Vox turned and looked at the open mouths of tunnels and side corridors. “These tunnels are that old?”
“Some are,” agreed Grigor. “Some are older still; and we have tunnels like these in many cities.”
“You dug these holes?’
“The Upierczi did much of it, but your kind made many of them,” murmured Grigor, still caressing the stonework. His eyelids drifted shut. “Do you know how the Upierczi came to be the slaves of the Ordo Ruber?”
“I… know the version I was told by the Scriptor’s grandfather. About Sir Guy going looking for… your kind.”
Grigor leaned his cheek against the stone wall. “Father Nicodemus sent Sir Guy out to find Upierczi anywhere he could. In Turkey and Russia, England and Romania. Many places. There were rumors of us, of course, and most rumors were false. They said that we were the corpses of the dead risen from graves to haunt and prey upon the living.” He laughed and then shook his head. “We were not a race then. We were an aberration, an abomination. Freaks who were born to live in shadows, always hungry, always on the point of starvation, driven to mad acts of violence merely to survive. It is no different with any creature God has made-in the direst moment need overwhelms control.”
“That hasn’t changed,” said Vox.
Grigor nodded. “Your people feared us, and that is to be understood. The Church, however, denounced us as demons, as children of Satan. Knights and warrior priests and anyone who could raise a sword on behalf of the Church were empowered to kill us, to hunt us to extinction.” He sighed. “Think of that life. To be alone, and to believe that there is no one like you. No one who shares your nature, no one who understands your hungers. No one who loves you.”
“Love?” said Vox quietly. “They make a lot about that in movies. Dracula and Twilight and all that shit. I don’t suppose you get to the multiplex very often, but that’s a kind of a theme out there. They think you are all about eternal love and romance. But I heard those women in the cells. Didn’t sound like love songs to me.”
Grigor turned away and looked deep into the shadows, and Vox wondered how much the man could see that he could not. Without immediately commenting on Vox’s statement, Grigor continued his story.
“When Sir Guy died, his son and successor, along with Father Nicodemus, created the Red Knights. A new order of chivalry, of knights errant given authority by the Church to prosecute a campaign against faithlessness. But that was in name only. They called us knights, and we call ourselves knights, but that is not who and what we are.”
“Then what are you?”
“Assassins. We were created to be the Order’s answer to the Tariqa’s fida’i. We were chess pieces. We were a sword, a knife, a gun. No different. Tools of war.”
“You’re more than that,” said Vox.
“Yes,” said Grigor and it was the first word he’d spoken that had real passion. “We made true knights of ourselves. We became in fact what they said we were in name only. We became a true order of chivalry. We became a society. A people.”
“You still live in tunnels, Grigor.”
“Because we choose to. It is our world, within but apart from the world above. We have thousands of miles of tunnels. We come and go and no one knows we are here. Archaeologists and miners sometimes find the tunnels, but we collapse connecting tunnels, and we are experts at disguising our private tunnels. We are not found unless we choose to be found.”
“That’s pretty fucking impressive.”
Grigor gave a half smile. “It’s necessary. We know that we could never integrate into the world above. We can play dress up and ‘pass’ for one of you, but not on close inspection. And we are still hunted up there. The Inquisition was created by a papal bull to hunt us down. Us and other things that move in the dark, most of who are only fantasies concocted by fools. Father Nicodemus was able to use some aspects of the Inquisition so that he and the sitting Scriptor could find true Upierczi. Find and recruit us; but to the Church at large we were monsters and therefore evil; and they still hunt us. We do not fear any man in single combat, or any two or three men. But the Inquisitors did not come at us in small numbers. They sent armies against us. They sent special teams-the Sabbatarians, the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulcher, and many others over the years. Some-most-of those groups are long gone. Died out or killed by us or disbanded by changes in Church policies. Only the Inquisitors remain, and after a long silence they’ve become active again.”
“Yeah,” said Vox, “I know about one of them. The Sabbatarians. The Seven Kings ran into them a couple of times. I even used them once in a while for some wetworks stuff, but I broke off my ties with them. Idealistic trash. They’re still around, though, and they’re formidable in numbers.”
“In the same way locusts are.”
“There are a lot of them,” said Vox, and Grigor nodded.
“Over the years we-with the help of Father Nicodemus-have managed to weaken their effectiveness by feeding them lies about who and what we are. About our strengths and weaknesses.”
“Disinformation,” Vox supplied. “Stakes, crosses, sunlight, that sort of shit?”
“Yes.”
“Nicodemus is a tricky bastard. What about garlic?”
Grigor did not answer.
Vox said, “I heard a rumor that some other group is gunning for you too. Arklight?”
Grigor hissed like a snake. “Whores and daughters of whores.”
“Maybe,” said Vox grudgingly. “Whores with high-powered sniper rifles, though.
With a black-nailed finger, Grigor pointed into the darkness in the direction of the wretched weeping. “They were our whores once. There is not one of them who has not screamed for us.”
“Charming,” murmured Vox. A wave of nausea swept through him and he stopped to steady himself on a wall. “When do we start the treatments? I’m losing a lot of ground here.”
The King of Thorns smiled.
“The treatment will make you scream,” he murmured.
“Then I’ll fucking scream,” snarled Vox.
The word “scream” echoed through the endless darkness.
A challenge. A promise.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Homa Hotel
51 Khodami Street, Vanak Square
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 9:06 a.m.
The sniper’s name was not Violin.
But it would do. For Joseph Ledger and for this crisis, it would do. The name meant something to her from a long time ago. Back when she meant something to herself. When she had a life instead of a mission.
Violin.
Even the sound of it in her mind was bittersweet. A memory of a girl who laughed freely and who thought that all the monsters in the world were in storybooks. Back before her eyes were opened.
Violin. She had liked the way Ledger had repeated it. He had truly tasted the name, the way a sensualist would. That intrigued her. She already knew that he was a passionate man, that was clear from the profiles Oracle had read to her. Ledger was a sensuous man, and a tragic one. He wore death and grief like garments.
And Violin understood that very well.
What she did not understand was why she had lingered to watch him, or worse yet, why she had called him. It felt correct while she was dialing, and yet in every way open to her analytical mind it was wrong. A tactical and strategic error and a clear break with Arklight protocol. Mother would be furious.
No, she corrected herself, Mother will be furious. The call was now part of her phone log, which meant that it was part of the mission file. Lilith would never overlook it.
“Oracle,” she said aloud.
The screen on her small computer lit up with its smiling Mona Lisa.
“Oracle welcomes you.”
“I want to enter a new code name.”