Order of the Black Sun Box Set 6

by Preston William Child

  14 avril 2016 – Entrevaux

  I think I am getting sick. My body is cold beyond belief, even though it is hardly below 19 degrees outside. Even the fire beside me seems only an illusion of my eyes, because I see flames while feeling no heat. Had it not been for my emergency I would have canceled tonight’s meeting, but I cannot. I just have to make do with warm clothes and wine to keep me from going insane with cold.

  We have sold off all we could to keep the business afloat and I fear for my dear Henri’s health. He does not sleep and he is generally distant emotionally. I have not much time to write more, but I know that what I am about to do will dig us out of the financial pit we have fallen into.

  Mr. Raya, an Egyptian alchemist who has an impeccable reputation among his clients, is paying me a visit tonight. With his help, we will enhance the value of the few jewels I have left, which will fetch a much higher price when I sell them. As fee, I am giving him the Celeste, a dreadful deed, especially toward my beloved Henri whose family considers the stone holy and have owned it since forever. But it is a small item to relinquish in return for the purification and elevation in value of the other diamonds that will restore us financially and help my husband keep his Barony and his land.

  Anna, Louise and I will stage a break-in before Henri comes back, so that we can explain the disappearance of the Celeste. My heart aches for Henri, for my defiling his heritage like this, but I feel like this is the only way to recover our status before being dumped into obscurity and ending up in infamy. But my husband will benefit and that is all that matters to me. I can never tell him this, but once he is restored and comfortable in his position, again he will sleep well, eat well and be happy. That is worth far more than any glittering gemstone.

  ~Chantal

  After signing her name, Chantal once again looked at the clock in her drawing room. She had been writing for a while. As always, she put the journal in the niche behind the painting of Henri’s great grandfather and wondered what could be the reason for her appointment being sabotaged. Somewhere in the haze of her thoughts, while she had written, she did hear the clock chime the hour, but paid no attention to it so that she would not forget what she wished to enter on this day’s journal page. Now she was surprised to see that the ornate long pointer had dropped from the twelve to the five.

  “Twenty five minutes late already?” she whispered, as she pulled another shawl over her shuddering shoulders. “Anna!” she called her housekeeper while she took up the poker to stoke the fire. With a hiss, it spat embers up into the mouth of the chimney as she threw on another log, but she had no time to pet the flames and make them stronger. With the deficit in her meeting with Raya Chantal had less time to conclude their business before her husband might return and that made the lady of the house just a tad anxious. Quickly after making a turn in front of the hearth again, she had to go and ask her staff if her guest had called to explain why he would be late. “Anna! Where are you, for God’s sake?” she cried again, feeling no warmth from the flames that practically licked at her palms.

  Chantal heard no response from her maid, her housekeeper or her assistant. “Don’t tell me they forgot that tonight they worked overtime,” she mumbled to herself as she hurried down the hallway to the east section of the villa. “Anna! Brigitte!” she called louder now as she rounded the kitchen doorway beyond which there was only darkness. Floating in the darkness Chantal could see the orange light of the coffee machine, the various little colored lights of the wall plugs and some of her appliances; the way it always looked after the ladies had left for the day. “My God, they forgot,” she muttered, sighing with effort as the cold gripped her insides like the sting of ice on a wet skin.

  Hastily the lady of the villa moved along the corridors, finding that she was home alone. “Great, now I have to make the most of it,” she complained. “Louise, at least tell me that you are still on duty,” she said to the closed door where her assistant usually worked with Chantal’s taxes, her charities and her press engagements. The dark wooden door was locked and no answer came from the inside. Chantal had been let down.

  Even if her guest still showed up, she would not have enough time to stage the breaking and entering charge she would get her husband to lay. Bitching under her breath as far as she walked, the noblewoman kept pulling her shawls over her chest and covering the back of her neck by loosening her hair to form some kind of insulation. It was reaching 9pm when she entered the drawing room.

  The confusion of the situation was almost smothering her. She had distinctly told her staff to expect Mr. Raya, but what baffled her most was that not only her assistant and housekeeper, but also her guest, had absconded from the arrangement. Did her husband catch wind of what her plans were and gave her people the night off to stop her from seeing Mr. Raya? More worrisome yet, did Henri get rid of Raya in some sort of way?

  When she returned to where she had laid out the velvet napkin with the three diamonds Raya had requested, Chantal was in for a bigger shock than just being home alone. A frantic gasp escaped her as she slammed her hands over her mouth at the sight of the barren cloth. Tears came to her eyes, burning up from the pit of her stomach and stabbing at her heart. The stones had been stolen, but what exacerbated her terror was the fact that someone had been able to take them while she was in the house. No security measures had been breached, leaving Madame Chantal terrified at the variety of possible explanations.

  6

  High Price

  ‘A Good Name is rather to be chosen than Riches’ ~ King Solomon

  The wind started blowing, but still it could not disturb the silence in the villa where Chantal stood in tears at her loss. It was not just the loss of her diamonds and the immeasurable value of the Celeste, but everything lost because of the theft.

  “You stupid, stupid bitch! Careful what you wish for, you stupid bitch!” she wailed through the prison of her fingers, lamenting the twisted fruition of her original plan. “Now you don’t have to lie to Henri. They really were stolen now.”

  Something stirred in the lobby, a creaking of footsteps on a wooden floor. From behind the curtains that overlooked the front lawn, she peered down to see if anyone was there, but the place was empty. The disturbing squeak was a half story’s flight of stairs down from the drawing room, but Chantal could not call the police or security company to search for her. They would walk in on a real, once faked crime and she would be in deep trouble.

  Or would she?

  Contemplating the aftermath of making such a call wracked her brain. Did she have all her bases covered if they showed up? If anything, she would rather upset her husband and risk months of discontent than to be killed by an intruder smart enough to override her home security system.

  ‘You had better make up your mind, woman. Time is running out. If the thief is going to kill you, you are wasting time allowing him to figure out your house,’ she mulled it all over while her heart slammed against the inside of her chest in fear. ‘Then again, if you call the police and your plan comes out Henri might divorce you for losing the Celeste; for even daring to think you had the right to give it away!’

  Chantal was so terribly cold, her skin burning like frostbite under her thick layers of clothing. She tapped her boots on the carpet to increase the flow to her feet, but they stayed frigid and pained inside her shoes.

  A deep breath later, she made her decision. Chantal rose from the chair and took a poker from the fireplace. The wind grew louder, the only serenade to the lonely crackle of the impotent fire, but Chantal kept her senses perked as she stepped into the corridor to find the source of the creaking. Under the disappointed leer of her husband’s deceased ancestors on paintings hung along the walls, she vowed to redeem what she still could of this ill begotten idea.

  Poker in hand, she descended the stairs for the first time since she waved goodbye to Henri. Chantal’s mouth was bone dry, leaving her tongue feeling thick and out of place and her throat coarse like sandpaper. As she looked up
at the lurching paintings of Henri’s female family Chantal could not help but feel a sting of guilt at the sight of the sublime diamond necklaces adorning their necks.

  She rather did not look at their stuck-up expressions damning her. As Chantal progressed through the house she switched on every single light as she went to make sure there was no place to hide for anyone who was not welcome. Before her, the northern flight of stairs stretched down to the ground floor where the creaking sound came from and her fingers ached in agony as she grasped the poker tightly.

  When Chantal reached the bottom landing, the turned to make the long journey across the marble floor to flick the lobby switch, but her heart stopped at what the half-darkness presented. She sobbed quietly at the fearsome vision before her. Near the switch on the far sidewall, the creaking was explained harshly. Suspended by a rope from the ceiling beam, a woman’s body was rocking from side to side in the breeze of the open window.

  Chantal’s knees buckled and she had to hold back a primal scream that begged to be born. It was Brigitte, her housekeeper. The tall, thin thirty nine year old blond was blue in the face, a hideous and ghastly warped version of her once pretty guise. Her shoes had fallen to the floor no more than a meter from the tips of her feet. The atmosphere down in the lobby felt like the Arctic to Chantal, almost unbearable, and she could not tarry long before she feared she would lose the use of her legs. Her muscles burned and stiffened from the cold and she felt the sinew taut inside her flesh.

  ‘I have to get upstairs!’ she shouted in her mind. ‘I have to get to the fireplace or I am going to freeze to death. I will just lock myself in and call the police.’ With all her strength, she waddled up the steps, taking them one by one, while Brigitte’s staring dead eyes followed her from her peripheral. ‘Don’t look at her, Chantal! Don’t look at her.’

  In the distance she could see the cozy warm drawing room, something that had now become pivotal to her survival. If she could just make it to the fireplace, she only needed to guard one room, instead of trying to search the vast hazardous maze of her huge house. Once she was locked into the drawing room, Chantal calculated, she could summon the authorities and try to pretend she did not know about the loss of the diamonds until her husband should realize it. For now, she had to deal with the loss of her beloved housekeeper and the killer that might still be inside. For now she had to stay alive first and be chastised for bad decisions later. The awful strain on the rope sounded like a recurring breath as she passed along the banister and it made her sick while her teeth jittered from the cold.

  A horrible moan ensued from Louise’s little office, one of the spare rooms of the first story. From under the door, a freezing gust of air flowed forth and crept up over Chantal’s boots to stalk up her legs. ‘No, don’t open the door,’ her reasoning urged. ‘You know what is happening. We don’t have time to discover evidence of what you already know, Chantal. Come now. You know. We can feel it. Like a terrible nightmare with feet, you know what is waiting. Just get to the fire.’

  Subduing the urge to open Louise’s door, Chantal let go of the handle and turned to leave whatever was moaning inside to itself. “Thank God all the lights are on,” she muttered through her clapping jaw, hugging herself as she walked to the welcoming door that let through the wonderful orange glow of the fire.

  Chantal’s eyes widened as she looked ahead. At first, she was not sure if she really saw the door move, but as she approached the room, she noticed that it was visibly closing slowly. Trying to hasten, she held the poker at the ready for whomever was pushing it shut, but she had to get in.

  ‘What if there are more than one killer in the house? What if the one in the drawing room is distracting you from the one in Louise’s room?’ she thought as she strained to see any shadow or figure that could help her discern the nature of the incident. ‘Not a great time to bring that up,’ her other inner voice remarked.

  Chantal’s face was ice cold, her lips colorless and her body trembling terribly when she reached the door. But it slammed shut just as she tried the handle, throwing her backwards from the force. The floor was like an ice rink and she scuttled to get to her feet again, weeping in defeat with the horrid sounds of moaning emanating from Louise’s door. Filled with horror, Chantal tried to thrust open the drawing room door, but she was too weak from the cold.

  She fell to the floor, peeking under the door even just to see the firelight. Even that would comfort her somewhat to imagine the heat, but the thick carpet impaired her sight. Again, she tried to get up, but she was so cold that she just curled up in the corner next to the closed door.

  ‘Go to one of the other rooms and get blankets, you idiot,’ she thought. ‘Go on, light another fire, Chantal. The villa has fourteen fireplaces and you are willing to perish because of one?’ Shuddering, she wanted to smile at the relief of a solution. Madame Chantal struggled to her feet to get to the nearest guest bedroom with a hearth. ‘Only four doors down and a few steps up.’

  Passing the laborious groans behind the second door was taxing on her psyche and her nerves, but the lady of the house knew that she would die of hypothermia if she did not make it to the fourth room. It had a drawer with matches and lighters galore, and the grid on the cheek of the hearth had enough butane to blow up Nice, should she bust the pipes. Her cell phone was in the drawing room and her computers were all in different rooms on the ground floor - the place she dreaded to go, the place where the window was open and her dead housekeeper was keeping time like the mantle clock.

  “Please, please, let there be logs in the room,” she shivered, rubbing her arms and pulling the point of her shawl over her face to try and catch some of her warm breath in it. With the poker firmly clutched under her arm, she found the room open. Chantal’s panic jumped between the murderer and the cold and she constantly wondered which would kill her quicker. With tremendous ardor, she tried to stack the logs in the fireplace of the guestroom while the haunting moans from the other room grew weaker.

  Her hands fumbled to take hold of the wood, but she could hardly use her fingers anymore. Something about her condition was strange, she thought. The fact that her home was properly heated and she could not see the vapor of her breath directly negated her assumption that the weather was unusually cold for this time of year in Nice.

  “All this,” she seethed at her misdirected intentions as she struggled to light the gas under the logs, “just to keep warm when it is not even cold! What is going on? I am freezing to death from the inside out!”

  The fire took with a bellow and the ignition of the butane gas instantly colored the pale interior of the room. “Ah! Beautiful!” she exclaimed. She dropped the poker so that she could warm her palms in the furious hearth that came alive with crackling tongues and sparks that would fade a mere pulse into their existence. She watched them fly and disappear as she stuck her hands into the fireplace. Something rustled behind her and Chantal swung around to look into the face of Abdul Raya’s emaciated face and black sunken eyes.

  “Mr. Raya!” she uttered involuntarily. “You took my diamonds!”

  “I did, Madam,” he said calmly. “But for what it is worth, I will not tell your husband what you did behind his back.”

  “You son of a bitch!” she slurred her anger, but her body refused her the agility to lunge.

  “Rather stay close to the fire, Madam. To live we need heat. But diamonds cannot keep you breathing,” he imparted his wisdom.

  “Do you realize what I can do to you? I know very efficient people and I have the money to hire the best hunters if you do not give me back my diamonds!”

  “Spare your threats, Madame Chantal,” he warned cordially. “We both know why you would need an alchemist to perform some magical transmutation on your last precious stones. You need the money. Tsk tsk,” he lectured. “You scandalous rich, only seeing wealth when you are blind to beauty and purpose. You do not deserve what you have, so I have taken the liberty of relieving you of this awful burden.”
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  “How d-dare you?” she scowled, her contorted face hardly losing its blue tint in the light of the roaring flames.

  “I dare. You nobles sit on all the earth’s most wonderful gifts and claim them as your own, Madame Chantal. You cannot buy the power of the gods, only the corrupt souls of men and women, this you have proven. These fallen stars do not belong to you. They belong to us all, to the magicians and craftsmen who wield them to create and beautify and make strong that which is weak,” he spoke passionately.

  “You? A magician?” she laughed emptily. “You are a geological artist. There is no such thing as magic, you fool!”

  “There isn’t?” he asked with a smile as he played with the Celeste between his fingers. “Then tell me, Madam, how I gave you the illusion of suffering hypothermia?”

  Chantal was speechless, furious and horrified. Much as she knew the odd condition was hers alone, she could not process the thought that he had given her a cold brush of his hand the last time they met. Defying natural law, she was dying of cold nonetheless. Her eyes remained frozen in horror as she watched him leave.

  “Adieu, Madam Chantal. Please get warm.”

  As he left under the swinging housemaid, Abdul Raya heard a blood-curdling scream from the guest room, as he expected. He tucked the diamonds into his pocket as upstairs Madame Chantal climbed into the fireplace to find any small measure of relief to her coldness. With her body having been functioning at a safe 37.5° Celsius all along, she died shortly after, engulfed by fire.

  7

  Absent is the Traitor in the Pit of Revelation

  Purdue had been feeling something he was not accustomed to knowing before – utter hatred for another individual. Although he had been slowly recovering physically and mentally from the ordeal in the small town of Fallin, Scotland, he found that the only thing marring the return of his jovial devil-may-care attitude was that Joe Carter, or Joseph Karsten, was drawing breath.