Authors: Jon Steele
“Matches, I need matches.”
She found some in the drawer. She opened the glass door of the lantern, struck a match, lit the candle. The wick sparked and flashed. She lifted the lantern, watched the flame rise and fall as it breathed. She looked at herself in the mirror. Hat on head, lantern in hand. She laughed to herself. If Max thought his ex-hooker of a mother was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs before . . . “Wait'll he gets a load of Mommy now.”
She turned off the lights in her room, walked through the dark in a pool of soft, yellow light. She reached the adjoining doors, stood in the opening. She raised the lantern, brightening her face. The light of the lantern spilled into Max's room, and Katherine saw the light sparkle in his blue-green eyes. At first, he didn't know who it was in the doorway. Then he recognized his mother's face. He smiled and giggled and shook Monsieur Booty's tail. “Weezangeh.” The cat, too, was transfixed by the vision in the doorway and didn't object to having his tail shaken so excitedly. Then, as if spotting something undetectable to human eyes, the beast hunched into a crouch and clawed at the chair, and the fur on its back stood up.
Mrrrrrewww.
“Oh relax, fuzzface.”
The beast heard Katherine's voice and calmed down.
“That's better. How about you, Max? You ready for story time with crazy Mommy?”
“Goog.”
“Okay. Here we go.”
Katherine walked slowly toward the crib.
“Once upon a timeâ”
There was a knock on Katherine's door again. She spun around.
“What?”
“Open up, Kat, I've got the tea.”
Katherine turned to her attentive audience, all two of them.
“One second, I'll be right back.”
She walked to the door and cracked it open.
Officer Jannsen was in the hall, two steaming mugs in her hands. Night Clouds tea for Katherine, green tea for her. She looked at Katherine, saw the hat, lantern, and fire.
“
Mon Dieu
, Kat, you're really going for it in the imagination department.”
“C'mon, get in here. I'll have to do my whole entrance again. But it's okay. I think I was holding back a little. I know I can do better.”
They stared at each other through the doorway.
“Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“If I'm going to see the show, you must first let me in.”
“Oh yeah, oh yeah.”
Katherine opened the door wide.
Officer Jannsen hurried through, steaming mugs in her hands, fully loaded Glock semiautomatic on her hip, and crossed into Max's room. There were sounds of furniture being rearranged as Officer Jannsen moved a chest and dragged a chair across the room to set next to Max's crib. Then it was quiet. Katherine waited a second.
“Are we finally ready in there, boys and girl?”
“Weezangeh.”
Mew.
“Oui.”
Katherine took a step . . . stopped. She saw her black cloak on the bed. She set the lantern on the floor, put on the cloak. She picked up the lantern and checked herself in the mirror.
“First rule of making a killer entrance, girl. Give 'em their money's worth.”
She walked slowly to the doorway.
She raised the lantern, filled the room with firelight.
Three pairs of waiting eyes were hers for the taking.
“Once upon a time, in a faraway land . . .”
II
T
HE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FORM TOOK A HAUNTING SHAPE AS HE
cleared the forest. It was a volcanic pluton, all that was left of a fire-breathing shaper of Earth. Millions of years ago, the volcano cooled and lava gushing from the magna reservoir slowed. The vent and crater sealed, and the still-boiling lava caught in the conduit solidified into solid black rock. The sides of the volcano wore away, leaving a massive limestone dome rising three hundred meters from the surrounding ground.
Astruc stopped to look at it. He could just make out the last of the sun reflecting off the south wall of the fortress atop the dome. It would be a steep walk from here, and soon the light would fade. But they had to wait till the handful of tourists and guardians of the site had left. He checked the nearby road. The parking area was empty. All was well.
He removed the goatskin from his shoulder and took a drink of water. He heard a rustle in the trees. He looked back, saw Goose coming into the clearing. Goose raised his head to see the high-above fortress from under the cowl of his hoodie. His glassy eyes tried to focus. It was impossible for him to see clearly beyond two hundred meters. The very potion that gave him a measure of vision was eating away at the retinas of his eyes. But he could see the haunting shape rising from the ground, and he could just make out the squared shapes of rocks silhouetted against the sky that could have only been cut by human hands. Astruc laid his hand on Goose's shoulder.
“We're close now. An hour more and we'll be there. Would you like to rest? The way is difficult.”
Goose shifted the weight of his heavy backpack. It was stuffed with technical kit, ammunition, and weapons. Astruc carried a backpack, too. Sleeping bags, clothes and food, the reliquary box he'd taken from the black stone cavern beneath Paris.
When they left the cavern, the priest and his charge followed the infrared ChemLights through the tunnels back to the surface. It was three thirty a.m. They hurried along the abandoned railway and climbed to the street. The rain had fallen still, and the streets were empty and dark. They were unnoticed by anyone. They climbed in their van, changed into clean, dry clothes. They drove to the 16th arrondissement and parked on Rue Pergolèse. They walked to Avenue de la Grande Armée, caught a passing taxi to Gare de Lyon. They took the 04:30 train from Paris to the Mediterranean city of Montpellier. A connecting train carried them south along the coast to Perpignan, very near the Spanish border. It was the long way around to Montségur. It would have been easier and quicker to travel by way of Toulouse. But they were hunted by the Dark Ones, so they laid a false trail to the east.
On the TGV from Paris, Goose opened his laptop. An Apple laptop, but it was only the shell. Goose had ripped out the circuits and motherboard and replaced them with those of his own making. The laptop was much faster, much more powerful. He connected the laptop to a 4G USB device. He hacked into the French Customs and Immigration database in seven minutes, listed himself and Astruc as passengers aboard an Egyptian freighter, the
Arabian Crescent
, bound for Alexandria that night from Perpignan. Under assumed names, of course, but the hunters searching the Internet would see their faces on two virtual Spanish passports. Goose slapped the passports together in five minutes with a bit of simple copy and paste. When he uploaded the data into the French servers, he ejected the USB, walked to the baggage compartment, and slipped it in the pouch of someone's suitcase. Didn't matter who, Goose thought. People being what they are meant someone would find the USB, slip it in their own computer, discover it had no security lock. The someone would use it from wherever they were, sending out a second false trail on the Internet. The Dark Ones would turn their gazes for as long as Astruc and Goose needed to execute the second phase of their mission. After that, they would be exposed, and it would be a race to Heaven's Gate and Spain, where they would execute the third and final stage of their holy mission.
They arrived at Perpignan just after dawn. Exiting the station, they spotted a man wearing a suit in the parking lot. He was removing a valise from the trunk of a Peugeot 307. A traveling man on an overnight trip. Goose waited for the man to enter the station, then hurried to the car. It took him sixty seconds to silently break into the car and hot-wire the starter. Astruc climbed in and they drove northwest to Saint-Estève. They left the highway and drove west along a country lane. The crowded flatlands of the Mediterranean coast became the hills of Languedoc. The hills leveled to become vineyards, then rose again. Two kilometers short of the village of Estagel, in a lonely part of the countryside, they pulled onto a dirt track. It led to a dilapidated barn set behind a copse of tall willow trees. The barn was open, and they drove in and stopped the motor. They knew this place. They'd set out for Paris from this place just forty-eight hours ago. They knew no one would find them here.
They slept till two in the afternoon, when the residents of Estagel closed their shutters for siesta. Goose rose, found Astruc's backpack and the rest of their supplies they'd hidden in a stall of the barn. Under the supplies, wrapped in waterproof tarp, were two shepherd's crooks and a sealed plastic bag containing two long necklaces of old, braided leather. A scallop shell hung from each of the necklaces. They tied them around their necks, let them hang outside their coats. Astruc opened the side pouch of his backpack, found an auto-injector, and handed it to Goose.
“In the name of the martyrs,” Astruc said.
Goose signed
Amen
, took the injector, and slammed it into his own thigh. The needle broke through his jeans, found muscle, and the potion flooded into his body. Goose closed his eyes, prayed a moment. He opened his eyes. Astruc was watching him.
“Are you well enough, now?”
Yes, Father.
“Good.”
They lifted their backpacks onto their shoulders. Astruc took one of the shepherd's crooks, gave the other to Goose.
“May the Pure God protect our spirits from evil.”
They left the barn, walked to the lane toward Estagel. The village was quiet, wooden shutters all closed against the afternoon sun. They walked slowly, keeping their eyes to the ground, and crossed the river to the D117. It was a country road of two lanes bound by rocky hills and autumn-colored trees. The air was cool, the sun was warm. There was a walking path next to the road and they followed it west, walking in the shadows of trees. To anyone driving by, to anyone giving them a casual glance, they appeared as religious pilgrims. To anyone driving by, to anyone giving them a casual glance, they appeared as religious pilgrims making their way across the south of France toward Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. There, they'd cross into Spain and join Le Chemin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelleâthe Way of Saint James.
They looked a little strange, perhaps. The big man in the long brown overcoat and blue-lensed glasses, followed by a smaller man who hid his face under the cowl of a hooded sweatshirt. But it was this strangeness that gave them a cloak of invisibility. That and the thousand-year-old Christian tradition of believing pilgrims who wore a scallop shell and walked the Way of Saint James with wooden staffs were making penance for their sins. They were not to be harmed or bothered in any manner. And perhaps their strangeness helped in another way: They did not look like the run-of-the-mill happy tourists who made the long trek in the summer months. No, the big man looked hard, and the small one hid from the world. Perhaps they truly were doing penance for their sins.
They skirted the towns of Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet and Quillan. At Bélesta they followed the D9 south through Fougax-et-Barrineuf. The road was isolated, and it wound through farmlands bordered by thick forests. At night, they made rough camp in the forests. They ate high-protein biscuits, cleaned their bodies with antibacterial wet-wipes. They did not build a fire, they did not use flashlights. When needed, they moved through the night wearing night vision goggles. They buried their trash, they brushed the flattened grass where they'd slept; they left no sign of having been there.
Three days from Perpignan now, they arrived at the foot of the volcanic pluton called Montségur. Goose pulled his cowl from his head. He let his backpack slip from his shoulders and sat on the ground. Astruc leaned his back into the trunk of a dead, limbless tree. He offered the goatskin to Goose. The kid took it, drank deeply. Astruc looked up at the darkening, cloudless sky. The summer triangle of Deneb, Vega, and Altair were already visible to the southwest.
“It is a good night. A good night for watchers of the sky.”
Goose scanned the sky with his glassy eyes. To him it was nothing more than looking into the underside of a dark blue umbrella. But he could feel the wind on his face. It felt clear, dustless. He handed back the goatskin and signed,
Will we see it, Father? Will it really come tonight?
Astruc took the goatskin, slung it over his shoulder.
“If there is to be any hope for the eternal soul of mankind, it must be tonight.”
Goose smiled and signed,
If this is your belief, Father, then it will be so.
“It isn't what I believe, it's what was foretold to the pure of faith.”
Goose pointed down the hill to the clearing, where a stile stood atop a stone altar.
Is that the field, Father?
Astruc turned and saw the stile, saw the field of grass beyond bound by a simple wooden fence. The stile was too far away to see the cross and inscription carved into the stone, but Astruc didn't need to see those things. The day was seared into his memory.
EN CE LIEU LE 16 MARS 1244
PLUS DE 200 PERSONNES ONT ÃTÃ BRULÃES
ELLES N'AVAIENT PAS VOULU RENIER LEUR FOI
In the fading light, the stile was backlit like something forever sacred. And he saw shreds of mist rise from the field and into the light as if the souls of the burned had never left this place.
“Yes, that's the Field of the Burned. We'll stop there to say the Lord's Prayer before we leave. Come now, the light is fading.”
Goose lifted his backpack to his shoulders and followed Astruc along the path. A deer watched them pass from the cover of the forest. They walked quietly. Quietly enough to hear the wind pass through the branches of autumn-colored trees. The taller trees bowed to the east; the wind was coming from the west. Astruc checked the horizon. Still not a cloud in the darkening sky.
III
C
AN
I
TOSS IN A PRINCESS?”