her reading glasses and headed out. Her limbs trembled as she followed. Her mouth had gone stone dry.
Nehir marched her over to the main stairwell and down into the ship’s bowels. By the time they left the stairs, Elena could hardly breathe; tension strapped her chest in iron bands. They passed a few of Nehir’s fellow Sons and Daughters, but none of them would make eye contact.
At last, they reached a steel hatch that stood ajar. Nehir opened it wider and waved her through first. Even now, Elena wanted to balk. She smelled burning coals. But guns pushed her across the hatch and into a room transported from some circle of Hell.
The walls were black steel. The floor was the same, with multiple drains for easy cleanup. All manner of blades—both small enough to dissect a frog and large enough to remove a limb—lined one side. On another wall hung studded whips, chains, and tools whose uses she was afraid to even imagine.
Across the room, the open mouth of a furnace glowed with a pile of coals, burning in gas-fed flames. It roared as she entered, heating the room to a stifling temperature. Before that fire, a steel X stood upright, angled slightly toward the furnace.
Upon that cross hung Monsignor Roe, his ankles and wrists cuffed in leather to the ends of the beams. They had gagged him and stripped off his shirt, exposing his thin chest, the concavity of his rib cage. His skin was already beaded with terror-borne sweat. His eyes looked with desperation at her, but also pity, as if she were the one about to suffer.
Kadir hunched behind the cross, stirring the coals with a long poker. To either side stood her father and Ambassador Firat.
Elena knew why she was here, what they wanted from her, what they would do to Monsignor Roe. “Daddy, don’t do this.”
Her father looked mournful but determined. “You are forcing our hand, my dear. You know that. We have it on good authority from an outside source that you have not been entirely truthful with us.”
She swallowed, struggling for anything to say. “What . . . what do you . . . ? ”
Firat swore in Arabic and waved to Kadir. The giant swung around with the poker, its end glowing a dark crimson. He stepped around the steel cross.
“Daddy, don’t,” she pleaded.
Her father turned his shoulder to her.
Kadir didn’t taunt or tease. With a machinelike coldness, he pressed the end of the poker to the priest’s right nipple. Flesh sizzled and smoked. Roe screamed through his gag, his back arching off the cross.
“Stop it!” she yelled. “Please stop it.”
Kadir removed the poker, taking skin with it. Roe collapsed back down, hanging limply in his shackles. Tears ran down his face, blood down his belly.
“I have been lying,” Elena admitted, choking down a sob.
She felt hollowed out, empty. She was too terrified, too guilt-ridden to offer any complicated fabrications. She dared not even try.
Firat stepped closer, scowling at her. “Then tell us where Hunayn truly went, where he discovered Tartarus.” The man pointed to Monsignor Roe. “Or next will be his left eye. Then his tongue.”
Roe lifted his chin, breathing raggedly. Still, he gave a small shake of his head, urging her not to speak.
Elena ignored him and did as she was told. In halting stops and starts, she explained everything, about activating the map, about what the fiery display revealed, about the ruby discovered along the Moroccan coast.
By the time she was done, she was on her knees, tears flowing down her face.
Her father patted her shoulder. She batted his hand away.
Firat turned to Nehir. “Ready the helicopter. I’ll arrange a second one to transport a strike team with you. You’ll need to find this place and lock it down. We’ll follow behind in the Morning Star and be there by sunset.”
Elena barely heard any of this. Men freed Monsignor Roe’s limbs and removed the gag over his mouth. He could barely stand. Elena regained her feet and stumbled to the old man’s aid.
“I’m sorry,” she moaned. “So sorry.”
Still gasping, Monsignor Roe lifted his head and turned to Firat.
“I told you she was lying.”
Fifth
The Gates of Tartarus
And he bade famous Hephaestus make haste and mix earth with water and to put in it the voice and strength of human kind, and fashion a sweet, lovely maiden-shape, like to the immortal goddesses in face. . . . And he called this woman Pandora, because all they who dwelt on Olympus each