Chapter Twenty
KHALIDA
Khalida slid the flashlight into her pocket as she stared at the winding stairs leading to the catacombs. The oversized clock across the room struck six. The sound echoed loudly in the silence.
Above her, moonlight beamed through the window as the city settled into its evening festivities.
The thieves guild had kept their word. A neat little opening had been drilled through the five feet of concrete, and now they had access to the catacombs.
The pack of thieves, including Damiano, had made themselves scarce as soon as they had completed drilling.
Not that she actually believed they’d left.
They were somewhere on the outskirts of the library.
Khalida leaned over. The air ascending from beneath them was unsavory and stale. The scent of dried bone and flesh was offensive.
“Are you ready?” Rieka asked as she sidled up next to her. “Don’t forget Sypha’s present.”
The flashlight in Khalida’s hand flickered red as she held it over the hole.
But even with the infrared light, the stairs disappeared into the abyss.
She double-checked the knife on her hip.
She had replaced most of the knives with the iron coated ones Dante had provided, though she couldn’t quite part with her favorites or her swords.
And Sypha’s knife. The blaster strapped to her side felt uncomfortable, but she would get used to it.
Talik had the manacles, and she had taken the thirty-foot rope and coiled it tightly before she placed it in her backpack.
“Yes,” Khalida answered. She tugged at the straps as she glanced up at Talik. He stood next to Dante, both of them deep in conversation, their voices too low to hear. “Any further updates from Kade?”
Most may consider the hunter class an abomination, and she didn’t entirely disagree after seeing the aftermath of their killing spree in 1789, but even she was not above using their resources. And their predatory tracking skills.
Talik walked toward Khalida, shaking his head. “No. He gained access to his side of the tunnel about twenty minutes ago. Try not to stab him when you see him.”
“I will never hear the end of it,” Dante added.
Khalida snorted in response, as Rieka laughed next to her. Ideally, Dante would be leading them, but he wouldn’t leave Rieka. Not when the Anki would do anything to claim her.
“No heroics,” Talik reminded her.
Dante continued, as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “If you see anything out of the ordinary, sense a presence that shouldn’t be down there, return. We can work out another way to search for the relic. With more firepower.”
“We built a library and the Vatican over their only way out to the surface,” Rieka said before hastily adding with a bright blush, stuttering, “I’m sure there is nothing but skeletons down there.”
Talik laughed, interrupting the growing tension surrounding them. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Rieka.”
The sound of his laugh curled around Khalida, filling her with warmth as she did a final count of her weapons. “We will track our movements and backtrack when required.”
The GPS would be helpful, but she didn’t entirely trust it. In Egypt, somehow the wayfarers had blocked any transmissions to the surface and left them in the dark.
“Ten hours.” Dante handed Khalida a small black band and did the same for Talik. “And come back. The thieves need eighteen hours to refurbish the site back to its original condition.”
She looked at the analog watch, slightly surprised, before placing it on her other wrist, the watch face covered by her shirt. It appeared Dante trusted technology as much as she did.
“And if we don’t find what we are looking for?” Talik asked quietly.
“Return. We explore other options. The hunter records may have more information we can leverage off.”
“I will lead,” she told Talik. Out of the two of them, she had superior night vision. The rest of Talik’s senses were above most Atlanteans, except for his eyesight. It was only a little better than the average human.
Talik continued to get ready, putting on his fingerless gloves. Unlike her, he had settled for two blasters and one knife strapped to his thigh, and two in each of his boots.
“No Dorothy?” Dante asked as he looked at the blasters.
Khalida shook her head. She had forgotten about Talik’s tendency to name his weapons.
Rieka looked at him, confused. “You named your blasters?”
“Rose and Blanche.” Talik nodded to each of the blasters, pointing them out. “Better known as the girls.”
She couldn’t work out if Rieka was impressed or horrified at the concept.
“Ask Khalida how many grenades she brought.”
This time, Rieka’s eyes widened. Talik was trying to deflect the conversation from his own idiosyncrasies.
Khalida placed a hand on the hilt of her sword. “How do you know I have any?”
“You like things that go boom and shiny silver-edged objects. The sharper the better.”
It was hard to argue with Talik when he had said nothing that was not true.
“Grenades in a catacomb?” Rieka slowly asked, as if that was the weirdest thing she had ever heard. “You will destroy the sarcophagi! And cause a cave-in.”
Talik smiled, his eyes dark with mirth, no doubt over Rieka’s priorities. He glanced at Khalida. “Let’s go.”
***
KHALIDA
The crunch of bones under Khalida’s boots echoed loudly.
The dirt floor was littered with rocks, cloth, and fragments of skeletons.
Two hours of walking through the catacombs, and she was well and truly over the novelty.
She had no interest in or quarrels with the dead—she just didn’t want to be there.
Worse, the air tasted stale and musty, and she had swallowed enough bone dust to last three Atlantean lifetimes. It coated her mouth and throat—it was going to stay with her for a long time.
“If anyone says the word catacomb to me when we get out of here...I’m going to turn and walk in the opposite direction,” Talik whispered as he begrudgingly took another step.
He angled his torch, the pale-blue light, out of the way to ensure that she wasn’t blinded but bright enough he could use it to navigate.
Every so often, he swore softly as he tripped over something—a shard of bone, a piece of stiff cloth, or pieces of chunky sandstone and the occasional marble belonging to one of the oversized coffins.
Objects that shouldn’t have been outside of the enclosed graves.
Disgust tinged his every word. Khalida would not disagree.
They had followed Dante’s directions down to the letter.
The three hundred stairs had led them into a small passageway that forced both of them to hunch over as they walked through it.
The walls had gotten closer as they had explored, until they only needed to reach out with their arms wide and their fingers brushed the stone.
After another mile, they had entered a larger passageway.
Here the tunnel expanded until it was eight times the size of where they had come from.
The walls were smooth, as if at some point water had run through the region.
And the ceiling was easily twelve feet high.
On either side of them were ten-foot-long coffins, no higher than her waist. Each of them had been covered with a heavy slab of rock that appeared unmovable.
The sandstone ranged from dark brown to a pale white.
Most had Atlantean inscriptions, a handful were Latin.
Occasionally, they came across a vault with an Atlantean dialect she didn’t recognize.
That wasn’t too disturbing. It was the open vaults that were far more worrying.
Every so often, they would come across a half-broken lid.
Considering the stone would have weighed at least a ton.
Khalida did not want to know what had moved it.
She glanced at her watch, comparing both of them. “Just over two hours and we have barely covered a mile.”
It was a painstakingly long process as they reviewed each of the burial vaults, looking for any hint of the glyphs that matched the scroll. Or the relic...not that Sypha had given them a decent description of what they were looking for.
“Stop,” Talik softly called out. He flashed the light to a corner of the burial vault he had just walked by. “It’s not the symbol, but what does that remind you of?”
Khalida moved to stand next to him, ignoring the warmth emanating from him as she bent closer to the sandstone.
Long, deep gorges penetrated the stone. Four distinct sets. One for each paw.
“Talons.” Khalida whistled low. “Serpopards.”
“There isn’t a scent associated with it—it may have occurred centuries ago.”
“Or weeks ago.” Khalida sucked in a deep breath, filtering everything out. Talik was right. There was no hint of the scent of decaying flesh that she would have associated with the animal. “Perhaps it’s a rat?”
“A rodent of unusual size? Unless they are mutant size, I don’t think so.”
No. It was evidence of the damn serpopard. Rome did not have a big-cat problem or hadn’t for at least two millennia.
“It couldn’t be easy.” Talik sighed as he brushed a hand through his hair.
Khalida straightened slowly. “If there are serpopards, there may be wayfarers. Which means there is more than one way into the catacombs, and not just through the library or the Vatican.”
“A city as old as Rome would have more secrets than most. And they have had plenty of time to learn every single one of them.” He lowered the flashlight, the light flickering in front of him.
Her eyes narrowed, and she stared at the dying light as she forced herself to focus entirely on the mission.
Alone with Talik, she couldn’t ignore the fact that she had expected it to be uncomfortable and awkward working with him, but it was the opposite.
They moved in unison and seemed to communicate without words.
It was disturbing how quickly they had fallen back into patterns from their youth.
Any other time and she would question it, but down here, they had no choice.
She hadn’t forgotten Talik’s words in the library.
If one of them died, the other one would follow suit.
Fate was cruel, but they had made their choices.
It would be difficult for the Anki to offer one of them their greatest desire and not affect both of them. She hadn’t been entirely frivolous when she’d told Talik there was nothing they would both agree on. The gods couldn’t bring back the dead.
“This is the first time we have seen anything of interest. We keep going. Dante said it was the second day when they noticed the glyph.”
“We don’t know if this is the same path Dante and Idris took,” Talik pointed out. “And we only have three hours before we need to turn back.”
His flashlight flickered, glowing brightly then fading interchangeably, like someone was flicking the switch or covering it.
She stopped, her senses on high alert. “Again?”
It was the second time it had flickered since they had changed the batteries.
“I can’t sense anything.”
“Neither can I.” Talik moved closer to Khalida.
He faced the way they had come and surveyed the opposite end of the passageway, his dying light swallowed quickly by the darkness.
Talik’s eyesight may be closer to a human, but the rest of his heightened senses rivaled hers.
Khalida silently nodded as she took another step forward, increasing the distance between them.
She could only hear two heartbeats. Hers and Talik’s. But it didn’t mean they were the only ones in the catacombs. “Unlikely that it’s the battery. It was fully charged. Maybe some sort of interference, like back in Egypt.”
It was a timely reminder of the importance of not relying on modern conveniences and technology. And why she carried multiple knives as backup.
“Electronic jamming doesn’t explain why the flashlight keeps flickering,” Talik stated, a hint of hesitation laced his voice. “It may be the stone the vaults are built from or even the tunnel we are in.”
He didn’t sound very convinced by his own argument.
Moving the flashlight higher, she angled the dying light above their heads.
“Wait,” Talik whispered. “To your left. What is that?”
Khalida followed Talik’s instruction until she caught the edge of the shallow carving.
Using the light, she jumped onto a nearby burial vault before she stood on her toes, stretching out to touch the ceiling and the carving.
Grunting, she traced the shallow cut, pulling at the moss and weeds that had grown over the image.
It was no bigger than her hand—they had gotten lucky that Talik had spied it.
She traced the carving. The indentation was worn down but unmistakable.
The carving was Ninhursag’s mark, the double horseshoe, but this one was more intricately carved than the one they’d seen on the scroll. “I am geotagging it.”
They had found it, except it was nowhere near where Dante had described it. “Dante said it was on the corner of one catacomb, not on the ceiling.”
“Maybe there is more than one carved into the tunnel?” Talik answered as the light suddenly increased in brightness.
She glanced down. He was right next to her, the light dancing in front of them, casting shadows along the wall. Shadows that shouldn’t be there.
“What the fuck?” Talik moved toward the end of the coffin and stepped behind it—into the space that hadn’t existed moments ago, where the coffin had abutted the wall, with barely enough of a gap to slip a blade behind it.
But now Talik stood behind it, the tunnel wall a good ten feet behind him. There was now another row of coffins. Her heart skipped a beat as she followed Talik’s light.
She froze. There were two sets of footprints outlined in the dirt, heading in the same direction. They appeared to be the same dimensions as theirs.
All her senses went into overdrive as she held her breath. On instinct, she pulled out one of her swords, comforted by the familiar touch. The sound of it unsheathing echoed through the enclosed space as everything slowed down. Just like what had happened to Dante and Idris.
Somehow, despite walking along the path, they were going around in circles.