‘You knew it was Luca,’ he said. ‘You let him set his hellhound on me. You wanted me to be killed, didn’t you? No more trouble from the artist for you then, hmm?’
‘What? You’re mad!’ protested Matt, struggling. ‘Of course I didn’t want him to get you. I had no idea Luca was tracking us.’
The artist pressed harder. His dark eyes were frightened. ‘Don’t keep anything like that from me again,’ he hissed.
Matt shoved him away and stomped ahead, his brain racing, trying to sort out why Caravaggio’s reaction had gone so quickly from fear to paranoia. He was hiding something. But what?
46.
Fire and Brimstone
The sea was blazing like a burning oil slick where Luca and the peryton had plunged beneath the waves. Red and black streaked clouds crashed together in the unsettled and violent sky. The horizon was an inferno.
Rémy whirled about as a yellow Jeep tore across the lawn from the front of the Abbey, sending up sprays of muck with its wheels. It skidded to a halt, blocking their way into the house. Rémy’s first instinct was to run, but by his side, Em was readying to fight.
The driver’s side door flew open. A formidable looking man wearing a black untucked shirt, dark jeans shoved inside knee-high boots, leapt out. Em made an inarticulate sound and ran into his outstretched arms.
‘Alessandro! I’ve never been so glad to see anyone in my life.’
Alessandro de Mendoza, known to his contemporaries in sixteenth-century Spain as the Moor of Cadiz and to Orion as the Professor, gathered Em into a warm embrace.
‘Professor,’ Rémy said, smiling as the man extended an arm to include Rémy in the hug. Although he knew these days that Alessandro was a noble soldier, a man of great fortune and a Guardian with fierce inspiriting powers, for Rémy he would forever be the old homeless scholar he had first met in London.
‘What are you doing here?’ Em gasped.
‘I’ll explain on the way.’
As if in agreement, thunder rumbled and cracked over the sea like colliding tectonic plates. Releasing them both, Alessandro opened the rear door of the Jeep and motioned for them to get in.
‘We must get out of here,’ he said.
‘I have to get Mom’s journal,’ said Rémy. ‘I left it inside when we were doing our research.’
Another crack of thunder shook the island. The fiery stain on the horizon brightened. A wave of fire hurtled into view, racing towards them. Alessandro started the Jeep and blasted the horn as Rémy raced into the house.
‘Hurry!’ Em screamed after him.
The book was on the kitchen table where he’d left it. He scooped it up and ran back outside. The edge of the fiery wave was already sweeping across the shore of the smaller island of Era Mina, setting fire to the thick brush on the beach before leaping into the narrow bay. The inferno would be on them in moments.
Alessandro yelled out the open window of the Jeep: ‘Rémy! Now!’
The fire engulfed the boathouse and what was left of the dock. The flames seemed to pause for a moment, as if daring them to linger, as fingers of lava stretched towards the Jeep. The grass blackened, glowed and shrivelled beneath the tyres, and there was a smell of burning rubber.
Rémy jumped into the passenger side. Alessandro shifted gear and the Jeep sped away, bouncing down the driveway on its rims, hurtling towards the gates. Rémy heard a roar as the fire pounced on the walls of the Abbey behind them.
No one spoke until Alessandro was safely on the road, the Abbey glowed like a furnace in the distance.
‘Do you think it survived?’ Em asked quietly.
The Conjuror mark on Rémy’s neck was swollen, and he rubbed it without thinking.
He knew she meant the peryton. ‘I hope so. It saved us.’
Em was filthy. She had abrasions from slipping into the hole, a ton of tiny burns on her legs and arms from the falling ash, and a nasty cut under her thumb, but she was in one piece. Silently, Rémy thanked whichever gods were watching. He reached back and squeezed Em’s hand. She squeezed back.
‘That journal almost cost us our lives,’ said Alessandro, watching Em outside animating new tyres on the Jeep.
The journal in Rémy’s lap looked like a family recipe book. It bulged with scraps of paper covered in notes, fragments of sheet music and notations, torn pages from art gallery catalogues, and enough scribbled notes on napkins to open a diner. The flotsam and jetsam of Annie Dupree Rush’s lifelong obsession with discovering the truth about Conjurors. For a long time, the journal had been Annie’s lifeline to clarity and understanding, but she had died before finding the answers. It felt like a puzzle Rémy was trying to complete in darkness.
‘It was worth the risk,’ he said.
They passed a truck filled with volunteer firefighters from Seaport going the other way, sirens blaring and lights flashing. Alessandro turned up the hill behind Seaport and followed the winding road to the top of the island, cutting round the switchbacks on the narrow road. At the lookout point, he pulled to a stop and shut off the engine. Below them, a line of emergency vehicles were loading on to one of the Caledonian ferries while a Royal Coastguard helicopter scrambled into the angry sky from the station south of Largs.
‘I thought we were getting off the island,’ said Em in surprise. ‘Not admiring the view.’
Alessandro smiled grimly.
‘No reason why we can’t do both,’ he said.
London
47.
Tea for Three
The Kitten sisters, Violet and Anthea, lived in the three-storey Victorian mansion on Raphael Terrace in Knightsbridge that had been in their family since it was built. Their grandmother had been an inaugural member of the Women’s Social and Political Union, and was one of the suffragettes to toss paint on future Prime Minister Winston Churchill when he was visiting their neighbours.
Much to the disgust of the same neighbours, the Kitten family had also run a soup kitchen and flop house for starving artists. Their work had brought them to Orion’s attention, and the Kittens had been protectors and patrons of the Order of Era Mina ever since. The sisters were trusted and adored, their house an Orion safe-house known only to a select few in the organization.
The rear entrances to the houses on the terrace backed on to a mews that comprised garages and modern flats these days instead of stables. A rock star, three actors, and at least two members of the Royal family lived in the area, and security was tight if not always visible.
Vaughn waved at the camera installed above the Kittens’ back door. From the top window of the house on the opposite corner, he spotted a flash of light and a figure watching him. One of the rock star’s security details.
The door clicked and Vaughn pushed inside a clean, well-lit mudroom lined with brass hooks holding colourful raincoats, mud-stained gardening jackets, and one or two striped umbrellas. Four pairs of wellies stood at attention on a mat behind the door. The room had once been part of the stables, and the distinct smell of manure and wet hay still permeated the air.
‘Vaughn darling,’ called a bellowing voice from a speaker on the wall. Despite the danger they all were in, Vaughn relaxed at the sound of Violet’s voice. ‘Tea in the library.’
The route to the library took him along a wide hallway with floor-to-ceiling art by men and women who had at some time benefitted from Violet and Anthea’s largesse. Vaughn’s favourite was Paula Rego’s portrait of the sisters in the mudroom after a day of gardening.
Anthea ushered him into the room, closing the door with the edge of her slipper. Violet’s arthritis made standing a chore, so Vaughn bent and kissed her cheeks.
‘We know this isn’t a social visit,’ said Violet, urging Vaughn to the empty chair.
‘You look well,’ said Anthea earnestly.
Violet passed Vaughn a plate of finger sandwiches. ‘That’s shite and you know it, Thea. He looks worn out and worried.’
Anthea glared. ‘I was just trying to make small talk,
Vi. Make Vaughn feel better. You want me to jump right in and say, “Have you averted the apocalypse yet?”’
Vaughn sipped his tea and ate a sandwich, trying not to laugh.
‘So,’ said Vi presently. ‘Have you averted the apocalypse?’
‘Not yet.’ He caught them up with the details about the explosions at the RA, the Abbey and Orion headquarters. ‘We don’t have the Bosch painting and the lyre either. I’m afraid we won’t be able to control what we’ve set in motion.’
Violet patted his hand. ‘Fear is only a monster. And fighting monsters is what we do best.’
‘We do,’ Vaughn conceded. ‘But the Camarilla’s monsters are much more seductive than they used to be. This isn’t going to be a four-horsemen-destroy the-world kind of apocalypse. It will be much more insidious. And it’s already started. Government coups, mass genocide, civil wars, social revolutions, industry takeovers, banks failing. It all appears organic, but it isn’t. It’s part of their plan. The Camarilla will be impossible to stop when the Watchers rise.’
Anthea looked concerned. ‘How did we let this happen?’
‘The Camarilla has raised an army of foot soldiers among our kind,’ said Vaughn. ‘They are promising them the world and more.’
‘I thought we’d wiped out the last of the Camarilla bastards in the Second World War,’ said Violet, topping up her cup. ‘It sounds as if I was wrong.’
Vaughn brushed the crumbs from his jeans and got to his feet. He embraced them both before returning to the mudroom. He removed one of the gardening jackets from its hook, the jacket Anthea was wearing in the Rego portrait, and turned the hook beneath it twice, clockwise. The wall slid open and Vaughn stepped inside a steel enclosed panic room where a painting that never failed to make him thirsty was displayed, Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère.
The wall closed, plunging him into darkness. The only illumination in the room came from a tennis ball of light rippling above the painting.
Someone was already inside.
48.
Mind your Manets
Vaughn faded into the Manet, landing gracefully on the black marble floor. The room was packed with rich men in top hats and bohemian women in fashionable gowns. Two courtesans in feather boas looked up from drinking absinthe at a nearby table.
‘Your entrances are always elegant,’ said one.
‘I aim to please,’ said Vaughn, bowing.
‘You’ll want the corner booth,’ said the other.
Before Vaughn could sit down, Zach had slid out of the booth and was embracing him.
Vaughn returned the love. ‘Glad to see you, mate,’ he signed, slapping Zach’s back as they settled back into the booth.
Zach Butler was one of the toughest young men Vaughn knew, with imaginative power unique to his abilities in coding and design. Under his father Simon’s tutelage, Zach had achieved more than anyone could have predicted on Orion’s behalf.
‘And your mother?’ Vaughn wondered how best to phrase his question. ‘How is she?’
Zach’s smile dimmed a little. He’d recently discovered that his mother hadn’t died when he was a baby, but had gone deep undercover for Orion instead. The two of them had reunited recently, but it had been hard.
‘She’s fine,’ he signed after a moment. ‘We’re both fine.’
Vaughn saw the conflict cross Zach’s expression. Along with being abandoned by Em, the love of his life, during the Guardian ceremony, Zach had been processing the fact that his mother had abandoned him too. Orianna Butler had been one of Orion’s most prized assets for almost twenty years, hidden deep undercover in the ranks of the Camarilla and now he was working undercover with her.
‘She isn’t expecting to be forgiven for abandoning me,’ continued Zach. ‘In fact, she doesn’t expect anything from me at all.’
‘Under the circumstances that’s a good thing,’ signed Vaughn.
‘It is.’ Zach paused. ‘But I feel like she should want me to forgive her.’
‘Don’t push it,’ added Vaughn, shaking out flecks of paint from his hair. ‘She’s more complicated than most of us.’
‘How’s Dad?’
‘Fine. Worried about you. Trying not to show it.’
‘Give him my love. I miss him. I miss everyone.’
Vaughn could see that Zach was desperate to ask about Em, but his pride wouldn’t let him. He fidgeted with a button on his sleeve instead, before placing his hands flat on the table. Vaughn tactfully changed the subject.
‘Who knew you’d develop your own distinctive Animare abilities?’ he said. ‘I’m so proud of you.’
Zach returned Vaughn’s smile, and for the first time in many months, looked more like his old self. ‘Must’ve been all the William Gibson I read.’
‘Your mum had something to do with it too.’ Vaughn sat back against the leather booth, wanting to say much more, but knowing this wasn’t the time. ‘It’s great to see you Zach, but contacting me was risky. You need to be in Rome, especially now Luca has the Bosch painting and the lyre.’
‘The Camarilla doesn’t trust Luca at the moment.’ Zach’s fingers were a blur. ‘They have him on a tight leash.’
‘The Camarilla doesn’t trust its own Nephilim? Fancy that.’
‘The Camarilla doesn’t trust anyone. Ever since Cecilia Ciardi took control, she’s been erratic and quick to anger. They know we’ve infiltrated them. And they’re moving more quickly than ever.’ Zach flexed his fingers and studied his palms briefly before resuming. ‘You saw Cecilia’s announcement about the concert at St Peter’s Square tomorrow?’
Vaughn nodded. ‘It’s why Jeannie’s decided to move matters on.’
The female bartender brought them both a pink frothy drink in a martini glass. Vaughn sipped it, and made a face. ‘Jesus, that tastes like turpentine.’
‘Probably is,’ signed Zach. ‘I contacted you because two things have come up that we haven’t planned for.’
‘What?’
‘First, Callum Muir. Do you know him?’
‘The Earl of Dundonal’s son?’ Vaughn rubbed the shadow of a beard on his face. ‘The Muir family have been patrons of Era Mina since the Middle Ages. What about his son?’
‘I saw Cecilia talking about him with one of her lieutenants. Callum Muir stole a map from the Keats-Shelley Museum and replaced it with a forgery. Cecilia was furious. She wants the original back. Fiera Orsini asked me to get him out of Rome. I may need to bring him to Raphael Terrace for a while.’
Vaughn considered the problem. ‘Are you sure you can do that without compromising your position with Cecilia? I need you to stay near her until this is over.’
‘She’s watching everyone closely, but I think I can get him here without too much trouble. He’s safely snoring at the Villa Orsini right now.’
‘You’ve already risked your life to get inside the Camarilla and reconnect with your mother,’ Vaughn said, suddenly wishing he hadn’t asked. ‘I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’ He put his hand on Zach’s. ‘If it’s getting too dangerous, come home. We can monitor Luca and the Camarilla through Orianna.’
‘I’m not quitting,’ signed Zach, annoyed, pulling away.
Vaughn sighed, torn between pride and fear. ‘You said there were two things. What else?’
‘Cecilia murdered her banker. Cut the guy’s head off.’ Zach’s sleeve slid up his wrist, revealing his Camarilla tattoo. ‘It was brutal. She’s never got her hands dirty before. She’s getting paranoid.’
‘Which banker?’ asked Vaughn sharply, afraid of the answer.
‘Victor,’ signed Zach. He grimaced. ‘It was Victor.’
‘Ah, shit.’ Vaughn rubbed his face again. Victor Moretti had been an Orion informant for years. ‘What about Victor’s family?’
‘Orianna got them safely to Switzerland, but somehow Cecilia found out they’d fled.’
Vaughn wanted to kick the table. ‘She’s ramping up to something big if she’s clea
ning house. It’s going to happen at the concert. No doubt about it. Are you sure your cover’s safe?’
‘For now.’ After a beat, Zach added: ‘Victor didn’t expose us. And Cecilia seems to still trust my mum.’
‘And you came through with Luca, so there’s that too. It was a relief to get your text about his agreement yesterday.’
Zach slid from the booth, but Vaughn grabbed his hand.
‘Right now, we can’t trust anyone,’ he said. ‘Take care, son.’
‘Take care yourself.’
Scotland
49.
Taking the High Road
‘I am glad you are both unhurt,’ said Alessandro de Mendoza.
The Moor spoke several Romance and African languages but because he’d learned his English at the Spanish court in the 1520s and 1530s, his intonation was crisp and his constructions a little antiquated.
‘I hope the improvement in the weather means the peryton survived,’ said Em, picking at the dried blood on her palm as she gazed out across the bay. The sky above Auchinmurn was thickening with smoke, but the thunder had stopped and the clouds were breaking up.
Rémy set his hand on the Moor’s broad forearm. ‘How many times have you saved my life now?’
‘I am not inclined to keep count.’
The scar running across Alessandro’s eyebrow from his battle with the Inquisitor centuries ago gave the impression he was about to wink, but Em sensed that was far from the reality.
‘You two were lucky I arrived when I did.’ His expression darkened to something explosive. ‘What in the name of all that is holy did you think you were doing, leaving the safe-house in Glasgow? You were given explicit instructions to stay.’
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