Chapter 2 - The Fire in the Iron Garden
The halogen beams cut through the condensation on the conservatory glass, throwing grotesque, elongated shadows across the decaying ferns and rusted iron urns. Sister Beatrice caught Falcon’s wet sleeve, her grip surprisingly iron-strong for a woman past seventy.
"The eastern cellar," she urged, her voice a sharp hiss above the infant’s fragile wailing. "The wine press leads beneath the river. You have three minutes before they breach the iron gates."
Falcon did not flinch. He wrapped the swaddling tighter around the infant’s shivering frame, pulling his own drenched coat over her to muffle her cries and shield her from the flying rain. His eyes, dark and predatory, locked onto the silhouettes advancing past the drowned hedge maze. There were five of them—long coats, umbrellas, silenced submachine guns held low. They moved with the crisp, disciplined lethality of Lucian Vane’s private cadre.
"Take the child," Falcon said quietly, reaching behind his back.
"Jax, no," the nun snapped. "A newborn cannot survive the damp tunnels without a mother's milk or heat. You carry her, or she dies in the frost."
A sharp metallic crack echoed as the greenhouse door handle buckled under a heavy breaching boot. Falcon moved with explosive speed. Grabbing a glass display canister from a potting bench, he hurled it toward the entrance just as the lead enforcer kicked through the rotting timber. The thick jar shattered, spewing concentrated kerosene and dry fertilizer across the threshold. In the same motion, Falcon pulled a brass lighter from his trouser pocket, struck the wheel, and threw it.
A wall of orange fire erupted violently, illuminating the night and consuming the first man in screaming embers. Gunfire ripped through the flames instantly, shattering the remaining glass overhead into a glittering hail of razor-sharp shards. Falcon spun, taking the brunt of the falling glass across his broad back, his heavy coat shielding little Rosie beneath his chest.
He bolted down the narrow aisle, dodging between towering dead ficus trees, Beatrice trailing right behind him. The air burned with sulfur and scorched earth. They reached the rusted floor grate at the back of the conservatory just as a volley of automatic rounds stitched across the wall above their heads, pulverizing terracotta planters into red dust.
Falcon ripped the cast-iron grate open with one bare hand, ignoring the rust that tore into his palms. "Down! Move!"
Beatrice slipped into the pitch-black maw without hesitation, descending the slippery brick steps. Falcon followed, tucking Rosie firmly against his breastbone. As he pulled the iron grate shut above them, a shadow blocked out the firelight overhead.
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A man peered down through the iron slats—young, sharp-featured, with a silver cross hanging against a tactical vest. Lucian Vane’s top lieutenant. The man’s eyes met Falcon’s in the subterranean darkness, a venomous smile curving his lips.
Rather than firing down through the grate, the man pulled an incendiary canister from his belt and pulled the pin, dropping it directly down the brick chute toward Falcon's feet.
