Death of an Adept

Nodding, Harry drew a deep breath and withdrew his hands, but the glass kept inching inexorably onward.

"Harry, these are the rough figures I've used to try to figure out his speed," Sir Gordon murmured, thrusting the piece of paper in front of the counsellor. "Can this be right?"

Harry eyed the figures, glanced at the map, then gave a slow nod.

"Better'n a hundred miles per hour, if those are the right numbers," he said, "and I think they are." He drew a steadying breath. "Noel, he's flying. Light plane or maybe a helicopter. And if we want to catch up with him, we'd better move!"

"Go scramble the flight crew," Philippa whispered, not looking up. "Take Ximena with you. I'll send Noel and Peregrine in a minute. We'll hold this end. I think we've got a lock on him now. Noel, pull out slowly, and Victoria, take his place."

"Switching to Map 72 before you do that," Christopher interrupted, unfolding another map with a rustle as Harry grabbed Ximena's hand and the two of them dashed from the room. "You're about to go off the edge of 65."

Again work was suspended while maps were shifted, after which McLeod and Victoria made their switch. The glass now was moving through the region of Biggar.

"All right, Noel, go get Humphrey to come and help Gordon with map shuffling and the like," Philippa murmured, still mostly focused on the glass and the hand, "and then take Peregrine and go."

As thudding footbeats told of his compliance, Christopher smoothly changed places with Peregrine, so that when McLeod reappeared with Humphrey, the artist had already pulled on his coat and was stuffing reference books into his art satchel.

"Godspeed, Noel," Philippa whispered, as Julia began a whispered explanation to Humphrey of what was going on. "We'll ring you on one of the cell phones as soon as we've got a destination fixed. Now go! And pray God you get there in time!"

Chapter Thirty-Five

HERMITAGE Castle brooded on its foundations like a massive gargoyle, but the castle itself was not Raeburn's destination tonight; rather, the ruined remains of a small stone chapel, several hundred yards to the west. He had considered using the nearby Nine Stane Rig, where Soulis had met defeat so many years before at the hands of his enemies - and in reversing the results of that defeat, Raeburn intended to see his own latter-day disappointments avenged and undone - but the Black Mass he had chosen as a fitting framework for his revenge on Adam Sinclair required a site consecrated according to Christian rites. The chapel ruins were somewhat more in the open than Raeburn regarded as optimal, with most of the foundations standing no more than waist-high, but on the first night of February there was even less chance of interruption than there had been on New Year's Eve.

It had been dark for more than four hours when a white Land Rover rumbled across the bridge and whispered to a halt next to a second one parked a short distance from the start of the chapel ruins, screened from the road by a stand of winter-bare trees and almost invisible against the snow. Ahead, heavy snowfall had softened the ragged outlines of the stones and lent a deceptive tranquillity to the icy gloom of the winter's night.

As Klaus Richter materialized out of the darkness beside the driver's door, clad in snow-camouflage and with the mouthpiece of a radio headset protruding from under his balaclava helmet, the driver rolled down his window.

"All secure," Richter murmured, gloved hand resting on a compact semiautomatic weapon slung around his neck as he leaned down to glance at the three passengers in the back seat. "You can bring him on out and unload the rest of the equipment."

No lights showed as the vehicle's front doors swung wide and two of Richter's mercenaries bailed out, white-clad like himself, a back door opening more slowly for Derek Mallory to emerge, wearing a cowled black robe and a bronze medallion stamped with the head of a lynx. When he had pulled out his medical bag, he stood aside to let the men haul Adam from the car. Simultaneously, Angela alighted from the other side, the two bags of Adam's blood tucked under one arm, garbed incongruously in the black habit of a nun.

Adam gasped as his bare feet touched the snow, wincing as one of his handlers grabbed his left wrist where Mallory had pulled out the IV just prior to their arrival. With his drugs discontinued and most of a unit of dextran in him by then, Adam had rallied somewhat in the preceding hour; but he still was dangerously weak, and had to fight back a swooping episode of lightheadedness as Richter and Mallory half-walked and half-carried him between them toward the chapel ruins, dragging his bare feet along the snow-covered ground. The night was still, but the cold penetrated Adam's single layer of wool almost as if he wore nothing at all. Behind him, muffled thumps and grunts told of equipment being unloaded from the Rovers' rear compartments.