Michael Morley - The Venice conspiracy

'In nomine magni dei nostri Satanus. Introibo ad altare Domini Inferi.'

Behind the high priest is an inverted cross. Tom sees it now – the Satanic acolytes are not acolytes, the grandeur of their robes shows they are a deacon and deaconess.

Ad eum qui laetificat meum.

The high priest starts to waft incense over the altar – and also a naked, drugged body lying on top of it.

Tina.

Tom knows the incensing will be done three times.

Then things will get bloody.

Fatally bloody.

Domine Satanus, tu conversus vivificabis nos.

He slips behind the gondola and tries to heave himself slowly out of the water. His clothes are soaked and weigh him down. The edge of the decking is higher than he'd have liked, and he knows it's going to be difficult to pull himself out without making a noise. He puts the iron bar down first. Strains his way up. For a second, he thinks he's going to fall back in, create a splash that will give away his position.

His biceps find some hidden strength and crunch him up and over.

Tom stays low. As still as a statue. Lets the water drip off his clothing and puddle around his bare feet.

Ostende nobis, Domine Satanus, potentiam tuam.

The high priest puts down the incense and takes a silver tray from the deacon.

On it are two shining silver tablets.

Tom's mind spins. The Gates of Destiny. The very objects Alfie had described to him. After all the talk of legends, it's a shock to physically see them.

Two of the artefacts are laid out on Tina's body. He can see one positioned above her breasts and one below her vagina. But where's the third? Tom knows enough about these rituals to understand Tina is being used as a human altar, and shortly the high priest will violate her as part of his offering.

His eyes dart to the space behind the high priest. The deacon now has an old silver goblet in his hand, filled by the look of it with blood. Tom's left wrist itches, almost as though it recognises its own property.

The deaconess comes back into view.

She's holding the third tablet in front of her face. Kissing it. Lifting it.

The Satanists turn towards Tom. He must have made a noise.

The deaconess suddenly flies at him. Hands like claws. Fingers grabbing for his flesh and eyes.

Tom swats her away, like he would a low-flying bird.

He hears the tablet hit the decking and her body splash in the water behind him.

The deacon grabs a ceremonial knife from the altar. It's strangely shaped, like something a carpenter or sculptor would use.

Tom grips the iron bar in two hands, shifts his balance from one foot to the other, creates a moving target as the deacon advances.

He waits for the inevitable lunge.

Cracks the bar across the deacon's wrist, then whips the iron in a low half-circle that's hard enough to shatter a kneecap. The deacon crumples into a screaming heap and Tom steps around him.

He hears thunder.

Hears it but can't place it. It's all around him and his body is shaking.

The high priest is holding a pistol.

Tom can see smoke around the barrel. From the look on the gunman's face he's expecting Tom to fall.

He's been shot.

He knows he has but he can't yet feel it.

Tom glances down. Blood is dripping onto the wood. But he still can't feel it.

Now the pain arrives.

Hot and angry. Raw and intense. The bullet's gone clean through his left hand, piercing the web of flesh between his thumb and index finger.

The high priest fires again.

The shot zips over Tom's left shoulder. He rushes towards the smoking barrel, swings the iron bar one-handed. It connects with a rib but the Satanist pushes Tom into the side of the wooden altar.

Tom loses his footing – and cracks his head on the decking.

The high priest raises his pistol towards Tom's fallen body.

Another shot rings out.

Then another.

Tom's still on the deck recovering from the fall when the high priest drops beside him. Shot dead.

One to the head. Dead centre. Another in the heart.

Valentina Morassi lowers her weapon.

Tom crawls away from the corpse and groggily lurches towards Tina.

She's out of it. Spiked full of sedative.

Soldiers are everywhere now. He's still holding Tina's face as a Carabinieri paramedic moves him to one side and checks her pulse and breathing. Valentina holsters her gun as she walks towards Tom. 'I thought I told you to stay by the trees.'

He almost manages a smile. 'It was good advice. I should have taken it.' They pause as two officers pass them with the now-unmasked deacon – a small-time businessman from the mainland.

Other soldiers lift Tina and carry her out of the boathouse. 'Will she be okay?' Tom asks.

'I don't know,' says Valentina. 'We've got good equipment on the boats, they'll treat her quickly.'

He glances down at his injured hand, still dripping blood on to the decking boards. 'This isn't over, you know.' He motions to the dead high priest, now flat on his back with his mask off. 'Whoever this guy is, he was only part of it. Lars Bale planned something much bigger than just this.'

Valentina looks towards the man she killed. 'I know who he is. It's Dino Ancelotti – Fabianelli's lawyer.' She nods at Tom's hand. 'We need to get stitches in that.'

He's about to say something brave when two male soldiers drag the deaconess past them.

'Wait!' shouts Valentina. 'I need to talk to this witch.'

San Quentin, California All Lars Bale has seen of the Death Watch wing is his eight-by-eight-foot cell. That, and the ugly mug of the guard earning overtime watching him twenty-four seven.

Out of his view lie fifteen other rooms, including the death chamber itself, the holding area for his corpse, the press viewing area, staff rooms, equipment rooms, viewing areas on one side for those associated with the victim, and on the other side for those linked to the prisoner.

Behind the scenes, a whole army of people are hard at work planning how to kill him and how to process the good, the bad and the ugly who've come to watch him die.

Officer Jim Tiffany has walked every foot of the complex in the last hour, checking things over. He's one of several guards who volunteered to be part of the execution team. After his earlier altercations with Bale, today is personal.

It's payback.

Tiffany feels a delicious thrill as he shouts through the high-security door. 'Get up, Bale. Turn around. Hands behind your back.'

The prisoner slowly does as he's told, sticking his wrists through a gap in the bars.

Tiffany and two other guards snap on cuffs, open up the door and then add leg chains before hobbling him off to the shake-down room. 'Turn again. We're going to un-cuff you and then we need you to strip for a medical.'

'How ironic,' says Bale, his voice sounding tired and bored. 'You are legally obliged to examine me, presumably to make sure that I'm healthy enough to die.'

Tiffany steps up close to him. 'Just do it, smartmouth.'

As Bale begins to strip, a guard lets a nervous young doctor into the room. He pulls on a pair of ghostly white latex gloves and – as advised by the governor – painstakingly avoids eye contact with the inmate as he starts the routine of checking his pulse and blood pressure.

'What are you doing, Doc?' Bale asks, as the medic runs his gloved fingers up the inside of the prisoner's right forearm.

Tiffany answers for him. 'He's trying to find a vein, Bale. Looking for the best place to hose you full of killer drugs.'

The young doctor turns his head and shoots the old guard a horrified scowl. He then returns to the task of checking the back of Bale's hands, the tops of his feet, ankles and lower legs. He makes notes then nods to the officers and retreats to the back of the room. He hasn't said anything and doesn't say anything – he wants out as quickly as possible. The whole thing makes his skin crawl. He pulls off his gloves, bins them and waits to be buzzed through the electronically locked door.