Rogue Angel 52: Death Mask

by Alex Archer

  Annja had only taken her eyes off the injured man a minute or two. In that time, everything about him had changed. The hand that had clutched at his wound had slipped away and lay limp in his lap. His head leaned to one side. He’d lost the fight. Garin rattled off a string of instructions, pointing at the spaces where it was safe to walk, shouting warnings when one of his men veered off the path.

  This time his voice carried.

  “Move to the edge.” The two men who had tied the rope around the dead man’s legs made their way around the cavern until they stood opposite where the corpse was slumped. “Yes, yes, now! Pull!”

  They did as they were told, without question, taking up the slack until the body began to move. The dead man’s head hit the tiled floor with a sickening thump. Annja gritted her teeth. She’d remember this. This was wrong. This wasn’t the Garin she knew. This was someone else. She knew exactly what they were doing. She couldn’t bear to watch, but she couldn’t look away.

  The pair dragged the body slowly but surely across the mosaic.

  Its movement was jerky and erratic, each handful of rope the two men hauled drawing it a foot or so across the ground.

  A smear of blood trailed in the dead man’s wake, marking his passage.

  When the body reached the center of the room, they stopped.

  They were all waiting.

  Something was supposed to happen.

  She could sense the anticipation in the chamber.

  All eyes were on the corpse.

  She held her breath and counted silently, marking the passage of time.

  She hadn’t even reached five before the rumbles began deep in the belly of the mountain.

  By the time she reached eleven, the floor had begun to shake.

  At fifteen, dust and grit began to sprinkle from the ceiling.

  Twenty, and the men in the middle of the chamber were on their knees, heads in hands as the mountain began to fall upon them.

  36

  The walls around Roux began to shake.

  Far below, it sounded as though the world had sheered in two, two great hemispheres of stone separating. The deep basso profundo rumble told another story. The passage was collapsing. The Moorish builders had left the ultimate trap to protect their treasure, preferring it to be lost to the world rather than fall into the hands of their persecutors. He liked their style.

  Fighting every instinct to get the hell out of there before the place came down around him, Roux ran into the collapsing tunnel. Annja was in there. He wasn’t leaving her. He choked back the dust and dirt that filled the air. Another rumble, this time followed by the unmistakable sound of falling rock. He ran on, stumbling as the ground lurched beneath him. He had to get to Annja, to be sure she was all right. He heard a colossal thunder crack of stone tearing apart and was hit by a sudden, sinking dread that the mountain was robbing him of his revenge.

  He saw two bodies in the passage ahead. They lay with their weapons out of reach. Even with the debris around them, it was obvious they hadn’t been hurt by the rockfall. They’d been taken from this world with deadly precision. The corpses bore the hallmarks of Annja’s handiwork. The men hadn’t stood a chance against her ruthless ferocity. She was capable of controlled violence beyond anything Roux or Garin could ever muster—she could become a pure killing machine if it was the only way. Annja Creed, mercifully, was on the side of the angels. It was where she belonged.

  He followed the tunnel deeper still, placing his feet carefully, not because he feared more traps but because a turned ankle now would be disastrous—even fatal. Everywhere he trod seemed to carry an element of danger. A light shone farther along the corridor, another torch, where the tunnel started to bend. There was another rumble. The ceiling above him shivered. The ground beneath his feet groaned. A huge cloud of dust billowed toward him, swelling to fill the passageway with choking, cloying white. The flaming torch snuffed out, stifled by the dust. He was in absolute darkness.

  He couldn’t breathe for the choking dust clawing its way into his lungs.

  Roux held one arm across his mouth, trying desperately to keep from swallowing or inhaling too deeply. He kept his eyes closed, dragging his free hand along the wall as he moved. There was no turning back. Not now. Each step took him closer to Annja, closer to Garin. They were in there—in with the worst of the collapse, where the heart of the mountain had given out.

  He needed to see them both, but for very different reasons.

  Roux could not live without certainty; he needed to be sure of what had become of both of them. His apprentices. Turning around without finding out would leave him even more lost than coming across either of them in the rubble would.

  37

  Stone and rubble from the ceiling came crashing down all around them, jagged spurs driving into and cracking the mosaic’s tiles and burying the body of the dead man they’d used to spring the trap.

  Annja looked at Garin, reading his mind. It wasn’t difficult to read, either: better him than me, his expression said. And he was right. If he’d been under that ceiling when it collapsed it would have taken more than the miracle of the curse to keep him breathing. He might, for all intents and purposes, be immortal, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t die. At least she didn’t think it did, though Roux might want to put that theory to the test before they were out of this place.

  The air was full of dust and grit. It billowed out to fill every expanse of the subterranean complex. She could see rather than feel the draft that drew the dust cloud toward the outside world.

  As the air started to clear, Annja saw that a huge section of the floor had fallen away.

  Blinking back the sting of dust, she realized she was wrong—it hadn’t collapsed. Rather, it had sunk, or most of it had, with the tiles forming a spiral staircase that led down. She couldn’t see where it led.

  “Move,” Garin called to the rest of the men. “We don’t have time to waste. In and out. There are enough bodies in our wake that someone is going to alert the authorities. We don’t want to be here when they do.”

  Annja knew that someone he was referring to had to be her, and she wanted to slap him silly. He was so conceited.

  What would happen if she stepped out of the shadows and faced him down? Would he try to kill her? Could he, even if he tried? He was resourceful, but with the bit between her teeth, she’d sure as hell test his immortality. Was she expendable? He’d used her up to this point... Would he cash her in like a pile of chips in a casino now that he was done playing with her? As hard to swallow as that was, it felt like the truth.

  The two men who had hauled their dead comrade across the floor were still holding on to the rope.

  “I said, move!”

  They jumped to attention, casting the rope aside, and started for the staircase.

  There were fewer guards now, she noted. A few had perished beneath the great slabs of ceiling.

  The odds were starting to even up, but it still wasn’t a fight she wanted to have unless it was absolutely necessary.

  Garin and Maffrici started to descend with the three remaining guards following behind them.

  She needed to stay close, but did not dare move until the last of them had disappeared from view. Even then, she took the time to be certain none of the men had stayed behind to stand guard.

  Annja made her way across the floor.

  She saw bodies and broken limbs in the debris. She picked a path through the devastation, one eye on the ceiling above in case there were still chunks of rock yet to fall.

  Garin’s voice rose up from below.

  It sounded as if he were in the grip of a heated argument, but then Roux had said more than once that Garin was capable of causing an argument when he was the only person in a room. She dropped to her hands and knees and crept to the edge, peering down the
spiral stairs to a floor more than thirty feet below. Garin was shoving Maffrici, the flat of his hand on the curator’s chest to drive home whatever point he was making. The curator looked frightened.

  The space that had been hidden below the mosaic floor almost took her breath away.

  It was flooded with light as high-intensity lanterns were turned on.

  The light bounced off every surface of the hidden room.

  Every inch of the chamber was a testament to the incredible skills the Moors possessed. They understood the nature of beauty and were capable of harnessing it. The walls were covered with too many patterns to distinguish one from the other, some picked out in silver and others gold. It was a treasure beyond imagining, a time capsule. And yet it wasn’t enough for Garin.

  Was this the treasure they had left behind, this secret shrine to their God?

  A place of worship rather than material possessions... That would have been in keeping with their faith, and a vast amount of wealth must have been needed to create this wondrous chapel in the mountain. Did it have to be anything more than this, a room dedicated to their God so close to the heart of the Inquisition?

  Annja drank the place in.

  More than five hundred years must have passed since this place of exaltation had been completed, and yet it looked as fresh as the day it had been created.

  It could have been tended to every day, polished by loving hands for generations, but it hadn’t been. It had been sealed from the world for all this time.

  This great, great secret...

  Annja’s heart was racing. She couldn’t have imagined a greater treasure waiting at the end of her quest. This was how Howard Carter must have felt when he broke into the tomb of Tutankhamen. This was a find for the ages. This was wealth beyond any dreams of avarice, a work of art in the glory of God. She didn’t know where to look, trying to take it all in, trying to imagine how the world would react to such an incredible find.

  Garin, on the other hand, looked as though someone had taken a leak in his cornflakes and expected him to eat them.

  “Is this it?” Garin yelled, holding his arms out wide. “This worthless room? Is this it? We’ve moved heaven and earth...for this?”

  “Don’t you see the beauty of this place, the artwork, the skill and craftsmanship?” Maffrici asked with more than a touch of incredulity in his voice. “This place is a national treasure. Just standing in here makes everything we have done worthwhile.”

  “But where are the jewels, the gold and the silver?”

  “Look all around you,” Maffrici said. “It is all here. Just as I promised.”

  The curator picked up one of the lanterns and turned it to face the wall, pointing out individual features, tracing patterns with his fingertips. “Gold and silver, rubies and emeralds, amethyst and jade. Use your eyes. Every inch of these walls represents immense wealth. You could buy a small country with the contents of this room.”

  Garin pushed him aside and pulled a knife from his pocket. He slid the blade behind one of the stones and prized it from its setting in the wall, pocketing it.

  “What the hell do you think you are doing?” Maffrici said, pushing Garin’s knife away from the wall before he could pry a second stone free. “Vandalism. Sheer, wanton vandalism. This treasure has survived intact for centuries. I will not stand by and watch you break it up. It needs to be saved for the nation. The Brotherhood of the Burning was founded to protect this place from the Catholic Church. I’ll die before I let you tear it apart.”

  “That can be arranged,” Garin said coldly. “And give me a break...the Brotherhood of the Burning? That’s a joke. They may have stood for something once upon a time. Now they are nothing. Less than nothing. This is it, these three men. Do they look like they care what happens here?”

  Garin took his knife to the wall again.

  This time, Maffrici pulled his hand away more forcefully. “I said no!” the curator shouted, the man’s aggression taking Garin by surprise. He stumbled, losing his footing, and before he could right himself he staggered backward, dropping the knife in the process. It clattered to the jeweled floor.

  Annja saw the rage on his face, saw him wrestling to maintain control, and knew his grip was slipping.

  Garin flung himself at the Spaniard. His fist slammed square into the middle of Maffrici’s face, snapping his head backward. He stumbled back a step. As he brought his head up, Annja could see the red rose of blood that had bloomed in the harsh light of the electric lanterns. His nose was a mess.

  “Do we understand each other?” Garin asked. It was a rhetorical question. The man nodded, clutching at his ruined face, no longer protesting as Garin set about the wall with a vengeance. “Get to it,” he told his men. “Strip this damned place. Anything shiny, it comes out. Anything that looks like it’s worth money, it comes out.” The brothers set to the task with greedy abandon.

  But...surely this wasn’t Garin.

  He wasn’t simply a thief...

  Was he?

  Annja could almost understand him doing this for some great work of art, some incredible thing of beauty he felt he needed to possess...but just money, just jewels? That didn’t feel right. It felt...cheap.

  There was no doubt that Garin was the dominant man down there. Any influence the curator had possessed entering the mountain was gone, crushed by one punch. It was notable that none of the armed men had moved to intervene. They knew which side their bread was buttered. That didn’t mean they worked for Garin, though, only that they respected his power in this new dynamic. What was the name Oscar had turned up during his digging into the Brotherhood...Enrique Martínez? Did they work for Martínez? Was he the power behind this particular throne or just another one being deceived by Garin Braden? All that was certain was that the guards had no allegiance to Maffrici. So that meant the curator had been used every bit as much as she had.

  She edged closer to the top of the stairwell, unwilling to put even a first foot on it until she was sure of her next move.

  She was still leery about charging in to confront Garin, even though she knew she should. She’d rather wait for Roux before she did that. He couldn’t be more than a few minutes behind her now, assuming he hadn’t been caught in the collapse.

  And then there was the risk of a trigger-happy soul down there. If she was seen making her way down, even if she shouted out a warning, there was no predicting what a nervous guard could do. Yes, she could use the sword to deflect the shots, assuming she could see the bullets coming. Every bullet was a risk. Every bullet was a possible checkout.

  She needed to get down onto the same level, to get close to them, if her attack was going to be effective.

  As she watched, she noticed something that seemed so strange, so out of place, that she knew it had to be the key to the treasure, to the reason why the Brotherhood of the Burning had started building this chapel in the first place.

  And Garin had missed it.

  In almost all of the places she had visited in the past twenty-four hours, there had been things that did not belong, Moorish artifacts hidden away in Catholic shrines, Christian emblems in the heart of Islamic places of worship. This was another one of them, so utterly familiar it couldn’t possibly be what she thought it was. And even when she was sure it was, she didn’t understand. She’d seen it before.

  And that was impossible.

  It had an exquisite beauty of its own.

  And if this shrine had been sealed up for as long as she thought it had, as she knew it had, then it couldn’t be a fake.

  In fact, it could be the original, carved even earlier than the one she had seen.

  The marble statue sat on a plinth at the far end of the room, as though on an altar. Garin ignored it while he tried to prize every last jewel from the walls. The carving was almost identical to the Madonn
a of Bruges, the only sculpture by Michelangelo to have left Italy during his lifetime.

  Was it really possible that there had been a second?

  Annja had only seen the other version of the sculpture once in person, but she had studied it in countless photographs. The depiction of Mary and the child Jesus had been a radical change from all previous representations. Earlier images and statues had almost always shown the infant as still a babe-in-arms while his mother looked on him adoringly, but Michelangelo had chosen to capture Christ as a child, almost able to stand upright, ready to slide from her lap and step out on his own. Instead of smiling at the child, Mary is looking away with sadness on her face, as if she already knows what fate has in store for her son.

  The statue Annja was looking at now was so similar it was virtually indistinguishable—at least from the memory she had of it—from Michelangelo’s masterpiece.

  In this one place, the Moors had created things of great beauty that represented the pinnacle of both Islamic and Christian art. Neither seemed out of place, as if the two religions should be able to exist side by side rather than competing for hearts and minds, forcing people into a position where they had to choose.

  The statue enthralled her.

  She wanted to go down there to take a closer look, to run her hands over marble that hadn’t been touched since the master had carved it.

  “Help me move this,” Garin barked.

  Annja wanted to shout down to stop him, to tell him to leave everything where it was, but even as she opened her mouth, her cry was silenced by a hand placed over it.

  38

  “Shh,” Roux whispered into her ear. “Don’t go doing anything stupid, girl.”

  He slowly removed his hand from her mouth.

  Annja wasn’t entirely sure she would have called out, but she was grateful to Roux that she would never know.

  “For a moment, I thought you were dead. Actually, I thought you both were. Not that I’d have missed him. You, on the other hand, I’m just getting to know, and I still rather like you.”