Map of Bones (44 page)

“
Nonna
…” she whispered.

Blood caked the old woman’s hair on the left side.

Rachel had thought her grandmother had escaped with Raoul.

Had the explosion knocked her down?

But Rachel supposed otherwise. Raoul must have pistol-whipped her out of the way, leaving her behind, useless baggage.

A moan rose from the old woman. She lifted a hand to the side of her head. “Papa!” she called feebly in a strained voice.

The blow, the confusion, the looming castle must have dislocated her grandmother, drawing her into the past.

“Papa…” Pain beyond her head injury keened in her voice.

But Rachel wasn’t the only one to hear the pain.

A few meters away, a dark shape rose from behind a flaming tire, stalking out of the smoke, drawn by the frail cry.

Rachel let go of Gray’s belt and stumbled a step down.

“I see it,” Gray said, stopping her with a hand.

He raised his gun, aimed, and squeezed the gun. The
pop
was explosive in the silent yard, but the yelp of the target was louder as the dog pitched over and rolled. Howls rose from it. It gnashed at its wounded back leg, attacking the pain. Other dogs swooped down upon it. Drawn by the blood. Lions on a wounded gazelle.

Rachel’s grandmother, startled by the beast, had fallen on her backside, mouth frozen in an
O
of surprise.

“I have to get to her,” Rachel whispered. It was an instinctive reaction. Despite the treachery, her
nonna
still had a place in her heart. She didn’t deserve to die like this.

“I’ll go with you,” Gray said.

“She’s dead already,” Seichan said with a sigh, lowering her GPS unit. But she followed them down the stairs, sticking close to the only gun.

In a tight knot, they traversed the edge of the courtyard. Pools of flaming oil lit the way.

Rachel wanted to run, but one massive brindled beast eyed them, hunched over a headless body, hackles raised, teeth bared, guarding its catch. But Rachel knew if she ran, the brute would be upon her in seconds.

Gray covered it with his pistol.

Her grandmother scooted away from the trio of dogs fighting over their injured brethren, ripping and tearing at each other to the point it was impossible to tell which beast Gray had shot. Her movement was tracked by another two beasts, coming at her from opposite sides.

They would be too late.

Another two shots and one beast collapsed, sliding on its face. The other bullet only grazed the second dog. The injury seemed to pique its bloodlust. It lunged at the fallen woman.

Rachel ran forward.

Gray’s gunshots had drawn more dogs. But committed now, there was no choice. He shot as he ran, dropping another two dogs, the last from only a yard away.

Before Rachel could reach her grandmother, the lunging dog struck. It snatched her grandmother’s arm, raised in defense. It bit clean through thin bone and withered flesh and tugged the old woman to the ground.

There was no cry.

The dog slammed on top of her, striking for the throat.

Gray fired near Rachel’s ear, half deafening her. The impact knocked the beast aside, off the old woman’s chest. The dog’s body writhed and convulsed, a clean head shot…also their last.

The slide on Gray’s pistol jacked open.

Rachel dropped to her knees, reaching her grandmother. Blood pumped from the old woman’s severed arm. Rachel cradled the body.

Gray crouched with her. Seichan dropped too, lowering their silhouette.

Dogs fought all around them, and they were out of bullets.

Her grandmother stared up at her and spoke weakly in Italian, eyes glazed. “Mama…I’m sorry…hold me…”

A crack of a rifle and her grandmother jerked in her arms, shot through the chest. Rachel felt the bullet exit, grazing a line of fire under her own arm.

She stared up.

Thirty yards away, two gunmen stood beyond the iron portcullis gate.

The new blast drew off a few of the dogs.

Gray sought to use the distraction to retreat to the castle wall. Rachel followed, not letting go of her grandmother, dragging her along.

“Leave her,” Gray urged.

Rachel ignored him, tears flowing, angry. Another rifle blast and a slug sparked off the stone a few feet away. Seichan reached down and helped carry her grandmother. Working together, they retreated faster.

At the gate, a pair of dogs struck the bars, gnashing at the gunmen, blocking their aim. But it wouldn’t last for long.

Reaching the relative shelter of the castle’s wall, Rachel collapsed over her grandmother’s body. They were still in direct view of the gate…but the entire courtyard was exposed. One of the dogs was blasted away from the portcullis. Another bullet pinged off the metal shutter of a window overhead.

Rachel, bent over her grandmother, finally freed the purse still hooked over her
nonna
’s shoulder, a permanent fixture to the old woman. Rachel snapped the clasp, reached inside, and felt the butt of cold steel.

She pulled out her grandmother’s heirloom.

The Nazi P-08 Luger.

“
Grazie, Nonna
.”

Rachel aimed toward the gate. She fixed her stand and let cold anger steady her grip. She squeezed the trigger…followed the recoil and fired again.

Both men fell.

Her focus widened—too late to stop the slavering beast leaping out of the smoke, muzzle snarled, teeth bared, going for her throat.

4:00
A
.
M
.

G
RAY STIFF-ARMED
Rachel to the side, knocking her down. He faced the monster and lifted his other arm. In his hand, he clutched a tiny silver canister.

“Bad dog…”

He sprayed the beast point-blank in the nose and eyes.

The dog’s weight struck him, flattening him on his back.

The beast howled—not in bloodlust, but searing agony. It rolled off Gray and writhed across the stone, grinding its face into the cobbles, pawing at its eyes.

But its sockets were already empty. Eaten away by the acid.

It rolled another two times, mewling.

Gray felt a twinge of discomfort. The dogs had been tortured into this savage state. It wasn’t their fault. Then again, perhaps any death was better than being under the thumb of Raoul.

The dog finally quieted and collapsed to the pavement.

But its tumult drew the eyes of a dozen others.

Gray glanced to Rachel.

“Six more shots,” she answered.

Gray shook his canister. Not much left.

Seichan had her eyes on the skies. Then Gray heard it, too.

The
thump-thump
of a helicopter.

It winged up over the ridge and castle walls. Lights blazed down. Rotorwash stirred a whirlwind.

Dogs scattered in fear.

Seichan spoke above the roar. “Our ride’s here!”

A nylon ladder tumbled out an open door and struck the stones only a few yards off.

Gray didn’t care who it was as long as they were free of this bloody courtyard. He raced forward and waved Rachel up the ladder. One hand held the flailing ladder steady, the other took Rachel’s Luger.

“Up!” he ordered, leaning close to her. “I’ll hold ’em off.”

Rachel’s fingers trembled as he freed her gun. His eyes met hers. He recognized a well of horror and sorrow that went beyond the bloodshed here.

“You’ll be okay,” he said, making it sound like a promise.

One he meant to keep.

She nodded, seeming to draw strength, and mounted the ladder.

Seichan went next, scrambling up behind her like a trapeze artist, even with her injured shoulder.

Gray followed last. He hadn’t needed to use the gun again. He shoved the Luger into the back of his belt and fled up the rope ladder. In moments, he was clambering into the cabin of the helicopter.

As the door was slammed behind him, Gray straightened to thank the person who had given him an arm and helped him inside.

The man wore a shit-eating grin. “Hi, boss.”

“Monk!”

Gray grabbed him in a bear hug.

“Watch the arm,” his partner said.

Gray let him loose. Monk’s left arm was strapped to his body, and a leather guard sheathed the bandaged stump of his wrist. He looked well enough, but paler. Dark circles shadowed his eyes.

“I’m fine,” Monk said, motioning him to sit and strap in as the helicopter sped away. “Just try keeping me out of the action.”

“How…?”

“We locked on to your emergency GPS signal,” he explained.

Gray pulled his seat harness over his shoulder and snapped it in place.

He stared at the other occupant of the cabin.

“Cardinal Spera?” Gray said, confusion in his voice.

Seichan sat next to him and answered, “Who do you think hired me?”

JULY 27, 4:38
A
.
M
.
AVIGNON, FRANCE

A
S THUNDER
boomed beyond the palace, Kat waited for Vigor. The monsignor had gone down the firepit’s dark stairs fifteen minutes ago.

To take a peek
, he had said.

She shone her light down the stairs.

Where was he?

She considered following him, but caution kept her at her post. If he was in trouble, he would’ve yelled. She remembered the ramp sealing and trapping them under Saint Peter’s tomb. What if that happened here? Who would know where to look for them?

She maintained her post, but she dropped to a knee and called below, trying to keep her voice soft at the same time. “Vigor!”

Footsteps answered her, hurried, coming up from below. A glow suffused, then focused down into a flashlight. Vigor climbed to within a half-dozen stairs. He waved to her.

“You must see this!”

Kat took a deep breath. “We should wait for Gray and the others to call.”

Vigor climbed another stair with a frown. “I’m as concerned as you, but there are surely other mysteries to solve down here. That is our purpose in being sent as an advance team. That is how
we
help the others. The Dragon Court, Gray, and the others are all in Switzerland. It will be hours before they can get here. We should put the time to good use and not squander it.”

Kat considered his argument. She checked her watch again. She also remembered Gray’s admonishment about being
too
cautious. But she was also damn curious.

She nodded. “But we check back up here every quarter hour for any contact from Gray.”

“Of course.”

Kat shouldered her pack and waved him down. She left one of her cell phones by the firepit, to pick up any call coming in—and to leave at least one breadcrumb to follow if they became sealed and trapped below.

While she’d bend about being too cautious, she wasn’t foolhardy.

She left that to Gray.

Kat ducked below, following Vigor. The stairs led straight down for a fair shot, then turned upon themselves and headed even deeper. Oddly, the air smelled dry, rather than dank.

The steps ended at a short tunnel.

Vigor’s pace hurried.

From the hollow echo of the monsignor’s footsteps, Kat sensed that a larger cavern lay beyond. It was confirmed a moment later.

She stepped out onto a three-meter stone ledge. Their two lights cast wide swaths across the domed and vaulted space, stretching above and below. It must have once been a natural cavity in the granite, but a great undertaking had transformed it.

Kneeling, Kat ran her fingers along the stonework underfoot, precisely fitted blocks of raw marble. Straightening, Kat shone her flashlight to the sides and down.

Skilled craftsmen and engineers had built a series of twelve bricked tiers, descending from their perch and on down toward the distant floor. The space was roughly circular in shape. Each level below was smaller than the next, like a vast amphitheater…or an upside-down step pyramid.

She shone her light across the yawning space contained within these tiers.

It wasn’t empty.

Thick arches of granite spanned out from the tiered footings in a corkscrew pattern, supported by giant columns. Kat recognized the arches. Flying buttresses. Like those that supported Gothic cathedrals. In fact, the entire interior space had that lofty, weightless feeling of a church.

“This had to have been built by the Knights Templar,” Vigor said, moving along the tier. “Nothing like this has ever been seen. A sonata of geometry and engineering. A poem in stone. Gothic architecture at its most perfect.”

“A cathedral underground,” Kat mumbled, awed, reverential.

Vigor nodded. “But one built to worship history, art, and knowledge.” He swept his arm out.

But there was no need.

The stone framework served only one purpose, to support a convoluted maze of timber scaffolding. Shelves, rooms, ladders, and stairs. Glass glittered. Gold shone. It all held a storehouse of books, scrolls, texts, artifacts, statuary, and strange brass contraptions. Each step around seemed to open new vistas, like some vast M. C. Escher painting, impossible angles, dimensional contradictions supported by stone and timber.

“It’s a huge library,” Kat said.

“And museum, and storehouse, and gallery,” Vigor finished. He hurried to the side.

A stone table, like an altar, sat not far from the entry tunnel.

A leather-bound book spread open under glass…gold glass.

“I was afraid to touch it,” Vigor said. “But you can see fairly well through it.” He shone his light down upon the exposed pages.

Kat peered at the book. It was heavily decorated in oils. An illuminated manuscript. Tiny script flowed down the page. It appeared to be a list.

“I think this is the codex for the entire library,” Vigor said. “A ledger and filing system. But I can’t be sure.”

The monsignor’s palms hovered over the glass case, plainly fearful of touching it. They had seen the effects of such superconducting material. Kat stepped back. She noted that the entire complex glittered with similar glass. Even the walls of the tiers had plates of the glass dotted along them, embedded like windows, set like jewels.

What did it mean?

Vigor still bent over the book. “Here it lists in Latin ‘the Holy Stone of Saint Trophimus.’”

Kat glanced back to him for explanation.

“He was the saint who first brought Christianity to this area of France. It is said he had a visitation of Christ during a secret meeting of early Christians in a necropolis. Christ knelt on a sarcophagus and his imprint remained. The sarcophagus lid became a treasure, supposedly invoking the knowledge of Christ upon those who beheld it.” Vigor stared out at the vaulted cathedral of history. “It was thought lost forever. But it’s here. Like so much else.”

He waved back to the book. “Complete texts of forbidden gospels, not just the tattered fragments of those found near the Dead Sea. I saw four gospels listed. One I had never even heard before. The Brown Gospel of the Golden Hills. What might it contain? But most of all…” Vigor lifted his flashlight. “According to the codex, somewhere out there is stored the Mandylion.”

Kat frowned. “What’s that?”

“The true burial shroud of Christ, an artifact that predates the controversial Turin Shroud. It was taken from Edessa to Constantinople in the tenth century, but during periods of marauding, it vanished. Many suspected it ended up in the treasury of the Knights Templar.” Vigor nodded. “Out there lies the proof. And possibly the true face of Christ.”

Kat felt the weight of ages…all suspended in perfect geometry.

“One page,” Vigor mumbled.

Kat knew the monsignor was refering to the fact that all these wonders were listed on just one page of the leather-bound book—which appeared to have close to a thousand pages.

“What else might be found here?” Vigor said in a hushed voice.

“Have you explored all the way to the bottom?” Kat asked.

“Not yet. I went back up to fetch you.”

Kat headed to the narrow stairs that led from one tier to the next. “We should at least get a general layout of the space, then head back up.”

Vigor nodded, but he seemed reluctant to leave the book’s side.

Still, he followed Kat as she wound back and forth down the switch-backing stairs. She gazed up at one point. The entire edifice hung above her, suspended as much in time as space.

At last they reached the top of the last tier. A final set of stairs led to a flat floor, hemmed in by the last tier. The library did not extend below. All the treasure piled above, held suspended by a pair of giant arches, footed on the last tier.

Kat recognized the stone of these arches.

Not granite or marble.

Magnetite again.

Also, directly beneath the crossing of the arches, rising from the center of the floor, stood a waist-high column of magnetite, like a stone finger pointing up.

Kat descended more cautiously to the floor below. A lip of natural granite surrounded a thick glass floor. Gold glass. She didn’t step out on it. The brick walls around it also were embedded with mirrored plates of gold glass. Twelve she counted, the same as the number of tiers.

Vigor joined her.

Like Kat, he took in all these details, but both their focuses fixed to the lines of silver—probably pure platinum—that etched the floor. The image somehow fit as an ending to this long hunt. It depicted a twisted maze leading to a central rosette. The stubby pillar of magnetite rose from its center.

Kat studied the space: the maze, the arches of magnetite, the glass floor. It all reminded her of the tomb of Alexander, with its pyramid and reflective pool.

“It looks like another mystery to solve.” She stared at the treasures hanging above her head. “But if we already opened this ancient storehouse of the mages, what’s left to find?”

Vigor stepped closer. “Don’t forget Alexander’s gold key. We didn’t need it to open anything here.”

“That means…”

“There’s more than just this library.”

“But what?”

“I don’t know,” Vigor said. “But I recognize this maze pattern.”

Kat turned to him.

“It’s the Labyrinth of Daedalus.”

5:02
A
.
M
.
OVER FRANCE

G
RAY WAITED
to interrogate the others until they were airborne again. The helicopter had flown them all to the Geneva International Airport, where Cardinal Spera had a private Gulfstream jet fueled and cleared for immediate takeoff to Avignon. It was surprising what a high-ranking official in the Vatican could accomplish.

Which posed Gray’s first question.

“What is the Vatican doing hiring a Guild operative?” he asked.

The five of them had swung their seats around to face one another.

Cardinal Spera acknowledged the question with a nod. “It was
not
the Holy See itself that hired Seichan.” He motioned to the woman seated beside him. “It was a smaller group, acting independently. We heard of the Dragon Court’s interest and activity. We had already used the Guild to investigate the group peripherally.”

“You hired mercenaries?” Gray accused.

“What we sought to protect required less-than-official means. To fight fire with fire. The Guild’s reputation might be ruthless, but they’re also efficient, honor their contracts, and get the job accomplished by any means.”

“Yet they didn’t stop the massacre in Cologne.”

“It was an oversight on my part, I’m afraid. We were unaware of the significance of their theft of the Cairo text. Or that they would act so swiftly.”

The cardinal sighed and twisted one of his gold rings, then another, back and forth, a nervous gesture. “So much bloodshed. After the murders, I approached the Guild again, to directly plant an operative among them. It was easy to do once Sigma had been called into play. The Guild offered its services, Seichan had had a run-in with you already, and the Court took the bite.”

Seichan spoke up. “My orders were to discover what the Court knew, how far their operation had progressed, and to thwart them however I saw fit.”

“Like standing by while they tortured priests,” Rachel said.

Seichan shrugged. “I came late to that little party. And once under way, there’s no discouraging Raoul.”

Gray nodded. He still had her coin from Milan. “And you helped us escape then, too.”

“It suited my purpose. By helping you, I was serving my mission to keep the Court challenged.”

Gray studied Seichan as she spoke. Whose side was she really playing on? With all her double and triple crosses, was there more she kept hidden? Her explanation sounded good, but all her efforts could merely be a ruse to serve the Guild.

The Vatican was naive to trust them…or her.

But either way, Gray owed Seichan another debt.

As planned, she had arranged to have Monk whisked out of the hospital before Raoul’s goons struck. Gray had assumed she would employ some of her Guild operatives—not call Spera, her employer. But the cardinal had got the job done, declaring Monk a Vatican ambassador and shuffling him out of there.

And now they were on their way to Avignon.

Still, one thing bothered Gray.

“Your group at the Vatican,” he said, eyeing Spera. “What’s their interest in all this?”

Spera had folded his hands on the table. Clearly he was reluctant to speak further, but Rachel reached across to him. She took his hands and splayed them out. She leaned forward to study them.

“You have two gold rings with the papal seal,” she said.

The cardinal pulled his hands back, covering one hand over the other. “One for my station as cardinal,” he explained. “And one for my position as secretary of state. Matching rings. Its traditional.”

“But they don’t match,” she said. “I hadn’t noticed until you folded your fingers together like that. With the rings on each hand side by side. They aren’t the same ring. They’re mirror images of the other. Exact reflected copies.”

Gray frowned.

“They’re
twins
,” Rachel said.