Dark Advent (Vatican Knights Book 8) Read online

  DARK ADVENT

  Rick Jones

  Hive Collective

  © 2015 Rick Jones. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and should not be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For more information e-mail all inquiries to: [email protected]

  Visit Rick Jones on the World Wide Web at:

  www.rickjonz.com

  Also by Rick Jones:

  Vatican Knights Series

  The Vatican Knights

  Shepherd One

  The Iscariot Agenda

  Pandora's Ark

  The Bridge of Bones

  Crosses to Bear

  The Lost Cathedral

  The Eden Series

  The Crypts of Eden

  The Menagerie

  The Thrones of Eden

  Familiar Stranger

  PART I

  ORIGINS: LATE 1980’s

  PROLOGUE

  Kimball Hayden was seventeen years old when he saw his first dead body.

  She lay at the base of the stairway looking towards the ceiling with eyes that had filmed over, the milky sheen covering what was once a beautiful shade of emerald. Her neck was awkwardly twisted, the bones within shattered in a clean break. From one corner of her lip blood had trickled to the floor and congealed, the silver-dollar-sized bloodstain the color of deep burgundy. And her position was hardly that of gentle repose, but more of an anguished posture.

  He could not take his eyes off her, half-expecting her chest to rise and fall in even rhythms and to see her lungs function, while the glaze that covered her eyes melted away like frost.

  No such thing happened.

  In fact, time moved along with the slowness of a bad dream.

  The house had a sepulchral silence to it—a tomblike quality with something oppressive and heavy hanging in the air like a pall.

  Then after what seemed like hours when true time was only seconds, Kimball turned to the person sitting halfway up the stairway. He was a man of diminutive size with a hatchet-thin face that was marked by pointed features and sharp angles. And eyes that were as black as obsidian glass that lacked any measure of understanding as if death was an entirely new concept to him.

  When the man eased back and raised his head, he found himself pinned with flat-line coldness from Kimball Hayden.

  That was the day Kimball’s conscience began to slip.

  It was also the day he started to operate with the cold fortitude of a machine.

  And it was the day of his dark advent.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Malden, Massachusetts

  Three Weeks Earlier

  The city of Malden is a suburb of Boston with an area of five-square miles and is divided into sections such as Edgeworth, Maplewood, Bellrock, and Oak Grove—all territorial segments ruled by ethnic groups such as the Irish, the Italians and the Jews, each claiming the territories with full entitlement.

  The Bellrock Boys were ruled by the Italians, a brutal faction who reigned by force and intimidation. Extortion rackets, loansharking and drug sales were their main sources of income. Those who spoke out against their administrative rule often wound up in the trenches, literally, with broken bones as a warning to others that voiced opinions were not acceptable. Those who owned businesses were forced to pay weekly dividends or ‘protection money.’ Those who refused often found their premises vandalized, or in some cases razed by fire.

  The police were impotent in most matters. When suspects were rounded up, harmful retaliations were often carried out by the minions of the organization as a lesson to entrepreneurs who cried out for salvation, when there was truly none to be had.

  In Edgeworth the Jews governed the area. In Maplewood and Oak Grove, the Irish. But it was the Boys of Bellrock who were beginning to flex their muscles by encroaching on these territories and taking new ground.

  Vinny “Cooch” Cuchinata was twenty-four and never really had a chance at life after choosing the Road to Perdition. He was a foster by the age of ten when his alcoholic father choked the life out of his mother, then took a knife to his own throat when he realized the extreme cost of his action. The murder-suicide of his parents left him as a stray to relatives who were less than appreciative to have him. Just another mouth to feed, they would tell him. That was about all the love he ever received.

  By the time he was twelve he ruled over a group of others. At first they sharpened their teeth with petti thefts and low-end misdemeanors. Then they graduated to felony burglaries by scoring stolen goods such as stereos, TVs and electronics---all high-end items that were fenced for a fraction of the cost.

  Business was booming and demand was up. It was always up. But when Cooch was caught inside a home trying to lift a computer, the owner, a man who wanted to see the boy put through the juvenile system as a way to teach the youth a lesson, was found dead in that very same house six years later to the day, with a single gunshot wound to the head.

  The killer was never caught.

  But the owner did get his wish because Cooch was run through the juvenile system which ended up being his springboard to learn from others. Over time his moral compass quickly deteriorated and his Road to Perdition started to look as if it was paved with gold.

  By sixteen he was out of school. By seventeen he was master of the Bellrock domain, calling the streets his to rule. No one contested him. Not after the body of the previous monarch was found nailed to a tree with his tongue pulled out of his throat in an old-fashioned Colombian necktie. Brutal but effective.

  By twenty the extortion, loansharking and bookmaking rackets were his.

  Now at twenty-four, he wanted the entire city.

  Cooch stood beside the dug trench somewhere in Everett with the Tobin Bridge in the background, and within the shadows of an abandoned factory warehouse. The area was deserted and filthy with garbage such as errant and loose papers, plastic drinking bottles, old and useless appliances that people simply discarded rather than pay the dump fee. Gulls and pigeons gathered, each feeding off the waste.

  In a small clearing, a man was kneeling inside a shallow grave with his wrists bound by zip-ties. The left side of his face was so brutalized from a beating that his eyelid had closed over his eye. His face was bruised and badly mottled, his lips all but destroyed. As he knelt inside the hole he continuously intoned how sorry he was, and that ‘it’ would never happen again. Never!

  “You’ve been telling me that for how long now, Carmen?” When Cooch spoke it was with a thick Boston accent, with the “r” taking on the “ah” sound, along with a thuggish inflection. So Carmen sounded like Cah-man. “Would you say two, maybe three weeks now.”

  The man was sobbing. “Please, Cooch. I sold everything to pay you back.”

  “Pay me back? You call fifty bucks payment for money you owe in excess of seven grand? Are you serious? What did you sell, Carmen? A car that was thirty years old. A piece of crap Pinto that ran on miracles. That’s where your fifty bucks came from.” Cooch went to the edge of the grave. He was wearing a long coat and tight-fitting gloves of expensive leather. Standing around the hole were three of his acolytes, all thick-neck bruisers wearing pricey suits.

  “Cooch, as God is my witness, I’ll pay you back.”

  “Yeah. How? By going back to Suffolk Downs to wager on dogs that never come through for you? Th
at’s how you got here in the first place.”

  “Please, Cooch. I have kids.”

  “You should have thought of that every time you went to the bettors’ cage to put money on the dogs, rather than food on the table for your kids. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Carmen started to make nonsensical sounds, which was all Cooch could handle.

  With a simple wave of his hand Cooch gestured to his team of hitmen, who removed their silenced weapons, directed their aim at Carmen, and pulled their triggers, the multiple rounds going off in muted spits with each impact against Carmen’s body bursting forward like the petals of a blooming rose.

  When Carmen lay still with one eye marginally open and showing only a sliver of white, Cooch signaled to his team: close the grave. Within four minutes the hole was filled in.

  Within five they were back on the road to Malden.

  Within six minutes Carmen was nothing more than an afterthought.

  Ten minutes later the gambler was all but forgotten.

  CHAPTER TWO

  When Becki Laurent graduated from Malden High School, she was in the top ten percent of her class. Less than two years later she was a drug addict whoring for her next fix. Like everything else drugs started with her as a recreation, which quickly turned to an addiction. And soon that addiction became a monkey on her back roughly the size of a gorilla.

  She lived in a rundown tenement in the Oak Grove section, a place where porches canted because the wood was aged and weakened with rot. Where warmth was provided by space heaters because the radiator had been defunct for years. Where windows were cracked and had to be pieced together with duct tape to keep it from shattering. A place where roaches the size of a human forefinger often scaled the walls or scurried across floors.

  She was living in a studio on the third floor that overlooked the MBTA station, the railway to the Orange Line that led into Boston proper. All day long the trains rumbled through, causing the windows to rattle in their frames. But neither Becki nor her boyfriend Dennis cared. Nothing mattered except the next high, the next plunge of the needle to get their veins pumping with heroin.

  The place was a mess, a classic sign of addiction. Foods such as pizza wedges were laying on the countertop and probably had been for days. The kitchen sink was pile-high with dirty dishes that had gone unwashed for days, forcing them to use paper plates. Used cups, saucers and dirty utensils were lying about posing as little obstacles for the roaches that clambered over them. And the entire studio smelled of cigarette ashes.

  Becki was laying on top of the mattress wearing a T-shirt and underwear. She was sweating and her skin was as pale as the underbelly of a fish. On both arms were track marks. And the brown lines that ran along both forearms were because her veins had collapsed.

  “Dennis?” Her eyes appeared as if she was staring at something at a great distance. “I need it so bad.” She started to weep, the cramps in her stomach getting worse. “Baby, I need it so bad.”

  Dennis started to run his fingers through her coarse hair. “I know, baby. But we don’t have any money. You gotta go out and get us some. That’s how it works.”

  “I’m too sick,” she offered.

  “Just a couple of tricks. That’s all we need to get us through.”

  “Dennis--” She gathered herself into a fetal position. “I can’t.”

  “You can,” he stated with an edge. “So suck it up. Get dressed. And get your ass out there.”

  She looked at him with an expression between tears and anger, between pain and suffering. Two years ago she became enamored with Dennis because he was the bad-boy type. He appeared roguish and combated against social conventions. He was a rebel without a cause and a boy with no true aim in life other than what he made for himself the day the sun rose. He had no plans, no direction---he simply lived a spontaneous lifestyle. And that, at least to Becki, was attractive beyond description. They drank, they partied, then he introduced her to weed, then meth. And her once promising future---the scholarships to regional colleges, the ambition of becoming a physician---went to the wayside. Dennis had become the center of her life and the bane of her existence.

  At first the relationship couldn’t have been better---the freedoms, the passion, the idea of existing with no worries of achieving goals. Then came the issues of addiction, the need to sustain and feed that monkey on your back that always hungered. So money became an issue and love a non-issue. Through Dennis’ insistence he empowered her to field sexual solicitations. In time his feelings for her became so muted that he eventually looked at her as a money-making tool and nothing more.

  She was his slave.

  He was her pimp.

  And they both lived damned lives.

  He forced her roughly to her feet. “Get . . . dressed,” he ordered her.

  “I said no!”

  He reared back and slapped her across the face, hard, the force sending her back to the mattress where she lay crying.

  Dennis put his arms out to his side. “Now see what you made me do?”

  She sat up, but slowly, and conceded her position because he would force her, regardless.

  When she did Dennis’s tone became syrupy sweet. “That’s my girl,” he said, hunkering down beside her. “Just think, by tonight we’ll have enough money to make your pain go away like magic. I can get the good stuff from Cooch.”

  She looked at him with feverish eyes that said: I have to do this.

  And Dennis intuited her thoughts: You don’t have a choice. Then he gave her a wink and a smile that was just as false as his professed love for her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Vicki Pastore was the most beautiful girl Kimball Hayden had ever seen in his entire life. She had dark, closely cropped hair with a sweeping bang across her forehead, a tanned complexion and eyes that shined like newly minted pennies. And whenever she smiled she did so with ruler-straight teeth and a polished gleam. She was kind and sweet, shapely and curvaceous. She was also the girlfriend to the captain of the football team.

  Kimball was sitting in Chemistry class listening to Ms. Grillo drone on about the Periodic Chart. Vicki sat in the next row and provided him with a perfect profile; her attention rapt to Ms. Grillo as his was to Vicki.

  Over the past several months he had become enamored with her until she was his first thought in the morning when he woke up, and the last thought at night when he went to bed. She was his passion, his crush, his first true love. But he was terrified of her as well, always too afraid to break the ice by saying something really ridiculous---something that would drive her away rather than to pull her close. So he admired her from afar and romantically fantasized what it would be like to talk to her, to kiss her, to laugh together, or just to be in her presence.

  Then when the bell rang to end the period, Vicki gathered her books to leave the room. Never once did she look in Kimball’s direction to acknowledge him, so that he could smile at her or perhaps offer a curt wave in greeting, a hello.

  At the door her boyfriend met her, a star-running back for the Golden Tornados, and the two exchanged kisses and talked. Kimball watched her face light up---could see the extreme fondness she felt for him by the spangled gleam that came from her eyes.

  It was the look of being in love.

  In a matter of moments they were gone, the two walking down the hallway together with the star-running back’s arm around her waist.

  In the classroom Kimball sat alone with his shoulders slumped in defeat. Then he sighed through his nose and considered a painful thought: She doesn’t even know I exist.

  So he closed his eyes.

  And he dreamed of her.

  #

  Vicki Pastore adored Travys D’Orazio completely. After all, he was the star-running back who was garnering interest from colleges such as Clemson and Penn State. Though his team was in second place in the division, his skills were undeniable, a north-south runner who always found the seam and could take the ball all the way to the end zone. He was
of average height but stocky, big at the shoulders and chest, a fireplug, with powerful thighs specially built to run and drive through tackles.

  “Can’t make it tonight, hon,” he told her. “I got to prep for tomorrow night’s game against Quincy.”

  “I understand.”

  “But after the game tomorrow night we’re all meeting at the Mount.” The Mount was a social gathering place where teens often met for a night of drinking and partying, especially after a football game.

  “I’ll be there,” she told him.

  “All right, babe.” He leaned over and kissed the crown of her head. “Keep it straight and even.”

  She never knew what that meant--keep it straight and even. It was something he always said in lieu of good-bye. When she asked him what it meant, he simply shrugged and spoke to her as if it was common knowledge. “It means, keep it straight and even.” How else am I to explain it to you? So she let it go as a quirk because she didn’t really care what it meant anyway.

  When the bell rang to signify the start of a new period, they parted and went their separate ways.

  And as Kimball was daydreaming of Vicki, she was daydreaming of Travys.

  And Travys was daydreaming of somebody else.

  In the game of love, especially as a teenager, no one truly wins. Because like anything else it was simply a learning process.

  #

  Paula Howard was from Malden’s west end. She was pretty, blond, shapely, and by the standards of social principles, a free-spirit when it came to her sexual values. Travys met her by the stairwell.

  She was smiling. “Done?” she asked him.

  He gave her a half-smile, one that was brash. “I told Vicki I had to prep for tomorrow night’s game against Quincy. So we’re good.”