THE EQUINOX STONE (Knights of Manus Sancti Book 2)

by Bryn Donovan

  Her blood beat harder in her veins. Before Manus Sancti, the world had been plagued by ghosts and demons. Evils ordinary people now scoffed at, if they even remembered them at all—the goblins of Cantabria, the vampires from Crete to Moldavia, the pandemics of ghost possessions, the curses that brought despotic reigns, plagues, and endless war—they’d been real. As terrible as the world was now, it’d been even worse. And over the centuries, the number of violent ghosts and humans using bad magic had naturally boomed, along with the world population.

  His voice rang off the walls. “We take revenge. We ensure our survival. We fight for the world’s future. Honorem da mortuis!”

  “Honorem da mortuis,” the crowd repeated, Val among them.

  “Cum salis et sanguine!”

  “Cum salis et sanguine!” they echoed more loudly.

  The old saying pulsed through Val’s consciousness with a new urgency. Honor the dead. With salt and blood. In other words, with tears and revenge.

  Val had cried long enough. And her tears over Michael struck her now as particularly beside the point. Capitán was right. They were at war. And she needed to do whatever she could to help them win.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  After the service, Michael went with Jonathan, Val, and the rest of the mourners out to the courtyard, Jonathan frowning at his phone. Tables and chairs had been set out for the wake.

  It looked like others he’d been to in Granada and El Dédalo. Each table held a basket of bread, a cruet of olive oil, cheeses and Serrano ham, grapes and figs, olives, cashews roasted with herbs, platters of baklava, pots of hot tea, and carafes of water and wine. Pomegranates, a symbol of death and rebirth, had been cut open into sections like flowers to offer up their ruby seeds.

  Instead of the usual subdued mood at a wake, the people around them engaged in loud conversations. Capitán’s call to arms had affected them all.

  Samir Hassan walked over to them, saying, “Salaam, Michael.” He carried his suit jacket over his arm, and his eyes were red-rimmed. Michael hadn’t realized he’d made it to town in time for the service.

  “Salaam, Samir.” He made the sign of honor for the dead for Samir’s dead fiancée and then hugged him. It pained him that he hadn’t offered condolences to him before. It was good Samir had come over and joined them instead of avoiding company, like before in the cafeteria.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonathan said to Samir in a low voice. “That speech was tough. Even though I think about her every day.”

  “I was glad he said it. No one was saying it out loud. That’s what they did to her.”

  “They’re monsters,” Michael said. He didn’t know what else to say. He’d been shocked when Capitán had said it as part of his address, and it made him sick to think of it. Samir and Lucia had dated for two years before getting engaged. On two of Michael’s missions with Jonathan, Lucia had been a consultant, researching a solution, and she’d light up when she talked about a discovery.

  Samir told him, “I’m glad you’re you again.”

  “Thanks. Me too.” Michael glanced around them. “Where’s Cassie?” Now that he was himself, he found himself intensely curious about the woman who’d taken almost no time at all to capture his brother’s heart.

  “On her way. She had to take a later flight,” Jonathan said. “They redid her cast.”

  “They said it’s healing fast, though,” Samir told him.

  They sat down at one of the tables. Jonathan said, “I wonder if they’ve found something.”

  A vindictive glint came into Samir’s eyes. “They must know where they are.”

  “And who they are,” Val added. “Could they really be direct descendants?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “We thought we took them all out in the 1950s, but of course we didn’t hurt children. They didn’t have many children, though—some of them were married, but more than half were celibate priests.”

  Michael picked up a piece of bread and split it down the middle. “Maybe they’re a whole new group who found out about the old one.” He started to reach for the ham and then stopped. Did it bother Val when people ate meat in front of her? He didn’t know why he hadn’t wondered this before, even though she’d been vegan for years.

  Christos. He was trying to treat her the same way he always had, before he’d been destroyed and put back together again, but it seemed impossible. Would the old him have put his arm around her in the sanctuary when she was crying? He honestly didn’t know. He poured olive oil on his plate and dipped the bread.

  Jonathan stabbed some of the ham and put it on his plate. “It sounds like we might launch a frontal assault.”

  “Inshallah,” Samir said. If God wills it.

  Samir was the only person Michael knew he could never, not even on his best day, beat in a fight. Neither could any Knight, though Freya might come close, as the only other one who shared his gift of telekinesis. Because of their ability, both of them had been trained hard from early childhood. And now Samir hungered for revenge. God only knew what he could and would do to any of the Tribunal.

  “Where’s Nic?” Jonathan scanned the courtyard. “He usually knows everything first.”

  Michael looked around too and spotted Angel Cheng. Near the doorway, she was engaged in conversation with another Knight, the movements of her hands underscoring whatever she was saying. Michael had never seen her dressed up before, but she looked sharp in a black sheath dress and heels.

  If Val hadn’t been with him before, he would’ve returned her flirting at Anantara, arranging a tacit understanding through words and glances that they’d be meeting up again for the night. He couldn’t be chaste forever, but if he’d hooked up with someone else right away, it might’ve stung Val. It was only out of deference to her feelings that he’d held back, he told himself. After all, who wouldn’t want Angel?

  On more than one occasion in Manila, he’d had a good time with the Knight. He recalled the noise of construction outside her apartment window, her walking around in nothing but a pair of boy’s boxer shorts, and the way she’d hooked her foot over his calf when he’d taken her from behind.

  Would Val like that position? Which position would she like best? She didn’t even know. How amazing it would be to help her try them all out and decide.

  He shouldn’t be thinking about these things about Val at a wake. Or anywhere, ever.

  The truth was, he could probably arrange a tryst with Angel—or maybe with Aquario Cruz, who’d eyed him more than once—without Val knowing. She could sense emotional changes between people, as easily as if there were headlines hovering above their heads, but she wouldn’t know the specific details.

  He just didn’t want to.

  And there was no way he could ever do that again with her. When he inevitably failed at dating an empath—and how long would that take, a couple of days?—he’d ruin his friendship with her. It would mess up things with Jonathan too, not to mention with his father. The Vegas had been his close friends since before Michael had been born. Just the idea of not having Val in his life, not sitting together in situations like this, never sharing a normal Christmas together again, one not ruined by bloodshed, the way this one had been…

  She was a part of his history and a part of his hope. He couldn’t lose her too.

  Jonathan stood up abruptly. Michael followed his gaze across the courtyard to see Cassie, wearing a black dress, still on crutches. Jonathan strode over to her, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her like his life depended on it. Neither of them seemed to be aware that probably a couple of dozen people had turned to stare at them.

  It couldn’t have been easy for Samir to see them together while he was mourning Lucia.

  “So you’re going to be mentoring her,” Michael said to distract him, reaching for the carafe of wine. “In the long term, she’s lucky. In the short term, she’s screwed.”

  That actually got a smile out of Samir. “I wasn’t that tough on Alex.” He was the other Knight Samir h
ad mentored, another sonámbulo, or outsider.

  “No tougher than anyone would’ve been,” Michael agreed, not looking for an argument. He’d heard Samir had taken food and sleep deprivation training very seriously, but Michael didn’t even fault him for that. They often had to fight when they weren’t at their best, and Samir would’ve been a bad mentor if he’d made training easy.

  Jonathan and Cassie reached their table. “Hey!” Cassie said to Michael, a huge smile on her face. She shifted her crutches to one arm and leaned over to abruptly hug him, losing her balance and falling onto him with a squeak.

  “Oh, shit,” he said as he grabbed onto her, at the same time she said, “Fuck.”

  Nonplussed, he helped her regain her balance. It amused him that his brother, who rarely cursed—except an occasional Christos, which was for some reason more polite than Christ, because it was in Latin—had fallen in love with a girl who had a dirty mouth. “Salaam, Cassie,” he said to her, and she laughed.

  “Sorry, sorry. I’m just glad to, like, really meet you this time. Sorry, that was weird.”

  “It was,” Michael agreed.

  “I’m not usually clumsy. I suck at these crutches.”

  Jonathan had brought a chair over for her. “Why don’t you sit down?” he suggested to her, smiling.

  “How’s the ankle?” Samir asked her as she got settled.

  “They say it’s healing fast. But it’s so annoying,” she said. “It’s going to be a couple of weeks before I get a walking boot.”

  “You can’t rush it,” Jonathan said, and Michael didn’t bring up his brother’s own long history of trying to rush healing.

  “I just wish I’d gotten here in time. And my shoulders are sore from the crutches.” No doubt her ankle hurt like a bitch too, if Michael’s own experience with an ankle fracture was anything to go on. Jonathan put his hand on her shoulder and kneaded his thumb in small circles in the muscles between the shoulder blades and the spine. She groaned. “Ugh, that hurts. No, keep doing it.” She closed her eyes, and in a moment, she moaned again. He stopped, and her head popped up to give him a questioning look.

  The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Well, I can’t keep doing it if you’re going to make those noises.” Michael laughed.

  Nic, wearing a black suit with a black tee, approached their table. “Salaam. There’s a meeting with Capitán in an hour. All of you except Cassie.”

  “I want to go,” she protested.

  He gave her a sympathetic look. “I’m sure you’ll hear all about it. Eugenia brought you here from the airport, right?” Cassie nodded. “She can give you a ride back to Anantara.”

  “How much have they found out?” Samir asked.

  Nic shrugged. “No idea. Maybe enough.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Val rode with Nic, Jonathan, Samir, and Michael to the guarída in Saint Augustine. The four-story brick building had, for a few years, housed an unsuccessful cigar factory before Manus Sancti had purchased it and moved there in 1906. There wasn’t much to recommend the place from the outside, which had been exactly the point. They’d moved there from their earlier headquarters, a Spanish Colonial mansion near the Historic District, which had been too conspicuous.

  It was allegedly the headquarters for Recovery Assurance, a debt collection company. There had been some debate over rebranding, because on a few occasions, it’d been mistaken for a rehab facility. For the most part, though, they didn’t arouse curiosity.

  Unlike El Dédalo, the guarídas were offices only, not residences. Knights lived in apartments and houses, owned by Manus Sancti, all over the area. But because Capitán had chosen to fortify their office and Anantara rather than evacuate them, Knights from all over had moved in and set up camp. The usually empty first floor was full of men and women, cots, duffel bags, and loud conversation, mostly in English and Spanish, the two languages everyone in Manus Sancti could speak. Val knew one of the Knights from Cairo and another from his past stint at El Dédalo. They all exchanged greetings before heading up to the meeting room on the third floor.

  Capitán was already seated at the head of the large carved table with Comandante Khouri seated to the left of him, an empty chair between them that nobody was going to claim. At his right hand sat Mercedes Navarro. She’d pulled her thick black hair back in a simple bun and wore a navy skirt suit. She had thick dark brows, pronounced lines around her mouth, and not a touch of makeup.

  Aquario Cruz and two Knights Val didn’t know, a man and a woman, also sat at the table. Val and the others saluted Capitán and settled themselves in antique wooden chairs.

  “Salaam,” Capitán said, and then turned to Mercedes. “Connect Turner.” She nodded and touched the remote next to her. Andre Turner and Hadiza Okafor appeared on the screen on the wall. Capitán said, “You all know why we’re here. Turner, debrief everyone.”

  Andre nodded. “First off, we’ve traced the dead psychometrist and one of the shooters to Val’s flight from Granada to Saint Augustine. We’re assuming the other shooters were local.”

  Before she could stop herself, Val touched the place on her neck where the crystal used to hang from a chain.

  Andre continued, “We also have a possible location for the Tribunal, based on Vega’s interrogation. There’s a Catholic girls’ high school in Saint Augustine, Blessed Virgin Mary Academy. We’re theorizing that some of the teachers and administrators are Tribunal.”

  When she’d asked the dying man where the equinox stone was, he’d said, ‘Blessed Virgin Mary’ before he’d died. But could he have really meant a school? “He said there were one hundred Tribunal here.”

  Andre nodded. “Not all of them would work at the school. Maybe none of them, but it’s a possibility. They’re not connected to the diocese. Most Catholic schools have students from different backgrounds and religions. Every student here seems to be Catholic.”

  “It fits their profile,” Hadiza added.

  “We don’t have hard evidence yet,” Andre said. “We’ve gone over the texts and emails of the faculty and staff for the last four years, and of course we haven’t found anything specific.”

  “The Tribunal has never liked technology,” Hadiza added. “In the 1950s, we learned nothing from wiretapping. We only got information by intercepting mail.”

  “Excuse me,” Aquario said, “but why would the Tribunal be involved with a school? Especially a girls’ school? They were mostly men, no?”

  Hadiza nodded. “But they had their female allies.”

  “It could be an easy way to make money or launder money,” Andre said. “The tuition is high, and they’re not spending much of it. And it has the advantage of being near our guarída. We did find an exchange of texts between teachers not invited to a secret meeting.” He took a drink from his travel mug emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis. He was American, not French, but it was a symbol of a team in American football—Val couldn’t remember what they were called. “We’ve tracked mail delivered to the school in the past three years, and two letters and one package have arrived from addresses in Rome. We’re still investigating those locations.”

  Comandante Khouri asked, “With all respect, is three that many?”

  “It’s not,” Andre admitted. “But twelve hours after the crystal was stolen, one teacher texted the principal to say, ‘We’ve got it.’”

  Hadiza said. “The principal matches the Tribunal profile.” She touched a button, and a man’s face appeared in the bottom corner of the screen. It appeared to be an official photo, and he was smirking—a man in his 50s, maybe, with a long face, deep-set eyes, and a proud aquiline nose. “Tom Padilla. Proud of his colonial Spanish heritage. In an online group that believes the current Pope should be removed for being too liberal. Shares hateful views about Jews in anonymous comments online.”

  “We think it’s at least worth pursuing,” Andre said.

  Capitán said, “Here’s the mission. We embed two of ours as faculty or staff. They Read the psy
ches of Padilla and other faculty members and administration. Gather intelligence. Recover the stone so it can’t be used again. Even if they find another psychometrist. You’re all here because I’m open to suggestions. Joe will be the runner.”

  Nic gave a nod.

  Jonathan said, “Am I going?” at the same time Samir said, “Send me.” They exchanged a look.

  “No,” Andre said. “They made sketches of El Dédalo Knights from the psychometrist’s descriptions. Jonathan, your hair’s too distinctive. And Samir, your accent would make you stand out.”

  “Octavio Zain,” the female Knight suggested. “He can Read people. And he speaks English like a natural-born American.”

  “But he can’t compress time,” Val said. Everyone looked at her. “When I Read people, I can. I can get a lot of information in a matter of seconds. Octavio doesn’t have the ability.”

  “Almost nobody does,” Capitán said. “Two other Mages, no Knights.”

  Val shook her head. She wouldn’t have persisted, but Capitán had explicitly asked for their input. “How is he going to corner people for minutes at a time to Read them? He’s going to get caught. And he can only blur the memory afterward. He can’t wipe it.” She was sounding critical, and she didn’t mean to. She knew Octavio. “He’s a fine Knight,” she added. “But it’s so risky.”

  “As I said, we’re at war,” Capitán said.

  Val’s heart pounded hard. She knew what she had to do. She said the words quickly, before she got too scared. “Send me.”

  Jonathan and Michael both stared at her, alarm written on their faces.

  Comandante Khouri said, “They know what you look like. They targeted you. And no offense, but you look young for a teacher.”

  Mercedes Navarro studied Val. “Dye over her pink streak, give her anti-recog glasses, lose the makeup. She could pass for a student.”

  “I’m twenty-two,” Val said, slightly offended.

  Hadiza said, “I read your report. It sounds like the men who saw you on the plane probably died at Anantara.”