Infernal - Страница 43

"So vent already."

Jack knew he was in a foul mood. Lack of sleep made it worse. He'd kept waking up during the night and stealing down the hall to Vicky's bedroom to see if the Lilitongue had moved. The only movement he wanted from it was back into its chest so he could lock it up and find an upstate landfill for its final resting place. But it didn't look like that was going to happen. Not unless it was forced back into its chest.

On one such foray he remembered talking to the damn thing: What are you? What have you done to Vicky? Then taking a swing at it.

His knuckles and wrist still ached from the impact.

"Tom and I spent the whole morning calling every place we could think of that might have heard of the Lilitongue of Gefreda. From the Museum of Natural History to antique dealers and antiquarian booksellers. Nothing."

"The Museum of Natural History? You should check with Doctor Buhmann there."

"Who's he?"

"He was one of my professors at Columbia. Specializes in dead languages."

"I'm not looking for a translation, I'm looking for somebody who knows about strange, ancient artifacts."

"This Lilitongue is ancient?"

Jack shrugged. "I know it's more than four hundred years old. The jerk says—"

"The jerk?"

"My brother."

"A shmegege you should call him. That better fits how you describe him. A shmegege and a gonif."

"I'll have to trust you on that. Anyway, the shmegege says the few mentions he found about it hinted that it was really old—maybe B.C. in origin. So you see, I need an archaeology type. If he can lead me to some old book, then I may need your professor friend. But at the moment—"

Nu, if this Lilitongue is one of a kind, you won't find anyone who's ever seen it, but someone may have read about it… especially if they specialize in translating texts of ancient languages."

Hope wanted to spark but Jack wouldn't let it. Still, Abe had suggested a direction he hadn't considered.

"Okay, maybe after we've exhausted the other avenues, I'll—"

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and hit the speak button. Had to be Gia.

"Jack?" Gia. Something in her tone…

"Something wrong?"

She sobbed. "The mark—it's bigger!"

A lead weight dropped into the pit of Jack's stomach.

"You're sure?"

"Absolutely. Last night it was between her shoulder blades, now it's touching them!" Another sob—the sound tore Jack's heart. "Jack, what's happening?"

He wished to hell he knew.

He spent a few moments trying to comfort her, assuring her that he was doing everything possible. When he hung up he relayed the latest to Abe.

"How do I get in touch with this language guy?"

"I'll see if I can arrange a meeting."

"Don't see if—do." He realized how he sounded. "Please."

Abe nodded as he picked up the phone.

"He'll remember you?"

Abe looked at him over the top of his reading glasses. "Oh, he'll remember me."

-69:48

"So how is Abraham doing these days?"

Peter Buhmann, Ph.D., associate conservator of languages in the division of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, professor emeritus at the Columbia University department of archaeology, was o-l-d. Figuring his age might require carbon dating. He looked frail, bent, pale, thin to the point of emaciation. Jack sensed something gnawing at his insides. Didn't look like he had much time left.

"Very well," Jack said.

Dr. Buhmann's office was small and cramped. The overstuffed shelves, threatening to drown them in paper if the building shook, made it seem even more claustrophobic.

"I haven't seen him since he graduated. One of my best students ever. A brilliant mind. I understand he sells sporting goods."

"Yes."

Jack figured the old guy would have a heart attack if he told him what Abe really sold.

He shook his head. "Such a waste of a good mind."

"He said you might know about the Lilitongue of Gefreda."

"Yes. He mentioned that on the phone. I haven't heard the Lilitongue mentioned in decades. So I went through my papers and found an entry in one of my notebooks." He opened a black ledgerlike book on his desk to a marked page. "I'm afraid it's not much."

"Anything you can tell me will be more than I've got."

"Very well." He put on his glasses and bent over the book. "These are notes I culled from various sources. The Lilitongue of Gefreda is mentioned as one of the Seven Infernals. I—"

"Which are?"

Infernal… Jack didn't like the sound of that.

"Mythical devices created in ancient times, each for a specific purpose."

"Such as?"

"Well, according to legend the Lilitongue was designed to"—he consulted his book here—"help someone 'elude all enemies and leave them helpless.' No name or purpose is known for any of the other six."

Disappointed, Jack leaned back and rubbed his eyes. He already knew that. He'd squeezed it out of his shmegege brother right before Gia's call.

"No mention of how it's supposed to do that?"

Dr. Buhmann shook his head. "None that I've ever read."

"Any picture of it anywhere?"

"None that I've ever seen." He sighed. "You must understand, the history of the Seven Infernals is shrouded in mystery. Most of the few researchers who've heard of them doubt they ever existed."

"Then why are they mentioned at all?"

A shrug. "Why are vampires mentioned? Why werewolves? Something inspired those myths, yes, but though the inspiration—say, the burial of a catatonic person in the former case, a severe manic-depressive disorder in the latter—might have been real, the folk tales that grew out of them are not."

That wasn't a folk tale floating in Vicky's bedroom.

"If I had to guess," Buhmann continued, "based on the escape fantasy offered by the Lilitongue of Gefreda, I'd say the myth was the result of wishful thinking by a persecuted culture." He frowned. "But then again…"

"What?"

"The Church seems to play an important part in the story."

The Jesuit Mendes… the map maker…

"The Catholic Church? The pope?"

"The Lilitongue was rumored to have been hidden away in the Vatican since the sixth century."

"Doesn't that tell you something?"

He laughed—a dry cackle. "So many strange and 'forbidden' things are rumored to be hidden in the Vatican vaults that the Church would need half of Rome to store them all!"

"Any rumor of it leaving the Vatican?"

Dr. Buhmann's eyes widened. "As a matter of fact…" He turned back to his notebook. "Yes. Here. It was rumored to have been stolen during the papacy of Innocent IX—who died in 1591 after only two months as pope." Another cackle. "Now, if I were a conspiracy theorist, I suppose I could make something of that."

"No mention of it after that?"

He checked his book again. "Not that I ever saw."

It all fit. The Lilitongue of Gefreda disappears from the Vatican in 1591… seven years later a Jesuit—at the request of the pope, if the inscription Tom had withheld could be believed—guided it to a watery grave. And it was never heard from since because it was buried in a Bermuda sand hole.

So what? He knew no more about the thing now than when he'd stepped into Dr. Buhmann's office.

Shit.

"May I ask you a question?"

Jack was tempted to say, You just did, but held back.

"Shoot."

"Why this interest in such an arcane legend? And believe me, the Lilitongue of Gefreda is very arcane."

How to answer that without telling too much…

"Someone I know thinks he's found it."

Buhmann's eyes twinkled. "Oh, I doubt that. But if your friend wishes to bring it here to the museum, I can have the objects curator take a look at it. No one knows what the Lilitongue looks like, so it will be impossible for him to identify it, but he should be able to carbon date it for you."

Nothing Jack would like better, but…

"It… it can't be moved right now."

And Jack wasn't about to self-destruct his life by becoming publicly involved with a thing that defied the laws of gravity. At least not yet.

But if everything led to dead ends, then that was what he'd do: bring the Lilitongue to the attention of the world and let the scientific community figure it out.

"Besides, what would carbon dating tell me?"

"Well, the Lilitongue is said to be ancient, fashioned in ancient Babylon or even earlier. If you brought in an object that was, say, five or six thousand years old, you might really have something."

Jack already knew he had something. He pushed himself out of the chair.

"Well, thank you for your time, Professor. Any suggestion as to where else I can look?"

He smiled. "To learn about a mythical object, you might want to consult a mythical book. According to lore there once existed a book, a 'forbidden' tome, that supposedly catalogued the histories and workings of all seven of the Infernals, along with much other 'forbidden' knowledge. But the book is most likely as fanciful as the objects it discusses."

"When and where was this nonexistent book last heard of?"

"The fifteenth century. Supposedly it fell into the hands of the Grand Inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, during the initial phase of the Spanish Inquisition. He tried to destroy it—burn it, tear it apart, slash its pages—but legend says it's indestructible."