Chapter 796

Evenson pressed a hand against his chest, gently rubbing the spot where his conscience was supposed to be.

Apparently, he’d just accomplished something wonderful.

Think about Nastrond and his followers. They had gone through an extraordinary amount of trouble chasing clues from a novel, trekking through vast forests, and traveling back and forth between Norway and Spain. They must have spent a small fortune on transportation alone, never mind all the time and effort they’d invested.

And what had it all been for?

They wanted to fight the gods.

Yet after all that effort, they hadn’t even managed to meet one.

Then Evenson had come along, waved his hand, and sent them straight to the gods’ doorstep.

Talk about efficient service.

And hadn’t they repeatedly declared that they wanted to become gods of death themselves? Evenson had gone the extra mile by sending them to meet Hela, the Asgardian goddess of death. They could observe her up close and learn from the best.

What a thoughtful fellow he was.

Honestly, he deserved a medal for this one.

Evenson sighed contentedly, sincerely wishing the group a happy afterlife.

With Nastrond and his followers out of the picture, the mission was practically complete. Their meddling had come to an end, and Nastrond had already revealed the location of the final piece of the Berserker Staff.

All that remained was to retrieve it.

Evenson and Melinda didn’t waste any time. They turned around and returned to the aircraft.

As soon as they arrived, the others crowded around them, eager to hear what had happened.

Melinda, however, was clearly in a foul mood. She ignored everyone and headed straight inside.

Evenson simply dropped a large duffel bag onto the floor with a heavy thud.

"It’s all in here."

Skye looked at the bag, then at him. The corners of her mouth twitched.

"Please tell me that doesn’t contain a hundred human heads."

"Hmm." Evenson pretended to consider the question. "There’s a Voodoo ritual that can shrink a human skull down to the size of a ping-pong ball. I’ve picked up a few tricks over the years. I could probably fit a hundred heads in there without any trouble."

The expressions around him changed instantly.

Several people instinctively stepped backward.

Skye looked as though she might throw up.

She was already regretting having asked. The image of a hundred shrunken, bloody human heads packed into a duffel bag had taken root in her imagination, and no amount of wishful thinking was going to dislodge it.

"Heh. I’m kidding."

Evenson waved his hands, laughing at their reactions.

"I’m not particularly interested in Voodoo rituals. I’m a Warlock, not a barbarian. Besides..."

His expression shifted from playful to oddly serious.

"As a Warlock, one of the things I despise most is people treating skulls like toys, rolling them around in their hands for fun."

The others managed a few strained laughs.

Coulson was the first to recover enough to ask the obvious question.

"Then what’s in the bag?"

Evenson nudged it with his foot.

The contents clattered together with a metallic rattle.

"The Berserker Staff, obviously. What else? Did you actually expect me to bring back a hundred severed heads?"

"Oh."

Coulson crouched and unzipped the bag.

The moment he saw what was inside, his brows drew together.

"Why is it in so many pieces?"

The explanation was simple enough. Earlier, Melinda had been overwhelmed by painful memories triggered by the Berserker Staff. In a fit of anger, she’d smashed the artifact into fragments.

Evenson hadn’t bothered putting it back together. He’d simply swept the pieces into the bag and brought them along.

Of course, that wasn’t something he intended to tell Coulson.

"The enchantment was cheap," he explained casually. "I put a little too much force into handling it, and the thing lost all its durability. Then it just fell apart."

Coulson stared at the bag.

"That doesn’t explain why some of these pieces are practically powder."

Evenson scratched his cheek.

"Well... I used a dustpan to gather everything up. The floor was filthy, so some of the dust got mixed in."

Coulson looked at him for a long moment.

Collecting an extraterrestrial artifact with a dustpan.

Evenson might genuinely be the first person in history to accomplish that particular feat.

"Fine," Coulson eventually said. "Skye, go get some superglue and clear tape."

"One more thing. What happened to Nastrond and the others?"

He glanced around.

"Are they still at the site? I’ll send a team to bring them in."

Coulson assumed that Evenson had dealt with the cultists in the usual way. The men were probably unconscious or incapacitated, ready to be arrested and taken into custody.

At the very least, they needed to recover the bodies.

Discovering more than a hundred dead people in one place would be a horrifying experience for anyone who stumbled upon the scene. And leaving that many bodies to decompose underground would create a smell that could become a problem all by itself.

"No need."

Evenson walked past the others toward the aircraft’s bar. He selected a bottle of liquor and took a leisurely sip.

"I’ve saved you the trouble. You can thank me later."

Skye happened to be returning with half a box of multipurpose adhesive when she heard that.

Her imagination immediately took another unpleasant turn.

"You didn’t turn them all into ashes, did you?"

She looked at the dust mixed in among the fragments inside the bag.

"Wait. Are those ashes... human ashes?"

"What’s going on in that head of yours?"

Evenson dropped onto the couch, looking thoroughly exasperated.

"Even medieval barbarians knew better than to carry around the ashes of their enemies. And do I look like the sort of person who’d incinerate a hundred people without blinking?"

He spread his hands.

"Think about it. Their headquarters was an enclosed underground space with terrible ventilation. If I burned a hundred people alive in a place like that, the smell would be unbearable."

He shuddered.

"How am I supposed to enjoy grilled meat afterward?"

His first concern wasn’t the deaths of a hundred people, but whether the smell would ruin his appetite.

Coulson sighed.

Sometimes he wondered whether Evenson was capable of thinking about anything other than his own convenience.

"All right. Then what did you do to them?"

"Random teleportation," Evenson replied without lifting his head.

Coulson had worked with the Warlock long enough to understand what that meant.

"Random teleportation. To where?"

He immediately began regretting the question.

If Evenson had simply left the cultists at their headquarters, SHIELD could have collected them in one operation. Now, thanks to this new development, they might have to scour the entire planet to find a hundred people scattered across who knew how many locations.

"How should I know? It’s random."

Evenson shrugged.

"They might have ended up on the summit of Mount Makalu. Or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Perhaps directly above an active volcano. Some could even have appeared in the stratosphere."

He took another sip of his drink.

"And I suppose there’s a chance they were delivered in batches."

Skye blinked.

"In batches? Wouldn’t everyone arrive at the same time? Does your teleportation spell have a loading screen or something?"

Coulson’s face twitched.

"I think he means their body parts might have arrived separately."

Everyone fell silent.

Coulson continued reluctantly.

"For example, someone’s head might appear in one place, followed two minutes later by the rest of their body somewhere else."

Evenson smiled.

"Or the upper half of someone could be in the Sahara Desert while the lower half is buried deep in the Amazon rainforest."

His tone remained completely casual.

"Anyway, you won’t have to waste time looking for them. Perhaps several hundred or even a thousand years from now, archaeologists will discover their remains and add a few more unsolved mysteries to the history books."

"Forget it."

Coulson rubbed his face.

He was beginning to think that he needed to arrange a meeting with Director Fury. Evenson’s methods were becoming increasingly extreme, and SHIELD agents weren’t supposed to dispose of suspects quite so casually.

But that was a discussion for another day.

"For now, let’s focus on the final piece of the staff. I assume you found out where it is?"

"Ireland," Evenson answered. "Inside a Catholic church."

He grinned.

"You wouldn’t believe how quickly those people started talking. Honestly, they barely gave me a chance to torture anyone."

Of course, in Evenson’s opinion, ordering a couple of felhounds to bite through someone’s arms and applying a few pain curses hardly qualified as serious torture.

He’d barely gotten started before Nastrond began talking.

"Then let’s get moving," Coulson said, his expression stiffening.

The next part should have been straightforward.

SHIELD would travel to Ireland, locate the church, speak with the priest in charge, explain the situation, show their credentials, and retrieve the artifact.

That was the plan, anyway.

Unfortunately, everyone had underestimated the priest’s professional integrity.

The elderly cleric refused to cooperate from the outset. First, he denied that the church possessed anything matching SHIELD’s description.

Coulson responded by holding a spectral scanner in front of him.

The readings were unmistakable.

The priest finally admitted that the artifact was in his possession, but demanded to know why he should hand it over.

No amount of persuasion seemed to work.

"That relic was left behind by a saint," the white-haired priest declared solemnly. "It has been safeguarded within this church for centuries. Our predecessors swore an oath before the saint himself to protect it. We will not betray that sacred promise."

Whatever the truth behind the oath, the church had certainly benefited from possessing the Berserker Staff.

During the Crusades, and again during Ireland’s struggle for independence, the church had produced warriors who could supposedly stand against a hundred ordinary men.

The staff had played no small part in those feats.

Even if its owners had stopped fighting wars, it remained an ancient artifact of considerable historical value. And now that the staff was known to be extraterrestrial in origin, its significance had increased considerably.

Why should the church surrender it simply because some government organization had arrived and demanded it?

From the priest’s perspective, SHIELD’s request amounted to little more than two agents showing up, flashing their badges, and expecting the church to hand over a treasured relic without question.

Coulson exhausted every reasonable argument he could think of.

Nothing worked.

Eventually, he began considering alternatives.

Perhaps Ward could sneak into the church at night and retrieve the artifact. SHIELD had resorted to such methods before, and this certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

But just as Coulson was preparing to suggest the plan, Evenson finally stood up from the wooden pew where he’d been sitting.

Looks like it’s my turn.

He clasped his hands behind his back and approached the priest with an air of supreme authority.

"I am the director of the Vatican’s Holy Relic Management Office."

The priest froze.

"The Vatican? The... director?"

The title sounded a little unusual, but there really was an office responsible for the management of holy relics at the Vatican.

If this young man was telling the truth, he was presumably a priest himself.

And yet, the more the elderly cleric looked at him, the more Evenson resembled a professional con artist.

Evenson paid no attention to his doubts.

"I have come under the direct authority of the Pope to assist SHIELD in recovering an item. I would appreciate your cooperation."

The priest’s suspicions only deepened.

He had heard about the strained relationship between the Vatican and SHIELD.

After Thor and Loki’s arrival on Earth, the Pope had attempted to place a cardinal with genuine authority inside SHIELD. He had also hoped that the organization would support the Church’s efforts to restore the collection of tithes.

SHIELD had ignored him completely.

Even the priest himself had thought the Pope’s proposal sounded rather questionable. Perhaps His Holiness had been drinking too much wine when he came up with it. Still, questioning the Pope’s judgment was a dangerous habit, and the priest quickly dismissed the thought.

Whatever the reason, the incident had left the Vatican and SHIELD on poor terms.

There were other reasons for his distrust, too.

Some time earlier, SHIELD had visited a secluded religious sect in Eastern Europe. By the time the agency left, the entire sect had been wiped out.

Only one person had survived: a Black priest who had been staying in France at the time. He remained remarkably reluctant to discuss what had happened, saying only that SHIELD had subjected him to severe persecution and abuse.

The priest had also heard that the aircraft involved in that operation was identical to the one now parked outside his church.

Given all that, why would the Pope send someone to help SHIELD?

It made no sense.

"Furthermore," Evenson continued, "the relic your parish has been safeguarding is actually a heretical object."

That wasn’t entirely an arbitrary accusation. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, the worship of the Norse gods was heretical.

"You claim to be faithful servants of the Lord, yet you have been preserving an object associated with pagan worship and honoring those who left it behind as saints. Your actions have provoked considerable outrage among those who take the faith seriously."

Evenson gave the priest a thin smile.

"So let me offer you a little advice, Father."

He flicked the cross hanging from the cleric’s chest.

"I’ve come to settle this matter peacefully. But the next people to visit you may not be so accommodating."

He lowered his voice.

"The Inquisition may no longer exist, but the people of Necessarius have far too much free time on their hands these days."

The priest’s expression changed instantly.

Cold sweat appeared across his forehead.

Most ordinary people would have dismissed the threat as nonsense, but an experienced cleric was likely to know something about Necessarius, the Church of England’s secret magical organization.

The prospect of attracting its attention was not one he wanted to entertain.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow, trying to recover his composure.

"You... you say you were sent by the Vatican. Do you have any official documentation to support that claim?"

The old man wasn’t foolish enough to accept every word at face value. Anyone could claim to represent the Holy See, and SHIELD had certainly employed unconventional methods before.

If he surrendered the relic now and later discovered the Vatican had never authorized the operation, he’d have to answer for the loss.

Coulson glanced at Evenson.

There was a hint of smugness in his eyes.

Well? Where are you going to get the paperwork now?

He assumed Evenson had simply been bluffing, trying to frighten the priest into cooperating.

Evenson, however, reached behind his waist and began rummaging around.

He searched for several seconds before finally producing a rolled parchment.

He handed it to the priest.

"Examine it carefully. Make sure you don’t overlook anything."

The priest accepted the document with both hands and unrolled it.

His expression changed.

The parchment was a genuine document bearing the Pope’s own signature.

More importantly, the authority described within it was far beyond anything he’d expected.

It didn’t mention the supposed Holy Relic Management Office or Evenson’s title as its director. Instead, it identified him as a member of a far more exalted organization.

The priest’s hands began to tremble.

It wasn’t a cardinal.

It wasn’t even a member of the College of Cardinals.

It was something much greater.

The Right Seat of God.

An organization whose existence remained a secret to the outside world, its members were figures before whom even the Pope would show deference. In a sense, they were believed to be angels walking among humanity, agents acting directly upon the will of God.

The priest whispered the titles he’d heard in hushed conversations.

"Vento of the Front... Acqua of the Back... Terra of the Left... Fiamma of the Right..."

His gaze slowly lifted from the parchment to Evenson.

The young man before him didn’t belong to any of those four.

Instead, the document identified him by a title far more mysterious, one the priest had never heard before.

Black of the Above.

The priest nearly forgot how to breathe.

Everything became much easier after that.

The priest’s attitude changed so completely that Coulson had trouble believing he was the same man who had refused to cooperate moments earlier.

The elderly cleric hurried into a private chamber and returned carrying the Berserker Staff fragment with both hands, presenting it to Evenson as reverently as though he were handing over a sacred relic to an archangel.

"Our parish has always maintained a critical interest in this object," he insisted. "We have never worshipped the pagan gods associated with it. I beg you to consider our intentions fairly, Your Excellency."

Evenson accepted the artifact.

Then he let out three cold, mocking laughs.

"Ha. Ha. Ha."

He looked at the priest with an expression of deep disappointment.

"Why the sudden change in attitude, Father? You were treating me rather differently a few minutes ago."

The priest lowered his head, too ashamed—or too frightened—to answer.

"Believe me, I’ll remember this encounter for a long time."

With that, Evenson turned and walked out with Coulson.

The mission was complete. They had recovered the final piece of the Berserker Staff, and the priest could spend the rest of his life fretting about whether he’d offended someone important.

He had brought that anxiety upon himself.

Or so Evenson thought.

Just as they were about to leave the church, the priest suddenly called after them.

"Your Excellency! Please, wait!"

He hurried back into the private chamber and emerged moments later carrying a small box. Almost tripping over his own feet, he rushed toward Evenson and pressed it into his hands.

Evenson looked at him in confusion.

He opened the box.

Inside lay an old, weathered sword hilt.

The priest lowered his voice conspiratorially.

"This is the hilt of the sword William Wallace carried when he met his end. It’s worth a fortune."

Evenson nearly choked.

He stared at the relic for a moment, struggling to recover his breath.

Then his expression brightened into a broad smile.

"Hahaha! When the gold starts jingling, the soul heads straight for heaven."

He carefully tucked the box away.

"Father, your devotion to the Church is truly admirable. I’ll be sure to report your loyalty to the Pope."

What a strange turn of events.

Somehow, Evenson had gone from threatening the priest with supernatural inquisitors to accepting an extremely valuable artifact as a gift.

Coulson was less than pleased as they made their way back to the aircraft.

He knew Evenson’s personality well enough to understand what would have happened had he demanded that the Warlock return the sword hilt.

Getting food away from a dog’s mouth would have been easier.

Evenson would have turned hostile on the spot, abandoned the operation, and probably made everyone’s lives considerably more difficult.

Still, Coulson couldn’t help being curious about one thing.

"Where did you get that document?"

He narrowed his eyes.

"Don’t tell me you forged it yourself."

"What are you talking about? It’s genuine."

Evenson snorted.

"I had Mephisto arrange it. Ever since the Vatican started selling indulgences, the place has essentially belonged to him. These days, he practically runs the whole operation."

He smiled smugly.

"I got my credentials straight from the source. They’re more authentic than the real thing."

"Mephisto?"

Coulson repeated the name.

He knew the name from the old story of Faust and his pact with the Devil. More than that, he knew that Mephisto was a very real entity in their world.

But hearing the name stirred an odd sensation in his mind.

Something about it felt familiar. He was sure he’d encountered the name before, perhaps in connection with an earlier incident or someone he’d once known.

He tried to recall the details.

Nothing came.

No matter how hard he searched his memory, he found only an empty space where the answer should have been.

And that, somehow, bothered him more than anything else.