****
I banged on the heavy door as hard as I could with my fist. “Carly, Matt, are you in there?” Though it had seemed like days had passed since my confrontation with Bokor, it was only ten pm. Way too early for Matt and Carly to be asleep. Perhaps they were out. I banged on the door one more time.
I heard the thud of boot-clad feet racing then the door was jerked open. Mateo and Carly Corsini stood in the opening, their eyes wide with alarm. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” Matt asked as the door swung open, his eyes darting behind me, looking for trouble.
“I’m fine. I just need to get into the archives. You didn’t hear me when I knocked at the front doors, so I came around to your private entrance,” I said. They gave me blank stares, and I finally realized what they were wearing. Mateo had on a pair of pants, the top button still undone. His boots were unlaced, as if he’d just stuck his feet in them and ran. Carly was wrapped in a blanket, her hair wild. I hadn’t expected to wake them; it was early by vamp standards. But then, they hadn’t been sleeping. “Oh, crap. Oh, Carly, Matt, I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I started to call on my way over here, but I left my scry-crystal at home. I wouldn’t disturb you if it weren’t extremely important. I swear.”
Behind Matt, Carly’s eyes softened. “Is it about the case you and Ian have been working on?”
“Yes. I think I might finally have a breakthrough on a location, but I need to take another look at that pre-Cataclysm list of churches and the maps. I would have waited until morning, but he’s taken another girl, and he’s killed a City Guard. I want this guy.”
“We heard about Marcus,” Mateo said, referring to Rangel by his little-used first name. He stepped back. “Come in. I’ll take you to the map room while Carly gets dressed. She’ll probably be more help to you in the actual research, though, since she lived in Nashville before the Cataclysm.”
“I’ll be right there,” Carly called over her shoulder, already making her way into the depths of their apartment to get changed.
I followed Matt into the room where they kept old maps and other historical images. Mat went to a large, metal cabinet and pulled two ancient maps out of a drawer. He carefully unrolled them and laid the out, side by side, on the table in the center of the room. One was a street map of Nashville, circa 2012, the year before the Cataclysm started. The other was the same map, but with the city wall, gates, and other modern landmarks drawn in.
By the time Mateo had the maps set up, Carly had joined us. In her hands, she had a huge old book with extremely thin, yellow pages. “Okay, this should have what you are looking for listed. What exactly are you looking for? I think we covered every religious setting in the city.”
“Within the walls of the current city, yes. But I think he is taking the mages outside the walls. What I’m looking for is somewhere of spiritual or religious significance somewhere in the O.Z., but still a part of the original city of Nashville.”
“Holy smokes, Fee,” Mateo exclaimed. “Do you know how big Nashville was?”
“Not to mention the number of churches?” Carly added.
“I know. Well, I don’t know the number of churches, but considering the number there were just inside the walls, I can imagine. I know Nashville was huge. But, I think I can narrow it down,” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. All I really had was a hunch, a feeling. Nothing solid to go on. This could just be a wild goose chase.
“Okay, I’m up for the challenge,” Carly said, settling down in a chair at the table so that the maps were on either side of the huge book. She flipped it open until it said “Churches” on the top corner of the page. “Okay, give me your criteria.”
I sat in the chair opposite her. Mateo still stood, leaning against the metal cabinet. “The first criteria is that it has to be within a couple of miles of the walls. I can’t imagine he would be traveling very far with an unconscious mage. Whatever drugs he is using would have to wear off eventually.”
“Okay. But that still leaves us with a pretty wide area, if we don’t even know what general direction he’s going in,” replied Carly.
I shook my head. “No, still no witnesses. This is all pure speculation on my part, so no idea of direction. But, it needs to be a significantly large structure.”
“Why?” Mateo asked.
“For one, it needs to be still standing. But mostly, and I thought of this on the way over, it needs to look religious or spiritual. I realized we are finding old religious spots by using the archives.”
“Which he doesn’t have access to,” Carly chimed in, catching on to my train of thought.
“Exactly. So, it needs to be a structure that is still standing that looks religious. I also realized it might not actually be a church. I can’t imagine that there are many still upright in the O.Z.”
“No, there aren’t many pre-Cataclysm buildings standing at all, at least not in the few miles surrounding the city. Those that weren’t demolished by war, weather, and earthquakes were taken down during the reconstruction, to help nature reclaim some territory and make it friendlier to animals,” Mateo informed us.
“It could be a cemetery, or a statue. There could be a more-modern structure built near it, or there is still the possibility that he is a part of a gypsy tribe,” I said.
Carly began to flip through the book she’d brought in with her and we were all quiet, the tension thick in the room. After a few minutes, Carly leaned back in her chair, her face scrunched in concentration. “Wait a minute. You said possibly a statue? So it doesn’t have to be a particular type of religion? Just has to seem to be religious or spiritual?”
“Yes. We don’t think this guy is a vampire, so the likelihood of him having a strong grasp of pre-Cataclysm religion is pretty slim. It is more likely that he has adopted somewhere that he thinks is of spiritual significance as his home base. Which is why I’m thinking cemetery,” I told her.
“I think I have an idea of the place we are looking for,” she said. “It’s not a cemetery. It isn’t even a place of religious meaning or worship, at least not in the 21st Century. It was actually a part of a park. It is a replica of an ancient religious site on the other side of the world. Even then, the religion hadn’t actually been practiced on a wide scale for thousands of years. But, I do think it would seem, to someone born after the Cataclysm, as somewhere sacred.”
“That sounds like the place,” I said.
“Hang on,” Carly said and ran out the door. In a few minutes, she returned with several small, colorful booklets and papers. “This is where you are going,” she said, handing me the papers.
While Carly filled me in on the basic layout of the building, Mateo drew a rough map from the closest city gate to the approximate area of the building.
“This was once a park,” Carly said. “But, that was two hundred years ago. I have no idea what it’s like there now. It could be that the building is in ruins or so covered up by vegetation that it hasn’t had eyes laid on it in centuries.”
I sighed. “That’s a chance I’ll have to take. At this point, I’ll take any lead we can get.”