The Adept Book 2 The Lodge Of The Lynx (33 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

THE FOLLOWING DAY
dawned grey and dismal, heralding sleet and snow that swept across the whole of Scotland that night and left the Highlands firmly ensconced in winter. In Edinburgh, workmen from Lothian Council were kept busy all Friday laying grit on the streets and salt on the sidewalks, while the road traffic grumbled along between aisles of slush and pedestrians struggled to keep upright as they slogged stoically along the icy pavements on their way to work or to their local shops.

Despite the adverse weather, the Brethren of Masonic Lodge No. 213 gathered that Friday night for their regularly scheduled meeting in the Lochend district of Edinburgh. The Master of the Lodge was one of the last to arrive, having been delayed by an old-fashioned black taxi that seemed bent on making every turn just ahead of him, and at a maddeningly slow pace, road conditions notwithstanding. So annoyed was he by the time he pulled up in his reserved space at the rear of the Lodge’s private car park—later by ten minutes than he liked to be on Lodge night—that he jotted the taxi’s number on the back of an old parking receipt before bracing himself for the dash through the cold and wet.

Pulling his regalia case from the seat beside him, he locked up the car and jogged gingerly across the icy tarmac, already unbuttoning his’ overcoat as he gained the back entrance. The Lodge Secretary met him just inside, with a slip of paper in his hand and a concerned expression on his whiskered face.

“Och, there you are!” the secretary said. “There’s a man been tryin’ to reach you for the last half hour an’ more. Says he works for you—name o’ Murray. Here’s his number. He said to ring him as soon as you got here.”

Rolling his eyes heavenward, the Master of Lodge No. 213 took the slip of paper and glanced at the number—unfamiliar—then headed on toward the cloakroom and men’s toilets, the secretary at his heels.

“I dinnae have time for this, Robbie. I got stuck behind a bloody taxi. Did he say what it’s about?”

“Only that it was’ urgent,” Robbie replied.

The Master sighed, sweeping off his hat. “All right, all right! I’ll call him from the pay phone while I get suited up. Tell ‘em upstairs I’ll be there to open Lodge in just a few minutes.”

“Aye, Worshipful Master.”

As the Lodge Secretary clattered up a back stair to do his bidding, the Master charged into the cloakroom and pegged his hat onto a hook, throwing down his case on a convenient chair. As he stripped off his topcoat, he wondered what possible emergency at the plant could have induced Murray to phone him here at Lodge.

Throwing open his case, he pulled out the white moire apron with its borders and symbols of sky-blue silk and tied it around his waist, adjusting the flap to indicate his rank as a Master Mason. Next came the broad silk collar with its pendant jewel, the badge of his office as Installed Master of this Lodge. When he had looped this over his head, adjusting it so that the jewel fell squarely on his breast, he pulled out the gauntlet cuffs and hefted them, glancing at the slip of paper with its telephone number, then delved into a trouser pocket and fished out a twenty-pence piece. Dropping it into the pay phone on the wall beside the coat hooks, he dialed the number, trapping the receiver between shoulder and ear while he pulled on the cuffs and waited for the connection.

The number rang at the other end. He glanced at his watch, adjusting the cuff on that wrist. As he did so, the cloakroom door opened behind him. Before he could turn around to tell them he would be right there, a strong arm collared him roughly from behind and clapped a thick pad of cloth over his mouth and nose, effectively smothering any outcry he might have made.

The chemical reek of chloroform flooded his nostrils and stung at his eyes. Choking, even gagging, he tried to throw himself forward in an effort to shake off his assailant. He was not a small man, but his captor hauled him back easily and locked a choke hold across his throat, pressing the chloroform pad even closer against his face.

His vision began to swim and his knees buckled under him as the chloroform did its work. Seconds later, he was sagging bonelessly in his captor’s arms, still vaguely conscious but no longer capable of shouting or struggling. His captor kept him from falling, removing the chloroform pad just long enough for an accomplice to slap a broad strip of tape across his mouth. While he was still reeling from this treatment, the first man twisted his gauntleted wrists behind his back and secured them with tape. At the same time, the second assailant came before him long enough to fling a dark hood over his head.

They seized him from both sides then, half-walking and half-dragging him out of the cloakroom, down the short corridor, and out into the frosty night, to be hustled unceremoniously onto the floor of a waiting vehicle—the very taxi that had occasioned such annoyance not minutes before, had he but known. From a sudden, sharp jab right through the front of his shirt spread a dull wave of lethargy. The forward lurch of the vehicle was the last thing he remembered before he passed out.

Three-quarters of a city mile away, on the south side of Edinburgh’s Calton Hill, a hard-lipped woman sat alone in a parked car outside the snow-crusted gates of Old Calton Road Burial Ground. Ahead and behind her stretched a straggling row of other parked cars, here to patronize the dingy pub that occupied a storefront on the other side of Waterloo Place, a short stone’s throw away. Farther up the hill, behind the pub, the winter sky was broken by the dark bulk of the Crown Office Buildings and the Nelson Monument. Nearer at hand, the lightly falling snow did little to muffle the rumble of diesel engines as a train forged along the tracks behind the cemetery on its way in to Waverley Station.

The streets in the area were deserted, the weather having driven most folk indoors. Inside the cemetery gates, however, within the high stone walls of the burial ground itself, nearly a dozen shadowy figures hovered in the snow-crusted shelter of a graffiti-scribbled tomb house, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands while they waited for a sign from their leader. Francis Raeburn was prowling wolfishly back and forth before a weatherworn grave marker fashioned in the shape of a man-sized obelisk. As he paused to glance at his wristwatch, the chimes of a nearby clock tower rang out the hour of eight.

As the echo of the last bell died away, headlights appeared at the Regent Road end of Waterloo Place, heralding the approach of a large, black taxi which crawled ponderously downhill toward the cemetery entrance. As the taxi flashed its lights, the woman waiting in the parked car smiled grimly to herself in the rearview mirror and gave an answering flash of headlights.

The signal was relayed by a man waiting just inside the cemetery gates. Instantly shifting into action, Raeburn stopped pacing and gestured to his subordinates. With one accord, they began shedding hats and coats to uncover the thin white robes they had been wearing underneath. While one of the group swiftly piled the discarded coats and hats on a tarpaulin behind the tomb-house, the rest made shrift to draw concealing white hoods up around their faces. As Raeburn followed suit, also pulling a scarf from around his neck, a fugitive beam from a street lamp half a block away picked up the dark, metallic sheen of the Soulis torc close around his throat.

The woman in the parked car started up her engine. As she pulled smoothly away from the curb, the taxi slid neatly into the space she had vacated and stopped, dousing its headlights. The two dark-clad men riding in the back seat stole a swift glance up and down the length of the street to ensure that their arrival had aroused no unwanted attention, then threw open the door nearest the curb and scrambled out, hauling a hooded form from under a tartan car rug on the taxi floor. They supported the man between them as they quickly hustled him from the shadow of the taxi to the shadow of the entry archway.

One of Raeburn’s white-robed associates met them at the gate, all but invisible against the snow as he ushered them in and closed the gate smoothly behind them on hinges obviously well-oiled. Two more of Raeburn’s acolytes joined them to help chivvy their prisoner uphill, all of them slipping and stumbling in the snow. Under Raeburn’s silent direction, they positioned their hooded captive with his back against the marker shaped like an obelisk, lashing him in place with cords of scarlet silk. This done, the men from the taxi withdrew the way they had come, leaving Raeburn and his subordinates to proceed with the work they had come here to do.

Anonymous now, all but invisible in their white hooded robes, Raeburn’s minions arrayed themselves in a circle around the man held captive to the grave marker, leaving vacant a place directly in front of the victim. Taking that place, Raeburn reached inside the breast of his robe and drew out a disk-shaped medallion bearing the likeness of a snarling lynx head, hung from a length of heavy silver chain—the only such device to be seen here tonight, though all wore the carnelian-set ring of their Order.

Pale eyes glinting within his hood, Raeburn paused a moment to finger the insignia, then reached forward to pull off the hood that kept their captive from seeing. As the lolling head lifted, its owner reviving a little at the rush of cold air, drugged brown eyes ranged uncomprehendingly over the surrounding circle of white-clad figures, feebly recoiling as Raeburn hung the medallion around his prisoner’s neck. With an impatient grimace, Raeburn nodded to one of his subordinates and stepped back to his place at the head of the circle. Without a word, the white-robed man glided forward and removed the tape from the prisoner’s mouth, then seemed to snap his fingers under the man’s nose. As the prisoner’s head jerked back in reflex, a sharp whiff of ammonia wafted across the frosty darkness, as quickly dissipating. Silent on the snow, the man melted back among his fellows, leaving the captive alone in their midst, more reasoned fear now beginning to light the brown eyes.

Raeburn lifted his hands, and an even heavier stillness seemed to settle in the ancient burying ground, somehow insulating the company from the whine and squeal of the diesel engines and air brakes in the railway yard not far away, swallowing up the other distant sounds of a city. Fat, lazy snowflakes drifted down on the freezing night air, one of them catching in the captive’s eyelashes. When anticipation had tightened to the desired level, Raeburn at last threw back his head and, in a sibilant whisper, began to chant the harsh, dread invocation that would call forth the power entrusted him by their Head-Master.

The chant frayed the air like the sound of a file grating on stone. The captive Mason tested feebly at his bonds; real terror beginning to fuel his struggles. Raeburn’s voice gathered in intensity but not volume, until he finally reared back, flinging both arms wide over his head in a gesture that embraced the sky.

“Come, mighty Taranis!” he rasped. “Come and be our guest this night!”

The air within the circle seemed suddenly to come alive. With a rending sensation in the sky above them, the air at once began to seethe with unholy activity. As the darkness thickened and churned, an eerie half-light flickered from cloud to cloud, beginning to stir an electrical tingling on faces and hands, like a mild shock or crawling insects.

“Come, thou Master of Lightnings!” Raeburn urged. “Come and receive our homage! Behold the offering that is set before thee, an oblation meet and ripe for burning!”

His voice resonated with thirsty expectation, and the thunder answered in a low, subsonic rumble as the gathering clouds heaved and surged. Glancing wildly around him, the captive Mason threw himself weakly against his bonds, managing an audible squeak now, but to no avail. In the same instant, with a sudden, rending crash, a bolt of lightning seared the night sky, striking like an adder’s tongue for the lynx medallion hanging on the prisoner’s breast.

The white-robed acolytes recoiled, hands raised to shield light-bedazzled eyes, as the lightning sizzled and snapped in a sustained blue-white arc. Impaled by the blast of raw energy, the victim’s stricken body jerked and thrashed like a broken marionette, bluish smoke wreathing his head and chest, reeking of charred cloth and burnt flesh.

Simultaneously, the power embraced Raeburn, seizing him in an almost sexual paroxysm. Face upturned toward the sky, he gave a hoarse cry of exultation and breathed deep of the stench of immolation. The victim convulsing in his silken bonds gave a last jerking spasm and then was still, but it was the reflex reaction of flesh long past pain. Errant energies played briefly about the dead man’s lolling head a final few seconds before abruptly winking out.

New darkness descended, the heavier for following elemental fire, and for a long moment, Raeburn was left trembling on the blind edge of ecstasy, intoxicated by the lingering kiss of power. The resonance left behind by the lightning’s force infused his lean body with a rapture he had hitherto only imagined. He clung to that rapture as long as he could, hands pressed urgently to the torc in an effort to prolong the moment, only opening his eyes when the last of the fire had faded from his veins and someone in the circle coughed.