by Jenn Stark
“Wait, what?” I looked at him. “You’re telling me the holy ninjas were tracking the Mercaults, not me?” I felt vaguely insulted.
“The Mercaults!” Claire drew her lips back in derision, a gargoyle with amazing hair. “They are filth.”
I didn’t dispute this. The Mercaults were filth that paid, however, and they didn’t traffic in stolen kids. That made them okay by me. Still, something didn’t add up. “I was at that Metro station alone, though. No one from the family there. Unless the Swiss Guard thought I was part of the family, in which case they’re stupid.” I shook my head. “And the papal office has hung around for an awfully long time to be that stupid.”
Beside me, Dante snorted, but Armaeus held up a hand. “Despite your continued assertions, the men you saw this evening are not working for the Holy See. Not directly.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Armaeus turned to the screen. He hit a button on a little remote, and a map of Europe flared to life, glowing stark green against a black background. The major cities of each country glowed as green dots as well.
Overlaying many of those green dots were amber triangles—the largest of which was positioned directly over Rome. “They are agents of a quasi-military entity known as SANCTUS, a shadow cabal within the Vatican. Their director is rumored to be Cardinal Rene Ventre, one of the pope’s closest confidants and a compatriot of the inspector general of Vatican security.”
“Friends in high places,” I murmured.
“Nevertheless, SANCTUS is not an official division of the Swiss Guard or of the Vatican corps. The pope can plausibly maintain complete deniability of their existence, as the office has maintained deniability of shadow security forces throughout its history. We first began tracking their efforts in 1935, but their initial attention remained rather exclusively fixated on following the activities of Hitler and his compatriots, as they collected religious artifacts to add to the power of the Third Reich. SANCTUS’s activity waned in the following decades but increased again at the turn of the century as interest in new age mysticism and ancient faiths experienced a renaissance. In the past decade, under the auspices of Cardinal Ventre, they have expanded operations dramatically. We have been monitoring talk for some time of their growing infiltration of the Connected community, especially as a new core mission has crystallized in recent months. For the moment, they appear to be dedicated to the cause of reclaiming false icons.”
“False icons?” I frowned at him. “False to whom?”
“That appears to be a question adjudicated by Cardinal Ventre. To accomplish their mission, the agents of SANCTUS have been quietly gathering religious artifacts they believe to be critical to their cause. Some of the items they have acquired recently are…quite rare. And quite specific.”
“And they’re doing what with all these toys? Adding them to the papal collection?” The Catholic Church’s treasure trove of artifacts was probably the largest collection of religious icons in the world, by several times over. “Seems a little grabby.”
Armaeus shook his head. “No. While the Vatican continues its interest in preserving and cataloging all icons of ancient and pagan religions as symbols of man’s imperfect faith, SANCTUS prescribes a far harsher approach. They seek to eradicate anything that is not of their god. They fear the power of such icons to sway a populace far too easily convinced by mystical prophecy or magical portents.” He turned to me. “It appears the seal of Ceres would be included in that description.”
“Uh-huh. And why would that be, do you suppose?”
Claire turned, her curiosity plain. “Did the Mercaults tell you nothing of the significance of the artifact?”
Dante also watched me as I considered the question. I was a big fan of a girl never spilling secrets, but the Mercaults hadn’t warned me that Vatican ninjas were on my tail. Not very nice. “They said that they wanted it as leverage. Apparently they thought this particular seal was some sort of key. They didn’t know to what, but they thought maybe that would become obvious once they had a chance to examine it.”
“And did you have a chance to examine it?”
“Sure.” I shrugged. “It definitely has energy, but not a lot of it. And it’s not been boosted. I don’t know how SANCTUS could’ve tracked it, honestly, unless they had a tip on the delivery boy. I couldn’t find a bug.”
“SANCTUS was summoned to the Louvre to take possession of the seal. They arrived several hours too late.”
“To take possession…” I frowned. “But that makes no sense. If SANCTUS was on its way, why did they send the seal anywhere?” When his expression didn’t change, I narrowed my eyes. “I thought you were big on not influencing events, O Great and Powerful Oz. Whose brain did you crawl inside to convince them to send that trinket across the city?”
“That’s not important.”
“Uh-huh. Kind of walking that ‘no influence’ line a little close, wouldn’t you say?”
Claire gasped, and Dante edged back in his seat a little bit. Wusses.
The Magician’s next words were clipped. “The seal is vital to our interests, and by painting a target on it, we not only recovered it without drawing suspicion, we gained vital information about the reach of the SANCTUS operatives. The news that the seal was a critical artifact only leaked in the last thirty-six hours.”
“Painted a target.” I considered that. “A target you knew I was going in after. That seems a little convenient. Were you the one who recommended me to Mercault too?”
“As you said, you were already in the city.”
“Which you damned well knew.” I was angrier than I should have been, but I didn’t want to focus too much on why. I knew the Magician’s stock-in-trade was manipulating people. He paid me a lot to put up with that. But the price was going up by the second. “So now you know that SANCTUS is willing to be drawn out with unverified information, to make mistakes. What about the reverse? You really don’t think they suspect you’re the one pulling their chain? And that it’s you personally, or the council?”
My words seemed to strike a chord in Claire. She turned to Armaeus with worried eyes. “You must be more careful, Grand-père,” she said, her lilting voice a shade more resolute. “What we have learned about SANCTUS is not promising. They are amassing artifacts, but we have but limited understanding of what they are doing with them. They say they are destroying them…”
“They’re not destroying them.” Dante stood and went to the screen. “They plan to use them. As bait or as bribes, whatever works more quickly.” As he passed his hand over several countries, their shading turned from black to various shades of blue—the pale ice of Ireland to the almost midnight black of Turkey and Armenia. “The activities of SANCTUS are concentrated in Eastern Europe, but they are spreading through the continent like a sickness. They have smaller operations in the New World, but those are growing.”
I looked at him sharply, then at Armaeus. New World? Was Dante just being French, or was he drinking the same breakfast shakes the council was?
Armaeus didn’t notice my attention. He leaned forward, frowning at the map. “This information has changed since last we spoke.”
“Significantly,” Dante agreed. “Activity has been stepping up for a while, but it’s spiked in the last few months. And there have been more public sightings of uniformed men giving the impression of Vatican authority outside of Vatican City. Places like Budapest, Ankara.”
“Any violence?”
He shrugged. “None that ever shows up on official channels. The traffic of artifacts continues unabated. If anything, it has also stepped up. We’re in the middle of an antiquities grab, it would seem, without the usual World War to serve as backdrop.”
“Okay, well—not to put too fine a point on it, but so what?” I asked. The severity of my question seemed to catch them off guard, but I pushed on. “You said SANCTUS has been around since the 1940s, right? They’ve scaled up and eased back their operations several times since then. What’s to say th
ey won’t ease off this time once they’ve collected enough toys?”
Armaeus shook his head. “Because artifacts are not all they’re interested in this time around.”
A chill chased up my spine as Dante hit another button at the base of the screen. In each of the nation states, to each according to their color, small person-esque figures appeared, like bathroom symbols for “male” and “female.” The darker the country, the more symbols filled it.
I blew out a low whistle. “SANCTUS is behind the missing Connected? They’ve kidnapped all those people? But why?”
“Not kidnapped, Miss Wilde,” Dante said, frowning at the map. “Killed. They’re committing genocide.”
Chapter Five
“What?” I was on my feet now, moving toward the map. All those people. They marched across the page in silent testimony. “They’re all Connected?” I shook my head, not needing an answer to my own questions. Of course they were all Connected, and of course they were being killed by religious nutjobs. It was almost too perfect. “The community hides in the shadows. They spend their entire lives trying not to be noticed. To prove that there’s a trend of harassment, you have to admit that you’re a member of a persecuted group, and this is not a club anyone’s interested in advertising.”
“It gets worse.” Claire waved a hand from her chair, and the map dissolved again. How many remotes did these people own?
Still, the next screen was clearly the point of this little demonstration. The male/female figures were joined by smaller figures, unmistakably children. Once again, the countries in Eastern Europe were the hardest hit, but surprisingly, they were followed by India and China—countries that had had relatively low adult casualties on the previous map.
“But children? That doesn’t make sense. They aren’t trained. Half of them don’t yet realize they have gifts, let alone know how to use them. They’d be useless to SANCTUS.”
“SANCTUS is honing its technique,” Claire said, her focus on the screen. “The adults seemed like the reasonable place to start, but their loss was not felt so strongly. With the children being targeted, the game changes, and changes swiftly.” Her glance shifted to me. “Half the atrocities suffered by the community in the past several months were authorized by SANCTUS. At least half.”
I stared at her. “You’re kidding me.” All this time, I’d thought the uptick in child abductions was the result of the ignorant or the darkest of the dark practitioners. But even I had not been able to reconcile the incredible amount of children taken, their bodies mangled and destroyed. “But their—what in God’s name could SANCTUS want with body parts?”
“We’ve no information on that.” Armaeus’s voice remained, as always, unperturbed. “The abductions and deaths of the children could be swift, with the bodies left out to be scavenged, so as not to draw suspicion. Or they could be utilizing body parts in the same sort of arcane experiments that the dark Connected are engaged in, to see if there is any truth to their claims. We simply don’t know.”
“But why leave any evidence at all? If SANCTUS is determined to eradicate magic in the world, you’d think they’d operate as quietly as possible. That doesn’t include hanging out your trophies for your cronies to admire. No. There has to be something more.”
“You’re right, of course,” Claire said. The abduction of children serves a dual purpose. When the shock and outrage over the abduction of adults waned, naturally they needed to increase their impact. They found an unexpected benefit to their new strategy, as members of the Connected began to try rescuing the children.”
My lips curled back at her words. “Bait,” I said flatly. “They’re using the bodies of the stolen kids as bait. Every new abduction, every new death, draws out either someone willing to use the spoils, or, equally tantalizing, someone trying to stop the killing. They get both ends of the spectrum.”
“And play them against each other along the way.” Dante nodded. “SANCTUS doesn’t care who kills whom. The fewer Connected, the easier their job will ultimately be. And once they infiltrated the community with information about potential children hitting the black market, they merely needed to watch who acted with intentions of exploitation and who with intentions of altruism, to adjust and refine their influence.”
Fury roiled through me at my colossal miscalculation. How long had I been pouring money into the search and rescue of children? Three years? Five? It all blurred together as I stared at the body count on the map. All the while, every one of my coordinated rescues, every infusion of money—it was like a big arrow pointing “Connected here.” And I’d been standing there with a can of red paint, leading SANCTUS where they needed to go. I felt sick. “The boy,” I managed. I glared at Armaeus’s profile. “The boy in Toulouse. Was he one of SANCTUS’s kills?”
“We have no way of knowing that.”
“Then why are you showing me this?” Anger replaced violation with swift heat. “You let me walk into the middle of SANCTUS’s little trap today not once but twice before stepping in, and then you bring me here for a game of map the dead kids? To what end?”
Armaeus eyed me coldly. “So that you will understand the stakes. This conflict goes beyond your little mercenary client runs for gold and ancient idols. When I suggest that you keep me apprised of your whereabouts, there’s a reason for it. And when I suggest that my need for you on certain assignments is paramount, it would be wise for you to accept the job.”
“Oh, right. Because you’ve suddenly become interested in the plight of the unfortunate Connected all of a sudden. You in your little cabin in the woods.” I looked at Claire, who sat frozen in her chair. So much for politesse. “You are his family, right? Or what’s left of it? Do you guys do anything other than compile slide shows?”
“Miss Wilde.”
“How long?” I demanded, turning on Armaeus. “How long have you been involved with the Connected, because I sure as hell haven’t seen you at any of the networking lunches. And if you’re this knowledgeable about what’s going down with these SANCTUS whack jobs, then why hasn’t that information filtered down to the people who are in the trenches, the ones trying to save lives?” I stabbed a finger at the glittering map. “Even if it’s a lost cause?”
“You have no right to talk to us that way!” Claire gasped. “We have been involved in the fight since the Fourth Crusade, and—”
“Claire, c’est assez.” Armaeus’s lifted a quelling hand. “Do not let her draw you out. She is overwrought.”
“I’m way beyond overwrought. I’m well down the track to pissed.” I glared at Dante, my anger ratcheting up a notch. “How many of you are there? And why aren’t you doing more? Or do you buy into the same pacifistic rhetoric that Mr. Big here likes to favor?” I scowled at him, swiveling my gaze between him and Armaeus. “And why do you two look so damned much alike? You’ve got to be related, but how directly?”
“You honor me.” Dante’s grin was sardonic. “But alas, no. Le seigneur’s direct bloodline ended with him. We are but—”
“That is enough.” Armaeus passed a weary hand over his face. “Miss Wilde, I brought you here because of the intelligence that my family has compiled—without my direct order or intervention, I would add, as that is counter to my oath as a member of the council. They can provide you with pictures of the organization’s top operatives, a listing of names and likely locations, areas of influences and families most likely to already be infiltrated. You can do with that information whatever you need.”
“Oh.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because I thought you would allow them the courtesy of showing you themselves. Forgive me for the oversight.”
“Hey, I’ve had a really bad day.” Grudgingly, I turned to Dante and Claire. Dante still smiled at me. The old woman, not so much. “I apologize for my terrible manners. It’s a constant failing.”
Dante nodded and turned back to the map. “As le seigneur indicates, we have much we can
show you about SANCTUS,” he said. “You understand, we cannot send you this information electronically? You will have to memorize it.”
“You all run out of minutes on your data plan or something?”
“Under no circumstances can this information be tracked back to my family, Miss Wilde.” The Magician’s tone brooked no argument. “If it ever is, I will lay that crime at your feet.”
“Oh, give me a break,” I muttered, squinting at the map, which was filling with images of surprisingly old men in dark robes. SANCTUS’s leadership, I presumed. “Fine. Hit me.”
It was over an hour later that Dante finally wound down, and by then I was swimming. I had a pretty good memory for faces and names, but the information the family had gathered was massive. And the overriding truth all the pictures carried was this: SANCTUS was well beyond some kind of nutjob splinter group in the Vatican. These guys were well organized and well funded. Someone was bankrolling the war on magic. And if it wasn’t the pope…
“Thank you,” I said, realizing that Dante had stopped talking. “I will try to get this information into the ears of the right people who can do the most good.”
“We would be very grateful.” He glanced at Claire, who regarded me haughtily. She sniffed as I looked at her, and I fought the uncharitable desire to strangle her in her sleep. So I’d been a little testy. It’d been a long day!
Armaeus stirred from where he had been standing at the hearth. He’d been pointedly silent throughout the long speech, almost disassociated, as if he wasn’t actually in this room, allowing members of his family to give me information that he, via some sort of pinkie-swear ceremony with the council, had promised not to pursue. He also thanked Dante and helped his grandmother/granddaughter/whatever the hell she was to her feet. Without acknowledging me, he turned to the door with Claire on his arm. Her spirits, not surprisingly, now appeared fully restored. Armaeus could do that to a girl.