“No chance.”
“This isn’t the same as Bryant Park. Once we’re inside, it will be hard to hide anywhere,” Daz said. “I looked up a site map last night. It’s nearly impossible for a sniper to find cover. Anyone who approaches us will have to approach us directly. I’ll take those odds.”
“Your reasoning is my own, Montoya. It’s why I agreed to the meeting, despite my unease.”
At least he acknowledged something was off, Marian thought. He had faced an unknown sniper with calm. He’d faced down a firestarter, a telepath and the man who killed his brother without once showing any fear. “You’re really worried about this curse stuff.”
“We’ve had two warnings from reliable sources.” He paused and stared at her. “I’ve found curses cannot always be disregarded.”
“I’ve always found that guns cancel out curses,” Daz said.
“Do you have a gun?” she asked.
“No, too much paperwork to get done in too short a time to get through customs with a weapon. I know where to get one, though.”
“You’ll get into serious trouble if you’re found with an illegal weapon,” she said.
“Less trouble than if someone attacks and I can’t defend us,” Daz said.
Richard stuffed his hands into his pockets and continued to stare at the abbey.
“Spill it, prince guy,” Daz said.
“Once, a very long time ago, this abbey was home. Someone’s sending a message to me by meeting us here.”
“Could be,” Daz agreed. “Or could be you’re homesick.”
“Possible.”
“Does it look the same as back then?” she asked.
“Not from when I first came to it, no. Two of the towers were built after my time in the abbey. And the interior was used as a prison for many years after I was gone, and it was stripped clean. All the frescos, furnishings and reliefs I once knew are gone. It’s a shell of what I knew.”
“You miss it?” she asked.
“I miss many things.”
“Romanoff’s contact wants to meet us where they keep the tombs of the kings,” Daz broke in. “Any thoughts on security there?”
“They are effigies, not tombs,” Richard corrected. “The bodies aren’t present any longer. They went missing during the French Revolution.”
“Some delayed peasant payback?” Daz asked.
Richard shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any to meet. As pointed out, there’s no place to hide in that room and thus we should be safe enough, putting aside my homesickness.”
“Do you know where the missing bodies from the effigies went?” she asked.
Richard only shrugged again.
Marian had the distinct feeling that Richard knew exactly where the bodies were located. One day, she was going to have him sit down and relate his life instead of doling it out in dribs and drabs. Her scholarly father would drool over the very idea. And whoever his Queen was, she probably had even better tales.
Richard shook his head. “Past is past. I find it much better to live in the present. California’s my home now.” He strode down the sidewalk and into the abbey, all hesitation gone.
Many Gothic or medieval-era churches were so similar as to be identical. Not Fontevraud Abbey. Marian’s fingers lingered on the smooth abbey walls as they walked down an interior corridor. As Richard had said, this place had been picked clean many years ago. The damage from the abbey’s time as a prison had been wiped away, but so had everything else.
This was an unremarkable wall, not even showing much of the signs of age of construction.
She craned her neck to study the vaulted ceilings above them. It would be lovely to spend the day here as a tourist, if only to note differences with other abbeys in Europe. The major difference so far was that the bareness made it feel cavernous but also more mysterious, as if it needed filling in.
If only they were tourists.
As they walked down the corridor to where the effigies were displayed, Marian shivered. Ancient places had their own unique atmospheres. Canterbury Cathedral was heavy and intense inside, the air thick with the prayers of so many pilgrims over the years. Westminster Abbey was more like a museum, historic but not sacred. Notre Dame in Paris overwhelmed with ornate structures and the beautiful sound of the bells.
In Fontevraud Abbey, Marian felt as if ghosts walked with her, whispering secrets just out of her coherence. She knew the logical explanation for the sensation. With so many vaulted ceilings, it was likely the air currents shifted oddly, carrying voices from one room to the others. Logic had little to do with Marian feeling she was being judged by the unknown specters.
So big a space. It needed color to be truly magnificent, like an arrowhead needed an arrow to be truly complete.
Daz craned his head to absorb his surroundings. “Not like church at home.”
“Not like home at all,” Richard said.
They walked into a large empty hall with high vaulted ceilings. Save for the four effigies in the middle, surrounded by rope to keep visitors at a respectful distance, it was empty. Marian wasn’t sure if the emptiness made the effigies more or less magnificent.
Daz had said “the kings” were buried here. It would be more accurate to say “the royal Plantagenets”. Henry II of England’s effigy was in one tomb. His wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, a native of this land, occupied another. They were joined by Richard I, their son, and Queen Isabella, their daughter-in-law, wife of their youngest son, King John. Isabella, like Eleanor, had been born near here.
But, as her Prince Richard had said, the bodies were gone, lost to time, just like Rasputin’s remains. Or just like Thomas Beckett’s bones, which were reportedly shot out of a cannon during England’s break with Rome under Henry VIII.
Medieval corpses went missing for many reasons over the years and not just because the person had been controversial in life. Sometimes it was through carelessness. Look at Richard III of England, whom history had tagged as her Richard’s murderer. His burial place was reported and then lost to time until its recent rediscovery.
Richard fell behind her as they walked closer to the effigies. Eleanor of Aquitaine held a book in her hand. Perhaps the Bible, though, having studied that formidable Queen at some length, Marian guessed it was more likely to have been some book of poetry penned by an admirer. The colors on the effigies must have once been bright red, blue and yellow but now were faded. Many areas of the stone were chipped and worn.
“They deserve better,” she said.
“They’re remembered and honored after 900 years when so many are forgotten,” Richard said. “That is worth a great deal.”
Marian bowed her head in respect.
“Looks like we’re early,” Daz said.
“Looks that way,” Richard said, glancing around.
A row of monks marched in, their hoods cast over their heads. Their sandals thwapped against the stone floor as they approached the exhibit. She hadn’t known the abbey was home to a monastery but their presence fit in with this place.
Richard bent his head and closed his eyes, his shoulders slumped as if in prayer. He might have lived here, but he couldn’t have known these people. They were five, no six generations before his time. So why had his immortal Court been centered here? Had the formidable Eleanor left other descendants who were immortal, like Richard?
If the walls could talk instead of merely whispering and making her shiver, she might know. As if sensing her discomfort, Daz stepped closer to her. His warm breath tickled her neck, a very human feeling in the midst of all this.
The monks chanted, and they spread out before the effigies.
Marian frowned. Russian chants?
She turned to whisper to Daz how strange that was.
He pushed her aside so hard that she stumbled and nearly fell.
“Run!” he yelled.
A monk holding a long knife vaulted over the effigies and landed on top of Daz. Two others rushed Richard and knocked him down. Marian scrambled backwards, toward the wall, away from the fighting. Fending off knife-wielding monks was definitely not part of her job description. Getting away from them, however…
Richard punched his opponent in the chest with the flat of his hand. Before the monk could recover, Richard regained his feet and grabbed the other’s wrist and wrenched away his dagger. The weapon went skittering across the stone and hit the bottom of Henry II’s effigy.
Marian automatically cataloged the blade as a Russian military dagger, pre-revolutionary. Oh, she was being so helpful, figuring out what the dagger was while Richard and Daz were fighting for their lives. She had to do something.
Richard ducked a blow from one monk, grabbed the arm of another and smashed the two into each other. As they crashed to the floor in a heap, he snatched a dagger from another who rushed him.
But he was too late to prevent yet another monk from slicing his forearm. Richard ducked to avoid a jab, grabbed the monk by his robe and tossed him into the far wall. The monk hit with a solid thump, his head smacked the stone, and he slid to the floor and did not move.
Blood dripped onto the pristine floor of the abbey. The monks surrounded Richard and Daz and began to close in.
Dammit, that last-resort trick Aunt Eunice taught her would only work with one person. Too many here. She needed to do something else.
She counted one, two, three, and disappeared into the floor.
Darkness closed around her, as it always did in solid ground. Packed dirt, very little moisture. Good, dirt with lots of water was always harder to pass through. She floated to the right, hoping to reach the ground directly underneath the effigies. So hard to judge distance and location underground but she could hear the sounds of footsteps and battle overhead becoming louder as she moved. Definitely, she was headed in the right direction.
The blood spreading on the floor flashed through her mind. No. She could not lose concentration. Aunt Eunice had drubbed into her how fatal that could be. If she didn’t keep her mind on the task, she could turn solid and suffocate inside the rock.
She floated upward and raised her hand over her head. There. The lighter feeling overhead was air. She pushed upward and her head phased into stale air. She was inside the effigies. No rotted flesh, no smell related to corpses. Perhaps they were long gone. She reached into her pocket for the mini LED flashlight she always carried. She waved her hand to make sure it was in empty space, blinked, and both the LED light and her hand became solid. She clicked on the switch.
Empty. Confirmation that there were no bodies here, as Richard had said.
But there were ghosts in the abbey. At least, there was one now.
She took a deep breath, easing it out as she became fully a phantom once more. She slipped the LED light back into her pocket and rose out of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s effigy, arms outstretched.
“Who dares disturb my rest?”
Her voice reverberated off the walls, sounding sinister and otherworldly. Aunt Eunice said the distortion was due to the lower density of the vocal cords in phantom form. Marian didn’t care why right now. She cared it was scaring the monks.
The monks engaged in battle with Richard and Daz halted in mid-fight. They dropped their daggers. The metal clattered to the floor, making more noise than the fighting had.
Richard grabbed one of the transfixed monks from behind and knocked him on the head. The monk slumped in his arms. He struck another in the side, knocking him over, and grabbed him. The remaining monks left stared at her for a second, turned around and fled.
She descended to the floor, still holding her phantom state. The eyes of the monk Richard held captive were wide in fear and terror.
“Follow me!” Richard ordered.
She took another deep breath, became solid and ran with them down a passageway opposite the way they had come. Richard carried the monk easily over his shoulder. Surfing must build serious muscles, she thought.
Daz glanced behind them. “Dammit, we should stay and talk to the police. We were the ones who were attacked.”
“And if the monks claim the opposite, that we were the aggressors?” Richard asked.
“That place has video covering it. They’ll know the monks are lying,” Daz answered.
“If the monks didn’t disable the video, the authorities will note the appearance of a ghost. Do you want to explain that?”
“I don’t,” Marian gasped out.
They dashed around a corner. The small hallway led out to the open grounds.
“Hell, Prince, they’ll spot us out there,” Daz said.
“We’re not going out there,” Richard said.
“Then we wait for the cops?”
“Not until we talk to our friend, the monk,” Richard answered.
“And where the hell do we do that?”
“Elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Marian said. “Where the heck is elsewhere?”
On reflection, she agreed with Daz. Running from authorities was, in her experience, a bad thing. And now she was doing it for the second time in three days.
Richard patted the wall just above his hand. “Here. On the other side is a passage. Go through and you should be able to let us in, Angel. Quickly!”
Do first, argue later. She was used to that. Too used to it. But she obeyed and walked through the wall.
There was a chamber on the other side, as Richard had claimed. She clicked on her LED light. The door was metal on this side, with a wheel mechanism that opened the steel bars on the top and bottom.
“I hope this opens easily,” she muttered. She set her now-solid hands on the wheel and turned.
The steel bars creaked but slid open with only a small effort. Now she just had to pull open the door. She wrapped her hands around the wheel and pulled. The damn door didn’t move.
She stuck her head through the wall. “It’s unlocked but stuck! You need to push it open from that side.”
“Go back in and step away,” Richard ordered.
She slipped back into darkness and flattened herself against the side wall. She shone her light above. Cobwebs. Spiders, she could handle. But who knew what else lurked in this place?
The door swung inward, and Richard rushed through, carrying the now-moaning monk. Daz stumbled in behind them. Richard slammed the door shut and locked it with one hand.
Wow, surfing must really build serious muscles.
With one last metallic click, they were in near-darkness. On the run from the authorities. With a crazed monk.
“I believe in the curse now,” she said.
“Me too,” Daz said.
“We certainly have enemies. No curses needed for that. Daz, more light please.”
Daz added his flashlight to hers, chasing away some of the gloom. Richard set the monk at the base of the wall.
She and Daz focused their lights on him.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Forget this place. Let’s back up because I’m still stuck on murderous monks and a woman who turns into a ghost. What the hell, Marian?”
Oh. She’d forgotten in the confusion that Daz didn’t know.
“It’s a psychic ability, like your firestarter’s power,” she said.
“Like hell it is! Alec doesn’t turn into a freakin’ phantom! I nearly had a heart attack when you disappeared into the floor.”
“There wasn’t time to tell you what I was going to do. We were in the middle of an attack.”
“You weren’t being attacked on the plane ride over. Or on the drive to see the Russian Elvis. Or last night in the hotel. Or on the ride here. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you.
What did you expect? You practically kidnapped me the day we met. Why should I trust you with the family secret?”
“You trusted him with it.” Daz pointed at Richard, who was kneeling at the captive monk’s side.
“Richard already knew. His court were my ancestors’ patrons. They helped found Doyle Antiquities.”
“Wait, you’re a whole family of ghosts?”
“No, just me right now.” No, she shouldn’t have said that. She was babbling again.
“Will you two stop and instead help me talk to this monk?” Richard cut in. “He’s muttering in Russian. I’m lousy at Russian. Angel, I need your assistance.”
She leaned down next to Richard, balancing by gripping his shoulder.
“Why did you attack us?” she asked the monk in Russian.
“Why do you disturb my saint’s peace, devil ghost?” the monk whispered. “Go back to Hell.”
Devil ghost? She’d asked for that one, hadn’t she?
“I only seek your saint for help, not harm.”
“No, as foretold, you are the devil! You are upon us! You will destroy my soul in fire! No, I will not give in to you, foul thing. Saint Rasputin, save me.”
“Did he just say Rasputin?” Daz asked.
“Yes, he did.” She had assumed all along they were looking for the corpse of the man, but he appeared to definitely have an heir of some sort who commanded living influence.
A Rasputin heir protecting the legacy would certainly explain a curse.
“I only wish to find Saint Rasputin to heal me. I need your help,” she said to the monk. “Please, I must have his blessing.”
“No! Unclean devil! The coming of the demon fire has been foreseen. The saint has been warned and is taking precautions to prevent his soul from being destroyed in fire. You may take me, but you will perish in your own fire!”
“He terms you devil, yes?” Richard asked.
“First I’m an angel and now I’m the devil. Lovely,” she muttered under her breath. “He said something about souls being destroyed in fire. He’s terrified, says it’s foreseen the demon fire will pose danger to his saint.” She translated everything the monk had said to her for them, realizing only then that the monk had said the “saint” was taking precautions. Implying Rasputin himself, not an heir.
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