Page 74 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
“Xander got a lot of useful information from his mark, but the most interesting piece of information was that this Jahad is headed your way.”
Christian knew instantly this meant two things. One, the incident in Gràcia had drawn the leader of the Expurgari to Spain—more unanticipated fallout of his decision to attack in public—and two, this was a perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So to speak.
Leander knew exactly what he was thinking. “It’s too dangerous. Caesar is the primary target, we can deal with the Expurgari later—”
“This Jahad won’t travel alone—there will be at least half a dozen of his top men with him, maybe more. It couldn’t be more perfect if we’d orchestrated it ourselves. We can cut off the head of the snake—”
“It would be quite a coup, I admit, but if Caesar finds out Jahad is closing in, he might run. And since Jenna won’t be able to See where he’s gone until after the pregnancy, we can’t take the risk of losing him—”
“Unless I can get Caesar and Jahad in one room together,” Christian said abruptly.
“And how exactly do you intend to do that? Send out engraved invitations?”
Christian knew if he could see his own face in a mirror, something ugly and dark would be looking back at him. Something violent and vicious and altogether wild. He said, “Let me figure that out, brother. If there’s a way to do it, I will.”
He disconnected the call before Leander could ask any more questions, opened his laptop, clicked through his email until he found Leander’s message, and began to read.
His parentage was unknown, as were the exact date of his birth and his real name. He was known only as Jahad, an Anglicized version of jihad, a word which in Arabic means “struggle,” to go from imperfection to perfection, to establish the truth over wrongdoings, to achieve the Kingdom of Heaven while tempted by the myriad pleasures and sin on Earth.
Born with the melanin defect that produces albinism, he was found swaddled in blankets on the steps of an orphanage in Rome, abandoned at only a few weeks old. Little was known of his early life except that he was relentlessly bullied and tormented by the other boys in the orphanage, taunted for his marble skin and gray-violet eyes so pale they were nearly tintless. As it inevitably does when unchecked, the bullying turned violent. One Christmas Eve when he was approximately fourteen years old, the albino boy was set on fire and left to writhe and scream in agony on the basement floor of the orphanage while the others watched, laughing.
It was only the intervention of a visiting priest that saved his life. The priest arrived in time to douse him in a bucket of water drawn from the well, but by then almost all the skin on the right side of his body had been eaten away by the flames.
He refused to name the perpetrators. It took him nearly a year of excruciating physical therapy to regain the use of his right hand and leg. To celebrate the milestone, he burned the orphanage to the ground—with all the boys in it.
It was at that point he was recruited by the Expurgari.
With no earthly ties, a pathological thirst for revenge against wrongdoers, and a psyche as scarred as his body, Jahad was a perfect addition to their cause. In possession of a near-genius IQ, the new recruit demonstrated an exceptional ability to strategize and lead others. He quickly rose through the ranks, making a name for himself with his total devotion to Expurgari canon, unquestioning loyalty, and unflinching application of violence in the advancement of the holy war against evil.
Expurgari means “purifiers” in Latin, and Jahad, a man who’d been transformed by pain, believed pain was the only true path to purity.
Every day except Sunday he wore a spiked metal cilice cinched tight into the flesh of his thigh, which pricked holes that bled and scabbed and bled again. He flagellated himself with a corded leather whip while naked on his knees, until his back was bloody and raw and his vision was dim. He practiced celibacy, fasting, and self-denial in many forms, yet still was not satisfied with all he did to check the needs of the flesh. One day a month he allowed the basest desires of his nature to reign and he visited one of the specialty establishments in the city that catered to men of his particular tastes.
Afterward, he strangled the animal while reciting the Lord’s Prayer and dumped its body in the Tiber River.
“Jesus Christ,” Christian muttered as he read that little detail in the dossier Leander had sent. To which his subconscious wryly replied, Not even close.
He clicked on a link and opened a file that held four verified pictures of Jahad, taken from various angles. Two were too blurry to be of much use, but showed the substantial bulk of his figure striding away from the camera, his face in profile, features obscured in the shadows thrown by the brim of a hat. A third picture was clearer, taken from the front as Jahad was looking right, again in a hat, this time in mirrored sunglasses, with the bright sun overhead winking off the corner of one lens.
But the fourth picture was arresting. Taken head-on at what seemed an arm’s length distance but was probably through a powerful high-resolution lens, it depicted a shirtless Jahad on the balcony of a hotel staring straight into the camera. No hat this time, nothing to cover his head or hide his features. Christian felt an odd sort of fascinated disgust, as one might when driving by the scene of a fatal accident, repulsed by the carnage but unable to look away.
His eyes, which read pale silver in the photograph, hel
d the flat, killer gaze of an assassin. His head was snow white and entirely bald—satin smooth, without the telltale stubble of a man who shaves it—and it became clear as Christian studied the photo that Jahad had no eyebrows or eyelashes to speak of. He was, in fact, entirely devoid of any hair at all. The right side of his body from his jaw to his waist was covered in hideous scar tissue, puckered and shiny, and his right hand was little more than a claw that hung at an odd angle by his hip.
But beneath the ruined skin was the impressive, well-developed musculature of a dedicated athlete.
Christian checked Jahad’s stats: six-foot-two, two hundred and thirty pounds.
Big. Almost exactly as big as he was.
A notation farther down caught his eye—alopecia areata universalis. Autoimmune disorder that caused a total loss of all body hair.
Wonderful. A bald albino bodybuilding religious zealot with a near-genius IQ and a predilection for sadomasochism, pyromania, and bestiality. He felt a twinge of nostalgia for the old leader of the Expurgari, who was just your garden-variety nut job with a God complex.
He closed the files and logged out of his email, then sat staring at the computer screen, trying to concentrate on the job at hand and all that needed to be done. But his conversation with Leander about deciding between the lesser of two evils kept circling his brain, one word nettling him like a burr.
Information.
