The Thieves of Darkness (56 page)

He remembered at the age of ten seeing the animals within the puffy clouds that floated through the blue sky, and when he went to bed at night, his imagination turned upside down. Where he saw animals in inanimate objects in daylight, the shadows cast about his room at night became everything that scared him: monsters and wild dogs, burglars and beasts, all seeming to lurk in the shadows waiting to snatch him from his bed. His nights were filled with frequent terror and restlessness that had been vanquished only by the logic of adulthood.

But now, with the voices in his ears, he reverted to adolescence, his fears growing anew—the only difference was that the something lurking in the shadows wasn’t his imagination. It was Michael St. Pierre.

Gianni raised his rifle; he would kill the American with a single shot and get back to the stairs and to safety.

He watched through the near darkness as Michael skirted one large rock and froze in place, unaware of the gun pointed his way.

Gianni held the rifle tight in his hands; he lined up the sight and took a single shot, the crack of his rifle shattering the silence, crashing his ears. He hit Michael square in the back of the head, dropping him where he stood.

Gianni raced to Michael’s body, thankful that he would toast Silviu’s memory before the day was done. Gianni pulled out his flashlight as he arrived and stood over the body. Michael was lying facedown, the blood pooling and haloing what was left of his skull. Gianni dug the tip of his boot under Michael’s chest and rolled him over … and the voices grew louder. His rage mixed with fear as he looked at what was left of Karl’s head.

Gianni spun about, furious at his stupidity, at his paranoia. He had killed Karl. Though they weren’t friends, they were on the same side.

Gianni looked around. As he stood under the glow of the two torches, the voices seemed to fade away, a trick of the mind, the overwhelming pressure of being surrounded with death. He ascribed the
voices to the altitude, to the diminished oxygen warping his mind. He refocused. He would find Michael and kill him.

And this time he saw him, there was no question. Gianni recognized his face, without doubt. He was moving among the rocks, by a group of stalagmites just beyond the second torch.

Gianni moved along the wall, the heat of the cavern rising the deeper he went, bearing down on him; it had to be over 120 now.

He saw him again. Michael was moving away from him, darting in and out among the rocks and limestone deposits. Gianni threw caution to the wind and, holding his rifle up and ready like a commando, gave chase, running as fast as he could.

And then he had him in his sights. It was a clear shot, as Michael was out in the open, no rocks to hide behind, no outcroppings to duck under. Gianni took aim, slipped his finger around the trigger, and…

Suddenly the floor gave way, as if the bottom had just dropped out of the earth. Before he could scream, he sank into the earth, encased in a canvas skin that he realized was a piece of sail. The mud instantly scalded his skin and, as he sank deeper, the sail parted, the mud pouring in around him, filling his mouth, scorching his throat, cooking him from the inside out. Boiling him alive.

Michael walked to the pool of boiling mud. A piece of the sail cloth had caught on the rock but otherwise there was no sign of any disturbance; Gianni was gone.

Michael hadn’t known how many guards there would be and wanted to conserve his ammo and not draw attention with gunfire. He had watched them come into the cavern and split up. He had stayed under the light of the second torch, avoiding the shadows, avoiding the fragility that would seep into his mind if he hid in the dark.

The sail had been ideal. Its tattered gray matched the stony ground perfectly; the piece he had cut off covered the pool of superheated mud, masking its deadly presence.

He wasted no more time. He headed back to the cavern’s center, to the room where Venue was. It was time to end this.

KC stood in the middle of the mandala foyer, her mind momentarily lost in the infinite design upon the floor, wondering whether if she stared at it long enough, she could truly see heaven, as legend said.

But her mind quickly rebounded; she felt a presence and spun about, her gun at the ready. Iblis stood there watching her, his arms hanging at his sides, his hands empty, no weapons visible.

“Why did you come back?” Iblis said.

“Did you kill my sister?” KC asked, her controlled voice ready to erupt.

Iblis remained silent.

“Did you do it?” KC’s voice focused, filled with contained rage.

“No,” Iblis finally said. “It was Venue; he called it his parting gift.”

KC stared a moment, and they held each other’s eyes, until she saw the motionless legs of one of the guards upon the floor. There was no question; Iblis had killed one of his own men.

“I came for Michael.” KC raised her pistol, aiming at Iblis. “Not that you could ever understand what it’s like to love someone.”

Iblis stepped forward without regard for the gun pointed at his head. He looked at KC, holding her eye, his perfect face relaxing, and for the briefest of moments she saw past his dark soul, deep into his heart, and
what she saw frightened her more than death, more than anything they could find in this temple.

She saw his love for her. And for a short instant, it was as if she were a child again, when he had swooped in out of nowhere to rescue her, to teach her, to care for her and Cindy, to save them from their cruel fate.

But just as quickly the memories of Iblis’s true self rose to the fore, his callous disregard for life, his brutal killings for pleasure and in the service of her father. She could not understand how such a being could even exist within his own head. He had a true detachment from reality.

“Michael’s sacrifice is but a waste now,” Iblis said. “We gave you the opportunity to live.”

“You gave me the opportunity to live?” KC said, her voice filled with irony.

Two guards approached, their HK MP7s held high, aimed at KC.

“How could you possibly think you’d get past us?” Iblis said softly. “To get in and out?”

KC stepped into Iblis’s space, uncomfortably close, and softly whispered, “Let him go, Chris.”

Iblis looked at her in shock at the revelation that she knew his true name.

“He’s all I want,” KC said, hoping to plead to what little conscience he might possess. “For all these years … it’s the only thing I have ever wanted for myself. Please…”

Iblis stared at KC, his face a mask.

KC stared back, the moment hanging on until…

Iblis looked at his two men; they moved in on KC and snatched her gun away.

Venue walked into the torchlit room, the glow of the flame refracting off the treasure. His smile could not have been broader. He walked to one of the mounds of treasure and ran his hands through it: jewelry, coins, weapons, holy crosses, utensils. He picked up a bejeweled chalice, its gold thick and heavy. He examined it up close, marveling at its craftsmanship, its sheer beauty. He looked out over the mounds, haphazardly strewn about the floor in three-foot piles. An entire ship’s worth. He walked around the hoard like a man assessing his felled quarry; his mind’s calculations of worth stopped after he exceeded three billion.

And then his eyes fell upon the bodies. Venue crouched over the skeletal remains of a corsair, his long cobweblike hair matted to his yellowed skull. He clutched a long saber, its honed edge stained black with blood. A dagger protruded from his bony chest; the hilt was leather-bound, accented with emeralds along its pommel. Venue clutched it and tore it out, shattering the man’s ribcage into a pile of brittle bone. He examined the blade closely, admiring its balance, its still-honed edge. Venue wondered who the man before him was, whether it was Kemal Reis or just one of his many underlings who had ventured on a never-ending journey up rivers, through unknown lands, finally scaling a mountain to find the place where he would die.

As Venue looked upon the vast amount of treasure, he marveled at the fact that Kemal and his men had carried it all up the mountain, through the narrow passage, a journey that must have taken nine months of sailing, trekking, and exhaustion.

Venue finally turned to the stacks of books and scrolls, the true object of his desire. He approached them as if approaching heaven. They were stacked on the floor. There were stone tablets, etched in a language he didn’t recognize, scrolls and parchments in Chinese, animal skins in Aramaic. It was a collection of writings and prayers, insights on and accounts of the primordial darkness, the evil that has been a part of existence since before the world began. There were maps leading to lost cracks in the earth, to the true location of Eden, to axis mundi that reached not only to heaven but also to hell.

He had read of this trove of literature back in his seminary days; it had been sought by Aleister Crowley, Heinrich Himmler, and Rudolph Hess, though the rumors of its existence were thought to be only the ramblings of insane minds. As Venue looked at them in their physical form he smiled; he had found that a grain of truth, no matter how minute, always existed in the heart of a rumor or myth.

Venue picked up a book. It was in Latin, a language he was more than familiar with from his days as a priest. Its leather cover was made of human flesh, a practice quite common centuries ago. Many times books on notorious individuals were bound in that person’s own skin. Called anthropodermic bibliopegy, it was found in many libraries, including those of most of the Ivy League schools of America. Often were stories told of the flesh owners’ ghostly faces materializing in the tanned and aged dermis, their souls trapped within the binding.

Written by an excommunicated priest, Jacarlo Jabad, in 1511, this was a treatise on evil, the fallen angels, and the suppression of all things incongruous with the Roman Church. It was said to speak of his encounters with the underworld, much as people of faith spoke of miracles. Bound in the former priest’s skin at his own request, it was, Venue thought, a fitting book to start with.

He looked about the cavern, filled with riches that far exceeded his
former net worth, but its value was nothing compared to that of the library before him. Sitting under the warm glow of the firelight, Venue gently opened the tanned flesh cover and began to read.

B
ENDI AND
T
HUT
stood back to back in the doorway of the gold chamber, one facing out, the other facing in, eyes alert, guns raised, guarding Venue as instructed.

They had swept the cavern with the gold in search of Michael, finding it hard to concentrate with such enormous wealth before them. They had found no sign of Michael or Silviu and assumed them to be somewhere out in the darkened cavern awaiting Gianni and Karl.

No one knew much about the two men, where they came from, their nationality, their last name, other than that they were brothers. In fact, that one assumed piece of information wasn’t even true. They had been friends since they were five back in Spain and had begun calling themselves brothers in their early teens as a joke. Bendi had followed Thut into petty larceny and trailed him through Europe. They had only done odd jobs for Iblis, but the offer of fifty thousand dollars to travel to India for a few days was tempting. They could take the next six months off and finally enjoy a vacation without having to finance it through picking pockets and stickups. It would be a nice break of bright sun and sand after traveling through the bitter cold and ending up in this dark place.

But the vacation would never happen.

The fusillade of bullets came without warning; the two “brothers” sailed back into the room, their bullet-riddled heads spilling blood upon the treasure. They never heard Michael’s approach; they never got off a single shot.

M
ICHAEL STEPPED INTO
the room, the butt of the MP7 rifle held tight against his cheek, smoke still pouring from the barrel. He lowered the rifle to find Venue engrossed in a book under the firelight of the
lone flaming torch. He hadn’t reacted to the violent deaths directly behind him, nor did he react to Michael’s entrance now.

Michael pulled out and shone his flashlight about the room, ensuring no one else was there, flicked it off, and clipped it to his belt.

“Where better to hide gold and jewels than with the demons of the world,” Venue said without rising, without looking at Michael. “And the books and scrolls, the secrets of man, the secrets of gods and demons … Where better to hide them than hell.”

Michael looked at the stacks of scrolls and books, the various parchments that had survived time.

“This all about books?”

Venue slowly closed Jabad’s treatise but didn’t turn. “This is about far more than your feeble mind could imagine.”

“You know, when someone is holding a gun to your head, particularly someone who has reason to kill you, you should choose your words more carefully.”

Venue turned and rose to full height. “Do you know what fear is?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, quite well. But I don’t think you have truly tasted it.”

“You believe in God, Michael?” Venue asked.

“More than you know.” Michael nodded, confident that he had the upper hand as he held the gun on the man.

“Man embraces him in all forms: Jesus, Yahweh, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu. Man reveres him, places him upon a mountain to be worshipped. Yet here on earth we all seek freedom from rulers, freedom to follow our own paths. The days of absolute kings, monarchies, dictators are but a memory. We rebel against authority, against being told what to do, except in the Church. ‘Follow the prescribed path written by men and thou shalt spend eternity in the warm embrace of the Lord, where we shalt spend a peaceful eternity in his worship.’

“There are other things out there, Michael. Man closes his mind to them, afraid of what he doesn’t understand. There are alternatives to God.

“These books were hidden away to hide that truth. To hide what lies in the shadows, to hide what lies in our subconscious. Who are the monks of this place to judge what man should and shouldn’t know?”