“Are you all right?” Raiden asked, his arms loosening. He stepped back, hands settling on my upper arms, and gave me a quick, assessing once over.
I nodded. Physically, I was fine. Mentally and emotionally, I wasn’t so sure. But we didn’t have time to dissect what was happening to me right now.
I glanced down at the still unconscious guard. He wouldn’t stay out forever.
The guard’s radio beeped, startling me, and a tinny voice filled the corridor. “Matteo, check in, now,” another guard demanded in Italian. “What is your status?”
I gulped and looked at Raiden.
“Do you know where to go from here?” he asked.
I nodded, not trusting my voice to work just yet, and shakily pointed to the corner ahead.
“All right, let’s get moving,” he said, releasing me and moving toward the guard. “Can you grab the guns?”
Raiden squatted, reaching for the guard’s arm and thigh, and with a grunt, hoisted the not-so-small man onto his back in a fireman’s carry. With another grunt, Raiden stood, making the whole thing look way too easy. He took a moment to adjust the guard’s position on his shoulders, then shot a pointed look at the rifle on the floor before raising his gaze to meet mine.
I scurried to scoop up the Glock and stuffed it into the front waistband of my jeans, then headed for the rifle. It felt cold and heavy, and completely unfamiliar, and I held it awkwardly with both hands.
When I turned back to Raiden, he was already making his way up the passageway.
I hugged the rifle diagonally across my body, freeing one hand, and reached up to turn on the light on my headlamp, then followed Raiden.
“What are we going to do with him?” I asked, voice hushed. I glanced over my shoulder. Where there was one guard, there were sure to be more. Much as I hated the idea, it was time to consider abandoning the mission.
“Bring him into the vault with us,” Raiden said. “Assuming we can even get in.”
“Oh, right—the vault.” Purpose rekindled, I rushed ahead, passing Raiden. I rounded the corner and skidded to a halt.
There it was. Right there. The door to the Order’s vault.
It was nothing like I’d imagined. It was neither ancient nor ornate. It was plain and practical gray steel. The door looked out of place among all of the gold and bright colors painted on the walls.
A chill crept up my spine. My mom had been here mere weeks ago. I was moments from finding out if following my instinct to come here had been the right call.
Raiden rounded the corner and headed straight for the door, moving quickly despite his heavy burden, and I followed close on his heels. He stopped a few steps from the steel barrier and motioned to the door. “Be my guest, Cora.”
I flashed him a nervous grin and stepped forward. The lock was strange, unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It reminded me of a puzzle from one of my games. It looked like a cryptex, made up of six steel inch-wide rings that spun around a horizontal axis, each ring marked by a series of ancient symbols. They were similar to the letters in the ancient Greek alphabet, but with some Cuneiform patterns mixed in, as well as some of the stylistic elements of Japanese characters. I recognized them both from my mom’s journal and from my dreams. These symbols belonged to the Atlantean alphabet. My people’s alphabet.
My fingers hovered over the rings. All I needed to do was line up the correct series of symbols.
“The journal,” I said, glancing back at Raiden. “Where is it?”
“In my bag—the front pocket,” he said, turning partway to give me access to his backpack.
I quickly unzipped the pocket and pulled out the journal, then flipped to the page displaying my mom’s smaller map of these tunnels as well as the six-digit code. The steel dials clicked faintly as I spun them, the internal mechanism offering up more resistance than I’d expected. It took a few minutes, but finally I rolled the final symbol into place. It clicked quietly, and I held my breath.
A deep clang sounded from within the door, and a moment later, it cracked opened. I inhaled deeply and curled my fingers around the edge of the door.
I was seconds from entering the vault where my mom had found the regulator and the crystal orb.
And hopefully, where I would find some answers.
31
The vault door was incredibly heavy, opening slowly and silently. I stopped pulling when I had it a third of the way open, and I slipped through the opening into the vault. The beam of light from my headlamp cut through the darkness, a sweeping spotlight illuminating only where I looked.
The vault itself was as surprising as it was simple. The room was perfectly round, and smaller than I’d expected, maybe twenty feet in diameter. The single, curved wall was built of travertine bricks about the same size and shape as the standard cinder block. The only break in the stone wall was directly opposite the door, where a tall, narrow archway was built into the wall. It had the look of a doorway, but a single, heavy slab of stone blocked the way.
The floor, too, was travertine, though slabs of some darker stone had been inlaid into the floor in a series of concentric semi-circles. The pattern tickled my mind, though I didn’t know why.
Six stone pedestals stood around the periphery of the room, three on either side, each a perfect cylinder—none of the frills or embellishments typical to Roman construction. From the looks of it, each pedestal was a solid, seamless piece of travertine.
I set down the rifle, propping it against the wall directly to my right and moved closer to the nearest pedestal. I dropped to one knee and leaned in to get a closer look.
I raised my hand and ran my fingers over the surface of the pillar. The stone had been smoothed and polished to perfection, and markings had been carved in neat columns, a precise string of alien symbols running from the top edge of the pedestal all the way down to the floor. The symbols were clean and simple, like the pedestal itself.
As I stared at the writing, it started to make sense to my mind. What had been gibberish just a moment ago was suddenly clear as day.
. . . a doru can only be wielded by an empowered warrior from the Order of the Amazons. In the hands of anyone else, a doru is little more than a sturdy staff. The weapon is constructed of a collapsible shaft of orichalcum, rendering it nearly indestructible. The focus crystal at the top of the doru concentrates the Amazon’s psychic energy, turning the doru into the most dangerous, powerful weapon ever created by the Olympians. The first doru was created by accident, when—
The sound of the door clanging shut interrupted my examination of the writing on the pillar. I twisted on my knee and watched Raiden set the guard on the floor, gently laying the man on his side.
Raiden shrugged out of his back pack and crouched down to fish around in the bag. After a few seconds, he pulled out a couple of long zip ties—military grade, no doubt. He proceeded to tie the guard’s wrists together, then moved on to his ankles.
Placing a hand on my knee, I pushed up to my feet and turned back to the pedestal. A two-foot-long, golden rod no thicker than the circle made by my thumb and forefinger rested on the top of the pedestal in a groove that must have been carved just for it. I recognized it from the sketch in my mom’s journal. A gracefully intricate pattern of curling and swirling lines had been carved along the length of the golden rod. A smooth, clear stone approximately the size and shape of an egg had been set into one end. With all of the decoration, the rod looked more like something a monarch would wield on the day of their coronation than any kind of weapon.
But this was a weapon—a doru, according to the writing on the side of the pedestal. An incredibly powerful weapon, but only when wielded by an empowered warrior of the Order of Amazons. I wasn’t sure what “empowered” meant, but remnants of Persephone’s memories from my dreams told me that was what she had been—an Amazon warrior.
And in my gut, I knew that this wasn’t just any doru. This doru was hers. The same doru I—she—had wielded in the dream of her dis
astrous first contact with humans.
I reached out with one hand, running my fingertip along the length of the doru. It felt warm to the touch, and the clear stone—the focus crystal—slowly filled with an amber glow. When I pulled my hand away, the color faded from the stone. My frown deepened.
“That looks familiar,” Raiden said, coming to stand beside me. He recognized it from my mom’s journal. “Any idea of what it is?”
I glanced at him, then returned my stare to the doru. “It’s a weapon,” I told him.
“It doesn’t look like a weapon.”
“No,” I agreed, “it doesn’t.” I finally managed to tear my stare away from the doru, curious about the items on display on the five other pedestals.
Planting my hands on my hips, I looked around the room, illuminating each pedestal with the beam from my headlamp. Three of the pedestals were empty, including the remaining two on this side of the room.
As I made my way to the next pedestal, I could sense Raiden’s stare following me, though he stayed put. A small depression had been carved into the top of this pedestal, just the right size and shape to fit my pendant. A pleased smile curved my lips. I was staring at the first bit of evidence confirming that I had put the puzzle pieces together correctly and that my mom really had come here, to this vault hidden beneath Vatican City.
I shrugged off my backpack and set it on the floor, crouching down beside it as I unzipped the smaller front pouch. I fished out the cell phone Raiden had given me, flipped it open, and selected the camera app. The phone was pretty basic, but it wasn’t featureless.
Standing partway, I slowly moved around the pedestal, snapping pictures of the writing as I moved. We didn’t have loads of time to lollygag in here. The quicker we looked around and got out—far away from both Vatican City and the Custodes Veritatis—the better. I could translate the writing later.
I finished with the pendant’s pedestal, then moved on to the next. A perfectly round depression had been carved into the top, just the right size to fit the crystal sphere. I recorded the text written around that pedestal as well. I was about to move on again, when a phrase popped out from the mass of symbols: consciousness orb.
I straightened, phone hand dropping down to my side. “Of course,” I breathed.
How had I missed it? I’d assumed Persephone’s memories were being filtered into my mind from the regulator because the dreams had only started once I was wearing it. But I hadn’t considered another possible source—the crystal sphere. When I first touched it, right before it knocked me unconscious, I would have sworn it had been filled with a swirling, incandescent blue mass. Just the first time. After that, the sphere had appeared empty, and touching it had been harmless.
Because Persephone’s consciousness had already been downloaded into my mind.
“What is it?” Raiden asked, making his way across the vault toward me.
I blinked, looking at him. “It’s . . .” I shook my head. “It’s complicated. I’ll fill you in once we’re out of here.”
Shaking off the shock, I hurried across the room to examine the three other pedestals.
One displayed a folded-up garment. Another displayed a perfectly smooth, six-by-six cube that seemed to be made of solid obsidian, or maybe onyx. The final was empty, only a three-inch-wide, disk-like depression remaining of whatever had been displayed there.
I photographed the pedestal displaying the garment from every angle as quickly as possible, then retrieved my bag from the other side of the vault.
Though I felt certain that the garment was ancient—as ancient as this chamber—the fabric felt soft and supple against my fingertips. I paused, garment in hand and brow furrowed, then shook my head and carefully folded it smaller before putting it in my bag.
I moved on to the pedestal displaying the cube, gently compressing the items in my backpack to make room. I set the bag down on the floor at the base of the pillar, made a quick circle around the pedestal, snapping pictures with my phone, then tucked the phone into my pocket and reached for the cube. The instant my fingertips made contact with the cube, it started to glow. A subtle, silvery light backlit intricate grooves carved into the stone, invisible to the eye until now.
I pulled my hands back a few inches, afraid to move more than that, and watched the cube glow brighter and brighter. And as it brightened, it started to hum.
“What did you do?” Raiden asked, rushing across the room toward me.
I shook my head, unable to look away from the glowing, humming stone cube.
The light was changing—shifting. It was bleeding away from the grooves, forming a very distinct, solid line that ran all the way around the artifact.
“Get back,” Raiden hissed, grabbing my arm and pulling me away from the pedestal.
We made it three steps before the glowing and humming reached a crescendo. And then, abruptly, it stopped.
The cube went dark. Quiet.
We froze, staring at the cube, afraid to move.
With a click, followed by the distinctive hiss of a vacuum releasing, the stone cube split in half and opened.
I jumped, just a little.
“What the hell?” Raiden said, voice little more than a whisper.
Lips parting, I took a step toward the pedestal. This wasn’t just a cube of stone. It was a box. And like Pandora, I felt compelled to find out what was inside.
Raiden stopped my forward momentum with the tight grip he had on my arm. “I don’t know if that’s smart . . .”
Behind us, came the very distinct metal clang of a heavy, steel lock disengaging.
Heart hammering, I spun around just as artificial lights flared on overhead and the vault door started to swing outward.
In the blink of an eye, Raiden had his handgun out and trained on the door.
A tall, lean man stepped through the doorway and into the vault. He had thinning blond hair, and pale skin lightly lined with age. He wore a tailored, slate-gray suit and had a distinctive air of confidence and authority. His expression was placid—serene, even—like he wasn’t remotely surprised to find intruders in the vault. Like he’d been expecting us.
He stepped to the side, and four armored guards filed into the vault through the doorway, each armed, handguns trained on us. Or rather, on me.
For all intents and purposes, Raiden should have been the one drawing their potential fire. He was the one pointing a gun at them. He should have been the bigger perceived threat. And yet, all four guards were targeting me. I swallowed roughly, and licked my lips.
The man in the suit stepped forward, drawing my attention back to him. He opened his arms wide in the universal gesture of welcome, which struck me as odd. And then he smiled.
“An honor, truly, ancient one,” he said, bowing his head. When he raised it again, his eyes fixed on me. “I’ve been waiting a very long time to meet you.”
32
I was struck dumb, eyes opened wide and brow furrowed. Getting caught had always been a possibility, but being welcomed—that threw me off guard.
The man in the suit brought his hands together in front of his chest, fingertip to fingertip. “Did you know, I found Diana in much the same position just a few weeks ago . . .” It was clear that English wasn’t his native tongue, but his accent was hard to pinpoint; it had a lilting, almost sing-song quality that made me think of Scandinavia.
I sucked in a breath to demand that he tell me where my mom was, right now.
“She managed to get away,” the man said, cutting off my demands before I could utter a single word. “For a time . . .” He turned away from me slightly, clasping his hands behind his back, and made his leisurely way along the perimeter of the vault.
I turned with him, breaths slow and steady despite my pounding heart. I could feel Persephone in my mind, alert and ready. It was the most aware of her I’d ever been, and I knew that if she felt that she needed to take over, she would. And I wasn’t sure I could stop her. At the moment, I wasn’t sure
I would want to stop her.
“We caught up with Diana later, of course,” the man in the suit said, pausing at the pedestal displaying the doru, then glanced across the room to the garment’s empty pedestal. He stared for a few seconds longer. I was blocking his view of the box, or I’d have bet he would have checked on it, as well.
“She, too, was a thief,” he said, not even sparing me a glance as he continued his slow journey around the room. “Though I dare say, a better one than you.”
I glanced at Raiden, but his attention was locked on the four guards spread out near the door. I spotted the rifle propped up against the wall, wishing I’d never put it down. A moment later, I remembered the pistol tucked into my waistband, hidden by my sweatshirt so long as I didn’t move much. But it was as good as useless; by the time I drew it, one of the goons would put a bullet in me.
My gaze drifted to the doru.
According to the notes in my mom’s journal, my people’s alphabet had yet to be deciphered by the Order. Which meant that they hadn’t been able to translate the writing on the pillars. It was unlikely that anyone would have guessed that the inconspicuous, ornate rod was actually a weapon. The guards likely wouldn’t shoot me on the spot for reaching for a stick when they were armed with guns.
I knew first hand just how powerful the doru could be when wielded by the right hands. What I didn’t know was whether my hands counted as the right hands.
I returned to watching the man in the suit, taking one tiny, test step toward the doru. Nobody seemed to notice my movement. Or, at least, they didn’t seem to care. So, I took another step.
“Such a strange relationship, yours and Diana’s,” the man in the suit said. “She clearly views you as her daughter, and yet the two of you share no DNA. You aren’t even of the same species.” Brow furrowed, he shook his head, chuckling softly, like my relationship with my mom was some amusing curiosity. “And yet,” he said, “she would give her life for you.”
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