CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ZACH HAD SAID that I’d see him again, and he was right. Not long after Adrian’s emotional goodbye to Costa, the Archon appeared to ask Adrian and me if we were ready to leave. I cast a long, pained look in the direction that Jasmine had disappeared to, but said yes.
“I’ll get Brutus,” Adrian said, and went into the gargoyle’s tent. Moments later, both of them came out, and Brutus gave a wary look at the bright sunlight around him.
“We don’t have passports or money,” I reminded Zach.
“Here,” Zach said, producing slips of paper out of thin air with the ease of a magician pulling coins from behind a child’s ear. “You can use these two for passports and the rest for currency. Adrian has accounts he can access for more.”
I looked at the blank slips of paper. This wasn’t the first time Zach had given me the equivalent of sticky notes to use as formal identification and/or money. Normal Archon glamour was only good for a specific illusion, like making Brutus appear to be a seagull to everyone except me, Adrian and other Archons. This type of glamour was next level. It not only fooled the human and demon eye—it also fooled computer scanners, too.
“What part of these are the passports?” Since I could see through Archon glamour, it all looked the same to me.
Zach pulled out two strips from the others. “Passports.”
I turned to Adrian. “This dress doesn’t have pockets.”
He took the two “passport” strips and put them in his right pants pocket. In the left, he put the money strips. “What names are on the passports?”
“Whatever names you tell them to be,” Zach replied.
Well, that was convenient.
Zach held out his hands. Adrian and I shared a weighted look. Once we took Zach’s hands, there was no turning back.
I placed my hand in the Archon’s open palm. Adrian did, too, and held on to Brutus with his other hand. With that, Zach pulled all of us through the gateway and that familiar stomach-flopping, free-falling sensation hit me.
The realm-traversing ride ended with me throwing up on the banks of whatever river we’d been deposited on. A city was in front of us, and across the river, it looked like another one was behind us. Thankfully, we appeared to be on the edge of the town in front of us, so we didn’t have an audience for either our impromptu arrival or my hurling. Brutus sprinted off in search of shade, and for a few wrenching moments, I was too sick to be embarrassed by how I was puking like a teenager after a bout of binge drinking. Then I mentally scolded myself.
Way to start off the new quest, Ivy! Demons of the world, beware—the last Davidian is back, and she’s got vomit!
“What a rookie reaction to a realm trip, right?” I said out loud, brushing aside Adrian’s concerned hovering. “Don’t worry. I’m fine. Did I get any puke on my dress? Dammit, I did!”
“We’ll need to get new clothes anyway. It’s much cooler here.” Then Adrian’s eyes narrowed as he looked around. “But this doesn’t look like Moscow. Where are we?”
“Trier, Germany,” Zach replied.
“Germany?” I repeated. “That wasn’t on the list of places you gave me, Adrian.” If it had been, I would’ve picked going here before going to the arctic end of Sweden. Hell, we’d had to travel through Germany in order to get to Sweden!
“Why are we here?” Adrian asked. “This didn’t make the list of favorite places.”
“It should have,” Zach said mildly.
I gave Adrian an exasperated look. “Were you sending me to the wrong places on purpose again?”
“No,” Adrian said emphatically. “I swear, I didn’t even think of this place as a possibility because I only came here once. I’d been to those other places many, many times.”
“Quantity isn’t everything,” Zach said, still in that mild tone. “The place you visited here left an impact on you.”
I arched a brow at Adrian. “Oh? How so?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “The one time I came here, I got ragingly high and tried to set fire to the Aula Palatina.”
“What?” I said even as Zach asked, “And how many other times in your life did you attempt arson?”
“None,” Adrian replied, his tone defensive now. “I mostly stuck to hurting myself when I visited this world.”
“You see?” Zach said with satisfaction. “Impact.”
“Or a temporary case of ‘like father, like son,’” I noted. “Demetrius burned down one of your former favorite places, remember? You probably got the arson idea from him...”
My voice trailed off as an idea began to form. Zach looked at me, his mouth doing that not-quite-a-smile thing. “Exactly.”
I glanced up at the sun’s midlevel position in the sky, then down at my vomit-spattered dress. “We need to hurry. We have to get Brutus, get some new clothes and then get to whatever place you tried to torch, Adrian. Something very important is there.”
* * *
WE ARRIVED AT the Aula Palatina, or Basilica of Constantine, with two hours of sunlight left. That should be enough to feel around for something hallowed, hopefully find it and get to somewhere safe before nightfall. If worse came to worst and it took longer, Emperor Constantine’s former palace entrance hall was now a church, so we’d be on hallowed ground. I’d rather wait out the darkness hiding on the property than take our chances looking for a hotel. Zach—of course—had disappeared on us while we’d been waiting for a taxi.
“I will see you again,” he’d said right before vanishing.
With him, that could mean five minutes or five weeks. Either way, we couldn’t count on him to pull us into the safety of a light realm if we finished after dark. We had to assume that we were on our own, and with Demetrius declaring open season on us to all the other demons in this world, I was paranoid about being caught on non-hallowed ground once night fell.
At least this place hadn’t been known as one of Adrian’s “favorites.” That was how Demetrius had found us last time, so without that, we might be okay. Just in case, I’d bought my new outfit without trying it on, since dressing rooms had full-length mirrors, and I’d made sure not to look into any of the mirrors in the main area of the store.
I’d also made sure to pick pants and a long, loose sweater instead of another dress. Not only was I warmer, it allowed me to stuff rocks into my pockets for the sling, and the longer, generous cut of the sweater hid the bulges. Adrian had changed, too. Gone were the homespun white top and drawstring pants he’d gotten from the light realm’s inhabitants. Now he wore a dark blue silk shirt and a black jacket over black tailored pants.
No, we hadn’t been able to afford all that from the strips of paper Zach had given us. Our first stop had been the nearest international bank. The Archon-glamoured “passport” Adrian used for identification had worked as well as predicted. Since it was also good for any name Adrian selected, he’d picked one of his many bank account aliases to take out enough traveling money.
Now we looked like regular tourists instead of slightly suspicious hippies. If not for the “seagull” that followed every taxi we took by flying over it, we’d seem downright normal.
We got out at the Aula Palatina, which was in a populated area with several shops, offices and restaurants. Adrian had given me a brief history on the way over, so I knew it used to be part of Emperor Constantine’s palace. The former entrance hall didn’t look very palatial today. It was a tall, rather plain-looking redbrick structure shaped like a long, covered stadium. The basilica’s only outward decoration that I could see were two sets of cathedral windows. Still, it was enough of a tourist draw that we were far from the only people there.
“No!” I told Brutus when I caught him giving hungry, lingering looks to a dog that two other tourists were walking nearby. At least, I hoped Brutus was looking at the dog.
Brutus chuffed as if to say, Hey, I was only reading the menu, not ordering! But he stopped eye-munching the group, and I gave him a couple pats in praise.
In all of our rushing, we hadn’t stopped to get him any raw meat, so no surprise that he was hungry. I was ravenous, too, but neither of us could add an early dinner to our schedule. We’d eat after we’d checked the entrance hall, which hopefully wouldn’t take long.
When Adrian and I went inside, leaving Brutus to guard the exterior, I really didn’t think it would take long. The interior was almost as sparse as the exterior, with only rows of wooden chairs, some overhead lights and a small altar interrupting the vast open space. No paintings, no shrines, no carved figurines, no statues, no frills at all, which meant no apparent place for a two-thousand-year-old hallowed weapon to be hidden.
“Feel anything?” Adrian asked in a low voice.
“Not yet.” And from the sparseness of the interior, I had no idea where to begin looking for hallowed-blocking wards. If not for my suspicion for why Adrian’s “like father, like son” sole brush with arson was at the same place Zach had specifically brought us to, I might have walked out.
But Adrian had inexplicably tried to burn this place down, just like Demetrius had burned down a former hiding place of the staff of Moses. Demons had natural aversions to hallowed objects, which was why they couldn’t touch them without lots of pain. Maybe Adrian’s demon side had subconsciously reacted to the spearhead by attempting to destroy it, just like Demetrius had almost destroyed Moses’s staff without knowing it.
It was possible, and since Zach had brought us here, there had to be something of value to find. I gave my whole body a shake, as if that would work free whatever kinks must be blocking my hallowed sensors.
“Let’s start with the altar,” I told Adrian.
It was only a wooden podium with some ferns on either side, but no need to ignore the most obvious hiding place. With the podium’s height, it could fit a two-foot-long, ancient iron shank inside it. In this spartan, relic-free environment, no one would probably give it a second glance even if they did see it. They might confuse it with a construction tool.
We wandered over to the podium casually, as if it weren’t our intended target. The church wasn’t full, since it was a Thursday evening instead of a Sunday morning, but it wasn’t empty, either. I managed to walk behind the podium and check out the interior—empty except for a Bible and loose papers that looked like sermon notes—before we were stopped.
“Can I help you?” asked a woman with salt-and-pepper streaks in her black hair. Her accent was German, no surprise, and she had lovely dark brown skin and deep black eyes. A light splattering of wrinkles cut deeper around the corners of her eyes and the sides of her mouth. Smile lines, I realized, and took that as a good sign.
“Sorry,” I said, trying to think up a reason that wouldn’t result in her calling security. “I, uh, thought I heard a kitten mewling back there.”
From her expression, she wasn’t buying it, but she smiled and said, “What a relief that you were wrong. I would hate to have one jump out and startle me during my next sermon.”
“You’re the pastor?”
“Yes,” she said. “For a few weeks now.”
Damn. I’d been hoping she’d been there for a while and might—dare I be so optimistic?—know the location of the relic we were after. Hey, it had happened once before.
“Ivy,” I said, taking a risk by whisking up my sleeve before I extended my right hand. The sling tattoo was now on prominent display. Between that and my real first name, if she was in on any of the supernatural secrets that had brought us here, she’d have no doubt as to who—and what—I really was.
She gave the tattoo only the barest, uninterested glance before she shook my hand. “Pastor Helena. Pleased to meet you.”
My hopes sank. I couldn’t feel anything powerful dinging my hallowed radar, and the pastor seemed not to recognize my name or my very famous tattoo. Still, something had to be relevant to our quest here. Maybe I just had to be more direct.
“My husband tells me this hall was built in the fourth century by Emperor Constantine.” I looked around as if admiring what I saw. “If these walls could talk, right? Bet they’ve seen a lot of amazing people and relics come and go. Didn’t I hear a rumor that the Spear of Longinus was once housed here?”
That was pretty direct, but Pastor Helena only shook her head. “Nein, I’ve never heard of that.”
I gave it one final try in case she was feigning ignorance because she thought I was a nosy tourist. “I’m the last Davidian,” I said bluntly. “And I’m here for the spearhead.”
She frowned as she gave me the look that countless doctors and therapists had given me when I told them that I could see icy, dark, duplicate images of places. The look that said, Oh, you’re batshit crazy, huh?
“Fraulein,” she said carefully. “I think—”
A loud, cracking noise sounded above us, as if a thousand branches had snapped all at once. I looked up to see something large and dark dropping down right on top of us.
And at the same time, every hallowed sensor in my body went berserk.