Gabriel covered a yawn. Carl was slumbering behind a book that had previously been propped in his lap. It was now sliding inexorably from his slackened grasp. Moving quickly and quietly, Gabriel was able to snag the tome as it headed for an undoubtedly loud impact with the floor.
"Carl?" He gently shook the friar, who muttered something incomprehensible and merely shifted in his seat. "Carl."
This time the friar came awake. "Van Helsing. Dear God, what time is it?"
"Late. Past your bedtime." Gabriel suppressed a grin at Carl's grumble over his light teasing.
The friar completely ignored him, spied his book in Gabriel's hand, and promptly snatched the tome from the amused hunter.
"Where was I?"
"About to go to sleep," Gabriel interjected helpfully, ignoring the glare in favor of moving to the window.
"Spear of Longinus, Holy Lance, the Spear of Destiny," Carl muttered to himself as he picked through the overlarge text.
After a few moments of carefully scanning elaborate lines of script, Carl dropped the book with a resounding thud onto the oaken tabletop. It quivered. Gabriel eyed the overburdened table warily.
"No good," the friar said at last.
"You only spent a few moments looking," Gabriel pointed out.
"And an hour with that same text before I fell asleep," Carl's indignation rolled off him in waves. "And seven hours before that searching for any mention of anything in all of the texts in the indexed system, which catalogues in detail each of the six archive rooms - " The friar blew out a breath in frustration.
Van Helsing grimaced. He knew all this, of course, mainly because he had been working with Carl on it.
"There's no information about the Spear once it reached the Vatican," Carl concluded miserably. "It seems to have vanished."
Gabriel snorted. "No, it's just been lost."
Carl nodded grimly. "Aye, catalogued and put on a shelf somewhere in Vatican City. Using Brother Yakov's filing system, no doubt," he sneered, in ill temper. Gabriel laughed, and tried to turn the noise into a cough with only marginal success. Carl glared in his general direction.
"Or hidden," the hunter offered, and hearing his own words, he frowned a little.
"What? What is it?" Carl had learned to jump on these small, thoughtful silences in search of clues that would help lead them to a solution.
Gabriel glanced at him, but his eyes were turned inward, seeing something very far away. "I was just wondering why the creature needed access to the Vatican, and why, when he got it, very nearly the first thing he did – after securing entrance for himself by attacking Michael – was destroy the laboratory."
Carl shrugged. "It did strike us a devastating blow. No one has ever penetrated this far into the realm of the Knights of the Holy Order."
Gabriel's scowl did not lessen – if anything, his countenance grew darker. "No," he murmured. Then he repeated himself, louder. "No. No one is any match for him here. There is no need for him to attack the Order – he has his sights set on the Lance, and on delivering the tool of mankind's destruction to his master."
"So why would he go to the trouble of penetrating so far into our defenses? It doesn't make any sense." Carl was pacing, yet froze as a thought struck him. "Unless he thinks the Lance is hidden in the catacombs."
Gabriel nodded. "Exactly."
Moments later the two men were walking as quickly as they could toward the entrance to the now barren laboratory.
"What if he's already got it?" Carl panted.
Van Helsing shook his head. "He doesn't."
"How do you know?"
"The Earth would be overrun by creatures of darkness."
"I mean besides that."
"Armageddon."
"I mean besides that."
"We would all be dead."
"Ah, well then, I think we might just be in time," Carl wheezed, doing his best to keep up with the long-legged hunter.
In moments, they had reached the confessional, and the friar nearly bounded down the stairs.
The laboratory was continually staffed now, with dozens of members of the Order reconstructing, rebuilding, and piecing together the decimated experiments and gadgets.
Carl stopped short and said plaintively, "But how in God's name are we going to find it? These catacombs are huge!"
Van Helsing frowned. "They've been cleared of everything. It would be easiest to check for irregularities in the stonework. The floor, the walls – if there are any indications, that is where they would be."
Carl rolled his eyes. "Has it ever been that easy?"
"I thought you mentioned something about not being a field man?"
"This isn't the field," Carl felt compelled to point out.
Van Helsing grunted, and muttered under his breath, "At this point, it might as well be."
"I heard that!"
Carl's voice bounced back to Gabriel across the chamber, drawing the curious attention of several of the holy men working within. The two had separated, and began peering at the walls and floor.
After several hours of fruitless staring, Gabriel rubbed his eyes and glanced at Carl. The two had worked their way through the large entrance chamber and had separated to examine the small storage chambers which were connected by short, narrow hallways to the main laboratory.
The friar was squinting avidly at something he had found. "Carl?"
"What is it?"
He had definitely found something, all of his attention riveted to the wall. Gabriel was more than a little suspicious. It was much too easy, despite the painstaking search and Carl's remarks to the contrary. Even with the help that Carl had commandeered – which had turned out to be nearly twenty extra sets of eyes, all told. The numbers had dropped, as it was now approaching the early hours of the morning.
He strode over to the friar, who was tracing a marking of some sort scratched into the stone. "You found something?"
"This - " Carl waved an impatient hand at the rough scoring. "I know this."
"What is it?"
"Someone etched the sigil of St. Linus into the stone. That's curious."
"St. Linus?"
"He was the second pope of the Roman Catholic Church, who was ascended to the papacy around 67 AD and martyred somewhere about 76 AD."
"Yes," Gabriel muttered to himself, thinking back. "He was one of Peter's students."
"Really?" Carl was intrigued. "Not much is known about him – all of our records for that time period are mostly held to be apocrypha."
"He followed Peter to the papacy, after spending several years as his adjutor. It's no wonder none of the dates agree, especially the Liber Pontificalus. Why would someone inscribe his sigil here?"
Carl shrugged, his shaggy auburn hair brushing his brow. "Not much is known about his time. There are significant doubts as to his importance, and quite honestly his martyrdom - "
Gabriel snorted, focusing in on a comment that had escaped his attention moments before. "The Church martyred him?"
"Well, yes. Should we not have?"
Gabriel smiled a little, brushing his hand over the round symbol. "Well, he was a good man. Peter chose his students sensibly, and he learned well. But he was only Pope for little more than a decade. Caught an ague. There wasn't much avid persecution at that time, no matter what the histories will tell you. Not until a few years later." Gabriel's face darkened with memory as his fingers lightly traced the roughly scratched lines.
Carl, remembering Gabriel's mention of the Romans in 73 AD, turned his attention to the marking once more. "But it doesn't mean anything," he muttered.
Gabriel's head snapped toward him. "What?"
Carl looked at the sigil. "It doesn't have any real meaning. It's just the symbol of his papacy. What is it doing down here?"
"Maybe . . ." Gabriel trailed off. He looked around, and seeing that there were few people present, he pulled out one of the many knives secreted around his body.
"What are you going to do with that?" Carl asked, his tone withering, yet nevertheless he drew closer as Gabriel crouched slightly in front of the marking in the stone. Instead of turning his blade toward the wall, he first knocked carefully near the stone with the hilt, tapping the mortar firmly.
The hunter let out a small, satisfied noise as a bit of brown-stained mortar tumbled out. Then, using the hilt – this weapon had an unusually slender grip – he slammed the metal, hard, against the top left corner of the stone.
Aged and worn, the rock cracked. One more solid strike crushed a corner of the stone to powder. Gabriel used the tip of the blade to gently pry out the mortar around the small block, and Carl's slender fingers wiggled it out into Van Helsing's waiting hands. The friar stepped back, turning the stone over and examining it closely. The side with the symbol was slick with exposure and smudged with soot from candles. All other sides, however, were rough and gray with dust.
Gabriel's only hesitation was a short pause to give the dark hole a considering glance. Carl gaped as the hunter reached into the newly-made gap in the stones. Gabriel made a small face as he continued to reach until his elbow disappeared into the hole.
His fingers fetched up against what he judged to be a rough-hewn stone wall, and he frowned in surprise.
"What's in there?" Carl was morbidly curious. It was well-known that many popes were buried in the Vatican, and rumored that not a few were secretly interred within the catacombs themselves.
"The crypts are under another section of the Vatican, Carl," Gabriel snorted, gently feeling around for anything he might have missed. "Besides, you know that anyone of real prestige is not buried in the catacombs." It was true – mostly only lower members of the clergy rated entombment in the catacombs. Sometimes there was so little space available that only the skull could be inhumed.
Gabriel pulled his hand from the recess and tiredly wiped the dust off onto his trousers, where the smeared handprint was a stark contrast against the dark linen. "There's nothing there."
"Are you sure?"
Gabriel nodded. "It's nothing more than a straight channel into the wall. Its length is a little less than a cubit."
"Indeed." Carl glanced at Van Helsing's arm, still dusty from elbow to fingertips. He turned the block over in his hand as Gabriel began to examine the wall around the hole. Carl looked at the mark once more, a vagrant thought flitting through the back of his mind.
"Carl, give that here," Van Helsing gestured for the block. He was peering at the wall just to the right of the gap in the stones, and as soon as the weight of the stone hit his palm he turned the block and gently slid it back into position. "What? What is it, what do you see?" Carl asked as Gabriel rapped the wall with a knuckle in frustration.
"Look at the mortar, here, and here." The hunter pointed at knee level and raised his arm, the gesture encompassing the height of the wall to just above chin level.
"It's gray." Carl stated the obvious, and then repeated himself when that knowledge sank in. "It's gray. It's newer. Someone repaired the wall recently."
"If you call within the last hundred years or so recent."
"So it's possible that there were more marks that were removed."
Gabriel stared at the dingy wall. "No, I don't think so. The stones here look the same as the rest, the same type, almost as worn. It's possible that there was a water leakage that caused the mortar to weaken, and the wall's stability became a concern." It was a common problem within the cellars of many elaborate buildings, and foundations were always treated with utmost attention.
"It certainly would be cheaper to reuse the stones," Carl agreed. "So where does that leave us?"
The hunter shrugged.
"We're missing the head of the Holy Lance, and we have the symbol of Pope Linus." Carl's eyes narrowed, staring irritably at the stone. "There is a St. Linus Church within the Vatican," he muttered.
Gabriel turned to him. "Then I suggest we look there. This is the only indication we've gotten of anything slightly out of the ordinary," he pointed out.
"Well, yes, but if I wanted to hide the Spear where no one would find it, I'd hardly go around leaving clues to its location," Carl returned as they turned sideways to sidle through the narrow passageway.
"What if you forgot where it was?"
"I think that would be the entire point, wouldn't it?"
The two continued their banter as they emerged into the main chamber. Gabriel was surprised by the number of men working there, given the fact that he estimated the day to be only into its fourth hour.
As Carl began walking toward the stairs, a young Buddhist named Suvrata caught his sleeve. There were many holy men, spanning all the major faiths and several of the minor ones, who understood the goal of the Knights and worked willingly as members. The only reason the Order's work took place primarily in Vatican City was the space, the ease of secrecy within the bowels of the Vatican, and the protection of the pope. Suvrata was just one of the thirty or so Buddhists who lived and worked with the Order. His robes were tan-orange in the light, which gleamed off his shaved skull. "Carl!" he breathed, dark eyes shining with wonder. "Have you heard? Michael is well!"
Carl started, surprised that word had traveled this quickly. Gabriel wasn't, but the hunter smiled as was expected.
"Thank God!" The friar recovered himself quickly.
"No, Carl, you don't understand," Suvrata insisted. "He is not simply well, he is completely whole. It is a miracle!"
Carl's face mirrored the shock he was expected to show.
"Not even the Cardinal knows how," the man continued. He was only slightly older than the friar whose robe he still clutched in his excitement. "The Pope has simply called it a miracle, but Taddeo insists that he has no knowledge of how this could occur."
"Michael is healed, then?" Carl asked, confirming that which he was already certain.
"There is not even a scar," Suvrata proudly stated. A wrinkle creased the holy man's forehead for just a moment before it was smoothed away. "I believe Taddeo is shaken," he confided in the friar, selectively ignoring the hunter at his side. "Nothing like this has ever happened, unless in the time of your Christ," he allowed. "He was shocked, and his face was quite white. I do not believe that he expected Michael to live." Sadness tinged his features at the tragedy so narrowly averted, but was quickly banished in the glow of awe.
Carl exchanged a few more words with Suvrata before he was able to pry himself away. In that time, Gabriel looked around the room and saw that, even within the glow of happiness and amazement that permeated the air, many of the holy men still glanced at him sidelong.
Gabriel listened to Carl with one ear as he tried to sort out the difference in the emotion aimed toward him now. It was no longer a mix of wary suspicion tinged with a jealousy he had only just discerned. The men were no longer jadedly wondering why a violent man with no past and no future should be saved when a youth lingered in suffering. Before, he had understood their resentment. For all his efforts, he was intrinsically set apart from them because of what he was; and it is always easier to find fault with, and resent, that which is different.
Now, though, the darker emotion had mellowed, yet the curiosity was growing, and that was the attitude he dreaded the most. He could not stay long. The members of the Order were men distinct from their compatriots in intelligence, wisdom, and skill. He could not chance their discovering who he really was. Seeing the many speculative glances averted as his eyes traveled the room, he felt his gut clench in anxiety. He needed to leave, and soon.
- - - - - - - -
Thank you to all my faithful reviewers, you guys rock!!
Ack, it's growing, with no end in sight! Sorry for the delay, but research was called for, and I wanted to meat this up some.
I hope you enjoy, and please take just a moment to review, and make my day!
