Page 42 of Dead Beat

But Dawes was already hurrying back into the dining room, her laptop in hand, her messy bun sliding to the side of her head. “The names!” she practically shouted. “Hector appears in Limbo, the great Trojan warrior, a soldier. Henry has to be Henry III. Dante sees him in purgatory, in the Valley of the Princes.”

Darlington tried not to gape like a fool. Why hadn’t he seen it?

“It’s right there,” he said with a laugh. “Right on the page. Nicky is Pope Nicholas III. Dante gives him one of the most vivid and comic punishments in purgatory. He’s buried alive upside down, wedged into the floor of hell.”

“The priest!” Turner said, slapping the table.

“Why Nick Zanca, though?” asked Dawes.

“It’s a reference to what Pope Nicholas is wearing,” Darlington said. “They’re military boots. Some scholars think Dante was making a point about Nicholas compromising his spirituality in pursuit of earthly power.”

“That’s a deep cut,” said Turner.

Darlington nodded slowly. “It must have been a kind of joke between them. But Kittscher was most definitely the scholar.” Soldier, scholar, priest, and prince. The four offices of the pilgrims, the roles they’d taken on in the descent.

Dawes frowned. “So why call himself Thomas?”

“Because he’s a pretentious ass.” Darlington couldn’t help smiling. “Doubting Thomas is a reference to Thomas of Aquinas, one of the greatest religious scholars to ever live. He authored the Summa Theologiae, and he was a huge influence on Dante. Some scholars even call the Divine Comedy ‘the Summa in verse.’ Aquinas was, of course, a believer but we know Kittscher wasn’t. So he called himself Doubting Thomas. Another little joke.”

“I don’t get it,” said Tripp.

“I didn’t say it was a good joke.”

“But where does this get us?” Turner asked, his frustration clear. “Now we know why these young idiots chose their nicknames. They all liked Dante. How does this get us any closer to sealing up the door to hell?”

“I…” Dawes shut her laptop and her hands disappeared into her sleeves. “I guess it doesn’t.”

The spark racing through them fizzled, that brief glimpse of hope withering to nothing. Just a demon’s game. A bit of nonsense. Turner had it right. Gibberish.

“I can’t sit here all night debating dead men,” Turner said. He looked tired, angry. “We finally found one of the original pilgrims and he turns out to be another vampire—”

“Not exactly,” said Dawes.

“Then what was he?”

Darlington had contemplated that very question for much of the drive home. “I think he was something like a nachtzehrer.”

Tripp squinted at him. “A what now?”

“It means nighteater. It’s a creature from German folklore that feeds on members of its own household. A little like a succubus.”

“A sex vampire?”

Darlington sighed. “Yes, Tripp. But without the sex or the blood.”

Turner scrubbed a hand over his face. “I really don’t care. We fished a girl out of the Sound last week. She was only twenty-four. That’s the real world. That’s why I spent all day talking to witnesses at Savin, and that’s where my attention needs to be, not … playing guessing games with demons.”

No one protested as he rose and gathered his things. Alex and Darlington followed him silently into the entry as Dawes and Tripp started clearing.

“We’ll go over the rest of what he said,” Darlington offered. “I could be forgetting something important.”

“We found the lost papers,” Turner said. “We even found one of the original pilgrims. We’re still coming up empty. Alex—”

“I know.”

“We need answers. We need to talk to your mom.”

“I get it.”