The Dark Temple

by The Dark Temple (retail) (epub)

  ‘I will help you in any way I can, but I don’t want to be the one whose hand plunges the dagger.’

  Davies pondered his nephew’s wish, then nodded his head in agreement. ‘You help us get to him and I will plunge it myself.’

  ‘Very well,’ Harker sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘Then if this banquet is not my final initiation, what is it?’ Let’s get it over with and allow me to get to know my family once again.’

  Davies clasped a hand on Harker’s shoulder and, after beckoning all the others to congratulate their new kinsman, he walked off and disappeared through the double doors.

  Detective Russo got to him first, pulled him to his feet and gave him a huge hug.

  ‘Are you even really a Detective?’ Harker asked.

  ‘Of course, I am. We’ve all of us chosen a career in which we can best serve the goals of Mithras.’

  ‘How about your brother-in-law?’

  ‘Oh, that’s real, on my wife’s side, though. She died a while back, I fear.’

  ‘I’ll bet she did,’ Harker murmured and as he moved from one hug to the next he couldn’t quite come to terms with what a bizarre experience this was. A group of orphans united in a deadly and awful sect with only blood and murder on their minds, yet all of them living normal lives outside it. It was like the Italian mafia where one’s family was something to be treasured during the day yet at night those same fathers became homicidal killers and psychopaths. The contrast was frankly unbelievable and yet, as Stefani pushed her way forward to embrace him tightly, he found the whole concept not only terrifying but tragic.

  ‘I knew you’d join us. Father has never been wrong, and family is after all the most important thing in the world. You have to meet the others as and I know you’ll love Sofia… she is a sweetheart.’

  ‘I know, but give me time, Stefani. I need some space to get my head around all this.’

  She pulled back and nodded in understanding. ‘It’s a lot to take in,’ she agreed just as Harker smelt the stench of something god-awful. He turned around to see Davies reappear in the open doorway tugging a leather strap. It was wrapped around the neck of the hulking man-child plodding in behind him.

  Although intimidating in size, the poor boy looked absolutely petrified, and the others present now began slapping him mercilessly about the head, mocking him viciously.

  ‘Down on your knees, beast,’ Davies commanded and the man-child complied immediately. The others now retook their seats with looks of scorn and contempt towards the giant simpleton. ‘This creature, this misfortune of nature, represents all that is wrong with the world we inhabit, which the world now holds up as something to be protected, when instead it should simply be taken out and destroyed. The sick Church of today only offers its flock weakness and pity and we must take pride in the knowledge that our own beliefs are pure.’

  As Harker watched the Mithras leader reel off his venomous, rhetorical nonsense he looked around to see everyone present applauding and cheering and his heart sank even lower, if that were possible.

  ‘Alex,’ Davies called out to him, slapping the dog lead against his open palm. ‘This creature has been raised like cattle for only one purpose: to be slaughtered as an offering to Mithras by one who is true of heart, and as a show of dedication to that which is to be.’

  Davies produced the same hunting knife that Harker had been tossed earlier on entering the dungeon maze, and it was now pressed firmly into his hand. ‘In the name of Mithras, shed its blood and destroy what it has and always will stand for. I refer to Jesus Christ, the most treacherous betrayer of the human race ever to have existed.’

  As the others cheered on with degrading chants, Harker felt his entire throat tighten with anger and he steadied his breathing. They were monsters all right.

  ‘Take your place with us,’ Davies encouraged triumphantly as the din subsided and all Mithras’s children looked on in excitement, eager for the sick spectacle to begin, ‘put this beast out of its misery, for its life now belongs to you and you alone.’

  Harker’s hands trembled slightly, but not from fear or disgust but rather wholehearted, unadulterated rage. He placed his hand on the man-child’s shoulder and addressed him. ‘Stand up now,’ he ordered loudly and the giant, with fearful tears in his eyes, pulled himself to his feet whereupon Harker untied the dog lead from around his neck. Then, holding the knife up to the boy’s throat ‘I own you,’ he growled. ‘And you belong to me.’

  Davies looked thrilled at the sudden show of strength Harker was displaying. He even clapped his hands joyfully as Harker leant close to the man-child’s face, which was quivering with fear. ‘Destroy them!’ Harker bellowed, and in that instant the giant stopped shivering. He now only looked confused as Harker bellowed again, ‘Destroy them all, that’s an order.’

  Davies had only just realised what was going on and managed the single word, ‘What!’ as a huge fist slammed down hard into his cheekbone with a crack, sending him flying against the wall opposite, where he crumbled to the floor in a heap and like a jackpot machine paying out the prized leather backed journal he had been shown earlier, along with his confiscated iPhone fell from Davies’s robed pocket and out onto the floor.

  The others sat shocked and motionless in their seats as the man-child now, with one hefty movement, flipped the entire table over and began ploughing mercilessly into them with his fists, swinging them left and right and sending anyone they touched sailing off in the opposite direction, like skittles in a bowling alley.

  With the cumbersome robes they were all wearing, it meant easy pickings. Harker grabbed his phone and the leather book firstly, jamming it into his pocket and then he snatched up one of the smaller silver platters from off the floor and smashed it hard onto Russo’s head. The detective had managed to avoid the man-child’s onslaught, but this unexpected assault knocked him out cold.

  Harker next turned his attention to Marceau who had initially taken a fist blow to the head but was now staggering to his feet – only to be sent back to the floor with the help of the now dented platter.

  ‘No please…’ he heard someone cry out before another hard blow from the giant sent them flying against the wall. Seeing how the youth was making short work of the lot of them, Harker ran back into the other room to grab the brass tongs next to the fireplace and pulled out a burning log, which he hurled up against the wooden rafters of the maze whose doors were still ajar having been opened in order to bring in the human sacrifice.

  To the sound of cries and moans of those guests getting pummelled, Harker hurled another burning log and then another, and by the time he returned to the dining room the timbers were already lighting up and starting to burn ferociously.

  ‘Enough. Follow me,’ he yelled and the giant ceased his rampage and thundered over to join him.

  The scene was chaos and, although none of the Mithras cult looked dead, there were writhing bodies everywhere. To one side he caught sight of Stefani, who bore a big red punch mark on one cheek and was busy screaming obscenities at him.

  ‘You wanted hell,’ Harker yelled to her, barely in control of the sheer rage still overwhelming him. ‘Well, here it is.’

  As smoke began to fill the room, Harker slammed the doors of the dining room, shutting them inside. There was no lock on them which at least gave the Mithras a chance to escape because as much as he wanted to kill them all at that moment, he wasn’t a murderer.

  He hurried over to the only other door and flung it open, and thankfully saw stairs leading upwards. He paused and looked back to see the giant standing staring at the billowing smoke. ‘Follow me,’ Harker urged, but the man-child merely glanced at him, then with a smile took off into the burning maze and out of sight.

  There was no way Harker was leaving without him, so he rushed after him in close pursuit. All around fire was raging, as he came to a halt at the small opening he had pushed his way through earlier, realising now he had no idea where to go next. Worse still he didn’t even ha
ve a name to call out so he began calling yelling, ‘Come back here… follow me.’

  After several seconds, with the heat becoming almost unbearable, the man-child appeared, looming from some side passage, then ran back over to Harker, who now realised what was going on.

  The oversized puppet with button eyes hung from his forearm, clutched tightly, and with an understanding nod from Harker they both sped back into the other room and up the stairwell. It ended at a set of double doors fixed above like those on an old-fashioned air-raid shelter.

  They bust out through them, both together into the warm night air and without pausing to catch his breath Harker guided them back through the brush, emerging fortunately within yards of the waiting boat he had arrived in.

  Harker was first on board and looked back to find the giant looking unsure. It dawned on him that this fellow had probably never even seen a boat before. Jesus, he might never have been outside before.

  His attempts at waving him on board had no effect whatsoever. ‘Get your arse in here now,’ Harker ordered, and immediately the giant jumped on board, nearly capsizing the boat in the process. ‘Now sit.’ He pointed to one of the benches, then started up the engine and began to pull away.

  Above the island of Poveglia, smoke billowed up into the night sky in an ever-increasing black cloud, blotting out the stars above. It was impossible to tell if anyone else had made it out to safety, because the entire island was shrouded in darkness. And in truth, as they moved further away and towards the city lights of Venice, Harker really didn’t pay it much thought. Honestly, he couldn’t care less. Everything he had just learned, the enormity of it all, had him feeling completely numb and at a loss and he found himself gaining solace in only one thing. His position of Jarl, within the Templars. The idea that he was not worthy of the role had been grating on him but, as he looked at the burning island now in the distance, he realised that not only did it serve an imperative function but that he would do all he could to uphold the faith Brulet had placed in him.

  As the giant stared up at the stars he was probably seeing for the first time, Harker pulled out his iPhone and peered at the screen. It was cracked in several places but as he pressed the On button, the screen burst into life. He let out a huge sigh of relief and then began deciding what on earth he was going to do next. Where the hell was he going to go, in the company of a gigantic man in rags, wearing hooved boots and clutching a life-sized doll, without attracting unwelcome attention?

  Harker finally dialled in a number and waited for an answer.

  ‘David, it’s Alex. I need your help.’

  Chapter 35

  The golden red sunset over the city of Cambridge looked more magnificent than usual as Harker sat lazily on his green garden chair, and he took another sip of his vodka and Red Bull and let it trickle slowly down his throat. It was hard to imagine that fewer than twenty-four hours earlier he had been tussling with a gigantic seven-foot man with a bull’s head in the depths of an underground hell hole. His wrenched muscles had begun to ache in the past few hours and, although the drink was helping, the Solpadeine Max and Ibuprofen he had swallowed were only just beginning to work.

  The phone call he had made to Carter from the boat had culminated in no less than an all-out rescue campaign. After an hour of waiting off the Venice shoreline he had been met by a large yacht which had taken both him and his new friend to a waiting van, and from there they had been whisked off to a local airstrip, from which a Lear jet had flown him back to the UK. Harker had not recognised the Templar waiting for him on board, but the man had wanted a full breakdown of everything, to be passed on to Brulet. This Harker was happy to do, even if the man had looked increasingly shocked, especially when he got to the subject of cannibalism.

  Unfortunately his oversized companion, whom Harker had taken to calling ‘Hercules’, had needed to be given an anaesthetic to calm him before he could be bundled into the van and then taken to a nearby hospital, under Templar care, which made the idea of coaxing him onto an aeroplane out of the question. Harker had even needed to give himself a jab with the syringe first to reassure Hercules that it was innocuous before he reluctantly accepted one too, out of trust for his new ‘owner’. Harker knew he was in good hands and that the Templars would do all they could for him but, given his years of isolation and God knows what else he must have experienced, any possible road to recovery would be long and difficult.

  Chloe was there to meet Harker on the tarmac at Stanstead and had she refused to let go of his hand, which was nice to begin with but after the second hour was becoming annoying. All the same, it had been a nice welcome. It seemed she hadn’t believed a word of Doggie’s story so had spent the past few days seriously worried, and even fearful he might have gone missing for good.

  Heading straight back to Cambridge, on receiving a phone call en-route, they had taken a detour to meet Doggie and Carter at the Fox & Hounds pub, where the past few hours had been spent relaxing outside in the beer garden. While enjoying the summer weather, he had brought his friends up to speed on the bizarre sequence of events that had been necessary in order to get him home in one piece.

  ‘That is one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard Alex,’ Doggie remarked, still bewildered by the account of the Mithras cult and its quest for vengeance against those whom it considered usurpers of its faith. ‘Revenge,’ he added solemnly, ‘is a dish best served cold, indeed.’

  ‘Or in this case hot.’ Carter suggested in reference to the blaze that had destroyed the Mithras’s cult’s underground den hidden deep within Poveglia island.

  ‘Quite,’ Doggie replied before turning his attention back to Harker, who was still thoughtfully nursing his drink. ‘Have they found any of the bodies yet?’

  The thought was unsettling and Harker shrugged his shoulders. ‘I haven’t heard anything yet except that I know the police are scouring the entire area. Only time will tell; there’s a lot to sift through,’ he said, ‘but knowing that lot’s history of beating the odds, I wouldn’t be surprised if absolutely nothing was found.

  A silence fell among them the three men as they each pondered the unsettling possibilities, and it was only broken by Chloe’s arrival with a fresh round of drinks.

  ‘Drinks, boys,’ she chirruped, placing the tray on the round wooden table. Then, noticing how lethargic they all appeared she added, ‘Have I interrupted something?’

  ‘We were all just contemplating your husband-to-be’s story.’ Doggie replied, giving her a grateful nod as he picked up his chilled pint of Guinness. ‘That Stefani Mitchell woman really had us all fooled.’

  Harker intervened, ‘Nice of you to say so, Tom, but it was me she fooled – and she managed it very well.’

  It wasn’t until getting back on UK soil that he had really begun to consider just how completely he had been conned. And it wasn’t so much that she had succeeded in that, but because the Mithras cult’s grisly real-life play had been executed with such masterly precision. No, what irritated him most of all was that one simple phone call to Brulet would have foiled the whole charade there and then.

  ‘We could have all done some checking ourselves,’ Doggie offered supportively, ‘and, anyway, let’s not forget that you were drugged for half of that trip. Who knows how it affected your reasoning.’

  Harker looked unconvinced at this notion and Doggie hastily took it upon himself to pry further into his friend’s apparent vision. ‘How real did it seem exactly?’

  ‘Just as real as sitting here with you now.’ Harker replied. And if he was honest he still felt in awe of the delusion he had experienced under that manipulative drug known as the Devil’s breath. ‘I did a bit of checking on it during the flight back and apparently it’s used all over South America by gangs and extortioners. Once taken into their system the victims become as compliant and suggestible as is needed. There are common examples of when victims will be driven to their own houses and happily help the robbers empty it of everything not nailed do
wn, only to wake up the next morning with little or no memory of what happened.’

  ‘Sounds like me after a hard night’s drinking,’ Carter joked with a smile.

  ‘But this weaponised version of it was so potent.’ Harker let out a deep sigh. ‘It’s actually pretty terrifying to think that such a small amount of this stuff can produce such profound results. I mean I felt I was actually floating above the earth, up amongst the stars, and it was so… real.’

  Chloe stroked Harker’s arm comfortingly, and they all fell silent again.

  ‘Quite a trip,’ Doggie remarked eventually, shuffling in his chair and tapping his fingers on the armrest. ‘When I was at university, a friend of mine slipped some acid in my drink, and I can tell you it made for an interesting experience.’

  Harker looked surprised at the admission and leant in closer to the Cambridge Dean. ‘You’ve never told me that,’ he said, impressed by Doggie’s candour. ‘Was it fun?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by fun,’ Doggie replied uncertainly. ‘If you consider it fun to be pursued by green aliens with gnashing teeth all the way through the centre of town, all the while screaming like a madman, then yes… it was a hoot.’

  The verbal image had Harker bursting out in laughter. ‘That sounds bloody awful.’

  ‘Yes, it was, but not as awful as to be found by one’s room-mates, sweating like a pig and believing the shower curtain was a forcefield able to protect me from the vicious little buggers!’

  Now everyone burst into laughter, and even Doggie himself let out a chuckle. ‘That was my first and last experience of using mind-altering drugs… Just give me a good old-fashioned drink anytime.’

  The atmosphere now relaxed but the idea of Stefani Mitchell being able to orchestrate such a deception was still gnawing into Harker’s ego. ‘That woman played it perfectly,’ he said.

  ‘I think, deep down, I knew she was a con woman,’ Carter said airily, ‘I sensed it somehow from the beginning.’