The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us 3)

I tapped my fingers nervously on the cab’s cracked leather seat as I strained to see out the back windows. We didn’t have time for this. Luc could stall for a few minutes, but if the treaty was signed before we arrived, it was all over.

“We have to get out,” I said.

“And do what, run? We’re still miles away.” Elodie craned her neck over a crowd burning something in the street.

A memory came to me. Istanbul, holding on to Jack like my life depended on it, the stolen motorcycle we were on flying through the city streets while people we thought were the Order chased us.

There was no shortage of motorbikes in Rome. I looked around and spotted a few parked in front of a gelato shop half a block away. “Can you guys hot-wire those?”

We jumped out of the cab. No one gave us a second look while Jack fiddled with some wires in one bike’s ignition and Stellan did the other. Both bikes roared to life, and I climbed on behind Stellan while Elodie held on to Jack. “See you there,” I yelled, and I clung to Stellan as we sped off down the street.

We maneuvered around crowds of people who paid no attention to us, and police officers who yelled in vain for us to slow down. When our lane slowed, Stellan swerved into oncoming traffic, nearly missing a wall of cars coming the other way. I dug my fingers into his chest and we flew up onto a sidewalk to a chorus of angry honking, and then made an abrupt turn onto a bridge flanked by stone lions. He hit the gas and we flew over the Tiber River, the gold dome of St. Peter’s Basilica approaching fast.

And then I looked around him at the road ahead.

“Stop!” I shrieked, but Stellan was already slamming on the brakes. I lurched forward, and Stellan braced us hard. Jack and Elodie ground to a halt next to us. The bridge was blocked by hundreds—no, thousands—of people.

“It’s St. Peter’s Square,” Stellan said. “It’s so crowded, it’s spilled all the way out to here.”

“Is the pope speaking?” Jack asked.

“Maybe. Or maybe this is just where people feel safe,” Stellan said.

I looked at my phone. “Twelve minutes until the meeting starts.”

We left the bikes on the sidewalk. Stellan took my hand, I took Jack’s, and he took Elodie’s, and we started weaving through the densely packed crowd.

The sun wasn’t down yet, but the pilgrims were holding candles already, a vigil for those who had died, and a prayer for those who still might. Some chanted, some cried. A group of stoic old men held signs in English proclaiming the end of the world, and every few feet someone silently lifted a cross to the sky, eyes closed, lips moving in prayer. Some eyes shifted to us as we pushed by, and there were a few shouts in languages I didn’t know, but most of the crowd ignored us, their eyes straight ahead to a glowing balcony, where the pope stood to give blessings.

I wondered for just a second whether we should try to evacuate all these people. If the Saxons were to release the virus on the Circle and it got down here . . . But we had no way to do it, and no time.

As we got closer, the crowds grew thick enough that we were getting nowhere. A wild-eyed man jumped in front of us and screamed something, waving a hand-painted sign, and I recoiled while Stellan waved him off. Jack let go of my hand and climbed up on the base of a light pole to look over the crowd, then jumped back down and led us in a different direction. “Excuse us!” Elodie shouted, and repeated it in Italian and French before we resorted to using our elbows. We skirted a group of nuns, not one of them taller than me.

And then, we were at the front of St. Peter’s Basilica. To get Alexander’s bone, we’d traipsed into their most sacred archives and taken anything we wanted—Circle privileges. Now we hopped the low fence only to be stopped immediately by a group of the Swiss Guard. Stellan said a few words to one of them, and he went to get a superior while the rest held weapons on us. When a priest appeared, Stellan murmured something to him, and he looked over the four of us, surprised—and opened the doors, gesturing for the guards to step aside.

The priest—the Circle’s main contact here at the Vatican, Stellan whispered to me—showed us inside St. Peter’s Basilica.

The same panic that had driven some people to riot outside had driven others in here, to seek comfort another way. The pews were packed with worshippers. Chanting, sonorous and trancelike, floated up like the wisps of smoke from the braziers. Saints and angels rendered in gold looked on from their perches high above the congregation, and the last rays of the evening light slanted in, blinding off the cathedral’s gilded accents, like the heavens had opened right above us. Our footsteps echoed hollowly.

We followed the priest up some stairs and into a room filled with Circle members. The second the door opened, every head swung our way. Everyone but Luc and Colette looked like they’d seen a ghost. Quite a few of them gestured to their Keepers, and in moments, half a dozen guns were trained on us. We’d known this would happen.

We’d considered blurting out everything the second we walked in the door. We’d decided against it. Without any preamble, no one would believe us. They might just kill us.

So we just put our hands up and walked calmly inside, like we were meant to be here.

The whole Circle was sitting around a long table, like they did at council meetings. In front of each of them was what looked like a contract and a pen. I immediately found Lydia, at the far end of the table, by my father. I let out a soft breath.

I hadn’t actually seen Lydia since Cole had died. In Russia, we’d just heard her voice. Her long dark hair was gone, in its place a severe, choppy pixie cut, messy enough that she’d probably done it herself, and not carefully. She was wearing an oversized coat, and she had no makeup on. This was the first time I’d ever seen her less than perfectly put together.

Next to her was my father. Alistair Saxon was at the head of the table, pretending, as he did, to be in charge. He half stood when we came into the room. And then he sat back down and sighed, and my last, small hope that he would stand up for what was right died.