Page 69 of Skotos
BANG.
The sound echoed through the chapel like a thunderclap.
I startled, my heart leaping into my throat.
Thomas spun toward the door, pistol sweeping left then right.
“Front of the chapel,” he whispered. “Stay behind me.”
I tucked the parchment into my coat and crouched low. Every breath was a shallow whisper in my chest. We listened—ears straining—for another sound or a voice or footsteps.
Instead, the old floorboard spoke again.
Creeeeeak.
Then another groan from somewhere below us.
Or maybe above? The rafters?
Could it have been a breeze, a gust of air?
Some animals rummaging around the ruins?
No, it sounded too heavy. It wasn’t the wind or a rat.
“Someone’s here,” Thomas whispered.
“I felt it earlier,” I admitted. “That we weren’t alone.”
He nodded, already stepping to the door. “We need to move.”
Behind us,Marini’s body shrank in the light. The man who had opened the secrets of the Vatican to us was now just another secret himself.
Creeeeeeeeeeak—closer this time.
Thomas edged into the chapel first, gun raised. I followed, blood pounding in my ears.
That’s when we saw him.
A figure in a priest’s robe—hunched over, skulking low between the pews, hands rifling through broken hymnals and rotten wood like a rat in search of some buried morsel. The sliver of daylight from the shattered stained-glass window caught his pale skin and sunken eyes.
The man’s head snapped up, eyes wide.
I didn’t know him, but I swore there was a flicker of recognition in his gaze.
Thomas darted forward.
The priest moved, faster than I thought possible. His hand darted into his robe—and came out with a small, gleaming dagger.
“Thomas! Knife!” I shouted.
Thomas lunged as the man raised the blade.
They collided in a blur of fabric and grunts, the dagger flashing between them.
There was a sharp cry—Thomas’s—and a spatter of blood across his shirt.
He staggered but didn’t let go.
