The Devil's Labyrinth

As the footsteps drew closer, he recognized one voice — Father Sebastian — and thought he heard someone else breathing hard.

A few seconds later the beam of a flashlight played along the floor in front of him.

Ryan crouched low and pressed himself against the wall of the alcove, holding his breath.

A figure shuffled quickly past the alcove, immediately followed by another.

The second figure was carrying something slung over his shoulder.

Something that looked like a body.

What was going on in this place?

Only when they were well past him did Ryan finally slip back out into the tunnel, every fiber of his being wanting to run the other way, back toward the dining room.

Instead, his heart pounding, he followed the two figures.

Every few yards they stopped to catch their breath.

Ryan kept as far back as he could without losing track of them, but as they went deeper into the underground, down narrow tunnels and two series of old stone steps, Ryan had to move closer or risk losing sight of them entirely.

Lose sight of them, and lose his own way as well.

At last the two men stopped.

Ryan watched as Father Sebastian fumbled with a key, then pushed open a door so old that it creaked in protest as it swung on its rusted hinges.

In the flickering of the flashlight, Father carried a body that Ryan could now see clearly.

A boy about his own age, naked and covered in what looked like blood.

Ryan’s pulse began to hammer in his ears.

A light came on in the chamber beyond the door, and the two men stepped over its threshold.

Ryan moved closer to see what was in the room.

Father Laughlin leaned against the wall, breathing hard, his face shining with perspiration.

Something that looked like a stone coffin stood in the center of the floor. Its rim was ornately carved with garlands, and there was a detailed crucifix on one end. Its lid leaned against the wall.

Father Sebastian laid the body in the sarcophagus.

It took both priests to lift the stone cover and slide it into place.

“Good,” Father Sebastian pronounced. “Let’s go.”

“Oh, Jeffrey,” Father Laughlin said, laying a hand on the stone tomb. “I am so sorry.”

Jeffrey! The name thundered in Ryan’s mind as he slipped back into the darkness, searching for somewhere — anywhere — to hide until the two priests had passed him. Was that Jeffrey Holmes? Ryan flattened himself against a small doorway, holding his breath until they passed.

But when he stepped out, he tripped on the uneven flooring, and his shoe hit a rock that ricocheted off the wall.

Father Sebastian whirled around.

The beam of his flashlight caught Ryan square in the face.

CHAPTER 44

THE POPE LEANED in close to the computer screen, unwilling to miss even the slightest nuance of the young blond girl’s movements. Though his vision was nearly as sharp as it had been forty years ago when he first came to the Vatican, he wished there were some way of seeing the clip on a larger screen.

As if he’d read the Pontiff’s mind, Cardinal Morisco tilted his head toward the large plasma screen that hung incongruously on the wall between a pair of sixteenth-century portraits depicting two of the current Pope’s earlier predecessors. “Perhaps if I connected the computer to the big monitor…?” he asked softly.

His Holiness nodded, then waited impatiently as the connection was made and the clip began again.

All too soon, it ended.

“Play it again,” he commanded.

Morisco tapped a few keys on the laptop keyboard, and the video began playing for the fourth time, the second time on the big monitor.

The Pope gazed in rapt fascination. The younger priest — the one with the knowledge of the ancient rite — appeared to know exactly what he was doing.

And he appeared to know exactly what proof the Pope needed to see in order to satisfy himself that the young priest truly had full control of the evil in the young girl. As the Pope watched, the priest played the demon like a master puppeteer manipulating a marionette, calling it forth and suppressing it at will, making it flow to the fore then ebb away again like waves on a beach.

But it wasn’t a beach upon which the evil played — it was on the soul of the girl in whom it resided, and every one of the demon’s tortures were reflected in the child’s face as her features twisted from placid innocent beauty into the unmistakable snarl of the devil himself, only to return to innocence as the young priest suppressed the evil.

Again and again it happened, taking on an almost hypnotic rhythm.

“Sound!” the Pope whispered. “I want sound!”

“I’m sorry, Holiness,” Morisco said as the clip once more came to an end. “There is no sound.”

“Play it again.”

This time, the Pope watched the faces of those attending the ritual: the old nun, the elderly priest, and the young, dark-haired priest who was conducting the ritual.

They were the same three he’d seen in the previous video — the one with the dark-haired girl — and he was certain their expressions were genuine.

Genuine anticipation as the ritual began.

Genuine terror when the evil showed its face.

Genuine anxiety as the young priest battled for control of the evil.

And, most important of all, genuine relief when the evil had been tamed.

These were not actors. The Pope himself had studied the records of all three of these servants of the Church, and their lifelong devotion to Christ could not be questioned.

Beyond that, there was the face of evil itself. The Pope had seen it before, too many times, and recognized it instantly. There was no mistaking its vileness, nor any way of faking its presence when it was not there.

Yes, this young priest knew what he was doing: he was able to invoke the devil himself from the soul of an innocent.

“I must see this for myself,” the Pope finally said, turning to Morisco. “We shall go to Boston.”

CHAPTER 45

A LIGHT RAIN BEGAN to fall across the Boston area, but Matt McCain barely noticed it as he slouched against the passenger door of the patrol car, while his partner threaded the vehicle slowly through the late-evening traffic. “Anything about that break-in strike you as odd?” he finally asked as Steve Morgan exited the thruway and braked quickly as they closed on a long, snaking line of red taillights.

“Like what?” Morgan parried, turning on the windshield wipers.

McCain shifted in the passenger seat, sitting up. “Didn’t seem like enough was messed up. I mean, usually a break-in like that is some junkie, looking for anything they can sell. And there were things all over that house that a junkie would have taken, starting with the computer sitting right out on the dining room table. How come the perp didn’t take it?” Morgan said nothing, having been McCain’s partner long enough to recognize a rhetorical question