A Line in the Sand Page 16

  Something snared my left wrist, and a lance of pain shot through my shoulder as the arm was wrenched painfully in a direction it was never meant to go. I stumbled, off balance, and another restraint locked around my right wrist. Handcuffs, by the feel, locked down tight enough that I’d start to lose circulation in my fingers pretty damn quick. Stretched spread-eagle between two hooded men, the third swept my feet out from under me, my captors slamming my knees into the cobblestones with a loud crack. Someone’s fingers laced through my long hair, forcing my head toward the pavement in a way that wrecked my shoulder joints again. More than that, with a grip on my hair like that, they could pretty much force me to do whatever the hell they wanted. Martial Arts 101: Control the head, and the body will follow.

  The cry they wrung from my chest was more anger than injury, and I lurched against the restraining hands without much hope of breaking free, but I had to try. Bright pain did the samba around my extremities, and just when the darkness started oozing into the corners of my eyes, the souls in my back responded.

  I felt them gathering themselves, heat and immense pressure pooling somewhere in the middle of my back. My vision was blinded by stars, the world around me reduced to streamers of color and light. One of the Hoodies said something, the voice garbled and unintelligible but the alarm plain through the high pitched bells in my ears. I didn’t know what my passengers were about to do, but I was fairly certain I was going to burn to a cinder before they got around to it. I realized that I didn’t really care.

  “Bored now.” It was Axel I heard clearly, my very own voice coated in a faint hint of other-worldly oiliness.

  In my soul-dazzled senses, I could almost see him behind me, a looming form far larger than his actual size. I felt the moment that my captors recognized his presence, and the grip on my hair loosened just slightly. I threw my head about, trying to see, only to hear Axel yell “Head down!”

  Even better than that, I managed to throw myself face first onto the cobblestones, just as a hot rush of air exploded over my back. It roared like a furnace, and when the sound died down, no one was holding my arms. Daring to look up, I saw four hooded forms lying at the foot of the wall, like dolls carelessly tossed aside. None of them seemed to be moving. “Uh…can I raise my head now?”

  “Are they out of your eyes?”

  I blinked a little, waiting for my vision to return to normal, then nodded. “They are now.”

  “Then go ahead.”

  I clambered to my feet, feeling the aches and pains that promised to become bruises and limping within a few hours. A set of handcuffs dangled off each wrist, and I flexed my fingers, trying to get some feeling back into them.

  “Jesse!” From the street, Cameron’s voice. “Jesse, can you hear us?”

  “Here!” Even as I spoke, the Scooby gang skidded into view, Sveta not even bothering to conceal the wicked blades she held in each hand. “I’m all right.”

  With a frown, Cameron knelt to examine the downed men, removing their masks and checking their pulses. “Edward. Peter. Raul.” With a sigh, he ran his hands over his face. “All of them. I know all of them.”

  Sveta’s knives disappeared, and she deftly unlocked the cuffs from around my wrists with a paperclip. I stuffed them in my back pocket, because who knew when you might need a pair. The marks around my wrists were angry and red, but I didn’t think they were going to bruise too badly. “What I want to know is how they found me. And how did you find me, for that matter?”

  Mary Alice, also tending to the rogue clergymen, tilted her head in puzzlement. “We heard you call for help.”

  “From blocks away?” I glanced over my shoulder, and much to my surprise, Axel was still there. He shrugged his lanky shoulders.

  “You wanted me to do something.” He wrinkled his nose, like a hound scenting, then pointed at me. “Check your front pocket.”

  I fished in my jeans pocket and produced the Cardinal’s card. There was no magic on it. I would have been able to tell just by touching it. But upon close examination, I could feel a small raised place, barely thicker than the card stock itself. Ripping the card in half revealed a tiny black microchip, which I crushed under the heel of my boot. “Tracker.” Why bother with magic, when technology was so much easier?

  “I guess that settles whether or not the Cardinal was involved.” Cameron sounded glum, but not surprised. “We can’t stay in Rome, Jesse. He controls everything here.”

  “I’m not leaving until I get my damn answers.” Yeah, not my smartest decision, but now I was pissed.

  Cam stood up, brushing his hands on his pants as if the touch of his former compatriots had contaminated him. “We don’t even know if there are answers to be had. I mean, why is he doing this?”

  I snorted. “For the same reason that everyone else is. They want what I have. It’s the magical equivalent of a tac nuke. If they can get these things out of me, and into something they can use…” The very thought was staggering. Two hundred and seventy-five souls willing to sacrifice themselves under the right circumstances. I’d felt that amount of power, just once, and I knew what they were willing to do to destroy Reina. I was afraid of what they’d do if they were hosted inside someone with different allegiances.

  “Giordano didn’t want me near the chapel, because if the souls go into the ceiling, they’re out of everyone’s reach.” It was the only place they’d be safe, I realized. The only place they couldn’t be used for someone else’s agenda.

  “Who is this?” Mary Alice had finally noticed Axel.

  The demon grinned and opened his mouth, and I stabbed my finger in his direction. “No. Do not.”

  “Aw…” Somehow, he even made his mohawk wilt as he pouted. “But we could be such good friends.”

  Looking back to the little nun, she was frowning like she’d tasted something bad. When she didn’t immediately point and scream “Demon!” at Axel, I realized she’d probably never heard one speak before. The oil-slick taint to their voices was unpleasant to be sure, but not easily identifiable if you didn’t know the source.

  Cameron moved to stand protectively in front of Mary Alice, giving the man-demon a death-glare. Axel was thoroughly unimpressed, and even went so far as to yawn.

  “Okay, we can’t just stand here with a bunch of unconscious bodies. Someone’s gonna notice.”

  “Do we call the police?” Sveta snorted at the nun’s question, and Mary Alice blushed faintly.

  “This is beyond the reach of the police, I think.” The Ukrainian eyed the downed men speculatively, and I touched her elbow to get her attention, then shook my head firmly.

  “No. No killing.”

  “They will come again.” She was disappointed in my decision, but I don’t think it surprised her any.

  “They will. But we’re not murderers.”

  She snorted and rolled her icy eyes at me, but let it drop.

  “I like her,” Axel observed.

  “Shut it.”

  The man-demon rolled his eyes too, but they stayed a normal color. I had to wonder what Mary Alice would have to say about his eyes flaring demon red. “You’re no fun when you’ve had your ass kicked.” I continued to glare at him, and he finally sighed, holding up his hands. “Fine. I know when I’m not wanted.”

  With a pop of imploding air, he vanished before our eyes, leaving only the hint of sulfur wafting around in his wake. I thought Mary Alice’s eyes were going to fall out of her head.

  “He…! What..? Who…?”

  Ignoring her, Cameron spoke up. “We got in contact with our source. Let’s at least go see him, then we can bail town. Find somewhere nearby, in case we need to get to the chapel, but further out of the Order’s reach.”

  “Huzzah! We have a plan.” No one seemed to share my enthusiasm.

  Chapter 14

  I’m not sure what I expected to find when we dropped in on Cam and Mary Alice’s “source.” From their vague comments, I think I was hoping for a bespectacled loon with Doc
Brown-style hair, wearing a tinfoil hat and surrounded by walls full of alien autopsy diagrams and I Want to Believe posters. What I got was a lot more Scully, and much less Mulder. I admit, I was disappointed.

  The man who opened the door to us could be politely called portly, his balding head ringed by a fringe of steel gray fuzz, which matched the walrus-style mustache that took up most of his face. He wore a tidy sweater vest, buttoned over his ample midsection, and his trousers were almost painful in their mundanity. Smiling behind his round spectacles, he ushered us inside. “Come in, come in!”

  “Dear god, it’s Wilford Brimley,” I muttered. Sveta gave me a puzzled look, but Mary Alice elbowed me in the ribs, biting her lip to keep from laughing. Finally, someone got one of my jokes. I knew I liked her.

  His name was Vernon, not Wilford, but it was close enough. He pumped all of our hands enthusiastically, his jolly cheeks glowing with his excitement. “I must say, it’s an honor to have you here, Father, Sister. Sit, sit… May I offer you some coffee or tea?”

  Cameron shook his head as he sat. “We are actually pressed for time, Mr. Rogers.”

  “Yes yes, of course. How can I help you? I’m afraid you were a bit vague on the phone.” The large man hefted himself into a rickety office chair that groaned under protest.

  I let Cam take the lead on this one, and spent my attention wandering around what was obviously an office. The walls were lined with shelf after shelf of books, floor to ceiling. Some of them were new, with shiny dust jackets and artfully designed titles. Others were too old to guess at their age, and the faint odor of mildewed paper hung in the air. Where the bookshelves wouldn’t fit, the space had been taken up by file cabinets, each drawer labelled meticulously with some kind of personal code I couldn’t even guess at deciphering.

  The dark, wooden desk took up the smallest part of the room, actually, and it took me a moment to realize why it looked so strange to me. There was no computer. How long had it been since I’d seen a desk without a monitor and keyboard resting on it? Even the phone was old-school, being a rotary version with an actual cord on the handset. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen one of those.

  As I passed my hands over the rows of books, a few of them tingled under my fingers. Traces of magic, impossible to know how old or for what purpose. I wondered if I should say something to the man about the possible danger inherent in fading magic. It could spoil, go sour, and the effects could be unpredictable at best. At worst…well, suffice to say I still had nightmares.

  “Hm, the Sistine Chapel legend? It’s an obscure one, that’s for sure.” Under Cameron’s prompting, Vernon heaved to his feet again and went to one of the file cabinets, going directly to the file he wanted. Pulling it out, he offered it to the priest. “I don’t have much, I’m afraid, and what I do have is based on single sources. No corroboration from that era.”

  Cameron took the file, examining the contents with Mary Alice leaning over his shoulder. “You’ve put a symbol next to this source’s name. What does it mean?”

  Vernon craned his neck to see, then nodded. “It means that person was burned as a heretic.”

  Lovely. I continued to explore the room, taking a closer look at the single bulletin board he had mounted on the wall. It was covered in note cards, each of them filled with tiny, cramped handwriting. Occasionally, a picture would be posted, each painstakingly labelled with the date, time, and source.

  “Hunh.” Sveta glanced over at my quiet outburst, and I pointed to a black-and-white picture of a ring of worn-down stones, nearly lost in a meadow of tall grass. “Look familiar?” Mexico, 1937, it said. I knew that in modern times, those stones looked just about the same, though the meadow in question was now cleaved in half by a deep chasm.

  Sveta snorted a little and rolled her eyes.

  Vernon’s notes on the stones were sparse, and marked with more questions than answers. Again, I wondered if I should fill him in on some of the details, or just let it go. They were just rocks now, after all, the power that had been imprisoned there a millennium ago now out and wreaking havoc in the world.

  The next photograph that caught my eye was a clipping from a newspaper, grainy at best and blurry at worst. Still, I recognized the woman, her jet black hair flowing loose around her face, just another body in a large crowd. Chicago, 1954. Sept? I’d seen her face much more recently, though I could swear she hadn’t aged a day. “Well hello, Cindy.”

  The hand-crampingly tiny writing went on for four notecards, containing a list of dates that stretched back into the eighteen hundreds. Sorceress, he called her. Vampire, he wondered. Immortal? I doubted that. Just because she hadn’t died didn’t mean she couldn’t. “One day, you’ll ask how it’s done. And if you’re very unlucky, I’ll tell you.” I couldn’t stop the shiver, and I took a moment to be grateful that I hadn’t been in possession of the souls when my path last crossed hers. I wasn’t sure my mind would survive seeing her as she truly was.

  I wasn’t sure just what Mystic Cindy was, in all honesty. When I’d encountered her, she’d been doing nothing more than translating some demonic text for me, on Ivan’s recommendation. Dressed in a UCLA sweatshirt and blue jeans, she had looked like any college co-ed anywhere. But, as proven by Vernon’s notes, she had looked like that for a very, very long time. No human lived that long, not naturally. At the time, she’d heavily implied that she was willing to tell me how it was done, and that I wouldn’t like the answer. Blood sorcerer, my instincts told me, using the life force of others to prolong her own. Those same instincts told me to stay far, far away from the tiny Korean woman, just in case I was right.

  “Jess?” I glanced over my shoulder to see Cam giving me a worried look, and gave him a shake of the head. I wasn’t down the rabbit hole again. “Come look at this, tell me what you think.”

  The file was made up of photographs of ancient documents, the ink on them nearly faded into illegibility. Each image was carefully notated with the source, date, time, and any other factoids that Vernon thought important. Cameron didn’t even bother to let me look at the first one, simply flipping it over so I could see the translation on the back.

  “They blaze like the sun. Only a man of pure faith can be rewarded with the gift of God’s sight?” I raised a brow at Vernon.

  “This was taken from a physicians’ manual, published sometime following the painting of the chapel ceiling. It documents the case of a mad man who believed that he could see souls in the artwork.”

  Cameron pointed at the passage again, as if I just hadn’t read it the first time. “He could see, Jesse. They thought him insane, of course, but…”

  “And did they cure the poor man?”

  Vernon checked some of his notes. “Erm…no. They attempted trepanning, and he died shortly after the procedure.”

  Sveta frowned, leaning over me to look at the file. “What is ‘trepanning’?”

  The portly man cleared his throat a little. “Um…they drilled a hole in his skull to try to let the demons out. He died, of course. Medicine back then was not what it is today.”

  “Okay, so fine, he could see. That’s not telling us much.”

  “He, the mad man, believed that he had been touched by God to allow such a gift, because he was a man of pure faith.”

  I couldn’t help but snort. “Well, we know that’s not true.” My faith was anything but pure.

  Cameron frowned, flipping a few more pages into the file. “Still, I feel like it’s important.”

  “Wait, go back.” Something caught my eye, and I pounced on the page when Cameron revealed it again. “There have been multiple reports of angel sightings in the chapel?” I glanced at Vernon to be certain I was interpreting his notes correctly.

  “Oh yes. As recently as the nineteen sixties.” He helpfully flipped to another page, obviously clipped out of a tabloid, yellowed with age. “Right here. Talk of a being of golden light, and the ceiling coming alive with swirls of color, moving in and out of the being�
��s hands.”

  Sveta raised a brow at me. “This is important?”

  “It could be…” I’d met an angel once. An honest-to-God, pun intended, angel. On top of almost frying what was left of my brain, he hadn’t been the most helpful fellow. But, if I could get one to show up again, maybe that was the key we’d been looking for. “Not sure how to call one up, though. He didn’t exactly give me his card.”

  At some point, I noticed that Vernon had a small notepad in his lap, and was hurriedly scribbling everything that we said. I stared at him until he noticed, and then he finished his sentence before he put the pen down, giving me a very bland look in return. There was a keen intelligence in those eyes, I realized, behind the jolly, befuddled show he put on. Here we were, confirming everything he’d ever suspected, just with our casual conversations, and he wasn’t even going to be ashamed about documenting it.

  “What do you think, Vernon?” I shifted to sit on the corner of the man’s desk, tilting my head. “You think there’s a sure-fire way to summon an angel? Got a hotline number in one of your files, maybe?”

  He pursed his lips under his enormous mustache, pretending to think it over. “Well, no, not as such. Prayer seems to be the usual method, of course. Summoning is usually reserved for less savory creatures.”

  Less savory… “Son of a bitch.” Cameron gave me a glare, but I ignored it. “Reina, Cam.”

  “What about her?”

  “What is she? I mean, truly, at her core, what is she?”

  I saw the color seep from his face as he realized. “A fallen angel.”

  Sveta cursed, and I nodded. “If it takes an angel to move souls in and out…”