The Grotesques (41 page)

“I don’t think it’s like that,” Rob whispered.

Romain wiped a hand under his nose. “Stay. Ella stay.” He pointed at Rob, his face sporting an ugly glare. “Ella stay.” His eyes darted between the two of them. Seemingly satisfied, he placed the tip of the cross on Adam’s head and began his chants. Even from where they stood they could feel heat radiate from his hand. “Adam still,” he crooned. Adam’s breathing slowed and his face relaxed.

Ella took a step forward. Adam was far too still. Not only was his skin turning grey but his features were losing definition. Rob’s hand settled on her shoulder before she could intervene. “He warned you not to interrupt.”

She hesitated, then forced herself to remain still. “I trust him,” she said. True enough until Romain shifted to block their view. That brought all her wariness back. She walked around the desk. When she saw Adam, her heart skipped a beat. Romain had turned him back to stone.

“You promised to bring him back.”

“Ella! Stay there.” It was a warning that sounded so much like natural speech it froze her to the spot. She watched as a light burst from Romain’s cross. It bathed the stone, lightening it and blurring its edges. When it died, Adam, human flesh and blood, lay curled up on the floor shivering violently, his breath fast and shallow, his clothes damp with perspiration. Ella removed the police jacket Rob had lent her at the canal and laid it over him.

“Ella?” He sounded disoriented. She hugged him to her, rubbing the goosebumps on his arms. His eyes locked on hers. In that moment, she forgot anyone else was in the room. She closed her eyes as he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

The door shut loudly as Rob left the room. She could not help looking down in guilt.

“Mr Lowell?” Chief Inspector Roan helped Adam up. He kept an arm around her waist. She rather liked that.

“I saw. Romain. He tamed a dragon.”

“I understand you have been through an ordeal but we need to move. Can you walk?”

Adam nodded, though he reached for the desk as his knees sagged. That didn’t stop him draping the police jacket back over her when he noticed her torn blouse. Ella pulled it around her neck.

“Give me a minute,” she said to Adam, placing a hand on his cheek.

ELLA FOUND ROB
at his desk. He stood up as soon as she came into view.

“Work can’t wait?”

“You’re sounding like your old self,” he said.

She took that as an invitation to approach. “You don’t know how much it means to hear that. Thank you. For everything.”

“You and Adam have had more to do with solving this case than I have.”

“You believed in me. I needed that.”

Rob gave her a single nod. “I guess we both needed to learn to trust again.”

She took a deep breath. “I never meant to hurt you.”

His eyes drifted to an old copy of the
Informer
on his desk. She couldn’t fail to notice it lay open to a page with one of her articles. “It looks like that paper of yours has some credibility after all.”

She walked around the desk and kissed him in much the same way she had kissed Romain.

“Ella, I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I’m not particularly proud of the fact that my principles aided a drug smuggler.”

“But you’d do it again.”

“With no hesitation.”

“Then for you, this has all been worth it.” His eyes held bittersweet concern.

She ran a finger along her by-line. “Strangely enough, it has.”

He helped her put on the oversized jacket. “I suppose we’ve proven we make an unbeatable investigative team.”

Her smile turned humorous. “Maybe we can work together again sometime.”

Rob grew serious but she knew him too well not to see behind the facade. “Just so long as you come totally clean about what you know, when you know it.”

“Agreed. But this is not over yet.”

His expression lengthened. He took her hand and gestured with his head. She looked back as he led her toward the Chief Inspector’s office and caught a glimpse of a black coat. Even so, Rob paused with a hand on the knob. “He’s a good man, Ella.” He was watching her reflection in the glass. They both noticed the bat at the same time. Rob turned to watch it flutter. Her grab for his arm drew a sympathetic look as he threw open the door. It swooped toward the greying man in the black coat, cutting a line that drew his attention their way. Rob gestured her down the passage.

“We need to go. Now.”

THE SMUGGLER OPENED
his house to them without question. A copy of the
Informer
in his hand, he watched her carefully as they piled into his living room. They had lost Osbourne. The detectives at the station, loyal to their chief, had detained him with by-the-book procedure until they could commandeer two police cars and slip away. If Doer was going to have problems with the blue and white vehicles parked out front, he gave no sign. Neither did he comment on the front page news. From what she could see of the headline, Phil had come through. Her name was attached to trash nobody would have believed a day ago. She made herself comfortable in one of the egg chairs and soaked up the overcast view of the city. She figured after what she had been through she deserved it. The others took the modern chaises except for Brendan, who sat stiffly on a hard chair and looked everywhere except at Doer and Roan.

“You need to hear this,” she said to the silent felon, wishing the bat fluttering at the window would just go away.

His missus, a curvy woman with spiked, bleached hair, dressed in tight leather pants and jacket, prepared sandwiches for them to eat while Ella and Adam related in awkward spurts what they had learned of Genord and his church. This time, she held nothing back. “That bat is Genord’s spy,” she concluded because it had persisted in thumping the glass. A moment later the missus was outside and swiping it with a broom.

“So what are we are left with?” Rob asked.

“A dragon head that wasn’t destroyed in seventh century Rouen and a wooden body created in our time.” Nobody said anything. “Sacrifices that give Genord power.” Doer made a hoarse noise in the back of his throat. It was the first sound he had made since they arrived. “And bring the dragon to life,” she added. He choked. She went to sit next to him.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Brodie, is he one of those creatures?”

“I’m so sorry.” She kept looking him in the eye until her comment sank in.

The boy’s name drew Adam over. She moved her hand to her shoulder, and he took it. “Romain was at the police station, and we couldn’t get past Genord’s magic. We couldn’t help your son.”

Even in the pallid light Ella could see Doer’s face was a mask.

“Then there’s little left of him.” Doer got up and went to stand by the window, hands on hips. “The bastard is going to pay.” He sounded like he was crying. His missus, seeing something was wrong, came back in. The evasive bat flapped against the window. The glass rattled. Ella flinched. She couldn’t relax even after Adam whispered a reassurance.

“We all want Genord dead,” Adam said.

Ella flicked her eyes to Rob. He did not disagree. “We wanted to tell you in person,” Ella said to Doer, “but I also thought you might be able to help.”

“From what I’ve heard, guns don’t touch that devil but I’m willing to go in blazing with everyone who owes me the slightest favour.”

“It won’t do the least bit of good. We need to find the dragon head. You mentioned you had a man working on the excavation. Were there any other anomalies besides the connection to the river, anywhere at all Genord might have hidden it?” she asked.

Doer shook his head. His expression was hard. “No, but something that important, he’d have gotten his own crew to do it and disposed of them afterward. You don’t take chances with cargo that valuable.”

Ella cringed at the matter of fact way he discussed murder.

Doer picked up on her sentiments. “Unlike Genord, I do not murder innocents. You asked to come here, Ella.”

“I could never approve of your work, but, yes, I,
we
, are asking for your help.”

“What do you need?”

Her lips parted but she really had no idea what to say.

“Do not think for a minute I am condoning a vigilante attack,” Roan said, “but why are we presuming the bastard is immune to ammunition?”

“I shot him,” Ella said. “About five times. He didn’t even bleed.”

The chief rubbed his neck as he fought down a first reaction. “Was he wearing Kevlar?”

“On his head?” She took a deep breath, quaking even before she said, “There’s a way to find out for sure.”

Adam stood as she did. She could see by the laxity in his jaw he guessed what she intended. “It’s a bad idea,” he said. “It rattles you every time.”

She gave him a subtle shake of her head because it was the only way they might ever learn how to defeat Genord.

“Do you even know why it happens?” he asked.

“Romain thinks I’m sensitive in some way. He thinks I picked up on Genord’s thoughts when he tried to detect mine with the bats.”

“What if Genord takes control? We don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“He already knows where we are. It’s best I do it now, before we have a plan.” She licked her lips, watching the bat weave to and fro in its search for a way in. The only blessing was that it remained a solitary nuisance. “And we’ve got Romain.”

The poor mason was kneeling in front of the coffee table, the awkward cross around his neck. He swallowed half a sandwich and wiped his mouth. “Ella see past.” He attacked the remainder of the sandwich and plucked another from the tray. “Ella safe,” he said with a full mouth. Ella leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder.

“Do you have any idea who he is?” Roan asked.

“Would you believe me if I said he’s a saint from about 600 A.D.?” she replied as Adam squeezed her hand.

Roan took only a second before answering. “After this morning, I’ll believe anything.”

Ella took a deep breath. “Will you let the bat in?” she said.

Doer narrowed his eyes. “You want a spy in here?”

She swallowed. He flicked his head. His missus, less confident in her movements though Doer had thus far spared her news of Brodie’s death, opened the back door in the adjoining room. The bat darted in. Adam stepped away. Cringing, she reached out a hand as it flapped past. Her shuddery touch set her stumbling. She tripped against the table as Romain sprung up with a desperate cry. One of his brutish hands grabbed her while the other knocked the bat across the room.

HIS FEET ITCHED
on this, the night of old Samhain. Romain padded to the roof of the church and there, beneath twinkling stars, laid a loving hand upon the grotesques he had fashioned. King Dagobert had thought his bishop’s craft amusing. The townspeople had thought it apt as they flocked to a new faith beneath the symbols of the old. The ancient souls taking refuge within the stone had protected Rouen through many a year of dwindling belief, content to stand sentinel rather than fade from existence.

Breath drawn, Romain descended and made his way around the bell tower, to the gargoyle he must sight before his heart could rest. High on the walls, La Gargouille’s head made amends for her former mischief by draining water from the sacred walls.

The mystic night had seduced another. Beneath the bell tower, Genord reached tenderly toward his adored Gargouille. A blue wisp of energy cackled from her snout, teasing itself toward his fingers. A wraith-like head formed, its eyes flickering, its jaws snapping. Romain swallowed. This yearly ritual weighed heavy upon his heart. He had lowered flood waters from the city, cursed foul demons to hell, and dismantled pagan temples stone by stone, but the scourge of his heart he could never betray.

“Brother, do not be tempted down that evil road again.”

Genord smiled. “It is I who tempt the fates.”

Romain clutched the heavy cross he wore.

“Not this time, brother bishop.” Genord’s laughter belted him from every side.

The ghostly dragon slipped from the shrivelled jaws of the mummified head, writhing through air as the flesh and blood beast had coursed through water. “See. I reign more powerful than your pitiful God.”

Romain raised the cross. Dragon and wood collided. The jarring impact dropped him to his knees but he held fast to the symbol of his faith. Before it, the wraith balked. He stood and pushed. With each heavy step, the dragon retreated to the shrivelled head.

“No!” Genord thrust his mind upon the wraith, drawing it inside him, knitting its energy through his blood. With crushing strength, he clasped Romain’s shoulder. “Yield.”

Energy blasted Romain’s innards, tearing his heart from his chest. Through clenched teeth, Romain called for his God. Pure light burst out of the cross, bathing Genord in a radiance that set him screaming. The wraith whipped from his body and coiled back to the tempered head. Their bodies flung apart.