Page 49 of Obsidian Dream
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.
