Day of Atonement

by Alex Archer

  “What do you mean, not the first time?”

  “There was someone else, a long time ago.”

  “How long ago? A few years? A hundred? Two hundred? Right now you need to be a hell of a lot more precise.”

  “Twenty,” Roux said, the memory flooding back again. He’d done so well to bury it away in the recesses of his mind where it would no longer haunt him. Now he was willingly letting the genie out of the bottle.

  “Twenty years? That’s nothing. That’s like yesterday. What it is not is a long time ago and you damned well know that. Talk to me, Roux.”

  Roux shrugged, not really sure how much to tell him.

  Should he confess how close that French journalist had come to exposing them? He had thought about it many times over the years, usually in moments like this when the urge to break off contact with Garin was strong. There was logic to it. The more they were seen together, the more likely it was for people to connect the two of them. Side by side it was impossible not to notice the one single unique trait they both shared, and now, with the proliferation of cameras and living lives out on social networks photographing absolutely everything in the minutia of life, it wouldn’t take much to bring trouble knocking on their door.

  “Someone—a journalist—found a few pictures of me that were quite a few years apart…”

  “…and you didn’t look a day older,” Garin completed for him. “That’s it, isn’t it. That’s what’s happened here. You got careless and someone found out about us.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” Roux said.

  “How can you possibly know that? Certainly there’s something to worry about.” Roux raised a hand to cut him off before he could launch into a tirade about how he’d compromised them, but he stopped midbreath. “He’s dead, isn’t he? That’s how you know. You killed him. Jesus, Roux. How many secrets are you hiding in that head of yours?”

  “Plenty,” Roux said. They were not strangers to death, but like it or not, the journalist hadn’t deserved what happened to him.

  In the light of the headlights coming toward them, Roux could see that other man was smiling, that he thought that this was in some way something to be proud of.

  “It was never my intention to kill him.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Garin laughed. “It just sort of happened. You keep telling yourself that if it helps you sleep, old man. Just remind me not to piss you off for a while, eh?”

  “Leave it,” Roux said.

  “Okay, you say it’s over, but what if this journo of yours told someone else? What if he left notes?”

  “It’s irrelevant. The two events aren’t connected.”

  “How can you possibly know that?”

  “Because they hired you to steal from me.”

  “No. That was happenstance. A collision of good fortune. They didn’t know where the documents were,” Garin said.

  “And you are stupid enough to believe that? You are quite possibly the only person in the world who could conceivably know that I had Guillaume Manchon’s papers in my vault. I mean, who in the world was he? Some hanger-on from the court at Rouen? Do you even remember him? I do. He was a nobody. A vile creature always fawning over more powerful men, a sniveling wretch with a perpetual cold who was obsessed with demons and devils and couldn’t set foot outside the church without invoking every damned holy rite known to man. That was Guillaume Manchon. And our tormentor just happens to be looking for the ramblings of this demon-obsessed scribbler? A man who stood there when they burned Joan and watched, relishing every second of it, rubbing his hands with glee over the flames as they bit into her flesh. A man who believed there was a demonic entity inside her that needed to be exorcised? And he wants you to get them for him? You, one of the only two people in the world who were at that execution. Sometimes, Garin, you are a true idiot.”

  It was Garin’s turn to fall silent.

  Roux settled back into the seat and listened to the beat of the windshield wipers and the swoosh of wet snow as the wheels churned it up for mile after mile.

  He needed to think.

  If he pretended to sleep, Garin might just shut up for once.

  49

  In the end Annja talked her host out of giving her a ride into the village.

  She was feeling much better than she had for a couple of days; the second cup of coffee and a plate of eggs and toast made the world of difference.

  She had told him that instead of heading down the mountain to the village she’d just double back and head up to the house she’d been visiting, explaining that they had a phone there and right now the most important thing was getting in touch with her friends who’d be worrying about her. He nodded, understanding, and no doubt relieved he didn’t have to get his car out given the treacherous conditions.

  Even so, she could feel his eyes watching her as she made her way from his house to the road that led back up the mountain.

  She desperately wanted to slip the sword back into the otherwhere, but wouldn’t risk it until she was sure he could no longer see her, even if that meant balancing the huge blade on her shoulder as she slipped and slid up the road.

  She felt much stronger, strong enough to take on whoever was in that house.

  She wasn’t running away.

  It wasn’t her style.

  Besides, if Roux was coming to save her, this was where he’d come, and he was going to need someone to save his ass when he sprung Cauchon’s trap.

  Going back into the lion’s den was the only option.

  Even if Cauchon had returned and freed his sister, even if he had a small army hidden up there, she was ready.

  And they were about to find out just how ready.

  Before she reached the road, she heard a car coming up the mountain.

  She held back, scrambling over a low wall at the side of the road and ducking out of sight.

  She didn’t get more than a glance at the car as it passed, but the old man had said there was only one place this road led to.

  As she reached the track she turned to see that the man who had saved her was still standing in his doorway, watching her. What had he thought about her scrambling over the wall? It couldn’t be helped, but so much for not doing anything to rouse his suspicion. She gave him a wave. He returned it and went back inside, closing the door on his little mountainside sanctuary.

  Confident that she was away from any prying eyes, Annja swung her sword, feeling its weight as her muscles worked through a routine, easy, graceful, filling her body with warmth. With each swing she felt stronger, as if the sword was giving her more energy. Energy that surged through her like an electric charge, invigorating her, restoring her.

  She didn’t need to walk up the mountainside; she felt strong enough to run, knowing she’d be strong enough to do whatever she needed to do when she reached the top.

  She was alive.

  Vital.

  Invincible.

  Annja’s heart rate accelerated, the blood pumping through her veins to the rhythm of the sword’s raw power, surging through her system, firing her synapses. She slipped the sword into the otherwhere, not needing its revitalizing thrill, and she strode on, determined to reach the house in the mountains as quickly as she could.

  The storm had subsided into a crisp calm morning of clear blue skies as far as the eye could see, dazzling against the blanket of white that lay over the mountaintops.

  It didn’t take long to reach the bend where she’d lost control of the truck and then the subsequent one where she’d bailed out. The night’s snowfall had obliterated the worst of the scarring the accident had done to the landscape. All that remained were a couple of faint marks in the surface from where the vehicle had overbalanced in the final seconds before going over the edge. Considering the wind, in a few hours even they could be gone.

  She walked to the edge and stood there, the wind battering her as she gazed down to where the tangled wreckage of the truck had burned out. It had fallen a l
ong way. Snow had accumulated on the wreck as winter claimed it.

  There was no sign of any other dwellings nearby.

  There was still plenty of ground to cover.

  She wanted to deal with these people before Roux arrived, or at least be in a position to stop him from doing something stupid. She knew how he was about her. He didn’t think rationally. It was some misplaced father instinct. It meant he made bad decisions, but they all came from the right place. The old man had a big heart. He cared. Sometimes caring, though, was a problem, especially if it meant dealing with kidnappers on their terms.

  Annja turned her back on the incredible vista, and noticed the snow at her feet, or rather the fact that it had been compacted by another vehicle during the night. She ran on, using those tracks for the grip she needed to break her stride into a run and attack the incline. It felt good to push on, to feel her heart pumping blood into her muscles, the icy cold air in her lungs. She wanted to scream at the top of her lungs and hear her voice echo from peak to peak before rebounding and filling her ears with its raucous chorus.

  She drove herself on, arms and legs pumping hard, teeth gritted against the elements, savoring every single step on the road.

  This was it, woman against mountain. She would win.

  She always did.

  No matter what it cost her physically or emotionally.

  She always won.

  50

  “Someone’s coming,” one of the men said, looking up from the video-feed he’d been monitoring on a laptop.

  Cauchon wheeled across the room and pushed him aside, getting a clear look at the screen. Despite the angle and its reduced clarity, he was sure he was going to see Annja Creed staggering back up the mountain toward the house, defeated, coming to beg for mercy and warmth because the mountain had beaten her. He would see her on her knees. He would listen to her teeth chatter and watch as she was reduced to a pitiful wretch, and then he would drive her demon out.

  He breathed in deeply, savoring the thought.

  He was just.

  He was on the side of the angels.

  He was doing God’s work.

  He was finishing what had begun six centuries ago.

  When he’d returned to the isolated farmhouse with his hired muscle, he’d found his sister locked in the basement, with no sign of the Creed woman. She was treacherous. Devious. The demon in her skin was cunning. Underestimate the devil’s minions at your peril—that was the message her escape had reinforced. He didn’t know how she had done it, and certainly didn’t doubt she had used her powers. How else could she have tricked Monique?

  What he didn’t know was if the woman’s demon granted her the same sort of immortality that Roux and his sidekick seemed to have, in which case would driving it out leave her in danger of dying? How many lives had she already lived? It didn’t matter, he thought, staring at the screen. This was the last one. That was all that mattered. And dead or alive, Roux would still come to the farmhouse trying to save her. And he would still bring the armor with him.

  Some things were just too perfect.

  The more he read from those ancient pages, the more he realized that he would be able to achieve so much more than just ridding the woman of the spirit that possessed her.

  A 4x4 passed the security camera, traveling slowly enough for him to see the vehicle’s sole occupant.

  He had stared at the man’s face, seen in so many pictures, taken from so many years, some almost a century apart that he would even have been able to pick him out in the dark.

  Roux.

  How the hell did he find us? he wondered. Why didn’t he know that the devil was coming?

  He tapped a couple of keys to bring up the map with the tracker signal. The signal hadn’t moved. It was still sitting where it had been since early morning, moving north on a highway seemingly heading to Paris. The old man had realized that there was a tracker on the car and switched it to another vehicle heading north. Cauchon’s frustration threatened to boil over.

  “Get your weapons!” Cauchon demanded, pushing his chair back from the screen. It didn’t matter how Roux had managed to find him. That was irrelevant. He was here now. It saved having to give him directions from Pau. The only thing that mattered was he’d come alone, and that was the last mistake the old man was ever going to make.

  The house was full of sound and movement; it was hard to believe that there were only three men and one woman readying themselves for war, but that’s what it was—war.

  “Watch the old man’s approach,” Cauchon ordered one of his goons. All he could do now was to put his faith in others; it wasn’t a position he enjoyed.

  But he wasn’t completely helpless, even if most of it was illusion.

  He retrieved a Browning Hi-Power pistol from its place in the cupboard.

  He had tried to fire the gun once and the recoil had almost tipped over his chair, but that didn’t mean that the weapon didn’t offer the same feeling of power that it did to able-bodied men. It was time he came face-to-face with Roux.

  He checked the screen again.

  Roux’s car was coming into sight of the second camera. He watched the 4x4 travel up the road.

  The contractor who’d installed the system had tried to convince him that he was going over the top with the number of cameras he wanted, but the man hadn’t understood that Cauchon was planning for war. This wasn’t about home invasion. He followed the progress from image to image as Roux neared, until the old man reached the last checkpoint.

  He called out distances to his men, Monique beside him, urging them to be ready for Roux’s approach. He watched as Roux brought the 4x4 toward the farmhouse, then stopped watching and wheeled himself toward the door.

  Cauchon wanted to be there to greet him.

  He wanted to see the look on the old man’s face when he realized that they were ready for him, that whatever trickery he’d used to find his way here hadn’t been enough.

  Monique stood at his shoulder, an Uzi at the ready.

  “I can hear him,” she said needlessly. The vehicle’s engine was the only sound in the mountains.

  Cauchon wheeled himself out onto the stone slab area outside the front door. The snow had been cleared that morning, and with the heat of the sun had melted little that remained on the steps. He sucked in the cold morning air.

  The winter sun glinted off the mountain peaks in the distance.

  Today was going to be a good day.

  Today was going to be the day when wrongs were righted and revenge exacted.

  Today was going to be the day when Roux finally met his Maker.

  The car crawled around the last tight curve that led to the farmhouse. Two of the guards took a step forward to intercept the driver, not waiting for instructions. They had looked capable of feasting on lions when Cauchon had picked them up, but now, dressed in black, fully armed, they looked like cold-blooded killers, standing out in stark contrast to the whiteness that surrounded them.

  The car stopped.

  Roux paused before he opened the door to get out.

  Cauchon watched him. Did the old man remember him? He had changed, of course. A lot. Life had happened to him. Whereas he would have recognized Roux anywhere. The man was unchanged. It was as if he’d been carved out of the landscape.

  “Welcome,” he said as Roux climbed out of the vehicle.

  The old man made no show of acknowledging the guns aimed at his chest.

  “I trust you haven’t come all this way empty-handed?”

  “Of course not,” Roux replied. “I’ve got what you want, but before I take another step, where’s the girl?”

  “Ah, not so hasty. All in good time. I want to savor our reunion. We have much to talk about, so why don’t you come inside out of the cold? It’s been a while.”

  51

  Garin approached the farmhouse, keeping low, moving as quickly as he could across the uneven ground, listening to the sounds of the mountain.

  He�
��d abandoned the warmth and comfort of the car farther from their destination than he would have liked. Hell, in an ideal world he’d have curled up on the backseat with a blanket over him and pretended he wasn’t there, but even a bunch of incompetents would have seen him. He had no choice but to go in by foot.

  He scrambled forward, hands pawing at the high snow as his feet sank into the drifts. Each stumbling step ended with the snow up around his knees. The two hundred feet to the crest of the hill was a colossal undertaking. He stumbled and nearly fell three times, dragging himself forward, eyes on the prize.

  He crested the next hill, keeping low, and saw the farmhouse up ahead. He made out six people, several of them with odd silhouettes that seemed to have distended and disjointed arms: submachine guns. That was an unexpected and unwelcome development. Garin wasn’t unarmed. Only a fool went into the lion’s den naked. But he didn’t like the idea of pitting his Colt Mustang against an Uzi. The XSP was good for concealed carry, weighing less than a pound even when loaded with six shots of .380 ACP. But heavy ordnance it was not.

  He dropped to his stomach and lay still as Roux made his way around to the passenger’s side of the car. He regretted it immediately. The snow was bitingly cold against his skin. He wasn’t twelve anymore. This wasn’t fun.

  The old man retrieved the box from the backseat.

  The guards watched him closely.

  From this distance, with the wind whipping across the mountaintops, it was impossible to hear what words passed between them no matter how hard he strained to hear. The mountains carried words away on the wind and wrapped them up in snow. He watched Roux and the others enter the house before he made his move.

  He had no way of knowing if any of them would continue to monitor the feeds from the security cameras, but had to hope not.

  There was a track that ran around the outbuildings, which offered some cover from the windows of the farmhouse. Garin scrambled forward, bolting for cover. He fell before he made it thirty feet, and slid twice as far down the slope, and then was up on his feet again and running hard for the stone wall, dreading one single sound: the crack of bullets from an Uzi echoing around the mountains.