Part III : Upon This Rock

Chapter One : Post-Op

(September 13th, 1964)

Elizabeth woke to a dull tugging in her abdomen, a sensation that was not pain but certainly was not pleasant. It felt as if someone had hooked a finger inside her and was stretching the flesh with short, rhythmic jerks. She was not groggy, but her eyes didn't seem to function. It took her a moment to realize they were closed, and when she opened them she quickly screwed them shut again; to her dazed and unfocused gaze it seemed as if she were trapped inside a cube of blazing white light. Tentatively, she opened her eyes and forced them to focus – she was looking at a white-painted surface studded with bright, actinic white arc lights. Even as she blinked and tried to see beyond the glare, there was the click of a switch and the lamps faded, leaving her with colored patches dancing over her suddenly-grayed vision.

The humming the lights had made faded, and she became aware of other noises; the clink of metal instruments in a metal tray, the soft hubbub of people moving, the echoes of her breathing – and the breathing of another – in a metallic room. Her fingertips searched, transmitting the information the skin of her shoulders and thighs had already brought to her senses – she was lying on her back on cold, smooth metal, looking upwards at the ceiling and the lights mounted there. She tried to sit up, and was stopped abruptly by the restraints clamped around her wrists and ankles. She lifted her head, gazing down at her body and realizing why she could feel the cold of the metal all along her back; she was naked, tied to a surgical operating table, with a white-clad figure bending over her abdomen. As she watched, the figure snapped off latex gloves and shot them into a bin like a boy with rubber bands, pulled down a gauze face-mask and reached for a 'phone on the wall. She pressed a button. “Coulter? She's awake.”

It took Elizabeth a moment to place the woman – she was slender and well-made, with a narrow waist impressively cinched by the wide white belt of the medical uniform she wore. Her thighs and calves filled the white stockings well and her bust was high, taut and inviting. She was, Elizabeth guessed, a few years younger than her – about the age Elizabeth had been when she went to Narnia, mid-thirties . . . and like Elizabeth at that age in more ways than one, for she was still trying to dress as if she were in her late twenties. Elizabeth could tell this dark-haired woman would, unless something happened to change her, say “late thirties” in a few years time – and wouldn't realize she would be far more attractive if she would admit to “nearly forty.”

The reason it took her a few moments to place her was her age – when she did realize where she had seen her before, the woman's increased age was a shock. She was the woman she had pistol-whipped unconscious – Captain Margaret Schillair. The last time she had seen her – only an hour or so before, it seemed – she had looked to be in her early twenties. Now, it was as if ten or fifteen years had swept by – and not touched Elizabeth (for as she looked down on her naked body she could still see the figure that, without false modesty, had always been very impressive for a forty-something mother) but had touched Schillair.

She'd moved in time, or had been in some sort of suspended animation, or something. She craned her neck and looked around as much as she could – there was nothing on the walls to conclusively indicate where she was, but the white-painted iron of the room suggested she was still in the N.B.O. facility. It would not have surprised her to discover that medical science which could take a brain from a human body and implant it in a machine could suspend human life indefinitely, or at least for a few years – but she was at a loss to explain why they might have done so.

She looked down her body, between the deep valley of her breasts, and saw a neatly-sutured puncture-wound just below her navel, on the downward curve of the shallow inverted bowl of her belly. It was right in the middle of the cold puddle of dimmed sensation she could feel as she directed her attention there – a local anesthetic, no doubt. The flesh wound in her side still ached, and as she moved she could feel the plaster pulling on her skin. “Where am I?” she asked. Schillair turned and smiled at her – it was not a nice smile, and the effect was not improved by the artificial tightness of her cheeks as she did so. Plastic surgery, Elizabeth automatically realized.

“You don't know?” she asked. Her smile widened. “Well, if you don't know, I see no reason to tell you. You are here to answer questions, not ask them.” She turned as the door opened and the suited figure of Coulter entered, dressed in a clean and unripped version of the dark gray three-piece suit he had worn when Elizabeth had last seen him.

The tall man glanced at the Captain briefly, before looking down at Elizabeth with an appraising smile and a definite leer in his glittering eyes that made her flesh crawl. She squirmed, trying impotently to hide herself as he reached out and ran a huge hand up her thigh, his fingertips brushing the inside of her leg, trailing over her intimacy and probing gently at the sutured wound. “Very nice work,” he said as Elizabeth shivered and shuddered, gritting her teeth and looking at him with fear and revulsion. It wasn't clear which of the women he was talking to, if indeed there was a single answer.

Coulter's appearance – in both senses of the word – threw Elizabeth. Not only had he been burned to ash and beyond the last time she had seen him, but he did not look a day older than when she had seen him what felt like minutes before – and the jarring sense that felt wrong threw her again. Somehow, time had not touched him – although that was perhaps not surprising, given that blades and bullets didn't seem to touch him either. An unknown sense told her she was right to guess Coulter and she had been held timeless, rather than Schillair rapidly aged – and the same sense told her Coulter's preservation and hers came from very different places.

“Thanks, Coulter,” said Schillair, gathering instruments and needles and dropping them into a plastic bin. “You left a pretty ragged wound – but there'll be no lasting damage.” She smirked. “Unless you want there to be, of course.” She gestured at something out of Elizabeth's sight. “Biopsy samples are over there.” Coulter didn't glance up, rather picking up Elizabeth's passport and credit cards from a tray by her head.

“Elizabeth Studdock,” he said, flipping to the laminated page at the back of the burgundy-covered document. “My name is Coulter – delighted to . . .” His eyes roved down her nakedness hungrily. “See you.” Her face twisted with disgust.

“The pleasure, I have no doubt, is all yours,” she said snidely. “You'll forgive me if I don't get up.” She glared at him with as much contempt as she could muster. He chuckled.

“You'll forgive me if I do,” he smirked, one hand in his trouser pocket rearranging himself so he was more comfortable in his clothes. He looked back down at the passport, flipping the page and glancing at the emergency contact information on the inside of the rear cover. “How predictable,” he added with distaste when he noticed her father and she didn't share a surname. “Couldn't one of you people plop out a bastard or two?” He didn't wait for a response, but turned to face the other woman. “Meg? Can you see what you can find about her dad? Giovanni Agnoli?”

Schillair glanced at Elizabeth, appraising her age with caliper-precise eyes. “Probably born around the turn of the century . . .” she mused, but stopped when Coulter shook his head and held the passport open in front of her face.

“Try during the War,” he grinned. She blinked and looked at it dumbly for a moment, and then grabbed the document, flipping through it.

“What the Hell?” she asked. “That can't be right . . . she's not even born for a fortnight!” Coulter chuckled and nodded.

“The ripping up of the work of time,” he explained to Schillair. “She was born in London – which means he's probably local. It's not a common name – see what Records can dig up.” Schillair looked like she had other questions, but a glare from Coulter silenced her. She nodded and left the room, taking her bag of instruments with her. “Now,” said Coulter, lifting a chair easily next to the metal slab, “what shall we talk about?”

“Where am I?” asked Elizabeth with a pitch-perfect defiance which caused a hitch in Coulter's smooth movements as he sat down. He did not answer her for a second, enjoying the new view of her topography that was presented to him as he did so. He smiled.

“Well,” he growled, “that isn't how I wanted to start – but it's as good a place as any. It neatly establishes the power dynamic we have here; you ask me questions because you don't have the answers, and I tell you what to think.”

Elizabeth snorted. “Good luck with that,” she snapped. Coulter seemed to ignore her.

“You're in an N.B.O. facility,” he said, “and it's thirteen years to the day after you and I first met – and you haven't changed a bit. I mean,” he ran a metallic fingernail along the delicate valley that ran vertically up her toned abdomen, “there's well-preserved and then there's unnatural.” He smirked as she squirmed, trying to get away from his touch.

“And I suppose you'd know all about that,” she hissed. He smiled.

“Oh, yes – but I don't know all about you. All these documents you have,” he picked them up in his strong hands and let them trickle through his fingers, “say you're not even born for another two weeks and that you live about forty years from now – which is about the age I'd put you at. I saw you thirteen years ago in this very building – and you were pretty much in exactly the same state as they found you in. It's like someone just plucked you out of time and stuck you back in thirteen years later.”

Elizabeth had been testing her bonds – they were metal manacles and held her effectively immobile save for an enticing jiggling that she tried to ignore Coulter's enjoyment of. She had rather expected more from the obvious leader of the Dark Apostles than schoolboy-lusting after a naked woman, but then she realized that was naive and gave the infernal too much credit and class. The image of sophistication was just that; they were base and brutish and entirely low, with a very simple, direct desire – to see her fail and fall. And all their elegance and intelligence and charm and powers would be bent to that end – not to meaningless and unnecessary airs and affectations. Why wouldn't he look at her with some sort of lustful hunger? Who was to say his desire was even sexual? “That's about the size of it,” she said with a bravado she didn't feel. “I've been put here for a reason – can you say the same?” Coulter laughed.

“Oh, I'm sure I can – probably more than you.” He sounded genuinely amused, and for an dreadful instant he was almost personable. It was only the pressure of his breath on her shivering skin that reminded her of what the situation was – and then the sudden switching-off of his avuncular nature. “Now,” he snapped, leaning forward abruptly, “where's Studdock's boy? Where's your child?”

Elizabeth gritted her teeth and stared into the eyes inches from hers. She was damned if she was going to show a single ounce of fear to this creature who could only kill her. Thomas was completely beyond the reach of any demon now and she had no idea where Edmund Michael even was – if indeed where was a fair description – nor any idea how to get there. “They are both well beyond your reach!” she spat. Coulter smiled.

“And I think,” he said softly, “your knowledge.” The look of concern and consternation that passed over her face raised a smile on his. “You're far, far away from home, aren't you? Plucked out of your comfortable existence by a God who hasn't explained Himself to you, the wife of a man who never was, the mother of a child who'll never be. You don't know what you're doing here, you're out of your time and out of your league.” His smile widened as her lips trembled – everything he said was true, and he could see she knew it.

“I still have faith in Him,” she whispered. He chuckled.

“That I see,” he said generously, “but for how much longer?” The monsters eyes were blazing bright, seeming to strip layers of obfuscation from her soul with every passing second. “I can see the questions in your mind – why would He put you here? Why would He let so many people die? Why would He let this happen to you, his favored daughter? Doesn't He love you any more? Doesn't He care?”

For a few dreadful moments, she listened to the questions he asked – running parallel to the same questions in her own soul. She'd asked herself every single question he'd asked; what was she doing here? What purpose did this serve? What good did it do her to simply see this stuff? In many cases simply to be told it? To have cherished childhood friends – and, yes, they were no-less-friends because they were fictional, perhaps even more so – die horribly in front of her? To be shot at and brutalized and see Susan murdered by monsters? To have horrible temptations brought into sharp relief? To see beauty give way to darkness? And be able to do nothing about it except watch, except be a passive observer? Why had God brought her here if not to do something – and if not to do something, why show her such horror? What good did it do her?

And then she remembered – or was reminded – of the thoughts that had run through her mind a couple of days before when she had been driving to meet Susan. It seemed like a lifetime ago, and, perhaps it was – it was certainly others' lifetimes ago. Then she had welcomed the challenge, the simplicity, the directness of a world where temptations were clear, where enemies were obvious, where dangers could clearly be seen. And what was more obvious, what hook more over-sized for the bait, than this? Give in and the pain will end was the message here – as it was with anything. Step away from the Cross and life will be easier.

How had she, who had done a relatively good job of not giving in to the more subtle temptations her previous life had offered, nearly succumbed to this blatant assault? God knew what He was doing – He had a plan for her, even if that plan was simply to place her in a crucible and see what she was made of. What else was human life if not that?

She clucked her tongue in derision. “I know what you are,” she said in contempt, as if to tell him that his plan would not work. “You're possessed, you're a demon.” He did not smile, instead clenching his teeth and narrowing his eyes. He sat back in his chair, pulling a golden case from his pocket and using a lighter with a flame like a Bunsen burner to light a long cigarette adorned with three gold bands. He blew a few lazy smoke rings before he answered her.

“Well-done,” he said bitterly. “You know what my goal is – and for now you have thwarted it.” The look of triumph on her face quickly faded as he offered, “The mere fact you're still alive shows I don't think your victory is necessarily permanent.” An unwilling and terrible shudder shook her body like a fever and he grinned again. “But all you do is apply a label to me – and I don't think you fully grasp what it means. It is true I am possessed, but also that I am possessing.” He knocked the ash off his cigarette, watching with enjoyment as she moved away from it as much as she could. The hot embers didn't touch her but still singed fine hair from her arm. He drew more smoke into his lungs. “The way you put it, it's as if I'm just over-riding my own will. That is, to speak in more general terms - 'cause I really hate talking about myself – you think the demon is just telling the human what to do, just using the body as a skin-suit. And it's not like that at all.”

“It isn't?” Despite the fear and loathing she felt, despite all the warnings not to converse with demons, despite the lewd leering that he was pouring on her naked body, she found herself grimly fascinated by the question. Just what was he? There were plenty of words she could have given to him – and the rest of those that Bronwyn had called the Dark Apostles – but he was right; those were just names, labels without clear meaning.

Coulter shook his head. “No,” he said, seeming to savor the word. “It's a partnership, a perfect union, a willing agreement. That is what true possession is – two beings coming together for mutual advantage, symbiosis if you will.” He gestured with interlinked fingers, the hot tip of his cigarette resting on his skin and not so much as warming it. “The human must let the demon in, the human must want the demon's help.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No,” she said emphatically, “no – God lets you possess people, He allows you to do it. He's the one in control, it is His choice . . .” Coulter laughed triumphantly and cut her off.

“Yes!” he howled. “Yes, that is very true! But don't you see what that means? Just who does He allow us to possess? If we possessed those with no will for it, those who did not want it – what would be the point? Why would we do it? What is our goal, Elizabeth? Why am I here, caught between the Rock and this hard place? Why do I do what I do?”

Her voice was a mere exhalation of air – she was shrinking back like a slug exposed to salt, naked and terrified before the power of an ancient creature vastly more powerful, intelligent and formerly-glorious than she was. “To damn souls . . .” she whispered.

“Wrong!” roared Coulter. His fist crashed into the metal beside her, causing the whole table to jump in its mountings, the reverberation rattling through the slab and her bones. “Wrong! To get souls to damn themselves! We choose to sin, we don't make us do it – even if we could, even if God let us possess us without our agreement, what good would that do? No evil act is a sin without consent of the will – a skin-suit murder would be amusing, it would be droll, it might even be artistic!” He was standing and gesturing with his hands and cigarette as he spoke, a kind of thuggish Noel Coward, and then abruptly glared down at her. “But it would not be a sin – and making us do that does us no good at all.”

His use of pronouns had confused her for a second or two – the fact he used us to refer to both demons and humans – but then she realized there was nothing more appropriate and horrifying than that. He wasn't a demon riding a human body, or a human mind being tempted by a demon – he was a combination of the two, a symbiotic creature, not a parasite and host, but something totally horrific. “You mean . . .” she murmured, her mind unwilling to accept what this meant.

“Oh yes,” he said with grim joy, “oh yes. Someone can be tempted to sin, but never forced into it. And, equally, of course, someone can be encouraged to virtue – but never coerced. There is a parallel between our work and our opposite numbers' – but it is in possession where we differ. Possession is where a human being says to the darkness, says to the little voice that eggs him on to do bad things, I will no longer resist you. I pledge to always give in to temptation.” He smiled, looking down on the lovely body offered beneath him. “And, of course, you can make the promise the other way – the act of faith, the firm resolution. But, the difference is, they won't accept the invitation – they won't come in and make sure you keep the promise. The best you can ever do is your own effort, a promise to try to resist, to try to be good.” Coulter shook his head and laughed. “Come on, is that fair? He always wants you to have the possibility of failing? You make a choice – and He says that you have to keep on making it?” He supported one elbow with his hand, holding his chin with the other. “And you keep making the right choice, and the right choice, and the right choice – and nothing changes . . . until you make the wrong choice, and then you're damned!” He looked down at her, the smile fading from his face and his visage settling into a stone-hard mask. She trembled in fear at what he might do next. He reached down and stroked her flesh.

“But of course, you know all about that, don't you, Elizabeth?” he said softly, his eyes glittering. Despite the fact it repulsed her, she had to admit the touch of his hand was pleasant – pleasurable, even. “I tasted you – you haven't had a man in five years. Husband away on business a lot? You're widowed?” The flash of grief in her eyes told him everything he needed to know. “But that doesn't mean you haven't felt that familiar spasm, does it?” he continued with a smile, his terribly strong fingers moving over her in assured curves. “You lie in bed at night and those fingers do the walking, don't they? Over the hills and across the plain and deep into the valley.” He was hissing through his teeth now, his lips articulating every syllable into her screwed-shut and desperately-denying face. “And you lie there afterwards, and you know it's wrong, and you beg for forgiveness, but it felt so good, and you were thinking of someone else while you . . .”

“Shut up!” she screamed, thrashing around as much as she was able, screaming at the top of her lungs. “Shut up, shut the Hell up! Get your filthy hands off me! Bloody well shut up!” He laughed indulgently and jumped backwards, licking the sweat of her terror from his fingertips. “Why the bucking Hell are you obsessed with sex anyway?” she sobbed. “What are you – a fallen angel or a horny teenager?” His laugh echoed all the louder.

“You forget,” he smirked, “I'm human as well as demon – I have physical . . . desires, I suppose you could call them. And you are very attractive – quite the sort of girl I like to rut with.” He shook his head at her blanched skin and look of fear. “Oh, don't worry – I'm not about to rape you. What would be the point? Well,” he added as a coda, “besides my own pleasure, of course.” He licked his lips. “I think you'd be really fun for an hour or two – but business comes before pleasure, and forcing you into sex wouldn't bring you one inch closer to where I want you to be.”

“I thought you said you'd pledged to always give in to temptation,” said Elizabeth in a very small voice. The terror of the threat of rape – a horrible physical violation which she had never truly come close to before (although she had come far closer than she would like) – stripped so much from her that she was shocked by just how additionally naked she felt. He looked at her and grinned.

“People who have pledged themselves to your side of the war will deny themselves pleasure for the sake of the higher goal, Elizabeth,” he explained. “Did you really think your saints had the monopoly on devotion to the cause? Did you really think that our darkness couldn't burn as brightly as your light?”

The fact he used – perhaps was forced to use – a metaphor of light for his darkness sparked something in Elizabeth it took her a moment to name. It flowed from the fact she was a woman – not as physically strong as he was, even without her injury and his infernal advantages – and that he had her chained down and stripped naked and was threatening her with the most intimate violation. The emotion that flowed from her heart was pity. Coulter, for all his strength and power and intelligence, was a pathetic creature – reduced to trying to dominate a helpless woman for the sake . . . of what?

“Why in God's name would you do that?” she asked in genuine wonder. She couldn't keep the compassion out of her voice. He snorted and shook his head. “No,” she asked desperately, “tell me, Coulter – why? You know you'll lose – you were there when Michael threw Lucifer from Heaven, weren't you? You know you lost on Calvary, don't you? You were defeated in eternity and you know you will be defeated in time . . .” She paused, and looked at him, trying desperately to see if there was some way she could see the human without the demon, and realizing there was no way to know. “Coulter,” she asked again, “tell me why. Tell yourself. Why?”

For long seconds, he looked at her with unabashed loathing. “You have compassion for me?” he asked eventually. “You pathetic weakling.”

She smiled. “If I am so weak, why is there fear in your eyes?” she asked coldly. Her face and voice softened. “But, yes – I have compassion for you. I love you, as a fellow human being, I love you – despite everything I know you have done and that you might have done.” She shrugged barely and uselessly. “There's your answer.”

“And it's the same as the one I would give you,” he snarled. Her eyebrows went scrambling up in surprise.

“You've thrown in your lot with the losing side because you love?” she asked. “I don't get it . . .” He shook his head and smiled grimly as he interrupted her.

“No,” he said sharply, “I threw my lot in with the other side to you, remember? It is because I hate. I hate your God, I hate your love and compassion and your bourgeois existence. I hate the hoops He would have us jump through. At the dawn of eternity I decided that it is better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven, and my choice is fixed for all time!”

“The demon's choice is fixed,” said Elizabeth with a quiet finality that could not be denied, “the human's is not. There is always a choice – the promise to always give in to temptation is no such thing, and you know it. The risk of salvation is always there. So,” she asked with a smile, “tell me, Coulter – why did you chose in time what you had chosen in eternity?”

He answered her as if she were an imbecile. “Because I hate,” he said again. “I hate you, I hate God, I hate Lucifer and her. I hate myself. And just as the goal of love is to see the beloved prosper, the goal of hate is to see the hated suffer.” Elizabeth shook her head.

“Pure malice? Pure spite?” she asked dully. “Pure and simple jealousy of . . . joy?”

“You say that as if it's a bad thing,” Coutler snarled. “You are each of inestimable value to God – every single one of you mud-born creatures of slime and earth is beloved of Him, and every single one of you who fails to make it to Heaven and comes into the embrace of Our Father Below is a great victory for us and a failure for Him!” Elizabeth snorted in derision.

“No it's not,” she mocked. “Don't be fool – lie to yourself if you like, but don't be so obvious about it to me. It's not a victory for you – it's a mitigation in a war you already lost utterly. God doesn't lose when a soul is damned – that person loses. And you don't win. You've never won. You don't even know what that feels like.” She grinned at him with an infuriating smile, the confident certainty of someone who has – at least for the time being – the measure of her adversary. “And you're not in Hell yet, Coulter,” she added. She paused, licked her lips and lay her head back on the slab. “I think I win this round,” she said conversationally. “Not bad for a naked woman tied to a table.”

She got no further before he sprang for her, exploding into the dark-furred monster with grotesque muscles and terrible fangs. His clawed hand dived for her throat, perhaps intending to crunch around her neck and tear her body – fracturing and ripping – out of the restraints. But the black claw stopped an inch from her skin, smoke rising from it and a yelp of pain bursting from his fanged maw. She felt the hot spike as the relic medal around her neck pulsed with sacramental energy, driving the infernal monster back. His body flexed and shrank, settling slowly into his human form. He moved his creaking fingers, the burned skin cracking as he did so, massaging his wounded hand. It took Elizabeth a moment to place the emotion on his face – and when she did so she could not help but crack a triumphant smile.

It was fear.

Coulter turned at the door into the room opened and Margaret barged in. She glanced at the wounded man, but thought better of saying anything. She held up a manila folder. “I know who her father is – or should be,” she said obliquely.

Coulter grinned lopsidedly. “Show me,” he said.

Suddenly, although she didn't know why, Elizabeth was cold.