The Devil's Labyrinth

CHAPTER 51

POPE INNOCENT XIV sat rigid in his chair for several long moments after the large video screen went black, his eyes still fixed on the monitor, his features frozen.

“Holiness?” Cardinal Morisco said softly, uncertain whether to interrupt the Pontiff’s reverie, but equally uncertain that the aging cleric hadn’t gone into some strange form of shock as he’d watched the images unfold before his eyes. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” the Pope sighed, sinking back into his chair. He retrieved his handkerchief from some hidden pocket in his cassock and wiped the moisture from his face. “Yes,” he said again, his voice slightly stronger. “I’m quite all right. Just give me a moment, please.”

“Surely.” Morisco busied himself with putting away his computer while the Pope collected his thoughts.

The first time he’d seen this ritual — in the first clip that had been forwarded from Boston — every bit of his intellect had told him to dismiss it as a prank. It had certainly been as badly photographed and ill lit as all the thousands of miracles he’d reviewed over the years, and even if what he’d seen was real, it had to be nothing more than a fluke.

Yet despite what his intellect had told him, his faith — and his guts — had told him something different.

They had told him to keep his mind open.

But the second clip had been far clearer and he’d been certain that the girl Father Sebastian Sloane had put through the ritual could not have faked her reactions.

So it was not a fluke.

But did Sloane really know what he was doing?

The Pope had been interested enough after the second clip to retrieve Sloane’s complete file, including the archived copy of his dissertation at Notre Dame.

It appeared that both he and Sloane had become interested in the same ancient Catholic rite, though the man who was now the Pope had begun many years before Sebastian Sloane, put in decades more time in research, and come up with nothing but dead ends.

Sloane, on the other hand, seemed to have had an intuitive sense that led him down pathways the Pope had never considered, even for a moment. The man had made seemingly irrational leaps of logic that, however unlikely, had eventually proved to be correct.

Could it be that the man had been divinely inspired?

Or could he somehow have actually discovered the text of the ancient rite?

Or, even more improbably — and important — had Sloane re-created the ancient Rite of Invocation?

The Rite of Invocation that had never, in the Pope’s experience, proved to be anything more than rumor.

Old stories handed down from centuries ago, undoubtedly twisted and embellished by every teller of the tale.

The possibility that Sloane had, indeed, either resurrected or re-created the Rite of Invocation had led to a series of sleepless nights for the Pope, as he speculated on the implications of such an event.

If Sloane had done what the Pope was now all but certain he had, this could be the most important event in Catholic history since the loss of the rite hundreds of years ago.

If it had ever existed at all.

Which was why even after witnessing this latest clip, the Pope had his doubts. It wasn’t, after all, simply that no one had ever been able to find the Rite of Invocation itself — it was far more than that; scholars had searched for centuries for evidence merely that the rite had ever truly existed. Teams of researchers had scoured every church archive in the world for years, and secular libraries and collections as well.

All to no avail.

So how could a priest from Indiana in the United States have found the answer?

It was beyond improbable.

And yet, in the afterglow of this latest video clip from Boston, the Pope’s doubt had all but vanished. He’d watched as Sloane invoked the evil that dwells in every man’s soul and done far more than merely banish it from the boy.

This was no simple exorcism as Morisco thought. Indeed, the Pope was quite certain that even Sloane’s deputies thought they were assisting at nothing more than an exorcism.

But the Pope knew better.

And so did Sloane. He wasn’t merely banishing evil.

He was taming it, controlling it.

Harnessing it to his own will.

And it was clear in the clip that Sloane knew exactly what he was doing.

“Holiness?”

The Pope looked up to see Morisco anxiously awaiting his words.

He trembled with indecision, and then certainty surged through him. “We shall go to Boston right away,” he declared, paying no attention at all to Morisco’s look of utter horror. “It shall be the first stop on our trip. A brief stop. I want no fanfare at all. A private Mass for the children of this St. Isaac’s school, and nothing more.”

Morisco’s horrified look deepened, but still the Pope ignored it.

“That is all, Guillermo. I shall meet with this priest who performs this ritual. Then we will continue with the tour exactly as it has been planned. Though perhaps we may stop in Boston again on the way back.”

“But Your Holiness—” Morisco pleaded.

“Thank you, Guillermo,” the Pope said as he rose out of his chair. “You have no idea how important this may be for all of us.” Leaving Cardinal Morisco staring at his back, he made his way slowly to the door of his apartment.

As always, the door opened just before his hand touched the knob.