by Anne Riley
“No, it was—it was fine.” I clear my throat. “You just surprised me, that’s all.”
“Well, don’t worry.” He holds his hands up in surrender. The flashlight beam dances across my eyes. “I won’t do it again. Come on, we’re almost there.”
He starts down the stairs again, but this time, he doesn’t take them quite so slowly. When he’s not burdened by a first-timer like me, he probably flies down this staircase. I hurry to keep up with the bouncing beam of his flashlight. Just when I’m about to shout at him to slow down, we hit flat ground.
“Another door?” I squint at the wooden entryway blocking our path. It looks identical to the one we first came through at the top of the stairs.
“Yep. We’re almost there, I promise.”
He presses his thumb to another electronic pad. We step through the door into a dark, musty corridor. I throw an elbow over my nose.
“Are we in a sewer?” I say, my voice muffled against my arm. It doesn’t smell as awful as a sewer, but there’s definitely a large amount of mold down here.
“No. We’re in a thousand-year-old Servator tunnel.” He swings the flashlight left to right, revealing a dirty floor punctuated by small, round drip marks.
“What do you mean, a Servator tunnel?” I pull my arm away from my face. If I’m going to be brave, I’d better be brave all around—even when gross smells are involved. “You say that like it’s a thing.”
He walks through the door, looking over his shoulder to make sure I’m following. Our footsteps echo softly against the walls, which I think are made of the same stone as the staircase.
“It is a thing. London hasn’t always had trains, you know. Centuries ago, if Servatores needed to move quickly from one spot to another, tunnels like these were their best option.” He pauses. “Of course, they’ve also been used for other things.”
“Like what?”
“Hiding people, mostly.”
My toe catches on an uneven stone and I steady myself on the wall. It’s slimy and cold, and I have to stop myself from making a disgusted noise. “What people?”
“Most recently, the Jews.” His voice is reverent.
I run a finger along the walls; they don’t seem quite so disgusting anymore. “This was an escape route from the Nazis?”
I barely see the silhouette of his head as he nods. “One of them, yeah. The Servatores during World War II tried to stop Hitler by Pulling, but they weren’t strong enough. They did manage to save some lives, though. And they smuggled everyone they could through these tunnels and into the countryside, where they hid them in the woods.”
“Amazing,” I murmur.
“Yes, quite.” His tone has become formal, like he’s leading an official guided tour. “The great majority of them were killed for what they did. The Mortiferi were recruiting heavily then, and given the imbalance between the two sides at that time, I think the Servatores must have known they wouldn’t survive. But they fought anyway.” His voice goes a little thick. “They didn’t back down.”
He stops in front of an ancient-looking iron gate. I stay a few steps behind.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly, glancing at me over his shoulder. “About the hand thing.”
I shake my head. “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. It was an overreaction.” The memory of that fire from his touch sears through my mind. I rub my arms, trying to get a grip on myself. It wasn’t the first time he’s ever touched me. But this time, without the element of an imminent threat, it seemed more…personal.
“I didn’t realize you would actually try to tear my arm off,” he mumbles, looking back to the gate. “That was supposed to be a joke.”
“Sorry. It won’t happen again. As long as you don’t touch me, of course.”
“Right,” he says, tapping on the keyhole.
There is a drip drip drip of water coming from somewhere to my left. How far does this tunnel go? It definitely turns here, but we’re not going to follow it anymore, apparently.
Still pointing to the keyhole on the gate, Albert says, “This one isn’t quite as high-tech as the others. It’s original to the tunnel.”
“This gate is a thousand years old?” I step forward and run a finger along one of the iron bars. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am. We’ve repaired it now and again, of course, and replaced small parts of it, but the overall structure is original. You can almost feel the history coming off it in waves.”
He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a thin red cord with a black iron key on the end, about three inches long, with jagged teeth and a few smudges of rust. He shoves the key into the lock with a metallic screech. The gate swings into the room behind it, and a new wave of apprehension mixed with excitement works its way through my body.
Albert goes in first. “Well,” he says quietly, “here it is. London Servator headquarters.”
TWENTY-TWO
MY VISION FILLS WITH BLUE WHEN WE WALK THROUGH the gate.
Nothing in the cavern is actually blue. It’s just a result of the glowing screens and incandescent lanterns reflecting off the cave walls. The space reaches at least fifty feet overhead, but the distance from where I’m standing to the opposite wall is only half that. It’s sort of like being inside a giant stone egg. The whole thing would have a claustrophobia-inducing effect if the ceiling wasn’t so far up, but as it is, there’s plenty of breathing room.
“Servator headquarters?” I say, giving Albert the side-eye. “Or Batcave?”
He lets out a small laugh. “Trust me, we’ve made our fair share of Batman references since we put this place together. But our reality is less impressive than Bruce Wayne’s, I’m afraid. We’ve managed to tap into some of the CCTV cameras around London, which you can see here—” he gestures at the row of rectangular screens mounted on one of the walls “—and we use them to coordinate with other Servatores on patrol. I’ve been down here most of the day, communicating with Dan as he traveled the city.”
I blink at the screens. It’s hard to reconcile goofy, lanky Dan with someone who roams London and communicates with headquarters. It all seems so official. “Did he Pull today? I don’t remember feeling any vortexes in my gut.”
“He only Pulled once, and you have to be really close to the person who’s Pulling to be able to feel it.”
“Ah. So why did he do it? What happened?”
A wrinkle appears between his eyebrows. “A girl’s boyfriend got a bit aggressive with her in an alley and then started to hit her when she refused his advances.”
My stomach clenches. “That’s horrible.”
“We’re not sure if he actually killed her or just knocked her out,” he says grimly, “but either way, Dan came to her rescue. He even managed to bring a constable with him.”
“So now she’s safe.”
He nods and looks around at the screens on the wall. “This is what we do. And now you know where we do it.”
I take a few steps into the space. “Is anyone else here?”
“Not right now. We take shifts at headquarters. Isaac and Casey have afternoon duty.”
“This all seems…” I frown. “More organized than I expected. And given the spy closet in your house, I had pretty high standards.”
“We have to be organized,” he says, trailing me to the center of the room. “It’s the only way to fight the chaos.”
He meets my eyes, and in the dim light I can see there’s more to those words than just their surface meaning.
“And by chaos, you mean Mortiferi,” I say in a low voice.
“Yes, exactly.” He flicks his head toward the opposite side of the room. “Are you ready for some profound unpleasantries?”
I step closer to him. “Let’s go.”
He leads me to what looks like a bank vault. The door is sleek metal, with a large combination lock on the outside. Albert spins it right, left, right, and then the door unlocks and we’re in.
I suck in a breath. “Hol
y. Freaking. Mother.”
The room behind the bank vault door is the size of a typical high school classroom. The floor is white tile, and the walls and ceiling are made of metal. Running all the way from the left to the right are metal shelves, arranged into rows, with books and video cameras and file cabinets stacked on top of them. Some of the file cabinets have large white labels I can read from here.
Founders—64 A.D. Rome Consortio.
London Consortio.
Trahos, Centuries 1-2
Even though I don’t understand a lot of the words I see, there’s a deep sense of history here, a profound air of magic that sends the hair on my arms springing to life.
Albert gives me a knowing smile. “Everything you hoped for and more?”
I steady myself on the cool doorframe. “What is all this?”
“Records,” he says. “Everything about our origins, our struggles, and our triumphs. Notes about each save, with names, if we can get them. Profiles of known or suspected Mortiferi. Patterns identified within their specific groups.”
He looks at me, and I force my mouth to close. “From how far back?”
“All the way back. Second century.”
“Second century?”
He nods.
I stare.
“Look,” he says, moving to the left side of the room. “This is a record of the very first Servatores.”
He opens the file cabinet labeled Founders—64 A.D. Rome Consortio and carefully lifts out a large square object wrapped in leather. He carries it to the end of the aisle and pushes a button, which sends a thin metal rectangle, roughly the size of the changing table in The Chicken Cottage bathroom, jutting out from the side of the bookshelves. On the metal table is a plastic bag with latex gloves inside.
“Document table,” he explains, putting on the gloves. “They stay inside the shelves when they’re not in use. Keeps them from getting dirty.”
“Right,” I say as he places the square object on the table and unfolds the leather.
Inside is a very old book with a crumbling exterior and pages that crinkle like autumn leaves. He slides a finger gently under the first one, turning it with a slow, deliberate motion.
“Now,” he says, and I feel like I should hold my breath. “Come look.”
I pad over to him and stand at his elbow. The first letter on the page is an elaborate drawing with painstaking detail and colors that used to be bright. It’s so elaborate, in fact, that I can’t even tell what letter it’s supposed to be. An S, maybe? Or an R? And the rest of the text is so cramped and so—well, so Latin —that I don’t have a chance of deciphering it.
“What does it say?” I whisper.
Albert leans closer to the page. “Been a while since I’ve looked at it. Let’s see. ‘Formed this fourteenth day of September, the brotherhood of the Servatores, now bound with common blood, vows to seek justice for the atrocities committed by Imperator Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus—’”
“Nero?” I echo. “These men formed an alliance against Nero?”
Albert nods. “It was just a couple of months after the Fire of Rome, which Nero was suspected of starting. He was crazy and brutal to his own people—you know all this, I’m sure.”
“Of course. But I’ve never heard of a brotherhood standing up to him.”
I don’t know much about Nero aside from the usual stuff—that he was awful and had syphilis and basically killed everyone in his path. If anyone confronted him, I can’t imagine they would have survived very long.
“‘Standing up’ is a generous term,” Albert says. “It was much more subtle than that, more underground. Similar to how we operate now. The fire was the last straw, and these men—the original Servatores—had been honing their powers for years as Nero grew more and more dangerous.”
“What kind of powers did they have?”
He turns the page to an illustration of four men with long, ornate robes. “They were royal magicians, so anything from transfiguring one item into another to making small items disappear.”
“But those weren’t real tricks,” I say, letting cynicism seep into my voice.
Albert lifts one eyebrow at me.
“No,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “They were real?”
“Sure. Real magicians with real powers, some of which we Servatores retain to this day.”
“Like communicating telepathically?” I say.
He smiles. “Spot on.”
“Can you do it?” I step closer to him without really meaning to. “Can you speak into my mind?”
“Not at will,” he says. “It’s not like Pulling, which I can do fairly easily. To speak into someone’s mind requires a great sense of urgency for us. More than just regular panic.”
Papa certainly seemed distressed when he spoke thoughts to me in the hospital.
“So these magicians,” I prompt.
He nods. “Eventually, they figured out a way to use their powers to fight Nero. He’d do something horrible, and they’d Pull, but they had a different word for it. Traho.”
“Traho,” I echo.
“It’s a Latin term they adopted for reversing small sections of time so you can stop something bad from happening, but there are all kinds of slang terms for it, depending on where you live.” He shrugs. “We just call it Pulling.”
Albert carefully turns a few more pages. I’m sure the text is fascinating, but the cramped words are hard on my eyes, and I look back to the shelves.
“Is all of this information about Servatores?” I ask.
Albert grins without letting his eyes leave the book. “If that were true, you’d probably punch me.”
“You’re really getting a handle on my personality.”
“Give me a minute to put this away,” he says, nodding at the book, “and we’ll go to the deepest, darkest corner of the records room.”
He wraps the book back up and stows it carefully inside the filing cabinet. Then he tugs off the gloves and seals them in the plastic bag, which zips back inside the shelf along with the document table.
The room is so still, yet so full of presence. I get the feeling I could spend hours in here by myself and never feel alone. Do these books actually contain magic? Remnants of the powers wielded by the early Servatores?
At this point, it seems anything is possible.
“It’s back here,” he says, gesturing to the far corner of the room. His steps slow as we walk. “None of us like to go back here, so I’m not sure what state we’ll find it in. Hopefully, whoever went through it last left it tidy.”
He leads me to the end of the last aisle, and when we reach it, I feel a shift in the air—a heaviness that settles on my shoulders and sinks into my chest, making me feel like I can’t breathe quite as well as I should.
Albert is watching me. “You feel it?” “Yeah,” I wheeze.
“There are things in this room,” he says, “that we can only guess at. These books carry something with them, and every time we touch them, it’s like they leak into us. I don’t know.” He rubs a hand over his face. “It sounds crazy, but I swear it’s true.”
“Let’s not stay here too long, then,” I say.
“Right. That’s a good plan. So, this lovely corner of the room is where we keep information about the Mortiferi.” He waves at the shelves, which seem less organized and dustier than the others. “We don’t put much effort into maintaining it because, quite frankly, there isn’t much new information to keep track of. We know who they are, and we know what they do.”
He digs around on the bottom shelf. The weight on my chest has begun to feel like claws digging into my flesh. I’m not sure how much longer I can be here.
“Almost got it,” he says, shifting what looks like a shoebox, then shoving an olive-green expanding file to the side. “Here we are.”
When he stands up, I almost laugh at the book in his hand. It’s a gray leather Bible with red embossed letters on the front cover.
“You kn
ow, they have the Bible online,” I say flatly.
“Sure, but this is an official London Servator one.” His eyebrows jump. “Much more exciting.”
“Of course.”
He flips the tissue-thin pages with considerably more speed than he used with the Roman book. “What I want to show you comes from the book of Numbers.”
“I don’t do math.”
He tips his head back with a loud laugh. “Blimey, you know exactly how to bring down the house, don’t you?”
“Sorry. This place has me on edge.”
His fingers stop, go back a page, and run down the text. “Here we are. Numbers chapter thirteen, verses thirty-one through thirty-three. The language is a bit antiquated, so bear with me. Ready?”
“Sure,” I say, even though I have no idea what I’m supposed to be ready for.
“‘But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.’”
He looks up, and I meet his gaze.
He thumbs all the way back to Genesis, stopping at chapter six. “‘And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.’”
“Sons of God?”
Despite his attempts to act casual, Albert’s eyes are alight with intrigue. “Angels. But because they’re taking human wives, they have to be fallen angels. Also known as demons, though pop culture has more or less erased the connection between the two.”
He adjusts his grip on the Bible and clears his throat. “‘There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bear children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’” He closes the Bible. “This is the King James translation, but there are other translations that give these giants a name—Nephilim.”
