Magi Saga 1: Epic Calling (17 page)

She couldn’t talk, she just screamed and roared as loud as she could, hoping that someone might hear her. The man talked to her but she couldn’t make anything out at all, she wasn’t really listening. Moments later she realised he had her other big toe nail in the grip of those pliers. She’d only just come to this realisation when he ripped that one free as well.

The pain and the fear she felt as she cried and tried to make her voice heard outside this room meant she didn’t take much notice of Vito and what he was doing. Moments passed and then suddenly she realised he’d moved and had sat right next to her and even now he had hold of one of her fingers.

‘No, no no not my fingers, please no, don’t, don’t do this, please, I’ll tell you anything you want, anything, I don’t care, I don’t, no, please. Please,’ she said as she felt the pliers grip the nail of her middle finger on the right hand, and pull.

He’d pulled four nails in total, two toe nails and two finger nails before he stopped and let her calm herself. No one had heard her, no one had come to save her, she was totally at his mercy, and he knew it.

She’d stopped crying, and had just started to catch her breath, but she looked up to the ceiling. She didn’t want to look at her fingers or toes. The pain had faded a touch, but not by much, she still felt like her digits had been pulled off, not just her nails, she knew they hadn’t because she could feel them and wiggle them, her fingers and toes were still there.

‘So Jade. I have some questions. Do you still have this silly sense of loyalty to your old friends or will you answer my questions?’

‘Do I have choice?’ she muttered, feeling exhausted.

‘Of course. You don’t have to speak to me. You have plenty more nails left and I’ve not even started with the drill yet. Would you like to talk to go for round two?’

‘Ask your fuckin’ questions,’ she said.

She’s been gone for a few days now, it’s strange, Jade is never away this long without letting us know where she is or if something’s the matter.

That man has been snooping around again today with his Private Detective badge and dodgy accent. He seems really interested in AJ and where she’s gone too. I’d like to know that myself as she disappeared pretty quickly.

Stuarts death didn’t help matters either, I have no idea where we’ll find another guy like him, it’s been tough out there these past few weeks.

Where the hell are you Jade?

- The diary of Renée

Report

The Vatican, Rome

Mid-September

Vito had been back in the Vatican for only a few short hours and had been catching up on his sleep, the jet lag wasn’t too severe but he felt tired all the same. He knew that Mary Damask would want a full report and a chat with him as soon as he could make it, so, on the plane back from the United States he had chosen to write up this report rather than sleep. Once the report was done, he had managed to catch a few hours’ sleep before the plane finally put down into Rome’s Leonardo Da Vinci International Airport, where upon landing he had been picked up and taken back to the Vatican.

Once back inside the holy city he passed by Mary’s office and left his report with the secretary before heading to his quarters and looking forward to a relaxing few hours’ sleep. He saw no need to see Mary right this second, she would need to read his report first anyway, and besides, he knew she would be swamped with other work as well. So Vito had decided to take a nap and see if he could grab a few hours before the call came through from Mary.

Vito had showered, crumpled into bed and fell asleep in moments. He must have been more tried then he had thought, and the sleep was dreamless and relaxing, for the most part. The only thing Vito could complain about being that it was much too short, the nap ended up being only a few hours long, not nearly enough to fully get over his jet lag as he still felt tired. He had been awoken by the insistent hammering of a clerk who had been sent to find him by Mary. She apparently wanted to see him right away and didn’t seem to care that although it might be mid-morning for her, it felt like some bizarre unknown hour for someone who’s sleep patterns had been sporadic at best and non-existent at worst these past few weeks.

Now in a different time zone, his mind had finally given up trying to figure out what hour it was, especially after his body clock had been further confused by this short nap.

Strangely though, once he had risen and begun to walk around a little bit pulling on his robes so that he looked somewhat presentable to the Grand Inquisitor, he quickly lost that feeling of fatigue. He might not agree with the time on his watch, but he felt alert and actually mildly refreshed.

Vito stood in front of the mirror in his bathroom and looked himself up and down, he looked presentable and ready for the meeting with the Grand Inquisitor. Looking at his reflection, he couldn’t help seeing the lines on his face from the years of service he had given the church.

Although fully awake and looking vaguely presentable, his lack of sleep was etched into his face making him look sunken and hollow. There were dark bags under his eyes, while his eyes themselves were heavily bloodshot.

It was at times like this that he jokingly wondered if God might be punishing him somehow, but he knew he had his limits, and there was no need to push them. Anyway, it could be easily fixed, and with a short Prayer, Vito had called upon his Divine Power and washed away the jet lag. It was a last resort, the Disciples were taught at an early age not to use His power frivolously or for personal gain and vanity. Just because you were now capable of astounding things didn’t mean you should rely on that power, or allow it to corrupt you.

The Disciples had seen many of their members lost to the other side due to the way the ability to use the Divine Power affected your mind. If you weren’t careful you began to think yourself above others and more than just a Human being.

Every Disciple was strictly trained and taught how and when to use the Power, and more importantly, when not to use the Power. Personal grooming being one of those things which they frowned upon.

Vito knew these things and typically paid heed to them. He certainly wouldn’t usually use the Power to see off tiredness or to make himself presentable for a meeting, but he figured this was a little more than usual circumstances and saw no harm in doing so this once.

The Disciples kept a number of Gifted Monks within their ranks for a few reasons and purposes, they almost never went out into the field and if they did it was usually as part of a much larger group. They performed a few tasks in the Vatican itself, one of which was to monitor the area for strange uses of the Divine Power and for incursions by Magi.

There were plenty of attacks in the Vatican’s early years, but as the church grew and the Vatican became the heart of the Catholic Faith, these attacks lessened and became much less successful as its defences grew. In recent decades there had been very few attacks at all. Many Gifted Inquisitors considered the Vatican their home, and the combined power they could bring to bare in the Vatican was substantial enough that even the most reckless and powerful Heretics thought twice about taking the Vatican and the Disciples on. Such an attack would be suicide and impossible to cover up, the secret of the Magi would be out and the burning times wouldn’t be far behind.

The Magi had learnt their lesson the hard way centuries ago when the Inquisitions hunted them down. There had been several public Inquisitions throughout the churches life time, each of them serving a purpose of the time in their own right, but they also covered up a much more secretive Inquisition as the Disciples of the Cross moved within the ranks of the Mundane Inquisitors hunting their Magi prey.

Vito often wondered what it must have been like to live during these times, when the Disciples worked much more openly and the Church was a true power in society. Only a few hundred years ago the Church had been a major international power that could topple kings and put others on the throne, but that had been a long time ago, and now the church seemed impotent and powerless on the board of international politics.

Disciples were still there however, working in the shadows and fighting the Devil worshiping Witches and Warlocks of the world.

Vito loved being out in the field, taking the Word of God to the Godless and showing them the Way, the Truth of the world and bringing them back to the fold like lost lambs. Every Magi repented his sins and cried for forgiveness when the cleansing flames slowly burnt away their taint.

The girl he’d been hunting in New York, the victim from the alleyway, had been called Amanda, and already it was clear to Vito that the Demon Horlack had not actually attacked this Amanda at all. It had been dark when this occurrence had happened, and the witness likely suffered from shock, after all, it isn’t every day you see one of Satan’s own in your very street.

No, to Vito it was very clear what had been happening, Amanda had clearly summoned the Demon somehow and been gifted with Dark Magic before killing her Pimp.

Two things then happened, one after the other to interrupt Vito’s chain of thought, firstly Vito’s sensitivity to the Divine sensed a working of the power in the room, one which he had been expecting and recognised as soon as it happened. One of the monitoring Monks who kept an eye on uses of the Divine Power in the Vatican was scrying into the room to check out the Magic that Vito had used moments ago. Intuitively feeling where the Monk’s senses were looking into the room, he turned and waved at him in a light hearted manner. A moment later the Divine Power faded and Vito was alone again. The Monks were nothing if not efficient and scrupulous.

Then the second disturbance was another urgent knock at the door to his room as the clerk was getting impatient.

‘I’ll be right there.’ Vito answered, and did one quick final check in the mirror before quickly leaving his room and heading along the corridor towards where the offices were, the clerk leading the way. It was about eleven a.m. and the sky looked bright but milky white with a blanket covering of cloud that the sun lit up, it still looked cool outside and Vito felt glad he wouldn’t have to leave the warmth.

The corridors and waiting rooms outside the offices were as richly appointed as the offices themselves, the churches wealth on show everywhere in the shape of luxury rooms, classic and famous paintings hung on the walls while statues and carvings stood waiting to be admired. All around him the Vatican’s staff went about their business, Priests, Cardinals and Swiss Guard walking purposefully this way and that to whatever meetings were waiting for them. Outside the windows Vito could see more people wandering around the grounds, some in quiet contemplation, others striding and clearly concentrating on reaching their destination.

Another corner and Vito had reached his own destination, the clerk motioned Vito into the waiting room and walked off. Vito stood at ease in the room where a man behind a desk worked as Mary’s secretary. He glanced up and motioned to a chair indicating that Vito should sit and wait for Mary to be free. The room was quiet apart from the Secretaries occasional rustling of paper and scratching of his pen as he wrote. Sitting down to wait, he found he could hear the muffled and distant sounds of Mary on the phone, it was incredibly faint and Vito certainly couldn’t make out any words, but at least he knew why after such an urgent summons he was now made to wait.

The offices the Grand Inquisitors used were large and spacious and some of the best in the whole of the Vatican. After all, they may be a secret branch of the church, but they were also the founding branch. This meant that the Disciples of the Cross had every luxury and no expense was spared for them. They were fighting for the world and its salvation, they were on the front lines and putting their lives at risk daily so that the rest of the world could live in peace.

Mary’s office was perhaps the biggest and most spacious of all the Grand Inquisitors, with her large desk at the far end leaving a large open space between the door and the desk that you had to cross to speak to her.

It made you feel small and was no doubt done on purpose to intimidate those who went in to see her.

The secretary’s voice cut through Vito’s musings as he heard the man press the intercom button and speak into it. Vito had never bothered to learn the names of the secretaries Mary used, there where at least three that seemed to be on some sort of rotation, and Vito had more important things on his mind.

‘Vito is here to see you ma’am,’ the man said.

‘Send him in please.’ Mary’s voice sounded from the intercom in the slightly distorted way they do when sent through such devices.

The Secretary clicked off the button and walked to the door, Vito rose and walked over as the Secretary opened the door to let him through closing it behind him. Vito felt quite insignificant as he stood at the far side of the office with Mary at the other end sat behind her desk jotting down notes, she wasn’t taking much notice of Vito for the moment.

The room was large with a high ceiling, rectangular in shape with the longer sides on either side of Vito as he stood at the door. Along the wall to Vito’s right were three tall arched windows that opened up onto the Vatican Grounds and lit the room with shafts of natural light. Long drapes framed these windows and stood tied back with golden ropes that pleated the drapes where they hung. Decorative rugs covered the floor, illuminated by the light from the windows as the high sun filtered through. On the left wall there were a number of paintings in thick gilded frames that hung over artistically carved tables and pedestals with small statues and busts perched upon them. He knew that these busts were of previous Grand Inquisitors who had used this office before Mary and who all were now dead. They watched over the proceedings of the office with detached benevolence and served as a reminder of the grand history of the Disciples of the Cross.

Directly to Vito’s left against the wall to his rear there was a table with glasses and decanters of water, while behind the desk along the far wall, there was a huge wall-to-wall book case that had been filled with a wide array of books from the glossy modern volumes to ancient and hoary codex’s, all of them related to Christianity, Catholicism and Witch Hunting in some way. The knowledge in these books was wide ranging, some of it could even be said to be blasphemous, but all of it was useful to the modern Inquisitor.

The desk Mary sat behind was set off to the right side of the far wall, closer to the windows, so that Mary got lots of light upon her oaken, wide desk. On its surface there were stacks of papers and folders, pens in pen holders, and other things that looked in keeping with the room around them, unlike the light grey, modern flat screen monitor and keyboard that sat on the right hand side of the desk.

The Vatican had taken a little longer than the rest of the world to speed up to the digital revolution, but young modern priests had forced it upon the church and by now the Vatican was fully wired up with broadband and all the other high tech gadgets you could ever need. But even now there were pockets of resistance, older priests who refused to work on these god forsaken contraptions. It was a nuisance as everything they wrote or typed had to be scanned in or copied into the Vatican’s Network, but people didn’t tend to argue with the Cardinals.

Mary finished what she was doing, closed the folder and popped it to one side, she motioned for Vito to come and join her at the desk, and to sit in one of the chairs that stood before it.

Mary Damask was slim but athletic, her pale features were severe and angular, enhanced by the bob of black hair that framed her face, its length and fringe cut to a harsh straight edge. She wore her robes of office which were a deep crimson colour and fell about her shoulders.

‘Welcome back Vito, does it feel good to be home again?’

‘Indeed it does Inquisitor, although the jet lag has been a little rough.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that Vito, but hopefully this shouldn’t take long. I’ve been a little busy today and have only found time to glance at your report. I’ll have a good look at it later when I get time, but I wanted to hear from you how it went first while it’s still fresh in your head. So, in your own time,’ she said, sitting back and indicating that he should start speaking.