“Has he got something on your man?” Nick asked, and only an extremely brave man would have done that. Or an overconfident one.
I didn’t rise to the bait, just shrugged my shoulders. Damon was there for his sister and no one else. Sure, he’d play the part to help me out with Eagle. But his main focus, almost his only focus, was getting Carole out. I believed him, when he said he’d only been to Sweet Hell twice before. And I believed why. I couldn’t see there being a nefarious reason lurking in the background. Reason enough for Cawfield to be staking him out.
What did Cawfield know? What was his endgame? And how did this all fit in with betraying CIB?
I had to know. And leaving Cawfield where he was, unaware of the sting or us watching, was our only chance.
Which meant we’d be endangering the sting. Endangering Damon.
And Carole. And Eagle.
Maybe endangering our chances of solving this murder case.
“We do nothing,” I said, eyes still on the screen, where Cawfield had faded into the darker recesses of the street. “We wait and we watch,” I added. “And then we catch the spider as he spins his web.”
Tricky things spiders. They hunt with patience. They sit and wait for their prey to come to them. You should try it, Keen. Sometimes you can catch the spider as he spins his own web.
“OK,” Pierce said, finally putting his cellphone away. “We do nothing.”
But the look on his face was anything but content with that idea. Joe Cawfield had just become Ryan Pierce’s thorn. He’d pick at it, scrub at where the thorn had struck. And he wouldn’t stop until he plucked it out of his side. Like Inspector Hart, Pierce could be a dog with a bone.
We turned our attention back to the screens, back to the interior of Sweet Hell. Viewed through Damon’s button camera. The picture was crystal clear. The low, heavy beat of the sensual music a percussion through the speakers in ASI control.
We watched as he played roulette. As he moved on to the baccarat table. We watched as he bid and lost over a thousand dollars in thirty minutes. Looking bored. Looking nonchalant. Looking the epitome of rich boy needing something else. Something more.
It was obvious he couldn’t see Carole. He was too relaxed. Playing the role, creating the illusion. Not for me. But because he hadn’t found his sister.
I felt a pang of heartache for him. I nibbled on my bottom lip as I contemplated the disappointment and frustration he must have been feeling.
And then when Nathaniel Marcroft finally approached Damon at just past the hour mark, I discarded all those superfluous emotions and focused on what comes next.
Because what comes next wasn’t on the main floor of the casino.
What comes next was down a plain, guarded hallway, similar to the one Jones and I had traversed, and through a double-height black door. With a gold embossed and stylised image in the centre. The Roman numerals for two, with flaming concentric rings surrounding them. I counted each one.
There were nine.
It wasn’t a Roman numeral. It didn’t mean two.
Irreverent Inferno.
And around it was The Nine Circles Of Hell.
Chapter Thirteen
“Paradise is only attainable to those worthy and no others.”
Marcroft paused before the black door, turning to face Damon at last. He’d barely said two words to him since collecting him from his card game out on the main floor and leading him down this nondescript hallway. We needed him to say something.
We needed Damon to get the man to start talking.
But until now, both had remained mute.
“The rules are simple,” Nathaniel Marcroft explained. “To enter Paradise you must prove your worth. To prove your worth you must obey the rules. Until now you have simply existed. The moment you step within the hallowed walls of this chamber you transcend to the afterlife. But that does not guarantee you entry into Paradise.”
I glanced at Pierce beside me. He had the same look of incredulity that I wore.
“What is Paradise?” Damon asked.
“That which you seek.”
“What the fuck?” Nick said from his seat in front of Pierce and myself. “This guy has to be on something.”
“Shhh,” I admonished as Damon spoke again.
“I want to…”
Marcroft raised his hand and shook his head to stall Damon’s words.
“It doesn’t matter what you want. That is yours to claim. All we provide is the means necessary to obtain it.”
“So I could want anything and you’d give it to me? Just like that?” Damon asked.
“Good. Good,” Pierce whispered, encouraging Damon on even though he couldn’t hear us.
Nathaniel Marcroft smiled, his face half cut-off by the angle of the button camera lens. But enough of him showed to convey his superior attitude.
“That is why, Mr Michaels, we charge for the privilege.”
“How much is Damon paying for this?” I asked, unsure if the fee to the back room of Sweet Hell had been discussed while I was inside my head earlier.
Pierce swallowed, eyes still on the screen. But he looked uncomfortable.
“Forty thousand.”
“What?” Nick and I said in unison, proving the ASI owner was just as shocked as me. But we couldn’t get any further with Pierce; Damon was talking again.
“Yet that price does not guarantee me Paradise.”
“If Paradise were so easy to obtain, don’t you think everyone would pay for it?” Marcroft offered, turning away and for a short time going out of the camera’s range. Damon must have been staring at the door - or the floor - in consternation.
Forty thousand dollars and he may not even get to where inside Sweet Hell his sister was.
Marcroft returned in front of the camera lens holding something out to Damon. For a second I couldn’t make out what it was. Dark. Fabric. Clothing of some sort.
“Just as we at Sweet Hell do not need to know what it is you seek in Paradise,” Marcroft said, “those members of the Irreverent Inferno do not need to know who seeks Paradise.”
“It’s a cloak,” Nick announced. “They hide their identities inside a fucking cloak.”
Bloody hell. How were we to pin down suspects if they were all covered in what appeared to be, now Marcroft was placing a cloak on as well and we could see it, a full length, flowing black robe with deep set hood?
“Am I the only initiate tonight?” Damon asked, making Pierce almost salivate with excitement. His pet undercover agent was performing right on point.
I didn’t have it in me to smile. This was shaping up to be something entirely more than I had expected.
“Not at all,” Marcroft replied, his voice distorted now his face and mouth was hidden inside the folds of the robe. “You’ll know who they are, if not exactly who they are, in due course.”
Marcroft looked toward Damon, the edges of the cloak flapping in front of the button camera when Damon shifted.
“Do the robe up, Mr Michaels,” Marcroft admonished in a tone of voice that had me believing he suspected something. But he couldn’t. The button camera was impossible to detect. “We don’t want anyone to identify you from your clothing,” he added.
Damon obeyed the command, sending our screen into darkness.
“Damn it,” Nick exclaimed. Pierce just ran a hand over his goatee and growled low in his throat.
We were blind, but at least not deaf. And then Damon did something while Marcroft turned toward the door, making the screen where his camera’s images had been on display flicker. In the next moment his thumb appeared before the lens and then the camera settled.
It wasn’t a perfect view, but we could see again.
“What did he just do?” Pierce asked.
“Buttoned up his shirt,” Nick provided. “You sure this guy’s not been undercover before?”
Pierce shook his head, a bemused expression on his face.
I just smiled. Damon wouldn’t win an
y fashion contests, but then, no one should see his outfit now that it was hidden behind a cloak. And spotting his high collared Henley in the opening at the top of his robe, would be difficult as well.
It occurred to me, that Damon wanted his sister back. But he also wanted to catch the bastard who had pulled her back into this underworld of sin.
And sin it was. Because when Marcroft finally opened the door and led the way into the “chamber,” as he’d called it, there was no denying that something sinful was about to go down.
The room had a high vaulted ceiling, with sweeping arches that peaked at the centre, almost creating a church-like scene. The walls and arches looked to be made of stone, possibly sandstone, but my guess was they were painted to appear that way. Sweet Hell was housed in a modern building, nothing about it indicated an ancient religious site. Despite the fact that the glowing naked flames in several torches dotted around the echoing chamber and the roughly hewn stone flooring beneath Damon’s feet gave the impression that this was an abbey or a cathedral buried beneath a modern urban street.
There was no music playing, and for a moment that surprised me, but one look as Damon angled himself first to the left of the room and then to the right, as he walked behind Marcroft, told me why. The occupants were waiting in silence. The silence alone would have given the impression that this was ritualistic. Add in the long shadows formed from the sconces, the dull echo of shuffling feet, the odd breath that could be heard in the cavern-like surroundings, and it was clear this was a stage set for something possibly sadistic, definitely debauched, and quite likely sinful.
That and the woman lying on an altar in a sheer white flowing dress.
“Can’t spot any bindings,” Nick advised, enlarging Damon’s camera image on a separate screen.
“She doesn’t match Carole Michaels’ description,” Pierce added and I let a relieved breath of air out, even as I realised her not being here didn’t necessarily mean anything good.
“Twenty-five cloaked forms,” I offered, counting off the figures standing resolutely silent and still around the periphery of the space. None of them lifted their heads enough to get a good look inside their hoods. The material too long and dark, the lighting too shadowed to allow anything more than the odd flash of teeth.
“She’s lying there unrestrained,” Nick commented, as the cloaked figures we could see from Damon’s camera moved forward, closing the circle around the altar. Tightening the ring. “Drugged?” he queried.
“She’s watching them,” I observed. “Doesn’t appear freaked.”
“Willing or not, what the hell are they going to do to her on that thing?” Pierce asked in a low voice edged with anger.
“If she’s willing, Pierce,” I warned; he had a tendency to get riled up about borderline abusive scenes. “Then it might explain Samantha Hayes.”
Pierce flicked his eyes to me and quirked an eyebrow.
I shrugged. “She ran a little hot on the kinky side of things. Wouldn’t this be right up her alley?”
“You may have a point,” he conceded. But he was still scowling when he turned back to the screen.
A low hum had started up over the speakers, the bodies of most of those we could see through Damon’s camera lens started to sway. I was picking the cloaked figures a little slower to pick up the bizarre movement were initiates like Damon, and unfamiliar with the rites the group were about to perform.
“This is freaky as fuck,” Nick commented.
I agreed, but I was too busy watching it all unfold to voice it.
One of the cloaked figures stepped forward, on the opposite side of the altar. The woman watched on, her lips parted, her body beginning to writhe along with the escalating hum. The cloaked figure raised his arms up high, as though appealing to a deity above him. Then after several long moments brought his hands down in a swift motion, laying palms flat on top of the woman’s stomach and chest.
She groaned. The humming stopped. Almost simultaneously.
The speaker seemed to echo when he spoke. I had no idea how the sound would have felt like in the room itself, but over the microphone it was eerie.
“We are honoured,” the cloaked figure began, and I tilted my head trying to identify the speaker. I couldn’t. But the voice did feel familiar. I just wasn’t able to place it, right then, what with the distortion of the echo. “To have six new initiates to welcome to our numbers.”
The ring of cloaked figures mumbled something in unison. It was impossible to make it out.
“Latin?” Pierce asked, but the main speaker had started talking again.
“To have made it through limbo,” he said, “is but an easy task for those who seek. But to progress further the stakes are much higher. Paradise is only attainable to those worthy and no others,” he announced, in a manner of speaking that reminded me of Carl lecturing. “Tonight you may prove your worth. For when tomorrow dawns, the door to Paradise will close again.”
The mass of dark figures repeated the mumbled words I couldn’t decipher and then fell silent.
“Step forward, Initiates,” the speaker ordered, raising his hands toward the ceiling again.
Damon moved forward, and from what we could see, four others across the circle of cloaked figures did as well. That left one we couldn’t see with the current angle of the lens. And twenty full-fledged members of the Irreverent Inferno standing back and slowly swaying. The hum had started up again. It was deep and resonant, even through the microphone and speakers. In a way it sounded uplifting, the type of noise you hear Buddhist monks chanting up in the Himalayas.
It echoed off the vaulted ceiling, making me revise my earlier assessment of the room not being made of actual stone. The acoustics made me believe differently now. Which seemed overkill, but then the entire experience was tending towards “sect on steroids.”
“One of you,” the speaker said, his hands still raised, but his head down, ensuring the hood kept his face hidden from view, “will receive the highest of honours this night. The privilege of proving your worth before your brothers. Of slaking your lust and rising above your peers. Of advancing to the third circle before you even leave this chamber.”
“Third circle,” Pierce murmured.
I just held my breath, because I had a very bad feeling about all of this. Not necessarily illegal bad. Nothing so far had indicated this was anything other than a cult type scenario. But bad bad. As in, the woman now actively writhing on top of that altar, as though in some sort of sexual bliss, and the six cloaked figures around the room who would get to “slake their lust” before they left the chamber.
Add them together and you got sex show under duress.
But was it? These initiates were here to seek Paradise. So far, Paradise appeared to be whatever they wanted it to be. It left a lot to the imagination. But you didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what that would mean right now. Slake their lust seemed to be on repeat inside my skull.
“Lamb,” the speaker said, lowering his arms and cupping the face of the woman on the altar. “Choose wisely. And receive your reward.”
“Oh, fuck,” Nick said in a low voice. “She gets to choose?”
“It’s better she chooses than the cloaked, masked, otherwise unidentified figures around her,” Pierce pointed out.
Nick opened his mouth to say something, but wisely chose to hold his tongue.
But what about Damon? I was sure that had been his next question, because it was certainly mine.
What about Damon? He was there because he sought something. To Marcroft senior it was Paradise, but what form, he didn’t care. To the man who killed Samantha Hayes, was it murder?
“Oh, fuck,” I murmured, my mind connecting dots. “Paradise is anything they desire,” I whispered, as the woman on the screen tilted her face first one way and then the other, eyes scanning the initiates as they stood waiting to be picked.
“Your point?” Pierce urged, gaze still intent on the screen.
“Sa
y you wanted to commit a crime,” I said, as the woman looked back toward Damon. “But you needed not only an opportunity to do so, but a way to achieve it and sleep well afterwards at night.”
The woman lifted her hand, finger outstretched.
My heart thumped against the wall of my chest.
“What better than a group of rich men,” I said, as the woman announced, “That one,” her finger pointing towards Damon. Fuck! “Who are sworn to secrecy?” I went on, needing to keep talking or I’d start swearing, possibly start kicking and hitting something as well. “Who have done borderline immoral things that could bite them in the arse publicly if revealed? What better than a cult which rewards bad behaviour and exonerates your sins? What better place to hide behind than this?”
“Shit,” Pierce exclaimed, but it could have been because Damon had taken a step towards the altar.
I closed my eyes. I felt ill.
“No,” the woman announced. “Beside you.” My eyes flicked open and a dark figure brushed past Damon and eagerly approached the altar.
“Never fear, Initiate,” the speaker declared. “Your eagerness has been well noted. You will do well, I think, tonight. But not in here.”
“Thank fuck,” I said, unaware I’d say those words aloud until they gushed out of me.
Neither man present indicated they’d seen the crack in my façade.
The cloaked figure who had been “chosen” approached the altar. The humming of those watching rose and turned haunting. Surprisingly sensual in its ebb and flow, wrapping around the bare skin on my forearms and raising the fine hairs.
“Prove your worth,” the speaker announced, bowed his head and blended back into the circle of Irreverent Inferno members, adding his hum to the voice of the rest.
It rose and fell, the sound echoing off the high vaulted ceiling, bouncing against the stone arches, rebounding off the tiled floor. It swelled as the chosen initiate reached out and touched the bare skin of the woman’s leg, just below the knee. Her dress rose up further as she writhed with the chanting, she moaned loud when his finger caressed down her shin.
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