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

cast through the stained-glass window of the Virgin Mary, whose arms extended towards him in invitation. The biblical beam of light had alit on his chest and over his heart, the feeling one of long-awaited comfort.

Then as he ventured from his chamber to see people milling through St. Peter’s Square as though the world had finally come to a sense of normalcy, Kimball was informed by a roaming bishop that Isaiah and Nehemiah had been lifted from the sea, and both were recovering at Gemelli Hospital.

On a side note, he had also been informed that the pontiff was taken by ambulance to Gemelli as well, his situation dire. It appeared that His Holiness had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and was lying in a coma.

Though Kimball did not wish harm upon most, there were some whom he believed deserved what they received from what they put out in life. Pope Clement XV was a cruel individual who used his station as pope to administer dark policies that were manifested by even darker ambitions. He even went as far as to kill a man while trying to reach the greatest height of the papacy, only to justify his action in the end.

But the Light had truly come when Kimball learned that Isaiah and Nehemiah would live to serve God for times to come. And hopefully, together as a team.

Looking skyward to feel the morning sun upon his face, Kimball smiled. Hours ago, he asked the Virgin Mother for a miracle—anything to show him that God was listening, even if it was on an infinitesimal level.

He was.

A miracle had been granted with the continuing lives of Isaiah and Nehemiah to show for his efforts by simply thinking: Ask—and perhaps—you shall receive.

In the sunlight, Kimball’s smile broadened.

His life, at the moment, was good.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

Gemelli Hospital

Rome, Italy

On the following day as Shari Cohen was being treated for her concussion, and as Isaiah and Nehemiah were being tended to at Gemelli Hospital, Pope Clement XV found himself caught within a struggle of his own.

The acoustic-tiled ceiling.

The saline bag.

The lines that connected him to machines that kept him alive.

The pontiff awoke from his coma and found himself within a lucid period of time. From the corner of his eye, he saw something wicked making its way to his bedside. It weaved and undulated through space, a dark and swirling cloud that morphed into shapes of strange and menacing beasts that were both terrifying and demon-like. And then this dark mass broke into comma-like wisps of black vapor, only to materialize into something else that was hideously demonic in nature.

The pontiff’s eyes popped with alarm as the shape took on a form over his bed and over his impotent body. And in his mind’s eye, Pope Clement XV imagined the evil of golden-yellow eyes with black vertical slits for pupils, looking down on him with judgment.

With his body almost entirely paralyzed, the pontiff was able to raise a palsied hand in an attempt to ward off the mass that only he could see, something that was horrible and dark, with his hand passing through the constantly reshaping shadow.

Pope Clement’s eyes ignited with absolute terror as he tried to scream, but the tubes obstructed his pleas somewhere at the back of his throat. His hand continued to fight off something only his mind could visualize, the Grim Reaper coming to call. And then there was the stench of body-rot and feces and fire and brimstone all comingling into a raw and unsavory smell that squeezed his stomach. The black mass above him continued to reform and redesign itself into bizarre and revolting shapes. Yet the judgmental eyes remained riveted within this constantly shifting mist.

Pope Clement continued his pointless efforts to fight what cannot be fought against, the pooling mass coming to claim his soul. Then within the pontiff’s field of vision, two tendrils extended from the black mass. They were long and thin and as pliable as the arms of a squid and jellylike in movement. And then they reached out for the pontiff and embraced him. Pope Clement XV could feel his chest being constricted and his lungs unable to draw oxygen through the tubes. His face turned crimson, and then purple, though his palsied hand still continued to fight the good fight, only for it to fall limp by his side.

Beside him, the alarm to his heart monitor sounded off as a keen wail.

* * *

From behind a pane of glass that divided her station from the pope’s room, a nurse had seen the pontiff waving his hand frantically through the air. To her, he appeared to be fighting off something that lingered above him, only there was nothing there. She could see his terrified eyes, all blood-stitched and raw with that thick and rheumy look to them. And that hand, that clawed hand, swiping the open air as though he was in a fight for his life and for his soul, only for his hand to fall in defeat.

By the time she was able to reach the pontiff’s bedside, his heart monitor was sounding off with an even whine.

Pope Clement XV had flatlined.

CHAPTER

SIXTY

Three Days Later

Sana'a, Yemen

Ahmed Jaziri was a chameleon who put on a different veneer daily by attaching different lengths and colors of false beards to disguise his features. In fact, he had a walk-in closet filled with artificial beards the same way that women stocked up on wigs. When it was fashionable for Arab men to be bearded, Ahmed Jaziri had that fresh-scrubbed look of a man in his late twenties, clean and smooth, which had surprised the Bangladeshi.

As Jaziri entered his home office in Sana'a, he was surprised to see the Bangladeshi sitting in his seat behind his desk while operating his computer.

The Bangladeshi lifted his eyes enough to look over the monitor to consider Jaziri. “You have surprised even me, Ahmed,” he told him, “after I