James Rollins - Map of Bones

His pistol blasted, but the shot went wild as he fell back out the door.

Rachel followed him, tumbling out the back exit into a narrow hallway, her uncle on her heels. She slammed the door and propped the pole against it, jamming it against the hallway’s far wall.

Beside her, Uncle Vigor smashed a heel on the fallen gunman’s hand. Bones cracked. He then kicked the man square in the face. His head bounced against the stone floor with a thud, then his form went slack.

Rachel bent down and grabbed his pistol.

Crouched, she searched both ways down the windowless hall. No other men were about. The additional forces must have been placed to ambush Gray and his team. A large crash rattled the door in its frame. The Bull was trying to break through.

She dropped flat to the floor and searched beneath the jam. She watched the play of light and shadow. She aimed for darkness and fired.

The bullet sparked off the marble floor, but she heard a satisfying bellow of surprise. A little hotfoot should slow the Bull.

She rolled to her feet. Uncle Vigor had crossed down the hall a few steps.

“I hear someone groaning,” he whispered. “Back here.”

“We don’t have time.”

Ignoring her, Uncle Vigor continued deeper. Rachel followed. Without a frame of reference, one way was no worse than the other. They reached a door cracked open. Rachel heard a moan from inside.

She shouldered in, gun ready.

The room had once been a small dining hall. But now it was a slaughterhouse. One priest lay facedown in a pool of blood on the floor, the back of his head a pulp of brain, bone, and hair. Another black-robed figure lay sprawled on one of the tables, spread-eagled, tied to the bench legs. An older priest. His robes had been stripped to the waist. His chest was a pool of blood. His head was missing both ears. There was also the smell of burned flesh.

Tortured.

To death.

A sobbing moan sounded to the left. On the floor, tied hand and foot, was a young man, stripped to boxer shorts, gagged. He had a black eye and blood dribbled from both nostrils. From his half-naked form, it was plain where the clerical garb for the fake priest had come from.

Vigor came around the table. When the man spotted him, he struggled, eyes wild, frothing around his gag.

Rachel held back.

“It’s all right,” Vigor soothed.

The man’s eyes fixed on Vigor’s collar. He stopped struggling, but he was still wracked with sobs. Vigor reached out to free the gag. The man shook and spat it out. Tears flowed down his cheeks.

“Molti…grazie,” he said, his voice weak with shock.

Vigor cut the plastic ties with a knife.

As he worked, Rachel locked the door to the dining room and jammed a chair under the knob for good measure. There were no windows, only a door leading deeper into the rectory. She kept her gun pointed that way and crossed to a phone on the wall. No dial tone. The phone lines had been cut.

She fished out Gray’s cell phone and dialed 112, the universal EU emergency number. Once connected, she identified herself as a Carabinieri lieutenant, though she didn’t give her name, and called for an immediate medical, police, and military response.

With the alarm raised, she pocketed her phone.

Outgunned, it was all she could do.

For herself…and for the others.

FOOTSTEPS APPROACHED Gray’s hiding place. He held perfectly still, not breathing. The steps stopped nearby. He strained to listen.

A man spoke. A familiar voice, angry. It was the leader of the monks. “The Milan authorities have been alerted.”

There was no reply, but Gray was certain two people had approached.

“Seichan?” the man asked. “Did you hear me?”

A bored voice answered. It was equally recognizable. The Dragon Lady. But now she had a name. Seichan .

“They must have gone out a window, Raoul,” she said, returning the favor and naming the leader. “Sigma is slippery. I warned you as much. We’ve secured the remaining bones. We should be gone before Sigma returns with reinforcements. The police may already be on the way.”

“But that bitch…”

“You can settle matters with her later.”

The footsteps departed. It sounded like the heavier of the two was limping. Still, the Dragon Lady’s words remained with Gray.

You can settle matters with her later.

Did that mean Rachel had escaped?

Gray was surprised at the depth of his relief.

A door slammed on the far side of the church. As the sound echoed away, Gray strained his ears. He heard no more footsteps, no tread of boots, no voices.

To be cautious, he waited a full minute longer.

With the church silent, he nudged Monk, who lay spooned next to him. Kat lay scrunched on Monk’s other side. They rolled with a sickening crunch of desiccated bone and reached overhead. Together they shifted the stone lid to the sepulcher.

Light spilled into the tomb, their makeshift bunker.

After spotting the Dragon Lady’s warning in blood, Gray had known they’d been ensnared. All exit doors would be guarded. And with Rachel and her uncle vanished into the sacristy, there was nothing he could do to help.

So Gray had led the others into the neighboring chapel, to where a massive marble sepulcher rested on twisted Gothic columns. They had shifted its lid enough to climb inside, then pulled the lid back over them just as doors crashed open all across the church.

With the search ended, Monk climbed out, shotgun in hand, and shook his body with a disgusted grumble. Bone dust shivered from his clothes. “Let’s not do that again.”

Gray kept his pistol ready.

He saw an object on the marble floor, a few steps away from where they had been hidden. A copper coin. Easy to miss. He picked it up. It was a Chinese fen , or penny.

“What is it?” Monk asked.

He closed his fingers over it and stood, pocketing it. “Nothing. Let’s go.”

He headed across the nave toward the sacristy, but he glanced back to the crypt. Seichan had known.

RACHEL KEPT guard as Vigor helped the priest stand.

“They…they killed everyone,” the young man said. He needed Vigor’s arm to keep his feet. The man’s eyes avoided the bloody figure on the table. He covered his face with one hand and groaned. “Father Belcarro…”

“What happened?” Vigor asked.

“They came an hour ago. They had papal seals and papers, identification. But Father Belcarro had a faxed picture.” The priest’s eyes widened. “Of you. From the Vatican. Father Belcarro knew the lie immediately. But by that time, the monsters were already here. The phone lines were severed. We were locked inside, cut off. They wanted the combination to Father Belcarro’s safe.”

The man turned from the bloody form, guiltily. “They tortured him. He would not speak. But they did worse things then…so much worse. They made me watch.”

The young priest grabbed her uncle’s elbow. “I couldn’t let it continue. I…I told them.”

“And they took the bones from the safe?”

The priest nodded.

“Then all is lost,” Vigor said.

“Still, they wanted to be sure,” the priest continued, seemingly deaf, babbling on. He glanced to the tortured figure, knowing he had been destined to share the same fate. “Then you arrived. They stripped me, gagged me.”

Rachel pictured the fake priest who had worn the man’s cassock. The subterfuge must have been devised to lure Rachel and Kat off the street and into the church.

The priest stumbled to the body of Father Belcarro. He folded back the older man’s robe, covering the mutilated face as if hiding his own shame. Then the priest reached into a pocket of the bloody robe. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. It seemed the elderly father had not shed all his vices…nor had the young priest.