Secrets of the Deep (42 page)

Well, you’d better figure out something quick,
he thought with a gulp as one of the other phantoms came zooming over the rooftops ahead and descended into the street a short distance ahead of him.

At once, Jake darted into a side street and pounded on, but an ancient mosaic of the Blessed Mother set into a nearby wall as he ran by gave him a sudden inspiration.

Holy
ground!

Since these phantoms were clearly evil spirits of some kind, then a spiritual solution might be his only real defense.

There was no shortage of churches in the old Sicilian city; as places of sanctuary, by tradition, these were never locked at night. If he could duck into one, the phantoms probably wouldn’t be able to follow him in, then he could run out one of the side doors and get away.

It seemed as good a plan as any. At least it would get him out of the reach of those long, wicked knives.

Spotting a steeple over the roofs ahead, he made a beeline for it, though he’d have to
find
the church somewhere within this sleeping stone labyrinth—and that before the phantoms found him.

They were coming closer. He could hear them shrieking to each other in frustration as they hunted him. He wondered if any of the local folk were hearing this or if they were still fast asleep in their beds…

Suddenly, Jake saw the small stone church ahead, tucked in among the crowded buildings. A ray of moonlight gleamed down upon it.

He poured on a burst of speed as he went tearing toward it, giving up on stealth in favor of just reaching the front door. His lungs burned, sweat coursed down his face, and every bounding step over the uneven cobbles jarred his knees. The church was only sixty yards away when one of the phantoms flew by overhead.

It almost didn’t notice him, scanning back and forth along the surrounding streets while he ran practically right beneath it. Unfortunately, it spotted him, and the next thing Jake knew, it was on his tail.

It was hard to be certain, but he believed this was a different one from the fellow he had battled back on the Corso Umberto. It called to its mates in a rasping shriek like a thousand nails on chalkboards as it whooshed after him down the street.

Jake winced at the awful sound, but focused with all his might on reaching the little church. He wasn’t even sure his plan would work, but he was about to find out.

Suddenly—disaster.

He tripped on a crooked cobblestone and stumbled hard onto one knee, crying out with pain as he caught himself with his hands.

That brief pause was all the phantom needed to close the distance between them, and then it was upon him.

It had not yet learned, as its companion had, that the force field around him could hurt it. However, that protective barrier was waning, and though it zapped the phantom back, the creature counterattacked at once.

Jake’s eyes widened as its blade penetrated the bubble, narrowly missing his ear. As the creature withdrew its arm, snarling at the pain, its injury gave Jake the sliver of time he needed to pick himself up and barrel on, grimacing and limping, his right knee bloodied by the hard bang.

The other two phantoms arrived then and joined the fray, all three of them racing up behind him, screeching with murderous intent, as he hobbled through the front gate, up the few steps to the portico, and grasped the handle of the door, praying it was unlocked.

The heavy door swung open. A glance over his shoulder showed the phantoms still in pursuit, undeterred by the boundary of the church property line. His last hope as he threw himself over the threshold was that they could not come into the church itself.

The creatures flew right up to the doorway but could not get through, to his relief. Once the door had swung closed, he took a few steps back into the vestibule and leaned against the wall, his chest heaving, his knee throbbing.

He reached down to rub it a bit and attempted to catch his breath while the phantoms thumped uselessly against the door, but they did not breach the building.

For now, it seemed he was safe.

Recalling his earlier plan to slip out through a side door and get away, he walked quietly into the church and glanced around to find another exit.

The nave was lit by votive candles clustered around the feet of statues here and there. The agonized form of the Man nailed to the cross at the front of the church sent a shiver down his spine. It looked so real.

He hurried across the nave to the side entrance and cautiously opened the door a crack. Sure enough, a phantom waited for him there, floating off the ground and screeching when it saw him. Jake slammed the door shut again.

Heart pounding, he crossed to the opposite side of the church and tried the door there, as well: same result.

Three doors, each one guarded by a phantom.

How am I going to get out of here?
Should he simply wait till dawn and hope the creatures would withdraw at sunrise? He did not fancy sitting here all night. Besides, what if daylight didn’t actually make them go away?

I’ve got to find another exit.
Feeling steadier after his brief respite, he walked around the dimly lit church trying to see if there were any other options for how he might proceed. He peeked into the sacristy behind the altar, but it was just a plain room with some shelves and the priest’s robes hanging on a hook.

He walked on, bowing his head when he passed in front of the altar, the way he had seen Dani do in Notre Dame Cathedral. And then, on the far side of the church, in the front corner, Jake spotted his solution. An unassuming wooden door there was hung with a sign that said:
Crypt
and
Exit to Churchyard
.

Perfect!
thought Jake. Better still, there was a display of holy water on a table beside the door to the underground crypt. The sign said that for a small donation, visitors could take one of the small vials.

At once, Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out a coin. He dropped it in the Poor Box, then helped himself to a few of the little bottles of the stuff. Maybe it would keep the phantoms at bay.

Nothing else so far had worked.

Then he went through the little door and started down the cramped wooden steps.

At the bottom, he stepped down into a vaulted passageway. It didn’t seem very long—maybe thirty feet—merely a sort of tunnel to the churchyard.

But it was very dark, and it had a dusty, musty smell tinged with frankincense and myrrh and some other spices, as well as something sharper…formaldehyde? Gooseflesh broke out across his skin as he realized what the odd, acrid smell was: chemical compounds for embalming dead bodies.

With a shudder, he began slowly walking down the passage. The darkness yawned ahead of him. Just a little moonlight shone through a few narrow street-level windows set high into the wall on his left. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust—and then he rather wished they hadn’t.

Once he could see, he found the crypt lined with bones, stacks of skulls and femurs artfully arranged in macabre art displays. Relics of dead saints. Mummified ex-parishioners leaning along the walls. Monks dressed in their robes, local persons of importance in their finery, all slowly rotting away. Even the emaciated body of a long-dead child lay displayed under glass.

It was dreadful. A violent tremor shook him, but he swallowed hard and forced himself onward. Calmly, he reminded himself that the people here had chosen to be buried or preserved beneath their church.

As he crept past, he tried not to look into the gruesome faces and focused on reaching the opposite door. Once he got to the far end of the passage, he quickly went up the few steps there to seize the door latch in relief. Taking a vial of holy water out of his pocket, he pulled out the tiny cork and covered the mouth of the jar with his thumb, ready to throw it at the first phantom he saw.

With a backward glance at the dead to make sure none of them were creeping up behind him, he lifted the latch and opened the wooden door a crack. Peeking out warily, he was thrilled to see the way was clear.

The phantoms were still waiting for him at the other entrances around the other corners of the building. His plan was going to work!

Heart pounding, he slipped out the door and closed it silently behind him. Then he stole across the churchyard, weaving his way among the aboveground graves and stone sarcophagi.

Unfortunately, he soon ran into a problem. The church’s private graveyard was walled in by high stone fences over ten feet tall with spikes on top. Moreover, the stone had been smoothed over with limestone plaster, making it slippery and virtually impossible even for an ex-thief to climb.

Jake looked around wildly, not seeing any way out. There had to be a gate here somewhere! But with the phantoms waiting on the other sides of the building for him, it wasn’t as though he had a lot of time.

What choice do I have?
Gritting his teeth and continually watching over his shoulder, he hurried along the wall, trying to find a gate or any sort of break where he could get out.

It wasn’t long before he had company. His next anxious glance toward the church revealed one of the phantoms on the way. It came scudding over the roof of the church and screeched to its cohorts when it spotted him. Jake broke into a run beside the fence, praying for an exit.

When the first phantom reached him and began to menace him with its knives, he hurled the holy water at it.

The vial splashed against its chest—a direct hit. At once, the masked creature shrieked and rocketed straight upward, its body smoking and singed.

Jake lifted his chin, watching it fly up high into the sky in amazement.
I guess it works!
He quickly pulled out a second bottle and uncorked it, ready to throw it at the next one, but still making his way along the wall, searching for a gate.

From the corner of his eye, he noticed something go flapping by overhead and instantly braced himself for another attack, but the swift black shape was too small to be one of the phantoms. A high-pitched cry revealed it was only a bat. It had probably been roosting in the tall columnar junipers that dotted the graveyard.

Jake put the bat out of his mind as the next phantom came whooshing toward him, knives gleaming. Holy water at the ready, he drew back his arm, keeping his thumb over the mouth of the vial for now, then threw.

He missed. The phantom had seen what had happened to the last one and was ready for him. It dodged aside, its attack thwarted for the moment, but the holy water spilled across the ground.

Blast
it!

Jake realized his plight then. As long as he was armed with these small vials, he had at least a means of driving them back. But as soon as he ran out of holy water vials…

Once more, the second phantom headed his way, and this time, it was joined by the third. Jake didn’t know what had happened to the one that had shot up into the sky, but these two were enough to keep him busy.

He swallowed hard, a holy water vial in each hand. He pulled one of the corks out with his teeth, waiting. He could not risk missing again.

At that moment, the strangest thing happened. The bat swooped by again, diving at the heads of the two phantoms menacing him.

What
the devil?

The creatures tried to swat the bat away as it fluttered around their heads, then it flew toward the church. The two phantoms turned in obvious confusion and watched it go flapping off.

But when the bat flew before the face of the great round moon, Jake gasped in astonishment. For it landed on the church roof, transforming in the blink of an eye into the shape of a man.

“Hullo, Jake,” he called down casually. “Getting into trouble again, are we?”

“Prince Janos?” Jake cried in amazement.

“Nightstalkers, Jake, really?” the vampire prince chided him in a droll tone. “Derek wasn’t joking. You really do know how to make friends wherever you go.”

The phantoms were clearly taken aback by the new arrival.

So was Jake, for that matter, considering Janos and he had never been formally introduced. Isabelle and Maddox were the only ones who’d actually met him. Jake had seen the vampire prince before, however, and of course, he knew who he was; Janos had served as a Guardian with Derek back when he had been a mortal.

Apparently, Derek had told Janos a bit about Jake, in turn.

Mystified, he watched the tall, cloaked figure jump off the roof of the church and plummet almost slowly through the air some forty feet or so, his black cloak flowing out behind him. He landed in the graveyard with a fierce, agile elegance and began striding toward Jake.

Still, the phantoms hesitated, as though unsure what to do.

“Seems my old Guardian instincts haven’t entirely left me yet,” Janos remarked as he approached. “Thought I’d do Derek a favor and check on you on my way to Merlin Hall. Had a feeling I’d better hurry, and it’s a good thing I did. I heard all the commotion this charming trio was making over the city. Figures I’d find you in the middle of it. Now stay back,” Janos ordered. “I’ll take care of these fellows.”

“Tell me how to stop them and I’ll help you!”

“You can’t. They exist on the shadow plane and can only be killed with a darkling blade. Like this.” Janos pulled out a large gray knife rather like the ones the phantoms carried, only his had a subtle blue glow around it. “Lucky for you, it’s a favorite weapon among my kind.”

Then Janos turned himself fully into his vampire form, eyes glowing, fangs gleaming as he let out a savage growl, then the ex-Guardian ran at the two phantoms like a berserker set loose.

Jake drew in his breath and pressed his back against the wall, merely trying to keep out of the way while Janos engaged the two phantoms in battle.

Wide-eyed, he watched, trying to figure out what the deuce the Order’s vampire double agent was doing here in the first place. Did his presence mean that Henry had completed his mission?