by Liliana Hart
Armaeus, seeing the torrent of emotions no doubt plainly chasing their way across my face, took a step toward me, and I all but hissed, holding out a hand to stop him in his tracks.
And speaking of hands.
“You tied me up,” I spit out. “How dare you do that! How dare you even think to do that?”
Now it was his turn to let anger harden his features for just a moment, as his brows rose in sardonic curiosity. “You asked me to bind you, Miss Wilde,” he said, his certainty inviolable.
“I what?” I stared at him, shock flooding through me. I didn’t remember asking him to do anything like that, I didn’t remember! And yet there was no question that I had; I could see it in Armaeus’s eyes. The Magician might be insufferably arrogant, might use any trick in his impressive arsenal to persuade me to a course of action, but he was honorable, in the end. He did not trespass where he was not wanted. And I had wanted him—apparently, I’d wanted him so much that I’d asked him to…
I shook my head—I truly couldn’t recall what I’d said, but that was secondary to the larger issue. Why had that memory been wiped away? What was my mind protecting me from?
“Did I…” I grimaced, hating that I had to ask for such clarification, but I had to know. “Did I ask you to do that last time?” We had never spoken about the first time we’d made love. As soon as Armaeus had realized that I’d no recollection of a portion of it—a very important portion of it—he’d gotten very quiet and very intrigued and had just…watched me. Just like he was staring at me now, in fact. I’d gotten out of his bedroom so fast my feet hadn’t even hit his insanely expensive marble floor, and I’d found Nikki and her Tyet the next day. And the Tyet had held this night, after all. No matter what I’d asked of Armaeus, no matter how much I’d desired him, I hadn’t given into that unfathomable need.
Not completely. Not yet.
“Miss Wilde—”
I waved off his response. “Never mind,” I said heavily, willing myself to put everything that didn’t matter aside so I could focus on what did. “So—what do I need to find this little gold box of yours? You have a map or something, or am I just going in with the cards?”
Armaeus looked as if he was going to say something else, then he nodded. “I suspect the cards will be helpful, particularly in this search. And you will also be needing this.”
I frowned as he reached into his jacket, which still appeared perfectly pressed, and drew out the slender gold disk. “The seal of Ceres? That thing actually has a purpose?”
“It provides a potentially easier path to our goal, yes, which might also explain SANCTUS’s current interest in taking it out of circulation.” He shrugged. “The relic is not a necessary tool. Still, as it has graciously made itself available to us, we may as well take advantage of it.” Armaeus’s smile was mild, his manner all business. He glanced from the shiny gold artifact back to me. “Beneath all of Rome lies the Mundus Cereris, or world of Ceres. It is a shallow vault of passageways that extends beneath the city, used by the goddess to search the uppermost levels of the underworld. For our purposes, it leads equally well to the Vatican necropolis.”
“Catacombs.” I stared at him. “You expect me to get to the Vatican by going through a bunch of mummies?”
Armaeus raised a brow. “Mind your history.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. And this seal is supposed to do what for me?”
“The entry to the Mundus Cereris has been hidden since the times of antiquity. Although most historians agree it was housed somewhere in the Roman Forum, the opening, a stone lid known as the manalis lapis, has never been located.”
“And this matters…”
But Armaeus was not to be denied his history lesson. “Ceres was the sister of Vesta, the two of them committed to the feminine concerns of hearth, home, family, fertility, and the harvesting of grain. It is not surprising that when Ceres began her search for her daughter, Proserpina, who had been taken into the underworld by Pluto, she turned to her sister Vesta for help. But to protect this passageway, which opened up an entire world beneath the city, she needed an entrance that no man would find and use for his own purposes.”
“So she stuck it in her sister’s temple, dedicated to womanhood, home of the Vestal Virgins, guardians of the eternal flame. Got it,” I said. Did he think I’d been working in the artifact trade for the past five years for nothing? “And you’re telling me this…”
“Because Ceres made several keys to her underground realm, one of which we happen to now have, thanks to you—and, of course, to me.” He tossed me the seal, and I grabbed it easily, turning it over in my hands. I noted the raised ridges again on the back, but frowned at him.
“If this is the lid to some secret passageway, we’re in trouble, Armaeus. That’ll be a pretty small opening.”
“There is no lid, unfortunately. Not anymore.” He shook his head. “But Ceres prepared for that contingency as well. Beneath the manalis lapis rested another entrance point, said to be etched into solid rock.” He nodded at the gold seal. “I can give you the point at which it is located, but what lies beneath the temple is a world I have not seen for a very long time. Still, it begins with the seal—though I would caution you to be careful. When placed upon the bedrock of Rome itself, I am told it is a single-use key. And another thing, Miss Wilde.” He smiled at me, amusement lacing his words. “Though your passage will be underground, you should not encounter any of the dead for the majority of your trip. Roman law forbade the burial of citizens within the city walls.”
“Yeah, well, Rome started out kind of small,” I grumbled. “That doesn’t account for much terrain.”
Nodding his acknowledgment of this point, Armaeus gestured to my chair and took his own seat. “We’ll be landing soon, and I must give you the rest of the instructions,” he said. “You’ll need to memorize them.”
“Uh-huh. And where will you be while I’m off playing capture the flag?”
“I regret that business calls me away immediately to Las Vegas. Where I look forward to you rejoining me late tomorrow, in fact, with the reliquary intact.”
“Fair enough.” I stowed the seal in my jacket. “So in preparation for that, why don’t you go ahead and get your bank online as well. I’ll want my money transferred the moment I toss you your pretty gold toy.”
Chapter Five
The driver Armaeus had hired wasn’t a local. It wasn’t until I’d slung myself into the back seat of the dark blue sedan that I realized this important fact, as he started talking to me in completely unaccented English.
“Welcome to Rome, ma’am. Happy to have you aboard. Where are we off to?’
“The Forum,” I said. “Anywhere close to the main entrance on Via Dei Fori Imperiali.”
“Whew, at this hour? Your boss must be kind of a dick, pardon the expression.”
I blinked at the man, catching his wide smile in the rearview mirror. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, I’m just saying. Shuttling you from the airport in the middle of the night directly to a tourist trap, and not even one of the better tourist traps, is kind of harsh. Sure, the Forum was pretty big stuff back in its day, but its day was a loooong time ago. It’s not like it’s the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain. Hell, send you to St. Pete’s in the dead of night, fine, but the Forum? Please. The place is locked up tight!”
I couldn’t help smiling as the driver kept up a nonstop stream of chatter. His banter, detailing the trials of being an on-command limo driver to the stars, kept me energized at least, and that, along with caffeine pills and some mumbo jumbo Armaeus had muttered at me when I’d departed the plane, was apparently all the rest I was going to get before this day was done. As we sped toward Rome, I went through the plan again. According to Armaeus, I would have to navigate through a mile of catacombs and underground passageways, one of them, notably, under water—before emerging into the subterranean underpinnings of the Vatican. The necropolis was relatively close to the surface but still
deep enough that I shouldn’t be disturbed at the hour I would be reaching it. I patted the pocket of my jacket, locating the deck I’d hijacked from Henri. This underground journey was going to be a series of yes-nos viewed by penlight, so I separated a few of the Major Arcana cards, sliding the rest back into the—
“Ma’am!”
“What!” I jumped about a foot, and the driver had the good grace to look abashed in the rearview mirror. We stopped at a light, and he turned around.
“Sorry,” he said, his gaze falling to my hands. “Hey! You’ve got Tarot cards, very cool!”
“Thanks,” I muttered. Several additional cards had fallen out of the deck, and I scooped them off the floor, keeping them separate from the pack along with my Majors. Cards didn’t just jump out of a deck for no reason, even if the reason was a bad one—like a driver who wouldn’t shut up.
“I wanted to let you know we’re almost there,” the driver said, swinging back around to drive. “Is there anything you need before I leave? Mini bottled water? Tourist map?” He handed both items to me over the back of his seat, seemingly out of habit, his eyes never leaving the road now that we were moving again. I took his offerings just as automatically, though I wasn’t remotely thirsty—and a map wasn’t exactly going to get me where I needed to go tonight.
As I tucked the map into my jacket pocket along with the cards, the car slowed and angled over to the right. I peered out the window, taking in the uplit view of the Roman Forum. We were at one of the main entrances, as requested, some enormous old building still half standing off to our left, its arched columns looming in silent testimony to a world gone by.
“Thanks,” I said, pulling out some folded euros. “Oh, and here—I appreciate you driving me this late.”
“No problem at all, ma’am.” The young man turned around, his eyes eerily black despite the brightly lit interior of the limo. With a grin that made him look almost boyish, he touched his fingers to his head in a smart salute. “And no tip needed, but my number’s on the map. You need a ride out of here, just call that line and ask for me by name.” He winked at me. “I’m Max Midnight.”
Of course you are. Still, I managed a smile, then peeled myself out of the limo. Where does Armaeus find these people?
I watched as the dark sedan shot down the Via Dei Fori Imperiali, waiting until it was well out of sight. It was a few hours before dawn still, but the Forum’s lights had finally dimmed, throwing the ruins into shadow. Not even the most energetic of tourists was still out at this hour, but I knew better than to waste any time. Without hesitating, I hurried to the nearest fold in the imposing but ultimately harmless fence surrounding the long rectangular field of enormous ruined temples and scattered buildings. Where the structure dented inward, I paused, pulling on my gloves. I’d learned over time that sometimes, when it came to handling artifacts, it paid to cover your palms. The unexpected bonus was that for most modern climbing tasks, gloves came in quite handy.
The beautiful wrought iron gate proved easy to climb, and I was on the other side in less than a minute. And then it was off through the maze of ruins toward the Temple of Vesta, one of the few circular structures (or what was left of it) in the space. The temple had once been the home of the Palladium, the ancient statue of Athena carved of olive wood and said to have fallen from the heavens themselves. The piece had long since disappeared into the mists of history, but I was banking that the other great feature of the temple had not: its famed hearth, once kept constantly lit by an intrepid team of virgins. I trotted the short distance through the Forum, past the Temple of Antonius and Fostina, and something called the Regia, which looked like a whole lot of nothing at all. When I reached my destination, however, my steps slowed, disappointment tightening my jaw. The hearth of the Temple of Vesta was still intact all right—mounted ornately on stacked slabs of rock in front of the temple.
What in the…I moved forward and circled the ancient building, still standing tall if somewhat tattered in her old age, with only a few of her columns remaining. I broke a few more city laws by clambering up onto the temple and skirting around it, then dropping back onto the rubble that marked what had once been the interior of the shrine.
Not helping, not helping, not helping. Dirt lay in huge piles all around the space, and only a few areas of actual rock were cleared off completely. I squinted into the darkness, trying to get a fix on where the center point might be, but I could only get so far before the dirt stopped me. What were they doing here? Some sort of latter-day excavation? I grimaced, dropping to my knees to where it seemed that the rock that had been unearthed was actual bedrock and not simply stones moved around for the hell of it. And then I started searching.
It took me a full half hour to find what I was looking for—deep, tool-cut grooves etched into a stone just off the center of the temple, the rest of the surface worn down. The section was bordered on all sides by more rock, which also boded well. Still, I saw no cut marks in the stone’s surface to indicate that there was some sort of hatch I could unlock. Suddenly unnerved by the thick darkness around me, I pulled out the Ceres seal and considered Armaeus’s words anew. How in the world could this be a single-use key?
No time like the present to find out.
Trying not to wince at the damage I was doing to the millennia-old seal, I turned the relic upside down and gingerly pressed it onto the stone.
Nothing happened.
I pressed harder. No dice.
“You have got to be kidding me!” I hissed, forcing all my weight onto the seal. Still nothing. I settled back on my heels, then shoved forward, forming my gloved hands into fists that I banged down on the seal like it was a square peg I was trying to hammer into a round hole. Nada. The rock stayed very rocklike. Very rocklike and solid. And hard, I realized belatedly, shaking out my hands.
“This isn’t happening.” I rolled up to my feet and scowled down at the stone. In the distance, I heard a police siren, and I jerked my head toward it, belatedly aware that I was, at a minimum, acting like a lunatic. At worst, I was doing my level best to deface state property with a stolen artifact. I needed to get out of here—down through this mass of stone, over to the Vatican necropolis to steal Armaeus’s stupid gold box, and then aboard a jet to Vegas to find those missing girls. I needed to move—and to move now.
“Come on!” I paced around the seal, then tentatively hopped onto the gold plate. Still nothing, and I began to see red. I stood off the edge of the seal, then raised my foot to stomp down on it with my heavy boot. “I have more!” stomp. “Money!” stomp. “Riding on this!” stomp! “Than I’ve ever seen!” stomp stomp! “In my life!” I backed up, launching myself forward again to execute a two-footed jump onto the now-battered seal. “DO SOMETHING!”
There wasn’t even a crack, and I half stumbled to the side, turning around and staring into the distance as I desperately tried to work out another solution, my lungs heaving, my head filling with a bone-rattling roar that pounded through my brain and—
The whoosh of movement took me completely by surprise as a storm of smoke shot up around me and the rock surface suddenly gave way beneath my feet. I plummeted into darkness and smashed hard into a wall, bouncing off it into a shower of rocks and debris that chased me down to an equally hard floor, accompanied by a tumble of stones that clattered around me. I blinked for a moment, then an ominous creaking sound stretched overhead in the now-pitch darkness, motivating me to scramble to the side until I came up against another wall, spitting out rock dust as I pulled the penlight out of my jacket.
“One use only,” I muttered, angling a narrow beam of light upward. I squinted at the completely blocked opening above me. Which meant—no exit either. So after I found the Magician’s relic, I’d have to come up with some other way to get out of here.
Armaeus hadn’t mentioned that part, of course.
I swung the penlight around as the rock dust cleared, relieved to see a darker opening cut into the rock opposite from where I was si
tting—and only one said opening. This cut down on my possible options of which way to go, for sure. Even better, the dust seemed to be moving into that hole, versus just hanging stagnant in the air, which meant somehow, somewhere, there was an opening up ahead.
Still, I put the penlight in my mouth and took the extra second to reach into my jacket and palm the cards, randomly flipping one upright into the thin stream of light.
The Devil stared back at me, grinning and fierce, looking truly evil in the old-style illustration. I much preferred the more modern depictions of the horned beast, but either way, this wasn’t helping. I reached for another card, focusing my question more specifically. Two cards came free in my hand, and I nodded when I saw them. That’s more like it. The Hierophant and the Eight of Cups—the Eight clearly one of the Minor Arcana cards that had tumbled out of the deck when the limo driver had startled me. So, apparently this road wouldn’t be a no-yes journey after all. The Eight of Cups was a sign to get a move on, and the Hierophant was also known as the “Pope” card.
Couldn’t get more literal than that.
I checked my watch’s compass feature to reassure myself I was facing northwest. Then I got to my feet and headed out. Time suddenly seemed far too short. I had to get Armaeus’s box and get to Vegas, if he was right about the twin sisters from Kavala being shipped there. And I had no reason to doubt him. According to Father Jerome, the sisters were Greek girls of exceptional beauty, and from what the priest had been told, their gifts apparently extended to a kind of shared cognition—they could wield the Sight in tandem, piercing the veil of the future simultaneously. In a world constantly searching for the next magical curiosity, they would be coveted treasures indeed.
