“And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.”

Ezekiel 37: 7-10

 

“The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.”

William Faulkner

 

 

Prologue

Guinea, Africa. 1731

The screaming didn't stop until just before dawn.

Miguel Rey huddled underneath one of the mud huts, his face pressed into the dirt. The smell of blood hung in the air, a coppery tang over the acrid pall of smoke from the burning roofs of the village. Miguel’s arms ached from the pressure of holding his hands over his ears, the futility of trying to shut out the agonized cries of the dying.

He should have been one of them.

The raiding party had come in the small hours of the night, easily overpowering the outer guards, running through the village. Some of the raiders carried shackles, others carried machetes, and each went about his work with no hesitation.

There were strong men in the village, and women of childbearing age – all worth a great deal as slaves, for it was not only white men who stole black gold. It was usually rival tribesmen who raided villages in the interior, driving their captives back to the coast where slavers would take them west to the New World.

Miguel had watched from the shadows as knives slashed and women were beaten to the ground even as the villagers fought back against the invaders. He clutched the cross around his neck, wondering whether the Lord called him to martyrdom.

Then he ran, hiding under the hut, a mute witness to the savagery.

When silence eventually fell, Miguel wondered if there would be anyone left. Would he die here in Guinea, the last of his missionary party?

When he first arrived here two years ago, Miguel had stumbled out of the forest, his legs weak from fever, his guts infected by parasites, his mind already in another realm. The villagers cared for him, as Jesus told his followers to do. The village shaman gave him foul-tasting herbal concoctions to drink – perhaps it was ekong, witchcraft, or perhaps the Lord’s blessing in disguise – but Miguel was soon back on his feet. Even the disease of bony growths on his body that had plagued him since childhood were gone after the shaman had finished his work.

It was a good and simple life, and Miguel quickly became part of it. He sat talking with the men, ate cassava root with them, supplemented by duck or even red river hog when the hunters got lucky. He celebrated the birth of their children by drinking palm wine. He struggled to learn the language, but the villagers were gentle, coaxing him into learning the names of various plants. They had been his friends.

Miguel came to bring the gospel to a heathen people, but instead, he discovered those whose faith and good works challenged his own. They were not people of darkness, they were children of God.

Now Miguel lay motionless in the dirt, listening for a sound that might indicate any were left alive.

He lay there until the sun rose higher, until it was clear that the raiders had gone. When all was silent, he crawled out from beneath the hut and brushed dirt from the robe he still wore as a priest of the Catholic Church.

Miguel crept toward the center of the village, where the fire pit acted as a central meeting place, where the villagers usually sat talking or sharing a common meal. The coo of a blue-headed wood dove called softly from the surrounding kapok trees as he stopped in the shadows of one of the huts and peered around the corner. He clutched a hand over his mouth in horror.

Bodies of the villagers not taken by slavers lay strewn across the ground, some curled in the fire pit, burned beyond recognition. Others slashed with deep machete wounds. Crimson stains pooled on the dusty earth beneath them, drying in the rays of light that dawned on good and evil alike. The air reeked with the stink of burned flesh. Miguel felt his gorge rise and swallowed down bitter bile as he took a step out, eyes fixed on the dead.

The sound of footsteps.

He darted back to the shadows, making sure he was hidden before peering around again.

The old shaman shuffled out from behind the trunk of a tree. His wrinkled face usually wore a broad smile, but now his eyes were sunken, his mouth twisted in pain as he carried the weight of grief upon him.

The shaman bent to one of the bodies, then straightened, lifting his hands to the sky, his mouth moving in a whisper. He pleaded with the ancestors, with the spirits of the trees around him, and with the gods of this land, to release the dead to the next world.

But as he moved amongst the bodies, the shaman’s face transformed from one who accepted death to one determined to overcome it.

He bent down to a little girl with a deep bloody wound across her neck, then rose to his full height, eyes like thunder as he stared up at the storm clouds gathering above. The shaman shook his head in determination, clenched his fists and strode into his hut.

Miguel crept forward to the doorway, desperately wanting to know what the man was going to do.

“I see you, priest.” The deep voice came from within. “Enter and witness the wrath of my ancestors.”

Miguel walked inside, his legs shaking as he met the shaman's dark eyes. The old man seemed suddenly taller, as if his physical frame was just a shell for the powerful spirit within. Shadows weaved about his body as he spoke.

“A great darkness came upon this land when the white men landed. My brothers sell their own for gold. But those they killed here will not rest in peace. They will rise up and slaughter those who wronged them. They will not stop until they bring to justice those who kill their children, enslave their women and carry their young men across the ocean to a foreign grave.”

The shaman bent to the racks of carved wooden boxes full of ingredients at the back of the hut. Miguel had thought these to be simple herbal remedies, but now doubt flooded his mind.

The shaman reached behind the boxes and pulled out five small ivory horns, each hollowed out to create a kind of vial, each plugged with beeswax. He carried them to the hearth along with a large bowl, then reached for a bottle gourd. The shaman took a swig, gulped it down and offered it to Miguel.

“Drink this. You're going to need it if you want to witness the Breath.”

Miguel had always resisted the shaman’s drink before, fearing its potency, but this time he accepted it and drank deep. The liquid was sweet and cloying, sticking to his throat, pungent with the scent of buried roots and honey. Within moments, he felt a sensation of lifting away from his body, colors growing stronger as his focus shifted.

The shaman began to chant as he mixed the powder from the horns into the bowl, using liquid from the gourd to dilute it until a thick brown paste remained. He stood up and carried the bowl outside to where the slaughtered bodies lay.

Miguel followed him back out into the sun, shielding his gaze from a world dialed up in sensation. Flies buzzed around the bodies, landing on gaping wounds and open, staring eyes. The brilliant red of blood, the intense green of trees around him, the heady scent of flowers over the stink of gore, the hot sun on his skin. It sank into his soul, searing his mind, and Miguel wondered if he would ever be able to forget what he saw this day.

The shaman began to chant a refrain, a prayer to the ancestors, an invocation to bring the fallen warriors home again. Even with Miguel’s basic knowledge of the local language, he could still recite phrases, and now he repeated the lines over and over – something about the four winds breathing into the slain. He found himself chanting along with the shaman, and perhaps in the depths of his soul, he called to his own God, a common humanity across the cultural divide.

The shaman walked around the bodies, dabbing paste from the bowl onto the lips of the dead. He marked their foreheads with a symbol, curving lines of the breath of the divine, the spirit of the ancestors. He continued chanting until every single body had the mark and each corpse was anointed with the paste.

When he had finished, the shaman sat down heavily on the ground by the fire pit. He shrank into himself, almost as if his body desiccated under the sun, as if he had poured his own strength into them all. Then the old man wept, his tears soaking the earth, pooling with the blood beneath.

Miguel felt his own eyes prick with tears at the loss of the villagers he had grown to love. It was the end of his life here in Africa, for there was only one way forward for him now.

Suddenly, a mighty wind swept through the kapok trees, rustling the leaves and sending the birds to flight. Dark clouds gathered above, whirling into a vortex where lightning flashed, illuminating winged creatures with forked tails. As Miguel stared up at them, unsure of what he really saw, the ground trembled beneath him.

He stumbled and fell to the ground. When he looked up again, the creatures were just clouds moving and shifting in the wind. The tremor passed as quickly as it had come and then it was quiet once more.

Miguel took a long deep breath, anchoring himself with the rough feel of the dirt under his hands. The shaman’s potion must have –

A sudden movement caught his eye.

Miguel turned his head. What was that? His heart beat faster. Maybe the raiders had returned.

Another twitch.

It was one of the dead women near the fire. Her hand moved, fingers clutching the air. But it could only be a trick of the light or some animal gnawing at her broken body, desecrating the corpse.

Miguel rose to go and get rid of it, but as he moved nearer, he could see nothing by her body. He frowned and bent down to look closer.

The dead woman turned her head.

Miguel let out a small cry, stepping back in horror. Her eyes were cloudy, opaque, as if a veil had fallen down over them. He put his hand out. “Agnes?”

She bared her teeth and snarled, her fingers curling into claws. Miguel jumped back in alarm. This was not the Agnes he once knew.

The shaman clambered to his feet, hope in his eyes. “The gods have answered.”

Other villagers began to sit up, oblivious to their deep bloody wounds, eyes empty. The shaman walked around to each one, calling his thanks to the ancestors above for bringing them back from the dead.

But they were not back, not really.

“What have you done?” Miguel called out.

The shaman looked over, his eyes red-rimmed. “I have unleashed the dead on those who wronged them. Run, priest. You have no home here anymore.”

The shaman turned back to minister to his army of the dead.

Miguel put his hand to his forehead, closed his eyes, wondered if this was all a vision from the potion he had drunk. But then he looked again at those around him. The dead had truly returned from the grave. Or at least some semblance of them. Was this black magic, or was this the revelation of the Breath as recounted by the prophet Ezekiel?

An idea began to form.

An army of the dead was a precious gift that could be used for the expansion of empire. A gift that would ensure his future.

As the shaman ministered to his new followers, Miguel slipped back to the hut. He gathered up the five horns, stopping each with wax again. He wrapped them with sacking and put them into a woven bag along with water and provisions for his journey. The nearest trader town was two days’ walk away, and from there he would get on a boat and head north to Europe.

This secret could change everything.

 

 

Chapter 1

New Orleans, USA. Present day.

As the rain thundered down for the seventh night, water seeped through the earth, trickling through the soil, widening the cracks. It curved over tattered remains of the dead and around the carapaces of scuttling things with unseeing eyes.

The chamber had remained hidden for so long, but finally, darkness awakened, a fissure opened.

A grave fell inwards from above, collapsing into the pit. The clouds shifted, and a shaft of moonlight pierced the gloom. Shadows whirled, awoken at last, as rain trickled toward the dry bones.

* * *

As dawn light filtered through the broad branches of the southern live oak, Luis Rey stood underneath a black umbrella watching his men as they widened the fissure leading into the tomb, making it safe to descend. The rain pattered down, a drumbeat that matched his racing heart as he leaned over his ebony walking cane, twisted fingers gripping the bone handle. Could this really be the place after all these years of searching?

Sweat trickled down his spine, the heat oppressive even at this early hour. Generations of his ancestors had lived in the Deep South, but something in his blood pined for the cool heights of the Sierra Nevada, the mountains of Andalusia. Yet his family would never leave this place, not without the Hand of Ezekiel. Luis trembled at the thought of what lay beneath. Could he be the one to find it?

In the center of the bustling city and yet removed from it by high walls and superstition, the St Louis Cemetery No. 1 was packed with vaulted tombs built above ground to protect them from flooding. The stone tombs housed the dead from the great families of the past, names etched into history as witness to the changing city. Some carvings had faded with time, the edges of tombs crumbling as the grey stone weathered away. Others were lime-washed white with detail in bronze. Angels with wings spread wide loomed over the graveyard – a hope of protection in the darkness beyond. How little they knew of suffering, Luis thought as he looked out over the cemetery.

But they would find out soon enough.

With the help of a local councilman encouraged by generous donations, Luis had surveyed the cemetery multiple times over the years, using the ever-shifting earth as an excuse for his private quest. It made sense for the chamber to be here. After all, the cemetery had been built after the great fire that destroyed much of New Orleans in 1788 – a fire that his family journals claimed to have been started as a way to destroy the Hand of Ezekiel relic forever. But they had never given up the search.

Luis had used ground-penetrating radar to search underground without disturbing the tombs above, but there had never been anything to investigate further, nothing that might have pointed to a hidden chamber.

But something had changed last night. Something shifted under the earth, and he could only dare to hope it was what he sought.

“Señor,” Julio shouted, pushing back the hood of his yellow rain jacket with a muscled arm as he waved with excitement. In all their years of working together, Luis had never seen his bodyguard’s eyes light up this way. But then he was more than just muscle. Julio was a man of true faith, committed to the cause, whatever it might take.

The team of workers around him moved back, revealing a way down.

Luis shuffled toward the hole, sensing movement in the darkness below. While his mind raced ahead, his limbs moved with agonizing slowness as he took each painful step.

Born with a rare connective tissue disease, Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva, it slowly turned his muscles, tendons and ligaments to bone. It was daily agony, but Luis understood that the Lord had blessed his family with the affliction. It kept their focus on searching for the relic over generations, reminding them of the sacred task with daily physical awareness. He thanked God for it, even as his bones ground against each other and he dragged his twisted limbs onward. Perhaps his reward was finally within reach.

Some of the men turned their eyes away from his contorted form, but Julio’s gaze never wavered. He didn’t shrink from suffering. His family had been in service to the Reys for almost as long as the Spanish had been in the New World. Their families were bound together, an ancient blood pact that together they might finally end.

Luis stepped to the edge of the hole. Julio reached for his arm, helping him to bend and look inside. “Could this be it?” he whispered.

Luis nodded. “Perhaps.” He leaned forward, but he could see only collapsed stone and darkness beyond. It smelled of fresh rain and the mulch of pungent earth with a note of sulfur beneath. “I need to get down there.”

“It’s not safe yet. Wait until we rig some ropes.”

Luis looked up at Julio, his jaw set, his dark eyes almost black in the dawn light, a promise of future rage.

Julio took a step back, biting his lip. “Of course. Right now. I can help you down myself.” He turned to the workers. “Stay back. Don’t stress the ground. But be ready with ropes just in case.”

He picked up a head-lamp and put it on, slinging a pack with safety gear onto his back.

Julio stepped down onto the rubble of the tomb, lifting up his arm as support. Luis placed his walking cane carefully down onto the first stone and took his first step.

“Stop in the name of the Lord!”

A tall, thin man stepped from the shadows behind a tomb. He wore a brown monk’s habit, tied simply at the waist with a piece of rope, the hood up obscuring his features. A heavy bronze crucifix hung around his neck.

“You trespass against God in this place.”

The man’s voice was deep and slow, like the languid movement of the waters in the Louisiana bayou. He pushed his hood back, revealing pale skin and grey eyes that echoed the stone of the tombs around them. His flesh hugged tight against his skull, his head shaved close and nicked in places, leaving patches of dried blood. He looked as if he subsisted on air alone.

The monk strode toward the hole, his right fist clenched around the crucifix.

The workers drew back, eyes looking away, unwilling to challenge a holy man. Some of them crossed themselves as he passed.

Luis stood his ground, Julio holding strong beside him, as the monk pushed to the edge of the hole.

“What right do you have to desecrate this holy ground?”

Luis tilted his head to look up at the monk. “The right of my ancestors who have sought this place for generations.”

The monk’s eyes widened. “Then you are–”

His words were cut off as Julio grabbed the monk and forced him to his knees. He tried to shout but the noise was muted by the stone and the rain and the rag they stuffed in his mouth.

Luis looked down at the monk kneeling before him. “Push his head forward.”

The man struggled, but Julio pushed him down and pulled down the robe revealing a stylized tattoo of wind swirling around a cross of bone on the base of his neck.

Luis spat in the monk’s face, barely hearing the audible gasp from the men around him. “You are Brotherhood of the Breath, one of the traitor Père Antoine’s bastard breed. But it ends here. Your very presence confirms this is the true resting place and your sacrifice will begin a new cycle.” Luis stepped away. “Bind him and lower him down.” He looked out at the wakening city. “Then guard the perimeter. No one must come down here until we are finished.”

Julio’s men wound guide-ropes around the monk and lowered him into the darkness. When the rope went slack, they threw the end in after him. Luis began the slow journey down, relishing each step on the stones of history as Julio helped him climb into the chamber.

When they reached the bottom, Luis paused for a moment, listening to the darkness. Was there a faint rattling, like bones against a casket?

The moans of the bound monk echoed around the chamber, the sound revealing a bigger place than expected. Luis shook his head. There was no way he could have missed this with the radar. It was as if it had appeared overnight, some opening into another world that slipped through the shadows of time.

Julio unpacked his bag, bringing out stronger lights. He flicked on a powerful flashlight and shone it around the chamber, his hand shaking a little as it revealed what lay ahead.

The floor was layered with bones, some full skeletons with rusted swords in their hands, some arranged in intricate designs, others piled high like a mass grave. Julio crossed himself as he raised the light higher. Pelvis bones and femurs lined the walls while a ceiling of skulls gazed down with empty eyes.

“We need to go deeper. The Hand of Ezekiel must be here.” Luis took the flashlight from Julio and started forward, shrugging back at the bound monk. “Bring him.”

Luis walked on, his thin ray of light lancing through the darkness, illuminating the long dead, their dull-white bones reflecting the glow back at him. Julio walked behind, carrying the bound monk, and together they formed a slow procession toward their final goal.

An altar made from criss-crossed leg bones fused with skulls and on top, a casket made from tiny bones fitted and fused together, inlaid with exquisite gold filigree.

Luis exhaled slowly and walked to it, putting his hand on what his family had sought for generations. Was there a vibration from inside, or did he imagine it? His heart pounded in expectation at what lay within.

The monk twisted and moaned more loudly as Julio dropped him on the floor near the altar.

Luis leaned closer.

He opened the lid and gasped. “No, this can’t be right.”

Inside, there was only a faded crimson silk cushion with five compartments, empty of the relics he so desperately sought.

Luis spun around and ripped the gag from the monk’s mouth. “Where is it?”

The monk laughed with triumph. “You will never find the Hand of Ezekiel.”

Luis grabbed the box from the altar and smashed it into the sneering face.

Blood spurted from the monk’s mouth as he fell sideways to the ground, coughing, moaning. A spasm of pain shot up Luis’s arm, a righteous punishment for his failure.

He leaned over the bleeding man, the box held high as a weapon. “Tell me where it is, and you will join me in glory.”

The monk spat blood in Luis’s face. “Never. I curse you and your crippled family as the Brotherhood has cursed all those who came before you.”

Luis hammered the box down, battering the grinning face until all that was left was a bloody maw. His pants of exertion echoed around the bone chamber as the dead bore witness to the sacrifice.

After a last bubbling breath, the monk exhaled a final sigh.

Luis stood over the corpse, breathing heavily, the box in his hand covered in blood. His limbs ached, and he could feel the crack of his injuries hardening already. But it was worth it.

Julio put his hand out, pointed at the box. “What’s that?”

Luis looked down. Blood had soaked into the joins of the tiny bones forming what looked like a map. He bent and dipped it into more of the monk’s blood, using the life force to outline the path ahead.

Luis smiled. Of course, the Hand of Ezekiel would not be held in one place. But the Lord rewarded the faithful, and he had passed the first test.

He looked down at the dead body. “Get rid of that. Mark it and leave it somewhere public as a warning to those who might come after us. The Brotherhood of the Breath is broken but not finished yet.”

Luis turned and walked back through the chamber. A shaft of sunlight broke through the clouds lighting the way ahead as he climbed out of the tomb into a new day, the bloody box of bone clutched tightly to his chest.

 

 

Chapter 2

New Orleans, USA.

As the taxi pulled up to the gates of the cemetery, Jake could see agent Naomi Locasto waiting outside in the shade of a turreted, brick building topped with the sculpture of a praying angel. Above her stretched an arch with decorative scrolls and the name of the place in filigree script – Saint Roch’s, Campo Santo.

The area was cordoned off with yellow police tape, and a few officers walked the perimeter. Naomi stood apart from them wearing a cream linen suit that set off her dark skin. Somehow, she managed to look cool and serene even though the sun baked down and it was already sweltering hot. Naomi was truly a modern American citizen, her family a blend of African-American, Native American, and Eastern European immigrants. Proud of her heritage, she was a linguist, one of the finest they had working at ARKANE, and Jake wondered why she had chosen to work on this case – and why she had asked him to join her once more.

The Arcane Religious Knowledge And Numinous Experience (ARKANE) Institute investigated supernatural mysteries around the world, working in a realm beyond law enforcement, where the line between reality and the supernatural blurred. The last time they had worked together in New York, Naomi had killed her first man as they had fought to keep the blood of an angel from those who sought to use its power for evil. Jake wondered whether that death still haunted her, even as the shades of all those he had left behind still wandered his nightmares. By day, he could deny their power, but by night, their echoes remained.

Some of the things he had seen remained seared into his memory, but Jake couldn’t step away, aware of what still lay out there threatening humanity. He was wary of this mission, unsure of what was to come, and if he was really honest, he was worried. His usual partner, Morgan Sierra, wasn’t here with him and he wondered whether she would ever be again.

Jake paid the taxi driver and stepped out of the car with a sigh of relief. It was good to stretch his legs after the long flight from London. The heat hit him like a blast from an oven, and he felt a trickle of sweat down his spine under his white linen shirt. The light-headedness of jet lag swirled in his brain, but he pushed it aside, sharpening his focus as he strode over to Naomi in the shade.

“Welcome back, Jake. It’s good to see you.” Naomi smiled and leaned up to kiss him on the cheek. He held her briefly, her skin cool under his touch. They had been through a great deal together, although she still didn’t know what he had seen under New York that final day. Perhaps he hadn’t even seen it himself.

“It’s good to be back.” He smiled, the corkscrew scar above his left eye twisting up to his hairline. “I’ve never been to New Orleans, so I hope we get a chance to have a look around.”

“This city will get under your skin, I promise. No one forgets The Big Easy. But first, I hope you can help with this case.”

Naomi pointed up the wide path toward the chapel, and they walked together along the gravel, footsteps crunching, as they passed stone tombs ranged either side. Bright purple bougainvillea curled around the graves, scarlet hibiscus flowers blooming at the edges while the scent of waxy frangipani filled the air.

“Why are you working this case?” Jake asked. “I thought you preferred to be based in the New York office.”

Naomi paused. She looked up at him, and Jake saw hesitation in her dark eyes. “It feels strange to say it out loud, but I think you’ll understand.” She took a deep breath. “I got bored.”

Jake laughed. “Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I go stir crazy if I’m not out on a mission. Director Marietti has given up trying to make me do office-work.”

Naomi smiled, encouraged by his understanding. “I was lost before in all the books and relics and sacred objects and symbols and languages and, oh, so much paperwork. I could delve into a manuscript for days without thinking of the people behind the mystery. Those who died in the search for it. Or those lost because we didn’t find it in time.”

She pointed out the graves around them, some with colorful flower wreaths, others hung with plastic beads. “Besides, I know this place, these people. When the body was found, and ARKANE notified, I volunteered for the case. With my heritage, I’m a good match for this area. Saint Roch has always been racially mixed, home to one of the largest populations of free people of color since before the Civil War.” She looked up at Jake. “But I don’t think this is just a simple murder. I wouldn’t have called you all the way over here otherwise.”

They walked on to the chapel. It was simple compared to many Catholic churches, a cream facade with gold-painted trim and a tall arched window stretching up to a cross silhouetted against the bright, blue sky. A plaque dedicating the shrine to Saint Roch was carved above the door:

To the patron saint of miraculous cures, in fulfillment of a sacred vow.

Jake glanced up at it as Naomi explained.

“There was a yellow fever epidemic here in 1867. A German priest, Reverend Thevis, prayed to Saint Roch, a fourteenth-century saint who cured plague victims in Italy. Thevis promised to build a shrine if no one in the parish died of it.”

Jake grinned. “Let me guess. No one did.”

“Exactly. So this place was built, and people still pray for healing here today – in a slightly macabre way.”

They entered carefully, their footsteps echoing in the sanctuary as they walked down the aisle. Jake took a breath, the cool atmosphere refreshing after being outside. The air reeked of disinfectant but underneath, Jake could smell blood. Something shocking had torn the peace from this place. It was a sanctuary no longer.

The church was simple. Wooden pews lined up to face an altar flanked by paintings of the saint’s life and a figurine of Saint Roch himself, a wide hat shading his eyes and a staff in his hand to guide the faithful onward. By his feet, a little dog looked up with soulful eyes, a piece of bread in its mouth.

“It’s said that the dog saved his life,” Naomi explained. “Roch nursed many plague victims, but eventually fell sick himself, and his dog brought him bread in the darkest moments.”

Jake raised an eyebrow. “Everyone loves a happy dog story, right?”

Naomi laughed, the sound echoing in the space, a moment of levity before she glanced over to another door. “The body was found in there.”

Jake walked over, opened the door and looked around at the strange scene. The room was filled with life-sized limbs, representations of the body parts that supplicants needed healing. There were plaster casts of feet in different sizes and shades, some flaking in the heat. Several legs were propped against the wall next to metal braces and crutches. Other objects cluttered every possible space on the shelves and window ledges – hearts, praying hands, crucifixes, coins, statues of saints and toys. A box with a pair of fake eyeballs sat on a shelf. At least Jake assumed they were fake.

The smell of blood was stronger in here. Flies buzzed as they thudded against the windows trying to escape. Nothing left to feed on now.

A sprayed outline of a body lay on the floor and within it, darker stains of blood that couldn’t be scrubbed clean. Jake hunkered down next to it.

“The police took the body already?”

“They had to move it. The heat, you know.” Naomi shrugged. “It’s in the morgue.” She handed Jake her smart phone. “These are the crime scene photos.”

Jake scrolled through the pictures, noting the position of the dead man in the orientation of the room. His face had been beaten to a pulp, his body broken and bruised. There were occult markings carved into his skin, bloody lines forming distinct geometric patterns, crosses, stars and hearts. Jake noted the monk’s robes, the emaciated body. This man didn’t care much for his corporeal life, but clearly, faith sustained him.

“Do you know who he was?”

Naomi shook her head. “No trace of him so far. No prints. No dental records. We’re searching through European databases as well.”

“So apart from the fact that this guy was a monk, why is this an ARKANE case?”

“The occult markings, for a start.” Naomi scrolled through the photos, zooming in to show the markings more clearly. “Some of these are veve, religious symbols of voodoo loa, or spirits. This is Baron Samedi’s. This one for Maman Brigitte. They were done post-mortem, so they didn’t bleed much. That’s why the lines are so clear.”

Jake shrugged. “We’re in New Orleans. Surely this kind of thing is pretty normal?”

“You’ve been watching too many zombie movies.” Naomi pointed back to the pictures. “But that’s not all. Check out his tattoo.”

Jake scrolled further to a shot of the man’s neck: a stylized tattoo of wind swirling around a cross of bone.

“It’s certainly not a veve,” Naomi said. “And it’s not from a known gang. That’s why we’re here. The city is wary of religious killings, and with this political environment, they want to rule out extremism on any side.”

Jake looked at the tattoo. If Morgan were here, she would probably know what it represented. But for now, he could always rely on Martin Klein back at ARKANE HQ in London. “I’ll get Spooky on it. If there’s something to be found, he’ll find it.”

Jake forwarded the photos onto Martin, knowing it wouldn’t be long before they had a response. He looked at Naomi, eyebrows raised.

“It still doesn’t explain why you consider this an ARKANE case. One body in a church with a symbol we’ll probably trace within the hour?”

Naomi tilted her head to one side, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “I wanted you to see this place first – but wait until you see the hidden bone chamber discovered under the oldest cemetery in New Orleans.”

Jake’s eyes widened. “Now that sounds like my type of place.”

* * *

ARKANE Headquarters, London, England.

Martin Klein examined the photo Jake had sent over. The straight bold lines of the bony cross. The curling wind giving it a sense of movement. He pushed his glasses up his nose, stretched his fingers out and delved into the world he loved best. The world of code and knowledge beyond the realms of the human brain. From this tiny office in the underground labyrinth hidden beneath Trafalgar Square, he could access a digital powerhouse.

Having recruited Martin from Cambridge University with a Doctorate in Computer Science and Archaeology, ARKANE Director Marietti had charged him with making sense of the chaos of data about religion and the supernatural. Over the years, Martin had raided archives from museums, libraries, private collections and secret societies around the world. An unseen relic hunter, leaving no trace of his digital fingerprints. It was spooky how fast he could find information, hence the nickname that Jake had given him, and that Martin not-so-secretly loved. But he could only steal what was available in bits and bytes, and so much of human knowledge lay in physical objects and hand-written scrolls stored in dusty libraries or carved into the walls of hidden tombs.

The everlasting search for knowledge drove ARKANE agents out into the field, solving mysteries, for sure, but also bringing back occult talismans, ancient manuscripts and objects of power for further study. Martin thought of the vault that lay beneath him, the security fully updated since the bombing that led them on a mission to India not so long ago. It was full of such artifacts gathered at great cost.

But the world was changing.

The digitalization of the Vatican Archives was a godsend to a white-hat hacker, as Martin considered himself. The project had begun in 2014 with the aim of putting the vast collection of Vatican Library manuscripts online for anyone to read. The team had started out with obvious texts of no significance – Renaissance Bibles, illustrated manuscripts, classical Greek and Latin works, papal bulls and ecclesiastical letters. But most of those working on the digitalization could not read what they scanned and photographed. As they accelerated the program, other texts began to slip through, perhaps by accident, perhaps by design. Valuable manuscripts with secrets that those with the right knowledge could access.

Martin had found some real gems while sifting through the millions of pages with his custom algorithm. He made sure to change the metadata afterwards so no one would know of his incursions – and it was doubtful that people would ever find the texts again in the mass of data.

The Vatican Library was one of the grandest collections in the world, but it was also one of the most useless because no human could possibly encompass the breadth of what lay inside. No single mind could process what lay inside the secret archives, or even the more accessible ones. Handwritten indexes had been copied from one to another as pages crumbled to dust. All it took was for one scribe to make a mistake on where a document was, or a deliberate mis-copying designed to hide a secret in plain sight. A scholar might spend years applying for access and finally make it to Rome, only to never find what he searched for. But with digitalization, it might be possible to fathom what truly lay within those hallowed halls.

Martin aimed to collect the sum of all human knowledge in the ARKANE databases, his job title as Librarian an understatement for his life’s work. An accumulation of every form of arcane and hidden knowledge the world had, from all cultures. With every year that passed, he gained access to more, and with the increasing possibilities of machine learning, he was able to delve deeper, finding links between disparate histories, surprising connections that explained ancient mysteries.

Once the original digitalization process had demonstrated its value, the Vatican had in recent months embraced new technologies with a project named In Codice Ratio, which used a combination of optical character recognition with artificial intelligence to search neglected texts going back to the eighth century. The aim was to take the fifty-three miles of corridors stacked with crumbling manuscripts and turn it into searchable text that could be used in a twenty-first-century Catholic faith.

It was in this maelstrom of knowledge that Martin finally found the symbol of wind swirling around a cross of bone. It was buried deep in the archives of the Spanish Inquisition, surrounded by dire warnings of what had been discovered in a bloody dungeon almost three hundred years ago. As Martin read the translation, his frown deepened, his eyes darkening in horror.

 

 

Chapter 3

Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

An army of skeletons overran the last of the living. They slaughtered the remnant of humanity with scythes and swords, drowning them, hanging them, carving them up. Two bony warriors rang a huge bell, tolling the death knell of the world as a haze of smoke burned across the ravaged, blackened land.

Morgan Sierra stared into Bruegel’s Triumph of Death, wondering at how the Dutch painter had managed to capture his apocalyptic nightmare onto such a large canvas. How could he bear to turn his imagination into reality when it meant facing the horror anew every day, preserving it for all to behold. Morgan didn’t think she could face her own nightmares like this. She had seen demons emerge from the Gates of Hell, the scar on her side throbbed from the fight in the bone church of Sedlec, and the burns on her legs sustained in the battle with the great serpent ached. And her mind … well, her mind was definitely still on edge.

Tourists stood around her, listening to a museum guide explain the symbolism of Bruegel’s sixteenth-century work. The skeletons were just a metaphor to show how death came to kings and paupers alike. But when Morgan looked at images like this, or at the Hieronymus Bosch nightmares in the room beyond, she knew that aspects of them were true. She half-expected the skeletons to emerge from the painting, swords raised high to slaughter those around her. Perhaps she was losing her ability to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

Her mentor, Father Ben Costanza, had known how to balance the mundane routine of daily life with supernatural experience. He had been a man of faith, able to hold both realities in his mind, even as most people walked the earth with no clue as to the battle that waged in other realms. Tears welled up as Morgan thought of Ben and how she would never be able to ask his advice again.

A familiar voice broke into her thoughts. “There you are!”

Morgan turned from the painting to be enveloped in an expansive hug, the scent of wildflowers filling her senses as she embraced her dear friend, Dinah Mizrahi. Dinah was a clinical psychologist, Director of the Ezra Institute based in Israel. She specialized in those with Jerusalem Syndrome, who believed themselves to be prophets or other biblical figures. The pale horse of the apocalypse had shadowed Morgan and Dinah’s steps when they had worked together once before – and it had been some time since they had caught up. When Dinah mentioned speaking at a conference in Madrid, Morgan had jumped on a plane to join her, glad of the chance to escape for a few days.

Dinah tilted her head to one side as she looked over at the painting. “That looks like your kind of fun.” She laughed and took Morgan’s hand. “Yalla, habibi. Let’s go get a drink and some tapas.”

They jumped in a cab and headed to one of the squares in the heart of La Latina, the oldest part of the city where tapas bars bumped up against ancient architecture and medieval streets. They found a table outside in a lively square tucked behind Iglesia de San Andrés Apóstol. Dinah called for wine and a selection of small plates – artichokes, asparagus and hard manchego cheese.

Morgan relaxed into the balmy evening as the familiar lilt of Spanish conversation rose around them. People catching up after work. Laughter. Normal life. No trace of skeletons with scythes. Morgan couldn’t help smiling at herself. Clearly, she just needed a break.

Dinah held her glass up. “L’chaim. To life.”

“To old friends and no drama,” Morgan said. They clinked glasses and sipped at the full-bodied Ribera del Duero.

“So, what’s been happening?” Dinah asked. “I heard you were in Jerusalem when that crazy serpent stuff was going on.”

Morgan shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe what went on under the Western Wall that day.”

Dinah held her hand up. “And I don’t want to know. It’s probably classified anyway. But why aren’t you out in the field now?”

Morgan took another sip of the wine, letting the heady scent of blackberries and spice relax her. “I walked out of ARKANE after the mission, and I don’t know if I can go back. My friend …” Her voice hitched as she bit back tears. “Well, he was more than a friend. More like a mentor. Father Ben Costanza.”

Dinah nodded. “The monk who helped you so much at Oxford University.”

“Yes. He died to protect an ancient seal. He tried to stop the End of Days – and even from beyond the grave, he saved my life and many others.”

“And you feel guilty.”

Morgan took a deep breath. “I feel like I’m surrounded by destruction. That I bring pain and death to my loved ones by being with ARKANE. Look at what happened with you and Lior in Jerusalem, and Faye and Gemma with the Pentecost stones. Even my father was killed for his beliefs as one of the Remnant.”

“All of that’s true, but you keep going back. Something is guiding you.” Dinah put out a hand and took Morgan’s. “For I know the plans I have for you, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

“The book of Jeremiah,” Morgan said, recognizing the sacred text. “But my faith remains on a knife-edge between science and the supernatural. I don’t believe in the Judaism of my father, or the Christianity of my mother. I can’t see the whole truth in either of them.”

“But you’ve seen into the heart of evil, Morgan. I know that – and I know you haven’t told me all that you’ve been through. Did Father Ben understand?”

Morgan nodded. “Yes, he did. His faith was strong and he died with the sure knowledge of where he would go next. Ben never shied away from facing evil.”

She smiled as she remembered Ben’s actions in India on the hunt for the weapon of Shiva Nataraja. Even as an old man, he had joined them to stop the Destroyer of Worlds.

Dinah swirled the red wine around her glass. “Exactly. He chose his life – as you have chosen yours. He wouldn’t blame you for his death.” She lifted her glass in a toast. “Father Ben.”

Morgan raised her glass in turn. “To Father Ben.”

Dinah leaned back in her chair. “So, what are you going to do next? Return to the university and your psychology practice?”

Morgan thought of her office tucked away near the Turf Tavern between Holywell Street and New College Lane in Oxford. When she left the Israeli Defense Force after the violent death of her husband, Elian, she had specialized in the psychology of religion. She had spent her first years at Oxford shuttling between the Theology faculty where divinity was uppermost, and the scientists of the psychology lab who had no patience for her religious leanings. Ben helped her marry the two as Morgan carved out a niche psychology practice helping cult survivors, but once she caught a glimpse of the world of ARKANE, she left all that behind.

After what she had seen beyond the veil of what most knew as reality, could she really go back to the mundane world of university politics and individual therapy?

She shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s still a place for me, but increasingly, it doesn’t feel like home. Even my cat prefers the sitter these days.”

“Adventure has its pros and cons.” Dinah topped up her wine glass. “And what about your old partner, Jake Timber, wasn’t it? Hot South African, I seem to remember.” She gave a cheeky smile. “How’s he doing without you?”

Morgan thought of Jake – his easy grin that twisted the corkscrew scar at his temple. His ferocity in battle and his unspoken tenderness.

Perhaps it was all about Jake. Perhaps she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him as she had lost so many others. But had she lost him anyway by leaving ARKANE? He was in America now, on a mission with another agent – another partner. Did he even think of her?

* * *

St Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans, USA.

This was more like it, Jake thought, as he followed Naomi through a narrow walkway between tightly packed vaults. New Orleans conjured many images in the minds of those who hadn’t visited – jazz, Mardi Gras, floods – and of course, the graveyards, cities of the dead that remained at the heart of the old town.

A few palm trees grew, casting shade across the tombs but mostly the sun burned down from above onto stony ground. The majority of vaults were functional, rectangular, some with stone cladding crumbling away to reveal brick beneath, some fenced with spikes on top to keep people out – or perhaps to keep the dead in. Others had filigree crosses or statues of angels. Most were in a state of disrepair, but some were pristine, a beacon of white marble against the grey stone of old tombs. Fresh flowers adorned one grave carved with the names of a prominent family, whose most recent burial was just a year ago.

Jake thought of his own family, buried together as they had died, hacked to death in a raid gone wrong. He hadn’t visited their grave in so long, preferring to stay away from South Africa and the memories he kept locked there. Back-to-back ARKANE missions meant that he never had time to think much about his own past – and that was fine. The living were his priority.

Naomi stopped in front of one tomb covered in hand-drawn ‘X’s with offerings of trinkets and plastic flowers lying in front.

“This is said to be the tomb of Marie Laveau, known as the Voodoo Queen.”

“In a Catholic cemetery?”

“You’d be surprised how much of voodoo is related to Catholicism.”

Naomi pointed at another tomb, an ostentatious white pyramid with the Latin inscription, Omnia Ab Uno, Everything From One. “That’s the actor, Nicolas Cage’s tomb, bought for when he dies.”

“Put the bunny back in the box,” Jake drawled in a terrible imitation of a southern accent.

Naomi looked confused.

Jake shrugged, a wry smile on his face. “Con Air. One of my favorite Cage movies.”

“Must have been before my time,” Naomi said, making Jake feel desperately old. “The collapse is at the back of the cemetery. This way.”

They rounded the corner of a tomb to find a gaping hole with a mound of broken rock that led down into darkness surrounded by warning signs and safety rope.

“This is why the police called ARKANE,” Naomi explained. “Traces of blood from the ground down there matched the body at Saint Roch. The monk was killed here, and then his body dumped – perhaps as a warning.”

Naomi walked toward the hole, her footsteps sounding suddenly loud in the deserted cemetery.

Except it wasn’t deserted.

Jake sensed something more here than the dust and ashes of the long-dead. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, his jaw tightened, and his skin tingled even though the sun still beat down with intensity. In his years with ARKANE, he’d become attuned to energy beyond the visible.

Usually, he felt at peace in cemeteries, an acceptance of the passage of life that ended in eternal rest after a lifetime of struggle. But here, there was a twisting sensation, like the earth had been wrung out. The suffering and violent death of so many had trickled into the ground, filtering down to something beneath, festering in the dark. Now it had been disgorged.

Naomi turned around. “You coming?”

Jake followed and together they clambered down into the chamber.

Industrial standing lights lit up the scene below, reflecting off a ceiling of skulls, glancing off piles of bone, glinting from a sword held by a skeleton lying in battle pose. But what did it protect?

Jake caught his breath as the place brought back a memory of the battle with the demon in the bone church of Sedlec. He was a long way from the Czech Republic now, but that day, Morgan had saved his life. He looked over at Naomi as she gazed up at the walls. She was a good agent but new to the game, and he missed his partner. This trip was already turning into more than he had expected.

“How did they not know about this place before?” Jake asked.

Naomi walked toward the altar, carefully picking her way through the prone skeletons. “The surveyors swear it wasn’t here. It just appeared somehow.”

“Or it was built recently.” But Jake’s cynicism faded as he bent to the nearest skeleton, its skull coated in the patina of time. This was no modern re-creation of an ossuary. This had been constructed many years ago with the bones of slaves, the bones of the plague dead, the bones of those who went to death willingly – and those who resisted the darkness as it came for them.

Jake thought back to the chamber under New York City, a place shown on no map, with no way to find it again. A place somehow separate in time. He knew there were pockets in the world where energy warped and hidden things waited for the right time to emerge. So, what had emerged here?

“Look at this.” Naomi pointed to the top of the altar. “There’s a dust mark, an outline of a box that’s been removed.”

Jake came to stand next to her. “But who took it, and why?”

His phone rang, the tone a sudden intrusion.

Jake glanced at the screen. Martin Klein from ARKANE HQ. The connection was weak, so he walked back toward the opening so they could hear each other clearly.

“Hey, Spooky, what did you find?”

“Jake, this is much bigger than one murder. The symbol belongs to the Brotherhood of the Breath, a shadow organization that has protected a sacred relic for hundreds of years.”

Jake looked around the chamber of bones. “What kind of relic? We have a few choices right here.”

“The Brotherhood protect the Hand of Ezekiel, said to be able to raise the dead.”