Page 57 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
He returned to his place at the foot of the bed and admired his handiwork.
He imagined the blue blanket wasn’t a blanket at all, but hair. Hair so thick and dark and lovely it could never be rendered plain by an indifferent cut, an inexperienced dye job.
Hair so midnight blue it mimicked the heavens and should be crowned with stars.
Hair like…his sister’s.
Mouth watering, heart pounding in his chest, Caesar began, slowly, to work open the buckle of his belt.
“Everything is arranged for the meeting?”
The man in the fedora inclined his head, murmured respectfully, “Ita, domine meus.”
Yes, my lord. How Silas loved the unchanging ways of the Church. Everyone spoke Latin, no one questioned authority, underlings knew their place. He’d refused to speak Latin since he’d left the Roman catacombs, but he supposed he could bend that rule today, this being a special occasion.
After all, it wasn’t every day you arranged to meet the pope.
“Excellens,” he answered, and the man in the fedora smiled.
Their meeting place was a tiny café with strong espresso, surly waitstaff, and an excellent view of the Place du Tertre, a cobblestoned square ringed by small shops topped with tidy red awnings. Strung through the bare branches of trees all around were tiny blue lights, and sparkling white along curbs and windowsills was a confectioner’s dusting of snow. In spite of the hour and the dropping temperature, the square still buzzed with shoppers and diners and row after row of artists with easels, hawking portraits to all the tourists. This close to Christmas everything stayed open late.
To the slight, smiling man in the fedora and cloak sitting across from him at the scrolled iron café table, Silas said, “The timing is very important. Just before his Christmas morning speech would be ideal. We won’t keep His Holiness long, of course. He has so many important matters to attend to that day.”
Silas sent a little nudge along with these words, a hint of agreeability that had the man nodding.
“Il papa is eager to meet you, domine meus. He had only the highest respect for your predecessor, and he knows the work you do is necessary to our Mother the Church. To keep her safe from the evil that would prevail were we not so vigilant.” His face darkened. “These devils are everywhere these days.”
Oh, he really had no idea. Silas had to work hard to keep a straight face. “Give the cardinal my warm regards, will you? Please thank him for arranging the meeting and for his service. He will be rewarded handsomely for his loyalty. As will you all.”
Again the respectful incline of the head. They exchanged a few more words, particulars of timing and travel, until Silas discreetly looked at his watch. Without needing to be told, the man knew the meeting was over and rose from his chair.
“Ire cum Deus,” he murmured as a farewell. He lifted his hand to tip his hat, and Silas saw the small, black tattoo on his inner wrist, a tattoo all his kind shared: a headless panther run through with a spear. The man turned and made his way across the busy square, and Silas watched him go until he slipped into the shadows between two buildings and was lost from sight.
Go with God. It had been their motto since time immemorial, three words spoken as a blessing or farewell or any number of things in between. Strange how fanatics always needed some kind of slogan. Silas played along with it, as had Dominus before him, as had all the nonhuman leaders of this decidedly human group of hunters.
Expurgari, they called themselves. The purifiers. What a laugh. Almost a thousand years since the Inquisition began and their little troupe of Church-sanctioned killers formed, and they still had no idea what kind of monsters really pulled their strings.
Soon, though. Very soon they’d find out.
He tossed a few coins to the table and rose, smiling languidly at the girl who rushed over to clear his plate. Plain as vanilla pudding, she blushed and looked down. Tempting, but he had no time to dally this evening. He had more important matters to attend.
He had a murder to plan, a revolution to lead, an empire to overthrow.
He was much too busy to get sidetracked n
ow.
It was the strangest place D had ever seen.
Vast and dark and cavernous, it was some kind of underground cathedral, a monument erected to exalt the talent of anonymous street artists and remember the long-forgotten dead. Graffiti, vivid as nightmares, was everywhere. Splashed over the rock walls in lurid swaths of purple and black and red, yellow flowers painted on towering columns, a swirl of kaleidoscope color on the rounded cavern ceiling far above his head. There were flying gold dragons and mincing white geisha and snarling pale ghouls with clawed hands reaching out. There were enormous letters in some forgotten alphabet and an eight-foot-tall depiction of a nude woman with one arm draped over her head.
But the bones were far more bizarre than the artwork.
Rising all the way to the ceiling along one long, curving wall was displayed an artfully arranged array of human bones. Countless bones, possibly thousands, femurs and ribs and skulls stacked with careful, almost reverent precision. It was an ossuary, ghoulish in its grandeur, made all the more eerie by the hundreds of candles that glowed along its walls.
And somewhere in this empire of paint and bones, Eliana was hiding.
He couldn’t see her but he felt her, that frisson that tingled over every inch of his skin like thunderclouds just before they disgorged a bolt of lightning. He took another step forward into the cool, echoing space, his gaze searching every shadowed corner, every crevice, every hiding place.
