The Dove by Brendan Carroll Read Free Book Online

feeling.  It was now an almost palpable force within his rooms and he was afraid.  Afraid that Jozsef Daniel would sense its existence.  Afraid that Ruth… Naomi… the creature in his mother’s body, would know of it.  Afraid of what it wanted him to do, what it was trying to tell him and he knew… he knew it was trying to tell him something.  He smashed his fists against his eyes and then ran to the bathroom where he splashed cold water in his face, trying to clear his thoughts.  He needed to tell Nicole about it, but he didn’t know if she would understand, didn’t know if she knew about the horrible sin he had committed, didn’t know if she could be fully trusted.  She was as desperate as he to get away from Jozsef and Ruth.  If he could have his way, he would have sent them back to the pits of hell, but he had lost everything!  Now it would be he, and not they, that had to flee, if flight was indeed possible at all. 
    He dried his face and stared at his reflection in the glass.  His eyes were bloodshot and his face looked pale and just a bit green around the edges and, for the first time in his life, he experienced the debilitating sensation of nausea.  He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten anything, but whatever was in his stomach came up in a rush and he coughed it into the lavatory, horrified by this simple action.  He stared into the bowl in disbelief, at first thinking that he was dying, before he remembered having seen this nasty little thing happen to others when they had been sick.  Sick!  He was sick!  And he could not be sick.  It was all in his mind!  He rinsed out the lavatory and washed his face again, brushed his teeth and combed his hair.  He had to get hold of himself or else Jozsef Daniel would know something was wrong with him.  The ‘Prophet’ was already mad as hell about the Ramsay thing.  He had forced his way into that little affair and used his powers… his waning powers… as Emperor, to help ease the suffering of the two people incarcerated on the third floor.  Jozsef did not dare go against the wishes of the Emperor in his own palace.  Not yet, anyway.  But the time was rapidly approaching when Jozsef would seize that power from him and he would be consigned to oblivion, just as Omar Kadif had been destroyed.  Bari did not intend to sit around and wait his turn.  He went back to the sitting room and checked the skull once more before heading for Nicole’s room.  She would have to be told about the skull and then they would go up and visit his great-grandfather. If there was anything at all left of Mark Ramsay, he had to know. They had to make a move soon.

    Chapter Three of Sixteen
    And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw the souls of them that were slain for the word of God
     
     
    Simon lay on his bed with his eyes closed.  They had still heard nothing from the Italian.  There was nothing to do, but wait.  Edgard had come to confer with him about what had told him about his encounter with Nicole in the meadow.
    Luke had not wanted to tell him everything, but he had dragged it out of him and Simon was very distressed to hear it.  He was especially distressed when Luke told him that the white braid he had been wearing since Mark Andrew had killed his own doppelganger in the Underworld was missing.  That it had been missing for several days now.
    Simon did not like to think his father was a supernatural being… an angel… a demon, perhaps, in some eyes.  He did not like to think that a piece of braided hair could move of its own accord.  He could not help but feel that he was somehow less than a man.  It went against everything he had been taught in his youth by the Cistercian Brothers at the monastery where he grew up.  But he had learned the Truth upon joining the Order.  The Truth about the Catholic Church and it had taken him years to get over the great deceit.  The Great Rome.  Not the Rome of the Caesars as most people