The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (39 page)

Grey stopped two feet from the guy, far enough not to spook him, close enough to do damage. Grey looked him in the eye and let him understand that he was wary but not the least bit afraid. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no idea who I am and where this is going, so you need to ask yourself if you really want to do this.” Grey clasped his hands in front of him and said softly, “Let it go.”

There was a moment of doubt in the man’s eyes, then the cruel edge returned. Grey was inside the swing before it was half-finished. He wrapped the man’s punching arm with his left hand, striking the underside of his jaw
with his right palm. The man’s head snapped up and back, but Grey continued forward, stepping behind the man and sweeping out his back legs. Grey changed the direction of his chin thrust, shoving the man’s off-balanced head straight down, the body following as Grey completed the violent
Osoto-Gari
. The man’s head thudded off the pavement.

Nine against one, with more inside, some of them with weapons, was a losing proposition. He had to cause maximum damage to those in his way, as fast as possible, and then run. He took the fight to the next guy, a squat goateed man with a bandanna, faking a snap kick to the knee to get in close, then leveling him with an uppercut.

Someone grabbed Grey in a bear hug from behind. Grey remained in constant motion, reaching for the man’s groin while leaning his weight back and thrusting his hips forward, creating space. He found the testicles and squeezed. As the man bellowed and released his grip, Grey found a fistful of hair and yanked him to the ground, stomping on his face to finish him off.

The other five were steps away, and he saw more men pouring out of the bar, most of them holding makeshift weapons. The last man between Grey and freedom came in swinging a beer bottle. Grey slipped to the left and caught his lead wrist and elbow, then whipped the man in a circle and threw him into the next closest attacker.

Grey saw open pavement and started sprinting. With his first step he felt a tug on his ankle, and then he was pitching forward, throwing his forearms down to protect his face. Grey twisted as someone pulled on his leg from behind, and he saw the bleeding visage of the man whose face he had stomped on.

Instead of pulling away, Grey leveraged forward and swung his other knee at the man’s head, catching him on the side of the face. He released Grey’s ankle, blood spraying from his nose. Grey scrambled to get to his feet, but was driven to the ground again as someone dove into his waist. Then a pile of men collapsed on him, punching and kicking and cursing, the stench of unwashed bodies almost as bad as the blows.

Grey tried to curl into a ball, but he couldn’t protect himself from the assault that came from all sides, over and over, until Grey’s vision clouded and he stopped moving. At some point the blows ceased, and someone spat on him. When he tried to move, a wave of nausea poured over him from the head blows. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth.

A huge set of arms wrapped him and pulled him to his feet, another kept a knife to his throat. Grey’s vision was still blurry, and he had to take deep breaths not to pass out. They dragged him backwards, towards the bar.

“Dante said you’d be trouble. You’ll pay for Speck and Nicky, you piece of shit Yank.”

“Fucking wanker broke my nose! Cut him up!”

“You know the rules. He’ll wish we had once Dante’s here. Call him.”

“Fuck that, Nicky isn’t moving.”

“You want to tell Dante you disobeyed him?”

They took Grey inside the bar, a cement-floored dungeon with a few pool tables and upside-down pentagrams chalked on the walls. A soccer game blared from a television over the bar, and a slinky bartender dressed in Goth stared at Grey as they dragged him through. He caught her eye and gasped. “Call the police.”

Someone struck Grey in the back of the head, leaving him teetering on the edge of consciousness. He was taken to a storage room, handcuffed, and strapped into a chair with a length of heavy rope.

They left him alone, and the lights went out.

V
iktor’s driver knew of Sant’Ambroggio, a sleepy hamlet twenty minutes along the coast from Cefalù, perched high on a cliff. Viktor had no idea why he had been given the address, but something about Scarlet Alexander told him she wasn’t the sort of person who would lead him into a trap.

Then again, she didn’t seem the sort to cover up the fact that she had met with Darius.

With La Rocca in the rearview, the road wound along the coast, taking a steep turn into the cacti-laden hills. Five minutes later they were needling through Sant’Ambroggio, a collection of whitewashed houses with red-tiled roofs clustered along a narrow avenue that paralleled the sea cliff on their left. Even narrower side alleys branched to their right off the avenue, leading into the hills.

They parked near the village center, a tight square perched high above the Tyrrhenian, La Rocca glowering in the distance. The driver stayed in the car at Viktor’s request, pointing down the street as he gave walking directions.

It was near the end of siesta, and Viktor could hear the murmur of families inside walled courtyards, preparing to finish up the day’s work before engaging in the languid
passeggiata
. The asphalt street simmered as he walked, the heat exacerbating the sour whiff of overripe tomatoes.

He passed a
tabacchi
and a butcher shop, both closed, then turned right onto a steep alley lined with plaster-walled apartments. Grapevines and clusters of honeysuckle draped the residences, rosemary and basil spilled out of
planters. A satellite dish on one of the balconies was the only sign of modernity, the rest of the alley a collage of dusty stone, cracked plaster, and hanging laundry.

Viktor’s thighs burned halfway up the hill. A woman folding clothes on a balcony stared openly as he trudged past her home in his black suit. By the time he reached the address Scarlet had given him, a tiny apartment near the top of the street, he was mopping his brow and trying not to gasp for breath.

An elderly man in a stained white tank top sat on the stoop of his apartment, chewing on something in slow motion, skin burnished a permanent copper from the sun. A walking stick lay at his side.

Viktor didn’t have time for pleasantries. He flashed his Interpol badge and spoke in respectful, formal Italian. “Are you the owner of this apartment?”

“Sì.”

“I’m with Interpol,” Viktor said, “and I’m investigating a series of murders. Nothing involving you. I need some information I was told you might possess.”

The old man said nothing. The deep tan had hidden some of the wrinkles at first glance, but he was a bag of skin and bones, a new set of wrinkles appearing every time his mouth moved to chew.

“Scarlet Alexander sent me,” Viktor said. “I’m looking for information on Aleister Crowley, and she referred me to you.”

The old man spoke out of the side of his mouth, in a low voice, and it took all of Viktor’s considerable ability in Italian to understand his thick dialect. “I was there.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I was ten. I was a groundskeeper.”

This took Viktor aback. That would make the old man a hundred years old. “You knew Aleister Crowley?”

“I saw him every day for three years. He never spoke to me.”

“You were there the entire time he was there?” Viktor said.

“And fifty years after.”

“Do you know a man named Darius?”

“No.”

“Simon?” Viktor said.

“No.”

“Have you ever studied magic?”

The old man spit.

“Did you ever go inside the lodge?” Viktor said.

“Not unless I had to. That was the Devil’s house.”

“Did you ever see a book called the Ahriman Grimoire?”

“I can’t read.”

“Have you ever heard of the Tutori, a group of priests commissioned by the Vatican?”

“No.”

The old man was a rare find, but Viktor wasn’t sure why Scarlet had sent Viktor to him. “How do you know Scarlet?” Viktor said.

“She wanted to talk to me. Like you.”

“What did you discuss?”

“What the villa looked like,” he said. “What I saw. Who was there.”

“Has anyone else come to interview you in the past few years?” Viktor said.

“Never.”

Viktor didn’t know where Darius had received his information, perhaps from the man in the retirement home who had burned, perhaps from Scarlet, perhaps from some other source. But looking at this elderly man free of guile, Viktor felt sure Darius had not been here.

Was it possible Darius’s journey had ended at Cefalù? Had he encountered the same dead end as Crowley? Was Darius indeed using the idea of the Ahriman Grimoire, perhaps even a fake, to impress and control his followers?

“Did Aleister ever leave the lodge to your knowledge?” Viktor said.

“Of course.”

“Not just for the day, but someplace out of the ordinary?”

The wrinkles on his brow congealed in concentration. “
Sì
. We talked about it.”

“Who did?”

“The servants.”

“Why?” Viktor said.

“It was strange. He didn’t like to leave.”

“Where did he go?”

“Geraci Siculo.”

“Is that in Sicily?” Viktor said.

“Yes.”

“Is it a town?”

“Village.”

“Where in Geraci Siculo did he go?”

“I don’t know,” the man said.

“Who did he go with?”

“His two best people.”

Viktor felt a tingle of excitement. “How long did they stay?”

“Not long, a few days.”

“Did they bring anything back?” Viktor said.

“I don’t know. We were servants.”

“Do you know why he went?”

“No.”

“There were no rumors,” Viktor said, “nothing overheard, no speculation among the servants?”

“No.”

“Did he return to this place, Geraci Siculo?”

“No.”

“Is there anything special about this village?”

The old man shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Is there anyone else who might know more about this?” Viktor said.

“Everyone is dead.”

Viktor relaxed his stiff posture, sensing there was nothing more to be gained. He offered him a stack of euros for his trouble, but the old man pushed his hand away.

Dusk approached as Viktor returned to the village square, the steep hills casting fingerlike shadows over the sea, the limestone cliffs of La Rocca fading to blue in the distance.

His driver told him that Geraci Siculo, a village in the Madonie Mountains, was at least an hour and a half drive from Cefalù. He argued against making a journey so late, as the road was treacherous and the village would be asleep. Viktor relented only because he was exhausted, and saw more value in getting some rest and setting out before dawn.

The driver didn’t know much about Geraci Siculo except that it was remote, one of those Sicilian villages untouched by time, set on a mountaintop for defensive purposes in the Middle Ages and never quite arriving in the present. As far as he knew, there was nothing of historical significance in the village. Viktor’s own research at an Internet café evidenced the same.

Viktor returned to his quarters, his villa part of a chicly rustic six-villa complex situated on the edge of old town, at the base of La Rocca. Though exhausted, his mind was a shortwave radio he could not shut off, switching channels and rising in volume every time he closed his eyes. He again turned to absinthe to relax, taking his glass and his spoon to the grapevine-smothered trellis, sitting in a wicker chair between potted palms, with the scent of rosemary drifting off the hill.

He dripped the water over the spoon, shivering in anticipation as the milky swathe of La Louche swirled within the emerald elixir. One glass became three, then another. The inebriation peculiar to absinthe washed over him, muscles relaxing, tension evaporating, his mind adrift yet strangely lucid. It was like being drunk on wine without the silliness, sharing the numbness and slight euphoria, a philosopher’s drink, drowning out the
banality of one’s surroundings and opening the mind’s eye to a mysterious realm.

He didn’t know how many glasses he had quaffed when she came to him, a curtain of flaxen hair rippling in the breeze on the hillside, spilling over her cloak.