James Rollins - Map of Bones

Raoul.

He bore a submachine gun in his hands.

Light flared to his left. Two other gunmen rose from hiding behind the slab. Behind Gray, a steel door slammed shut across the lower passageway.

But worse, he felt the cold barrel of a gun at the base of his skull.

“He’s carrying the gold key around his neck,” Seichan said.

Raoul strode forward. He stopped in front of Gray. “You should be wiser in your choice of companions.”

Before Gray could respond, a meaty fist slammed into his belly.

Gray coughed out his air and fell to his knees.

Raoul reached to his throat and grabbed the chain. He yanked the key free, ripping the pendant from Gray’s neck with a snap. He held it up to the light.

“Thank you for delivering this to us,” Raoul said. “And yourself. We have a few questions for you before we leave for Avignon.”

Gray stared up into Raoul’s face. He could not hide his shock. The Court knew about Avignon. How…?

But he knew.

“Rachel…” he mumbled.

“Oh, don’t worry. She’s alive and well. Catching up with family at the moment.”

Gray didn’t understand.

“Don’t forget about his teammate at the hospital,” Seichan said. “We don’t want to leave any loose ends.”

Raoul nodded. “That’s already being taken care of.”

UNABLE TO sleep, Monk watched television. It was in French. He didn’t speak French, so he was not really paying attention. It was white noise as he thought. The morphine fogged the edges of his mind.

He kept his eyes off his bandaged stump.

Fury kept the pain reliever’s sedation at bay. Not only for his mutilation, but for being the fall guy in this operation. Pulled out of the fight. Used as a goddamn bargaining chip. The others were in danger, and he was locked down in a private room, guarded by hospital security.

Still, he couldn’t deny a hollow pain deep inside him, one that morphine could not touch. He had no right to feel sorry for himself. He lived. He was a soldier. He had seen buddies pulled off the field in far worse condition than him. But the ache persisted. He felt violated, abused, less a man, certainly less a soldier.

Logic would not soothe his heart.

The television droned on.

A commotion outside his door drew his eye. Arguing. Raised voices. He shifted higher in his bed. What was going on?

Then the door burst open.

He stared in shock as a figure strode past the security guards.

A familiar figure.

Monk could not keep the shock from his voice. “Cardinal Spera?”

RACHEL HAD been returned to her cell, but she was not alone.

A guard stood outside the bulletproof glass.

Inside, her grandmother sank to the cot with a sigh. “You may not understand now, but you will.”

Rachel shook her head. She stood against the far wall, confused, dazed. “How…how could you?”

Her grandmother stared up at her with those sharp eyes of hers. “I was once like you. Only sixteen when I first came to this castle from Austria, escaping as the war ended.”

Rachel remembered her grandmother’s tales of her family’s flight to Switzerland, then eventually Italy. She and her father were the only members of her family to survive. “You were escaping from the Nazis.”

“No, child, we were Nazis,” her nonna corrected her.

Rachel closed her eyes. Oh God …

Her grandmother continued, “Papa was a party leader in Salzburg, but he also had ties to the Imperial Dragon Court of Austria. A very powerful man. It was through that fraternity that we made our escape, underground through Switzerland, through the generosity of the Baron of Sauvage, Raoul’s grandfather.”

Rachel listened with growing horror, though she wanted to cover her ears and deny it.

“But such safe passage required a payment. My father granted it. My virginity…to the baron. Like you, I resisted, not understanding. My father held me down the first time, for my own good. But it would not be the last. We were hidden here at the castle for four months. The baron bedded me many nights, until I was heavy with his bastard child.”

Rachel found herself sinking down the wall, settling to the cold stone floor.

“But bastard or not, it was a good crossing, mixing a noble Austrian line of Hapsburgs with a Swiss Bernese line. I grew to understand as the child grew in my belly. It was the way of the Court, strengthening pure lines. My father pressed it upon me. I grew to understand that I carried a noble bloodline back to emperors and kings.”

Sitting on the floor, Rachel tried to comprehend the brutality done to the young girl who would become her grandmother. Had her grandmother validated that cruelty and abuse by couching it in a grander scheme? Brainwashed at that fragile age by her father. Rachel sought to find sympathy for the old woman but failed.

“My father took me to Italy, to Castel Gondolfo, the home of the pope’s summer palace. I gave birth to your mother there. A shame. I was beaten for it. A male child had been hoped for.”

Her grandmother shook her head sadly. She continued, relating an alternate history of their family. How she was married off to another member of the Dragon Court, one with ties to the Church in Castel Gondolfo. It was a marriage of convenience and deceit. Their family had been assigned to seed their children and grandchildren into the Church, as unwitting spies for the Court, blind moles. To maintain their secrecy, Rachel’s mother and Uncle Vigor were kept unaware of their blasted heritage.

“But you were meant for so much more,” her grandmother said with hard pride. “You proved your Dragon blood. You were noticed and chosen to be drawn back into the full fold of the Court. Your blood was too valuable to waste. The Imperator chose you personally to cross our family line back upon the ancient Sauvage line. Your children will be kings among kings.”

Her nonna ’s eyes shone with the wonder of it. “ Molti bellissimo bambini . All kings of the Court.”

Rachel had no strength now to even raise her head. She covered her face with her hands. Every moment of her life flashed past her. What was real? Who was she? She thought back on the number of times she had taken her grandmother’s side over her mother, even her nonna ’s advice on her love life. She had revered and emulated the old woman, respecting her hard, no-nonsense edge. But did such solidity come from toughness or psychosis? What did that imply about herself? She shared this blood-line…with the grandmother…dear God, with that bastard Raoul.

Who was she?

Another concern arose. Fear pushed her to speak. “What…what about Uncle Vigor…your son?”

Her grandmother sighed. “He has served his role in the Church. Celibacy ended his bloodline. Now he is no longer needed. Our family’s legacy will carry forth through you, gloriously into the future.”

Rachel heard a trace of pain behind these last words and glanced up. She knew her grandmother loved Vigor…in fact, more than Rachel’s own mother. She wondered if her grandmother had resented that daughter she had given birth to, a child of rape. And was that same trauma carried down to the next generation? Rachel and her own mother had always had a strained relationship, an unspoken pain that neither could surmount, neither understood.

And where would it stop?

A shout drew her attention to the door. Men were coming. Rachel climbed to her feet, as did her grandmother. So alike…

Down the hall, a troop of guards marched past. Rachel stared in despair at the second in line. Gray, hands bound behind his back, trudged past. He glanced into her cell. Spotting her, his eyes widened in surprise. He tripped a step.