The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (17 page)

Viktor wanted to throttle the old man. “Does this book have a name?”

“All books have a name,” Zador said, amused. “It is called the Ahriman Grimoire.”

Viktor worked hard not to reveal his shock at the mention of Ahriman. “I’ve never heard of that book. And I’m aware of all the major grimoires.”

“Are you?”

Viktor couldn’t imagine a grimoire existing that was both unknown to himself and so important that both Crowley and Darius would have gone to such lengths to search it out. Surely it would have come across Viktor’s radar at some point in his studies.

“What is it?” Viktor said. “What did you tell him?” Viktor was letting his excitement get the better of him. He forced himself to regain his stoic facade. “What can you tell me about this grimoire?”

Zador’s eyes started roving again, and Viktor had the disconcerting feeling that Zador was talking to someone else, in another place and time. “A codex, made in the time of the monks. There is only one copy in existence, if it in fact still exists. It is said the grimoire forbids the reader from making another. The power is not just in the content of the words, but in the making.”

“Which was?” Viktor said.

“Legend says the scroll was authored with a pen dipped in the still-warm blood of virgins, dripping from their bodies during prolonged torture. The victims were sacrificed at the end of the ritual, the edge of the codex bound and covered with leather soaked in their blood.”

It sounded outlandish, but Viktor had heard of plenty of similar grotesqueries performed during human history, especially during the Middle Ages. The more disturbing fact was that Zador had memorized the process.

Viktor said, “When was it written? Ahriman hasn’t been worshipped for two thousand years.”

“The grimoire was allegedly written in Avestan.”

Viktor caught his breath. Avestan was a variation of Old Persian, and the sacred language of the Zoroasters. Spoken, he knew, from roughly seventh to fourth century
BCE
, and transcribed a century or two after Christ.

“Would you care to see a book on the subject?” Zador said. “This book is not so rare as the Ahriman Grimoire, but rare indeed. I believe there are”—his head moved side to side as if mentally making calculations—“yes, six copies in existence outside of the Vatican.” Zador’s eyes gleamed, and Viktor wondered
why he had become so helpful all of a sudden. He had the unsettling feeling that he was being led down a path, that this whole visit had been a hand of tarot stacked and dealt by Zador.

“I would,” Viktor said.

Zador disappeared, then returned cradling a thin book with a binding so aged it resembled peeling sandpaper. There were a few areas of water damage, and several gouges in the cover, but the book was otherwise intact.

After setting the book on the table, he handed Viktor a pair of disposable latex gloves and a pen-shaped device Viktor knew was used to turn the pages of rare books. The title, written vertically on the side in Latin, was
The Ahriman Heresy
.

“When was this written?” Viktor said.

“In 1551.”

A muscle in Viktor’s neck twitched in anticipation as he eyed the piece of living history on the table. “The price?”

Zador’s oversize head wobbled back and forth. “Ah, but this book is not for sale. You may explore its contents in this room alone.”

“You haven’t heard my offer,” Viktor said.

“The purpose of this shop is to preserve and spread knowledge, not just to sell wares.”

“If you were interested in spreading knowledge, you’d open the back rooms to public browsing.”

“Ah,” Zador said, “but not all knowledge was meant for everyone.”

“
Do prdele
. Why then, pray tell, was I chosen to receive such sacred knowledge?”

“As you know, the practice of magic requires balance. One of the darkness has read this book recently, and so shall one of the light.”

Viktor stifled his chuckle, amused both by Zador’s melodrama and the content of his words. The day Viktor represented the light was a sad day for the forces of goodness. Maybe Zador was talking about something else again, or maybe he was just addled.

“Sometimes we do not choose which side we represent,” Zador said with a grin. “And sometimes, we’re forced to switch sides in the middle of the contest.”

Viktor put the gloves on. “I’ll take a look, but why have I never heard of this work or the Ahriman Grimoire?”

“The Vatican took great pains to destroy all evidence of the Ahriman Grimoire and the short-lived heresy it spawned. Including the book you now hold in your hands, which is but a history treatise detailing the heresy.”

That made sense to Viktor. History’s victors tended to do the telling, and over the centuries, the Catholic Church made the Nazis seem like concerned librarians when it came to disposing of books with which it disagreed. What the Church did not want known, they destroyed or kept for themselves, making the Vatican the largest rare bookstore on earth. Unfortunately, membership was required.

Viktor said, “Why did Crowley and Darius want this grimoire so much?”

“I haven’t read this book.”

“But you know.”

Zador didn’t answer, his gaze floating over Viktor and around the room.

“Did Crowley read
The Ahriman Heresy
here?” Viktor said.

“He had his own copy.”

That comment set Viktor’s fingers tapping. “Then the grimoire must be mentioned in
The Ahriman Heresy
, and he was here looking for it.” Viktor decided to ask a blunt question. “Do you know where the grimoire is now?”

“Not here,” Zador said, and Viktor knew that was the most direct answer he was going to get.

“Darius was looking for it, too, wasn’t he?” Again no response, and Viktor said, “Did you send him anywhere?”

“Soon you will know as much as I.”

Zador left the room with a half bow, closing the door on the way out. At first Viktor thought Zador meant the answer lay within the copy of
The Ahriman Heresy
, but he realized if that were the case, then Crowley wouldn’t have come to the bookshop searching for the grimoire.

Darius was following Crowley
, he mused to himself.
Crowley might have learned about the grimoire from
The Ahriman Heresy,
or from another source, and then begun his search. Where did
Crowley
look next, that’s the question
.

That something like the Ahriman Grimoire had survived did not surprise Viktor. No matter how great the persecution, powerful ideas and hidden knowledge have a way of staying alive, secrets buried in the cracks of history, waiting to be uncovered like vine-covered ruins in the jungle.

Wishing he had his absinthe, Viktor settled into the chair to read. When he finished he closed the book and sat in silence, his elbows on the table, fingers steepled against his mouth.

A
lone in the catacombs,
Grey’s mind shouted at him, with God knew how many members of the Church of the Beast in that cavern and a maze of tunnels in every direction. But if there was an innocent girl bound to a rock slab in that tomb of horrors, then he had to do something, or at least try.

He sprinted down the passage. As he closed in on the mouth of the huge cavern and saw what lay inside, he started to shake. Not from fear, though part of him was afraid, but from an emotion that had always been more powerful than fear for Grey, one that shuddered him to his core as he took in the scene.

Anger.

Dozens of black-cloaked worshippers lined the walls and filled the center of the cavern, surrounding a wooden contraption in the middle, a fifteen-foot-high hangman’s tower that supported a table-size platform four feet off the ground. A silver bowl rested in the middle of the platform, and on each corner sat an enormous gas lantern, together casting a reddish glow throughout the cavern.

Hanging upside down above the platform, feet tied to a rope suspended from the top of the wooden tower, long blond hair swaying underneath her, was a naked young woman.

She had cuts on her neck and wrists, her outstretched fingertips dangling above the huge bowl. Blood dripped from her wounds into the basin, her blood-streaked hair and face giving her a ghoulish appearance. Grey could see
her swaying a few inches back and forth, fingers wriggling, probably too weakened by blood loss to do much more than attempt a feeble struggle.

Rage
.

She was alive, and Grey clung to that fact with a desperate hope. A priest in a black cassock stood on the platform beside the girl, holding a red goblet in one hand and a curved knife in the other, identical to the one Grey had taken from his captive. Grey noticed everyone holding a goblet. His eyes flicked to the bowl, and his soul shrank from the implication.

Grey edged into the cavern, still behind the other cult members. Either no one had noticed him, or no one thought twice about another black-cloaked arrival. Just inside the cavern, placed on ledges on either side of the entrance, Grey saw two smaller lanterns, similar to the ones on the platform. He also saw a basin of water, probably to extinguish the torches. Looking around the cavern, he saw three other entrances, each illuminated by lanterns.

The priest on the platform bent to dip his goblet into the silver bowl beneath the girl, bringing it up streaked with crimson. The chanting from the crowd continued, the same monotone words issuing forth in that guttural language, causing Grey to scream to himself in silence.

Stop chanting, you depraved lunatics, stop chanting and take your knives, your cloaks, and your bloodstained hands and go watch a horror movie or role-play in a nightclub. Do not, do not, do
not
do what it looks like you’re about to do.

The priest raised the goblet and drank, lips stained red with blood. Grey swallowed. He could not, would not, stand and watch in dismay while this girl’s life drained away, blood and spirit quenched by these animals.

There were too many, and he knew his chances of survival were almost nil, hers even lower. He had no idea how he was going to get her out of the catacombs, he had no idea about much of anything, save for one thing: The people in this room were about to find out what it was like to go to war.

You think you have a taste for violence? Let’s see just how deep that appetite runs.

After slipping his knife inside his cloak, he grabbed the two lanterns off the ledges beside him. He broke the glass on the bottoms, with the butt of his
torch. Each lantern was filled with a deep basin of highly flammable lamp oil, which Grey splashed on the backs of the robes of the men next to him. As heads turned he tossed the remaining oil as far as he could into the crowd, in a path towards the platform, and then in a circular spray.

Shouts and confused cries interrupted the chanting, but Grey had already brushed his torch against the backs of the thin polyester cloaks of the men next to him, causing a leaping flame that ignited the cloaks like living torches and spread quickly in the crowded space. Grey then broke the glass on the top half of the lanterns, still burning from the residual fuel on the wicks, and threw these firebombs-in-waiting into the crowd. They met with the burning robes and exploded in sharp cracks.

Dozens were on fire or trying to shrug out of their cloaks, the entire cavern in chaos. Grey burst through the first line, knife in one hand and torch in the other, setting more worshippers alight as he waded towards the center of the room and sprang onto the platform. One man in the room had been aware enough, from his heightened vantage point, to notice the source of the confusion, and Grey’s blood curdled when he saw what the priest on the platform was doing: standing beside the girl, looking right at Grey with a maniacal grin, curved knife pressing into her throat.

Her eyes bulged in fear, but before Grey could move, before he could plead or bargain for her life, the priest ran his knife across her throat, and the girl’s head jerked. Grey knew it had been a death stroke.

The priest came at Grey, knife raised and eyes burning. He died on his third step, blow parried and insides gutted before he even knew what was happening. Grey took him by his hair and slung him off the platform, then went to the girl and lifted her chin. She was already limp, eyes lifeless.

Grey overturned the basin of blood in a rage, then killed the first six men who climbed onto the platform, wielding the knife as an extension of his own prodigiously talented hands, stalking and feinting and slicing from all angles, a whirlwind of violence and terror.

The men below hesitated, no one wanting to be the next to step onto the platform. Grey stood alone above the fray, shivering with rage, covered in blood.

“Dominic Grey!”

The shout came from his left, from the middle of the crowd. The stench of burning flesh filled the room, and greasy smoke filled the cavern, giving the air a surreal glow.

“Dominic Grey,” a powerfully built man in the middle called out again, a lit torch in his raised hand. “You can’t fight us all.” He swept his arms in a circle, roaring,
“Lui brûler!”