The Paradise Prophecy

“Thirty-three pages of what?”

Her question was just a buzz in Batty’s head. “This looks like the entire manuscript, for God’s sakes, just as he dictated it. Where the hell did Ozan find this? It has to be another fake.”

“What does?” Callahan asked. “What is it?”

Batty’s eyes were transfixed on its carefully bound pages. If it was a fake, it was exquisitely rendered.

His hands trembled as he turned back to the first page and stared at its title. Then he looked up at Callahan, feeling an unbridled giddiness overtake him, as if he were an archaeologist who had just stumbled upon the lost city of the Incas.

“For the last time, Professor, what the hell is that?”

Batty tried to control the tremor in his voice. “It’s John Milton’s original draft of Paradise Lost.”

27

Spotting a leather book bag amidst the clutter on the worktable, Batty quickly moved to it and snatched it up. He dumped its contents onto the table-sunglasses, car keys and an iPad-then slid the Milton manuscript inside.

“What are you doing?” Callahan asked.

“Not leaving this here, that’s for sure.”

Ozan had apparently been planning to work from the original, and Batty wanted to examine it more closely. If it was genuine, maybe he’d find something that hadn’t made it to the printing press. A line of verse or a stanza that might help him figure out what Ozan and Gabriela had been looking for.

He gathered up the notepad and the copy of Steganographia and shoved them into the bag, then reconsidered the iPad and added it to the mix. There might be something useful on it.

“We need to get back to the hotel so I can sit down with this stuff.”

“I don’t know if you noticed, Professor, but there are a few people out there looking for us right now. How do you propose we do that?”

“This is a smugglers’ tunnel, remember? What do you bet there’s another way out?”

Callahan seemed to like that idea. “Not bad, Mr. Broussard. You just earned yourself some brownie points.”

“Why, thank you, dear. Does that mean I’ll be sleeping in a nice warm bed tonight instead of the sofa?”

She smiled. “You pick the hospital, I’ll be happy to put you there.”

As they geared up to go, Callahan was thinking she was the one who needed a hospital bed.

Putting aside LaLaurie’s mind meld-the effects of which were still lingering-she was completely, utterly and irrevocably exhausted. She’d managed a few hours’ sleep on the plane. Enough to recharge the batteries a bit. But the day’s events were weighing on her now and her body kept screaming for her to just lie down already. And the thought of getting out of this place, back to the comfort of their hotel room, was uppermost in her mind.

She waited as LaLaurie slung the book bag over his shoulder, then followed him out of Ozan’s library into what turned out to be a labyrinth of interconnecting tunnels, designed, she supposed, to discourage any interlopers who managed to discover the place. They turned left, then right, went down steps through archways, then turned right, left, right again . . . And after several minutes of this Callahan had to admit that she was completely lost.

Which annoyed her no end. She could field strip and reassemble a SIG Sauer P226 with her eyes closed, but couldn’t navigate a network of smugglers’ tunnels?

Pathetic.

The good professor, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly where he was going. And after their little trip to Ozan-land, Callahan had pretty much given up on trying to talk herself out of what she now knew in her bones to be true. She might be reluctant to admit it to La Laurie, but he didn’t need to convince her of anything anymore.

What happened to Ozan was not even close to what anyone would classify as normal. And judging by Gabriela’s phone message, she’d gone through the exact same thing. Which meant that the Satan-worshipping wack-job theory that Callahan had been clinging to for so long had gone straight out the window.

Bottom line, she owed LaLaurie-and Lieutenant Martinez, for that matter-a profound apology.

Whatever they were dealing with here, it had the ability to get inside your head and drive you bat-fucking insane.

And the idea of that chilled Callahan to the marrow.

Batty felt sure it would be just a few more turns, another set of steps, and they’d emerge somewhere on the streets of Istanbul.

He couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel to give this manuscript a closer look. He could almost feel it vibrating inside the book bag, as if it were alive. Which lent some credence to Milton’s claim that the words on its pages were divinely inspired.

But as he turned a corner, he suddenly stopped.

Callahan said, “What the hell are you-”

He held up a hand, silencing her.

Ahead, one of the light fixtures was broken, plunging the far end of the tunnel in darkness, and he sensed that someone was waiting there, in the shadows.

He could feel the heat. The hunger.

Keeping his voice low, he said to Callahan, “Don’t move.”

She squinted toward the darkness, whispered, “You see something up there?”

“The waitress from the tea shop across the street.”

Callahan paused, as if waiting for a punch line. Then she said, “You’re kidding me, right?”

“I wish I were. She waited on me when I stopped there this afternoon.”

“What-you forgot to leave a tip?”

“Actually, I gave her a pretty generous one, but I don’t think that matters much right now. If I’m right about her, and I’m pretty sure I am, she could rip us both apart in about thirty seconds flat.”

Callahan considered this a moment. “Normally, I’d ask you to explain a statement like that, but I think I’m gonna take your word for it. What do you suggest we do?”

“Stay very still,” Batty told her. “Believe it or not, she needs an invitation to attack. A sign of aggression.”

“Ooookay . . . This is probably a stupid question, but how the hell do you know all this?”

“I thought we already established that. I read a lot of books.”

She looked at him. “You ever considered fiction?”

“Never go near it,” he said.

The shadows stirred ahead and Batty had a feeling their movement through the tunnels alone had probably been aggressive enough to pose a threat. Or maybe he’d already managed that back at the tea shop.

Whatever the case, it was already too late.

The shadows shifted and Ajda stepped forward into the light-not a drudge, as he had hoped, but a full- fledged, shape-shifting, throat-ripping sycophant.

And that was far, far worse than any drudge could ever aspire to be.

Worse still, she had shifted already, looking more animal than human. Freddy Krueger’s long-lost daughter with a loving spoonful of junkyard rat thrown in, complete with bared teeth, sharpened nails and phosphorescent green eyes. Feral didn’t even come close to describing this thing.

Batty felt Callahan sway beside him, and he knew that any doubts she’d had about otherworldly phenomenon had just been swallowed whole by the Goddess of Chew-on-This-Motherfucker.

She was tough-probably one of the toughest people he’d ever met, man or