The Vatican Children (World of Shadows Book 2)

by Lincoln Cole

  “Hair of the dog,” he mumbled, taking a swig.

  Though cheap and bitter swill, it would take the edge off his hangover. He would need to get breakfast soon if he planned on a long drive like this, but just now, eating sounded like a terrible idea.

  Thoroughly frustrated with just about everything right now, he hated the case they’d put him on, and he hated getting pulled off it. He hated Arthur, and he hated the fact that Frieda had such power and control over him. An intimidating woman, and made considerably more so by the backing of the Council of Chaldea.

  Worse still, if he pulled even a quarter of the crap that Arthur did on a regular basis, they would have kicked him out of the Order and executed him years ago. Hell, he thought Arthur would get executed after the stunt he pulled out in West Virginia. Going into that manor alone was a ballsy thing to do, and strictly against his orders, but all it got Arthur was a slap on the wrist.

  Rules just didn’t seem to apply where Vangeest was concerned.

  Garfield staggered away from the bed and into the bathroom. He splashed water onto his cheeks and rubbed the stubble on his chin, and then his stomach turned, and he found himself vomiting into the cheap and dirty toilet.

  Once that was over with, he felt quite a bit better, and when he finished packing up his meager belongings, he headed back out and quickly got on the road.

  Maybe Frieda had it right, and his case would still be here when he got back.

  Who knew, maybe pigs would even fly.

  Chapter 8

  “We aren’t getting out that way,” Arthur said to Niccolo, his voice coming from off to the left.

  “Which way? If you’re pointing, I can’t see anything.”

  “The way we came in, I mean. Which means we’ll have to head the other direction if we want to find another way out.”

  “There’s another way out?”

  “Definitely,” Arthur said, but he didn’t sound too convinced.

  Suddenly, Niccolo found it difficult to swallow. He could barely see the shape of Arthur beside him in the underground tunnel, and even then, he couldn’t make out his features. The air felt stale down here, and if he moved, he would bump into the walls straight away.

  “Where’s the flashlight?”

  “Lost,” Arthur said.

  Too bad.

  The tunnel didn’t seem as dark or foreboding with the light.

  Niccolo would have liked to see Arthur more clearly right about now, as well as what lay around him. Who knew, maybe he had someone other than Arthur next to him in the darkness.

  He forced the thoughts away, pushing down his fear. The tunnel reminded him of the crawlspace beneath Rose’s home, and the basement where Tim had confronted him in Everett. It brought back painful memories and opened fresh wounds.

  “How will we know when we find another way out?” he asked, focusing on the task at hand. “We can’t see anything.”

  The only light they did have flitted in under the doorway they had come through, and that gave only enough to make this first chamber visible. If Arthur worried at all about their predicament, he didn’t show it. Instead, he dug into his pocket for his cellular flip phone.

  “What are you doing?” Niccolo shook his head. “No way on Earth will you get a signal down here.”

  “The walls are too thick to make a call,” Arthur said. “But we need more light.”

  As soon as the phone came on, the screen glowed like a blinding flare had set off. Though a dim screen, in fact, it still gave enough illumination to fill the room and let him see Arthur fully once more. Niccolo squinted and winced, and then reached into his pocket as well.

  “No,” Arthur said, holding up his hand to stop him. “Save yours. In fact, turn your phone off completely. We’ll need it if we end up stuck down here for a while.”

  “What would you consider a while?”

  Arthur didn’t answer immediately. “Hours,” he admitted, finally.

  “Hours?” Niccolo said, incredulously.

  “Maybe days. It depends on whether they want to wait us out or not.”

  “You said we might find a way out down those tunnels.”

  “We could.”

  “You don’t sound too confident.”

  “Those tunnels face to the south, which means the buildings above us lay that way.” He waved his hand toward the door they had come through.

  “They could have access hatches.”

  “They could,” Arthur said. “But if so, then they will likely be locked from the outside.”

  Niccolo’s stomach sank. “So, you think we’re trapped in here.”

  “Probably,” Arthur said. “So, we should figure out where exactly here is.”

  “Two phones is all we have for light?”

  Arthur nodded. “That’s all we have. We need to make it count.”

  Arthur turned to leave and hesitated. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “For this,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “I’ve gone off my game ever since ...”

  Niccolo offered, “Everett?”

  “It started before that, but that triggered the culmination. I feel directionless, and the old me would never have ended up in a situation like this. I’m sorry for this.”

  “No,” Niccolo said. “Apology not accepted. You have nothing for which to apologize.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You might be having trouble finding your way, but that’s because you’re trying to find your way out of a dark place. Mistakes happen, and if we’re to die down here, I would rather die because you made bad decisions trying to be a good man, than live because you made good decisions as the same man you were before.”

  Arthur didn’t reply. Niccolo had surprised himself a little with what he said, and he found that it rang true. In the last few weeks, he had gone from hating Arthur to something akin to friendship. He surely didn’t want to die down here, but if that happened, then he would accept it.

  Finally, Arthur nodded at him. “We should keep moving.”

  “What about the door?” Niccolo asked. “We shouldn’t leave it, should we?”

  “It’s locked, and if they try to bust it down, we will know.”

  “Shouldn’t one of us stay here, just in case?”

  Arthur didn’t stop walking. “You’re welcome to stay,” he said over his shoulder, “but it’ll get dark since you’ll need to keep your phone off.”

  Niccolo hesitated a moment longer, groaned, and then followed Arthur down the dark tunnel.

  “WAS THIS A TRAP? DO you think Elgin sold us out?”

  “Hard to tell,” Arthur said. “Definitely a trap, but I don’t think he sold us out. I believe I just made a lot of mistakes, but Naomi is also good at her job. We just set off their defenses, and they responded. Naomi has a reputation for paranoia, but if she’d known we were coming, I don’t think she would try to kill us. I reckon she would run.”

  “You sure about that?”

  Arthur hesitated longer than Niccolo would have liked, and when he finally answered, it didn’t sound convincing. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Now, we try to find a way out of here. Even if the access hatches lock from up above, there is a chance one of them has rusted enough that we can break it open.”

  “What happens if we can’t, and we get stuck down here?”

  Arthur frowned. “Then we will have to try plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “We don’t have one yet.”

  THEY WALKED THROUGH the pitch-black tunnels in silence, Arthur up in front, and Niccolo keeping an eye behind. Arthur had turned the screen light as dim as possible, but already, the battery ran near empty. Niccolo couldn’t even feel certain when he’d last charged his phone, and it would surprise him if it hadn’t fallen under halfway by the time he’d turned it off.

  He held the tranquilizer gun Arthur had given him in his hand, clutching it for dear life, and
couldn’t imagine letting it go. When Arthur had trained him how to use it, the lessons had seemed pointless and exhausting, but now he wished he’d paid more attention.

  Niccolo breathed as quietly as he could, but each inhalation sounded like a hurricane in the echoing quiet of the tunnels. Occasionally, something else bounced back to them, most likely coming from outside their locked doorway, but he couldn’t tell for sure.

  It worried him that in his fear, he might also imagine phantom sounds around them. Soft noises came like a dripping sound from somewhere around them. It proved difficult to tell what had reality and what only happened in his head.

  He focused solely on following Arthur and watching the hallway behind him, and he tried not to imagine what horrible things might lurk just out of sight.

  They ran into dead-end after dead-end with all the access hatches locked and bolted from the other side. Enormous rusty pipes wound along the walls in groups, and at various intersections, went through the ceiling and to the sky above. Once in a while, the tunnel became so narrow that it forced him to suck in his ample gut to get through.

  After about an hour, and just when his claustrophobia had nearly got the best of him, the cellphone Arthur carried lost power. It flickered, and Niccolo’s heart jumped into his throat.

  “Damn,” Arthur muttered.

  They managed to keep moving for another few minutes before the light went out altogether.

  “Your turn,” Arthur said.

  He didn’t need to say it, though. Already, Niccolo had reached for his pocket. They stood in the heavy darkness for a moment while Niccolo fished out his phone. He flipped it open and held the power button until it turned on. It lit up the area in front of them.

  Though dim, in the utter darkness it felt bright. Quickly, he lowered the brightness to the lowest setting, and then handed it over to Arthur. The Hunter put his phone away and set off walking once more down the tunnel. They reached another tight section of pipes and squeezed through.

  “You skipped an access hatch back there,” Niccolo said after a minute

  “Did I?” Arthur asked. “Probably locked.”

  “What if it wasn’t?”

  “It probably was.”

  Niccolo didn’t like that answer. In their current state, he felt that everything should get checked. “We should try them all.”

  Arthur hesitated. “We need to keep moving.”

  “But—”

  “Let’s just keep moving,” Arthur said. “Stay close behind me.”

  Niccolo wanted to object but changed his mind. Arthur knew best in a situation like this, and he had to admit that he had jumped in way over his head. They continued walking, Niccolo still keeping an eye behind them.

  “How big is this place?” Niccolo asked, finally.

  “Big,” Arthur said.

  “But, I mean, how big? We’ve walked for what feels like hours.”

  “Why do you ask? Are you getting tired?”

  “I felt tired a while ago. Now I feel exhausted.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.”

  Arthur fell silent. They walked for a few more moments before Niccolo spoke up again.

  “What did you mean? Why is it good that I’m exhausted?”

  “No reason.”

  “No, tell me. What did you mean to say?”

  Arthur sighed and stopped walking. “This place isn’t that big at all.”

  “What?” Niccolo asked, incredulous. “But we’ve been walking for hours.”

  Arthur stared at him. “In a circle.”

  Niccolo stared back. “A what?”

  “A circle. Not a big one, either. We’ve checked the same three access hatches, like, sixty times.”

  “You mean you’ve led us in circles?”

  “That’s what I said, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “To keep moving.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Since the first time we made the loop,” he said. “I wanted to suggest we just keep walking to occupy ourselves. Tiredness helps combat fear. I figured I would just suggest it when you bought it up, but ... well ...”

  It dawned on Niccolo. “That’s why you ignored those access hatches.”

  “I grew tired of checking each one time and again. At first, it seemed funny, but now it’s just draining.”

  It made so much sense now that Arthur had said it aloud. The fact that they had turned slightly to the left constantly, the tight section of pipes ...

  “Oh,” he said.

  Arthur didn’t respond. He turned around and just kept walking down the hallway. Niccolo stood there for a long moment before rushing to follow him.

  “You mean for these last three hours you’ve made me think we had headed deeper into this place and might find a way out?”

  “Four hours, actually. And, no, I didn’t make you do anything,” Arthur said. “It seemed cruel to disenfranchise. Each hatch we got to, you grew so hopeful that it would let us out.”

  “So, we won’t get out of here?”

  “Nope,” Arthur said. “Not through these hatches, at least. Our only way out is via the door we came in through.”

  “We can bust our way out?”

  “I’m good. But not that good.”

  “What, then?”

  “We wait,” Arthur said. “And, we walk—walking helps me think, and it keeps you from falling to the ground and crying. Trust me; the darkness would get to you after a while. The last thing I wanted you to do is sit in the dark with your thoughts.”

  Niccolo stopped walking, shocked, and then burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Everything,” Niccolo said. “This. All of this. It’s just funny.”

  “There are a lot of words I would use to describe this, and funny doesn’t even make the list.”

  “I mean, you and me trapped in this tunnel in the middle of the desert with no way out. I would never have thought I would die like this.”

  “It isn’t how we’ll die,” Arthur said. Then, he added, “Not me, at least.”

  “Really? I don’t see any way out of this, so if you do, maybe you should enlighten me before I go out of my mind.”

  “Right now, my best plan is to wait for help.”

  “Help from who?”

  “Frieda,” Arthur said. “I am more than a few hours late on a check-in, so she knows we’ve landed in trouble. I also told her where we would head, so she has the location.”

  “Why didn’t you say that earlier?”

  “Because it’s my hope, but it might not prove true.”

  “What?”

  “I miss check-ins all the time, and it might take a couple of days for her realize something has, in fact, gone wrong.”

  “A couple of days?” Niccolo said at a near-shout.

  “That’s a small possibility.”

  “How do you miss check-ins? That’s the entire point of a check-in. To check ... in.”

  “Sometimes I get busy,” Arthur said. “This job isn’t exactly on a normal schedule.”

  The fear bubbled up inside Niccolo once more.

  “So, we get trapped in this tunnel, and now you tell me we have no way out, armed people wait on the other side of that door who plan to kill us, and the only person who knows we’re down here might send someone to rescue us?”

  “Basically.”

  “No wonder you just kept walking.”

  “We might have another option,” Arthur said. “We could always try to negotiate.”

  “With Bishop Glasser?” Niccolo shook his head violently. “I would rather just die down here with you.”

  “Then, let’s try to relax. We’ll run out of light soon, and then we won’t be able to walk anymore. We can find somewhere to hole up near the door and just wait it out. If help is on the way, then it should get here in only a short while.”

  “And, if it isn’t?”

  Arthu
r hesitated. “Then it will be a long next couple of days.”

  Chapter 9

  Garfield called Frieda to get directions once he had left his hotel, but he hung up as soon as she had given an address. Although she would expect regular updates, he didn’t want to talk to her until he’d made it to Arthur. The sun came up, and he felt better, but he still needed more sleep.

  He doubted he would get any; at least, not anytime soon. It would take a four-hour drive to get to the water treatment plant to which Frieda had sent him, and he couldn’t help but feel curious about what Arthur had gotten himself into.

  He needed more information about what he had to deal with. Not a lot of traffic met him while he drove through the empty deserts, and even though it had reached early in the afternoon and the sun lay behind him, he wore his shades. Most likely, dusk would fall at around six at this time of year, and maybe earlier.

  After a few hours driving, while on the freeway heading west, he called Frieda again. “Where am I going?” He flipped open his map of Arizona on the passenger seat and glanced down at it.

  To see the paper better, he snapped his shades up, and then took another sip of his Styrofoam coffee. He had picked it up when he got gas, along with a hotdog that had probably been spinning for a week. It had tasted disgusting and half-rotten, but he’d managed to choke it down. He liked to think he had an iron stomach.

  When not drinking, that was.

  “I gave you the address.”

  “That address points to the middle of nowhere. I don’t think it will help me find Arthur.”

  “It’s a big facility. Might not be on the maps, but it’s out there. I’m sure you can’t miss it.”

  “What should I expect to find?”

  “Arthur,” she said, as if the answer were obvious.

  “I mean aside from Arthur. Do you know what he was doing or working on?”

  As much as he didn’t like Arthur, the guy was effective and wouldn’t likely get himself into trouble. Whatever proved too much for him to handle, gave enough to keep Garfield on his toes.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You sent him out there.”