Inquisitor (Orion Chronicles Book 3)

by John Barrowman

  Eidetic

  Callum abandoned the Range Rover in front of a loading dock close to the square. He jumped out and ran to the passenger side to Matt, who waved off his help. They jogged towards St Peter’s together.

  At the high wall surrounding the Vatican, they stopped. The entire area was blocked off, a flotilla of utility vehicles parked like a mechanical moat around the square. The whirlwind was powerful, blasting around them like a raging beast.

  ‘It looks like there’s a lid on top of the square,’ yelled Matt over the wind, holding his side and craning his neck. ‘You can’t even see the Basilica dome.’

  Another earthquake rocked the area, sending one of the rubbish trucks nose down into the ground and cracking open chunks of pavement.

  Matt!

  Matt froze where he stood.

  ‘What?’ said Callum, alert.

  ‘My sister,’ Matt said after a moment. ‘She’s inside that maelstrom. I can feel her in my head.’

  ‘Is this a twin thing? Orianna said you were twins.’

  Hardly able to hear Callum through the roar of air, Matt slid down the wall to the pavement, his side exploding in pain. ‘Yes. Kind of. We need to get in there.’

  Callum crouched in front of Matt. ‘I can help.’

  ‘Unless you can climb tall buildings in a single bound, I doubt it.’

  ‘Does an eidetic brain count?’

  ‘Eid… what?’

  ‘I remember things. Photographic memory, you could call it. It’s why I’m a good forger.’ He said this with some pride. ‘You know I said I had the map in my mind? I have literally all of it in my mind. Every last detail.’

  ‘Keep talking,’ Matt said, interested.

  Callum grinned. ‘If you give me some charcoal and your sketchpad, I’ll draw it.’

  Matt held up his hand and let Callum pull him off the ground. He almost lost the sketchpad and charcoal to the ferocious wind blowing all around them, but Callum seized them and drew a rough outline of the map. He turned the page towards Matt. The paper flapped and curled in his hands.

  ‘This bulbous part of the tree: I think it’s the portal,’ he said. ‘And these two branches lead to the centre, here.’

  ‘There’s nothing there,’ said Matt, gazing at a part of the map that looked like an empty field.

  ‘Back in the day, there was nothing but fields and swamps on this side of Rome. Vatican City eventually built on them. And if I’m reading this correctly, this symbol…’ Callum tapped a small mark on the page, ‘… is Castel Sant’Angelo. The Sistine Chapel is on the north side of St Peter’s, so I think the portal is underneath whatever is on the south side.’

  Still gingerly clutching his side, Matt used his encrypted phone to look up a map of St Peter’s. ‘That’s the Tomb of the Martyrs,’ he said. ‘Give me back the sketchpad. Now!’

  83.

  Rewind

  Rémy had been here before.

  The tomb had been recently rebuilt, the walls no longer the shambles of masonry it had been the last time he’d seen it. The painting The Flaying of Marsyas was still hanging on the wall, beside the fluttering tapestry.

  In the centre of the tomb was the bulbous trunk as white as alabaster and as bare as a skinned animal with the ram’s head of Pan, the God of Nature, growing out of it. The tree’s roots were like worms writhing underground. When the thick liquid overflowing from three brass cauldrons met the roots, Pan’s head swelled as flesh developed around his fossilized skull.

  Rémy looked up and the keening he’d heard from the lyre became his own. Caught in the choking branches like a broken kite was Em, and next to her, bleeding from a wound to his head, was Alessandro.

  They were both dead. He was sure of it in his heart and his head.

  The tapestry fluttered away from the frieze as two people entered the space. What the hell was Caravaggio doing here? Had the Inquisitor captured Matt, too?

  Caravaggio was clasping his hands in supplication as he entered the tomb. He wasn’t a prisoner in this performance; he was a willing participant. Jesus, how badly had they all fucked up?

  Caravaggio at least had the grace not to look Rémy in the eye. The blonde woman behind him was familiar somehow.

  Cecilia Ciardi followed, holding the lyre. Except… it wasn’t Cecilia. At least, not the Cecilia Rémy had seen on the stage, holding out her hands to the ecstatic crowd, her black stola blowing in the wind. This Cecilia was shedding her skin like a snake. Her head was alive, her scalp covered in hundreds of tiny harpies, their needle-like claws curling out and scratching at the air, their wings fluttering like black hummingbird wings around her face. Rémy felt something cold and metallic clamp around his wrists. He looked down at the manacles, then up again in disbelief.

  ‘You,’ he croaked. ‘You’re the Inquisitor. The First Watcher.’

  ‘I’ve had many names and many bodies. The old man’s was far too weak. This now…’ The First Watcher stroked the skin as it peeled away. ‘This has suited me well.’

  The lyre was thrust into Rémy’s manacled hands. With a flick of long claws, the First Watcher summoned Caravaggio.

  ‘Give him the chord.’

  Caravaggio unrolled the canvas he held in his hand. The beautiful colours of his painting Rest on the Flight into Egypt glowed in the dim light. He reached in, removed the sheet of music in front of the violin-playing angel and set it in front of Rémy with an ironic half-bow.

  ‘Traitor,’ hissed Rémy. He shot out his hand and slashed a manacle across the artist’s cheek. Caravaggio leapt back with a howl.

  ‘Play,’ hissed the Inquisitor. ‘Play and you may still save your other friends.’

  The familiar blonde woman reappeared with two young men in leg-irons, their hands cuffed in front of them. Rémy didn’t recognize the first guy, who looked pale and frightened. But he sucked the air between his teeth at the sight of the second. Zach – Em’s ex, the guy in the camel coat from Chicago – brought up the rear, a tablet tucked under his arm.

  84.

  The Tree of Life

  The blood oozing from Matt’s side was making him dizzy. He couldn’t understand how he came to be here. One moment he and Callum had been making their way through the tunnel beneath the Tomb of the Martyrs, and the next… A flash, a sense of the world turning upside-down… and then the unmistakeable chill of iron manacles on his wrists and ankles. He’d lost his sunglasses. Thank God it was dim in here. Unsteadily, he raised his head and stared at the vast white tree growing in the centre of the room. Its topmost branches had breached the ground far above his head, and were stretching into a dark and thunderous sky. What in God’s name was hanging up there? It looked like…

  The frenzied flash from his kaleidoscopic eyes was so bright with horror that Caravaggio, Callum and Zach raised their hands to protect their own vision. The Inquisitor roared, and waved a claw that hurled Matt and Callum back against the stone wall. Blessed darkness descended.

  85.

  Waiting

  Zach struggled to control himself at the sight of Em hanging sightlessly in the hideous breathing tree. He felt a hand on his back. It wasn’t yet time. If he acted too soon, everything they had planned would be for nothing. He closed his eyes.

  He let his mother’s touch calm him.

  86.

  Behold, They Rise

  ‘Play!’ The Inquisitor sloughed off more of Cecilia’s body, revealing scales as black as pitch, the head of a reptile and compound insect eyes.

  Swallowing his revulsion, Rémy stared at the piece of music before him. It didn’t matter. Nothing did now. Em was dead. Alessandro too. Matt lay unconscious on the ground. Vaughn had no idea where they were. They were all lost.

  He plucked the chord.

  The tree stretched seductively like a panther on the prowl, its limbs extending up to the light. The viscous liquid continued to spill over the roots and carpeted the stones of the vault. Rémy’s eyes were wet with tears, but through them he watched tw
o similar reptilian creatures crawl from the thickening fog spewing from beneath the roots of the tree.

  87.

  Down in Flames

  Zach slipped his tablet from under his arm and began silently to tap the screen. From the corner of his eye he saw his mother flick her left wrist in a curious motion. There was a shriek from the creeping Watchers, and a burst of white flame. The trunk of the tree hissed and spat as it caught alight.

  Zach stopped tapping. Since when could his mother shoot fire? She was a Guardian, not a magician.

  88.

  We Three

  Cecilia was nothing more than clots of flesh on the ground. The Inquisitor swung round to face the blonde flame-thrower.

  ‘Sol!’ he roared. ‘What is the meaning of this disobedience?’

  The blonde woman smiled. ‘Sol has served her purpose, Father. Don’t you recognize me? It’s been an age, I know…’

  Another blast of flame hit the ground, sparking the silver liquid into giant shards of flying ice.

  ‘Sebina?’ The Inquisitor’s croaking voice was incredulous. ‘You defied me?’

  ‘I choose life…’ She looked at Zach. ‘And love.’

  Hissing, the Inquisitor raised its scaly arms before the hurtling fireballs and stabbing blades of ice. Harpies emerged from its claws, enveloping everyone in the room, pecking at their eyes like buzzards.

  Sol – Sebina – Orianna. She flicked her wrists again. This time, silver mist emerged. The harpies froze and fell to the ground.

  The tree was no longer growing, flames lapping at its roots, the other Watchers shrivelling to ashes.

  89.

  Art and Life

  Rémy was glad of the fire. It brought him back to his senses. The flames coiled around the rising tree, searing its smooth white bark, cauterizing it. They licked at the edges of the tapestry that covered the wall. The ancient fabric curled and burned away like paper, revealing the stone frieze beneath. And there he was again, being crowned King of the Underworld. Ambuya’s mirror had shown Rémy this scene as it had first unfolded. He would not let it become reality, even if he died resisting.

  The carved goddess with the pipes stretched her marble limbs. She caught his eye – and winked.

  Minerva. The pipes.

  Rémy dropped the lyre and crawled to the frieze through the billowing smoke. He reached up, knowing that the stone would part before his manacled hands. He had lost the pipes the day that he had won the contest against Apollo inside The Flaying of Marsyas. He had asked to keep them as his prize, but hadn’t thought about them again until this moment.

  It was as if they had been waiting for him in the tomb for all this time.

  90.

  Altered States

  Zach stood, paralysed, one hand hovering over his screen. Sebina was the name from the curious message he had passed to Luca in the café from Orion. He could hear Luca in his head, even now. The hope in the Nephilim’s voice. Sebina is alive?

  His mother gestured at him with a free hand. Don’t freeze now! Do it!

  He blindly keyed in one last line of code.

  The ground suddenly shook as Luca dropped from the square above, his wings blocking the light. Caravaggio shrieked and cowered into a ball.

  ‘You are mine, artist,’ Luca hissed. ‘You are responsible for Sebina’s death. You and you alone. I will make you wish you had never been born.’

  Sebina. That name again. Zach’s brain was stuck on the revelation that Sebina, Sol, Orianna, were one and the same.

  His mother.

  Off to the side of the tomb, he saw Caravaggio sliding to his feet. Rousing himself, Zach body-slammed the artist against the wall. Lifting his hands to the artist’s terrified face, he flickered his fingers.

  Going somewhere?

  He shoved the artist to the ground, placing a foot on his neck. A hologram cage hovered above his tablet, expanded like a balloon and dropped over his captive with a metallic clang.

  With an emphatic jab on the screen, the hologram began to shrink. Caravaggio screeched in shock as the image closed around him. He dissolved into dusty pixels and disappeared.

  91.

  Soul Deep

  The Inquisitor swung to face Rémy, stone cold eyes staring.

  ‘Where did you get those pipes? I took them form the girl. I destroyed them!’

  Feeling the coolness of the ivory against his palm, Rémy put the pipes to his lips and played.

  The roots of the tree pulled themselves from the ground, revealing a deep green abyss below. With a roar, the Inquisitor sent more harpies at Rémy’s head.

  Luca unfurled his silver-black wings in the small space, and swooped at the Inquisitor, wrapping him in his blazing light and concealing him from view. The harpies vanished in a puff of smoke.

  Luca turned to the others. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said.

  He tipped sideways. He and the Inquisitor plunged into the abyss.

  ‘No!’

  Rémy turned at the strangled yell. Zach had thrown himself to the edge of the abyss, reaching with one desperate hand to the blonde woman as she was sucked down into the underworld with Luca and the Inquisitor in a surge of air. Too late.

  Rémy closed his eyes and let the pipes’ notes rise to a crescendo.

  Flames ate what was left of the trunk.

  The abyss crept shut like a wound healing itself, leaving only shrivelling, charred roots like skeletal fingers gripping the ground.

  92.

  A Song for the Dead

  Rémy used Minerva’s pipes to conjure open his manacles, then freed Callum and Matt from their leg irons as they slowly regained consciousness. Zach sat beside the space where the abyss had been, holding his head in his hands. Alessandro’s body had fallen awkwardly.

  Rémy crawled over to Em and cradled her in his arms. Her skin was cold, her lips and nails blue. He swept the pink streaked hair from her face, took her hand and held it to his cheek, then against his heart.

  Music gives life to the dead.

  Not a prophecy. Not a curse.

  A legacy.

  Rémy opened his mouth and sang the song he’d heard the little girl singing on the doomed slave ship. Nuru’s song. It carried in its chords the cries of her ancestors and the hopes of her children, the melody flowing from his Conjuror’s soul.

  A golden mist of music curled around the fallen tree branches. It widened and spread, enveloping the vault and lifting all of them into the light and space of St Peter’s Square. Rémy didn’t stop singing until his throat was raw.

  The golden veil of mist lifted. Em was sitting up against the obelisk in the centre of the square. And she was breathing.

  93.

  Family Affair

  The square was utterly quiet, still full of a silent crowd, and chairs, and a long golden stage that had been broken in two. As the mist spread, they began to stir as if roused from some form of hypnosis. Waves of people stumbled delirious and dizzy towards the exits, where not one Camarilla soldier remained at their post.

  Callum and Matt had landed beside the Basilica steps. Callum walked awkwardly, holding his arm, but Matt ran towards the obelisk, the bloody bandage around his waist trailing behind him.

  ‘Thank God,’ he said, hugging Em. ‘I thought for sure you were dead. It felt in my head like you were.’

  Em studied the fingernails of her free hand. They were an odd shade of blue. ‘I’m pretty sure I have a concussion, but that’s all.’ She looked up at Rémy, who held her other hand. ‘Right?’

  Rémy’s heart ached for Alessandro even as he remembered his words. Some secrets are ours to keep.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that’s all.’

  ‘We need to get you all away from here.’

  Rémy looked up to see a slender, white-haired woman raise her cane in the air. A black SUV crashed through the rubble surrounding the square and pulled up next to the obelisk. He stood slowly, helping Em to her feet. Matt and Callum walked together, suppor
ting one another as they climbed into the car.

  Still sitting on the far side of the square, Zach hadn’t moved. Rémy recalled the way the blonde woman had vanished into the abyss, and how Zach had screamed for her. He glanced at the white-haired woman, who was watching Zach with compassionate eyes.

  Without warning, an aftershock cracked across the square. Two colonnades crashed to the ground and a cloud of choking debris swirled into the air. With his wings open behind him, Luca walked out of the curtain of grey with the blonde woman at his side. They appeared to be holding hands. Rémy remembered where he’d seen her now: when he had been trapped in the ancient tomb. She was Zach’s mother.

  Zach looked up. His mother broke into a smile, then a run. As she embraced Zach, Luca swept them both off the ground and into the air, his wings scorching the night sky.

  It seemed that Zach didn’t need a ride.

  94.

  In My Time of Dying

  In the darkness above Constantine’s Arch, a slit of white light opened up in the sky and Luca descended, carefully carrying his precious human cargo. He set Sebina and the young man gently down on the masonry, and stroked Zach’s hair.

  Zach took one look at the drop, and was sick over the side of the monument. Sebina put her arms around Zach’s shoulders and turned his face towards hers. He resisted at first, but then relented. They held each other as Luca watched.

  ‘It seems you’ve been keeping secrets from me,’ Luca said at last.

  Sebina smiled. ‘Zach is my son, Luca,’ she said. ‘The apple never falls far from the tree. He is a master at subterfuge, animating firewalls and inspiriting. He had Cecilia wrapped around his fingers from the beginning.’

  The darkness swirled around them like a tornado. Luca moved closer to Sebina, afraid that she would vanish before his eyes. He touched her face, stroked the soft skin of her neck, wrapped a strand of her hair around his fingers. Then he laughed, a sound that cracked the few windows nearby that the recent earthquakes hadn’t broken.