The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3)

by Green, Layton

  Grey saw movement at Viktor’s side. He shifted his gaze in time to see Anka slip out of her guard’s grasp. Grey felt a moment of elation, thinking she would help free Viktor.

  Instead, she ran past him without so much as a sideways glance, rushing straight to Darius. As she approached, Darius reached up to her with an outstretched hand, the bottom half of his torso dragging along the ground like a snake’s. Grey’s knife was still embedded in his spine.

  Grey watched Anka lean down and rip the knife out of his back. Darius screamed. She raised the knife over her head, and Grey got a glimpse of her face, twisted beyond all recognition, a mask of rage and hate. She thrust the knife downward, first in Darius’s back and then in his face, again and again and again, with so much abandon that a few of her thrusts missed him completely. Darius stopped moving, but she continued stabbing, her arm whipping up and down like a mechanized toy gone berserk, blood spattering her face.

  Grey looked towards Viktor again. His fingers had dropped to his side, and his face looked empty, a marionette hanging limp above the ground. Grey moaned Viktor’s name as the colored spots returned. Right before his vision blurred, he thought he saw men rushing to help Viktor, but they might have been with Darius.

  He heard screams and shouts from the crowd, gunshots, more bellowing from the megaphone, and then the sounds merged into a roar of white noise. A shadow formed over Grey, coalescing into the figure of a man. Grey’s vision cleared for a split second, and again he saw the face of the man who had pursued Viktor. Grey tried to move or yell for help, but his legs and voice failed him.

  “I’m with the Swiss Guard,” the man said, his voice thick and distant to Grey, as if traveling underwater. The man waved his hand above his head and said something about an ambulance and trying to stay conscious, but then colored spots faded to black, and Grey was falling down a long and sunless tunnel.

  Grey woke to pressure on his face and the sound of concerned voices. He felt as if his mind were outside of his body. He thought he heard Anka’s voice somewhere above him, and he had the hysterical thought that he was traveling to the astral plane to meet her.

  As the fog cleared from his vision, he realized he was still lying where he had fallen. The odor of sulfur from spent gunpowder had settled on to the loamy smell of the cemetery. A medic placed an oxygen mask over his mouth, then multiple hands eased him onto a stretcher. He heard the medic tell someone to apply a tourniquet before they moved him. Looking up, he saw the tree and the rope, but there was no sign of Viktor.

  He heard shouting and a woman shrieking to his right. Two policemen were forcing Anka down the narrow pathway in handcuffs, about to pass beside his stretcher.

  Anka noticed him as they approached, and her screams turned to sobs. Despite her wild hair and blood-soaked face, her beauty was still in such contrast to the chaos around her that she made the cemetery look like a movie set, her sculpted features too perfect for the reality of the situation.

  She dug in her heels and looked right at Grey, the madness and terror draining from her eyes. A tear streaked down her cheek, dripping over the petite curve of her nostrils.

  “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I had to do it.” A deep shudder rolled through her. “He found me that night, watching the ceremony from the oak tree. He made me do things, made me drink blood and eat…” her eyes slid downward. “He made me do them again and again, and I couldn’t get away.”

  She was passing right beside him now. The officers squeezed her past Grey, and she twisted to keep him in her vision. “Don’t you understand?” she said. “He read the grimoire. No cell could have held him. I had to do it.”

  Grey felt a chill at her words, a coldness settling inside him that had nothing to do with the temperature outside.

  Her eyes bored into his. “Bring me the book, Grey. I won’t let it change me, I promise.” She was almost to the entrance tunnel, her last words poisoned darts cutting through the floodlit cemetery. “We could be together.”

  Then she was gone. He closed his eyes as the medic finished wrapping his wounds and whisked him out of the circle of tombs.

  The hospital door eased open, and Grey shifted in his bed to see Viktor enter the room carrying takeout from a Japanese restaurant, his broad neck covered by a swath of bandages. Grey had similar bandages on his thigh and arm, and was still attached to a bank of instruments monitoring his return from the precipice of severe blood loss. He knew if the police and medics had not arrived when they did, he would have entered hypovolemic shock. Instead of sneaking in sushi, Viktor would be lying six feet under in a grave next to Grey.

  Though he had been told Viktor was alive, he had not yet seen him. Grey realized just how glad he was to see a friendly face, though even Viktor’s impassive features looked wan, drained of emotion. Grey eased to a sitting position and eyed the bag of takeout with the kind of desperation that results from eating British hospital food for two days straight.

  “You know me well,” Grey said.

  Viktor spread his hands. “You’re a simple man.”

  “True.”

  “Not in the slightest.” He helped Grey arrange the bedside tray. “But when it comes to the senses, we can all become simple.”

  Grey clacked the chopsticks. “Was that a jab at me for trusting Anka?”

  “It was a jab at myself.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything,” Viktor said. “My apologies for the delay. After my release I debriefed Jacques and came straight here. Texting him was a smart move.”

  Grey worked the utensils with practiced flair, shoving sashimi into his mouth. “I figured an order from Interpol would be more effective than me trying to explain that insanity to a British cop over the phone.”

  “Indeed. But how did you find us in the first place?”

  In between bites Grey summarized the events of the past few days. Viktor pursed his lips and listened. “Well reasoned,” he said. “And my utmost gratitude.”

  Grey waved a hand. “Call us even for the sushi. So what was Darius’s big surprise? A Mayan-inspired cataclysm? Jesus conspiracy theory?”

  “According to Jacques, the police found a computer station in one of the tombs, manned by a hacker Jacques tells me is wanted for international cyber attacks.”

  “Those guys don’t come cheap,” Grey said. “But after the balance sheets I saw, that wouldn’t have been a problem. What was he doing?”

  “Preparing to broadcast a live feed on the Internet, via a virus that would hit the world’s major news sites and interrupt their programming with a DVD prepared by Darius.”

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Grey said.

  “How familiar are you with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church?”

  “I saw Angels & Demons.”

  Viktor cracked a smile. “Technically the hierarchy is quite flat: the pope, a couple of thousand bishops, and a few hundred thousand priests. But among the bishops there are powerful archbishops and cardinals, with a wide sphere of influence. The confiscated DVD exhibits sexual acts being performed by a number of the Western world’s most powerful archbishops and cardinals.”

  Grey whistled. “How many?”

  “Many.”

  “With who?”

  “The faces of the other participants were digitally obscured,” Viktor said, “and Jacques’s people haven’t been able to unscramble the images. But he tells me it was one man and one woman, sometimes alone with the priests, sometimes together. Occasionally a minor was also involved; it appears Darius was accounting for a variety of proclivities. Jacques tells me the images were… quite graphic.”

  “Did the woman have blond hair?” Grey said.

  “She did.”

  Grey wiped his mouth. “Something like that could bring down the Church.”

  “So thought Darius.”

  “And you don’t? Some of the highest-ranking members of a celibate order broadcast over the Internet performing threesomes with a minor?”

>   Viktor started to pace, stopping to look out the window. “Have the recent molestation scandals—evidence of which was found in the Vatican’s own archives—brought down the Church? How many arrests at the higher levels have been made, how many parishes have been closed? No, this DVD would have made headlines worldwide, been discredited, a few reprimands made, and business at the world’s wealthiest entity would have proceeded as normal.”

  “Perhaps,” Grey said quietly. “Perhaps not. The DVD’s already disappeared, hasn’t it?”

  “Faster than a Russian summer. There was a man with the police, the man I told you who’d been following me, and who I assumed was part of Darius’s organization.”

  “I saw him at the end. He led the medics to me.”

  “He paid me a visit at the hospital,” Viktor said. “His name is Farinata, and he’s a ranking member of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. Somehow the Church discovered that a few of the cardinals had been compromised, and he was sent to control the damage.”

  “And he followed you because he knew you were investigating the murders, and he had no idea what else to do. He never approached you because he wanted to ensure all evidence was destroyed before involving anyone outside the Church.”

  “Presumably,” Viktor said. “He didn’t say. Curiously he himself had never heard of the Tutori. He told the Vatican where I had gone in Sicily, and connections were made.”

  “That must have caused a bit of heartburn in Rome. And Jacques called him after he got my text?”

  “That, or he was in contact with the London police,” Viktor said. “The Vatican has ways of keeping tabs on information it desires.”

  “So he showed up at the hospital with his tail between his legs, begging for silence.”

  “And asking whether we knew of any copies of the DVD,” Viktor said. “The prospect of that will give them heartburn. He extended an apology on behalf of the Church and offered a reward for our troubles. I declined.”

  “Thanks for asking me,” Grey said drily. He shoved a piece of tuna sashimi into his mouth. “Darius is dead, I assume.”

  “Anka stabbed him twenty-three times before they reached her.”

  Grey remembered the disturbing things Anka had told him at the end, the sight of her face just before she had killed Darius. He set down his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. “I suppose she hated him after all.”

  “Or she believed what the Sicilian priest told me,” Viktor said with a smirk. “That Ahriman favors only one.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Whatever her reason, she’s in custody. Something else: Jacques discovered there was a passenger on your San Francisco flight listed as Eve Summerfield, from Glaisdale. You can sleep better knowing Anka was booked on that flight.”

  Grey didn’t think he would sleep better for a long time. Had Anka been insane all along, or had Darius tortured her to the point of mental instability? Had she, too, had a glimpse of that damnable book? Did something inside it have the power to warp, whether real or imagined?

  Despite his bleak view of the world, Grey was at his core an optimist in the potential of the human spirit. He still wanted to help the woman whose touch had haunted his dreams, and whose life story, if at all to be believed, was a sad tale no matter what had later transpired. He wanted her to be spared the horror of those gray walls and bars.

  Then his mind flashed, from her beckoning lips and sincere green eyes to the woman who had seduced and then placed poison-filled bottles in the rooms of multiple men, probably himself included; to the woman who had performed unspeakable acts in the video Viktor had described; to the woman who had stalked the Parisian catacombs with confidence and purpose, mingling with the members of L’église de la Bête, at home among the leering skulls and bones.

  To the woman who had tried to use him even at the end.

  Whoever she had once been, she had been made into someone else, her lost innocence warped by the power of evil into a weapon of unusual beauty and deceit.

  “Farinata said the Ahriman Grimoire was never found,” Viktor was saying, pulling Grey’s thoughts back to the room. “Though Darius wouldn’t have kept if far from his side. I’ve a strong suspicion it’s now resting in a secret vault in the Vatican.”

  “What’d the media say?” Grey said.

  “The Vatican orchestrated a cover-up, and since Niles Widecombe is a major MP, I suspect the British government didn’t protest too much. A news release claimed Simon Azar has embarked on an undisclosed spiritual sabbatical. Some of his worshippers have already disbanded, some have formed splinter groups, some have proclaimed him the new messiah and await his return.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Jacques cleared up a few things as well,” Viktor said. “As we suspected, they found a tiny ignition device in the sleeve of Darius’s robe, a quite sophisticated mini-flamethrower.”

  “But how’d the flames spread so quickly on the victims? And how did you avoid being burned?”

  “When Darius held me captive, he brought me into the bedroom filthy from my travels, allowing me a final cleansing before donning the ceremonial robe. Darius leaves nothing to chance, so I suspected an ulterior purpose. We already theorized the robes had been doctored, but when I saw the soap in the shower, it hit me. Darius was a chemist, not a tailor. Testing has already confirmed that the victims were literally coating their skin with a water-resistant chemical accelerant, and that’s how they burned so fast and at such a high degree.”

  Grey whistled. “Clever. It fits with the poisoned perfume as well. Chemical concoctions in everyday products. How’d he manage the fire with the other two victims, if he wasn’t actually there?”

  “With an assistant and misdirection, I’m sure of it. When I was with Gareth it was chaotic, and the guard conveniently ran past Gareth right when the fire started. I’ll bet my diplomas Oak and the guard were using mini-igniters.”

  “We still don’t know how he managed the disappearing act.” Grey said.

  “The art of deception, in the rights hands, is a very powerful tool.”

  Grey looked Viktor in the eye. “When I climbed onto the tomb to throw the knife, it took me some time to gather my strength. I saw him touch you and disappear.”

  Viktor shrugged, but Grey saw a flicker of doubt buried deep in his eyes.

  Grey continued, “At the cemetery I saw Oak, Alec Lister, and at least one member of the Beast Church I recognized from the catacombs. Did Jacques ask them about the disappearances?”

  “To a person, they swore Darius had the power of the Devil. All of which reinforces the theory that for his greatest illusion, he confided in no one.”

  “Was there any evidence of hologram capability at the computer station?” Grey said.

  “No.”

  “What about the research on bilocation?”

  “Theoretically possible, I suppose. Though there are no verified cases of anyone being able to control such a phenomena to that degree.”

  “And you verify that how, exactly?” Grey said. “So your theory is an illusion of which we have no proof, and which you, an expert at debunking the supernatural, witnessed up close and personal.”

  “At night, in a cemetery, with ample time and opportunity to arrange an illusion beforehand.”

  “You touched his hand.” Grey said.

  “I thought I did.”

  Grey gave Viktor a long stare, then ticked off the choices on his fingers. “So it’s an impossible illusion, astral projection or bilocation, some other arcane working of the universe of which we’re unaware, or the power of the Devil.”

  “I can admit,” Viktor said evenly, “that perhaps the power of Darius’s belief allowed extraordinary psychosomatic acts to occur. This is uncharacteristic of you, Grey. Aren’t you the Doubting Thomas?”

  “Just seeing where you stand.”

  “I see,” Viktor said. “And what did you learn?”

  “That you’re not convinced yourself of what happened.”

  Viktor’s hand moved as if
to straighten his tie, then he seemed to realize he wasn’t wearing one. He folded his arms instead. “You can trust me when I say I don’t believe that Darius gained the favor of a being named Ahriman, who made him handsome, charming, and afforded him the power of teleportation.”

  Grey said softly, “You almost died, Viktor, because you left me and went to Sicily to pursue the grimoire. And you still can’t believe?”

  “I went to Sicily to gain insight into Darius’s actions. If I hadn’t, I might not be alive.”

  “I’m afraid if something is out there,” Grey said, “watching us from the spiritual realm or the astral plane or wherever the hell else, you can never prove it. And you might kill yourself trying to.”

  Viktor looked through Grey for a long moment. “Maybe there’s nothing more than an unthinking and impossibly complex universe. Or maybe there’s a personal God after all, or an unfathomable entity to whom we can never hope to relate, or something else entirely. All we can do is scrape at the truth and discredit anything false. What greater calling is there?”

  “How about living life?”

  “Why the third degree?” Viktor said. “Why does this matter so much to you?”

  “Because what I care about is not seeing my partner killed.”

  Viktor seemed taken aback, then bent to clasp Grey’s hand. “Thank you, my friend,” he whispered.

  “What’d you say to Darius at the end?” Grey said. “I heard you shout something, but I didn’t recognize the language.”

  “It was Old Persian. Roughly translated, I said, ‘In the name of Ahriman, the true God, thee I do swallow.’”

  “Okay, that’s chilling. Why exactly did you say that?”

  “The priest I met in Sicily gave me the idea, as did my previous observances of Juju and other auto-suggestive mental phenomena. After the fire failed to burn me, I wanted to continue to erode Darius’s faith, if for nothing else than to buy time.”