236 | John W. Warner IV Churchill blew a plume to the side so as not to sicken him further, then handed him John Dees Speculum, a polished black mirror used for conjuring; he had liberated it from the British Museum. Im gladdened, old friend. We need you, history needs you, now more than ever before. How was your stay at Barrowgill? He beheld his sagging, aging visage and rubbed the mirror on his leg to brighten it. Scotland was uneventful, the castle cold, clammy. Belial was unobtainable to me. Why is not clear. Dees rituals were precise, the heavens in alignment. I am most.. .bewildered. You are of the old royal bloodline. Was the Queen there with you? Yes. But was quite.. .un-im-pressed. Lord Dowding and Archbishop Lang send their best, so does the rest of my salubrious Black Team members, the descendants of the Orphic Circle of old. Weve more dowsers and psychic assassins by the month. A shrug. I care not of this. I see. Well anyway, everyone likes your V for victory finger sign. I use it to good effect. He coughed. Good. They should, and I knew they would. Speculate via Speculum. You met with Hitler twice years ago. You felt his black energy, his purified madness. Can you…enlighten me on current events as you see them? A moment… With a long match, Crowley lit two tall, thick candles at the altar, staring into one flame then the other, two pillars of light, a humble portal into unknown realms of thought and consciousness. Taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling as if tasting the atmosphere for poisons, he whisper-chanted an unintelligible poem in an unusual tongue, then said: My liege, no guarantees exist within the rotating spheres of time and space, gravity and love, existence and nonexistence, and yet.. .1 sense a distinct vibration in the aether. He paused, beheld the candle-lit Speculum, and gathered inner strength. He low-growled: The rabid wolf has bitten off more flesh and bone than he can drag away to his den. Lessons will be learned, fates satisfied. Eventually the Slavic bears will devour…bim, their strength and resolve second to none, their crack female snipers burning with the Divine Feminine, loins afire. In a dream I saw a great frozen metropolis that awaits the demon with jaws wide and black; in a pit of ruins death will ensue en masse, frostbite, black appendages, starvation, cannibalism. All have confirmed this in their visions, All will revel in hard-achieved balance and justice, The Law satisfied