The Romulus Equation (14 page)

In the spiritual plane time had no meaning, and she was unaware how long it had taken her to cross the sun-baked desert, dry and decayed, but when she arrived she nursed a stitch in her ribs. Her heartbeat quickened as she looked as the mountains before her. Now that she had arrived at their feet, she could see that they were arranged in a crescent formation, with a narrow gorge running through their centre. Steeling her courage, the fortune-teller continued her approach, all the while expecting her son to leap out of the shadows and attack. Her astral self breathed, walked and talked in much the same manner as her physical one, but she reminded herself that this was not reality. This was the domain of a madman. Even though this was not the physical world, she could still die in this place. In fact, Renard would be doing his level best to ensure it. Should her immortal soul be destroyed, the effect that it would have on her physical body back at the hotel would be catastrophic.

The journey so far had been fraught, but her son had been absent, no doubt watching every moment of her torment from afar. As she walked through the narrow gorge between the towering mountains, a blanket of shadows rushed to consume her. She looked nervously behind her as she felt them encroach upon her.

‘Be calm, Destine,' she told herself. ‘Now is not the time for a faint heart.'

She scoured the mountains that walled her in, feeling a thousand piercing eyes watching her every move. Still, bravely ever onwards she went, deeper into the gorge. Soon, she found herself enclosed, as if the walls were moving in on her from all sides, and she obeyed a sudden compulsion to flee. She lifted her skirts, running as fast as she could, but before she could escape the rocks slammed shut in front of her, barring her exit completely. She was trapped. She looked around, seeing a slim shaft of light in the distance, but as she made a start towards it, a column of rock burst forth from the ground, just inches from her feet. She shielded her face as she was pelted with thick, choking dust. Spotting a thin crevice, a seam of light illuminated by a flash of lightning, she started towards it, but once again, right in front of her the earth was breached by a monstrous monolith bursting through the sand. Again and again the columns smashed themselves up from below the ground, coating everything in choking red dust. It was as if the rocks were alive, walling the Frenchwoman inside their circle, desperate to keep her incarcerated. Destine fell to her knees, her legs useless. She felt her heart hammer ten to a dozen, threatening to burst free from her chest. It was the most potent fear that she had ever experienced. There was no escape from it. As the cloud of dust cleared, Destine looked closer at the stone columns. What she had taken for rock was not rock at all – it was a tower of naked bodies, coated in a thick blanket of blood, squirming and writhing in agony. It was alive with Renard's victims… and they were screaming for release. A hand leapt from the tower of corpses and grabbed her and as Destine tried to cry out, no sound was heard.

‘
Help me
!' pleaded the owner of the hand, her face contorted as she was crushed against the body of another victim. ‘
Help me leave this place
!'

‘
Help us
,' added another.

‘
Help us all
,' said yet another.

A chorus of groaning victims was the only sound that Destine could hear as grasping hands pleaded with her, smashed faces begged her, grotesque messes of limbs and deformed organs shuffled closer. Destine heard organs burst, bones snap, skulls crush, and still, those gut-wrenching pleas for mercy. Destine snapped her eyes shut, denying the voices as they tried to invade her mind. Like a barrage of chattering whispers from every side, all at once the shrieks of the dismembered bodies assaulted her ears. Destine tried to push the chorus of guttural voices away, but they kept coming back for wave upon wave of attack until the many voices became unified and focused into one, seething voice of hatred.

Madame Destine recognised it instantly.

‘
Surely you must know that you are outmatched, Mother. This is my domain. I claim absolute majesty over your soul, and once it is dead your physical body out there unprotected in the real world shall also die. You should have let me kill you before. Then at least I would have allowed you to beg for mercy. But now I will make sure that your agony lasts an eternity.
'

On her knees, her hands clamped to her ears, ‘
Non
!' Destine screamed, her eyes streaming tears. ‘I will
not
submit!'

Her voice was like an explosion, the sound shattering her eardrums, deafening her.

No, she was not deaf.

There was just no sound to be heard. No sound anywhere.

Destine opened her eyes. The voices were gone. So too were the patchwork pillars of Renard's dismembered victims. It was all a trick of the mind. Digging her fingernails into the dirt, Destine concentrated her efforts. Renard was right – this was
his
mind,
his
domain. Playing by his rules, he was destined to be victorious. She had been a fool; fighting a spiritual battle with physical weapons. Denying the pressure building within her abdomen, she focused all her conscious thought.

A blast of energy exploded from her stomach and leapt into her hands. She held it gently, nursing it, shaping it into a sphere of white light. The sphere grew in size and mass as Destine felt her strength return.

It was like bathing in the light of a newborn star.

‘
What are you doing
?' screamed Renard's voice in the ether, as the blinding sphere grew bigger still. No longer in Destine's hands, it floated above her head, bathing her astral body in its radiance.

‘
Stop that
!' Renard commanded.

But Madame Destine did not stop.

Her body was illuminated; the sphere's light bleaching everything to white. Even with her eyes squeezed shut, Destine could see it. She was snow-blind.

The sphere exploded to cover everything it touched, erasing it. The coarse sand beneath Destine's feet, the blood-red rocks around her, the scorched sky – the sphere consumed the totality of Renard's psychological realm until there was nothing left.

Anywhere.

White.

Everything was white.

‘
Destine
!' yelled Prometheus, back in the reality of the guest house room, as he ran to the fortune-teller's side, barely getting there in time to catch her before she collapsed. He laid her gently onto the bed, lifting her veil. Her eyes were closed, and her breath shallow. Prometheus searched her face for a sign of life. ‘For God's sake, don't be doing this! Not after all we've been through! Don't you bloody die on me, woman!'

Destine smiled feebly. ‘Perish the thought…'

‘Thank the Lord!' gasped Prometheus, bundling her up into his embrace. ‘The both of you have been like statues for hours! What the hell happened?'

‘She won,' said a clipped voice behind Prometheus, and the strongman spun around to see Renard regaining consciousness, a bloodied tear rolling down his right cheek.

At the sound of her son's voice, Destine sat bolt upright. For a few moments they stared at each other, neither one able to speak, neither one sure what to say.

It was Renard that broke the silence.

‘
Félicitations, mère
. And so… you may claim your prize. I will lead you directly into the heart of the Hades Consortium's lair. It is beneath an old foundry, less than three miles from here. But we will need to leave soon, for our psychic battle has taken its toll on my body.' He looked down at the fresh blood that seeped through the bandages. ‘My wound has reopened and I will be dead soon.'

‘You will not!' stormed Destine, grasping her son by the throat. ‘I am inside your head now, Antoine, and if I do not wish it then you shall not die! Prometheus, let us depart immediately. We shall soon be at Cornelius's side.'

Renard afforded himself a grin. Everything was working to plan…

Once darkness had fallen, Cornelius Quaint fired up his assembled crew in much the same way as he did his troupe of circus performers before a show. He paced along the line of men that consisted of Romulus, Viktor Dzierzanowski, the crime-lord's second in command, Giuseppe, as well as a ragtag band of Romulus's paid muscle. The conjuror sized them all up, his granite expression unwavering as he caught their eyes and held their gaze. A briefing on the forthcoming day's events was given, and Quaint was confident that everyone knew their roles to play. Everyone was primed for action, and everyone would do an exemplary job. Only Viktor seemed a little confused about a few points, specifically: how on earth it was all going to work, what they would do if they were spotted, and why Quaint insisted on venturing knee-deep into insanity at the drop of a hat.

‘Number one, Viktor,' Quaint said, with a finger in the air. ‘Our plan is really quite simple, but we must not invite complacency. Number two!' exclaimed Quaint raising another finger. ‘I have no intention of us being spotted, but if so I shall do what I do best and talk us out of it. And finally, number three – shame on you, Viktor – insanity is an oft overlooked recourse. So, are there any more questions?' Quaint did not pause long to find out. ‘Right then. Let's go and destroy an irreplaceable work of art!'

A little over an hour later, Quaint, Viktor, Romulus and the small band arrived at a piazza, with the Fevretti Fountain located in its direct centre. Quaint marvelled at the fountain's design. It had been decades since he'd last seen it, and although it had aged considerably, it was still as breathtaking as ever. The towering statue upon a raised platform sculpted to show the goddess Diana in scenes involving the hunting of stags, wolves and snakes. Even though it was hundreds of years old, the cascading flow of water seemed to inject it with life. The statue was fifty-seven feet high with the circumference of the fountain's base around fifteen yards, in turn enclosed behind a fifteen-feet high fence, its tips fashioned into lethal-looking points.

‘Of all the places that we needed to go, it had to be here,' said Romulus by Quaint's side, reading the conjuror's mind. ‘But without it, we would have a devil of a job getting inside the Hades Consortium's lair.'

‘They probably don't think anyone would be stupid enough to blow up the Fevretti to gain entry,' said Quaint.

‘Well, they did not count on us, did they?' Viktor said, proudly.

Romulus and Quaint shared a glance.

‘Now that we have come all this way, are we not going to go through with this?' asked Giuseppe, Romulus's second in command.

‘Don't be so hasty, son!' snapped Quaint. ‘There are still people about, and I'd rather we didn't have any witnesses, thanks all the same.'

‘But the fountain's guards lock the fence around it about ten o'clock, and that will make our job even harder!' said Giuseppe.

‘It's but a minor obstacle compared to the real problem,' said Quaint. ‘And I want those guards to lock that gate. Only then will they know their jobs are done and they can go back to their homes safe in the knowledge that everything is secure. I'd much rather that than have to deal with anyone who gets in our way. They're not the real enemy.'

‘Yes, but it gets locked with a formidable chain,' said Giuseppe. ‘I tried to pick it myself just for fun when I was a young boy. It's impregnable.'

‘Bah!' snorted Viktor. ‘No lock is such!'

Quaint grinned. ‘And that's why I brought Viktor along. I need his particular talents.'

‘What does that mean?' asked Romulus, eyeing the German. ‘I thought he was a knife thrower?'

‘He is, and a damn fine one. In fact, he's the best in Eur—'

‘The World,' whispered Viktor.

‘The World,' said Quaint. ‘But before he earned that title, he had another one… as a plunderer of people's possessions.'

Viktor's cheeks flushed with embarrassment. ‘That was a long time ago.'

‘You are a thief?' asked Giuseppe. ‘Me too!'

‘It is a small world,' Viktor muttered, looking around at the group of surly men under Romulus's charge – scoundrels, miscreants and ne'er-do-wells, the lot of them. In this particular place, it would have been more of a challenge to find one of them who was
not
a thief.

‘So we wait until all the pedestrians are gone,' said Quaint. ‘And in the meantime, I need to familiarise myself with the fountain again, remind myself just how big the bloody thing is. We're going to have to make an awfully loud bang. Thankfully, I have just the thing.' He produced two explosive sticks from inside his jacket pocket. ‘I picked these up in Egypt a few months back and I knew they'd come in handy. A bunch of mercenaries called the Clan Scarabs concocted the stuff, and if memory serves, one stick is more than enough to breach that tunnel.'

‘So why do you have two?' asked Romulus.

‘Because we don't want to risk anyone following us,' said Quaint.

‘But that will also cut off our only escape route,' said Romulus. ‘And what about the Consortium's guards that might be patrolling the tunnels? My spies have never gone as far as the Hive before. They never dared. We only have a handful of men in our band and the Consortium has an army, remember?'

‘True, but I doubt that many are actually stationed here in Rome,' said Quaint. ‘You said so yourself, even your own men dared not get too close, but it's the Consortium's reputation that's also its biggest weakness. It'll
assume
that no one knows where its little secret lair is, and it'll also assume that even if someone did, there's no way they'd be brave enough to come knocking. So it
assumes
it's untouchable, that its reputation is deterrent enough.'

‘Your plan is flawed, Cornelius,' said Romulus. ‘Remember, this place is the Hades Consortium's main base of operations in the world, and the council of the inner stratum resides within… its most trusted and powerful members at arm's reach – my brother being one of them. If I were the Hades Consortium, the Hive is exactly where I would station most of my troops.'