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But Mark: the way he had almost totally discounted Sylvester’s findings, even basically threatening to discredit the detective. How he merely wanted to cover up the murders, not help with the investigation. Was he going for a strange power play among the Archangels? Was managing this panic somehow going to allow him to consolidate control? Sylvester thought back to Mark’s actions almost twenty years before. With those actions in mind, Sylvester would put nothing beyond him. There was no way he could be trusted.
Sylvester flipped through more files, rubbing his burning eyes. He leafed through a stack of reports Garcia had gathered from locals living near the crime scenes. Anybody who thought they had seen something strange had been interviewed. Most were nothing of interest, just fancies of worried people, but he took the time to scan through them anyway. One of the reports he stopped on was from a homeless man who had been sleeping in a doorway next to Theodore Godson’s star on the night of the first incident. The report was several pages long and appeared to be nothing more than the rant of a drunk or a drug addict. Sylvester groaned, pulling the report out of the stack and setting it aside.
Then he stopped. Something on the page had caught his eye. He looked at Garcia’s neat handwriting. There was that word again.
Beast.
He began reading. The man described seeing a black, shimmering beast on the boulevard that night that had seven heads and horrible, twisted horns. But then again the man went on to say the beast looked nothing like the alien spaceship he had seen the previous week. Sylvester sat back in his chair and thought. The witness was clearly unreliable, but the description was familiar to him. And specific. The man had counted seven heads.
He felt a sudden surge of adrenaline as his mind made the connection. He slid the tub of Red Vines off the file box and dug around until he found what he was looking for. His King James Bible. He flipped the book open, paged through to Revelation, and started to read.
It took him only a minute to find it. Revelation 13:1. He read it twice to himself to be sure:
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
A beast, he thought. He sifted through the reports again, reading them with new eyes. He picked out key phrases from the interviews, felt a strange presence at night, and sinking feeling of terror in the dark. They weren’t just worried. They were feeling something. Sensing that something was wrong. He was convinced. Something as old as time itself, something terrible and forgotten—a myth—was in fact real. And it was loose in the city. His intuition had been right the whole time. He couldn’t prove it, but he knew it as surely as he knew anything. He reached back into the file box and rifled around again until he pulled out a small, ornamental box made of brass. The outside had a series of engravings between small jewels inset in the metal. He looked at it and took a deep breath.
Suddenly a voice from behind startled him.
“Sir?”
He turned to see Garcia.
“What is it?”
“You better come see this,” the sergeant said.
“Jackson Godspeed flying out of his Commissioning? I heard. But I’ve ruled him out already.”
“You’ll want to see this anyway.” Garcia’s expression was grave. Sylvester set the box carefully on the desk in front of him and rose out of his chair.
They walked down the hall together, their bodies throwing long shadows in the amber glow of the emergency lights. Garcia led him to the TV in the waiting room, where several people had already gathered to watch the ANN special report. A serious-looking anchor was announcing the breaking news.
“Angel City police officials won’t comment at this time,” he said, “but in what may turn out to be the story of the year, Jackson Godspeed has been linked to the series of gruesome Angel attacks on the boulevard this week. And amid the outcry in Angel City, Senator-elect Ted Linden has called for special hearings on Capitol Hill around what he calls the ‘Angel Question.’”
Sylvester turned to Garcia.
“Jackson? Who did this?”
“Wasn’t me,” the sergeant said. “And it wasn’t anyone on our team, either. I checked.”
Sylvester turned and walked quickly back down the hall. Passing his station in the bull pen, he walked back toward the offices and burst into Captain Keele’s office without knocking. The captain, who was signing some paperwork, barely raised an eye as Sylvester came in.
“Oh good, David, we were just about to have you join us.” He motioned with his pen behind Sylvester. “These gentlemen are here from the NAS. From the Council’s Disciplinary Department, I’m sure you’re . . . familiar with it?”
Sylvester looked behind Keele. He could just make out the outline of two large figures in the darkened office. They seemed imposing, ominous. He couldn’t see their faces. He turned back to the captain.
“Sir, Jackson Godspeed has nothing to do with this. That is a totally unrelated situation.”
“You yourself had him questioned—”
“And quickly ruled him out.”
The captain regarded Sylvester patiently.
“They seem to think otherwise, Detective. They say they have good reason to suspect him, and I’m inclined to believe them. I think they have more experience in these matters, wouldn’t you agree?”
Sylvester looked at the captain in disbelief.
