by John Saul
Since that day, his resolve to avenge the terrible wrong that had been done to his family had steadily grown until it was a furiously burning rage so strong that no force in the world could stop it.
But now, nearly three decades after that first fateful discovery, it would soon be finished.
The gravity of the moment pulled him first to his knees, then fully down until he was prone on the floor for a moment, his arms stretched toward Mecca, offering a prayer of thanks to Allah, who had guided him. Allah, who had heard his prayers and had given the Catholic Church a Pope who was familiar with the ancient rituals. Allah, who had made certain that this Pope understood what he had seen in the video the priest known as Sebastian Sloane had sent through the foolish—but highly malleable—Cardinal Morisco.
Now it was Allah who was about to deliver the Pope to him, to Abdul Kahadija, the name the man called Father Sebastian Sloane had taken when he discovered the truth about his family’s history and had returned to his forefather’s true Islamic faith, throwing off the heresies of the Roman Church as he’d thrown off the Spanish name he’d grown up with.
Paquito, his brother had called him a little while ago. But never again.
Soon their vengeance would be complete, and their hated Christian names would never cross either of their lips again. But even in his fury, in his lust for the vengeance the Church had so richly earned, he would see that the Pope received a good death.
A righteous death, at the hands of the very ritual the Catholic Church used to exterminate Muslims from Spain so long ago.
Used to exterminate his family, to tear them from the faith that had sustained them for a hundred generations!
What could be more righteous than that?
Fresh strength flowed through Abdul Kahadija, setting his whole being aquiver with energy, and he raised his hands to Allah in praise and worship. Then, when his trembling ceased, he stood, gathered his materials into a cloth bag, and left the room that was little more than a monastic cell, clad once more in the black cassock that belonged to Father Sebastian Sloane.
It was no more than a quarter-hour later that Sebastian Sloane placed his cloth bag on the cold floor next to the stone sarcophagus that held Jeffrey Holmes’s corpse. Removing a handful of candles from his bag, he placed them in a wide circle around the sarcophagus, and lit them slowly, whispering a prayer from the ancient ritual before igniting each wick. Only when all the candles were lit did he turn off his flashlight and put it back in the bag. Then he withdrew the precious scroll, wrapped now in a large square of emerald green silk.
Next came the single piece of chalk he would need.
By the flickering light of the unsteady candles, Sebastian carefully surveyed the uneven stone floor, visualizing how best he could expand the drawing of the labyrinth contained within the ancient scroll to fit the floor around the sarcophagus. Yet even as he gazed at the space around the stone coffin, he knew it couldn’t be “best.” No, “best” wouldn’t do.
The labyrinth had to be perfect.
Yet from one angle, the room didn’t seem big enough to hold the complexity of the pattern, while from another angle, the space seemed far too big.
Yet it had to be done, and it had to be perfect.
The labyrinth had three entrances and three paths, and though all three paths found the same destination, all moved in different directions, twisting and turning as they led toward their goal, yet never connecting, never intersecting.
Where even to begin?
Trust in Allah, he told himself. Let the hand of Allah be your guide.
The chalk began to vibrate in his fingers, and a moment later he was on his hands and knees. As if of its own volition, the chalk began making marks on the floor. The lines encircling Jeffrey Holmes’s tomb were all evenly curved; those that radiated out were perfectly straight. As he worked, the man in the priest’s garb found himself moving first one way around the sarcophagus, then the other, moving out a little with the completion of each circle. At first he saw nothing but a jumble of lines, but slowly a pattern began to emerge.
He worked faster, not feeling the cold hardness of the stone floor beneath his hands and knees, utterly unaware of how much time might be passing.
As the labyrinth took shape, the entire room grew darker as if filling with a shadow, though the shadow had no visible source. The candles burned steadily, but it seemed as if their light was being swallowed by the gathering shadow. The cavernous, high-ceilinged chamber grew close, the air thin and difficult to breathe.
Yet Sebastian’s arm raced over the stones, detailing the path the servers would tread to complete the ritual he’d begun with each of them in the preceding days. His arm moved faster and faster, jerked this way and that by an invisible force. Though the stick of chalk had worn away, the drawing continued, as he tore off the skin and meat of his knuckles until it was completed in his own blood.
Still, the room filled with the strange shadow, and the atmosphere grew heavier and heavier until finally Sebastian Sloane lay prostrate on the floor.
The weight in the chamber grew so heavy that his very breath rasped, and the pressure on his lungs threatened to collapse them inside his body.
What if he did not survive the preparation?
Please. Without me, this cannot be completed.
And then it was finished.
After seven complete revolutions had been made around the coffin, the pressure in the room eased, and the deep shadow suddenly vanished.
As if startled out of a reverie, Sebastian hesitated for a moment, then rose slowly to his feet and looked down at the diagram that had been traced on the floor.
Though he knew it was perfect, he still compared it to the labyrinth laid out in the ancient scroll.
They were alike in every detail. But beyond that, he could feel something—some presence—in the chamber that had not been there before.
All was ready.
Only the children were missing….
CHAPTER 57
THE FLICKERING LIGHT glowing at the end of the long tunnel drew Ryan through the darkness like bait in a trap, and even though he knew that very soon the jaws of the trap would close in on him, he could no more turn away from the light than a wolf can turn away from fresh meat.
Moments ago, he’d been sitting in the cafeteria eating dinner with Melody and Sofia, and trying to figure out the easiest way to get to the hospital to see his mother. But then a strange feeling had washed over him, a feeling that he was wanted—that he was needed. He’d looked around, half-expecting to see one of the priests or nuns beckoning to him from the doorway, but even as he saw no one he realized that the feeling hadn’t come from outside himself at all. It had risen from somewhere deep within himself, and he had stood up from the table and walked toward the door.
He’d wanted to stop, wanted to bus his dishes, but there was no time.
He had to follow the summons.
Melody and Sofia had risen at exactly the same moment as Ryan, and he followed them out of the dining room and through the door at the top of the stairs. This time, though, there was no hesitation as he gazed into the darkness below and no fear of the confusion of tunnels through which he must pass.
As he drew close to the soft, pulsing light he found himself gazing into the dank chamber in the very center of which stood Jeffrey Holmes’s carved marble sarcophagus. But unlike the last time he’d been here, when the chamber had been filled with darkness, now there was a circle of candles around the room’s perimeter, and a strange diagram—like a maze—was inscribed on the floor.
Inscribed in chalk, and in blood.
To the depths of his soul, Ryan did not want to go into that room and though his feet threatened to disobey him—though he felt an almost irresistible force drawing him into the chamber—he stopped at the doorway.
Sofia and Melody were already inside, standing quietly at two of the three entrance points to the labyrinth that had been drawn on the stone floor.
The third entrance point was vacant, and Ryan knew they were waiting for him.
The strange force inside him urged him on, but still he resisted. He could smell the stench of death mixing with the smoke of the candles, and the stink of the rotting corpse that lay inside the coffin.
Now the power of the candlelight itself combined with the force within Ryan, and he gripped the edge of the doorway to keep himself from crossing over the threshold.
A black figure emerged from the shadows of the far corner of the room and stepped into the glow of the candlelight. “Come in, Ryan,” Father Sebastian said, his voice soft, soothing. “A gift awaits you.”
Beads of perspiration erupted on Ryan’s face as he struggled against the forces that were compelling him to step into that room.
“It is through my blood that you exist and you are bound to my bidding,” the black-clad priest intoned.
The words reached out to Ryan, combining with the force inside him and the power that seemed to fill the room itself, and he knew he was not going to be able to deny Father Sebastian.
He felt his fingers slipping from the doorjamb.
“I command you to submit,” the priest said, the words belying the softness of his voice.
Ryan felt his feet move, inching closer to the threshold.
“Submit,” Father Sebastian instructed, a little more forcefully.
Ryan’s left foot slipped over into the room, and instantly an eerie calm washed over him.
Suddenly he felt as if he had come home.
He looked at Melody and Sofia. Both of them were smiling at him.
Smiling in welcome, as if a family—a family of just the four of them, three children and a father—were now complete.
But that wasn’t true.
The priest wasn’t Ryan’s father, and Sofia and Melody weren’t his sisters. Something was wrong—something was very, very wrong.
“Excellent,” Father Sebastian crooned. “Please take your place.”
Ryan’s whole body trembled as he struggled to resist each step that led him to the third entrance of the intricate maze that had been drawn on the stone floor, but his mind seemed to have lost control over his body, which seemed now to be obeying only the commands of the strange presence—the thing—inside him.
The thing, and Father Sebastian’s hypnotic voice.
As if he had somehow been forced out of his own body, Ryan watched himself move to the third entrance to the labyrinth.
Father Sebastian laid a small bundle on the lid of the sarcophagus, then ceremoniously untied the scarlet ribbon and folded back the black velvet. A glint of silver flashed from the dark material, and then the priest picked up a large silver crucifix, holding it almost as if he were offering it to Ryan. But then he turned it upside down and Ryan saw that it was more than simply a crucifix.
It was also a dagger, and as the priest closed his right hand around the head of Christ, he pressed the stiletto-sharp point of the cross’s base to his lips, kissing it.
Candlelight glinted off the blade, and cold sweat began to trickle down the side of Ryan’s face.
The priest laid the holy weapon on the cold marble of the coffin’s lid, and turned again to the black velvet, opening its last fold. Now he lifted up an ancient scroll, its edges tattered, its dowel worn. Father Sebastian carefully unrolled it and began to read in Latin.
After a few words, first Sofia and then Melody began to recite along with him.
And then, even though Ryan had never heard the words before in his life, the verses began to emanate from his lips as well.
He not only spoke them, but he understood them.
They were uttering a prayer for unity.
A prayer for power.
Their voices began to rise into a chant, and though the candles seemed to grow brighter, Ryan felt the room beginning to fill with something else.
Something dark.
Something evil.
All the resistance he’d felt as he entered the room melted away, and as their chanting continued to rise, he and Melody and Sofia began moving slowly through the chalked labyrinth, weaving first one direction, then another, approaching close to one another, only to turn away at the last moment.
Back and forth Ryan walked, one slow step at a time, as if in a dream. Melody and Sofia kept passing him, each treading her own path, never touching him or each other, their courses never crossing. The strange ballet went on, the chanting rising ever higher as the three of them drew inexorably closer to the center of the maze.
Closer to Jeffrey Holmes’s cold tomb.
Their voices rose together into the howling crescendo, as if all the demons in hell had unloosed their bonds, and as the last note sounded all three of them stood at the center of the maze, separated only by the marble coffin. With the echo of their voices still reverberating in the chamber, Father Sebastian raised the heavy silver crucifix once more. He held it high, the stiletto’s point aimed at the ceiling. His voice rumbled as a new invocation rose from his lips.
He handed the desecrated cross to Sofia.
Without hesitation, Sofia drew the point of the blade across her palm, then let the blood from her wound drip onto the white marble as she passed the crucifix to Melody.
Melody repeated what Sofia had just done, and her blood, too, fell onto the sarcophagus.
The blade was passed to Ryan.
Against his own volition, he took the blade from Melody, and the instant their eyes met, Ryan saw that the light in her eyes—the light that had first drawn him to her—had completely gone out.
Something in Melody had died, and as he took the crucifix from her hands, Ryan knew that something was about to die in him, too.
But he was powerless to stop it.
He held the point steady above his wrist. Then, just as he was about to plunge it into his own flesh, a vision flashed before his eyes.
It was his father. His father clad in his full-dress uniform. A silver crucifix hung around his neck, and he was looking Ryan squarely—lovingly—in the eye. “Do not be afraid,” he heard his father say. “I have a gift—”
His father’s words were suddenly cut off as the blade bit into his flesh.
The vision vanished.
His blood flowed from the wound onto the stone lid of the coffin, and as the blood of the three of them mixed together, the white marble turned to mist, then vanished completely.
Now their blood was pooling on the rotting flesh of Jeffrey Holmes’s corpse, and as Ryan watched, the flesh itself began to bubble.
“This is my body,” Father Sebastian whispered, his voice low and raspy. “And this is my blood.”
“Eat of my body,” Father Sebastian commanded, but now it was no longer Father Sebastian at all, but only a face—a face that Ryan recognized at once.
It was the face of the darkness that had filled the room, the face of the thing inside him, the face of the thing that had come to inhabit Melody and Sofia as well.
It was the face of pure evil.
The face of the Devil himself.
“Drink of my blood,” the voice commanded.
Silently, unable to summon any resistance at all, Ryan McIntyre and Melody Hunt and Sofia Capelli obeyed the commands.
They dipped their fingers into the bubbling putrefaction that had once been Jeffrey Holmes, and completed the blasphemous communion.
“It is finished,” Father Sebastian said. “Now sleep. Sleep, and forget until you’re summoned.”
Ryan awoke in his bed, in his darkened dorm. Clay Matthews stirred in his bed on the other side of the room, then was still.
A nightmare…it had to have been a nightmare!
But a moment later, as every detail of the dream came flooding back to him, a great wave of nausea rose over him. He scrambled out of bed and raced toward the bathroom, the vomit spewing from his mouth even as he dropped down in front of the toilet. When it was over he found himself gazing down into a vile mess of what looked like entrails mixed with fres
h blood.
A mess that smelled not like vomit, but exactly like the rotting corpse he’d beheld in the dream.
His gaze shifted from the toilet to the palms of his trembling hands, and as he stared at the blood-red marks where the stiletto had cut into his flesh, he knew the truth.
It had not been a dream at all.
Ryan rested his heated cheek on the cold porcelain floor.
It had not been a dream, and he had not forgotten it, despite Father Sebastian’s final command.
What was happening to him?
Even though his stomach had calmed—and the marks on his palms were invisible in the darkness—he still couldn’t bring himself to go back to bed. The memories, or fragments of dreams, or whatever they’d been, were still too fresh in his mind to risk going back to sleep.
All he really wanted to do was get out. Out of his room, out of the dorm, out of St. Isaac’s. But where could he go?
It didn’t matter—all that mattered was that he get out. Pulling on his clothes, Ryan slipped out of his room into the silent hallway, grabbing his jacket just before he closed the door silently behind him. But even as he made his way quietly through the dorm, the question of where he was going still hung in his mind. He couldn’t go home—no one was there. But where else was there?
The police?
Even if he found a police station, what was he going to tell them? What had happened—or at least what he thought had happened—sounded crazy even to him, and there was no way the police were going to believe him.
His father.
That’s who he really wanted to talk to. If his father were here, he’d know what to do.
But his father was dead, and his mother was in the hospital.
The hospital! That was it—he’d go to the hospital, and maybe his mother would be awake.
Awake, and able to touch him, and smooth his hair and tell him everything was going to be all right, even though he knew that nothing would ever be right again. Even if she wasn’t awake, at least he’d be able to touch her.