pregnant moon bathed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica and its neighboring Vatican buildings in frosty relief against a sky of diamond chips. Rome had a peaceful majesty at night that transcended its hectic daytime hours. It was rare for the Cardinal to watch the sleeping city with nothing but the tranquil view—he tended to retire early and, as so many others, rose with the sun—but it was rarer still to sleep within his Vatican City apartment and be awakened by a phone call made half a world away with such dire complications to his life.
Cormac sensed turbulent days ahead.
Picking up the receiver again, he dialed four numbers into the old phone. The click of connecting lines followed by a loud squeal met his ear.
He sighed and hung up once more.
The Cardinal leaned back in his chair, waiting and thinking, the simple red robe he had thrown on a smear like drying blood in the window’s mirrored image. Rome glimmered outside but his superimposed ghost image stared back, face carved deep with wrinkles and hawkish blue eyes surrounded by heavy bags of darkness. The man within the glass looked haggard. He barely recognized his own reflection anymore, his disheveled red hair whitening, the apparition exuding weariness and grown older than he could account for.
But a fire still blazed in his heart despite the early hour, a driving need to fulfill his duty.
There just never seemed to be enough time.
Cormac turned away from the aging man, thinking how best to counter the information he now possessed. The call from the archbishop watching over the Seattle portal disturbed him; it forced his hand in a way with which he was not entirely comfortable.
The consequences of his decision could undo him and the power he had spent a lifetime acquiring.
The possible dominion likely gained though made it worth it.
While waiting for his summons to be answered, he picked up a framed photo that sat at the corner of his desk. Black and white, it displayed a smiling middle-aged man bearing a striking resemblance to Cormac, his arms wrapped around the shoulders of a woman and a girl in her teenage years. In front of the trio stood a grinning boy, his hair chaotic.
The background desert met the horizon and nothing else.
The Cardinal smiled sadly, remembering. The Middle East had been a harsh climate filled with a hardened people; Cormac had been a boy on the adventure of a lifetime, bringing the Word to new regions around the world.
The Cardinal Vicar of the Vatican barely remembered that boy.
The day to come would be like all others—filled with a mass, multiple meetings with delegates from around the world, and writing letters of import for the Church and its denizens. The Cardinal Vicar oversaw the daily spiritual operations of the diocese of Rome, a position once held by the Pope before his duties expanded to encompass the wellbeing of the greater Catholic world. Cormac was one of the youngest Cardinal Vicars in the history of the Church, and at fifty-eight years of age, he still had several decades to bring light to the darkest places.
After twenty minutes, a sharp knock came at his office door.
Cormac straightened, letting the full authority of his mantle settle back on his shoulders before clearing his throat.
“Enter please.”
The door opened and a tall man with short blonde hair strode into the room. Unlike the Vatican Swiss Guards he commanded, Finn Arne wore black pants with matching thick sweater devoid of symbols. The dead orb of his left eye peered at the Cardinal like a phantom moon. No evidence of disrupted sleep touched him. He was a captain with daily duties similar to all Swiss Guard but like the Vicar, Finn Arne had secret functions he carried out.
“Captain Arne,” Cormac greeted.
The visitor inclined his head and sat in one of the offered chairs. “Your Eminence.”
“It is early,” the Cardinal said. “I apologize for waking you.”
“The Lord knows neither sun nor moon,” Finn said, his accent shadowed by Germanic. “How may I best serve you, Cardinal Vicar?”
“I have received a disheartening phone call.”
“From?”
“Seattle, Washington, in the United States.” Cormac folded his hands within the sleeves of his robe. “There has been a breach of the portal there.”
Finn frowned. “You seem rather unworried.”
“It was contained. The knight did his duty.”
“I see,” Finn said, smiling. “Then what has stolen me from my warm bed?”
In his many years serving the Church, Cormac had never met a more bold and coldly calculating man than Finn Arne. He