by Tracy Clark
And why did I feel that tug of fate from the first moment I’d met Finn?
It doesn’t matter.
Every step closer to the imposing statue of St. Peter made my breaths come shorter. I don’t know what I expected, that his hand would still be gone, that the church would leave the keeper of the keys standing there with just a stump like Ultana Lennon’s?
Instead, St. Peter pointed his large marble finger toward me as if to accuse, “There she is. She’s the one who has my hidden key.” Reflexively, I touched the key my grandmother had stolen from him to make sure it was concealed beneath my shirt.
For the longest time, I stood in the sun on the gray square pavers, staring at the imposing statue from every angle. St. Peter had been hiding a secret in his hand, right above the adoring heads of Catholics from all over the world. Someone had to know that his famous keys hid a secret key within them. Someone had to know why.
Willing an answer from the curly-haired stone, I asked over and over again, what were his secrets?
After an amber-saturated evening of walking amid the humming noise of Rome past the timeworn buildings and fountains, and slurping down pasta slick with sauce, and then a tart limone gelato on my way to my hotel, I woke to another bright day in Rome. Signore Salamone was to meet me in St. Peter’s Basilica to begin our tour in front of Michelangelo’s famous sculpture, La Pietà.
I’d arrived a bit early and found myself staring in still rapture at the impossibly alive statue of the young Virgin Mary, who cradled her dead son across her lap. It was so breathtakingly lifelike and gave the impression a wand had been waved over them and had frozen the devastating scene for all eternity. I was mesmerized.
Agony froze my chest so that it was hard to breathe and pity washed over me for their suffering. I’d watched both of my parents die at the uncaring hands of others. My hands squeezed into hard knots. I could not feel as placidly resigned as the sweet face of Mary looked in Michelangelo’s interpretation, though her upturned left hand seemed to ask, why? I’d wondered why he’d chosen to make her so. Maybe Michelangelo believed it was beneath Mary to feel wrathful anger.
I was not so good.
“It’s the only sculptural piece the artist ever signed.” I spun around to face the kindly looking elderly man who’d spoken. As I assessed his aura, he extended his hand. “You are Miss Sandoval, I hope?”
“Yes,” I said, afraid to offer my own hand but not wanting to offend. My hands felt like weapons against myself. He perceptively dropped his own while I debated. “Where is his signature?” I asked, hoping to see the circular monogram with my own eyes.
Instead of pointing to the base of the sculpture, where I’d guess an artist would place a small, modest claim, Piero gestured upward, right at the Virgin Mary. “See her cloak strap there?” he said, pointing to the middle of Mary’s chest where a sash ran from her waist upward between her breasts and over her left shoulder. A series of Latin capital letters were engraved into the strap.
“It doesn’t look like his name,” I said, trying to make out the bold engraving. I stepped closer and peered at the letters. Not only was it some kind of Latin version of his name, but I noticed that within the words, random letters were oddly engraved smaller than all the others, and set in circles. Three circles, in fact.
My heart flopped in my chest as I identified the random letters one by one:
Every hair on my arms stood on end. My silver aura leaped from my skin in excited spikes. The only piece he ever signed, and done so audaciously it was almost arrogant. He’d stamped his name on a sash, a freaking banner to the world, and on it he’d placed three letters in three circles. A Latin derivative—for three.
Instantly, I thought of Dante and his structure of The Divine Comedy and its full-on reliance on threes—three parts, thirty-three stanzas, each with thirty-three lines, all written in third rhyme.
“Moving, isn’t it?” Piero asked.
I could hardly utter my agreement. I was totally moved, like whoa. I concentrated on calming myself as we walked away from La Pieta and through a long, narrow room toward an altar. Behind the altar and covering the entire wall was Michelangelo’s famous painting, The Last Judgment.
The image was enormous, violent and dark in a way that surprised me. Piero explained that Michelangelo had originally painted the figures nude, but the church found it obscene and had the masterpiece altered. It would have taken me weeks to discover many of the hidden messages within the painting on my own, but within minutes, I was given intimate details of the work as if Piero had known the artist himself.
Piero showed me Michelangelo’s self-portrait in the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew and the face of—no way!—Dante Alghieri, which the painter had included along with figures from Dante’s Inferno—a direct nod to The Divine Comedy.
“Moved” was becoming an understatement. I had to remind myself to close my open mouth.
I noted auras painted around Jesus and his mother, and the eerily familiar way Mary had her arms crossed over her chest self-protectively as I’d had when my aura was attacked for the first time in the hospital and in the many times since.
St. Peter, a burly figure to Christ’s left in the painting, seemed to be offering one gold and one silver key to Christ. Follow your instincts was what my grandmother told me, so I asked the only question I truly sought. “Signore, I’m fascinated by the symbolism of keys. Is there anything special about the keys in this painting? Or in any other art in the Vatican?”
Piero looked at me quizzically before answering. “Keys are quite important in Christian art. There are the keys in St. Peter’s hand, of course. They are the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven bestowed to him by Jesus. But many don’t realize that there is another set of keys painted within The Last Judgment…” We craned our heads up, and he gave me a small pair of binoculars through which to better see. “Over on the right, there is a man dangling upside down over the fires of hell.”
It took me a moment to pick out the man, but it helped that he was upside down as Piero described. The hulking naked figure was being shoved down toward hell by angels. “I see him.” Then something else caught my eye. “He has keys,” I said, “two of them. There’s also a small pouch.”
“Yes. Some say it’s a moneybag of gold, meant to show that someone from the church was going to hell for avarice, for being corruptible. Some say the bag held something else, but we don’t know what. Only the artist knew for certain.”
“Dante’s ashes?” I whispered to myself. That’s what the pouch reminded me of.
“Pardon?” His hand was suddenly on my shoulder, and I stepped out of his reach. “My, but you do know how to impress an old art professor, Miss Sandoval. Not many people know of the pouches from Dante’s remains.”
I could’ve been right or it could have been money. In Michelangelo’s adoring eyes, someone should’ve gone to hell for ordering Dante’s death. Did Michelangelo know about that? But how could he? Gold or ashes, it was a condemnation of someone within the church, the two keys made that clear.
If Dante’s Paradiso was a message to Scintilla, then it might take another Scintilla to recognize it. Was Michelangelo Buonarotti, like his beloved Dante, using his art to send messages of his own? One last look through the binoculars set my heart quickening.
One of the keys of the damned man being shoved into hell looked startlingly similar to the key around my neck.
Chapter Eleven
Finn
Saoirse texted twice more, asking where I was and leaving me no idea how much she knew about Newgrange. If Lorcan had been ignorant of his mother’s fate, perhaps Saoirse was as well. I couldn’t imagine that if Saoirse or Lorcan knew I’d been present when their mother died, that I’d be getting a text as innocuous as “Where are you?”
I texted back: On biz with me mum
I need to see you
Is everything okay?
You left me hanging! Last I heard you needed to help your ex-girlfriend and wanted me to run int
erference between Lorcan and my mother. What happened?
I sighed. Okay, so she was in the dark, for the moment. I thought about whether to type my answer, realizing that to keep Saoirse’s trust, the news about the Arrazi battle at Newgrange should come from me and not her brother. It was only a matter of time before he told her what he’d stumbled upon, and I wanted to admit to her myself that I’d killed my own uncle, and why.
I’d not, however, tell her what I knew about her mother’s death. The last thing I wanted was to endanger Cora further. What if Saoirse and her brother, Lorcan, somehow blamed Cora and the Scintilla for their mother’s death? Cora had enough enemies breathing down her neck—she didn’t need more.
We’ve had a death in the family. I could use a friend. Can I come by later?
After Cora departed through security and texted her arrival at the gate, my mother and I walked to the car, whispering worries and scenarios. I wondered how Clancy had gotten out of that tomb. Had anyone helped him? Had they found Ultana?
“I could go and check the tomb,” I said to my mother. “See if Clancy left her body there. Maybe lock it up again?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t go anywhere near that place. Newgrange is closed because of the deaths, and the entire area is on high alert. Ultana’s dead—a bloody relief, if you ask me. Maybe now all this nonsense will stop. You don’t need to be connected with it.”
“I’m already connected. Lorcan saw me at Newgrange.” I swallowed hard. “With his mother’s dagger. If they find her body, they’ll see she was run through with a blade as well.”
“Let’s pray he’s too stupid to put two and two together.”
“I didn’t kill Ultana, mother.”
“You think anyone will believe she drove the blade into her own stomach? Who does that?”
“Someone who believed she couldn’t die.”
“Why on earth would Lorcan Lennon protect you when the news is out that Clancy was killed with a dagger? When they find Ultana, every eejit Arrazi for miles will assume you killed both of them.”
I swallowed hard. Lorcan found me, the only Arrazi alive in a sea of dead bodies. We’d been attacked. I’d attacked in return to defend the Scintilla. “You love who you love, man,” I’d said to Lorcan by way of desperate explanation. “And I fell in love with a Scintilla. Clancy was trying to take them for himself when he found out your mother wanted them. He was betraying her orders.”
Lorcan’s face had been a mix of astonishment and confusion. “Weren’t you betraying orders?” he’d asked.
“I don’t take orders.”
I’d defended for love and defended all of us against my ruthless uncle. Pray Lorcan would leave it at that. I needed to stay in the Lennons’ inner circle. Surely, Saoirse and Lorcan would have some idea what the Arrazi were up to. Hopefully, they were a rudderless ship without Ultana as their captain.
“I’m going to go over to the Lennons’,” I told my mother.
“Wait until everything settles, Finn. You have no idea what the fallout will be. With any luck, this mission of hers will die with her.”
Despite my mum’s warnings, I couldn’t just sit and wait for the fallout. If Ultana no longer gave instructions to the Arrazi, what would happen? Would they abandon their mission to hunt and kill the Scintilla?
If Ultana’s instructions came to her from any religious order, who specifically issued those instructions and with what bait? Would they simply find another Arrazi to take on the job? My gut clenched. Too many people would be happy to replace Ultana as the most powerful Arrazi in the world. Didn’t matter if we were an unknown breed of humans; power is power and a breed of human with superpowers is even more formidable.
Made me wonder why the Arrazi needed to take orders from anyone at all.
When I arrived at the Lennons’ house Saoirse flung open the front door and pitched herself into my chest, slight arms clutched around my neck. She abruptly withdrew and blushed. “Jaysus, what is it with you? I seem unable to stifle my stupid impulses around you, Finn. Forgive me. You did scare me, though, with that call of yours. What happened, for Christ’s sake?”
I gave her a tight smile. “Is everyone home?” I asked, trying to sound casual, like I didn’t have a block of freezing dread melting at my core, especially when we walked past Ultana’s collection of ancient weaponry hanging on the wall. One of her deadly blades was now hidden in our kitchen, high up on a shelf.
“Just us,” Saoirse said, leading me into their kitchen. “I haven’t heard from my mother in two days. Typical,” she added, pulling biscuits from a cupboard and a wedge of cheddar from the fridge and setting them on the white marble countertop. “Strange, though, two different Arrazi have shown up at my door today, asking about her.”
I took her arm. “I reckon they want to talk to her about Newgrange,” I said, affecting a dramatic tone. “You knew about it, ’ey? Lorcan said you’d caught wind of something going down there. You’ll not want to have much to do with me after I tell you what happened.”
Soairse’s ginger brows pinched together as I proceeded to tell her about the battle at Newgrange, or as much of it as I could so she’d know I’d been caught in a hopeless situation against my uncle.
“How did you know that something was brewing there?” I asked her.
“Clancy—he called here looking for my mother, and when I told him she wasn’t here, he said to give her a message to meet him there.”
That set me back. Why would he call for Ultana when he knew damn well she was dead? Maybe he wanted to know if they knew it…
“When did he call?”
“I can’t right remember exactly,” Saoirse said, nibbling the edge of a thin cracker. “Why?”
“You once told me that your mum told Clancy she wanted nothing more than to find three Scintilla. Well, Clancy set his sights on three Scintilla, to be sure, and was racing to capture them for himself before your mother found them. That’s why I don’t understand why he called her. He wouldn’t have wanted her to know…” It made no sense.
If Clancy just wanted to know if they knew something had happened to their mother, why would he then tell Saoirse that he was going to Newgrange? Maybe he was trying to worm himself into the vacated leadership position through Ultana’s children. “They cornered us at Brú na Bóinne. I had to help the Scintilla. I had to stand against them for—”
“For her,” she said with a knowing look.
I nodded. “I wish I knew where she is now, or that she’ll be okay.” I bowed my head for effect, but my words were so true. Cora was on my mind constantly, and my heart ached with a persistent need to know if she was safe.
“Cora has the Scintilla guy to look out for her now, right?” Saoirse said. Sympathy filled her eyes as she gripped my forearm. “Let her go, Finn. It’s tragically obvious, isn’t it? You can never be together. You did what you could, you let them—helped them—escape.”
I pulled away from her grasp, anger punching rhythmically at my temples. “Nothing is obvious when the world tries to tell you who you’re allowed to love.”
“Finn, this isn’t prejudice. It’s biology. We are genetically designed to kill the silver ones. She has to know she’ll never truly be safe with you.”
Her words were a kick in the gut, an echo of Cora’s words at the airport.
“Maybe she could be. My uncle was able to keep a Scintilla captive, behind everyone’s back, including your mother’s,” I added stubbornly, hoping it would make his duplicity even more rank, “and he didn’t kill her. For twelve years, he didn’t kill her. I think there might be more to the story of why we were made this way, if only we could find it.”
“You’re a romantic,” Saoirse said, with a tart splash of condescension. “It’s sweet. But how much are you willing to risk for love?”
Everything.
“Surely your brother will tell your mother that I killed fellow Arrazi,” I said, doing my best to hold her gaze through my deceit, “and once she
knows, I doubt she’ll be so keen to have me around anymore.”
“Are you kidding?” Saoirse laughed in a lighthearted way that made me feel sorry for her loss, and her ignorance. “You’ll never get away from my mother.”
The doorbell clanged and my nerves with it.
“Are you bleedin’ kidding me?” she said. I stayed in the kitchen while Saoirse ran to answer it but listened as best I could to the unfamiliar voice in the foyer.
“All the world is talking about the mysterious deaths at Newgrange,” the man said in his southwestern Irish dialect. I was glad I’d beaten this stranger to Saoirse’s door. “But all the Arrazi are talking about now is why some of ours were dead among them. Arrazi know that it’s been all too easy to nip a few here and a few there to take advantage of the drop-deads. Hell, I’m sure our kind killed those folks. But who killed them? Everyone is terrified your mother had a hand in it, bein’ as she’s threatened every Arrazi under the sun. And if it wasn’t her, then who?”
“You came here to accuse her mother?” I asked, stepping into the foyer and putting my arm around Saoirse’s small waist.
“No, no,” the man said, eyeing me from top to toe with a squint. “I came to see if Ultana Lennon knows the truth, to settle the talk.”
Saoirse’s back went rigid under my hand. “You came like a common gossip to my door. People ought to worry more about how my mother will react to the talk. She’s been occupied on business, and this idle chatter of her possible involvement with those deaths is insulting. Perhaps the Arrazi are just as vulnerable to the sickness that is claiming the lives of people all over the world. Talk about that.” She slammed the door in his face.
“Saoirse, you’re wrong,” I said. “The Arrazi weren’t vulnerable to the sickness. I saw with my own eyes. Those people began to fall, began to die, before any Arrazi hooked their claws into the auras of the few who were still standing.”
What I didn’t tell her was that something uncanny happened out there… A sense that the battle outside that monument had rippled outward and somehow brought on the deaths.