Now she emerged, looking appropriately frightened and harried, as the guards mobilized around her and began herding people out of the building, urging them to “remain calm.”
With their attention on the crowd, it was easy enough for her to slip away and move toward the stairwell, although working in an evening gown was not something she was fond of. She’d kicked off her Dolce and Gabbanas in the ladies’ room, figuring she’d be much better off without the five-inch heels.
A moment later, LaLaurie was beside her, and as they moved wordlessly together down the steps, she had to admit his call for simplicity had been a smart one.
Or maybe not.
Halfway down, they were confronted by a security guard hurrying up the stairwell toward them. He gestured for them to turn around. “No way out down here. Please exit through the-”
Callahan knocked him back, then pulled a travel canister of hairspray from her purse and sprayed his face. He crumpled to the steps, out cold.
“What the hell is that?” LaLaurie asked.
“Something our lab cooked up. He’ll be out for a while.”
They continued down the steps until they reached a dimly lit room, cluttered with antique furniture, pieces of art, paintings, books, and other collectables, some sitting on oblong tables, others peeking out from open wooden crates that were lined up along the walls. The tables were littered with rags and bottles of solvent and toothbrushes and polish, and Callahan realized that this was the staging area, where items were carefully cleaned and buffed and readied for auction.
She and LaLaurie moved through the darkness until they reached a brightly lit hallway, dotted with office doors. Each door had a pebbled glass window that was clearly labeled with the occupant’s name, including one at the far end, marked KORAY OZAN.
Beyond this was a narrow stone archway that led to another stairwell. A sign above it read ARSIV. The archive rooms.
Callahan signaled for LaLaurie to follow her, and they moved down the steps into darkness. When they reached the bottom, she fumbled for a light switch and flipped it on.
The light was dim but serviceable, revealing another hallway-or tunnel, really-this one made of old mottled stone. It had a low rounded ceiling with light fixtures strung along it and looked like something out of a horror movie. It occurred to Callahan that the auction house had probably been built here after an older structure had been torn down, leaving this part intact.
“Smugglers’ tunnel,” LaLaurie said.
“What?”
“If I’m not mistaken that’s what this was. Ozan was once a black marketeer, so I’m not surprised he was drawn to this place. I’ll bet there was a lot of traffic down here once upon a time.”
There were three wooden doors ahead. One to the right and two to the left-marked BIR, IKI and UC. But none of them showed any signs of a recent police presence. No crime-scene tape in evidence.
Callahan and LaLaurie worked their way along the curve of the tunnel and came to a juncture, where it branched off in two different directions. Callahan mentally flipped a coin and was about to go to her left, when LaLaurie took her by the forearm.
He gestured to the right fork. “This way.”
“You’re sure?”
“Trust me.”
A moment later, they were standing in front of another wooden door, an X of yellow police tape across it. Callahan didn’t bother wondering how LaLaurie had known where to go. It wasn’t worth 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.