Still, not one to look a gift escape in the mouth, I yanked out the grate and stuck my penlight into the space, tossing more rock dust down. Nothing but open air lay beyond the hole, 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. Dare to dream.
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 eased up 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. The chamber held two doors, so, fine, two cards: Hanged Man and Sun. “Oh great, now you give me the Sun.”
I’d take it, though. I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic. Probably because I was forty feet underground.
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 turn as the weird half-echo of spectral laughter dogged my steps. Finally I gave up and started jogging, 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 felt like hours but which my watch confirmed was only ninety minutes, 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 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 raced over to the side of the cavern, then stuck the penlight in my mouth again—never mind where else it’d been stuck during the last several hours—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 totally see where I was, if only I spoke Italian. The underside of an official-looking manhole lay above me not six more feet.
Pausing to ensure everything was going according to plan, I did one more check of the cards and got The Devil, which I was getting used to by now. Then 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 then 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 or come face-to-face with the Super Friends? Toss-up. Justice was always a pain that way. You got what was coming to you, but every so often that was the boomerang of doom.
I glanced up at the manhole. Security forces were typically presented by knight cards, and knights were conspicuously not showing up to my card party so far. But 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
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 eased up 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. The chamber held two doors, so, fine, two cards: Hanged Man and Sun. “Oh great, now you give me the Sun.”
I’d take it, though. I was starting to feel a little claustrophobic. Probably because I was forty feet underground.
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 turn as the weird half-echo of spectral laughter dogged my steps. Finally I gave up and started jogging, 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 felt like hours but which my watch confirmed was only ninety minutes, 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 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 raced over to the side of the cavern, then stuck the penlight in my mouth again—never mind where else it’d been stuck during the last several hours—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 totally see where I was, if only I spoke Italian. The underside of an official-looking manhole lay above me not six more feet.
Pausing to ensure everything was going according to plan, I did one more check of the cards and got The Devil, which I was getting used to by now. Then 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 then 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 or come face-to-face with the Super Friends? Toss-up. Justice was always a pain that way. You got what was coming to you, but every so often that was the boomerang of doom.
I glanced up at the manhole. Security forces were typically presented by knight cards, and knights were conspicuously not showing up to my card party so far. But 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
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