Adventure of Dallas Fontaine 2

Dallas steps through the chapel doors and finds the operation coming apart at the seams. Mercer crates are split open, papers are trampled, and the air stinks of incense over ozone. Somewhere in the wreckage, Mercer is already dead.

At the altar wall, the hidden workroom gapes open. Utah stands inside it with the Liber Signorum Rubrorum spread under a bare lamp, turning its pages like a butcher inspecting a blade. His hands move with feverish care.

A terrified congregation member kneels before the altar, too stunned to flee. Utah marks the page with soot and ash, then traces the words as if he is teaching the book a new language.

The page gutters, and the text seems to darken into itself, as if the book is swallowing the ritual instead of recording it. The chapel’s logistics tables, copied manifests, and church forms now point to the same thing, Mercer’s cargo route has been turned into a rite.

Dallas sees the clean line through the mess, Mercer’s smuggling front has become Utah’s altar. If that kneeling man is the first test, the Liber is being rewritten into a delivery system for whatever Utah believes comes next.

Dallas moves before Utah can lift his eyes. The revolver hand stays low, the other hand snaps the book free, and the lamp light skids off the Liber as it leaves the altar.

Utah lunges for the empty space, but Dallas already has the tome against his coat. A page tears loose in the grab, fluttering down beside the kneeling congregant.

The torn slip lands face up, showing a pressure-impressed route mark, a church attachment code, and the same hand that tied the cargo trail together.

Utah freezes for half a beat, staring at Dallas with naked fury. The ritual remains unfinished, but the book is gone from his hands.