Twelve Shades of Midnight:

by Liliana Hart

  I picked up my pace.

  True to Armaeus’s words, the world of Ceres made heavy use of ancient underground passageways hewn through the rock. The space remained blessedly empty of anything but stone and the occasional rat at first, but after the first quarter mile or so, bodies started showing up. I had clearly made it beyond the boundaries of the Old City. Some of the chambers were stacked with cloth-wrapped corpses that looked as old as time itself, but others were filled with figures with a distressingly fresher feel. Holding my breath as much as I was able, I darted through the makeshift crypts, using the cards to guide me when I had a choice of more than one passageway. From time to time, I could sense the passages soaring above me and almost hear the distant traffic as the catacombs reached toward the streets of Rome. Other times, I could barely move, once shimmying on my stomach through a crevice carved into the rock, slick with running water. Apparently, I’d reached the Tiber River. I made pretty good time despite all that, covering the terrain in a little over an hour, before something decidedly different shifted in the air around me.

  It all started feeling…cleaner.

  I slowed my steps, sweeping the penlight on the ground and up around the walls. Fewer cobwebs and dust, I decided. That was it. Someone had clearly strolled this way recently—at least within the last century or so. The air was lighter here as well, the narrow passageway between the stacked bodies seeming almost spacious. I pulled another card, rolling my eyes as the Devil once again showed his ugly mug. The second proved more useful, however: the Sun.

  I dimmed my light and advanced, realizing that the gloom of the space had lifted somewhat as well. Not enough for me to get away without using light of any sort, but enough to make me feel like I was no longer trudging through the bowels of hell. As I moved from one chamber to the next, I felt something else too.

  The sudden sense of eyes on me.

  Hello, there.

  I turned around quickly, sweeping the light. No one was behind me, or ahead of me either, as I arced the beam around. The sensation eased as abruptly as it had struck, and I blew out a long breath. After having traveled through the graves of what felt like half the ancient Roman population, I should expect to be a little jumpy. Nevertheless, I picked up the pace, moving through the passages with more determination. They had begun to tilt upward, and as I passed one cleft in the rock, I paused, something once more murmuring in the back of my mind, just out of reach.

  I cycled up my penlight and flashed it over the surface to the right. Not stone at all here, but a metal door, deeply recessed into the wall and hung with shadows. I didn’t need to pull the Hierophant card this time—the papal seal was boldly emblazoned on the metal, immediately above the door’s old-style lock.

  Transferring my penlight to my teeth, I reached up high inside my jacket and pulled my picklocks free. This would not be delicate work with a structure so old, but torque was important. I didn’t want to lose my precious tools in the mouth of a stubborn iron lock.

  The mechanism worked, though not without protest, my wrists easing the picks through their dance with steady pressure and a few choice swear words. Clearly this wasn’t a common entrance or exit for the Vatican staff. That also boded well.

  I pushed past the door and found more catacombs on the other side, along with a fair number of empty indentations in the wall. Too small for dead bodies, but clearly something had been placed here at one point—placed and then taken away. Were these the treasures Armaeus had spoken of so reverentially? If so, how long ago had it been since he’d traveled these passages? No one would keep relics down here when there were high-tech, hermetically sealed storage solutions not forty feet above.

  At length, the passage ended, and I was left in a room with no exit—just four stone walls and the entryway I’d come in. I flickered the penlight up over the stone surface overhead and frowned. A constellation had been etched into the chamber’s ceiling, the earth at its center, the planets and sun revolving around that overlarge orb. I slid the light to the right of the earth, past the moon and to the large sun, its center pierced with a thick dot. A circumpunct, one of the oldest symbols of the sun—or of God—that existed. Peering up into it and remembering the last card I’d pulled, I flashed around the space at my feet until I found a big enough chunk of stone that was not so large I couldn’t move it. I shoved it into place, then stood upon it, dimming my penlight again and flipping it over. I stuck the bottom of the flashlight into the groove created by the chiseled dot and pushed hard.

  This time, I didn’t have to wait for my reward. The penlight broke right through the thin layer of dirt, and shavings cascaded around me as a burst of light poured down over my face. The block moved easily enough at the push of my fingertips, stone scraping on stone, and with two hands, I was able to push it up and to the side, revealing a hole large enough for me to climb through. Dim yellow light shone down from the chamber above, and I could see a tiny portion of its flaking ceiling.

  I’d reached the Vatican necropolis.

  Chapter Six

  I hauled myself up through the opening, trying to get my bearings. I was in an ancient room, but not as ancient as where I’d just been. It was one of the painted crypts of the necropolis, the sides layered in a rich terra-cotta orange, the floor decorated with an elaborate ornate mosaic. My entry square was in the center of a long line of similar squares, each with a hole in its center, and I was familiar with their functions. The tiles had been used originally as food portals so that the ancient Romans could more easily deliver feasts to their dead relatives.

  Very thoughtful, the Romans.

  Now, the centers of most of the tiles were stuffed with dirt and even clay, it looked like, sealing them off. I swung my feet clear of the hole and scowled around, every sense on high alert, but no guards came pounding toward me, no alarmed cries went up. Still, I set the stone back in place and scattered rock dust over it for good measure. Wiping my gloved hands on my trousers, I reached the doorway of the ancient tomb and glanced back. From this vantage point, I couldn’t even tell the floor had been disturbed. Good.

  I found myself in a long brick-and-stone corridor bathed in an eerie yellow glow coming from a line of recessed lights. I quickly made my way to the end, glancing into the empty crypts on either side of the passage, noting the ornate frescoes and striking images in some, the utter barrenness of others. At the end of the corridor, just as Armaeus had described, I found the original tomb of St. Peter, or whatever they were calling it these days. No way the guy’s actual bones were still here, but the space itself had a strange feeling to it that made me slow down, the cards seeming to almost shift in my jacket as I poked my head into the narrow space.

  Bingo.

  I saw the gold box almost immediately, but it wasn’t as if that took any special skill. It was lying right in the open, sitting in a sort of cut-out section of the wall, looking almost enshrined on purple and red vestments, candles lying around its base. A strip of red cloth lay crisscrossed over the relic, which, as Armaeus had suggested, was about the size of my hand from fingertip to wrist. There was no high-tech energy force field down here protecting the thing, just the cloth sash, and I frowned at the setup, inching closer. The light seemed particularly strange, surrounding the reliquary in a luminous glow, and I remembered Armaeus’s description, that the gold box was being “purified.” I glanced around, listening, but no sound emanated from anywhere in the crypt except my own thundering heart.

  Still, once again I felt it—that strange sense of being watched.

  I checked my watch. Four thirty a.m. The sun would be rising in less than two hours, and I had no idea how I’d get out of the catacombs anymore. I certainly wasn’t going to be getting back out through the Forum. All of which meant I couldn’t waste any more time here, not when I had a long trudge into nowhere ahead of me.

  Using one of the ceremonial candles lying to the left of the reliquary, I pushed the sashes off the box. God didn’t cry out in holy fury, so, so far,
so good. I squatted down, trying to eye the platform beneath the gold. No way to tell what was under it, and I stood again, weighing my options.

  Just get it over with, I thought, feeling strangely inclined to laugh. Sometimes, it really was that easy.

  I reached out with my right hand and plucked the golden box off its pool of vestments. Something seemed to shift, and, frowning, I swept the vestments back—just as a green light on a technical-looking platform shifted to red. And then it started blinking.

  “Shit!” And sometimes, it wasn’t. Time to go.

  I shoved the box into my jacket, sparing a few extra, precious seconds to throw the vestments back over the blinking red light, as if that was going to have some meaningful effect on anything. Then I dashed into the long corridor leading away from St. Peter’s tomb, moving fast. Sticking my hand in my pocket, I yanked out another card—Chariot.

  I frowned, picking up my pace. Chariot? I’d expected the Sun again, dammit. Surely the best idea would be just to go back to the room where I’d entered the necropolis.

  The sudden crack of pounding boots on stone shot my attention toward the edge of the corridor, just as I skidded past a room dominated by an enormous mosaic of—

  “Do not mess with me,” I gritted out, swinging into the room and turning around, then around again. The chariot on the floor in black-and-white was unmistakable, and for added points, the scene it depicted was the freaking kidnap of Proserpina, daughter of Ceres—but there was no door out of this room, no big flashing arrow pointing anywhere, and I was out of time.

  “Shit!” The box in my right pocket suddenly seemed to gain about a thousand pounds, and I hurtled forward, smacking facedown onto the floor. Just then, two guards ran past the crypt’s doorway, their flashlights sweeping the space, but not stopping. Spitting out rock dust as quietly as I could beneath the tramp of their feet, I squinted up—and then I saw it. A grate at eye level in the floor, maybe added after excavation to shore up splintering rock or to cover a dangerous hole, who knew. The important part was it was there—and darkness loomed behind it.

  I scrambled for the grate and tested it quickly, realizing it wasn’t even attached. Without taking the time to second-guess that piece of crazy, I pulled it away and stuck my penlight into the space, tossing more rock dust down. Nothing but open air lay beyond the grate, and then, finally, the pebbles struck bottom, loud enough to almost reassure me I wouldn’t break every bone in my body trying to make the drop. As shouts erupted in St. Peter’s tomb, I resecured my light and zipped up my jacket, then snagged the grate. I shimmied down into the hole, pulling the grate behind me until it clanked into place over the opening. Then I hung for another sickening moment in the open air.

  And dropped.

  The weight of the gold box seemed to even out in flight, and I landed with only the usual amount of pain, sprawling onto the chamber floor with a grunt, then rolling into a tight ball to spread the agony around a little more. The place was black as pitch, and I wrenched out my penlight again, flipping it around as I squinted into the darkness. I was completely disoriented, but the chamber held two doors, so I picked two cards: Hanged Man and Sun. “Oh great, now you give me the Sun,” I muttered.

  Still, I’d take it. I headed back into the darkness through the east-facing door, the one indicated by the Sun, and prayed for a quick exit.

  I didn’t get one.

  The cards started playing hard to get from that point forward, showing me the Devil at every choice as spectral laughter seemed to dog my steps. Finally I just gave up, taking whatever passageway seemed like it was leading up. My last intelligent card had been the Sun, after all. Well, the sun was in the sky, right? And the sky was up. Finally, after what seemed like hours but which my watch confirmed was only ninety minutes—still too damned close to dawn to feel good about—I stumbled into a space that seemed ever so slightly newer than third century AD. A wide cistern of some sort had been cut into the floor, holding what looked like a deep well of murky water. I craned my neck upward, my penlight barely picking out a catwalk high upon the wall. And hanging down from that catwalk, bolted against the wall…

  “Finally,” I moaned, realizing for the first time how nervous I’d been that I’d never get out of this labyrinth of stone and death. I raced over to the side of the cavern, then stuck the penlight in my mouth again—never mind where it had been this night—and attacked the ladder with newfound energy. Hand over hand, I climbed up the side of the sheer wall, not bothering to look down until I finally collapsed onto the landing of the catwalk far above, my lungs blowing hard. From there I could clearly see where I was, if only I spoke Italian. The underside of an official-looking city-issued manhole lay above me not six more feet.

  Pausing to ensure everything was still intact, I did one more check of the cards. Three came away in my hand. The Devil, which I was getting used to by now, the Five of Wands—another of the minors I’d already encountered this evening, and one I wasn’t at all happy to see again—and Justice.

  I scowled. From my underground position, I had no way of determining what Justice meant. Was I going to crawl out in front of a police station? Was karma about to bite me in the ass again? Or were there…

  I glanced up at the manhole. Security forces were typically presented by knight cards, but I’d been trying to keep tonight’s party just for the Majors. Still, if the enforcers for SANCTUS were waiting for me up there, for some reason, things were not going to end well for Armaeus’s box. Or for me, as it happened.

  Getting to my feet, I pulled the dull yellow reliquary out of my pocket and held it under the gleam of the penlight. As Armaeus had instructed, there was nothing on the piece but the inscription, carved into the box in some unreadable language. Aramaic, he’d said, but it didn’t matter. It could have been Alien and I wouldn’t have known the difference. The box looked bug-free at least, so that was a bonus. I stowed the reliquary in my jacket once more and slipped the safety off my gun in its shoulder holster, then hit the next ladder, picking up speed.

  Just as the square slab of rock in the tomb had been easy to dislodge, the manhole cover above me proved equally accommodating, and I pushed up the circular slab of metal to see out. I was in the middle of some sort of side street, and though a few cars were visible lining the curb, no traffic stirred. I heaved the manhole up and away, then crawled out of the shaft, pausing only long enough to drop the cover back over the hole. I’d just finished that process, still on my knees, when I heard a car door open.

  And then the lights came up.

  Christ, that’s bright. I crouched away in legitimate pain, the dawn still far enough away that I was practically blinded with the sudden glare after so many hours in darkness. Steps sounded loudly around, me, official and precise, and I heard a gun cocking into place. My own weapon was still holstered tight to my side, but I needed to understand how many people I’d be shooting at before I went that route.

  “The inscription, if you will.”

  “What?” I growled, turning around. Had someone said that aloud? And in English? No one spoke again for another moment, then the man closest to me started shouting at me in rapid-fire Italian.

  “Scatola!” the man next to him cried out over his associate’s words, and I understood what they wanted, even with my lousy Italian. Box. They wanted the reliquary.

  Worked for me. To hit me, they’d have to go through the relic, and I figured they didn’t want to risk damaging the thing. So with my left hand, I reached inside my jacket and pulled the box out, waving it in front of my chest as I turned, keeping my feet moving and the relic close.

  “The inscription,” the voice sounded again, more insistent this time. Definitely English. But I couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from.

  “I can’t read the damned inscription!” I shouted back, finally getting a good look at the men surrounding me. A dozen guys ranged in a tight circle wearing black uniforms and berets, all of them with rifles trained on my twirling form. How had th
ey found me so quickly? And what exactly had happened to Armaeus’s other agents—

  Meanwhile, I felt the press of otherworldly eyes upon me again as words were forming in my head, words such as I had never heard before, ancient and melodic, hypnotic and strange. Running around and through and over and above the Italians who now were edging closer, their shouts growing louder as the sun finally broke over the horizon and flooded the far-off street, its light still not reaching into this side alley.

  “The inscription!” The command was shouted now, this time in clear and perfect English, so close as to be right against my ear.

  “Fine!” I bellowed back. Waving the reliquary in my left hand, I spoke the words that had formed in my head in a rush—all three lines, not even knowing what I was saying as the sounds tumbled and crashed over themselves, my heart lightening as I neared the inscription’s end.

  Still, whatever I was saying, I wasn’t saying it fast enough. I heard the cock of a pistol, sensed the gun aimed at me as I babbled out the last words.

  And then the box suddenly weighed a million pounds, plunging from my hand.

  I grabbed for it and missed, then went for my gun instead, yanking it out just as the box made contact with the asphalt—and everything went sideways.

  As the relic shattered on the ground, an explosion ripped through the space with a percussive blast, though there was no sound, not even much light. Still, I wasn’t the only one affected. The commandoes standing around me all burst backward as well, like leaves caught in a strong wind, stumbling to the ground, smashing up against the alley’s wall, while I was yanked to my feet, and—

  Found myself staring into the face of the second most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life.

  “Second?” he said with a twist of his cruel lips. “How disappointing.”

  “What in the—” I hadn’t been working the cards this long not to figure out who this guy was. But what—and how…“You have got to be kidding me,” I snapped, not able to help myself. “Armaeus sent me after the actual Devil? As in the Prince of Darkness, the Father of Lies, the Enemy of Righteousness—you’re what I just stole from the Vatican?”