'But it is. The only part of Bel-Marduk that survived his mutilated body's entombment. His heart.'
'Impossible.'
'Naturally.'
'Kline, let's stop this nonsense. Let me walk away with Cora -' Kline screamed across at him, a furious cry that might have been anguish. The wire noose around Halloran's neck jerked tight and he was dragged backwards by Daoud, away from the altar, his legs giving way so that he fell to the wet floor, the Arab crouching behind him, maintaining the pressure. Cora took a step towards them, then collapsed back against the stone.
'There's still more to he done, Halloran!' Kline screeched. 'Especially now, in this era of awesome power, when we hold the very weapons of our own genocide. Don't you understand that he directed mankind towards this point, he set us on this road! A few more decades, that's all it will take. A micro-second in earth's lifespan. A few more years of disruption and dissent, of famine and disease, of wars and violence. A culmination of evils, when the balance between good and bad has been tilted irrevocably towards his, Bel-Marduk's, way! I showed you the lake, Halloran, allowed you to see its contents. A residue, like many others around the world, of our own corruption, a manifestation of our evils in living form. You saw them, you recognised your own culpability, your own vileness! We're not unalike, you and I, Halloran. You just have a little further to travel.' Kline was leaning over Monk's body, sucking in air, exhausted, drained by his own beliefs. 'I could have made you one of mine, Halloran. A little encouragement, that's all it would have taken. But I can't trust you. I don't have time to.' He calmed himself, or perhaps weariness did it for him. 'She'll join us in our communion, Bel-Marduk's and mine.
Cora will help us and be one of us.' He levered himself up from the body. 'Asil . . .' The Arab stepped forward and from beneath his robes he drew out a long blade, one edge thickened for weight so that it resembled a machete. The metal glowed in the candle-light.
He raised it over Monk's chest and the bodyguard's hands twitched frantically. His lips parted. A sobbing came from them.
Khayed brought down the blade with a short, sharp movement, minimum effort in the blow, for he needed only to pierce the breastbone so that the paralysed man's ribs could be pulled apart, his heart exposed.
Monk shuddered. His hands and now his feet quivered as the finely-honed blade was drawn down his stomach. The cutting stopped when muffled gunfire was heard from above.
47 ACROSS THE COURTYARD
'Hold 'em there, McGuire. Don't let anyone through the door.' McGuire looked at his leader apprehensively. 'An' where the hell will you be?'
'Finding our man. He'll not escape.'
'Are you fuckin' insane, man? There's nothing we can do now except mebbe get away ourselves.'
'You'll do as I tell you, or it'll not only be me you'll answer 'An' what if he's not here?'
'Oh, the bastard's here all right, I can feel it in me piss.'
'I'll give it five minutes, Danny, no more than that.' Shay decided it was pointless to argue. McGuire had always been the yellow one, enjoying the killing only if he was mob-heavy or guaranteed a safe getaway.
Besides, five minutes should be enough; then he'd leave McGuire to his own fate. He turned away from the main doors, one side of which remained open, and quickly scanned the hall, taking no note of its grandness. It was a damned cold house, to be sure. And there was nothing good inside these old walls.
Shay ran across the stone floor, expecting someone to appear at any moment through one of the many doors that opened out onto the hall. He kept an eye on the stairs and landing too as he went, sure that anyone in the house would have heard the din outside.
Into a corridor he ran, revolver held before him like a pointer. Ile stopped and listened. Gunshots from the hall. McGuire was keeping whoever had driven up to the house at bay. Had they nabbed Flynn? he wondered. Things were going bad. He almost smiled. Things were fucking terrible.
A door was open at the end of the corridor, rain pouring in. What was this? The house couldn't be that narrow. He hurried to the doorway and looked outside, suddenly understanding the layout. A courtyard, filling up with rain by the looks of it. And what was that?
Light from another doorway opposite. Somebody there, like him, peering out.
Shay did not hesitate: he was through the door like a shot, racing across the courtyard towards the other man. Something was bubbling to his right, but he paid it no mind, realising it was a fountain, the storm causing its basin to overflow.
He kept running and the other person had spotted him, was backing away. The fool's attention must have been on the fountain before, not on the shadow bearing down on him through the storm. It had been Shay's luck that lightning had not struck during those few seconds.
He burst into the hallway and was able to reach out for the man who, too late, had attempted to flee. He pulled him round, clamping a hand over the man's mouth, then ramming the barrel of the gun beneath his captive's wire-rimmed spectacles so that they rose off his nose, the weapon hard against his closed eyelid.
48 BLOOD RITES
The Arab was murmuring an intonation that was breathless, his excitement conveyed through the wire which vibrated against Halloran's throat. Daoud watched the figures at the altar, fretful that he was unable to join them, but chanting the incantations learned from the cuneiform writings, so that he was at least part of the ceremony.
A breeze swept down from the corridor above, bending the candle flames as it swirled around the underground chamber, ruffling the light so that shadows danced and weaved as though they also belonged to the rite.
At the stone slab that served as an altar, Felix Kline, aware that his strength was fading, his will weakening with it, urged Khayed to hurry. Tissue was breaking from him, falling onto the robe he wore, onto the open body lying below on the stone. He could feel fresh lesions forming, the flesh ulcerating and rupturing beneath his clothing, skin weeping pus, dribbling wetness. The pain was intense, as though every joint in his body was on fire, and his scalp was tightening around the skull, splitting apart as it shrank. This agony was like never before, and it was the significance of that which frightened Kline more than anything else. The torments of his sleep, the panic that had lingered afterwards, the sense of deep foreboding—these were feelings he had not experienced since discovering the hidden tomb so many years before. Why now, O Lord? Have I failed you in some way? Acre you failing me, Bel-Marduk?
The questions were silent, his spoken invocations uninterrupted, for those ancient words were important to the ritual, their tonal values an inducing cadence for affinity between the psyche and the spiritual realms.
Khayed's hands were bloodied beyond the wrists as he pulled at the sliced sides of the body to expose Monk's innards. The bodyguard's eyelids fluttered as life dwindled, receding within him so that it could expand outwards through another dimension. The Arab tugged at Monk's exposed sternum, bending the ribs upwards, then pushed sweating organs down towards the gut, reaching for the heart and dragging it clear, stretching arteries and breaking veins until the feebly pulsing organ was revealed. All a familiar and well-practised ritual.
Kline took the other heart, the old shrivelled husk that represented—that was—the existence of his deity. With one hand he lifted this shell, while with the other he reached for Cora's wrist. She was too numbed to resist, incomprehension still misted in her eyes.
But when Kline plunged both their hands into the gaping wound, the dried, withered thing held between them, she whimpered. When he settled the remnant organ against the fresh, bleeding one, using their hands as a vice, she screamed.
Cora felt her whole self being drawn down into the huge open wound, blood spurting along her arm, her hand disappeared into the quagmire. And it was the ancient petrified heart that sucked her in.
Kline was lost in a delirium of sensations, a euphoric rebirth without trauma, a vigour beginning to pulsate through him. All this ceased for him when the girl pulled her hand free, bringing with it the parasite heart.
Cora held the relic in her bloody grasp and stared loathingly at it for but a moment. Turning away, she cast it from her, a violent and sudden movement that neither Kline nor Khayed could prevent.
The brittle shell scudded across the stone floor and came to rest in a puddle of blackened water.
Now it was Kline who screamed, a piercing cry that echoed around the walls of the chamber.
And it was Halloran who took his chance.
