The multitude of different shapes and sizes of cargo vans available in Europe would be enough to make any American's head spin. Europeans may see full-size pick-up trucks as an oddity but that certainly does not mean that there are not full frame vehicles lumbering the motorways across the pond. Sophie sat in the back of one such vehicle as it jolted down the autostrada towards Ligornetto. Two days earlier this trip to the Vesalius Museum to visit Curator Brenier had been much more comfortable as she sat in the back of a limo flipping through the applications on her I-Pod Touch.

Today, instead of busying herself with bad pop music and that curious Pocket God application, her focus was on her LWRC M6A2-SRT carbine rifle with a 10.5 inch barrel so that it was ideal for close combat. It was a relatively new weapon but her father was a friend of the Virginian manufacturer and had made sure that both of his daughters were fully trained on it before it was even fully tested. She knew every inch of it, breaking it down once a week to clean it completely with the ever powerful and always effective Militec-1. She gripped it tightly for it would be her security blanket for the next several hours.

Her pale blue eyes lifted to survey the rough faces before her. There were seven men in all, including the driver. All seven silently stared downward as if studying the pattern on the hard rubber floor. There was little in common between them. Two were Russian, two were American, one was French, another British and the final was an Australian. With the specific nationalities gathered, the Frenchman had joked that after the heist they could hold their own meeting of the United Nations Security Council. They ranged in age from twenty-five to fifty and all had different reasons for being here. Yet, there was one thing that she could be assured of -- each and everyone of them was either an experienced art thief or an experienced bank robber. She did not have the room for error that comes with inexperience.

"We're here for one painting and one painting only. If any of you even so much as dare to look at anything else, I will have your balls nailed to the peak of the Matterhorn," she reminded, breaking the silence.

Only a couple actually broke their stare with the rubber floor mats. The Australian, Kicks, rose his voice. "We understand our orders." He was a favorite of her's for these operations. Unlike the stereotype of his nationality, he was excellent at assisting her in the planning stages and had never drawn her ire with improvisation in the midst of a heist.

"Then let's be quick about this," she stated beneath her breath with a calm, cool tone she felt inside as well as portrayed out. She was a warrior by birth and this was only one more battle in the ancient war that she had trained for her entire life.

The Vesalius Museum was housed in the rambling former home of an 18th century artist whom Sophie had never heard mention of outside of Switzerland. What made entry difficult was the well-tailored gardens that surrounded it which left them open to discovery and capture on both the way in and the way out. Sophie, instead, choose to concentrate on the positive which was that the building's security was sorely lacking. Europeans were pathetically behind when it came to protecting their artifacts of cultural and historical significance. They balked at the idea of drilling holes in the fine architecture of the museums for adequate security systems and shuddered at the unwelcoming prospect of armed guards.

Curator Brenier was not at all alone in the sentiments he had relayed to Sophie several days earlier. Until the world decided to take art and antiquities theft seriously, it would continue to run rampant through out Europe and the Middle East in particular. It was simple supply and demand. As long as the black market remained rich with deep-pocketed collectors, there would be men like those Sophie had gathered in the van that were willing to risk capture for high reward.

The van exited the motorway at Mendrisio and rolled down the superstrada towards Varese-Stabio to the traffic light at Stabio where they turned a smooth wide left. The van drew to a smooth stop as the clock ticked the eleven o'clock hour. The windowless back of the van gave them no insight to what lay beyond the doubled back doors but each had the image and blueprints of the building well-memorized in their head.

"Time to go," she stated, nodding towards the van's rear doors.

A soft breathless exhale escaped Sophie's lips as her gloved hands gently set the painting down on the table before her. The haunting gaze of Saskia van Uylenburgh, forever immortalized in pen and bistre ink, stared back at her. Rembrandt had created this work in the early 1640s shortly before Saskia, his beloved wife, had passed away of tuberculosis. His portraits of her in the years prior were of a robust woman with round cheeks and curly red hair but in the course of two years she turned into the haunted wisp of a creature. Her fingers clutched the pillow beneath her head and what was left of her hair was wrapped and covered. Saskia's sunken eyes stared off to the left of the observer, open-eyed and ready to meet death.

Her life had not been easy. She had been orphaned at age 12 and had three children die shortly after childbirth. Finally, in 1641, she had the healthy son she had wanted -- Titus. Yet, the young woman would only live for a year after the birth of her son. She died at only thirty after a hard fought battle with tuberculosis. It always struck Sophie how frustrating that must have been for the woman. Saskia finally had the child and a comfortable life yet she could enjoy none of it because she only became weaker and weaker by the day.

"Was the information right? Is it there?" Will's question as he stepped into the sitting room of her suite in the posh San Remo suite. If she had drawn back the shades of the window there would be a view of a pristine pool several stories above the sea which spread as far as the eye could see. The view was not the reason she and Will had traveled across the ocean, however. The real reason was on the back of this painting.

Gently, Sophie slid her hands beneath the fragile 350 year old paper to turn it over. "It's time to see," she whispered beneath her breath as she drew the magnifying glass over the faint words in the corner of the worn page.

"Eli, Eli," she read in a quiet tone. "Lama sabachthani."

Will resisted the urge to lean over her shoulder. His hand tightened its grip on the doorway as he watched Sophie carefully. "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? "What language is that?"

"Aramaic," Sophie muttered softly. "It translates to 'My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.'"

A desperate tone was starting to creep into Will's voice. Yet, Sophie was so buried in trying to figure out the answers to those questions that his anxiety did not register. "Why would he say that? What does that have to do with this?"

"It was what Jesus said on the cross when he took on man's sin," Sophie replied distantly as she searched for answers. There was nothing. It didn't mean anything. She knew that deep down but she didn't want to accept it. The lead she had gained after scouring and scouring all the information available suggested that Rembrandt might have been from a family like the Rhovniks, a "Taken" family -- one of the ancient families that lose a member once a generation to this eternal war. Her research suggested that, like her, he might have even been born with the ability to speak and read the language of the angels. Yet, this was clearly Aramaic.

"I thought Jesus spoke Hebrew."

With the words burning a hole in her mind, Sophie gently eased the work over to study its lines once again. "He probably did. After all, the scriptures were in Hebrew. He probably knew at least a little Greek and Latin but Jesus was a citizen of Galilee. Aramaic would have been his people's tongue."

"What does it mean, Soph?" Will's question was low and panicked. "Please tell me that this will help us find Yaya."

Yaya, or Sonja Rhovnik as she was better known, was one of the Taken. Like Sophie, she had been raised to be a foot soldier in this war but, unlike Sophie, it hadn't been a position that she had accepted with open arms. They had assumed that it wouldn't be an issue. With Sophie's talents and after that particular incident at the high school six years prior who would have suspected that Sonja, not Sophie, would have been the Taken out of this generation?

Perhaps the answer to Will's question was written on her face for he smacked the door frame in a burst of violent anger with an open palm. Sonja should be preparing for her finals right now. She should be getting ready to graduate from Wake and preparing for medical school. And she should be excitedly waiting for the marriage proposal from Will that she wasn't supposed to know was coming. Sophie had introduced the pair several years prior and the chemistry was instantaneous. They were inseparable. Sophie had been with Will to help pick out Sonja's ring and she had grinned when Sonja told her that she had discovered the receipt in Will's coat pocket when he let her borrow it on a chilly evening.

Their lives had just been beginning when Yaya was Taken. Will's dark eyes stared her down. Although, he knew what she was about to say, he had to hear it for himself. "It has nothing to do with Yaya. It's merely the sad words of a heartbroken man staring down the dismal truth that the love of his life is dying."

Her words didn't produce a show of his temper. However, his shoulders slumped at the news and a shaky breath was exhaled. For a long moment the pair stood there soaking in the truth. They had no where else to go. They had no idea where Sonja was taken. They had no idea if she was still alive even. Their leads were now dried up and there was nothing left to do but return to North Carolina empty-handed. Will's shaky voice repeated the words but this time they were his own, not Rembrandt's.

"Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani."

Acting on Sophie's orders, Kicks had left the stolen painting in an abandoned warehouse in Milan and made an untraceable call to the museum to alert them as to its location. The heist was plastered on the news for several days as was the curiosity of the painting being returned less than a week after it was stolen. Members of the media speculated that the thief had underestimated how difficult such a piece would be to be moved on the black market.

Soon there were more important stories for the European press to sink their teeth into -- the conservative swing in the European Union elections, North Korea's nuclear tests, and the post-election protests in Tehran.

At JFK, Sophie and Will had parted ways. He'd become a most unbearable travel companion and his presence felt like a reminder of her failure at finding Sonja. Her information had her believe that the answer as to where to find the headquarters of the ancient Ad Lucem organization might be on the back of that painting, that Rembrandt may have been of a Taken family, that he may have had details of Ad Lucem which he had hidden in his works. It was another dead end and it was the last of the dead ends that Will could take. He had clearly given up hope and was looking for solace by returning to his father's farm in North Carolina.

Sophie could not go back yet. She was not ready to give up hope on Sonja. Desperation drove her to board the flight that was now coming in over Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

The end of World War I caused a flood of ethnic Slovenes to leave the newly formulated Yugoslavia to escape their battered homeland for the possibilities that America offered. The Rhovniks were forced out by the Illyrian Movement and fled with their fellow countrymen. As one of the few Slovene families who refused to be bullied into the idea of a single state for the Slavic people, the Rhovniks had been branded as of the old, elite by the South Slavic intelligentsia which made up the Illyrian Movement. As in all great waves of migration, one Slovene family settled in Cleveland which drew another which drew another. Before long the Slovene population in the Lake Erie region had tripled. The Rhovniks could not bear to let their culture go completely and found a home on the banks of the lake among their people.

Her grandmother's driver was there to meet her but she could only muster the shabbiest of greetings but she was sure the man would not tattle about her disrespect. The town car sped down I-90 through Cleveland's recession hit suburbs towards Mentor. In her childhood, the excitement would build in the pit of her stomach as soon as they turned on Lake Shore Blvd. The joy in seeing her grandmother, grandfather, and plethora of aunts, uncles, and cousins would leave her practically unable to remain buckled into her seat.

Despite her own grand house which was older and architecturally much more significant, she never failed to feel the swell of awe when she would catch sight of the large white house looming on a short cliff which overlooked Lake Erie.

This time, however, she lacked joy. She was a pit of emptiness and she was about to commit her most desperate act yet.

Sundown brought its daily respite from the summer heat. Yet, as any Carolinian would explain, it isn't the heat that makes July and August afternoons unbearable. It's the humidity. It's sticky sweet and smells of honeysuckle and no matter how many deep breaths one takes, the heavy air never fulfilling enough. On the worst of days, it can become a never ending battle to attempt to get enough air to satisfy one's lungs.

Lightning bugs lit the fields surrounding the Great House, attracting their prey to the light. The humid air caused a light layer of sweat to glisten on Sophie's cheeks as she stepped out the side door and into what Yaya had always referred to as the "Morning Garden" for the fact that they ate their breakfast in the nook off the kitchen which overlooked the garden. Although, full of herbs that the household staff often used for cooking, the garden was dominated by a monstrous Buddleia Davidii bush with its peeks of deep violet flowers. It was alive in the mornings and then again in the evenings with song birds bathing in the shallow bird bath, squirrels hanging upside down to access the feeder, and fluttering butterflies swarming the bush.

Sophie had gone out herself last winter and pruned the bush back nearly completely, almost hoping that she had done too much damage to save it. Yet, as soon as spring hit, it began to grow and now it was larger than ever, laughing at her for thinking she could drown out her childhood memories of her sister so easily.

"Look, Sophie, look! It's a hummingbird! Right there!"

"Right where? No, no, silly. That's just a hummingbird moth."

"No way! I'll bet you I can catch it!"

She spun her key chain around her finger, using the clatter of keys to drown out such heavy thoughts, as her long strides took her towards the closet pole barn. Gravel crunched satisfyingly beneath her feet. She threw open the doubled doors of the barn and punched on the light switch. The overhead florescent lights flickered on, illuminating any car lover's dream. Yaya had cared little for vehicles. As long as they got her from one place to another, she could not care if it was a German made sports car or an American made hatchback. Sophie and their father did not share her disinterest.

She drummed her fingers on the hunter green hood of restored 1963 Ford F100 as she swung around its front end to make way for the cab. It cranked up beautifully. She imagined that the pleasure she got from the rumble of its engine was akin to an opera enthusiast as their favorite soprano took the stage. Maneuvering the vehicle into gear, she settled in for the jaunty drive down Fisherman's Creek Road.

With the windows rolled down and in the driver's seat of her pride and joy, she almost felt free of the yoke of responsibility. Almost.

The drive from the Great House to Bubba's BBQ on Main Street seemed dreadfully short. She swung the vehicle in to find that the parking lot was already full of classic cars for the weekly get together. Mike Stoneking's 1971 Pontiac Firebird, Jeremy Bridges' unmistakable cherry red 1957 Chevy Bel Air, even Walter Helm's 1974 Austen Mini was present. There were, of course, a plethora of Mustangs, Corvettes, and Trans Ams. It wouldn't be a Southern crowd without a strong showing of American made muscle cars.

Sophie backed into a parking spot and swung open the door. No sooner had her feet hit the pavement then she was faced with the sunny smile of Carla Branch. Carla's grandmother could directly trace her ancestors back to the slaves that had lived and worked at the Great House plantation. It gave her grandmother no small amount of pleasure that her granddaughter was now the best of friends with the daughter of the current owner. "Soph, when did you get back in town?"

The young women parted after a warm hug and Sophie glanced over Carla's shoulder down three cars to at Carla's boyfriend Cam who was busy showing off just how clean the engine of his flat black 1970 Chevy Chevelle with the rally stripe package. He looked up from the small crowd that had gathered around the car to wave to Sophie with a dopey grin. To most of these men, the weekly show and tell was the highlight of their week.

"Yesterday. I swung by Cleveland after Italy to see my grandmother." Sophie closed the truck's door and took a lean against it. "How is your summer going?"

There was something off in Carla's typically easy smile. She was anxious about something. "Great, great. I'm trying to convince Cam to take me down to Columbia tomorrow to the zoo. I'm just trying to enjoy my last summer before med school."

Med school. The two words came like a vicious blow but Sophie held her smile. She did not need to show the hurt, though, because Carla's face fell and she quickly reached out to grip Sophie's arm. "I'm so sorry, Soph. That was awful of me."

Sophie shook her head, lifting her own hand to pat the hand of Carla's that was gripping her opposite arm. "Why, Carla? You're going to med school. I cannot avoid anyone who is going or ever has gone to med school because of Yaya."

"The police are going to find her, Soph. She will come home to us," Carla whispered as a reassurance. Sophie's heart quite nearly broke and for the millionth time over the past year she wanted to tell Carla the truth. She wanted to tell her that Yaya had not been kidnapped by some unknown assailant as the Rhovniks had told the police. However, the truth was far too crazy for anyone to believe. Who in their right mind would accept that the young woman had been Taken by an ancient and secret organization in which she trained to be a part of all her life in order to assist in the war between heaven and hell? Whomever dared tell that story would instantly become the authorities' primary suspect.

"Of course, of course." It was all Sophie could say and it came in the barest of whispers.

She felt the hard gaze of staring eyes before she found their owner -- Daniel Oxendine. His closely cropped head of dark hair and unblinking hazel eyes reminded her of his brother, Jimmy. Jimmy Oxendine. His mere name brought up the memory of that dead teenager staring up at her on the floor of the cafeteria of Chester High School with unseeing eyes widened as his features were affixed in his final emotion -- surprise. Jimmy Oxendine. Carla's hand on her arm pulled her from the memory. It was only then that she noticed that the parking lot had gotten eerily quiet. Everyone was waiting uncomfortably to see if this would turn into a scene. Southerners dislike their tension out in the open.

Sophie refused to acknowledge the situation to any of the rest. She turned her dark eyes on Carla and spoke quietly. "When did Daniel get back in town?"

"A couple days ago. Mrs. Hunter said he was dishonorably discharged. Big shock," Carla replied with a roll of her eyes. This was what she had been anxious to tell Sophie. "Don't let him ruin your evening, Soph. You know you did nothing but save the lives of a lot of people that day."

"I don't regret a single moment of that day," Sophie muttered as she flung an arm around Carla's waist. "Forget his sorry ass. Let's go in and I'll buy you a beer."

Sophie's alarm went off before dawn, beeping at her with its persistent whine. She did not have to get up. Nobody would care if she turned it off and rolled over to go back to sleep. No longer was she assumed to be the Taken of this generation of Rhovniks. Yaya had filled that role and now Sophie's sole responsibility was getting married and birthing the next agent of Ad Lucem.

But Marc's words were ringing in her ears and the endorphins from her morning run very well may jog her memory into gear. Who was Alain DeMuer? What was that damnable Marc Franco up to this time? She had promised her grandmother that she would let Yaya go but how could she when that professional prankster was dangling information before her nose to tease her? She should have let the Williamsons kill him three years prior in the Nexus point of Barrisvon.

When she reached over to shut the alarm clock off, she did not roll back away from it but swung her feet to the rug below and vigorously rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Only fifteen minutes passed before Sophie and Walt were stepping out of the house and onto the summer porch. The Blue Tick Coonhound seemed restless this morning and instead of plopping down on the cool concrete in the shade of the summer porch, he was hot on her heels, eager to follow her on her morning run. She reached down to give the top of his head a friendly pat, happy for the company.

"Just a minute, Walt. I need to put the truck away."

After another long night of celebrating with the newly engaged Carla at Bubba's BBQ, she had left the dark green Ford F100 parked in front of the house rather than pulling it into the pole barn. She had perhaps one or two more beers than it was safe to drive home after as she once again teased Carla about being proposed to in front of the gorilla exhibit (which happened to be Carla's favorite) and happily listened to her old friend chat about the possibility of eloping in the Dominican even before Carla's fall classes began. By the time the pale yellow headlights of the Ford F100 had illuminated the house in the wee hours of the morning, Sophie was pleasantly buzzed, infected by Carla's cheerfulness, and exhausted beyond measure. The walk from the front drive to her bedroom was a good fifty yards less than from the pole barn to her bedroom so she had left her truck in the drive without a second thought.

Something felt wrong in the pit of her as she was turning the corner of the house to head for the front drive. Even before she laid eyes on the truck, her gut was telling her that she would not like what she would find.

Newspaper clippings held by masking tape against the vintage truck fluttered in the breeze. She was too far away to read them but she wasn't too far away to read what had been carved into the driver's side of the truck. KILLER, it read in deeply graved letters that dug right through the paint and into the sheet metal. A mere key would not have done such damage. Someone had taken a knife to the vehicle.

Her pace slowed. Walt whined at the sudden change in her mood and the pair slunk closer. The headlines of the newspaper clippings jumped out at her. They were from multiple area newspapers -- the Rock Hill Herald, Columbia's The State, and the Florence Morning News. Some were originals yellowed with age and some were merely copies of the clippings. Their words dug into her soul even more than the letters carved into the side of the truck. "Chester High School Shooting. Three Dead, Including Shooter." "Unnamed Teenager Shot and Killed Chester High School Shooter." "Chester High School Student, Jimmy Oxendine, Shot Dead During School Rampage."

Jimmy Oxendine. Why was it that whenever she thought of him she immediately pictured his hazel eyes looking up unblinkingly at her as he lay dying at her feet? And why after all these years did his death still tug at her emotions? Yes, he had been the first man that she had killed but he had not been the last and, if anything, his death had been the most necessary.

Yet, it was the only killing that the people of Chester knew she had committed.

The "unnamed teenager" had remained unnamed to the rest of the world. While immediately after Jimmy was killed in the middle of his murderous spree the media was clamoring to put a name to the "hero", the police on the behest of her father had refused to release her name. Although, there had not been another living person in that hallway when Sophie had shot and killed Jimmy, in a small town like Chester, news spread from the police department like wildfire. It helped to have a powerful grandmother who had friends and business associates in many of the major television stations and newspaper publishers. They agreed that that the teenage girl in question, Sofia, should have the opportunity to "live a normal life free of her role in the tragedy" and, in a rare show of decency, agreed not to publish her name. And, thus, the Rhovniks had avoided answering many uncomfortable questions -- such as how Sophie was able to disarm a teenage boy two years older and five inches taller and why the weapon she "took" from him and used to kill him had the serial number filed off when all the other guns he had used had been properly registered to his father.

Everyone in Chester knew it had been Sophie that had pulled the trigger. It was the great unspoken truth. At least it was unspoken in her presence. What they said when she walked out the door, she did not know. The Oxendine family did not agree with public sentiment that she was a hero. They still refused to accept that Jimmy had killed those people, that he would have killed more had he not been stopped. The Oxendines blamed her -- "the nutcase from the crazy Eastern European family by way of the God Damned North".

"I didn't even want to go there," Sophie whispered beneath her breath. It had been Yaya that had wanted to try public school for a year or two. She had recruited Sophie to assist her in pushing their father to allow them to test their wings. Sophie had done so quite reluctantly. They had only been attending classes six months when the incident occurred. At the time their grandmother had told them that it had been God which led her to the hallways of Chester High School, that He was showing her the path that she would walk with Ad Lucem.

But Elsie Rhovnik had been incorrect. Despite proving that she could do what was necessary, Sophie was not Taken. Yaya had been.

Without turning to look, Sophie knew it was Dale Johnston's Bronco that was rumbling up the unpaved drive under the shade of the giant oaks. It was even more battered now that it had been a year ago when Yaya had disappeared. Instead of swinging it towards the cow barn he drew to a stop beside her beloved truck and quickly threw it into park. His boots thumped louder with each step he took. She could feel his anger growing.

He came to a stop beside her, tugging absently on the brim of his ancient black hat emblazoned with the iconic white "3". "Those damn Oxendines. They ain't worth the powder to blow 'em all to hell. I'm going to call the Sheriff."

"No," Sophie stated quickly, suddenly spurred back into the present. "It'll only make matters worse."

Dale gave a grunt of disapproval, shaking his head at the mess of a truck. "Then what do you want to do, Soph?"

She handed over the keys of the truck with an expression that she hoped would show that she did not care what the Oxendines thought or said. The Oxendines were nobody and nothing. Marc Franco was somebody and he knew where Yaya was. "Take it to Marty's and get him to paint it. I'm going for a jog."

Elsie Rhovnik wasted little time before trying again. Sophie had not even the time to order the jet fueled and a flight plan filed before another meeting had been scheduled. She could not be too terribly disappointed in being stuck in Ohio for another couple of days. By this point in the summer, the barely tolerable heat and humidity of a southern summer was beginning to wear on her.

However, the shoreline of Lake Erie can be quite disappointing if one is hoping for spectacular sandy beaches with rough, breaking waves and rip currents strong enough to sweep away even the strongest of swimmers. The lake can at times be so still that it laps gently against the lakeshore with barely a ripple and, rather than blindingly hot white sand, the lakeshore is filled with smooth pebbles of various sizes and colors.

On such a night in which the lake stood eerily still and Sophie could swear she could almost hear the romantic whispers of couples walking on the Ontario side of the lake, she stood on the edge of the sharp cliff with the house looming behind her with a sharply man at her side. Certainly, he did not pick out the clothing himself. A man who spent that much time pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose and discussing the the theory of carbon capture and storage did not also flip through copies of GQ in his spare time.

Yet, there was a kindness to him that she enjoyed. Her grandmother had done better this time. As the son and sole heir to an inter-dimension shipping company, Paul Ashcroft would not be frightened by the arcane, the supernatural, or technology superior to that possessed in this world.

And he didn't mind silence. He did not feel the need to fill it with small talk. An evening could be enjoyed just as it was. That was all the pleasure that she had the right to ask for any more.

Her bare feet dug into the soft Kentucky Bluegrass beneath her toes as she lifted her wine glass to her lips. The Cleveland shoreline may pale in comparison to South Carolina's Cherry Grove, Hilton Head, or Pawleys Island but the grass most certainly had South Carolina beat. The Bermuda grass which filled their lawn and pasture was not nearly as soft and often this time of year dried to a pale brown. Where the Rhovnik farm stood in Chester county, city water was a fool's dream and with livestock to keep hydrated well water could not be wasted on such a silly thing as lawn maintenance.

A lightening bug lit its back end just to their right and the sight brought a smile over Sophie's wine glass. Once when still in innocent girlhood, Yaya had caught a couple of the young farmhands smashing the bugs and smearing them across the wooden fence posts to see their streak of light which remain lit for a couple seconds even after death. She had been in tears and demanded that they stop with such foul language that it caused their mouths to hang open.

The thought of Yaya drew Marc's words back to her mind and she could no longer resist. "Paul, you do business in RhyDin is that correct?"

The man's brows lifted and her turned away from the view of the lake to Sophie to nod slowly. "I do indeed. Are you familiar with the city?"

"My family has holdings in several cross-realms cities. Part of my education included visiting most of our holdings," Sophie replied evenly as she turned to meet his gaze, dropping her glass to her side.

"It is an interesting city. Although, the current governor has put much time and money into attempting to make it a safer place to live, we still prefer to do business in settings where there are more formal governments and a stable economy."

Sophie nodded and did her best to hide a pleased smile. Conservative and well-informed. This one seemed as if he fit the bill perfectly. "I had heard that Marc Franco had set up shop in the city. Is that true?"

A rueful laugh greeted her question and was answer enough but he did elaborate. "The Gossip GangSTAR, he calls himself. Yes, indeed, he is terrorizing the city with his unique fictional stylizing."

"I spoke with him recently and he told me I must meet a man named Alain DeMuer. Are you familiar with him?"

Paul gave a distracted nod as he slipped out of his jacket and lay it over her shoulders. The sun was sinking beneath the horizon and the air began to chill. It was perhaps a bit too intimate of a gesture for a first meeting but she accepted it with a hint of a smile as he responded finally to her question. "Yes, yes. I have not done business with him personally but I know him by reputation. He is a prominent business man and baron."

"I wonder why he said that we should meet," she mused quietly. The comment was really more for herself than for him.

The question held a rhetorical quality as she certainly did not expect for Paul to have an answer. She doubted he knew Marc Franco as well as she and, while he was of an ancient family and knew of the Ad Lucem connection, he most certainly did not know of Marc Franco's recent visit to her farm. Yet, he cleared his throat after a moment to ponder. "Well, if rumors are correct Lord DeMuer has had his fair share of unpleasant encounters with supernatural beings and has quite the collection of arcane texts."

The phrases were still conversational red flags even though Paul had tried to side step the heavier words to err on the side of polite conversation. Supernatural beings. Demons. Arcane texts. The writings of the angels and devils. Very few people were born into the world with the capability of being able to read such writings. There were no translation tools, no Rosetta Stone. Sophie had been born of the chosen few. Her eyes studied Paul's face for a moment as she collected the information.

"Perhaps I shall have to take a trip to RhyDin then."

Paul's face lit with a smile, taking the comment as a sign that she wished to spend more time getting acquainted with him. "You must let me know when so that I can make sure I am in town as well."

Sophie missed his smile and his misunderstanding of her words. Her eyes were lit with hope once more as she stared out over the smooth water. No longer did it seem eerily quiet but now it appeared peaceful and serene. Perhaps Marc Franco was not setting her up. Perhaps Yaya really was working with this Lord DeMuer for Ad Lucem.

She blamed the warm effect of the alcohol but it almost felt as if Yaya was at her side urging her in soft whispers to ignore their grandmother's wishes and to continue the pursuit. One more try. Just one more try.

"Did you do as you were told?"

Marc Franco sucked in his bottom lip and bit down hard like a petulant child being scolded. He then released his hold on his lip and gave a decisive nod. "I told that damn Sofia Rhovnik to find Alain."

A smile cracked Director Blakely's face and he gave a slow nod. "Good boy, Marc. Good boy."

"Does this mean my debt to Ad Lucem has been repaid?"

"We are only getting started, Marc." The director gave a short bark of a laugh. "It is time for you to become a close confidant of Alain DeMuer."

Costa Rica prides itself on being a stable piece of tropical heaven amidst the turmoil of Central America. It abolished its military after a civil war in 1948 and has seen no need to reform one. It's considered one of the greenest countries on Earth and has hopes of being carbon neutral within the next five years. Twenty-five percent of the country's land mass is within the boundaries of protected national parks and it contains a staggering variety of animal species considering it's relatively small size. As a result, the nation is a hotbed for eco-tourism activities -- zip-lining through the tropical canopy, surfing the large waves, sunbathing on both white sand and black sand beaches, and exploring the volcanoes, waterfalls, and many national parks.

Yet, what the tourism board prefers to sweep under the rug is that the mostly deserted and rural coastline that sits between Columbia and Mexico and the United States is irresistible to many drug cartels. They use the tiny fishing villages as warehouses for their product in the relative safety of a country whose police force is paltry compared to most nations.

Teo Garcia and five other well armed men from the Jurado Cartel were zipping up the coast from the shack town of Jurado, Columbia past Panama to drop off their load in the back room of a roadside cafe in the coastal town of Camillo in the large province of Puntarenas which takes up much of the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. After a day or two another boat coming from the north would pick it up for the journey back to Mexico or California. Teo's mother would, of course, be beside herself with worry if she knew what he was doing but he had bigger plans than living in his parents' shack for the rest of his days.

A man standing to the right of the driver elbowed him lightly and nodded off the port side of their boat. Teo's gaze followed the nod to find a gorgeous Croatian-made 42 foot Elan Power yacht several hundred yards away. It was not unusual to see a yacht out in these international waters. Arranging sport fishing expeditions was a major business. The impressive fins of Sailfish, the stunning bill of the Blue Marlin, and the bright vibrant colors of the Dorados attracted world class fisherman and amateurs alike. Such a fine yacht, though, was a bit of an abnormality and, curious to get a better look, the driver swung their speedboat to the left.

Perhaps the fine workmanship of Elan Marine led them in towards the well crafted boat for a better look at the Elan Power yacht but it was God's fine craftsmanship that led them in even closer.

"Ay dios mio," the driver muttered as they were flagged down by a teenage leggy blonde in two scraps of skin tone colored fabric serving as a bikini.

She began jabbering in English before the engine was even turned off. Thus, the first half was completely lost between the wind and roaring of the speed boat. The second half was spoken too quickly for any of the men to translate. Meeting the men's blank stares for a moment, the blonde tried again.

"You must help us. Our boat has sputtered out and died. The owner's tanked and we don't know what to do," she whined in a distinctly British accent.

They all had understood parts of it but the man among them most fluent in English translated her words to the rest of the crew. Taking a side trip from their planned route was completely taboo. They had a job to do and if it wasn't done correctly there would be hell to pay. Teo's eyes were on Alberto, the crew's leader, waiting for him to make a decision on how to respond to the situation.

Just as Alberto began to shake his head and motion for the driver to turn the boat away from the yacht, the blonde turned on the balls of her feet, yelling back into the cabin. "Amber! There's men here to help us!"

The brunette who Teo assumed to be Amber emerged from the cabin and caused more than one head shake on the speed boat. A high ponytail of dark hair swung with her every move and crystal clear blue eyes popped against darkly tanned skin. She too was dressed in floss but of a midnight black that seemed to accent her dark tan even more. Her cool eyes were leveled on the men as she came to a stop on the rear deck beside her blonde cabin mate.

A coy smile graced her lips but before she had time to say a word to the speed boat full of drug runners, they were joined by the yacht's drunk owner. A bawdy redheaded man stumbled out of the cabin with a bottle of wine in one hand. He grinned at Teo, Alberto, and the rest and lifted the bottle into the air to toast their arrival. "Ahoy! Our radio is out and our motor died on us. Come aboard, come aboard. Quick, quick, quick!" Between the slurred words, there was a giddy singsong quality to his thick Australian accent.

Uncertain looks were exchanged but right on cue the bawdy man presented a fist of American twenty dollar bills from the pocket of his untied robe. With an absent shrug, Alberto took a step towards the front of the speed boat and hopped over to the rear deck of the yacht. He motioned for Teo and the man beside him to follow. The driver remained on the wheel while the two final remaining passengers sat unmoving on the cargo crates carrying their load.

The action occurred so quickly that in later recounts of the events Teo and the surviving members of the crew had difficulty remembering the exact details. As Alberto passed the brunette, she pulled the gun shoved in the back of his waistband out. Alberto gave a surprised cry and swung around to face the pretty brunette. No longer was there a smile on her lips but now a concentrated frown. The trigger of the pistol was squeezed and in the blink of an eye Alberto, a minor chief in the Juardo Cartel, lay dead with a single gunshot wound to the forehead.

The shock of the sudden death had routed Teo in place. He did not even put up a fight as the brunette grabbed him and twisted his arm back behind his back, pulling him in front of her as a shield while jutting the gun into the small of his back.

The blonde was no slouch either. Even as the shot was being fired, she slammed her elbow into the skull of the man moving up the steps of the deck towards her. Stunned, he stumbled back down several steps. It didn't take long for adrenaline to toss aside the ringing in his head and he lunged towards the leggy teenager but she lifted her knee in towards her chest and delivered a sickening sidekick to the very same spot. His unconscious body slid down the stairs uselessly.

The supposed drunk Australian was in the boat in a flash, swinging his wine bottle like a weapon as the driver reached for his weapon beneath the seat. He never stood a chance. "Too slow!" He was told in the same giddy singsong tone that now lacked the drunken slur.

Hardest to explain to the Juardo Cartel leadership after the incident was how the two men positioned on the crates had been disabled. They went down in a heap with taser burns on their backs. Later the two guards had sworn that the fourth attacker -- an American teenage male -- entered the speed boat from the water behind them to catch them before they had time to reach for their weapons.

As the three other young people used zip tie handcuffs that they produced from the yacht to subdue the unconscious drug runners, the brunette tightened her grip on Teo's arm. He groaned in pain but it did rip his mind from the dead body lying at his feet. "?C?mo te llamas?" Her voice was a hushed whisper.

"Teo," he growled in reply.

"Is there prime on your boat, Teo?" The brunette asked quietly. The word "prime" meant nothing to him. Teo could only assume it to be an American slang word for their shipment. He could never keep up with American vernacular.

The interrogation was short-lived as the redheaded Australian tossed a crowbar from the yacht to the shaggy haired boy who had just pulled the prone bodies of the guards off the crates. The blonde pulled their arms behind them and yanked the zip ties tightly against their wrists.

"Maparido," the man cursed beneath his breath. His insult did not seem to even reach the brunette's ears. She was too intent on watching the shaggy hair youth rip into the bright red bags within the crates. Once the Australian joined her to handcuff the last man, she brushed past them and stepped over Alberto's dead body to move closer to their prize.

Slender rich green coca leaves filled the bags. For centuries upon centuries the leaves would be chewed by natives on spirit walks or for the sedative properties. It was not until one hundred and fifty years prior that European scientists found a way to extract the mild dose from the leaves to create a powerful drug. Once these leaves were in Mexico or Southern California, they would be crushed and mixed with alcohol, gasoline, or kerosene to extract the cocaine from the leaves. From there they may be even further polluted to produce crack cocaine before it hit the streets.

High dollar though it may be, coca leaves were not what they were looking for.

Teo watched as the brunette shoved her arm deep into the bundle. When her hand reemerged from the first bag of leaves, it was holding a bottle that probably at one point carried soda. The liquid it now contained was of a similar color but had an odd sheen and moved like oil sludge when she shook it. The brunette turned back to Teo with the bottle held up to him and tilted her head to the side with a small smile. "You had no idea what you were carrying, did you, Teo?"

He refused to answer but that was answer enough for her. With a short, humorless laugh at his ignorance which caused his blood to boil once more, she turned from him to address her own crew. "Empty these bags. Find the bottles and get them onto the yacht as quickly as possible."

"And the coca leaves?" the Australian asked as she began to step over the side of the speed boat onto the rear deck of the yacht.

With a slow, sultry smile tinged with hate, she tossed a look towards Teo. "Toss it in the ocean. Let Teo here tell the Jurado Cartel why their shipment is at the bottom of the sea and their prime is missing."

He swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing when his death sentence was pronounced.

Several short hours after the Costa Rican heist, the crew had split up and was out of the country. Kicks had been placed in charge of escorting home the blonde -- a Rhovnik cousin named Andrea who would be starting her junior year at a European boarding school this fall. Escorting teenagers wasn't exactly his cup of tea and he had made that known. Being escorted was seen as an affront by the well-traveled Andrea Rhovnik and she had made that known as well.Yet, Sophie and insisted which left only her and Chase standing in Portal Keeper Martin's front business -- a dusty old book store in Austin, Texas called Rare Finds.

The ten bottles of the slimy "prime" that were lined up on the counter was a rare find indeed.

The sight of the prime had been a sobering moment for both Sophie and Chase who knew the power held within those bottles. Kicks who had little knowledge of the arcane did not care and did not want to know but Andrea Rhovnik had insisted on an explanation for why they had gone out of their way for such sludge and why the sight of it caused Sophie and Chase to turn to stone.

The explanation was simple and not so simple at the same time. Prime was rumored to be the blood of Bathin, the Duke (or Great Duke depending on the source) of Hell. The opiate within the blood could make a human sublimely happy. At least it could for a while. When the effect of the drug wore off, it could leave an addict a heap of sobbing depression desperate for more. Only the drug could bring happiness and relief. Whether or not it was truly Bathin's blood was up for debate. Among Bathin's skills was an arcane knowledge of precious stones and herbs. Therefore, if there was any demon who had the knowledge and skill to create the most potent drug on the planet, it would be Bathin.

Portal Keeper Martin was grinning wildly over his very expensive prize. His gaze lifted reluctantly from the bottles to Sophie. "Is it real?"

"I assume so. I have not tried it. I certainly would never put that impure substance in my body," Sophie spat back at him.

He snorted at her morality and unscrewed the top of one of the bottles. It burped and a bubble on the surface popped as if the sludge within the bottle was alive. Luis Martin dipped his pinkie finger into the substance, careful to only coat it with several drops and then popped the finger into his mouth. A shiver of delight ran up his spine and he laughed for no apparent reason. "It is! It is prime!" His declaration seemed to echo in the empty store front.

Sophie could sense Chase's frame tighten beside her. Silently he questioned whether handing Bathin's blood over to such a character was really worth it merely to avoid their grandmother's ire. He knew his cousin was blinded by thoughts of Yaya but it was not his place to question. Sophie led as she had always had led and he would follow her every command until it led to his death.

"I'm thrilled for you," Sophie muttered as she crossed her arms before her chest. "How long until you've recalculated the portal to put us into Icecrest?"

Luis lifted his beady eyes with a grin. "By morning you should be ready to go."

He reached out with a shaking hand towards a bottle once more but with a growl, Chase pushed his arm away. He held an open gym bag against the counter and swept the bottles back into it. Sophie flashed Portal Keeper Martin a tense smile as the pair backed away towards the door. "Then you'll get your prime in the morning."

Kazzy had drawn the map with ink on acetate. She used brighter and more colors than most cartographers would go for but her research would stand up to any criteria test. The upside to rotating through so many odd jobs was the wide network of contacts she could tap when she needed to find out about a place she had never visited. The conversations with shipyard workers, merchants, scammers and the like had been recorded on tape and used to lend accuracy to what she could dig up on Icecrest at the local library. She relied mainly on the firsthand and more recent accounts to guide her work.

She charted two possible paths from RhyDin. Both led west but the first course would take them on a safer but longer route, one not as plagued by the threat of turbulence and dangerous storms. The second was more risky but less taxing on time and fuel.

How to fly to Icecrest was only half of the problem?where to land once they got there would prove even more challenging. Besides the rocky terrain any spot in the open would leave them vulnerable to the various lawless factions roaming through the war torn city. Kazzy again left them options, three this time, though she personally thought the second one best. Suprema Cove would provide enough cover to let them land without immediately alerting one of the many gun-toting parties on the ground. She went on to map out the various roads and dirt paths (at least dirt whenever they weren?t covered by ice) thinking these were more realistic for traveling than trying to use any of the waterways. Those were marked too but Kazzy had heard too many corroborating tales of pirating to endorse them heavily.

She had not failed to put her own personal touches on the map. Inside the ornate compass rose she hid the name she used when she tagged buildings in RhyDin with Lizzie?Stix. As if that weren?t signature enough she also drew a small sparrow soaring downward in the bottom corner of the map, an homage to her tattoo and her father?s favorite line from Hamlet.

When Alain opened the green envelope he would discover the most useful of her personal touches. Kazzy had enclosed a Third Eye, a small wooden triangle with a glass orb in the middle akin to the planchette that came with any Ouija board, used to reveal messages hidden by Kazzy?s very real and living hand on the map. She first learned the usefulness of a Third Eye when passing notes during class at St. Augustine?s Prep Academy. It saved her many ruler slappings and lectures from the nuns when she could hide her messages on innocent pages from her biology textbook. After so many conversations that covered not only the topography of Icecrest but the best places to eat, to shop, to pawn and to sodomize, she could not resist the urge to include these points of interest as well. The markings would only show up underneath the orb of the Third Eye and would lead Alain and his crew to places ranging from the Grand Jest for Icecrest?s finest oyster ice cream (a true delicacy in the region according to Ben Clyde) to The Red Hook (a true degenerate?s dream according to Stooge).

The map done and delivered Kazzy could return to Kesey to crash from the caffeine and sugar high that kept her working for the last few days and imagine Tombs' face when he was forced to wait in line with all the other teenyboppers to get her coveted The Brothers Bradley signed poster.

When dawn broke over Icecrest, the city was already teeming with activity. Many of the empty streets had filled, most of them with the disgruntled masses. Men and women held whatever weapons they could carry and chanted at the loyalist guards that met them as they pushed on the boundaries set down in the last 'treaty,' in some cases way over the line.

They wanted the Emperor to hear their cries.

The previous night, a soldier representing the Provisional Authority had chased two vandals from the palace grounds into the Brustedt Markets, which was well within Popular Action Initiative territory. When one of the vandals turned, the soldier assumed he intended to shoot and shot first, instantly killing a boy who could not have been any older than Julia Bradley; in addition, he was completely unarmed.

The city was alive with a thousand sounds, chief among them the shouting, marching, stamping and rampaging masses. Machine guns rattled out short staccato bursts (the rebels had always been short on ammunition), and mortar fire pounded away for minutes at a time before the culprits were run off. Helicopters and seaplanes and heavily armed speedboats roared their way in and out of the city, most of them opportunists plying their trade.

The sounds were chaotic but still dull, warfare turned down to just a simmer, such a strange combination... yet one of these sounds was not like the others. One of these things just didn't belong.

The upbeat motown number by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," blasted its way out of the heavily modified Russian helicopter registered to S.P.I., rattling out through the speakers into the ears of the crew and those of the angry populace below them. It rattled windows and turned its share of heads in spite of the chaos, and everyone was too awed (or at least temporarily shocked) by it to fire off any shots in their direction, as they did with the other helicopters.

"Sir! Why aren't they shooting at us?"

Alain DeMuer sat with his legs dangling over the edge, cradling a small but tough-looking old assault rifle in his lap, smoking a cigarette. He didn't turn his head to the question... but he grinned, nice and wide.

"Let's see what's going down at the Fisherman's Wife -- ten to one they're open..."

"And lips are flapping," the sergeant nearby half-muttered, with a grin of his own.

"Then we go see what the Emperor's hiding in his cellar."

"Left and right are both in a ****ing uproar," Alain muttered as twelve boots thudded and sloshed their way through one of Icecrest's many tunnels. The old city was like swiss cheese that way, criss-crossed by ancient mines, brief flirtations with a subway system, smuggling tunnels, even a relatively short-lived idea for underground footpaths to alleviate traffic on the streets. In the dark thoroughfares no one could tell who was on whose side, so the factions were in the habit of avoiding each other down here, assuming no one was anyone else's concern... Only the Provisional Authority ever proved to be a problem, and today they had bigger problems to worry about than smugglers, mercenaries, and opportunists crawling around beneath their feet.

"Over the Ruj Lane murder?" whispered the woman behind him and to his left.

Alain nodded, but no one could see it; their dimmed blue lights swayed in the dark, illuminating their surroundings in a sporadic and chaotic way. "Anarchists lost their foreign backing over it... they're all scared. P.A.I.'s blaming the P.A., and vice versa.

"Now everyone caught in the middle just wants to get the hell out." The words almost froze Alain's footsteps. He knew the feeling of being trapped in a doomed city, all too well, and the way thudding mortar fire punctuated the sounds of sorrow was hauntingly familiar... The woman, realizing what she had implied, hastily added, "But we have our orders... And there's nothing we can do, anyway."

"Uh-huh," Alain said absently. He turned left, then turned left again and gestured to the others. "When you reach the surface, split up. Two of you to the Moon's Livery, two of you to the safehouse in the Palace district for some recon, and you," he pointed, "go to the church on Fifth Street, see if you can't get a hold of the community leaders."

"The Livery's here?"

"Just before we went under. It'll be a lifeboat now, take as many as you can, lead them underground in small groups..."

The team began to move up the short metal ladder out of the damp brick tunnel, and the one at the top looked down. "But what about what we came for...?"

"The vodka?" At this moment, the Moon's Livery was being loaded with a warehouse full of vodka, the finest that Icecrest had produced in recent years, bought at rock-bottom prices from desperate distributors. "We came here for the loot under the palace, before the Architect's goons, Ad Lucem's finest, or any goddamn radicals can get their hands on it. That's all. Even if we lose that battle, let's do some good. Make room on the Livery, and dump the liquor in the ocean if you have to."

* * *

The Baron arrived alone at the Fisherman's Wife to gather human intell before rejoining the others at the safehouse. Traveling that way was more dangerous, presumably, but he didn't think so... It let him escape notice, such that the bartender who'd just mentioned Rhovniks and DeMuers took a full minute to see him.

Alain thrived in the strange crowd and the heavy noise, cutting a path without a broad wake, trading serious words with known informants and making it look casual by pairing them with easy, son-of-a-bitch grins. Whatever attitude he needed on the surface often changed, but under it was constant, consistent, solid and cold. His eyes were two chips of blue steel, never quite paranoid but constantly on the alert, purposeful in their movements, which betrayed the fact that most of his actions had motive backing them. Another clue he revealed through habit was gunslinger's hands, because he never kept them up high or too far out in the open except when he wanted to, usually to light a cigarette. They liked to stay close to his sides, whether or not he had a weapon there.

Today he walked in with a rifle over his shoulder, like most of the men in the bar, but it was a solid bet he carried a pistol in his holster that worked as seamlessly as an extra limb.

Alain DeMuer could not bury his scars. They picked him out in a crowd, the burn scars on his palm, the whip scars that traced up the back of his neck, and an old wound along his throat. When he rolled up his sleeves, the effect was far worse. They were a part of his signature, his profile, on the list that every informant, assassin, and businessman that wanted to cross his path checked off.

So while he did a fine job worthy of a detective or a spy blending into his surroundings, controlling his actions and reactions, and working the environment to his advantage... he remained recognizable to anyone who made it their top priority to find him. He picked a spot at the bar and busied himself rolling a cigarette so he could tune into information nearby that another man was paying for; clearly, he had no idea the sister of Sonja Rhovnik was looking right at him.

Alain and Sophie had proceeded in silence from the Fisherman's Wife. To him, Sophie seemed a strong and private woman, who no doubt grieved privately, and he knew there was little meaningful sympathy he could offer now. Letting her press on toward their task may have been the most compassionate act available to him.

"Careful," he muttered, the first word he'd said to her after they'd gone underground into the city's tunnels. Already they'd crept past several militants and a patrol from the Provisional Authority, keeping their lights as dim as possible all the way, and now black ice proved a problem as they proceeded down a slope, towards the palatial tunnel complex. He touched the stone wall to steady himself as he crept forward, blue steel eyes shining faintly, strangely in the dark... His nature was not altogether mortal.

Sophie, on the other hand, was mortal and as badly as she wanted to concentrate on the mission at hand, her heart ached for her sister. There were no tears. She would have a lifetime in privacy to mourn her sister. Even if it had been prudent to speak, she had nothing left to say. She would prefer to be doing this on her own but no suicide mission would bring Yaya back to her.

For now, she had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. It was certainly not an easy task. Black ice was a rare sight in upstate South Carolina and her experience with it was limited to her travels and winter vacations spent on Lake Erie. She followed him down, taking his lead by allowing her hand on the wall to steady herself.

"Should be dead ahead," Alain added, but as soon as the slope levelled off, clattering boots echoed down a corridor that ran perpendicular to them. He put his hand up instinctively for her to stop, then extinguished the little light strapped to his jacket and pressed in against the wall. A steel knife hissed quietly out of a sheath at his boot, and he waited, and prayed they would not be discovered by... well, whoever these people were. Likely another P.A. patrol, this close to the palace.

Sophie swung her body in against the wall as well and pressed her gloved hands against it. The biting cold radiating from it seemed to slice right through her gloves, causing an instant ache in her bones. She pursed her lips tightly as she strained to listen in the darkness. It was then that she realized that her gun was still sitting on top of the keg in that back room. Certainly she had other weapons but losing her handgun was a grave error indeed.

"Check the main line," the lead man called back to the rearguard as the patrol raced by, slipping and sliding frequently, and the man in the back skidded to a halt. He walked up to the 'crossroads' and stopped to light a cigarette... but as his comrades' boots thudded away, fading into the distance, he thought he could hear something closer. The movements were unmistakable, and Alain didn't wait long. He grabbed the soldier by the back of the head, slammed him headfirst into the wall, twice, and threw him to the ground. His knife went out towards his throat, but as the man appeared to be unconscious, he stopped himself.

"...Rotten luck." He nodded towards Sophie. "Come on."

With no more than a blink of a reaction, her steely gaze shifted down in the direction that the man's peers had moved off in. There was no sound of a return. They had not heard. Alain's order got a firm nod and she very willingly peeled herself off of the wall to step over the unmoving soldier. She was sure he was barely more than an adult but she did not bother to look.

"We're moving too slowly. Those papers cannot be lost." Her words came soft but urgent. Perhaps she was not reminding him so much of those points but reminding herself as to why she was still going on with this mission in spite of the news he had just delivered.

Alain switched his light back on. "It's too dangerous. If we speed up, we could slip. This last stretch here is pretty steep."

For many years later whenever the incident was mentioned, she would refuse to acknowledge that the brief conversation had taken place. Instead, she would insist that Alain had pushed that they walk faster, not her. Just as the words left his mouth her boots slipped on the ice and her balance could not be recovered. She fell hard onto the ice and a foot swung dangerously near his ankle.

"Son of a ****ing -- " And thus Sofia Rhovnik discovered, Alain Cavan DeMuer had a dirty mouth, no matter how hard he tried to control it. His feet went out from under him, and when he begged Kael for aid, the cruel Fallen merely laughed. Down they sped through the darkness, bumping over the stones and sliding on the ice, a tangle of limbs. Didn't help matters that they couldn't see a thing.

As they started to level off, Alain figured it was due time to try to stop. He made several attempts to twist around, then dug his boots as well as he could into the corners of the tunnel. He skidded to a halt, with the Rhovnik against his back. First he took a deep breath -- "Thanks, for that." As cross as it was, there was unmistakeable humor in his tone. This wasn't his first adventure.

Nor was it hers. Had she been in the right mindset, the added danger might have even proved fun. Instead, she only wanted to get this over with and find some way to get out of this icy hell with the ancient writings which she had already deemed to be Rhovnik property.

"We got down here faster, didn't we?" The rhetorical question came in a low growl and she pushed herself back up to her feet and took the lead even though he was the one that knew these underground passage ways, not her.

"Shouldn't be much further. Maybe ten meters," Alain said as he followed, intensifying the beam on his electric torch, only limping a little at first. That little trip was going to leave some nasty bruises...

The close encounter with the ice had left her legs cold and numb. She stretched them out as long as she could while still feeling secure in her balance on the ice. She would not make the same mistake twice. "Just get me beneath the palace. I'll know where to go from there."

The Baron looked straight up, tracing his fingers along the ceiling. He continued this way for maybe twenty meters, longer than he'd supposed, then he felt a groove.:: "...Okay." He felt the shape of the rune to read it, and smiled grimly to himself. "We're in. Southeast corner."

This wasn't at all how she'd remembered it but she wasn't about to let him know that. She paused for just a minute before pushing ahead. At first her path selection seemed to be merely at random and she may have even led them around in a circle through the labyrinth of mazes that existed beneath the palace. Eventually, though, she began to recognize the long strings of numbers that were painted onto the walls at the cross sections. Within only a couple more minutes she was twisting through the tunnels like she had been for decades.

Alain kept pace with her, and tried as he might to listen. The P.A.'s forces were strained, though, and most of the patrols were likely further out from the palace in the underground to stop infiltration as well as they might... The tunnels here were not so frozen over as the others, better-maintained, even cleaner, as far as tunnels went. Not wanting to risk breaking Sophie's concentration, he remained silent.

The P.A.'s forces were strained which was what gave one of the emperor's council members the idea to sneak down into them. The very same documents that Alain and Sophie were trying to "rescue", Council Member Dasirst was trying to steal to secure as his exit strategy. As they turned the final corner for the door to the bunker, Sophie dipped around the corner and then immediately pulled back.

"Security code denied." The cold reply from the bunker's security system announced when Dasirst tried his access card. A curse from Dasirst followed.

Sophie hugged the corner of the wall and looked up at Alain, raising her brows in a questioning expression. She knew well enough that she was too distracted to make this decision. If it were up to her, she would shoot the man where he stood to make herself feel better. These writings were more important than her grief.

Alain peered around the corner, then back, frowning pensively. After a few more moments, he mouthed two words to her: Trust me. He had an idea.

"Loyalist scum," he snarled as he rounded the corner, but cocked his weapon just as the Councilman began to draw his own. "Drop it," he said, and already there was a clatter, "or I'll blow your brains out... or maybe I'll do it anyway? For all the people you killed. For the Rodesten massacres -- don't you turn around!" he barked, and shoved his rifle into the man's ribcage. He pressed himself against the wall, shivering. "Maybe I split you up the spine, see what you look like inside. See if the Emperor's men bleed red like Populists do."

Whatever it accomplished was working. Dasirst believed this was a P.A.I. man who was willing to do anything to get into the palace vaults and earn the accolades of his commanders, including torture... not unlike the horrific torture an Elite Justice had suffered before they dumped his body in the Palace District. "P-please! What do you want? I..."

"The door," Alain snarled.

"...I can't help you, see, I was about to give up..."

"The door!" he shouted this time. He held a knife in his other hand as he surged up close, holding the blade to his neck, breathing raggedly into his hair. "The door... please." The effect was terrifying.

"Okay... okay! I was going to try a manual override, an old one..." Alain jerked the knife. "No, I swear! They revert to it, every time there's a breach... Theta, Gamma, Four, Nine, Beta, Six."

"Valya," Alain growled, apparently meaning Sofia, and jerked his head to her for her to try the code. When Dasirst tried to get a look at her, Alain roughed him up again, and he desisted.

Sophie did not turn the corner until the gun was in Dasirst's ribs. They had met once or twice at functions while she was the emperor's guest during her brief stint pretending to translate the documents for him. Eventually, the emperor grew tired of her limited information and cut her access but in that short time she had discovered just how important they might be to the cause. When certain Dasirst was too concentrated on the gun in his side than on the faces of his attackers, she swung around the corner to follow.

Her fingers entered the code slowly on the keypad, desperate to make sure each and everyone was right. The computer signaled the correct code and the cold voice suddenly sounded much sweeter. "Security clearance accepted. Access granted." She almost laughed as the doors peeled open to reveal the bunker within.

Dasirst almost laughed too, relieved that he would live, and then Alain struck him in the head with the butt of his weapon. "Never did like his kind," he grunted as he dragged his unconscious form into the bunker, then pushed with his boot to tuck him into a corner. "Now he can blame the P.A.I. when someone finds him down here."

He shouldered his weapon and took a look around, following Sophie at a slower pace, taking in the details for a few different reasons. To Sophie, he figured, they were all too familiar.

"He better hope he finds a way out before they find him." Her tone was absent and distracted as the sight floored her just as it always did.

The room was lit brightly to allow for the documents to be examined in ease. In fact, the entire room was a researcher's dream. It had all the high tech equipment that one could hope for. Yet, the only thing that Sophie had her eyes on was the glass cases that lined the back wall. There were twenty-three in all, each holding a piece of papyrus in varying levels of decay with the language of the angels and devils brushed artfully onto them.

It was then that she smiled. It was a grim smile, heavy with not only the news of the day but also the seriousness of the shared mission. "Are you ready to rob a nation of its greatest treasure?"

Nine long weeks.

That was the time that Seamus Morvan had spent undercover, with only sporadic contact from his comrade Malcolm in the last month. He had posed as a freedom fighter for the Fifth Street Militia, a group that aimed to protect the neutrality of their neighborhood. The residents were a diverse group, always on the cultural edge... variously skilled and in positions of power within the government in the best of times, and easy scapegoats in the worst of times.

Seamus had grown to love them. The men and women of Fifth Street invited him into their homes for dinner, given him shelter when his crumbling apartment was destroyed by a car bombing, shared their woes and shared in what they imagined were his. A number were Catholic, and he had gone to Mass with them. He could remember the terrified faces on Sundays, packed into a freezing chapel, breathing fog and shivering with cold and fear, and listening to their priest for some scrap of hope.

Now he stood on the southern end of a warehouse that DeMuer Exports had bought shortly after his arrival, packed in between a crate and three barrels next to a rusty metal door. The alleyway was almost completely iced over, and every time he moved he had to kick the ground with his steel-toed boots and dig in, lest he slip from cover. The rifle fire that cracked the frozen air every other minute was a chilling reminder that he ought to be cautious.

Behind him, hundreds of women and men were packed into the warehouse among crates of vodka, convincing themselves they had been abandoned, but not ready to make a desperate run for it... not yet. On the northern side of the building, in the water, was the Moon's Livery with her gangplanks drawn up. A man and woman who had gone halfway up had been shot by rifles from a bombed-out building across the street and toppled into the icy water, and the Livery's crew wasn't taking any more chances.

Not until this clears up, Seamus had to reassure himself; these people couldn't be abandoned!

He had been in touch via radio whenever he could, and from this he gathered there were upwards of forty militants packed into the bombed-out building across the street. He also gathered they were suggesting he get out another way, since they authorized him to use 'whatever means necessary' to return home... a needless thing to say, if he would be leaving on the Livery sooner or later anyway.

What were they doing?! The crew had mounted no counter-attack, but their ship was still sitting in the water by the warehouse. What on earth could they be waiting for...?

Several bursts of bullets ricocheted into his alleyway, and Seamus ducked instinctively. In a moment he knew why - snow and ice crunched, a man with a rifle racing towards him, over the bodies of two of his fallen comrades. The knight leveled his rifle, looked between two of the barrels before him and down the iron sights, and squeezed the trigger. The man's head snapped back, blood streaming from his throat and in a brief jet out of his mouth, and he crumpled, dying quickly.

His ammunition was far from infinite. He grimaced after checking his clip, then peered through a small brass sight held in one hand. There were signs and sounds of activity... Sooner or later, the militants would mount an attack on this end of the warehouse, braving sniper fire from the Moon's Livery, and overwhelm the building and the hundreds of innocent people inside of it.

People who depended on Seamus for survival.

Damnit, why hadn't the Livery acted yet?!

"Such pretty language." Sophie was quickly at Alain's side once he was over the wall and no longer a lingering target in need of coverage. Confidant in Seamus's abilities, she had left the man with the confidence that this was certainly not his first gun battle. That's how she liked them -- tough, grim, and with a biting sense of humor.

She dropped to her knees beside Alain, producing a knife from her coat to rip a slice into the leg of his pants. She was nothing if not prepared. A package of chemical hemostat is also found within the depths of her down jacket. Her pale eyes glanced off towards the bottles of vodka even as she tore off the top of the package. "You thinking what I'm thinking?" Her vague mix bag of an accent tore free to show her Southern roots when repeating the saying she had heard so often in her childhood.

Alain tilted his head back and sucked in several breaths until he was steady. Just another addition to a growing collection of complex scars. "I'd say so," he replied, sounding vaguely like someone from upstate New York himself. While she worked on his leg, he whipped a trench knife out of his boot and got to work shredding his scarf, dividing it up into a dozen rags. He whistled and called, "Morvan!"

Seamus hurried over, the fire on his previous position too intense to keep it up there anyway. "Boss."

"Remember back home, what me and your brother did when they rolled in the barricades at the Narrow Lanes?"

"Aye, boss," Seamus replied with a grim smile, and a moment passed between the two of them, their eyes meeting. Remembering. "I do." He took the remains of his Baron's scarf and started preparing what could be nothing other than Molotov cocktails.

The zeolite stemmed the bleeding as much as it could. The bullet needed to be removed but with so much needed muscle surrounding the area that would be best done by a doctor. A doctor. They would need to get through this mess before that was even necessary. Her own scarf was pulled off her neck roughly and wrapped around the leg, tying it securely in place in the hopes of keeping it relatively clean in this most certainly non-sterile environment.

"How many people are in this building?" The question was posed to Seamus. Her mind was already flooded with the limited possibilities.

Alain grabbed one of the vodka bottles nearby and took a more-than-healthy swig from it; then he winced in anticipation and tipped the vodka over his hand and the wound. It burned a great deal, but vodka that strong? It sterilized. Kael told him yes, go for it, so he started to dig his fingers in...

"He'll manage," Seamus said to distract Sophie. The knight was aware of some of his liege's abilities. "And, oh, about three hundred souls. All of them waiting..." Bitterness tinged his words.

"Okay," Alain said, and that little piece of bullet rattled across the rooftop. He struggled and pushed himself up to a crouch. "We light that building up, and then the captain will lower the gangplanks again or I'll have his ****ing head." Then he eyed Sophie. "Ever used one of these things before?"

Three hundred. Her pale eyes remained on Seamus as the sheer number was overwhelming. Even if they got three hundred people off this shipwreck of a city, what would become of them next? One step at a time. One step at a time.

Her gaze followed the bouncing bullet. The damage that could have been done digging for the bullet almost made the action idiotic. She gave a shrug and a shake of her head. It wasn't her leg but she had entrusted her life and the life of Elssa to the man. Gruff sarcasm weighed heavily on her tone as she reached out to take a couple from Seamus. "No. Maybe later you can show me how to fire a gun."

"Didn't know civil war was your speed, love," Seamus teased her, but otherwise busied himself carting the makeshift weapons over to the edge.

The purpose behind Alain's action became obvious quickly - his eyes had changed, gone from a cold blue-steel to a brilliant silver fire that, whatever it was, certainly wasn't human. The zeolite had slowed the bleeding enough for Kael to proceed, and now the power behind the silver fire laced skin, muscle and vessel back together again. It wasn't something he wanted to reveal to Sophie, but he didn't have much choice. "Thanks for the assist," he muttered to her as he limped by, up to the edge near Seamus.

"Ladies, gentlemen... please collect your drinks," the knight announced to them, opening an arm to the collection. "And light up."

The hint of amusement that had reached her lips if not her eyes went stone cold at the change in Alain. The coldness of the realization that settled in around her was nothing compared to the frigid air. She had only read of those like him. Few and far between were even the ancient texts that talked of it written in the beautiful, archaic language of the angels and demons.

There was no time for fear. There was no time for questions. It took the invitation from Seamus to wake her from the hard truth. Although not a smoker, girls like her did not go far without a lighter. She dug into a pocket to find her own and as the two men moved towards their own bottles, she sparked the lighter. "One right after the next one. Just give them long enough to panic but not enough time to think."

She had done this before. Causing chaos was in the Rhovnik blood. The fabric sticking out of the top of the bottle was lit. While tar and gasoline would have been preferred, the vodka would have to do. "Forgive me Father for wasting good vodka." The words were muttered beneath her breath. The bombed out warehouse that the militants were hunkered into had little glass still within their window frames. They were empty shells and excellent large targets. She launched the bottle towards one of them with spot on accuracy.

Alain and Seamus' movements were almost identical; they lobbed their bottles in large arcs and they exploded into flames. Men screamed in agony, and then the second volley overwhelmed the building. Soon it was nothing more than an inferno, and as the twenty or so survivors raced out into the street to attempt an attack on the warehouse and the ship, a cry went up from the captain of the Moon's Livery:

"Save the Baron! Slaughter the rebels!" The gangplanks clattered down into place, and the crew raced out with their guns blazing. The street-fighting was fast and brutal, and it allowed the refugees at last to make their way onto the ship. Sailors and knights controlled the flow of human traffic with precise instructions.

"All aboard," Alain muttered, his eyes already returned to blue-steel but for the reflection of the inferno and the violent battle, a reminder of that former Celestial fury. His gaze locked onto Sophie, lingering, searching for some sign in her face... then he nodded, very slightly, and limped away to the ladder off the roof.

She knew and he knew that she knew. Words could not be found. There was too much news to digest. Too much had happened in the last twenty-four hours. There would be time enough for words.

Sophie could not follow until she saw the Yaya look alike safely on the ship. Her eyes found Keo as he stumbled exhausted from the journey but a knight had helped him to his feet and guided the dark-haired girl and her father onto the boat. Only then with the halo of the warehouse fire behind her did she push away from the wall and follow Alain to the ladder.

It was time to get the hell out of Icecrest.