Chapter 4

Father Antonio had been right. Directly below where I was leaning through the floor was a secret stairway. It started near the outer wall of the chapel heading towards the center. Directly below me it was already down about four steps, which was why I hadn't touched the bottom when I had first stuck just my arm through. It extended straight ahead for about fifteen steps before reaching a small landing, and then it turned ninety degrees to the right and disappeared from my view.

"What do you see?" asked Mary impatiently through my earpiece, as I took some additional seconds to look around.

"It's a stairway, just like the Father said," I stated while continuing to explore the immediate area. Finally, I added, "Okay, pull me back up."

Hands grabbed my waist and started to pull even as I raised my head and shoulders. In seconds I was completely above the floor and released the phasing.

I rolled over onto my back and sat up facing towards the others in the general direction of the nave of the chapel while I slipped the cloaking vest back on. "The stairway starts closer to the outer wall and is about four steps deep at this spot. It continues in that direction," I paused to gesture forward, "After about fifteen steps, it reaches a landing and then turns to the right. I couldn't see any farther from this location. I looked around, but I didn't see anything down there that looked like a release mechanism to swing the floor out of the way."

"Sounds like we are going to have to blast our way through," stated Beatrice as she and Lilith started digging through their packs.

"If you can pass straight through stone," said Father Antonio. "Why can't you just go down and fetch the Seer Stone and meet us back up here?"

"What if it is booby-trapped? Or what if the vault is filled with a bunch of fake Seer Stones in addition to the real one?" I asked. Perhaps I had seen too many movies like the Indiana Jones ones and the National Treasure pair. "I think you and the others need to accompany me. And while others can use the portals between worlds my Halo opens, I can't bring anyone with me when I phase."

Beatrice and Lilith were both working something in their hands that looked like Silly Putty. After kneading it for several seconds, Beatrice motioned for me to move out of the way. Then she rolled her piece out into a long skinny string like a piece of pretzel dough. She laid it diagonally across the spot where I had been lying. Then she took the other piece from Lilith and laid it at a cross diagonal to the first forming a large X about half a meter across.

"Everyone should step back at least ten meters," Beatrice said, as she pulled from her pack a small black box with a long pair of wires wrapped tightly around it. She unwound the wires, which had to be almost ten meters long, and stuck the free end into what I now realized had to be plastic explosives.

As she backed away from the explosives paying out the wires, I glanced around. Several large columns supporting the floor and pulpit of the upper chapel were scarily close to where Beatrice had placed her charge. If she miscalculated the amount, she could easily damage these pillars and bring the level above down. Even though I could phase and the risk to me should be minimal, I still found myself backing off an additional few meters.

Beatrice moved until her body was mostly behind one of the big columns, about seven meters from the explosives, with only her arm protruding to where it still held the small black box. After a glance around to verify everyone was well back, she said, "Fire in the hole." And then she flipped up a small clear cover with her thumb and pressed the newly exposed red button.

The explosives went BANG. It sounded exceedingly loud within the confines of the chapel, but since my ears were barely ringing afterwards, I quickly decided it had been quiet enough so it most likely wouldn't have been heard outside.

The bang was immediately followed by several loud thumps and then the whole area was filled with a billowing cloud of dust. The ceiling above didn't come crashing down. We waited thirty seconds for the worst of the dust to clear and during that time everything was quiet with no rumbling to indicate the chapel was about to collapse.

Beatrice led the way forward, the light from her flashlight piercing the lingering tendrils of dust. Once we got close, I saw a rectangular opening about one meter wide by one and a half meters long. Looking down, I could see a light coating of rubble on the newly exposed steps, but no pieces large enough to block the passage. Damn, Beatrice was good. But then she seemed to be a world class expert at everything.

"Camila, how about you and I stay up here to keep a look out?" said Mary. "I don't want us all trapped in what is probably a dead-end passage if trouble comes looking while we are down there."

Camila nodded.

"I'll go first," I stated. "How about Lilith next, then Father Antonio, and finally Beatrice?" It seemed best to have the strongest ones up front in case we ran into anything unexpected.

"Ah, how about you first and Father Antonio second," suggested Beatrice. "Since the Father is the most familiar with the situation, he may spot something the rest of us might miss."

I nodded. I moved over to the new hole while pulling my vest back off, just in case I needed the full power of the Halo without any notice. Hopefully, if we got in and out fast, there wouldn't be enough time to attract any Tarasks. Or if one did show up and we were lucky, it would materialize in solid rock like the one buried in the wall of Ariel's prison.

Quickly, I lowered myself into the newly exposed hole. When my feet reached the bottom, I was a little more than waist deep. I took the flashlight Beatrice handed me and then ducked low to move down the steps until I was low enough to clear the broken edge of the hole.

I swept the flashlight back and forth as I slowly paced down the steps, looking for anything out of place that might indicate a step was about to move away to drop me into a deep pit. I knew it was unlikely and the worry was just the consequences of an over-active imagination after seeing too many movies. In the movies, traps always featured complicated mechanisms using lots of ropes and pulleys. I mean, get real, would those old ropes still work, or even exist, after hundreds or thousands of years? I really doubt it.

I tried to use that logic to convince myself I was being irrational, but I still found myself studying each step and the surrounding walls before moving forward. It felt like it took fifteen minutes to reach the small landing, but I knew it wasn't that long, as, with a glance back, I could see that tail-end Charlie, I mean Beatrice, was just entering the passageway and so it seemed unlikely more than one or maybe two minutes had passed.

The largest pieces of the floor that had been ripped out by Beatrice's explosion had tumbled down the stairs until they had ended up on the landing. I stepped between these before looking off to the right. I found the stairway continued in that direction for another fifteen steps before it turned left at another landing. Everything about this next section, including the rough-hewn walls, looked exactly the same as the first section. I forced myself to move a little faster. The longer we were down here, the more time for trouble to arrive.

At the second landing, I looked to the left and discovered another series of fifteen steps taking us yet further underground. But this time things were different. At the bottom of the stairs was a straight passage heading in the same direction.

"I think we will be at the bottom once we descend a third set of steps," I stated for the benefit of those behind me. "Comm check, please."

Those behind me on the stairs quickly responded. Then Mary and Camila reported in. Their replies were filled with static. They were still intelligible, but that might not remain the case if much more rock got between us and them.

I moved down the third set of stairs at what felt almost like a jog compared to the first set. There didn't seem to be any traps lying in wait, but, just in case, I was mentally ready to phase at a moment's notice. I just hoped if something happened I was far enough ahead of Father Antonio that he didn't get caught in it, too.

When I reached the bottom, the passage stretched out before me. It was the same meter and a half width as the stairway until it visibly widened about twelve meters in front of me. Unfortunately, the beam from my flashlight petered out at about the same range. I wouldn't be able to see the chamber beyond until I was most of the way down the passage.

In his excitement, Father Antonio was already crowding my back as I began to move forward. I was tempted to tell him to hold back, but his enthusiasm must have been contagious. At least I tried to still move slowly and methodically, swinging my flashlight around to highlight the floor, walls, and ceiling before taking each step. Nothing jumped out as worrisome.

When I reached the secret vault, I discovered a circular chamber about five meters across with the same three meter high ceiling as the passageway. The walls contained five arched niches at regular intervals, but they all appeared to be empty. The only thing in the chamber was a pedestal near the back wall. Sitting on the pedestal, at almost head height, was an object that had to be the Seer Stone. It was larger than I was expecting. It was egg-shaped and about the size of an ostrich egg. Okay, I've never seen an ostrich egg in person, but this Seer Stone was at least three times as large as a chicken's egg. From four meters away, it looked a deep burgundy color with swirls of gold and silver that seemed to almost move under the beam from my flashlight. I covered the flashlight with my hand so the Seer Stone was no longer illuminated, and it glowed with some internal light. I suddenly realized it was like divinium except it produced a golden glow instead of a blue one.

And it was while I had the flashlight covered that I also realized I could sense power emanating from the stone. I've been near many relics since getting the Halo – at the Vatican, in the catacombs under the Vatican, in a half dozen cathedrals and about as many abbeys. Not once had I ever had the feeling I was in the presence of something HOLY. But now I did. The longer I stood there, nearly frozen at the entrance of the secret vault, the stronger the sensation became. And then I realized there was an underlying sense of dread, like I shouldn't be standing in the presence of something this holy.

With a shake of my head, I forced myself back into the here-and-now and remembered the mission.

"I see the stone," I stated out loud for the benefit of those behind me and Mary and Camila back in the chapel. To my own ear, my voice sounded slightly ragged.

I took one step into the chamber and the Seer Stone suddenly flared to life with an intense burst of radiant energy. Then, almost before my vision cleared, I was thrown back. I phased straight through Father Antonio and then Lilith and finally Beatrice before crashing to a halt at the bottom of the stairway a dozen meters from where I had been standing. What the hell?

Beatrice turned and played her flashlight on me. "Ava?"

My body momentarily ached all over from the impact, but it quickly passed. I shook my head in response to Beatrice's question. "I have no idea what just happened. I took one step into the chamber and suddenly I was thrown back here."

Beatrice glanced behind her, towards the chamber. Other than the light from the others' flashlights, everything seemed quiet.

"Did you notice anything before that?" Beatrice asked when she had turned back in my direction.

"As I stood in the doorway of the chamber, I got this overwhelming sense of power radiating from the Stone. And it appeared to glow like divinium except gold rather than blue. And . . . and . . . I had this growing sense of dread – like I wasn't worthy to be standing so close to something so Holy."

Beatrice turned back forward. "Lilith, move passed Father Antonio and see if you can enter the vault."

"Okay," responded Lilith, quietly. I heard her more through my earpiece than via the ten meters of space separating her from Beatrice and me.

I could hear shuffling sounds from up ahead as I climbed back to my feet. Then, after a few seconds of silence, Lilith spoke again and it wasn't her normal calm, quiet tone.

"Whoa. I have this sudden overwhelming sense of dread like if I set one foot into the chamber, it will kill me."

"Okay, back off for now," I told Lilith. Then I continued, "Father Antonio, could you move forward into the vault now, please?"

"Ah, ah, I don't think that's a good idea, Sister Ava," replied the Father. "I mean, if I get thrown down the passageway like you did, I don't think I'll survive." I could hear the fear in his voice and it was more pronounced than when we were facing the monsters back in the hell-dimension.

Beatrice must have heard it, too. "I'll go," she said calmly.

We knew the passageway was safe, so it didn't take more than fifteen seconds for her to reach the far end and squeeze by Lilith and Father Antonio.

"Okay, I'm at the entrance to the vault," stated Beatrice. She paused for what seemed like an eternity, but which, in truth, wasn't more than thirty seconds. "I can see the golden glow you described, Ava. But I don't get the sense of dread you and Lilith describe. I feel something, but I would describe it more as a sense of peace and tranquility. I'm stepping into the vault now."

It was at least twenty seconds before she said anything further. It wasn't until she spoke that I realized I had been holding my breath.

"Fuck!"

Beatrice almost never swore, so it had to mean something serious.

"Beatrice! Are you okay?" I almost shouted through the comm.

"I think so," she replied. I could hear a quaver in her voice.

"What happened?"

"I . . . I . . ." Beatrice began with a stutter. I heard her take a calming breath before she continued. "I took two steps into the chamber when I got a powerful shock, sort of like an electrical shock. And, I think, my armor started heating up."

"Well, I guess this means the Seer Stone is the real thing," I stated.

"I don't get it," said the Father.

"To the best of our knowledge, there are three planes of existence the human, the demonic, and the angelic. The middle plane, the human one, can interact with either of the other two, but the demonic and the angelic are too far apart and can't directly interact, but rather repel each other like powerful magnets. Lilith, since you were infected by the Tarask, you have too much of the demonic plane in you to interact with something from the angelic plane. And it is the same for me. I have the Halo, which was created on the demonic plane. I think only someone purely on the human plane can directly interact with what has to be an artifact from the angelic plane."

I didn't say it out loud, but suddenly wondered if being the Halo bearer meant I could never get into Heaven. If that was true, the price of being the Halo bearer was staggeringly high.

I forced my thoughts back to the current situation. "Beatrice should be able to interact with the Seer Stone, except she is wearing divinium armor from the demonic plane. If we are going to be able to remove the Seer Stone from this chamber and take it with us, Beatrice is going to have to remove her armor and weapons. And she will have to be careful to maintain her distance from everyone in the process or at least Lilith, Camila, and me plus anyone wearing divinium, which is pretty much everyone on the team."

I guess Father Antonio could also carry the stone, but I had known him barely an hour and I wasn't certain he wouldn't turn out to be another Father Vincent. No, for the time being it was definitely best if the stone stayed in the possession of one of the sisters, which only left Beatrice and Mary as potential candidates. And Beatrice was the one who was already down here.

"I agree," replied Beatrice. "I'm getting out of my armor, now. Father Antonio, you and Lilith are going to have to carry my armor and weapons to keep them a safe distance from me and the Seer Stone."

"Okay," said Lilith. Father Antonio didn't give any verbal reply.

For the next two minutes I could hear faint murmurs and other sounds, but nothing more specific.

Finally, Beatrice spoke again. "I think that is all the divinium I was carrying. I'm moving back into the vault, now."

I was again holding my breath to hear if Beatrice was now able to approach the artifact, when I finally heard something through my earpiece. However it wasn't from Beatrice like I expected.

A loud burst of static almost forced me to pull out the device. The static was only intermittently broken by an intelligible word.

"Trouble . . . help . . . now . . ."

I was only catching one word in five, but it had to be Mary's voice. Unwelcome company must have made an appearance.

Then I heard what could only be the sound of a shotgun firing through the static.

"Beatrice, have you got the Stone? We have to go, now!" I shouted.