Douglas Preston: Brimstone

Then there was that other feeling, the one that made him almost physically ill. It was the image of Pendergast, there in the clearing, surrounded by dogs. Everyone-the hunters, the handlers, the beaters-closing in. Only one of us can get through. There's no other way.

D'Agosta felt his throat close up. "You're right. I have no proof. Except maybe this ." He reached into his pocket, drew out Pendergast's platinum chain and pendant: a lidless eye over a phoenix, rising from fiery ash, now pitted and partly melted. The chain he'd retrieved from Fosco's burning, smoking corpse. He stared at it a moment. He balled the hand into a fist, pressed a knuckle against his teeth. He felt a ridiculous impulse to burst into tears.

The worst of it was, D'Agosta knew he was the one who should have been left on that hill. He wished, more than anything else, that he had been left on that hill.

"Anyway, he would have contacted me by now. Or you. Or some body." He paused. "I don't know how I'm going to tell Constance."

"Who?"

"Constance Greene. His ward."

They drove through the rest of the tunnel in silence, finally emerging into the Manhattan night. Then he felt Hayward take his hand.

"Let me off anywhere," he said, sick at heart. "Penn Station's fine. I'll take the LIRR out to Southampton."

"Why?" she replied. "There's nothing for you out there. Your future's here, in New York City."

D'Agosta remained silent as the car cruised west: past Park, past Madison, past Fifth.

"You have a place to stay in town?" she asked.

D'Agosta shook his head.

"I-," Hayward began. Then she, too, fell silent.

D'Agosta roused himself, glanced at her. "What?" It was hard to tell, but in the reflected light of the streetlamps, he thought she was blushing.

"I was just thinking. If you're coming back to the NYPD, working here in the city . well, why not stay with me? For a while," she added hastily. "You know. See how it works out."

For a moment, D'Agosta didn't answer. He just looked back out at the lights passing over the windshield.

Then he realized, quite abruptly, he had to let go. Let go, at least for the moment. The past was over and done. Tomorrow was an unknown, still to come. He had no control over either. All he could control, all he could live, was the here and now. Knowing this didn't make things any better, really-but it did make them easier to bear.

"Look, Vinnie," Hayward said in a low voice. "It doesn't matter what you say. I just can't believe that Pendergast is dead. My gut tells me he's still alive. The guy's as close to indestructible as a body can be. He's cheated death a thousand times. He'll do it again somehow. Know he will."

D'Agosta smiled faintly.

Ahead, a traffic light turned red. She eased to a stop, then turned to look at him.

"So, you coming back with me, or what? It's not polite to make a lady ask twice."

He turned to her, squeezed her hand.

"I think I'd like that," he said, his smile broadening. "I think I'd like that very much."

{ Epilogue }

A chill November sun illuminated, but did not warm, the bleak stone ramparts of Castel Fosco. The garden was deserted; the marble fountain purled and splashed for no one. Beyond the castle walls, dead leaves swirled over the gravel of the parking area, obscuring the tracks of the many vehicles that had come and gone earlier in the day. Now all was quiet. The narrow road leading down the mountainside was empty. A single raven sat on the battlements above, gazing silently over the valley of the Greve.

The coroner's van had removed Fosco's body around mid-morning. The police lingered a little longer, snapping photos, taking statements, looking for evidence but finding nothing of value. Assunta, who had discovered the corpse, had been borne away, ashen and distraught, by her son. The few remaining servants had also gone off, taking advantage of the unexpected vacation. There seemed little reason to stay. Fosco's nearest relation, a distant cousin, was vacationing on the Costa Smeralda of Sardinia and would not arrive for several days at least. Besides, none were eager to linger in a place to which death had made such a gruesome visitation. And so the castle was left to brood in shadows and silence.

Nowhere was the silence more profound than in the ancient passageways that riddled the rock far beneath the basements of the castle. Here there was not even the rustle of the wind to disturb the dusty tombs and stone sarcophagi of the forgotten dead.

The deepest of these passages, carved by Etruscans into the living rock more than three thousand years before, twisted down into black depths and came to an end in a horizontal tunnel. At the far end of this tunnel stood a brick wall with a small scatter of bones lying before it. Though the tunnel was dark, even with the aid of a torch it would have been almost impossible to tell the wall had been built only forty-odd hours before, sealing up an ancient tomb, the bones of its former occupant, an unknown Longobardic knight, swept out and left lying in the dirt.

The ancient tomb that lay behind the brick wall was just large enough to contain a man. Inside that tomb there was no sound. Darkness reigned so profoundly that even the very passage of time seemed suspended.

And then a muffled sound broke the stillness: a faint footfall.

This was followed by a rattle, as if a bag of tools had been set down on the ground. Silence descended briefly once again. And then came an unmistakable sound: the scrape of iron against mortar, the sharp rap of a hammer against a cold chisel.

The rapping went on in a low, measured cadence, methodical, like the ticking of a clock. Minutes passed, and the sound stopped. Another silence, and then there were the faint sounds of scraping, the abrasion of brick against mortar; a few more sharp raps-and suddenly a faint light appeared in the tomb, a glowing crack that outlined the rectangular shape of a brick in the upper portion of the wall. With a soft, slow grating, the brick was withdrawn, millimeter by millimeter. Then it was gone, and a soft yellow light shone through the newly opened hole, penetrating the darkness of the tomb.

A moment later, two eyes appeared in the glowing rectangle, gazing in with curiosity, perhaps even anxiety.

Two eyes: one hazel, one blue.