In The Dark Of Night

Chapter One - The Accused

Chapter One

The Accused 

 Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.

~Joseph Heller, Catch 22

"Onore, lealtà, rispetto..."

The old, Italian chapel hummed with the silent swear, floating over the seated occupants in the pews whose hands were clasped and whose heads were bowed.

Well, most of them, anyway.

Tucked far into the back rows, clad in nothing but solid blacks, was a tall, dark-skinned male, bald head reflecting the light beaming in a rainbow of colors through the stained glass-depiction of Jesus Christ, and lips curled back into a permanent grimace.

As the people around him rose and the whispers of a hymn strew from the organ at the front, he sat still, unmoving. He warranted no looks - it was like he wasn't even there. 

And then the alarm on his watch went off, and he leaned down to tap it, the church-goers among him raising their voices in chorus, none seeming to notice the impossibly big man lumber to his feet, pull up his dark hood over his tattooed face and journey down the nave, right up to the altar... to kneel right before the High Priest.

The man carried right on preaching without batting an eye.

The grimace twitched to a smile for just a moment, before the bald man bowed his head before the preacher and whispered the words for entry. 

A loud 'crack' shattered the voices in song, but they never stumbled, tones blending together wonderfully and eyes trained on the large depiction of the Garden of Eden, raised behind the priest's head... the depiction that was currently splitting apart. 

With a nod to the priest, the hairless man sidestepped him, cloak swelling around him as he headed towards the gaping hole in the middle of the before-solid wall, a low hiss of cold air blowing from its lips. 

As he tucked himself within the crooks of the wall and glanced down the old, brick passage before him, he spared one last look at the clueless congregation, before, with a smirk on his marked face, turning to stalk into the cool confines of the man-made cave, the wall slamming closed behind him.

To the untrained eye, the space before him was blank; full of nothing but air and coldness. To eighteen year old Cale Schatten, however, the room was teetering with gold beyond imagination, with emeralds and rubies and diamonds and pearls - a mini-treasury, in the old essence of the word. 

He was sure not to look anywhere but directly before him, at the seated panel of shortened men, with tufts of hair billowing from their ears, noses and lips, but none growing from their scalps - dwarfs, as his Mentor, Jamie Phelps, had informed him. 

"And never forget, Cale... dwarfs like a good bargain. And they like a covetous man even more..."

So Cale didn't look at the mounds and hills and rivers of expensive jewelery. Instead, he focused his golden glare upon the chittering man, whose stubby little nails were worn down to the nubs and whose lips were parched from lack of sunlight and liquid. 

Their eyes were the most disturbing. 

They were slits; gleaming, hard little slits that were full to the brim with malice and hatred and greed.

It was the eyes that made Cale's blood boil. 

"I hope you haven't started without me." A booming voice echoed about the tiny space, startling the dwarfs at its sudden intrusion.