After following another resident inside the building, using his Interpol badge to allay suspicion, Grey climbed to the fourth floor. He knocked and knocked on Gustave’s solid metal door, obviously a special install, with no answer. No sounds emanated from the apartment.
He called and knocked even louder, then took out his lockpick. He had the door open in seconds, surprised neither the dead bolt nor the chain had been set. As soon as the door opened, the stench of death poured out of the room and settled onto Grey like a shroud. He covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, then crouched and moved inside.
In the center of the high-ceilinged room a man hung upside down from a wooden beam, slash marks on his neck and wrists, blood coagulating beneath him in a sea of flies. Grey guessed the body was a few days old.
He searched the apartment, finding nothing of interest except an empty laptop case and a few pictures identifying the man hanging in the center of the room as Gustave Rouillard. Grey snapped a picture of the body on his cell phone, sending it to Viktor with a short text.
Gustave’s investigation had taken place years ago. Why kill him after all this time?
There were only three reasons Grey could think of. Either Gustave had reignited his investigation, which was unlikely, or someone had tapped into Gustave’s e-mail and seen the message from Viktor, which Grey also found unlikely. Judging from the state of the body, Gustave had died before Viktor had contacted him.
It was option three that Grey found most reasonable.
Gustave was a loose end, and the Church of the Beast was under new management.
Grey backed out of the apartment and into the street, eyes scouring every vehicle, storefront, and face. He cobbled together enough French to make an anonymous call to the emergency police operator before he slipped away. He wasn’t in the mood for questions. The French police hadn’t helped Gustave before, and they sure as hell couldn’t help him now.
As the afternoon faded he decided to return to Xavier’s flat. Losing Gustave had been a body blow to the Paris investigation. Grey had no other leads, he didn’t speak the language, and he knew from experience that trying to deal with a feared and deadly cult made it difficult to pry information out of witnesses.
Nevertheless, his best option right now was finding someone who could provide more color on Xavier’s murder. Perhaps another neighbor would be more forthcoming. He knew it was a long shot, but Viktor had yet to respond, and Grey was itching to do something.
He noticed the man following him as soon as he entered the metro. As Grey descended the long escalator, his eyes had flicked over his shoulder, observing the street for any unusual activity before making a change in environment. The sandy-haired man in the brown pullover was fifty feet behind him, his step a little too purposeful, his gaze a bit too sure.
Grey took his time buying his ticket, checking the metro map and then using the crowded restroom. When he left the restroom the man was still there, standing next to a magazine stand in the corner. Grey moved through the turnstile and down to the platform, the man in the pullover trailing behind.
Grey would put good money on who had sent the flat-faced man, and he wasn’t going to waste an opportunity. He took the metro back to Havre-Caumartin, then stepped into a surface elevator just as it was closing, making it look as natural as possible. After hurrying outside, he ducked into a pharmacy with a good view of the metro.
The man in the pullover came bounding out of the metro entrance, looking both ways before darting in the direction of Xavier’s flat. Grey’s suspicion that the man had guessed where Grey was headed was confirmed when Grey followed him to Xavier’s street.
The man loitered near Xavier’s flat, then found a bench and pretended to read a magazine. Grey ensconced himself in a small park, the autumnal trees still providing plenty of cover. Eventually the man checked his watch and made a call on his cell, waving his free hand in agitation.
When dusk settled, the man finally left the bench. Grey followed him through the posh neighborhood to a less desirable area of the city filled with the metallic screech of shopkeepers pulling down roll-up doors. Darkness made Grey’s job easy, and he debated taking the man to a deserted alley for a private chat. He decided the man might lead him someplace more interesting. There was also the possibility of not being able to communicate with his captive.
They were now in an isolated section of the city, filled with warehouses and automotive repair shops. The streets were eerily quiet and smelled like motor oil. The lights of Paris twinkled above, providing just enough ambient light for Grey to follow his quarry from a distance.
The man ducked into a shuttered warehouse, and Grey waited long minutes before approaching the padlocked door. He didn’t hear any sounds from inside and was surprised not to see any light seeping underneath the door. Grey hovered over the padlock, fingers twitching as he worked his metal filing.
He eased the door open as slowly as he could, relieved when it didn’t squeak. Moonlight filtered in, and Grey’s eyes widened at the closet-size space, empty except for a worn manhole cover set into the floor. Grey lifted the cover, eyes widening even farther when he lifted the cover and saw an iron ladder descending into darkness.
He listened, hearing nothing except the faint drip of water. Then he sent Viktor a text with his location, used a pen-size flashlight to light the way, and stepped onto the first rung.
Zador’s shop contained the same claustrophobic aisles as Viktor remembered, piles of used and rare books stacked not just on the shelves but on the floor between rows, on top of the shelves, and on every available counter space.
An elderly man with an oversize head and a shock of white hair emerged from one of the aisles. Viktor had no idea of Zador’s true age, but he knew he was older than he looked, which was about seventy. Others claimed Zador had studied magic with Crowley and Blackwood, but that was impossible, unless Zador had run into a certain strange elixir somewhere along the way. Zador gave Viktor a nod of acknowledgment, then headed back into the stacks, his uneven gait a mixture of mental energy and creaking limbs.
Viktor followed. Zador was shelving books from a cart, and he spoke without looking at Viktor. “There is something in particular you look for? Last time it was the, yes, the Liber Iezirah second edition. Most rare indeed. You would like something else in the kabbalist canon?”
Viktor had to concentrate to understand Zador’s thick Hungarian accent, which sounded like he was softly gargling while he spoke. For anyone besides Zador, Viktor would have been shocked that he remembered his last purchase, more than two years ago. “I’m here for something else this time,” Viktor said. “I’m looking for information.”
“I’m a seller of books, not information.”
“One might argue they’re one and the same,” Viktor said wryly.
“Information from people isn’t to be trusted.”
“Do books not have authors?” Viktor said.
“Once something is written it becomes a truth of its own, a self-contained, immutable work presented to the eyes of the reader without inflection, to interpret as you will.”
“Be that as it may,” Viktor said, “I’m not looking for a book.”
Viktor saw a grin lift the corners of Zador’s mouth, though he still faced the stacks. “One is always looking for a book.”
“I’m investigating the death of Matthias Gregory,” Viktor said. “I assume you know who he was.”
“I do.”
“I also assume you know who Xavier Marcel was,” Viktor said.
“I do.”
“Have you heard anything about these deaths in the occult community?”
“Anything?” Zador said.
Viktor gritted his teeth. Zador’s obtuseness was a thing of legend. “Potentially useful information. Rumor. Fact. Anything in between.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“Have you had any strange visitors recently?” Viktor said.
Zador stopped
shelving, revealing a wandering gaze that always made Viktor uncomfortable. Viktor knew Zador didn’t see well, but it was more than that, the way his eyes never focused on Viktor but remained in constant motion. Not motion as if he were looking around the room, but as if he were mentally absent, his gaze focused on other realms or planes invisible to the human eye.
No one, at least that Viktor was aware, knew the story of Zador’s past. The shop had been there as long as anyone could remember, and the rumor was that he had arrived from Budapest the day after the previous owner had died and assumed ownership the next day. Another rumor was that Zador and the previous owners were part of a secret society, a sect of magicians that kept watch in various bookstores over a repository of hidden knowledge, doling out the rarest texts only to those they deemed worthy, to further their own mysterious agenda.
“Most who enter my door are strange,” Zador said, the delivery implying the inclusion of Viktor.
“Have you ever met a man named Douglas Oakenfeld?”
“The name is unfamiliar.”
“Do you know who Simon Azar is?” Viktor said.
“Neither.”
Viktor took a stab in the dark. “His real name is Darius Ghassomian.”
“Ah, Darius.”
Viktor’s next question was halfway out of his mouth before he cut it off. “You know Darius?”
“He was here a year ago, perhaps two. I am not so good with time.”
“What was he doing in San Francisco?” Viktor said. Zador shrugged, and Viktor did his best to stay calm. “What was he doing in here?”
“Looking for a book, of course. I told you, everyone is always looking for a book, whether they know it or not. And this book was rare, very rare indeed.”
Viktor leaned forward. “Which book was it?”
“Ah,” he said, his eyes focusing on Viktor. “You should have said you wish to discuss a book.”
A customer had entered the store during their conversation, a somber man with clipped dark hair and an exaggerated Roman nose. Zador waited until he left, then flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED. “Come,” he said to Viktor. “We shall go to the back.”
Grey counted eighteen rungs before he landed in a rounded tunnel extending in two directions. The darkness was broken only by the shallow beam from his pocket flashlight, the plop of dripping water, and a pervasive stench.
He hated to use the light, but he had no choice. The passage to the left sloped downward, and on instinct he chose to follow the passage heading down, checking his cell before he started walking.
No signal.
After a few hundred yards the tunnel leveled out and Grey arrived at a locked iron gate. The gate was rusty, but the lock was not, piquing his interest. He picked the simple lock in no time, then passed through the gate into a different sort of tunnel, a rough-hewn, rock-walled passage that confirmed Grey’s suspicions.
Grey had visited the Parisian catacombs as a tourist, many years before. He didn’t remember much, but he knew the section open to the public was only a small portion of the catacombs crisscrossing beneath the city, a two-hundred-mile network of narrow tunnels and caverns, many of them lined with human bones. After overcrowded cemeteries in the eighteenth century started to contaminate the city’s water supply with decomposing human rot, the deceased were moved to stone quarries beneath Paris, where the bones were dropped into pits and set into the walls.
The tunnel tightened as Grey walked. The top of his hair brushed the ceiling, and he could touch the pitted rock walls on either side. The cooler underground air chilled his sweat, raising the gooseflesh on his exposed forearms. After a time the tunnel spilled into a small cavern whose walls were covered with bones, the glow from his penlight reflecting off the dull white surfaces.
He had entered the catacombs proper, but it wasn’t like the polished tourist area he remembered: This section was rougher, disheveled, bones and skulls strewn on the floor and sticking out of the walls at weird angles. Alone in the underground cavern with the skeletal remains, his penlight casting distorted shadows on the walls, the gooseflesh spread from his forearms to the rest of his body.
Tunnels branched in five directions, all of them lined with bones. As he considered the situation, he saw the light of a torch bobbing in the distance down one of the tunnels. The light disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Grey guessed that someone was following a cross-tunnel up ahead.
He pointed his flashlight at his feet, padding down the tunnel towards where he had seen the light. This might be his only chance for information, and he could still turn around if needed.
The tunnel intersected with another a hundred yards down. To his right, Grey saw the faint flicker of a torch. Grey switched off his own light and moved forward as fast as he could. The pounding of his heart outpaced his footsteps, and he tried to avoid crunching on loose bones. The stale air stagnated in his mouth as he worked to control his breathing.
Though Grey could see the light up ahead, he was wading through darkness and had to keep his hands in front of him to ensure he didn’t run into a wall. Whenever the tunnel took a slight turn, Grey recoiled as his hands brushed one of the knobby skeletal remains poking out of the walls.
He had no idea if anyone else was in the tunnels behind him, or how many entrances to the catacombs were scattered across Paris. Grey knew he was pushing his luck, but he was gaining ground, pressing forward among the bones and the darkness, the only sound the faint hiss and pop of the torch a hundred feet ahead. As he got within fifty feet of the man another light source, a broader and richer glow, entered his field of vision at the far end of the tunnel. At the same time, he heard a sound that sent a tingling flushing through his nerve endings: the murmur of voices speaking in unison in a foreign language.
Not just speaking, but intoning.
Chanting.
The chanting didn’t have the lilting cadence of French, but rather an older, rougher, more guttural inflection. Grey was good with languages, but he didn’t recognize this one. What he knew was that it set him on edge.
The bad news was that an unknown number of people waited up ahead, most likely members of L’église de la Bête who would not be amused by Grey’s decision to crash their party. The good news was that Grey had drawn close enough that the noise of the chanting drowned his footsteps.
Though Grey could theoretically retrace his steps and outrun any pursuers, there might be shortcuts within the tunnel network, a warning system, or traps of which he was unaware. Further, Grey had seen at least five passageways branching off, making it likely that someone would appear behind him.
His target, buried within a black cloak, was twenty feet ahead. Grey tried to gauge how far it was to the end of the tunnel, estimating a hundred yards. When Grey passed a small alcove on his left he decided to act. He knew he wouldn’t get another chance to talk to a member of the Church of the Beast.
As he sprinted forward, Grey could see the mouth of a large cavern up ahead, probably one of the central grottos used to collect the bones before they were distributed to the smaller tunnels. Tonight, Grey knew, the cavern served a different purpose.
Or, he thought grimly, perhaps it didn’t.
Grey caught the man just as the backs of more black-garbed figures materialized inside the cavern. A sinister red glow emanated from the mouth of the grotto, but Grey wasn’t close enough to make out the source.
Grey’s hand reached around the man’s face and clamped over his mouth. He yanked him backwards and switched to a blood choke, trapping the two sides of the man’s neck between Grey’s left biceps and forearm. He reinforced the choke by grabbing the biceps of his right arm with his left, then placing his right hand on top of the man’s head. The effect was of a python wrapping its prey. A proper blood choke, cutting off the oxygen from both sides, rendered someone unconscious far faster than a strangle. Grey dragged the man backwards to keep him off-balance, the man’s futile gasps and struggles only expending more oxygen. Six seconds
later he was unconscious.
Grey picked up the man’s cloth-wrapped torch and dragged him into the alcove. Seconds after they were secured, he saw the flickering shadows of approaching torches. Grey extinguished his torch and held his breath until the torches passed, shaky at how close he had come to being discovered.
Underneath the polyester black cloak, Grey recognized the sandy hair and brown pullover of the man who had followed him. The man was dressed in slacks and a dress shirt beneath the pullover. After searching the man and failing to find identification, Grey took a long curved knife he found tucked into the robe and laid it on the ground next to him.
He had released the choke a few seconds after he felt his captive go limp, causing no permanent damage. The man was already stirring. As soon as his eyes fluttered Grey slapped him across the face, hard enough to stun him and cause him to moan in pain. The slap also brought a sense of dominance to the situation, as did the fact that Grey was sitting on top of the man’s chest, knees pinning his arms, feet tucked under his buttocks.
The man wriggled and got nowhere, then glared at Grey, who was holding the knife against his throat with one hand, a fistful of hair in the other.
Grey waited for the ceremony to begin in earnest. Three more torches passed in the next few minutes, and each time he pressed the knife against his captive’s throat, his own stare boring into the man’s unblinking gaze.
After another few minutes the chanting ceased, and Grey could just make out a single voice intoning in the same harsh tongue as the chanting. The crowd answered in repetition each time the speaker paused, and Grey knew the ceremony had started. He eased the knife an inch off the man’s throat.
His captive spit his words out. “Savez-vous ce que vous faites?”
Grey noticed an expensive watch and trimmed fingernails, and his hand was grasping a head of coiffed hair. “Speak English.”
The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) Page 10
