Page 89 of Fastest Kill

Dario checked the pendant and small bag with the bee were safe on his necklace before he tucked both inside his collar and followed Frederica into the dark.

The Roman sewer tunnels were exactly as Tore described, but they also ran deeper and farther than any public survey acknowledged.

Tufa blocks, large and neatly fitted, had the occasional missing mortar joint that left a gap big enough to fit a fist. The ceiling curved two and a half meters overhead. The floor was uneven and damp, the passage just wide enough for one person at a time, with their shoulders turned.

Frederica moved through it carefully, keeping the light on her vest dimmed and using the faint luminescence from the entry shafts overhead. They were maintenance access points spaced every twenty meters, each letting in a thin column of failing sky to navigate by.

Dario followed Frederica's footsteps, her breathing, and kept his mouth shut in case their voices carried. Frederica's first stop was at the left fork. She listened for eleven seconds, then moved on without a word.

The second was at the second junction. There were voices. Men, somewhere in the right-hand passage, not moving toward them. They held position until the voices receded, and Dario used the time to check the chain at his collar again and keep his breathing slow.

The third time she stopped, it was because of what was on the floor. A body lay face down in the narrow passage, hands at its sides.

Dario crouched and pressed two fingers to the neck. The skin was cold, but something felt wrong. It had no residual warmth, nor post-mortem rigidity.

They both understood what Serapis had warned them about. Agrippa didn't waste resources. The disciples who had given too much too early didn't leave, exactly. They remained in service as gūl.

Dario hissed and moved back as the dead man shuddered and got back to its feet. Frederica pulled a short sword from the sheath on her back and cut off its head before it made a sound, three seconds of efficient violence that Dario made grateful she was on his side. She wiped her sword on the corpses and kept moving.

"You're amazing," he whispered.

"There will be more. Get your knife out," she replied.

They found two living guards next, alert and armed, operating on a patrol. Frederica moved without hesitation or theatrics. No wasted motion, no word spoken. She took both guards down before they knew she was there, and Dario caught them and lowered them to the ground so they wouldn't make a sound.

Dario handled another gūl on the loading area stairs. The creature came around a corner, and Dario cut its head off before it sensed them. He made sure it stayed down and stepped over it to join Frederica in the loading bay.

"They might be moving, but they aren't really clever," Dario whispered.

Frederica was standing in the center of the poorly lit bay, her boot on the floor, testing the hollow sound beneath.

"This is what Tore was talking about," she said, tapping the floor again.

"Let's see what it is."

The flagstones on the floor were Roman, but the one Frederica was standing on was made of painted wood to match the floor around it.

Dario crouched down, felt around the edges before sliding his knife under the edge, and levered it. Something clicked, and a small panel sprang back to reveal a metal ring.

Dario pulled, and the thick wood lifted on a counterweight set somewhere deep inside, and the door moved smoothly and silently, revealing a staircase.

It was Medieval, not Roman, cut from the same tufa but with the narrower proportions of Gothic construction, the arched ceiling dropping lower with each step. The walls on either side were covered in symbols, layer on layer, carved into the stone and overlaid with metalwork fixed directly into the rock.

"They are binding symbols," Frederica said, shining her light on them.

Altun's pendant was warm against Dario's chest in a way it hadn't been before.

That can't be good, he thought, but he trusted the sorceress.

They moved carefully down the stairs, and whatever magic was on the walls didn't hinder them. At the bottom was a passage that they followed for forty meters before it turned.

Dario paused, holding onto Frederica. "You hear that?" he whispered.

It was a low, sustained resonance that had no identifiable source, the kind of vibration that lived behind the teeth and at the base of the skull. It rose and fell in a pattern that was not quite rhythmic, not quite musical.

Frederica's hand closed briefly around his wrist, two beats of pressure that he read as 'it's ahead, be ready.' He nodded, and she let go and moved forward.

The door at the end of the passage had been left open because whoever had built this place hadn't expected the uninitiated to get that far. Frederica pushed it open, and the sound of the chant echoed all around them. Dario gripped his knife and stepped inside.