The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3)

by Green, Layton

  One thing apparent to Grey was that Anka was relaying her story in a very fluid, natural manner. Either it was true, or she had practiced it over and over. He said, “Weren’t you afraid he’d see you?”

  “My curiosity overpowered my fear, and I was a street orphan—a survivor. Besides, he would never harm me.”

  “Then why’re you so worried about him coming here?” Grey said.

  “I’m afraid for you.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “You can’t fight him.”

  Grey gave her a tight-lipped smile. “So what happened when you followed him? Do you know where you were?”

  “I wish I’d paid better attention to the street names. Somewhere in North London.” Her eyes slipped downward. “They disappeared inside the house, but there was a huge walled cemetery behind the grounds, and I slipped over the wall. It was late, the cemetery was deserted. I could hear strange sounds coming from the grounds of the mansion, some kind of chanting. There was a huge oak twenty feet behind the wall, and I climbed until I had a good vantage point. I was terrified someone would see me, but it was dark, and the tree provided good cover.”

  She wrapped herself in her arms. “A rock waterfall drowned most of the noise. Everyone was dressed in black cassocks and wearing some type of animal mask. There were people chanting, and in the middle of the property, right on the grass, there were at least ten people… copulating.” Her face twisted in disgust. “Everyone else was watching.”

  “Did you see Simon?” Grey said.

  “Everyone had a mask on, even the people on the ground. But there’s more, Grey. The people chanting were all holding a black book they were reading from, and there were large crosses lying on the ground. People were urinating on the crosses.” She shuddered, her eyes downcast. “There were also animals. A large dog and a goat.”

  “Sacrifices?”

  “They were… they were using them,” she said.

  “Jesus.”

  “I don’t know for sure,” she said, “but I think I witnessed a Black Mass. Whatever it was, it was barbaric, evil, and Simon was part of it.”

  “So why didn’t you leave him?”

  She looked up. “I raced home that very second, flung my clothes into a bag, and took a train to Exeter. I didn’t have the money to leave England. The next night he knocked on my door at the hotel. I didn’t open it. I was shocked he’d found me so quickly, and I told him I never wanted to see him again. Then he was… standing in the room with me.”

  “As in, he didn’t use the door.”

  “He claimed he was the most powerful magician in the world,” she said. “It was as if he was this new person, this thing full of ego and power. He told me he knew I’d watched the ceremony and that I didn’t understand yet. That he wanted to tell me everything but was waiting on the right time, was sorry for lying but wanted to ease me into the truth. He also said the people in that ceremony were misguided, and he was helping them change their ways.”

  “I bet he was. What I saw in Paris was worse.”

  She took a deep breath. “I told him I was going back to Romania. He told me that wasn’t possible. He said he couldn’t make me love him but that I could never leave him.”

  Grey balled his fists, his temper boiling to the surface. Despite the incredible nature of her story, he could see the fear of Simon smothering her.

  “Did you try to leave again?” he said.

  “Of course. Each time he appeared and took me back. He can find me whenever he wants.” She took Grey’s hand and squeezed it, her lissome body shifting into his, eyes pleading. “I’m so afraid, Grey. I just want to be away from him.”

  “Why haven’t you gone to the police?”

  “Because I haven’t a single piece of proof. And because I know what he can do. The police can’t help me.”

  “Did he murder the cult leaders?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Him or Dante—the man with the tattoo.”

  “Do you know what Simon’s plans are, his ultimate goal?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “Why did you choose to help me?” he said.

  “I don’t know. You’re strong.” She put a hand against her forehead. “I know it’s selfish of me to involve you.”

  “Let me worry about that,” he said.

  Grey saw the spires of Cambridge approaching in the distance, piercing the sky above a lingering morning fog. Grey was not a trusting person to begin with, and he didn’t know what to believe. True honesty was a myth anyway, he mused. No one revealed the entirety of self.

  “So what now?” he said.

  “I have to return to London.”

  “You’re free to do as you please, within reason?”

  “He knows there’s nowhere I can go. But they’re looking for you, I overheard them talking. You’re investigating him, aren’t you?”

  “It looks that way,” he said.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, searching for his when she opened them. “Please be careful.”

  The train pulled into the station, the Gothic backdrop of the town a fitting setting for the story Grey had just heard. The passengers rose, and Grey walked Anka to the next track over for her return trip. “Stay,” he said.

  She gave the spires a longing glance, then lowered her gaze. “I can’t.”

  “Then meet me later. Tell him you need to get out of London and you’re coming here for the afternoon, for the night if possible.”

  “I’ll try,” she whispered.

  “Do more than try.”

  She squeezed his hand, and he made her repeat his cell number until she memorized it.

  WHITBY, ENGLAND

  Viktor hired a black cab to take him through the Yorkshire Moors to Whitby. They drove north through the craggy countryside, past a line of villages hunched together in tight stone clusters, turned inward against the forbidding weather. An hour later they entered the coastal town of Whitby on the cusp of an approaching storm, the skies gunmetal gray, the howling winds from the moors a horde of barbarians flailing at the gates.

  The taxi descended towards the harbor. Port of call to both Captain Cook and Bram Stoker’s fictional count, Viktor understood why Stoker, student of the occult himself, chose this setting for the arrival of his undead liege. The ruined archways of an abandoned abbey, set on a cliff high above the harbor, loomed over the town with subtle menace as waves crashed on the rocks below. From a distance, the gulls circling the darkening sky above the abbey looked suspiciously like bats.

  The driver let Viktor off at the entrance to the pedestrian-only old town. Though an atmospheric collection of quaint pubs and historic buildings, Whitby had become a caricature, Goths flitting about in vampire costumes, entire shops devoted to Dracula curios, tourists and haggard local fisherman sitting side by side in the bars, swigging Captain Cook’s namesake ale.

  Viktor made his way to the Circle’s combination magic shop and museum, a narrow facade of black-painted wood situated at the base of the long stone stairway leading to the abbey. Pushing through a velvet curtain, he regarded the contents of the shop with amusement.

  An array of potted herbs sat in the windowsills, warding off everything from halitosis to leprechauns. Painted sigils covered the door and ceiling, and the walls were lined with shelves overflowing with an impressive collection of magical arcana: One shelf contained jars of animal parts, rare plants, and fungi; another sparkled with an array of exotic crystals; yet another was stacked with more versions of tarot decks than Viktor had known existed. Goblets and staves, daggers and animal skulls, rings and amulets, books on everything from magical theory to rune systems: It was a treasure trove of occult esoterica.

  Viktor strode to the counter, manned by a tall man with a sharp chin, a ponytail, and a receding hairline. He wore black leather pants and a frilly white dress shirt, unbuttoned low enough to showcase a ruby-studded Celtic cross hanging from a chain. A different
ring adorned each finger, and black disk earrings elongated his earlobes. Viktor made sure the distinctive ring of L’église de la Bête was not part of the costume.

  The attendant peered at Viktor’s nearly seven-foot frame and black trench coat with arched eyebrows.

  “I’m Viktor Radek.”

  “Ah, right, Gareth said you’d be calling.” He spoke briskly and with an educated British accent. He called over a pimply girl in fishnet stockings to watch the counter, and led Viktor through a beaded doorway in the rear, up a flight of stairs and through a locked door at the end of the hallway. “This is where we house our private Crowley collection. Invitation only. The Mags in this town would start a siege if they knew this stuff was back here.”

  “Mags?” Viktor said.

  “Street magicians. Magpies.”

  “Ah.”

  “You know, the wannabes who start with Harry Potter and D&D, revere Crowley as a god, and think that dressing in black and owning the Necronomicon will get them shagged. Which it might, but it won’t make them magicians.”

  Viktor didn’t reply.

  “I’m rather guessing you’re not a Mag,” the clerk said.

  “Correct.”

  “They should be prancing about in York instead of Whitby, if they knew any better. York has an amazing psychogeography, though I’m sure you know that. The Masons have been there since the Dark Ages. I’d be there myself if it weren’t for the shop.”

  The clerk started flipping through a thin ledger. “What level are you? Third Order? Fourth?”

  Viktor snorted.

  “Higher, aren’t you? You have the look. Can’t fake true magical wisdom. Did you study with Gareth? I’ve never actually met him. What’s he like? Are any of the rumors true?”

  “All of them,” Viktor said. “The book, please?”

  “Right, right. Apologies.”

  The attendant unlocked a cabinet and extracted a familiar thin volume, though Crowley’s copy of The Ahriman Heresy was even more worn than the one in Zador’s shop, the edges yellowed, a water stain splotched across half the cover. He laid the book on a desk.

  “What’s your opinion of Crowley? Brilliant bloke and a master magician, but a bit of a cad if you ask me. Can’t deny his contributions, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He was sort of like Jesus: Either you believe Crowley’s mumbo jumbo about Aiwass speaking to him, or he was a liar or insane. None of that chuckle chuckle, he’s-just-a-misguided-bloke middle ground for those kinds of claims. By the way, you ever read his fiction? It’s rather undervalued.”

  Viktor’s lips compressed. “No.”

  The clerk put his hands up. “Hey, I get it. The room’s all yours. Just pull the cord by the door if you need to ring me.”

  He started to leave the room, and Viktor called out to him. “There is one thing. Do you know where Aleister acquired this book?”

  “Not for certain, no, but he had it when he returned from the East.”

  “I see,” Viktor said. “Thank you.”

  The clerk gave his chin a thoughtful tug. “You don’t know Scarlet Alexander, do you?”

  “Who?” Viktor said.

  “Magister Templi of the Thelema Lodge in Cefalù. Scary good magician. If it’s information on Crowley you’re after, I’d look her up.”

  “Thank you,” Viktor said.

  “Gareth knows her, I believe.”

  “Thank you.”

  He left the room, and Viktor sat at the desk, his nose twitching not from the musty smell of aging parchment but from the enigma surrounding Crowley’s copy of The Ahriman Heresy. Cad he might have been, but Crowley had spent his life in pursuit of hidden knowledge.

  Viktor felt a flutter of excitement as he opened the book. He turned the pages slowly, searching for variations in the text. There were a few notes in the margins, circled words and phrases, but nothing of importance. As far as Viktor could tell, the copy was identical.

  His hopes dwindled the longer he read. He would have to conduct more research he didn’t have time for, try to retrace Crowley’s steps and decipher which ones, if any, were related to The Ahriman Heresy.

  On the last page something caught his eye. Just beneath the text, written in the same tightened scrawl he recognized from past experience as Crowley’s handwriting, was a word, circled and underlined.

  Viktor rubbed at his chin and copied the word into his notepad. In both Latin and Italian, the phrase meant roughly “the guardians,” or “the defenders.” The emphases signified importance, though what that might be, Viktor had no idea. Since as far as he could tell it was the only difference in the two copies, it was worth noting.

  He could hear the rain starting to clack against the building as he flipped through the final pages of blank parchment, included in ancient texts just like in today’s books, and then a series of chills coursed through him when he turned the last page, leaving him clutching the book in trembling hands.

  A short note had been taped to the inside of the back cover. The note was penned in a different hand than Crowley’s, a neater and loopier handwriting that Viktor also thought he recognized, a thought confirmed by the note itself.

  Dearest Viktor,

  I never doubted you would come.

  Darius

  CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

  Grey watched from the platform as the train carrying Anka back to London rumbled to life. She was small in her seat, staring out the window, arms crossed and hugging her chest.

  He stepped off the platform in a fog, the skin on his arm still tingling from where she had touched him, his mind enwrapped in the mysteries hovering around her. Why claim she needed his help if it wasn’t true? What possible motive lay beneath that striking veneer?

  He approached the pretty center of Cambridge, feeling the pang of being on the other side of the glass in this town of grassy lawns and bourgeois charm, surrounded by laughing students and families strolling arm in arm, the graceful spires of the university rising in the distance.

  The Zoroastrian scholar lived outside town, and Grey decided to walk, tired of being cooped up on planes and trains. He skirted the university, pausing when he saw a sign for the Cambridge University Library.

  He had to know. If he was going to help Anka, if he had even the hope of trusting her, he had to verify some part of her story.

  He entered the intimidating building, and a shy librarian with a Scottish accent led him to the area housing the collection on paranormal research. Grey couldn’t believe the size of the stacks.

  Three hours later he had his answers, and he felt a little bit lighter than when he had entered. Astral projection, he learned, was a fancy name for an out-of-body experience, and human beings had been claiming to have them since the beginning of time. Recent studies in the United States evidenced that at least 8 percent of people, and perhaps more than 20, believed they had undergone an out-of-body experience at one time or another. The conventional wisdom, at least among those who accepted the phenomenon, was that the spiritual or “astral” body was separate from the physical body—the concept of the soul—and, at least with certain people and at certain times, was capable of traveling outside it. No one claimed to understand it, except for the mystics and the quacks. The phenomenon had been called by many names in many different cultures, appeared to occur both in conscious and unconscious states, and was associated with near-death experiences, dream and meditative states, hallucinations, religious experience, and a plethora of other phenomena.

  Most often, Grey learned, the astral traveler had no control over the event, and found him- or herself floating above or away from the corporeal self, or rising in a tunnel of light after heart failure. There were occasional reports of people who could control the phenomenon, though these were unverified and largely ignored by the scientific community, or at least the Western one.

  However, and Grey’s pulse increased when he read this part, out-of-body cases existed where people appeared to observers in physical form far from their actu
al locations, sometimes thousands of miles away. This phenomenon was known as bilocation, and there was ample literature documenting purported cases over the years, across a multitude of cultures and belief systems. There were even a few extremely rare cases of a reported doppelgänger—the actual corporeal appearance of the same person in two different locations, at the same time. Though such reports had been scoffed at in the past, and attributed to the Devil in earlier times, recent developments in quantum physics had scientists rethinking astral projection and bilocation, and even the appearance of a doppelgänger, as within the realm of possibility and perhaps even—according to some theoretical physicists—probability.

  Grey left the library deep in thought. He was far from convinced, but at least the phenomenon existed, or was thought to exist.

  Powers of the mind, Viktor always preached. Grey had worked with Viktor long enough to know there were plenty of things in this world that no one understood.

  Plenty.

  Grey went a step further. He contacted Rick Laskin, an old acquaintance in Diplomatic Security, now posted at the Romanian embassy in Bucharest. Rick had been a Navy SEAL before joining DS, and when he and Grey had undergone DS training together they had bonded over their respective stints in Special Forces. Grey wasn’t sure if Rick could dig up the information Grey sought, but Rick was a solid all-American kind of guy and would do his best.

  It was worth a shot.

  Grey hailed a cab. A mile past the university the driver turned onto one of those tiny lanes that wound through the English countryside, originally built for the horse and buggy and for some perverse reason never expanded. Following Grey’s Google directions, twenty minutes into the maze of hedge the driver stopped in front of a wooden gate bearing the address of Dastur Zaveri, the Zoroaster priest and historian whom Ervad Kasraavi had recommended in London. There was no buzzer or sign of a house, just a pebbled path that disappeared into the woods.