The Source - Michael Cordy [131]
Click. No more bullets.
Kelly was almost inside now, rising to his feet. Torino threw the gun down with his backpack and clutched the detonator. His first priority must be to protect the Church. He glanced through the gap into the garden.
Then he pressed the detonator button.
The resultant firestorm sounded more like a hurricane than a bomb blast. It raced round the eye-shaped crater, gathering momentum, sucking up all the oxygen and incinerating everything in its path. When the fire reached the soldiers' stored ammunition, there were more explosions. From inside the cave it sounded as if a war had broken out. A plume of flame shot through the narrow passage Bazin had made in the fallen rocks, knocking Kelly to the floor. Torino's chest felt tight as oxygen was sucked out of the antechamber into the garden. There was a loud whoosh of displaced air, and black dust and smoke swirled through the opening.
Suddenly, it was over. What evolution had taken billions of years to create had been destroyed in minutes.
'What have you done?' groaned Bazin from the floor.
Peering through the acrid, smoke-filled air, Torino saw that the garden was no more. In its place was a charcoal wasteland, surrounded by the bare granite walls of the crater. The stream had mostly evaporated and the lake was black with ash. Small fires still raged where there was anything left to burn but the destruction was total. Despite Torino's satisfaction, the desolation saddened him. Doing one's duty was never easy.
Kelly lay on his back on the rock floor, blood pouring from a gash on his forehead. One side of his clothes had been blackened where the plume of flame had scorched him. He appeared unconscious or dead.
Torino saw Bazin's pistol glinting in the shadows beyond his body and moved to claim it. He would return with more incendiaries and purge these caves of any remaining abominations: the hydra, the nymphs and the worms. Only the Source, which brought glory to Rome, would remain. The Holy Mother Church would build a new Vatican here. Leaving his backpack on the floor by the entrance, he stepped into the shadows to retrieve the gun.
80
Bazin groaned as Torino passed him. It was now painfully clear to him that his half-brother had not led him to salvation but to damnation. When he had been the Left Hand of the Devil, Bazin had sinned against man, but when he had killed for Leo, in the name of the Church, he had sinned directly against God. This pained him more than the bullets embedded in his gut.
After a lifetime of killing with impunity, it seemed odd to Bazin that his last act – sparing the lives of Ross, Zeb Quinn and Hackett – should be the one for which he was punished. He was glad, though. As Ross was fond of saying, deeds were everything, and this one had been a rare act of selfless good in a life of selfish evil. As Bazin glanced at Ross's motionless body, however, he realized that this last attempt to save him, the others and the garden appeared to have been in vain.
As his lifeblood leaked on to the rock, he called to his half-brother, 'I know I sinned, Leo, but I came to you for absolution. I wanted to do the right thing. God may still forgive my sins but He'll never forgive yours. You've turned Eden into a wasteland in His name. Look around you, Leo. This isn't Heaven. This is Hell, and it's of your making.' Bazin knew he was close to death now, but he felt no fear. Not as he had in the clinic when he was ill.
Torino shook his head sorrowfully. 'You're dying, Marco. I tried to help you, I really did. But you turned against God and now you'll be damned for ever.'
Watching Torino bend to retrieve the gun, Bazin blinked at the shapes moving in the shadows behind him. As death closed in he turned again to Ross and something he saw made him smile. He called again to his brother. 'You should fear Hell more than I do,