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Epilogue

September 13, 2004

VINCE WALTERS WAS in his office going over contracts when his secretary called him on his secure line.

Vince answered on speaker-phone. “Yes.”

“There’s a woman here to see you,” Barbara said. She sounded flustered. “She doesn’t have an appointment and—”

“Then send her away,” Vince said, turning back to his paperwork, dismissing her.

“I’ve tried and I was just about to call security but she’s insisting I call you first.” Barbara sounded pissed off now and Vince looked up from his paperwork, curious. Barbara never got angry. She could turn away the most ambitious salesman. Whoever this woman was, she’d really gotten under Barbara’s skin.

“Who is she?” Vince asked.

“She says—” Barbara began and then she was cut off by the sound of another woman’s voice, demanding something. Barbara said, “Ma’am, I’m telling him. Now will you please be patient!” To Vince: “She says her name is Brandy Black and that you knew her husband Frank. She’s requesting a meeting and I’ve told her that your calendar—”

“Send her in,” Vince said, frowning.

Barbara started, her voice surprised. “Send her in?”

“Send her in,” Vince confirmed. He hung up and began sweeping the papers he was working on into a folder labeled Al Azif Project. He’d finished the deal on this last year, shortly after making presidency of the corporation. He was not only in charge of World Accounts, the Al Azif project had been handed to him without question. He invested the funds in high yield stocks and bonds, channeled the profits to various offshore accounts and wiped his hands clean of it. In the years to come, the project would fund various weapons technologies intended for the US Government’s so-called War Against Terror. It would also fund biological research that would be a fundamental part of this new weapon. Once engaged, the group’s plans could move forward.

He swept the file into the top folder of his desk, making a mental note to place it in his safe when the door to his office opened and a dark-haired woman walked in.

Barbara was behind her, looking flustered. “Mr. Walters I tried to—”

“It’s all right,” Vince said, rising to his feet and buttoning his sport coat. He held his hand out to one of the two soft leather chairs in front of his desk and smiled at Brandy Black. “Mrs. Black. Nice to meet you. Please, have a seat.”

“No thanks, I’ll stand.” Brandy Black had crossed the room and now stood in front of the desk, arms crossed over her chest, her dark eyes smoldering. She was a stunningly attractive woman; five foot five with a trim, athletic body. Her features were beautifully sculptured; high cheekbones, full lips, perfect nose, stunning eyes, and luscious black hair that fell to her shoulders. She and Frank must have made a beautiful couple.

“Fine,” Vince said. He caught Barbara’s eye and nodded. Barbara got the hint and exited the room, closing the door behind her. Frank smiled at Brandy and sank back into his chair. “Well then,” he said, leaning back. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Black?”

“Don’t you know?” Like Barbara, Brandy looked pissed. Only she looked like she had a mission.

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Vince said. “Why don’t we start from the beginning?”

Brandy relaxed a little bit; her shoulders slumped slightly, her features softened. “I… um, listen, I’m sorry if I was nasty to your secretary back there, but she really pissed me off.”

Vince smiled. “Barbara’s been known to do that to even International Investors. That’s why I’ve retained her services.”

“Yeah, well, she wouldn’t even listen to me as I tried to tell her why I needed to see you,” Brandy said, and now she was slipping into another persona, one that was probably more normal for her. “If she hadn’t been so difficult, I wouldn’t have gotten so mad at her and I wouldn’t have stormed in here like some Nazi Storm-Trooper.”

Vince chuckled. “Nazi Storm-Trooper. I like that. Has a nice ring to it.”

Brandy turned to Vince, all traces of anger gone. Now she looked serious. “I’m sorry I’ve intruded on you, Mr. Walters, but you’re my only hope. I’ve been… trying to find out what happened to my husband for almost… well, for over two years now, and I’m getting nowhere.”

“So what do you want me to do?” This was the first time Vince had spoken to Brandy, much less met her. He’d kept tabs, though. The Mike Peterson murder-suicide case had been big news for a while until it was replaced by something else. The police had never questioned Vince in the death of Frank Black. As for Mike’s friend William Grecko, he’d proved to be no problem. Shortly after the Mike Peterson murder-suicide case broke, William Grecko checked himself in to a rehabilitation facility for his chronic alcoholism. He’d remained there for a month, then took a nearly one-year leave of absence from his law firm. The group monitored Grecko closely, but the lawyer seemed to have no interest in the Peterson case. When he did return to work, he took less stressful cases, mostly involving family matters. Shortly after Grecko went into rehab, the law firm’s offices were broken into and the entire suite searched; several computers were taken. The resulting data taken from the pilfered documents and computers stolen from the office suggested that none of William Grecko’s employees had any knowledge of his relationship with Mike Peterson. If Billy had any evidence saved on any electronic media, he’d taken it with him and put it in a safe place. A subsequent search of his home during his stint in rehab had come up with nothing as well.

That was fine, though. William Grecko couldn’t do anything even if he did reach out to his FBI contact. The group had friends in every government agency. At the first whiff of investigation, certain powers-that-be would make the appropriate moves and the investigation would be stopped.

In the years that had passed, Vince had resumed his life and position at Corporate Financial. He ascended to a higher role in the organization, began directing certain activities. Outside of the corporate structure, he began directing certain magical activities, including the monitoring of an older ritual the Yazidis developed, one they had practiced fifteen hundred years ago but was said to have elements that went back even further, to Sumerian times. In fact, he’d just received word from a high-ranking member of the group, Julie Montenelli, that the latest in a series of these rituals had just concluded successfully. These rituals, combined with others being practiced by the group, would create the right atmosphere for his own soul-cracking. And then, when the stars were right…

Brandy Black was an extremely beautiful woman. She was also extremely bold, especially to have hopped on a plane to California to confront him face to face. She was trying hard to control herself; her eyes were smoldering pits and her lips were pressed into a thin line of anger. Vince could detect her anger just simmering beneath the surface. “You’ve been ignoring me for years,” she said, a low whisper, guttural with anger and menace. “He seeks you out because he thinks he can help you… he risks his life because he thinks you’re in danger…” Brandy was lurching closer towards him, looking like she wanted to leap over his desk and throttle him. “…he does all this and you ignore me!”

Vince looked impassive. “I had no reason to speak to you.”

“No reason to speak to me?” Brandy looked taken aback by Vince’s stoic demeanor. “My husband wanted to help you! He kept me in the dark about what it was he was working on and all he would tell me was that something happened to you and him when the two of you were kids. Whatever it was, he was paranoid enough to set up these fake IDs for me and the kids, then move us out to the middle of goddamn nowhere—”

Vince held up his hand. “What is it you want to know?”

Brandy stopped. For a moment, she looked surprised, as if the years of stonewalling her and ignoring her inquiries had finally resulted in breaking his barrier. “I just want to know the truth,” she said. “What was he so scared of? What happened to him, what happened to you to… to make him do this?”

Vince shrugged. “I have no idea. I had a perfectly happy childhood. Frank, on the other hand… well, Frank was a troubled child. Seeing him again really brought those memories back and I’m sorry to say, whatever trouble he had only worsened in his adulthood.”

“What do you mean?”

“He was incoherent. He didn’t make any sense. He rambled on about his parents, how they were horrible to him and abused him and all that, then he claimed I had witnessed some of it and been abused myself. I was skeptical. He told me about his past, how he ran away, got hooked on dope, the whole nine yards. At first glance, I thought his story bore serious consideration, so I indulged him.”

Brandy was looking at him warily. Vince continued. He stood up from behind his desk and approached her. “We spent a few days together, driving around Orange County and he kept bringing things up about when we were kids. Try as I might, much of what he told me didn’t add up in my memory. Plus, he was using drugs again.”

“No he wasn’t,” Brandy said.

“Yes, he was,” Vince said. He nodded, then placed a friendly hand on her shoulder. “Granted, he was smoking pot. Claimed it relaxed him. He offered me some but I abstained. However, I’m afraid he was smoking more than pot. It had a strange scent to it. He wouldn’t tell me what else it was, and it wasn’t until later… after his accident happened, that I began asking around and doing some research when I found out what else he was smoking. It was opium.”

“Bullshit,” Brandy said. “Frank wouldn’t do that. He hadn’t touched dope in almost ten years—”

“Maybe he was relapsing then,” Vince said. “Regardless, he was using in front of me, and the longer I spent with him, the more I… well, the more I was beginning to see Frank for who he was.”

“And what’s that?”

“What did Frank tell you?” Vince asked. “About his childhood? About him and I? About him contacting me?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. Just that… what he was working on had to do with when the two of you both were kids. And how he thought that… well, how he thought he’d been abused in some way.”

“Ah, I see.” Frank took his hand off Brandy’s shoulder and strolled closer to the window, his hands behind his back. His corner office consisted of floor to ceiling windows that opened to a stunning view of Newport Beach. He turned to her. “He told me that as well. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t remember much of the details of our childhood. I remember we played together, of course. And I told him I always had the impression that he came from a troubled home. He confided to me the abuse allegations and it made sense to me. You know what I mean?”

Brandy nodded. “Yes. He told me all that too.”

“Did he tell you about my mother?”

Brandy shook her head. He could tell she was being truthful. “Frank showed up in my life a few days after I returned home from tending to my mother’s funeral. She’d been murdered in a home invasion robbery by a guy named Steve Anderson, who was seriously disturbed.” He shrugged, looking reflective. “Steve later hung himself with his shoelace in his cell a month before he went to trial.”

“I’m sorry to hear this,” Brandy said.

“Thank you,” Vince said, nodding. Steve Anderson, in fact, had been arrested two months after Frank’s death and the pieces of evidence against him fell quickly into place. “I was still reeling from the shock of my mother’s murder when Frank came back into my life. As much as I wanted to believe that Frank and I experienced similar things in our childhood, I simply couldn’t. I went along with him anyway because, like I told you, I was going through a bad time myself.”

“The Orange County medical examiner still won’t tell me the details of Frank’s death,” Brandy said. “All they’ll tell me was that his injuries were fatal… that he’d died from severe blood loss and shock.”

“I understand the police believe Frank was killed by an unknown assailant when he was trying to buy drugs,” Vince said.

“That’s not true!”

Vince shrugged. “He was found two blocks from a neighborhood in Fountain Valley where heroin and opium was regularly sold and used at.”

“How do you know this?”

“I tried calling him a day or so after I last saw him,” Vince explained. “A police officer answered his cell phone. He’d died maybe a few hours before. I met with the investigating officers and told them all I knew. They asked me if I’d observed Frank under the influence during that time and… well, I couldn’t lie to them.”

“Frank wasn’t doing drugs!” Brandy protested again.

“Didn’t they find traces of marijuana in his system?”

“Well yes, but—”

“And traces of opiates?”

Brandy looked upset. “He’d been prescribed OxyContin a month before following minor surgery on his back. But that doesn’t mean he—”

“Backslid? Perhaps not, but the lab results tell another story. The way he disappeared sure explains things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Brandy, let’s cut to the chase. Frank Black had fallen off the wagon and was losing his mind. It was obvious to me in the few days I spent with him that he was on a wild goose chase involving his alleged abuse, that he had a major drug problem, and that he was either making shit up or hallucinating it. He obviously sent you away as part of this fantasy, but I believe he also wanted you and your kids out of the way so he could get high in peace.”

“Why… why are you saying that?” Brandy was starting to cry.

Vince sighed, put his arm around her and gently escorted her away from the desk, toward the windows overlooking the view. “I’m sorry, but if you’d heard some of the things he was saying, you’d think it was crazy.”

“Try me.” She turned to him, her eyes imploring him to tell her the truth.

Vince looked reluctant. He shook his head. “Are you sure he never told you about his childhood? About his mother, Gladys?”

“He hated his mother,” Brandy said. “He never told me why, just that she and his stepfather were horrible people.”

“He didn’t tell you that he thought his parents were Satanists? That they belonged to a secret nationwide Satanic cult that was involved in white slavery, the international drug trade, and child pornography?”

Brandy looked like she’d been slapped in the face. She gasped, her eyes widened in surprise. “N-no… he didn’t. I—are you serious?”

“Very serious.”

“He told you this?”

“Yes, he did.”

“What about… your parents? Were they part of it too?”

Vince laughed. “My mother? A Satanist? She was the most Christian woman you could ever meet. It’s mind-blowing to say the least.”

“Did Frank tell you you’re mother was involved?”

“No. Only his.”

“You’re saying my husband told you that he thought that his parents were members of a satanic cult and that they abused him?” Brandy still looked like she was having a hard time accepting this.

Vince nodded. “Yes indeed.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Were they?”

Vince noted her serious tone, her unblinking approach. He laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No, I’m not,” Brandy said. “My husband obviously believed it. Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because it isn’t true,” Vince said. His tone and demeanor became more serious, less playful. “I’ve gotten to know Gladys Black and her husband in the past few years due to the intersecting of our professional lives. She’s a lovely woman. Very driven, professional. She was saddened to learn of Frank’s passing. We’ve talked a lot about Frank in the past few years and she shared some details of his childhood with me. He was a very disturbed child.”

“If you’re going to—”

“Let me finish,” Vince said, over-riding her protests. He stood tall and firm near the big plate glass windows that overlooked Newport Beach. “Your husband was obsessed with his theory. It was obvious to me he’d gone through a rough time, but Gladys tells me that Frank was seriously disturbed at a young age. He had disciplinary problems as early as the second grade. He began using drugs at a very early age, began drinking, began getting in trouble with the police. Gladys did everything she could to control him, but she couldn’t. She finally sent him to her former sister-in-law’s place in Texas. They had a hard time with him too, and he eventually left their home and wound up in Los Angeles. I’m sure he told you the rest? The years of selling and using drugs, being involved in petty crimes?”

Tears pooled in Brandy’s eyes. “You’re painting the impression that he was some kind of scumbag. He wasn’t anything like that!”

“I agree, he redeemed himself later,” Vince said. “I have to commend him for that. I think his relationship with you really helped as well. Unfortunately, his past demons were strong. He could never completely escape from them. In the end, they consumed him.”

“The police said Frank was talking to a guy named David Connelly,” Brandy said, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “They found the phone records on Frank’s cell phone. They haven’t been able to locate him. It’s like he just disappeared. Did he ever mention that name to you?”

Vince shook his head. David Connelly was the pseudonym Mike Peterson had adopted and opened his alternate identity under. With Carol Peterson’s help, they’d dismantled all traces of David Connelly when the three of them had been in Pennsylvania. “No, he didn’t. Why?”

“Are you sure? Because the phone records the police retrieved were made in the week the two of you were parading all over Southern California.”

“Frank made a few phone calls, but I never asked who he was talking to and he never told me.”

“So you’re telling me that Frank was crazy? That he had paranoid delusions?” When Brandy turned back to him, Vince saw that tears were pooling in her eyes.

Vince’s features softened. “I’m afraid so. I’m so sorry.”

Brandy nodded and turned around. She reached into her purse and extracted a tissue. She dabbed her eyes. Her voice was shaky, yet remained strong, vigilant. “I’ve been trying to talk to you about this for… the last four, five years now. Why wouldn’t you speak to me?”

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Vince murmured softly. “I didn’t want you to… think less of your husband. I was… hoping you would simply… ac-cept what happened, accept the evidence the police found at the crime scene and just go on.”

Brandy nodded, her shoulders quaking with the intensity of her quiet sobbing. Vince let her stand there and sob; he could tell she needed to cry, that she needed to get it out. It was probably hard for her to comprehend that her husband had never truly changed his low-life ways, that he’d never received psychological counseling, that he’d allowed his problems to simmer and fester for years until he began making shit up until he began to believe his mother had been a deranged Satanist.

“I’m sorry,” Brandy said, her back still turned to him. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time like this and bugged you…”

“It’s okay,” Vince said. He stepped toward her and touched her shoulder gently.

She turned around, her eyes red. She wouldn’t look up at him. She looked too embarrassed. “Did Frank ever tell you about his real father?” Brandy said, sniffing.”

“No,” Vince said, curious. “He didn’t. What about him?”

Brandy wiped her eyes. “He told me his father was driven insane by his mother. He said one of the reasons he was contacting you was… to find out what happened to his father. And that… he thought that by doing that, he could help you too.”

“Help me?”

“Like I said, he never told me specifics. I just… kind of put two and two together.”

“I see,” Vince said. Playing dumb with this woman was proving to be beneficial. Until now, they had no idea what Frank had told her about his childhood. “His natural father suffered from similar delusions, then?”

“I don’t know what really happened to Frank’s dad. He only told me bits and pieces over the years. At first, he wouldn’t tell me anything about his parents. Every time I asked, he would clam up. The most he would say was that his father left the family when he was three and that his mom and stepfather were abusive toward him. Before he… well, before he sent the kids and me back east, he revealed a little more. He told me his father saw his mother do some really awful things and was driven insane by it. That’s the reason his father left. I… I never believed it, tried to get him to tell me more specifics, but he clammed up, said he’d already told me too much.”

“Uh huh,” Vince said, nodding for her to go on.

“I speculated that perhaps the real story behind it was that his father simply disappeared. Maybe he had his own drug and alcohol problems. I reached out to Frank’s Aunt, and she admitted to us that Frank’s dad turned up twenty years or so later, basically a homeless drunk. She wouldn’t tell me much else. I can… a conspiracy theorist would say that the reason he’d become an alcoholic was because he’d been driven to drink by the horrible things he’d seen. But I don’t buy that.”

“You don’t?” Vince looked at her, his gaze gentle, caring.

“No. I can’t believe that.” Brandy had gained her composure. She clutched her small purse in her hands, facing Vince as they stood by the large plate-glass windows. “If mental illness is hereditary… and I believe it is… I have to think that Frank had developed this theory himself. His Aunt won’t tell me what drove his father to drink, and I think she was a bit embarrassed to talk about it. I can see why now.”

“Why’s that?” Vince asked.

“Isn’t obvious? Like father, like son.”

Vince patted her shoulder again, lending some semblance of support to the still-grieving woman. “Again, I’m sorry.”

Brandy sighed. “It’s just… trying to wrap my head around this… why Frank would do this… has driven me crazy.”

“I can’t even imagine what you’ve had to go through,” Frank said.

“Did you know that the police in Pennsylvania got in touch with me?”

“No, I didn’t. What for?” Vince was aware of the criminal investigation over the gun battle in the parking lot of the Family Cupboard Restaurant in Lititz, Pennsylvania. A similarity in Frank’s appearance and the description of one of the gunmen wanted in the Pennsylvania shooting was made. The three men who’d ambushed them were connected to an apocalyptic Christian cult based out of Missouri—a group that had since been destroyed by The Children of the Night shortly after Vince’s re-baptism into the Dark Father’s fold, although he wasn’t going to tell Brandy that.

“They said he looked like a murder suspect,” she said. “The composite drawing looked kinda like him, but… Frank had cut his hair a day or two before his murder. Were you with him when he did that?”

“I was,” Vince admitted it. “I actually cut it for him. He asked me to.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“You cut it? In your home?”

“Yes.”

Once again, Brandy Black had that look about her; sharp, penetrating, as if trying to see past the lies Vince was feeding her. Vince didn’t drop his gaze.

Brandy reached into her purse and extracted a tissue. She wiped her eyes with it and then wadded it up, stuffing it in her purse. “I’m sorry Mr. Walters. It’s just… I’ve tried so hard to get to the bottom of Frank’s death that I simply didn’t want to believe what the police told me… that they found traces of drugs in his system. It’s just hard to believe that he would have…”

“Backslid like that?”

Brandy nodded. “Yes.”

Vince stepped forward and laid his hand on her shoulder. He began to lead her away from his desk toward the door to his office. He was gentle, and if he was forceful Brandy didn’t notice. She went willingly. “I’m sorry I’ve avoided you but, as I said, I didn’t want you to think less of Frank. Whatever problems he had… they were too strong for him.”

Brandy nodded, her face screwing up again, and Vince could tell she was struggling not to cry. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him for comfort. “He was a brave man,” he said, his voice soothing. “He was trying to beat whatever demons he had in his past but they were too strong for him. They overwhelmed him. I’m sorry.”

Brandy nodded and sighed. She looked up at him with red, watery eyes. “Thank you.”

Vince offered her a smile and grasped the doorknob to the double oak doors that led out to the lobby of his office. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head and composing herself. She grasped her purse. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Vince opened the door for her. “How are you and the kids by the way? You’re still on the east coast, right?”

Brandy stepped through the double doors and put her sunglasses on. She paused in the lobby, facing him. “Yes. We’re in Maine, at the house Frank set us up in before all this happened. We’re doing fine. My mother and I sold our agency, and I’ve got some money from Frank’s literary estate. We’re doing okay.”

“Good. If you need anything be sure to give me a call. Even if it’s just to talk.”

“Thank you,” Brandy said. “I will.”

“Take care of yourself, Brandy,” Vince said, touching her hand in a farewell gesture.

He watched her exit the lobby, not even paying attention to Barbara as the younger woman walked past to the elevator. Vince stepped back into his office and closed the doors behind him, pausing briefly as he rested his back against them.

Brandy Black would be fine. He had no idea how she would play into all this, but she had not been a thorn in his side before. Today’s episode was minor, really. He smiled to himself as he replayed the moment in his mind when he told her about the satanic aspects of Frank’s case. He knew she wouldn’t believe it, which was precisely why he’d told her. Her subconscious had already accepted the fact that Frank had relapsed into drug use again; she just didn’t want to accept that emotionally. What he told her had nudged her firmly into that corner of opinion and that was exactly where he wanted her.

Vince moved across the room to the large pane-glass windows and looked out over the parking lot. The visitor’s parking lot lay to his right and five minutes later Brandy exited the lower lobby, walking briskly across the atrium. He smiled as he watched her meander through the parking lot.

Vince Walters watched Brandy Black as she climbed into a white sedan, the corners of his mouth turned upward in a lupine grin. The file he’d swept to the side of his desk lay open, the words Al Azif clearly shown in the waning afternoon sunlight. He thought about the project, thought about all the hard work he’d put in on it, and as he thought he concentrated, pushing himself into that hallucinatory dream world he’d entered over and over again.

His vision blurred through a haze of smoke. He felt the heat rise around him, comforting, warm. Below him he heard screams of horror, but he ignored them. He looked out over the vast city of skyscrapers, the people below resembling tiny ants in a network of veins now growing littered with debris. And then he drifted up through the smoke as a faint rumbling erupted below.

He opened his eyes, the smell of smoke in the back of his throat. His smile grew wider. Al Azif’s funds were going to be well protected.

Al Azif.

Arabic for the Customs of the Dead.

And a great fury will come from the Middle East, the great tribulations will open up, and the Anti-Christ will begin amassing his army in the Battle of Armageddon.

The great fury was coming. Al Azif had funded it. Thanks to Samuel Garrison and his vast network.

Vince Walters—Andrew—was orchestrating it. The stars were closer to being aligned than ever before. When the soul-cracking occurred, it would coincide with a military operation in Iran, an operation that would be conveyed to most of the world as a small-time bombing run to quell rising tensions between Muslim extremists and reformers.

But it would be so much more.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

But it was what he wanted. Even if most Christians tried to deny the fact, the simple fact of the matter was, it had to happen for their Savior to return.

Otherwise, why call yourself a Christian?

And why was he—the son of the Great Tempter—seen as such a bad guy in the Christian mythos?

Andrew smiled. None of that mattered. Sure, it was all written in the great spiritual texts of old. Sure it was foretold that he and Samuel and the others who had helped set this end of the battle up would be defeated. That wasn’t the point. The point was, it was what He wanted, and Andrew and Samuel, and the rest of the Children who had helped orchestrate this would bask in the glory of the Lord. Was not Judas Iscariot doing the Lord’s bidding when he betrayed Jesus with a kiss? Wasn’t he fulfilling God’s prophecies in the old Hebrew manuscripts?

Of course he was!

And so were Andrew and The Children of the Night.

And while he was at it, he was going to have some fun.

He laughed as he watched Brandy Black’s white sedan rental car recede in the distance.