Simon shook his head. “Martin, don’t you know what the hell goes on in your own basement?”
Chapter 104
The catacombs beneath the Edificio Nuovo, Comitato per Interventi
Secret Entrance outside the Vatican City, Rome
Simon found them on a bench not far from the tunnel entrance, leaning on each other. Straker was worse—he’d been banged up and was wheezing due to broken ribs. Bella’s clothes were badly shredded, but otherwise she was relatively unhurt. They looked broken, exhausted, and much older.
“Thank you,” Simon said.
Straker nodded. “For what?”
“We got them. Martin bound the demon. Without your help we’d never have done it. Your statue—it held them up.”
“I hope never to see that thing again,” Bella said, shuddering.
“I completely agree,” Simon said, explaining that the commandos were mopping up.
He handed Straker an electronic key fob from one of his jumpsuit pockets. “This is for a white Alfa sedan parked near where Via Candia and Via Tunisi cross just north of the Vatican. Make sure you grab the leather bag in the trunk.” He didn’t mention the bag’s contents, a million in neatly-bundled euros.
Straker took the key.
Simon next handed him a phone. “This is a burner with three contacts. The first is a doctor here in Rome who handles problems off the books, no police involvement. The second is a direct line to my pilot, who’s standing by a Cessna Citation with a full tank. The third number is where you can leave me a voicemail. It’s good for a week. Far as anyone knows, you disappeared during the melee. Call if you want to…file an after-action report, as it were. Or disappear for real. You deserve something for what you went through. This is a start, so take advantage of it.”
Bella was crying.
“We will.” Straker nodded.
Straker shook Simon’s hand. “I’m sorry about Walton.”
“Me, too. Seemed like a good guy.”
“He was…”
Bella hugged him. “Thanks again, Simon Pound.”
He watched them walk slowly away, then turned back into the disguised tunnel entrance.
Chapter 105
Kessler Industries Hangar
Leonardo da Vinci—Fiumicino Airport
Rome
Stoyanova was keeping Kessler calm, but Curtis was unclear whether she was doing it with magick or just old-fashioned sex. She caressed Kessler’s flesh almost absently, as if she were otherwise engaged, and rubbing her boss’s groin was merely one of many routine tasks.
Not so desirable now, was she? Her clothes soiled by the human dust of the catacombs, her face smeared with grime and blood. She was hiding a limp. But she kept Kessler from breaking down.
“I was so close,” Kessler muttered repeatedly. “So close. Astaroth would have been free and our new world begun. Where did we go wrong?”
Curtis wanted to toss out a few thoughts, but kept them bottled instead. Better to allow Kessler to go through his warped grief, then regroup, and then probably make good use of that Argentine citizenship he’d bothered to obtain some years ago for just such an event. Curtis sensed his time at Kessler Industries was coming to an end. Working for a self-described super-villain wasn’t all it was made out to be…
Curtis rallied the remaining three men from his depleted army. The rest of Kessler’s “knights” had succumbed back at the catacombs, some of them while feeding that demon’s hunger. Curtis had seen enough to believe completely now, but all he wanted to do was forget. He went up to the cockpit and the pilots turned to stare.
“Bad day at the office. Better head for home.”
But he was roughly shoved aside by the disheveled Kessler, who appeared drunk. “No! Plot a course for the island.”
Curtis turned, frowning. “Island? Fuck the island!” He turned back to the pilot. “Follow my previous order. Head home. We’re having a disagreement, but we’ll sort it out while in flight.”
“Pieter,” Kessler whispered. He was teetering in the cockpit doorway. “Pieter, listen…”
“Yes?” Curtis said.
And then his head exploded, raining a wide arc of blood and brain matter over the rear of the pilots’ chairs. His body crumpled to the deck like rotted fruit.
“The island,” Stoyanova said from where she’d crept up behind Curtis. She held up the Taurus .380. “Like your boss says.”
Kessler turned, stared at Stoyanova.
Her face had changed. It was no longer that of the ravishing woman who had been his lover and accomplice. It was no longer human. It was unspeakably ugly.
Suddenly a multitude of voices spoke in Kessler’s head.
“We will head to the island now,” Astaroth said, using Stoyanova’s vocal cords, “and then we will complete what you began. You will not stand in my way.”
Cornelious Kessler felt the wrath of the demon in his chest. An invisible hand grasped his heart and held it long enough to make the message clear. Once released, he sagged onto the bulkhead.
The engines whined. The plane taxied out of the hangar.
The reptilian creature that had been Stoyanova settled itself on a leather sofa. Its glowing yellow eyes fixed Kessler’s and a smile split its unrecognizable face.
Kessler’s hands trembled.
He looked away.
He was the bound one now.
Chapter 105
Exterior of Kessler Industries Hangar
Leonardo da Vinci—Fiumicino Airport
Rome
“We’re too late,” Martin said.
Simon ripped an MP5 submachine gun from a guardsman’s hands and aimed at the French-made Dassault as it taxied out the hangar’s opposite end. But it was out of range, and besides there were civilians inside lying prone on the hangar floor. They’d dropped when the gunshot had rung out from inside the plane, and seconds later the side door had opened and a bloody body tumbled out to the concrete in a heap.
It was Pieter Curtis.
Simon lowered the barrel. “Cat?”
She was drained and it showed. Pale, her normally lustrous hair flecked with dust but also lank and lifeless. Her body seemed to have sunk in on itself.
She leaned on him. “I can try.”
For the next five minutes, Cat’s body suffered further punishment as she cast successive spells at the plane and the adept it carried. She no longer thought of that woman as her sister Elena. She was Stoyanova, Kessler’s tool in his bid for world domination. Perhaps she was even the architect.
“She’s fighting back.” Cat’s voice was hoarse. She broke out sweating as her body absorbed the other adept’s counterattack. But then she steadied herself and focused her glare on the far runway, where the plane had taken off.
“I’m—I’m forcing it down!” she said, breathlessly. Surprised. “It’s going down. She must be too tired to fight back.”
Simon was once again amazed at her reserves of stamina and power. He saw her seeming to gain power, even as she directed her attack on the Kessler plane. It was so similar to what Stoyanova had tried to do to Simon’s flight—it gave him chills. He tapped the band with his capsule under his jumpsuit, thankful only a few seconds of aging had occurred before Cat had saved him.
“That’s it, that’s the best I can do.” Cat doubled over and retched.
They were silent until Simon’s phone buzzed. “Have to take this.”
He stepped away and heard him thank the caller. “Glad to hear it, man. I’m sure Steve McQueen would be proud. I’ll pick it up tomorrow—er, make that the day after tomorrow. Thanks!”
Simon grinned like a child. “My Bullitt Mustang is fixed.”
Father Martin’s face was blank. Cat was too exhausted to shake her head, but shook her head anyway.
They sat on the car bumper until Martin’s phone went off. “The plane went down about five minutes after leaving the coast,” he said after listening. “Debris field spotted, but no bodies. I’m sure they�
�ll be found floating soon. It’s over.”
Simon glanced at Cat.
She wasn’t buying it.
He shrugged. The demon Astaroth was bound in his prison again, among the other demons still guarded by the VSS. It was only a matter of time before someone discovered a new ritual, a new way to release the creatures into the world.
“Let’s go home, Cat.” Simon draped his leather jacket over her shoulders and felt them stiffen. She smiled, but there was little humor in her eyes.
Whatever home is.
“Sure,” she said.
EPILOGUE
Near-immortal perhaps, yes, but that has never guaranteed my success. My history is dotted with less than stellar performances, but more often than not they weren’t my fault. The Templar fiasco was one. Later, Pope Sixtus loaned me out to one of several warring banker families on the down-low, so he could wash his hands of an attempt to remove the Medici from power. Alas, it was not my finest hour, and the main target survived while his brother did not. The Medici were too well-connected, and I was forced to assure the intermediary could not brag of having influenced the pope’s involvement. His horse was famously temperamental, so when he was thrown into a cypress grove and broke his neck, there was no suspicion to fall on either his employer or the pope. Ah, and then there were the Borgias…my, how much subterfuge! How often did I clean up both sides of a conflict begun by one or other of the offspring, and old Rodrigo—Pope Alexander VI—apologetically dispensed my services to repair such problems. He was a fine gentleman who knew his wines, especially the Spanish ones as you would expect, but I often wondered that he did not require me nearly as much as those children of his. No, my involvement did not always solve a problem, for the pope who dispatched me might have been of questionable judgment. It was only when the job of directing secret operatives was farmed out to an “expert” Jesuit who advised the man in the big office that we began to show a return on the generous fees paid me over the centuries. Such is the fate of the instrument, the tool, the weapon—in the end it is only as effective as its wielder…
He faded in from the darkness of the long corridor. His right hand was behind his back.
“When is the funeral?”
The old man turned, not quite startled. His white hair was a limp halo. “Funeral? Whose funeral?”
“Yours.”
“Wait. Wait, please.”
“I can wait. Tell me why.”
“Why?” The old man shrugged. “What do you mean, why?”
“Why jump from the side of the angels, Bellucci?”
“It was too much, Simon.” His voice was pleading.
“What was? The money was too much?” Simon could understand that, up to a point.
“No,” said Bellucci. “Power. They offered me so much power. Living down here, they forget about you. You become meaningless, a cockroach among the stacks. I was tired of being the cockroach. I wanted to be pope.”
“Pope?” Simon barked a laugh. “You?”
“You don’t remember, do you? In my youth I was an up-and-comer. I was on a fast track. I could have been pope! But you see, that’s what I mean. Even now, you laughed. I was on the short list. But they went for that smiling fool, Luciani, instead. And what did he do in his thirty-three days? He demoted me! Me! I had been staunchly on his side and that was how he paid me back.”
“So you killed him?”
“No, I always thought you did.”
“I would have protected him. That was my job, and he had enemies. But he wasn’t paranoid enough. He sent me on assignment. Yes, even he was willing to deploy me, the pope’s weapon. So I wasn’t here, and they got him.”
Bellucci stroked his chin. “I always thought…”
Simon shook his head. “I got them later,” he said.
There was a long silence between them.
“How did you know?” Bellucci stood straight-backed, still proud and unbending.
“Kessler’s assassins went after my bracelet. But they should not have known my silver flake hasn’t been in a pendant for decades. And somehow they knew about the Rolex decoy, too. All this is recorded in the VSS files designated Most Secret, and in the Archives. And you always say, you’re the only one who knows where everything is.”
“Ah, that was my mistake. Knowing too much.”
“Among others,” Simon said. “You found the ritual in the Archives, and you recruited Kessler, didn’t you? You needed someone with money and power, but he had to want much more than he could ever have through normal means.”
“He wasn’t hard to find. He had interests. Tastes. Ideas…The Internet has made us all cozier with each other. Now it’s easy to find people of similar mind if you know which communities to…troll. He was a fabulously wealthy man, but his was a voice screaming out for more power. I heard it, and I approached him. By then I knew how to get him that power. He was fascinated…”
Simon said, “So, the papacy. For you it was all about the power you never had.”
“And power I would have earned, Simon. Astaroth wasn’t going to run things as a demon, a drooling monster for all to see. He would have been the power behind the throne, but I would have sat on that throne. I would have been the pope, the face of the Church, delivered to Astaroth wholly without its knowledge. He would have toyed with us—humans, you know—for generations, pitting us against each other and taking us apart little by little, enjoying the sport, but his followers would have benefited forever. I would have lived forever, Simon. Like you. Like Kessler.”
“Well, he won’t be living forever after all. And Astaroth is bound again, this time for good.”
“And me?” said Bellucci, his eyes finally pleading. “What about me? Does the current…big guy have an opinion?”
“He does.”
“Since you’re here, it must be the end.”
“Everything ends, old man.”
Simon fired one round and caught the hot brass in his gloved free hand.
He’d considered making it look like a suicide, but it didn’t matter. Bellucci had no family, no real life outside of the Archives. No one would note his passing. A clean-up crew was the last step, already en route. A quiet alcove in the catacombs had been predetermined, perhaps too good a resting place for a betrayer. Another betrayer, but not one likely to be pardoned.
Simon left the Archives the way he had come, through the long corridor that led to the secret tunnels. He had been here many times. He would be here again.
He shrugged.
Cat was waiting. There was a little restaurant just outside the city’s center he’d been waiting to try. Tonight seemed the perfect time, before they hopped on the Gulfstream and headed back to New York.
Occasionally Time is your friend, Simon mused.
My career “facilitating” death on behalf of the papacy has been, shall we say delicately, dotted with royal clusterfucks. Take Ulster, for instance. Name anytime they called it a hot-spot and I was there. One month I’d infiltrate a revolutionary group and carry out an “assignment,” and the next month I’d infiltrate an opposing group and carry out its opposite. I worked for the government…until I was told to work against the government. I stopped bombings and helped carry them out. Thinking about it makes my head spin. You see, while the papacy was nominally on one side of each conflict, occasionally it was also in its interest to be on the other, or yet another. My job has always been difficult to rationalize because occasionally it appears to be in direct opposition to what you’d think would be the official Vatican stance…but differing results require differing approaches, and the VSS—plus its many unnamed predecessors—has often played one side against the other, trying to make the dominoes fall in a certain direction. I so much prefer those assignments that require me to save the world, or a small corner of it—at least I can feel my conscience need not cry out in the night. Not that I allow much of that. But occasionally, when it dawns on me that I may well be someone else�
��s assignment…well, near-immortals can be paranoid too.
Contrary to popular (and often unpopular) belief, the entity with whom I made my Deal—God, if you will—does not concern itself with the everyday affairs of its creation…Yes, that means we’re left to fend for ourselves. Mostly…
Simon Pound
The End
About the Author
W.D. Gagliani is also the author of the horror-thriller Nick Lupo Series: Wolf’s Trap (a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award in 2004), Wolf’s Gambit, Wolf’s Bluff, Wolf’s Edge, Wolf’s Cut, Wolf’s Blind, and the hard-noir thriller Savage Nights, plus the novellas Wolf’s Deal and The Great Belzoni and the Gait of Anubis. He has published fiction and nonfiction in numerous anthologies and publications such as Robert Bloch’s Psychos, Fearful Fathoms, Undead Tales, More Monsters From Memphis, The Midnighters Club, and others, and e-zines such as Wicked Karnival, Horrorfind, 1000Delights, Dark Muse, and The Grimoire. His fiction has garnered six Honorable Mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror (one of which, the story “Starbird,” is also part of Amazon’s Story Front print and audio program). Gagliani has also written a Nick Lupo/Jack Daniels crossover tale, “Hair of the Dog,” for The World of J.A. Konrath (Amazon Kindle Worlds). His book reviews and nonfiction articles have been included in The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chizine, HorrorWorld, Chizine, Cemetery Dance, CD Online, The Writermagazine, The Scream Factory, Science Fiction Chronicle, Flesh & Blood, BookPage, Hellnotes, and many others, plus the books Thrillers: The 100 Must Reads, They Bite, and On Writing Horror. Additionally, the creative team of W.D. Gagliani & David Benton has published the novel Killer Lake (Deadite Press, 2019) plus short fiction in anthologies such as THE X-FILES: Trust No One, SPLATTERPUNK: FIGHT BACK, SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror, SNAFU: Wolves at the Door, Dark Passions: Hot Blood 13, Zippered Flesh 2, Malpractice, Masters of Unreality, etc., venues such as DeadLines, The Horror Zine, and SplatterpunkZine, plus the Amazon Kindle Worlds Vampire Diaries tie-in “Voracious in Vegas.” Some of their collaborations are available in the collection Mysteries & Mayhem.
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