Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) by Vincent Zandri

exactly have time to read
it right now, so give me the Cliff Notes.”
    “It’s like I explained to you in
the headquarter’s interview room, some have speculated that when he went into
the cave he was abducted by extraterrestrials who took him into space and
taught him not only the wonders of our modern world but showed him precisely
what the future would look like.”
    “E.T. again,” I say, under my
breath.
    “Call it E.T. if you want, Chase,
but when he returned to Florence from that two-year absence, he started
inventing machines that couldn’t possibly be constructed using the technology
of that time. He also started obsessively drawing what would come to be known
as the grotesque heads.” She points to the man, or beast, laid out in the
coffin. “I think we’ve just discovered our first real grotesque man. Proof they
really existed. Proof da Vinci wasn’t just sketching from imagination, but,
instead, recording history. Or, the history to come. Proof he’d witnessed the
modern day genetic experiments between humans and animals.”
    I pull the Book of Truths out
of the satchel, open it.
    “Maybe there’s a history of this
man/animal inside the book,” I say, carefully, but rapidly, rummaging through
the pages until I come to a sketching of someone laid out in a coffin. It
matches our man, the head grotesque, pig-like, and not of this world.
    “Dear God, that’s him, or it ,”
Andrea says looking over my shoulder.
    There’s another sketch accompanying
the man. It’s Vitruvian Man.
    “There’s our V-man again,” I say. I
feel my built-in shit detector speak to me. I turn, and there on the wall is
the very faded, but still visible, carving of Vitruvian Man.
    “Da Vinci has been down here,” I
say. “He made pains to sketch this poor creature and to carve the Vitruvian Man
on the wall, following with a sketch in the Book of Truths .”
    “Question is, why?” Andrea says. “Why
go to the trouble to record this man’s burial chamber?”
    I’m rattling my brain for an answer
when I hear the sound of chewing once more. Only this time, the chewing noise
is growing louder and louder with each passing second.
    “What the hell is that?” Andrea
says, drawing her weapon.
    “I don’t know.” I swallow. “But I
don’t like the sound of it.”
    We both stand stone stiff, enough
fire power in both our hands to take down a small army. But, somehow, I feel
like bullets are not going to work against whatever is coming our way. Then,
out the corner of my eye, I see it emerging, if not oozing from a small hole in
the stone wall.
    A centipede.
    But not the kind of small, two or
three-inch long centipede I might have uncovered in my damp garage back in
upstate New York when I was growing up. This sucker must be a foot long if it’s
an inch, and maybe an inch and a half in diameter.
    “Chase, what the hell is that?!”
Andrea barks.
    Coming up from out of the floor,
centipedes. Dozens … hundreds of them, creeping out of small, coin-sized
holes in the floor and walls. Holes I never noticed in the dark room until now.
    “The place is infested,” I say. “Stomp
your feet.”
    “There’s too many of them, Chase.”
    I’m stomping my feet, feeling the crush
of the insect’s shell-like bodies, their guts splattering under my soles. But
Andrea is right. There’s too damn many of them. I feel multi- legged bugs
dropping on my head. I swat them away as fast as they drop onto my scalp.
    Andrea screams as a long centipede
crawls into her hair, runs its never-still legs around her neck.
    “Oh, Christ,” she shrieks, “get us
out of here, Chase.” Then, “Ouch! The bitch bit me.”
    “They’ve got pinchers,” I say,
swatting more of them from my legs and arms.
    Shining light on the walls, I’m not
seeing an opening. Only the life-like Vitruvian Man carved into the far wall.
    “We need to leave the way we came,”
I say.
    “How?” she shouts. “We