The Cult (20 page)

Neil grabbed her shoulder. “Relax, Alexa.”

She pushed Lamont back in his chair and took a deep breath, slowly dropping her hands, palms down, trying to calm herself down. She looked up. “So you had nothing to do with the murders?”

Di Mardi shook his head, whimpering. “No, nothing,” he sobbed.
 

“We have hundred of witnesses willing to testify that you brutally murdered men and woman on the stage, even little babies,” Alexa hissed.

Di Mardi grimaced, turned his face away, like a baby that didn’t want the food that was being fed to him. “That was all an illusion, Captain. Half of your witnesses were stoned out of their minds.” He glanced at Benjamin Lamont who looked up at Alexa and said, ”Do you mind if I confer with my colleague?”

“Why?”

Benjamin licked his lips. “Look, at the moment we’re up for running a cult, maybe a bit of drug trafficking. I’m planning on turning state witness, see if I can somehow get my sentence lightened. I want to find out if Joe is with me.”

Alexa shrugged. “Go aright ahead. Can’t see it helping much, though.”

“Could we have some privacy for a moment, Captain?”

Alexa looked up at Neil and Bruce.

“I’ll tell you everything, I swear,” Lamont urged.

Alexa snorted, stood up and ambled out of the room, followed by Neil and Bruce. She led them around the corner, then stood in front of the mirrored one-way window, studying the two men as they spoke urgently to one another.

Bruce switched on the intercom to the room. “Let’s listen in.”

“…on this journey with me?” Joe Lamont asked.

Lamont nodded. “I’ve been with you from the beginning, Benjamin.”

Lamont put his hand on Joe Di Mardi’s, gave it a squeeze. “And you believe in the righteousness of our mission, in the new journey we will be undertaking?”

Alexa cocked her head to one side. “What the hell are they talking about?”

“Will our disciples follow us too?” Di Mardi asked.

Benjamin Lamont smiled. “I don’t see that they have much of a choice, Joe.”
 

Benjamin Lamont put his hand in his pocket as Alexa yelled, slamming the window with her palm. “No, stop!”

“See you on the other side, brother.” Di Mardi stood up and leaned toward Lamont.

Lamont stood up as well and kissed Di Mardi on his lips. ”Until we meet again,” he said as Alexa rushed around the corner and yanked open the door to the holding room.

She turned her face and held her arm in front of her eyes as both men’s heads flared up into an eye-blindingly bright light, a chemical halo of intense radiance surrounding their heads as they held onto each other in a final deathly embrace.

Fifteen seconds later, the light started petering out and she took her arm away, risking a glimpse.

Lamont and Di Mardi lay slumped on the table, their charred torso’s and heads still smoking, fused into one.

Like brothers in arms.

Hyatt Regency Hotel, Phoenix, Arizona

Bradley Ortell heaved the bulky duffle bag off his shoulder and dropped it on the bed. He unzipped the bag for the umpteenth time that day, double-checking that all the cash was still in there. He was paranoid, things had gone pear shaped fast. He picked up a wad of cash, fingered the notes, then tossed it back in the bag and zipped it up again.

He had gotten out in the nick of time, collecting his stash from the apartment in East Chapel and moseying on out of there a day before the stupid Interpol bitch cleaned out his operation. He always trusted his gut; it had saved his hide countless times before.
 

He stood in front of the mirror and started undressing, glancing at the duffle bag on the bed. He would enjoy a late dinner and then get back on the road again before the APB’s got round. The border would be empty and personnel tired and bored, crossing the border late at night was always the safest bet to get to Mexico with the least amount of fuss.

The twenty-odd-million dollars in his bag ought to ensure a good retirement. Help him set up a new base somewhere, maybe South America. He still had his contacts, still had the recipes. Who knew, maybe there was another stupid cult somewhere that needed some drugs?

In the future, he would be more careful though. It was stupid that Di Mardi wanted the girl’s body mutilated in that way. Di Mardi had said he wanted to teach the other’s a lesson, show them what could happen if they ever came up against him. That needless incident had started this whole chain of events.

And the fact that he had to remove the dead babies and other bodies after every performance bothered him as well. Covering up the murders. No, next time he wouldn’t be doing anyone’s dirty work.

He fingered the golden chain around his neck. It was thick and heavy, a parting gift he’d taken with him from Di Mardi. Memories. He would probably pawn it somewhere.

He tore a crisp new shirt from its packaging and slipped it on. Next, he wrapped his favorite blue silk tie around his collar and started tying a windsor knot. He frowned, scratched his neck when he felt a tingling sensation, like the shirt had been washed in some fabric softener that caused an allergic reaction.

His eyes opened wide as smoke erupted from the collar, then shrieked as it started heating up and burning his skin. He tried to pull it off, but it burned his hand and then his entire neck and chest lit up, blinding him.
The goddamn chain!

He screamed as he slumped to the floor, rolling around, trying to rip the burning object from his neck. He managed to crawl into the basin and stick his head below the tap, but he was too late to open it, dropping to his knees as he slumped over the tub.

The chain burned for another thirty seconds before fizzling out. Ortell’s charred features were contorted into a grimace, the skin burned from his face. His body spasmed and convulsed in a defiant rebellion against the inevitable damage it had suffered, then went limp as Ortell blew his final breath through yellowing teeth visible beneath the blackened skin of his lips.

McGill woke up as he felt someone squeezing his shoulder. He bolted upright in his bed, looking around the room, trying to see who had touched him.

“Good evening, Bishop,” he heard someone say with a smooth voice.
 

“Who’s there?” he asked, fumbling for the light on his night stand. He switched it on, then groped for his glasses and slipped them on.
 

A man sat in his favorite recliner to the side of his bed. His leg was folded over a knee, bouncing up and down. He had a grin on his face, and he was drumming his fingers on the armrests of the recliner, like he had a nervous energy.

“Who are you?”

The man stood up and folded his hands behind his back. “My name is Father Timothy Casanellas.”

“What do you want?” McGill asked, pulling the crumpled covers from his legs.

The man shrugged, started pacing around the room. “Retribution.”

“For what? I did nothing to you.”

The man stopped pacing, turned around to face McGill. He wore a Roman Catholic cassock and stood looking down at McGill, a trace of a smile on his lips. “Oh, but you did, my dear Bishop. You have brought disrepute to our profession.”

“How?”

He marched over to McGill, leaned on the bed and put his face close to the bishop’s. “Because you’re a murderer,” he hissed.

“What? How do you…?”

The man stood up. “We know! I checked your records. You killed a man almost twenty years ago.”

McGill shook his head, pushing himself back. “I served my time!”

The man lifted his chin an inch. “Doesn’t change anything. A murderer is a murderer. A person of the cloth who murders is an abomination to the Lord.”

Bishop Daniel McGill feared for his life for the first time in forty years. The awful memories came rolling back, like ghosts from his past. “What are you going to do to me?”

The priest sneered. “Watch you suffer, old man.”

Alexa used the key McGill had given her and unlocked the front door. She bound up the carpeted stairs then stopped dead in her tracks, listening intently. She heard urgent voices and a muffled conversation and then a thump and McGill shrieking.
 

She dashed the rest of the way upstairs and ripped open the door to the Bishop’s bedroom. McGill looked up. He sat, fastened to a chair, and a man stood over him, his arm pulled back, ready to deliver another blow.

“Stop! What the hell are you doing?”

The man turned around, straightened his cuffs. “Who are you?”

“Alexa Guerra, Interpol. What are you doing to Father McGill?”

The man smiled, sauntered toward her. “Ah, so you are the famous Captain Guerra. I’ve read so much about you.”

Alexa glanced over the man’s shoulder at McGill. He looked terrified, a welt forming below his right eyes and blood seeping from his nose. She now regretted to agree to the older man’s rules of no weapons in his house.

“Who are you?”

“Sorry, how impolite of me.” The man stood up straight, jutting out his chin. “My name is Father Alessandro Raphael Timotheus Casanellas, member of the Illius Mortiferis, ordained by the Pope and selected by God Himself to perform my sworn duty.” He blinked a couple of times and stabbed his finger at her. “And you, little girl, are in my way.”

This was the guy whom Latorre had been investigating? “You’re the priest killer?”

The man frowned, the side of his mouth turning up in a faint smile. “Oh, my, no, Captain. I am so much more than that.” He turned to his side, keeping his eyes on Alexa as he bit his lower lip, his teeth showing. “I am the purveyor of justice to men of the cloth, the punisher of sins and the grim reaper come to dispatch these false prophets to hell.”

“Blah-blah. You kill priests.”

The man lifted his eyebrows. “And you do not see yourself as a murderer, Captain? I have heard that you body count is tallying up to quite a commendable sum.”

Alexa shook her head. “I don’t judge those I kill, priest.”

“You sure?”

Alexa shook her head again. “Nope, never.”

“Is it not true that in that split second,” the priest snapped his fingers, “before you send your victims to Hell, you make a moral choice between yourself and the poor soul you are about to kill?”

“Nope.”

The man stood up straight, fluttering his eyelids. “So what would you call it then?”

Alexa grinned. “Self defense.” She stepped into the room, keeping her eyes on the priest as she sauntered over to McGill, touched the Bishop’s shoulder. “You okay?”
 

McGill pursed his lips, nodded.

Alexa bounced back as the priest upended McGill’s bed and pushed it against the wall, creating more space in the room. He beckoned her closer. “Come, Captain, let us perform the macabre dance of death, and let God be the judge of whom shall leave here and whom shall sit at his feet tonight.”

The man circled her like a python waiting to strike. He crouched low, hitching his cassock onto his knees, then threw a couple of mock-punches, feinting to the left and striking with a right, but she stepped to the side and the blow shot by harmlessly.

She stood still, her arms by her side, watching his chest. He had a low center of gravity, bouncing around on his feet, like a boxer. But his fighting style was something she had never seen before, a combination of Brazilian Capoeira and Chinese Wu Shu, changing his stance regularly, first orthodox, then southpaw, rolling his shoulders as he did so.

He bounced forward and swept at her feet but she stepped back again, watching him closely. He followed by going into a handstand and lunging up into a roundhouse kick which caught her off-guard, striking her shoulder with a powerful blow.

She winced and backed off, rolling her shoulder. Shit, that hurt.

The man danced around her energetically, changing stances as he did so. “I thought you were going to be a tad tougher after everything I’ve read about you, Captain.”

She realized that the objective of his fighting style was to deceive, feints followed by blows, sweeps followed by kicks. She would need to use all her skills and training to defeat this man.

Her shoulder was aching, but she didn’t show any signs of pain. The man aimed a front kick at her midriff, and she stepped aside and forward, anticipating the punch that was to follow and blocking it with an arm while simultaneously striking a knuckle-punch into the man’s chest. He took a couple of halting steps back, grimacing.
 

The confident look on his face wavered for a second. “They teach you
bursting
in the French Army, Captain?”

Alexa dropped her arms. “My dad taught me some Krav Maga, yes.”

His eyebrows raised slightly, as if re-assessing her. She didn’t give him time to think, whipping out a side kick which he blocked, then swinging back and striking his shoulder with her elbow.
 

He grunted, took a step back. “You fight so—”