She shrugged. “I’ve no love for the Elysium Order. However,” she held up a finger, “what if the changing of the guards happens or someone walks by? Even if we hide the bodies, the lack of guards will alert the others. If there is an augur here, and there probably is, the entirety of the cathedral will be on alert near instantly. That makes our job far more difficult.”
“Fair points,” Eva said with a frown. “But you can’t just complain without putting forward a suggestion of your own. What’s your plan?”
“Hmm,” she tilted her head back and forth a few times. “Something like this.”
Before Eva could so much as react, Serena had jumped around the corner, extending her arm out like she was holding a pistol.
Through her blood sight, Eva could see the guards’ eyes widen a fraction of an inch.
Neither of their hearts had the chance to spike in pace before Serena’s invisible pistol sent a recoil up her arm.
As her wrist flicked back, a dark beam erupted from her eyes.
Both guards slackened slightly, but not enough to topple over.
“Hurry,” Serena said, already taking off running towards the door. “Not much time.”
Wayne and Zoe were already in motion, apparently having experienced such antics from the vampire in the past. Eva scrambled after them a moment later.
Both guards had a dazed look on their faces. Neither was quite focusing on any one thing in particular.
“Locked,” Wayne grumbled from ahead of the pack.
Serena whipped her head to one of the guards, staring at the nun for a moment.
For a bare instant, the nun’s eyes refocused. Eva tensed, ready for a fight.
But the nun just turned without actually seeing any of them. She pulled a key from her pocket and unlocked the door, tapping the lock with a wand before returning to her position at the side of the door. As she retook her position, her eyes lost their focus once again.
Wayne and Zoe charged through the door. Serena gave a little pat on the shoulder of the nun. “Thanks,” she said before following the other two.
With one last look at the glossy-eyed nuns, Eva ran through the door.
“A little warning next time,” Zoe said as she shut the door and flicked the deadbolt back into place.
“Ohh, but there’d be no
Zoe ignored her, clicking the locks on the door shut. “The nun touched the door with her wand. There was probably a magical lock in place. I hope it wasn’t tied to any alarms.”
As they spoke, Eva watched the other side of the door through her blood sight. Both nuns shook their heads slightly as they lost the sag in their pose.
Eva waited at the door, preparing to charge through and stop the nuns from running to get help. Serena was right in that killing them would be troublesome. They could at least restrain them. That would give them plenty more time than having them run off right away.
Neither made a move for or away from the door. Each simply resumed her guard without so much as a word to the other.
“Eva,” Zoe called up from the bottom of the staircase, “we’re not there yet. Best to keep moving before they notice the spells on the door are gone.”
“What was that?” Eva asked anyone as she reached the others. She paused for just a moment, looking around. “People inside the large room on our right. Only three. A meeting of some sort?”
Eva wished that her blood sight could provide more details. Or maybe she needed to get good at reading lips through blood veins. As it was, all she could tell was that three people were seated around a table, discussing something. Two of them were augurs, judging by the copious amount of eye-shaped organs dotted around their bodies.
They were fairly far away. Just at the edge of her range.
The end of the stairs opened up into a long hallway that, after a curve, followed back along the hallway they had just been in one floor up. The main chapel room sat directly adjacent above, though if there were a replica down here, they hadn’t gone down enough steps for it to copy the vaulted ceiling.
Unless the room had been partitioned off, the nuns would be sitting in the far corner from where Eva was.
Perhaps much of it had been made into a storage area? There were doors on either side all along the hallway. Offices? What did the Elysium Order need with such a large space?
And they still had to go down one more floor before reaching the room that contained the obelisk.
“That,” Serena said from the head of the group, “was just a figment of their imaginations. Staring at a wall for hours on end has a habit of playing tricks on the mind. Whatever they thought they saw was probably nothing.”
“‘Probably nothing’ unlocked the doors?”
Serena shrugged. “Not my fault that she had a sudden pressing need to open the door and forget about it afterwards.”
Frowning, Eva glared at the vampire’s back. “If you can do that, why are we bothering with all this sneaking around? We could just walk up to a nun and have her go get the obelisk.”
