The Dark Thorn (6 page)

The sword disappeared.

Richard and the carcass were all that remained.

“Bran,” Richard said flatly.

“Who the hell
are
you?!” Bran questioned, suddenly angry.

The rail-thin man walked toward him, his haunted eyes growing darker with each step, his lips a severe line. Even in the darkness Bran could see Richard was tired. With pale skin and shaggy hair, the homeless man barely looked alive, a walking zombie.

“I am no one to worry about.”

“No, seriously,” Bran pushed. “Who the hell are you and what was that thing?”

“It
was
a mistake.”

“A mistake?”

“Yes, thank you,” Richard scoffed. “No more, at least.” He peered down at the dead body of the cu sith. “The cu sith got lucky once. Not tonight though.”

“What were those things?” Bran reiterated, pointing where the fairies had been. “And that dog thing?”

“
Tha
t is none of your business.”

“The
hell
it ain’t,” Bran hissed, still fueled with adrenaline. “I want answers!”

“Answers, huh?” Richard mocked. He offered his hand. “Leave the Bricks, boy. Get your things and get out of that store. You are safe, for tonight. But not from Merle.”

An unidentified chill swept through Bran. Merle’s visitor smiled in assurance but there was no warmth in it, the offered handshake a mechanical act. Bran sensed danger in touching the man’s hand. He didn’t know how he knew. He just did.

Bran rebuffed the hand.

“Why shouldn’t I trust Merle?” he said instead.

“Don’t come back down here—at night at least,” the disheveled man said, ignoring Bran’s rejection and turning to leave. “Mark my words. Stay away from that old man. He is nothing but trouble.”

“Hey! Wait!” Bran shouted.

“Go back to your street friends,” Richard said over his shoulder as he left the alley. “They are safer than Merle ever will be.”

Leaving the dead cu sith behind, Bran chased after. “Stop, you assho…”

But out on the sidewalk, Richard had vanished.

Still leery of the night around him, Bran hurried the last few blocks to the bookstore. He didn’t know what to think. Creatures that looked like fairies had attacked him. A giant green dog had spoken to him and then tried to kill him.

Either he had been drugged or it had really happened.

And Richard, a friend of Merle, possessed a sword that became vapor at will.

While unlocking the door, Bran peered through the night back the way he had come, angry at the fear still rushing through his veins and his inability to uncover what had truly happened.

For an instant, he thought he saw a flash of brilliant azure light.

Then darkness fell once more.

Cardinal Cormac Pell O’Connor sat in the warm glow of several lamps and placed the phone receiver back onto its cradle.

He was not pleased.

Through the arched window, the silver light of the pregnant moon bathed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and its neighboring Vatican buildings in frosty relief against a sky of diamond chips. Rome had a peaceful majesty at night that transcended its hectic daytime hours. It was rare for the Cardinal to watch the sleeping city with nothing but the tranquil view—he tended to retire early and, as so many others, rose with the sun—but it was rarer still to sleep within his Vatican City apartment and be awakened by a phone call made half a world away with such dire complications to his life.

Cormac sensed turbulent days ahead.

Picking up the receiver again, he dialed four numbers into the old phone. The click of connecting lines followed by a loud squeal met his ear.

He sighed and hung up once more.

The Cardinal leaned back in his chair, waiting and thinking, the simple red robe he had thrown on a smear like drying blood in the window’s mirrored image. Rome glimmered outside but his superimposed ghost image stared back, face carved deep with wrinkles and hawkish blue eyes surrounded by heavy bags of darkness. The man within the glass looked haggard. He barely recognized his own reflection anymore, his disheveled red hair whitening, the apparition exuding weariness and grown older than he could account for.

But a fire still blazed in his heart despite the early hour, a driving need to fulfill his duty.

There just never seemed to be enough time.

Cormac turned away from the aging man, thinking how best to counter the information he now possessed. The call from the archbishop watching over the Seattle portal disturbed him; it forced his hand in a way with which he was not entirely comfortable.

The consequences of his decision could undo him and the power he had spent a lifetime acquiring.

The possible dominion likely gained though made it worth it.

While waiting for his summons to be answered, he picked up a framed photo that sat at the corner of his desk. Black and white, it displayed a smiling middle-aged man bearing a striking resemblance to Cormac, his arms wrapped around the shoulders of a woman and a girl in her teenage years. In front of the trio stood a grinning boy, his hair chaotic.

The background desert met the horizon and nothing else.

The Cardinal smiled sadly, remembering. The Middle East had been a harsh climate filled with a hardened people; Cormac had been a boy on the adventure of a lifetime, bringing the Word to new regions around the world.

The Cardinal Vicar of the Vatican barely remembered that boy.

The day to come would be like all others—filled with a mass, multiple meetings with delegates from around the world, and writing letters of import for the Church and its denizens. The Cardinal Vicar oversaw the daily spiritual operations of the diocese of Rome, a position once held by the Pope before his duties expanded to encompass the wellbeing of the greater Catholic world. Cormac was one of the youngest Cardinal Vicars in the history of the Church, and at fifty-eight years of age, he still had several decades to bring light to the darkest places.

After twenty minutes, a sharp knock came at his office door.

Cormac straightened, letting the full authority of his mantle settle back on his shoulders before clearing his throat.

“Enter please.”

The door opened and a tall man with short blonde hair strode into the room. Unlike the Vatican Swiss Guards he commanded, Finn Arne wore black pants with matching thick sweater devoid of symbols. The dead orb of his left eye peered at the Cardinal like a phantom moon. No evidence of disrupted sleep touched him. He was a captain with daily duties similar to all Swiss Guard but like the Vicar, Finn Arne had secret functions he carried out.

“Captain Arne,” Cormac greeted.

The visitor inclined his head and sat in one of the offered chairs. “Your Eminence.”

“It is early,” the Cardinal said. “I apologize for waking you.”

“The Lord knows neither sun nor moon,” Finn said, his accent shadowed by Germanic. “How may I best serve you, Cardinal Vicar?”

“I have received a disheartening phone call.”

“From?”

“Seattle, Washington, in the United States.” Cormac folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe. “There has been a breach of the portal there.”

Finn frowned. “You seem rather unworried.”

“It was contained. The knight did his duty.”

“I see,” Finn said, smiling. “Then what has stolen me from my warm bed?”

In his many years serving the Church, Cormac had never met a more bold and coldly calculating man than Finn Arne. He was the best trained of hundreds of Swiss Guards who protected the Pope. He had a predisposition to moral flexibility, making him a useful tool. His appetite for young women every night took him, however, down an unholy path Cormac had a hard time overlooking. Finn knew this but made no apology for it.

Cormac knew the captain’s warm bed had a warmer female body still in it.

“The attacked is the son of Ardall,” Cormac replied instead.

The smile dropped from Finn’s mouth.

“Do I have your attention now?” Cormac questioned, gratified at the captain’s change.

Finn Arne sat straighter. “Does His Eminence know?”

“The Pope has other pressing matters to contend with. It is best he know nothing of this—at least, not until it is finished.”

“And the others?” Finn Arne asked.

Cormac thought about the Vigilo. The other Cardinals were all devout and strong, entrusted with most Vatican secrets. The Pope led the Vigilo but the Vicar was its true leader. It oversaw the portals, prepared for any attempt by those on the other side to return from Annwn. The Church led the Yn Saith knights as best it could despite the machinations of the old wizard, but over the centuries the Vigilo had lost much of its power. Cormac breathed deep. Beyond this new situation there was an opportunity to gain a power the Church had had only once in its long past.

Including the other Cardinals could disrupt what chance Cormac had of gaining that power.

Finn Arne would know the truth, as would the Seer.

That would be it.

Cormac returned the man’s icy stare. “You alone will know of this.”

“The portal here is safe?”

“It is. Cardinal Seer Ramirez and Ennio Rossi protect it. If it were not safe, I would know.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“Bring young Ardall here,” Cormac ordered. “This must be done discreetly and quickly.”

“How did you learn of this? Certainly not from McAllister.”

“From a spy in the employ of Archbishop Glenallen at my behest. I have had a certain bookstore in Seattle watched for some time now. Even if the old man avoids capture in one of his places of business, the Vigilo knows what transpires there,” the Cardinal said. “I have spies in all places, Captain. Never forget that.”

“Did the knight remove—”

“The boy’s memory? No, he did not,” Cormac grunted. “There is more going on here than what lies on the surface.”

“What of McAllister, should I encounter him?”

Cormac fought the distaste in his mouth. Richard McAllister. He was one of the older knights, a man whose past haunted him. While Cormac knew that past to be a hard one, the knight had lost the capacity to rise above it, for the role he was asked to play. He was an infected wound the Church could not afford to turn gangrenous.

“He should pose no threat. Of the seven Yn Saith, he is the weakest. I doubt he has the constitution to challenge you or your men. Leave him be. His time of reckoning is coming.”

“Then I will fly at once.” Finn Arne pushed away from his chair.

“Sit
down
, Finn,” Cormac commanded sharply.

The captain lowered back into his chair, his dead eye an agate in a harsh face.

“Be wary, Captain,” the Cardinal said. “Don’t run back to your
warm bed
too quickly. There are other forces along the Seattle waterfront you should be reminded of. The Kreche still lives and the old wizard is adept at calling on aid from all quarters.”

“The Kreche…” Finn Arne scowled.

“It lives longer than most halfbreeds, nigh on ninety years now,” Cormac reiterated. “It is not a factor to be taken lightly, Captain Arne, especially if Myrddin Emrys is pressed into a fight.”

“I will be cautious, Your Grace.”

“One more thing,” the Cardinal said, leaning forward. “The Ardall boy may have a seed of some kind on his person. It will be unlike anything you have seen before. Search his home, search his person. Search anywhere you think it could be and bring it to me unchanged.”

“You believe the old man has plans for the boy then.”

Cormac nodded. “The wizard is mostly impotent now, but he can be…unorthodox.”

“It will be as you ask, Your Grace.”

“You have the Lord and the Church on your side,” the Cardinal Vicar said. “Let no one stand in your way.”

“I will not, your Eminence,” Finn Arne promised.

“The jet will be ready when you arrive to the airstrip,” Cormac said. “Assemble your team. The centuries-long secret of the Vigilo cannot be discovered by this boy. Be the Shield you were meant to be. Do not delay.” The Cardinal paused. “And do not fail me.”

Finn Arne rose, bowed, and left, fire in his lone eye.

Cormac watched him go. Finn would see the job done now that his focus was in the right place. It had been years since the Kreche had last been observed in the city of Seattle, just as it had been years since the Heliwr strode the world. If the boy had been given the seed—if the old man had surfaced to gain his new champion—then Cormac and those of the Vigilo had to be prepared to counter the wizard and be ready to take advantage of it.

But why had a fey creature from Annwn gone after the scion of Ardall?

There was some element Cormac missed.

He shook his head. With religious zealotry feverish in the Middle East and throughout the world, Cormac would do what was necessary to destroy it and other evils.

To gain the power of the Heliwr would tip the scales in favor of the Church.

And give Cormac a direct path to the papacy.

Assured Finn Arne was gone, Cormac changed into his official robes and ventured into the bowels of the papal apartments. The light of overhead lamps dimmed with every floor he left. Down he went, each descended staircase a gripe to hips and knees, until he entered tunnels devoid of any light source and had to flip on a flashlight. Chill seeped from the stone, followed by damp and mold, strengthening until he had to breathe through his mouth. The bones of the city’s birth grew around him, decayed from millennia of dripping water and misuse.