Raiders

CHAPTER ONE

The hunt was electric. Kiya felt the man’s fear as he stumbled down the steps and strained his eyes in search of an exit. The Ravens watched him too, each circling around the vaulted chamber to cut off any possible escape route.

But their prey was fast and knew the building better than any of them. Fumbling a door handle in the dark, Monsignor Bruno Scala, the head of the Vatican’s Archivum Secretum pulled on the heavy oak door until a crack of light appeared in the darkness. It lit up the old man but he moved into the shadows before they could get to him and then he was gone, slipping away through a stone archway beyond the door.

Kiya whistled in the low light and ordered Tekin and Dariush to follow her into the corridor after Scala. The Ravens mustered, and once again she felt the adrenalin coursing through her veins like fire as she moved after the fleeing man; the lethal Bride flanked by her two Ravens…

Through the archway now, and Scala was clambering up a short series of stone steps at the end of a twisting corridor. Lit only by a couple of bare electric bulbs, the desperate man’s shadow bobbed up and down along the ancient stone wall as he once again slid from view.

Kiya resumed her pursuit, pushing out into the subdued darkness of the tunnel and making her way toward the archway. She heard Tekin and Dariush moving swiftly a few paces behind her.

The chase exhilarated her because she knew she would win. She knew in her heart that the old man could never escape from the thing which hunted him — the thing of which she was just a tiny part.

And when she caught her prey tonight, the Lion would be pleased and he would reward her lavishly with his promise to elevate her to a Soldier. She had dreamed of it since the day she had joined them. To think it was only hours away gave her a bigger adrenalin rush than a needle full of ephedrine.

To be lifted out of the mass of humanity as they had done to her, to give her the answers most sought but never learned, was enough of a gift, but to move from Bride to Soldier in less than a year… Her heart quivered as thoughts of secret rituals flashed through her mind. They said the pathway to Soldier was one of the hardest… but she was certain the Lion would guide her.

“There!” Tekin said. “He went to the left.”

Her carob brown eyes flicked up and saw the Raven pointing to another door at the end of the tunnel.

Dariush rushed up behind them. “Did you see him, Kiya?”

“Yes — come on!”

They sprinted along the corridor and burst through the door, finding themselves outside in the moonlight. They were on the roof, and ahead of them Monsignor Scala was slipping and sliding on the tiles as he made his way along the apex. He was struggling to reach another door a few hundred meters to the north at the base of a clock tower.

“He’s getting tired,” Kiya said, her own chest rising and falling with the effort of the hunt. She smiled. “Very tired.”

Scala clutched at something hanging around his neck and called over to them as he swung open the door. “Do not move settled things, you demons! Do not drag this out of the ancient past!”

He turned to slip inside the door but Kiya had tired of the chase. She pulled a shuriken throwing star from her pocket and threw it across the rooftop. The sharpened steel blades spun into a blur and flashed silver in the moonlight as it zoomed through the night and buried itself in the throat of Monsignor Bruno Scala.

The old man’s eyes almost burst from their sockets as he realized what had happened. Reaching up for the star he pulled it from his neck. The blood pumped from his jugular as if he were a slaughtered pig. He fell to his knees as his blood pressure rapidly dropped.

“I have taken him,” she whispered. She heard the reedy voice of the pipes as they floated through her mind. She closed her eyes and saw the sun setting over the Nile Valley. The priests were dancing around the temple and chanting to the sun god.

She opened her eyes.

Vatican City.

She walked across the apex of the roof with the Ravens behind her. To the rest of the world they were nothing more than three silhouettes in the light of the crescent moon, but to Scala they were judge, jury and executioner.

Kiya held out her hand. “Give me the ankh.”

The old man was breathing hard, and blood bubbled out of his mouth when he spoke. “Quieta non movere!!” His fearful, hoarse voice made the Latin sound even more ghostly as it echoed across the rooftops. “Do not move settled things!”

“Goodnight, Monsignor,” Kiya said, and gently closed his eyes as the old man slumped back against the clock tower. As his last breath left his dying body, she snatched the ankh from his dead hands and held it up to the moonlight. The symbolic value of the shape was as ancient as time itself, and she couldn’t resist staring at it:

Her eyes danced over its ancient beauty. It was made of gold, as the legend had said it would be, and it was encrusted in precious gems — diamonds, rubies and sapphires. She followed the moonlight reflecting off the gold and saw what she had been hoping for — a carefully carved lined of symbols stretching all the way up one side and down the other. This would change the world forever.

“This is our treasure?” Tekin asked.

Her smile was the only reply.

“Then we must leave,” said Dariush. “The sun will rise soon.”

Slipping the ankh around her neck and scanning the streets of the Vatican City for any sign of trouble, Kiya the Bride was satisfied she had completed her mission and it was time to return to the Lion’s den.