Thirty-five
John had seen Jennifer go down. The explosion had
struck him an instant later, leaving him to slowly recover on the cold
stones of a deserted tunnel. When he managed to regain his footing, a
woman of Spanish descent wearing a red, ground-length robe awaited him.
“Where’s the girl?” John murmured, only slowly
regaining his strength.
“Are you a policeman?” she asked with a polite smile.
“My name is John Cantrell. I’ve worked for a man
called Garko.”
“My apologies if any of that information should have
meaning to me. I was told you arrived to arrange the sale of a girl. You
are still alive only because I need to know how you came to know my name."
“Dimitri Carvelli shouted your name about a half
second before his father put a bullet in his brain. You must have some
idea of the importance of the people you’ve been messing with when you
sent Dimitri after Peugeot’s girls.”
“I had no idea,” Rosie said. “My goodness, what an
unfortunate development.”
“Who hired you to take out Evelyn Haxx?”
Rosie gazed at him from a beautiful face chiseled in
stone. “That would be, of course, confidential information.”
“Confidentiality is your prerogative, I suppose,”
John said, “but you’re not going to have much more time than Dimitri to
explain yourself before Garko and his men bounce a bullet about the inside
of your own lovely skull.”
She cocked her head to one side
in curiosity. “Have you no confidence in your own ability to escape
me and my associates with the lovely young woman who accompanied you?”
“I’m not trying to escape you,” John said. “I came
here to find out who pulls your strings.”
“You don’t want to know the
agency that pulls my strings, Mr.
Cantrell. Regardless of that, I’m thankful to be dealing with an
intelligent man. I can guess the kind of men who employ you. I do
imagine they could cause us considerable difficulty. If they knew of our
existence. Which they don’t. And will never.”
“Then how do I know of you, you silly bitch?”
“You take too much for granted. What incredible arrogance. You
truly know who and what you are. I
would never have expected knowledge of that nature to be fully conscious
in a man.
Not in this world.”
“I don’t want the girl harmed,” John said, regretting
his outburst. Anger would solve nothing.
Rosie sauntered closer. “You will determine whether
or not the girl is harmed. To survive yourself, I want your
acknowledgement of who and what you are. You will reside over a sacrifice
to the Dark Lord.”
“You’ve got to be out of your fucking mind,” John
murmured.
“You needn’t inflict a fatal wound. A very small cut
will be sufficient, symbolic of the blood that will stain your soul. It
will be our assurance that you would not betray us, an act I suspect
similar to the nature of Dimitri’s death at the hand of his father. Your
soul has been stained before in just such a manner, has it not?”
Sasha’s death and the hell that had followed had been
that stain. John’s sigh of despair was the only response Rosie needed to
hear.
“Even now, it is generally thought that you are one
of us, a sanctified agent of Satan. I sensed it myself when you were
brought to us. No other man would have the courage to walk into our lair
knowing who we are with such utter confidence in his ability to survive.”
In John’s eyes, a spilled drop of blood was a far cry
from murder. If a death would free Jennifer, then he would give these
fiends their drop of blood and be gone from their midst.
“I felt very strongly that you would listen to
reason,” she said. “I stake my life on my judgment in these matters.
“Harm Jennifer and I’d say your personal judgment in
these matters sucks. You bank on your devil, but I’m banking on men smart
enough to follow me to this place and clean up whatever mess I leave
unattended.”
“You don’t share our world view, but you know we have
one. It’s obvious more is happening than a financial contract for the
death of one of your friends. We’ll leave it at that until you can see
for yourself the nature of the world you live in. If you wish to conclude
our business on our terms, a service is scheduled to begin within a few
minutes. Partake of the sacrifice. We will then give you the girl and
you will leave us. Beyond that, we may be of service to one another.
That remains to be seen.”
John had no recourse but to wing it from moment to
moment. He had expected armed men and the opportunity to acquire a means
of self-defense by disarming one of his adversaries, a tactic he had
developed to perfection over the decades. Rosie was a factor he could
never have anticipated. Insane, perhaps, but an insidious and
unpredictable insanity. How could anyone have ever suspected such people
existed for real?
“The drop of blood you spill will join us together in
the presence of the Dark Lord,” Rosie said in her lovely voice. “It is a
marriage that will never be broken. Your alliance with us will last
forever. “
John said nothing. Her sacrifice was the only escape
route visible to him. Once he had been tainted in her eyes, perhaps she’d have more of use to say
to him.
“Follow me, and we will complete our foolish little
ritual so that you may be on your way.”
John’s legs were wooden. Every step through the
gloomy catacombs jarred his aching head. He’d have to use every ounce of
his smarts to escape Rosie and her screwed-up minions moving at a snail’s pace,
because his coordination wasn't up to the challenge of escaping in any great
hurry.
He could hear church music drifting down from above.
“Do they know you’re down here?” he asked.
Rosie glanced upward and smiled. “They’d never
believe you if you told them. The Disciples of the Dark Lord have
occupied these chambers for almost a century. Our kind built them. They
have killed every last soul who ever knew of the catacombs and destroyed
or modified all the old building plans registered with the city.”
“Then why are you telling me that I’ll leave here
alive?”
“Because you are one of us, of course.”
John couldn’t see the sense of it. Insanity didn’t
work in this manner.
“You are what the world would deem an evil man,”
Rosie said, amused by his confusion. “You could betray us, but you won’t
bother, because you have no loyalty or interest in the world of light, no
allegiance to them at all. Whether you believe in him or not, Satan has
always been your personal god, your god of choice. Spill your single drop
of blood in the presence of the Disciples, and they will open their arms
to you like brothers. I give you my word that it will be so.”
John shrugged. Then so be it.
At the end of a long corridor, a rising chant of
mostly male voices overpowered the strains of the organ overhead. Rosie
made a final turn that opened onto a low balcony overlooking a chamber
the size of an auditorium. They came up behind an altar of solid stone
and standing before it with his back to him, a dark-robed priest waited
with ominous patience.
Looming out over the open floor of the chamber, two
hundred or more faces peered at John from the depths of their hoods of
heavy black cloth. Rosie drew alongside the priest. The priest stepped
aside to make room for John.
The sacrifice that awaited him was a dark-skinned
woman with her lower legs and her arms and head shrouded in red lace
cloth. She lay unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of her
breasts. A crooked dagger with a silver goat’s head handle lay upon her
slender torso, the handle lying between her breasts, the tip of the blade
resting midway between her naval and the triangle of her pubic hair.
She was young. Except for the color of her skin, she
might have been Jennifer awaiting him. He would have expected deceit of
that magnitude from these people. It was going to be bad enough drawing
innocent blood from the girl on the stone altar, but there was
nothing he could do for her. One man could not right the wrongs of an
entire world. He had no way of knowing, in fact, whether or not she
would be harmed at all.
“No need to dawdle,” Rosie said. “Do it and go. You
don’t have to stay and watch the rest of the service.”
“Where’s Jennifer?” John said.
“Look around and see for yourself. She awaits you in
plain view.”
John scanned the shadows beyond the crowd. His eyes
paused upon a small white shape bound to a stone column behind the crowd.
Satisfied, he turned his full attention to the body lying before him. He
reached for the hilt of the knife. In doing so, his knuckles brushed the
nipple of one breast. He thought that she might react to the touch. She
did not.
“Is she unconscious?” he asked hopefully.
“She is fully conscious and sensitive to the caress
of a gnat’s whisper,” Rosie said. “She will be for what remains of her
existence. It is not your concern, is it?”
John held the blade to Rosie's face. “I could free this
girl and kill anybody who interferes.”
“You have the power of the mortal world to wield
against us,” Rosie said. “We have but the power that arises from the
acceptance of death and the absolute power of futility. No mortal force
can stand against it. Kill one of us. Kill me if you wish. As many as
you are able. You will cure the evils of only the tiniest corner of your
own world, but you know full well its pathetic extent and the degree of
moral corruption that will escape you. It avails you nothing to interfere.”
From the depths of his sullen anger, John surveyed
the crowd. Not a dark figure stirred. John raised the twin-edged blade
above the body of the sacrifice. One drop of blood and he would be gone.
