Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller) (42 page)

More guards appeared from around the left side of the house, fanning out and shooting in Edger's direction.

"There fucking everywhere!" Black shouted as he fired a volley of shots from behind Edger.

They both ran for the trees.

So much for staying covert.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

The Ritual Room was on the bottom floor of the Mason house, built between the main living room and the kitchen. It was a large, square room, about thirty feet on each side. Windowless, although it had air vents. The entire room was painted a mat black, and the only source of light was from the hundreds of candles placed on the floor around the walls and in a number of alcoves set into the walls themselves. Painted in the centre of the floor, in red, was a massive pentagram, around which was also painted a number of occult symbols.

Around the outside of the pentagram stood nearly two dozen figures, all wearing long black cloaks with hoods over their heads. These were the Red Falcon members. Powerful, influential figures in Northern Irish society, as well as a few from the Republic. They had gathered for the biannual Blood Sacrifice Ritual, a ritual that every Red Falcon member believed helped them increase their power and overall influence in the world. The sacrifices were always made to a demon called Beltock, a powerful demon that would bestow power on anyone who offered him the right sacrifice. The right sacrifice always being the blood and soul of an innocent child, no older than twelve. Nothing less would do.

The efficacy of these bloody occult rituals and infernal beliefs was never questioned by the Red Falcon members. Every member believed it all absolutely.

Except Mason.

Mason stood in the centre of the pentagram, wearing his father's black SS uniform, looking around at the men and the few women who stood staring back at him like he was some sort of god himself. To the members, Mason was their leader, the one who showed them the way, helped them gain the power they craved so badly, and helped them indulge their sadistic pleasures whenever they felt the need.

Mason didn't see himself as a leader of any kind. He saw himself as more of a puppeteer, expertly pulling on the strings of each Red Falcon member in order to get them to do exactly what he wanted. Each member in the room was handpicked by him because of what they could do for him in terms of furthering his research and affording him the protection he needed to carry it out. Of course
they
didn't know that. Every member thought they were special to be asked to join the Red Falcon Country Club. They thought they were being let in on some great secret that made them superior to everyone else around them. They all saw themselves as the "chosen few".

Mason had to admit that he did get a certain kick out of the whole cult thing. He enjoyed hoodwinking such powerful people, playing on their taboo desires and filling their normally intelligent heads full of nonsense. The Blood Sacrifice Rituals were pure show, nothing more. It was all a pantomime. There was no demon called Beltock who gave out power to the chosen few. There was only Mason and his Machiavellian manipulations.

The name Red Falcon had come from a secret Nazi project that his father had been involved in along with Heinrich Himmler, a project designed to investigate, and ultimately make use of, occult power, which Hitler himself had been very interested in. Not long into the project, Mason's father had realised that so-called occult practises were basically nonsense at worst, and at best, a way to control gullible people. Mason's father took himself out of the project, but Himmler kept going, believing that it was all true, going to great lengths to find apparently magical objects that would help the Nazi's defeat their enemies. Despite the many artifacts procured by Himmler and his team, they still managed to lose the war, proving that their occult beliefs were nothing more than wishful thinking.

As a control mechanism however, the occult could still be useful. Which was why Mason created the Red Falcon Country Club. As he looked around at all the faces now, each one so smug in their certain knowledge that they were special and beyond any kind of reproach, Mason could hardly believe how ignorant these supposedly intelligent and powerful people could be.

The members' belief in Mason as some kind of demi-god was now even more entrenched by the fact that Mason had managed to effectively make himself immortal. Whether he actually
was
immortal now remained to be seen of course, but as far as his followers were concerned, he was just as immortal as any god was. The great Beltock had helped him, he told the members, and they all replied in unison, "Hail Beltock!"

As far as they were concerned, Mason was the Great Alchemist, the one who finally turned lead into gold. He had found the Holy Grail, and they all desperately wanted to sup from that cup.

But none of them ever would, because very soon, they would all be dead.

The pantomime was over.

Murmurs ran through the gathering of hooded members. The sound of gunfire coming from outside the house had unsettled many of them.

"Not to worry," Mason told them. "We're just experiencing a minor security breach. My guards are handling it."

Mason had already pulled Deputy Chief Constable Smalls to one side and told the cop to make sure none of the local police responded to the noise coming from the estate. As far as the local PSNI were concerned, the gunfire wasn't gunfire but firecrackers being thrown to celebrate a birthday party.

It was hard for Mason not to feel unsettled by the breach himself though, which by now he had learned was down to that man Edger, the man Mason had ordered Rankin to kill. Having failed, Rankin had left Edger to carry on with his misguided revenge trip. Hopefully, the guards would take care of it. If not, Mason would take care of Edger himself, one way or the other.

"Brothers and sisters, hallowed members of the Red Falcon Club," Mason said to the crowd surrounding him, his arms raised as if to bestow glory on them all. "You may have noticed that there is no sacrifice tethered within the circle as there normally would be. That's because tonight, there will be an even
bigger
sacrifice."

Murmurs of excitement rippled through the room.

Like lambs to the slaughter.

Mason looked at his watch. Almost time.

He walked to the back of the room and lifted the gas mask of the floor that he had placed there earlier in the evening.

The cult members stood staring at him, puzzled looks on their faces underneath their hoods.

"It is time to make the final sacrifice," Mason said. "It is time for you all to meet Beltock in person."

A few of the members expressed their disconcertedness by asking what was going on. He even saw one or two of the more clued in members go to the doors and try to open them. The doors were locked however.

Mason smiled, as he tasted the fear in the room. The reality of what was happening was beginning to sink in amongst the members, who in Mason's eyes, were merely sheep about to be slaughtered.

As the gas began to pour through the four air vents in the room, Mason put his gas mask on, and watched the looks of horror on the faces before him as the gas settled over them and infiltrated their lungs. The gas was a variation of Zyklon B, the gas used to kill millions of people in the concentration camps. Mason made the compound himself, ordering one of his programmed assistants to release it at a precise time.

Before him, every person in the room was grasping at their throats as the gas made its way into their respiratory systems, essentially cutting off their oxygen supply. As Mason watched, most of the people in the room fell to their knees as the gas proceeded to choke them to death, and he imagined this was what it must have been like for his father back in the day, as he watched the Jews and other inhumans get gassed into eradication.

One of the Red Falcon members crawled towards Mason. His name was Brian McGinty, the Lord Mayor of Belfast. A particularly repulsive man in Mason's eyes. McGinty's face was a bright pink colour. As he clawed at Mason's jack boots, he began to foam at the mouth, his head reminding Mason of some kind of leaking beetroot. Mason kicked the man away so that he rolled over onto his back, the foam from his mouth spilling out onto the floor as blood leaked from his ears.

Mason began to move through the room at that point, his hands clasped behind his back as he stepped around the convulsing bodies like a gardener inspecting his flower beds, only these flowers were choking and screaming in the throes of death. Many of the dying were banging their bright pink heads against the hard floor, as if trying to end their suffering by breaking their skulls open. In some cases, it seemed to be working as the head-bangers collapsed unconscious, their faces resting in a pool of their own blood.

It was oddly satisfying to watch them all writhe around the floor like a bunch of dying insects that had just been hit with a dose of insecticide. To Mason, that's what the people in the room were anyway. No more than insects. And him, a giant bird of prey, stepping on their remains.

Within a few minutes, every person in the room was dead. Nearly two dozen people who thought immortality awaited them, wiped out in the blink of an eye, their skin now covered in red and green spots thanks to the gas, adding to the ghoulish effect on their corpses.

Mason took a final look around the room, at the piles of bodies, then he turned on his jack boots and walked out of the gas chamber like Mephistopheles emerging from the pits of hell.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Bullets whizzed past his head and slammed into nearby trees with a thwacking sound. Crouched down, using a thick pine tree as cover, Edger waited until he could see the guards coming up the slope towards the edge of the forest. The first guard that appeared, Edger fired at him, hitting him with two shots that sent the guard tumbling back down the slope.

Then more guards appeared at the crest of the slope. One had a shotgun that he fired in Edger's direction, the hundreds of steel balls travelling at lethal speed, slamming into the tree that Edger was using as cover, exploding bits of bark all around him.

A second later, Black, who was crouched behind a tree ten yards to Edger's left, fired a number of shots from his rifle. Edger saw the guard with the shotgun go down as bullets peppered his chest.

Edger aimed at another guard, shot him in the stomach, the guard staggering back as he continued to fire his machine pistol into the trees. Another shot from Edger's rifle to the guard's head took him down. Then Edger took down another guard with his last two rounds, before ducking behind the tree and quickly changing the magazine. When he next looked, there were three more guards on the grassy slope, all firing Scorpion machine pistols towards his and Black's positions.

9mm bullets were cutting through the trees all around Edger, breaking branches, exploding bark, blowing up the soft earth around him as they narrowly missed their target.

Fuck this. We're sitting ducks here.

They needed to make it to the house.

Breaking cover for a second, Edger fired three rounds at the closest guard, all but one of the rounds impacting the guard's body.

That's when he noticed, out of the corner of his eye, the massive black shadow charging through the trees at him from the right. Edger swung his rifle in the direction of the charging guard, but before he could get a shot off, the guard was on top of him, kicking Edger hard in the chest, the impact sending Edger crashing back to the ground, his rifle landing at his feet as he lost his grip on it.

Then the guard was on top of him, pinning Edger to the ground. The guard was so big and heavy it was like a rhinoceros had come charging through the trees and sat on Edger. Only this rhinoceros held possibly the biggest god damned knife Edger had ever seen. The guard held the massive blade with both hands as he raised it over his head, the hard steel shining ominously in the moonlight, reflecting back into the eyes of the guard, and for a second, Edger saw the pure, unbridled aggression in those wide eyes, but also something else that was difficult to explain, like a deadness behind them, possibly reflecting an unthinking personality, like the guard was just a drone sent out to do a job without thought or question, and it hit Edger in that moment that all the guards were probably as brainwashed as Declan once was, programmed by Mason to do his bidding, with no regard for their own lives.

The guards didn't care if they died. They only cared about killing anyone who threatened their master, Gabriel Mason.

The huge knife came down fast, hurtling towards Edger's face. He managed to get both hands up to block the ascent of the blade before it pierced his skull, and he grunted with effort as he tried to hold the knife away from him, but the guard was strong and was leaning all of his weight down on the knife, and within seconds it seemed, the point of the knife was almost touching Edger's forehead. The guard clenched his teeth, looking like a wild animal as he put more effort into forcing the blade down another half an inch so that the cold tip of the steel blade pressed into Edger's forehead, breaking the skin, until Edger felt a trickle of blood run down his face, putting a coppery taste in his open mouth as he strained to stop the knife going any further.