The Templar Knight fell backward, twisting away.
Richard incinerated the bag on his back.
He had only just ended the first threat when the second Templar Knight fought through the fire, roaring his battle call like a maddened bull and swinging with great force. Barely having time to dodge and wielding only enough fire to slow the warrior down, the Red Cross backed away until cornered against a bookshelf of massive tomes.
Grinning, the warrior brought his blade down to cleave Richard in two. The knight sidestepped. As he did so, the warrior overextended his efforts and was caught off balance.
Gritting his teeth, Richard smashed the head of the Dark Thorn across the left cheek of his attacker.
The warrior crumbled like a puppet cut from its strings.
The first soldier was back, sword in hand.
“Don’t make me kill you!” Richard thundered.
Knowing he was no longer protected by the power of the Grail, fear entered the man’s eyes. Richard feinted at him. The Templar Knight fled the room then, knowing he was bested before he even began.
Richard turned to discover the power in the room had shifted.
Arawn had overcome Clement.
The fey lord held the Pope against him like a shield, the edge of his dagger lying against Clement’s wrinkled neck. The polished sword of the Pope now lay on the ground. Richard didn’t know how to proceed. As he lowered the flame about the Dark Thorn to a halo, he walked slowly to stand nearer the three other men.
“Let me pass into the Vault,” Arawn asserted, squeezing Clement by the throat.
The Cardinal Vicar did not move, his sword at the ready.
“Richard McAllister, we hate the same hypocrisy,” Arawn said smoothly. “You do not let the Church command you. Nor do I. It is for the Tuatha de Dannan I do this. When Plantagenet had his lackey trick me, I thought my time over. The man who owned this body took my life. I was imprisoned for long decades before my spirit eroded that of John Lewis Hugo and his body became my own. Encouraging Plantagenet to reclaim his birthright was my first step against the very Church that drove us from the Misty Isles.
“You and I hate the same thing.”
“But you are Tuatha de Dannan!” Richard shot back. “You sent that cait sith to his death into Seattle! You kill your own kin in Annwn even as we speak!”
“I did not bring them to this fight, knight!” Arawn seethed. “I do not wish their demise any more than you do. By the time I gained control of this flesh Plantagenet had built a large army and it was too late for me to aid my brethren. I use him as he used me, to keep my own safe. Help me regain balance!”
“I will not give into your wishes, Arawn!” the Pope growled. “The secrets and power beyond that wall will avail you nothing!”
“We will see. It is up to you, Cardinal Vicar. Let die your Pope?”
“Do not give in, Cormac,” Clement insisted.
Arawn snarled, looking back and forth between the Cardinal Vicar and Richard. The knight could see the struggle within Cormac. It matched his own. To give into Arawn’s demands meant giving him power; to not give in meant the death of the Pope.
Clement had no such hesitation.
“It is to you now, Cormac Pell O’Connor.”
Clement twisted hard from Arawn, breaking the grip, even as a dagger appeared in his hand from the folds of his robes. The fey lord did not flinch from the weapon even as the knife plunged into his back. Sucking on the contents of his own Grail bag, Arawn rammed his dagger through the chest of Clement.
The Pope gasped and his eyes rolled toward heaven.
He went limp and collapsed.
“Neither of you can kill me,” Arawn sneered. “The power of your Word is with me and forever shall be.”
“No longer,” the Cardinal Vicar said.
The grin on Arawn’s face disappeared. Water gushed to the floor. Pope Clement had not only stabbed the fey lord but also the bag that offered him protective life over the body of John.
With a snarl, Arawn went for the sword the Pope had dropped. Richard did not wait. He vaulted in between the two men and jammed the butt of the Dark Thorn into Arawn’s chest, slamming his body backward against the stone wall, pinning him there.
“Finish him!” the Cardinal Vicar roared.
“We will not kill him.”
“He is evil!” Cormac raged, raising his gray sword. “Look what he has done! Step aside, McAllister. Now!”
Conflicting emotions swept through Richard like a wildfire. He wanted to slay the fey lord as much as the Cardinal Vicar did. He still saw Elizabeth as she died under the blade of Arondight; he still burned for vengeance at what had been done to his life.
“I will not,” Richard said finally. “We don’t know what will happen to the spirit of Arawn if we kill the body of John Lewis Hugo.”
“If he is left alive, what then?”
“I will speak to Merle on this subject. He will know what is best when it comes to the fey,” Richard answered. “Arawn will be tried with wisdom. Not by us.”
“By whom then? The Morrigan or her ilk? The laws of the Holy See? Italy?” Cormac scoffed. “No. He has killed the pontiff. He has infiltrated the Vatican. He alone knows of Annwn, and the Seelie Court would more than likely let him off the hook for his affront. All that we have fought for—all that you have fought for—would be put at jeopardy by not killing him now!”
“If you try, I will kill you,” Richard said flatly.
It was the hardest thing Richard had ever had to say. The Cardinal Vicar was taken aback. The dark brooding eyes of Cormac stared at Richard. The knight stared right back at his elder.
“Merle or the Morrigan will know best how to punish the spirit inside of John Lewis Hugo,” Richard repeated. “It is the only way to ensure punishment is given.”
Breathing hard, the point of the Dark Thorn still pressing him against the wall, Arawn grinned. “My end will not come by your hand knight,” he whispered. “Not like your wife.”
“That may be,” Richard said, unwilling to let the personal barb unseat his authority of the Dark Thorn. “But your role in this is over.”
Arawn laughed, a sick sound.
And began to change.
Unsure of what he was seeing at first, a black fog clouded Richard’s vision, the miasma swirling out of John Lewis Hugo’s body and into the air. It hung suspended before him, diaphanous and cold, free flowing, unmoving.
Two red coals blinked in the ether.
The spirit of Arawn.
Latent rage at the escape attempt filling him, Richard sent the fire of the Dark Thorn into the cloud with controlled fury, wrapping the fey in coils of magic. Arawn struggled, fighting the staff, trying to invade Richard instead. The knight closed his mind to the offense. Bringing years of anger to the fore coupled with the memory of Elizabeth and her last few fear-filled moments, Richard tightened the magic of the Dark Thorn on Arawn like a vise, a dam of pain unleashed, crushing the spirit. Inhumanly wailing, the lord fought as the magic bit into him.
It did not matter. The mind of Arawn burned away as the fire of Richard’s will incinerated it.
The final, terrible scream of Arawn echoed through the suite.
Then all went silent.
Breathing hard, Richard looked upon the now palsied body below him. The fey lord that had come close to destroying him had vanished, leaving a body wracked by spasms and twitches, hands clawed and twisted. A dull moan escaped the mouth, growing into choking gasps of pain.
“What is wrong with him?” the Cardinal Vicar asked.
“The pain…” the man mewed, teeth gnashing.
Richard stared at the body of John Lewis Hugo, unsure of what he witnessed.
“Kill me…”
The fire that had made Richard a killing machine became smoke. Arawn no longer resided in the body, leaving only one possibility for who spoke to them.
It was John Lewis Hugo, his soul no longer trapped.
Pleadi
ng for death.
“Kill me…” John Lewis Hugo cried.
“No,” Richard said.
“Pleeeease,” John sniveled, gulping in air. “Kill meee…”
“Do not do so, McAllister,” Cormac ordered. “Or suffer damnation.”
Richard ignored the Cardinal Vicar and knelt, grasping the shaking wrist. Like he had done to Al and Walker in Seattle days earlier, the knight went into the mind of John Lewis Hugo.
There he encountered fractured pandemonium.
The agony of the man overwhelmed Richard. The soul of Philip’s onetime best friend was disjointed and broken, a shattered pane of glass. Richard had never felt such acute and traumatic memories in another before. John Lewis Hugo had witnessed every savage moment Arawn had been privy to—the mutation and breeding of thousands of children with fey and animals via the Cailleach to create a ghastly army of halfbreeds, orders given to assassinate countless political figures within Annwn to either gain favors or just to see them die, the torture and breaking of numerous jailed men and women in the Caer Lion dungeons merely to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about human anatomy.
John had screamed into the void where his consciousness lay, unable to alter the events his body took part in, until his very being frayed and snapped.
The distress was so poignant Richard had only one course.
Richard moved into what remained of the other’s mind and massaged it, lending his strength to John Lewis Hugo. The emotional anguish was too much for Richard to assuage—too many years of witnessed abuses for the magic to wipe away. As he had done to the two homeless men, the knight erased the centuries of horrible memories, to a time before John Lewis Hugo entered Annwn when he loved a tailoring assistant on Threadneedle Street in London. It had been the last time he had been truly happy. Richard felt what John Lewis Hugo had experienced so long ago—the innocence and the love, the hope of a touch and the feeling of a kiss on blushing cheek, the first unfamiliar and anxious moments of sex. They were emotions Richard had long since thought dead within his own heart, and they left him sad.
There, in the past, Richard slowed the other man’s pulse.
When the knight opened his eyes again, John Lewis Hugo sighed contentedly one last time—and did not breathe again.
“You are going to hell, McAllister.”
Richard stood again, weariness finally catching up to him. He ignored the Cardinal Vicar and strode toward the door of the suite.
The knight turned back to face Cormac only once.
“If you had any doubt, you are too.”
“You realize, Bran Ardall, you have saved the world as we know it.”
With the boy standing behind him, Richard sat across from Cormac O’Connor, a large desk and a gulf of uncertainty between them. He stared out a large office window overlooking stormy Rome. It echoed the unsettling feeling he had inside. Sitting in a plush chair, he and Bran were alone with the Vicar, Finn Arne having left the room after reporting that the catacombs had been cleared of the remaining Templar Knights and the portal was secure once again.
Cormac had changed into clothing more suited to his station—red vestments with white trim, a red zucchetto upon his head, and a gold cross about his neck. The sword he had carried, Hrunting, lay with Durendal in the corner of the room, both cleaned of the blood staining their blades.
A gloomy dawn was only an hour away.
Somewhere below in chambers Richard could only guess at, Pope Clement XV lay in secluded peace. Very few knew of his death. In time it would be announced as a heart attack to the world and his burial wishes would be carried out.
A new Pope would then be selected.
A clock in the room ticked the seconds of silence away. Hungry and tired, Richard had accepted the invitation to the Cardinal Vicar’s office and brought Bran for two reasons only.
“Please, have some fruit and water,” Cormac offered, gesturing at a bowl of apples, bananas, and grapes and a glass pitcher. “You must thirst after what took place. It is the least I can do. Without you, both the Vatican and Annwn would have falle—”
“Stop with the pretenses, Cardinal Vicar,” Richard said bitingly.
The Cardinal Vicar stared hard at the knight.
Neither spoke, gauging one another.
“When has civility been frowned upon?” Cormac asked finally.
“When it is not sincere.”
Cormac did not flinch from the unabashed insolence. “Let us speak frankly, McAllister. You have ever been a thorn in the side of the Vigilo. It is beyond rational reasoning why Merle has chosen you to be the Heliwr. That said, there is no reason we cannot begin anew. It will take strength and friendship to see the coming days set right. Rossi is dead. Dozens of Swiss Guards are dead. The survivors will need to have their minds cleared of their memories to keep Annwn safe. And with the knowledge that even some fey have the might to challenge the separation of our worlds, it is more pressing than ever that we work together.” He paused. “Needless to say, you have no reason to fear our association.”
“The loss of Ennio is great,” Richard said. “The loss of your Pope is a hardship for you. Loss is nothing new to me though, Vicar. Loss is not foreign to Bran here either. You extend an olive branch. I have no desire for one.”
“Why did you agree to meet with me then, McAllister?”
“There are two reasons. The first, I keep my promises,” Richard answered. “You sent Finn Arne after young Ardall here, hoping to capture him at best, harm him at worst. I promised your captain upon meeting with him that I would bring Bran here with me after the death of Philip Plantagenet. That happened, so I am here to fulfill that oath.”
“Now, you wait one minute. I meant no harm to B—”
“There is more,” the knight interrupted. “I wanted him to meet you, to see your face, to know there are men in the world like you who use other people to their own selfish ends. Bran is now a portal knight. He has yet to fully understand the forces that move throughout this world. He now knows of you.”
“You just described your wizard,” Cormac said, face reddening.
“That may be truth. Bran now knows this too.”
“I have no aspirations but to keep the two worlds separate,” the Cardinal Vicar said. “The Vigilo maintains a valuable service. Sometimes it requires sacrifice and the best tools available. Sometimes those tools are people. I merely look for the best ways to keep the peace. Nothing more.”
“You are a liar,” Richard said. “I know you, Vicar. The rest of the Yn Saith know you. You are like Philip and Arawn. More will never, ever be enough.”
The ruddy face darkened further in anger.
Richard did not flinch.
“How dare you accuse me,” Cormac gnashed, the color of his face matching his robe. “I asked you here not to quibble about the lies and efforts of Philip but to extend my heartfelt gratitude and begin a relationship in these trying times. His Excellency lies in a cold room, murdered. My best friend and mentor already lies in his crypt, murdered. Countless Swiss Guards gave their life to stop Philip and his machinations. The Catholic Church and all who depend on her will soon be in deep mourning. Instead you throw that in my face? And question my motives?”
“You don’t deny it,” Richard snapped. “Who do you think you are?”
“I think you have not done the mathematics of the situation, Heliwr,” Cormac spat vehemently. “Even now, as we sit here speaking, the College of Cardinals is convening in the Sistine Chapel to begin the election process. The white smoke will blow for me. It is best for you to understand this precept: Do not be quick to make an enemy who wears so much authority upon his mantle.”
Richard sat forward. “Are you threatening me?”
“If that is what it takes for you to not make a mistake,” the Cardinal Vicar sneered before looking to Bran. “For one so young to not make a mistake.”
“Would you have me murdered?” Bran asked evenly.
Cormac folded his hands before him.
“Ever hear the adage ‘One kills a man, he is a murderer; one kills millions, he is a conqueror; one kills everybody, he is a god?’ I have no doubt you have. For centuries the Vigilo has kept the world safe from those who would subvert it. It was given us by Saint Peter to ensure Christianity remained strong after his passing and spread to all hearts. Once a part of the Church, the knights are now a rogue element, given an agenda by a wizard of all people,” Cormac hissed. “You are part of the same hypocrisy.”
“You sound pleased the Pope is dead,” Richard said.
“Perhaps there is some truth to that,” Cormac admitted. “But I see His will be done.”
“He is nothing but a thug, Richard,” Bran said.
“As I said, you are young and insolent, fool!” the Vicar thundered. “How dare you question me! A whelp! A boy who has never seen the world and the evil within it. I know more secrets about this longest of wars than you could fathom! I should have you shackled for your disrespect!” Cormac paused, his ire lessening as a grin tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I mean, after all, perhaps it was you who killed the Pope.”
Before he knew it, Richard was on his feet. The Dark Thorn materialized into his hands, its magic angrily diffusing the room. The Cardinal Vicar leaned back in his seat, a modicum of fear dampening the fire in his eyes.
“You are nothing to me, McAllister,” Cormac goaded as he stared hard at Bran. “You lost your ideals years ago when your wife died. The power that has been bestowed on both of you does not make you wise.”
“That may be,” Richard said. “But at least my soul is not stained.”
With contempt, the Cardinal shook his head.
“For now.”
“If I see you again—if you so much as send Finn Arne after me or Bran or the other Yn Saith—today will not be the last day you see me. And trust me, you don’t want to see me again.”
“Sounds to me like you are willing to bloody your hands by killing the innocent, as long as you believe it is done for your own rightness,” Cormac remarked.
The Dark Thorn Page 47