Vampire a Go-Go(44)

“Hallowed ground,” Father Paul said.

“What’s that?” Allen asked.

“The vampire can’t come here.” Father Paul patted Allen on the shoulder. “That’s why she needed a patsy.”

“Thanks.”

“A lot of dead folk in here,” Finnegan said. “This might take a while.”

“I think you’re right,” Father Paul said. “Let’s break into two teams. We can cover more ground.”

“Split up?” Penny didn’t like the idea.

Neither did Allen. “I’ve seen enough episodes of Scooby Doo to know that’s a bad idea.”

“Father Starkes will go with you and Penny,” Father Paul told Allen. “Amy will come with me and Finnegan. Don’t worry. We’re trained for this. But we can’t take all night. We have to divide up and find Roderick’s tomb.”

They split up, each team going a different direction. They raked monuments with flashlights, glimpsing names, trying to hurry. An hour later, Allen’s team ran back into Father Paul’s.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Allen said. “There’s got to be a way to narrow the search.”

Father Paul nodded. “I think you’re right. Finnegan, break out the laptop. I want an uplink.”

The big Irish priest slung off the backpack, pulled out a thin laptop computer, and booted it up. He set the computer on top of a tomb, the screen’s glow eerie in the cemetery. “We’ll have the satellite in a few seconds. Okay. Got it.”

“Let me try,” Allen said.

“Give it to him, Finnegan,” Father Paul said.

Allen’s fingers flew across the keyboard, cross-referencing historical databases, Google, Wikipedia. He blinked at the computer screen, read the information again to be sure. “Oh… shit.”

Father Paul read the screen over Allen’s shoulder. “What is it?”

“The cemetery was founded in 1869,” Allen said. “Two hundred and sixty plus years after Roderick died. There’s no way he could be buried here.”

“But the ghost said the Vysehrad cemetery,” Penny insisted. “Zabel was clear about it.”

Allen shook his head. “No. He said the Vysehrad-the castle. Remember? Zabel just assumed the cemetery.”

“We can’t search the whole castle, all the grounds,” Finnegan said. “It would take hours and hours.”

“More like days.” Father Paul sighed, shook a fresh cigarette from his pack.

“Wait,” Allen said. “Just nobody panic, okay? It’s just another research project, right?”

The priests looked at one another. Father Paul said, “What do you have in mind?”

“Let’s think it through. Hallowed ground, remember? If it were anywhere else in the Vysehrad, Cassandra could fetch it herself.”

Father Paul nodded. “Good point.”

“Right.” Allen’s hands went back to the keyboard. “So we concentrate on the cathedral and the cemetery.”

The priests and the girls watched Allen go at it, calling up databases, following links to other links, web pages to dead ends, backing up, starting again. He became one with the machine, a virtual explorer in an endless world of bits and bytes and information.

I am the Matrix. That made him chuckle.

“What is it?” Penny asked.

“Nothing.”

He arrived at the home page for a European architectural society, which took him to something about the castles of Europe. Click. The castles and palaces of Prague. Click. The Vysehrad. Click.

“This is all in Czech,” Allen said.

“Hold on, lad.” Finnegan took over the computer, his thick fingers entering information with surprising alacrity. “I’ve downloaded a translation program from the Vatican mainframe. It works fast. There you go.”

“Thanks.” Allen took over the computer again.

His eyes took in the words almost by osmosis. Vysehrad constructed in the tenth century. Stonework. Bulwarks. Battlements. Masons.

Freemasons.

Allen cleared his throat. “Listen to this. A Mason hall was constructed to house all the stoneworkers during the construction of the Vysehrad. The hall stood until 1701, when it was gutted by a fire and the stone blocks were looted for other construction projects. But the stone foundation was reused later, when the cathedral was built around 1869.”

“What do Freemasons have to do with it?” Father Starkes asked.

“You’ve been neglecting your history lessons, Starkes.” Father Paul looked at Amy. “Our lady friend can tell you.”

Amy nodded slowly. “The Society hasn’t been part of the Freemasons in hundreds of years. But way the hell back then… yeah.”

“Edward Kelley had some sort of association with the Society,” Allen said. “I’m not exactly sure. There was no time to read the journal completely. Some sort of alliance, I think.”

Father Paul dropped the cigarette, mashed it out with his shoe. “Finnegan, get on the laptop and send the bishop an email. He can read it when he wakes up in the morning. Tell him we apologize, but we’re going to have to bust into one of his cathedrals.”





FORTY-EIGHT




Zabel watched them from the V of two trees about fifty yards away. The glow of the computer screen lit the small group. What were they doing? Obviously, finding Roderick’s grave hadn’t been so easy. Zabel had perhaps been strangely lucky. Better to let the priests and the college kids do the hard work, then Zabel could move in afterward and take the stone.

Six of them against one of him. He was regretting leaving Lars in the car. This might get tricky. Best to watch and wait for the right opportunity.

They were moving now.

He watched as the priests and the kids clustered around the door to the cathedral. Were they going in? The big priest approached the front door with a crowbar. A loud crack and the rattle of a falling chain. They were breaking in!

A large raven landed on a tree branch near Zabel. It flapped wings, squawked.

Shut up, you stupid bird.

He turned his attention back to the cathedral. They were going inside, but they left the tall black guy out front. A lookout. This gave Zabel an idea. He reached into his bag of tricks, took out a jar of goo, rubbed some on the palm of his hands. He bent down, grabbed a handful of loose dirt in each hand, and spread the dirt in a circular motion while chanting arcane words.

A mist seeped out of the ground around him, swirled around his feet. A thick fog. It began to spread.

The raven squawked again, and Zabel frowned at it. Many considered the raven to be a bad omen. A good thing Zabel wasn’t superstitious.

“Find the light, Finnegan,” Father Paul said.

“Right.”

The Irish priest went fumbling into the dark, and sixty seconds later the lights, small electric bulbs made to resemble candlelight; came on. Charming. Every historical inch of Prague had been done over for the tourists.

Not nearly as grand and impressive as St. Vitus Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Paul and Peter was nonetheless large and ornate, with rows of pews, hanging chandeliers, an altar with much gold, and other shiny stuff.

“Spread out,” Father Paul told everyone.

Allen asked, “What are we looking for?”

“Let’s hope we know it when we see it.”

Allen strolled the aisle between a row of pews and a stone wall, glancing at the floor and ceiling. A narrow wooden door led to a small anteroom. Another door beyond that, stairs leading down. He descended into a small basement, where he had to feel along the wall for an old push-button light switch, which brought a naked high-watt bulb blazing to life overhead. Barrels and crates. Storage.

Think. Don’t just wander around aimlessly. Who were these people?

Masons. Stoneworkers.

Allen got on his hands and knees and ran his hands over the smooth, wide stones, trying get a fingernail in the crack where the stones met. Allen new nothing of stonework, but this seemed to be solid stuff. He frowned at his dirty hands. The floor was covered in thick dust. Nobody had been down here in a good long time.

He continued to crawl along, knees scraping a trail in the dust. He crawled between barrels and crates, smearing dust on his sweaty face. Back and legs aching, he gave up at last. He stood, looked back at the dust trail. He looked down at his clothes. What a mess.

Allen stood there with his hands on his hips. Think, moron. But his mind went blank. He simply gazed at the floor, the mental equivalent of a test pattern droning in his head.

He noticed something.

The trail his knees had left in the dust was interrupted by a clean line that ran across it. No dust at all. He bent down for a closer look. A perfectly straight line. No dust. Right down the center of the line was another crack where two of the big floor stones met. Was it his imagination, or was this crack very slightly wider than the others?

He put his face right down next to the crack and held his breath. A slight waft of cool air touched his cheek. That’s what kept the dust from gathering along the crack. He crawled again, followed the crack. It went under a crate.

Allen stood, put a shoulder against the wooden crate and pushed. It didn’t budge at first, so Allen got lower, gained leverage, pushed again. It edged out of the way. Allen heaved again, his face going red, until he’d moved the crate completely off the crack.

He slumped against the wall, sucked air for a few seconds before bending over to examine the stone beneath the crate.