Chapter 4
FRIDAY 10:30 p.m.
London, England
“Your eulogy was thoughtful,” Chancellor Javan broke the silence. “I’ll never understand why Brenton favored David.” He exhaled through his nose with a tiresome grunt, then slid his dress shirt sleeve up over his elbow to scratch a single, blatant imperfection, a scar that circled his right wrist, continued up his arm, disappeared under his clothing and then reappeared glistening along his neck until it stopped at a stub of tissue that was his missing ear.
Ian stared at the limo floor. The questions
he wanted to ask about his father’s death hadn’t congealed on his tongue.
The car tu
rned off the highway, and the rain thickened to a cloudy drizzle, making the tinted windows glow with an abstraction of street lights. They passed Trafalgar and turned onto Parliament Square. Construction barriers lined the torn up pavement, reducing the road to a single lane.
“Where are we going?” Ian asked.
After Brenton’s internment, Javan insisted on a private meeting.
“The
re’s someone I want you to meet,” Javan answered cryptically.
Ian frowned
. There wasn’t anyone within Javan’s inner circle he would appreciate knowing.
“You’ve nothing to worry about,
” Javan laughed with a careless staccato. His porcelain veneers looked pointy in the dim light. He turned to the driver. “All the way to the steps if you can, Dettorio.”
They stopped
for a moment beneath the large archway of Derby Gate. Motorized blockades lowered beneath the pavement, allowing the limo to trespass down the narrow, private lane. On either side of the car, majestic Italianate buildings boasted of Britain’s monarchy. Pillars and arches carved into statues of grim-faced and domineering nobles towered overhead, each capable of making the proudest of men feel insignificant.
The limo p
arked along the curb. Javan exited without a word. Dettorio met him at the door with an umbrella, and the two walked to the edge of the steps overlooking St. James Park and shared a brief discussion. Dettorio came back to the car and opened the door for Ian.
Ian reached for his cane.
His hands were trembling, and he could barely grasp it.
Wh
y had he agreed to this?
He felt
his breast pocket for the picture sent from his father. Perhaps this was the only way to know the truth. Brenton deserved justice, and the police, even Lang, were tight-lipped about the investigation. Javan, on the other hand, was willing to talk.
Leaning into his cane, Ian exited the car and followed the men down th
e steps. At the foot of the steps, they turned into an entrance that was tucked inconspicuously under the stairs. Piles of sandbags were stacked along the entrance to keep rainwater from flooding inside the subfloors of the Ministry’s Treasury.
Ian recognized their location
. “The War Rooms?”
I
t was a museum, a public attraction of Churchill’s headquarters during World War II and a surprising choice for a meeting place. Protected by reinforced concrete, the claustrophobic bunker could withstand topside nuclear annihilation.
Javan waved
a clearance card over the door sensor. There was an audible click as the bolt unlocked. Dettorio held open the door.
“After you,
” Javan offered.
Ian
stepped inside, and Javan followed. They waited a moment as Dettorio locked the door and returned to the car, and then Javan turned to Ian with a sly smile. “Just this way.”
Ian followed him
down a long corridor, passing the reception counter for museum guests. Only a few shapes were discernible in the darkness. They descended a maze of corridors. Staged rooms protected by Plexiglas were filled with WWII memorabilia. Mannequins in authentic military garb were positioned into reenactments depicting what the bunker might have looked like during war era. Some models were frozen over typewriters, others sat at conference tables looking over strategic maps of Europe.
“I need you to understand something
, Ian,” Javan said, without looking back. “I’m here to help you. I know you are confused about what happened to your father, but you need to trust me.”
Ian struggled to keep up
, his body was crippled with arthritis. They entered a storage area and stopped at the center of the room. Javan met Ian’s eyes, picking his words carefully.
“I’m certain this is
what your father would want.” He ducked under the metal pipes hanging from the ceiling and crouched beside a bolted trapdoor.
Ian followed
him. “I don’t understand. Where are we going?”
With
a boyish grin, Javan pulled a skeleton key from his pocket and twisted open the lock. “It’s a bit old fashioned, but I’ve never been one for the modern world.” He lifted the trapdoor, revealing a steep staircase that ran almost perpendicular to the floor. It was a narrow chute made even more claustrophobic by the large brick walls on every side. The bottom of the stairs was lost in darkness.
“No way,” Ian said flatly.
Each cement step measured at most one foot across and five inches wide. Gaping holes separated each step. Making it down such a steep incline with a cane was impossible.
The wrinkles along Javan’s pitted face
softened. “I’m here to help you.”
Ian gripped his cane
. He would do it alone. He descended into darkness, his crippled legs and rickety frame a shivering wasteland of gnarled bone. Javan followed close behind, steadying Ian by the shoulders. It was an eternity of stairs. When they finally reached bottom—at least 40 feet down—there was nothing but a metal door.
“What’s this?”
Ian said, trying to regain his breath.
Javan squeezed past
him and unlocked the door. The door swung open, revealing yet another dark corridor. Pendant lights hung from wires every few strides along the concrete ceiling. Steel doors lined both sides of the hall. About a hundred feet away, four men dressed in fatigues, ballistic vests, and combat helmets stood beside a vault door with reinforced, high-security steel girders.
Ian’s mouth turned
to sandpaper.
“Your father
died trying to protect something.” Javan held firmly to Ian’s shoulders and directed him toward the vault. They faced the door. “If you want to know his killer,” he said, “you need to understand
why
he was murdered.”
It took all four of the guards to release the lock and force open the hatch. Once open, three of the men
stood back, clutching handguns.
Ian cowered behind Javan. “What’s in
side?”
“This was the last
man to see your father alive.” Javan nudged Ian forward. “He won’t hurt you. It’s me he wants.”
Ia
n stepped hesitantly over the metal door frame. The room was pitch black. The hall light only illuminated a few feet in front of his eyes. He stretched out his arms and felt his way to the back of the cell. When he reached the end of the room, he turned around in confusion. “There’s no one—”
Snake-like eyes
peered up at him from the floor. At the opposite corner, the eyes rose up off the floor, floating slits of iridescent green. An unbearable smell hit his nose.
“Shoot him,
” Javan said from the entrance.
An explosion of gunfire sent Ian
sprawling into the wall. Bullets sliced through the air, ricocheting off mortar in a deafening roar. The ammunition met its target with a dozen split-second thuds. The eyes stopped glowing, and the dark shape slumped to the floor.
Gun smoke clogged Ian’s lungs.
A pale light flickered on overhead.
Javan stepped into the room. He stopped for a moment beside the dark shape, which was nothing more than the thin, naked corpse of an old man. Annoyed by the stench, he rubbed at his nose and ran his other hand stolidly across the back wall, fingering the slugs embedded in the granite.
Ian gasped for air,
disoriented and lying face down on the cement. He stared over at the corpse. Thousands of miniscule sores riddled the man’s gray, necrotic skin, glistening under fluorescent light. He had obviously been tortured. Lines of puffy and then puckered skin alternated across his body, winding around his entire frame beginning at the bottom of his neck, extending down to the wrists and stopping at his hands, and then running horizontally along the length of his torso, hips, and legs, to stop again at the ankles. Something prickly had imprinted itself upon his ashen flesh, leaving a million swollen pinholes. At every dimpled puncture, bile percolated from each wound, creating a coat of slimy excrement that dripped onto the floor. Bullet holes exposed the man’s ribs, but something was missing…
Ian
’s eyes widened with shock. “There’s no blood!”
“Immortals do not bleed,
” Javan said.
The odor of rotting flesh
overwhelmed the smell of gun smoke. It was so pungent, Ian couldn’t process what Javan said. “I don’t understand.”
“This man chooses to bear the
se wounds. Pain empowers him. His sores are self-inflicted. They have allowed him to be a ruler within Abaddon for thousands of years.”
Ian sat up too quickly. Dizzy, he propped his weak frame against the wall.
This was impossible. Javan was messing with him.
“What is damnation but to live forev
er with one’s sins,” Javan insisted.
“The man is dead,
” Ian said.
As if on cue, the captive blinked. Silver capillaries pulsed beneath his translucent flesh
, began awakening across his body. Ian could see the fluid moving, activating organs and limbs. The man’s fingers began to twitch. Life spread over him like some perverse resurrection without healing or renewal. This was simply the regeneration of the grotesque. The white sclera surrounding his black irises began to exude an otherworldly glow again.
Unable to look away, Ian felt his brain disconnect from his body. He tried to blink, but
he suddenly had no control. His muscles were non-responsive. There was something even more unusual about the decrepit old man, somehow he could break into Ian’s mind and control Ian’s thoughts. A flash of light burst over Ian’s vision. The cell, Javan, and the guards disappeared. There was only the captive.
Pain
engulfed Ian’s body. It was a racking ache. Nothing like he’d ever felt before. There was a burning sensation. He grabbed his head—he knew this wasn’t real. The floor erupted with fire. The blaze spread up the walls, licking the ceiling with a monstrous crackle. Angry flames ate through his cassock, clawed at his flesh. They boiled his blood and reduced his bones to hollow glass. He felt every sensation of burning, and as his body transformed to ash, his stomach erupted with insatiable hunger. It was starvation so severe that the inferno became an afterthought.
Ian twisted toward the door. He
crawled away from the captive in a senseless panic. His mind and body were scorching. The outline of a dark figure appeared in the smoke, blocking his view. At first it was only a shapeless silhouette, but slowly the details of a face became visible: the nose, pointed and thin; the mouth pulled downward in a scowl, the lips taut and quivering; finally the eyes—they glowed exactly like the eyes of the undead captive. But it wasn’t the captive.
“What do you see?” Javan
interrupted Ian’s vision.
Ian scrambled toward Javan’
s voice.
Somehow, he ha
d left the cell. His back was against the wall of the corridor, his entire body trembling. The captive was locked away behind the thick steel vault. Ian was safe. He was surrounded by armed guards. He stared down at his body. His cassock was clean, his hands unharmed. There was no fire. None of it was real.
Javan forced
Ian around, grabbing him by the collar. “What did he show you?”
Ian’s tongue was
numbed by the fire that parched his bones. He felt suddenly alone, as if severed from God. Worse, he had stepped into darkness.
Willingly
. Holiness had left him.
“He showed you the Chosen One,
” Javan said. Sweat dripped along the sides of his cheeks.
Ian clawed at the cement floor
. The periphery of his vision was a delirium of cobwebs. His head was spinning. He threw his arms over his head to duck below the hallucination, an aftershock of grotesque flashes: his blackened, shriveled body, cinder skin, depleted sinew sucked into his charcoal bones.
Javan pulled Ian’s head off the ground. “Who did you see?”
Ian sputtered, barely able to form the words. “I saw myself.
Chapter 5
FRIDAY 11:53 p.m.
Orkney Island, Scotland
The rolling countryside was covered in late night fog. David twisted the radio knobs, trying to find a broadcast station, but the thick mist left nothing but static. As he switched off the rece
iver, Darwin leaned against him. Saliva dangled from her mouth.
“What’s wrong, girl?” He found a napkin
on the floor and wiped off her drool.
She whimpered and tried to
sit in his lap.
“Darwin!” He pushed her back into the passenger seat.
The Jeep swerved dangerously across the single lane highway.
“You’re gonna get us killed.”
David slammed on the brakes. He grabbed Darwin’s collar as she slid toward the dash.
The wheel
s skidded along the damp cement. They stopped inches from runaway sheep blocking the roadway.
Da
vid clutched the wheel. His legs were shaking. He looked at his dog to make sure she was okay. Darwin was panting and anxious, but not injured. “Crazy animals.” He turned back to the road and flipped on his brights.
Ubiquitous gray and white
spanned the countryside. Hundreds of sheep had broken through the field fences protecting the highway. They blocked the road, stumbling over each other in a disoriented panic, maneuvering as one collective organism. They seemed oblivious until the bumper pushed them forward. Then, it was a frenzy of wool, the sheep jumping into each other and over each other as he tried to continue up the road.
He laid on the horn and inched up the hill
top, slowing splitting the sea of animals. He reached the top of the ridge.
“Holy hell.”
His foot slipped off the clutch. The Jeep stalled.
T
here weren’t hundreds of sheep—there were thousands, growing in density toward Stenness.
The fur on Da
rwin’s neck raised on end. Her whimper expanded into barking.
“
It’s okay.” David found the remains of his hamburger beside his seat and held the leftovers to her nose. Her ears bent back. She wanted nothing to do with it.
“We’re almost there,” David
promised, restarting the Jeep.
T
he herd crowded the roadway, but lessened in number along the rocky edges of the lake. Time for four-wheel drive.
Locking the hubs and shifting into high range, he turned off the road into the greensward that surrounded the edges of the Loch of Stenness. Unruly tufts of grass b
illowed out of the earth, coalescing into mounds, and making the ride bumpy and slow. Once he reached the lake, it was easier to drive around them. The yellow porch light of Marta McLeod’s Bed’n’Breakfast finally came into view. David gave a sigh of relief.
****
“You coming?” David stepped out onto the gravel road and encouraged Darwin to follow him. It had taken over an hour to reach Marta’s place. His shoulders were tense and tight, his eyes strained and tired. He was ready for bed.
Darwin looked over at him from the passenger seat and lowered her head.
She was unwilling to budge.
“Yeah, you’re cute.
” David leaned back into the cab and grabbed her collar. “But you still need to come out of the car.”
Darwin jumped
to the ground, tucked her tail, and leaned against him.
“No sheep chasin’,” he mumbled, but
Darwin didn’t seem the slightest bit interested in running off. She followed him to the back of the Jeep where he pulled out a small suitcase. He threw aside field equipment and clutter, and then frowned, finding the bouquet for Marta squished and withering. Turning the arrangement upside down, he shook out the half-dead petals, discarded the most embarrassing blossoms, and formed the remainder into a wilted work of art. He was late, Marta was probably asleep, but at least he did tardy with style.
****
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” a jovial voice boomed from upstairs as David opened the front door. The lilt of Marta McLeod’s Scottish accent played tricks on his ears. “Who’s coming to my house expecting a room at this ungodly hour?”
A round woman bounded down the stairs. Gray curls framed her grandmotherly face.
Marta made wrinkles and smile lines attractive.
David hid the flowers behind his back. “Sorry I didn’t call.”
“Aye, when do you ever call?” Marta smiled. “I always have a room for you, Dr. Hyden. I was hoping you’d be coming to visit that old ruin of yours. Give us a kiss.” She shoved a chubby cheek in his face.
Shyly, David complied.
She spotted the flowers behind his back with a squeal. “Shame on you.”
He handed her the bouquet. “Sorry
, they’re not much.”
“You shouldn’t have, love.” She fetched a vase from the kitchen and filled it
with water. “But I’m glad that you did.”
David helped himself to one of the h
omemade orange rolls in a straw basket on the table. They were still warm. She’d been up baking and waiting for him.
“Those are for breakfast.” Marta slapped his hand and then nodded for him to take a bite. “
Well, how’s it taste?”
“Delicious,” he said
. Orange cream gushed out the sides of his mouth. He wiped the custard with the back of his hand.
Marta bent over Darwin.
“How’s he treating you these days, sweetheart?”
Darwin lashed out at her hand.
“Darwin!” David pulled the dog back by her collar. “Sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into her tonight.”
Marta masked her alarm by rearranging the flowers. “
She’s jealous is all. It’s not every day she sees you giving flowers to another woman.” She set the vase on the table and snatched up David’s bag before he could object. “Are you staying the whole weekend?”
“Is that okay?” He licked st
icky sweet goo from his fingers and took his luggage away from her.
“‘Course it is
, love.”
David followed her up the stairwell
. Darwin kept at his heels, her ears set back with agitation.
“Was your drive alright
?” she asked. “The fog is thicker than pea soup tonight.”
He laughed. According to Marta, weather
could always be compared to some form of soup.
“
What’s with all the sheep?” he asked.
Marta shook her head. “
They think they own this country of ours.”
“I’ve
never seen so many in my life. We had to off-road it just to get here.”
She
stopped at the top of the stairs beside his bedroom door. “They’ll stop up the roads now and again.”
“
Yeah, but thousands of them?”
“Thousands?” Marta’s eyebrows skewed with surprise. “You’re exa
ggerating.”
“I’m not.”
“Aye.” She pouted and opened the door. The floor creaked as she moved to his bed, folded back the covers, and fluffed the pillows. “A few days ago, Mr. Boyle found ten sheep, all of ‘em dead and atop your ruin.”
“Maeshowe?”
“Ugly lot, too, the way he tells it. Frozen stiff, and all wild in the eyes.”
“Mad sheep disease?” David winked.
Marta giggled. “Make yourself at home and let me know if you’ll be needing anything.”
****
David pulled the covers up to his chin and patted the bed. “Come on, girl.”
She paced the floor.
“Come on up, Darwin.”
Slobber dripped from her tongue, and her ears
were still set unnaturally back. Maybe there was going to be an earthquake or something? She was acting so strange.
David threw off the covers.
“I can’t even get my own dog to sleep with me.” He sat at the edge of the bed. “Do you need to go outside?”
There was a dog door downstairs
, and she had never had a problem going by herself.
He went to the door, offering to join her, but she cowered in the corner, walking back and forth and whining.
“I don’t know what you want,” he said, stroking her head
.
She
settled at the foot of the bed, uninterested in leaving the room.
David bent over her. “Please come
up.”
She licked his hand
and whimpered.
Leaving the door ajar and letting her choose, he got back into bed, pulled up the covers, and
invited her into the warm sanctuary. “It’s now or never, girl.”
Darwin’s ears folded back. She stared at the open door.
“Fine.” David turned out the light and was soon fast asleep.