The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3)

by Green, Layton

  Grey spent the flight to Paris half expecting the girl to pop up beside him, and he felt both relieved and disappointed as he stepped into the bright lights and cosmopolitan bustle of Charles de Gaulle Airport. He couldn’t shake her from his mind, and he realized he and Viktor had never finished discussing her strange appearance.

  It wasn’t just the girl that made him uneasy. This case had just begun and he already felt a twinge in his gut, a knot of tension he hadn’t felt since Zimbabwe. Working with Viktor had challenged his perception of reality before, and Grey had the unsettling feeling that it would happen again on this case.

  Or, he thought as he cleared security and the image of the girl flitted across his mind, maybe it already had.

  Viktor had given him three things before he left: the address of Xavier’s flat, a phone number for Viktor’s Interpol contact, and the address of an ex–investigative journalist named Gustave Rouillard who had once researched the Church of the Beast. Apparently the Church was almost impossible to find, secretive and dangerous in the extreme, but Viktor said this man might help if Grey mentioned Viktor’s name. Grey had asked for a phone number, but Viktor said that after Gustave’s last encounter with the Church, which had left him crippled and homebound, he stayed off the grid.

  Lovely.

  After leaving his backpack at an airport hotel, Grey took a train into Paris. He always felt a little uncomfortable in the City of Lights, as if he were a peasant invited to the lord’s ball, always saying the wrong things and stumbling into the furniture.

  His first visit had been his favorite. He had loved the disheveled charm of the Left Bank, the grandeur of Champs-Élysées, the bakeries and street food that turned the entire city into an aromatic café. The underground fight circuit had been a joke, and after Grey trounced the city’s top fighters in a dingy gym, he gathered his winnings and treated himself to a solid meal, then took a bottle of wine to a bridge over the Seine and, under an amber moon, gazed at the sublime majesty of Notre Dame.

  There would be no enchanted lights on this trip. He decided to start with the former residence of Xavier Marcel, known to most as the Black Cleric, known to his neighbors as Jean-Paul Babin. Grey called Jacques, the Interpol contact, and arranged to have an officer meet him at Xavier’s flat.

  Following Jacques’s directions, Grey took the metro to the ninth arrondissement. He walked a few streets south of the Havre-Caumartin stop, to a flat on a street full of handsome ash-colored buildings. A man in a suit was leaning against the wall of Xavier’s building, with the rigid stance and active eyes of a police officer. There was something else, however, that Grey normally didn’t see in the eyes of a policeman.

  Fear.

  Grey opened the Interpol liaison identification Viktor had procured for him a few months ago, feeling strange as he used the ID for the first time.

  The officer inspected the ID. “Parlez-vous Francais?”

  “Non, pardon,” Grey said. “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

  The officer gave a half smile as he unlocked the door for Grey. “Non.”

  The officer signaled with a wave of his hands that Grey was free to roam. Grey stepped into the flat expecting to see walls encrusted with blood, or pentagrams chalked into the floor. Instead, he saw the home of a meticulous man. Everything was in order, the floors polished, the furniture carefully arranged, the spines on the bookshelves aligned by size.

  He moved through the spacious living room and into the study, feeling a little chill as he saw the title of the book that lay closed and bookmarked on the desk: Le Livre de Lucifer. As if this were a typical upper-middle-class home, except the Book of Lucifer had replaced the Bible in the study.

  A bookshelf had been built into the wall behind the desk. Grey always felt a bookshelf was the best judge of personality, and the Black Cleric’s bookshelf did not disappoint. Grey spoke Spanish and recognized enough Latin cognates to figure out most of the titles. Again, the books were well organized, classics on one shelf, history and philosophy on another, religious books from a surprising variety of faiths on a third, and then the shelves Grey expected to find: tome after tome on magic, the occult, and Satanism, some with shiny new bindings and some looking old enough to crumble into dust if touched.

  Grey riffled through the desk and found nothing of interest, then moved into the wood-floored bedroom, where the police report indicated that Xavier had died. The room looked innocuous: a queen-size bed along the wall, a mahogany armoire that matched the headboard, and a bedside table topped with a lamp and an alarm clock. A bathroom off the bedroom contained the expected items: soap, a collection of men’s skin-care products, a shaving kit, two toothbrushes, and a portion of the counter allocated to Xavier’s girlfriend: makeup, deodorant, feminine hygiene products, a cone-shaped bottle of perfume.

  He opened the closet door, then grimaced. A curved knife with a jeweled handle hung on the wall. Grey knew the reputation of the Black Cleric, and he knew the purpose of this knife.

  There was nothing else of interest. After he left, the detective locked the door and hurried to his car. Grey knocked on the door of the neighboring flat. A few moments later an older man in a suit opened the door, his eyes going at once from Grey to Xavier’s flat.

  He swallowed. “Oui?”

  Grey flashed his badge and said, “Parlez-vous Anglais?”

  “Yes. I have already spoken to the police.”

  “I understand,” Grey said. “You were here the night of Xavier’s death?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?”

  “No.”

  “Did anyone enter with Xavier?”

  The man’s eyes slinked to Xavier’s flat. “I did not see him enter.”

  Grey pursed his lips, the man’s extra blink giving away his lie. “Was there someone with him?”

  “Pardon?” the man said, as if he did not understand the question.

  “I understand you had no love for your neighbor, but anything you can tell me might help the next person.”

  “Que alors? No love? My neighbor was a monster. I have already contacted my estate agent, I will not stay in this house.”

  “Did you see anyone enter the house at any time that day?” Grey said.

  “There was a woman, but there was always a woman. Even before I knew what he was, I knew he had a”—he waved his hands—“how do you say… voracious… appetite.”

  “What’d she look like?”

  “She was wearing a coat and a hat. I did not see her face.”

  “When did she arrive?” Grey said.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “But you didn’t see Xavier enter?”

  “Why would I? I do not spy on my neighbors.”

  “You saw the girl,” Grey said.

  “I was walking my dog.”

  He tried to close the door, and Grey stopped the door with his hand. “Was she thin, tall, white, black? Blond hair, dark hair?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Try harder.”

  His face sagged, and his eyes flicked to Xavier’s flat again. He took a step back. “I am sorry, monsieur. There’s nothing more.”

  Grey removed his hand and the man shut the door. Grey stood alone as a stiff breeze swept the street.

  Viktor left the Fairmont and strode towards Polk Street to meet Zador Kerekes, the Hungarian owner of a used and rare bookstore specializing in the occult. Worry for Grey fluttered through him as he walked, turning into tendrils of fear that snaked up and constricted his chest.

  L’église de la Bête was a frightening cult. Viktor had investigated them once before, when twin girls from a wealthy Paris suburb had been the victims of ritual murder, but Viktor had been unable to penetrate the cult. It was one of the few failures of his career, and he considered himself lucky to have survived that investigation with his life.

  Grey was a formidable adversary, but L’église de la Bête was based in Paris, and they didn’t play by the same rules a
s everyone else. Not to mention whichever faction had murdered the Black Cleric. That had shocked Viktor. He didn’t know anyone in the underworld who dared raise a hand against Xavier.

  He walked down California Street and through the quiet chic of Nob Hill, the wind whipping through the streets like a heat-starved missile, racing beneath the fabric of his suit. Viktor had visited Zador before, both to conduct research for an investigation and to find select works for his personal library. Zador himself was a magician, rumored to be a rare Ipsissimus of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a storied group of sorcerers that claimed Bram Stoker, W. B. Yeats, and Algernon Blackwood as members. Though the Order had officially dissolved a century ago, many claimed that Samuel Mac-Gregor Mathers had disbanded the original Order to escape the public eye, and that its work continued unabated in secret.

  Viktor neither knew nor cared about that rumor, but he did know that Zador, for all his eccentricities, had his finger on the pulse of the occult community. If, as Viktor thought, someone had recruited Oak in San Francisco to work against Matthias, then Zador was a good place to start asking questions.

  Darius’s recent emergence as Simon Azar pooled and gummed in Viktor’s mind like the muddy waters of a swamp channel. Nothing made sense. Though Darius had possessed a superior intellect, he had never been handsome or charismatic. To achieve what Viktor had seen on that video, he must have gone to charm school and undergone a physical metamorphosis when he reached adulthood.

  Still, he was an angle that had to be investigated. Viktor got an acrid taste in his mouth. There were few things in life he wanted to do less than contact Darius Ghassomian.

  As he turned onto Polk that thought tugged at him, pulling him down into the rabbit hole of memory. He let them come, the memories he shunned above all others. He let them come because he needed to see clearly in the present.

  Becoming black magicians possessed a powerful allure to the three young adepts, but first they had to be scholars. They started with the modern canon, Eliphas Levi’s Doctrine and Ritual and History of Magic, the Necronomicon and the Lovecraftians, Blackwood and Dion Fortune, everything Aleister Crowley had ever written or said. Then they moved further back, to Blavatsky and the theosophists, to Francis Barrett and MacGregor Mathers. They studied the late alchemists Isaac Newton and Comte Saint Germain, and then braved the wicked intelligence of Arthur Dee, Cornelius Agrippa, Abramelin the Mage, and the other Renaissance occultists. Then they delved deeper still, like moles into a secret mountain, seeking out ancient books and even more ancient masters, back in time to when myth and reality blurred and were one, when King Solomon and the Witch of Endor looked to the star-filled sky for answers, when Hermes Trismegistus and the Egyptians built the Pyramids and tapped into things unknown.

  They grew in confidence, moving from minor arcana to more complicated spells and rituals, eventually braving the great grimoires themselves. It was hard to say whether everything worked as planned, because most real magic did not have overt results. But there was one thing Viktor could say for certain about every dark incantation performed by the light of the moon: It was thrilling. They were dancing with the hidden forces of the universe, snapping the shackles of human convention, exploring the deepest levels of reality and consciousness.

  There were gatherings with other occultists and budding magicians, there were parties and drugs and sex, but above all else, there was a great tittering excitement at probing the waters of the unknown.

  It was the happiest time of Viktor’s life, buzzing with the discoveries of youth, adrift in the sort of foggy, romantic mystique that dissolves with the responsibilities of adulthood. It was all so fresh, vibrant, alive.

  Though Viktor enjoyed the occult, he wasn’t consumed by it, as was Darius. The three of them seemed to Viktor like the famous puppet shows of Czech culture, marionettes poking their noses into the bizarre and stumbling around the stage of life, fools all the while. Their own quest for magic had produced no real answers, and they knew no more than the puppets.

  Eve, Viktor knew, enjoyed the occult on a surface level, like a role-playing game. She participated because it quenched a thirst deep inside, an empty place that had never been filled by her absent salesman father or her codeine-addicted mother. She enjoyed the drug-induced rituals most of all, though after the first few Viktor decided those were not for him. It was not until many years later, when the Juju nightmares first appeared in London, that he would turn to absinthe to help numb the memory of the monstrosities he had witnessed.

  While Viktor sought answers and Eve sought solace, Darius sought power. Unlike Viktor, who conducted himself with a cool, if somewhat remote, confidence, Darius came from a poor family and was ill at ease with the world. Painfully thin and frail, he had never had a girlfriend, and had never enjoyed the finer things in life unless Viktor paid his way. Viktor knew that being a magician gave Darius a sense of control he had never before experienced. Goethe’s Faust was Darius’s favorite play, and he used to tell Viktor that if he ever had the chance, he would call the Devil and worry later about how to escape the consequences.

  There was only one thing Darius craved more than power, and that was Eve. It was becoming harder and harder for Viktor to hide the electricity flowing between Eve and himself, and Viktor knew how much it hurt Darius when Eve looked right through him.

  Viktor had fallen just as hard as Darius. He had mistaken Eve’s introspection for shyness, her sensitivity for weakness. Now he knew her for who she was: an intelligent, highly emotional, complex human being, whose beauty was matched only by her empathy. And Eve, he knew, found comfort in Viktor’s solidity, probably saw her father in Viktor’s remoteness—though Viktor was someone she could reach. And he was a striking figure on campus, handsome and foreign and brilliant, towering above the other students.

  Viktor and Eve had started seeing each other in secret, though Viktor knew Darius loathed their obvious chemistry, and loathed their pity even more. But he also knew Darius would never disrupt the trio, because it would mean losing touch with Eve.

  Instead, Darius found solace in the one thing at which he excelled even more than Viktor: the practice of magic. Darius had the gift. His dexterity was extraordinary, his stamina already a thing of legend, and most important of all, he had the one thing Viktor had never been able to achieve through the application of his powerful will: faith.

  Viktor knew that if magic did, in fact, work, even if it was just some unexplained function of the universe, then Viktor had to at least believe in it to see the results. This, above all else, was what drove and tormented Viktor Radek. He had a burning desire to know, yet he himself believed in nothing. He wanted, he craved, that faith-supplanting proof.

  Darius, on the other hand, had an abundance of faith, so much so that it drove him to believe that true magic lay at the intersection of the magician’s esoteric skill set and a higher, mysterious power. Darius had never claimed a religion or moral alignment, but he came to believe that it was the so-called forces of darkness that responded most to human entreaty and practical magic.

  After that year’s All Hallows’ Eve party, something changed in Darius. He talked to Viktor less and less, grew sullen and angry. The three almost split when Darius demanded that, for the sake of their magical development, they follow Aleister Crowley and explore sex magic as a group. Perhaps the most notorious black magician to have ever lived, dubbed by a British tabloid in 1923 as the “Wickedest Man in the World,” Darius idolized Crowley and his infamous motto, “Do what thou wilt.”

  Eve threatened to never speak to Darius if he ever again mentioned such a revolting thing. Darius had been crushed and started using prostitutes for his magical experiments.

  By this time Darius and Viktor knew a rift was inevitable. Neither, however, could have guessed just how deep and terrible the circumstances of that rift would prove to be.

  Viktor’s reverie with the past broke when the muscular sprawl of the Pacific appeared in the distance. He realize
d he had walked too far and berated himself for losing concentration. It was unlike him.

  Despite the chill, his body felt hot beneath his suit, a warm flush from the intensity of the memories. He straightened his tie and strode towards the bookshop, a denizen of the present once more.

  He found Zador’s Rare Books halfway down a side street off Polk, the narrow entrance almost unnoticeable, the incline so steep the cars had to park angled against the curb.

  A bell tinkled as Viktor entered the shop.

  Grey grabbed a croque-monsieur on the street, walking as he pondered the morning’s events. It was good to get a visual of the crime scene, but he doubted he was going to discover anything of interest unless he found one of the members of the Church of the Beast. Even if he found one, he knew they weren’t going to be sipping cappuccino and discussing the case. But he would deal with that when the time came.

  Grey followed the directions he had printed to the house of the journalist Viktor said might help. Gustave’s apartment was in a shabby section of Saint-Denis, one of those edgy urban areas populated by artists, a host of people on the fringe of society, and die-hard cityphiles who didn’t make much money but wanted to live in town.

  According to Viktor, Gustave had investigated the Arceneau kidnappings, running an exposé on the twin girls who had turned up in pieces in a sewer. Gustave had exposed a few reputed members of the Church of the Beast, but despite a lengthy investigation and a huge public outcry, no arrests were made.

  For his troubles, Gustave had received a visit from two men in goat masks who had left him impaled through his anus on a Judas Cradle. His neighbors rescued him before he died, but the horrific torture had left him crippled.

  Grey approached Gustave’s building, the weathered stone streaked with grime. The building was on the corner of a hectic intersection, and judging by the seedy bars and package stores, the area might be busier at night. The perfect place for someone uncomfortable in isolation, Grey thought. Someone forced to live a life of fear.