Ordo Lupus and the Temple Gate - Second Edition: An Ex Secret Agent Paranormal Investigator Thriller (Ordo Lupus and the Blood Moon Prophecy Book 2)

by Lazlo Ferran

  “Have you some change?” Georgina asked me.

  I reached into my trouser pockets for whatever change was there.

  “I will owe you,” she said, smiling at her deft use of colloquial English.

  As my fingers trawled for coins, I glanced over the narrow cobbled street. I could see a few hopeful heads of other children in the cool shadow of a side street, watching us. I glanced up at the narrow slit of blue sky high above, and then to the upper end of the street which sloped quite steeply towards us, and on down to a junction further on. “Here you go.” I handed over the coins I had managed to retrieve, but there were more. I placed them in Georgina’s hand and she passed them to the little boy. He swiftly turned and ran towards his friends.

  “There’s more!” I said.

  “Wait!” she called to him. He hadn’t stopped and she started off after him.

  At that moment, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a white flash moving towards her. I didn’t have time to shout. I just ran after her and caught her dress hem flowing out behind her, just in time. I yanked it and she stopped as it ripped. The white car whistled by only inches in front of her face, knocking her hand to the side with a loud whack, which made her lose her balance and fall over.

  “Georgina!” I cried. As I stooped over her fallen form, I looked at the car, as it rolled silently down the street, and saw the faces of two children leaning from the car window, laughing with delight. I noticed that the car appeared to have no driver, but I guessed another child was at the wheel. “Are you alright?” I asked, turning back to Georgina.

  “Merde. My hand is broken I think.”

  “Let me look.” I gently felt all the bones and although it was swelling fast, and she cried out in pain as I touched the back of her knuckles, it all seemed intact. “Maybe a fracture but nothing more.”

  “My dress is ripped.”

  “Don’t worry. I will buy you a new one.”

  Then she silently started weeping. She clutched my arm as if it were a log in white water, and I hauled her to her feet.

  “Bloody kids. Joy riders!” I muttered.

  “It was children? Oh! Merde! I wish I could get hold of them!” She was angry. “I wondered why I didn’t hear it. You saved my life!”

  She was sobbing now, convulsing, partly with shock from the sudden impact.

  “They must have just pushed it down the hill.”

  After a few minutes, she stopped shaking and dried her eyes. “They are a nuisance.” She was silent for a moment. “Is that what you mean by chaos? Was that one of those events?”

  “Maybe. Yes. Evil possibly, but in a random way. It is Evil but in its raw form, like a whim, not really planned or carefully thought through. Not assisted, as it is when carried out by the Jackals.”

  “I felt it, yes. It was out of control. Tell me more about it.”

  We walked and talked, until we found ourselves on our way back to the flat at around four. We had intended seeing a film Georgina wanted to watch, but never quite arrived at the Cinema. I told her as much as I could about my experiences, and what explanations I had for any of it.

  She listened attentively, clutching my arm all the time, like a little child. After I had finished talking, she said simply, “It’s around us now isn’t it.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can feel it. It’s like a darkness.”

  As we arrived at the flat, I looked around us and the shadows in the streets seemed just a little bit darker than usual.

  I bathed her hand in disinfectant, to clean the small cuts, and then lightly bandaged it. She seemed quite sleepy when I had finished, so we curled up on the bed together for a doze. “Wake me in time to go,” she said, before falling asleep.

  I really didn’t feel sleepy at all and just lay there looking at her hair, and at the wall above the window overlooking Paris. I wondered what she had meant when she said she had done bad things. I wouldn’t know until she told me. I wondered again if I had done something bad when I was young, which might explain why I was cursed now. I looked at the clock on the bedside table, it was nearly six. I considered briefly not waking Georgina, leaving her to sleep through her appointment at the Notre Dame. I knew something bad would happen if she went. I closed my eyes and my thoughts drifted.

  Perhaps I had done something bad in a previous life. An image formed in front of me. A robed and hooded monk was walking across an inner courtyard of a marble building, from my right to my left. His sandaled feet seemed to make no sound on the cool marble, and I could see olive trees and vines through the various porticos around the courtyard. He was moving so slowly that time almost stood still as I watched for each footfall. I couldn’t see his face but I wanted to. Finally he reached a step which lead down to a path which lead through a portico and he stopped. His hands slowly raised as if to remove the hood from his face.

  “Wake up!”

  I recognised the voice but it couldn’t be the monk. Then something was shaking me and I looked at Georgina’s face.

  “You were asleep,” she said.

  “Huh? What time is it?”

  “Nearly seven. We have to go now.”

  I was disappointed that she had woken up in time but I hid it. “I was having a weird dream.”

  “What about?”

  “I don’t know. A monk I think. I really wanted to talk to him.”

  “Come on. Get ready.”

  I swung my legs off the bed and sat there, rubbing my eyes. “I only need to wash my face and comb my hair. We’re not going to dinner.”

  “We might. Anyway. Just hurry up.”

  Within five minutes we were out of the flat, Georgina looking nervously about, as we stepped onto the pavement. Nobody seemed to be watching us. Within one block, she had stopped a taxi and we climbed in.

  “Notre Dame, s’il vous plaît,” she said.

  As we crossed Paris I felt as if I was losing something; control, life, light. Something intangible was slipping away from me. “Darling, we’re early. Let’s walk the last half mile?”

  “Why? It’s not safe to walk.”

  “But we’re early. It will be even more unsafe to be standing around for half an hour outside the Cathedral.”

  “No. I want to drive. Stop being so negative!” Her voice was tense, her words terse, and I stared out of the window. It was the closest we had come to an argument.

  An image flashed into my mind, vivid and insistent. I tried to ignore it but it appeared again. A car hitting a pavement and crushing someone underneath. The car was white and I thought it was just the joy rider’s car. I ignored the image. It flashed in my mind again and I saw that it was a man driving the car, dressed in black. I pushed it out of my mind.

  “We’re nearly there,” said Georgina absently. She was looking out of the window, away from me.

  Another image flashed into my mind, worse than the last. It seemed to be inside Notre dame, with the cool evening light blazing through the stained glass windows, and I could see several monks standing by the main gallery parapet, looking down at something. I followed their gaze down and saw something twisting on the end of a rope. There was a movement from one of the monks and fire leaped down the rope, igniting the object twisting on the end. Then finally I could see what it was on the end of the rope. It was a body and the rope was around its neck. It was Georgina! In the taxi, I jerked at the image. “Stop the car!”

  “Why? No!” said Georgina.

  “Trust me baby. We’re not going to Notre Dame tonight. I just saw what will happen to you.”

  She looked confused, and the taxi driver was staring at us in his rear view mirror. He stopped the car and we paid him. I quickly ushered Georgina up the nearest side street and into the shadows. I was sweating.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Don’t ask. We havE to get away from here. We’re too close.” I took her hand and started up the gradual slope of the street, between the high sides of private apartment buildings. Only the occasional small wi
ndow broke the grey concrete surfaces. The occasional car roared past, its engine sound echoing as if in a small box. I found myself humming ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ yet again, as I always did to calm my nerves, but quickly changed it to ‘This is my song’, from the Tom Thumb film. We turned at the top, into another street, lined with small shops and wrought-iron balconies. With more people moving, I felt safer. A few streets later, moving in the direction of the flat, I began to feel that we really were safer, and slowed down. My heart was still thumping though, as if something were wrong. I looked around us. Everyone in the street seemed suspicious. If I saw any man with dark glasses on, I found myself staring intently at his face, for signs that he was watching us. We only walked a few paces more and I heard the sound of a car engine being gunned. We both swiveled towards the direction of the sound, and I saw a white Peugeot crossing over the road, moving straight towards us. We ran and as I looked back, I saw the car crash into the wall behind the spot where we had been standing. There was a terrible sound of glass smashing, and metal rending, and then the sound of the engine running out of control, like a wailing animal. The driver was slumped over the wheel, motionless. As a crowd gathered, we turned down another side street, and I started looking for a parked car.

  “We have to get out of here! We’re being watched. We need a car.”

  My own car was still in Paris, parked in a bay I had often used when visiting, but it was too far away and anyway, it would be watched. My training from M.I.6 cut in and I looked for one of the types of car which I knew were easy to break into. After zigzagging for a few blocks, I still hadn’t found any of the cars I was looking for, but we stopped outside a small boutique.

  “Go in there, try something on quickly and bring out a coat-hanger, one of those metal ones,” I told Georgina.

  I straightened out the hanger and slid it between the glass and the rubber strip on the driver’s door of a battered old Citroën I finally found in the next street. It was partially in shadow but Georgina stood in front of me to block the view from the windows of the flats opposite. In only a few seconds, I heard the click of the door unlocking and I climbed in. I ducked down to hot-wire the car and the old engine sputtered into life.

  “It’s no racer but it will do!”

  “You really were in the Secret Service then? Either that or you are a criminal!” Georgina laughed, as we pulled away. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it matters. We just need to keep moving.” After her little laugh, I was surprised that she suddenly went quiet. I glanced at her and could see her looking morosely out of the passenger window.

  “You saved my life again.”

  “You don’t seem very happy about it.” I immediately wanted to bite my tongue. Given her suicide attempt the night before it was a particularly stupid thing to say.

  “No. It’s not that. It’s just that it’s only you that is keeping me alive! I can feel that I should have been killed already twice today, both times by cars.”

  “Oh the first one was just kids playing! It was close but you probably would have survived. But it is twice. I haven’t told you the image I saw in my head about what might have happened to you in the Cathedral. I saw the second white car, exactly as it happened, so I am sure about the Cathedral too.”

  “I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me. You see! It’s just your will keeping me alive. You have become like a light in the dark for me.” She clutched my arm and was silent for a few moments. “Somehow you are managing to avoid fate, maybe for a few hours, who knows? But you can’t escape it forever. I have done bad things and even God has abandoned me now. Oh it’s no use! Why do you even bother trying to save me! You will get yourself killed!”

  I was barely hearing what she was saying, just concentrating on driving, constantly looking in my mirror for signs of cars following. “Yeah. Sometimes it goes like that. It will pass eventually.” I was driving steadily North East towards Courvbevoie, the only suburb of Paris I knew well, using as many side streets as I could. The little Citroën was very easy to manoeuvre in and out of the heavy early evening traffic. Several times I thought cars followed us too long for it to be coincidence, but as we crossed the second strand of the Seine, I knew we were being followed.

  “Christ! How the bloody-hell did they find us?”

  “I told you it’s no good. They have allies in Les Gendarmes.”

  “Somebody must have seen us get into this car. We have to switch to another car.” Even as I said it, in my soul, I knew it wasn’t true. They could see us. Or at least something could see us. I could feel its eyes on us, but not in the material world. In the spirit world, vague shapes drifted in and out of focus, but we were exposed and somewhere, far off dark, smoldering eyes watched us. A powerful mind seemed to know my every thought. I felt helpless and hopeless.

  “They seem to know our every move. I think it’s the Serpent. I think it is beginning to read my mind.”

  Georgina looked at me, her eyes full of curiosity.

  “We need to find a way to block its sight or something,” I suggested.

  “Okay. So how do we do that?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

  The black Mercedes that had been following us was still there, almost like a shy stalker, crawling around corners about two-hundred yards behind us, before slowly catching up, and then falling back again at the next turning.

  “Why do you hum that silly tune?”

  “Which one?”

  “You know.” She mimicked me and it was a pretty good rendition. I hadn’t noticed that once again, I had been humming that same tune from Tom Thumb.

  “I don’t know. It’s from an old Hollywood film – ‘Tom Thumb’.”

  “Oh. I don’t know it but I love films. I would like to see it.”

  “You will. I will take you to see it next time it shows in Paris. Do you have a cinema that screens old films?”

  “Yes. Of course. Paris has many small cinemas.”

  “What’s your favourite film?” I didn’t know many basic things about Georgina, her favourite colour, film and book, and I was just about to launch into a question and answer session with her, when an idea came into my mind. “Of course. That’s it!”

  “What?”

  “I think I know how to get these bastards off our tail.”

  “How?”

  “Okay. Paris has had many famous films, filmed here, right?”

  “Um hmm.”

  “Okay. So I suggest a film and you give me directions to go there, one street at a time. If I don’t know where we are going to, nobody else will know until the last moment. Maybe it will work.”

  “It sounds crazy but let’s try it! I may not know some of the films though.”

  “How about ‘The Red Balloon’?”

  “Oh I know that one! That was one of my favourite films when I was in school, because they showed it all the time in England, and it reminded me of home. I know where it was filmed too. Everyone in Paris would recognise it.”

  “Good. Don’t tell me. Just take us there, but in a very roundabout fashion. Okay?”

  “Okay.. Let me think. Okay. Turn right at the next set of traffic lights.”

  We drove for perhaps a few miles north, on one of Paris’ main roads before Georgina, sucking in her cheeks, pointed to the right.

  “Turn there!”

  All the time I was trying to think of ways to lose the Mercedes. For a moment our luck changed and we crossed a set of lights just as they turned to red, leaving the Mercedes stopped in the queue of cars. “Now’s our chance!” I said. I took the next turn to the left and continued to weave through the maze of residential streets, heading roughly in the same overall direction as before. After about twenty minutes we hit another main road heading almost due north, and Georgina told me to take this road. There was no sign of the Mercedes. Dusk was falling over Paris and drivers were turning on their headlights. We followed the road around the northern re
aches of Paris until it headed south west.

  “Somewhere near here we need to turn left. It’s a while since I have been here.” She seemed more relaxed now, and her face was fixed in total concentration, as she sought the right road.

  We turned into another wide road but as it headed north, the streets became narrower, and when we were driving alongside a row of trees on the edge of a park she asked, “Don’t you recognise it?”

  “No. Not really.”

  She laughed. “No. It’s changed a lot. This park was once the waste ground, where the battle took place. Over there was the staircase leading up to the bakeries.” She pointed ahead of us to some buildings with lights twinkling, on higher ground. We continued to drive around for some time, Georgina pointing out many locations in the film. Only the Church reminded me of the film.

  “Okay. I think you have seen it all. Shall we stop?”

  “No. Let’s keep moving. How about ‘Last Tango in Paris’?”

  “Oh that movie! Really, I am surprised at you!” She formed a moue with her red lips, pretending to be offended. But then she laughed. “I bet your wife didn’t approve.”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see it with her. Well? Do you know where it was filmed?”

  “Most of it, no. But I know the bridge where they met, and I think I know the restaurant where they had the last tango.”

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  “Well. Just keep on going down here and then first right.”

  I followed her directions through a few dimly lit streets and then we turned south onto the only main road in the area, and I soon recognised it as the road we had come north on. On a street corner, I inadvertently saw the name of the street – the Rue de Belleville.

  “Damn. I saw the name of the street.”

  “Do you think it’s important?”

  “I don’t know. We better turn off it and try a different way.” I took the next right, and after a few blocks we were lost.

  “Damn. I don’t know this area at all. I guess just head south for now.”

  “Which way is south?”

  “Oh. That’s right. We don’t know, do we? God I’m hungry. Can’t we stop for something to eat?”