Lingering in the doorway to the hall, I glanced down at the dead man and spat on the floor by his shoes.
“That’s for Taraneh and Arastoo Mouradipour, you piece of shit,” I said quietly. And although it was true, I felt a hollow place in my chest. I’d just shot an unarmed man, a man who was injured and bound, and I’d made a joke about it as I pulled the trigger. It made me feel like a piece of shit.
My phone rang again. No ID. I didn’t answer. Instead I headed toward the door, clicking my tongue for Ghost. After a moment I heard nails clicking on the floorboards.
Ghost followed right at my heel.
We went out the back.
There were two cars out back. I debated taking one, but there was no time to do a proper search for trackers or other bugs, and I already had enough problems.
I did rummage around, though. I found half a chicken sandwich on flatbread and gave that to Ghost, who didn’t even bother to sniff. He attacked it as if it was trying to escape. As he ate, he cut me some hard looks, letting me know that we still had some issues to work out.
The first car had nothing else in it.
In the second I found a locked briefcase under a blanket on the rear seat. The locks were good and the case was reinforced. No time to jimmy it now, so I decided to take that with me. I popped the trunk and stood staring for a ten count at a full-blown arsenal. Six AK-47s with bundles of magazines held together by heavy-duty rubber bands, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and a small duffle bag of 1980’s-era Russian hand grenades. The underside of the trunk lid was rigged with slots for a dozen of the stakes and four hammers. These guys were serious about this. I took some party favors and slammed the trunk.
Ghost finished his sandwich and looked up for more.
“Sorry, kiddo, but that’s all I have.”
His look of disgust eloquently showed how deeply disappointed he was in me. Man’s best friend indeed.
There was nothing else to find.
“Let’s go,” I said softly.
We did not exactly run, but we walked mighty damned briskly away from there.
Interlude Eight
Krak des Chevaliers
June 1203 C.E.
Sir Guy LaRoque stared at death.
And death, in its many forms, stared back at him. The big stone fireplace blazed and threw its dancing light across the floor, and yet the shadows of the vast hall were not chased back. Rather they recoiled like some dark serpent, ready to strike the unwary.
Monks had brought a chair for Sir Guy and helped him into it, lifting his legs onto cushions and tucking a rug around his spindly limbs. The knight felt empty, like a suit of clothes stuffed with straw and sticks. No longer a vital man, not yet a corpse. Tottering in the gloom of a cancer that was consuming him from the inside out.
The figure closest to him was both death and life in Sir Guy’s mind. Father Nicodemus, wizened but unyielding. He had been old when Sir Guy was a boy, but the man had not changed. Not a line, not a day. In his cups, Sir Guy comforted himself with the thought that it was God’s own grace that touched this man with a lighter hand, sparing him so that Nicodemus could serve heaven on earth. Sir Guy needed drink to believe it then, and now, sober and loitering at the edge of the grave, he knew that it was sophistry of the weakest kind. In truth, he did not know how to think about the old priest. To do so conjured dreams, and his nights were already troubled.
“You have done so very well, my son,” murmured the priest. “You have served Almighty God with a fealty and a zeal unmatched by any in the Red Order.”
Sir Guy said nothing. He had so little energy that breathing was a herculean task that required all of his powers. Father Nicodemus patted him on the shoulder and his slender fingers lingered to stroke the dying knight’s neck where it was exposed above the soiled collar of the Hospitaller doublet. It was so strange a thing, a pretense of tenderness that felt like a violative caress.
Then the priest took a few steps forward and held his arms wide as if to embrace the other deathly figures who stood in silent stillness.
Three men. They stood in a row, shoulder to shoulder, like brothers. Hollow faces that gave them a starved appearance. Thin-lipped mouths like knife slashes. Three shapes that pretended to be men. Three creatures Sir Guy had brought here from different parts of Europe and Asia. From Newburgh, from the Carpathian Mountains, and from a destroyed town in Turkey. They shared no common language, no sameness of culture, no drop of familial blood. And yet they were cut like poisoned fruit from the same blighted tree. Slender, pale as wax, with dark hair and eyes that burned like red coals. And teeth. Christ Jesus and all His saints, those dreadful teeth. Even after all this time that was the thing that continued to haunt Sir Guy, awake or asleep. Teeth like dogs. Like wolves.
Nicodemus spoke a word and it hung burning in the air.
“Upierczi.”
Three pairs of red eyes widened, filling with fear, filling with wonder.
“The children of shadows,” Nicodemus said to them. “Yes-I know you. Born of cold wombs, shunned and hated. Slaves to a hunger that you have been told is an affront to God. Reviled and condemned. Excommunicated and driven out to hunt in the night.”
Three pairs of red eyes studied him. It was the only thing about them that moved, shifting slowly to follow Nicodemus as he paced across the burning expanse of the fireplace.
“The Upierczi have been called monsters, sons of Judas. Pariah. Demons.” He stopped and fixed them with his own stare and it was darker and more fell than theirs. “But that is not what you are. Not demons. Not creations of Satan or fiends from the pit.”
They watched him. Sir Guy watched them as they studied the priest. Now there was uncertainty on their faces.
“When Sir Guy asked you to come with him, he promised safety. He promised you a place where you would be free, and be protected. He extended the arm of the church to you, offering to bless and sanctify you, to forgive you your sins and let you walk once more in the light that shines from the face of Jesus Christ.”
They watched. One of them bowed his head and began softly to weep tears of blood.
Father Nicodemus stalked over to him and used one clawlike finger to lift the creature’s chin. “Listen to me, child of shadows,” he murmured in a gentler tone than Sir Guy had ever heard him use. “The Lord God has not forgotten you. You have not fallen out of His favor. You have not been barred from the grace of heaven.” He leaned close and licked the bloody tear from the weeping monster’s cheek. “God made you!” he whispered. He reached out his hands to touch the other two creatures, tracing lines across their wax white cheeks. “God is all and He makes all things and He made you. Therefore you are God’s creations. Whoever tells you otherwise is a heretic and will burn in hell.”
The silent creatures said nothing.
“I know what you feel, my children,” continued the priest. “I, of all who walk upon the earth, understand the fires that burn in your hearts and the need in the pit of your stomach. You kill because you cannot prevent yourself. A power greater than your own will compels you to hunt, to tear open the flesh of your prey, to bathe your face and lips and tongue in the heat of the blood. And afterward you revile yourself because this is against God. This is what you have been told. Yet what does Deuteronomy chapter twelve, verse twenty-three say? ‘The blood is the life!’ Did not Jesus shed his blood to redeem all? Does not His blood wash the world of its sins? Does the wine of communion not become blood as it touches the lips of each Christian?” He pulled them all closer still, and Sir Guy had to strain to hear. “You are not sinners, my children. You are merely lost. All your lives you have been seeking to understand why God would strike you with so heavy a hand and force you into a life of sin. I tell you now that God has not shaped you to be monsters or sinners. God has forged you into weapons.”