Inquisitor

by John Barrowman

  The expressions around the table confirmed it. As the shocked murmurs began to spread, Jeannie noticed Vaughn slipping his phone into his pocket. He gave her an imperceptible nod.

  ‘Quiet!’ Jeannie cried, her hands in the air as she waved for calm. The threads on all the tapestries lit up like a million strands of lights – flashing, warning. ‘You have to listen to me now, before hell breaks loose.’

  37.

  Time’s Not on Our Side

  Thirty minutes later, Vaughn Grant stood outside the gates of the Royal Academy courtyard, catching his breath before threading through the heavy morning traffic on Piccadilly. Ducking inside the tea shop on the corner of Duke Street, he smiled to the young woman behind the counter.

  ‘Usual, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Please,’ said Vaughn, before taking the table in the bay window where the chairs were decorative wrought iron and extremely uncomfortable. Anyone taller than six feet had to sit back a few metres to avoid their knees bumping the iron swirls on the matching table. For Vaughn, the ambiance was part of the place’s charm. That, and the fact that the same family had run the establishment since the eighteenth century and tended to ignore the occasional supernatural occurrence across the street.

  Only one other table was occupied with three elderly women, enjoying the last sitting for afternoon tea, Harrods shopping bags in a green row beneath their table. Dunking his chocolate biscuits in his coffee, Vaughn thought about what just happened across the street. If it hadn’t been for Jeannie’s presence, Vaughn was not sure things would have gone Orion’s way. And they had to go Orion’s way. Recent events had proved that.

  The door to the tea shop chimed and a young woman in a navy linen suit, skinny trousers cuffed over black combat boots and a tapered jacket over a silk T-shirt came in, scanning the room from behind dark sunglasses before heading to Vaughn’s table.

  Lakshmi Misra unbuttoned her jacket and took the seat across from Vaughn. A radio was hooked to the belt of her trousers and her boots were polished to a mirrored shine. In her late twenties, Lakshmi was one of Scotland Yard’s youngest Inspectors in the Art and Antiquities unit. More importantly, she was one of a small trusted group of people in positions of power in the UK who were privy to Orion’s secrets. These positions and their covert responsibilities were hereditary to families known as Patrons of Era Mina.

  She silenced her radio. ‘You were right,’ she said, leaning towards Vaughn. ‘Your Nephilim, Luca Ferrante, was responsible for the recent theft at the Prado.’

  ‘How much time before the press know about it?’

  ‘The Prado’s not keen on the publicity, so we should have enough time. How much do you need?’

  ‘As much as I can get,’ said Vaughn, grimly. ‘If Luca took the lyre on the Camarilla’s behalf, then time isn’t on our side.’ He roughed his fingers through his hair. ‘Dammit! We should have taken the triptych ourselves the moment we identified Bosch from Matt’s sketch. Now we’re playing catch-up. Again.’

  ‘Not completely,’ said Lakshmi. ‘If this plan works, we may just get ahead of the curve.’

  Vaughn ordered two more coffees and an Eccles cake, Lakshmi’s favourite. ‘Do we have time to eat?’ she asked, raising slim eyebrows.

  ‘If you’re quick.’

  The waiter set down the fresh coffee and pastries. Orion’s failure to act sooner on their intel weighed heavily on Vaughn. It was why he was here with Lakshmi, and why he’d persuaded Jeannie to leave the Abbey and come to London. If they were going to stop the Camarilla, Orion had to act boldly. Orion had to take more risks. Orion needed to finish what they had started the day Rémy Dupree Rush arrived in London. He rolled his neck, loosening his knotted muscles.

  ‘When was the last time you had more than a couple of hours of sleep?’ Lakshmi asked.

  ‘I’ll sleep when this is over. The Camarilla’s offensive has started. With the lyre and the Inquisitor’s portrait already in Rome, all they need is Rémy and they can open Chaos.’

  Three Panda cars shot past the window heading west, their sirens wailing and lights flashing. Within seconds three more and an ambulance screamed past in the other direction. The traffic was clogged and moving slowly. Vaughn turned back to Lakshmi, her radio crackling with angry voices.

  ‘The Camarilla still need the Devil’s Interval, the sacred chord for Rémy to play on the lyre,’ Lakshmi pointed out.

  Vaughn relaxed a little. ‘At least we have that locked away.’

  ‘And Rémy? He’s locked away too?’

  ‘In a Glasgow safe-house under Alessandro’s surveillance.’

  ‘Have you told them about your plan?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘They’ll be pissed off.’

  ‘I’ll take that risk. By the way,’ he added as he lifted his cup, ‘excellent work in Rome last month.’

  Lakshmi tilted her head, acknowledging his praise.

  ‘In fact,’ Vaughn added, ‘your team was so thorough that the Council itself bought the terrorist theory. It caused a bit of a problem.’

  ‘Oops,’ Lakshmi said, stirring sugar into her cup. She finished her cake, wiping crumbs from her lap. Her radio squawked. She turned down the volume. ‘Orion has someone inside the Camarilla, right?’

  ‘We do,’ said Vaughn, dropping money on to the table.

  ‘Then you’ll know their next move as soon as they’re ready to make it.’

  ‘Provided they don’t catch our someone first,’ said Vaughn.

  A red double-decker bus trundled to a stop near the RA. Then a tactical vehicle wailed past the tea-shop window, jumped the curb and swerved on to the pavement. Its passengers, in full SWAT gear, leapt from the vehicle before it came to a halt, waving furiously at the bus driver to move. Two London taxis and a delivery truck passed the other way, heading for Piccadilly Circus.

  ‘No turning back now,’ said Lakshmi. ‘Everything’s in place.’

  A halo of energy was hovering above the RA buildings. It expanded like a balloon, then exploded, engulfing the buildings and the grounds with tentacles of light and colour.

  38.

  Blow Out

  Every building, vehicle and ribbon of pavement wavered, as if someone had lifted the corner of the Royal Academy courtyard like the edge of a tablecloth and shaken away the crumbs. The only sounds within the blast radius were the muffled screams of pedestrians and the dulled squeal of skidding cars. Where there should have been sound there was only colour: layers of brilliant blue and gold, shimmering silver and glowing neon. Silent ripples of light radiated into the street, narrowly missing the double-decker bus as it flipped over and over until it came to a halt right side up on top of a line of empty parked cars. The glass in the tea-shop window sighed and slid out of its frame, smashing on the pavement outside.

  Vaughn did what he could to calm the elderly tea drinkers. ‘Can you handle the fallout, Lakshmi?’ he asked, making for the tea-shop door.

  Lakshmi was already seeing to the waiter, who was stunned but unhurt. ‘Of course,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Go!’

  The upended double-decker was empty. It looked as if it had been on its way to pick up a tour group. The lone driver was crawling out of his smashed front window. The staff from the nearby hotel were outside in full force, swarming into the street to offer aid to the people in the multiple but minor car collisions. Vaughn climbed over the rubble of the collapsed archway into the Royal Academy courtyard and surveyed the damage.

  The whole area was covered in glass from blown-out windows. Two of the courtyard sculptures had projectiles embedded in them. A big black hole had been punched in the ground, an abyss with silver spider veins flowing from its edges deep into the darkness. Every building in the main square was relatively unscathed, windows notwithstanding, with the exception of the one that had stood immediately above the hole.

  The Council Chamber.

  The hole looked like it was breathing. Like it was alive.

  The Academy staf
f were already moving inside in recovery mode. Emergency lights had kicked on and first responders’ whistles were piercing the eerie quiet. Vaughn darted across the courtyard, drawing as he ran. When he got to the tallest building in the compound, a fire-escape animated against its rear wall. He shoved his sketchpad back in his pocket and climbed the ladder two at a time. Then he flattened himself on the roof and army-crawled to the edge.

  Vaughn’s fingers flashed across his sketchpad, and a military pair of binoculars manifested in front of him in a burst of light. Putting them to his eyes, he watched Lakshmi cordon off the area, barking orders at the police and fire officers who’d arrived on the scene with her cell phone caught between her ear and her shoulder. This was why Orion paid handsomely to have friends in high places.

  Vaughn watched the strange cloud formation coiling over the nearby buildings. Then, like the trails of a jet, the clouds thinned out across the northern sky.

  Scotland

  39.

  Life’s Pleasures

  Caravaggio pulled himself up against the hundred pillows piled against Matt’s headboard. He yanked one from under his shoulders, balled it up and tossed it onto the floor in disgust. ‘What is it with this century and pillows?’

  Matt handed Caravaggio a beer. ‘Stop complaining. You’re lucky to still be in this century.’ Pulling on his jeans, he lifted his own beer from the night stand and walked to the open window to look out over the Scottish hillside.

  ‘I may be lucky,’ said the artist with a smirk. ‘But so are you, my friend.’

  Matt ignored this. ‘We need to leave Orion HQ and head back to Glasgow tomorrow, before Vaughn realizes we all took a little holiday.’

  ‘Why would you ever want to go back?’

  Caravaggio climbed out of bed, stepping over the clothing strewn on the floor. He lifted Matt’s chin. Matt met his gaze, his irises fragmenting into a kaleidoscope of electric blues.

  ‘Why not just come away with me?’ Caravaggio suggested, kissing Matt on the lips. ‘We could wander the world.’ He moved his lips to Matt’s neck. ‘Enjoy life’s pleasures.’

  Matt leaned into the kiss, then gently pushed the artist away. ‘Because Michele, I don’t trust you.’

  The artist pouted and helped himself to a slug of Matt’s beer.

  ‘I like you,’ Matt amended. ‘I like you a lot. But you’re dangerous to be around.’

  He pulled on a vintage Dylan tour T-shirt of his dad’s. The dates were faded and unreadable, but Matt refused to get rid of it. Em thought he wore the shirts as penance for their father’s death. Matt was holding on to the idea that it was all about the aesthetic.

  The sun bathed the tiny oval room in a pale pink light. Matt slipped on his shades. ‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he suggested.

  Caravaggio sighed. ‘If you don’t want to pick up where I just left off, fresh air will have to suffice… for now. Let me get dressed.’

  Matt was already halfway down the narrow spiral stairs when the tower shook on its foundations, throwing him down the stone steps. His head thumped against the wall at the bottom. Before he blacked out, he heard the whir of a great pair of wings.

  40.

  Out Cold

  Matt could smell the sea, feel his body rising and falling in angry waves. He was at the helm of a sailboat, its jib full and holding taut against a strong wind, Era Mina in the distance, the light on top of the tower flashing directly into his eyes. Then it wasn’t Era Mina any more. It was the church tower at Orion headquarters. And he wasn’t on a sailboat. He was on the ground and Caravaggio was dousing him with cold water.

  Matt sputtered and coughed, rolling on to his back and gazing up at the late afternoon sky. They were a short distance from what was left of the tower, and the sun striped through the trees above his head. He felt dizzy and nauseated. He covered his eyes and tried to sit up. Caravaggio handed him his shades. Matt put them gratefully on his nose.

  ‘What the hell happened?’

  ‘Bad things,’ said Caravaggio grimly. ‘And more may be coming.’

  Matt tried standing, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate. He crawled against an oak tree. Over Caravaggio’s shoulder, Orion HQ was burning. Strange white flames like long pale fingers were pulling the structure into a hole as big as a football pitch that was widening beneath it. The church tower itself had gone, a black scar on the ground the only evidence it ever existed.

  ‘That’s not a normal fire,’ mumbled Matt, touching the egg-sized lump at the back of his head.

  ‘No. It is not,’ agreed Caravaggio. ‘That’s a supernatural inferno.’ The artist was fully dressed, his leather jacket fastened over his loose white tunic and leather trousers.

  ‘How long was I unconscious?’

  ‘A few minutes.’ He handed Matt a scuffed black sketchpad and tapped the dagger in his waistband. ‘I managed to save a couple of things.’

  Matt watched groggily as the black scar on the courtyard between the buildings healed over and vanished. He ran his fingers over the imprint of the constellation of Orion on the sketchpad cover. ‘Thanks,’ he said after a moment. ‘For getting me out.’

  Caravaggio pulled Matt to his feet and helped him through the woods and away from the imploded church.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Matt, feeling light-headed and bruised all over.

  ‘Far away.’ Caravaggio led Matt through the trees. ‘A vanishing church is going to bring attention up here very soon. I don’t think we want to be explaining what may or may not have happened.’

  Matt grimaced. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Especially since we’re still supposed to be in Glasgow.’

  He realized they were both barefoot. Waiting until they were out of sight of the emergency vehicles squealing through the village and up the winding one-lane road towards the church, Matt opened his sketchpad to a blank page where he drew a pair of black CAT work boots for him and a pair of riding boots for Caravaggio.

  ‘You didn’t happen to rescue my phone, did you?’ asked Matt.

  ‘Never crossed my mind,’ said Caravaggio, admiring his shimmering boots.

  ‘’Course it didn’t.’

  The higher and deeper they tramped into the forest, the darker it became and the less nauseous Matt felt. But as they climbed, he felt the atmosphere change. The air grew heavier, denser, warmer. The stench of sulphur was stronger. It reminded Matt of something from a long time ago. He spun on his heels.

  ‘I feel it too,’ said Caravaggio quietly.

  Matt nodded, relieved. It wasn’t just him.

  Leaves crunched and the ground shook somewhere on the hill behind them. Bursts of smoke coughed through the trees. Then the trees didn’t just rustle; they bowed over, their tops brushing the ground before whipping back up.

  Saying nothing, Matt and Caravaggio split up, ducked into the brush and hid behind the trees. Matt signalled with a headshake and a scribble not to animate; the animation glow would give away their hiding places— Shit. Animating the boots had been a beacon to whoever was tracking them.

  Matt scanned the thick growth off the trail. Further up the slope, he noticed a stone bothy used by hikers and hunters. If they could get inside, the glow from their animated boots would no longer be visible. But to get to the bothy would mean climbing higher directly in front of whatever was hunting them. Which was a problem.

  Unless…

  41.

  Sync and Swim

  On the other side of Scotland, Rémy pulled his earbuds out while dragging a kayak one-handed on to the sand. He peered into the dark mouth of the cave on the western shore of Auchinmurn.

  ‘So this is where the magic happened,’ he said.

  He and Em had taken the train from Glasgow to Largs early, enjoying the hour of relative normality in the quiet train car, chatting a little about their childhoods, listening to music on their phones and reading. The Abbey had been deserted with Jeannie in London for the Council meeting and Renard visiting a friend in America, so they’d spent most o
f the day raking through stacks of ancient manuscripts and mounds of scrolls in search of clues to the prophecy on the stone relief in Rome. To Rémy’s disappointment, they had found nothing to illuminate the bits and pieces he’d already uncovered in his mother’s journal. The sun streaming into the windows from the bay and the smell of summer in the warm breeze proved too much for either of them to sit inside and dig through the last stack of manuscripts, and so they had decided to get out on the water instead, Rémy kayaking while Em swam.

  ‘Yup,’ said Em, dropping her swim goggles to her neck. ‘This is the place. The cave where the infamous Calder twins at the ripe age of thirteen ran a long con on tourists to the island of Auchinmurn.’

  ‘How much money did you make?’ Rémy sat on a flat rock just inside the lip of the cave and dangled his feet into one of the many pools pocking the rocky ground.

  ‘About two hundred quid,’ said Em, offering Rémy a square of the energy bar she was unwrapping. He shook his head.

  ‘I’d rather eat sand.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she held up the energy bar, ‘but raisins.’

  He shivered. ‘Not happening. Hate them.’

  ‘Who doesn’t like raisins?’

  ‘It’s a black thing.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, sheepishly.

  ‘Of course not.’

  Rémy’s laughter made Em grin. He felt warm. He was glad the four of them had been at each other’s throats in Glasgow yesterday. It made it easier to spend time alone with Em. Maybe today he could say some of the things he hadn’t brought up in the garden back in Glasgow. Because no matter what they found in the Abbey’s manuscripts, Rémy was determined to go back to Rome.

  ‘So what the hell’s wrong with raisins?’ Em prompted.

  ‘When I was in kindergarten,’ Rémy explained, ‘I used to save the box of raisins my aunt packed in my lunch and hide them in my desk for later. Sometimes I’d forget they were there. I was sneaking some during Geography when suddenly the kid next to me fainted. Turns out my desk was full of ants and I was eating them. Ants were all up in my neck and arms.’