by Brett King
Brynstone turned back, looking for the assassin. Not far away, moonlight glinted off a black boot. Was Metzger getting careless? Not taking a chance, Brynstone fired the Glock, which kicked back against his hand. The spent casing burst from the side, tinkling on the ground. He heard a grunt, followed by heavy footfalls. Had he hit the assassin?
Diving behind a pillar, Metzger rolled over and clutched his leg. As warm blood gushed into his sock, he hissed, “Verdammte Scheisse.” He couldn’t stop the next words from escaping his lips. Words he’d never said in his life. “You shot me.”
Brynstone pulled a knife from his belt, then charged toward the woman. Relief flooded him when he looked into Kaylyn’s eyes. Even with tape across her mouth, she seemed to speak a thousand words. He wanted to kiss and hug her, but couldn’t take time. After slicing the ropes, he sheathed the knife as she crumpled into his arms.
He scooped up Kaylyn, then hurried past Tilton on the floor. As he headed for the stairwell, Metzger fired a handgun. A bullet grazed Brynstone’s shoulder. Another split his calf. He spun away. Pushing through blistering pain, he staggered to an alcove near the stairwell. Bending on shaky legs, he lowered Kaylyn to the floor before he toppled over her.
Metzger couldn’t believe it. Brynstone shot me. He ripped his shirt, then tied off his right leg. He’d trained himself to ignore pain. He wasn’t angry, only determined. Closing his eyes, he thought about his mother. He’d had no trouble killing Truda Metzger. Why couldn’t he neutralize John Brynstone?
Metzger’s eyes snapped open. Someone was behind him. Before he could stand, a boot slammed into his shoulder, toppling him. Catching himself on his hands, he started to push off the floor. Before he could, the person landed another hit, this one on his skull. The second blow came faster than the first. Dizzy red spots danced before his eyes. The pain was beautiful. It inspired Metzger. This is what he had been missing. This would help him kill Brynstone.
He sensed the next move before it happened. He could hear Brynstone’s boot, inches away. Rolling over, Metzger found the calf and chomped his teeth into flesh. Something didn’t feel right. Despite the swift attack, there was tenderness in the leg muscle. He wasn’t fighting Brynstone. He was fighting the redheaded woman. The one Brynstone called Jordan.
Metzger pounced on her, flipping Jordan on her back. His good knee rammed into her stomach. He grabbed her delicate throat and squeezed. She gurgled. Her eyes glowed with terror. Metzger forced pressure on her windpipe. She tried to fight him. No contest.
He loved killing beautiful things.
Huddled behind a wall, Kaylyn hugged her husband. “He took Shay. She’s here somewhere. I heard her cry, but it’s been several minutes.”
“See that stairwell?” Brynstone said. “Get out of here.”
“What about Shay?”
“I’ll find her,” he answered. “Promise you’ll hit the stairs as fast as you can?”
She nodded, tears standing in her eyes. She touched tender skin where John had ripped tape from her mouth.
“I love you,” he said, kissing her. “Now go.”
A faint cry. Her head snapped around. “That’s Shay.”
As John hurried away, she noticed blood soaking through his shirt. After he ducked around a concrete pillar, she checked for the assassin. Couldn’t see him. She sprinted to the stairwell and pushed open the door. She heard the German not far away in the darkness.
“Do not fight death,” he told his victim. “Embrace it.”
Does he have John? She couldn’t leave. Not now.
Chapter Forty-eight
Paris
5:13 A.M.
Notre-Dame’s scale and grandeur overpowered Cori the moment she stepped inside. Oversized pillars sheltered a scattered collection of relics and statues. Prayer candles flickered inside the vast sanctuary, casting it in a medieval glow. Lightning crackled outside the rose window, brightening the stained glass. Everything went black inside the cathedral, except for rows of votive candles clustered around the altar.
“We lost power,” Wurm said.
“The Île de la Cité gets hit hard,” Bettencourt sighed. “The island goes black, except for the Préfecture de Police.” The woman had stolen away from the security guard, Vaden, to meet with them.
“Does the name Le Stryge mean anything to you?” Wurm asked.
Bettencourt frowned at his mispronunciation. “It comes from a Greek word meaning ‘night bird.’ For centuries, people described winged demons that preyed on children, sucking them dry of blood. As you might suspect, these night spirits were associated with vampires.”
Cori and Wurm glanced at each other, wondering why Jung’s sash hinted at a vampire.
“Come, let me introduce you to Notre-Dame’s most celebrated grotesque,” Bettencourt said, as rain splashed against the rose window. “His name is Le Stryge.”
Chapter Forty-nine
Las Vegas
8:16 P.M.
Brynstone searched the sixty-fifth floor of the Helios Tower. Individual suites were framed, but with open walls, the floor was a cavernous room. No sign of Shay. A woman’s scream froze him. Jordan had found Metzger. More likely, Metzger had found Jordan. Should he help Jordan or keep searching for Shay? No question. Find the baby.
He tried to stifle a bitter thought. I want to kill Metzger.
Kaylyn peeked around a pillar. The German kidnapper straddled a woman, choking her.
“You should be dead.” His glassy eyes blazed as he spoke to his prey. “I’ve grown careless on this assignment. You must pay for my mediocrity.”
Kaylyn saw a stack of two-by-fours. She grabbed one, then sprinted toward the man. Picturing her child, she put everything she had into her swing. The board blasted into his head, vibrating so hard it made her arms ache. He fumbled to his knees, trying to keep balance. She took it to him again and connected. The blow flipped the man. He collapsed face-first.
She bent over the woman. Red hair flowed around her delicate face.
“Are you okay?”
“Thanks to you,” she wheezed. “My name’s Jordan. I work with your husband.”
Kaylyn scooped her arm around the taller woman, then struggled to help her stand. Jordan’s head rolled back and she winced. Blood dribbled from her nose. Kaylyn looked back at the German. He was holding his head. He tried to roll onto his hands and knees.
“We have to go, Jordan.”
The woman was bigger and more athletic than Kaylyn, making it hard to support her weight. Straining, she glanced up at her face. Jordan was smiling.
It was chilling.
Brynstone sensed the pain, bright and deep inside his body. He had been shot in the shoulder and leg, Metzger’s bullets grazing him both times. Fight through it. He reminded himself he’d been shot before, back when he was a Ranger.
Where is Shay? he wondered. What did that monster do to her? He’d heard her cry, but he couldn’t track the sound. He turned. Wait a minute. He flipped on the flashlight, sweeping it across a wall safe the size of a dorm-room refrigerator.
Oh God, no.
Chapter Fifty
Paris
5:19 A.M.
For the second time this morning, Cori and Wurm followed as Nicolette Bettencourt led the way up the worn spiral staircase inside Notre-Dame’s north tower. Moving out into the rainy night, Cori noticed that most of Paris still had power, including the Latin Quarter. The Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe glowed in the distance beyond the Île de la Cité.
A bitter chill cut through her body as she shared an umbrella with Bettencourt. “Careful,” the French woman warned. “It is slippery.”
They returned to the narrow walkway known as the Galerie de Chimières, where haunting grotesques surrounded them. The rain and power outage cast the gallery in an eerie atmosphere. In the murky morning, the cathedral’s stone citizens possessed an unnatural animation. Crouching dragons and dogs and demons seemed poised to attack. Cori peeked over the ledge for a glimpse of the Chr
istmas tree below. The parvis glistened with rain. It was a straight drop of two hundred feet.
The gallery was encased in a security cage, a web of steel-reinforced cables separating them from the grotesques perched on the cathedral walls. Bettencourt grabbed the security fence. “Some people come to Notre-Dame with the motive of ending their lives. In 1989, a suicidal man dove off the tower and landed on a thirteen-year-old girl waiting in line near the entrance. A year later, this security retainer was installed to prevent further tragedies.”
“Still, it’s a shame they had to close it in like this,” Wurm said, tipping back his umbrella to inspect the retainer trusses stretching overhead.
“It can’t be helped,” Bettencourt yelled over the roar of the raindrops pounding on the umbrella. “But now to other things. Permit me to introduce Le Stryge.” She pointed to a winged grotesque perched on the ledge, his head crowned with horns.
Cupping his jaw in his hands, the creature had stabbed his tongue at the Paris skyline for more than a century and a half. On the way up the tower stairs, Bettencourt had explained that the grotesque had guarded Notre-Dame for less than a decade when illustrator Charles Meryon christened him Le Stryge in 1854. Later, American artist John Taylor Arms playfully named him Le Penseur, or the Thinker. Memorialized in sepia-washed postcards, he was better known as the Spitting Gargoyle.
Created during the cathedral’s restoration, the grotesque was rumored to be spitting at the site that would host the Eiffel Tower in 1889. Nicolette Bettencourt seemed to relish the symbolism of stone taunting steel, a blithe gesture of the old world mocking the new.
“I was thinking about della Rovere coming up the stairs,” Cori said. “I’m guessing, but maybe the priest hid the Scintilla inside a gargoyle in 1502, before Cesare Borgia found him. Over the centuries, gargoyles crumbled and crashed onto the parvis. Cut to Viollet-le-Duc’s reconstruction during the 1840s. The architect removes any gargoyles posing a safety risk. During the reconstruction, he discovers the Scintilla inside a deteriorating gargoyle.”
“What are you driving at?” Bettencourt asked.
“Maybe the architect finds this thing and decides to conceal it inside a new grotesque. Around that time, he tells Carl Jung’s grandfather, the grand master of the Swiss Masons.”
“Viollet-le-Duc traveled often to Switzerland,” Bettencourt said. “He lived his final years in Lausanne. He died there in 1879.”
“It is plausible he might have known Jung’s grandfather,” Cori added. She tugged on the network of security cables that separated them from Le Stryge and other grotesques mounted around the gallery. “Can we go out there to see him?”
“Promise to be careful. It is dark and quite dangerous,” Bettencourt said, handing over the umbrella. She unlocked a black door composed of metal bars, like on a jail cell. “Go, but I must see Vaden before he becomes suspicious.” She headed for the tower.
Cori maneuvered her umbrella through the security door to visit Le Stryge. She popped it open again as Wurm joined her. The grotesque looked more sinister up close. Her mind flashed to a childhood memory of watching The Wizard of Oz. The Spitting Gargoyle reminded her of those creepy flying monkeys that raised hell with Dorothy and her pals.
Wurm leaned close. The slick black skin of their umbrellas pressed together. “You think the Scintilla is inside this thing?”
“Hope so.” She found herself wondering why Viollet-le-Duc had chosen the cathedral’s most famous grotesque to guard the Scintilla. Why draw attention to the hiding place? Then she realized the architect had had no conception of the fame that awaited Le Stryge.
Power returned to the cathedral, bathing the western facade in light. She jumped, then caught her breath. Hugging herself, she looked at the clearing sky. The rain stopped, but the air had turned bitter. She leaned her umbrella against the railing.
To the grotesque’s left was a shrieking owl sculpture, its tongue also sticking out. Beneath Le Stryge, two leaf-shaped decorations known as crockets curved out from the gallery railing, the top projecting farther than the one beneath it. Near the crockets, poles with miniature spotlights protruded beyond the railing. Lights cast an amber glow on the grotesque.
With damp hair plastered against her face, Cori closed her eyes. Reaching around Le Stryge’s wing, her hand glided along his pitted hide. Like a blind person exploring an unfamiliar face, she moved her fingers from the horns down to the ridged forehead and around to his deep ear cavities. She touched the sunken cheekbones and flaring nostrils of his hooknose. Nearly two centuries of unforgiving Parisian weather had dulled the grotesque’s features. Once sharp and curved like a sabertoothed cat fang, the horns were now shorter and flattened on top. The crown on his forehead had eroded. So had his nose, and even the tip of his notorious tongue.
“There’s one sure way to see if the Scintilla is inside,” Wurm said, staring at Le Stryge. “Let’s break open this thing.”
“We can’t destroy this grotesque. It’s an important artifact.”
“It’s nothing more than a bloody rock.”
Hearing footsteps from behind, Cori and Wurm turned. A man stepped from the northern tower. He was tall and brawny, cords framing his muscular neck. He fumed as he stepped through the door, joining them on the small balcony.
“Santo Borgia,” Wurm said. “Haven’t seen you since the slaughterhouse.”
“We found our mother’s body at Bollingen,” Santo said, balling his fist. “How many of us have you killed over the years, Dr. Wurm?”
“How many Borgias?” he asked. “Must be three or four. I’m a decent fighter. It always surprises people when they get their butt kicked by a mathematician. But I didn’t kill your mother. Lucrezia struck her head in the watery chamber beneath Jung’s tower.”
“Expect me to believe that? Just shut up and hand over the relic.”
Wurm shook his head. “It is lost to history.”
Santo lunged, then snapped his arms around Cori. Wurm jumped on him, but Santo Borgia flung him off. Screaming, Cori wriggled enough to bite his hand. It didn’t faze him. With a sweeping motion, Santo hoisted her body above his head, then pitched her over Le Stryge. She felt weightless as her body cut through the air. Flying over the grotesque, Cori saw the parvis far below. She couldn’t breathe, terror freezing her lungs.
On Notre-Dame’s tower gallery, Wurm watched as Santo Borgia heaved Cori over Le Stryge. Wurm burst into a rage, then rammed into the man. Borgia was a powerhouse, all force and muscle, but he was no match for Wurm’s fury. He swung the metal flashlight, shattering Santo’s collarbone before clubbing his skull. He heard bone crack in Borgia’s nose. Dropping the flashlight, Wurm grabbed the man’s arm and neck, driving his body as he slammed Borgia’s head into the stone balustrade.
“You shouldn’t have thrown Cori off the tower,” he snarled.
Wurm stepped over the unconscious man, then rushed to the ledge.
Cori dangled on the bottom crocket a few feet beneath Le Stryge. As Santo had flipped her over the grotesque, she had twisted toward the gallery wall. Jerking sideways, she’d missed Le Stryge but slammed into the top crocket. It had busted apart as pain roared in her left arm. The bottom crocket jabbed her rib cage, slowing her fall before she grabbed the curved stone.
Straining to pull herself up, she realized how close she had come to dying. Hanging from the crocket, she thought about how it could still happen if she lost her hold and dropped two hundred feet to the parvis. Finding a desperate breath, she wrapped her arm around the crocket. She swung her leg over the metal pole holding the spotlight. Bracing against the parapet, she glanced at the highest crocket below Le Stryge, the one broken by her fall. A wooden handle stuck out of busted masonry. She guessed Viollet-le-Duc had stashed the object inside the crocket beneath the grotesque’s ledge during his restoration.
Her arm burning as she climbed, Cori grasped the meaning behind Le Stryge’s famous spitting tongue. Never intended as a mocking gesture at the Eiffel Tower’s f
uture home, the grotesque’s tongue instead pointed at the crocket a few feet below. The Scintilla wasn’t concealed inside the grotesque, but beneath him. Her muscles protested as she reached for Le Stryge. Wurm appeared from behind the grotesque. He pulled her onto the balustrade.
Cori saw Santo Borgia facedown on the gallery floor. She panted, “Nice work.”
Wurm brought her into his big arms. “I thought I’d lost you.”
The affection surprised her. He pulled away, acting like the moment had never happened. He pointed at Le Stryge. “We need to tear apart this brute.”
“No need,” she answered, straddling the ledge. “Take a look.”
He looped his arm around Le Stryge. Leaning over the balustrade, he studied the crocket beneath the grotesque.
“Crumbled when I fell on it.” She clawed at a handle sticking out of the broken crocket. Masonry chunks crumbled away as she tugged on the handle.
He handed the umbrella to her. “Jam the sharp end of this into the stone.”
Cori chiseled away at the eroded stone. A minute later, she wiggled the handle from the fractured crocket. “A hammer. An ancient one.”
“Probably belonged to one of Viollet-le-Duc’s workers,” Wurm said, sliding back to the gallery. He sighed, “We need the Scintilla, not a hammer.”
Chapter Fifty-one
Las Vegas
8:22 P.M.
Brynstone was reeling. He remembered his phone call with Metzger, when they’d first hit town. The assassin had said that Shay was in a “safe place.” He meant it. The sick son of a bitch had locked her inside a wall safe. How long could she survive in there?