The Paradise Prophecy

the headache.

She stripped the tape off and threw the door open. Finding a switch on the wall, she flicked it on and an exposed bulb came to life overhead.

The room was small and square and held nothing more than what auctioneers called “box lot” items. Inexpensive china, glassware, paperback books, old magazines, all stuffed into open cardboard boxes and stacked against a wall.

And burned into the center of the stone floor was the now-familiar anarchy symbol.

“What did I tell you?” LaLaurie said.

“Did I disagree?”

The symbol was one thing, but what she hadn’t expected to see were the words scrawled in black marker across a cardboard box at the bottom of one of the stacks, written in Turkish with a weak, shaky hand.

“Jesus,” she said softly. “Maybe you were right after all.”

She crossed to the box, hitched up her dress, and crouched next to it, running her fingers over the words: Onu koru. A message left behind by a man who knew he was about to die.

“What does it say?” LaLaurie asked.

She looked up at him. “Protect her.”

26

So you believe me now? That he was Custodes Sacri?”

“Considering what he wrote here, it’s certainly a possibility.”

“No kidding. And what about the rest of it?”

“The woo-woo stuff?” Callahan shook her head. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Professor. I’m still leaning toward some nutcase who thinks he’s some kind of dark avenging angel.”

“What if I could change your mind? Make you see it my way?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve been trying to do ever since we met?”

LaLaurie moved to the center of the room and squatted next to the symbol on the floor. “Give your hand.”

“What? Why?”

“Just do it.”

Callahan hesitated, not sure what he was up to, but finally reached out and took his hand. “Don’t get any ideas. I saw the way you were looking at me tonight.”

He ignored the remark. “When I was young,” he said, “before I fully came into my own, my mother would do this so that I could see what she saw. To prepare me for what was to come.”

“Meaning what?”

“Let me show you.”

He looked at the symbol, then paused a moment as if to brace himself. Then, lowering his free hand, he pressed his palm against the floor and closed his eyes.

Callahan sighed. “This again? If I wanted to see the Amazing Kresk-”

She flinched as heat radiated up through her arm and tunneled straight through to her brain-a simmering bolt of energy that came at her so fast and furiously she didn’t have time to react.

Her nostrils filled with an almost overwhelming smell of sulfur, as the floor tilted sideways and she felt herself falling. She yelped and tried to reach out, but realized she had no hands, no body. She was merely a presence in free fall, tumbling into a deep, dark nowhere.

Then light assaulted her, blinding light, sweeping past her, through her, all around her, and she felt as if she were spinning out of control. In the middle of it all she saw Koray Ozan, blurry but unmistakable, tears streaming down his face as he begged some unseen entity for mercy.

Then she was inside Ozan’s head, the hiss of a thousand voices skittering through her brain, speaking in a tongue she didn’t understand, uttering what she sensed were hideous, vile things. All she knew for sure was that they were unwanted voices, invading Ozan’s mind-her mind-like an army of angry locusts.

Then the room around her burst into flames and Ozan screamed.

Callahan cried out, too, ripping her hand away from LaLaurie’s as she collapsed to the floor, the flames gone, the voices fading.

Shaking uncontrollably, she stared at LaLaurie in horror and confusion. “What the hell did you just do to me, you son of a bitch?”

But LaLaurie didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. He had collapsed himself, looking as if all the blood had drained from his body, his eyes closed, his face deathly pale.

Was he alive?

Somewhere in the distance, beyond the stone walls of the tunnels and the muffled braying of the fire alarm-

– was the sound of approaching sirens.

We need to get out of here, Callahan thought. Right now.

Once the fire department got here and realized there was no fire readily apparent, they’d start searching the building, looking for whatever had tripped the alarm. And when they found that guard on the stairs . . .

Still trying to shake off the effects of LaLaurie’s mind meld-or whatever the hell it was-Callahan checked to make sure he still had a pulse and shook him awake.

“Come on, Professor, we’re about to have company.”

He moaned and opened his eyes, barely able to speak. “Stronger than I expected . . . Did you see it? Did you see Ozan?”

“At this point it doesn’t much matter what I saw. We need to get moving.”

She helped him to his feet, threw an arm around him, and urged him through the doorway. LaLaurie could barely walk and had to lean into her for balance.

Working her way through the tunnel, she found the steps to the next floor, but with LaLaurie in his current condition, getting to the top would be problematic. Callahan had always taken pride in her athletic ability, but LaLaurie weighed a ton. And from the feel of his body, much of that weight was pure muscle. No way they’d get up these stairs on her strength alone.

As if reading her mind-which might not have been all that much of a stretch-LaLaurie muttered something, then shifted around, gathering his strength and started up the steps.

They moved at the pace of a newborn snail, Callahan trying to figure out what the hell had happened back there. Ozan’s tortured face filled her mind’s eye and she shut it quickly, not wanting to relive his horror.

When they reached the top of the stairs, the alarm stopped and she heard muffled shouts above them.

The fire department was here.

Steering LaLaurie to the right, she crashed through a doorway into the nearest office then sat him in a chair and closed and locked the door behind them.

The room was dark, except for the incandescent light that filtered in through the pebbled glass. She could see the outlines of a cluttered desk, an old CRT computer monitor sitting atop it.

A search of the building would likely start upstairs, but it wouldn’t take them long to get down this way and the sight of the guard on the stairs would stir up a whole different kind of trouble.

LaLaurie looked at her. “This is Ozan’s office, isn’t it?”

“I think so, yeah.”

He gestured to the computer on the desk. “Can you hack into that thing?”

“Now? Why?”

“I want to see his records. He sent that figurine of Michael to Gabriela, so he may have sent something to the other guardians, too. Maybe we can figure out who they all are.”

“We don’t really have time to be playing around with this.”