Chapters (145)

Chapter One Hundred Sixteen

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:18 a.m.

Violin felt a small vibration in her earpiece and she tapped it.

“Go,” she said very quietly. The sound of the refinery in full operation was like thunder. Two sentries walked along a catwalk twenty feet below her.

“Daughter,” said Lilith, “listen to me. We have new intelligence. We’ve cracked the Book of Shadows. It has everything the Order has ever done. Names, places, dates. Everything. Mr. Church is going to coordinate a worldwide police action against the members named in the most recent entries. We are going to tear the whole thing down!”

“Oh my God!” cried Violin. “That’s—”

“There’s more. You need to find Joe Ledger right now.”

“That’s what I’m trying to—”

“No, listen. No matter what it takes, no matter who gets in your way—find him. Church is certain Grigor is there.”

“What?”

“The device is unarmed. Vox helped the Upierczi obtain and position the bombs, but he withheld the activation codes until they gave him the full spectrum of a gene therapy to cure his cancer. Upier 531. Daughter, they’ve made Hugo Vox one of them. Now Vox is fulfilling his end of the deal.

Grigor is there to activate the Aghajari bomb. He has a device for it, a code scrambler. He has to be stopped.”

“I’ll cut his—”

“Listen,” said Lilith sharply. “The code scrambler has all of the codes on it. All of them, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Daughter,” said Lilith, “we figured out where the other devices are. You have to get that code scrambler. If those other devices are activated … God.”

“Where are they?”

Lilith told her.

Violin had to clap a hand to her mouth.

Before another second passed she was moving. Leaping down to the catwalk, running nimbly along it, heading down toward the basement. Looking for Joe Ledger.

Looking for Grigor.

Racing to save the world.

Chapter One Hundred Seventeen

Aghajari Oil Refinery

Iran

June 16, 6:21 a.m.

I bellowed my pain as I tried to wrench my flesh from the teeth of that shattered crate, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Grigor bent low, his body language becoming like some animalistic and predatory thing, vulpine, unnatural. His mouth was a wide, red slash in his pale face. He flashed out a hand and knotted my hair in his fist. Blood ran down my face, blinding my right eye, snaking hot lines inside my clothes. My arms were pinned by the jagged wood and I couldn’t reach my back-up knife clipped inside my pocket. He could have killed me right there and then. I knew it, he knew it. My life was nothing to him, an inconvenience at worst or an amusement at best. But he paused before going for the kill.

“Your world is going to die,” he snarled.