Nicodemus was a liar, through and through.
This was theater. It had to be.
And I realized his plan in a flash of insight: He hadn’t had Grey and the Genoskwa grab us because he’d been about to turn on us and kill us. He’d done it to force Michael to stay near us if he wanted to intervene—instead of intervening somewhere else.
Deirdre and Nicodemus stood close together, his hand on her arm. I saw the demonform young woman look up into his eyes, her expression fragile and uncertain, and I focused my thoughts exclusively on my hearing, Listening as hard as I could.
“. . . wish there was another way,” Nicodemus was saying quietly. “But you’re the only one I can trust.”
“I know, Father,” Deirdre said. “It’s all right.”
“You will be safe from the Enemy here.”
Deirdre lifted her chin, and her eyes were wet. “I have chosen my path. I regret nothing.”
Nicodemus leaned over and kissed his daughter’s forehead. “I am so proud of you.”
A tear rolled down Deirdre’s cheek as she smiled, and the demonform faded away, until a blade-thin girl remained, staring up at him. “I love you, Father.”
Nicodemus’s rough voice cracked a little. “I know,” he said, very gently. “And that is the problem.”
And he struck with the curved Bedouin dagger.
It was an angled thrust, up beneath the sternum and directly into the heart. Deirdre never broke eye contact with him, and never moved a muscle. The blade sank in to the hilt, and the only reaction she gave was a slight exhalation. Then she moved, leaning closer to Nicodemus, and kissed his mouth.
Then her legs buckled and she sank slowly down. Nicodemus went with her, down to his knees, and held her gently, the jeweled hilt of the dagger standing out sharply from her body.
“Mother of God,” Michael breathed. “He just . . .”
Nicodemus held her for maybe two minutes, not moving. Then, very carefully, he laid the body down on the cavern floor. He withdrew the knife with equal care. He dipped two fingers into the wound, felt around for a moment, and then withdrew something small and covered with blood and gleaming. A silver coin. He cleaned his daughter’s blood from it and from the dagger with a handkerchief. He pocketed the Coin, sheathed the knife, and rose, calmly, to walk back toward the rest of us. His face was as blank as the stone floor beneath his feet. Everyone stared at him in shock. Even Grey looked surprised.
“Mother of God, man,” Michael breathed. “What have you done?”
Nicodemus stared at Michael with steady eyes and spoke with quiet contempt. “Did you think you were the only one in the world willing to die for what he believes, sir Knight?”
“But you . . .” Michael looked like he might be near tears himself. “She just let you do it. She was your child.”
“Did your own precious God not ask the same of Abraham? Did he not permit Lucifer to destroy the children of Job? I, at least, have a reason for it.” He gestured curtly at Grey and the Genoskwa and said, “Release them.”
Grey let go of Valmont at once. The Genoskwa turned me loose only reluctantly, and gave me a little push as he did it that nearly knocked me to the ground.
Michael’s mouth opened and closed. “I could have talked to her,” he said.
“If he’d given you the chance,” I said. “That was the whole point of the hostage drama. To make sure you were focused somewhere else.”
Nicodemus stared at me coldly.
“He was worried that you might say something, Michael. That in the moments before she knew she was going to die, Deirdre’s faith might have wavered. Particularly if someone like you was there to offer her an alternative.”
Nicodemus inclined his head to me, very slightly. Then he said, “You have never beaten me, sir Knight. And you never will.”
“You’re insane,” Michael said quietly, sadly.
Nicodemus had begun to turn away, but he paused.
“Perhaps,” he said, his eyes distant. “Or perhaps I’m the only one who isn’t.”
Anna Valmont moved to my side and said quietly, “Look.”
I looked.
Deirdre’s corpse stirred.
No, that wasn’t right. There was movement at the corpse, but the body wasn’t moving. Instead, a faint, silvery glow seemed to begin radiating from it. Then there was motion, and the glow coalesced into a humanoid shape, which after a moment refined itself into a translucent silvery shade in the shape of Deirdre. She sat up from the corpse, separating herself from it, and rose to her feet. She turned and paused, frowning down at the body, and then lifted her own hand and stared at it.
Behind her, the same silvery glow that had surrounded the body began to suffuse the solid stone image of an archway carved in the next wall. It spread to the edges of the carving where a silvery translucent lever appeared, in the same place the lever had been on the previous two gates.
Deirdre’s shade turned to look at her father. She smiled, sadly. Then she turned and drifted over to the lever. She wrapped ghostly hands around it and pulled it slowly down. The light in the stone intensified, becoming brighter and brighter, until there was a flash and it was gone, taking Deirdre’s shade and the stone alike with it, leaving an open archway in their place.
Light poured from the archway.
Golden light.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Nicodemus said, his voice calm, “we have done it.”