The Illuminati Endgame (The Relic Hunters 7)

by David Leadbeater

  He sat down, a glass of champagne in one hand, staring into the middle-distance, and scraping absently at the coagulated blood with a thumb nail. My name is Bacchus d’Orléans and I am the Grand Master of the Illuminati.

  Sometimes he had to pinch himself. To accept how far he’d risen. To reassure himself that he was flying in the stratosphere of the human race. The Ishtari—the forerunners of the Illuminati from the mists of time—had surely never expected that their great leader would become the most powerful man in the world.

  And hunted.

  You had to accept a little unwanted attention when you worked outside the law. He knew that. Bacchus had three remaining High Minervals, countless guards, and over a hundred Hoods to watch out for him. And they were so close to realizing their final goal.

  Riches, power, eternal wealth. Supremacy. Dominion. Words that made him wish Adelaide, Discord or Cronos were here to slake his passion. But, above all that, there was Hades and, with it, the reaping of the greatest reward. Could it be the Great Dragon?

  It would win them the world.

  Bacchus reviewed their progress so far. The only fly in the ointment was that seemingly unkillable one: Guy Bodie. Yes, their clever tech scientists had detected several searches recently that related to the prophecy. Perhaps someone else was searching, or at least aware, but they were still small fry compared to the Illuminati. Bacchus had already sent teams to the IP addresses’ real locations to search, locate, interrogate and then destroy.

  But Bodie?

  A thorn in the side. Bacchus had tried to eradicate him several times. Looking back, the whole sacrificial torture thing in Italy had been a mistake. Pleasant yes, but a misstep. He should have killed Bodie and co. quickly rather than offer them to the Great Dragon.

  Adelaide walked up, soft of step, and put a hand on his shoulder. “Grand Master, our teams are approaching Loch Ness.”

  “Ah, the seventh location.”

  “Yes. They have identified the ley line and plotted the exact location. It is merely a matter of time.”

  Bacchus smiled. “Is Nimrod leading them?”

  “Of course.” Adelaide also smiled in fond memory of their best killer. “I look forward to greeting him when he returns.”

  “As do I. The Great Dragon will feast hard that night.”

  Adelaide laughed and remembered hours, days and weeks they’d served the Great Dragon with Nimrod. The great slayings, the blood-soaked celebrations. “Do we have a plan for the end of all this?” she asked.

  Bacchus blinked. “The end?”

  “For when we celebrate in Hades.”

  “Ah, yes. That will be the greatest ceremony. A triumph of power and flesh and blood. And then... our reward.”

  “I wonder what form it will take?”

  “Isn’t that part of the wonder, the passion of serving our master? The Ishtari left the means behind with which we could cleanse the world. Remake it in our image. I look forward to receiving our just reward in Hades.”

  “As do I.” Adelaide turned on her heel and left the room.

  Bacchus was left alone, enjoying the silence once more. This was the calm before the storm, he imagined. The build up to an explosion that would change the world. And I will dictate it.

  I am all powerful.

  The world, and his regal future, lay before him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Bodie slowed the car as their navigation app informed them they were approaching the pin Lucie had dropped in the digital map. The pin marked the place where the ley line crossed Loch Ness. Collecting ore from the shore at a point along that line should be sufficient.

  “It’s offroad from here,” Bodie said, pulling the car onto the grass verge. The wheels bounced over several ruts and came to a stop. Bodie climbed out of the car and went around to the trunk to grab his backpack.

  He shivered as a biting wind blew straight off the top of the loch at his face. Loch Ness touched its southernmost point a few hundred yards to his left. Its boulder-strewn shore lay beyond a grassy field which they would have to traverse to locate the point where the ley line dissected the loch. Despite being dotted with several stands of trees, there was little meaningful cover should the Illuminati already be here.

  Bodie slowed as Cassidy approached the end of the field and stopped behind a row of trees ahead of him. Straight away, her body language told him something wasn’t looking good on the other side.

  She turned. “Get down.”

  Bodie dropped and crawled to her side. “If this is another Nessie sighting, I’m gonna throw you in the bloody loch.”

  “I wish,” Cassidy whispered. “Actually, I don’t, and I’d like to see you try. Just take a look.”

  Bodie was already peering between trees. The earth was cold beneath his stomach and littered with tiny pebbles, making the journey less than comfortable. Bodie kept his head low. Ahead, the vista opened out.

  The field overlooked a curving boulder-covered beach. A tiny, man-made peninsula of stone ran into the loch. The beach was gray and mostly rock and marshes. Bodie counted four figures standing and staring out over the dark waters.

  “Three men, one woman,” Cassidy said. “Well built. They move like soldiers.”

  “They could be sightseers,” Bodie said.

  “True, I see no sign of weapons. But they’re in the right place to extract ore.”

  Bodie bit his lip. Cassidy was right. By now the others had crawled to their sides and were gazing down. Those below wore weather jackets and jeans, and carried backpacks. Bodie waited, knowing they couldn’t stare at the loch forever.

  The first man turned away. He was a swarthy-faced individual with large shoulders. At this range, Bodie couldn’t tell if he bore any scars, and the thick clothing made it impossible to tell if the group wore vests or carried weapons of any sort.

  But they moved like soldiers.

  Bodie watched. The woman, a blond with short hair, studied her phone for several seconds before pointing at the ground. The others then removed their backpacks and pulled out shovels.

  Lucie grunted. “I think that answers the questions.”

  “Sure,” Cassidy said. “They’re Illuminati. Surprised we saw no sign of their vehicle.”

  “There are plenty of places a vehicle can pull over,” Jemma said. “And there’s no way of telling whether a parked car belongs to Hoods or tourists.”

  Cassidy nodded. “The question now is—do we wait, or do we stop them?”

  It was a bloody good question too, in Bodie’s opinion. On the one hand there were just four of them. Stopping them would slow the Illuminati’s advance but wouldn’t put them out of the quest. Weighed against that was a harsh reality—they appeared to be soldiers and any kind of confrontation might end badly for at least one member of his own team.

  At this stage did they risk a fight?

  Bodie was a thief at heart, a man who stole through the night and avoided opposition. His heart leaned toward lying low, but his head knew that slowing the Illuminati now might prove invaluable later. Cassidy was his opposite, and had been a fighter all her life. He could tell the redhead was itching to start a quarrel with the four figures ahead.

  Jemma spoke up. “They will have weapons,” she said. “They’re just keeping them hidden for now.”

  Yasmine cleared her throat. “We can use the trees.” She pointed to their left. “Come up right behind them.”

  “We could use a Pang for this,” Cassidy said.

  “Don’t talk about that wanker,” Bodie said. “Only thing he can do right is stab you in the back.”

  As they watched, all four Illuminati soldiers removed their backpacks, got down on their knees, and scraped at the beach. They used trowels at first, digging hard for a purer sample. Bodie didn’t blame them. There was no hard and fast rule with the samples and surely some would end up more contaminated than others.

  He saw now how the Illuminati were combatting that potential problem.

  They too
k eight samples in total, mixing them together in one bag. Cassidy bit her lip as the figures, bent to their task, focused on what they were doing.

  “To hell with this,” she said. “It couldn’t be easier to stop them right now.”

  Bodie couldn’t prevent her crawling between two trees before scrambling across the small beach. He followed, Yasmine at his side. They paused four feet behind the Illuminati and prepared to attack in sync.

  The woman sat back, looked around, and locked eyes with Bodie. Before she could yell out a warning, he jumped. His boots struck hard earth and he used his forward momentum to bring both elbows crashing down onto the spine of his chosen target.

  The man collapsed with a scream, both shocked and hurt. Yasmine struck the woman a crushing blow across the face. The woman went sprawling.

  Cassidy leapt forward with a boulder, hoping to end her fight with one strike, but her opponent dodged with lightning reflexes as she neared him, warned by the other attacks. Cassidy fell hard on her side and lay there, staring up at the clouds, the breath knocked out of her.

  Jemma approached at speed from behind another tree, holding rocks in both hands.

  Bodie struck at the kidneys of his adversary, trying to debilitate the man before he could recover. Thick clothing made it difficult to land a telling blow. This close, his breath filled the man’s ears, his panting loud, the world concentrated to just a few feet. The man struck back with elbows which Bodie dodged, then the man rolled and let fly with a wild haymaker, catching Bodie across the face. Seeing stars, he blinked as the man leapt on him.

  Cassidy recovered quickly. Her attacker was on his knees before her, staring. At first, she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t pounced but then the man leapt up and scrambled to his right, away from Cassidy.

  Toward his backpack.

  Trusting her instincts, Cassidy yelled out a warning to her friends: “Weapons!” and then darted after him. Sand and grit flew from her boots as she set off.

  The man had a good lead, but she closed it quickly, nearing him as he reached for the backpack. Gambling that he’d try to open it, she accelerated, aiming to shoulder-barge him to the ground. Instead, the man swung the backpack like a sledgehammer, smashing Cassidy across the face with it and sending her sprawling.

  Cassidy hit the beach face first. For a moment she couldn’t focus. Pain flared in her chin, her chest and forearms. She brought a knee up, trying to rise, but fell flat again. Seconds passed. She was aware that, at any moment, her opponent could land on her without challenge. She dug deep. The years she’d spent underground street fighting didn’t go to waste. There was steel in her, a solid conviction. She rolled, opened her eyes and looked up.

  A slate gray sky looked like it had been stapled across the sky above. Cassidy fought nausea to sit up and then, in many ways, wished she hadn’t.

  Her opponent had raced to and already opened another backpack. Now, he reached inside and extracted a handful of short swords. They were scabbarded in plain sheaths and had bare but well-polished hilts.

  Cassidy sat up, her face on fire. Her opponent ran past her, swords in hand.

  Bodie saw Cassidy fall and had been about to leave his opponent and run to her aid when he noticed the man rummage inside his backpack. Then he saw the swords.

  His own adversary sported a wide grin. “You don’t know me, do you?”

  Bodie studied the figure, his bearing, and frowned when a jolt of memory struck. “Sure, and I’m guessing you’re ex-military. Nimrod, wasn’t it?”

  “Of sorts. Yes, Nimrod, leader of the Hoods. I was trained on hard streets, not in some fancy fighting school. We met first in Karachi as I recall.”

  About them the battle continued. Cassidy had dragged herself to her feet. The man with the swords was fast approaching. Yasmine and her female opponent struggled toe to toe. Jemma was taking the full attention of the fourth fighter for now, swinging her rocks at him.

  “You’ve got your ore,” Bodie said, taking a risk, knowing that the more they fought the better chance there was of sustaining an injury. “Just go. We won’t stop you.”

  Nimrod’s eyes flickered. He weighed the choices for all of three seconds. A moment later he threw his right hand up in the air, caught a sword by the scabbard, and drew it. His answer wasn’t spoken, it came in the thrusts of his weapon which Bodie knew to be a dirk.

  A long-bladed dagger, it was the personal choice of most highlanders several hundreds of years ago. Nimrod swept it down from the right and then the left, making Bodie dart backward and almost lose his footing.

  This was just going from bad to worse.

  From the corner of his eye he checked for Cassidy, assuming she’d be hot on the heels of the guy holding all the weapons. He was surprised to see her rummaging through the backpack the man had left behind. A second later, she upended its contents over the beach.

  Bodie spun, evading Nimrod.

  Yasmine used the moment her opponent grabbed the thrown sword to land a devastating attack on her chest and stomach, targeting the solar plexus, ribs and kidneys. The woman fell. Yasmine picked up her sword.

  “Stop!” Yasmine shouted, unsheathing the blade and holding its point to the woman’s throat. “Stop and she lives.”

  There was a moment’s respite. Nimrod watched Bodie and glanced warily at Yasmine. Jemma was struggling, falling to her knees as her opponent paused.

  Cassidy approached Bodie from behind. “You’re welcome.” She slapped a short sword into his hand.

  “Help Jemma out.”

  Cassidy drifted past, a sword of her own held in a light grip.

  Nimrod weighed up the odds. “We do not need her,” he said.

  Without hesitation he swung at Bodie, who barely managed to thrust his sword into the air at the right time. Cassidy attacked Jemma’s opponent, their swords colliding. Yasmine’s opponent kicked backward and wriggled free. Yasmine backed away from her and looked up. The shores of Loch Ness echoed to the sounds of metal clashing with metal, reverberations traveling across the waves.

  Bodie backed up to the water’s edge, feeling it lap over his boots and find a way through the leather. Wind scoured his back. Nimrod’s sword came down time and again. Bodie, no swordfighter, was barely able to cope and saw no chance of counterattack.

  Cassidy swung at Jemma’s assailant and then the man who had distributed the swords. She kept both of them at bay. When one was distracted, Jemma heavy threw stones at him, missing with the first two but striking a full-on temple blow with the third.

  The man staggered.

  Cassidy ran him through. Blood flowed from his body across ledges of stone, and dripped into the loch.

  Cassidy’s original opponent struck out at her, driving her backward. His sword thrust left and right and then from above. Cassidy danced on the edge of Loch Ness, bruised and bloody, but matching the man blow for blow. The sharp blades ground together. A resounding echo swept in from the murky, rolling waters.

  Bodie fell to his knees in the loch. Nimrod towered over him. “Street fighting wins,” he said, raising his sword.

  “I’m not military, pal,” Bodie said. “I’m a thief.” He plucked a sample of ore from Nimrod’s belt, spun, and hurled it toward Lucie so she wouldn’t have to dig. Nimrod froze, stunned at what Bodie had done and what it meant. In that moment, Yasmine struck him from behind and drove him past Bodie into the loch.

  The two fell into the shallows.

  Yasmine held Nimrod’s head under the surface as she knelt on his chest. Nimrod battered weakly at her with the flat of his sword, unable to bring the blade or point to bear.

  Cassidy fended off sword-strikes from her opponent and, in a lull, raised a hand, palm out. “Stop, stop. You’re the last man standing.”

  A quick check made him back off. “You see, this is the difference,” Cassidy told him. “Evil bastards like you will just kill all their enemies, superior numbers or not. Bullies would do the same. Us... we’re different. We don’t wanna ki
ll anyone.”

  Yasmine dragged Nimrod out of the loch, disarmed him, and covered him with her sword as Lucie scraped at the ore.

  Bodie walked over to face Nimrod. “This is your lucky day, pal. Remember this when we meet again. Remember what we did for you.”

  Nimrod spat at him. Bodie shook his head and walked away. He looked left and right. Nimrod’s team were either dead, hurt or had surrendered. The loch lay to their left, vast and ominous and ever-watchful, a deep and unforgiving custodian of the ongoing centuries, years that undulated between decades like the loch’s eternal waves, flowing by. It was a privilege, seeing this place, but he’d never imagined he might end up fighting for his life along its frigid coastline.

  “Stay,” he told Nimrod.

  “They’re gonna get more ore,” Cassidy said as they hurried away.

  Bodie kept a close eye on their enemies. “What else do you want us to do? Kill them? The ore can’t be hidden. It’s everywhere. And we need it to figure out what their terrible endgame is. How they’re gonna change the world. At least we’ve slowed them down a bit.”

  “Another one done,” Lucie said, hanging on to the rucksack containing the ore with both hands. “What’s up next?”

  “Whatever it is,” Cassidy said. “I hope it’s warmer than this place.”

  Bodie didn’t answer but tended to agree. His boots were sodden, his socks squelchy, his feet freezing. His arms were aching, muscles burning from fending off Nimrod’s onslaught. Cuts and scrapes crisscrossed his body. But their quest, as ever, lay in surging forward. They could never go back, just go on.

  Bodie gritted his teeth and walked.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The journey to Canada was as tiring as it was restful.

  On landing, they made a laborious journey to Calgary, Alberta. This was a wild country, an unspoiled wilderness in parts, a majestic reminder of an old world, harking back to times when the Ishtari had been alive. Bodie helped navigate as he, Lucie and Jemma made the final leg of their journey toward the ancient medicine wheel.

  Cassidy and Yasmine had been persuaded to stay back at the hotel for this one, after suffering worse injuries than they’d thought during the Loch Ness battle. It was a sure sign that, no matter how many victories they claimed and fights they won, they weren’t infallible. Cassidy had taken hard knocks to the back of her thighs that made it difficult for her to walk. Yasmine had chest pains that turned out to be a bruised rib. Both needed to rest for at least a day so, despite their protests, Bodie took the decision to leave them behind.