by Laura Legend
The sun had sunk below the horizon, fading into red. The emergency lights now strobed the same bloody color. The soothing, automated voice that had sounded the alarm continued to drone on: “Warning, perimeter breach. Warning, perimeter breach.”
Before she knew what she’d done, Cass’s sword was in her hand and she’d pivoted to put her back to Zach’s. Richard stayed right where he was, alert but unconcerned. Maya made a beeline for the private elevator in the far corner of the room, making sure it was ready at a moment’s notice.
Only a few seconds after the alarm sounded, the main office doors burst open and a heavily armed security squad swept into the room, checking corners and securing perimeters. The squad consisted entirely of women. They were each more than six feet tall. They balked at the sight of Cass with her drawn sword, but Richard waved them off.
Figures that Richard’s private security detail would consist entirely of Amazons, Cass thought to herself, annoyed at their competence.
“What’s the situation, Captain,” Richard asked.
The captain put a finger to the earpiece concealed in her ear and reported back: “Ten feral Lost, two groups of five that breached the building in two separate locations. They do, in fact, appear to be hunting for Ms. Jones. But we still need to move you to a secure location, sir, ASAP.”
“Yes, in a moment, Captain. I’m sure, though, that this isn’t anything you can’t handle. We need to conclude our business here, first.”
Richard pulled out his phone and, while composing a message, his thumbs flying, called across the room to Maya. “You will take care of them, Maya? You will help them secure the relic?”
The first time he’d brought this up, it had sounded like an order. This time, though, it sounded like a request, like he was entrusting her with something of personal significance to him, calling on her loyalty and friendship.
“I’ve got this, Richard,” Maya said. “No need to worry.”
Richard finished his message and pushed send. Maya’s tablet lit up with a set of instructions and research materials.
“Cass, Zach,” Maya called. “It’s time to go.” The private elevator doors swished opened. Maya stepped in and held the door with her hand.
Cass took a long look at Richard. She decided to trust him—and, by extension, to trust Maya.
“Let’s go, Zach,” Cass said. She took him by the elbow and they moved quickly across the room.
“Godspeed,” Richard said, just before one of the main doors was blown off its hinges and a handful of feral Lost, greeted with gunfire, loped into the room. Before anyone knew what had happened, a pair of Richard’s security team were down. Cass, looking back, stopped in her tracks, sword raised, ready to return to help.
“Go!” Richard shouted, unsheathing a long, thin blade from the shaft of his cane. As one of the Lost leapt in his direction he sidestepped the attack and, with an elegant swing of his blade, sent its head rolling. The body dissolved into white ash.
“Go,” Richard said to Cass, quietly this time, as if they were standing eye to eye, rather than separated by the whole room.
Cass went.
Richard’s security bundled him off toward a safe room, sporadic gunfire covering their escape. Maya was still waiting, holding the elevator doors at bay. Zach got there first, but Cass wasn’t far behind. However, one of the Lost was also right on her heels. As soon as Cass cleared the elevator doors, Maya slipped her hand away from the door and hit a button for the basement level. They stood waiting for the doors to close as the feral vampire bore down on them. Just as Cass began to worry that the doors would be too slow, they swept cleanly shut, and the leaping vampire crashed heavily into the far side.
The elevator smoothly accelerated downward as if nothing had happened. Zach let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, Cass lowered her sword, and Maya calmly watched the floors tick off as they rushed toward their destination.
When they reached the designated subbasement, the doors dinged open. Cass found herself in a space that was part locker room, part military-style ops center, and part train station. Lockers with clothes and gear lined one wall. A bank of computers and surveillance monitors lined another. And, on the far end, some kind of rocket-sled was positioned on tracks leading into the darkness of a narrow, circular tunnel.
“Alriiight,” Cass said to exaggerated effect, “I see you’ve got your own secret base down here—hidden away under the office tower that disguises your other, normal secret base.”
Cass and Zach shared a look and almost laughed.
Cass tamped the laugh down and just finished up with a half-admiring: “Pretty cool.”
“Excuse me for just a moment,” Maya said, heading to the lockers. “My original schedule for the day didn’t call for any tactical gear.”
Maya punched a code into one of the lockers and surveyed the gear inside. Then, without any wasted time or fuss, she unzipped her dress and stepped out of it. She was, Cass and Zach could plainly see, absolutely ripped.
Cass gulped and stared. This time, Zach had to give her an elbow to the ribs.
Maya stepped into a pair of black pants and boots, then shrugged into a sleeveless top. Everything fit like a glove. Apparently, even her emergency, “secret mission” clothes were tailored. She picked a jacket from among several and zipped her tablet into a pre-packed go-bag.
“Okay,” Maya said, evidently familiar enough with slack-jawed stares that they no longer registered, “to the sled.”
The sled had four seats. Maya slipped into the “driver’s” seat and booted up the controls while Cass and Zach crawled into the back. The sled’s systems cycled online and a power meter slowly rose from red to yellow toward green.
“Buckle up,” Maya said as a couple of Lost tore through the roof of the elevator, dropped to the floor, and rushed the room.
But before the pair could get their bearings, the system flashed green, Maya punched the “go” button, and they were all three flattened into their seats by the force of their acceleration.
17
Cass wasn’t sure if “rocket-sled” was the appropriate technical term for what they were riding in, but the fact that it was basically a sled and literally rocketing down a tube clinched it for her: it was a rocket-sled.
The force of their acceleration was enormous. Clearly, it was built for emergency evacuations not daily pleasure trips. As soon as the system engaged and Maya punched “go,” it felt like an enormous, fat hand had reached out of the ether to smash her flat into her seat. She had a hard time even turning her head to see if Zach was okay. When she finally did, she saw that he was also pinned in his seat, struggling to fasten his seatbelt.
When, out of the corner of his eye, Zach saw her looking at him, he grimaced exaggeratedly, drawing his lips into a thin line. Encouraged by a glimpse of Cass’s smile, he upped the ante and opened his mouth in a huge smile that captured the full force of the wind and blew his cheeks out like a windsock, revealing his teeth and gums. Bug-eyed, he looked like an inflated balloon.
Cass lost it. All the stress and pressure that had been building for the past few hours burst in a peal of laughter and, when she opened her own mouth to laugh, she ended up creating the same comical effect. Zach, in response, also lost it. This only wound them up further, creating a feedback loop of laughter and rubbery cheeks.
Cass couldn’t tell if the tears streaming down her face were a product of the wind or her laughter or just the remnant of emotional release. She struggled to calm down and catch her breath but, helpless not to look again, she turned her head back in Zach’s direction only to discover that a new face, pointy incisors bared, had also joined them.
Cass’s laughter turned into a shout of surprise that Zach, when he also discovered the vampire hanging onto the back of the sled, echoed.
Bastard, Cass thought. Stupid vampires ruin everything.
She tried to raise her hand to punch him in the face and knock him loose, but she could hardly li
ft her arm. The thing must have been incredibly strong to not only hang on to the sled but inch its way forward.
Zach, drawing a lesson from Cass’s failed punch, tried using his elbow instead. With a more compact, g-force friendly gesture, he cracked his elbow into the creature’s nose, splintering it into a bloody mess.
But the vampire’s grip didn’t loosen. In fact, he just seemed angrier now as he unleashed a wild snarl. He struck back at Zach, raking a razor sharp set of nails across Zach’s chest, hooking a finger under his shirt collar. Zach cried out in pain and alarm.
Screw this, Cass decided. This is your stop, pal.
Cass unbuckled her seatbelt, shimmied down into her seat, and flipped around so that her shoulders were planted on the floor and her feet were pointed up. Gathering herself, she kicked the vampire with both feet, connecting with his face.
The vampire lost his grip on the sled and it looked, for a moment, like he was going to tumble free of the sled and into the darkness of the tunnel. Instead, now he just flapped in the air like a streamer attached to the sled, two fingers of one hand still hooked under Zach’s collar.
Zach screamed again, fighting to break free. There wasn’t much Cass could do—flapping in the breeze, the vampire was out of her reach.
Maya looked back to see what all the screaming was about. When she saw that Cass was upside down on the floor and Zach was flying a vampire like a kite, she shook her head, scolding them like she was the only real adult on this rocket-sled. Maya, unlike the rest of them, appeared unaffected by the speed. Her hair looked great and the striking features of her face were still beautifully composed. In one easy motion she pulled a 9mm Glock from a holster under the dash and fired a silver bullet right between the vampire’s eyes and, for good measure, a second into his heart. The body dissolved into ash and instantly disappeared in the wind.
“Thanks,” Zach shouted into the wind.
“You are welcome,” Maya returned.
Cass struggled to right herself in her seat and, with exaggerated care, rebuckled her seatbelt.
They continued down the tube for another five minutes before the sled pulled to a stop. Cass was pretty sure that it would take a couple of days before her cheeks returned to their normal shape. Zach was patting down his own face, checking to see if everything had returned to its prior position.
Maya swung elegantly out of the sled, go-bag in hand, and looked back at the two of them, subtly shaking her head in some mix of wonder and disapproval at their antics. This almost set Zach and Cass to laughing again.
“Children,” Maya said, “it is time to move along.”
From there, Maya led them up an ancient, narrow, twisting flight of stairs. The stone steps had deep grooves worn in them. Cass guessed that the passage was at least five hundred years old. They climbed five or six stories worth of stairs, Maya in front, Zach in the middle, Cass in the back. Zach tried hard to keep his eyes on the uneven, stone stairs and not on Maya’s perfectly toned glutes. Cass also tried hard to keep her eyes on the stairs and not on Zach’s own toned buttocks. They both suspected that Maya wouldn’t have had the same problem if she were bringing up the rear.
Finally, though, the stairs ended at a heavy wooden door on black iron hinges. Maya disabled the lock and leaned against the door, shoving it open. They stepped out from the stairs and onto a grass covered hill. The night sky was full of stars and Rome lay spread out below them.
“There,” Maya said, pointing out a particular section of the city, “is the Basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls. That’s where we’ll find the relic we’re looking for.”
18
They made their way down into the city on foot. Maya seemed to know exactly where they were headed. But, as far as Cass could tell, she wasn’t leading them directly to the Basilica. That wouldn’t have made much sense anyway in the middle of the night. Instead, Maya lead them through narrow streets into an old section of the city to a second story apartment. They climbed the exterior stairs up the side of the house. Maya punched a code into the shabby door’s high-end security system and ushered them inside.
“Welcome to tonight’s safe house,” Maya said drily.
After they were all inside, Maya swung the door shut with a satisfying “thunk”—the door must have been solid steel, disguised as ratty wood from the outside—and armed the security system. Cass was surprised at how relieved she felt to be locked securely behind a steel door. Now that they were safe, the stress and exhaustion of the past day caught up with her and she slumped onto a lumpy sofa.
Zach sat down at the small kitchen table, either his bones or the chair creaking as he settled gingerly into it. Maya checked the kitchen for supplies and took a look in the apartment’s one other room, a bedroom with a pair of twin beds. Then she fished her tablet from her go-bag, set it on the table, and unpacked some of the rest of her gear in the bedroom.
Cass and Zach looked at each other from across the room. They were both too tired to move. Cass groaned, her voice low and gravely. Zach joined in, harmonizing his groan with her pitch and timbre. Still groaning, Cass rested her head on the back of the sofa and looked at the water stained ceiling. Zach rested his forehead on the kitchen table as he exhaled a deep breath of exhaustion, examining the grain of the wood at close range. They continued groaning and sighing in concert for almost a minute until Maya popped her head out of the bedroom, eyebrow raised, to see what was going on. They both stopped instantly and looked at her innocently. Maya went back to what she’d been doing. As soon as she was gone, they couldn’t resist a quiet snicker that, given how tired they were, felt good and quickly faded.
“I’m hungry,” Cass said. “What have we got to eat over there Zach?”
Zach leaned back in his chair and took a look in the fridge. Then, wiggling his chair toward the counter, he looked inside the cupboards. Except for condiments, the fridge was basically empty. The cupboards were full of dusty cans. Zach grabbed a can of chili from the nearest shelf, blew the dust off the top, and leaned forward to inspect the label.
“It looks like we’ve got a lot of canned chili, expiration date . . . two years ago. Though I’m pretty sure this stuff lasts forever” Zach said, shaking the can as if to hear what was inside. The can made an unusual glurping sound. He tossed it onto the couch next to her. “For what it’s worth, this one sounds good.”
Cass looked at it suspiciously, but didn’t touch it. She squeezed a little farther into the corner of the couch, putting a little more distance between herself and the can. The can of chili made another glurping sound, this time all on its own, and Cass got up from the couch to have a look in the cupboards for herself. Behind a row of cans, she found a vacuum sealed bag of pistachios.
“Aha!” she said, claiming victory.
Zach looked skeptical, doubting that a bag of pistachios warranted any celebration. Cass sat down next to him and, just as Maya returned, busted the bag open, scattering nuts across the table. Cass scooped the nuts back toward herself. Maya, clearing a few nuts off her tablet, sat down with them.
“The chains of Saint Paul are housed in the Basilica Papale San Paolo Fuori le Mure,” Maya said with a perfect Italian accent.
“Yeah,” Cass added, “they’re usually displayed in a glass case on an altar in the chapel of relics in the basilica. The chapel is open to the public on a daily basis. The altar sits atop an underground tombstone and sarcophagus associated with Paul.”
Maya tapped, swiped, and brought up on her tablet several images of the basilica, the chapel, and the chains.
Cass continued. “The chains are, according to tradition, the ones that held the apostle Paul during his trial in Rome. If Judas was telling the truth, then, regardless of their actual provenance, they have doubtless been invested by belief and tradition with enormous power over centuries of veneration.”
Zach nodded. Cass split open a couple of pistachio shells, popped the nuts in her mouth, and then tried, unsuccessfully, to suck the red stains fr
om tips of her fingers. Giving up, she cracked a couple more. Zach furtively gathered up the mess of discarded shells for her as she went.
“The security guarding this relic is not imposing,” Maya said. “If it were just a question of bypassing several security guards, some alarms, and a glass case, we could be in and out tonight. The problem is that the relic is protected by a powerful spell that is especially geared to keep vampires at bay. This, of course, is where you come in, Cass, and why Amare needs your help to acquire them.”
Cass popped a couple more pistachios open and, before Zach could clean up the mess, she swept the shells off the table into his lap with the back of her hand.
“The trouble,” Cass said, “is that I don’t actually know anything about spells. I only know about relics. I’m not sure how I can help.”
“Yes,” Zach agreed, picking bits of shell out of his lap, “that’s true. But spells like this are always built around the history and characteristics of the relics themselves. So it’s not just a matter of undoing a spell, it’s a matter of undoing a spell that is keyed to the history of the relic itself.”
“Right,” Maya said, taking back control of the conversation. She tapped, swiped and displayed the tablet again, this time showing the text of spell, written in Latin. Only one piece appeared to be missing. “We know the basic outlines of the spell-breaker, but this missing element—here—is keyed to the relic’s history, to a specific detail that we have yet to recover.”
Cass leaned in close, tilted the tablet toward herself for a better look, and left a red smudge on the screen. She quickly read through the Latin text under her own breath.
“I can already tell what the missing piece should be,” Cass said, “but I don’t know how to fill in the blank off the top of my head. I do know, though, that there is a small, private library located near the basilica that houses just the kind of information we’ll need. I think that’s where we should start tomorrow.”
“Agreed,” Maya said approvingly. Cass was surprised at how good it felt to receive approval for having obscure academic knowledge. Her time as a grad student seemed like a completely different life now. Still, it was nice to feel like some part of her former life was still relevant and useful to her current one.