Wolf Angel, Mark Hobson [best free ebook reader for pc .txt] 📗

thought about resisting, kicking out, but then two more figures hove into view, one to either side. These were holding wicked-looking hand-scythes which glinted in the torch-light, and covering their faces were carved wooden masks with a pair of straight brown horns sticking up from their heads, and straggly hair like an animals mane. Through their eye slits and mouths Pieter could see the faces behind the masks, staring blankly at him.

“Do it, or they’ll slit you open.”

Pieter threw his gun aside, and sagged against the big man behind him, and the pressure against his neck eased, but only a little.

Bart forced him forward, keeping the gun against his neck, and they passed through the curtain just as the chanting came to a sudden stop, the silence filling the room beyond.

He found himself in a large, circular space. The floor was covered in more red carpet, and the plaster walls were painted cream, and affixed with more burning torches. Above, high up near the ceiling and spaced evenly around the circumference, were a number of narrow window slits, dark now that night had fallen. Over to the left and right were two large arched openings, like two semi-circle eye-slits, with shadowy chambers beyond. Inside, amid the gloom, Pieter could make out several shelves and wooden boxes, and the walls right at the back were lined with hundreds of tiny holes. Within each one, hundreds of human skulls looked back at him through their empty eye-sockets.

Some kind of catacomb, they were in some kind of old, cobwebby catacomb filled with the bones of the dead.

A circle of people stood waiting for him. They were all dressed in long, dark robes covered in gold symbols and markings and crescent moon shapes and stars, tied at the waist with rope. There were about a dozen of them, and each wore carved demon masks identical to the other two. All except one. Standing directly opposite Pieter across the far side of the circle of people was a robed figure wearing a goat’s skull in place of their own head, the long pointy snout and narrow nostrils and large black eye sockets appraising him silently. Huge horns grew out from the temples, to curve down to the sides. On the bony forehead, in blood, an inverted pentagram.

Pieter felt his legs go weak, and he might have gone down had Bart not had such a firm hold of him.

Again he urged Pieter forward, a tiny snicker coming from his lips, and the circle on this side parted to allow them through, before closing behind them again.

Seated in the centre, arms and legs tied to a chair, head covered in a hessian sack, was the naked figure of a man.

The goat-headed person lifted their arms and opened them wide in greeting, and the voice, although muffled by the skull, was instantly recognizable.

“Welcome,” Lotte said. “You are just in time.”

CHAPTER 18

A HISTORY OF FAMILY MADNESS

Lotte made the sign of the cross, inverted, and everybody followed suit.

“Bring him forward,” she ordered, her voice now strong and powerful, and Bart manhandled Pieter towards the centre of the circle of hooded people, and then forced him to his knees.

He watched mesmerized and numb and confused and terrified in equal measure as she stepped forward and placed her hands on the shoulders of the man seated on the chair. Her touch made him jump, and Pieter could hear his breath coming in quick gasps now, the sacking over his head moving as he twisted his head from side to side.

“I see you have managed to find us, thanks to Bart leading you here? My loyal servant, my loyal brother.”

Pieter snapped his head around to catch a quick glimpse of the barman, who was smiling broadly, his eyes watery with love and devotion.

“Your brother? But you told me… you told me he hurt you? That he…” His voice trailed off in despair.

Lotte was shaking her head. “Oh you fool. Our ruse was so simple, and you fell for it. I’m sorry for the deceit and lies, but they were necessary to entice you and to draw you into our game. Bart would never hurt me. He loves me.”

Bart moved away from Pieter and joined his sister. She slipped an arm around his big waist and kissed him on the lips with her goat-snout face, making Pieter sick to the stomach. The two henchmen with the scythes took up position just behind Pieter.

Lotte turned her skull-face back towards him, and now her voice had an edge to it. “But you weren’t supposed to hurt him so badly. You were only meant to warn him, not beat him. You monster!” The irony of her words was breathtaking.

“You fucking mad bitch,” Pieter mumbled to himself, shaking his head. “You’re fucking mad.”

“I can understand how it might look, from your point of view. And I was reluctant to use you like that. I do genuinely like you Pieter, and I was hoping you would become a willing participant in our wonderful project. Alas, despite my best attempts to entice you and seduce you, you proved difficult to manipulate. So we had to use other methods. Therefore, we set out to play you – I hate that expression, but it seems appropriate here – we set out to draw you in by approaching things in a more oblique way, using emotional distress to weaken your defences.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.” He tried to rise, but a pair of strong hands pushed down on his shoulders, keeping him there.

“Your father, oh, that was a necessary evil, but it worked. Your distress and grief was palpable, and it was the opening I required.”

Pieter wasn’t sure he was hearing right. His father? What did his death have to do with… the thought evaporated like mist as a horrible realization started to dawn on him.

“Yes, a tragedy, mmm, but nobody will miss a drunken old man like that, apart from yourself of course. He was