“It’s Father Murphy, Cardinal.”
“Dermott, I hope you’re not holding onto the tail of this helicopter,” Malachi said trying to stifle a yawn. Murphy could hear the beat of the rotors in the background.
“Something you said bothered me, sir.”
“What was that?”
“Catch-as-catch-can. I’m assuming you meant you weren’t sure how to track Father Gallo once you reached Inverness. How did you track them there?”
“Credit cards,” Malachi answered. “Ian Cruickshank checked their credit card records and found they’d bought tickets to Glasgow and then on to Inverness. Why?”
“Father Gallo has the Relic with him, does he not?”
“Yes. At least we believe so.”
“Surely you know, Cardinal, that there is a GPS transmitting device inside with a battery that lasts up to fifteen days and an antenna wired to the outside of the case?”
“Are you serious, Dermott?
“I heard Father Gant telling Monsignor Rautenberg about it last year. He was always worried about losing the Wood of the Cross and so, when the technology came along, he forked over the dough himself and had a small transmitter installed. As long as the Relic is in the case, he could go on any computer and know its exact whereabouts – within about ten feet. And if the Relic now remains with Father Gallo, well...you get the picture.”
“My God...how do we find out where they are?”
“It’s a matter of accessing the service on the Internet and using his tracker software. Monsignor Rautenberg could probably tell you how, or he could do it for you.”
“Do you mean we could tap in from here? From the helicopter?”
“If you have a wireless card and service, I’m don’t see why not. That’s how GM’s OnStar service works. They know where your car is, they can do a diagnostic on your engine as you drive or open your car if you lock it...all from a satellite.”
“Dermott, I don’t know how to thank you but I have to call Heinz so I’m going to hang up.”
“Glad to be of service..”
“By the way...where are you? It’s awful noisy at your end.”
“Let’s just say I’m taking a little initiative.”
Malachi was too excited by the news to read anything into his statement, thanked him again and pushed the end button.
Murphy already had Heinz Rautenberg’s Vatican number in hand and he quickly dialed him.
After a moment, the Monsignor answered. “Rautenberg.”
“It’s Dermott Murphy.”
“Late of The Watchers, I take it,” Rautenberg said, dryly. “Father Langevin has been asking where you are. So where are you?”
“On an aircraft on my way to Scotland. This is urgent. I am trying to help Cardinal Malachi who is headed with two of the Crusaders to Inverness, Scotland.”
“I know. To intercept Father Gallo before he tries something foolish.”
“Yes...but he didn’t know about the GPS transmitter inside the Relic’s case,” Murphy said.
“He must know; he tracked them to Inverness.”
“Using credit card information gleamed when they bought train tickets. Are you near a PC?”
“Yes...right here on my desk.”
“You know the URL for the tracking service and the password to track the Relic, right?”
“Certainly...I have them preset into my laptop. Father Castilloux and I were Father Gant’s backup.”
Murphy could hear the rattle of keys. “Can you see where it is?”
“Just a minute,” Rautenberg said. There were a few more tapings on keys and then: “There...I see it. It’s in...wait a minute...it’s in Stornoway, not Inverness.”
“Stornoway? Where’s that?” Murphy asked, one finger now plugged in his open ear to hear better over the aircraft engine.
The pilot, obviously listening, spoke up: “On Lewis Island, across the Minch – in the Outer Hebrides.”
“Lewis Island...the Outer Hebrides of Scotland,” Rautenberg said, repeating the pilot’s words. “Why is it so noisy on your end. Where are you?”
“Monsignor...Cardinal Malachi will call you as soon as I hang up. Please have the coordinates ready for him as he’s headed to the wrong location. If he doesn’t call, then call him; we’re going to have to know the minute the Relic moves. I’m going to give you the number of my satellite phone.” He looked at Grantham who called out the number and he relayed it to Rautenberg. The Monsignor repeated it back to make sure it was correct and then said good-bye.
“Course if you’re not with me later...I’ll be getting all your calls,” the pilot said.
“One thousand pounds,” Murphy offered.
“Sold,” Grantham intoned, with a grin. “I’ll give you the charger, the case and my wife for that.”
“Marriage is a sacred union,” the priest admonished, and then grinned at the pilot’s embarrassment. “But God will forgive you if you forget Inverness and take me to Stornoway.”
“What’s all this?” Grantham asked, suspiciously. “There’s nothing illegal about, is there?”
“Illegal? The Catholic Church? Bite your tongue, lad!” Murphy said, his hand hanging over the seat back touching his suitcase containing an assortment of grenades, 75 pounds of high explosive TNT, blasting caps, detonators and a Stoner 96 Knights 5.56 mm belt feed Light Machine Gun with a 200-round belt container; it was capable of spitting out 550 bullets per minute. “The Catholic Church is the ethical seat of morality, the heart of our collective soul, and a model of peace and forgiveness in the free and not so free world. Remember that, my boy.” He shifted to make his snub-nosed .45 Police Special sit more comfortably in the inside pocket of his heavy cape. “Illegal indeed!” he sniffed.
“Sorry,” the pilot said quickly. “Well...I can radio an amendment to my flight plan and figure a new heading for Stornoway. If the weather isn’t cooperating, Inverness is our alternate.”
“Surely it can’t be that bad.”
“No offence, Father, but though I learned to fly in hours... it’s taken me years to learn when not to fly. And that experience makes me a good and a safe pilot.”
“One thou–,” Murphy began.
“I know, I know,” pilot said, with good humor. “One thousand pounds. But we still fly safe.” He shook his head, chuckling to himself as he rolled the aircraft to the left and picked up the VHF microphone to get a weather update and file a new flight plan. Business was booming.
* * * *
PART EIGHT
“HOUR OF THE WOLF”
It draws nigh, silent as night
Fangs agleam, eyes pits of fire
Promises broken, spirits conspire
Hearts beat wildly, sobbing in fright
J. Richard Wright
HOUR OF THE WOLF (1989)
Into the eternal darkness into fire
And into ice....
Dante Alighieri
THE DIVINE COMEDY – INFERNO
~ 1 ~
“Stornoway? What in the deuce is he doing up there,” Cruickshank asked, as Malachi ended the call from Rautenberg.
“He obviously has a specific destination in mind, whatever it might be,” Malachi said. “Can we alter our course?”
They were almost a half hour into their flight. Father Nathaniel and Father Oberon dozed in their seats now, their faces barely lit by the red night lights shining from the front of the cockpit where they illuminated the instrument panel. The priests seemed used to sleeping in odd places, and neither the buffeting of the craft by the wind nor the periodic crackle of crosstalk on the VHF radio appeared to bother them.
Cruickshank took down a headset and boom-microphone hanging on the bulkhead and plugged it into a receptacle. “Sergeant Frazer, we need to go to Stornoway on Lewis Island. Yes...alright, I understand. Quite right...yes. Check and see. That’s a good chap.” He hung the headset back up and leaned over to Malachi as the radio in the cockpit crackled and the pilot asked for a heading to Gl
asgow Port Airport. “He says we’ll have to set down at Glasgow, take on more fuel and then fly to Ullapool first,” the detective shouted over the noise of the engines. “He also said that during his preflight he noticed that there were high winds over The North Minch, gusting to 45 knots with even more heavy weather expected. It wouldn’t be a nice night to fly over it. If we got lost and wandered from the channel over the North Atlantic and had to ditch in the ocean, we’d freeze to death within five minutes of being in the water.”
“Charming,” Malachi shouted back. “But it’s no use going to Inverness if Father Gallo is in Stornoway.”
The helicopter banked and the pilot gave them a thumbs up signaling they were on their way to Glasgow. He then motioned for Cruickshank and Malachi to put on their headsets.
“Sir, we’re cleared all the way to Ullapool once we take on more fuel,” the pilot said. “Now there’s no airport in the town but we can set down there if we have to, or divert over to Inverness. Control tells me the weather over The Minch is deteriorating rapidly. I grew up in Ullapool and the strait can get pretty nasty. It’s about 75 kilometers across and I don’t know that it would be wise to cross it tonight.”
“Can we take a boat?” Malachi asked.
“Almost more risky,” the pilot answered. “Though it’s sheltered water, this time of the year you could get waves five to ten meters high. I doubt anybody would take you in bad weather.”
“We must reach Stornoway tonight,” Malachi insisted.
“Ullapool is near the maximum wind velocity for safe flight for this helicopter but we’ll head up there and make a decision as to whether we cross when we arrive.”
Cruickshank cut in: “Mustavias, we can only do what we can do.”
Malachi shrugged: “We’re going to find a way across that strait even if we have to swim.”
Both men removed their headsets and settled back in their seats, each lost in his own thoughts as the engines droned and winds began to buffet the helicopter.
Unaware of the quickening drama around them, the Crusaders continued to sleep peacefully as the tiny craft flew on, discernible only by its red and green navigation lights, and a powerful strobe sending blue-white flashes into the inky blackness of the night.
~ 2 ~
Seven hundred kilometers to the northeast, the heavy beat of huge, bat-like wings slowed in the night sky as Adramelech wound his flight over the forbidding landscape of Lewis Island and looked down on the dark stone turrets of his earthly home; a mere few hundred yards away was a two-hundred-foot cliff ending at the boiling Atlantic ocean below. Rain mixed with sleet peppered the air. As he watched from on high above the stone castle, plumes of white spray exploded upward from fierce, rolling waves hitting the jagged rocks as gale force winds drove the sea into the cliffs in a relentless assault as old as the ocean itself.
Clutched tightly to his belly with one of the demon’s muscular arms, Rosalita used her own two hands to cling to the bluish-black skin of the demon monstrosity as it wielded itself over the fortress and began to drop to the ground in a dizzying circular dive.
Even this horned aberration, in its purest hellish form, was glad to be home again. At the last possible moment, the creature extended its ribbed, leathery wings out fully and landed lightly on the wooden drawbridge over a water-filled moat. It’s familiar, used to the drill, dropped onto her tiny feet and made her way forward to the heavy oak doors. Rosalita pulled the round, wrought iron handle, and the door of the edifice swung open to receive its shadowy lord of the manor.
As the creature stalked inside, it began to morph into a more pleasing human form until it reached the Great Room. There it now stood tall, naked and darkly handsome, surveying its surroundings. Though immensely tired from the flight, Adramelech summoned his remaining strength and stood upright. “We must put on a fire for our impending guests, Rosalita,” Adramelech said, his voice ripe with black humor. “We wouldn’t want them to catch their death from a chill.”
The Great Room was rectangle-shaped, and had a palladium-style, arched entranceway at one end and a wall-size stained glass window at the other. The glass featured a scene of a pentagram surrounding a figure being crucified upside down while a Roman soldier gleefully carved out the victim’s innards with a long, sharp lance. Various stained glass constructed demons rejoiced at the travesty. The other two walls were hung with various medieval weapons as befitted a castle, gleaming brass trumpets from which multi-colored banners hung, and huge oil painting showing various dark scenes of torture including naked humans being: drawn and quartered, roasted over fires, and decapitated, all before manic, cheering crowds of devils. An array of ancient medieval broadswords, and longbows and arrows completed the décor.
At floor level, lined along these walls were full-sized suits of armor standing mutely at attention holding pikes, broadswords and maces in their hollow, metal gloves. In the center of the room were three separate islands containing couches and chairs as well as end and coffee tables and reading lamps, somewhat reminiscent of a grand old hotel. Twelve-foot square carpets were scattered about covering the stone floors to lend a little warmth.
Between the rows of armored knights, on opposite walls, stood two walk-in sized fireplaces complete with logs piled high, ready for lighting. Rosalita now approached one of the fireplaces and reached high above her head to the mantle for some long matches.
Adramelech covered the distance to her in half a dozen strides and touched the logs that immediately burst into full flame. He grinned at her as she cowered before him, afraid of his displeasure. “Fear not, my faithful,” he said with a grin that bared sparkling white, razor-sharp teeth. “After all, am I not the Prince of Fire.” As she began to rise, no longer fearful, Adramelech’s arm snaked out and seized her; she screamed as he hurled her against the stone wall where she hit with tremendous force and slid down, her shift bunching under her arms leaving her naked. On the wall was a trail of tissue, mucus and blood. Though the pain of the wounds caused her to gasp, she was already healing as she scrambled to her feet.
Adramelech laughed and said: “Soon my little friend, I will be more invulnerable and powerful than I have ever been. Tonight I will crush the power of the church; I will vanquish these cheating champions of the most holy, and I will begin to prepare for our Master to ascend to his rightful place on earth and rule it as his dominion.”
Rosalita stood waiting for more orders but the demon ignored her. Instead he crossed the room and sat on a couch facing the fire. He watched as, within it, tiny human figures materialized, screamed and tried to run as they were captured by small crab-like figures and dragged back to be tortured and burned in the yellow and red flames.
“By the way, that was your last healing, Rosalita,” he called out. “I’ve decided you’ve become tiresome and I no longer have any need for you. I shall take a new familiar, one that is somewhat more nubile...and eligible.” He laughed harshly and waved his hand. “Sleep tight.”
With that pronouncement, Adramelech went back to watching the scenes play out in the fire. He began to quietly chuckle which quickly build to unrestrained mirth and soon became a hysterical shriek of maniacal laugher echoing off the cavernous walls of the castle. Rosalita fearfully scurried away.
~ 3 ~
Father Gallo arose from his bed in Stornaway’s Cabarfeidh Hotel where he had not been sleeping. Maria and Clay, exhausted from the journey, had begged for a few hours rest and remained asleep in an adjoining room connected to his by an open doorway; each was flaked out on a queen bed fully clothed. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearing 11 p.m. They had to be going soon; he estimated the drive would take about an hour. Then they would proceed on foot through open countryside for another half an hour. The advantage was that in the wee hours of the morning, they wouldn’t arouse any curiosity. The priest tiptoed into their room, quietly reached into Maria’s single piece of luggage and removed a Crucifix which he deposited out of sight under her bed. They could sleep an
other ten minutes, he decided.
Unknown to Gallo, before sleeping, Maria had placed a call to Cardinal Malachi in the Vatican. Unable to reach him, she had tried several other members of The Seven and finally settled for Monsignor Heinz Rautenberg’s voicemail. She left a terse message saying she was trying to get in touch with Cardinal Malachi, and they were in Stornoway, Scotland. Gallo insisted he knew where Adramelech’s lair was and they were going after him without any further delay; he was determined to end the demon’s existence now. Maria and Clay didn’t know what to do. Maria then ran out of change for the payphone and the call was cut off. The two soon fell asleep.
In his room next door, Gallo cautiously opened the combination locks on the case containing the Relic. He gazed in awe at the long dark piece of wood as it sat encased in a blue velvet notch custom shaped for it. However, he soon felt his pulse quicken and his head begin to swim. Sweat broke out on his brow and ran into his eyes and he became nauseous. Managing to stagger to the bathroom, he threw up repeatedly before finally returning and slamming the case shut. He locked it again and set it in the farthest corner of the room away from him. Nerves!
A half hour later, feeling better, he knocked softly on the doorjamb of Maria and Clay’s room. He looked at his watch: 0130. Few people would be about to see them now. He held a map of Lewis Island in his hand. Neither stirred. “Sister Maria, Clay...we have to go.”
When they awoke, however, a major argument erupted with Clay and Maria saying it was foolish to proceed without help.
“I have what I need to kill him,” Gallo asserted. “If you don’t wish to come, then I will face him alone. Abandon me if you wish. I’m an old man but I seem to have more courage than some.”
“You can’t face him alone,” Clay said. “Where are these Crusaders? Have you called them? If so, why aren’t they here? Aren’t they the ones trained to deal with this...thing?”
“Yes, they’ve been trained. But they’ve also failed repeatedly and gotten themselves killed more than once in the bargain. All I need to do is get close enough to him and he’s finished. The scroll said that if he is touched by the Wood, mankind would no longer suffer this plague.”
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