Page 229 of Empire of Shadows

“You talking to yourself, crazy fool?” Staines demanded.

“Praying,” Kuyoc corrected him neatly. “For God to protect me from the demons of this place sure to be outraged by your desecration.”

The priest flashed Staines a slightly terrifying smile. Staines blanched.

“Shall I ask them to spare your soul from their vengeance?” the priest pressed.

“Yeah,” Staines replied. “That would be very nice.”

The guard hurried away.

“You can’t possibly be serious,” Ellie demanded. This time, she carefully kept her voice to a whisper.

“I wanna know more about this dynamite,” Adam countered.

“Quiet,” the priest ordered as he gazed out over the place where Dawson and Jacobs watched the last nails be driven into the crate. “I’m trying to make a plan.”

“I’ve always been more of an improvisation kind of guy,” Adam offered helpfully.

Ellie could practically see the quick, well-tuned wheels of Kuyoc’s mind churning. His gaze settled on her with a force she could feel.

“What do you dream of?” he demanded.

“Me?” she protested weakly. “I…”

Possibilities churned through her mind. There were so many things—equality, respect. The feeling of sand under her fingers. The freedom to follow the bright, intriguing instincts of her intellect.

Or was Kuyoc asking her a different question?

The air around her tightened, sparking with the potential of the moment before a storm. Her skin, still damp from her ordeal in the caverns below, shivered with a strange chill—and the answer popped from her lips.

“A woman with a scar on her cheek,” Ellie blurted.

Kuyoc’s eyes widened with surprise.

“What?” he gasped.

Ellie’s eyes flickered to the priest’s forehead—to where a similar scar marred his weathered skin.

There were things in the caves below that Ellie now knew were quite capable of inflicting such wounds.

“You were here,” she spluttered, barely managing to keep her voice low. “You were here before. You fought those monsters.” Her eyes snapped to the pendant he wore beside his cross—the one that looked so remarkably like a great, pointed fang.

“Tell me about the woman,” Kuyoc ordered. His eyes blazed with focus.

“I saw her in the desert. In London. And here,” Ellie admitted in an awkward, hushed whisper. “In this place. By the plaza. There was… There was ash raining from the sky.”

“Did she speak?” Kuyoc pressed urgently.

Ellie swallowed thickly and answered him with the echo of the words from a dream.

“What do you want?”

Kuyoc’s eyes slid closed. He shook his head and laughed—a dark, tired chuckle.

“Quis enim cognovit sensum Domini?” he muttered.

Ellie’s mind automatically translated the Latin scripture.

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