The quaint buildings arranged in a square around us didn’t strike me as that, but whatever, it meant that phones were close. And hey, one of the shop’s names was even in English. Granted, it was called Fuck Luck Tattoos, but all I focused on was that if the title was in English, then someone in the shop probably spoke it.
Adrian must’ve felt the same way. He took my arm, murmuring, “Let’s try here.”
“I’ll stay with Jasmine,” Costa said. Brutus had already run toward the shop because it had a sun-blocking awning.
I glanced at my sister. She met my gaze, then deliberately looked at the diamond ring on my hand before looking back at me. After her blowup following Adrian’s parentage reveal, I expected accusation in her stare, or anger, but instead, the only emotion I read was sadness that bordered on grief.
Don’t let him hurt you, she mouthed at me. Please.
Adrian’s back was turned, so he didn’t see it. I closed my eyes for a moment, wishing I could reassure her that her fears were groundless. Adrian wouldn’t betray me. He’d only hidden the true purpose of my destiny from me before because he’d been trying to help me, and while that had been a betrayal of my trust, he’d had good intentions. Just like I’d had good intentions when I’d hidden my knowledge of Demetrius from him.
Adrian tugged on my arm again, turning around. “Ivy?”
“Coming,” I said, adding, “I’ll be fine,” to my sister. Then I went into the tattoo shop with Adrian.
The proprietor did speak English, and he agreed to let Adrian make an international call after he dropped a hundred-dollar bill onto the counter. I didn’t think he’d had any money, so I was more than surprised to see several more Benjamins in his wallet. At my questioning look, Adrian shrugged.
“I brought some emergency cash along with our dry clothes.”
“You didn’t get any sleep earlier, did you?” I muttered.
Adrian only smiled as he accepted the phone from the proprietor and dialed. After a moment, he began to speak in French, judging from the few words I recognized. The conversation lasted about five minutes, and when Adrian hung up, he looked satisfied.
“We now have a hotel reservation and a car on the way. The rest of what we need will arrive tomorrow.”
He knew someone who could get four fake passports within twenty-four hours? I was impressed. “Wow.”
“The salt mine’s just a few blocks up from here, isn’t it?” Adrian asked, as if only casually inquiring.
“Yes,” the black-haired, heavily tattooed man replied in accented English.
“Thanks.” To me, Adrian said, “Want to walk by and see if it interests you?”
I translated the subtext and let out a short laugh. If I felt nothing at the mine, then I had been wrong about Adrian being the map and possibly everything else.
“We came all the way to Poland,” I replied. “I sure as hell hope that it interests me.”
* * *
COSTA, JASMINE AND BRUTUS came with us, even though the three of them hung well back. That was fine. I was focused on my hallowed sensor. So far, I didn’t feel anything, and the closer we got to the mine, the more that worried me. I’d been so sure that I had figured out the real clues to finding the staff. Zach knowing without us telling him that we wanted to go to Poland only seemed to confirm that, but in retrospect, he’d never said that I’d gotten it right. He’d never said anything, in fact, except that he wasn’t our doorman. Would Zach really drop us here if he knew that it was nothing more than a wild-goose chase based on a very incorrect assumption?
Yes, I thought grimly. He would. And probably be smug about it afterward, too.
When Adrian said, “This is it,” I was still registering a zero on my hallowed meter. The small, rather plain-looking building in front of us didn’t match with my mental picture of the home to a salt cathedral, either, although it was a mine so everything interesting was below.
“How deep is the mine?” I asked Adrian. Maybe that was the problem. I could be standing directly above the staff, and yet perhaps still be far enough away not to sense it.
“Very deep,” Adrian replied. “Over a thousand feet. And the mine is also well over a hundred miles long.”
I gaped at him. “Are you serious?” If it was that massive, it could take a full week of underground explorations before I picked up a hint of the staff, even if it was here!
“You don’t feel anything?” Adrian asked, his tone light.
I knew him well enough by now to know that the more deliberately unconcerned Adrian sounded, the more he usually cared. “Not yet, but if it’s under a thousand feet of solid rock because it’s at the bottom of this thing, I wouldn’t expect to.”
So saying, I walked toward the entrance of the mine. At some point, this place had been turned into a tourist attraction, and signs in four different languages, English being one of them, told me where to go. Adrian caught up to me in a few strides. So did Brutus, who was eager to be inside anywhere.
“Stay here, Brutus,” Adrian told the gargoyle when we entered the building. Then he spoke to him in Demonish, and the tourists ahead in the ticket line cocked their heads at us.
“You talking to bird?” the woman asked in stilted English.
“He’s our pet,” I told her, patting Brutus and stifling my smile as she goggled at that. “We just love seagulls.”
Then, it was our turn to get tickets, and Adrian selected four for the Tourist route. He paid cash and then handed two tickets to Costa and Jasmine.
“You are in luck,” the female teller remarked. “The English-speaking tour group needed four more to be complete.”
“Let’s hope our luck continues,” I said under my breath, then gave the teller a parting smile as we joined the group.
Edgar, our tour’s group leader, went over a brief history of how the mine was thousands of years old and used to be a major producer of salt for the area. I stopped listening after the first few minutes, tuning into my hallowed sensor instead. So far, it was still flatlined. After several more minutes of droning on, we were herded into the mine’s version of an elevator and our descent began.
I was glad I was wearing jeans, but I soon realized that my blouse wasn’t suited for this. With each story that we went down, the temperature seemed to plummet, until I was fighting a shiver when we stopped and got out at the first leg of the tour.
“Everything you see is made of salt,” Edgar was saying, and I paused in my hallowed-finder mode to give an appreciative look around. Statues and what looked like 3-D paintings were carved into the walls, as detailed and impressive as anything I’d seen in a museum. I could understand why Edgar had to specify that all of this was salt, too. With its bluish-gray color, it more resembled granite than the stuff I sprinkled on my food.
An hour later, I was torn between being thoroughly impressed and very disappointed. We’d traveled down hundreds of carved steps, seen the magnificence of the Chapel of St. Kinga, which rivaled the basilica for beauty, in my opinion, as well as other caverns that were decorated with life-size statues acting out religious scenes. There was even an underground lake, with a light show playing across its glassy surface set to the music of Chopin. Yet while I’d been awed by all the works of art around me, especially considering how they had been chiseled out by hand from solid rock salt, my hallowed sensor had been silent.
I didn’t understand it. If there was ever an example of senseless human behavior being influenced by a supercharged, hallowed object, this mine should be it. And still, I felt nothing hallowed at play here.
After we had lunch at the underground restaurant—yes, there was an underground restaurant—and the group was starting to reform, I pulled Adrian aside.
“We need to try going deeper,” I told him. From our guide, I now knew that the Tourist tour only descended a quarter of the wa
y down into the parts of the mine open to the public.
“Edgar,” Adrian said, sidling up to our brown-haired, slightly portly guide. “This has been wonderful, but my wife wants to get more adventurous. We’ll need to go back up to get tickets for the Miners or Mystery tours.”
“I’m sorry, my friend, those require purchasing two weeks in advance,” Edgar replied.
Adrian smiled at him and pulled out his wallet, fingering through the still-impressive stack of bills in it. “Are you sure there isn’t anything you can do? I’d hate to disappoint her.”
Edgar’s features tightened in obvious offense. Great, we’d been assigned an honest, unbribable man as our guide. Now we were probably about to get kicked out entirely.
I rushed to place my hand over Adrian’s wallet, giving Edgar my best guileless smile. “So sorry! I’m afraid we’re a little too used to how things work in America. Plus, this is our honeymoon, so he’s tripping all over himself trying to make me happy. I hope you excuse his exuberance. He meant no insult—”
I stopped my apologetic gushing when Edgar suddenly grabbed my hand. His grip tightened when I tried to pull away, and then Adrian’s arm shot out, landing against Edgar’s throat.
“Take your hands off her,” Adrian said in a dangerous tone.
Costa sidled over, giving a concerned glance at the standoff. “Everything okay?” he asked quietly.
Edgar still hadn’t relinquished my hand. He couldn’t stop staring at it, even as Adrian increased the pressure to push his forearm deeper into Edgar’s throat.
“Let. Go,” Adrian said, each word heavy with threat.
“Wait,” I breathed, realizing what Edgar was starting at. I pulled up my sleeve, revealing more of the braided-rope tattoo, and Edgar’s eyes bugged. “You recognize this, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Edgar managed to say.
Adrian stared hard at Edgar. I hadn’t seen any telltale shine over Edgar’s eyes or other minion characteristics, and when Adrian dropped his arm, I knew he hadn’t, either.
A small crowd had started to gather as members of our group stopped what they were doing to watch this. I ignored them and tapped Edgar’s hand, which was still clasped over the lower part of my tattoo. “How do you know this mark?”
Edgar finally let go of me to rub his throat where Adrian had half throttled him. Then he shocked us all.
“Because I am one of the Guardians of the staff, and we have been waiting a long, long time for you, Davidian.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
EDGAR FOLLOWED UP his stunning announcement by pulling the fire alarm. We stayed below, but the remaining members of our group plus all the other tourists and most of the mine’s employees were rushed up to the surface. Only Edgar and an old, spindly man he introduced as Piotr remained with the four of us, and as we waited for the mine to completely empty, Edgar told us its real history.
“Piotr and I are both Guardians. The roots of our order can be traced back to 660 BC, when the first of us smuggled priceless relics out of Jerusalem before the Babylonians invaded. Later, some of us became Templars, but our primary responsibility was always the same—guard the staff until the day of the last Davidian.”
It was beyond unbelievable that a group of people had been expecting my arrival for over twenty-six hundred years. Then again, it was also unbelievable that I had a hallowed weapon even older than that supernaturally embedded into my arm, so who was I to judge?
“Is it here?” I asked, everything tensing in me.
Both Edgar and Piotr appeared surprised by the question. “Of course,” Edgar said. “Can’t you feel it?”
My breath exploded out of me as relief nearly weakened my knees. We’d finally found it!
“Ivy’s only recently begun to embrace her abilities, so she’s still learning how to hone them,” Adrian replied.
Piotr still looked doubtful, but Edgar seemed satisfied by that. “It is also much deeper than where we stand.”
“You were the Guardian entrusted with its location?” Piotr asked, sounding very surprised.
Edgar bowed his head. “Now that the awaited day has come, I can at last admit that I was the one chosen among our order.”
“And where is the staff, exactly?” I prompted.
“Beneath the Russegger Chambers,” Edgar replied.
Piotr looked at Edgar as if he’d lost his mind. “You alone out of dozens were entrusted with its location, and you were foresworn never to reveal it to anyone!”
“Except her,” Edgar replied, gesturing to my right hand for emphasis. “As foretold, she bears the mark of the Davidian.”
All this “foretold” stuff was starting to creep me out. Wait until these guys found out that I was here to retrieve the staff but wasn’t going to use it yet. They might believe my lineage made me all that, whereas I knew I wasn’t nearly strong enough to attempt to wield the staff yet. It would be safer for me to play Russian roulette with a half-full cylinder of bullets.
Piotr gave me another skeptical look, then turned back to Edgar. “I will ensure that all the chambers are empty and send the rest of the employees away. Only Guardians should be present for this.”
Adrian began to strip the nearby restaurant tables of their tablecloths, clattering dishes and glasses to the floor. “We need lots of these to wrap it in,” he muttered, and Costa hurried over to help.
Jasmine stayed with me, and I was startled when she came closer and her hand slid into mine. Then I squeezed back, infinitely glad by the wordless gesture of support. She might be mad, worried and highly disapproving of recent events, but she was letting me know that, no matter what, she was there for me.
“So, you’re the one who took the staff from the Milwaukee chapel and left the tablet behind as a clue?” Jasmine asked.
Edgar smiled. “Yes. And my predecessor was the one who journeyed with it from France to its two homes in America.”
“Why move it so much?” I asked, glancing around at the mine. “At the bottom of this place seems pretty safe to me.”
“We do as we’re told,” Edgar replied. “And the Messenger is never wrong. Shortly after it was moved from here to France, the mine flooded, so it would have been damaged had it remained. Then the Messenger told us to move it with the chapel from France to America. Less than twenty years later, Nazis overran France, and among their many cruelties, they were obsessed with stealing religious relics. Then the New York chateau burned in the 1960s and the Messenger told us to take the staff along with the chapel to Wisconsin. Ten years ago, when its responsibility fell to me, I obeyed the Messenger’s instructions to bring it back home and leave the tablet as a clue for you.”
“Who’s this Messenger that tells you what to do?” I asked, suspicion growing along with my anger.
Once again, Edgar looked surprised that I didn’t know. “Zacchaeus,” he said, calling Zach by his full name.
Adrian responded with a slew of curses that mirrored my thoughts exactly. Just wait until I saw that Archon again! He’d known all along where the staff was because he’s the one who’d been directing its movements for over two thousand years!
“Do not say such things,” Edgar gasped, staring at Adrian in horror. “Zacchaeus is an officer of the Most High!”
“You don’t know him like we do,” I said grimly. “He let us run around like chickens with our heads off for weeks when he knew where the staff was the whole time. Worse, people got kidnapped and killed from the demons following us. Had Zach just told us where it was, he could have prevented all that.”
“Damn right,” Jasmine muttered. Costa grunted in agreement.
Edgar looked distressed as he glanced back and forth between us. “You cannot mean that,” he finally said.
I let out a short laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you sooner rather than later,
but I do.” Then, because he looked on the verge of either giving me a lecture or bursting into tears, I added, “Why don’t you take us down to the Russegger Chamber?”
Edgar pursed his lips as if holding back a reply, making me think he’d been leaning toward lecture instead of tears, but at last, he gave me a short nod.
“This way.”
* * *
THE ELEVATOR IN the Danilowitcz Shaft was the only direct way in or out of the lowest portion of the mine, and it took us over four hundred feet straight down into the darkness. By the time we stopped, my ears had popped several times. I moved my jaw around in an attempt to relieve the pressure, but the worst part was that the pressure was the only new thing I felt.
“How far away from it are we now?” I asked Edgar.
“It is about seventy meters ahead, in the old mining tunnel past the chambers,” he replied.
Since America was the only nation not on the metric system, I had no idea what that meant. “Two hundred feet,” Adrian translated, catching my questioning look.
I tried not to remind myself that I’d felt the staff’s former casings much sooner. Tried, and failed. Why wasn’t I feeling it yet? It had to be at least ten times more powerful than the stuff it had been wrapped in, and yet I felt nothing!
“Are you sure it’s still here?” I muttered under my breath.
Edgar heard that, and gave me a very offended look. “I have guarded it faithfully for the past twenty-five years.”
Half his life, judging from how old he looked. And since he’d come from a long, long, long line of Guardians, he obviously took his job very seriously. That meant slacking on his part wasn’t the problem. It must be me.
I took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly as we entered the chambers. Some of what we passed looked like science exhibits, with different types of salt, their ages and their chemical compositions behind glass walls. Others contained old machines and tools used in mining, and farther in were religious exhibits, like a wooden re-creation of the crucifixion. Through it all, I felt nothing...until we stepped into the mine tunnel.