Devil and Disciple

by L J K Cross

  “At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch’s pond.” She only had to read the opening line of the opening chapter and already Amanda was transported to Moscow, far away from her doubts and far away from her thoughts of Steve.

  ****

  Hurtling along the deserted motorway, his clapped out Ford KA vibrating and shuddering dangerously, Steve was deaf to its protests at driving so far over the speed limit. All he could think about was Amanda. He knew he had to get to her fast and so he just drove the accelerator even further into the floor, ignoring the heat that could have been coming from the struggling engine or the pressure in the ball of his foot. Either way he didn’t care and just pressed on. Steve had not passed another car in over an hour. He hadn’t expected to at this time of night, on such a desolate expanse of road. That was exactly why he had chosen such a circuitous route across the barren moorland. He hadn’t wanted any traffic or road works to stop him getting to the airport as fast as possible. Yet despite the absence of traffic and despite pushing his car beyond its limits, Steve still couldn’t shake all his pent up frustration and a gut wrenching sense of urgency.

  One of his all time favourite songs, Iron Maiden’s The Phantom of the Opera came on. Steve looked down at the car stereo fumbling for the volume button to turn the sound up to several decibels above eardrum splitting. Steve couldn’t help but smile to himself as the haunting guitar rift boomed out of his car’s tin pot speakers. He noticed distant car headlights in his rear view mirror but gave them no more thought. You didn’t need to think when The Maiden were playing. You just listened and appreciated.

  “I’ve been looking so long for you now you won’t get away from my grasp.

  You’ve been living so long in hiding in hiding behind that false mask.”

  As Steve sang along doing his best Bruce Dickinson impersonation, the words now seemed to have an added resonance that sent a shiver down his spine. Over the past few days since he had been back in England he had had a chance to go through Amanda’s email account. It quickly became apparent that Alexander had been observing Amanda from a distance for quite some time, just biding his time. Now that he had got her in his grasp Steve dreaded to think of the danger she could be in.

  Steve cursed his old banger despite trying its best to get him to his flight bound for St Petersburg as fast as possible.

  “Come on you rusty old piece of shit!”

  Steve leaned forward as if that would help the car go faster but it was no use. Those distant car headlights were gaining rapidly.

  “Keep your distance, walk away, don’t take his bait.

  Don’t you stray, don’t fade away.

  Watch your step, he’s out to get you come what may.

  Don’t you stray from the narrow way.”

  Steve sang at the top of his voice, half hoping that Amanda would hear his words of warning. He didn’t just want her to walk away. She needed to run away, as far away and as fast as possible! But as he peered searchingly out of his window he knew that his words had been swallowed up by the bleak blackness of the moor. He just prayed that he was not too late, that he would get to St Petersburg in time. He would never forgive himself if anything happened to her. Part of him felt that he had pushed her away but he hadn’t done it intentionally and he definitely hadn’t intended to push her into the arms of such a devil. “The Soviet Satan”. That was what one of the newspaper articles about the assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II had labeled him. Steve just hoped it was some journalist’s lousy attempt at being satirical.

  It was upon him: a piercing spectre of light that filled his rear view mirror, swaying from side to side with intent menace. Its presence completely consumed, demanding your concentrated attention as Steve found himself also swerving and swaying, closer and closer into its clutches. He couldn’t make out the vehicle or the driver, just a silhouette cast in a perilous red glow by his tail lights. The red screamed in warning. The engine of his spent Ford KA screeched in protest at being pushed way beyond its limits.

  “Go on then. Get past you dickhead. What are you waiting for?” gesticulated Steve at the pulsating apparition in his rear view mirror. Steve moved even further over to his left to make his point, giving the vehicle the full expanse of the wide desolate road on which to make his move, but still it remained, taunting, goading, chasing. A blinding light from behind. A past finally catching up, preventing him from seeing ahead into his future.

  The beast of an engine behind gunned, firing a warning shot.

  “What is this joker playing at?” muttered Steve but he had a chilling feeling his pursuer was about to play his hand. The vehicle roared up alongside. Steve dragged his gaze from the white line he had been clinging to – his life line in this deathly darkness as he fought to keep from veering off the road. He glanced over at the vehicle that had pulled up alongside, about to give the driver the finger but something stopped him. His hand dropped, hanging limply in mid air. The driver stared unflinchingly ahead, unseeing, oblivious and yet familiar. Even as they hurtled along at terrifying speeds, neck and neck in a dead heat, mere inches to spare with no room for error, Steve was racking his brain trying to place just where he had seen that face before. It wasn’t exactly the kind of face you could forget, although it was not for the want of trying. Steve chanced a quick look at the car, almost swerving into it at the same time as his concentration momentarily slipped. A black Rolls Royce Ghost. A dark angel. Its beating wings casting a shadow of pending doom and disaster.

  “Nice car,” thought Steve but he was certain that he didn’t know anyone who could afford such a car. Where had he seen that driver before?

  That was the last thought to go through Steve’s mind. He didn’t see the Rolls Royce veer violently into his path. He had no time to react although resistance would have been futile against such a powerful machine. He was truly outmaneuvred, out machined and out muscled in this David and Goliath of battles. A single knockout blow sent Steve’s crumpled car flying, free falling away from the road. It hit the rocky terrain hard but carried on flipping and rolling without direction, without any hope. With every bone breaking impact, Steve’s chances of survival diminished. His seat belt strangled rather than saved, more of a hindrance than a help to his mangled and broken body.

  Koroviev got out of the car; his face as impassive as ever and ran his hand gently along the door of the Rolls Royce. There was hardly a scratch on its gleaming paintwork. The same couldn’t be said for the twisted wreck that had come to a dead stop several metres away. Koroviev could see Steve’s lifeless, inert body suspended upside down, still held in place by his seat belt. Even at this distance he could see the heavy drops of blood falling, forming a sticky spreading pool on the ground.

  Koroviev walked slowly towards the car. There was no sense of urgency despite the horrific scene. He knelt at the side of the car taking care to avoid the crimson pool. Almost as an afterthought he reached into the car, going for the jugular he placed two fingers on Steve’s neck. His pulse was faint, fading. Koroviev’s next move was more calculated, an apparent attempt at self-preservation rather than Steve’s preservation. He slid his hand inside Steve’s jacket and immediately located what he was looking for. As he placed Steve’s passport inside his own jacket for safekeeping, Koroviev met Steve’s gaze, pleading and imploring through a blood soaked haze. Koroviev acknowledged, smiled and turned. Walking back to his car, he pulled out his phone and made the necessary phone call. He then fired up the Ghost’s engine, revving it for several moments as if in retribution before flying off at full speed, disappearing within seconds into the darkness.

  ****

  “But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”

  Amanda put down her book and looked ruefully out across the dark, cloudless St Petersburg night. Her eyes fixed on the animated lights of the city, beyond the impenetrable frozen waters of the Neva that confined her to this isolate desolation and was remind
ed of the world that went on living without her. Amanda lifted her eyes, casting her thoughts beyond and wondered if Steve was able to go on living without her? Amanda knew what she had to do, knew that it would all be worth it in the end, when that Ms World Body Builder crown was hers. Steve would see their true path and would see that their fates were destined to be shared, their lives inextricably intertwined.

  Amanda lay her head back and allowed her eyes to succumb to the heavy drowsiness she had been fighting off as she read the last few pages of her book. Thinking of her and Steve one day being back together, sharing each other’s love and success, a genuine smile played across Amanda’s face for the first time that day. Amanda’s eyes only briefly blinked open, her smile momentarily fading, as she heard sound from nearby; a faint beating rush of wind. Amanda assumed it to be the ever present, overbearing presence of Koroviev, forever hovering, flying around, disappearing into darkness, like some dark angel. Amanda gave it little thought as she drifted off to sleep to dream, hopefully of happier times with Steve.

  CHAPTER 20

  Steve was fighting, struggling, his eyes blinking in resistance, defending themselves against the blinding white light. He felt like he had been in the fight of his life. He must have lost. So this was heaven. This was it. This was what all the hoo-ha was about. The paradise we were all supposedly striving our whole lives to reach. But why was he in such pain, such unbearably real, bone aching pain? And why still this unsettling sense of encroaching doom?

  Steve squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the pounding pain of the deathly march that was stomping through his head; a thousand heavy boots trampling in unison, pulverizing his brain underfoot, without destination, without direction, just marching endlessly, aimlessly in punishing perpetuity. They marched in limbo with a dark figure at the fore overseeing their damnation. The ominous figure approached and came to stand directly over him. Steve squinted hard but the shadowy figure remained featureless, its opaqueness made all the more obfuscating by the halo of white light that radiated around it. Steve lay paralysed in confused helplessness, numbed to his pain, prisoner to his body. As the figure reached over to administer his medicine – a bitter pill on the tongue, a sharp acidic liquid dripping down the throat – Steve was incapacitated by fear, not for himself but for Amanda. As the dark tentacles came to drag him back to his slumberous prison Steve struggled with increased desperation. He knew their sole objective was to prevent him from reaching Amanda.

  ****

  Amanda’s eyes fought to open, attacked by the offending bright light of morning that streamed through the window but desperate to escape her terrifying nightmare. It reoccurred, rearing its ugly head, every night. The same dream that somehow managed to become more graphically grotesque, more paralysingly real as each fitful nights sleep unfurled. Last night Amanda tripped and stumbled, at the same desperate pace as she did every night, down the dark twisting corridors that had become eerily familiar. Again, as with every other night, she found herself confronted by a marble statue that morphed hideously before her very eyes. But last night the room she found herself in was that much darker and danker than usual, more of a prison cell than a viewing gallery in a museum. Amanda could feel the claustrophobic grip of the steel bars that surrounded her, tightening around and encircling her, pushing her disastrously closer to the bared fangs of the now monstrously deformed statue. With alarm, moments before she woke, Amanda spotted Steve on the far side of the bars, hopelessly trying to reach through to her, trying to save her from the scathing, acerbic words that were being screamed over and over again. “Rukopisi ne goryat………..RUKOPISI NE GORYAT!”

  Escaping from her incarcerating terror, Amanda woke with a panic, a vague disturbed recollection that she had left something behind, that was possibly lost to her forever.

  Amanda bathed in the fleeting rays of the winter sunshine that streamed through her window to wake her and waited. She waited for her heartbeat to return to a more normal and steady pace, waited for the warming rays to restore her body, battered and bruised by her brutal training regime, to life, waited for Koroviev to enter with her breakfast. Amanda’s bedside alarm began to ring. Koroviev, punctual as clockwork, was already at her bedroom door, breakfast tray in hand and so Amanda’s day began, as it was to begin every day for the foreseeable future. A future of such groundhog repetition that even Koroviev’s surly but dependable presence came to be reassuringly appreciated. Every day demanded one to practice dedication, discipline and sacrifice with an almost religious zeal. Every day you worshipped in the church of pain and offered your body up to a higher cause, knowing that the rewards, once they came, would be euphoric, beyond compare.

  The rewards were already starting to be realized. Almost instantly Amanda started to feel stronger in the gym but soon enough her trainer ran out of training methods sadistic enough to punish her muscles into failure. He still screamed with the same vehemence inches from her face. He increased the pace, cutting down her rest periods to mere seconds, giving him just enough time to put even more weight on the bar. Soon the bars were full and bending dangerously under the weight and still Amanda carried on repping out set after set. Every exercise was finished off with drop sets or forced sets or giant sets or a set of hundreds but still Amanda made it look effortless. Her muscles just bulged and blossomed whilst her trainer looked deflated, sweaty and spent. Nowadays though when Amanda left the gym there was always a slight pat on the back or a begrudging smile. Such hard won acknowledgement and such hard gained muscle growth inevitably inflated her ego. Amanda’s swollen narcissistic conceit blinded her to the unusual changes that were occurring in her body. She didn’t care about the worrying numbness in her limbs, the permanent pounding in her head or the debilitating stomach cramps. All she cared about was the gains she saw in the mirror. The gains she knew were bringing her closer to achieving her dream.

  Even if Amanda hadn’t noticed that her oversized training gear was getting that bit tighter, her weekly weigh in sessions confirmed it. In addition to seeing her progress confirmed in black and white on the computer screen, Amanda had another reason to look forward to her weekly weigh ins. She got to see Alexander, which had become a more infrequent event as time passed, or to be more exact she got to see Alexander in the flesh rather than just sensing his clandestine presence skulking in the shadows particularly during her most private moments. Amanda told herself that a man of Alexander’s standing had a million and one demands on his time but still the nagging doubt remained that despite her phenomenal progress, she hadn’t progressed far enough for Alexander, that she still wasn’t perfect enough for him. At the weekly weigh ins Amanda would strip off under the harsh inspecting lights of the lab to be prodded and poked, measured and weighed. Everything was noted. Everything had improved. As her weight went up, so her body fat went down. As the tape measure had to be let out further around her biceps, so it had to be taken in quite a few inches around her waist. Yet throughout Alexander stood motionless, silently observing. His face remained impassive, giving nothing away.

  ****

  Steve was also progressing day by day. His progression was nowhere near as impressive as Amanda’s but he was progressing all the same. His progress was also being closely overseen. The dark shadowy figure was a constant presence that floated in and out of Steve’s heavily medicated haze. Each time he felt the darkness receding that same dark overbearing figure was stood over him. Steve would feel his mouth being opened against his will, the pill being pushed through his clenched teeth and so the dark heavy cloud would descend once more. Despite the fogginess of his thoughts, Steve knew something, everything, was wrong. He knew he had to put a stop to it if he was to ever see Amanda again. The next time the dark figure came Steve was waiting, ready to play the dark figure at his own game. He played along, taking the pill in his mouth, feigning drowsiness, seeming to drift off into a comatose reverie. Once he was sure the dark figure had gone, Steve took the pill out of his mouth and discarded it. As the dark cl
ouds began to lift for good, Steve could feel his body recovering and began to have clarity of thought once more. His thoughts turned to Amanda, hoping he would soon see her again, hoping he was not too late.

  ****

  “18 inches,” declared the doctor, lifting his glasses and moving in even closer to the computer screen as if disbelieving of the results. Amanda looked from her flexed bicep to where the myopic Dr Pakhomov was sat as if she hadn’t quite heard him right, a look of utter incredulity etched on her face. She then looked back to her bicep as if it belonged to someone else, prodding it with a finger just to be certain.

  “The biceps have grown a full inch in just over a month. In fact,” he paused briefly, running his finger across the screen as his mouth muttered the calculations he was making in his head, “the recordings on all body parts measured are impressive.”

  “Very impressive indeed,” acknowledged Alexander, a rare approving smile stealing across his face. “The cloned growth hormone is working much better than expected.”

  Amanda wasn’t sure which to be more proud of – her sleeve bursting bicep or gaining Alexander’s approval. Gaining his approval proved much more elusive.

  “How do you feel it is going?” asked Alexander, turning the full heat of his attention on Amanda. It really was proving a night for novelty. Communication with Alexander was usually only one way. He issued instructions. They were followed to the letter. His word was beyond question; no one dared.