Paternus: Wrath of Gods (The Paternus Trilogy Book 2)

by Dyrk Ashton

  “Well then,” Edgar says to the colonel, “Would you mind providing us with a bit of transportation?”

  “Anywhere you’d like to go,” the colonel replies.

  Edgar looks to Peter, wondering how much he should divulge. “We could continue to our original destination.”

  Peter thinks a moment. “Perhaps we should proceed to the Lake.” To Fi’s complete surprise, he turns to her and asks, “What do you think?”

  I... um...” Fi looks to Zeke, who’s as surprised as she is. A glance at Edgar reveals only a smile. “Let’s go to the Lake.”

  “The Lake it is,” says Peter.

  Edgar addresses the colonel, “It wouldn’t be prudent to divulge the exact nature of the location, but it’s not far. Still here in Scotland, in fact. We’ll guide you along the way.”

  “As I said, we are at your service,” the colonel replies. “Transportation, supplies, anything you need, including protection with all the force at our command, if necessary. But,” her gaze roams over Mrs. Mirskaya, Myrddin, and Pratha, “you already appear to be quite well protected.”

  “Do you know who they are?” Edgar asks.

  “No.” She pauses. “But I have an idea. We’re familiar with the non-human beings who walk the earth, have hunted vampires and werewolves, when we could find them, which has not been often. There are others though, written of and described in ancient scrolls, secret manuscripts we’ve acquired and kept secret for centuries. I believe you call them Firstborn.”

  Pratha raises an eyebrow, Myrddin smiles, and Mrs. Mirskaya huffs. The colonel continues. “We of the Order refer to them as the Nephilim.” Edgar says nothing, but the colonel stands and bows to Peter and the Firstborn. “I do not know who each of you are, and as much as I would like to, it’s probably best kept that way. Still, it is a great pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Myrddin hops forward, taking her hand and kissing it. “The pleasure is mine, milady.”

  “Watch yourself,” Mrs. Mirskaya reprimands him. Myrddin steps back in line.

  The colonel’s eyes fall on Peter, who now wears an infantryman’s combat uniform given to him by the colonel’s troops, with shirt untucked and sleeves rolled up. The name patch reads Johnson. “You, I have seen in old photographs as well, but we haven’t many, and have never been able to establish your whereabouts or identity.”

  Peter shakes her hand. “That’s probably also for the best.”

  She’s numbed for a moment by the warmth and firmness of Peter’s grip. “Understood.” Her inquisitive eyes move to Fi and Zeke. Questions of who these two young people are and why they’re here are apparent in her expression, but she smiles and nods.

  Fi nods back, shoving her hair behind her ear. Zeke waggles his fingers in a wave, immediately feeling like an idiot for doing it. Feeling like an idiot again, that is.

  Then the colonel’s gaze falls upon Baphomet, who sits with his back against a wall, still cloaked in khaki and boots. He’s given the chains back to Pratha and his feet are once again bound, though loose enough to walk, and a tether of chain runs from the one between his feet to the one that binds his wrists. The others part as the colonel approaches him. The soldiers posted to guard him become more alert, in case there’s any trouble from this as-yet unidentified prisoner.

  Baphomet watches her as she studies him, remaining calm and composed. “Can I help you?” he asks. For the first time, the colonel truly takes in his features, and sees the color of his eyes.

  “Can this be?” the colonel whispers to herself.

  Fi and Zeke come closer with the rest of the group. They see the colonel’s face awash with a variety of thoughts and emotions, including wonderment and disbelief.

  “You know this person?” Edgar asks.

  “We have texts, anecdotes, descriptions of ancient rituals. Interwoven with the piecemeal history of the Knights Templar, from the very beginning...” Her voice trails off and she takes a small subconscious step back. She blinks to break Baphomet’s unsettling gaze, and addresses Edgar.

  “Early in the twelfth century, during the Holy War, a cadre of knights were granted control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, believed to have been built upon the ruins of Solomon’s Temple, which we have since confirmed. It was there the Order of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon was born. This is well known, but there are other documents claiming a mysterious man came to them out of the desert offering counsel. He aided them with his wisdom and knowledge of the region, and seduced them with his charm.

  “Some of the knights took him to be their leader, and he showed them hidden caverns beneath the mosque, within the ancient ruins themselves. Over time they began to worship him, gained knowledge of his dark arts, and were corrupted. They say he was immortal, and it was he who later counseled the Templars in politics and economics, the ways of finance and wealth, the strategies of fortress placement, as well as control of power in seats of government and the Church. They gathered many of their ancient treasures on his direction.

  “Most of the Templars were oblivious of his true nature, or the secret black worship his growing number of true followers practiced in his name. Fornication of forbidden sorts was the least of their sins, for there was also human sacrifice, and the drinking of blood.”

  Zeke is enrapt by the colonel’s tale. Baphomet watches her, expressionless except for the tiniest hint of a smile.

  “Then, in 1307,” the colonel continues, “at the height of the Templar’s power, they say the man brought them all down. That it was he who betrayed them, whispering in the ear of King Philip IV of France, warning him of the dangers of the influence and wealth the Templars had gained, and providing explicit detail of their surreptitious transgressions.

  “The king called for an inquisition. The Templars were hunted down and imprisoned, starved and tortured. Most were innocent, but false confessions were induced through brutal means. Many were burned at the stake. The Order was officially disbanded by Pope Clement V in 1312. Ever since, the Knights Templar have been a mere shadow of their former selves. Even today.

  “A few survived the inquisition, but their property and financial holdings were seized. Those who escaped capture went into hiding or fled to Portugal, the only European nation that refused to take part in the inquisition. Those who dared continued with their holy onus, though entirely in secret. But some were not the best of men, no matter what they professed, desiring only power and riches, and over time the Order splintered into opposing factions.

  “Then, in the late 1500s Queen Elizabeth the First had one of her closest advisors, a member of the Order and trusted friend, seek out the Templars he felt were good and true. She knighted them all, funded them in secret, turned over whatever the royal family had collected that could serve their cause, and aided them in carrying on their sacred duty, to seek out evil in their kingdom, but always to report to her.”

  The colonel says to Edgar, “The royal family asked me to give you their kindest regards, by the way.” To Peter and the Firstborn’s amusement, Edgar blushes.

  Her attention returns to Baphomet. “There are descriptions of this man and his rituals. Sketches and engravings of his image, in what they say is his true form, as a man with the face, horns and legs of a goat. But there are other illustrations, descriptions, and even a single painting of him as a man, which we have restored and keep in our deepest vaults. He had white hair, extremely pale skin, and eyes the color of the faintest pink rose.

  “Some have proposed he’d once been known as both the Ram of Benebjedet and the Ram of Menses in Ancient Egypt, but long before that, the pagan god Pan. But the name by which he was known to the Knights Templar, was Baphomet.”

  Baphomet smiles up at her, the disturbing force of his regard causing her to shiver.

  “I’m reaching here, I know,” the colonel says. “It’s almost impossible for me to believe I’m saying it, but I have seen and heard many strange things. From his appearance, however, and by the fact th
at he is bound in the company of Sir Galahad, can I assume this creature before me is the Baphomet?”

  This time Edgar looks to Pratha, who nods. “Indeed he is, madam,” he says. “Indeed he is.”

  Even though the colonel has guessed the answer, she’s clearly shaken by the truth of it. She looks over Peter and the others with renewed respect and admiration. “Then we truly are in the company of ancients.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  NAGALOK

  MODDEY DHOO

  A light snow falls, not enough to obscure the orange moon hanging low in the Nagalok sky. An aurora fills the northern horizon with dancing woven streamers of green and red.

  Mac perches on a promontory that stabs up from a ridge of black rock. He scans the sky and icy landscape one more time, then flies downward.

  Kabir, Cù Sìth and Akhu sit together beneath an overhang of stone at the foot of the ridge. Naga has squeezed in as best he can, his body wound around the others, his head resting on one of his coils to join the conversation. Kabir and Akhu have been telling him the events leading to their arrival in his throne chamber.

  “I am not fond of this tale you tell,” says Naga. “But things are as they are, as they have ever been.” He addresses Akhu, “What of your sifu?”

  “I have not seen him for half a century,” Akhu answers. “But I have sent a call into the aether. He will come, if he is able.”

  Naga says, “I would not have been surprised to hear his High Holiness had become light itself and passed into a higher plane of existence by now.” There’s no sarcasm in his voice.

  “He has visited you, you know. While you slept.”

  “Has he?” Naga asks. “I would have liked to speak with the Tusked One.”

  Mac flaps down among them. “Still no sign of Kleron’s bunch, or those bloody insects.”

  “Perhaps he assumes the nuclear detonation was successful,” says Kabir. “That we’re dead and buried, or at least buried. Or, if we escaped, we’ve already slipped away.”

  Cù says, “Kleron does not ‘assume.’ It’s obvious now he hoped we’d lead him to Naga’s hiding place, but I’m not convinced he cares whether we lived or died. We’re not that well hidden. With Hugin, the locusts, Ziz, Kleron on the wing, they could have found us by now if they wished.”

  “You may have been right, Moddey Dhoo,” says Mac. “Kleron could have been toying with us all along. Perhaps the Snake Lord as well. “

  Naga hisses, “One does not toy with Naga.”

  “What does Kleron hope to accomplish,” Kabir asks, “if not to destroy us all?”

  “I do not know,” says Akhu, pushing to her feet. “But we have waited long enough.” The others rise as well.

  “Where to, then?” Mac asks. Kabir hands over the coin left for him by Peter. Naga peers at it over Mac’s shoulder. The symbols are only readable with a key memorized by all Deva. They’re to rally to Freyja, and she’s been in the same place for nearly 20,000 years. “Alrighty then.” Mac hands the coin to Akhu, then jabs a thumb at Cù Sìth. “Are we sure it’s safe to take the Moddey Dhoo?”

  “I am sure Lord Naga is happy to keep an eye on Cù Sìth.” Cù’s eyes shift to the King of Snakes.

  The corner of Naga’s mouth curves up. “It would be my pleasure.”

  “That’s well and good,” says Mac, facing Cù. “But if Kleron’s game is more complicated than killing us, it’s even more likely Cù Sìth’s sudden change in allegiance was planned all along. Once he’s accomplished whatever it is Kleron wants him to, Kleron himself, or Hugin, more likely, could simply appear out of nowhere and slip him away.”

  Akhu studies Cù’s face. “He would have to allow them to slip him.”

  “Which of course he would do if he’s a spy.”

  “I would not,” says Cù. “My oath to Father is genuine. You can trust me.”

  “You know what they say, Moddey Dhoo,” says Mac. “Trust isn’t given for the asking. It must be earned.”

  Cù looks to Kabir, whose expression is unreadable. “What more must I do?” he asks.

  Kabir speaks, more sympathetically than Mac, but still stern. “Why not begin by telling us exactly why you’re here? What could possibly make one of the feared and mighty Cerberi wish to be a Deva? And want it badly enough to gamble his life by defying Lucifer, risk the attentions of Maskim Xul, and kill his own maternal brothers?”

  * * *

  Rocks have been brought up to sit on, and the peculiar light of the aurora plays upon Cù Sìth’s features. “I do not care what you think of me, for what I have done in the past or what I tell you now, and I do not tell you this for sympathy. I won’t have it. Nor do I expect you to understand.” He takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “How could I, when I don’t understand it myself?” He pauses, then says, “I have no right to ask, but my one wish would be that you do not repeat what I have to say.”

  Mac says, “That depends on what it is, laddie.”

  “Understood,” Cù says. “Do with it what you will, then.” He gathers his thoughts. “The truth is, over the last few centuries, I have lost the joy in killing, for inciting terror, for torture, murder, and rape.”

  Mac’s eyes narrow. “Your names still live on in legends from around the world, but also in more current memories of the peoples of the British Isles. Incidents have been reported as recently as the last few decades. The Scots still whisper your Truename, Cù Sìth, and call you the Barrow Hound. To this day they speak of Moddey Dhoo on the Isle of Man, Gwyllgi in Wales, Barghest and Old Shuck in England, just to cite a few.”

  Cù’s voice becomes softer as he stares at the ground. “And for a time, in Belgium, I was known as Oude Rode Ogen.”

  “Old Red Eyes, the Beast of Flanders,” says Akhu. “We are aware.”

  Cù picks at his claws as he continues. “It was there something terrible happened to me.”

  When he doesn’t explain right away, Mac asks, “And what might that be, exactly?”

  Cù’s expression squirms with distaste. “I realized I had a conscience.”

  The others exchange glances. Akhu says, “That is not such a terrible thing, Brother.”

  “It is for me,” he says. “A beast who never shed a tear or spared a moment’s thought for the feelings of others, who in slumber had glad dreams of inflicting harm and suffering.” He goes back to picking at his claws and repeats, “It is for me.”

  He rubs his palms on the thick black fur of his thighs, then lets out a long sigh. “It was some time late in the seventeenth century. I’ve never paid much attention to tracking time. A typical miserable foggy night in Belgium. I was lazing in a thicket by the road, I recall, cleaning my teeth with a stick after an evening’s meal, when a mob of constables and locals came by, headed for the hamlet of Nekkerspoel. They carried torches, as the humans did back then. Shouting of a murder, plotting revenge, and some spoke in hushed tones of Oude Rode Ogen, as if by saying my name out loud they’d summon me. In that particular case, they did. I did not attack, but I was curious, so I followed.

  “At the edge of town I donned a human cloak with a wide-brimmed hat to cover my eyes, kept to the shadows of the buildings as I entered. Peering around the corner of a pub, I saw them drag a tall black man from where he slept beneath a porch. A vagrant, sleeping off too much to drink. His eyes, wide with fear, were bloodshot, and they decided then and there this was Old Red Eyes, the shapeshifter of nightmares and legend, the man who could change into a black hound with glowing red eyes, and who that very night had been seen stealing a young girl from her bed, then murdered her and left her body mutilated in a ditch.

  “I don’t think they believed that, though. They just wanted someone to blame, to release their anger. That I understood. What I did not understand was how I began to feel as I watched what they did to him. They bound his hands and feet and strung him up by the neck—but only enough so his feet still touched the dirt. They wanted him alive while they slowly flayed the skin from his body, sho
uted and cursed his name, pissed on him, and stabbed out his eyes.

  Cù stares at the ground. “I’ve done much the same, and worse, to more humans than I can count. And I won’t say I did not enjoy it. But there was something about that night. I’d always taken credit for my deeds, the more depraved the better, even boasted to any who would listen.

  “This man, however, was being tortured and killed for something I had done. It was I, of course, who had stolen that girl. She’d screamed as I tore her apart. Still whimpered as I swallowed the flesh of her legs, crunched the bones and sucked the marrow. Even then I hadn’t enjoyed it, but I thought nothing of it, until I witnessed another taking the blame, being punished for my deeds. Something changed in me that night, and I haven’t been right since.”

  No one speaks for some time, until Akhu says, “Or perhaps, Cù Sìth, something has been right.”

  Mac still isn’t convinced. “Old Red Eyes is rumored to have stolen a child in Flanders not more than three years ago.”

  “I will not deny it,” says Cù. “I am a killer and always will be, but it no longer offers gratification.”

  “Then why continue?” Kabir asks.

  “Because I like the way humans taste.”

  Naga nods his great head. “I can sympathize with that.” Akhu, Mac and Kabir shoot him a look. “Simply stating a fact, my friends.”

  Akhu says to Cù, “This still does not explain your desire to defect, and willingness to kill your brothers, Surma and Wepwawet.”

  “I have hated my brothers for a long time, and they have hated me. I was always the biggest, the strongest, our cruel mother’s favorite, and they were jealous. The reasons are not important, but mostly it’s because that’s what we do. We hate. We hated The Pater and all he stood for. I’m sure it began when he abandoned us to our mother, whom we also despised. We loathed each other, and though we never spoke of it, we loathed ourselves. It was the way we were, we believed, and we came to not only accept it, we reveled in it. The shared animosity and rage is what kept us together for so long. That and the knowledge that the three of us together struck terror into the hearts of even elder Firstborn. When the humans came along, we hated them most of all, because Father loved them so.”