The Diabolist (Dominic Grey 3) Read Free Page B

platform bed and a tatami mat, along with a few chairs he had picked up at anestate sale. The built-in bookshelves contained a selection of novels, philosophical works, and travel and language guides. The latest
Time Out New York
, earmarked at the cheap eats and off-Broadway sections, had been tossed on the bed.
    Sick of hotels, he had rented the studio for a year. His job with Viktor required frequent travel, and Grey supposed New York was as good a base as any.
    He showered, poured himself a cold sake, and was pleased to see he had a voice mail from Viktor. When he had long spells between cases he grew restless. He had worked on a couple of small investigations in the last few months, but nothing major since the tragic case involving the Egyptian biotech company. Tragic, and incredible. Stretching the limits of his beliefs was quickly becoming part of the job description.
    In his message Viktor said there was a new case requiring immediate attention, and that Grey should check his e-mail for travel details. Grey logged on and found a plane ticket to San Francisco leaving at six a.m. the next morning, along with a hotel reservation for three nights at the Fairmont. He was to meet Viktor in the hotel lobby at two p.m. tomorrow.
    Grey stared at the empty street below his window as he finished the sake, wondering where Frankie would sleep that night, wondering what the new case with Viktor would be like, wondering how renting a half-furnished loft in a forgotten corner of a city of ten million people, without a friend or barely even an acquaintance, was that much different from braving the streets of Tokyo when he was a teenager, alone and unsure.
    He pushed away from the window and started packing, happy to be working again.

INNER SANCTUM OF L’ÉGLISE DE LA BÊTE, PARIS CATACOMBS
    D ante’s black duster swept around his ankles as he strode through the gloom, the steady drip of sewer water his constant companion, the pentagram tattoo splayed across his shaved head catching the occasional drop.
    Most of the members of L’église de la Bête chose to enter the catacombs through one of the secured hidden routes, but Dante preferred to walk in plain view of the homeless, thieves, murderers, and worse who occupied the levels near the surface streets. He enjoyed the way they scattered or looked down as he approached, careful not to meet his gaze. And there was always the chance that someone new had arrived in the underworld, someone unfamiliar with Dante and his knives.
    He left the rat- and filth-infested sewers behind, descending into a section of the catacombs of which polite society was unaware, and to which most of impolite society dared not go.
    Dante had been a member of L’église de la Bête for more than a decade. For most of that time, he had been the right-hand man of Xavier Marcel, the Black Cleric. Dante had not feared Xavier, but he had respected Xavier’s capacity for cruelty and devotion to cause.
    Dante felt no remorse about his new allegiance to the Magus. The Magus had given Xavier a choice, and Xavier had chosen to stand against him. Dante was a weapon, not a politician, and while L’église de la Bête was his church,he had only one true ethos, and that was pain. He would worship and follow whoever granted him the most access to it. For the present that was L’église de la Bête, and the Magus.
    Pain
. Suffering had already polluted Dante’s soul by the time he entered prison at the tender age of eighteen, but during his decade of incarceration, his internal torment transformed from an emotion into a calling.
    Dante’s slight lisp had not gone over well in prison, until he disemboweled someone with a shiv for mimicking it. He participated in so many fights that pain became irrelevant, and he became known as someone who would never quit during a fight, no matter how much injury he suffered. It made him a feared man.
    In prison he met two men who would define the rest of his life. The first, a Filipino