Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) (20 page)

Dougherty stopped
in the doorway’s entrance and turned around, looking at Redington who was still standing in the center of the cathedral floor. “Aren’t you coming, Paul?” he asked.

“Yes,” Redington said
, “I’ll be there in a moment.” Dougherty hesitated a moment longer before turning and stepping through the doorway.

Beyond the windows, to the west, the sun was setting in a
brilliant blaze of glory, casting multi-colored prisms through the stained glass and over the interior of the great temple.

Outside, from its hilltop, the cathedral had once commanded fine views; west all the way to the Ohio
River, north and south over the lush meadows of the region toward the small village of Darby in the distance. The former view was still available to the occasional tourist who wanted to bother with sight seeing; the latter had been interrupted in the second half of the twentieth century by urban sprawl and shopping malls. Now there was a screen of well-tended hemlock trees between cathedral and road; not sufficiently tall to conceal the upper half of the building’s steeple and tower, but enough to dampen the view from the lower levels of the church to the modern world beyond.

How such a place had come to be built in rural eighteenth century Ohio—given the fact that Jesuits were by definition
soldiers and wanderers who, for the most part eschewed excess—was a story of sheer and enormous will, a testament to the innate need for roots, the insatiable sense of home that drives men to accomplish uncommon feats.

Redington’s moment of reflection was suddenly
interrupted as the statue of Christ, hanging on its eternal cross near the altar suddenly exploded in a convergence of multi-colored light prisms. It was as if the deity had suddenly come to life and was attempting to convey some sort of cryptic message. It was just the setting sun of course, slanting through one of the stained glass windows. The old priest stared at the spectacle in awe for a long moment, watching the familiar image wax and wane in the dying sun’s illumination, waiting for some sign from the heavens. But of course, no message was conveyed, no answers to his most daunting questions, just a great weight in his heart for what had to be done on this day.

Just as suddenly as the strange spectacle beg
an, the sun set behind the hills, and it was over, the interior of the cathedral darkening as if a blanket had been drawn over it. The only sound in the chilling silence of the holy place was the soft murmuring of voices as the other six members made their way down the stairs at the back of the church toward the basement meeting room. And as the voices receded Redington felt a strange and prophetic chill come over him. In his pocket the fragment began to vibrate, and through the fabric of his robe he felt heat. He plunged his hand into the robe’s pocket and encircled his fist around the object hoping to tame its ambition. The pain was immediate and nearly overwhelming, as he suspected it would be. Even so, he did not release his hold on the artifact. Extracting it, he finally opened his hand and held it close to his face, examining it for the umpteenth time. And again he was awed by its strange, almost alien metamorphosis. It pulsed and glowed in the dim illumination, morphing from a simple pitted iron spearhead fragment into the most beautiful golden object he had ever seen. And as this strange alchemy took place, blood poured from the wounds it caused, and again, as always, the pain felt somehow right.

Redington did not move, couldn’t move. The silence was too intense, almost annoying. Something
was
happening. He felt it in every fiber of his being. He’d been nervous since making the decision to call the meeting of the elders twenty-four hours earlier. And he didn’t know why until this very moment. His brethren had come unquestioningly from all corners of the globe. All understood the importance of this meeting and what it could mean to the future of mankind. These men, these elders, members of an ancient brotherhood who had dedicated their lives to a single cause, were the antithesis of the darkness that occupied the shadows of this strange and contradictory universe. But something was very wrong on this day. As far as he knew, loyalties had never before been questioned, yet moments ago that had all changed. Dear, God, yes, it was true, everything felt wrong; the body had somehow been infected, and the air inside the cathedral felt thick with evil.

Redington knew that these holy men had not made the journey here alone. The Brotherhood of the Order employed many people, scientists, tacticians, security forces, ex-soldiers, and yes, even assassins, all sworn to loyalty and obedience, well paid, ready and willing to do whatever
was necessary to protect the Order’s secrets and sanctity. And Redington knew that stationed outside the temple on this day were innumerable of these forces. These nameless, faceless people, trained professionals, soldiers and assassins, flew in the face of everything the church stood for. But it was a dangerous world, and Jesuits had always been forced to live by the sword. The Jesuit Brotherhood of the Order was, after all, a direct descendent of the legendary Nights Templar; this was the truth, although society at large had no idea that the Templars still existed in any place other than internet conspiracies, of which there were many. And that’s the way the Order preferred things to be.

The Jesuit
Templars began as a military religious order of the Roman Catholic Church. They’d been betrayed once driving what was left of their decimated ranks underground. They would never make that mistake again. Ever vigilant, they had managed to remain in the shadows for more than half a millennium, they’re most sacred mission: to see that the artifact ended up in the proper hands.

Although Redington had always taken comfort in his and the other members’ security, in that moment he realized a cold hard fact. All of the trained professionals in the world could not protect them. The object was telling him to run, to go quickly and not look back, because something inherently evil, something greater than all the power of man’s collective good had infiltrated the Order’s sanctity
on this day.

From the corner of his eye Redington picked up a quick and sudden movement, a flash of light so silvery-bright that it was almost blinding. He whirled, his heart racing to a gallop in his frail chest, and for a moment he thought his seventy-nine year old bowels might let go. But the flash was gone before he could identify it. He scanned the interior of the darkening cathedral for more movement, but saw none. The artifact was pulsing, telling him to run, to go from this place as quickly as possible and deliver the prize to its rightful owner before it was too late.
Run,
it said.
Run, run, run!
But he could not run. He could not even move. Not yet. First he needed to
see.
And what he needed to see was the truth, which came to him in a flash of gut wrenching horror.

When finally he did move, he did not run away, as the artifact kept insisting, instead he began walking determinedly toward the door that led to the downstairs meeting room, the place where moments ago his six contemporaries had gone. His pounding heart fill
ed with dread, he descended the carpeted stairs. All along the way the corridor was lit by guttering candles set in wall sconces. As he drew closer to the meeting room, he heard nothing but a chilling silence. Then the slaughterhouse smell struck him and he stopped cold. “Oh, God,” he murmured. “Not now. Please, not here.” But he knew, God, he
knew,
and he began walking again, tentatively this time, toward the door at the end of the corridor, toward the truth he knew lay within. In his tight fist the artifact vibrated so severely that blood spilled to his feet along the way. He felt no pain. He was beyond pain. His entire being was numb with shock and disbelief.

When he pushed the door open he saw death everywhere. No, it was more than death, it was blasphemy; the bodies all mixed up somehow, as if they had been put through some sort of cosmic blender. The heads were whole and untouched, calcified, like blocks of
alabaster, propped up on individual chairs, eyes wide open staring blankly toward the doorway, mouths stretched and elongated; five silent screams. The reality struck him like a lance in the heart. Five, not six. He looked from face to face counting them again, recognizing each one. He glanced around him. At the end of the room the exit door stood ajar and there was no sign of the traitor. The reality struck him with cold finality. Nearly seven hundred years of effort had all been erased in the wink of an eye by a traitor he had suspected but had no proof of, a servant not of God, but of an unholy entity that was gaining in power by the minute. His attention was suddenly drawn to a tier of Aramaic words scrawled in the victims’ blood on the far wall.

He knew what the words meant, of course, he’d seen them before.

LOST

FORSAKEN

FORGOTTEN

But what astounded him most was the image below the name. A perfectly-rendered—in an almost supernatural way, as though it had been photo-flashed onto the wall—copy of the object he’d worn around his neck for nearly half a century.

The
same object that pulsed and burned in his hand at this very moment.

Clutching the artifact tightly in his fist, he placed it against his chest where his heart beat
out a syncopated rhythm.

He stared, unable to move
, his breath wheezing in and out of his lungs. This seemed a first in the annals of the Collector’s brutality. Redington did not actually know who or what the Collector was. His predecessor, Father Starbird, had given him as much as he knew, but in fact, no one actually knew for sure; there were rumors that he was a fallen angel cast out by God and trapped here on earth. But Redington had never been convinced of this; the demon he knew seemed more illusionist than something of God’s making. There were other wilder rumors that he was some sort of alien from another world—perhaps another reality—come here to wreak havoc upon the earth. To Redington this seemed more like science fiction than anything based in fact.

One thing was certain, the Collector was
a clever illusionist, but for the most part his stunts seemed contrived, his repertoire limited to cheap parlor tricks, butchery and kidnapping. And when he became bored with his little sideshows he would run back to wherever it was he hid and continue to draw power from the unfortunates he had taken there as sustenance.

The real power was in the artifact, in the things it could do,
in the visions it could portend, both horrible and wonderful, and in the protection it could afford its owner. He suspected that the Collector wanted it but was not powerful enough to take it as long as the one who possessed it was alive and refused to relinquish it. What Redington could not understand is how the Collector had managed to corrupt Isaac Ross, a trusted member of the Order. Earlier in the day Redington had completed his meeting with the young woman, and she’s the one who had informed him that Isaac was the suspected traitor.

Redington
carefully made his way toward the stairwell and what he hoped would be freedom. Along the way he reached toward a candle sconce, tipping it and dropping its burning contents to the carpeted floor. Then another. And another. The candle wax splashed as flames spread out and began to burn with vengeance.

“You would destroy your precious house of God?” whispered a voice that froze Redington in his tracks.

Redington placed the trembling fist that contained the artifact against his heart. “It is merely a building of stone and wood,” he replied. “The true house of God dwells within us all.” He scanned the corridor looking both ways for some sign of the illusionist. He saw nothing.