by Liliana Hart
So to me, M. Armaeus Bertrand had been no different, at least at first. With a voice that registered somewhere between hot toffee and dark chocolate on the deliciousness scale, Armaeus had commissioned me via phone to track down a dubious-sounding “Atlantean bowl” owned by an even more dubious-sounding Sicilian. I’d found the bowl, of course, though it’d looked no more Atlantean than I did. The next day, a pile of cash had shown up in my account…along with M. Armaeus Bertrand’s personal contact information for a new job.
At that point, of course, I had tried to look him up. Sadly, my Google Fu was not strong. After I’d hit a few dozen sites listing the man’s Vegas creds but no photos, no rap sheet, and no Facebook page, I’d gotten distracted by a before-and-after article on celebrity plastic surgery gone terribly wrong. And that was that.
Still, the man and his council paid very well. Two jobs had led to three. Three to four.
It had taken Armaeus until the fifth job to get me to Vegas. By the seventh, I was in his bed. Totally better than a gold pen, I’d thought at the time.
Fool me once.
Since then, the Tyet had kept my virtue intact, but it couldn’t keep the Magician from crawling around inside my head. So now Armaeus was here…and he wanted the seal?
I considered that. My contact wasn’t exactly going to be announcing his Mensa candidacy anytime soon, but he had figured out that I’d scored his Roman party favor. How pissed off would the king of coins be to find out I’d not only flummoxed his flunky, but I’d pawned off said artifact not thirty minutes later?
Then again, I’d stated my new price, and Monkey-Boy hadn’t been willing to pay. So how was this my fault?
“Is there a problem?” Armaeus hadn’t seen fit to disappear into a puff of smoke during my mental gymnastics, and now he tilted his head as he glanced over my shoulder. “Other than the fact that you are being followed?”
I frowned, narrowing my gaze at the men I’d also just noticed—dark uniforms, black berets. But still—
“How did even you see those guys?” I protested. “They’re directly behind you. And what is up with the Swiss Guard tonight, anyway? Since when does the pope care this much about pagan gold?”
“Those men are not quite the Swiss Guard, Miss Wilde.”
“I beg to differ,” I differed, my gaze still trained on the stylish soldiers of death. “Maybe you didn’t see them? Tall, dark, enthusiastic? Snappy berets?” It certainly was the Swiss Guard.
True, they were still sporting their black ninja gear, and their berets looked more special forces than ceremonial snap caps, but the man closest to me had a papal seal tat right behind his ear: crossed keys, mantle, rope, pope hat. Vatican City all the way, and that must have been what’d tipped me off when I’d seen them the first time. I glanced smugly at Armaeus, in case he’d missed my obvious smackdown. He stared stonily back at me and shook his head. Some people just couldn’t concede the point.
“I did note the presence of those men, yes. They are not your initial concern, however.”
Then, without warning, Armaeus pulled me up against his body, hard. My pulse jacked, my sight dimmed, and everything froze up in shocked and shivering pleasure—except my mouth.
Naturally.
“Hey!” I hissed. “What are you—”
“Shh.” Armaeus’s whisper was right at my ear. “In addition to your not-quite Swiss Guard, the men to whom I am referring entered the crowd a few moments after you. They have since been joined by a fourth gentleman. They lost you when you entered the church, then re-grouped once you stepped outside again. One of them has a bandaged neck. Yes.” Armaeus noted my flinch. “I suspected that was your doing. Give me the seal, Miss Wilde.”
“But how did they find me?” I asked. Without answering, Armaeus abruptly turned deeper into the crowd, towing me along with him. Then, with a movement so fast I had no hope of stopping it, he reached into my jacket and slid the Ceres seal free. Something inside me deflated a little, as I realized I’d just been violated without even getting dinner first. Pungent or not, my prince of coins had been on the hook for at least eighty thousand euros for this little snatch and pitch, and I really, really hated to see that money go away. “You’re paying for that, you know. And just for the record, it’s gotten really expensive.”
“Keep moving.” Without breaking stride, Armaeus opened the velvet bag and withdrew the heavy gold disk, slipping it into an interior pocket of his own jacket. He then tucked the seal’s pouch into the pack of an oblivious passing tourist. I saw the young man swing energetically away, and didn’t miss how half the Swiss Guards’ heads swiveled to watch him go. The pouch had been bugged? By the guards? How did that make any sense?
Armaeus steered me into a side street, but it was too late. Now the crush of tourists rapidly dwindled away, and I could hear the boots of multiple men striding into the street behind us. Clearly my prince and his buddies were following us by sight and not by technology, and my brain bumped back online. “Hey,” I protested. “Those guys might actually be here to make good on this job. I need to talk with them.”
“They are not interested in talking, Miss Wilde. Or in paying you.”
Irritation flared, and I stopped short. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. And that money is import—shit!”
A sudden flare of semiautomatic rifle fire peppered the brick wall over our shoulders as Armaeus ducked low and pulled me into a side street that was little more than an alley, but at least it was heading in the right direction: away from the crazy men with guns.
“Three streets over,” Armaeus said, his words unrushed over the clatter of my thrift-store boots and his million-dollar loafers. “A driver will transport us to safety.” Behind us, I again detected the dulcet tones of my contact as he snarled something in French. Armaeus glanced back, his teeth glinting white as he grinned. Then I heard my contact’s cry of confusion.
It was the last sound he ever made.
A second round of gunfire punctuated the night, the sound of the silenced weapons like the breathy popping of balloons, overtaken by the shouts of pain and the crunch of bodies falling to the ground. The Swiss Guard flowed into the street behind us, and Armaeus yanked me close. Every one of my nerve endings lit up like a neon sign at his touch, but I knew better than to resist. The man could move. And sure enough, with each of his strides now, the pavement shot beneath us like a rushing torrent.
The Swiss Guards’ angry Italian dwindled into the distance, and the buildings around us shifted and blurred. Trapped in that strange cocoon of movement, however, I could think of nothing but Death. Death had erupted all around me, just as the cards had predicted. The cards had been right on the money, in fact—first the exploding Tower, then the Magician, then Death. All of them appearing in rapid succession, each more alarming than the last. The only card left was—the Devil.
What did that mean this night? More lies, more deceit? Or was the card simply showing its usual colors, warning me that I was about to head into the underbelly of society—down the well-trod rabbit hole of crime, prostitution, drugs, and death?
That was the Devil I knew, anyway.
I didn’t want to think too much about the Devil I didn’t.
Armaeus turned again, and he finally let me go, our racing footsteps slowing to a fast stride. I blew out a sharp breath, forcing myself to focus. No streetlamps cut the gloom of this dark street, but Armaeus had definitely relaxed. Squinting into the darkness, I saw why.
A low, sleek limousine purred ahead of us in the shadows, double-parked on the street. Without speaking, Armaeus guided me to the car, but now that the danger was past, all the familiar panic alarms were going off inside me. Dealing with the Magician was hard enough when I could maintain my own personal space. Being stuck in the tight confines of a limousine with the guy was something else again. I honestly didn’t know how far I could push my Tyet, and I wasn’t in the mood to figure that out tonight.
“You know, I can pretty much di
sappear on my own,” I said, taking a step away. “Just wire me the money for the seal as usual, and we’re solid.”
Armaeus scowled at me. “I have presented distractions to the men who follow you, not barriers, Miss Wilde. Get in the car.”
“No, really, I’m good,” I hedged. “Besides, they’re not after me anymore. You’ve got what they want. So I head left, you head right, and all’s well with the world. Easy peasy.”
But Armaeus wasn’t looking at me. He turned toward the darkened Parisian street behind us as if he could pierce the stone buildings with his gaze, measuring the footfalls of our pursuers, gauging their beating hearts. Then he glanced back at me, scowling, and his golden eyes sent a chill right through my bones. “Oh no.” I said, backing up. “No, no, no. Do not even think about it.”
Armaeus opened his mouth to speak, but I didn’t hear his voice so much as I felt it.
“Nma,” the Magician whispered.
Blackness flowed around me and swallowed me whole.
Chapter Three
“Miss Wilde.”
Armaeus’s voice seemed to emanate from somewhere inside me, followed immediately by my brain’s residual protest of DANGER! But it was all so far away, so quiet and still, especially when all I wanted to do was curl up under the heavy blanket and sleep under the warm, softly muted amber lights.
I frowned. Amber?
My world tilted precariously in a way that cars or people simply do not move, and I shot upright, thrusting the sumptuously thick flannel blanket off me as I tried to lurch out of my chair—only to practically bisect myself on a safety belt. I sucked in a deep breath, wrenching the thing off as my gaze shot around the chamber, confirming what the tilt I’d experienced had already suggested. I was in a luxuriously appointed airplane cabin with large overstuffed chairs positioned around a gleaming table, a wet bar off to one side. “You have me on a plane?” I sputtered. “How long was I out?”
Armaeus sat across from me, his legs crossed, his manner contemplative. A glint of silver hung from a chain in his hand, and I froze.
“A Tyet,” he mused. “It has been some time since I’ve seen one crafted so finely. Where did Nikki Dawes acquire it, do you know?”
I ignored the question. I also wasn’t going to beg for my amulet. If anything, Armaeus’s interest in it just confirmed its value to me. Now if I could just get the damn thing surgically implanted into my skin, I’d be fine. I sat back in my chair and scowled at him. “You want to keep working together, then you do not play mind tricks on me again, you got it?” I bit out. “I have my limits, and you just crossed them.”
A faint gleam of amusement flared in the Magician’s golden eyes. “I merely needed to get you to safety.”
“Then you merely needed to insist. Or knock me out. But you don’t cheat.”
Armaeus’s brows lifted in two graceful arcs. “Your outrage is misplaced, Miss Wilde. I have no interest in harming you. Most would not even have noticed the projection.” He nodded to me as if I should be proud of myself, like the horse that’s figured out the purpose of the bit a second after the bridle has been strapped on.
“Not helping.” I glared into his beautiful face, gratified to hold on to my fury, if only to distract myself from the way my fingertips kept twitching at the edges of my sleeves, as if taking off my clothes would be the most natural thing in the world for me to do next. My gaze slid to the Tyet still swinging from Armaeus’s fingers. How much was my lack of control around him the result of me no longer wearing the amulet? And how much of it was just a simple lack of control?
Toss-up.
Armaeus smirked, demonstrating that he was still skulking around in my brain.
Asshat, I thought very clearly.
Unlike whatever pyrotechnics he’d thrown at my prince of coins and his goons, however, what Armaeus had used on me was not a magic spell, even though it felt like it. The greatest spiritual leaders had utilized heightened vocal projection throughout antiquity, a manner of speaking that required both intense training and extreme force of intention, so that the words delivered with the chosen vibration seemed to resonate within the listener’s very bones. In the hands of a master, even stones and sea could be displaced. But while I’d heard of abilities to compel at the level of M. Armaeus Bertrand, I’d never experienced it firsthand. From everything I had read, no one had in almost a thousand years.
Bully for him.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?” I asked, if only to keep my gaze off the glittering Tyet. “I don’t normally have to manage three different tails at the same time.” I shook my head, eyeing the wet bar. “You said that last group wasn’t the Swiss Guard, but they sure as hell looked like it. And one of them definitely had the papal seal tatted on his neck.”
Armaeus regarded me with his hypnotic eyes. “Your assumption was not an unreasonable one,” he said. “And not far off the mark. Those men are agents for Vatican City—or a very select group within that city-state, more precisely. They are known as SANCTUS, and 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. SANCTUS is not an official division of the Swiss Guard or of the Vatican corps, but we have been monitoring talk for some time of their growing activity. They are dedicated to the cause of destroying false icons.”
“False icons?” I frowned at him. “False to whom?”
Armaeus flashed a thin smile. “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 them? Just 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 shifted his glance to me. “It appears the seal of Ceres would be included in that description. Further, the monitoring device was placed in the seal’s pouch while it was still in the Louvre. Someone wanted SANCTUS to steal it.”
“And to think, they could just have asked me nicely. Then paid for it. Like you’re about to do.”
Armaeus’s chuckle was soft. “And do you do everything that is asked nicely of you, Miss Wilde?” He set the Tyet to swinging once more as his gaze roamed over me. My fingers, accordingly, resumed their twitching. “That would be quite…intriguing.”
“Don’t change the subject.” I narrowed my eyes. “I could have gotten eighty thousand euros for that chunk of gold, especially with these SANCTUS people after it.”
He nodded. “That amount will be delivered to Father Jerome at Saint-Germaine-Des-Prés tomorrow, and more, if”—he raised a finger as I perked up—“you agree to another job. And reconsider my offer to permanently relocate to Las Vegas.”
I hesitated, sensing a tidal wave of crazy coming my way. I was developing a sixth sense for it. There was no way I was going to dignify Armaeus’s Vegas offer with a response, but the first part…“Another job doing what?”
“One of SANCTUS’s recent acquisitions is an item of great personal value to me, and necessary for the council’s continued work,” he said. “I need you to recover it.”
That did catch my attention. The members of Armaeus’s council in Las Vegas were collectors in their own right, and they were as avaricious as any client I’d ever had. But what the Arcanan Council bought, it tended to keep. So far, I’d only met the Magician, the Fool, and the High Prie
stess of their merry little band, though there were rumors of other council members lurking in their hallowed halls. None of the ones I’d met, however, seemed too likely to give up their toys without a fight. “SANCTUS stole something? From you?”
Armaeus shrugged. “Not exactly. But the result is the same. The item is a very old gold-wrought box, a reliquary no larger than the size of your hand. It is unadorned except for the inscription on its seal, which is Aramaic and not important for your purposes. It will be heavy for its size and can seem to grow heavier or lighter as you carry it. But it will not be unmanageable.”
I nodded, filing away that last odd tidbit. The longer I was in this business, the less surprised I was by anything I learned. “Why me?”
“My initial attempts to retrieve the box have met with…failure,” Armaeus said with a rare display of candor. “I had hoped not to involve you in this particular mission, but when I realized where you were and what you were pursuing, I realized it might be time to increase your work on behalf of the council.”
“Increase, huh?” That sounded promising. Freaky or not, the council paid well. “So where is this little box?” I asked, looking around. “I assume we’re heading there now?”
“Rome.” Armaeus nodded. “The relic has been temporarily stored in a holding cell for purification. I am given to understand that it will be moved again shortly, however, which makes its retrieval tonight necessary. It’s located in the necropolis beneath Vatican City.”
I stared at him, not even bothering to widen my eyes. “You’re insane,” I said instead. “The necropolis. Under Vatican City. As in the home of those whack jobs back in Paris—”