The Goliath Chamber - Vatican Knights 24 (2021), Rick Jones [e ink epub reader .TXT] 📗

mask—glistened with a wetness that appeared like tar in the gloomy cast of light.

With her hand, she beckoned Mannix to approach with a wave. “Close the door,” she told him.

Mannix did. And then he took one of the three empty resin chairs close to the woman.

“And the sinner?”

Mannix swept a hand across his chest to emphasize the blood splashes that were not his own. “The sinner put them down,” he stated through the metallic voice box.

“And the blood on your vest?”

“The sinner’s,” he said. “He was unwillingly to comply with our demands. He thought he could best me.”

“So, you killed him?”

“He gave me no choice.”

“I see.” The woman’s eyes examined Mannix’s Kevlar and the bloody patterns, most which were amoeba-shaped splashes. Then she noted the dripping blood lines on the face of the mask and the blood on his hands. “It must have been one hell of a fight,” she added.

“When two soldiers of elite caliber go at it, there’s no such thing as a clean or easy kill.”

“No. Perhaps not.” Her voice remained even while her stoic features refused to betray her sentiments. And then: “I noticed that you’re not wearing a ring. You want to tell me why that is?”

Mannix sat unmoving and appeared to be at a loss for words. Then he examined both hands that were coated with the blood of his opponent, red and sticky. Then he reached up and removed his Kevlar helmet. Gone was the bloodied face of the skeleton. In its place was the face of Kimball Hayden.

“You must think I’m stupid,” the woman told him. “I knew who you were the moment you stood in the doorway.”

Kimball stared at her with deep bitterness from eyes that were heatedly passionate and poisonous. “Why?” he asked her. “Why come after me now?”

Antle shrugged. “Why not.”

When Kimball leaned forward, she could feel a tangible threat dripping off him that was as deadly and contagious as a pestilent disease, a virulent that most people could not walk away from after it was fully encountered. That was when he removed the combat knife from his sheath and held it up in display before her eyes. The blade was thick with Mannix’s blood, the Vatican Knight failing to wipe the knife clean. “Believe me when I say this: I will use this on you unless you give me the answers I want.”

Antle remained stoic. Whether her brave face was real or simply a veneer of underlying feelings of terror, Kimball could not tell. The woman was like stone.

“Why are you here?” Kimball asked her. “Who sent you? And where’s Shari?”

Antle removed the cigarette and stamped it out in the ashtray. “I expected no different from a sinner who has killed innocent women and children in the past,” she told him. “To coerce me into giving up my secrets by loosening my tongue through pain, do you not see your own evil?”

Kimball waited, though his muscles worked at the back of his jawline due to waning patience.

“You’ve infiltrated the highest ranks of the church as someone who seeks the Light but continues to live in the Dark, because you cannot make a choice between the two. When most surrender one for the other, you choose to remain in the middle because you’re enticed by both. You’re unable to make the proper choice, Sinner, because the Dark has too much of a hold on you. You’re the Prime Evil here. Not me. Not the pontiff. Not the Nocturnal Saints. It’s always been you.”

“Me? I’m the bad guy here?” Kimball appeared amused. And then: “I guess it really is about perspective and how we perceive things differently as individuals, isn’t it?” Easing back into his seat, Kimball removed the vest and set it aside. The white of his Catholic collar had been stained with Mannix’s blood.

“I see that the band of your collar which represents your station within the church is soiled,” she said. “It’s stained from your signature nature to kill. And yet you continue to wear it like a badge.”

Kimball removed the collar and, like the vest, set it aside. “Feel better?” he asked her rhetorically. After a pause, he added, “Where is she? And who sent you? I know you wouldn’t be here unless your services were called for. You knew about Shari Cohen and where we lived. That kind of information is particularly sensitive since the Vatican Knights stay under the radar as much as possible. And Shari Cohen was an unknown to the Nocturnal Saints. Someone within the church who has ties to the Nocturnal, perhaps? Someone—” Kimball’s eyes popped as though the lightbulb of enlightenment suddenly went off in his head. And then: “You’re kidding.”

Antle remained absolutely silent. She even went as far as to raise her chin in defiance.

“You’re kidding,” he repeated, this time speaking in a rather troubled way.

Antle’s silence was answer enough to Kimball Hayden.

“And Shari,” he insisted. “Where is she?”

The woman’s continuing silence was beginning to grate on Kimball’s nerves.

Reaching up to tap the pocket of his shirt, it sounded as though loose coins were jingling against each other. Then he used his knife to point at her ruby-faced ring. “I like your ring,” he told her. “It’s rather different from the collection I have here in my pocket. Four so far. If you don’t give me the answers I want, I’ll add yours to the collection.”

“So now you’re taking trophies, is that it?”

“No,” he answered. He removed the rings and placed them on the table beside the ashtray. One was coated with dried blood. “These are to prove to you that your team is out of commission, unless there are a few more out there lurking about.”

She shook her head. “There’s no one else. If you made it this far, then you’ve deactivated the force. I’m the last.”

Kimball was surprised by her admission. He had followed the lights that led to her lair, a small stonewall chamber. It made sense that the queen would be protected at all costs,