Page 43 of Skotos (Of Shadows & Secrets #6)

Will

T he chapel looked even more ominous than before.

Thankfully, Lucio provided us with a pair of his best men, two burly Italians whose scarred faces and arms spoke far more than either of their owners.

Overhead, the sky was a bruise of angry gray and black, clouds so thick they swallowed the sun whole.

The stone archways and broken spires of the ruined church cast jagged silhouettes against the low-hanging sky, like the bones of a giant beast long dead yet refusing to surrender the last of itself to the Earth.

Wind whispered through the grass, occasionally gusting to scatter leaves and light debris across the road.

We stayed in the car longer than we should have. Thomas sat beside me in the back seat, his face still too pale, the white bandages beneath his shirt a reminder of how close I’d come to losing him yet again. His earlier delirium had passed, but his movement was stiff and cautious .

“You still think this is a good idea?” I asked.

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he watched through the windshield as Lucio’s men circled the perimeter of the chapel. They moved with the efficiency and grace of assassins, quietly, with weapons ready, their eyes sweeping every shadow.

There were no other cars, no other signs of life.

Still, we waited.

Thomas sighed and let his head rest against the window. “We’re going back into the lion’s den.”

“More like sticking our heads in its mouth,” I muttered. “We’re insane.”

One of the men reappeared at my window, gave a terse nod, then stepped back. The other motioned from the chapel’s entrance that the perimeter was clear.

Thomas grunted and opened his door. I followed.

The men flanked us—hard-eyed and silent.

I appreciated their presence, though I trusted them about as far as I could throw the chapel and its centuries-old stones.

After being followed and chased for days, then Thomas getting stabbed, trust was in scarce supply, even for our supposed friends.

Thomas walked slower than usual but steady.

His wound was wrapped in gauze and tape, the bleeding finally staunched.

I wanted to tell him to stay back, to let me handle this, but I knew he’d hear none of it.

He was far too stubborn—and brave—to let me walk into danger without his comfort and support.

Lucio had armed us, so we strode toward the chapel’s doors with pistols in hand.

We climbed the cracked steps and passed through the arched entry.

The interior of the chapel was cloaked in shadow, just as before.

The cloudy day robbed us of most of the ambient light, so all four of us flicked on our flashlights.

Four searchlights darted about. Those of our guards sought hiding places or other spots where would-be assailants might lurk.

Thomas and I sought . . . well . . . we still weren’t sure what we were looking for.

My gut told me the answers we needed were in that ruin, or more likely, below it.

Dusty pews appeared untouched, save for streaks in the murk left by Thomas’s scuffle with the knife-wielding priest. Dull light trickled in through the shattered stained-glass windows and a few holes in the crumbling masonry, casting fractured beams of green, crimson, and grayish gold across the pews.

The place was empty.

There were no nesting birds.

No whispering voices.

No tenuous footsteps.

Only silence.

We moved slowly, scanning each corner. I kept my pistol at the ready as my eyes darted toward the pulpit, the confessionals, then the decaying wooden doors along the side .

“It’s like the place is holding its breath,” Thomas murmured beside me.

“Wonder what it’s waiting for.” I grunted and released the breath I’d been holding. “Let’s see if Marini found anything else in the office.”

Thomas nodded and followed me into the small chamber. The moment I stepped inside, my heart leaped into my throat. Thomas hadn’t realized I’d frozen and blundered into me.

“Sorry,” he said. “What is it?”

“Marini’s gone.”

“What?” He gripped my shoulder and stepped around me, his eyes landing on the empty floor that consumed my attention. “Where the hell—?”

“Someone didn’t want us searching him anymore.”

Thomas kneeled to examine the floor where the priest once lay.

The priest’s blood was gone, too. “They probably didn’t want anyone else finding him.

That would raise too many questions, possibly incite a papal investigation.

The last thing a secret sect within the Church would want is daylight shone in their direction. ”

“Right,” I said, unsure how to take news of a missing body.

As unsettling as it was for our search, it somehow felt even more wrong that a man like Marini would simply be erased from existence.

He was a quiet, diligent man who loved his Church and his work, one of the truly good people in the world.

The thought of his final resting place being left in the hands of maniacal killers? That chafed at something deep within.

We spent another ten minutes combing through the office, opening every desk drawer, examining each tome on the bookshelves, hoping beyond hope we might find disturbed dust or some other clue that brought Marini into that space.

When we came up empty, Thomas said, “Let’s find that trapdoor again.”

We left the office and approached the altar and the space behind it where, last time, I’d discovered the open trapdoor. This time, however, a thick chain was looped through the iron ring and secured with a shiny padlock.

“That’s new,” I said. “Someone didn’t want us coming back.”

Thomas kneeled, examined the lock, and looked up to find one of Lucio’s men watching us as he leaned against a nearby wall. “You carry bolt cutters?”

The man grunted and stomped out of the chapel, returning a moment later with a pair of cutters in one hand and a duffel bag in the other. From the way his arm flexed, the bag contained some heavy equipment.

“Tools,” he said simply, lifting the bag before dropping it on the floor with a loud thud, shattering the chapel’s somber peace .

They might say little, but Lucio’s men knew their business and came prepared. I had to admire them for that. Thomas pointed to the chain, and the man’s muscles flexed. When the lock fell away with a clank , I stepped around and pulled the heavy chain through the loop and opened the trapdoor.

“I go,” the guard said, pointing to his own chest. His English was almost as limited as my Italian, but soldiers found a way to make do.

He vanished down the stairs and didn’t return for several minutes.

When he did, he held out another chain and padlock for us to see, then tossed them on the floor to pile atop the other set.

“Are we good?” Thomas asked.

The man cocked his head and then nodded, the meaning sinking in a heartbeat after Thomas’s words.

“After you,” Thomas said, motioning with his good arm for me to take point.

A few steps into the darkness, I shoved my gun into my coat pocket and pointed my flashlight into the darkness. Everything looked exactly as it had on our first visit: roughly hewn walls, layers of dust, an utter lack of life.

So, we descended.

The second door—the one with arcane religious symbols that led into the basement chamber—stood open, the work of our beefy friend.

Despite his assurance that we were safe and alone, I couldn’t help but step slowly and carefully into the Order’s inner sanctum, half expecting ghosts of the past to leap out and screech at our intrusion.

There were no ghosts.

Or people.

A part of me had wondered if the place would be cleaned out, all evidence of the Order’s presence wiped from existence, but we found the place, like the rest of the chapel, undisturbed.

Maps and newspaper clippings still clung to the walls, wedged between swords, shields, and other relics of a distant past. The chairs surrounding the table appeared unmoved, as the dust around their legs showed no new scuffs.

“All they did was toss up a chain and a couple of padlocks?” Thomas muttered.

“Looks like it,” I replied, scanning the room with my flashlight, using a mental grid to take each section in turn. “I can’t see any evidence that . . .”

“Will, what is it?”

“The cardinal’s cassock is gone,” I said, staring into the far corner.

Thomas stepped around the table and examined the hook on the wall where he’d found the priest’s garments. “You see anything else different?” he asked after a moment.

I completed my search and shook my head. “Not a thing. I can’t even see footprints in the dust on the floor. Whoever came down here was either light on their feet or ridiculously careful.”

Thomas turned and eyed me. “All right. Let’s take this room apart, see if we can find anything useful. You take the maps and clippings while I search the rest. Check for loose stones in the walls, anything that sounds hollow, some kind of hidden chamber or passage.”

I gave him a mock salute. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

“That’s Lieutenant, thank you very much.

You dragged me into . . . this work . . .

before I could earn those bars.” His smirk made me smile and turn away.

I refused to let him see me amused while we searched for clues to an international assassination plot.

Never mind the fact that he’d been recruited into the OSS before I even knew it existed.

The last thing Thomas Jacobs needed was encouragement.

I moved to the wall where the newspaper clippings and papers hung, taking a brief moment to admire the ancient swords and shields that apparently had nothing to do with our present crisis but were seriously fascinating to anyone who loved history—or medieval knights, or giant cutlery.

Before I could spiral too far down an Arthurian rabbit hole, I turned toward the papers.

Some were yellowed with age, others appeared crisp and recent.

I scanned the headlines—most were after-the-fact reports of the assassinations we already knew about.

They contained images of leaders from across Europe, as well as public statements and obituaries, but no new names or new warnings.

I was about to turn away when something caught my eye.

One clipping, seemingly unremarkable, showed the Pope standing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica waving to a sea of people. It wasn’t marked or altered, but something about it drew me in.

“Why are you here?” I muttered.

Then I realized what was so different about the Pope’s clipping: It was the only one stuck to the wall with others attached behind it.

All the other clippings were single articles affixed individually.

The Pope’s image sat atop at least five other articles.

I reached up and flipped to the second clipping, then the third, and so on.

Each showed a different image of the Piazza San Pietro.

The camera angles varied: from the dome of St. Peter’s to a high window of an adjacent building to another from street level to one from behind a colonnade, and even one from what looked like the roof of a nearby hotel, if I remembered the area’s layout correctly.

While the individual clippings didn’t amount to much, the collection taken as a whole made my skin pimple. Together, they formed a panoramic tapestry—almost as if someone had been studying the space.

But something else niggled the back of my mind .

Some of the images were annotated with faint red ink in the margins, angles drawn from rooftops, and notations in Latin and Cyrillic. My stomach sank as realization dawned.

“Thomas,” I called. “Come look at this.”

He crossed the room and peered at the wall.

“What am I looking at?”

I pointed and flipped through the pages behind the one featuring the Catholic Church’s leader. “These aren’t just clippings; they’re vantage points and sightlines.”

His eyes narrowed as he reached up and began flipping as I’d done a moment earlier. “This is a tactical layout using photos taken by newsmen.”

“No need to stake the place out when the media will do it for you.”

Thomas whistled, his brows lifting. “Someone’s been planning.”

“Planning it from every angle,” I agreed.

The meaning settled over us like the dust in the room—heavy and choking.

“Holy shit. We were right.” Thomas blinked. “They’re really going to kill the Pope.”