Angel City Read online

  ALSO BY JON STEELE

  The Watchers

  War Junkie

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA

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  Copyright © 2013 by Jon Steele

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Lyrics from “South City Midnight Lady” by Patrick Simmons, © WB Music Corp. and Lansdowne Music Publishers, used by permission of Alfred Music Publishing Co. Inc. Lyric to “The Wheel” by Robert Hunter, copyright © Ice Nine Pub. Co. Used with permission.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Steele, Jon, date.

  Angel City : Part two of the Angelus trilogy / Jon Steele.

  p. cm

  ISBN 978-1-101-62112-7

  1. Murder—Investigation—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619T4338A54 2013 2013009626

  813'.6—dc23

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  for

  Juanita Hedlund

  Contents

  Also by Jon Steele

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Author’s Note and an Angelus Trilogy Glossary

  Epigraph

  Prelude

  BOOK ONE: GO, SET A WATCHMAN, LET HIM DECLARE WHAT HE SEETH

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  BOOK TWO: WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT? WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT?

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  BOOK THREE: AND THE WATCHMAN SAID: THE MORNING COMETH, AND ALSO THE NIGHT

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BOOK FOUR: FOR THE LORD GOD OF ISRAEL HATH SPOKEN IT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Adæquatio Intellectus Et Rei

  About the Author

  Author’s Note and an Angelus Trilogy Glossary

  LES CARRIÈRES (OFTEN REFERRED TO AS “THE CATACOMBS”) ARE the tunnels and quarries that run for hundreds of kilometers beneath the streets of Paris. They were begun in the twelfth century by miners following limestone deposits to be used for building materials. The Great South System under the Left Bank of Paris is the most extensive section of les carrières. It is deeper than the present-day subway, rail, and sewer tunnels. The German Luftwaffe used a section of les carrières (near Luxembourg Gardens) as a bunker during the Nazi occupation of Paris.

  THE CATHARS WERE A CHRISTIAN SECT, MOST ACTIVE DURING THE eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. They believed in the duality of the universe. To them, pure immaterial spirits (souls) were created by a Good God and dwelled amid the stars with angels, while the material world was created by an Evil God who sought to entrap pure spirits in the forms of men on Earth. And though the Cathars believed Jesus Christ to be a “pure spirit,” they did not accept him as the Son of God, nor did they believe he died on the cross. The Cathars did not practice the Catholic sacraments of baptism or Communion; their one sacrament of Consolamentum was offered near death as preparation for the soul’s return to the realm of the Good God. In keeping with their beliefs, the Cathars considered the Catholic Church, particularly the physical wealth and power of the Papacy, to be a creation of the Evil God. For these reasons, the Cathars were condemned as heretics.

  MONTSÉGUR IS THE NAME OF BOTH THE GEOLOGICAL FORMATION OF igneous rock (called pluton) located on the north slope of the southeast Pyrenees and the medieval fortress atop it. It is thought there was a previous structure atop the pluton in the pre-Christian era; most possibly a temple of sun worship. The temple was replaced with a stone fortress during the eleventh century and later abandoned. In 1204, the fortress was refortified by a local noble who opposed the expansion of the Kingdom of France into Occitania (what is now the department of Midi-Pyrénées in southeast France). The noble allowed the Cathars to take refuge in the fortress to escape the slaughter of the Albigensian Crusade, initiated by Pope Innocent III in 1209. In 1233, the Roman Catholic Church ordered the extermination of the “Cathar heresy” through the Office of the Inquisition. In 1243, French Crusaders acting in the name of the Pope laid siege to the last redoubt of the Cathars at Montségur. The fortress of the Cathars was destroyed by the Crusaders at the end of the ten-month siege. The current structure atop the pluton was built over the ruins of the Cathar fortress at the behest of the King of France. It served as a military garrison until the eighteenth century.

  THE DOMINICANS ARE AN ORDER OF PRIESTS ESTABLISHED BY SAINT Dominic in 1215. The order was known as Ordo Prædicatorum, the Order of Preachers. They encouraged devotion to the Virgin Mary through the recitation of the rosary; they were also fiercely loyal to the Pope and many became feared throughout southern France as Inquisitors. With the blessing of the Pope, Inquisitors had the power to subject anyone suspected of heresy to trial by torture and death by burning.

  PARADISE: Planet Earth, where the Unknown Creator has set in motion an evolutionary process affecting the future of the universe.

  HARPER’S KIND: referring to small creatures born of light and without free will, sent to Earth two and a half million years ago by an Unknown Creator to hide in the forms of men and defend the evolution of Paradise.

  THE ENEMY, GOONS: referring to those creatures born of light who preceded Harper’s kind but rejected the divine will of the Unknown Creator, first taking the forms of men and breeding with human females to create a new race of physical beings, thereby bringing “evil” to Paradise.

  SUTF, OR SPECIAL UNIT TASK FORCE: the top-secret division of the Swiss National Police under the command of Inspector Gobet.

  HALFBREEDS: children of the enemy who infected Paradise with greed and fear. A term also used by Jay Harper to describe the children bred by Harper’s kind in a now abandoned experiment to replenish their numbers in the wake of severe losses.

  PARTISANS: human beings in secret service to Harper’s kind.

  TIME WARP: a defensive maneuver in which Harper’s kind isolates a small geographical area by locking it in a moment in time.

  THE FIRST FIRE: the flame remnant used in the creation of the universe, brought to Earth by Harper’s kind two and a half million years ago to trigger the evolutionary process as planned by the Unknown Creator.

  RADIANCE: the potion mixed with a special blend of tobacco and used by Harper’s kind to prevent the physical weight of the human form from crushing out the light of their being
.

  DEAD BLACK: an injectable potion used by Goons to create a feeling of euphoria while committing acts of evil.

  FLASH: the ability of Harper’s kind to “see” past events in their eyes, as if reliving the event.

  SCAN: the ability of Harper’s kind, and the Enemy, to check another’s eyes for levels of pure light or traces of dead black.

  IMAGINING: a process of conceptualization shared by Harper’s kind and human beings.

  THE WAR, ETERNAL AND FOREVER: the two-and-a-half-million-year-old battle for Paradise, fought in the shadows between Harper’s kind and the Enemy.

  In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I can see, as I have seen in the past, all the marring and mangling of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and the souls torn with violence from proud bodies and hurled to God.

  JACK LONDON

  The Iron Heel

  Prelude

  IN ÆTERNUS

  FORTRESS MONTSÉGUR, OCCITANIA, MARCH 15, 1244

  WHEN THE KNIGHT REACHED THE STONE STEPS TO THE ramparts, he realized he was walking in circles. He stopped, looked around the courtyard. Till then there had only been the sensation of a staggering, forward motion; now came an awareness of the world around him. It was the tower he recognized at first, rising like some singular presence against the late afternoon sky. It was badly damaged during the bombardment, as were the battlements. In the early days, when French catapults were still halfway down the mountain at Roc de la Tour, the stone missiles did no more than bounce off the outer walls of the fortress. The knight made sport of collecting the stones, calling them “the Pope’s turds” and bringing them into the courtyard where the fighters of Montségur built their own catapult. After writing curses on the stones, the fighters returned them down the mountain from where they had come. But in February the French broke through the lower defenses and scaled the cliffs, securing a foothold on the summit. Their catapults found their range and the final assault began. They leveled the terraced village on the north cliff in three days, forcing the folk who lived there to seek refuge within the fortress. Still, the fighters of Montségur would not surrender. The French adjusted their targeting and launched stones, a hundredweight each, into the courtyard.

  Just now, seeing the crumpled shelters in the courtyard and the pools of blood on the ground, terrible images came to the knight’s eyes. There was no defense from the bombardment, not even in the lower chambers of the tower. Fighters and folk were crushed to death. The French then attacked with infantry and captured the barbican a mere thirty chains from the fortress gates. It was Montségur’s last line of defense. All was lost unless the Crusaders could be repelled.

  The knight felt a cold wind at his back.

  He turned to the smashed open gates, and for a moment he was confused. He couldn’t remember what had happened next. But as he felt the wind on his face, more images came to his mind. He saw the fighters of Montségur mustering in the courtyard at evening, preparing for the last battle. Two young boys stood nearby, holding torches so the fighters could see as they dressed in chain mail, coifs, and helmets. There were but a handful left now: nineteen knights with swords and shields, five crossbowmen and archers, twenty sergeants and infantrymen with lances and war hammers, a few Basque mercenaries with axes and cudgels. The knight remembered the fighters speaking quietly among themselves.

  “What is the day?” one said.

  “Why should you care?” another answered.

  “Because I should like to know the day of my death, if this is to be the day of my death.”

  “Then, it is a Tuesday, I think.”

  Such fateful words were a soldier’s words, the knight remembered thinking. And he remembered how he, too, tried to recall the day just in case this would be the day of his own death. The fighter was correct, it was a Tuesday; first day of March. The day was named after the Norse god of war, Tiw; the month was named after the Roman god of war.

  “Not a bad day to die, then,” the knight said to the fighters, fitting his helmet to his head and securing the chin strap. The fighters laughed.

  About the courtyard, the three hundred folk seeking refuge within the fortress had gathered to watch the preparations for battle. Farmers and shepherds from the surrounding valleys, craftsmen and merchants from nearby towns, dispossessed nobles from Languedoc. Many of them credents to the Cathar faith, all of them sympathetic to the cause of the Cathars. The leaders of the faith watched, too; the ones who called themselves “the good men.” They stood at the entrance of the tower, somber and silent in their black robes. The knight could see their lips forming words of silent prayer as was their manner.

  The knight bowed to them, the good men continued to pray.

  The knight turned to the fighters, the fighters fell quiet.

  “Brothers in battle, I salute you this fine evening. For ten months, we have held an army of ten thousand soldiers at bay. Not just any soldiers, but soldiers of France. At our greatest strength, we were two hundred fifty fighters. I ask you to think on it. Outnumbered more than sixty to one, yet we have not been shaken from this rock. We are told, tonight, there is a full company of infantry at the barbican awaiting our surrender. We are told two more companies are making their way up the mountain and will be here by the dawn. They say Louis IX—”

  Some of the fighters cursed, the rest of them spit.

  “They say that Capetian donkey, then—”

  The fighters laughed.

  “—they say he commands us to kneel and swear an oath of fealty to France. But I say as we live and breathe, this rock beneath our feet is all that is left of Occitania. It is our land, and I say free men do not kneel on their own land. And His Holiness the Pope—”

  More curses and spit.

  “I mean that evil son of Satan—”

  Laughter.

  “—has blessed the French soldiers, calling them Crusaders, warriors of Christ. He has decreed these Crusaders to be doing God’s work in slaying the Cathars.”

  The knight pointed to the folk.

  “His Holiness therefore orders us to surrender these men and women to the Inquisition, that they may be investigated for the crime of heresy. But I say these folk have fed us, tended our wounds, washed our braies and leggings, kept our worn shoes bound together with scraps of cloth torn from their own tunics. I say these folk have done all in the defense of Occitania but wield a weapon.”

  He nodded to the good men at the tower.

  “More, we are ordered to surrender the leaders of the faith to be burned at the stake unless they repent. But I say these good men have prayed for us, offered our dying brothers the sacrament of Consolamentum. I say we are bound to these good men and them to us. I say we will not surrender one pure soul to the tyranny of a corrupt and sinful Church.”

  The fighters agreed with grunts and snorts.

  “Brothers in battle, mark my words well: This alliance of Pope and King howling at the gates craves more than our lands to make them France. Pope and King crave our absolute destruction so that all memory of this place, all memory of us, will be wiped from the face of the Earth.”

  The knight pulled his sword from its sheath. He could see the chinks and nicks of battle on the blade. He admired the markings by torchlight.

  “So, with apologies to the good men for my foul tongue, I say we tell Pope and King to go fuck themselves in the arse.”

  There was no laughter this time; only the sound of weapons being drawn and raised. The folk in the courtyard parted to let the fighters pass. The boys, bearing torches high, led the way to the north gate. As the fighters had arranged themselves in formation, the knight nodded to the boys.

  “Douse the fires. Get you both to the tower.”

  The boys lowered the torches to the soggy ground. The fires sizzled out, the boys dashed away. The knight stood quietly, watching the sky, waiting for his eyes to open to the stars.
There was the Great Plough of the heavens, there was Polaris. There was Draco and Cassiopeia. A voice whispered to him from behind:

  “And what have to offer the stars this fine evening, Oh noble knight?”

  It was Jean de Combel, crossbowman from Laurac. Always good with a mocking word before battle to cheer the men. The knight turned back to him, touched the flat of his sword to the crossbowman’s shoulder.

  “I pray, ‘Whatever you do, let me live one day longer than that ugly bastard de Combel.’”

  The crossbowman laughed.

  “Then you shall live forever, knight, for I will never die.”

  The knight nodded.

  “Done. Now open the gate, de Combel, and let’s put the bargain to the test.”

  Jean de Combel stepped forward with his archers. They lifted the cross brace, set it aside. The doors moaned and creaked open on iron hinges. The knight stared ahead, imagining . . .

  If they could retake the barbican and dislodge the forward company of French Crusaders, drive them over the cliffs, the fighters could capture the catapults. The machines could be turned around, used against the enemy soldiers scaling the mountain, and those encamped at Roc de la Tour. Two more catapults stood there. And in capturing those, the fighters would have enough firepower to break the siege. The folk could descend along hidden trails and disappear into the shelter of the Pyrenees, then over the peaks into Catalonia. But the French were dug in too well, and when the King’s crossbows opened at the flanks, the fighters of Montségur were caught in crossfire.

  The knight winced, remembering a long bolt howling through the battle. He remembered hearing the killing thing before it hit him. Knowing the moment he heard its voice, it was meant for him. The bolt hit with the force of a war hammer, the tiny blades cutting through his chain mail, digging into his chest. He saw himself dropping his sword and shield, falling to the ground. He lay amid the battle tasting his own blood in his mouth, knowing the blade had missed his heart but pierced his lung. The attack withered, the fighters fell back. Jean de Combel picked up the knight’s sword, pulled the knight’s arm around his own neck, lifted the knight to his feet. They hurried to the fortress. The knight pulled away from de Combel, fell against the stone arch of the gate.