The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (36 page)

B
y eight p.m., Grey was beginning to question the wisdom of his decision to wait for a courier to visit PO Box 550. By midnight, he was questioning his decision, despondent, and freezing.

Although the mail store closed at eight, Grey discovered that key holders had twenty-four-hour access to the section by the front door. He knew the second he left his post he would miss someone who could lead him to the next step in the puzzle. So he could put up with the lack of sleep, the incessant drizzle, the gnawing hunger.

What bothered him was that he might be wrong. He had already lost too much time. He hunched under the umbrella he had bought off a passing street vendor, resolving to wait it out until noon the next day.

The minutes crept by. When Grey checked his watch again it was three a.m. The Devil’s Hour, according to Viktor, so named because it was a mockery of three p.m., the hour when Jesus was supposed to have died on the cross. Despite himself, Grey shivered in the frigid damp, and not just from the rain and fog smoldering in the neon streetlights.

While Grey’s rational mind might propound that the Devil didn’t exist, the concept of an evil entity that had been with him from his earliest memories, a force of darkness at odds with God and humanity, was tough to shake.

Especially when huddled on a bench at three a.m. on a deserted street in East London, thinking of a beautiful girl with paranormal abilities who had
rescued him in the catacombs beneath Paris from a bloodthirsty pack of Satanists and their demonic magus leader.

The Devil’s Hour passed without incident, as did the two that followed. At six a.m. Grey’s cell rang. Numb from cold, he rubbed his hands together before taking Viktor’s call. He had been waiting anxiously to hear what happened with Gareth, having tried to call Viktor numerous times since midnight.

“I’ve been worried,” Grey said.

“With good cause. Brace yourself, because the news isn’t pleasant.”

Viktor sounded rattled, which at once put Grey on his guard. Viktor didn’t rattle. Grey could also tell, though Viktor hid it well, that he had drunk too much absinthe.

Viktor’s addiction had never been a problem with Grey, as he always kept it under control, or at least appeared to. Some men could handle addiction, some couldn’t. Grey wasn’t one to interfere with another man’s demons, but it was six in the morning.

Grey said, “I take it you haven’t slept?”

Viktor was quiet for a moment, and Grey knew that he got the hint. Viktor was his friend, and Grey would spend as much time as needed talking through his issues when the time was right. But at the moment, if they were to have a chance to get through this case, he needed Viktor clear-headed and at the top of his game.

“Not yet,” Viktor said, his voice more in control.

“Me, either.”

Grey listened to Viktor’s recounting of the past two days, feeling the color drain from his face when Viktor told him of the appearance of the robed figure and of Gareth’s immolation.

“Jesus,” Grey said.

“It’s not the Darius I once knew. I know that sounds clichéd, that we all change with time, but there was something in his voice… something different.”

“It’s harder to deal with when it’s your old college buddy.”

“Yes,” Viktor said quietly. “He’s more brazen than I would ever have imagined.”

“What’d the video show?” Grey said.

“The camera showed the appearance of a black-robed figure, or the illusion thereof. Unfortunately the camera was positioned behind the figure, and Gareth isn’t visible once the figure appears.”

“They knew where the camera was,” Grey said. “Then what?”

“The cause of the fire is impossible to determine from the angle of the camera, though it appeared to start at the cuffs of the robes, and explode from there.
Do prdele
, I should have insisted on another camera.”

“The robes must have been tampered with, some accelerant applied. Can we rule out the security guard?”

“Absolutely not,” Viktor said. “He disobeyed strict orders not to intervene.”

“His boss was being burned alive and screaming for help. You can hardly blame the guy.”

Viktor was quiet.

“If he caught some of the flames as well,” Grey said, “but didn’t burn like Gareth, that reinforces our theory of an accelerant.”

“It’s not a theory,” Viktor said.

“Just take it easy,” Grey said. “We’ll get him.”

“I don’t understand… I canvassed that room. But Darius was brilliant, perhaps the most intelligent person I’ve ever known. And he’s an illusionist as well as a chemist.”

“You don’t have to convince me it’s some kind of trick,” Grey said. “Even if you subscribe to this three powers of the Devil nonsense, fire isn’t one of the three.”

“Precisely.”

“So what’s next? Are you coming to London?”

“Not yet,” Viktor said. “There have been other developments.”

“Such as?”

“Two more letters have been delivered. One of them was to me.”

Grey cursed and pushed away from the bench. “When?”

“In my hotel, when I returned from the emergency room. I’ve no idea how it got there.”

“The same thing?” Grey said. “Six days?”

“Three. And there were other differences, principally that I was called a nonbeliever rather than a heretic.”

“Three days,” Grey said. “Come to London. He’s here somewhere, I can feel it.”

“I trust you, Grey. Keep working the angle you’re investigating, knowing that time is even more of the essence. I spoke to Jacques, and he’ll relay any information from the forthcoming investigation.”

“And you?”

“We must understand where he went and why,” Viktor said. “I know I’m getting closer.”

“What does it matter, now that he has the grimoire?”

“We don’t know that he has the grimoire, just that he was pursuing it. He might be pretending to have the grimoire to gain influence over L’église de la Bête. Devious and not unlike him. If I can find it first, it would destroy his reputation.”

“And if he already has it?” Grey said.

“Whether or not he found the book, I firmly believe the details are paramount to stopping him: where he went, what happened along the way, what he plans to do with it. We must discern his motives and predict his next move before it occurs.”

Grey frowned. That wasn’t where he would have placed his chips. He thought Viktor would better serve their cause by coming to London. But Grey wasn’t the boss, and Viktor was rarely wrong.

“So what’s next?”

“I leave for Palermo at noon,” Viktor said. “Regardless of what happens, you have my word I’ll rejoin you in three days.”

“Let’s hope so,” Grey said. “You mentioned a second letter. Who was it to?”

“The pope.”

W
hen the computer shut down, ending the live feed, Darius reached for a glass of water. His daily regimen of broadcasts and magical preparation had been exhausting, not to mention handling the day-to-day workings of both the Order and the various other organizations over which he now presided. He had barely slept in a week.

But the final push had been made. He checked the number, hoping his calculations had been correct.

They had. In the last hour, the Order of New Enlightenment had topped one million online followers. A rush of excitement coursed through his body, followed by one of pride.

He had done it. The new religion was thriving, or rather an old one that was three thousand years overdue, one that was going to turn the world on its head. The growth of subscribers had been exponential, far faster than he had anticipated.

And this was just the beginning, confirming what he already knew: The need was great; his God was real; the time had come.

He would show the world that everything they thought they knew about God, about religion, was out of balance, wrong. Backwards.

Evil
?
Good
? How did those terms apply to this world? Had anyone bothered to look around? Had anyone read the Book of Job?

Tonight he would make the announcement that ten days hence, he would throw wide the doors to the Order of New Enlightenment.

Ten days: seven days after the Unveiling, seven being representative of the invisible center, the spirit of all things that would reside in his temple of power and spread throughout the world.

After all these years, the countless hours studying and planning and searching, his moment had come. When the biggest domino of them all fell, Simon Azar would emerge from the resultant vacuum as the voice of reason for the world. And once his place at the top of Babylon was secure, Darius would show the world what real power was, what a
concerned
God could do. His towers of silence would pierce the clouds, his corpse bearers would fling the nonbelievers into canyons, rattling the earth with their screams.

It was time for a new age.

As he lingered, Darius admired the media room. His Internet connection was secured by the highest technology money could buy. The Russian hacker Darius had bought, a wanted man in three countries, had proved his mettle by hacking into the U.S. Department of Defense.

After slipping into his robe, Darius entered the six-sided antechamber, where four of the five other members of the Inner Council awaited. Darius took his place in the ebony armchair on the raised dais. Dante and Luc Morel-Renard sat to his right, two men whose loyalty he would never have to question. Dante relished his work, and Luc owed his political future to Darius.

The seats to Darius’s left caused him more grief. Oak was a necessary evil, critical to the North American power base. He didn’t worry about Oak’s straying from the path; he worried about his stupidity. When the time was right, and that time was soon, he would be replaced.

To the left of Oak sat Alec Lister, newly appointed leader of the Clerics of Whitehall, another key figure. Alec granted Darius access to an elite sector of British society, one full of depraved and cruel patriarchs. Darius knew Alec was the least loyal of the Inner Council, and so far Darius had kept him in check by appealing to his monstrous carnal appetite. Moreover, unbeknownst to Alec, Darius had gathered evidence of Alec’s proclivity for underage consorts.

Darius looked at the seat across the room, the empty chair, and his stomach contracted.

Eve, oh my Eve. Will you watch from afar as Viktor becomes a blackened corpse at my feet, pride stripped before the fall, his soul shucked and left to roam the ether? A discarded spirit pleading in vain for help from the gods in whom he never believed?

As Darius’s eyes drifted among the illusory stars of the chamber, he felt as if were sitting atop the galaxy. He saw the mysteries of the universe, of which there were many, spiraling from above, beckoning to the lost souls trapped within.

His thoughts returned to terrestrial matters, to the tiered flooring and ample spacing the architect had left between the oversize chairs, such that two more circles of six could fit within the original circle. When the time was right, Darius would expand to the proper number. The rest would be chosen for their influence, geography, and devotion, and he already had a few in mind: the leader of a heretical group of Sunnis, a Chinese billionaire, a devoted priest of Kali who commanded vast influence in the Mumbai underworld.

His lieutenants had gathered this evening because they were about to sample the event that would precipitate the Unveiling. Each was on the edge of his seat, eager to see what Darius’s genius would reveal.

Darius’s index finger depressed a button on the side of his chair. A section of the wall retracted, and moments later the members of the Inner Council gasped, the images on the giant projector laid bare before them.

Soon, very soon indeed, the entire world would see.