We left the Vatican Museum through the official exit, without being waylaid further. We’d had to abandon the spear still embedded in Raphael’s torso, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to pull the weapon out without mortal help.

The three guards at the door only glanced up briefly. They were not interested in stopping people leaving, especially when one was in clerical garb, and besides, they were clustered about a monitor showing newsfeed, and deep in voluble discussion amongst themselves. Egan cast a swift look at the transmission as we passed.

“La Paz,” he said grimly.

Once out on the street we broke into a jog. The Forum was a good thirty minutes south on foot, and the route was crowded. Overhead the sky was now a deep, ugly red, and the drizzling rain felt unpleasantly warm. It took me a few moments to realize that it was staining my gray fleece jacket, and I grimaced when I saw that the spots were red too.

We were passing a bar when we heard the people inside start to shriek and wail. “Milano!” the cries reached us.

“Damn it,” Egan growled. “Let’s hope they’re not heading this way.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the entrance to an alley. “Milja,” he said, hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes, “you have to get a grip on that thing inside you. Put it away, now.”

Green fire flared inside me. “It saved your life.”

“And I’d rather go down in a firefight than see it turn you into a monster.”

Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you? Going down heroically in a hail of bullets would be so much easier than letting me love you. “It’s not in control. I am.”

His mouth tightened to a hard line. “We need to cross consecrated ground. Hide it.”

I wanted to argue, but I realized he was right. I was probably glowing like a beacon as far as angels were concerned. I swallowed hard and concentrated on Samyaza within me, pushing him back down, untangling the tendrils of emerald fire that had wound their way to the very tips of my fingers.

“Good,” he breathed, watching my eyes.

It didn’t feel good, packing all that power away, but I did it. All the way down from the back of my skull to the knotted snake twisting in my lower belly. So much power, so much heat—and concentrating it down there hit me with a sudden wash of arousal. Burning, hip-twisting, touch-me-now-oh-please horniness. I caught Egan’s face between my hands and kissed him, pressing my aching body up against his.

His response was immediate and primal. It was a good thing that it was dark, and people had other stuff on their minds, because I suspect that a robed priest locked in a passionate kiss with some woman in the street might not have gone down well otherwise.

Egan pushed me away at last. “Later,” he groaned.

It hurt, pulling away from him. Bits of my body were screaming in protest—a faint, karmic echo of the agonies I’d inflicted on the operatives of Vidimus.

By the time we reached the Via dei Fori Imperiali on the border of the ancient Forum, the traffic had come to a gridlocked standstill and the blaring of car horns was a cacophony. We scurried across the broad road and headed, not for the tourist gate as I’d been expecting, but for the only Christian church visible in that area of ancient ruins, its Baroque white facade a beacon amidst the cheek-by-jowl ruins in darker brick and stone. A small sign by a path I could easily have overlooked proclaimed the way to S. Francesa Romana, and we yomped up a ramp past some portable toilets.

“I thought we were going to the Temple of the Vestals?” I asked, looking back in the direction of the archaeological park. The ruins in question were only a few hundred yards away, but on the other side of the fence.

“There’s a tunnel.”

“Of course there is.”

Egan used the first of the twinned keys at the blackened wooden door and led the way through the interior porch into the main body of the church. It wasn’t a terribly large building by Rome’s standards, and to my untrained eye looked much like the interior of Santa Maria della Vittoria where I’d seen the ecstatic sculpture of Saint Teresa, except that here the brightly painted roof was flat. Most of the artwork that I could see on a cursory glance about me starred the Virgin Theotokos, and the painting over the high altar even resembled what I’d call a proper, decent icon, of the type I was used to back home in Montenegro. The lights up there were the only lit bulbs in the place.

Egan, of all things, crossed himself hurriedly. Maybe it was just automatic.

“You just stabbed up an archangel,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “I think you lost several billion Catholic Points right there.”

He winced. Then he turned to a tiny door in a niche that might have been a minor chapel, easy to overlook amongst all the florid decorations. The door was of dark bronze though, and looked immensely strong. There he drew out the second, modern key. “This lock is always sticky,” he grumbled under his breath.

I threw off my ruined jacket and dumped the bathrobe on top of it as I tried to catch my breath. “Egan, are you scared we’re going to go to Hell for this?”

He looked over his shoulder at me, and narrowed his eyes. “No.”

I was stung by what I took for his Catholic arrogance. “We’re not on God’s side here, you know.”

The tumblers on the lock rolled over with a clunk that seemed too loud. “You’re not going to Hell, Milja. Trust me.”

“But Jesus talked about Hell all the time.”

He pushed the handle and the door swung open to reveal a steeply descending stair. Then he walked back to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “You remember the last time you asked a question with too big an answer, in Norway, and I told you that it really ought to wait until later?”

“Uhuh.” I bit my lip. I still didn’t know what I was supposed to do with that confidence he’d entrusted me with. Except maybe cut him a lot more slack. Shame poured cool water on my burning frustration.

“Please trust me on this one: we haven’t got time…and I am not the person you should be hearing it from.”

“Then who?”

His eyes pointedly indicated the floor beneath us.

“Uh. Okay.”

“Come on.”

He led the way down into the earth, after locking the door behind us. The stone walls of the spiral stairwell were painted white, and it opened out into a narrow corridor that set off in a straight line—beneath the Forum and presumably in the direction of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins.

Egan flicked on a light switch. The whitewashed passage was low and narrow, and it sloped downward.

There must be hundreds of miles of tunnels and catacombs under Rome. So many secrets.

Secrets buried under secrets.

Like Egan. Always more revelations, more confessions. One just covers the next.

“There’s something I don’t get,” I said to his back as I followed him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Gabriel Fell, okay, and was imprisoned. Like the Watchers before him. Does that mean that God was like, ‘I might as well take advantage of this opportunity’? Wasn’t Gabriel acting on orders?”

Egan didn’t answer.

“And if he was, how was it fair to imprison him?”

He walked on as if he hadn’t heard me.

“He told me he’d promise to keep the secret if we’d let him go,” I said. “Is it such a big deal that it wasn’t really a virgin birth? I mean, if Jesus really was the Incarnation, like you said, what difference does it make? Everything still stands as it did.”

Egan reached the end of the corridor; another small door, this one of heavy wood. He leaned against the wall, and I thought he looked tired and drawn all of a sudden. “That’s…”

That’s not the secret.

“…not the secret.”

My heart plunged.

“Then what is?” I whispered, my mouth so dry that I could barely form the words.

“Ask him,” he said, pushing open the door.

The chamber inside was round, much like the subterranean chapel that Penemuel’s tomb had been concealed beneath. But this one was brightly lit by electric lights, and painted all over with a white so harsh that it made me blink. Opposite our door, and to either side at the quarter points, were niches that might also have once been doorways, now bricked up and occupied by tall crucifixes and wreathes of plastic flowers. I think I’d expected something Ancient Roman, but this chamber felt disconcertingly modern and bland.

Except for its focal point.

In the center of the floor, starkly contrasting with all that white, was a man, crouched and naked. His hands were flat on the stone before him, and his head bowed so low that his thick locks masked his face. My first impression was that he was bulkier than Azazel, with heavier muscles.

The Archangel Gabriel, in the flesh.

My mouth was dry as I approached him. The room was so quiet that I could hear his breathing.

“Gabriel?”

He did not stir.

I went down on my knees beside him. The whitewash on the floor went all the way to where he knelt, and had even been daubed up over his bare toes and the back of his hands in places. For some reason that irrelevant detail woke a rage in me; the thought of someone indifferently redecorating this room and taking no more care or notice of the prisoner than if he’d been an inanimate object.

“Gabriel, wake up. I need to speak to you.”

No reaction. His wrists and ankles were bound tight by thick twists of leather that were sunk into stones mortared flush with the floor. They too had been daubed with paint.

“What’s holding him down?” I asked Egan over my shoulder.

His answer was dry and without mercy; “The body rather famously went missing from the tomb, if you recall.”

I cringed inwardly, my inculcated reverence flaring in helpless protest. There was a pointed and deliberate cruelty, I suddenly recognized, in surrounding Gabriel with crucifixes bearing the tortured figure of Our Lord—pious reminders of the brutal consequences of his Fall.

And plastic flowers, I thought bitterly. To look nice.

Screw this.

I slipped my hand under Gabriel’s bearded chin and tried to lift his head, but his frame might as well have been made of welded steel. I swept thick ropes of hair aside to reveal his handsome profile and one closed eye. He looked a little older than Azazel too, though not so old as Uriel.

“Please,” I whispered in vain. “It’s me, Milja.”

I wondered if I would get a reaction if I stuck a fingertip in that eye, but the thought was unconscionable. He’d already suffered beyond any human limits.

“Can he hear me?” I asked Egan, despairingly.

“Ah, this is a problem. Arse. I was hoping he’d respond to you. You said you’d spoken in your dreams.”

“What?” I said suspiciously.

He sighed. “So far as I know, there’s no record of him saying anything in the last four years, despite some fairly strenuous attempts to get him talking. In fact I might be the last person he spoke to.” Egan groaned then; “Aaah…”

“What did he say?”

“‘You will cut me free.’” There was a peculiar look on Egan’s face. “At the time I thought he was just trying to psych me out.”

I wondered what would happen if we did cut him free—surely that would wake him? But then it would be too late to make demands. He might well join the fight against Azazel, and all would be lost.

I took a deep breath. “Egan, you need to knock me unconscious.”

“Say again?”

“I can get through to him in my dreams. I’ve done it before, haven’t I? I need to be out cold, though. You’ll have to smack me on the back of the head or something.”

“Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?” he asked. “It’s not like they show it in the movies, you know! I’d have as much chance of fracturing your skull or giving you brain-damage as of knocking you cold.”

“What about what you did to that policeman, at the station?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Less violent, still too dangerous. I will not risk your life, Milja.”

“You risk it more by doing nothing! You risk thousands of people every second we waste!”

His mouth twisted.

“Egan, please!”

“Okay.” He turned grim and closed-down. “Stand up.”

When I did so he spun me so that I had my back to his chest. He crooked his right arm around my neck. I hoped that he couldn’t feel my racing pulse. Did I trust his skill?

At least I’ll be in his arms.

“Take five slow breaths,” he said low in my ear. “Exhale all the way out each time; empty your lungs of carbon dioxide.”

I obeyed and felt his hard arm tighten against both sides of my neck. There was no sensation of having my airway cut off, just a sudden dark dizziness.

And then…

* * *

I am standing in the desert of dust; the place of things condemned to be forgotten. At my bare feet is a half-buried book with worn, illegible leather binding. Above me the huge form of the sphinx is slumped in the drifts, his head bowed and his wings sprawled crookedly.

“Gabriel? Gabriel, wake up!”

Slowly, slowly, he lifts his face and shakes dust from his hair and his eyelashes. I am showered in the detritus of the eons. His voice is like the roar of great waters.

“Daughter of Earth? Have you come to free me?”

“Yes,” I say softly. “Maybe.”

His eyes are smoldering golden suns, lifted blindly to the sky that is not a sky. “Have the archangels agreed then?”

“Not yet.”

“But you have spoken to them?”

“Yes.” That much is true; I’ve spoken to all of them individually. Michael is a bully, Uriel is a creep, and Raphael—whom first impressions suggested was the least hostile of the three—is a prevaricator we’ve left for dead in a pool of blood. And here is the last of the four archangels; the Pillar of the South. I can feel gooseflesh prickling all over my bare skin, though I’m not cold. It is impossible not to be awed by his sheer size and his unearthly grandeur. All the other archangels have only appeared to me disguised as men, but here is an angel in all his inhuman majesty. Even bound and broken, there is a numinous splendor about him that makes my knees want to bow.

“You must tell them again! Tell them that I will promise to keep their secret, in exchange for free air under my wings once more, for sun on my skin, for limbs unbound.”

“Gabriel,” I say, my throat furred with the wasteland’s dust, “what is their secret?”

He makes a moaning noise that sounds like a sandstorm. “Do you truly wish to know?”

“I think I must.” I don’t want to, not really. I am filled with a premonition, as you sometimes are in dreams, that it is something terrible. It is the black despair I have seen in Egan’s eyes sometimes, the fear glimpsed through the chinks in Uriel’s armor of righteousness, the source of Michael’s nihilistic anger.

But if it gives me an edge, any weapon to save Azazel…

“The secret is my story.” He bows his head. If his face were not forty feet high I’d feel moved to brush the sand from his parched lips.

“Tell me.”

His words are as slow and massive as tumbling rocks. “When on high, before I was bound here, the Adversary came to test me, as he does each of us. He spoke to me on my own and then took me into the Presence, as close as we ever dare go, to the point of bliss where every particle of me loosened, yearning to dance free and return to the light of its Source. And he asked me about my work on Earth.

“I had been obedient, without fault or hesitation. I had followed every Divine Command. I had saved and I had slain. But there was no passion in my slaughter, and the Adversary saw that. Why, he asked me, did I punish without righteous wrath?

“I told him that I did not feel it fair to despise those whom I executed. Not for one moment did I think that they did not deserve their fate, for the Laws are clear and the disobedience of the condemned was blatant. They were creatures given over to evil. But I felt it unjust of me, I said, to strike with personal ire, when I did not—could not—know what it was to be mortal. When I did not know what it meant to feel fear, or rage, or sorrow, or helplessness. When I could not truly understand what it was to resist the instincts of the flesh, or to be granted power over others without the Clear Voice to guide my actions. I told the Adversary that it was wrong of us to think ourselves better than Men, when we had not walked in their shoes nor known for ourselves their manifold limitations. I said that I had seen how easy it is for a rich man to condemn a poor man for stealing bread, and that in truth I felt I had no right to judge any one of them.

“Then the Adversary said to me, ‘You think that we cannot be just in our condemnation? By that argument would you not accuse even Our Father of injustice?’

“The scales fell from my eyes and I saw then that I had erred, and was flawed. I turned to walk into the Light of the Presence and be unmade, willingly.”

Gabriel rumbles deep in his chest.

“That was when a Still Small Voice spoke to both of us, and said, “No.”

For a long moment the only sound in the desert is the hiss of sliding grit.

“I do not know whether my unguarded words moved Him, or He was waiting all along for us to understand. It was not for us to know such things. But the Divine Plan was revealed to us, the four archangels; the Most High would descend into the world and become a child, the most helpless and weak of creatures. To know pain and fear, and hunger and thirst. To crave His mother’s comfort and His father’s approval. To feel a terror of death and a desire for carnal intercourse. To be tempted by both evil and good, by both powerlessness and power. To experience everything as mortals experienced it, and so to show them the way to the light of righteousness. And for such a thing to happen He must forget His true Nature, or else it would be nothing more than a game of make-believe. And a body must be created that could sustain such a Nature without going mad. This was our task. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“It was to be the pivotal moment of all Creation and all Time. Such a thing had not been done, nor could have been imagined before. The whole Host of Heaven was ordered into the Earthly realm, and bore witness to the Incarnation in awe and terror.

“For thirty years Our Father lived in ignorance of His Nature; a passing moment in the span of eternity but a life sentence for a man. Then he was baptized into the Truth and for three more He was knowing, but still thinking as the man He had become in that time and place, imagining Satan to be His great enemy, seeing the world around Him as a man, bounded by His flesh and culture and all the ignorance of mortality. It was the Divine Test.

“And it failed, Daughter of Earth. It failed spectacularly, and to the ruin of us all.”

I stare, my questions frozen on my numb lips.

“Humanity, with all its flawed potential and its contradictions and its endless pitiful suffering, drove Him half out of His mind. Every child broken by want, every innocent ruined by chance, or malice, or error. A world without Truth or Light, where every creature must fight for life, taking it from others, and therefore only cruelty could prosper. Yet He was certain there must be some way to make Mankind good, if only the punishments were clear and the rewards great enough. He railed against His followers, He promised Heaven and He threatened Hell. He swore to return after His mortal term and cleanse the Earth of all evil. He offered moral transfiguration through mere faith in Him, to burn out all sin upon request. Nothing was enough to turn the lost sheep to the Light. Nothing. He died in despair, and in the extremity of His torment doubted even Himself.”

I rub at my burning eyes.

“It is what happened after that that is our secret, Daughter of Earth. How we had waited for that moment, that death, that glorious resurrection into the Spirit! How we had longed to return to a Heaven filled anew with His Presence! How we yearned to see Creation redeemed! Yet that is not what happened.”

“What did happen?” I ask.

“Nothing.” He shakes his vast head. “Or almost nothing. Our Father did not return to the Host waiting to receive Him. And alone amongst all the angels and archangels only I heard the Still Small Voice. Do you want to know what It said to me?”

I can’t even nod.

“It said, ‘I am ashamed.’ And nothing more.”

“God…said that?” My legs give way and I slide down onto the grit. “You’re going to have to explain to me using very short words, Gabriel.”

“This is the secret that must not be spoken: Our Father saw what He had done and unmade Himself, in contrition for all that His Creation had been forced to suffer. He died and did not rise again. So I believe.”

“Right. Okay. Okay then.” I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this. “So who knows this?”

“Only my brothers in whom I first confided; the three archangels. And they took it badly, as you might expect. They did not want to believe me. They raged and called me a liar. They panicked and then they despaired.”

“What about the rest of the Host?” I croak.

“No. I wanted to tell them. Is it not our task to serve the Truth, after all? I wanted to tell, but my brothers would not permit me.”

“You mean the Host haven’t noticed?”

“When He became incarnate, Our Father left His Light suffused throughout Creation to sustain it, like the ghost-light of an exploded galaxy. As the Christ-cult grew, the Adversary accepted the mantle of blame, for what else was he to do? The Pillar of the West ordered the Host to stay on Earth in their guardian positions. The three chose amongst themselves to hide what they knew and officially accept the story you read in the Gospels, and to bury all evidence to the contrary. I am the evidence they buried.”

He sighs, a tornado that could flatten nations. “And since that day only the humans who call themselves Vidimus have heard the truth I have to tell.”

Vidimus. ‘We have seen.’

“But why? Why hide the truth?”

“My brothers are afraid, and rightly so. I understand their fear. What do you think the Host will do if they find out? If they know this despair? There will be war in Heaven and on Earth. I understand this. I have had centuries to think upon it. So I swear now that if they will free me, I will keep my silence.”

I stare at my hands, sifting the dust through my open fingers. I realize now why Michael has sloughed off his responsibility for the Watchers in his domain—why should he bother to keep them alive for a final Judgement that will never happen? I comprehend Uriel’s barely-veiled contempt for Christianity. I understand why they have all held publicly to the old codes of angelic conduct, and why they have secretly broken them.

“I don’t care,” I say, which is a lie. I do care; the revelation gnaws upon my guts like a cancer. But I do not have time to grieve, not if I am going to save Azazel—or anyone. “Okay. Big secret. All that can wait. We have something else to deal with right now. The world is burning. We are about to destroy ourselves for good. And you have to stop it. You are the last chance we have.”

Gabriel blinks at me, focusing on me properly for the first time, and suddenly his tone changes. “Who are you, Daughter of Earth? Are you Vidimus?”

“No, I’m not.” Do they even admit women to their conspiracy of silence?

“I see flames on your lips. I see you encompassed by darkness and fire.”

“My name is Milja Petak,” I say, “and I am the beloved of the Scapegoat.”

Gabriel growls—or perhaps groans—and the sound booming through his huge leonine chest makes the desert shake. “Is he free?”

“Yes. I freed him, and that’s how I want him to stay.”

His bared teeth loom over me. “Have you come here to torment me?”

“No. I’ve come because he’s fighting the Pillar of the West one last time, and the world cannot survive. How much do you want your own freedom, Gabriel? I’ll let you go right now, if you swear you will save the Scapegoat and stop the carnage. And I don’t care how, to be honest. Fight at his side. Kill the Pillar of the West if you have to. Stop the end of the world.”

“Save him?”

“From defeat. From being imprisoned again. He would rather die than be recaptured. You understand that, I guess. Don’t you feel the same way?”

He pulls at the titanic chains binding his forepaws, stretching his jaws in a soundless snarl that could swallow suns.

“There, yes. You know what it is to be a prisoner.” My voice is as thin as a knife-blade in the dusty air. “You know why he would rather pull the world down around himself. Save him.”

“You don’t know what you ask!”

“I know what I offer. I will cut you free right now, Gabriel. I will let you go. But only if you promise.”

“What if I cannot?” he demands. “What if I cannot save both your Master and the world? Which would you have me pick?”

“If that is the case,” I say in a voice I do not recognize, “then you must do what you think right. And I will take all the revenge in my power.”

He stares at me, until I feel I will burst into flames and be consumed. “Free me,” he says at last.

“Promise to save him.”

“I promise I will try.”

* * *

I struggled back into consciousness to find Egan crouched near me with one hand in my hair, his gun out and his eye on the door. How long I’d been unconscious I couldn’t tell, except that he’d had enough time to lay me down in the recovery position and strip off his cassock to make a pillow for beneath my head.

He started as I stirred and groaned. “Are you okay?” he asked, setting down the weapon.

I pulled myself up, clinging to his arms. Clinging, too, to the cold fire of my purpose. It was all I had left. “I’m alright. How long was I out for? It felt like ages.”

“Sure, it was only a minute. Did you speak to him?”

“Yes.” I glanced around at the bound angel, who had not moved.

Egan swallowed. “Did you ask about…?”

“Yes.”

His gaze slipped away like a shamed and wounded animal.

“So you’re, what?” I wondered. “A Catholic atheist?”

“Agnostic. Technically we don’t know if God’s dead or has just…logged out.”

“And Vidimus? Your whole organization is built on a lie?”

“We are just trying to hold the world together, Milja. We’re doing what we can.” His focus pinned me again, demanding answers. “What now?”

“Cut him free.”

“He’s going to help?”

“He says he’ll try.”

“Well. That’s something, I guess.” He moved across to holster the gun in the back of his belt and pull out a serrated knife from the bag. I made space for him, watching him work, my hand to my mouth. Trying not to think about what it was he was cutting.

As Egan sawed through the bonds at his ankles, Gabriel began to groan. As his left hand came free, his shoulders heaved. When the last of those awful fetters fell away he pitched onto the floor, stretching muscles that had been cramped for centuries and gasping with pain. Watching the heave of his bare ass was like seeing the Atlas Mountains pushed skywards by the tectonic forces of the earth; I was transfixed in awe before I could stop myself staring. And when he rolled onto his back to straighten his spine I had to turn my shoulder and step away, wide-eyed.

From the corner of my eye I saw Egan scoop up his abandoned cassock and sling it over Gabriel’s exposed crotch. Then he came to stand over me. I rested my head against his chest, sliding an arm around his waist.

Oh Egan. Are we doing the right thing? What will happen to us?

It was as if he'd heard my unspoken words. “Milja,” he murmured into my hair, “whatever happens from here on… You must know, you are the light of my life. I love you. I have never loved like this.”

I was a bit stunned. I nuzzled my face to the warm hollow between clavicle and jaw. Words seemed hopelessly inadequate for what I felt; an impossible mixture of tenderness and feral lust, humility and giddy joy, protectiveness and gratitude for his strength. “We will be together,” I whispered. “Whatever happens today, we’ll see it through together.”

“Show me the sunlight,” groaned Gabriel’s deep voice from behind us.

We turned. He was most of the way to standing; his hands were braced on his slablike thighs. Like all angels he was shockingly handsome, but I was glad to see that he had somehow managed to fashion the clerical robe into a kind of loincloth. It made it easier for me to look at him.

His eyes were blankly golden.

“Not much sunlight up there at the moment,” said Egan tightly. “More rains of blood.”

“I will put a stop to that.”

“Feel free.” Egan gestured at the door.

“Are you okay?” I asked. Azazel had been weak and dizzy after I’d released him, his memory a near-blank. “Can you walk?”

Gabriel nodded. “Give me your hand.”

I could feel Egan’s reluctance as I left his side and offered my hand to the archangel. His was huge, of course; my palm seemed to disappear into his grasp.

Gabriel sighed and stood up straight, looming over me. He shook back his heavy hair and then fixed me with a considering look. “Milja Petak,” he said, indicating Egan with a flick of his golden eyes. “You love this man?”

“Oh yes.”

“And the Scapegoat has let him live?” His lip lifted from his teeth. “Truly we are at the End of Days.”

It took a moment for me to realize that he was making a joke. A pretty grim one, but he was recovering a lot faster than Azazel nevertheless. “Yeah,” I squeaked.

“Let’s go,” said Egan warily.

He retreated into the passage to the church of Santa Francesca and Gabriel followed, leading me in his wake like a child. I noted that he had to duck beneath the low ceiling. He seemed to be a good seven feet tall.

“How long was I incarcerated?”

“About two thousand years,” I said. Not even half as long as Azazel and the other Watchers.

“I remember being brought to Rome,” he said, trailing fingertips curiously over the painted bricks. “Being paraded through the streets. Does Rome still stand? And her Empire?”

Vidimus hadn’t exactly been keeping him abreast of the situation, that much was obvious. “Rome is…huge,” I said cautiously. “But there’s no more Roman Empire. It’s, like, the heart of the biggest Christian sect instead.”

“Denomination,” corrected Egan curtly.

“Christian?” he rumbled. “Denominations?”

“There’s a lot of history for you to catch up on,” I said weakly.

We reached the bronze door at the head of the stairs and Egan held up a finger for quiet before unlocking it. Then he drew his gun again.

“What’s that for?” I whispered.

“If there was anyone left conscious after the last fight, they’ll know where we were headed. Someone will be on their way.”

“Let me,” said Gabriel, not dropping his voice at all.

Raising an eyebrow, Egan squeezed obligingly aside to let him go through first. We followed the archangel up into the belly of the church.

It was empty. A sullen red light suffused the place from the few windows. I breathed a sigh of relief, allowing myself a moment’s respite from dread. I’d had more than enough of fighting. Egan turned to lock the stair door behind us.

“Best to obfuscate our tracks,” he muttered.

“What is this?” Gabriel asked. He was turning on his heels, staring all around us at the religious paintings and statues. He looked perplexed. “Who is this goddess?”

Oh boy. “No goddess. That’s her. You remember? Mary. The virgin.”

His face dropped with incredulity.

I couldn’t help remembering what our guide, Eskinder, had said in Ethiopia. “How old was she, Gabriel?”

“I did not hurt her. I made sure of that.”

“You piece of…” I muttered.

He whirled on me, his eyes lambent. “It was not my choice, or hers! But she was chosen. The One you seek to blame is not here. Perhaps you should forgive Him.”

Beneath our feet the ground shook, and the rafters over our heads creaked, shedding flakes of paint.

“Okay, I think someone heard that,” said Egan in a level voice. “Whatever you’re planning to do, you need to be fast.”

“Does the Flavian Amphitheater still stand?”

Egan blinked. “Yes. It’s changed a bit, but…”

Gabriel sank a hand on my shoulder and held out the other to him. “Then let us go.”