J. Geissinger - Edge of Oblivion

His gaze flickered down to her mouth, and his nostrils flared. “ Ufficio Scavi ,” he blurted, brusque. She didn’t understand and her brows lifted.

His gaze darted right to a small black door recessed in the stone wall perhaps a hundred yards away, beneath a huge statue of a robed woman in traditional habit. Another damn nun.

“ Ufficio Scavi ,” the guard said again, more forcefully, now staring at her mouth.

“Oh,” she said, understanding. Ufficio —office. Office of the... Scavi ? She jumped when the guard answered her in heavily accented English, his voice low.

“I’ll take you.”

Was it her imagination or was there a double entendre there? “Why, I’d just love that,” she purred, gazing up at him through her lashes. She was gratified to see his flush deepen.

He took her by the arm and quickly led her down the wide marble steps and over the worn cobblestones to the Plaza of Protomartyrs around the side of the basilica. They passed beneath an arched corner and went through the squeaking black door of the Ufficio Scavi , which swung shut with an echoing thud behind them. They were in a small stone antechamber, totally unadorned, cool and quiet as a tomb. An arched doorway directly in front of them had steps leading down into a tunnel swallowed in gloom. They were alone.

“Wait,” the guard said, releasing her arm, and pointed to the floor. “Here. First tour at nine.”

“You’ve been so helpful! Thank you so much. Grazie ,” Morgan breathed, doing her best impression of a damsel in distress. A damsel whose heart hadn’t recently been ripped—beating and bloody—from her chest. Sweetly smiling, she trailed a finger down the soft folds of the collar of her sweater dress, exposing as if by accident the top swell of her breasts, the cleft between. “May I show you something, since you’ve been so nice?”

The guard blanched. His gaze flickered to the closed door; then he stepped forward and licked his lips as if she were a trussed and roasted Thanksgiving turkey and he hadn’t eaten in years. He lifted his hand to her face, but before he could touch her she had him by the wrist.

Quietly, she said, “Stop.”

Obediently, he froze midstep. His face wiped blank.

“You’re going to answer a few questions, then you will leave this room and forget you ever saw me. Understood?”

The guard stared at her, his blue, blue eyes utterly blank.

“ Capisce? ” she insisted.

Slowly, he nodded.

“Good,” Morgan said, keeping her grip on his wrist. With her other hand she pulled the medallion from beneath the draped collar of her dress. “Do you know this symbol?”

The guard nodded again.

“What is it?”

“Horus,” he said in a monotone, “ Dio della vendetta. ”

Dio —God. OK. Vendetta ...revenge? “God of revenge?”

The guard frowned a little, concentrating. He said softly, “ Sì. Er...vengeance.”

The god of vengeance. It sent a chill down Morgan’s spine. She swallowed around a sudden lump of fear that lodged like a stone in her throat. “Where can I find this symbol in the necropolis?”

“The tomb of the Egyptians,” he intoned, staring at her chest. “Tomb lettered Z ; symbol of Horus is painted on the north wall.”

Painted on the wall? “Anywhere else?”

He blinked, slowly lifted his gaze to hers, and with a vague motion of his hand said, “ Ovunque. ”

Morgan stifled a frustrated sigh. “English, please.”

The guard gazed blankly into her eyes. “Everywhere,” he said, very soft.

“What do you mean, everywhere ?” Morgan said sharply, so that her voice echoed off the stone walls.

“Paintings,” he calmly responded, “statues, frescoes, the obelisk in St. Peter’s Square, the pope’s hat—”

“The pope’s hat!” she exclaimed, astonished.

“—wood carvings, tile work, tapestries, stonework—”

“Enough! Stop.”

He fell silent, waiting for her next command, while Morgan tried not to hyperventilate.

Everywhere. The feral Alpha’s symbol was all over the Vatican. Even on—good Lord—the pope’s hat. How? Why?

“I don’t understand. Why would the symbol of an Egyptian god be all over the seat of the Christian church?”

A faint smile curved his lips. “Their gods were here long before ours. We just...” he floundered, searching for a word in English, “... appropriato . Stole them. Reconfigured.”

Morgan’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. She didn’t have time for this. “Are there any other entrances to the catacombs?”

He shook his head. “Only in the pope’s private chambers, but there you cannot go.”

Oh, but she could. But at the moment she was at the entrance to the necropolis, so she might as well start here. She gave the guard’s wrist a final warning squeeze and said, “You will return to your post and forget me.”

The guard blinked down at her and wistfully murmured, “Forget you.”

“ Sì. Go now. Go.”

He nodded slowly, then turned on his heel, went through the door, and let it swing shut behind him.

The moment he was gone, Morgan turned and made her way down the narrow flight of stairs, her heart pounding, light diminishing behind her with every step. At the bottom of the steps was a series of narrow passageways constructed of red bricks that led off in every direction, lit with dim spotlights at long intervals. The air was humid and stagnant, the ground uneven dirt. Several richly engraved stone sarcophagi were assembled near the entrance, beyond which was a larger main corridor with a map in English and Italian on the wall that showed the various tombs of the necropolis. Feeling excitement mixed with crushing dread, Morgan located the Egyptian tomb on the map and set off in search of it.

She passed tomb after tomb, both large and small, cold, shadowed rooms of brick and earth with stone sarcophagi resting in niches in the walls. Motifs of stags and vases and flowering vines, perfectly preserved, decorated walls and ceilings; remnants of colorful mosaic tiles survived in patches over the floors. The corridor narrowed at length, the brick walls showed more signs of deterioration, the air became clammy and thick. Around another corner, and she began to feel claustrophobic. The ancient walls, now flaked and uneven, pressed close; the light dimmed to a faint greenish hue.

Just as she was beginning to panic that she was lost, the weak light of the entrance to the tomb of the Egyptians appeared around another corner, illuminating the gloom like a phantom in a graveyard.

Her heart in her throat, Morgan stepped hesitantly into the tomb. Six elaborate stone sarcophagi and four empty niches lined the walls of the square mausoleum; several alabaster urns and shards of broken pottery lay in one corner. On the north wall, just as the guard had said, was the painting of Horus, god of vengeance.

It was massive and strangely vivid in the half-light, rich with color and an eerie dimensionality that made it seem to bulge from the wall. A bare-chested warrior with the sunhaloed head of a falcon and huge, flaming wings fanning out from the middle of his back floated over a mob of prostrate worshippers gathered at a riverbank. He held a sword in one hand and a staff in the other, bands of gold surrounded his muscled biceps, a linen garment hung from his hips. But the eyes were by far the most striking of all. Black and piercing above a sharp, elongated beak, they seemed uncannily alive .

Morgan took an involuntary step back, dropped her gaze, and saw, in the right corner of the painting, a cutout in the stone roughly the same size and shape as the medallion that hung around her neck.