by Lincoln Cole
The Bishop’s Legacy
Book III, World of Shadows
By Lincoln Cole
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this work may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Published by Lincoln Cole, Columbus, 2018
[email protected]
www.LincolnCole.net
Cover Design by M.N. Arzu
www.mnarzuauthor.com
“Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:”
Matthew 25:41
Prologue
The dying man’s eyes slipped closed and he took another rasping breath. Debra couldn’t believe that this was happening and knew she wasn’t going to be able to save him. The hospital lights flickered around her and she let out a sob.
“Please. Please, stay with me.”
The grip on her hand loosened as his life ebbed away. He was about to die, she realized, and more tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Someone please!” she screamed at the empty emergency room around her. “This man needs help! Please! I don’t know what to do!”
His eyes suddenly shot open, and his grip on her hand tightened almost enough to hurt. She jerked back, but he didn’t let go.
He leaned his head up the tiniest bit from the floor, looked her squarely in the eyes, and mumbled something to her.
Then, his eyes slipped closed and his head fell back to the floor. The blood stopped pumping out of his neck.
She knelt there for what felt like forever in shock and confusion. He was no longer dying, she knew: he was dead.
That wasn’t all, though. He had spoken to her, and the word floated in her thoughts just out of reach, difficult to focus on. It took her a second to realize what it was the man had whispered to her with his final breath.
Run.
She never got the chance.
Chapter 1
“Two more incidents this morning,” Frieda said. Even over the phone Arthur could hear the exhaustion in her voice. He doubted she had slept much in the last couple of days. “My phone has been buzzing constantly and I feel like for each fire we put out two more pop up.”
“You’re kidding,” Arthur replied. “How much damage can these kids do?”
He had his phone on speaker and resting on his lap. He had tried putting it up on the dash but it slid around too much and he had to scramble to catch it. The car jostled and bounced on the dirt road, and he continually had to adjust it to keep it in position.
He would have asked Niccolo to hold it for him, but that would have been a complete waste of his breath. At this point he wasn’t willing to ask the priest to help with much of anything.
Father Niccolo Paladina sat in the passenger seat of his rental car, quiet and lethargic as he stared out the window at nothing. There were only trees and foliage around them as distraction, Arthur knew that his thoughts were internal anyway.
He was withdrawn and somber, much more diminutive than he had when they first began this mission. Only a few weeks since the events in Everett, Washington had wrecked him spiritually and emotionally.
Staring out that car window had been the only thing he had done for the last several hours of driving. He hadn’t spoken since they fled their hotel room in California after the events in the shipyard.
Arthur was driving them through the forest outside his hidden cabin in Colorado. It was an uneven road and difficult to navigate, but he had driven down this way a thousand times before.
His biggest problem right now was that a storm had passed through sometime in the preceding days while they were hunting down the Bishop, so he had to drive around some fallen debris, including a huge tree that blocked one section of the road. This rental wasn’t made for off-road driving, and he was worried that they would get stuck.
“I wish I was kidding, Arthur,” Frieda continued. “One twelve-year-old boy attacked a supermarket with some sort of windstorm and injured over a dozen people. Another little girl set a building on fire.”
“Are you sure they were Leopold’s children? Starting fires doesn’t really seem to fit his MO.”
“Positive they were. She started the fire with her fingers. Both of the kids were in his notes we recovered from the shipyard.”
“No major psychic abilities?”
“Not these ones. At least not that we saw. Charles Greathouse rounded up the little girl without much trouble. The building was unoccupied and the injuries in the market are being blamed on freak coincidence. Neither event was difficult to tidy up,” Frieda replied. “Nobody saw anything out of the ordinary and the events were unrelated.”
“Looks like you’re getting lucky.”
“How long until that luck runs out? I think this is only the tip of the iceberg. Things are about to get a lot crazier.”
“How so?”
“We found thirty other names on the list.”
“Thirty?” he asked. “That’s insane.”
“Tell me about it.”
“How did so many kids go missing without anyone noticing?”
“I wish I knew, Arthur. That’s not all. There were mentions of other kids that aren’t included in the Bishop’s plans or listed in the notes with names. We don’t know where they are or what they are planning, but it looks like there could be as many as seven more kids unaccounted for.”
“Any leads you can give me? Where should I check first?”
“I’ll tell you as soon as the Church tells me,” she said. “They are reading through the Bishop’s notes and trying to make sense of it all. Right now, they are keeping their cards close to the chest. If I had anything to offer you, I would.”
“Alright. I guess I’ll just play it by ear, then.”
“Don’t feel too bad. That’s what I’m going to be doing, too. How long will it take you to get there?”
“A day and a half to two, give or take. I’m hoping to drive straight through.”
“Let me know as soon as you cross the state line into Ohio.”
“I will. And you let me know if you hear anything else from the Church. I want to get out ahead of this if we can.”
“Will do. Take care, Arthur.”
“You too.”
He hung up the phone and dropped it into the cup holder between the seats. The interior of the car fell silent, the only sound the tires grinding rocked the narrow and winding dirt road. A gust of wind pushed the car a little bit off the road, forcing Arthur to correct and keep them on the path. A little stronger of a gust and they would have been split into a tree.
Maybe the storm hadn’t completely passed after all.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “Couple more minutes and we’ll be at the cabin to check on Desiree.”
He wasn’t really expecting a reply from the priest, and Niccolo didn’t offer one. Instead, he kept staring out the window with the same moody expression on his face. Arthur was wondering, and not for the first time, if the priest might be more of a liability on this mission than a help.
It was late in the afternoon and would be dark by the time they reached his cabin. When they first left California he had considered skipping this trip entirely and driving straight through to Ohio, but he needed to collect some supplies and chec
k in on Desiree before they went to deal with Jeremy.
He also wanted to make sure that Desiree hadn’t burned his cabin to the ground. He was pretty sure she wouldn’t, but it was still a chance. Honestly, if she had, he wouldn’t have blamed her.
He played back his conversation with Frieda in his mind. She was scrambling to do damage control around the country from all of the attacks. He could hardly believe things were happening so quickly. Already four incidents in only a day.
Either the Bishop had triggered his soldiers around the country before he died or, more likely, Jeremy had seized control in the power vacuum and was starting the plan on his own. If Frieda was right, then there could be dozens more children out there planning horrific acts of violence all around the country.
The Bishop might be dead, but his legacy was alive and well.
◆◆◆
Arthur was relieved when they finally pulled up to his cabin and it was still standing. It still hadn’t begun storming, but he could feel the heavy rain coming just from the taste of the air. They needed to be on their way out of here before the storm caught them and trapped them.
Luckily, they were a little bit ahead of schedule and there was still some light left in the day. It was a relief to get out of the cramped and uncomfortable rental car and stretch his legs. With Niccolo’s incessant silence it was beginning to feel more like a funeral hearse than a Chevrolet.
He had known this was going to be a long and cumbersome drive with the distracted priest, he just hadn’t known how withdrawn and quiet the man would become. He had hoped that by now the priest would have gotten over the horrible events at the shipyard, but if anything he was only getting worse.
Not that he blamed Niccolo for the somber attitude. The priest was still dealing with the turmoil of the last several days and everything that came with it. It would be difficult to come to terms with what he had done: he had killed someone, and even though the shooting was justified and unavoidable, it was still a lot to deal with.
To be honest, Arthur could hardly believe that Niccolo had pulled the trigger to end the Bishop’s life. He could only imagine what the priest must be feeling right about now. Niccolo had shot someone, a Bishop no less. It was something Arthur wouldn’t have expected from the mild-mannered priest in a thousand years.
Even with the death being self-defense, it was weighing on the Priest’s soul.
What made it worse, however, was that they had just left. Arthur was used to leaving the scene of a crime with dead bodies, but for Niccolo it meant they were avoiding the responsibility. The guilt, shame, and fear of getting caught were no doubt weighing him down.
Still, he didn’t have time to worry about Niccolo right now. The priest would have to deal with it on his own, because they were in a hurry.
He turned the car off and then peered up at the front of his cabin. The curtains were pulled closed, but he could still see some light spilling out of the front room. Arthur sighed in relief, because part of him had been afraid that when they made it back here Desiree would already be gone. He’d left her a car and keys as well as a map to make it back to the main road.
They had only been gone a few days, but he had no idea what she had gotten up to while they were out hunting down the Bishop. He wanted to make sure that she knew the Bishop was dead, though, and that she could go home.
“I’ll go check up on Desiree and then we can get back on the road. Do you want to stay here or come inside with me?”
Niccolo didn’t respond, just continued staring out that window with that same vacant expression on his face. If he even heard Arthur he gave no sign. Arthur waited a moment, seeing if he would respond, and then shrugged.
“Suit yourself. Guess you’ll be waiting. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”
Niccolo gave him the faintest nod without looking for him. He closed the car door and strode up to the front entrance of the cabin. He considered just heading inside – after all, it was his cabin – and then changed his mind. He wasn’t sure whether Desiree knew they were here, and he didn’t want to startle her.
He knocked on the door.
He heard scrambling from inside and what sounded like glass breaking. He winced, even though there wasn’t anything of actual value in the entire place. A second later and the door of the cabin cracked open a couple of inches.
The barrel of a shotgun greeted him.
Not the tranquilizer dart gun he’d left her with, he noted, but a full-on twelve-gauge shotgun. He had left her the keys to his cabin, but he hadn’t really thought she would go poking around, much less find his armory.
He kept quite a few guns locked away in his room, and they were hidden behind a secret door that he realized wasn’t as secret as he’d originally thought. That, or maybe she was a better sleuth than he’d given her credit for.
“Um…hey?” he said.
Her expression softened when she saw it was him and she lowered the gun.
“You scared the hell out of me,” she admonished him, opening the door wider. She put a hand on her heart. “Thing's beating a mile a minute. Do you know what time it is?”
“No clue. Why, what time is it?”
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “Late. I know that much.”
She was still blocking the doorway, shaking her head in annoyance. Arthur waited for a second for her to move out of his way, but she didn’t.
“Can I come in?” he asked, only the barest hint of sarcasm in his voice. “It is my cabin, after all.”
“Oh yeah, sure. Sorry.”
She stepped out of the way to let him through. Arthur walked in past her and nearly gasped in surprise. He saw that the interior of his cabin was impeccably clean and organized. In fact, everything was in perfect order except for what looked like a tea cup that had smashed on the floor in front of his couch.
A fire burned pleasantly in the fireplace and it looked…
Cozy.
He hated it.
Desiree, apparently, could tell. She fidgeted and cleared her throat.
“I had to do something while I was here alone,” she said. “And I clean when I’m worrying or nervous about something. This place gets creepy at night when I’m here alone and I needed some way to occupy myself.”
“I can see that.”
“Any news? You guys were gone for several days.”
He hesitated; how much, he wondered, should he tell her? Arthur honestly didn’t know how much the Church would want her to know, but after a moment he decided that honesty was the best option.
After all, if the Church hadn’t let her down with its secrecy and lies, then none of them would be in this situation.
“Bishop Glasser won’t be a problem for you any longer.”
“What do you mean? Did you catch him?”
“He’s dead.”
“Dead?”
A mixed expression of relief, trepidation, and shock flashed across her face. It was replaced with something that seemed a little bit like regret. He could understand and sympathize: she’d been building herself up for the last several days to the realization that she might actually have to meet the Bishop face-to-face again.
She wouldn’t have to now, but his being dead also meant she wouldn’t be able to. The thought of meeting him probably terrified her, to be sure, but it also excited her. It would be her chance to face her abuser head on and move past it.
Now, though, she would never get that chance.
“I thought the plan was to turn him over to the Church for justice?”
“It was the plan,” Arthur agreed. “That was why we went there to begin with, but things took a turn. Shooting him was self-defense.”
“So, you had no choice but to kill him?”
“Not me. I didn’t do it.”
“Then who did?”
“Niccolo.”
“Woah, wait, what? Niccolo, the priest, killed Leopold?”
“It wasn’t intentional and Leopold gave him no other cho
ice. He refused to give up until Niccolo panicked and pulled the trigger.”
She blew out a breath. “How’s he taking it?”
“About as well as we might expect.”
“That’s too bad.”
“I know.”
“Do you want some tea?” she asked. “I can make some more. Where is Niccolo?”
“In the car. No thanks, for the tea.”
“Ah. He needs alone time.”
“Yeah.”
Arthur found it somewhat strange that he was having this conversation with Desiree at all. After all, only a few days ago she had been his prisoner and locked in the basement until Niccolo forced him to free her. Trusting her hadn’t been easy, but that wasn’t her fault nor her problem.
It was his.
It didn’t feel like a few days, though: it felt like months had passed since he’d first kidnapped Desiree at her home to protect her from the Bishop. So much had happened since he left here with Niccolo that it felt like an entirely different world.
It had been the right choice to free Desiree and he was glad Niccolo had demanded it of him. He wasn’t one for trusting people, certainly not someone who had no reason to trust him back, but Desiree was an incredibly friendly and forgiving person.
It made her all the more special since she had every reason not to be. Without Niccolo’s influence she would probably still be locked down in the basement waiting for him to let her go.
“He hasn’t been willing to talk to me – or anyone – since it happened.”
“I guess I get it,” she said. “That’s a lot to deal with, especially for someone like him. I doubt he could handle something like that even if he wasn’t a priest, but in this case it goes against everything he stands for.”
“I know. I just wish there was something to say to make him feel better.”
“There isn’t. I doubt he would want to feel better even if he could. Time is what he needs.”
“That’s something we don’t have.”
“Then keep him busy. If he doesn’t have time to think, he won’t have time worry about it.”