by Rick Jones
* * *
Little could be seen from Kimball’s position below, but he knew enough to realize that a skirmish was going on along the catwalk. After checking Bowman to see if he was all right outside of a piece of his earlobe missing, Kimball tapped his lip mic.
“Isaiah?”
Silence.
Then louder: “Isaiah?”
Still nothing.
Above him on the catwalk two shadows continued to battle, the shapes morphing into different sizes as they converged on one other, nothing but black on black with no definable outlines to them.
After Kimball left Bowman in the hands of the Vatican Knights, he raced to the upper tiers of the catwalk. As soon as he reached the mid-level tier, that was when he saw Isaiah catch the railing as he was being tossed over the side. Now hanging precariously over a forty-foot drop with one hand grasping a rail, Kimball could see rage spelled all over the assassin’s face as he moved against Isaiah with a pair of knives.
With no options and too many stairs to climb, Kimball withdrew his suppressed weapon, took aim, and fired off a shot.
...Phfttt ...
The Vatican Knight had missed his mark.
* * *
Just as the assassin raised the knives to plunge deep into Isaiah, a bullet skipped off the railing by Isaiah’s hand and coughed up a spark. The ricochet of the round off the metal caused the killer to flinch and fall back, which gave Isaiah the opportune moment to swing a leg up and hook it around the post. With the agility of a monkey, he was then able to climb over the railing where he took to solid footing against the metal grating, as the assassin came at him with both knives swinging. The man in the constable’s uniform swung the blades with fluid and practiced motions, which told Isaiah that he was not a novice with double-edged weaponry. As he closed the gap between them with the knives slicing the air with the sound of whispers, Isaiah was forced backward along the catwalk with space running out. Isaiah looked to his left, then to his right—a forty-foot drop on both sides. In front of him was a colossus of a man with broad shoulders and a tree-trunk neck, the assassin a seasoned killer.
The knives moved diagonally first with one hand and then the other, the killer cutting perfect Xs in the air. As he pressed Isaiah to the last few feet of the catwalk, the Vatican Knight engaged the much larger man by ducking and then lashing out his foot, which connected against the assassin’s knee. The constable cried out as he stumbled in his approaching gait, from both pain and surprise. Returning to standing form, Isaiah attacked his opponent with a series of sidekicks with his feet connecting solidly against the man’s chest. The assassin fell back, stunned, the kicks coming too fast for him to comprehend as the Vatican Knight’s leg came at him in a sequence of blurs. Then in a flash of a moment, Isaiah struck the man’s jaw with his heel with such impact that his assailant’s head snapped viciously back. But it wasn’t enough to down the large man as he simply shook his head as if to cast away the cobwebs, then was ready to go at it again, the killer now smiling with malicious amusement.
Isaiah was astonished by this since men often fell to these series of practiced moves, the kicks a brutal hammering too much for the human body to absorb. But the assassin shook it off as if it was a mere nuisance, and once again began his approach with both knives swinging.
Isaiah once again found himself backing up along the catwalk as the assassin advanced on him with rage in his eyes, while managing a predatory grin. His arms now moved with a chaotic design to them with the knives moving faster and faster until the actions became almost indefensible—nothing but the raging movements of a madman.
Isaiah looked for his opportunity but found little as the assassin pressed forward like a furious bull that no longer worked as a skilled fighter, but as a crazed man who swung the knives with reckless abandon.
To Isaiah this opponent was close to an immovable force, a juggernaut who was like a block of granite weighing down on him. As the assassin closed the gap between them on the catwalk, Isaiah jumped from his poised stance, and threw a roundhouse kick to the killer’s jaw and connected. The knives dropped to the grating as the man’s eyes rolled upward into his head until nothing showed but slivers of white. Then Isaiah drove on him with a series of pummel strikes to the chest, blow after blow, punch after punch, the assassin, however, unwavering in his stance.
Then the killer’s hand whipped out and grabbed Isaiah by the throat and tightened his grip, the Vatican Knight suddenly subdued as he was single handedly lifted off the metal grating of the catwalk and held aloft. Isaiah shot his legs out and struck the assassin with coordinated kicks that had no effect, the killer still maintaining his predatory grin.
And then the focus began to fade from Isaiah’s sight as his world began to darken. The periphery of his vision started to close in from the edges with a blackness that started to pinch out the surrounding shadows for an even greater darkness. Isaiah began to gag and lose strength, his kicks and blows useless against the much larger man.
Then the assassin noted the Roman Catholic collar. A priest?
His smile quickly melted away. “You don’t fight like a priest,” he said, squeezing.
Isaiah began to turn different shades of coloring, going from red to burgundy, then from the color of burgundy to a hue of purple.
“You don’t fight like a priest,” he repeated, studying the collar as if trying to figure out its intent. Then: “It matters not if you see fit to protect a heathen. God will judge you the moment you cross His Threshold of Light, where He will then send you to the Lakes of Eternal Fire.”
Isaiah was beginning to lose all strength, his life beginning to ebb against the man’s tightening grip.
Then from the assassin: “Time for judgment.”
Just as he was about to close a second hand around Isaiah’s throat, the large man received a blow to the back of his head. Dropping Isaiah to the metal grating of the catwalk, the Vatican Knight sucked air into his lungs with a raspy pull. Pivoting quickly on the balls of his feet with a hand to the placement of the blow, the assassin confronted another man who also wore the collar of a priest.
He was larger than the first and more muscular. And he possessed cerulean blue eyes that pinned him hard anger. Here was a man, the assassin thought, though he wore the band of piety, who was capable of great violence.
The killer looked at the suppressed weapon in Kimball’s hand, saw the point of the barrel and the opening of its circular mouth. “Are you going to shoot me, priest?”
“I’m not a priest,” Kimball answered.
“Then you’re a demon who masquerades as a man of virtue, which you’re not if you choose to protect a blasphemer.” Then the assassin swung his arm at Kimball, the limb as large as a ham hock and nothing but muscle, missing as Kimball drew a step back. When the killer descended on Kimball, the Vatican Knight raised his weapon and set off a muted shot.
A bloodless wound magically appeared in the center of the assassin’s forehead with a ribbon of smoke slowly drifting from the hole. The assassin stood his ground, though he wavered in his stance, before he walked past Kimball like something from a zombie apocalypse with movements that were choppy and uneven, until he stopped ten feet away. It was as if he was on the cusp of dying, but still within the area between life and death until his body fell over the railing to the auditorium floor below.
The large man impacted against the seats which disfigured his body, his bones snapping into odd and twisted configurations.
After aiding Isaiah to his feet, both men looked over the railing of the catwalk to the auditorium below. The room was clear, and Bowman had been ushered out by the Vatican Knights to his safety.
Kimball patted Isaiah on the back. “Are you all right?”
With a hand still to his throat, the Vatican Knight nodded. Then: “I hit him with everything I had,” he told Kimball. “I would have floored everyone else. But this guy kept coming.” Then he looked at Kimball. “I swear, hitting him was like hitting a block
of stone. He just wouldn’t go down, no matter what I threw at him.” Kimball continued to look down at the body of the assassin, who lay as a broken heap.
Now to locate the Brimstone Diaries, he thought.
After hooking an arm around Isaiah, Kimball Hayden aided his second lieutenant to the lower level.
Chapter Twenty-One
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Vaughan House
Westminster Cathedral, Central London
“What is this place? Where am I?” Robert Bowman appeared both scared and agitated as he sat inside the Chancery Offices of Vaughan House, which was part of the Metropolitan Curia in central London. His injured right ear was covered with gauze that appeared like a single muff. “The police will be looking for me. You know that, don’t you?”
Father Ferrano was inside the office with Kimball Hayden. Ferrano was pacing the room slowly with his arms folded while Kimball sat idly in a chair. Bowman, who sat opposite Kimball with his chest puffed out in a manner of macho posturing, also attempted to put on an air as a man of great importance.
“Mr. Bowman,” Father Ferrano said without looking at the man, “please understand that you are under the protection of the Vatican. Right now, you’re inside the Chancery Offices of the Metropolitan Curia in central London.”
Bowman’s eyes fluttered with confusion. Then: “I’m under the protection of whom?”
Father Ferrano stopped and looked at the professor. His arms remained crossed. “The Vatican.”
“The Vatican,” said Bowman. “As in the Vatican of Vatican State? That Vatican?”
“Is there another?” Kimball asked.
Bowman looked at the Vatican Knight who was dressed piously from the waist up, but as a soldier from the waist down. “You were the one who tackled me on stage, weren’t you?”
Kimball nodded.
Bowman’s eyes appraised the man sitting across from him. He was broad of shoulder and thick with muscle. The features of his face were strong and angular. But he also possessed the unseen tangible of someone who could be extremely dangerous, despite the Roman Catholic collar around his neck. Bowman leaned forward in his chair. “You’re not a priest, are you?”
“No,” said Father Ferrano, interceding. “He’s a Vatican Knight.”
“A Vatican what?”
“Knight,” Ferrano said. “A Vatican Knight. He’s part of an elite commando group whose purpose within the church is to protect those who cannot protect themselves. And you, Mr. Bowman, should be quite grateful that he intervened when he did. Otherwise, your body may still be lying at the base of the podium you lectured from.”
Bowman looked at Kimball and saw the fierceness within his cerulean blue eyes. Then to Father Ferrano, he asked, “I assume that somebody tried to kill me over my viewpoints?”
“Obviously. But at this point we’re not sure if it’s simply an individual, or if it’s a fanatical cabal.”
“But you have your suspicions as to whom it may be.”
Kimball nodded. “A few.”
“You mind telling me?”
Kimball looked at Father Ferrano, who nodded that it was all right to do so.
“You’re sure?” Kimball asked.
“He’s going to find out anyway. He needs to know.”
“Well, that’s rich,” Kimball said as he faced off with Bowman. “That such a man as yourself who comes from an exalted bloodline is an atheist.”
Bowman held his hand up and patted the air. “First of all,” he began, “I am not an atheist. I’m simply proffering a different viewpoint where God and Nature are one and the same, and that Nature is a perfect and governing force behind everything that realigns situations that have become unbalanced in life. When populations become too great, then Nature unleashes a virulent to control the masses, be it man or beast. Here, the microbe becomes king. My viewpoint is just another way to look at our spiritual surroundings the same way that Joseph Raphson looked at pantheism.”
Kimball Hayden had no idea what he was talking about.
“I see that you’re closed to my viewpoints,” Bowman stated to Kimball.
Kimball, however, shook his head. “No,” he told him. “I believe that all men should believe whatever they want to wholeheartedly. I’m just saying that there’s a great irony involved here. Something you don’t quite understand.”
“Such as?”
Father Ferrano stepped forward until he stood beside Kimball, who remained seated. “Soon after the crucifixion of Christ,” the priest went on, “Saint Peter created a journal that memorialized the life and death of our Savior. In this book, which had been titled The Brimstone Diaries by the operatives from the Prelature Order of the Cross, Saint Peter had listed a series of names which eventually became a genealogical chart of Christ’s bloodline, after the true history of his life was recorded.”
Bowman gave him a nonplussed look. “Bloodline?”
Father Ferrano nodded. “Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a union. And from that union a child was born to them prior to his crucifixion, which Mary Magdalene raised. In time, that child begat children who then begat other children, creating a lineage.”
“I still don’t understand.”
Kimball leaned forward in his seat. “Several hundred years ago conservatives saw the bloodline as tainted and born from sin, since Mary Magdalene had been associated with prostitution. The Prelature Order of the Cross and conservative cabals like them sought to diminish this bloodline by terminating all who carried the blood of Christ to purify a line, which should have ended upon the moment of Jesus’ crucifixion.”
“And you’re tying this to me how?”
“You’re tied to this,” said Father Ferrano, “because your name is listed in the Brimstone Diaries, along with thousands of others. The book had been maintained by Archive scribes over the centuries, who recorded everyone attached to the ancestry, until the book was stolen a few days ago. Since then, those who had been listed before you were killed.”
“And I was the next in line.”
Father Ferrano nodded.
Appearing exhausted and confused, Robert Bowman no longer puffed out his chest in bravado. Instead, he appeared more deflated. “You’re telling me,” Bowman whispered, “that I’m a descendant of Jesus? Is that what you’re saying?”
“It’s a kick in the ass, isn’t it?” said Kimball. “Given the irony regarding your beliefs on science and Christianity.”
“But there must be hundreds of thousands of descendants.”
“Perhaps,” said Father Ferrano. “But the Brimstone Diaries were a documented account of everyone born to the bloodline, as well as those who had been murdered off over the centuries. Agents who believed in the tainted-line theory effectively culled the line over the centuries through murder. During the Black Plague, which nearly wiped out the population of Europe, the disease had done the job for them. But with the book now in the hands of hostile operators and with today’s technology, the entire line can be systematically wiped out within a decade or two.”
Bowman started to rub his temples. “This can’t be happening.”
“It is,” said Father Ferrano.
“And the assassin?”
“At the coroner’s,” Kimball told him. “We’ll be making a visit to gather information as to his identity and try to backtrack his trail. We need to know if he’s part of a faction, like Opus Dei.”
“What about local law enforcement?”
“Local law enforcement knows nothing about The Brimstone Diaries,” Father Ferrano intervened. “Or of its contents or the nature behind the murders. This is an in-house matter that’s being investigated solely by the Vatican.”
“You mentioned Opus Dei,” Bowman said nervously. “You believe they appropriated the book?”
“They had come to mind,” said Kimball. “Since they had stolen the tome twice before.”
“This is the twenty-first century, not the pre-Middle Ages. Opus Dei didn’t exist back then.”
Father Ferrano didn’t bother to explain the history of the faction. Instead, he said, “Sometimes, Mr. Bowman, people are not open to change, no matter who’s behind the theft. That’s simply the nature of humankind.”
“So now what?” Bowman asked. “I can’t stay in hiding forever.”
“You’re right,” said Kimball. “You can’t.”
“Then what?”
“You need to be patient,” the Vatican Knight answered. “All I can say is trust us, since the Vatican is working to correct the situation.”
“How? My life is on the line here.”
“Everything begins and ends with the body inside the coroner’s office,” Father Ferrano told him. “We’ll find out who it is and go from there.”
“And Opus Dei?”
“The offices of Opus Dei will get a visit from us for sure, Mr. Bowman. Believe me,” stated Father Ferrano.
“And the book?”
“It’s something we need to find before it does more damage,” said Kimball.
“What if it isn’t one man at all, but a league of killers? Then what?”
“Then my team will handle them,” Kimball said.
“Are you sure they’re capable? These Vatican Knights?”