by Tracy Clark
“No, Cardinal?” she spat his condescension right back at him. “You’re going to try and convince me this isn’t just another Inquisition? History confirms the brutal actions of your office within the church.”
“Incorrect. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has been in place since 1542, though that is simply when it was given an official title. It’s had many names over the years, but our mission was in place long before that, long before there was a Vatican, long before there was a Rome! The hierarchy of the church is ignorant of my true mission and the true mission of every man who has ever held my position—to preserve the world’s most volatile secret. I am one in a line of dauntless men who, over thousands of years, were tasked with this burden, and I take quite seriously the job of routing out and destroying the machinations of Satan. The sooner you devilish mutants are destroyed for good, the safer will be our world.”
He was confirming that there was a society in place through history to hunt us down, to keep us a secret. I opened my mouth to rail at him, but Mami Tulke beat me to it.
“You think we were created by Satan?” Mami Tulke asked scornfully. “We who give life,” she said, looking at Cora, “against those who…” Her eyes ran up and down the cardinal. “Those who take life? Your machine is fed by fear. Fear divides us all, and people like you use that fear to make other creeds, other religions, other gods, wrong. It’s the biggest divide among humans, it’s poison, and you spoon-feed it to them.”
“Are you suggesting the masses not come to the church to seek union with the Holy Spirit for their healing and salvation?” he asked Mami Tulke, disdain evident on his face.
Cora surged forward, facing off with the cardinal and putting herself between him and her grandmother. My body jerked to protect her. “Maybe we’re all holy spirits, and if there’s a God, he or she created us as such.”
Cardinal Báthory and Cora stared hard into each other’s eyes while all of us watched, our hearts thrashing. Her aura jabbed at him, belied her desire to attack him. He suddenly reached forward and plucked Cora’s phone from her hands, causing her to reach to snag it away, but a gun barrel was thrust at her face, and she backed down. The cardinal pressed play.
Face white, jaw rigid, the man pulled out his own phone, took a picture of Cora’s screen, and then dialed a call. “I’ve just sent you the photo of a young Irishman you need to find and deal with. Immediately. He’s threatened to expose the Arrazi. Oh, and he also claims to have the book. Your life depends upon you eliminating him, getting that cover, and bringing it to me. Alert all Arrazi you can to immediately make way to Rancho Estrella, a hovel of a ranch in the Elqui Valley in Chile.” His voice turned colder than before as his gaze swept over the Scintilla. “Do this and the Arrazi will get everything they’ve been promised and everything they deserve.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Finn
My mother was the first person I sought out when I returned home, but she was in surgery. My questions about whether she hired that man to follow me would have to wait. Asking her in person was the only way I was sure to get the truth.
When I woke the next morning, I was thinking about my dinner with Saoirse. She had a way of getting inside my head and making me question myself. It was a classic head versus heart debate. My head knew that being close to Saoirse was smart if I wanted high-level information on what the Arrazi were up to. But my involvement with her had become more complicated than that. She played on my broken heart and made me wonder if a life with an Arrazi woman was possible; if I could have the semblance of a normal life, like my parents.
Admitting defeat to my heart felt like draping my head beneath the guillotine with my hands holding the rope. I’d never have the one person I truly wanted. I liked Saoirse, I had some attraction to her, but to pretend I felt more wouldn’t be fair, to either of us. No one had ever struck lightning in my heart like Cora.
I had to be real. I had to stick with my higher reason and my strongest passion. So, after breakfast, I sat in the hidden room in my house and continued to research my theory about the water of life being a metaphor for energy. I’d also brought with me a shipping box, some random books from my mother’s library, and the largest book I could find. That large book I intended to hollow out in order to conceal the cover of the Book of Kells. I’d then bundle it with the other books and pack it for shipping.
Hundreds of times, I pictured trying to get the artifact through customs on a plane, and I realized that the only way I was likely to get it to Chile was if I let go of it temporarily and shipped it hidden inside a box of books. It was an enormous risk, but if it worked, I could fly to Chile and pick up the box in Santiago, then take it to Cora.
There had to be a motive for Ultana to want to find the missing cover and destroy it. I was convinced Cora could charm the reason up out of the book when she touched it. With hope, our questions about our origins might be answered. If there was anything I wanted more than that, it was an answer for why we were created so hopelessly opposed.
Using a scalpel from some medical supplies my parents kept, I carefully cut away the inner pages of a large astrology book so that the illuminated manuscript would fit neatly within and not be damaged in transit. The book was placed in the middle of the haphazard pile of books, covered with packing materials, and then the box was sealed. I addressed it to a shipping store in Santiago, then carried the box to the trunk of my car before returning to the room and my fascination with the water of life. One simply had to type those words in a search to find intriguing examples to support my theory, and many of them came from arguably the most popular book in history.
Revelation 22:1 And he showed me a river of water of life, bright as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the lamb.
Revelation 21:6 To the thirsty I will freely give from the fountain of the water of life.
John 7:37 Let anyone who is thirsty, come to me and drink.
John 4:14 But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
Why would Jesus Christ talk in this manner? He was no aqua peddler. He was the savior, right? Who could argue that he was speaking metaphorically of anything other than spirit?
I’d been at it for hours and rolled my stiff neck left to right when movement from the security camera caught my eye. I watched Mary make her way past my concealed room to answer the door. I couldn’t hear anything that was said, but two large figures stood in the doorway. There was something about Mary’s posture that prickled my spine. She pushed the door closed, but they forced their way inside. Within seconds Mary fell to the floor. I leaped up. The men had dropped her without ever touching her.
Arrazi.
Disbelief and rage blazed through my body. Not in my fookin’ house. I looked around the room for a weapon, but there was nothing but cabinets, a computer, and reams of our family’s history. Nothing with which to defend my home or my… Jaysus, my parents!
Swiftly, like they knew the layout of the house, the men went straight down the hall toward the stairs that would lead to the bedrooms. I had no idea where my parents were, or even if they were in the house. I hadn’t been paying attention. Last I saw of my father through the security camera was him heading down to the kitchen. I hadn’t seen him go back up, but then, I’d been absorbed in what I was doing.
My mother appeared on the monitor at the top of the landing, and my body blasted with fear. Alarm showed in her eyes when she saw the men who’d taken the first few steps up the stairs toward her. Rather than run, she turned and looked directly in the security camera and held her finger up to her lips while shaking her head “no.” I understood. She didn’t want me to come out. She didn’t want me, or this room, to be found. But it went against everything inside me. There was no way I’d stand by and watch while my family was attacked.
Never did my mother look so fiercely solid as she did at the top of those stairs, star
ing down the men who’d dared to enter her home. Dammit! This wasn’t a time for bravado. Why wasn’t she running? Before my hand even hit the handle of the door, one of the men drew a knife and plunged it into my mother’s chest as he ran past her and straight toward my room across the hall. My room?
I yelled, and no one heard.
They were after me.
I slammed the lights off, carefully slid the door open, and stepped out into the hall, closing it behind me. I was absolutely torn about where to go first. I needed to check my mum, but I also needed a weapon to defend us when they came back out. Those men would not leave my house alive.
The closest weapon I could think of was Ultana’s dagger in the kitchen. I ran full-out and found my father at the table, with the newspaper and leftovers. “Two Arrazi men are in the house, Da. They’ve killed Mary and stabbed—” I choked on the words. “My God, they’ve stabbed Mum.”
The fork clattered to the plate, and he was on his feet and reaching for a biscuit tin over the fridge. What the… He turned around with a gun in his hand. “You stay here.”
“No. If she’s alive, she’ll need you to help with the wound.” I retrieved the dagger from its hiding place. “Either way, it’s me they’re looking for. She was simply in their way as they ran toward my room. Let’s go.”
He led the way out of the kitchen, flicking lights off as we went. My father was in battle mode. When we reached the stairs, we heard my mother moan, and both of us ran up the stairs to her. She leaned against the wall with her hand pressed firmly over the wound in her chest. Blood seeped between her fingers as she breathed in shallow puffs. Her eyes weren’t panicked. I think I’d have felt better if they had been. They were resigned. “Out,” she said to me through dusky lips. “Go.”
“Ina, let me see,” my father whispered, kneeling at her side. When he pulled her hand away, we knew. My hand curled around the knife, and I knelt to kiss my mother’s forehead. “Is breá liom tú.” I love you.
What else was there to say? Nothing else mattered. I shook with shock and rage.
As soon as I stood, one of the men rounded the corner and saw us. My father raised his hand, and the crack of the gunshot reverberated, making my ears ring. I leaped on the man with my knee on his bloody chest and my knife at his throat. “Who sent you? Why are you doing this?”
“If they want you dead,” he sputtered, “you’re already dead.”
“They?” But the man’s eyes closed forever.
“Finn!” my father yelled just as the other man grabbed me from behind with his forearm across my neck and a gun at my back. He spun me around to face my father, using me as a shield as he moved us toward the stairs.
My father stood and blocked the way. “You’ll not take him.”
The man fired at my father. It was too dark to see where he’d been hit or how badly, but he dropped to the floor over my mother and lay motionless. I struggled, but the man was too big and too strong and had the warm barrel pressed to my kidneys.
Why would someone want me dead?
“Where is it?” he hissed in my ear.
It? What, the book? I had nothing else of value to give him.
“Hidden,” I said, unsure, desperate, and afraid. “In another house on the property.”
He shoved me forward. “Take me.” I dared a last frantic glance at my parents before he thrust me onto the stairs.
We trampled through the woods behind the manor and down the dirt lane that Clancy used to use with his beloved horse and buggy to get from house to house. I had no idea what I’d do when we got there. All I could hope for was an opening, any chance to fight. Instead of Clancy’s house, I took him to the underground prison where he’d kept Cora’s mother prisoner for over a decade and had kept Cora, as well. I tried to keep my hands steady as I recalled the code and pushed it in the keypad. The door slid open.
I led the man down the slanted walkway. “What the bloody hell is this place?” he barked.
“A place to hide things.”
I stopped in front of the door where I’d first glimpsed Cora after my mother and I had found out where Clancy had taken her. The door was slightly ajar, and we stepped into the room with the ornate post bed, sheets still rumpled from use. Cora’s grandmother, I reckoned. I scanned the room, looking for anything that I might use as a weapon. He had a gun. I had nothing. If I was fast enough, could I lock him in and get away without being shot? I needed to call an ambulance and the police and get back to my father.
If he was gone, dead—dead like my mother, then I had no one left in this world.
“Hurry it up!”
Next to the bed was a side table with nothing on it. If I could just grab it by a leg, I might be able to swing it at him before he got a clean shot, but I feared he’d fire at the first hint that I was reaching for the table. I knelt down next to the bed. For an absurd moment, I had a sudden memory of praying on my knees next to my bed as a child. Maybe those prayers would somehow coil through time and help me now.
I slipped my hand beneath the mattress and box spring, pretending to retrieve whatever it was he came for. My fingers lit on something hard, though, surprising me enough to yank it out.
“That there doesn’t look so special,” he said over my shoulder at the crude booklet that looked handmade. “No gold, no jewels.” That’s when I knew for sure what they were after.
I grasped the curved leg of the table and heaved it as hard as I could. He fell, the gun firing into the ceiling before skidding across the floor. I scrambled to pick it up and held it out with both hands. A slicing pain shot through my chest before the man blew backward across the floor. Having lost his weapon, he’d tried to attack my spirit.
I fired.
Bullet casings kicked onto the carved floor beneath my feet until the gun snapped open and stayed that way, rounds spent. I tossed the gun on the bed. The man was dead. His blood seeped into dozens of carved moons on the floor, and his eyes stared sightlessly at the small skylight in the ceiling. My body quivered with adrenaline. I had to get back to the house and find out if my father was okay. I turned to run, then saw the strange makeshift book on the floor. I scooped it up and ran as fast as I could, though my legs were rubber and my body shaking.
My father’s frenzied voice called out to me in the trees.
“Da!” I yelled. “I’m coming!” Relief was a break in the onslaught of terror that had pumped through me since I saw Mary die at our front door. My mother was dead, I knew it; her last agenda wasn’t to keep herself safe but to keep me safe, hidden. How could she possibly think I’d not run to defend her? Did she think I was a coward? That thought broke what was left of my heart.
Father and I called out back and forth through the trees and stumbled our way to each other, clasping into a tearful hug. “You’re not hurt?” I asked.
“Superficially, yes. Bullet grazed my arm. I hoped he’d think I was dead so I could follow. Thank God you’re all right, son.” He sobbed into my hair, clutching me to his broad shoulder.
We made our way back to the house. “You’ve got to leave here,” I told him. “Get away for a while. I don’t think this will be the last of it.”
“What do they want with us, Finn? The only person I’d thought capable of such evil is dead.”
“Possibly,” I answered with a pointed look. “When a woman tells you she can’t die and believes it enough to run a blade through her own stomach, it might be wise to believe her.”
“You can’t mean…”
I nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean. I killed a man who was following me. The man said the word ‘she’ when he spoke of a woman who’d hired him over the phone. I thought maybe it was Mum, but…”
My father shook his head, confused but somehow certain that I’d come to the wrong conclusion. “Your mother wasn’t having you followed, son.”
“The bloke I shot back there, he also said ‘she.’ That’s why I now believe it could be Ultana. Can you really put it past her, Da? And S
aoirse also told me that her mother was determined to obtain something very valuable, something—”
“Aye, the three Scintilla.”
“No. Something that’s been in the Mulcarr family for many generations.” His head tilted questioningly. “The missing cover of the Book of Kells.”
My father literally clutched his heart. “No…”
“I assure you, yes.”
“Ina never told me,” he said, as we stepped past my mother’s body, and I choked down my emotions and continued to my room. My father sat on the edge of my bed, his body trembling. I picked up a blanket from the floor and wrapped it around his shoulders.
“I need to clean up quickly and get out of here. I have to go to Chile with the book. Cora’s sortilege is to access information in objects by touching them. I have to get to her before it’s too late.”
“They came here looking for the book?” he asked, shock making his voice spongy. “How—how did they know we had it? Even I didn’t know…”
My body froze. The only place I’d said anything about the book was in the video. How could anyone know of that video yet unless…?
Unless someone already had Cora.
My guess was that it was a woman we’d all believed to be dead. You don’t watch for an enemy who’s supposed to be rotting in hell.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Cora
This was shit.
From every angle.
We were surrounded by Arrazi, staring down the barrels of multiple guns, and a hit had just been ordered on Finn. He’d made that video to try to help, and this man wanted him dead for it. The jumps from enemy to enemy finally led me to the apex, the one person at the top who controlled everything. Arrazi, Xepa, and a literal Inquisitor from the Roman Catholic Church—those were the rungs of evil I’d scrabbled over only to end up here, having achieved nothing.
It freaking pissed me off.
“Theodore, come,” Cardinal Báthory barked his order, and a young man, skinny, with a mouselike face scurried over. His aura was weak and tight around his body, but I recognized the Arrazi feel of it. “Theodore, I want you to identify the Scintilla in this room.” He then inclined his head to another man at his right. “Go with him. You know what to do.”