The Crimson Dagger - Vatican Knights Series 23 (2020) by Rick Jones (romantic novels to read txt) 📕

And then one cable fully snapped with a clean break, the elevator now free from one rail and leaning heavily against the other. Its weight was magnificent as it contested the other cable. One by one the wires to the last cable began to snap because the tension was too great, the cable now unraveling until it hung by a single thread. And then that, too, snapped.

The elevator started its downward drop into the abyss, the cab bouncing from wall to wall as the impacting friction caused sparks to light as small embers, with these small flickers glowing like fireflies that came and disappeared.

The falling vehicle started to pick up momentum, falling and tumbling faster and faster down the shaft. It continued to carom horrifically off the walls, the cab bouncing and plummeting with the free weight heading for the Vatican Knights, all who clung to the rails with nowhere to go and nowhere to hide.

The cab.

The Vatican Knights.

A collision course in the making.

The noise of impending doom, getting louder and louder as the elevator neared their position.

Below, Kimball encouraged his team forward.

More bouncing.

More sparks.

The elevator picked up speed, falling faster and faster, an uncontested weight that would not be stopped until it hit bottom.

And then disaster struck the Vatican Knights.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Medstar Washington Hospital Center

Washington, DC

Encapsulated by absolute darkness as alien voices spoke to her from a far-away land, Shari Cohen could hear her breaths that were both deep and regulated, as though she was on a respirator. Her breathing came in even measures, with each exhale and inhale having the sound of rushing air.

But within these moments, she caught snippets of images that had a feeling of dread attached to them. In her mind’s eye, though the tale that be told to her had made no sense, she saw glimpses of hellfire and a towering black monolith. She saw a window pane with a spiderweb crack in its center, a bullseye feature, when fracturing lines suddenly expanded outward from this mark and snaked their way to the pane’s edges, where the window completely shattered to give view of what was behind the glass.

She saw gargantuan flames roaring beyond this framed square where the window once stood. Within the flames stood the silhouette of a man, tall and wide of shoulder. She recognized the Shape and knew the contours well.

Fire had raged all around this mass and lapped at the blackened floors as though to taste and to examine the real estate for the final consumption. And then this shape reached out a hand to her with the gesture asking for her help.

Shari tried to move within her own darkness but found it impossible, her body too heavily weighted under the numbing agents that currently coursed through her veins.

The hand of this Shadowman continued to stretch towards her until it could reach no more. Around it, a circle of flames threw off incredible amounts of light in different hues of reds and yellows and oranges, the colors of Hell. Yet the image remained blacker than black with its features staying unlit, the Shape now calling to her in banshee wails. In time, these flames began to quench its thirst by taking the Shadowman. Fires started to climb up the legs of this Shape and along its outstretched arm, the Shadowman crying out in white-hot agony. Then the Shape became a flaming light, a torch, the screams from deep inside its throat as tormenting for her to hear as it was for the Shadowman to cry out.

And then the sounds and the image began to recede with the Burning Man falling away until it became a star-point glimmer, and then it was gone. Its voice, like the light, had also faded into obscurity.

In her state, she wanted to fight against her bonds to be free and to help the Burning Man.

. . . Come back . . . Kimball . . . Please . . . Come back . . .

But she once again found herself alone within her own personal darkness that was absolute and complete.

. . . Breathing . . .

. . . Breathing . . .

. . . Breathing . . .

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Inside the Kristallpalast

Vienna, Austria

The name of Daniel was a callsign that had been taken from the Old Testament, and one of the many callsigns that the Vatican Knights went by like Isaiah, Leviticus and Job, just to name a few. Daniel’s real name was Marino Abatangelo, with Abatangelo ironically meaning ‘abbot’ or ‘priest,’ which he was neither. Marino, who went by Daniel as a Vatican Knight, was discovered years ago in the streets of Rome, either begging or stealing, when a priest by the name of Bonasero Vessucci came upon the waif who boldly asked the then-cardinal for a simple coin. Vessucci, however, saw the boy’s value, which was far more than the pennies he asked for.

Upon inquiries such as ‘who are your parents’ and where do you come from,’ it appeared that Marino had run away from an orphanage. His father was unknown and his mother too young to care for him. But the underlying truth was that the bastard child was more of an embarrassment to the family because he had been born from an unblessed union.

But Bonasero had seen a light behind the dirty and grimy face of this wayward child. It was a flicker of goodness that could easily be fanned into a bonfire. After the then-cardinal took the boy in after legal approval, Bonasero raised the child as though he was his own. He educated him and taught him the power of prayer. Then Marino was introduced to the world of sports, which he excelled at and developed coordination. Further studies had familiarized him with philosophies and the art of deductive reasoning. In time, the boy grew into a teenager, and then the teenager became an adult, and the adult chose a life as a Vatican