With their knives sharpened, their guns loaded and, for now, keeping a lid on their rampant desires, they visited the man named Leo Barone in the dead of night, after first making sure his wife and three children were home. They moved in utter silence, embracing the dark like the pure predators they were.
‘Daga,’ the woman said. ‘I’ll need a few seconds for the alarm.’
The man nodded, resting his powerful bulk on his haunches, waiting, the very thought of bloodletting already flooding his senses far beyond their normal levels. His full name was Cassadaga, and he was a mythical killer made flesh.
‘I live for this,’ he whispered.
‘Me too,’ the woman said as she connected a home-made keypad to the door’s modern digital lock.
Ivana was his partner in everything, a safecracker, a thief, and a hot-blooded murderer. Together, they had scoured Europe for the last two months, preying on the innocent where they could, moving on when growing attention forced them to.
‘You think we’re doing the right thing here?’ Ivana asked as she worked. ‘This is Italy. We should be savouring the wine, the pasta, and hot, sticky pools of blood.’
Daga knew she wasn’t questioning the killing that was soon to come. She lived for it as much as he did. What she meant was should they be working for … him.
‘He has the money we need,’ Daga said. ‘He went through the right channels. He said all the right things. As usual, my love, we take each day as it comes.’
Two months of slaking their bloody lust across nine countries had eaten into their reserves of cash. Daga was bankrolling them both and since – until recently – he’d had a ten-year sojourn, he wasn’t exactly flush with cash. Still, the death spree had been worth it.
People had whispered about Daga for years, called him the world’s most vicious thief. He was unkillable, a myth, a demon. Nightmare stories were told about him, repeated quietly around campfires in the dead of night.
Behave, child, or Cassadaga will come for you.
His eyes fixed on Ivana as she worked. Tall, broad and exquisite, she was an Eastern European beauty who’d crashed into his life just a few months ago and had changed everything – the whole way he worked and played. Now they were inseparable.
‘Done,’ Ivana said.
Daga’s excitement rose a notch. They were lying inside this house, all four of them, with no idea that a horrific death was coming for them. Stretching out a hand, he pushed open their front door to be confronted by a dark hallway.
He entered. The house was utterly silent and cast in shadow. Daga moved down the hallway a step at a time, with Ivana at his back.
‘This job is for him,’ she said. ‘We don’t have to finish it.’
Daga looked back at her. ‘Are you saying you don’t want the kill?’
‘I’m saying we could easily procure our own.’
Daga frowned. Of course, she was right, and that was probably the best thing to do.
‘The man’s crazy,’ Ivana went on.
Daga blinked, surprised at her words under the circumstances. He was under no illusions that the homicidal acts they perpetrated together were entirely rational. He enjoyed being … extreme.
‘He has a plan,’ Daga whispered. ‘A good plan, as it happens. Marduk may be in prison, but he still runs what’s left of the Amori, and he still has access to cash. If we help him with this, we’ll be in an excellent position financially.’
‘By helping him escape?’
Daga felt the attraction of the kill pulling at him, but gritted his teeth and lingered a little longer. ‘Yes, he has plans,’ he said. ‘Plans to locate the ziggurat, find the Amori riches, take down the Vatican once and for all directly, and then kill Joe Mason and his fucking team. Now, some of that jives directly with my own cravings and, I assume, yours.’
Ivana squeezed her attractive face into a frown. ‘I definitely wanna kill Mason. And the riches sound good.’ Her last sentence came with a light air, as if she had sensed his irritation at their lack of forward progress. ‘For now, though, let’s concentrate on the blood.’
Daga grinned, a demon in the darkness. Her words stimulated him. They knew already that the parents slept in the front bedroom, the children in the back two. He flexed his muscles, breathed deeply in anticipation, and made his way across a dark front room towards an open flight of stairs in the corner. It was three a.m. Daga paused with his right foot on the first step.
‘Keep it under control,’ he breathed, without turning around. ‘This is a big operation.’
Ivana placed a hand on his shoulder in acknowledgement. Together, they climbed the stairs cautiously, keeping to the sides so as not to make them creak. Fourteen risers later, Daga found himself on a narrow L-shaped landing. To his left, the parents’ bedroom. To his right, the kids’. He turned to Ivana and nodded. She would take the kids.
Daga crept towards an open door, paused at the threshold. The room beyond was in darkness, illuminated only by the faint green glow of a digital clock. Daga stepped towards the bed and stood over his two victims, breathing quietly, letting the knife cut patterns slowly through the air above their bodies. It was a moment of power for him, carved-out seconds of supremacy when he had held the power of life or death or intense torture in his hands, the knowledge that those below him would soon live in sheer terror a source of stimulation and inspiration.
Daga reached down, put his hand across Leo Barone’s mouth and rapped him smartly on the forehead with the hilt of the knife. Leo’s eyes flew open, filled with shock and then with fear. Daga put a finger to his lips.
‘Make no sound,’ he whispered. ‘Or I will slit you from ear to ear.’
Daga made Leo prod his wife awake and then made her the same promise. He made sure they could see the knife, but not the gun in its holster at the small of his back. He wouldn’t want them reaching for it in some misguided attempt at survival.
‘We have your children,’ Daga whispered in English, with an evil taint to his voice, and then he grinned.
Leo’s eyes flew even wider. His wife – a woman named Millie – couldn’t help but whimper. Daga immediately ordered them to sit on the edge of the bottom of the bed so that he could reach them easier. Leo was bare-chested and wore striped pyjama bottoms. Millie wore a long black negligee that was rumpled around her legs. Daga put his knife to Millie’s throat.
‘Make another sound,’ he growled.
Right then, Ivana herded the two kids into their parents’ bedroom. Daga guessed the girl was about fifteen, the boy around twelve. They were both dressed in pyjamas, and both dashed from Ivana’s side into the arms of their parents.
Daga allowed it. It was hard working with kids. They tended to act on impulse and do things an adult would never dare. Ivana came over to his side, brandishing her own knife.
‘Sit still, don’t speak,’ Daga said. ‘If we were here to kill you immediately, your blood would already soak the bedsheets.’
‘And believe me, he knows,’ Ivana said with a false little laugh. ‘He’s killed more people than Ebola.’
‘Is that a friend of yours?’ Daga looked at her with a wide grin.
‘An old flame.’ Ivana snickered.
They were already lost in their private world, where slaughter reigned supreme.
The kids sat beside their parents; that was four people lined up along the bottom of the bed. The room was silent and mostly dark. Daga liked it that way. He leaned forward so that his eyes glittered at Leo’s own terrified ones.
‘Which one?’ he asked.
Leo swallowed hard, unsure if he was allowed to talk. ‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ he said finally.
‘Your children,’ Daga grated. ‘Which one should I cut first?’
Leo’s face went white. His wife sobbed. The kids were rigid. Ivana chuckled softly at his side.
Power filled Daga, the power of absolute control. He was ruthless and deadly and, with one swift decision, he could change the entire course of these people’s lives.
Of course, he already had.
‘It’s time to decide,’ he said. ‘Which child. Which limb. How far in should I stick the blade?’
Daga’s tone was conversational, light. Leo shook his head, unable to speak. Daga wanted to take Ivana right then in front of these people, lay her across the bed and satisfy his lust.
At least, one part of his lust.
Tension stretched inside the room like elastic. The only sound was breathing, hard and laboured. The kids had their eyes shut. Daga tapped Leo on the shoulder with his blade.
‘You are Leo Barone?’
‘Y … yes.’
‘And you are the warden of Vittore prison?’
Now Leo chewed his bottom lip. ‘I am.’
‘You are the big dog? The boss of bosses? The head man, yes?’
Leo nodded. ‘Yes, I … I run the place.’
Daga held his blade back as a sudden urge took him to ram it through Leo’s throat until the blade pierced right through the other side. It would be a great start to proceedings. But he had other objectives tonight.
‘You can make prisoners move, yes?’
‘Make them … well, yes, I guess.’
Daga saw an opportunity to shed a little blood. He trailed the blade from the top of Leo’s left shoulder to the right and watched crimson bloom in its wake. It was a shallow cut, but the blood soothed him.
‘Can you, or can’t you?’ he asked. ‘Be very specific.’
‘Yes, yes, the decision rests with me. S … sorry.’
Hearing the man apologise as Daga cut him from left to right made the thief smile. ‘Ivana,’ he said. ‘Get ready to cut the kids.’
Leo bit right through his bottom lip in fear. Blood welled. His eyes pleaded with Daga. ‘Oh, no, I will do anything you want. Anything. Please don’t hurt my children.’
Daga held up a hand. It was a practised move they’d done before. Normally, they would revel in the pleas, urge more and more, and then cut and start laughing. Normally, they would satiate themselves with their victims’ abject fear.
Tonight was different.
Daga pretended to hold back, to appraise Leo once more. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You have one chance. Do you know a prisoner named Marduk?’
Leo closed his eyes and shook his head as if he’d always expected the prisoner would bring some form of bad luck. ‘Of course. He’s … notorious.’
‘Ex-leader of the Amori, the group that tried to take down the Vatican,’ Daga went on. ‘Stole their little Book of Secrets and then some ancient body from a monastery in the alps. Captured, incarcerated, left to rot. He wants out.’
Leo gaped. ‘He wants out?’
‘Yeah, you know what that means, don’t you? It means you’re going to help me arrange his escape.’ Daga waved the blade at the young girl’s neck. ‘Aren’t you?’
Daga took a moment to assess the kids. The girl, blond hair and with a round face, was staring down at her knees, breathing slowly. Tears dripped from her eyes onto her pyjama leggings. Her mother held the girl’s right hand tightly. The boy, with brown tousled hair, was staring fixedly at Ivana as if he wanted to ask her for an autograph. If he did, Ivana would gladly tattoo it on his flesh. His eyes were wide, glazed. Maybe he was in shock. He gripped his sister’s left hand.
Daga didn’t care. He turned his attention back to Leo. ‘I know all about you,’ he said. ‘Marduk made it his business to know all about you. Englishman working abroad rises to the upper echelons of Italy’s prison service, gets the warden’s job at one of the country’s most notorious prisons. And, you get to live close to Milan. I’d say that’s a win-win. How are you finding Milan in the spring, Leo?’
The warden nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off Daga. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Me? I’d like you to die. I’d love to stick you and your fucking family a hundred times and watch you all bleed out. But we’re working for Marduk, at least for today.’
‘That makes you four lucky bastards,’ Ivana put in.
They didn’t appear lucky, sitting and crying and wiping their noses. Daga watched Leo bleed, mesmerised by the drip of the blood and the intoxicating smell. ‘Do you feel lucky, Leo?’ he asked.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Leo said. ‘I can’t just walk a man out of prison, can’t just set him free.’
‘Oh, we have a plan,’ Daga replied. ‘Now, sit back and relax. Let me explain.’