Blood of the Lamb (45 page)

He shook his head. “I wish I could claim that sort of inspiration. No, I learned the new Librarian was hunting it. Before that I didn’t even know it was missing. But you can see, it presented a golden opportunity.”

“I can’t.” Her shoulders fell. When she spoke all fire was gone. She sounded small and sad. “All
I
wanted was the life I had. My home, my work.” She paused. “You. But you ended that.”

“For a while. But now we can have it forever. Give me the Concordat, and we can start a new life. Together. In the sun. Livia, please.”

Thomas calmly rerolled the Concordat and replaced it in the tube, making sure the cap was tight. Tube in hand, he muscled himself out of the cistern as though he were leaving a swimming pool. He straightened, stood next to Livia, and, facing Richter, said, “No.”

89

“Father,” said Jonah. Livia saw him smile at Thomas, saw his smile change. “I understand. You want to negotiate. The Concordat for your friend the Cardinal. Fine. Give it to me and I’ll tell you where he is. I promise you, he’s”—Jonah’s grin broadened—“as you last saw him. So, please.”

Talking to Livia, Jonah had been caring, wry, the man she’d never—as he’d known—stopped loving. But as he spoke to Thomas, Livia heard a new note in his voice. His confidence spilled into smug superiority, his resolve into threat. Did he not hear himself?

Momentarily the Tempietto dissolved and Livia was back standing before the Conclave. Rosa Cartelli’s shrill fears of terror and of fire if the Noantri Unveiled were balanced by the Pontifex’s calm words:
The time will come, but it is not come yet.
The Pontifex, whose understanding of their lives was fathomless and clear: this was what he’d meant. This was the true peril of Unveiling. The greatest danger came not from the Unchanged, was not to the temporal existence of the Noantri. It arose from within, and what was at risk was their very souls. Her people would have much to offer an Unveiled world; but the change she was seeing in Jonah right now was the proof that they were not ready. The Concordat’s demand for secrecy, she was suddenly sure, was the very thing that kept the swagger out of the Noantri step.

“No,” she said. “What you want is wrong.”

“His reasons are wrong,” said a new voice. “Twisted as they can be. But his request will be fulfilled.”

90

Thomas spun to face the doorway. At the sight of the thin form silhouetted there his heart leapt. “
Lorenzo!
Thank God! You’re free!”

The Cardinal, dressed in street clothes and without clerical collar—but carrying a lit cigar—smiled as he stepped into the room. “Thomas. You’ve done well.” He turned to the openmouthed Jonah Richter. “You didn’t seriously think I’d stay shut up in that foul-smelling attic waiting for you to come back?”

Richter recovered himself, laughed, and made Lorenzo a mock bow. “Your Eminence. You have to admit I was right, though. It worked.”

“It wouldn’t have been necessary in the first place if you’d had the least modicum of self-control. How like your kind, though: the arrogance of Satan himself. Thomas, bravo. I’m humbled by your devotion and proud of your erudition. Now please give the Concordat to me.”

“Lorenzo.” Thomas felt the way he often did translating a fragment of text: he understood the words but couldn’t get them to make sense. “How did you get free?”

“He obviously walked out my door.” Richter’s tone was merry. “The same way he walked in.”

“I’m sorry, Thomas,” said Lorenzo. “We had to improvise. You’d quit the search and were leaving Rome. Jonah had great faith in
Professoressa
Pietro and was perfectly happy to let you go, but I knew better. You were the key.” Lorenzo turned a sour eye on Livia, as though she’d been holding Thomas back. Then: “Thomas. The document. Please.” He put out his hand.

“Wait. I don’t understand. The phone call . . . Your abduction . . .”

“Catch up, Father!” Richter said. His thumb waggled from Lorenzo to himself.

“Desperation makes strange bedfellows,” Lorenzo said matter-of-factly. “Jonah came to me and, after I’d controlled my disgust at his very presence, convinced me the Concordat was more likely to be found if a Noantri was also on the trail. This one, to be precise.” He pointed the cigar at Livia. “I was revolted, but it was efficient. Thomas, let’s get out of here. It’s unbearable to be this close to them for long.”

Richter shrugged. “Livia, he thinks we smell funny. This from a man who can’t go anywhere without a stinking cigar. To have a flame always nearby, that’s it, isn’t it, Your Eminence? God, you Mortals are so easy to read. Fine, take it and go. It amounts to the same thing.”

Thomas looked from one man to the other. “It does? How can that be?
You
want to make it public. Lorenzo—” He stopped as he met Lorenzo’s eyes.

In a voice of infinite patience, Lorenzo spoke. “I told you once: centuries ago, a great mistake was made. It can’t be undone, but it can be corrected.”

“But the Church—if the world knows about this agreement, that the Church and the Noantri—”

“Yes.” Lorenzo stood relaxed and straight, like a man relieved of a burden. “The Church we know, compromised and corrupt, will finally fall.”

“And our people”—Jonah Richter smiled at Livia—“will be free.”

“Not for long!”
Lorenzo spun on Richter in sudden, savage rage. “The new Church that rises will be fearless and mighty! The Church the Savior intended! It will put an end to your filthy kind!” He turned to Thomas; his voice dropped to a plea. “You understand, don’t you? All evil flows from them. In God’s image, but not human. Among us, not of us, degrading us, destroying us. Mocking the promise of the Resurrection.
They must be stopped!
”

Thomas felt shaky, as though engulfed by a tide that might sweep him away. This was the Lorenzo he knew, the friend he loved, raging against coming disaster as so often before. But this time he was wrong.

Whatever the true colors of Livia’s people, whatever the depth of their hearts and the desires inside them—however evil one or another of them might be, as one or another of Thomas’s people might also be—the Noantri nature was not as Lorenzo believed.

“No,” he said. “Lorenzo—”

“Give it to me!”
Lorenzo grasped for the tube in Thomas’s hand. Thomas pulled his arm back but no need: Richter seized Lorenzo, flinging him into the altar. The shadows from the eternal flame bounced and danced, though the lamp stayed aright. Richter lunged, clamped a vise grip on Thomas’s wrist. He tried to pry the tube loose and would have succeeded but Livia wrapped him from behind in a bear hug. Thomas yanked his hand from Richter’s fingers as Richter, with an earthquake roar, blasted free, throwing Livia to the floor.

Richter leapt on Thomas and the two stumbled back. Thomas felt a sickening thud as his head slammed into the wall. Dizzy, pinned by Richter’s weight, he stretched his arm, lifting the tube as high as he could; he was taller than Richter and the man couldn’t reach it. Richter laughed. He stopped trying for the tube, instead wrapping both hands around Thomas’s throat. He squeezed and shook. Fiery knives sliced through Thomas’s skull every time the back of his head hit the stone again. Tiny red lights burst behind his eyes and he knew he’d lost. He couldn’t breathe; he couldn’t think. The tube began to slip from his fingers. His straining lungs begged for air.
Our Father, who art in heaven . . .

“NO!”
A howl echoed off the stone walls.
“Leave him alone!”
Thomas could barely make out Lorenzo staggering toward them. The Cardinal’s face purpled with effort as he tried to pull Richter away. He had no effect at all; then, with wonder, Thomas saw Lorenzo—rail-thin, seventy-three, and never a street fighter—make fists and hammer at Richter’s head and face.

The blows were ineffectual but Lorenzo was relentless.
“Let go of him!”
he rasped, and finally Richter turned, snarling. Thomas slipped down the wall as Richter dropped his grip and faced the Cardinal. A second’s pause; then one roundhouse punch to the jaw was all it took to lift Lorenzo into the air and hurl him across the room.

91

Livia, winded when Jonah threw her to the floor, pulled in deep breaths. She shook off her daze and looked up just in time to see the Cardinal, flying off Jonah’s fist, crash headfirst into a wall. Jonah spared himself a moment to grin in satisfaction. Then he turned back to where Thomas lay gasping on the floor. He reached down for the tube that had dropped from Thomas’s grip; but that moment was all Livia needed.

Leaping up, she tackled Jonah as she had the clerk at the Metro station. The tube flew from Jonah’s hand and bounced across the room. They rolled and wrestled; in the end he was stronger, though, and leveraged himself on top of her, pinning her down. Looking into her eyes, he grinned. “This was not how I imagined myself back in this position.” He leaned down and quickly kissed her. She lost her breath again. Then he jumped up, scanning for the tube. Livia shook off another, much different kind of daze, and followed his eyes. She saw him redden in anger: Thomas had recovered enough to crawl across the floor and grasp the tube, pulling it protectively close.

“Father,” Jonah said. “Don’t be silly. You’ll only get hurt more.”

Thomas couldn’t do more than shake his head as he lay on the floor, hugging the tube to him. When Jonah leaned down to take it, Thomas held it tight, engaging with all his remaining strength in what Livia knew would be a losing tug-of-war.

She leapt up. “Jonah!” He turned to face her. “Leave it! It isn’t time!”

He grinned again. A bead of sweat made a trail down his temple. “No. If I can’t make you understand, my darling, I’ll continue without you. Once we’ve Unveiled, you’ll know. You’ll thank me and come back to me. We have time. I can wait.” He reached down again and, with a grunt, yanked the tube from Thomas’s weakened grip. “Now move aside,” he said, but she filled the doorway and stood. “Livia. If we fight, I’ll win.”

“Still. I can’t let you take it.”

“Come with me.” His voice was soft. “I became Noantri to be with you. You took on this task to save me, you say. So come with me now.”

“And to save our people.”

“This will free our people.”

“It will destroy them.”

He took a step toward her. “There’s only one way you could stop me.”

She said nothing.

“But you won’t do it.”

“I will,” she said, but she knew he was right.

Another step, and he put a hand on her arm, as if to gently tug her aside. She shook it off and stood firm. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.

Before she could answer Thomas lunged up from the floor, grasping for the tube in Jonah’s hand. A second late, Jonah pulled his hand away but he’d lost his grip. The tube flew through the air again, this time landing on the altar shelf. Jonah sprang toward it, stretched for it, but Thomas grabbed at his leg and he tripped. Flailing clumsily, trying simultaneously to kick Thomas away and to reach the tube, Jonah knocked the lamp over. Oil spilled down his arm, and in horror Livia watched flame catch fabric. She rushed forward, threw her arms around him to smother the fire, but he had the Concordat in his hand now and he broke free. The back of his jacket blazed as he leapt for the door.