Page 50 of Skotos (Of Shadows & Secrets #6)

Thomas

T he crowd erupted as the Holy Father appeared in the balcony above the crimson banner. Several cardinals in their traditional black and red flanked the smiling figure in pristine white. Standing behind the Pope, only a few feet to his right, was a man we’d come to know well: Monsignor Rinaldi.

Pius raised his arms and widened his smile.

The crowd’s voice swelled into jubilant cheers and wild applause. I might not fully understand or appreciate the beliefs of their Church, but still, one could only admire the love and respect the members held for their leader. He was, indeed, their Holy Father, and they adored him for it.

My gaze darted from the Pope back to Will.

He had lowered to his knees as one policeman trained a rifle on his chest while another stepped forward to snap cuffs on their prisoner.

I knew our diplomatic status would get us out of this mess, and Will would be safe while in custody; and yet, his capture removed another vital player from an already empty board.

Time had betrayed us, and without Will’s help—

Crack!

The gunshot was a lightning crack amid the thunder of the crowd. The moment it sounded, the gathered throng stopped cheering and watched, frozen in horror, as one of the cardinals standing next to the Pope gripped his chest and tumbled backward.

Screams and cries rose above the piazza. Onlookers gawked. Terror seized thousands as they scrambled, shoved, and pressed their way to safety. Police and Swiss Guardsmen stationed below tried to maintain order, but the threat of a shooter had panicked the crowd beyond recovery.

Rinaldi bent to care for the fallen cleric. One of the other cardinals did the same, disappearing from view behind the banner that now looked coated in blood rather than the holy dye of the Vatican’s finest seamstress.

Only the Pope remained standing . . . and one other cardinal to his left.

I looked back toward Will. His hands were being secured.

My gaze then shifted to Lucio’s man on the adjacent rooftop. He waved and shouted something. I lifted my palm to my ear to let him know I couldn’t hear him. He flapped his arms so wildly I thought he might try to leap down and fly. Then he pointed, and I followed the line of his finger.

On the far side of the plaza, on the roof of a building we’d missed, lay a man in dark clothing, a rifle in his grip.

The muzzle flashed.

A crack sent the crowd into a frenzy.

Police stationed on yet another rooftop fired.

The shooter’s rifle fell away as the man tried to stand, only to be shot several more times. I barely blinked before the bullet-riddled man fell backward to the cobbles below.

“The Pope!” someone screamed.My head snapped back to the balcony.

Rinaldi had regained his feet and was bear-hugging the Pope, pulling him down.

Both of them dropped out of view.

The cardinal, the last man standing, gripped his shoulder.

His eyes widened like a child seeing his first giraffe.

A shaft of sunlight cut through the clouds and glinted off something dropping from his hand.

In a heartbeat, he vanished from view, leaving the balcony as empty as it had been a half hour before.

Heart in my throat, I turned and ran.

The rooftop door slammed behind me as I hurled myself down the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time. My shoulder screamed with every impact, the fresh bandages pulling tight against reopened wounds, but I didn’t slow.

I couldn’t slow.

All I could think of was Will in handcuffs being hauled away.

I had to get to him.

Despite the pounding of my shoes against the hard stairs, it was the gunshots that echoed in my ears—those sharp cracks had split the world in two, dividing everything into “before” and “after.”

Before, when Will was safe on a rooftop surrounded by Italian police.

After, when everything had gone to hell and I had no idea if he was alive or dead or bleeding out in some Roman gutter.

Italian police weren’t known for abusing prisoners, but their Pope might’ve just been assassinated, and Will was in their custody.

All my mind could picture were worst-case scenarios.

I crashed through the building’s front entrance and into pure chaos.

The piazza had become a nightmare of panic and terror.

Thousands of pilgrims who moments before had been singing hymns and waving papal flags now screamed, shoved, and trampled each other in their desperation to escape.

Mothers clutched crying children to their chests while fathers shouted for family members lost in the crush.

Elderly priests and nuns stumbled and fell, their cassocks torn and muddied by the stampeding crowd .

A woman in a floral dress slipped and went down hard, her purse spilling its contents across the stones. Three people stepped on her before I could push through to help her up.

“ Grazie ,” she gasped, blood trickling from her split lip.

I didn’t have time to respond. My eyes swept the chaos, searching for any sign of Will’s frame, his unruly hair, that stubborn set to his shoulders when he was pissed off about something—which, given his current circumstances, he undoubtedly was.

Swiss Guardsmen were trying to restore order, their halberds useless against the tide of human panic.

Italian police with whistles and batons formed human chains, attempting to direct the flow of terrified civilians away from the Vatican’s gates.

Their voices were lost in the roar of the crowd, their commands drowned out by screams and sobs and the thunder of thousands of feet on stone.

I pushed against the tide, fighting my way toward where I’d last seen Will’s rooftop.

Every step was a battle. Bodies pressed against me from all sides.

A priest’s elbow caught me in the ribs, a woman’s sharp heel scraped down my shin, someone’s rosary beads tangled briefly in my jacket before snapping and scattering like dark tears across the ground.

The air reeked of sweat and fear .

Sirens wailed in the distance, growing closer, adding their mechanical screams to the human ones already filling the square.

I broke free of the crush near the fountain and sprinted toward the building I’d seen Will on. My lungs burned, my shoulder throbbed, and my vision blurred at the edges; still, I ran.

Behind me, the crowd surged and ebbed like a tide of human misery, but ahead—

There.

A cluster of police cars, their blue lights flashing like angry stars against the ancient stone facades.

Officers in crisp uniforms were securing the area, unrolling yellow tape and shouting at civilians to stay back.

One car was just pulling away from the curb.

Through its rear window I glimpsed dark, sandy hair and a familiar profile.

Will.

“ Fermati! ” I shouted, breaking into a dead sprint. “Stop!”

The car didn’t slow. Instead, it turned onto a side street, tires squealing slightly on the wet cobbles, and disappeared behind a row of shuttered shops and yellowed apartment buildings.

My breath came in ragged gasps. I slammed my fist against the nearest wall, pain shooting up my arm.

The ancient brick didn’t care about my frustration.

It had seen empires rise and fall, had weathered barbarian invasions, papal scandals, and world wars.

One more American having a breakdown wasn’t going to make it flinch.

“Shit,” I gasped, leaning against the wall and trying to catch my breath.

Think! Think like a spy, not like a lovesick fool.

Will was alive—I’d seen him in the car, conscious and apparently uninjured.

That was something. The Italian police weren’t executioners; they were just doing their job, arresting a foreign national found with a firearm on a rooftop during an assassination attempt.

It would’ve been dereliction to leave Will un-arrested.

That meant he’d be taken to a central station for processing.

Rome only had a few facilities large enough to handle a case like this, especially one involving potential international terrorism. The main police headquarters on Via di San Vitale was the most likely destination, a fortress-like building that could handle high-security prisoners.

Getting him out would require more than showing up with our diplomatic credentials.

The Italians would want answers, explanations, and official channels.

They’d want to know why two Americans were crawling around their rooftops during a papal appearance.

They’d want guarantees, assurances, and a formal apology from the ambassador.

All of which would take time.

Time we didn’t have .

The Order might’ve killed the Pope—or they might’ve failed. Either way, they were still out there, planning and plotting, preparing to take down their next target. We needed clues. We needed leads. We needed any trail we might follow to take them down.

We had nothing.

I pushed off from the wall and started walking back toward the piazza, my mind racing through possibilities.

By the time I reached the wide expanse, the crowd had thinned and quieted, but the sirens were louder.

Ambulances mixed with police cars, their urgent wails echoing off the surrounding buildings like the cries of mechanical banshees.

The Swiss Guard had formed a human wall, their colorful uniforms no longer ceremonial but deadly serious.

Behind them, I saw additional guards, ones carrying modern weapons instead of ornamental halberds.

The gates themselves had been sealed with massive iron barriers that looked like they could withstand a siege.

I approached the nearest guard, a mountain of a man whose eyes tracked my movement like a predator stalking his prey.

“I need to get inside,” I said in English, then tried my broken Italian. “ Ho bisogno di entrare. è urgente. ”

“No,” the guard replied simply, his hand moving to rest on the grip of his sidearm. “ Nessuno entra. Ordini del Papa. ”

No one enters. Orders from the Pope.