Chapter 11
Eleven
Cisco
One second, the basement halls are a catacomb of whispers and dust, priests, scholars, and tourists too tired to notice the world is ending. The next, the evacuation alarm detonates overhead. Sound slams into my skull with the force of a jackhammer.
Every ounce of control I clawed back from my curse is suddenly undone. The devil wakes and thrashes inside my chest, desperate for release and begging, Strappagli la testa. Tear off their heads. Prove you’re alive.
Someone runs past. My hand slams on Mercy, shoving her to the side with me and narrowly missing a collision. I vaguely register their shout for us to leave before vertigo strikes, and I stagger.
For a heartbeat, the walls collapse inwards. The air turns rank and sour. Dirt, sweat, and fear.
Mercy is the only thing the alarm doesn’t blur. Her figure moves in front of me, long and star-bright, haloed under the emergency lights flashing blood red from above.
She turns back and pauses. “You okay, Padre?”
I don’t get a chance to answer. Doors burst open up and down the crypt.
Robed staff, guards, even a balding old canonist. Everyone bolts for the exits as if the devil’s on their tail, except I know I’m standing right here .
. . watching, battling my control to save their lives.
They push and curse, crashing into each other, trampling papers and coffee cups.
Some try the staircase; others double back to side corridors, shouting in ten different languages.
It’s chaos.
“They know.” Sweat prickles my brow.
Mercy’s eyes narrow, and she does the thing that obliterates the cold void in my body . . . she becomes the calm in my storm, sharp eyes cataloging the commotion, assessing the threat so I don’t have to.
I rest my head against a wall and focus on controlling my breath.
I don’t deserve her. She’s too good for me.
Too beautiful, too smart, too perfect. What was going through God’s head the day He decided to put her in my life, someone who would watch out for me when I needed it the most?
Someone who wouldn’t persecute me based on the thing living inside me.
Pain twists my insides as the urges try to bypass my will. I drop the bag and double over.
“Black suits at the far end,” she mutters, hand slipping beneath her habit’s veil to release her broken sword.
Break their necks.
The voice rattles inside my skull. I follow Mercy’s gaze to where two men gather by an emergency exit. Each has an ear-wire and hard little eyes. The tall one aims his torch around, mainly at the ceiling. The stocky one is already pawing at his phone, calling for backup, maybe.
Mercy’s robes rustle as she moves.
“Stay close,” I mutter, grabbing a handful of her habit and yanking her back. “If anyone touches you—”
“I’ll handle it.” She jerks her chin at the plain-clothed guards, who now nod and point at the phones, their faces more relaxed. “I don’t think this is our fault. Maybe a fire drill, or faulty device.”
Nevertheless, I pick up my bag, and we keep moving.
Fast. We round a corner and nearly collide with a gaggle of terrified academics.
They clutch portfolios and rosaries, faces white, veins standing out.
I bulldoze through them, shoulder first, forging a path for Mercy.
She follows in my slipstream, and it makes the void inside me purr.
Beneath the sirens, there’s another sound. The scraping, buzzing crawl of flies, far away but growing louder. Or maybe it’s just in my head. We pass tombs, shelves of relics, nameless crypts. The deeper we go, the more we’re alone.
Alone . . . just you and her.
No one to kill. Just a woman to fuck.
The curse shivers up my spine. I see myself grabbing Mercy’s waist, slamming her into stone, lifting her robes, and taking what I need until the whole world vanishes.
I blink, shoving the vision away with a grunt as we take the last turn and see St. Peter’s tomb dead ahead, lit with a single overhead bulb.
A hand clamps my shoulder and drags me backward.
I spin in a blur of black cloth and shadow, my hand already a vice around a man’s throat.
I slam him into the ancient brick wall. Air bursts from his lungs.
My other hand is back, fist clenched, the cross on my finger aimed at the soft bridge of his nose.
“Francesco. Basta.”
I blink. The red haze recedes enough for me to see wild, silver hair and the steady ice-blue eyes of Monsignor Bianchi.
“Monsignor,” I snarl.
He looks at my raised fist, then up at the hollowed out monster reflected in my eyes. “You always were more wolf than shepherd, Francesco, but I must catch your suora before she is too far.” I don’t release him. “You can’t trust anyone else.”
My fingers remain buried in the flesh of his neck, feeling the frantic leap of his pulse against my palm.
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because you saved my life once.”
I slowly uncurl my fingers and nod.
While he goes after her, I find my bearings. I’m in a dark, dank, excavated room covered in peeling frescoes and pagan carvings. My bag is a few steps away, where I must have dropped it. I grab it just as Bianchi returns with Mercy.
“This is a good way to lose my collar, Francesco.” Bianchi keeps his voice pitched low, gesturing to the evacuating scavi.
“The alarm?” I ask.
A nod. “I tripped it myself. Rats scatter when you turn on the light.”
Mercy locks eyes with me and raises her brows.
There’s no time to explain Bianchi’s meaning, only that I trust him enough to follow him deeper into the excavated room.
We keep going past a half-collapsed reliquary.
We follow him through a low arch. Every few feet, red lights strobe through dust. The evacuation remains in full swing.
“This should be good enough.” Bianchi finally stops in a narrow, shadowed tunnel.
He tilts his head to listen, then turns to me.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” He glances at Mercy, mouth twitching, and introduces himself in broken English.
“Sister. It is a pleasure to meet you. I am Monsignor Bianchi. I trust Francesco has told you about me.”
He waits expectantly.
“Um . . .” Mercy looks to me for direction.
“He is the exorcist who discovered me in Blackfriar,” I explain. “And friend.”
“Pleasure’s all mine, Monsignor.” Mercy’s purr sounds more like a growl as she steps closer to me. Her sleeve brushes my wrist, and the hunger shifts. Every muscle in my body clamps and screams, mine, mine, mine. Now it’s just her in my mind, a frequency I could lose myself in if I let go.
“You’re burning up, Francesco. Sweating.”
Biancho is right. While I’m nowhere near the condition I was in after Jasmine, my recovery period has rapidly decreased.
I’m hungry again. If I don’t find space and time to control myself, to pray, to confess, to find some semblance of peace other than Mercy . . . she might not survive my attention.
I close my eyes but see her naked against the cedarwood lockers and wince. She consented to my demands, but if she truly wanted me to stop, I’m not sure if I could have. She doesn’t understand how dangerous this can be.
“Cisco.” Her hand lands on my forearm. Squeezes once.
“I’m fine.” I open my eyes and force myself to look steady.
Bianchi gives me an assessing once over, clearly unimpressed as he switches to Italian and says, “My son, if you did to the cardinals what you did in prison to save my life, then you are the furthest thing from fine.”
My eyes narrow. “You’re not here to turn us in?”
“Why did you chase us, then?” Mercy asks, also in Italian.
Bianchi’s brows shoot sky-high. “So it’s true. Sinners are chameleons.”
She bares her teeth. “You’ll never see us coming before we slit your throats.”
“I mean no offense. We have been . . . I suppose you can say sheltered . . . from the truth.” He sweeps his gaze over both of us. “You two are the answer to a prayer.”
My fists clench and open on repeat. “You led me into that viper pit, and now you’re calling us a prayer.”
“I admit, the plan was not perfect.” He makes a constipated sound and shakes his head, wild hair bobbing. “The only thing we didn’t expect was that you’d make it so . . . final. Like the fireworks at Ferragosto. You left nothing behind to find.”
“Who’s we?” Mercy asks.
“His Holiness,” I reply.
It has to be.
Bianchi steps closer to me. “He has spent years watching the black smoke of Satan pour through the vents of the Apostolic Palace, Francesco. He couldn’t speak to you. Not with Valerio’s dogs sniffing at his heels. He had to know if the man he sent into the dark was still his . . . or theirs.”
The buzzing in my head drops to a low, confused hum.
Bianchi reaches into the deep folds of his crumpled jacket, his eyes flickering briefly to Mercy. He produces two items: a sleek black phone and a small leather-bound book so old it’s bound in skin.
“You proved your loyalty with their blood,” he says. “From this breath, you do not exist to the Church. No more Entity, not the old team. Now you report only to His Holiness. Through me.”
He shoves the objects into my chest. The book is heavy, vibrating with a cold power that makes the tattoos on my ribs itch. Mercy must sense it too because she steps closer, wary.
Mercy’s eyes narrow on the book. “What’s in it?”
Bianchi smirks. “Answers. The kind people were murdered to keep quiet.”
“Why does it feel different?” I ask, thumb rubbing over the surface. I can’t explain it, but it feels alive.
“It is from the vault,” Bianchi explains. “You read it, you destroy it. If you die, you die with it.”
He tries to push us out of the tunnel.
“Wait.” I dig my heels in, refusing to move. “They threatened my family. The Sisterhood.”
“Later,” he says, hurrying me.
“They said they’d laicize me,” I add. “Threatened my family and released my uncle from prison.”
Bianchi winces. “I cannot help with that.”
“We’re supposed just to trust you?” Mercy’s voice goes deadly soft.
“Please, Francesco. You must go.” Bianchi checks his watch. “The alarm will buy you only a few minutes. Five, maybe less. The tomb is clear for you to search for your missing sword piece.”
“How did you—?”
He cuts me off. “Same way you will know why the Pope trusts a man who chooses the Sinner over the Sanctum when the Sanctum is a lie.” He points down the alley toward the deep shadows near St. Peter’s resting place.
“The third sarcophagus on the left has a false back. It leads to the secret passage near the Trastevere gate. Leave Rome before the sun realizes what you’ve done. ”
I look at the book, then at the man who once gave me a collar to keep me from the noose. Even though Valerio trained me as a weapon, Bianchi was the first man to show me there was hope.
“Va’ con Dio, Francesco,” he murmurs, his hand ghosting a swift sign of the cross. “Go, before the hunger wins.”
He vanishes into the dark.