Order of the Black Sun Box Set 8

by Preston William Child

  “Wow, obedient,” Sam said, holding Nina’s hand as they entered the warm living room. The place smelled like wet dog pelt and old piss, making Nina feel sick. It was clear by Finn’s home that he was not well off at all. On the other hand, she had known filthy rich people who lived like swine in their baronial houses, so her guess was her own. Sam saw the grail, or what Nina assumed was the grail, but it was nothing like the glorified chalice on Arthurian paintings of Galahad and Bors and Lancelot.

  It was pale yellow, about the circumference of a small dog bowl, without embellishments of precious stone or extensive carvings. By the shallow dents here and there, worn through age, it could very well fit the age of the Holy Grail. It certainly did not look fantastical or expensive, which Nina and Sam had learned, usually made an artifact all the more genuine.

  “I am sorry, but where do we know each other from?” Finn asked Peter as he poured the first glasses.

  “Your memory has gone to the dogs, old boy,” Peter chuckled, casting an eye to the black dogs panting happily against the wall.

  “I have not been well for a long time,” Finn admitted, taking up his glass with Peter. Sam and Nina gracefully declined, opting to keep their wits sharp. “Sláinte!” the two old men cried, and drank down the first bit.

  “What is the nature of your illness, old Dylan?” Peter asked, while Sam and Nina still shared mutual bewilderment as to Peter’s familiarity with Finn.

  “Cancer, Peter,” Finn sighed, trying to place Peter’s features in the facial recognition centers of his memory. “Acute myeloid leukemia.”

  “When were you diagnosed?” Nina asked out of turn, but the question came to quick that Finn forgot to do his math first, and he answered, “September, 1949.”

  “So, you looked me up?” he asked Peter. “We served in the war?”

  “Aye,” Peter said. “Perceval Chapter, 1944.”

  Nina gasped audibly, her dainty hand crushing Sam’s already tense fist. “Oh, Jesus,” she mumbled. Sam felt a knot in his stomach and his throat closed up when he realized that Peter was one of the men who served with Father Harper, Carlos Cruz and Keating.

  “You were not on the picture,” Nina frowned.

  “I took the picture, my dear,” Peter smiled. “Do not try to run, please. We do not want to excite the beasts.” He saluted the Rottweiler congregation, and turned to face an equally shocked Dylan Finn. “Relax, Dylan. I knew you had good reason to keep the grail for yourself that night you absconded with it. Now I understand.”

  “I…I had to keep the cancer away, Peter,” Finn admitted. “The Lord guided me to the grail, because he knew I would need it. It was the only way to stay alive.”

  “Did the Lord lead us to it as well, so that you could slaughter our sons?” Peter asked. “Why, Captain? Why did you murder our sons? Could you not have taken random children, as we did in the war?”

  Nina’s blood ran cold. Her gaze stayed on the grail, its silent scream and its pale golden belly brimming with imaginary blood in her mind’s eye.

  Finn drank more, not even bothering to offer Peter another glass. “You know why, Peter,” he growled. “The men of the Perceval Chapter all drank from the vessel, all killed for the privilege of youth and survival over death.”

  “Not even Christ survived death!” Peter yelled, upsetting the placid animals into yelps and groans.

  “But he did!” Finn defended. “He rose again! We were mere men, blessed with the power of the Grail. Our sons, begotten while we were charged with the blood of Christ, carried our power in their blood. Christ’s blood! In our bloodlines! When the odd orphan or unattended child did not suffice to hold off the sickness, I had to, Peter! I had to turn to the sons of the Holy Knights. The sons of the Perceval Chapter!”

  “Oh my God,” Nina’s soft uttering quivered along with the soft, reluctant yelping of the excited canines. Sam pressed her hand as if to soothe her, but she could feel the clamminess of his skin. He was as terrified as she was. Peter’s eyes were ablaze, but he poured Finn another drink. “You are pathetic. Killer of children! What gave you the right to relinquish your grace, Captain, to keep death at bay at the slaughter of our children?”

  Finn bit his lip, breathing hard and deep. His teeth were lined with old blood, black traces of his sins, but he was far from done. He rose from the couch, immediately arousing the attention of the dogs. Calmly, Peter opened the cooler box. Nina pressed her body in under Sam’s, fearful of what he would bring out.

  “I see you brought me one last son of the Holy Knights,” Finn grinned, looking at Sam as he reversed toward the chalice on the mantle. “The son of the Templar, Harper! His blood will give me a few more weeks.”

  “Holy shit!” Nina exclaimed, her eyes bulging in their sockets as she gawked at Sam. The dark rugged journalist was trembling, sliding his hand down to his concealed Beretta. Two by two, Peter took out thirteen large steaks he had purchased at the butchery in Limerick while they stopped for diesel. Confidently he tossed them to the dogs and they zealously obliged.

  Sam was frozen in anger, confusion and fear, locking his hand over the butt of his gun. He was not going to be slain for any reason, let alone the sake of a father he never knew. Nina was holding onto his forearm, whispering, “Not yet, not yet.”

  Peter shook his head at Finn. “I did not bring Sam to you, you arrogant bastard. Sam brought me to you. I used him to find you, you sick son of a bitch, so that I can cut you down as you cut down my son in Wales, 1975!”

  Finn laughed loudly, chalice in hand. Sam and Nina tried to figure out if the devilish roar came from his inebriation or from feeling invincible. As he swung the big chalice, they could see the abhorrent traces of hardened blood still clinging to the inside.

  “Peter?” Sam said suddenly. He did not quite know what he was trying to ask or say, but he felt the need for clarification right now. Peter looked at him with a stern, but stable expression. “What is happening? Are you with him or are you with us?” Sam asked. Next to him, Nina started to weep.

  Behind the couch where Sam and Nina were seated, dogs began to collapse into a deep sleep. One by one, they hit the floor with a yap. With the chalice in his hand, Finn grinned though his hideous black lips, but his legs were buckling under him.

  “You might want to look away for this,” Peter told them both. “How could I ever be with him? We all know the devil personally, but that does not mean we are willfully in league with him. Look away. I need you to forgive me for what I am about to do.”

  “What are you going to do, Peter?” Nina inquired, terrified and sobbing.

  “God forgive me for my hypocrisy!” Peter prayed in a thundering voice as he pulled out his own weapon from his side holster. Sam took the initiative to record whatever was to follow, as he did the suicide of Carlos Cruz. After all, that is what he was paid to do. Investigate, record and report.

  Dylan Finn cackled like a victorious demon as he caressed the Grail. His mangled sermons of religious grandeur fell from his cracked lips like the speech of a dead man drawing breath. “I cannot die. The Holy Grail will make me prevail, as always! The blood of the Lamb is in my veins…”

  Peter pulled back the hammer on his old Enfield No.2 revolver and aimed at Dylan Finn’s face. “Oh, Lord, absolve me for taking this life as he has taken the life of my son! I cannot…I will not suffer this monster to tarnish the legacy of our pact anymore!” he beseeched in a howl of words.

  “Peter, we need him al...,” Sam tried to remind the retired officer, but it was too late. An ear-splitting crack devastated their ears as Peter Carrol pulled the trigger.

  Sam held Nina tight to his chest, his powerful arms shielding her face from the horrific scene that enfolded. Peter sent bullet after bullet into the skull of the former commander, even after his face had turned to a bloody mess. Six rounds, equally timed, ended the life of the religious child killer under the roof of the abbey he lived in.

  31

  Virtue and Vengeance


  When he was done, Peter replaced his spent weapon and sat down on the couch. He was broken, but relieved, having no idea that he was in the frame of Sam’s pocket-sized video camera. He took the bottle of liquor up, his hand as steady as a surgeon’s.

  “You will need a few drinks after that,” Sam advised.

  “Give me that bottle!” she shouted at Peter. Astonished, both he and Sam glared at her as she stumbled over the coffee table to seize the bottle from Peter.

  “Hey! I think we all need a stiff drink!” Peter protested. Nina turned the bottle upside down, releasing the liquid onto the floor without any consideration for the age of the whiskey. Sam was still shattered from the ‘Templar’s son’ revelation, and had not the strength to interfere. Scrambling for a substitute, Peter Carroll grabbed a coffee mug from one of the side tables and held it under the neck of the bottle to salvage what Nina had not yet spilled. “How can you do such a thing?” he asked her blankly, but Nina’s face was fixed and resolute.

  When the bottle was empty, she scampered over to the corpse of the late Captain Finnigan while Peter took another mouthful of the whiskey to conclude his lifelong quest for revenge.

  “What are you doing, Nina?” Sam asked.

  “Finn has drunk the blood of the Grail Knights’ sons, right? He also drank the blood of children that…” she hesitated to find the right words to reconcile explanation and task without impediment, “…the children’s blood that activated the power of the Grail, right?”

  “Aye,” Sam concurred, still unclear on her purpose.

  “Sam! Think!” she exclaimed. “Purdue! Purdue has a wound that will not heal, remember? We can use Finn’s blood, pour it in the Grail and give it to Purdue to heal him!”

  “That is a reach, at best, don’t you think?” Sam reasoned.

  “It is worth a try!” she persisted. “Peter, do you have ice in that cooler box?”

  “Of course,” the old man affirmed. “Had to keep the meat fresh.”

  “Sam, please, come and help me lift him before everything bleeds out,” she requested in heavy laborious breaths. “Christ, I cannot believe what I am doing or why I am doing it.”

  Sam came to assist her while Peter kept drinking away his deeds and prayers, convinced that his sins would soon catch up to him. Nina winced as she held the bottle against the torn arteries of the fresh cadaver Sam had angled to help the blood run downward. “God, I hope this works. We will keep it on ice in that bottle, get to Edinburgh and feed it to Purdue straight from the Grail. It might just work.”

  “I wonder why his wound refuses to heal,” Sam conjectured, but Peter had a theory of that too, one that would prove to be exceptionally likely.

  “He was stabbed with an artifact, correct?” Peter asked.

  “Aye,” Sam agreed. “Jane said Willard stabbed him with one of his own relics.”

  “What do you know!” Peter chuckled. “The Fisher King, circa 2017!”

  “What? Sam grimaced, having a time of holding the dead weight of the corpse steady.

  Nina gasped. “Of course! The Fisher King, or the Wounded King, in Arthurian legend, is part of the tale of the Holy Grail. Many versions prevail about it, but in short, a rich king has a wound inflicted by the bleeding lance, and the wound never heals, leaving the king unable to do anything for himself, but sit and fish. Knights are sent out to find a cure, but only Galahad was virtuous enough to qualify to retrieve the Grail for the Fisher King.”

  “Who stabbed him?” Sam fished.

  “I am not sure,” she doubted for a moment, “but the bleeding lance was said to be reinserted in his wound to prolong his suffering. Fucking hell, this is all so uncanny.”

  “Bleeding lance,” Peter slurred from over at the couch. “Sounds sinister.”

  The bottle was almost three quarters filled when Nina caught her breath, staring wide-eyed at Sam. “Holy shit! I know why Purdue’s wound will not heal!”

  “Why?” Sam asked, dropping the drained corpse to relieve his arms.

  “The bleeding lance, Sam. Remember Deep Sea One? Purdue owns the Spear of Destiny! Oh my God! He was stabbed by the Spear of Longinus, the spear that pierced the side of Christ!” she revealed. “The very lance that killed Christ!”

  “Now that would have been a valid reason to kill a child for,” Peter jested in his deteriorating coherence. His sentiment was understandable, ghastly as the suggestion was.

  “Okay, let's get going before the puppies wake up,” Sam proposed. “I will drag Peter to the car. You bring the Grail and the cooler box. I have to agree with you, Nina. Never had I thought I would ever say stuff like this. It is rather surreal.”

  “What about the body? Locals are bound to find him and know we were here,” she wondered aloud.

  “Nah, the dogs will get hungry in the next few weeks,” Sam shrugged.

  “Jesus, Sam,” she scowled, picking up the stained Grail.

  “What? Do we really care what happens to the remains of a monster who could rival Vlad Tepes himself?” Sam asked.

  Nina scoffed. “Vlad Tepes impaled his country’s enemies and traitors to his family. Do not insult him with a comparison to this doggy treat.” Her boot nudged the dead man contemptuously.

  “That’s my girl,” Sam winked. He was himself to a degree, yet he seemed a bit distant since he had heard that damning statement about his paternal origins. Nina was not sure if there was any truth in the words of Dylan Finn’s claim, but she comprehended that it would have shaken Sam to some level.

  They locked the sleeping dogs in and drove away from the unholy nest of corrupted virtue. As Sam drove them back toward Limerick, Nina could not help but recall her discussion with Terry Jones about the holiness of objects and the duality of holy relics. In her mind, several disturbing childhood phrases floated to reiterate her contempt for dogma.

  ‘Eat of my body…drink of my blood…’

  ‘Spear of Destiny…bloody lance that skewered the body of the Messiah…’

  ‘He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him…’

  Not surprisingly, these phrases, spoken with great piety, implied gruesome practices to Nina. She had always found it detestable, especially taught to the untainted and clear minds of children, while condemning the same subjects within secular matters. The duality of what was considered holy and what was repugnant, was the basis of her refusal to adhere to the faith Father Harper tried to indoctrinate her with. Holding the Holy Grail in her clasped hands in her lap, seeing the dried blood inside it, only reinforced her belief that all piety was masked perversion.

  There existed no absolution and sin was intangible, in her opinion, especially after what she had witnessed this night. A religious man murdered his brother in faith for the murder of another. Where was the line between virtue and vengeance?

  32

  Subterfuge

  Terry Jones received a phone call while he accompanied Mr. Keating to the car outside a fast food restaurant in Edinburgh. Yet another lead had run cold to find the elusive Captain Finnigan that Keating had charged Terry and the historian to find. After Nina called the ambulance and Terry’s bullet wound had been tended to, he followed her instruction in lying to his superior to stall their discovery of the Grail. In return, she would make sure that the court knew of his assistance in the investigation into the murder of the Basildon boy and the surveillance of the organization known as the Meisters.

  Nina gave Terry a jumbled version of the archives to deliberately confuse the trail while she and her associates took care of the real deal. Keating bought into it when Terry assured him that the historian had been eliminated and Kingsley was taking the fall for the child in Essex.

  “Hello?” Terry mumbled through a mouthful of falafel. “Oh, thank you for calling back.”

  His dark blue eyes darted briskly to Mr. Keating as his adrenaline kicked in. After days of pretending to follow definite clues, Terry finally heard from Dr. Gould.

  “What is it?” Keat
ing enquired impatiently, weary of failing to locate Capt. Finn. “Good news?”

  Terry held up an index finger and smiled, a sure sign that the caller had a solid address, for a change.

  “Is he with you?” she asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Terry nodded, keeping his eyes away from Mr. Keating.

  “Tell him that you have a location on Finn and he has the Grail,” she said. “Meet me at the paint factory at 9pm sharp, tonight.”

  “Okay, then,” Terry cleared his throat.

  “And Mr. Jones,” Nina advised, finally, “wear a vest and leave your gun in the car.”

  It was an unusual and risky request, but if he wished to serve limited time in prison, he had to comply.

  “Super,” Terry answered. “Ta very much.” He raised his eyes and looked at Mr. Keating. Terry never thought that he would look at the cruel murderous master of the Meisters and feel no intimidation, no apprehension.

  Tough as he was, Terry Jones was a foot soldier, an enforcer, a slave. Keating treated him like a son until he was dissatisfied. Then Terry became the subject of his emotional ridicule, punishment and violent bouts. He joined the Meisters as a teenager, out of desperate need for food and shelter alone. He did not much care what they stood for, as long as he had the protection of the members, most of them runaways and wayward sorts, just like Terry. This was why he feared abandoned places, such as the paint factory where Nina took him.

  To him, as a young man, it represented vagrancy. Drug running, starvation and sodomy at the claws of the beasts who ran the rat holes. Every time he found himself in such a deserted place, especially at night, the smell of heroin vomit and sweat would fill his nostrils. The only sense worse would be the feeling of despair, unsafe during open season.

  He expected to go to prison for his involvement with the Meisters, even just as a bodyguard and runner, but it would be better than being forever on the run, on the take and on the mend. Inside his hard exterior, Terry Jones had always felt as if his insides were falling out and nothing could hold them in. Secretly, he felt sore, a sore that could never heal as long as he persisted in this maelstrom of misery at the service of just another rat.