Of Saints and Sinners Read online

  Cardinal Julian knew his face was red. He spun on his heels and stormed out of the room. Slamming the door behind him and throwing the file folder onto the secretaries’ desk, scattering papers onto the floor.

  Moreales would pay for this. That insolent asshole was done here.

  Father Moreales looked up as the Cardinal stormed out of the room and slammed the door behind him. He let out a long sigh.

  “You know Christopher? There is so little opportunity for humor in what I do that I thank God all the more when one occurs,” Moreales said.

  “Of course sir,” his secretary Christopher said.

  “This report that he was delivering. It is the same one you procured from his office computer last week I assume? The one related to the other reports from New York?”

  “Yes sir. The one regarding the attacks and monster sightings in and below the city.”

  “Our original theory is a troll or some abnormally large gnome,” Moreales said.

  “That was the theory sir, and until we had this report, we had no concrete information on how the creature or creatures looked. All the other reports were third or fourth hand originating mostly from street people, who are unreliable at best. Other than a vague notion of a ‘monster’ we did not have much to go on.”

  “And now?”

  “After running this report by the rest of the team we have concluded that it does not fit any known physical characteristics of any mythical creature.”

  Moreales glanced up from the report at this assistant.

  “So what you are saying is we don’t have a clue.”

  “Yes sir,” Christopher said. “Also this latest report is from a well-respected priest as seen with his owns eyes and we confirmed the disappearance of the anthropology student Douglas Perkins. The involvement by the Lenape native American and their writing also lends, if not authenticity, at least curiosity that we need to take note of.”

  Moreales leaned back in his chair hands clasped lightly in his lap and chin lying against his chest with his eyes closed. This was his thinking position although on occasion it could also be his napping position.

  “Suggestions?” Moreales asked.

  “Assign an agent; he can investigate the cause of these monster sightings and disappearances. I think we have enough information now to conclude that this is a matter for the Inquisition and not some false hysteria by the homeless and poor.”

  “So you vote for action? I agree, something is going on over there in New York, in the bowels of that city. Notify Mortimer and Silas of this report and have them look into it.”

  Christopher didn’t move.

  “Do you have a concern Christopher?” Moreales asked.

  “Yes sir. I don’t think Silas is the one for this task. At least not initially. Once we know exactly what is going on and we need some brute strength to go confront the problem he would be an ideal candidate, but for now I think we need someone a little more subtle.”

  “So you don’t think the mind of a demon is subtle or devious enough to handle this job?”

  “Of course I do sir, just not the mind of this particular demon.”

  “Silas is a little rough around the edges, but he has proven very effective and knowledgeable for the inquisition. Your point is taken, but I would like to use Silas.”

  Moreales leaned back and stared at one of the murals on the wall. It depicted a female saint slaying a dragon with sword.

  “Perhaps it is time Silas had a partner,” Moreales said.

  3

  The heavy metal door creaked loudly as Silas opened it. He winced. He would have to have that fixed; it made sneaking out of his basement apartment almost impossible. It didn’t matter this time anyway. Father Deluca was standing across the alley at the foot of the concrete stairs leading to the back entrance of the mission.

  If there was any human Silas could say he liked it would be Father Deluca. He had spunk and grit. Father Deluca spent day and night with the lowest of mankind--the homeless, the broken, the drug addicts, and the crazies--yet through it all he did not back down. He consistently battled to help them, even those who didn’t want to be helped, even the ones who wanted nothing more than violence. He was a tireless crusader. Or maybe he was just insane; the jury was still out as far as Silas was concerned. But that didn’t stop him from enjoying the priest’s company.

  Silas was about to call out to him, but then hesitated. Father Deluca was staring off down the alley, a frown creasing his brow. He glanced at his wrist watch, then back down the alley. Then to Silas’s surprise he paced back and forth a few steps. For a man who was the soul of patience pacing was out of character.

  “Father Deluca?” Silas finally called out quietly, not sure why he was quiet, but feeling the tension from the priest.

  Father Deluca looked up sharply. Obviously he had been too lost in thought to hear the loud door.

  “Silas,” Father Deluca said, a faint smile touching his lips. “What are you doing home at this late hour? It’s midnight. Shouldn’t you be off saving the world--or at least putting on a rock and roll show?”

  It was a Saturday night; as far as Silas was concerned he should be three sheets to the wind by now down at the bar.

  “Just getting a late start Father. Had to press the old leather jacket and jeans and all that,” Silas said.

  Silas pulled a pack of smokes from his inside pocket, shook one out and offered it to the Father. Father Deluca looked at the pack, and longing flashed in his eyes. It was his vice and they often enjoyed a smoke together in the early evening or at dawn if Silas was sober enough. The priest seemed to enjoy the conversations and Silas enjoyed the little corruption he could inspire in the priest, so it was a win, win. This time, however, Father Deluca shook his head.

  “No Silas, not tonight. As much as I might want to, I am waiting for someone.”

  “Suit yourself Father.”

  Silas flipped one of the smokes into his mouth and sucked in slowly as the tip lit with a bright red glow. He then took out one cigarette from the pack and slipped it into Father Deluca’s breast pocket and winked at him.

  “For later Father,” he said.

  Father Deluca chuckled.

  “Thanks Silas. I can always count on you to be the devil on my shoulder.”

  “You betcha. So what brings a priest out to a dark alley? What would the parishioners say if they could see you skulking around like this?”

  “Actually I am waiting for one now. Well at least one of the regular patrons of the mission.”

  He seemed to consider for a second. Then he said:

  “Silas, I know that you are not one of the regular employees of the church, and you know that the archbishop has asked me to take special care to watch over you. I know that you provide discrete services for the church, and although I admit I don’t know the exact nature of the services maybe you can help me with this. You spend a lot of time on the streets right?”

  “Well not really with the homeless. They smell funny,” Silas said. He was curious what the priest would ask of him. Father Deluca knew about Silas’ nature and his arrangement with the Vatican, but he was not privy to the details, which was probably for the best. He knew that Silas had some skills bordering on the miraculous, but the priest did not know that his smoking buddy and sometime confidant was one of the bad guys… one of the really bad guys.

  “No, but you hang out at some of the most disreputable and broken establishments in the worst parts of town right?”

  “Oh that. Yep, pretty shitty places.”

  Father Deluca looked off down the alley for a moment and then back at Silas, the frown back on his face.

  “When I started working at the mission about twenty years ago it was falling apart and I took it as my personal goal to reestablish it as a presence in the community.”

  Silas didn’t change his expression, but if this was going to be an impromptu history lesson on the parish he was going to regret offering Deluca the smoke.


  “Since that time the community has grown slowly,” Father Deluca continued. “And the mission with it. The people that we helped ebbed and flowed obviously, but overall the number of people we helped continued to grow.”

  Silas looked down the alley; his bike was at the other end. Perhaps he should start walking toward it.

  “That was until recently. It seems that the people coming to the mission, the ones that need the help the most, are disappearing.”

  “Maybe it’s just that it’s working. I mean maybe all this help, you know the food and the talking, is really helping. Perhaps some of the people are pulling themselves out of this life,” Silas said, hoping he sounded convincing.

  Father Deluca raised an eyebrow.

  “And you and I both know that is bullshit,” he said.

  “Then why do you do it? If you think it is all bullshit then what’s the point?” Silas asked.

  “I didn’t say it was all bullshit. I think the church…I think we help people a little, give them a foothold maybe, to start pulling themselves up as you put it, but I don’t believe that we can clean the streets and make it all better. I know the statistics and I know that for every person I help just a little, ten more fall deeper into their hell.”

  “Oh no Father, don’t be so hard on yourself. Hell is much worse than this,” Silas said and smiled reassuringly. He told Mort he could be sensitive when it was needed.

  Father Deluca grunted.

  “The point is Silas…this is different. This isn’t the slow, natural attrition of the streets claiming their own; there have been an alarming number of our regular visitors that have disappeared. Ah, here comes my informant now.”

  Father Deluca nodded towards the end of the alley. Silas instantly detected movement at that end, though whoever it was was trying hard not to be seen. The small shape clung close to the brick wall, scurrying between trashcans and crates piled against the walls.

  Silas tensed and instinctually stepped in front of Father Deluca. It might have been one of the Fey or even an imp, although Silas didn’t think Father Deluca would have anything to do with one of those. The shape was thin and lanky enough that it could have been the homunculus of some minor sorcerer, but his demonic senses detected a heartbeat, body heat, and the smell of sweat. No. Homunculus was out of the question.

  The form stepped from the shadow, and Silas saw that it was just a boy, fidgeting nervously from foot to foot.

  Jesus Christ! I need a vacation, Silas thought, slowly reining in his fury and letting the tension out of his shoulders and fists.

  “Michael,” Father Deluca said and stepped around Silas. “I am glad you made it.”

  Father Deluca’s hand disappeared into his breast pocket, and for a moment Silas thought he was going to offer the boy a smoke. Instead, he pulled out a small candy bar.

  “I stole this from Father Tiernan; his gut’s big enough. I don’t think he will miss it.”

  Father Deluca tossed it gently to Michael, but it bounced against the boy’s chest and hit the ground. Michael was staring, eyes wide, at Silas.

  Uh oh. Silas recognized that look. The boy was about to make a break for it. Silas stepped back into the shadow. With his size he could not completely disappear, but the demon in him pulled the shadows closer to hide as much of his intimidating visage as possible. Normally, scaring off the neighborhood kids was the look he was going for, but in this case he wanted Father Deluca to be able to talk to the boy.

  “Don’t worry Michael, Silas is my friend. He won’t hurt you. He just looks tough. Really he is as tame as a pussy cat.”

  Silas had to chuckle at that. It came out as a deep rumble and probably didn’t help the situation. Apparently Father Deluca agreed because he gave Silas a sharp look.

  “In fact, I asked him to be here. I have asked him to help us find out what is going on and where your friends have gone.”

  Michael’s eyes flickered back and forth between them then he nodded slowly and seemed to come to some conclusion. He walked over to Silas and tilted his head to look him in the eye, like David confronting Goliath.

  “I am not afraid of you,” the boy said.

  And Silas believed him.

  He turned his back on Silas, dismissing him. Very few grown men could do that. Hell, very few grown demons could do that. Silas was quickly changing his opinion of the youth in the neighborhood.

  “Come, let’s sit over here where there is more light.”

  Father Deluca guided the boy to the stairs and they sat. The boy had retrieved the fallen candy bar. He opened it and started shoving it into his mouth.

  “Michael here lives with his brother, sometimes on the streets, sometimes at the mission. I have tried to get them to meet with Child Protective Services to talk about options, but he always seems to know when they are about and makes himself scarce. Right Michael?”

  Father Deluca ruffled his hair, but stopped when he saw that the boy had stopped eating the candy bar and was staring at the ground. Father Deluca hadn’t seen it, but Silas had seen when the boy stopped eating the candy; it was when Father Deluca had mentioned his brother.

  “He’s gone,” the boy whispered.

  “Who is?” Father Deluca asked.

  “Jared. Jared is gone. They took him.”

  “Who took him? What do you mean gone?” Asked Father Deluca.

  “He said he was going to look for the others. The ones you were asking about, his friends… my friends.”

  “You saw somebody take him?” Silas asked. This was getting interesting. Maybe this was something in his bailiwick.

  “No. He just left me, said he would be back in an hour. Said he thought he might know something about what was going on. Why all those people were dropping out of sight. Then he took off.”

  The boy was lying, Silas could smell it. Demons were some of the best liars. It was an art, and just like you wouldn’t show off your doodles to Picasso, you don’t lie in front of one of Satan’s little helpers. If the boy wasn’t lying he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  “Maybe he was late. He said he would be back in an hour. When was this?” Father Deluca asked.

  “This morning.”

  “Father, you had asked these two to look into the disappearances you were talking about?” Silas asked.

  Father Deluca looked away from Michael reluctantly. Worry etched his face. “Yes. I was saying too many people I was trying to help have just faded away, some that the brothers were close too. I asked them about it, but they did not know what was happening. I..um…”

  Father Deluca paused, worry had turned to guilt.

  “I asked Michael and Jared to look into it. See if there was some connection. I thought maybe there was some new drug or maybe even a new mission or other place helping. If I had thought for one moment that it might be dangerous I would never have asked the kids to help.”

  “There is no other mission Father,” Michael said. “Just you and the other shelters that have been around a while. It’s like some of these people we see every day on the same street corner or in the same line for food all decided to get the fuck… um…I mean, leave town.”

  “There was nothing common among them? Some of them, the ones you actually talked to on a regular basis, were they all doing something? Some connection? Maybe a new drug?” Silas asked.

  “No, there are no new drugs, just the same ones day after day Mr. Silas.” Michael scrunched up his face in the universal child body language of “I’m thinking”.

  “There was one thing…”

  “Yes?” Father Deluca prompted. “Don’t worry you can tell us. We want to help.”

  “But you might think I’m weird. I’m not even sure I got it right.”

  “Trust me, you don’t know shit about weird kid,” Silas said.

  “Well, now that I think about it, they were depressed,” Michael said.

  “They live on the streets; it ain’t fucking Disneyland. Of course they were depressed.”

  �
��No dumbass, I mean more depressed than usual,” the kid said.

  Silas grunted. Kid was ballsey as hell.

  “A couple of them--Sam the old guy that worked his mouth like he always had a wad of chew in there and Lisa, the crack ho that came into your mission once in a while--talked about getting away from it all, about finding a way out. I thought they were talking about killing themselves or some shit like that,” Michael said and brought his hand up shaped like a gun to pantomime blowing his head off. “Others that have disappeared said the same shit.”

  Father Deluca sat next to Michael and pulled him in close in a hug. Michael resisted a minute then allowed himself to be pulled against the Father. Tears were forming in his eyes.

  “I shouldn’t have let him go. I knew that… I tried to tell him, but he didn’t listen, Father. I let him go.” the boy said into Father Deluca’s shirt, but Silas could hear him clearly and thought for a moment that the boy almost let slip what he was concealing.

  “No Michael, it is not your fault. You couldn’t have known. Jared is eighteen years old; there is no way you could have stopped him. He was much bigger than you. You did the right thing telling me.” To Silas he said, “So how about it? Do you think you can help?”

  “Not really much to go on here now, is there Father?” Silas asked. “I mean some street people disappearing? Maybe a suicide pact. What am I going to find, a room full of bodies and pitchers of Kool-Aid?”

  The boy winced and pulled closer to the priest, Silas thought he heard a sob. Father Deluca shot him a hard look. It occurred to Silas that this might be one of those moments Mort was referring too when he called him insensitive.

  “This is unusual and I know you specialize in the unusual Silas. I know this might not be as important as what the Vatican asks you to do, but I was hoping that you might be able to help me. Help us.”

  Silas looked down at his watch. It was late and he needed a drink.

  “Okay Father, I’ll look into this if I can. I can’t promise anything of course, and like you said this might not be my number one priority if his holy upittyness decides I need to chase my tail on something else, but I’ll do what I can.”