As Jake tensed next to her, Morgan shifted her position. They stood back to back, sighting the security guards down the barrel of their guns. She knew they could take down at least three of the men, but they were outnumbered and the leader knew it.
“If you surrender now, you’ll have a chance with the dogs in the forest.” He hefted the weight of the metal bar. “I’ll even give you this after I’ve finished.”
Morgan felt Jake lean back against her a little, his weight shifting. She knew her partner. He was in no mood to let these men anywhere near.
So be it.
Morgan readied herself, her target on one guard holding an automatic. These men might be ex-military, but it was likely a while since they’d been in an actual fight.
She prepared to fire.
“Stop!” A woman’s voice rang out across the courtyard.
The leader held up his fist, stopping his men from attacking. Morgan considered firing first to take advantage of the pause, but then Dr. Kelley Montague-Breton emerged from the shadows.
She was petite in stature, but her authority was clear as the men stepped back to let her pass. She walked in front of the guns and assessed the scene. There were dark shadows under her clear eyes and a depth of pain that seemed unusual for such a wealthy heiress and powerful CEO.
Morgan kept her gun raised, aware that everything could change in a second. “We’re here for the Becket reliquary and the bones of the Magi.”
“And whatever else you have hidden here,” Jake added. “ARKANE will have a team up here soon to investigate what the hell you’ve been doing.”
Kelley laughed softly and shook her head. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with. Your Director Marietti will find only obstacles and those in power will pressure ARKANE to close any investigation. Anchorite is untouchable.”
Morgan knew she wasn’t bluffing. Martin’s notes had implied Anchorite was bound deep into the corridors of government and its power went back generations. It held the kind of influence that remained in the shadows, but could wield both immense wealth or a silent blade as required.
Kelley paced the courtyard, assessing Morgan and Jake with a cool gaze. After a moment, she stopped, her posture changing as if she’d come to a decision. “There is no way for you to reach Anchorite through official channels. But perhaps you can end a cycle that I can’t finish myself.”
She looked up at the citadel. “The Black Anchorite has ruled my family for generations, tied by history and sustained by blood. I’ve tried to end it, but he…” Her words trailed off and in the silence, Morgan sensed years of dread.
Kelley took a deep breath and turned to the leader of the security guards. “Let them in, Zale.”
Zale frowned, confusion flickering over his features. “But we have to protect the citadel.” He looked up at the looming stone tower and lowered his voice to a whisper. “What if they don’t make it? He will demand a sacrifice.”
Kelley reached out and touched his arm. “There has already been so much sacrifice, far more than you know. I have to take this chance — for my sons, for future generations. For me.” She leaned in and spoke softly. “Please. Let them try.”
Zale softened at her touch and Morgan could see there was something between them, even if it had yet to blossom.
He waved his men away. “Back to your stations. I’ll handle this.”
The other guards returned inside the buildings and Zale turned, determination on his face. “I’m going in, too.”
Kelley frowned. “Why? Let them take the risk. You don’t know what he’s capable of.”
Zale shook off her hand and turned to look up at the citadel. “Every time you stepped through that door, I wanted to come with you and help end him. This is my chance.” He gripped her hands. “Let me prove myself to you.”
A sudden chill wind blew over the escarpment, sweeping a tornado of dead leaves up from the orchard. They whirled in the air, twisting into shapes of ruined corpses that reached out with undead hands. As the smell of rot and decay permeated the courtyard, the cry of a crow pierced the air, then many more joined the harsh chorus. Morgan looked up to see a flock of dark birds wheeling above, calling what could have been a warning. Was it for them or for whoever lay within?
“You must hurry,” Kelley said. “Or he will have time to prepare, and remember, things may not be as they seem inside. Stay together.”
Morgan gazed up at the citadel, black stones against a darkening sky as carrion crows circled above. Perhaps a temporary truce was the best way forward until they made it out with the relics and dealt with this Black Anchorite, whatever he might be. She and Jake had faced all manner of adversaries on their missions, and Morgan was ready for this one. As long as Jake was by her side, they could manage whatever might come.
She glanced at Jake, and he nodded in agreement. Together, they fell in behind the security guard.
Zale stepped up to the door of the citadel and bent his head for a moment as if he prayed for strength, then he put his hand against the thick wood studded by iron rivets. It seemed impregnable, but as he pushed the door, it swung open silently. The dark maw of a corridor stretched away before them.
The crows fell silent above and the whirling leaves fell to the stones of the courtyard. Zale held his gun out and stepped warily inside, Morgan and Jake right behind him, weapons high.
The temperature dropped inside the stone walls and a sudden bone-chilling cold made Morgan shiver as the door swung shut behind them. Motes of dust and ash rose from the floor, hanging in the air and clinging to their clothes as they walked on. The flagstones of the corridor were uneven, some half-sunken into the ground, and scuttling insects burrowed blindly in the cracks between as they hid away from the light. It smelled of the aftermath of battle — smoke and blood and fear. A memory of violence sunk deep into the citadel, woven into the fabric of stone and earth beneath.
There were places where the veil was thin, where the line blurred between the living and the dead, the present and other times. Morgan had brushed against such places before on ARKANE missions, but this citadel was peculiar. Time was confused here, its hold on the fabric of life somehow suspended.
An oversized crucifix hung on one wall lit from below, the body of Christ tortured and bloody, his face transfixed in pain, his eyes pleading for release from two thousand years hanging on the tree. But even though the citadel had the trappings of faith, Morgan sensed that no prayers had been spoken here for generations. The air seemed heavy with curses overlaid with a cloying incense that couldn’t hide its dark nature.
“Welcoming place, isn’t it?” The heavy stone around them dampened Jake’s soft words, but Morgan allowed a flicker of a smile to play over her lips. Her ARKANE partner was thankfully irrepressible, even when injured. Perhaps she needed some of those painkillers…
Zale stopped at another heavy door at the end of the corridor, this one etched with faded runes mingled with medieval curses. The door handle was sculpted steel crafted from the rolled blades of vanquished enemies. Morgan and Jake readied their weapons as Zale reached out with a shaking hand.
Before he could touch it, the door opened with a creak.
An old woman stood in the doorway, her eyes opaque as she stared into the air above their heads. Her skin was dry and cracked, shrunken against her bones.
“He’s expecting you,” she croaked with a ragged breath.
She waved them on and as Morgan walked past; the woman looked right at her. The irises in her blind eyes seemed to swirl into patterns of storm clouds where deformed winged creatures flew, talons outstretched, as they hunted their prey in the shadows.
A long hallway stretched in front of them with tapestries hung on both sides, the rich fibers coated with a layer of dust. As they walked past, Morgan recognized the sack of Jerusalem by Crusaders underneath the grime. Knights mounted on horses with red crosses on their armor slashed down at infidels and pilgrims alike, their faces contorted with lust for blood and glory. Heaped bodies lay at the base of the tapestries, each face a portrait of suffering, while maggots squirmed out of bloody wounds and carrion birds pecked at eyes and exposed flesh. A banner of embroidered words hung above the killing field: God will know his own.
The images were so vivid that Morgan thought she could hear the cries of Crusaders ring out across the battlefield, the clash of metal, the thud of horses’ hooves, the screams of the dying. It was as if they were in the midst of battle, the smell of smoke from fires, the stench of blood and voided bowels, the sweat of men and horses as they slaughtered in the name of God.
The cacophony grew louder. The battle was almost upon them, sound and sensation intensifying into a crescendo.
The corridor grew hazy and the tapestries writhed with life. Morgan fell to her knees, overwhelmed with memories of war. She was under fire in the Golan Heights, a soldier in the Israel Defense Force, fighting to stay alive. A flash of light and her husband, Elian, died once more in a hail of bullets, his blood coating her hands, soaking into her uniform.
The bullets came again — over and over — and still, she couldn’t save him. Tears rolled down her cheeks as Morgan cradled Elian’s broken body against her own, another pointless death in an endless war.
The sounds of battle rolled around her in waves, emanating from the tapestries, along with memories of death by fire and torture, bullet and knife, fist and boot. Memories that weren’t hers anymore, but somehow projected from the surrounding walls.
In the depths of the bloody vision, Morgan clawed her way back to the surface, mentally setting aside the past. She had faced such horrors before and lived. The memories couldn’t touch her now.
She placed one hand on the carpet, anchoring herself to the physical world, pushing away the swirling vortex of terror as she fought to escape the strange visions that the citadel projected into their minds. Beside her, Jake reached out for a tapestry with an expression of anguish, tears on his cheeks. Did he see the broken bodies of his family there?
Zale stumbled and put his hands over his ears. “Make it stop,” he moaned. He fell to his knees and bent forward, his head almost touching the carpet as he tried to block out the assault on his senses.
They had to get out of this corridor. There was something in the tapestries or in the air that dragged them into the violent depths of war. But Morgan would not turn back. It wasn’t just the mission anymore. A dark curiosity led her on. She wanted to face the Black Anchorite.
She shook Jake’s arm. “We need to move. Now!”
He blinked, confusion on his face, but as Morgan grabbed Zale under one arm, Jake took the other side. Together, they dragged the moaning security guard onward, through another door at the end of the corridor, and stumbled into the heart of the citadel.
A circular room opened up to a skylight high above, with stone walls bounded by plain Gothic arches. Each led off to separate rooms, most stacked high with books. A mottled rug of black and crimson, the colors of pitch and blood, led toward a fireplace roaring with flame, although somehow the room remained piercingly cold. A gigantic oil painting of the End Times hung on the wall. Demons boiled from the pit of hell, tormenting the damned with spiked claws and sharp teeth, ripping flesh from bone as an uncaring god turned his back on them all.
A robed figure stood looking up at the painting, his stature tall and commanding, a hood over his face. He turned as Morgan and Jake burst in and the firelight flickered over his ravaged face.