Accuser, Seducer, Destroyer: The Venom of God (working title)
an excerpt

He sat in the arm chair, a crystal glass of a single malt whisky in his left hand, a gun in his right, gazing out of the floor to ceiling window in front of him. The rain poured from the sky in torrents, each drop drumming against the patio surface, or falling down past it, down the rock face of the mountainside.
The lighting was dim in the room, the only source a dying wooden fire, the orange flames flickering.
His head of security, Lucian Hunt, said the facility was unreachable except by helicopter. The window was five inch thick bulletproof glass. Lucian said this would protect them against any sniper fire. The entire building was wired with security cameras and detectors of every sort, heat, infrared beams, motion, electrostatic, sound, there was no way to get into the building without being detected. The room was lined with steel and lead sheets which wood panelling had been placed over. It was supposed to be impenetrable. He had a hundred of the best mercenaries money could buy guarding him.
The building was supposed to be able to resist any explosive attack short of a nuke, it was resistant to fire, earthquakes, lightning, tornados, hurricanes, anything.
The building was small enough to be containable, large enough to allow the hundred men to function without getting in each other’s way. Some patrolled the mountain, others the roof, others inside and some around the outside. They were in constant radio contact, and the security cameras were always watching them.
There were radar dishes on the roof scanning for aircraft, there were barbed wire fences at the bottom of the mountain, anti-personnel mines hidden through out the grounds. The place was designed to be secure.
And yet he was worried. His name was Alex Dreyfus. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. There were far worse people on the planet, far more violent, far more intelligent, far richer, there were people better than him at everything, and still he was the one that his invisible nemesis was after.
“Perimeter. What is your Status?” Hunt radioed through.
“Alpha clear.”
“Bravo clear.”
“Charlie clear.”
“Delta clear.”
“It doesn’t matter you know.” Dreyfus said loudly to Hunt. “You can’t stop him, nobody can stop him. I never should have hired you.”
“Who’s him?”
“I was afraid that you wouldn’t take the job if I told you. You may have heard of him, his name... they whisper it in fear, they dare not speak it in case he is insulted that they had the nerve to say it in his presence. They call him Samael.”
Hunt chuckled.
“You find that funny Lucian?”
“He’s nothing more than an urban legend sir. You know that if the stories were true he’d be nearly eighty years old? And yet all the stories say he looks to be between twenty eight and thirty eight. They’re just ghost stories to scare the big bad criminals.”
“You know Hunt, I’ve been in this business a long time, I’ve sold weapons to just about every terrorist organisation on the planet, and you can’t be in this business without making enemies... I had a private security team... some of the best soldiers money could buy... this nonentity, this myth, this legend, killed them all in the space of five minutes. Fifty special forces veterans killed by one man, one man who doesn’t exist, who’s a myth a story a legend. I only just got away, flew straight to a safe house deep in Paraguay, I had political connections there, they gave me an army unit to provide protection.” He paused to sip his whisky, he figured if he was drunk enough the fear might go away, and if it didn’t and he died... well at least he’d had his last drink. And at least his last drink had been a particularly divine single malt whisky. It actually sounded rather pathetic when put that way.
“Two days later there’s a letter under my pillow... red wax seal on the back with one of those fancy imprints, real expensive paper, the stuff you pay hundreds of dollars for, and that was just the envelope, the paper the letter was on was even better, to hold it between your fingers was a delight, the ink the writing was in was a little more strange though, I had it analysed, it was blood.” Dreyfus paused to breath and then continued: “None of my staff had put it there, the army unit saw nobody, this ghost had put the letter under my pillow... I’ve no idea when, I don’t even know whether he did it in my sleep or not. I fly to Monaco to stay in Monte Carlo’s grand casino, you know Monaco has the lowest crime rate on the planet? My security team is killed in my sleep, and I only just wake up and escape in time, I fly to Hong Kong, I had some dealings with a guy there who works with the Shadow Corporation Syndicate. He arranges for me to have some of the best protection SCS can provide... and all the while I wonder why he keeps letting me get away... he could have easily killed me by now I know it...
He killed the SCS team easily, cut them down like wheat. Took no time at all. And these SCS guys weren’t interested in protecting me, no; they were only interested in killing this nonentity. And I couldn’t figure out how I kept getting away, but now I know, now I understand: he wanted me to feel like this to have no where to run to, no where to hide, to be stuck in some box just waiting for him to inevitably come. He wants me to be both dreading my death and hoping for it just so I know he’s no longer after me.”
The security cameras showed all the guards in their positions all well, no problems, the radar showed no aircraft. The perimeter was clear; the sensors were fine and detected no activity.
“You know the better the assassin, the closer they can get to you before you know they’re there?”
“Yes.” Hunt replied.
“They say Samael kisses the most beautiful women he assassinates before doing the deed.”
The monitors showing the camera views all fuzzed out and the detectors went wild the sirens screeching through the facility.
“How’s your perimeter now?” smirked Dreyfus.
“All teams report in. All teams report in. House perimeter report in. Household report in. Roof report in, Mountainside report in. Report in all teams, all teams report in, can anyone hear me report in, report in god damn it all teams report in now alpha? Is anyone there? Delta report in golf? Bravo? Foxtrot? Charlie? Echo? Report in. Anybody? Report in.”
The sirens went dead.
The door to the room gave the tiniest creak. Hunt shot at it ten times. Pointless really. The door was designed to be bulletproof. He reloaded the handgun and pulled an MP5 submachine gun to his shoulder.
“If he’s a man bullets will kill him.” Hunt spat.
“Samael’s not a man, he’s the devil, they say he made Valentin for his own amusement, everyone knows how dangerous Valentin is, Samael’s a hundred times worse.”
“We’ll see.” Hunt said picking up a grenade.
He opened the door quickly; firing the MP5 as he did so then threw the grenade through it and closed the door again.
There was a quiet boom as the grenade exploded and then silence.
They listened to the silence, holding their breaths so as not to miss even the faintest of noises.
And then the handle of the door slowly started to turn...
Hunt raised his MP5 again, ready to fire.
The handle turned more ten degrees, twenty, thirty, forty, Hunt’s figure tightened against the trigger ready to blow away whoever was to come through the door, fifty degrees, sixty, seventy, eighty, eighty five...
Eighty seven degrees, eighty eight degrees eighty nine degrees...
It had stopped, it wasn’t moving it wasn’t turning it was completely static the handle a single degree away from freeing the door.
Why hadn’t he locked the door again when he had had the chance? Hunt couldn’t help but ask himself, like it would have helped anyway, if it was really Samael it wouldn’t make any difference. The stories said Samael had killed the unkillable. It was rumoured Samael had killed Joseph Stalin. Everyone knew it had been Samael that killed the Columbian president, which had started the civil war which had been going for three, four years almost now.
The door handle still wasn’t moving.
Hunt was breathing heavily now, he was pumping more adrenaline through his veins than blood.
And then the door burst open and a blinding white light burst through it, and out of the light a black shadow burst through.
Hunt opened fire at the shape, emptying his magazine into the shape as it flew through the air and then when it thudded to the ground.
The MP5 went empty and he tossed it aside, switching it for his handgun. Custom made by Amadeus Snipes, an ex SAS guy based in London. It was a good gun, ten rounds, each one gas expanding, powerful enough to blow a man in half, the gun was silenced and heavy enough to do serious damage to someone when you hit them with it. It was a good gun. It would do the job properly; he put a round into the head of the man that had burst into the room just to make sure he’d died.
Keeping an eye on the open door he moved over to the body and turned it over.
He nearly threw up when e saw it was alpha team leader.
His heart was beating heavily against his chest, the adrenaline running so heavily through his system he wondered whether he would have a heart attack.
Slowly he moved towards the open door, his gun pointing into the impenetrable black abyss of the corridor. He squinted his eyes looking for a human shape, but there was none to be found. He looked up to the ceiling because no one ever did and it’s always where they come from to kill you. There was nothing there. He was about to close the door when a pale hand shot out of the darkness, grabbed at the barrel of the gun and pulled it from Hunt’s hands.
Hunt had no other option than to charge into the darkness.
There was nothing there.
He span around frantically searching for Samael. Flailing his arms in the darkness, swinging wild punches that connected with nothing but air. Finally he came to his senses and retreated back to the room, he was sensible though, he was a professional, he wasn’t going to turn his back to the corridor and let Samael run up it in that silent stealth way the bastard would certainly know, no, he kept looking down the corridor, ready and waiting for anything as he backed his way back to the open door. And then he felt it: the icy cold touch of a metal point in the back of his neck. Hunt involuntarily shivered and froze on the spot.
It was impossible. There was no way Samael could have passed him.
He slowly moved to put his arms together he had a combat knife up each sleeve, and he carefully shifted his wait so he could turn quickly and attack.
Okay. three, two, one... Now!
He span on the spot slashing in a frenzy at Samael.
The silhouetted figure had slid back and twisted, the right hand holding the sword was behind him, the sword pointing to the ground, his left hand moved slowly and gracefully, each small movement it made blocking Hunt’s attacks, gliding them away, redirecting them forcing them to reflexively move away.
And then the soft finger tips touched at Hunts throat and was vaguely aware of the fingers tightening around his wind pipe, twisting, the thumb striking at one pressure point and then another he was aware of a gagging reflex and pain in his neck, he felt the delicate fingers strike at three more pressure points and then the ridge of the hand slammed into his windpipe and he went out cold. He never woke up. He might as well of been dead from before he hit the floor. His windpipe had broken from the shock induced by the impacts of the attacks and closed up; it was only a matter of minutes before his heart stopped beating.
The silhouette walked through the door into the glimmering light cast by the flickering orange flames from the fire place.
It was close to dying.
“So what happens now? Are you just going to kill me? Quick and clean in cold blood?”
“Death’s not such a bad thing; at least I won’t be there.”
“I suppose that’s true. I don’t suppose there is any way I could persuade you to not kill me?”
“Yrubsilas’s journal. Who did you sell it to?”
“If I tell you will you let me live?”
“No, you are a piece of my art. But if you tell me, it will be a lot less painful.”
“I sold it to a man who worked for SCS... I think his name was... Gettler.”
And then Samael was behind Dreyfus, Dreyfus twisted round in his chair to shoot him with his gun but it was too late, Samael slid the tip of his sword into the back of the man’s neck and severed the spinal column.