The Dark Thorn (62 page)

“You lie,” Arawn growled. “The army I built would not be so easily spent.”

“Where is Philip if I lie?” Richard asked.

Twisting the knife, Arawn did not answer.

“A fey lord killed the Cardinal Seer then…” the Vicar said.

“And he will not gain the Vault behind us,” the Pope added. “Arawn, return to your world of Annwn. The relics in these walls will not be yours to possess.”

“Within that Vault is the ability to expose centuries of Church lies,” Arawn said to Richard. “I know you hate them as much as I. This world can no longer crusade against those it does not agree with. The Tuatha de Dannan are needed to the banish evil of those lies. Once mankind knows we exist, it will look for truths beyond their narrow noses. The relics are needed. The swords these men carry are part of that collection!”

“Only one man was ever meant to control that much power,” the Pope argued. “And He has long since been martyred and become the Word.”

“You hoard them for your own devices!” Arawn shouted.

“The Vigilo prote—” the Vicar began.

“Your Vigilo is an abomination!”

Richard kept the Dark Thorn before him, wondering what he’d gotten himself into again. The knight hated Arawn for what the fey lord had done, having killed his wife and used him for an advantage. Richard also hated the Church, the lies Arawn spoke of all too real. He knew he could not let Arawn gain the Vault, but the Vigilo were as culpable for centuries of murder. The world spun about him. For the first time, Richard did not know what to do. Arawn was a danger he had witnessed firsthand, but aiding the Pope and the Cardinal Vicar helped another side just as evil.

“Richard McAllister, look to history!” Arawn said, still holding the Guard by the throat. “Without the crusading desires of the Catholic Church pushing my kind from this world, there would have been no need for Annwn. Or the portals. Or Knights of the Yn Saith. Your wife never needed to die, had the Vigilo been satisfied with their own place in the world. The fey seek balance. Ultimately, the men in front of us represent an evil that drew us here.”

“Your wife is not the issue here, McAllister,” the Pope argued. “This creature must atone for—”

“He will!” Richard roared, slamming the Dark Thorn against the stone floor. “Remember this though, pontiff. I am not here for you. Or your Vigilo. I come here to set right wrongs.”

“Get the Heliwr then, Templars!” Arawn shouted.

The room erupted into pandemonium. Arawn was like a snake. He dodged the thrust and sent the dagger plunging into the neck of the Swiss Guardsman. Blood spurted everywhere. Richard barely had time to bring forth the fire of the Dark Thorn in defense as the Templar Knights charged with swords drawn. Steel rang. Grail bags gave life to the warriors attacking Richard. He barely had time to think. In the close quarters it was hard for him to move, but he gave the ground he needed to maneuver, releasing the pent-up magic inside of him, the fire of the Dark Thorn urgent.

As he gave ground, one of the Templars swung his sword in a broad arc even as the other attacked Richard from the side. For the first time the knight used the Dark Thorn as a club, parrying the sword even as he sent his fire directly into the man’s face.

The Templar Knight fell backward, twisting away.

Richard incinerated the bag on his back.

He had only just ended the first threat when the second Templar Knight fought through the fire, roaring his battle call like a maddened bull and swinging with great force. Barely having time to dodge and wielding only enough fire to slow the warrior down, the Red Cross backed away until cornered against a bookshelf of massive tomes.

Grinning, the warrior brought his blade down to cleave Richard in two. The knight sidestepped. As he did so, the warrior overextended his efforts and was caught off balance.

Gritting his teeth, Richard smashed the head of the Dark Thorn across the left cheek of his attacker.

The warrior crumbled like a puppet cut from its strings.

The first soldier was back, sword in hand.

“Don’t make me kill you!” Richard thundered.

Knowing he was no longer protected by the power of the Grail, fear entered the man’s eyes. Richard feinted at him. The Templar Knight fled the room then, knowing he was bested before he even began.

Richard turned to discover the power in the room had shifted.

Arawn had overcome Clement.

The fey lord held the Pope against him like a shield, the edge of his dagger lying against Clement’s wrinkled neck. The polished sword of the Pope now lay on the ground. Richard didn’t know how to proceed. As he lowered the flame about the Dark Thorn to a halo, he walked slowly to stand nearer the three other men.

“Let me pass into the Vault,” Arawn asserted, squeezing Clement by the throat.

The Cardinal Vicar did not move, his sword at the ready.

“Richard McAllister, we hate the same hypocrisy,” Arawn said smoothly. “You do not let the Church command you. Nor do I. It is for the Tuatha de Dannan I do this. When Plantagenet had his lackey trick me, I thought my time over. The man who owned this body took my life. I was imprisoned for long decades before my spirit eroded that of John Lewis Hugo and his body became my own. Encouraging Plantagenet to reclaim his birthright was my first step against the very Church that drove us from the Misty Isles.

“You and I hate the same thing.”

“But you are Tuatha de Dannan!” Richard shot back. “You sent that cait sith to his death into Seattle! You kill your own kin in Annwn even as we speak!”

“I did not bring them to this fight, knight!” Arawn seethed. “I do not wish their demise any more than you do. By the time I gained control of this flesh Plantagenet had built a large army and it was too late for me to aid my brethren. I use him as he used me, to keep my own safe. Help me regain balance!”

“I will not give into your wishes, Arawn!” the Pope growled. “The secrets and power beyond that wall will avail you nothing!”

“We will see. It is up to you, Cardinal Vicar. Let die your Pope?”

“Do not give in, Cormac,” Clement insisted.

Arawn snarled, looking back and forth between the Cardinal Vicar and Richard. The knight could see the struggle within Cormac. It matched his own. To give into Arawn’s demands meant giving him power; to not give in meant the death of the Pope.

Clement had no such hesitation.

“It is to you now, Cormac Pell O’Connor.”

Clement twisted hard from Arawn, breaking the grip, even as a dagger appeared in his hand from the folds of his robes. The fey lord did not flinch from the weapon even as the knife plunged into his back. Sucking on the contents of his own Grail bag, Arawn rammed his dagger through the chest of Clement.

The Pope gasped and his eyes rolled toward heaven.

He went limp and collapsed.

“Neither of you can kill me,” Arawn sneered. “The power of your Word is with me and forever shall be.”

“No longer,” the Cardinal Vicar said.

The grin on Arawn’s face disappeared. Water gushed to the floor. Pope Clement had not only stabbed the fey lord but also the bag that offered him protective life over the body of John.

With a snarl, Arawn went for the sword the Pope had dropped. Richard did not wait. He vaulted in between the two men and jammed the butt of the Dark Thorn into Arawn’s chest, slamming his body backward against the stone wall, pinning him there.

“Finish him!” the Cardinal Vicar roared.

“We will not
kill him
.”

“He is evil!” Cormac raged, raising his gray sword. “Look what he has done! Step aside, McAllister. Now!”

Conflicting emotions swept through Richard like a wildfire. He wanted to slay the fey lord as much as the Cardinal Vicar did. He still saw Elizabeth as she died under the blade of Arondight; he still burned for vengeance at what had been done to his life.

“I will not,” Richard said finally. “We don’t know what will happen to the spirit of Arawn if we kill the body of John Lewis Hugo.”

“If he is left alive, what then?”

“I will speak to Merle on this subject. He will know what is best when it comes to the fey,” Richard answered. “Arawn will be tried with wisdom. Not by us.”

“By whom then? The Morrigan or her ilk? The laws of the Holy See? Italy?” Cormac scoffed. “No. He has killed the pontiff. He has infiltrated the Vatican. He alone knows of Annwn, and the Seelie Court would more than likely let him off the hook for his affront. All that we have fought for—all that you have fought for—would be put at jeopardy by not killing him now!”

“If you try, I will kill
you
,” Richard said flatly.

It was the hardest thing Richard had ever had to say. The Cardinal Vicar was taken aback. The dark brooding eyes of Cormac stared at Richard. The knight stared right back at his elder.

“Merle or the Morrigan will know best how to punish the spirit inside of John Lewis Hugo,” Richard repeated. “It is the only way to ensure punishment is given.”

Breathing hard, the point of the Dark Thorn still pressing him against the wall, Arawn grinned. “My end will not come by your hand knight,” he whispered. “Not like your wife.”

“That may be,” Richard said, unwilling to let the personal barb unseat his authority of the Dark Thorn. “But your role in this is over.”

Arawn laughed, a sick sound.

And began to change.

Unsure of what he was seeing at first, a black fog clouded Richard’s vision, the miasma swirling out of John Lewis Hugo’s body and into the air. It hung suspended before him, diaphanous and cold, free flowing, unmoving.

Two red coals blinked in the ether.

The spirit of Arawn.

Latent rage at the escape attempt filling him, Richard sent the fire of the Dark Thorn into the cloud with controlled fury, wrapping the fey in coils of magic. Arawn struggled, fighting the staff, trying to invade Richard instead. The knight closed his mind to the offense. Bringing years of anger to the fore coupled with the memory of Elizabeth and her last few fear-filled moments, Richard tightened the magic of the Dark Thorn on Arawn like a vise, a dam of pain unleashed, crushing the spirit. Inhumanly wailing, the lord fought as the magic bit into him.

It did not matter. The mind of Arawn burned away as the fire of Richard’s will incinerated it.

The final, terrible scream of Arawn echoed through the suite.

Then all went silent.

Breathing hard, Richard looked upon the now palsied body below him. The fey lord that had come close to destroying him had vanished, leaving a body wracked by spasms and twitches, hands clawed and twisted. A dull moan escaped the mouth, growing into choking gasps of pain.

“What is wrong with him?” the Cardinal Vicar asked.

“The pain…” the man mewed, teeth gnashing.

Richard stared at the body of John Lewis Hugo, unsure of what he witnessed.

“Kill me…”

The fire that had made Richard a killing machine became smoke. Arawn no longer resided in the body, leaving only one possibility for who spoke to them.

It was John Lewis Hugo, his soul no longer trapped.

Pleading for death.

“Kill me…” John Lewis Hugo cried.

“No,” Richard said.

“Pleeeease,” John sniveled, gulping in air. “Kill meee…”

“Do not do so, McAllister,” Cormac ordered. “Or suffer damnation.”

Richard ignored the Cardinal Vicar and knelt, grasping the shaking wrist. Like he had done to Al and Walker in Seattle days earlier, the knight went into the mind of John Lewis Hugo.

There he encountered fractured pandemonium.

The agony of the man overwhelmed Richard. The soul of Philip’s onetime best friend was disjointed and broken, a shattered pane of glass. Richard had never felt such acute and traumatic memories in another before. John Lewis Hugo had witnessed every savage moment Arawn had been privy to—the mutation and breeding of thousands of children with fey and animals via the Cailleach to create a ghastly army of halfbreeds, orders given to assassinate countless political figures within Annwn to either gain favors or just to see them die, the torture and breaking of numerous jailed men and women in the Caer Lion dungeons merely to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about human anatomy.

John had screamed into the void where his consciousness lay, unable to alter the events his body took part in, until his very being frayed and snapped.

The distress was so poignant Richard had only one course.

Richard moved into what remained of the other’s mind and massaged it, lending his strength to John Lewis Hugo. The emotional anguish was too much for Richard to assuage—too many years of witnessed abuses for the magic to wipe away. As he had done to the two homeless men, the knight erased the centuries of horrible memories, to a time before John Lewis Hugo entered Annwn when he loved a tailoring assistant on Threadneedle Street in London. It had been the last time he had been truly happy. Richard felt what John Lewis Hugo had experienced so long ago—the innocence and the love, the hope of a touch and the feeling of a kiss on blushing cheek, the first unfamiliar and anxious moments of sex. They were emotions Richard had long since thought dead within his own heart, and they left him sad.

There, in the past, Richard slowed the other man’s pulse.

When the knight opened his eyes again, John Lewis Hugo sighed contentedly one last time—and did not breathe again.

“You are going to hell, McAllister.”

Richard stood again, weariness finally catching up to him. He ignored the Cardinal Vicar and strode toward the door of the suite.

The knight turned back to face Cormac only once.

“If you had any doubt, you are too.”