had torn information from them and then continued on to tear away their humanity. And the bastards had used burning matches to sear crosses over their hearts.
The Mouradipours were Muslim, so if it hadn’t been for the stakes and garlic and all that vampire hunter bullshit I would have figured this for some kind of anti-Islamic statement.
And why kill the Mouradipours and then try to take me captive? Or, was capturing me a prelude to a trip up here to this makeshift torture chamber?
Probably.
Even so, why set up this hit at all? Just to get the flash drive? Or to keep its information out of someone else’s hands? Hours had passed, surely they had to know that I would have passed along that information by now. What was the point of targeting me now?
And how many teams was I facing here?
The Red Knights were one faction, and they were top of the line. I would like to think that I would have won the fight in the hotel without Violin’s help, but I’m not sure I can say that with conviction. I can say without fear of contradiction that I have never faced anyone as fierce or capable as that knight.
On the other hand, the fearless vampire hunters-though clearly organized and violent-were Triple-A ball compared to the knight’s major league status. Sure, the team downstairs was brutal, but they were absurdly clumsy. I’m pretty good in a fight, but I was unarmed when I stepped into the house, and I won this one too easily. They were not exactly amateurs, but they sure as hell weren’t very high up on the professional food chain. If they hunted the Red Knights I wonder what the win-loss ratio was. If this was Vegas I’d bet the farm on the knights for a shutout.
Now, my friend the rat-bastard Rasouli was a third team.
Violin and whoever she worked for were a fourth.
Could I make an argument for any of them being the same team? Hard to say, because I had no idea who was lying to me and who was telling me the truth.
The knight clearly wanted the flash drive and had no love for Rasouli. That seemed obvious. Violin was willing to work with Rasouli to set up the meet this morning, but she said that she considered him to be a spitty place on the sidewalk. She knew about the knights. The knight knew about Arklight, and so did Violin, and she tried to scare the bejesus out of me by saying that my even knowing that name could be fatal. She also warned me away from the knights. The bastards downstairs knew about the knights but so far they hadn’t mentioned anything about Rasouli, the flash drive, Arklight, the Book of Shadows, the Saladin Codex, or the nukes.
And on top of all that, were any of these teams the ones who planted the nukes?
If the nukes were even real.
My head was starting to spin. What would help me fill in the blanks?
I thought about Krystos and the Romanian guy. I looked at the dead bodies and the tools that had been used on them and some very ugly thoughts began forming in my head. The Civilized Man in my head cried out in protest. We didn’t do that kind of thing. The Warrior was grinning and sharpening his knife. He was all for it. I looked to the Cop for the voice of reason, but he kept looking out of my eyes at the innocent couple who had been torn apart.
There was a clean sheet on the bed, and I pulled it off and covered the murdered couple. I don’t know why: it wouldn’t matter to them; it wouldn’t make any of it better. I tried to tell myself that it was out of courtesy and respect, or a token act to afford them some measure of dignity even after this kind of death.
That sounded nice, but it was bullshit.
I couldn’t bear to look at them. If I turned away I knew I’d still see them that way in my mind. If I covered them, then that would be my last memory of them. Or so I hoped. Any lingering regrets I might have had for shooting Inigo drained away and left no trace.
I turned away and searched the upstairs for weapons and found nothing that provided any answers. So I stole one of Mr. Mouradipour’s clean shirts from a hall closet. In the bathroom I washed the blood off my face and throat, ran fingers through my hair, and took a moment to look at the blue eyes in the mirror. They were filled with doubts and questions.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked the man in the mirror. He had no answers at all, so I went back downstairs.
I found Ghost standing in the living room staring at Krystos, who stared back as if mesmerized. I clicked my tongue and Ghost looked at me with a strange expression in his brown eyes. He was not trembling as much as before, and there was more wolf than shepherd in the look he gave me. Maybe it was the smell of fresh blood or the sight of wounded prey. Or maybe the stress had pushed him into a different head space.
“Ghost,” I said, and for a moment he did nothing except stare.
I took a step toward him. It’s a pack leader move, challenging and demanding. He would either back down or go for me.
“Down!” I ordered.
And, with only the slightest hesitation, he lay down. He didn’t roll. I wasn’t asking that of him. But he obeyed my order.
I squatted between Ghost and Krystos. I don’t know if the Greek had participated in the horrors upstairs, or if he even knew about it, but he was part of this team. Apparently the leader of the team, and that put the whole thing on him as far as I was concerned. He could read those thoughts from my expression. He read other things too.
He began to cry.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
CIA Safe House #11
Tehran, Iran
June 15, 12:59 p.m.
I stared at Krystos for a long time without speaking. Twenty, thirty seconds. It always feels longer when you’re holding the low cards. He may have been a tough guy when he had a gun and a crew, but when it came to toughing it out with me, he was holding four low cards and a joker.
Silence and patience were my cards while I waited for him to break.
“P-please…” he said in a hoarse whisper. “For the love of God.”
“Is that what you are, Krystos? A man of God? A true believer?”
“Yes.”
“Your friends, too?”
He glanced around at the dead. “Yes.”
“What’s that mean exactly, being a ‘man of God.’ To you, I mean.”
The word was a tough one for him but he came up with him. “Ordained.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re a minister?”
He shook his head. “Priest.”
“Bullshit. What about going to hell for torture and murder?”
Krystos raised his bound wrists and nodded toward his left arm. “Sleeve,” he said.
I pushed his sleeve up and there was tattoo of a cross with Latin words written in an arch above and below it. Above was
AD EXTIRPANDA
Below the cross
EXURGE D ET JUDICA CAUSAM TUAM
“What’s that?”
“Permission,” he said.
When I did not respond, he said something that I pretty much never expected to hear anywhere outside of a Dan Brown novel or an old episode of Monty Python.
“The Holy Inquisition.”
