The Dark Temple

by The Dark Temple (retail) (epub)

  As Harker gazed over at him, feeling nothing less than shell-shocked, he managed a confirming nod and so the ex-priest continued with his explanation.

  ‘The Mithras have been around far longer than you can imagine. In one form or another we were here well before the Romans, before the Persians and earlier even than the Sumerians. We were a religion guiding humans before recorded time itself, and directed empires and civilisations that no one in the modern world even knows existed. The first true faith, born during homo sapiens’ fast rise to dominance across the planet and amongst those first few who practised burying their dead.

  Davies stepped over to a section of the wall next to the fireplace and pressed it in with his open palm, whereupon a small door slowly swung open to reveal a drinks cabinet and a decanter. ‘Our beliefs have survived for thousands upon thousands of years,’ he continued, pouring drinks into a couple of crystal tumblers, ‘but it was not until the rise of early Christendom that we truly met our match.’

  He gathered up the two glasses and returned to Harker and placed one in his hand. ‘Russian Standard vodka.’

  The fact that this man knew Harker’s drink of choice was nothing in itself, but it meant that he had done his homework. Harker took a swig and let the liquid burn his throat before swallowing it greedily in the hope it might combat the numbness he was feeling.

  ‘The early Church realised the power of our religion and it did the only thing it could do to compete… It stole every aspect of it and then repackaged it for its own purposes.’

  Harker knew what Davies was alluding to but he remained quiet and allowed him to continue.

  ‘And it worked, too. By stealing our beliefs and manipulating them for their own ends, they contrived to make the religion of Mithras obsolete. And so its surviving believers did the only thing they could do… they went underground and waited, biding their time generation after generation, until the moment to rise up again,’ By now Davies was grinning with zeal. ‘And that time has now come, Alex Harker, and I wish for nothing more than for than you should be a part of it. In fact I want you to serve alongside me.’

  These words had Harker coughing on the last sip he had taken, and he wiped his lips whilst busily shaking his head. ‘Let’s pretend I believe any of this history lesson you’re telling me, for what reason would I possibly want to help you?’

  ‘Because it is your birthright.’

  ‘What!’ Harker spat out incredulously, but Davies looked unfazed by his reaction.

  ‘There are seven ranks in our church, which is the one true church,’ Father Davies began to explain, hardly containing his excitement. ‘The first is the Corax, the second the Nympus, third is the Miles, fourth is Leo, fifth is Perses, sixth is Heliodromus… and lastly, the position of supreme patriarch, that of Pater – or Father.’

  Davies now stood back and raised his hands in self reverence. ‘And your own father was destined to become Pater but, after his defection to the Templars, it fell to me to assume the position and I have done so all these years, working to make us strong once again. And I want you to take your rightful place by my side, as my second, and to succeed me when I retire from my duties.’

  Harker barely batted an eyelid but internally he was going ballistic. He couldn’t know for sure if his father had had anything to do with this bunch of wackos, because photographs could be doctored. There was also the fact that they only appeared to include a dozen or so members and, given how most religions had been suffering attendance loss over the last sixty years, how on earth this man expected them to usurp the Catholic Church simply made no sense at all. One thing for certain, though, Davies believed it to the core. Not unlike the assuredness displayed by many other mentally ill people Harker had encountered over the years.

  ‘What, so this whole business has been nothing more than a recruitment drive?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it so crudely, Alex, there is far more to it than that.’ Davies now placed his hands together and raised them up to his lips. ‘What you couldn’t possibly know, and even the Templars are unaware of, is that their arch enemies, the Magi, were far from the dangerous entity they were considered to be. They were but unknowing pawns in a deception that we orchestrated long ago. Most of their assets and plundered wealth were given to them by us. All we ever wanted was for them to fight the Templars and in doing so destroy each other through an act of attrition and pave the way for us.

  Davies now smiled as Harker’s mouth literally dropped open and the man now crossed his arms and looked towards him deviously. ‘The only true way to own the game is get in at the ground floor and we were around long before the Templars or Magi even existed. We watched them both grow in strength before deciding to pick a side and the Magi were always the more pliable; with their total lack of morals and zest for power they proved far easier to manipulate than the Templars ever could have been.’

  Harker now only managed a disbelieving shake of his head as the full weight of what he was being told sunk in. ‘You controlled the Magi?’

  ‘Controlled is not the right word,’ Davies replied, letting out a chuckle and shrugging his shoulders, ‘they played in a game that we had created and designed to produce a single outcome… the destruction of both the Templars and the Magi, who were the only true opponents standing in the way of our return.

  Even though Harker was still reeling from the titanic revelation he could see the reality of it. Two organisations, completely opposed, and coerced unsuspectingly into centuries of slowly whittling each other down as the Mithras watched from the shadows, waiting until the moment was right, when they had decimated one another and were ripe to receive the final death blow. ‘You’re telling me the whole war between the Templars and the Magi has been nothing more than a chess game of your creation?’

  ‘They were always destined to fight amongst themselves Alex,’ Davies continued smugly, ‘but at every step we have aided in their hatred of one another, for time and patience has always been our weapon; it has also proved our greatest strength and always will be.’

  Harker could barely believe it, and as he stood there motionless and perplexed, unable to truly absorb what he was hearing, Davies continued as if the bombshell meant nothing.

  ‘Your father never knew of our true role in all this, and thankfully so given his treacherous behaviour but now, with the true knowledge of what we are and our place in all this, you are ready to take your rightful place amongst us. And you have already progressed further than you realise, and only a single step is left now before you take the position that is your right by blood.’

  ‘A single step!’ Harker growled in disbelief, his head swimming in confusion because this whole thing was nuts. ‘I haven’t even taken a first step.’

  A knowing smile crossed across Davies’s face and he let out a chuckle. ‘Alex, your initiation began days ago.’

  During the course of the last few days, Harker had been preoccupied with notions of prophecy, murder, visions, relics, and everything else in between. And also, having only so recently discovered that Mithraism even existed he had not really given much thought to the idea that the sinister group behind everything had been the Mithras cult. An ancient cult, whose only reality and relevance lay buried in the history books! But, as he stood there staring at Father Davies, he began to realise the full significance of almost everything that had happened to him lately, and the stages of Mithras initiation that Davies had explained and that he himself had knowledge of as a professor of archaeology.

  ‘The Corax means the first step in initiation: a baptism.’ he muttered as Davies’s eyes lit up at his realisation. ‘Back in Rome, at your apartment, I was almost drowned. And I remember that boy muttering something I couldn’t make out… He was baptising me?’

  Davies nodded enthusiastically as Harker continued.

  ‘The second step, called Nympus, involves marrying the god of Mithras like in that strange ceremony back at the Baths of Caracalla.’

  ‘Yes,’ Davies concu
rred with glee. ‘You were directly above an ancient Mithras temple which is even now open to the public.’

  Suddenly thinking himself back to the museum in Athens, he recalled the crown that Adonis Anastas had so unexpectedly placed upon his head. ‘The third step, that of Miles, is being anointed with the crown of Mithras, which symbolises liberation from the bonds of the material world.’

  Harker now fell silent as the weight of what he was discovering pressed deeply on his soul. At this point Davies now took over, appearing more thrilled with every utterance.

  ‘The fourth step called, Leo, is the initiation through fire as guided by a representative of Jupiter – Miss Avi Legrundy herself.’

  The bizarre chanting Harker had heard Legrundy spouting as he awoke tied up in Dr Marceau’s apartment, just before she set it ablaze, now made a twisted sense. Even as Davies continued, he felt sick to his stomach at the deception inflicted on him.

  ‘The fifth step of Perses was an act of faith in vanquishing a gorgon or a true monster, and your defeating of the horned man-child is proof in itself that you are worthy of your new position.’

  Harker’s revulsion was tinged by the empathy he felt for that lumbering, tortured, disabled boy he had fought against. ‘Who was that exactly?’

  Davies looked like he could not have cared less. ‘That genetic monstrosity was born for one reason and one only, and that was to offer you penance and admission for you when the time came. It is a brute representing all that the Mithras reviles and it has been kept in bondage in those testing grounds for but one purpose – and its reason for existence is now over.’

  Up until this point there had been at least a semblance of a normal personality underneath all the psychotic behaviour this ex-priest was displaying, but this cold and heartless statement had Harker not only despising the man but also feeling completely repulsed by him. ‘Are you telling me you kept that poor disabled boy in that dungeon all his life just so he could test me!’

  Davies’s truly deviant nature was displayed further as he looked aghast at Harker’s sympathy for what he himself saw as nothing more than a useless entity. ‘There have been others tested by that deformed creature, yes, but you were always its main reason for existing. That thing has no place in a superior world, a world of the strong and the pure. It was lucky to have found any purpose at all for otherwise I would have slit its throat as a child, without a second thought.’

  The chilling reply now started Harker thinking of the other murders that had taken place on this structured journey of ‘enlightenment’ the Mithras cult had so fanatically set him upon. ‘And that woman and child you mutilated before your own apparent death at the hands of the police? I saw the video of it.’

  ‘Sacrifices must always be made for a higher purpose and, although I will admit they were innocents in all this and, unaware of the miserable fates that awaited them, it was a necessary evil in convincing the Church that the “three days of Darkness” prophecy was imminently upon them.’

  ‘So you murdered a little boy and his mother,’ Harker growled in disgust, ‘and for what?’

  Davies looked shocked at Harker’s expression of compassion. ‘We’ll get to that shortly, but don’t forget the boy himself was a verified schizophrenic and so tainted, as for the mother… well, she was too gullible and easily pliable and my standing as an ex-priest offered her a reason to believe in his satanic possession. With a little help from me, of course.’

  ‘So you really once were a priest – at least. Archbishop Federar certainly believed it.’ Harker said, still astonished at the level of insignificance which human life represented to this man.

  ‘The road of the Mithras is a long one, Alex, and I had infiltrated the Church long before the Templars even became aware of us. My credentials were genuine, although that corpse with its head blown off, which both the Church and the newspapers believed to be me, was just another lost and useless soul we used for our purpose. A few changes to his dental and blood records, with a little help from Detective Russo, and no one was the wiser as you’ve seen for yourself.’

  Davies now grasped Harker by both shoulders and regarded him as one would do a son. ‘We have gone to great lengths in bringing you back to us, after your father decided to deny you your birthright and here you are duly restored to us; to me and your family. For you see, we are the same, Alex Harker… because, you see, your father was my brother.’

  Harker pulled away from the man’s grip, and stared at him in abject disbelief at the disclosure as Davies nodded excitedly.

  ‘Your father believed his siding with the Templars would bring the Mithras to its knees and they even thought that we had been totally destroyed from the inside out. But as you now know it was nothing more than a game within a game and he should have realised that you cannot easily stamp out a belief that has stood the test of time for thousands of years with one single blow of deception. The Templar’s arrogance is its greatest weakness; we are still as strong as ever and for the past twenty-five years I knew I would eventually find you. Your father hid you well from us, but once you became embroiled with Sebastian Brulet and those other devilish zealots, I realised it would just be a matter of time until we reached out to you. And now, my nephew, here you are.’

  Being identified as kin made Harker feel light-headed and he stared blankly as his ‘uncle’ continued with the warped sense of logic he had displayed thus far.

  ‘There is so much you have yet to learn about your personal history and importance in all of this, and when I discovered you had resigned your own place within that steaming pile of dung that is the Catholic Church, I knew it was in your blood – your DNA – to resist that same false and deceitful ideology. Catholicism is nothing more than a stolen reflection of the one true faith. Of Mithraism and the millennia of history and devotion that have always behoved us to stay pure and to praise the one true god.’ Davies raised his hand towards the painted ceiling and the image at its centre, ‘I refer to Mithras, the true lord of humanity and yes, Alex… I am your uncle, and you have now come home.’

  Harker now felt in a state of information overload, but that surreal feeling took a back seat to contemplating the complete fantasy that he would ever join a heartless, cold and just plain wicked group as this, regardless of whether he was genuinely related. As he looked up at the man who would be his uncle, now smiling like a Cheshire cat, he realised the fellow was not only a psychopath but clearly insane to boot.

  ‘So, Uncle,’ Harker began deciding his best bet for the time being was to play to the man’s delusions, ‘will you now explain why you had me chasing the ‘Darkness’ prophecy, the blessed candles, and breaking into the Vatican’s archives?’

  The use of the word ‘uncle’ had Davies wagging a finger at him. ‘Now, now, Alex. Let’s not insult each other’s intelligence, since I know how you must feel about all this. You’ve been kept away from us for too long but, given time, I know you’ll come to believe in the truth of what we’re trying to accomplish.’

  ‘Ok, Davies, so why the goose chase?’ Harker replied tersely, realising this man might be crazy but he wasn’t stupid.

  ‘Many of us have felt unsure about the wisdom of bringing you into the fold. Some think you will have become too polluted by your experiences.’ Davies pointed his finger upwards, deliberately ignoring the question. ‘You found one such upstairs, sharing his bed with a nest of emperor scorpions.’

  The remembered image of the swollen blue face of Michael Donitz caused Harker to grimace. ‘So that’s how you repay those who dare to disagree with you?’

  ‘Yes, but for your sake, Alex,’ Davies said sternly, as if Harker had asked for all this. ‘All debts must be repaid, and the debt of loyalty is amongst the highest. I doubt he will die, since we administer anti-venom regularly and other medical requirements as necessary. If he survives until tonight, he will have a chance to return to us with a restored sense of loyalty.’

  ‘Or with sheer bloody murder on his mind,’ Harke
r muttered quietly. ‘If he has a mind at the end of it all.’

  ‘If we’re to fight those that would oppose us, then we must remain strong and united, and absolute loyalty is the lifeblood by which we will achieve that.’

  ‘And what the hell is that, exactly?’

  ‘The Catholic Church has become far too powerful to get rid of just like that, but Mithraism has witnessed many other false religions come and go, and yet we are still here. Time is our saviour as it always has been, and in a few thousand years from now who knows how things will have evolved. We have started already to hurt the Church… in fact I had Legrundy remove the entire congregations of two churches only a few days ago, as you might have heard, and that is just another part of our plan to instil fear into the hearts of the masses. We are custodians of the true faith until the time becomes right, and until then we will do exactly what you yourself have been doing over the past few days – by chipping away at the Church piece by piece.’

  ‘And how exactly have I been doing that?’ Harker replied, confused by his apparent part in all this.

  Davies made his way over to the nearby pillar and with the flat palm of his hand pressed its surface. With a clicking sound a portion of the stone slid away to reveal the two ‘blessed candles’ sitting in shiny metal holders. ‘I’m afraid these little trinkets are barely worth the quartz we had them made from, although I will say they were expertly crafted to make the right impression and the light electrical discharge was a rather ingenious design.’ He picked up the two items and held them out in front of him, one in each hand, and then dropped them to the floor where they shattered into a hundred sharp pieces. As Harker stared down at a chunk which landed at his feet, he could make out a thin wire strip, containing tiny light diodes, running along its length.

  ‘So they’re fake! Then what about my vision? You can’t fake something like that,’ Harker gasped, trying to make sense of an experience that been haunting him ever since it happened.

  Davies pulled a tiny vial from his other pocket and gave it a shake. ‘Its medical term is scopolamine, better known as the Devil’s Breath, and the South Americans have been using it for centuries. It’s a highly potent mind-altering drug and I’ll admit we’ve been tinkering with its effects for some time now – well before you even came on my radar. It makes the subject highly susceptible to suggestion and, with added hallucinogenic properties, it allows one to literally lead someone through a “trip”, suggesting situations and events which the recipient experiences as being very real. The CIA have been using it for years but we, with some additional manipulation, have turned it into a far more useful compound.’