by Kate Johnson
I nodded. It made sense to me.
“Women.” Luke shook his head, and I scowled.
“So rows of dead people don’t bother you at all? I suppose you’re perfectly at home in a crypt.”
“My parents are buried in one,” Luke said, and I shut up.
There were dusty, corroded little plaques on the shelves, each announcing the baron and his dates. We passed the Henrys, Samuels and Johns of the seventeenth century, then the Edwards, Thomases and Francises of the sixteenth, right through the Williams, Edgars and Geoffreys of the late middle ages, after which the plaques started to get hard to read, and after a while, disappeared totally.
“Now tell me this isn’t creepy,” I said, as we ventured so deep into the darkness that the door wasn’t even visible behind us.
“Maybe it is a little.”
“Glad to hear it. I was starting to think you were some kind of android.”
Luke frowned at me. “Remind me why we’re here again?”
“The key. Which may not have even fit this lock.”
“Marvellous.”
“But, I bet it’d be a great place to hide something,” I said. “Something like, I don’t know, a mysterious ring with great powers.”
“You really believe it has powers?”
I wasn’t about to rule it out. “Janulevic does.”
“What do we do when we find it?”
How the hell was I supposed to know? “Cast it back into the fires of Mount Doom?”
“You’ve been watching Lord of the Rings again, haven’t you?”
“I could have been reading it.”
Luke shone the torch at my face. “Have you ever read it?”
“Most of it.”
He grinned and, the next moment, tripped over something, grabbing my arm for support.
“What the hell was that?”
“The third baron?”
“Funny.” He aimed the beam at the floor. There was a large, solid iron ring set into the stones. If I looked carefully I could just see that the edges of a small trapdoor were visible.
“I am not going down there,” I said.
“Could be fun,” Luke said, but he didn’t sound very enthusiastic. He knelt down, handed me the torch, and pulled at the ring. Nothing happened.
“Could be locked,” I said.
“Do you see a keyhole?”
“Maybe it was locked from the inside. Maybe there’s someone down there.”
“They’ll be in good shape, then. Help me out with this, Soph. My arm’s bloody killing me.”
I’d forgotten about that. I reached down and hooked two fingers from each hand around the iron ring. Luke counted to three and we both pulled.
The trapdoor sprung open, and we fell backwards. And I didn’t give a damn about what was down there, or all the dead barons around us, or the dust or the slime: I was lying in Luke’s arms and my heart was pounding.
“Hey,” he said, brushing back the hair from my face, “you look hot when you’re scared.”
I frowned. Not the romantic line I’d been thinking of.
I pushed myself away from him and picked up the torch again. The trapdoor was small, maybe fifteen inches across, and the hole beneath it wasn’t much bigger.
“There’s something in there.” I peered at the bottom of the hole, which was about two feet deep.
“You want to do the honours, or shall I?”
Reaching into a dark, forgotten hole to pick up an unnamed object wasn’t my idea of fun. I could pull off the Lara Croft look, but I’d rather do without the dirt and the bugs and the general ickiness of your average tomb.
“I’ll let you,” I said. “Someone has to hold the torch.”
Luke gave me a look, but he gamely reached into the hole and brought out a small, carved wooden box. It had a little lock on the front, but a long time in the ground had corroded the metal. It opened easily.
“It’s like pass the parcel,” I said, looking at the dusty velvet wrapping inside. Luke held out the box and I, mindful of nasty wriggly things, very gingerly reached in and lifted the velvet aside.
There was a ring, a large, man’s ring, set with tiny little jewels in a complicated Celtic design. The whole thing was gorgeously made, every surface covered with intricate patterns.
“Wow,” I said, impressed. “Do you think that’s what I think it is?”
“I think it might be,” Luke said, and took it out. “It’s big.”
“Irish kings had big fingers.”
“You really reckon it’s that old?”
I frowned. “Well, it’s called Séala, so it’s supposed to be a seal. But you wouldn’t put stones in a seal ring. Maybe it was reset.”
Luke took it out and slid it onto his thumb. “Maybe it’s not the same ring.”
And then a voice came from behind us, a gravely, foreign voice, and we both spun around to see the man who had run Tammy over standing there, holding a gun against Harvey’s temple.
“Hey,” Harvey said. “How about that, you’re here too.”
“Harvey? What are you—what’s going on?”
He gave a very tense smile. “This is Dmitri Janulevic. He showed up at your apartment and said he knew where you were and I was going to come along and help him.”
“How did he know?” Luke asked, at the same time I asked, “Help?”
Janulevic garbled something and I glanced at Luke. He shrugged in incomprehension, but Harvey apparently understood. He shifted on his plaster cast, grimacing.
“He’s been monitoring the cameras you set up at Angel’s. You all left the church unattended so he could hack in.”
“But—Maria?” I said in horror. She was supposed to have been watching it.
Janulevic chortled nastily and said something. Harvey winced.
“He sent her a telegram her mother was dying. Maria left.”
“I’ll fucking kill her,” Luke muttered.
“He saw you coming and watched you go in the crypt. Then he came and got me for, uh, translation purposes.”
Janulevic said something else, and Harvey flicked his eyes at me. “He wants you to know it’s not personal, he just wants the ring.”
“What ring?” Luke said, and I willed myself not to look at his hand, which was hovering by the gun at his side.
Janulevic snapped something, and Harvey translated, “He says drop your weapons. Both of you. And, Sophie, your bag too.”
I glanced at Luke. He gave a small nod, and I unbuckled the holster holding Docherty’s gun. God, why hadn’t we gone to get him out first! The gun went on the floor, and then Luke’s joined it, and I added my little backpack to the pile.
“Hands up.”
I raised my hands.
“He wants to know what’s in the box.”
“Nothing,” Luke said swiftly. “We dug it up but it’s empty. Someone else must have got here first.”
Harvey relayed this to Janulevic, who shook his head and babbled something that came back to us as, “He says you’re lying. Luke, he wants to see your ring.”
“What ring?”
Harvey rolled his eyes. “On your thumb?”
Luke held up his hand. “It’s a family ring. We all have them. A signet ring. It’s a British thing.”
Harvey said something to Janulevic, who shook his head crossly.
“He says that’s the ring he wants.”
I cleared my throat. “I thought he was after a seal ring? This one has stones in it. You wouldn’t put stones in a seal ring.”
“Wouldn’t you?” Luke asked, sotto voce.
“Well, no, because you’d use the ring for sealing letters and you wouldn’t want to get wax in all those diamonds, would you?”
Luke and Harvey looked impressed. Janulevic didn’t. He glared at me and jabbered something in Czech. Harvey’s face fell.
“He says you need to shut up.”
“Good luck,” Luke muttered, and I glared at him.
“Actually, what
he said was ruder than that, but you get the idea. I don’t think he likes you, Sophie.”
“Well, he’s not exactly my favourite person, either.” My arms were beginning to cramp. “What does he want?”
“Ta Séala,” Janulevic said, and we didn’t need a translation for that.
“We don’t know where it is,” I said.
“We don’t even know what it is,” Luke added.
“What about Ireland?” Harvey translated.
My nostrils flared, and I glared at Janulevic. “You tried to kill me in Ireland.”
Janulevic sneered something else, and Harvey said, “He thought he had. But you’re persistent.”
“I’m hard to kill,” I said, feeling brave, and then the next thing I knew Janulevic had fired his gun at me and my head exploded with pain, and I thudded to the floor, stunned and bleeding.
“Sophie,” Luke yelled, and grabbed hold of me. He probed my temple, felt my neck, my wrist, then he closed my eyes and cradled me in his arms. There was blood on my face, hot and sticky and seeping into my eyes. God, I’d been shot in the head and I was dying.
And then, “She’s dead,” Luke said in disbelief. “You killed her.”
Hold on a sec. Dying, maybe, but surely someone with Luke’s combat medical training should be able to tell the difference between dead and dying?
Or at least show a little more remorse.
Bastard.
I started to open my eyes, but he pressed them shut again. “Sophie,” he said, holding me close, “God, Sophie.” And then in my ear he whispered, “Play dead,” and laid me on the ground.
Janulevic jabbered something else, and I wished I could see what was going on, but maybe I didn’t need to because I heard Harvey’s voice, properly miserable, saying, “He says get up. Luke, I’m sorry. She didn’t deserve to die.” Janulevic said something else. “He says get up or he’ll kill you too.”
Slowly, Luke moved away from me, and I realised as he did that there was no light coming in through my eyelids. He’d laid me down behind the beam of the torch, which was lying on the ground.
God, he was clever.
I opened my eyes a crack, and realised I was in total darkness. I could see Luke, standing a few feet away with his hands still raised. There was blood on them and on his face. My blood. I blinked, and it hurt. I couldn’t even tell where I’d been shot. I could be bleeding to death. I’d already had one head wound this week. Two was just ridiculous.
“Is that how you killed the professors?” Luke asked Janulevic, his voice hard, and I wondered if he’d be this calm if I actually had been killed. Would he give a damn? Or would it just bugger up the mission?
Janulevic sneered something in reply.
“He shot some of them,” Harvey said. “But only a few so the bullets wouldn’t be matched up.”
“Like we matched up the bullet that killed Petr Staszic and the bullet that shot me?” Luke said. “And the bullet that shot Greg Winter?”
Janulevic smiled a horrible smile when he heard Greg’s name, and when he’d got the full translation, laughed a little. He said something that made Harvey flinch.
“He says you’re smart. He says he’s had this gun a long time. Almost as long as he’s been searching for the seal.”
“Why Greg?” Luke asked. “He didn’t have it.”
“Not when he was killed. But he’d had the ring. He hid it somewhere. Janulevic’s spent seventeen years looking for it.”
“What if it doesn’t exist?”
Janulevic got mad when he heard this, and blabbered on for quite a while. I moved my hand up to my face, very slowly, and tried to feel where I’d been hit. Rationality was creeping back in and I knew, if I was still alive, then it couldn’t be a bad wound. Everyone knows head wounds bleed worse than they actually are, right?
Right?
Luke was looking at Harvey for a translation.
“He’s pretty sure it exists,” Harvey said.
“That’s all?”
“A lot of insults to you. He wants the ring.”
“It’s not a seal ring. You heard Sophie. Not with stones in it. It’s a family heirloom.”
Whose family? I wondered, spotting my gun lying not far away. If I moved very quietly I might be able to stretch over and get it.
“He says it’s a magic ring,” Harvey said, and asked Janulevic something. But Janulevic shook his head. “He won’t say what it does.”
But Luke already knew, and I knew, and I wondered, if I had that ring on my finger, would I be making a wish?
Hell, yes.
But what wish? This was Luke, right, so his heart’s desire would probably be to finish the mission safely. But maybe, just maybe, he might be hoping that I was okay. After all, I must’ve looked pretty bad. I had blood all over me. He could be wishing that Maria got back here in time and took Janulevic out. He could be wishing for Angel’s safety or even Tammy’s recovery, although I didn’t think that was very likely. He could be hoping that he and I would work things out. Or he could be hoping that I’d get my hands on that gun.
The laser sight lay next to the gun, and I reached it first and used it to pull the pistol over to me. But it rattled on the ground, and I couldn’t move properly to pick it up, my head was swimming, and I lay very, very still, just in case Janulevic heard the noise and looked over.
But Luke, gorgeous darling Luke, spoke up loudly. “Why do you want it, Janulevic? What’s your heart’s desire? Total world domination’s a bit James Bond. Financial freedom? Wouldn’t it be easier to play the lottery? Or is it arms you’re after? Why not try the Middle East. I hear they’ve got some excellent stuff. American, too, so you know it’s quality.”
Harvey relayed this, in a slightly amazed tone of voice, to Janulevic, who started spitting angrily, especially when he heard the American bit, and he began ranting in reply before Harvey had finished, his little eyes fixed on Luke.
I used up all my strength to reach over and grab the pistol, snap the laser sight in place, and cover the beam with my hand. Then, reeling from the effort, I shakily aimed it.
“…taking over his ancient culture, slamming McDonalds on every street corner, turning Prague into Pittsburg and Brno into Boston,” Harvey was reciting, looking pissed off, and I nearly smiled as I sighted down the barrel, removed my hand from the laser sight, and trained the little red dot on Janulevic’s trigger hand. “His heart’s desire is to eliminate the—” Harvey ground his teeth, “—the scourge that is America, to claim back what they have taken and undo the damage they have inflicted.”
I squeezed the trigger, there was a flash and a bang, and Janulevic’s .22 clattered to the ground. Janulevic clutched at Harvey for support, but Harvey kicked him away, and when he was clear, I aimed again, the dot on Janulevic’s head this time.
“Luke?”
“What are you waiting for?”
For your assurance that killing this man is the right thing to do. That I won’t lose my soul like I thought I was going to do last time I shot someone. That Janulevic deserves to die for what he’s done. That you’re really sure I need to do this.
The red dot shook as I trembled.
Luke turned to look at me, and I saw it in his face: there wasn’t anyone else about to make my decision for me.
So I made my choice.
And fired. Janulevic was dead.
Harvey stared in amazement as Luke picked up the torch and knelt by me. “Are you okay?”
“Not bad, to say I’m dead.”
“You were faking it?” Harvey said incredulously.
I looked up at Luke. He raised an eyebrow. “Just this once,” I said, and he grinned and kissed my forehead. “What did you wish for?”
“Wish?”
“You were wearing the ring. It’s supposed to grant you your heart’s desire. What was it?”
Harvey and I both looked at Luke, who looked nonplussed.
“That you’d shoot Janulevic,” he said.
Fig
ures.
Chapter Eighteen
Another trip to the emergency department, where one of the nurses waved at me and asked how I was getting on with those stitches in my calf. Janulevic’s bullet had ripped through my ear, which hurt like hell, and would probably leave a scar. Great. Another thing to lie to my parents about.
Luke took me home and told me to rest, which was never going to happen, especially as whenever I turned on my side, pain shot through me. I threw all my bloody clothes straight in the machine and managed to take a shower without getting my big fat ear bandage wet, although I wasn’t sure about how well my hair had been washed. I got dressed, looked through my mail, and picked up the phone to call the office and tell Karen I’d be in later to make a report. Luke had already called her about the body, and now he’d gone off to help her with moving it out of the crypt.
She wasn’t yet back at the office, so I called her mobile and left a message on voicemail. Then I flumped idly down on the sofa, and it was quite a while before I realised my answer phone light was flashing.
“You have one new message. Message one: Hello, this is Julie from the Stansted Vet’s Surgery. I’m calling for Sophie Green? You brought a cat in to us yesterday, by the name of Tammy. I would have called you yesterday but I’m afraid we had a computer failure and lost your number.”
Fear gripped me. My nails dug in my palms. Why didn’t she just go ahead and say it?
“I just wanted to tell you that Tammy…will be fine.”
I let out a huge long breath of relief.
“It was touch and go during the night, but she made it through to this morning, and now she’s quite bright and perky.”
I grabbed the phone and dialled so quickly I got it wrong the first time and had to try again. “Can I come and see her?”
They said I could, and I grabbed my bag and my keys and rushed out of the house. Ted sat there, looking weary and battered, a bit like me really, but solid and sure and not about to give up. He sounded happy when I started him up, and seemed to enjoy the short ride up to the vet’s.
Tammy was languishing in a little cage with a soft, furry blanket and a catnip toy. She was wrapped around with lots of bandages, her ear was split and half her lovely multicoloured fur had been shaved off to make way for rows and rows of stitches. I felt tears come to my eyes, and when she lifted her head and mewed at me I nearly broke down.