The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) (40 page)

“Viktor,” she whispered.

Her
voice.

He told himself it couldn’t be real, could not be her voice, but his senses told him otherwise. He squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he was intoxicated. When he opened them he listened to the tick of the clock, flexed his fingers, touched the glass to his lips.

She was gesturing to him now, still whispering, the voice unmistakable. He had to obey his muse, illusory or not.

“Eve,” he said, leaving the patio and climbing the low stone wall that bordered the property. She was moving away from him, across the hillside, towards the stone staircase leading to the heights of La Rocca.

He hurried to catch up, peering through the darkness that had settled over the hill. His long legs took the stone steps two at a time, yet still the ghost of his beloved drifted ahead, the distance between them an ache he had endured for decades, impossible to ignore.

He swigged straight from the bottle as he climbed, the unprepared absinthe burning his throat. If this was a vision from the Green Fairy, then he didn’t want it to end. The steps became a faint path worn into the rock, then dirt and scrub. She would appear out of the darkness to beckon, her face cloaked by the hood. “Help me, Viktor. He still has me.”

“Who does?” Viktor said.

“You know who.”

Oh, my Eve, I promise not to fail you this time. Whatever you need I shall do, my love.

In the back of his mind he wondered whether this was the proof of the beyond he had sought all his life, his beloved returned from the grave, a living wraith before his very eyes.

She stopped and half turned, beckoning with her finger, tawny blond hair silken as starlight, just as it ever was.

“Eve!” he moaned, reaching for those pale hands whose warmth he had not felt for lifetimes, a shudder of emotion coursing through him. The ache to bury his face in her hair was more than he could bear.

Viktor took the final step towards her, and then he was falling through the night, his last step never reaching solid ground.

G
rey woke to someone dabbing his forehead with a wet cloth. Long straight hair, dyed black, brushed his face. Underneath the hair he recognized the gaunt body of the barmaid, clad in black fishnets, knee-high leather boots, and a lacy top.

“I’m sorry they did that to you,” she said in a low voice.

Grey’s eyes flicked upward, to the pierced lip and brow. “Did you call the police?”

She averted her eyes. “I can’t.”

“Yeah, you can.”

“He’ll kill me and my Lizzie.”

“I can help you,” Grey said.

“It’s not just him. It’s all of ’em; they’re everywhere now. The East End’s infected.”

“Just give me names and an address. I work in law enforcement. With Interpol.”

She gave a short, hysterical peal of laughter. “You ’aven’t seen him, ’ave you? That tattoo? Those eyes? I’ve never seen the boys afraid of anyone but ’im.”

“I’ve been hearing that a lot.”

She moved her head closer, dropped her voice even more. “He’s not even the worst. There’s another one, someone
he
reports to.”

“Are they in that new building a few blocks away, the glass one?” Grey said.

She exchanged the blood-soaked rag for another. “Blowed if I know.”

“Why didn’t they kill me?”

“I’m just the bartender; they sent me to wake you. There’s someone they’re looking for, though. Some girl. Maybe you know ’er?”

Grey’s hands tightened. “Who is it?”

“Supposed to be a real stunner. Never seen ’er meself.” She dabbed gently at his forehead. “If you know ’er, could be the only thing that can help you.”

“Why do they want her?” Grey said.

“Like I said, I’m just the help. You do know ’er, don’t you?” Her voice dropped to a whisper, conspiratorial. “Tell me where she is and I’ll make a deal for the both of us.” She made an abbreviated sound somewhere between a hiccup and a giggle. “A deal with the Devil.”

“Aren’t there three?” Grey said.

“Wha’?”

“Three in the deal. Me, you, and your Lizzie.”

She lowered her eyes. “Yeah, that’s right.”

“Get out of my face,” Grey said.

Her face transformed into a mask of rage, eyes blazing with righteous fury. She raked her nails across his face. “Foul thing! Where is she?” Grey cringed from another swipe of her claws. “He’ll cut you into pieces and eat your heart; we’ll toast to your blood and toss your bones in a bucket!”

The door swung open. When she saw who was in the doorway, a lean man about Grey’s age and height and wearing a black duster, she swallowed her words and shrank away from Grey.

“I tried, Dante,” she said, bowing her head. “I tried, but he ’ad nothing to say—”

“Leave us,” Dante rasped, and Grey detected both a lisp and a harsh French accent.

She scurried out of the room and closed the door. Dante regarded Grey from across the room, expressionless. His long face had a Mediterranean pallor, and Grey could see the bottom half of the tattoo covering Dante’s scalp,
the tips of the pentagram reaching downward like the grasping legs of a spider.

He moved forward, stopping a few feet away. “Dominic Grey.”

It was said as a statement, and Grey didn’t deny it. As Dante spoke, Grey noticed the points of his sharpened incisors. “I thank you for making my job easy.”

“I thought your job was in Paris,” Grey said, “butchering innocent victims in your little Hell caves.”

“Where’s Eve?”

“Who?” Grey said.

Dante flicked his tongue across his incisors. “We know she helped you in the catacombs.”

Grey didn’t show it, but his head was spinning. How did they know someone had helped him in the catacombs, and who was Eve? Was it someone else, or Anka by a different name? And why did she have the same name as the girl from Viktor’s past?

“That was just me, pal. I’m sure your friends will vouch for that, the ones still alive.”

Dante’s mouth tightened. “You’re still alive because we want her. I ask one more time: Where is she? He knows you’ve been with her.”

“She’s not his toy.”

Dante just smiled, and Grey didn’t like it. At all. “Do you mean Simon, or Darius? How many names does he have? You might want to know who you’re working for before you kill for him.”

“Why?” Dante said.

The nonchalant manner in which Dante answered unnerved Grey, crawled under his skin as would the detached response of any psychopath to someone with a rational mind.

“I know about you,” Grey said. “I know what happened to your parents, to your sister.” Grey inclined his head towards his own back, where the scars from his father’s beatings and cigarette burns lay intertwined within the
Irezumi
-style jujitsu tattoo that sprawled over and around his father’s handiwork. “You’re not the only one who knows about pain.”

Dante stepped to Grey, eyes bulging. Grey could see his face twitching to keep control. “You know nothing of pain.” He withdrew a foot-long blade, then snapped the flat of the blade across the left side of Grey’s torso, smacking the ribs that had been bruised in the fight.

Grey drew a sharp breath and gritted his teeth. “What I know is that pain is mental. It only controls you if you’re weak.”

“It controls you whether you like it or not. It’s just a matter of degree.”

“Submission is different from control, Dante. Everyone submits to torture eventually, but that doesn’t mean the pain has controlled you, it means your body has failed and your mind’s in shock. You recover when it’s over. I’ve never seen anyone as controlled by pain as you. You’re as good as dead.”

Dante took the blade in both hands and thrust forward as if to impale Grey, reversing the stroke at the last minute to strike him in the side of the face, again with the flat of the blade. Grey’s head snapped to the side, blood running out of his mouth from shredded gums. Colored dots filled his vision.

“I’m dead already,” Dante said, “and you’ll be dead soon, too. But before that, you’ll learn to respect the pain.”

“If it’s respect you’re after, you’re in the wrong room. Untie me, and we’ll talk about respect.”

Dante’s wrist twitched, and the knife in his hand flew downward. Grey felt a sunburst of agony, and saw the knife sticking out of the top of his thigh. He balled his fists against the darts of fire shooting through his leg, and it took all of his willpower not to gasp.

“You know I would have killed you already, if that was my goal,” Dante said. “You know we need you alive for a few more days, and you know I’ll move you someplace more private and torture you when I have more time. You’re fine with all of that—you’re strong; you accept it. What you may not know is what we have planned for Viktor and for Eve. I’ll make sure to allow you to watch.
Oui
, I can see in your eyes that this is your form of torture. I
can see in your eyes you’re already closer to me than you realize. No one as good with pain as you can be far from embracing it forever.”

Grey spoke through tightened lips. “Remember when I told you I knew about you? You interrupted me. I wasn’t going to say I sympathized with you; I was going to say I didn’t give a damn. Life is hard for everyone, some more than others. But the damage you cause to other people, that’s on you. Your pain has made you into a monster.”

Dante’s mouth curled. “We’ll see who knows what about pain.” He grasped the hilt of the knife stuck in Grey’s thigh and twisted it, tearing deeper into flesh and muscle. Grey’s vision blurred as waves of nauseating pain tore through his nerve endings. Only his training in pain management kept him from going into shock.

Dante yanked the knife free, another knife appearing in his hand as if by magic. He held the tips of both to Grey’s eyes. “After you watch me kill your loved ones, I will take these next, so you can suffer in darkness.
À demain
.”

With a flick of his wrist he reversed the knife again, and swiped the hilt across Grey’s temple.

V
iktor opened his eyes to tendrils of pink sunlight threading the hillside. He tasted dirt, and spat. After wiping his mouth he groaned to a sitting position.

Nothing felt broken, though everything hurt. His head throbbed the hardest, though from the fall or excessive absinthe, Viktor wasn’t sure. He surveyed his surroundings and realized he was at the bottom of a long slope, at the base of the path to La Rocca. He could see his villa through a pine grove to his left. Looking up, he saw the five-foot wall off which he must have stepped. He vaguely remembered tumbling down the hill and lying in a daze at the bottom.

Two early climbers gave him sidelong glances. Viktor stood and brushed himself, remembering Eve’s voice, her hair, her lips. She had seemed so real. He cursed himself for his weakness and shuffled towards the villa.

His driver was taking coffee on the balcony next to Viktor’s, eyes widening as Viktor approached from the hillside. “We leave for Geraci Siculo in fifteen minutes,” Viktor said, his voice hoarse, his hands still shaking from the absinthe.

“I can help you?” the driver said.

“No.”

Viktor showered, dressed, and made espresso in the moka pot. He tried to call Grey and got no answer. Just after the coffee bubbled upward, Jacques called.

“Yes?” Viktor said.

“Where are you?”

Viktor held the phone to his ear while he added a dollop of cream. “Investigating.”

“I asked you to come to Rome.”

“Not all requests are granted,” Viktor said. “I will come to Rome in two days.”

“That’s the day after the deadline for His Holiness,” Jacques said.

“Tell me what it is I can do to protect His Holiness that the entire Swiss Guard cannot?”

Jacques didn’t answer.

“Trust I am doing what I consider best for the investigation,” Viktor said. “My partner is doing the same, exploring leads in London.”

“
Oui?
Such as?”

Viktor informed Jacques of his theory that Darius, Simon, and the man behind the murders were all the same man, leaving undisclosed that he had suspected this for days.

“If we can locate this man before tomorrow night,” Jacques said, “we can at least observe or detain him until the threat to His Holiness has passed.”