Page 57 of Skotos
27
Will
The next morning, I made a quick call to our new Vatican friend, Monsignor Rinaldi, to arrange another visit with the Curia. I wasn’t sure what questions he might answer—or even which ones we needed to ask—but all paths, indeed, led to Rome, at least those with any hint of mission progress appeared to.
We found Marini where we’d left him—half buried in parchment, hunched over a volume thicker than my arm, and looking like he hadn’t seen the sun in a decade, if ever.
Marini glanced up as we entered, his brow creasing. “Back again so soon?”
Thomas closed the door behind us. “We were hoping you might help us connect a few more dots.”
I laid the satchel on the table and pulled out a folder, spreading its contents—photos of the bullet casing, the strange icon, sketches of the spear, notesfrom Marini’s own tomes, and a few newspaper clippings describing the recent assassinations.
Marini leaned over his desk with a frown. “So it wasn’t just an echo from history; it is truly happening again.”
“Again?” Thomas asked.
Marini nodded absently, his eyes never leaving the pages on his desk.
“We need to know who’s behind all of this,” I said, watching him carefully. “If we have any hope of stopping future killings.”
“The spear.” He tapped the photo with a bony finger. “I assumed it was symbolic, long dead.”
“It’s not dead.” Thomas crossed his arms. “Someone’s using it, and people are dying.”
Marini’s hands trembled slightly as he turned one of the photographs. “The implications of this are . . . staggering. If what you say is true, we are not just dealing with a forgotten order—we are facing one that never truly vanished.”
“And they’re still killing,” I said.
For a long moment, Marini didn’t speak. His eyes rested on the image of the casing, his brow furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line. Then, almost imperceptibly, his shoulders sagged.
I watched how gently he handled the edges of the photos, how he squinted as though willing the ink to speak more loudly.
“Father Marini,” I said, quietly now, “how did you end up down here, of all places? Buried in parchment, surrounded by tombs?”
He blinked, lifting his head as though I’d broken some spell, then he gave a quiet, almost embarrassed laugh. “Not the sort of glamor the priesthood promises, is it?”
“That depends on who you ask,” I said, granting the man a small smile.
His chair squealed as he leaned back and looked past us to the lamp’s gentle glow on the far wall. “I came to the cloth late. It was not my first calling—far from it, in truth. I studied history—secular and political, Russian imperialism, mostly. I loved unearthing truth buried in the dust, the unvarnished kind; but I was always . . . haunted, I suppose . . . by the gaps, the things that could not be explained or discovered, those things that did not add up in any official record.”
He looked at me then, his eyes those of a patient grandfather who was never blessed with children of his own. “I had questions no historian could answer, but the Church . . . the Church embraces mystery. It does not demand clarity. I suppose, somewhere in those contradictions, I found peace.”
Marini smiled, his gaze growing ever more distant. “I asked for the most obscure assignment possible. They gave me this. I think they expected me to go mad cataloging the forgotten, butinstead—” He gestured to the stacks behind him, to the cloistered silence. “I found my true home.”
I liked him more for that, for all of it—his quiet conviction, his awareness that his work mattered, even if few ever saw it.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “For trusting us.”
He inclined his head, then his gaze sharpened as he returned to the photos. “I had a mentor once,” he said, not looking up. “Father Luciani. He was obsessed with patterns in the past—hidden threads in Church history that reemerged when the world was at its weakest. He believed the Divine moved when man needed His guidance the most. I always thought his theories were romantic nonsense, but this . . .” He paused, his fingers gently brushing the page. “This feels like one of those threads pulling taut.”
He looked at me again, and for the first time, I saw the man beneath the scholar—the tired, frightened human trying to make sense of a world he thought he understood. His hands trembled again as he spoke. “What if these people have been waiting, hidden all these years? What if they have been searching for a crack in the world they might wedge open? Perhaps one born of a great war?”
I suddenly felt protective of Marini, this kind, aged man who lived beneath a mountain of marble in the shadow of great men whose influence was felt across the globe, this man who never once covetedthe limelight or fame, rather sought only to be of service in his own unique, if small, way.
“Father Marini,” I said. “We need your help. We want to stop this—whatever it is—but we have so little to go on.”
The priest eyed me a moment, his expression less emotive than the stacks of dusty books behind him. “I need time. There are deeper records, ones not indexed that require a different permission even to acknowledge. I will need to speak with my superiors, perhaps His Holiness, to be allowed access.”
