The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (10 page)

He rose with her, her full breasts pressing against his chest, his desire arcing to an unbearable level. As he lightly bit her neck she moaned and moved her head downward, kissing his chest as her hands massaged the ridged muscles in his stomach. Then he looked down over her shoulder and saw not the smooth curvature of her back, but scaly skin and a jagged reptilian ridge
where her spine should be. Stomach recoiling, Grey tried to push her away, but somehow she was too heavy. He was suffocating under her weight, unable to catch his breath.

He shot up in bed, panting, realizing it had all been a dream. The bead of sweat dripping off his brow evidenced the intensity of the nightmare. Despite the gruesome ending, his whole body was flush with desire, tingling at the memory of her touch.

He was parched and went to the bathroom for some water. This time he saw her in the mirror when he flicked on the light, standing behind him with the same expression she’d had on the plane, that exquisite face pleading for help.

She was gone before his eyes adjusted to the light, a lingering effect of the dream, a living ghost to torment his lonely nights. He checked behind the shower curtain as if he were a child, then splashed his face with water and hovered over the sink. As water dripped off his chin, he peered up at his unshaven face and tousled dark hair and sleep-filled eyes, at his scars and the edges of the tattoos covering his back and triceps.

He returned to bed and succumbed to the drone of late-night television, his pulse slowly returning to normal. The memory of the dream faded as the entropy of deepest night arrived, and he felt as if he were the only person awake on earth. Yet the one thing he failed to shake was the feeling of her cottony lips merging with his own, soft hair feathering his chest as he pulled her close.

V
iktor had been eager for Grey to leave, not because Viktor was tired but because two things called for his full attention: his absinthe and the past. Two things in which he never indulged too deeply while Grey, or anyone else, bore witness.

First the absinthe. Loosening the collar of his dress shirt, he sank into the sofa, imbibing until the cool liquid fire stoked his mind and prepared the way for the coming journey. This particular cubbyhole of memory, dank and secret, was more personal than most.

Grey had asked why a practitioner of magic might be involved with these murders, and Viktor had been less than forthcoming in his response. As Viktor had said, he did not yet understand the connection, but what he had withheld was that there was one area of magic that did indeed concern the study and invocation of the powers of darkness.

It was not a likely scenario, but Viktor had to admit it was the only one that made sense at this point. Yet before Viktor drew this to Grey’s or anyone else’s attention, he had to be sure.

Because Viktor himself had once dabbled in this type of magic, and he preferred that chapter of his life to remain buried.

The absinthe swirled under Viktor’s practiced hand, rocking gently in the glass. When she stilled, drawing Viktor’s gaze into her murky depths, he began to remember.

Viktor Radek had come of age under the long shadow of the Iron Curtain, and during his childhood he saw his beloved Czechoslovakia sink further and further into the stultified embrace of Communism. Minor Bohemian nobility under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Viktor’s family had transitioned to successful merchants and bankers when the Czechoslovak Republic was formed in 1918. The arrival of Communism reduced the Radeks from royalty to simply filthy rich.

Viktor loved every single statue, castle, and Gothic cathedral in his country. He loved the beauty and culture of Prague, he loved the medieval villages tucked away like treasure chests in the forests, he loved the Czech Republic’s weird quirks, literary prowess, and strange fascination with death.

But his countrymen were suffering. The Czechs took the occupation harder than most, as they did not even have religion to sustain them. It fascinated him to this day, that a country whose buildings and landscape dripped with mystique could remain one of the most secular cultures on earth.

Viktor, on the other hand, had always questioned the
why
, had asked his parents about the nature of God when he was five years old. But the religious pessimism of his birth country influenced Viktor’s worldview from the beginning, making him who he was today: someone who yearned for answers, but for whom blind faith would never suffice.

What Viktor sought was cold, haughty, adamantine-hard proof. He had witnessed enough seeming impossibilities and inexplicable occurrences in his profession to know that at least some of the answers were out there.

Or had he? He wondered if it was even possible, from the tragically challenged vantage point of humanity, to do more than chip away at eternal truth and divine mystery, to discover if a puppet master cackled as he pulled the strings.

But there was the rub, he thought with a languid draping of his arms over the sofa, the absinthe working its way into his marrow. The universe was a
machine, beautiful and complex beyond imagining, but still a machine. And machines have builders, operators, repairers.

They have designers.

So he would search, and study, and bear witness, until he had overturned every secret-laden stone on earth, until he had done everything in his power to uncover the why. Dark or light, good or evil, right or wrong, it was knowledge that was paramount.
Truth
.

Oh, he could hear them now, the philosophers and existentialists clamoring in their beer halls, shouting to the monks at the next table over that truth was a fable, a personal lens. Well, Viktor was also a philosopher, one of the best in the world, and he was here to tell them that truth existed somewhere, whether they liked it or not.

It was just deep, deep in the cave.

Viktor had trod the cobblestone streets of Prague as a young teen, exploring the remnants of the religious traditions that lay hidden in the nooks and crannies of Old Town, always looking over his shoulder for the
Státní bezpečnost
, the Communist party’s dreaded enforcers. Before he had entered high school, he’d studied with the underground Jews and Catholics, had sought the wisdom of the kabbalists, the Trappist monks, and the secret societies that littered the underbelly of Prague. His parents, worried that Viktor would draw the attention of the
Státní
, sent him to boarding school.

Switzerland felt like a sterile compound compared to Prague, but Viktor had gained something very important: intellectual freedom. He devoured religious and philosophic books with a hunger that baffled his teachers.

Viktor did exceedingly well in school, choosing Oxford because it had arguably the finest library in the world. Yet he soon discovered the library was no longer where he wished to be. Once Viktor decided to pursue religious phenomenology in graduate school he would return to the scrolls and dusty rooms he loved so well, but the cultural awakening of 1960s England spoke to his burgeoning youthful passions, and at Oxford he discovered something even more exciting than the riddles of the universe: He discovered how to live.

The Oxford girls loved this enigmatic, cultured visitor from Bohemia, tall and darkly handsome. Viktor never dove into the deep end of the countercultural revolution, standing on the sidelines with a cool air and his brooding intelligence while hordes of his generation threw themselves into drugs, free love, and Beatlemania. That just made him even more intriguing to the fairer sex. He could barely believe the freedom at his fingertips on this strange, freewheeling little island, and he didn’t think life could get any better.

Then he met Darius and Eve.

He found a kindred mind in Darius Ghassomian, an Iranian-American Viktor had met in an introductory World Religions class. Darius and Viktor always received top marks in their classes, and were considered perhaps the two most intelligent students at an already elite university. Both were also wildly ambitious.

Darius was similarly obsessed with religion and philosophy, yet he introduced Viktor to something far more interesting, something that was experiencing a revival in the universities and other mainstays of the countercultural revolution.

He introduced Viktor to the occult, and together they plunged headfirst into those dark and seductive waters.

During orientation Darius had met a girl named Eve, who had dabbled in witchcraft and the occult and was impressed by his knowledge. Eve’s shyness bordered on disability, yet she had an otherworldly beauty behind the thrift-store skirts and turtlenecks. When Viktor first met her Eve reminded him of the American actress Faye Dunaway, mysterious, withdrawn, her face possessed of a ghostly symmetry. Darius, awkward and thin as a javelin, knew Eve was drawn to him not out of attraction, but because she did not feel threatened.

Viktor felt an instant connection to Eve and thought she felt the same. To Viktor’s chagrin, it was obvious that Darius was hopelessly in love with Eve. Viktor did not have great experience in such matters, so he decided to ignore the situation—a ridiculous idea, he soon realized—because Viktor
thought he had everything of which he could dream: personal and intellectual freedom, a vibrant social life, and two very close friends with whom to share his experiences.

Neither Viktor nor Darius was sure if Eve shared their obsession with life’s more esoteric questions, or just enjoyed having someplace she belonged. Neither bothered to ask. She seemed excited about the new adventure they had planned for next year, when they returned from summer break. They had sampled a wide variety of the occult; exploring witchcraft, ancient goddesses and fertility cults with Eve; the kabbalah, secret societies and Eastern mysticism with Viktor; and introduced by Darius to the rich and enigmatic world of magic.

All of these things were interesting, but it was time to broaden their horizons. To journey to a place only the intrepid dared venture, Darius told them, to plunge into the darkness and rise back out with the keys to knowledge and power grasped firmly in hand. Eve and Viktor agreed at once to Darius’s plan, and Viktor spent the entire summer in anticipation of the coming year.

For Viktor, Eve, and Darius had decided to become black magicians.

Viktor didn’t know when he had drifted off, but he woke from his stupor just before four a.m. After drinking a glass of water, he tried to sleep, but his mind was too steeped in the past to relax. He went to his laptop and Googled the press conference for the Order of New Enlightenment.

Earlier in the day Grey had asked Viktor if he had heard of a charismatic New Age preacher named Simon Azar. He had heard of him, but hadn’t had a chance to hear him speak. Cults and charismatic religious figures abounded, coming and going every day by the hundreds, around the world. Viktor became interested when they turned from populism to criminal behavior, or if there was another compelling reason.

A link to Simon’s first press conference appeared, as well as to another broadcast that had aired earlier that night. Viktor clicked on the former.
Seconds into the video, Viktor’s mouth fell open, shoulders hunching as his body coiled into a spring of tension.