Sanctus (40 page)

Liv felt like she was sinking deep into water that was warm and thick with memories that swam before her as she sank; images from her life, flashing and fading like glittering fish. The breeze she had felt rinsing through her was now a current, bringing whispers of forgotten voices and fragments of distant memories with its flow. She sank deeper and the images thinned out, drifting upwards and away as a much brighter light rose up beneath her.

This is death
, she thought as she watched it rise from the darkness to meet her. The light overwhelmed her and new images crowded behind her eyelids.

There was a garden, green and lush, and a man walking through it, and the sun shining down, or something like the sun. Then the shadow of a tree rose up and cut out the light, and she was in a cave, surrounded by men with hate in their eyes.

Then there was pain.

An eternity of pain and darkness as her flesh was ripped, and cut with blades, and burned with fire and boiling oils.

And there was the smell of blood.

And an endless, desperate yearning for the sun, to feel it on her skin and walk soft across the cool earth.

And pain was everywhere, flashing out of the darkness, imprisoning and overpowering her, for ever and ever.

Then she saw a face, with eyes full of sorrow and compassion.

Samuel’s face.

She fixed on the image, not wanting it to flit past like the others, holding it with her eyes until more things appeared within it.

She saw his body, naked from the waist up, flowing with blood from cuts deep in the skin. Then a cave, crowded with other men who reached up as one to draw bloody lines round their left shoulders with sharpened blades. And she heard a sound. An echoing chant of low voices bleeding together in an ancient language she somehow understood.

‘The first,’ they said over and over. ‘The first. The first.’

And pain flashed out of the darkness and exploded in her left side along with the sound of shearing flesh. And a new voice rang out, full of anguish and pain.

‘Where is God in this?’ Samuel cried. ‘Where is God in this?’ Then the images fled. And for a moment all was silent, and all was dark.

Then she felt herself starting to rise.

Liv’s eyes fluttered open.

She was back in the chapel, lying on the spot where she had fallen. As she focused she saw Gabriel’s face filling her vision, smiling down at her like warm sunshine. She smiled back, thinking she was still in her dream, then he reached out, laid his palm on the side of her face, and she felt the warmth of him and realized he was really there.

She glanced across at the Tau. The blood miring the spiked interior was now the only sign that Eve had been there at all. Liv traced its flow, down to the floor and the wet channels where it mingled with hers. Then she saw the figure rise up from behind the iron cross, his body running with blood, making him look like a demon in the dim reflected light. He raised the burning flambeau he held in his hand, the flames throwing ghoulish light across his hate-filled face. Gabriel sensed movement and started to turn but the heavy torch was already swinging down, aimed at his head, the flames roaring as it fell. A thunderclap shook the room, knocking the demon away and back towards the altar.

Liv looked across at the entrance, to where the sound had come from. A slightly built monk stood in the doorway. He had a gun in his hand and from where she lay his smooth scalp seemed to shine like a halo in the candlelight.

* * *

Athanasius looked upon the slaughterhouse scene he had discovered. The gunshot had thrown the Abbot away from him towards the vile needles inside the empty sarcophagus that dominated the far end of the room. He took a step into the room, the gun still trained on the bloodied figure of his former master. The Abbot wasn’t moving.

He looked at the other two figures, a man and a woman. They were both looking at him warily. He lowered the gun and moved towards them. The man wore a cassock but Athanasius didn’t recognize him. He had a cut in his side and another on his arm, judging by the blood that stained the sliced material.

The girl was much worse. She had a deep slash across her neck from which blood still flowed on to the ground and into the channels carved in the floor. He bent down to look closer. Then froze as the flesh around the wound started closing up, watching in silence as the miracle unfolded before him. Within moments the blood that had flowed so freely became a trickle then stopped altogether. He looked up into the girl’s face, saw something timeless in her eyes and remembered the words he had read in the Heretic Bible.

The light of God, sealed up in darkness.

He reached out a hand to touch her face, then a noise by the altar made them all spin round.

The Abbot had shifted position. They each watched as his head lolled heavily on his shoulders, turning towards them until his eyes stared straight at Athanasius. The flambeau lay where he had dropped it, smouldering against his cassock and shrouding him with smoke. ‘Why?’ he asked, a look of confusion and disappointment on his face. ‘Why have you betrayed me? Why have you betrayed your God?’

Athanasius looked up at the savage opening of the Tau and the wrist manacles dangling at the end of the crosspieces.

Not a mountain sanctified, but a prison cursed.

He looked back at the girl, her slender neck now completely healed, her endless green eyes burning with life.

‘I have not betrayed my God,’ he said, smiling down at the miraculous woman. ‘I have saved Her.’

Distant sounds began to penetrate the woolly numbness of Arkadian’s head: muffled shouts from urgent voices; the squeak of rubber soles on hard floors. He tried and failed to open his eyes, the lids too heavy to shift, so he lay there and listened, letting his senses warm up while the dull ache in his chest and shoulder blossomed into pain.

He took a deep breath and concentrated all his energy on opening his eyes. His lids parted for a split second, then he screwed them back shut.

It was bright: painfully bright. A negative image of what he had seen was now seared on his retina: a chequerboard outline of a suspended ceiling; a rail over to one side with a curtain hanging from it. He realized he was in a hospital.

Then he remembered why.

He lurched forward, trying to sit up, but a firm hand held him down. ‘Whoa there . . .’ a male voice said. ‘You’re OK; I’m just checking your wound. What happened to you?’

Arkadian struggled to remember. Rolled a dry tongue round his mouth. ‘Shot,’ he said eventually.

‘That’s for sure.’

‘No.’ Arkadian shook his head and instantly regretted it. Took more breaths until the bed stopped lurching beneath him. ‘Was given a shot of . . . something . . . Don’t know what . . .’

‘OK. We’ll run some bloods; we might have to sedate you again before fixing you up.’

‘No!’ Arkadian shook his head again, the spinning less severe this time. ‘Need to call in.’ He forced his eyes back open, squinting against the glare of the emergency room. ‘Need to warn them.’

The curtain swished open and a short, compact woman in a white coat marched in and grabbed a clipboard from the end of the trolley. ‘Sleeping beauty awakes,’ she said, the fringe of her ash blonde hair falling round her face as she read the paramedic’s notes. A badge pinned to her pocket identified her as Dr Kulin. She looked up at the wound. ‘How is it?’

‘Clean,’ the nurse said. ‘Still wet, but nothing major was hit. Bullet passed right through.’

‘Good.’ She dropped the notes back into their holder. ‘Pressure dress it and move him out. We’re going to need this space any second.’

‘Why?’ Arkadian asked.

She looked puzzled. ‘Why do we need to pressure dress it? Because you’ve been shot and you’re still bleeding.’

‘No, why do you need the space?’

Dr Kulin glanced down at the badge tucked into Arkadian’s belt by the paramedics. It was standard procedure. That way, when casualties from both sides of any violent encounter ended up in the same hospital, the good guys got seen to first.

‘There’s been an explosion. We’ve got numerous incoming. And from what I’ve heard of their injuries, Inspector, they’ll all outrank your gunshot wound.’

‘Where?’ Arkadian already knew the answer.

A commotion outside snatched the doctor’s attention. ‘By the old town wall,’ she said, jerking back the curtain. ‘Close to the Citadel.’

Arkadian caught a glimpse of a trolley rolling quickly past. On it was a man, drenched in blood, dressed exactly like the one he’d examined in the morgue two days previously.

Arkadian closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of blood and disinfectant. He suddenly felt more tired than he had ever done. Whatever he’d hoped to prevent had already happened. He wished to God he could speak to his wife and listen to her soft voice rather than the chaos unfolding around him. He wanted to tell her he loved her, and hear her say the same. He wanted to tell her that he was OK, that she shouldn’t worry and that he’d be coming home soon. Then he thought of Liv Adamsen, and Gabriel, and the woman in the warehouse – and wondered if any of them were still alive.

Dr Kulin followed the first trolley into an examination space and stopped short. She had covered the emergency room for upwards of ten years, but never seen anything like this. The man’s torso was covered in cuts, straight and deliberate, steadily leaking blood on to the bunched green material of the cassock that had been hastily cut away. There was so much blood he looked as though he’d been dipped in it.

She turned to the paramedic who’d wheeled him in. ‘I thought it was an explosion?’

‘It was. Knocked a hole through the base of the mountain. This guy came from
inside
the Citadel.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Dragged him out myself.’

She reached down tentatively and shone a pen-light into the monk’s eye. ‘Hello. Can you hear me?’ His head lolled from side to side, making the deep cut around his neck open and close obscenely, as if it was breathing. ‘Can you tell me your name?’

He whispered something but she didn’t catch it. She leaned closer, felt his breath on her ear as he whispered again, something that sounded like
Ego
Sanctus . . .
The poor man was clearly delirious.

‘Did you do anything to stop the bleeding?’ she said, straightening up.

‘Pressure packs and a plasma drip to keep him hydrated. He just won’t stop.’

‘BP?’

‘Sixty-two over forty, and falling.’

Not dangerously low, but near enough.

The heart monitor beeped as a nurse stuck electrodes to his chest. It also sounded way too slow. Dr Kulin looked at the wounds again. There was no sign of clotting. Maybe he was a haemophiliac. The clamour of fresh arrivals forced a decision. ‘Five hundred IU of prothrombin and twenty mills of Vitamin K. And type him fast so we can transfuse. He’s going to bleed out if we don’t hurry.’

She headed back through the curtain and out into the main corridor. Three more monks rolled past at speed, heading to the far end of the ward, each losing astonishing amounts of blood from wounds identical to the ones she’d just seen.

‘Where do you want this one?’ The paramedic’s voice snapped her back to attention. She looked down and was relieved to see it did not contain a monk. ‘Right here,’ she said, pointing to one side of the corridor; the examination booths were filling up fast and this one didn’t appear to be haemorrhaging. The paramedic steered the trolley to one side and stamped on the wheel brake.

‘What’s the story here?’ Dr Kulin asked, easing open the cracked, blackened visor of the motorcycle helmet and shining a light into the woman’s right eye.

‘Found her in the tunnel,’ the paramedic said. ‘Vitals are strong but she was unconscious when we found her and stayed that way on the ride over.’

Dr Kulin switched her penlight to the left eye. It dilated slightly less than the right. She turned to a nurse. ‘Straight to X-ray,’ she said. ‘Possible skull fracture. Don’t remove the helmet until we know what we’re dealing with.’

The nurse grabbed a porter and was already moving the trolley away when the entrance doors burst open and two more blood-soaked monks were wheeled in: same wounds; same massive blood loss.

What the hell was going on?

She followed the first into a cubicle, did a quick assessment then administered the same dose of coagulating compound. She heard another doctor hollering for five litres of O-positive from down the hall. She moved to the next cubicle in a daze, battering aside the curtain as she went. Beyond it lay another surprise. Another monk, only this one wasn’t bleeding; he was standing beside a trolley, arguing with a nurse, and holding a young woman in his arms.

‘I’m not leaving her,’ he said.

He had a large amount of blood on his cassock, though not nearly as much as the others. The girl on the trolley was drenched, the soak pattern suggesting massive neck trauma. Dr Kulin stepped forward and pushed down the neck of her T-shirt. The skin beneath was stained crimson, but she could see no sign of any cuts. ‘Delivery notes?’ she asked, searching for the source of the bleeding.

‘Vitals low but steady,’ the nurse said. ‘Blood Pressure eighty over fifty.’

Dr Kulin frowned. It was low enough to indicate major blood loss, but she just couldn’t find the source. Maybe the blood belonged to someone else. ‘Keep her on a drip and monitor the BP.’ She smiled at the girl, seeing her properly for the first time. ‘Other than that, you seem fine.’ She was momentarily transfixed by the almost unearthly brightness of the green eyes that stared back at her, then got a grip on herself and switched her attention to the monk.

He pulled his arm away. ‘I’m OK, really . . .’

‘Well, you won’t mind me looking then.’ She parted the bloody, shredded sleeve of his cassock to peer at the red smeared flesh beneath. The source of his bleeding was immediately apparent, a nasty deep gash right across his wrist that had obviously been quite deep. It looked a good few days old, judging by the extent of the healing, yet the blood was fresh. ‘What happened?’ Dr Kulin asked.

‘It got knocked about a bit,’ he said. ‘I’ll live. But, please. Has a woman been brought in? Looks about forty. Black hair, five six?’

Dr Kulin thought of the woman in the motorcycle helmet. ‘She’s gone to X-ray.’ The high-pitched sound of a cardiac alarm sounded somewhere behind her. ‘She’s been knocked about a bit too. But don’t worry: I think she’ll be fine.’