He ignored Archette, knowing the CIA man was planning a desperate move at the first opportunity. He also knew Archette could shoot him over the seat but he was watching his every move, so screw him. If he used a gun, Ben would just use his, simple as that. They could die together.
In a short time Ben found an isolated beach area. He drove in and stopped. Then he jerked open the limousine’s rear door, hauling and hurling Archette face-first onto the rocks.
There was no sand at all; the beach was a rainbow of sea gravel.
Bloodied by the impact, Archette rose enraged. His mouth was open in shock and emotion for the first time vividly twisted the haggard face. Ben felt a wave of satisfaction to know that, for probably the first time, Archette knew what it was like to be in the trenches instead of simply sitting back and criticizing those who did the fighting.
The CIA man’s eloquent manner had utterly fled.
“You . . . you’re a fool,” he rasped, pointing a finger. “Do you think they won’t know that you’re responsible for this?”
The .45 hung hot, and Ben shook his head.
“Bastard,” he whispered, feeling ridiculous, but not knowing what else to say. “You damned Communist bastard … You betrayed them.
Pushed them into the street... for whatever Cain is. For that evil damned family down the road.”
Archette seemed to collect himself. “Ben,” he began, with a rising control, pleading, almost apologizing. “You need to consider the consequences of this action. It is not too late to, uh, to resolve this this misunderstanding.”
Ben said nothing.
His face revealed it all.
Sobering, Archette straightened as he gazed into Ben’s eyes. Fear began to quicken in the CIA man’s face as he measured his situation. He began backing away. “I shall forget this,” he said, frowning, “and you can continue your career.”
Waves collided against the shore.
“Make peace with God,” Ben growled coldly. “I should’ve let Soloman do this a long time ago.”
Archette continued backing away.
“B-B-Ben,” he said, raising hands to plead reason. “Just what do you know? Please! I’m telling you the truth! I am on assignment! If you do this, you will only endanger the sanctity of—”
“Right,” Ben growled as he fired.
The first round went through Archette’s chest and sent a fleshy cloud of blood into salty air. The second caught him high in the right lung. The third blew off a white segment of skull and scattered showering chunks of bone and brain on distant rocks.
Swaying slightly, Archette stood, eyes gone glassy.
Then fell forward to the ground.
Ben raised his face to search the beach for witnesses. He found none, though it didn’t matter. They would know who did it, and he would deal with it. He slowly holstered the pistol and stared down, no words rising within him, as he’d expected.
The man was dead.
Yeah. He nodded, turning away.
It was enough.
***
Soloman mounted the stairway at the rear of the dungeon, climbing step by step until he came boldly into a wide torch-lit cathedral, beholding Cain seated motionless on a lordly stone throne.
Soloman glanced around and saw a portal to his left, a vast granite stairway leading up. Without expression he turned back to the throne as Cain smiled, released a faint laugh.
“Come to me, Soloman,” he said. “I did not want to face you in battle again; it was becoming tedious. But now, I suppose, I must kill you. And then begin again.”
Soloman walked forward, slowly reloading the shotgun. He held Cain’s demonic eyes, staring without fear at the giant seated so calmly on his throne in the cold, cavernous darkness.
“I’m going to kill you,” Soloman said without emotion.
“A bold threat for one who has lost so much,” Cain replied casually, unmoving and unintimidated. “Tell me, Soloman, do you know why you fight so fiercely?”
Soloman said nothing. With one hand he racked the shotgun.
“No, of course you don’t.” Cain smiled. “But I will tell you. You fight because you failed. Yes, because you failed your child, leaving her when she needed you the most. Because you failed your wife, surrendering to the temptations I presented – like all the rest.”
Soloman’s face was dead, his eyes ready. His mind was so shut down that he almost didn’t hear the words, but they struck him deep, hitting with a regret that wounded, making him mourn how much life he’d wasted when he had a child and wife who had loved him so much.
“Yes, because you failed them both,” Cain rasped. “You had the chance to make their lives and you cast it aside ... for this world.”
Soloman saw it all in a moment and knew that he had been loved, and that he had loved in return. It was true, he had not loved as he intended to love, but he had loved as truly as he had known how.
Cain laughed.
“No more words.” Soloman frowned. “It’s time.”
The giant laughed again. “Your courage is futile, Soloman. For whether I die or not means nothing to me. I will return ... I always return. And when I do, I will hunt you down to take my vengeance.”
“Then get ready to take it.”
Soloman raised the shotgun and fired.
The blast scattered wide with the distance to hit Cain and the throne and the wall behind him with a disintegrating impact. Then there was a pause as Cain slowly shook his head and stood, obviously perturbed. He flicked his hands, scattering blood.
“Again and again we dance this dance, Soloman,” he rasped. “But now I tire of it. You have become a distraction.” He gathered something within himself, lowering his head as he assumed a threatening stance. “When will you understand that you are nothing? When will you understand that I will always take what you love as my own?”
Warily, Soloman edged toward the stairway, the shotgun centered on Cain’s massive body. And as he reached the gate, glimpsing the long staircase behind him, he angled his body, secretly removing a grenade from his waist. He locked his thumb in the ring, waiting.
Cain’s aspect darkened.
“All games must end, Soloman.” He started across the floor, slowly at first but gathering speed quickly. “And this game has gone too long!”
He charged, hurling a massive table to the side.
Soloman turned and leaped up the steps as Cain crossed the floor in a roaring red rush, but this time Soloman was almost as fast, taking the stone steps four at a time. Desperation decided his judgment because he knew Cain would be closing in quickly, and he pulled the pin as he reached the second floor, dropping the grenade behind him. He made another ten feet before it exploded, bathing the upper stones in mushrooming fire that erupted with an inhuman howl.
Stunned by the concussion, Soloman rose and whirled back to fire for effect. He sprayed flames and saw Cain’s monstrous form sprawled wildly on the floor beneath the stairway, hands lifted to his head, his body wreathed in smoke. Clearly, he had almost been on top of the detonation and Soloman quickly loaded more rounds, taking a single second to secretly remove another grenade and lock a thumb through the ring.
“You’re going to die tonight, Cain,” he said. “As God is my witness, you’re going to die.”
Stillness, and the echoing roar.
With a growl Cain rose.
“Human,” he rasped. “You are only . . . human.”
“You took away everything I ever loved,” Soloman said. “I’ve come to take it back.”
Cain laughed, blood flowing from his mouth. “My only mistake was that you ever had it to begin with.” Then, rising with effort, he began to ascend the steps, his face smoldering over extended fangs.
Defiantly Soloman pulled the ring and tossed, staring stolidly as it toppled down the stairs. As Cain real
ized what was coming his eyes widened in surprise. Soloman waited until the last split-second before he moved, hurling himself aside. The blast was more brutal than he’d anticipated, erupting up the staircase to pursue him. He hit the floor rolling, bringing the shotgun high. Then he leaped back to see Cain stumbling wildly through the flames, and he fired point-blank, the round hitting center-mass.
As Cain staggered back Soloman fired again and again and again, sending down seven rounds. Then he leaped, hurling himself down the flight to kick the giant violently in the chest.
It was a murderous blow and would have killed a normal man, crushing his heart or shattering his spine, but Soloman knew it wouldn’t kill Cain. Yet as they tumbled down the stairs in a chaotic mass of flailing arms and legs, Soloman realized the blow had, indeed, stunned the giant. And when they reached the base, Soloman dove away as Cain struck at him again, shattering stone, his face distorted in horrific wrath. Whirling back, Soloman emergency-loaded a single round and fired.
The shotgun’s impact slammed Cain against the wall, fangs unhinged as an ungodly roar thundered into stone, and Soloman slammed in another round to fire yet again, pinning the giant down. Then he quick-drew the Grizzly, discharging the semiauto almost point-blank into Cain’s body.
At the first blast he knew it penetrated something vital because Cain’s bloody fangs distended in a wounded roar, the armor-piercing bullet cutting through and through. Soloman counted the rounds as he continued, and then the slide locked.
He had to move.
The giant’s wrath blazed black in his face as Soloman staggered away, entering a tunnel that led to somewhere dark and unknown with Cain pursuing close behind.
***
Maggie, supported by Mary Francis, staggered into the inner ward to see Marcelle falling from a stairway, the prison tower. The priest was blackened by blood, his hand hard against his chest.
“Marcelle!”
Mary Francis, shouting an oath, laid Maggie against a wall and spun to embrace Marcelle, settling him also against the stones where he collapsed, grimacing in agony. He tried to speak, failed, and wearily bowed his head, breathing heavily.
“Where,” he whispered finally, “is Soloman?”
The Mother Superior answered, “He has gone to kill Cain.”
Marcelle nodded without surprise, struggling to rise. Then he seemed to see something, and a slow groan of despair came from him. Maggie, instinctively clutching Amy more tightly in her arms, raised her head to follow the gaze and saw the horrifying sight.
Two warlocks approached, swords in hand.
Mary Francis stood, confronting them.
“Go,” she said to Maggie. “Go quickly.”
“Mary, you can’t—”
“Go, child!” she snapped, hesitating a moment before she added in a gender voice, “I have lived long enough.”
Marcelle coughed as the Mother Superior glanced at him. “Do you wish to follow Soloman or Maggie?” She revealed no expression. “Do what you must do.”
“I will follow Soloman,” Marcelle whispered and rose tiredly, stumbling toward the darkened portal that led to the dungeon. Blood coated the stones as he slowly staggered away.
“Marcelle!” Maggie shouted, and removed the syringe containing the original Marburg virus from her jacket.
He came back a step, and she reached out to place it tightly in his blood-soaked hands, speaking quickly. “This is the only thing that can kill him! If you inject Cain with this he’ll die in seconds! Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he whispered, carefully placing the steel-gray syringe in his coat. “I ... I understand.” Then he turned again and descended toward the darkness of the dungeon.
When he was gone Maggie looked at the warlocks, now halfway across the inner ward, approaching without fear.
Mary Francis knelt and lifted her, ensuring that Amy was tight in her arms. “Go now!” she said. “I will make sure that you and your child live! But you must go now!”
The warlocks closed in.
“But how can you—”
“Go now!”
Maggie stumbled through the wide granite gateway, holding her child tightly to her breast as they went together and alone into a frightening night, leaving all they’d ever loved behind.
Marcelle stumbled down the stairs, reaching the base to discover two massive warlocks dead in a blackened pool that darkly reflected distant torchlight. He staggered over them and collapsed heavily on the cobble-stone floor, groaning in pain.
He was dying quickly, he knew. The wound was deep, piercing, severing his soul from his flesh inch by inch. Then from somewhere far away he heard a series of explosions that thundered through stone like a beast awakened, and he knew the battle had begun.
Struggling in pain, he tried to gain his feet, failed, found himself crawling with a long, slow moan through a subterranean underworld, slowly passing glistening red fangs . . .
With a startled shout Marcelle rolled away to see the horrific blue-red face staring blankly at him, and even in his pain he felt a sudden adrenaline rush before he realized that the beast was dead.
He knew what it was: a mandrill, its chest and neck so deeply clotted with blood that it cloaked the depth of savage wounds. With fading strength Marcelle shook his head, leaning down a moment as he gathered himself. Then he rose and continued forward, knowing only a cryptic haunting silence that had suddenly struck from far above.
As if the battle were already lost.
***
Defiant, Mother Superior Mary Francis turned.
From within her cloak, hidden under the secret cover of darkness, she clutched the grenade that she’d recovered after Soloman’s battle with the mandrill. Moving carefully, she hooked a finger through the ring, staring at them without fear. Waiting.
The warlocks advanced, coldly committed.
She stood in the gate.
Said nothing.
They closed in on her, but when they were ten feet away they suddenly separated, seeming to suspect something in her defiance. They hovered on the edge of attack and exchanged cautious glances, as if fear had crossed from one to the other.
Mary Francis bowed her head. And it took only a moment more for them to decide before they moved over her, slashing.
She pulled the pin as they converged, severing pain there as the scarlet blades tore through her body, and then a roaring bright white rose from within, raising her to something she had never known and never imagined, pain lost to a magnificent light ...
CHAPTER 26
Soloman spun, not knowing if he was about to be attacked from the front or behind. Even with his superior night vision, he could see little in the maze of tunnels that he’d found in the darkness.
It was a catacomb, a grave, and he could feel nothing, sense nothing in the air. There was only the stench of ancient bone, death, and defeat. He froze, sweating, listening.
He knew Cain had pursued him into this darkness that quickly disintegrated into a maddening maze of halls buried far beneath the castle where Soloman had immediately lost his way, threading a frantic trail through the corridors, becoming increasingly confused.
Grave niches cut into the walls contained the remains of all those sacrificed in this cursed place for hundreds of years. Long white ribs, bleached arms and legs lying sadly beneath eyeless skulls flickered in trembling torches, and Soloman felt a new measure of fear and hate.
Other torches lit distant sections of the wildly connecting tunnels, and he cursed in frustration, whirling left and right to find a point of reference. He searched frantically, but everything seemed the same; he had no idea how to get back to the surface.
No ...
No good ...
He knew Cain would have a phenomenal advantage in this arena because he could see in the dark. But with savage pleasure, he also knew that the
Grizzly had severely wounded the giant, and it gave him hope. Bending his head, Soloman fixed on everything around him to—
Air stirring.
Soloman tilted his head. Sweat fell from his brow, and his finger curled around the trigger of the shotgun.
It was something Soloman never truly identified, but he was already moving with unnatural skill as he felt the distant darkening of a connecting corridor before actually seeing it, and then he’d found a narrow, bone-littered niche where he melted flat to the wall, the shotgun tight against his chest.
He closed his eyes tight in panic.
Knew that Cain was beside him.
Soloman’s heart was pounding so hard that he feared it would reveal his position. Nor did he doubt what he had glimpsed, for at the last moment he had clearly seen the shadow and knew Cain had closed on him in this labyrinth, this infernal maze.
No good ...
Before they went head-to-head again, Soloman wanted to give the Grizzly time to do some real damage. He had to tear Cain down piece by piece, he knew, in order to defeat him.
The hallway darkened and Soloman stopped breathing, staring emptily at a near section of tunnel. Then he knew that the black presence was approaching, and Cain came forward haltingly.
The beast now stood on the far side of the niche.
Soloman closed his eyes, knowing he and Cain were less than six feet apart. He tried to make himself disappear, willing himself not to bewhere he was, so that Cain couldn’t somehow feel his aura. For he knew from experience that some senses were more dependable than sight and smell—senses not easily understood but which rose vividly to life in mortal combat—and he didn’t want to give Cain any advantage.
The corridor was darkened for so long a time that Soloman finally opened his eyes to stare away from it, not daring to focus his gaze lest Cain sense his presence. Then, after an almost infinite moment, the presence moved away, down a connecting corridor.
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