The Thieves of Darkness (46 page)

With great effort, despite his dark emotions, he placed the rod in the box mold and closed the top. Almost instantly the feeling diminished.
He momentarily feared the rod emitted some type of radiation, but, if so, both he and KC would have felt it ever since they’d obtained the rod, as the leather and metal tube it was held in was incapable of containing any deadly emissions.

He didn’t know what caused the feeling, but there was no doubt it came from the ancient artifact. He refused to speculate on the cause—he didn’t need his mind running away from him—and remained focused on his creation. Nonetheless, he decided he would keep the odd effect of being in direct contact with the rod to himself and would create two replicas before dawn.

After five minutes, Michael opened the box. He brushed a coating of baby oil over the hardened half mold so that he could easily separate the cast when it had hardened. He mixed up a new batch of mold compound, poured it over the exposed rod, and closed the box.

Michael’s adopted father, Alec St. Pierre, the man who had raised him, was an expert craftsman, a man who tinkered with and created everything from grandfather clocks and cars to furniture and electronics. Michael had learned many skills from him and had developed a great love of creating things from scratch. It was artistry, a skill that had proven more than helpful in his illicit past. Though Alec St. Pierre had passed away, Michael still cherished the memory of the father who raised him, a feeling that wasn’t diminished by his relationship with his birth father, Stephen Kelley, the man who owned the jet in the hangar, the man who told him tales of his heritage, of his birth mother, and what she had been like before she died in childbirth. Michael considered himself more than lucky: He had lost the father who raised him, but cherished his memory, while being privileged to become friends with the father with whom he shared blood.

Michael flipped back the top of the wooden box, exposing a black hunk of rubber. He gingerly separated the mold into its two halves to reveal a perfect mold of the rod. Michael took out the original and tucked it back in its case, not wanting to experience the unpleasantness of its presence.

He removed the two sections of the hard rubberlike mold, and on
the lowermost end by the tails of the entwined snakes, he used his knife and carved out a slit into which he placed a small copper pipe. He then took a drill and, with a one-sixty-fourth-size drill bit, punched ten holes along the length of the rod’s outline.

Michael laid the two halves perfectly against each other and duct-taped them together. He carved a notch in his wooden box and dropped the mold inside, allowing the copper pipe to protrude from the box. He grabbed a tube of resin and injected it into the copper pipe, emptying the entire contents into the mold, then followed suit with five more tubes until the gel overflowed the top.

Michael placed the case aside, grabbed his camera, and climbed up into the jet. He headed to the small conference table, downloaded his picture file into his computer, and printed out the photos of the rod, studying them with a careful eye. He went to the bar, crouched, and spun open the safe, pulling out a black velvet pouch, tucking it into his pocket. Closing the safe, he headed back to the workbench.

Michael opened the case, unbound the rubber mold, and pulled out the resin replica. It was deep brown, a perfect match but for its overall color. Michael twirled it about, slapping it against the palm of his hand, and smiled: The quick-drying resin was as sturdy as metal.

Michael reaffixed the two halves of the mold together. He squirted more resin compound into the head section of the mold and turned back to his workbench. He set about grinding the sharp edges and imperfections off the replica. With his hand grinder, Michael ground down the raised areas that corresponded to the jewels on the original staff. He made quick work of the eyes, honing them down to concave sockets, and filed off the poised fangs.

With a delicate hand, Michael painted the bodies of the snakes in a rough reflection of the original serpents that intertwined up the shaft, distinguishing and highlighting them from the rod they wrapped around. He wasn’t concerned about creating an exact replica so much as an authentic artifact that would suspend suspicion for the briefest of moments.

From the velvet pouch Michael extracted two ornate necklaces, each
a gathering of a host of precious gems. Spoils from a theft many years in the past, they were finally being put to good use. Michael snipped the necklaces apart and epoxied the gems into the recesses he had created along the length of the rod. He inlaid four small rubies into the eye sockets and nodded at the likeness he had created. He reached into the pouch and withdrew two silver forks. He carefully cut the tines from the fork body and placed the first one in a vise. With a metal grinder, Michael honed the tine into a sharp fang, following suit with each tine until he had four perfect fangs. He rubbed them with a mixture of black paint and chalk, approximating silver tarnish, making them appear aged. He drilled four holes and epoxied the teeth into the snake mouths. He held up the rod and smiled. His creation could have fooled Sultan Selim II himself, but Michael had an even greater advantage: No one knew exactly what the rod looked like except for him and KC. It had never been on display in a museum, it had never been rendered in exact detail. It was an object of myth, so the duplicate wrought by Michael St. Pierre could fool the world.

Michael opened the mold and withdrew the second head, which was a virtual duplicate of the serpent head before him. He repeated the process of grinding and painting, creating a replica head of jeweled eyes and silver teeth. He anchored the head to a wooden rod, wrapped it in bubble wrap, and inserted it into the leather tube.

Upon reuniting with KC in the morning, Michael had passed off the perfect duplicate as the genuine article, and once he was sure that their plan had worked, without the need to surrender the original rod, he had Busch place the original in the jet’s safe. Michael showed KC the wooden rod with the false head, which she would use to deceive Iblis. He was confident that Iblis would only peer into the container, not risk taking it out in a public place like the courtyard of the Blue Mosque. His ruse worked—he had fooled Iblis, he had fooled KC—but now as he stood inside the jet back in the hangar eighteen hours later, he condemned himself for his cleverness, for his deception might very well end up costing KC her life.

“Paul,” Michael turned to his friend. “I don’t care about this treasure,
this place of peace or whatever horror may lie beneath it. All I care about is getting KC. When Iblis and Venue find out the rod she carries is a fake …” Michael paused, unable to voice his fears. “Mary died of cancer, there was nothing I could do to prevent it, I know that. But KC … I’m not going to have another woman I love die when I have the power to save her.”

KC lay upon the bed in the stateroom at the back of the Royal Falcon jet. They had been in the air for almost eight hours, heading east over the rocky, arid plains of Turkey. KC had occasionally looked out the window to see the stars and to note that their course had not deviated. They were heading into the heart of Asia, and KC knew where; she didn’t know its name or its precise location, but she had seen it clearly marked on the chart.

It had been Iblis’s goal—she stopped and corrected herself. It had been Venue’s goal. Simon had implored them, with dire warnings, not to let the map fall into Venue’s possession, and now … She felt as if she had laid it right in his hands.

She wondered if Simon knew who Venue truly was, but within seconds, she banished the thought. She felt in her heart he was too good a friend to hide such a devastating secret from her.

She had first learned of Venue before she and Simon raided his office to steal the ancient letter. She knew of his ruthless dealings, of his destruction of even his weakest competitor, and that he was suspected the world over of criminal underworld ties, but she never suspected that he was her father.

He had expertly buried his criminal past in St. Thomas Cemetery in Shrewsbury, England. Finbar Ryan had truly died all those years ago;
she had witnessed his interment standing at her mother’s side. Her father was wiped from the face of the earth, only to be reborn as Philippe Venue, trading in his holster for a briefcase.

And upon her mother’s death, in a psychotically paternal action, Venue had sent Iblis to be their guardian, her teacher. She did not know Venue’s motive, or why he had never attempted to contact them or send money. She was thankful that he had never reached out.

But the fact that he had set her on her life’s path, that he had sent Iblis to turn her into a criminal by using her love for her sister to motivate her, twisted her heart. Her mother had explained that their father was a man capable only of taking, filled with depraved indifference. She understood full well why her mother hated the man, why she had taken them to his funeral so they could all bear witness to his demise.

But her fury at Venue—she would never think of him as her father—and her anger at Iblis were minute when compared to the pain and disappointment she felt toward her sister. She had raised her, sacrificed all for her, supported her, cared for her. Cindy had cried on her shoulder countless times over life, the absence of parents, school, and boys, never knowing that KC had no one to cry to. KC had listened to her sister’s stories of heartbreak, never revealing that she wondered what it felt like to fall in love in order to have your heart broken.

And as Cindy grew up she became driven by success, by money, forever boasting of how she would one day care for KC when she made her millions. She became lost in the materialism of youth, in the craving to have it all, and it had finally consumed her, clouded her understanding of what was truly important in life and making her easy for Iblis to lure into a world of hollow promises, illusory wealth, and Philippe Venue.

As KC sifted through all the confusion and deception, she was filled with mind-numbing rage. At Iblis for all that he had put her through, at Cindy for her betrayal, but most of all at the puppet master, the man who had manipulated them, the man her mother raised her to hate: her father.

The fact that he was alive, that she had broken into his office to steal the grand vizier’s letter … All at once she understood why the first
painting she ever stole and sold,
The Suffering
by Goetia, hung on his wall. It was a prize, displayed with pride, as a coach displays pictures of his gold-medal protégés.

And then a final fact floated to the surface, the worst of all. Venue was the one who had sent her to her death in Chiron Prison, knowing full well that she was his flesh and blood. Was there any more heinous act than condemning your own child to death?

So many thoughts spilled about her mind. She had lived her life under false pretenses and suddenly felt like an utter fool. She sorted through the years, her sacrifices and self-denial, her longing for normalcy, for someone to reach out and pull her out of her life, embracing her, loving her, and making everything right with the world.

And her thoughts fell to Michael. She had gotten so close to a real relationship, one that had filled her heart and soul with joy. There was something shared, and it did not matter if they were angry, frightened, or tired, it was a constant and undeniable bonding of their hearts. In all the places, in all the situations to find love, she had never imagined it would occur under such circumstances. And with a man who made her feel every bit a woman, who made her feel confident and unashamed of her past and her career. He did not look for her to change in any way. He loved her in the most simple and most complicated of ways. He had soothed her when she was nervous, calmed her when she was frightened, and consumed her with his lust. She yearned for him now; she needed to feel the calming effects of his embrace, needed to be told everything would be okay.

For those brief moments of love, for indulging herself, however briefly, for this one instance of selfishness, she was being punished, dragged off to the ends of the earth by the two most despicable men she had ever known: one who had fathered her and one who had trained her. And the one person she thought she could count on, whom she had raised and was closest to, her own sister, had betrayed her and fallen in league with them.

KC walked about the small suite, rummaged through the fridge, and found some Italian sausage and cheese. She opened a bottle of wine. She
wasn’t going to play the martyr and not eat; she wanted to have all her energy when she tore into Cindy. She laid the food on a small desk and sat. She reached inside her shirt and withdrew the engraved necklace that Michael had given her, removing it from her neck, laying it on the table, reading the words of hope:
There’s always tomorrow
. And for the first time since she had met Michael, she doubted that promise, not only doubting his words of wisdom, but doubting she would ever see him again. She dug through the drawers of the small desk, finding a notepad and pen.

And as her heart finally broke, she poured her wine and began to write.

Dearest Michael
,

I’m sorry…

KC watched the sun rise out the jet’s port window, its dawn light painting the lush green forests below an orange early-morning hue. To the north she could see the peaks of the Himalayas and knew they were somewhere over India. No one had knocked, no one had entered the room since their departure. She knew both Cindy and Iblis were on the other side of the door and understood why they had left her alone. They both knew the wrath she would unload on them the moment their eyes met.

The jet began its descent and touched down twenty minutes later on a small private airstrip precariously perched upon a sharply rising hill bordered with ravines on either side. The surrounding area was awash in dense foliage and rolling hills of green. And in the distance, not more than forty miles north, she could see a mountain, larger than anything she had ever seen, its peaks blanketed in snow, outlined by a crystal-blue sky.