Chapter 30
The cold rain mists my face while I stand motionless, waiting.
I left Grace to her training, but my mind keeps going back to it; the cold, clinical gleam of the cattle probe in Issac’s hand, the way her body would arch in a perfect, agonized bow as he fucked her over and over with it.
I wonder if she’s there right now, muscles locked, her scream a silent thing as we beat the disobedience out of her. Is the line beginning to blur for her? Is the shock still pure punishment, or has the searing jolt started to carry a different charge?
“Perimeter is clear,” Marco’s voice whispers in my ear, bringing me back out of my head.
Around me are the subtle, efficient sounds of my men preparing for violence. The rustle of tactical gear, the muted click of safeties being thumbed off, the low hiss of communication through earpieces.
They are my instruments. Twelve of them, all former Carabinieri or special forces, men who traded a faded flag for the clear, uncomplicated currency I provide.
They are good.
They are quiet.
And most importantly, they are mine.
In my hand the cold, matte steel of my custom-made Beretta is a familiar comfort.
“Move in,” I command, my voice low. “Clear the ground floor. I want a path to the heart of this place.”
They flow past me, a river of black Kevlar and lethal intent.
The main warehouse door groans open, revealing a cavernous space swallowed by darkness.
Our helmet-mounted lights cut beams through the gloom, illuminating floating dust motes and a forest of silent, skeletal looms. The air is thick with the ghosts of industry and something else, something waiting.
We move in a standard tactical diamond, Marco at my back, his presence a solid, reassuring wall. Our footsteps are swallowed by the vastness, but every sound feels amplified to me: the thud of my own heart, the rhythm of my own breath.
Ezekial is here. Ezekial is close.
The certainty is a drug, hot and sweet in my veins.
A door creaks open to our left. A scrawny man with wild eyes and a kitchen knife lunges out, screaming garbled nonsense. He doesn’t even get within five feet. Two suppressed shots from the point man, a dull thump-thump, and he crumples to the concrete.
Another one tries to ambush us from a catwalk above. A single shot from another of my men and he pitches over the railing, landing with a wet crunch behind us. The violence is clinical, efficient. It fuels my excitement.
Each dead disciple is a thread cut from Ezekiel’s delicately worked tapestry, making him weaker, more exposed.
We find a set of metal stairs leading down. The intelligence said the lower levels were the nerve centre. Of course. Rats in the basement.
“Heat signatures are coming from below,” Marco says, checking a small handheld scanner. “One. Maybe two. The rest are cold.”
“He’s cornered.” I say, the words tasting of triumph.
The stairs lead to a long, narrow corridor lined with rusted pipes. The only light comes from our own beams, creating a moving pool of clarity in the oppressive dark. At end of the corridor there is a heavy, industrial steel door where a sliver of warm, yellow light spills out.
This is it. This has to be it.
I signal my team. Four men stack up on the door, weapons raised. One gives a silent count with his fingers. Three. Two. One.
They breach fast and clean, sweeping the room with practiced precision. I hear their calls. “Clear! Clear!”
I step across the threshold with Marco a shadow at my shoulder.
The room is not what I expected. It’s small, circular, an old boiler room perhaps.
But it’s clean. The rust has been scrubbed from the pipes, which are painted a dull gold.
Tapestries hang on the walls, rich, embroidered fabrics depicting strange, esoteric symbols—a serpent eating its tail, a ladder reaching into a fractured sun.
Candles burn in sconces, their flickering light dancing over the only piece of furniture: a simple wooden chair in the centre of the room.
And a man.
He stands with his back to me before the chair, gazing at one of the tapestries as if it might be his very salvation.
He’s tall, wearing a simple dark t-shirt and jeans.
His posture is relaxed, contemplative. He doesn’t flinch at the violent entrance of my men, he doesn’t turn either. The arrogance of it is staggering.
A fierce, hot joy erupts in my chest. Finally. After months of dead ends and phantom leads, here he is. Ezekiel Sewell. The man who thought he could challenge us. The man whose head will be my gift to the Grand Master.
My men have him surrounded, the red dots of their laser sights painting his back like a constellation of death.
“Ezekiel,” I say, and my voice echoes in the stone room, thick with triumph. “Turn around. Your rebellion ends tonight.”
The man does not move. A cold trickle of unease cuts through my euphoria. Is this too easy? Where is the panic? The defiance?
But my source has never let me down before. He was the reason I could set my little trap in Paris, could eliminate six Esau rats in the freezing cold woodland of Estonia. He’s not wrong about this, he can’t be wrong.
“I said, turn around.” I bark, stepping further into the room, my Beretta raised.
Slowly, with an almost theatrical deliberation, the man begins to turn.
It feels like an eternity. I see his profile, a strong nose, a greying beard. My finger tightens on the trigger. I am already composing the report in my head, the words I will use when I present him, bound and broken, to our Grand Master.
He completes the turn.
And the world stops.
The face is wrong. The eyes are a dull brown, not the piercing blue I’ve studied in photographs. The features are softer, weaker. This is not Ezekiel. This is a stranger.
The man smiles. It’s a gentle, pitying smile, the kind you’d give a slow child.
“Antonio,” he says, his voice calm, almost melodic. “He said you would come. He said you would be so focused, so sure of your own victory you would ignore every little red flag dancing in your wake.”
The blood in my veins turns to ice.
“Where is he?” I snarl, the words tearing from my throat, my gun now pointed directly at his face. My men shift uneasily, their weapons still trained on the impostor.
The man’s smile never wavers. His eyes are serene, accepting. A true believer.
“Our Prophet is everywhere and nowhere,” he says. “But he wanted me to give you a message. He said you should really have learned not to be so gullible.”
His hand moves as he speaks, revealing not a weapon but a small, black plastic device. A simple remote. His thumb rests on a single, large red button.
Time seems to fracture. Everything happens in a horrifying, crystal-clear slow motion.
Marco shouts, “Down,” and lunges toward me, not to shoot, but to shield me.
The man’s thumb depresses the button.
There is no sound at first. Not a bang. Instead it is a deep, subsonic vibration that comes up through the soles of my boots and into my teeth. The very air in the room seems to contract, to suck inwards towards the man in the centre.
Then the world explodes.
The man, the chair, the tapestries, they don’t just blow apart. They unmake. It’s like the literal sun explodes in front of me in a blinding, white-hot sphere of pure fury.
The light consumes everything, scorching my retinas, followed by a wall of force that hits me like the fist of God.
It picks me up and throws me backward as if I weigh nothing. A deafening roar that is less a noise and more a physical assault hammers into my ears, my skull, my bones.
I am flying through the air, back out into the corridor, and then the world is a chaos of fire and screaming metal.
I hit the ground with a jarring impact that drives the air from my lungs. Debris rains down, chunks of concrete, twisted pipes, things that were once my men.
Fire blooms like a terrible, hungry beast, rushing out of the room and down the corridor, chasing the oxygen, consuming it.
Heat. An unbearable, searing heat washes over me.
It licks at my exposed skin, and it’s not a kiss, it’s a brand.
My clothes smoulder. The air is ripped from my lungs, replaced by a superheated blast that scorches my throat, my trachea.
I can smell it—the acrid stink of cordite, the sweet, ghastly smell of cooking meat, and the unmistakable scent of my own hair burning.
I am on fire.
My left arm, my back, my face, they are alight. The pain is a distant throb, a warning siren heard from miles away, its approach inevitable and terrifying.
Through the ringing in my ears, I hear the screams. Not of fear but of pure, unadulterated agony. The screams of my men, the best money can buy, caught in a conflagration they could never have anticipated.
They are burning alive.
I am burning alive.