A Line in the Sand

by K. A. Stewart

  “Hey, she’s supposed to be my girl, remember?” Cameron poked me in the side with a smirk, and I just shrugged at him. Sveta muttered something under her breath in Ukrainian, and while I don’t speak the language, I’m pretty sure she was plotting our deaths.

  Mentally acknowledging the fact that we were probably the most inept covert operatives ever, we still managed to make it through the metal detectors without incident. Once past the entrance, the crowd dispersed more, the majority of the tourists heading toward what Cameron assured me were the museums.

  “Come on, before it gets too crowded in there.” The priest hurried us a different direction, rushing us past what I’m sure were historic treasures that would probably be very offended to find we’d just skipped over them.

  He halted just outside an ornate wooden door, and gave me a hard look. “Whatever you do, don’t make too much noise. You’ll want to, but… Most people can’t see what you’re going to see and we don’t want to draw attention.”

  “Pretty sure I can handle it.”

  I couldn’t.

  Now, I’m sure the Sistine Chapel is lovely. It was smaller than I’d expected, from the pictures I’d seen. I’m sure the artwork looked pretty awesome and I can appreciate all of the work it took to paint such a masterpiece. But I couldn’t see any of it.

  We stepped through that doorway, and my entire field of vision was dazzled by the light from overhead. All I could do was crane my neck as I stared up at the ceiling, vaguely aware that Cameron was guiding me out of the way of the other tourists behind us. No matter where I looked, streamers of blinding white light intertwined across the structure, winding down the columns, threading around every beam. It was a never-ending dance, swirling and frolicking above us.

  Souls. Thousands and thousands of souls, encased within the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I could see every one of them, pick each one out distinctly, and the souls in my skin rose in answer, trapping me in my soul-sighted state whether I wanted or not.

  “Holy shit!” Dimly, I was aware of gasps and disapproving noises from somewhere in my vicinity, but I couldn’t be bothered to care.

  “Shh.” Cameron’s grip on my arm tightened in warning. “People are starting to look. Get a grip.”

  “You get a grip.” I did manage to lower my voice, at least. “I can’t even… I… Why didn’t you tell me?” There was a faint pressure just behind my ears, and I thought that if I closed my eyes for just a moment, I might be able to hear them singing, that beautiful host dancing to its own music inside the ceiling.

  “It’s not broadcast, for obvious reasons. Very few can see it, even those of us who are trained. I was taking a gamble that you’d be able to.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I see it.” Everywhere. They were everywhere, covering every inch and in every crevice. The area just over our heads grew brighter, the curious souls coming to check us out as if we were the oddities here. “They’re happy. I can feel that they’re happy here.”

  “What about…yours?”

  Concentrating, I could pick out the thread of my passengers’ existence from the sheer overwhelming life force around me. “They’re calm. Peaceful.”

  “But they don’t show any sign of wanting to join the ceiling?”

  “No. How do we make them do that?”

  Cameron sighed. “No one knows. That secret has been lost for a very long time.”

  Someone jostled us from behind, and I heard Sveta growl in response, but my eyes were glued to the ceiling above us, sorting out the intricate weave of souls, one elegant thread at a time. “How do you get them out of there?”

  “We don’t know that either. They’re trapped there, and have been as long as the Order has existed.”

  “Not trapped,” I corrected him instantly. “They’re not trapped. They’re safe.” I couldn’t have explained how I knew that. Perhaps it was just the simple sense of tranquility that radiated down on us. Maybe it was the fact that my own ethereal hitchhikers weren’t losing their collective shit over any kind of perceived danger. This was a good place. A safe place.

  “That’s my hope. If we can remove yours from you, and store them here, they’ll be safe and you’ll be free.”

  I had the sudden realization that my eyes felt dry, and I wondered when I blinked last. At that thought, my vision blurred, and I forced my eyes shut, bending over to firmly remove the ceiling from my sight. “Gah…that’s…ugh.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine. Just…gimme a second.” Inside my own head, I forcefully commanded my passengers to calm. They forgot, sometimes, that they were many, housed inside just one little me, and sometimes their reactions overwhelmed my very ordinary senses. A human body was not meant to contain more than one soul, after all.

  Slowly, the glow outside my closed eyelids receded, and when I finally opened my eyes, the floor beneath my boots looked almost normal. Daring to glance up again, I could still see the white lacework of souls in the ceiling, but the harsh brilliance was bearable.

  Sveta pressed close to my side, her voice hushed. “We need to go. Security is watching us.”

  “Keep me moving.” I didn’t trust my own feet not to get distracted by the spectacular display above. “Shove me if you have to.”

  Sveta linked her arm through mine, just a normal girl out sightseeing with her guy, but her nails dug into my bicep. The pain helped focus me, and between her and Cameron, they got me out of the chapel. Once outside, I lifted my face up to the sun, letting the perfectly ordinary light dazzle through my closed eyelids. It was different than the soul light, more solid, more real. It helped.

  After a few minutes, Cam asked, “You good?”

  “Yeah.” I opened my eyes, happy to see that the world was once again just the world. “Yeah, I’m good.”

  “Okay, well here comes the fun part. Now we get to visit the Cardinal.”

  I straightened my shoulders, shrugging off Sveta’s grip as unnecessary now. “The first rule is, walk like you know where you’re going, and no one will stop you.”

  Though Cam gave me a skeptical look, we headed off through the square at a brisk pace. About a hundred yards in, I started humming the Mission Impossible theme, and the priest gave me a dirty look. I just grinned.

  You would think, with horrific things in the world like terrorism, and just flat out crazy people, security around the private quarters in Vatican City would be better. But it seemed like everyone was concentrating on making sure the tourists didn’t get rowdy in their appointed tourist areas, and we were able to slip off the beaten path pretty easily. I was privately celebrating our good fortune, but Cameron’s frown only grew deeper.

  “This isn’t right. There should be more people back here. Staff, clergy, just…people.”

  “So what’s that mean?”

  He sighed. “It’s possible that I just don’t know the patterns here well enough. Maybe I’m reading it all wrong.”

  “Or?”

  “Or they already know we’re here, and they’ve cleared a path for us.” He glanced at me. “We can still turn around and try to get out of the city.”

  I thought about it for a moment, then shook my head. “No. We need answers, and we’re not going to find them out there, just waiting for them to come after us again. Sveta?”

  Her answer was terse. “I am bad at waiting.”

  “Then on we go.” Cam’s posture screamed reluctance, but I had to wonder if it was for our imminent peril, or because he was afraid to find out the answers we’d come for.

  Finding the Cardinal’s office was, as Cameron had noted, way easier than I’d expected. We passed several people in a long hallway that took no notice of us at all, which was probably odd, I agree, and Cam led us straight to a lovely wooden door that gave way immediately upon turning the doorknob.

  Cardinal Giordano acted surprised, I will give him that, but there was something practiced about his movements that said he’d been expecting us. As he stood up from his desk, my eyes searche
d him for weapons, but found none. “Can I help you?”

  He was younger than I expected. For some reason, I’d been picturing a doddering old man, gray-haired and wrinkled. Instead, the man before us was only in his fifties, his blond hair a few shades of gold darker than mine, but with a smattering of white at the temples. His face was weathered in the way a long-time gardener’s would get, and he wore plain black slacks and a dark gray collared shirt. Beneath that, his body was lean and rangy, like mine might be someday if I lived that long, and he had immediately balanced himself on the balls of his feet upon rising, prepared to move quickly in any direction. He was a fighter, this one, or had been in the very recent past.

  “Stop!” Sveta’s voice cracked like a whip, and even I flinched a little. The Cardinal, however, froze in place instantly, one hand hovering near the edge of his desk. “You will not press the panic button.” She had no visible weapons, but the older man nodded and took a step back from his desk, raising his hands to show his good intentions.

  Cameron gave us both a glare – I had no idea what I’d done – and stepped forward. “Your Eminence, please forgive the manner of our intrusion. I am Brother Cameron of—”

  “I know who you are, Brother.” The Cardinal smiled faintly. “And I recognize Mr. Dawson’s predicament, if not his face. I am not, however, familiar with the lovely young lady.”

  “Svetlana.” She gave it over grudgingly, and offered no more.

  “I am Cardinal Salvatore Giordano. Please, be welcome.” He gestured for us to take a trio of seats in the corner of the plushly furnished office, but none of us moved. Finally, he nodded a little. “As you wish. Why have you come to visit me in so clandestine a manner?”

  “We weren’t sure who we could trust, Eminence.”

  While Cam made with the niceties, I let my gaze wander the room. Wards on the windows, the same lines drawn over and over in many different colors, all in varying degrees of brightness, proving that they’d been laid down over many years. Decades, maybe even. A bookshelf full of tomes, ranging from last year’s bestselling spy thriller, to things that had no names and only the faintest hint of gilt left on the cracked leather spines. One of the chairs in the corner was more worn than the other two, and I guessed that it was the Cardinal’s favorite.

  Turning my attention to the man himself, I could barely make out the glimmer around him, the slight shimmer that told me he was a magic user. It wasn’t an aura so much as just a slight wavering in the air around his shoulders, like heat off the asphalt. Easier to feel, than see.

  Speaking of, there were three more magic-bearing presences just on the other side of the door behind us, and the souls in my skin fluttered enough to make my borrowed shirt ripple in a nonexistent breeze. “Company,” I murmured to Sveta, and we each stepped to the sides, now flanking the doorway. If they came through, they were in for a nasty surprise.

  The Cardinal caught the movement, glancing past Cameron to survey the scene, and I saw that he was correctly assessing the situation. “They will not come inside, unless I call for them. You must understand that in these dark days, a security force is unfortunately necessary.” He must have caught something in Sveta’s cold eyes, because he gave her a gentle smile. “I did not press the button, as you instructed, but there are additional safeguards on this room. Your presence could not go unremarked.”

  He spoke English very well, I realized, only the faintest hint of an accent slipping around through certain vowels. I couldn’t place it. “Please, everyone. There is no need for…whatever this is. What is the source of this distrust?”

  “We were attacked, Eminence. Yesterday, in broad daylight, by several men. One of whom I positively identified as a member of the order.”

  I’d hoped he’d at least feign surprise, pretend like he hadn’t known about it. Instead, the Cardinal sighed and shook his head sadly. “I had feared as much. I owe you an apology, Brother Cameron. You should have been warned.”

  “So wait, you knew about this?” Biting my tongue has never been a talent of mine.

  The Cardinal again glanced over Cameron’s shoulder to meet my eyes. “Unfortunately, yes. We have suspected for some time that there was…an unsavory faction within the order. I have put men that I trust to investigating, but we have been unable to pin down anything concrete.”

  “Add that to the list of shit we should have known sooner,” I grumbled. Sveta snorted, which for her might as well have been a guffaw, but if Cameron could have killed me with a glare, he would have. “Were you just going to let us wander around the city as bait while you took your sweet time seeing us?”

  “It was not my intention, no.” Slowly, moving like he thought we were feral beasts, easily spooked (and he may have been right, in Sveta’s case), he came around his desk to lean against it. “My intention was to keep you as far from Vatican City as possible, for your own safety. I didn’t dream that they would be so bold as to actually strike at you.”

  “It was Brother Francis. Francis Laird.”

  Giordano grimaced. “Well, that explains that. Brother Francis’ body was found in the river this morning, a victim of an apparently heinous mugging. It would seem now that his compatriots knew that he could be identified, and they removed him.”

  Cameron’s face clouded darkly. “With all due respect, sir, what the hell is going on here?”

  “That is something I would very much like to know myself.” The older man ran a hand over his close-cropped hair with a sigh. “The world has become a very dangerous place over the last decade or so. The world is awash in new and greater evil, and I fear that I did not prepare you and your brothers adequately for what is to come. If a few of them have succumbed to temptation, I take full responsibility. I should have been ready."

  “Why was Cameron told to keep me away from the chapel?”

  Cardinal Giordano looked at me for a moment before answering. “You saw?”

  “I did.”

  A gleam of keen interest sparked in his eyes. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.”

  The holy man muttered “damn” under his breath, then immediately apologized. “It was too much to hope that they might have gone into the ceiling on their own. And to answer your question, I gave the order to keep you out of the chapel because we were not certain what would happen. Some had theorized that the souls would be absorbed into the receptacle automatically, and others worried that it might take your proper soul with it as well. Obviously, unfounded fears, but not ones I was willing to dismiss lightly.”

  “How did it happen? The ceiling, I mean?”

  The Cardinal shrugged. “No one knows. All written records were destroyed by my predecessors, and we are left with only theories. The recent restoration of the ceiling was undertaken in an attempt to determine what Michelangelo had done with his paints to make such a feat possible, but we learned nothing. The thousands of souls have been there for centuries, and will remain so until they are called home at the end of days.” He sighed again. “Which may be sooner than we know.”

  Cameron tilted his head. “You truly believe that? That we are facing the end times?”

  The older man gestured toward one of his windows. “Can you look out there and say with certainty that we are not? The floods and famines, earthquakes and typhoons…war…” He turned back to us again, fixing his eyes on me. “And a great power returned to this world at the beginning of summer, an event for which you were responsible, I believe.”

  “Witnessing it is not the same thing as causing it.” Reina. I should have known that the Knights Stuckupidus would know about her. “Totally not my fault.”

  “Regardless. It was felt around the globe, by those who are sensitive to such things. It cannot bode well for us.”

  “But can you help him?” Trust Cam to get us back on track. “They’ve come for him twice now, because of what he’s carrying. Can you get them out?”

  The older man pursed his lips. “Getting them out, as you say, has never been
the difficult part. I believe that Mr. Dawson knows this already.”

  “I would just have to pass them on to another person, the same way they came to me.”

  He nodded. “And I fully understand why this is not a choice you would wish to make. However, it is still one choice, and in the end, may be the only one you have.”

  “I’m not going to do that to someone else.” First off, there was no one in the world that I trusted that much. Not even Cameron, pious and noble as he was. Everyone had their breaking point, and sooner or later, some big bad would come to slurp up the souls like ramen noodles.

  Second, I wouldn’t have wished this burden on my worst enemy. Aside from the fact that it made me a walking target, there was also the very real possibility that I was going to lose every single marble I had rolling around inside my head. A fate worse than death, if you ask me, my body wasting away as my mind went walkabout.

  Giordano seemed to debate something with himself, then stood up. “Come with me. I have something to show you that you may find interesting. A…slightly less hard place to go with your rock.”

  Chapter 12

  Giordano led us out of his office, past the three bodyguards whose grim faces could have rivalled Sveta’s at her coldest. They fell in behind us, which caused Sveta to drop back and walk behind them in return. There was some awkward shuffling as all the trained killers did a little dance, trying to keep each other in sight, and by the end, Sveta was smirking a little, having made fools out of them by simply doing nothing. The tallest of the men, apparently the leader, finally signaled one of his cronies to walk beside Sveta at the rear of our group, and we were able to proceed.

  We were taken to an elevator, not precisely hidden, but tucked around a corner unobtrusively. There were no numbers on the buttons, a total of six blank yellow lights, but when the Cardinal selected a certain one, Cameron flinched.

  “Your Eminence?”

  The older man gave the priest a smile. “I am certain, Brother Cameron. I believe that Mr. Dawson and Miss Svetlana will have an appreciation for certain necessities we face in this line of work.”