Lara received an 8 X 10 photo copy of the bill of sale. Intrigued by the photo, she traveled to Rome to view the sandstone in person.
It was a genuine artifact.
Anasagio De Santis was the statesman that had made the purchase, and with a little research, Lara found that the De Santis family was still in Italy. The only problem was that there were too many to contact.
So Lara turned to the internet and a genealogy program that she had designed herself, because much of her work required family traces. She traced the De Santis family from Anasagio forward in time, looking for any links to Rome. She found a family who owned estates in the oldest parts of Rome. One piece of land actually backed right up to the historic Coliseum.
Intuition led her to believe that she was heading in the right direction.
She tried to interview the family and was given a cold shoulder, which intensified the feeling that she was on track.
She had to wait two full weeks before she could enter the De Santis home and look for clues.
She entered the home under the darkness of night, using night vision goggles to search without a light. It was a beautiful home, with large, elegant, hand stitched tapestries that hung side by side along the huge, stone walls. Each one looked to be specially made to depict a certain time of importance in the De Santis history.
She almost overlooked a hidden tapestry in the main foyer of the home. It was half the size of the others and was hidden behind a larger tapestry. She pulled the larger one aside and gasped at her find.
The tapestry depicted a man standing over a mound of dirt, much like a grave, and in one hand, stretched up to the sun, was a gleaming white sword. At the tip of the sword was a crown of thorns. They could be none other than the crown Lara was looking for.
The find drove her crazy with excitement, and she searched the house for more clues. There were none to be seen in the upper two floors of the house, but there was a cellar that she had yet to search.
She found a hidden door in the south side of the cellar, hidden cleverly in the stone wall. It opened to reveal a long, dusty passageway. The pungent odor of rat urine filled the air and she covered her nose with one gloved hand.
Lara, not afraid any longer of being seen using a light, removed her goggles to conserve the battery power, put them in her pack, and removed a flair. There were torches lining the narrow walls and she grabbed the nearest one and lit it with the flair. The dancing flame caused the cobwebs to shadow dance along the smooth walls and ceiling. It was a long corridor that disappeared around a curve further down the way. She cautiously made her way down the alley, looking for any other hidden rooms or tunnels as she went. There were none.
The stony path finally opened on a large, cavernous room. Light streamed in from holes in the ceiling.
She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The entire room was a miniature arena, hidden underground. A thick coat of dust and dirt covered everything. There was a bank of stone bleachers along her right at the top of a high wall that was as smooth as glass. They were built like the stadium bleachers of a modern sports arena and even had an enclosed section that protruded further out from the other seating This would probably have been the personal balcony for some person of importance. She could see the event in her mind…an emperor or some sort, sitting in his private booth, enjoying a special edition of some violent game of blood that unfolded in the arena below him.
The arena in which Lara now stood.
The playing field was like nothing she had ever seen before. The alley ahead of her was open to the ceiling high above, but was lined with ten-foot wall. In the dim light, she could see different hallways leading off to her left. She moved to the first one. It led to another, shorter passage that intersected more routes, each leading in different directions.
“It’s a maze,” she said out loud, and her voice surprised her. It came out of her mouth as a whisper, but the arena amplified it, startling her as it rose to a bouncing crescendo around the room. No doubt that the builder made it that way so that whatever official was sitting up in the booth could hear all the gruesome details happening in the labyrinth below. She ducked into the next causeway and heard a noise echo through the room. It was a sound that she herself hadn’t made. She drew one of her pistols and crept cautiously back to the first length of the maze and the door to the passage out. A section of wall had closed off the way out, trapping her inside. There was always a release switch somewhere near the door, and she would find it later.
Then came another sound.
It was a deep, low growl that was quickly joined by another.
She couldn’t see the animals that growled, but there was such viciousness behind the sounds that she didn’t want to face what was hunting her. She rushed away from the main section that traveled the length of the stands and wondered deeper into the maze.
Somebody knew she was here. They had locked her in, and left her to fend for herself against whatever creatures that shared the maze with her. Lara kept turning blindly through the labyrinth, hoping that she could find what she was looking for. She needed to get to higher ground.
Something sped by behind her, its claws ticking on the stone floor. She rushed down another passage and there, before her, was exactly what she was looking for. A section of wall had crumbled away, leaving a crescent shaped bite out of the top and small chunks had broken off from its face, providing Lara with perfect handholds to climb with.
Something moved again behind her and she spun around to shoot the shadowy creature, but it was gone before she could train her gun on it. Then, from behind her, something leaped through the air, howling fiercely. She hit the floor rolling, training her gun at the furry blur and firing off three rounds as she wheeled across the ground. Crimson droplets, wet and salty, splattered her face and lips, and she knew that at least one bullet had found its mark.
She pulled two flares from her pack and, when they were lit, she threw them to each end of the short passage so she could see what was coming before it got to her. Indeed, there was blood on the floor. The growling of the first creature was joined by the agonizing roar of the wounded one. Their voices blended, intensified, and pounded the air with their reverberation.
The creatures were no where in sight, so Lara took the only chance she had. She holstered her pistol and leaped for the crumbled wall, scrambling up its surface, using the holes for hand holds.
A huge wolf burst into sight as she hung against the wall, trying to pull herself up. She caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of her eye and dropped back down to the floor. Her gun was out of her holster in a blur of motion and she pumped another three rounds through the barrel. The wolf yelped with pain as it crashed to the ground, dead.
Lara turned as another wolf burst into the alley behind her. She fired and missed. She had always prided herself on perfection, and when it came to firearms, she almost never missed. She was more frightened than she realized.
The wolf tore by her, slashing at her legs with its teeth.
Lara jumped forward and into a roll, coming up on one knee, gun blazing. As soon as the wolf was down, she holstered her gun, leaped for the wall and pulled herself up. A third wolf burst into view, slashing at her feet as she pulled them up out of the way.
Lara lay on top of the narrow wall, breathing heavily, thankful for another streak of luck and life. The wolf paced back and forth in a raging frenzy. Its hackles were raised on its massive back and its teeth gleamed in the light of the flares as it repeatedly jumped and snapped its jaws at the air below her. She rose and started toward the booth, but as she reached the first passageway that ran the entire length of the stands, she realized that she had a new problem. She’d have to jump across because there were no cross sections attaching this wall to the stands.
She vaulted over the gap and made it easily. She was now in the booth and it took her less than a minute to find the secret door leading out of the booth. It led to another corridor, but this one was quite different from all the others. It was lined on both sides with elaborate carving that had been sculpted directly into the wall. It didn’t take Lara long to figure out that the carvings on the walls were identical to the detailed portraits sewn into the tapestries in the De Santis home.
Lara wasted no time traveling the length of the passage. She lit another flare as she went because the light from the arena didn’t stretch this far into the passage. The hallway wasn’t long, and it opened up into a small room lined with statues and a pedestal in the center of the room. On the pedestal was the object of Lara’s search, the famous crown of thorns.
She stepped into the room then stopped, realizing that something here wasn’t quite right. She held her breath and listened. There was an almost silent scrape of a shoe behind her and Lara threw herself to the side of the room as a burst of automatic gunfire shattered the ground where she had been standing. She threw the flare to the far wall and was rewarded with another round of gunfire.
There was just enough space for her squeeze between the statue and the wall and she moved swiftly from one to another till she was at the back of the room. So far, whoever was shooting at her hadn’t entered the room yet, and she planned on staying hidden in the back of the room till they did.
Her eyes wondered to the thorns on the pedestal. Even in the dim light of the flare, she could see that the spines were all stained with dark, dark crimson. A silhouette rushed into the room and Lara squeezed off a couple of shots.
She missed.
Automatic fire sent stone splinters showering over her head.
“You’re really starting to tick me off,” she said to her unknown assailant. “You’ve gone and gotten my hair all dirty.” Her British accent was out of place in the Roman environment.
More gunfire made her duck behind another of the statues. Whoever it was that had stormed into the room was tracing her steps along the far wall, trying to come up behind her. The flare was getting dim.
She moved up the other wall and pulled her night vision goggles from her bag and placed them on her head. She didn’t turn them on quite yet because even the weak light of the flare, amplified by the goggles would blind her. It only she could hold out long enough for the flare to go out.
Another spray of bullet splintered the wall to her right. The shooter was firing blindly because none of the bullets came close to her.
There! The flare was out. Lara pulled down the goggles and turned on the power. There he was, by the back wall now. She took careful aim and closed her eyes to keep from being blinded by the muzzle flashes from her gun. She fired, and the man screamed in pain.
She ripped off the goggles and lit another flare, throwing it into the corner, near the fallen man. She rushed to him and bent down beside him.
“How many more are there?” she asked, putting her pistol under his chin.
“Two. They’re out in the arena, waiting.”
“Good, boy,” she said, patting him on the head. Her bullet had taken off his kneecap.
“Now, I can’t have you calling out and warning the others, can I?” She ripped off the boot of his injured leg and roughly removed his sock (it smelled much like the rat urine that putrefied the walls of this place) and stuffed it in the man’s mouth. She rose making a point to put most of her weight on his leg as she stood back up. The small micro-Uzi that the man had been shooting at her with was laying several feet away. She snatched it up headed to the pedestal at the center of the room.
She couldn’t imagine the pain that crown of thorns would have caused. She never came here intending on stealing the thorns, she only wanted to see it for herself. But the attack against her had really ticked her off, and she decided that the artifact would look quite well with the other religious pieces in her museum back home. She carefully wrapped the crown in a towel she carried in her backpack, then placed the bundle carefully inside. She had lots of questions she had yet to answer on religion and she had thought the crown of thorns would give her some insight, but all she felt was evilness. It was an evilness that came from the ones who had fashioned those thorns into a crown, and bestowed it onto the sinless one’s head. She felt that there was no need to give the De Santis family such an honor as keeping such an important artifact under their care.
Behind her, the man tried to move and grunted in pain.
Lara exited the room and followed the hallway back to the booth. There were two men waiting, but as always, they would be no match for her.
