An informant wishes to meet you at Fontevraud Abbey tomorrow at 10 a.m. to discuss Mr. Genet’s acquisition. Will call in the morning with exact details. I look forward to my Elvis car. Be careful, Marian. These are not good people.
Richard handed the note back to Marian. If a former KGB agent considered them “not good” people, they probably should start being concerned about curses. The choice of rendezvous was ominous as well. That was where the Immortal Court lived before the French Revolution.
All of it was suspicious.
“I’ve always wanted to visit the abbey, but somehow, it had never worked out. At least, whatever happens, I finally have a chance to see it,” Marian said.
“I could wish for any other place. ‘Whatever happens’ might be worse than you imagine.”
Marian tucked the note back in her pocket.
“What do you mean?” Daz asked.
“I don’t like it. I’m familiar with the abbey from my time in France. It feels like a trap.”
“If it is, and if you still want to find Rasputin, we have to walk into it,” Daz said.
“Absolutely,” Richard said. “But Marian doesn’t have to take the risk.”
“The hell I don’t,” she said.
After breakfast in the hotel suite the next morning, they set out for the abbey. It was close enough for a nice, brisk stroll. Marian suspected that the person who’d agreed to meet with them knew that.
Curses. She’d tossed and turned thinking about it. She didn’t believe in curses, but she believed in psychic abilities. A curse could mean a psychic was protecting Rasputin’s remains, for some reason. Maybe a descendant? Or a descendant of a former pupil? Rasputin had lived long enough that he could have trained a successor, like one generation of Doyles trained the next.
But whatever was behind this curse, they didn’t know about her. And she had Richard on her side, and Daz. She’d take those odds. She’d faced dangerous situations alone before. Having back-up was better.
As the massive stone towers of Fontevraud Abbey loomed above them, Marian sensed Richard’s growing discomfort. He looked down, not up. He almost bumped into several pedestrians, and he didn’t glance at the shop windows.
She was getting used to his not talking when something was on his mind. But this seemed different.
As they neared the entrance, he stopped, as if he’d encountered some invisible force field. His head was down and his gaze kept sliding away from the abbey.
This was not Richard. He ruled the world. The world did not rule him. What bad memories stalked him here?
“What’s wrong, Richard? Are you worried about curses?” she asked.
“I’m more worried about flesh-and-blood men. This is an odd place to exchange information on Rasputin.”
“But it’s public and that’s better for us than a private, remote location,” Daz said.
“You were shot at in public,” Richard said.
“Not going to let me live that down, are you?”
“No chance.”
“This isn’t the same as Bryant Park. Once we’re inside, it will be hard to hide anywhere,” Daz said. “I looked up a site map last night. It’s nearly impossible for a sniper to find cover. Anyone who approaches us will have to approach us directly. I’ll take those odds.”
“Your reasoning is my own, Montoya. It’s why I agreed to the meeting, despite my unease.”
At least he acknowledged something was off, Marian thought. He had faced an unknown sniper with calm. He’d faced down a firestarter, a telepath and the man who killed his brother without once showing any fear. “You’re really worried about this curse stuff.”
“We’ve had two warnings from reliable sources.” He paused and stared at her. “I’ve found curses cannot always be disregarded.”
“I’ve always found that guns cancel out curses,” Daz said.
“Do you have a gun?” she asked.
“No, too much paperwork to get done in too short a time to get through customs with a weapon. I know where to get one, though.”
“You’ll get into serious trouble if you’re found with an illegal weapon,” she said.
“Less trouble than if someone attacks and I can’t defend us,” Daz said.
Richard stuffed his hands into his pockets and continued to stare at the abbey.
“Spill it, prince guy,” Daz said.
“Once, a very long time ago, this abbey was home. Someone’s sending a message to me by meeting us here.”
“Could be,” Daz agreed. “Or could be you’re homesick.”
“Possible.”
“Does it look the same as back then?” she asked.
“Not from when I first came to it, no. Two of the towers were built after my time in the abbey. And the interior was used as a prison for many years after I was gone, and it was stripped clean. All the frescos, furnishings and reliefs I once knew are gone. It’s a shell of what I knew.”
“You miss it?” she asked.
“I miss many things.”
“Romanoff’s contact wants to meet us where they keep the tombs of the kings,” Daz broke in. “Any thoughts on security there?”
“They are effigies, not tombs,” Richard corrected. “The bodies aren’t present any longer. They went missing during the French Revolution.”
“Some delayed peasant payback?” Daz asked.
Richard shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any to meet. As pointed out, there’s no place to hide in that room and thus we should be safe enough, putting aside my homesickness.”
“Do you know where the missing bodies from the effigies went?” she asked.
Richard only shrugged again.
Marian had the distinct feeling that Richard knew exactly where the bodies were located. One day, she was going to have him sit down and relate his life instead of doling it out in dribs and drabs. Her scholarly father would drool over the very idea. And whoever his Queen was, she probably had even better tales.
Richard shook his head. “Past is past. I find it much better to live in the present. California’s my home now.” He strode down the sidewalk and into the abbey, all hesitation gone.
Many Gothic or medieval-era churches were so similar as to be identical. Not Fontevraud Abbey. Marian’s fingers lingered on the smooth abbey walls as they walked down an interior corridor. As Richard had said, this place had been picked clean many years ago. The damage from the abbey’s time as a prison had been wiped away, but so had everything else.
This was an unremarkable wall, not even showing much of the signs of age of construction.
She craned her neck to study the vaulted ceilings above them. It would be lovely to spend the day here as a tourist, if only to note differences with other abbeys in Europe. The major difference so far was that the bareness made it feel cavernous but also more mysterious, as if it needed filling in.
If only they were tourists.
As they walked down the corridor to where the effigies were displayed, Marian shivered. Ancient places had their own unique atmospheres. Canterbury Cathedral was heavy and intense inside, the air thick with the prayers of so many pilgrims over the years. Westminster Abbey was more like a museum, historic but not sacred. Notre Dame in Paris overwhelmed with ornate structures and the beautiful sound of the bells.
In Fontevraud Abbey, Marian felt as if ghosts walked with her, whispering secrets just out of her coherence. She knew the logical explanation for the sensation. With so many vaulted ceilings, it was likely the air currents shifted oddly, carrying voices from one room to the others. Logic had little to do with Marian feeling she was being judged by the unknown specters.
So big a space. It needed color to be truly magnificent, like an arrowhead needed an arrow to be truly complete.
Daz craned his head to absorb his surroundings. “Not like church at home.”
“Not like home at all,” Richard said.
They walked into a large empty hall with high vaulted ceilings. Save for the four effigies in the middle, surrounded by rope to keep visitors at a respectful distance, it was empty. Marian wasn’t sure if the emptiness made the effigies more or less magnificent.
Daz had said “the kings” were buried here. It would be more accurate to say “the royal Plantagenets”. Henry II of England’s effigy was in one tomb. His wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, a native of this land, occupied another. They were joined by Richard I, their son, and Queen Isabella, their daughter-in-law, wife of their youngest son, King John. Isabella, like Eleanor, had been born near here.
But, as her Prince Richard had said, the bodies were gone, lost to time, just like Rasputin’s remains. Or just like Thomas Beckett’s bones, which were reportedly shot out of a cannon during England’s break with Rome under Henry VIII.
Medieval corpses went missing for many reasons over the years and not just because the person had been controversial in life. Sometimes it was through carelessness. Look at Richard III of England, whom history had tagged as her Richard’s murderer. His burial place was reported and then lost to time until its recent rediscovery.
Richard fell behind her as they walked closer to the effigies. Eleanor of Aquitaine held a book in her hand. Perhaps the Bible, though, having studied that formidable Queen at some length, Marian guessed it was more likely to have been some book of poetry penned by an admirer. The colors on the effigies must have once been bright red, blue and yellow but now were faded. Many areas of the stone were chipped and worn.
“They deserve better,” she said.
“They’re remembered and honored after 900 years when so many are forgotten,” Richard said. “That is worth a great deal.”
Marian bowed her head in respect.
“Looks like we’re early,” Daz said.
“Looks that way,” Richard said, glancing around.
A row of monks marched in, their hoods cast over their heads. Their sandals thwapped against the stone floor as they approached the exhibit. She hadn’t known the abbey was home to a monastery but their presence fit in with this place.
Richard bent his head and closed his eyes, his shoulders slumped as if in prayer. He might have lived here, but he couldn’t have known these people. They were five, no six generations before his time. So why had his immortal Court been centered here? Had the formidable Eleanor left other descendants who were immortal, like Richard?
If the walls could talk instead of merely whispering and making her shiver, she might know. As if sensing her discomfort, Daz stepped closer to her. His warm breath tickled her neck, a very human feeling in the midst of all this.
The monks chanted, and they spread out before the effigies.
Marian frowned. Russian chants?
She turned to whisper to Daz how strange that was.
He pushed her aside so hard that she stumbled and nearly fell.
“Run!” he yelled.
A monk holding a long knife vaulted over the effigies and landed on top of Daz. Two others rushed Richard and knocked him down. Marian scrambled backwards, toward the wall, away from the fighting. Fending off knife-wielding monks was definitely not part of her job description. Getting away from them, however…
Richard punched his opponent in the chest with the flat of his hand. Before the monk could recover, Richard regained his feet and grabbed the other’s wrist and wrenched away his dagger. The weapon went skittering across the stone and hit the bottom of Henry II’s effigy.
Marian automatically cataloged the blade as a Russian military dagger, pre-revolutionary. Oh, she was being so helpful, figuring out what the dagger was while Richard and Daz were fighting for their lives. She had to do something.
Richard ducked a blow from one monk, grabbed the arm of another and smashed the two into each other. As they crashed to the floor in a heap, he snatched a dagger from another who rushed him.
But he was too late to prevent yet another monk from slicing his forearm. Richard ducked to avoid a jab, grabbed the monk by his robe and tossed him into the far wall. The monk hit with a solid thump, his head smacked the stone, and he slid to the floor and did not move.
Blood dripped onto the pristine floor of the abbey. The monks surrounded Richard and Daz and began to close in.
Dammit, that last-resort trick Aunt Eunice taught her would only work with one person. Too many here. She needed to do something else.
She counted one, two, three, and disappeared into the floor.
Darkness closed around her, as it always did in solid ground. Packed dirt, very little moisture. Good, dirt with lots of water was always harder to pass through. She floated to the right, hoping to reach the ground directly underneath the effigies. So hard to judge distance and location underground but she could hear the sounds of footsteps and battle overhead becoming louder as she moved. Definitely, she was headed in the right direction.
The blood spreading on the floor flashed through her mind. No. She could not lose concentration. Aunt Eunice had drubbed into her how fatal that could be. If she didn’t keep her mind on the task, she could turn solid and suffocate inside the rock.
She floated upward and raised her hand over her head. There. The lighter feeling overhead was air. She pushed upward and her head phased into stale air. She was inside the effigies. No rotted flesh, no smell related to corpses. Perhaps they were long gone. She reached into her pocket for the mini LED flashlight she always carried. She waved her hand to make sure it was in empty space, blinked, and both the LED light and her hand became solid. She clicked on the switch.
Empty. Confirmation that there were no bodies here, as Richard had said.
But there were ghosts in the abbey. At least, there was one now.
She took a deep breath, easing it out as she became fully a phantom once more. She slipped the LED light back into her pocket and rose out of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s effigy, arms outstretched.
“Who dares disturb my rest?”
Her voice reverberated off the walls, sounding sinister and otherworldly. Aunt Eunice said the distortion was due to the lower density of the vocal cords in phantom form. Marian didn’t care why right now. She cared it was scaring the monks.
The monks engaged in battle with Richard and Daz halted in mid-fight. They dropped their daggers. The metal clattered to the floor, making more noise than the fighting had.
Richard grabbed one of the transfixed monks from behind and knocked him on the head. The monk slumped in his arms. He struck another in the side, knocking him over, and grabbed him. The remaining monks left stared at her for a second, turned around and fled.
She descended to the floor, still holding her phantom state. The eyes of the monk Richard held captive were wide in fear and terror.
“Follow me!” Richard ordered.
She took another deep breath, became solid and ran with them down a passageway opposite the way they had come. Richard carried the monk easily over his shoulder. Surfing must build serious muscles, she thought.
Daz glanced behind them. “Dammit, we should stay and talk to the police. We were the ones who were attacked.”
“And if the monks claim the opposite, that we were the aggressors?” Richard asked.
“That place has video covering it. They’ll know the monks are lying,” Daz answered.
“If the monks didn’t disable the video, the authorities will note the appearance of a ghost. Do you want to explain that?”
“I don’t,” Marian gasped out.
They dashed around a corner. The small hallway led out to the open grounds.
“Hell, Prince, they’ll spot us out there,” Daz said.
“We’re not going out there,” Richard said.
“Then we wait for the cops?”
“Not until we talk to our friend, the monk,” Richard answered.
“And where the hell do we do that?”
“Elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere?” Marian said. “Where the heck is elsewhere?”
On reflection, she agreed with Daz. Running from authorities was, in her experience, a bad thing. And now she was doing it for the second time in three days.
Richard patted the wall just above his hand. “Here. On the other side is a passage. Go through and you should be able to let us in, Angel. Quickly!”
Do first, argue later. She was used to that. Too used to it. But she obeyed and walked through the wall.
There was a chamber on the other side, as Richard had claimed. She clicked on her LED light. The door was metal on this side, with a wheel mechanism that opened the steel bars on the top and bottom.
“I hope this opens easily,” she muttered. She set her now-solid hands on the wheel and turned.
The steel bars creaked but slid open with only a small effort. Now she just had to pull open the door. She wrapped her hands around the wheel and pulled. The damn door didn’t move.
She stuck her head through the wall. “It’s unlocked but stuck! You need to push it open from that side.”
“Go back in and step away,” Richard ordered.
She slipped back into darkness and flattened herself against the side wall. She shone her light above. Cobwebs. Spiders, she could handle. But who knew what else lurked in this place?
The door swung inward, and Richard rushed through, carrying the now-moaning monk. Daz stumbled in behind them. Richard slammed the door shut and locked it with one hand.
Wow, surfing must really build serious muscles.
With one last metallic click, they were in near-darkness. On the run from the authorities. With a crazed monk.
“I believe in the curse now,” she said.
“Me too,” Daz said.
“We certainly have enemies. No curses needed for that. Daz, more light please.”
Daz added his flashlight to hers, chasing away some of the gloom. Richard set the monk at the base of the wall.
She and Daz focused their lights on him.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Forget this place. Let’s back up because I’m still stuck on murderous monks and a woman who turns into a ghost. What the hell, Marian?”
Oh. She’d forgotten in the confusion that Daz didn’t know.
“It’s a psychic ability, like your firestarter’s power,” she said.
“Like hell it is! Alec doesn’t turn into a freakin’ phantom! I nearly had a heart attack when you disappeared into the floor.”
“There wasn’t time to tell you what I was going to do. We were in the middle of an attack.”
“You weren’t being attacked on the plane ride over. Or on the drive to see the Russian Elvis. Or last night in the hotel. Or on the ride here. You lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you. What did you expect? You practically kidnapped me the day we met. Why should I trust you with the family secret?”
“You trusted him with it.” Daz pointed at Richard, who was kneeling at the captive monk’s side.
“Richard already knew. His court were my ancestors’ patrons. They helped found Doyle Antiquities.”
“Wait, you’re a whole family of ghosts?”
“No, just me right now.” No, she shouldn’t have said that. She was babbling again.
“Will you two stop and instead help me talk to this monk?” Richard cut in. “He’s muttering in Russian. I’m lousy at Russian. Angel, I need your assistance.”
She leaned down next to Richard, balancing by gripping his shoulder.
“Why did you attack us?” she asked the monk in Russian.
“Why do you disturb my saint’s peace, devil ghost?” the monk whispered. “Go back to Hell.”
Devil ghost? She’d asked for that one, hadn’t she?
“I only seek your saint for help, not harm.”
“No, as foretold, you are the devil! You are upon us! You will destroy my soul in fire! No, I will not give in to you, foul thing. Saint Rasputin, save me.”
“Did he just say Rasputin?” Daz asked.
“Yes, he did.” She had assumed all along they were looking for the corpse of the man, but he appeared to definitely have an heir of some sort who commanded living influence.
A Rasputin heir protecting the legacy would certainly explain a curse.
“I only wish to find Saint Rasputin to heal me. I need your help,” she said to the monk. “Please, I must have his blessing.”
“No! Unclean devil! The coming of the demon fire has been foreseen. The saint has been warned and is taking precautions to prevent his soul from being destroyed in fire. You may take me, but you will perish in your own fire!”
“He terms you devil, yes?” Richard asked.
“First I’m an angel and now I’m the devil. Lovely,” she muttered under her breath. “He said something about souls being destroyed in fire. He’s terrified, says it’s foreseen the demon fire will pose danger to his saint.” She translated everything the monk had said to her for them, realizing only then that the monk had said the “saint” was taking precautions. Implying Rasputin himself, not an heir.
“Appealing to his good side doesn’t seem to be working,” Daz said.
“Definitely not,” she agreed.
“Then show him your anger,” Richard said. “Say anything you believe will cause a reaction.”
She shrugged. Why not?
“Speak now!” she ordered in Russian. “You say I am the devil. I will touch you and pollute you with my unclean presence if you do not answer why you have sought to injure me and my people.”
Russian was a nicely guttural language for threatening people.
“You can destroy me, but you cannot frighten me. Saint Rasputin has blessed me. My soul is cleansed.” The monk put up a hand, as if to ward her off. “It has been foreseen that our saint must destroy a devil made of fire coming to challenge him. You are the vanguard of this one and you hope to convince me to stray from the path? Never! We will not listen; we will help our savior cleanse the world to make it safe for Him. You must be cast back into Hell, all of you. Whatever happens to me, I will be in Heaven with God’s blessing. I Curse you and yours forever!”
Marian could practically hear the capitalized H in Hell and C in curse. “You challenge me with the specter of Rasputin, a dead man? Ghosts have nothing to fear from other specters.”
“Not dead, never dead, devil ghost! As our Lord was reborn, so our Saint Rasputin, he who is God’s chosen to cleanse the world, is reborn. He is coming! You will pay!”
The monk began shaking uncontrollably. She jumped back to avoid being backhanded. Richard grabbed the monk’s head to prevent him from smashing it against the floor and cradled the thrashing body against him.
In a few seconds, as quickly as the fit had started, it ended with the monk unconscious.
Daz knelt and checked their captive’s pulse. He put his head on the monk’s chest. “He’s alive, but I have no idea what’s wrong with him.”
“He’s told us all he was going to tell us,” Richard said. “He’s no more use to us now.”
“We can’t just leave him here without medical help,” Daz said. “I don’t operate like that.”
“Oh, and you think I would just let him die?”
“Enough! I’ll take him back outside the wall.” Before anyone could object, Marian put her arms around the monk and turned them both in phantoms. At least he was limp. Doing this while he was struggling would have been impossible.
She was roughly the same size as the monk. That meant she couldn’t make all of him go phantom at once. Too big. She didn’t have that much juice. But she could go phantom bit by bit, and turn him phantom the same way, as they passed through the wall.
She closed her eyes, to shut out the world and be sure all her focus was on their ever-changing bodies. It all took maybe seconds for them to travel through the wall. To her, it felt like hours.
She took a deep breath and let go of her ability. They turned solid on the other side of the wall. Fresh air. Nice!
“Stop!”
The yell in French came from someone rushing toward them.
She set the monk at the base of the wall and slipped back through to the others. As soon as she was solid, Richard encased her in a hug. The musty smell of the corridor was replaced by the scent of his sweat and blood. His arms felt like a wall of steel protecting her.
Good; this was very good.
“God’s bloody eyes, Marian, that was dangerous. Do not do that again!”
“That was not nearly as dangerous as fighting crazed Russian monks.”
“And not nearly as dangerous as keeping secrets from someone trying to help you,” Daz said. “Or maybe you were setting us up, Prince?”
“Why would Richard set us up?”
“I know why he’d set me up. Maybe you were in on it. How come neither of you mentioned the possibility that Rasputin might be alive?”
“I had no idea!” she said.
Richard scowled at Daz and set her down. He held her out at arm’s length. She stared back. He held many secrets. Maybe he had kept something from her.
“Did you know?” she asked in a voice near a whisper.
“Angel, I had no more idea than you that Rasputin could be alive.” He turned to Daz. “Watch your words, Daz Montoya, especially in regards to her.”
Daz took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to think. There’s an army of Rasputin’s monks and she can go ghost. And nobody filled me in on any of it.”
“I knew nothing of the Russian monks.” Again, Richard stared at her. “I wouldn’t have endangered Marian with such a trap.”
She nodded, any words caught in her throat, as usual when it came to him.
“And, you, Montoya, should not be so quick to accuse me of something regarding the monks. I insisted on questioning one of them. Why would I do that if I knew about them?”
“I have no fuckin’ idea. And that doesn’t explain why she kept her secret from me.”
“Because I didn’t trust you enough yet,” Marian said in a quiet voice.
“Great, just great. And here I was worried about saving your life.”
“I appreciate that,” she said.
“Appreciate it all you want, but you know what I’m thinking? You had the contact from Romanoff. If anyone set us up, it’s him. And that means you could be involved.”
“I don’t think he would…I didn’t—”
“I warned you, Montoya.” Richard stepped in front of her. “She is without blame. Five of us knew about the supposed meeting. The contact, Romanoff, and the three of us. And if I had to pick who betrayed me, it’d be you.”
“Yeah, that’s why I fought off the monks.”
“You fought to save your own life.”
Marian stepped between them. “Can we all just assume we’re in this together? If I didn’t trust both of you, I wouldn’t be here. And, you know, your yelling could be echoing out to the other areas of the abbey.”
Daz took a deep breath. He moved back several feet.
“All right. Maybe I’m overreacting.”
“The same,” Richard said. “I hate being attacked.”
Wow. They had both just listened to her. Finally, she’d said something right.
“The most likely explanation is that someone lied to Romanoff to set us all up,” Marian said. “That’s what he was worried about when he talked about curses. Or it was Romanoff himself.”
“Russian Elvis seemed to like you,” Daz said. “And you still have to get him one of Elvis’s cars. That alone would keep him from setting us up. I think.”
“Could be.”
“Enough,” Richard said. “We should have this discussion back at the hotel.”
“And just how do we get there?” Daz asked.
“I know a way.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I hear an explanation for the ghost thing.” Daz put himself in the center of the darkened corridor. They would have to go past him to go farther down the passageway.
Well, Richard would have to get past Daz. She could go right through him.
“Explanations?” she asked.
“How do you do it?”
“She does it the same way your people do: with psychic manipulation of molecules. This is her gift, passed down through the family. There is nothing further to explain than that. Now, enough, before I decide you’re an enemy.”
“If you distrust me that much, why bring me along?”
“Because you’re interesting,” Richard said.
Marian snorted. That did sound so very Richard. Boring seemed about the worst thing in the world to him.
“It’s what he said, Daz. It’s the family gift.” Or curse.
“You should have told me,” he said again.
“What difference would that have made?”
“I was about to put myself between you and that monk.”
Crap. He was saying he’d have taken a blow or worse for her. “I’m sorry.” He was right. “Daz, it’s a family secret. I’m not supposed to tell anyone, ever.”
“Everyone at the Phoenix Institute has some sort of psychic ability. If you told us back then, they’d have understood. You’re one of them. Us.”
“You kidnapped me, remember? Besides, your telepath was damn scary.”
Daz winced. “Beth is the least scary person I know.”
“You mean she’s less scary than Alec, who commands fire, and Drake, who oozes menace? Don’t take this the wrong way, Daz, but given who else you know, that’s not reassuring.”
He laughed. “Okay, I see your point.”
“Thank you.” She meant it. Twice now, he’d tried to save her life, not knowing she didn’t need the help.
“Are we the Three Musketeers and all for one again?” Richard asked.
“I never thought we were. But okay, Prince, how do we get out of here?”
Richard looked into the darkness. “We go down and then across, perhaps as far as two or three miles, if my memory is correct. I only hope the whole passage is intact. The door being undisturbed is a good sign but the roof could’ve collapsed. If so, we’ll have to turn back and risk going through the abbey proper.”
Richard took the lead as they descended stone steps covered with dust that circled around a central column. Daz took up the rear, leaving her between the men.
“I’m really sorry,” she said to Daz.
“I guess I didn’t give much reason for you to trust me.”
“There was the Girl Scout Cookie cocktail.”
He laughed. “Getting you drunk is probably even less reason for you to trust me.”
Their voices echoed in the downward-spiraling passage. Marian wished they would stop to look at the column they were winding around. Was it one huge stone or hundreds of little ones welded together? Were there any carvings she was missing in the dark? What would excavations in this place find? Perhaps the missing corpses of the royals?
This place didn’t belong in a museum. It should be a museum.
“How old is this passage?” she asked.
“Older than myself, though it was expanded and reinforced during my time here,” Richard said.
“There are immortals older than you and your brother?” Daz asked.
“I suspect immortals go back as far as the human race. What happened to those who came before, I cannot say. Perhaps they gave up their desire for life and passed away. It was my Queen who began to organize us. Mayhap in other areas of the world, there was someone else filling the same role.”
“So who’s your Queen?” Marian asked.
“The Queen,” Richard said.
Damn. She’d hoped for more than that. “Other immortals are hiding out among us?”
Richard shrugged. “Or blending in. Who knows? I was tempted to find out once but then someone showed me how to surf.”
“You thought surfing was more interesting than finding other immortals?” Marian said.
“People didn’t seem at all interesting at the time, immortal or not. The sea changes from day to day.”
“Did Lansing ever see this place?” Daz asked.
“No, we moved away from here before he was born.”
“Just how deep are we going?” she asked.
“This deep.” Richard stopped at the bottom of the steps. She and Daz shone their flashlights into the darkness, revealing vaulted ceiling of bricks and cut stone. Cobwebs and other things skittered in the dark, but there was no sign of decay.
The floor was solid stone. That explained how it was preserved so well. Dirt floors would have let in much more moisture, not to mention more creatures.
“It must have taken years to build this.” If she could just get proper lighting down here, she would happily spend days puttering around. To say nothing of her father and her college professors.
“It took over fifty years to build the first tunnel, and more passages were added to over time.” Richard closed his hand around her wrist and guided it to the left. “I believe this one will take us far outside the borders of the abbey.” He guided her hand to the right. “But not this one. It will merely circle back around.”
Marian rubbed her wrist where he’d held it. Her skin was all tingly. “And what’s at the end of our tunnel?”
“I have no idea what is there now. It will be interesting to find out.”
Marian decided interesting could quickly become one of her least favorite words.
“What if the tunnel’s blocked at the other end?” Daz asked.
“We retrace our steps, wait until nighttime and slip out using the other tunnel. Darkness should provide us enough cover from anyone in the abbey,” Richard said.
“And then what once we’re outside? Do we go back to our hotel room?” Marian asked.
“That depends on what we discover when we rise from the earth, what the surviving monks tell the authorities, and if they’re believed.”
“A bridge to cross after we get out of here.” She sighed. “If it’s blocked at any point, I can poke my head up and see what’s on the other side, at least.”
“Handy power, that,” Daz said. “I wish I had it when I was a SEAL.”
“Thanks, I think.”
And that made him the second person in a week who was intrigued by her power rather than freaked out.
“Alec would love to see you in action,” Daz said. “You have got to show him when this is over.”
“It’s not over yet.”
Richard took her hand. “Stay close.”
Close, yes. She squeezed his hand. “Okay.” Something wet trickled onto her palm. Blood?
“Are you hurt, Richard?”
“A scratch.” He took a cloth from his pocket and wrapped it around his arm. “I didn’t even realize it was still bleeding. It will stop in a moment.”
“Daz? Were you hurt at all?” Marian asked.
“Nope, just bruises. The monks didn’t touch me with those knives. I’m not getting sliced by a poison-soaked blade again.”
“When did that happen?” she asked.
“Classified. Hey, I can keep secrets too.”
They walked for a time in the dark and silence. Their footsteps echoed around them.
“Richard, if Rasputin is alive, what’s our next step?”
“I don’t know.”
And, for once, he didn’t sound amused by not knowing.