The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (16 page)

Not just speaking, but intoning.

Chanting.

The chanting didn’t have the lilting cadence of French, but rather an older, rougher, more guttural inflection. Grey was good with languages, but he didn’t recognize this one. What he knew was that it set him on edge.

The bad news was that an unknown number of people waited up ahead, most likely members of L’église de la Bête who would not be amused by Grey’s decision to crash their party. The good news was that Grey had drawn close enough that the noise of the chanting drowned his footsteps.

Though Grey could theoretically retrace his steps and outrun any pursuers, there might be shortcuts within the tunnel network, a warning system, or traps of which he was unaware. Further, Grey had seen at least five passageways branching off, making it likely that someone would appear behind him.

His target, buried within a black cloak, was twenty feet ahead. Grey tried to gauge how far it was to the end of the tunnel, estimating a hundred yards. When Grey passed a small alcove on his left he decided to act. He knew he wouldn’t get another chance to talk to a member of the Church of the Beast.

As he sprinted forward, Grey could see the mouth of a large cavern up ahead, probably one of the central grottos used to collect the bones before they were distributed to the smaller tunnels. Tonight, Grey knew, the cavern served a different purpose.

Or, he thought grimly, perhaps it didn’t.

Grey caught the man just as the backs of more black-garbed figures materialized inside the cavern. A sinister red glow emanated from the mouth of the grotto, but Grey wasn’t close enough to make out the source.

Grey’s hand reached around the man’s face and clamped over his mouth. He yanked him backwards and switched to a blood choke, trapping the two sides of the man’s neck between Grey’s left biceps and forearm. He reinforced the choke by grabbing the biceps of his right arm with his left, then placing
his right hand on top of the man’s head. The effect was of a python wrapping its prey. A proper blood choke, cutting off the oxygen from both sides, rendered someone unconscious far faster than a strangle. Grey dragged the man backwards to keep him off-balance, the man’s futile gasps and struggles only expending more oxygen. Six seconds later he was unconscious.

Grey picked up the man’s cloth-wrapped torch and dragged him into the alcove. Seconds after they were secured, he saw the flickering shadows of approaching torches. Grey extinguished his torch and held his breath until the torches passed, shaky at how close he had come to being discovered.

Underneath the polyester black cloak, Grey recognized the sandy hair and brown pullover of the man who had followed him. The man was dressed in slacks and a dress shirt beneath the pullover. After searching the man and failing to find identification, Grey took a long curved knife he found tucked into the robe and laid it on the ground next to him.

He had released the choke a few seconds after he felt his captive go limp, causing no permanent damage. The man was already stirring. As soon as his eyes fluttered Grey slapped him across the face, hard enough to stun him and cause him to moan in pain. The slap also brought a sense of dominance to the situation, as did the fact that Grey was sitting on top of the man’s chest, knees pinning his arms, feet tucked under his buttocks.

The man wriggled and got nowhere, then glared at Grey, who was holding the knife against his throat with one hand, a fistful of hair in the other.

Grey waited for the ceremony to begin in earnest. Three more torches passed in the next few minutes, and each time he pressed the knife against his captive’s throat, his own stare boring into the man’s unblinking gaze.

After another few minutes the chanting ceased, and Grey could just make out a single voice intoning in the same harsh tongue as the chanting. The crowd answered in repetition each time the speaker paused, and Grey knew the ceremony had started. He eased the knife an inch off the man’s throat.

His captive spit his words out.
“Savez-vous ce que vous faites?”

Grey noticed an expensive watch and trimmed fingernails, and his hand was grasping a head of coiffed hair. “Speak English.”

“Do you know what you are doing?” The man said in educated British English, with only a slight French accent. “When they find you they will tear out your eyes and eat your heart.”

Grey slapped him again, this time so hard the whites of his captive’s eyes showed and he went limp in Grey’s grasp. He shook him, and the man whimpered.

“You should be worrying about your own health,” Grey said.

Grey felt strange interrogating the man with the archaic chanting in the background, like it was background music for some cheap horror film. But he had already seen enough of the Church of the Beast’s handiwork to know its horrors were all too real.

“I’ll make this quick,” Grey said. “Trust me, you don’t want to know what happens if you don’t answer my questions.”

The man sneered. “What makes you think—”

Grey pressed his thumb into the hollow of the man’s throat until he coughed and gagged, releasing the pressure only after the man’s eyes bulged in pain. Grey despised torture and thought it immoral, especially on an institutional level. But Grey was not an institution, and had long ago accepted that in rare situations he was going to do what he thought he had to do.

“
Trust
me.” Grey didn’t waste his time asking why the man had followed him from the metro. “Who killed the Black Cleric?”

The man said nothing, and Grey kept the knife against his throat while pressing a finger into the pressure point just below his ear, digging underneath the jawbone. Press hard enough, and the pain was excruciating.

Grey knew that if the man didn’t have full faith in Grey’s intentions, he would refuse to talk or hold out for a much longer time than Grey had. For this to work, the man had to look into Grey’s eyes and know he would carry out his threats.

Which wasn’t a problem.

The man arced in Grey’s grip, causing his neck to press into the edge of the knife. Grey released the pressure point and again took him by his hair. “Who. Killed. Xavier.”

The man’s breath came in short heaves from the pain. When he caught his breath he gave a mocking laugh. “But that is the wrong question.”

“Enlighten me,” Grey said.”

Grey pressed the knife deeper, drawing blood, and the man hurried his words. Victims saying anything to relieve the pain was the principal drawback to torture, which was why Grey preferred a hard and fast approach, to try and get as much of a gut reaction as possible. “We have a new leader,” the man said, “one with the blessing of the Beast. Xavier refused to step aside. He was no longer in favor.”

“I don’t suppose this prophet wears a black robe with silver stars?” Grey could see the surprise of recognition in the man’s eyes. “He killed Xavier?”

“He destroys anyone who stands against him.”

“I hate to put a dent in your hero-worship,” Grey said, “but your new prophet was in San Francisco the night Xavier died.”

The man’s condescending smirk, as if he knew that already and the six-thousand-mile difference between the two cities didn’t affect his response, sent a chill down Grey’s spine.

“Where do I find him?” Grey said, and the man didn’t answer. “Is he here tonight?” Grey pressed his thumb into the man’s throat again, harder than before. The man gagged and still didn’t respond.

Grey set the knife down, again taking the man by the hair. “I’m going to say this once. I know the kind of man you are; I saw your Church’s work in Gustave’s apartment. But you know nothing about me.” Grey placed the thumb of his free hand on the man’s eyeball, nudging the bottom of the pupil just enough to make him squirm. “Look at me.
Look
at me. If you don’t tell me his name and where to find him, right now, you’re going to lose an eye.”

Grey pressed harder into the eye, feeling the eyeball try to slip away from the pressure. The man’s screams were drowned by the noise from the ceremony.

“Wait!” His trapped hands clawed at the air as he tried to free his eye from Grey’s grip. “I don’t know his name, and I swear I don’t know where he is, or if he comes tonight. No one does. He comes and goes as he wishes.”

“What do you mean?” Grey said. “Where does he live?”

“I mean it does not
matter
where he is. He has the power of the Beast.”

Grey knew the man was telling the truth, or at least thought he was, but sensed he wasn’t telling all of it. Grey increased the pressure on the eye even more, and the man convulsed in pain.

Grey’s voice was harsh. “I don’t want to hear about magic. You know something about where to find him. You have the count of three to tell me, or you lose an eye and we move to the next. One.”

The man jerked and bucked, but couldn’t break the hold.

“Two.”

A gong sounded in the background, above the chanting. “
Oui
, stop!” the man said, and Grey released a tiny bit of pressure.

Pain rattled through his voice. “It is you who now has the choice.” His eyes flicked towards the cavern. “That was the signal to begin the sacrifice. Do you torture me, or save the girl? She has seconds to live.”

“You obviously don’t know me very well,” Grey said evenly. Any trace amount of sympathy he possessed for the man had just left the room, but Grey didn’t want him to know that his statement about a sacrifice, uttered with the composure of truth, had gotten to Grey.

“And you misjudged the timing,” Grey continued. “She has seconds, but you don’t. Three,” he said, increasing the pressure to an unbearable level, feeling the eyeball start to separate from the socket.

“London!” he screamed. “Dante’s in London serving the Magus. I have no idea where or why. That’s all I know, I swear by La Bête.”

Grey jerked him up by his hair, striking his temple with his free elbow. The man went limp. Grey picked up the knife and the cloth-wrapped torch and sprang to his feet, donning the man’s black cloak before racing into the passage.

Z
ador led Viktor to a nest of rooms in the rear, an area somewhat more orderly than the front room, stuffed with books from every conceivable genre of magic and the occult. Entire shelves were devoted to thematic subjects such as Egyptian, Babylonian, and Druidic magic, as well as rows of rarer specialties like Shamanism, Necromancy, Geomancy, and Numeromancy. There were plenty of one-offs as well, esoteric titles that made Viktor shake his head, such as
Variants of Subtropical Lycanthropy
.

Many of the books were secured behind glass cases. Viktor’s fingers twitched at the sight of it all, and he would have given a small fortune to spend a day alone in these rooms. Zador led him past the glass cases to a study in the very back of the store. The study contained two musty leather chairs, a floor lamp, and an antique writing desk.

Zador pulled a chain on the floor lamp, filling the room with mellow light. “He was on a journey, that one.”

“Darius?” Viktor said.

“
Perdurabo
. The Great Beast.”

Viktor frowned. “Crowley? What does he have to do with this?”

“We discuss the world of magic, do we not? If we discuss magic in the modern era, we discuss Aleister.”

Viktor wasn’t quite sure when they had started talking about magic, but he would play along. It was true that Aleister Crowley was the most infamous black magician of the twentieth century. A rival of Yeats in the Golden
Dawn magical society, a prolific author of occult texts, and the founder of his own magical society as well as the infamous Abbey of Thelema, Crowley was reviled for his publicized use of sexual and drug-induced rituals. Believed by many to possess potent supernatural powers, Crowley was feared even more than he was loathed. “To be honest,” Viktor said, “I never understood why a true magician would seek fame and fortune.”

“Aleister was an egotist, yes, but he kept his secret magic, his true ambition, to himself.”

Viktor’s eyes narrowed. “Then how do you know about it?”

“One’s innermost secrets are revealed through one’s choice of books.”

Viktor snapped his fingers. “The San Francisco visit.”

Viktor had studied Crowley’s life in detail, and he knew there was speculation that he had been searching for someone or something in San Francisco, though no one had ever figured out who or what.

“The San Francisco visit was well before his death,” Viktor said, “not long after the turn of the century. Did your predecessor know him?”

“You were very much alike,” Zador said, ignoring the question. “He was large in body and spirit, full of life and himself. And, yes, full of power.”

“I long ago learned the foolishness of being full of myself,” Viktor said.

“Of course you did, of course. That was Aleister’s undoing, you know. He sought to become a god on earth, as does someone else. As perhaps do you. As perhaps do we all.”

“Someone else?” Viktor said. “Who? Darius?”

Zador’s gaze stopped wandering, fixating for a rare moment on Viktor. “I shall tell you what I told him: I’ve never touched it, and I never will. That book should never have been made.”