Soul Thief (Blue Light Series) (15 page)

Doug ran into the forest, the wet undergrowth dragging at his legs until he was so deep in the stand of trees he could see neither house nor lights. There he stopped, bent forward, breathing in vast spasms, his sweaty hands resting on his trembling knees. Bile gurgled at the back of his throat. No longer able to hold it back he let go. His head spun and his ears whined. A sudden and irrational fear crawled up from his belly along with the undigested food and wine. He made no effort to control the spasms, and the fear was something beyond him, all mixed up with his drunkenness, all mixed up with the darkness of his life. For a moment he was certain of nothing, not even his physical existence.

He staggered away wandering aimlessly in the forest. He tried to focus his thoughts on the chaos of the past eighteen hours, but it was no use. There was no sense to be made of it and Doug realized that he was far too drunk for any sort of rational thought.

Exhausted, he staggered and went down, and as darkness settled over him like a shroud his final thoughts were of the dogs. Where were they? Why weren’t they making a meal of him?

Doug awoke to a series of screams that, even at a distance, carried a freight of blind panic that made his skin clammy with fear. His first thought was of Annie, but he soon dismissed it. The screams were not
coming from her. He knew her voice and this was not it. Besides, no harm would come to her here. Of this he was certain. She had something the old man wanted, and she would be protected until the day she could deliver it.

He sat up straining to make sense of the din. Now there were male voices added to the mix, shouts and commands. The earth was wet where he’d lain and it smelled ripe and hot beneath him. His mind churned with terrible images of death
that he could make no logical sense of. He did not know what time it was. He had no idea how long he’d been out. His head thrummed like an abscessed tooth.

Soon the din became intermittent. Struggling to his feet he began to move toward it. Small animals scuttled before him. He could hear them moving through the palmettos. Presently he saw light. He stopped, seeking focus through the stand of trees. Though he could not articulate the light’s source, it was bright and it seemed to be coming from the same direction as the sound. He froze. There was a tall figure several yards ahead of him, first still then moving. Concentrating he tried to fix the figure against the matrix of light and shadow. He could make no sense of it.

It moved like a ghost, so quiet, so casual. Or perhaps it was merely an illusion, conjured by his taxed mind. He watched it as a still deer might watch a hunter. It seemed to glide through the forest unhindered by trees and undergrowth. Impossible, he knew, but still, the illusion persisted. Fear settled in his bowels, not the logical fear of adulthood borne from life’s experience, this was something else, the barbed irrational fear of childhood, elemental fear.

But fear alone was not enough to stem his curiosity. He moved forward following the
illusion until he came to a small clearing lit by an open fire. Not far beyond the clearing the dull shadow of the mysterious stone building he’d seen earlier in the day loomed. Now Doug could see several other illusions, or perhaps they were men, he could not be sure, for the figures seemed fluid, backlit by flames. Two of them seemed to be staring down at something on the ground. The tall figure Doug had seen moments ago was no longer visible.

He inched closer trying to make sense of it all. 

Was there some sort of ritual afoot?

The screams he’d heard earlier had
subsided to whimpers. The voice was that of a woman. Doug chanced a few more tentative steps closer to the illusion straining to see with his eyes what his mind did not want him to see. As the scene became clearer he felt his sanity slipping by degrees.

De Roché
and Du Lac stood in the center of the circle, and out beyond them at the very edge of the clearing stood Joe Remy with three leashed Dobermans. The dogs were working against their restraints, their mouths frothing. There was blood in their eyes and on theirs snouts. Beside Remy stood Theo. Theo showed no emotion. Remy’s eyes were bright with terror.

“She ran,” Du Lac was saying to nobody in particular, his eyes fixed on the object at his feet. “I tried to stop her but she was drunk and she just slipped out of my grasp. I tried to warn her but she wouldn’t listen. Oh, dear God, what do we do now?”

“She’s still alive,” De Roché said without emotion. “I don’t know how, but she is.”

“But what do we do, Ed?”

“I’ll take care of it,” De Roché said.

“But how?”

“I have men, and they have shovels.”

“But she’s not dead.”

“She soon will be.”

Doug suddenly realized why the dogs had left him alone. They’d been busy elsewhere.

On the ground at De Roché’s feet lay Lilly, Du Lac’s wife or whore, or whatever the hell she was. It was obvious that she’d been mauled nearly to death by the Dobermans; the ground around her ruined body was covered in something dark and wet. Doug could not see the woman well enough in the dim light to ascertain how much damage had been done to her. He guessed that was a good thing.

“What is this?” asked Du Lac gesturing toward the fire pit.

“Sometimes my men get bored,” De Roché explained. “So they come here and have a fire. Gives them focus, something to do during the long nights.”

“No,” said Du Lac, backing away a careful step. “This is more than a relief from boredom. This is a place of ritual. The firestones are set in the shape of a pentagram. And Lilly ran directly here, as if she was drawn to it.”

“Don’t be silly, Alistair,” De Roché said dismissively.

“No, I’m sure, Ed. I chased her. And I saw something.”

“What did you see?”

“I don’t know. A man, but not a man.
Very tall with a black robe and hood. He was with her when I got here. He was bent over her doing something to her. When he saw me he disappeared. Then the dogs arrived. The dogs did not even go near me. They wanted
her.”

“Now you listen to me,”
De Roché said. “You need to focus on the business at hand.” De Roché turned toward the dogs and their handler. “Remy!” he said. “Take the dogs back to their kennel. I will deal with you later.”

“But he’s right,” Remy said, his eyes
bright with fear. “He was here. I saw him. I swear. That’s why I let the dogs go.”

“Remy, shut up!”
De Roché barked. “The dogs were not chasing a phantom. They were chasing this stupid woman. Do you understand?”

“But you weren’t here,” Remy insisted. “You didn’t see what I saw.”

“One more word out of you, Remy . . .”

“Joe!” Theo warned.

“Get out of my sight,” De Roché said flapping his hand dismissively.

“Come on, Joe,” Theo said, taking Remy by the arm and leading him away from the carnage.

“Gather up Savage,” De Roché said to his departing security chief. “I need you two back here pronto with shovels.”

“Yes, sir.” In a moment he and Remy and the leashed animals were out beyond the circle of flames moving toward the kennel.

On the ground the woman’s whimpering had ceased.

Du Lac knelt beside her. “I think she’s dead,” he said. “Dear God.”

“Now you listen to me, Alistair,” De Roché said. “We cannot let our emotions cloud our judgment here. There’s too much at stake.”

“But I don’t understand, Ed. What did the dog handler see? What did
I
see? ”

“Nothing,” said
De Roché. “He’s a fool and he saw
nothing.
Do you understand?”

“But
—”

“No buts, Alistair. Do you understand me?”

Evidently De Roché’s tone was enough to silence his subordinate, for he stopped arguing.

“Now,”
De Roché said, his tone signaling new business. “Who was this woman?”

“Lilly.”

“Yes, Lilly. I know her name. Who
was
she?”

“An escort. From one of the
Tampa agencies.”

“I hope you were discreet.”

Du Lac stood up. “Yes, Ed. My staff is nothing but discreet. No real names are ever given. Credit cards are untraceable.”

“All right then, I need you to leave now,”
De Roché said. “Go home and forget what you saw here. Everything will be taken care of.”

Du Lac
stared at De Roché for a long moment before turning and tracing his footsteps back the way he’d come, the sound of rolling thunder seeming to follow him like an omen as he went.

Doug had seen and heard enough. He began backing carefully into the forest, his mind reeling. The Collector had been here tonight. That’s who he’d seen moving through the forest. Remy had seen him too, as well as Du Lac. He’d been doing something to Lilly when he was interrupted by the dogs. There could be no doubt.

As
Doug began his turn a twig snapped beneath his shoe. Doug stood, rooted to the spot. There was no way to avoid being seen. For a long moment the old man simply stared across the expanse of lit clearing. Then he nodded a short, sharp nod that was plainly acknowledgement. I see you, it said. And I know what you’ve seen and heard here tonight. Then the old man turned and walked toward the row of cypresses that lined the edge of the clearing.

Sometime later Doug entered the house through the kitchen’s rear entrance. The door was unlocked and there was not a soul about. He stole up the stairs
like a thief and slipped into Annie’s room, undressed and sat on the edge of the bed watching her sleep. He’d never felt this hopeless. He wanted to scoop her up and carry her away from this terrible place. But he knew she would not go. He knew that he’d somehow lost her to the power that lived here, and he had to figure out how to get her back.

They slept the remainder of that night on Annie’s childhood bed; arms around each other
in a long exhausted sleep. If anything stirred in the mansion, Doug did not hear it. But once during the night he dreamed he heard the distant cacophony of beating wings.
Birds
, he thought, and then he remembered and he was afraid. The dim residue of a night filled with confusion and death lingered in his dreaming mind, but whenever he forced his thoughts to focus on the chaos inside the dreams the images fragmented and scattered like a thousand spooked and flailing winged creatures.

Through his lace of sleep Doug’s mind picked up a signal from some impossible place.
My name is Ariel,
the voice said. Doug dreamed that the voice was the voice of his unborn child. He saw her in all her angelic beauty and his heart cried out with a nearly desperate love.
How is it that you are my daughter?
He asked.

She smiled
and took him by the hand and said,
If you follow your heart everything will become clear.

Doug came awake in a sweat, breathing in ragged and desperate gasps. “
Ariel?” he called out before he could stop the expulsion. “Where are you? Who are you?” The words echoed inside his head, inside the room. He glanced over at Annie, afraid that his outburst had startled her awake. It hadn’t. She lay on her side, curled like a sleeping child. He placed his hand gently on her abdomen and imagined he felt the child’s heartbeat within.

Doug
lay back down in restless thought. Outside the wind had come up, howling around the eves of the house, thunder roamed the heavens, and lightning lashed the sky. The flight of birds had evidently moved on, for their noise could no longer be heard. And as Doug fell back into a dreamless slumber, rain cried the tears of a lost child on the windowpane.

The temple sat on a hilltop so that God could see everything that went on inside. This was the hope at least. That the maker, in all His beneficence, would see what man had sacrificed in His name, that He would peer in the windows and come to know and respect the name of man as man had His.

The temple had stood for more than two centuries. It was built of earth and wood and stone and glass, of blood and flesh and souls.

How many souls?
Father Paul Redington wondered, as he gazed up into the vaulted ceiling high above his head. How many saved and how many forsaken? And how many more would be forsaken if he did not act soon? Time was short. The prophecy would not wait. An enemy of the church, an enemy of everything that was good and pure and right, had made its intentions quite clear. It wanted something Redington had and it was willing to do most anything to acquire it.

Father Paul Redington’s black cassock billowed as he moved down the aisle toward the altar at the back of the temple. He felt a maelstrom of emotions like nothing before in his experience. He had just finished preparations for the dreaded meeting that was to come. Since receiving the message this very morning
that the chosen ones were on the run things had happened fast. He had first notified the members. All were in transit and would arrive by nightfall. Preparations had been made to receive them; food, drink, comfortable accommodations.

He knew that it would be difficult
to convince them of his intentions, but in the final analysis it would not matter. He had already made his decision, and he would carry out his plan with or without their consent. Everything else was purely academic. The consequences of non-action would far outweigh the life of one old priest. He’d lived a reasonably good life and he knew it was time to pass the burden. He had understood from the very beginning that the object was not his to keep; it was never meant for him. He was merely its custodian—one in a long line of custodians that went far back into the dim recesses of Christianity—until its rightful owner came forward to claim it. He must prove once and for all that the time of judgment was near and that man had better stand up to the challenges ahead or be forever lost. And if mankind’s only hope was the young man and the child then Redington must find him before they did, because the father was the child’s only hope of survival.

He reached the altar, picking the artifact out of his pocket, staring at it. After all these years he had never lost the sense of awe the object instilled in him. It began vibrating almost immediately upon contact with his flesh. He’d stopped wearing it around his neck three months before when it had begun causing him pain. He knew what the pain meant, of course; it was telling him that he must let it go, that it was time for it to be passed. He knelt at the altar, the vibrating artifact clutched tightly in his fist. As he began the prayer his blood began to flow, and the pain somehow felt right.