Elixir

by Davis Bunn

  Kirra possessed a dancer’s verve and temper, fiery and larger than life. Some of her strongest compliments had been delivered as wounding barbs. Taylor sipped coffee now flavored with bile and recalled their final argument. The apartment rang with what Kirra had shouted. Faith has taught me to honor what is real, and you are the most real man I ever met. To have her offer such praise in a rage had left Taylor leaking real blood.

  Taylor realized Ada was watching him. He said, “We never broke up like that before.”

  She huffed her disagreement. “I know what I saw. You was like two angry magnets. Seemed like every time I turned around you’d be pulling apart. Then you’d fly back together in a whirlwind of love, just sick over all them hours you were apart.”

  “Six days,” Taylor replied, still burning from old loss. “That was the longest we’d ever been apart before. This time was six weeks.”

  Agony. The time apart had been pure torture. Six weeks she had remained isolated behind her walls of wealth and anger.

  Then the woman had appeared. Jezebel, Ada had called her. The name was as good as any. She had been everything Kirra was no longer. Wanton and voluptuous and available. Taylor had come in from a surf and found her sprawled on a towel, basted in oil, wearing the tiniest bikini he had ever seen. How those three triangles had managed to stay in place was a mystery that bore close inspection. She had offered him the same sort of scrutiny, her green eyes sparked with an eagerness that inflamed.

  Taylor had not been with a woman since Kirra’s conversion. Her refusal to accept their mutual desire any longer had been yet another constant battle zone. Taylor had a well-honed desire for sex. He was handsome, athletic, and used to getting what he wanted. At least, he had been until Kirra had started attending church with Ada. For eight months he had subsisted on Kirra’s religious version of a bread-and-water diet.

  Jezebel. That night he had feasted on the woman with a lust as strong as rage. At dawn he had fled the woman’s hotel room as he would have his own pyre.

  Three days later, a buddy who still worked on the Revell yacht told him of the shrieking and moaning everyone had heard coming from the owner’s cabin. Rumors flew. About Taylor. About another woman. About treachery and ruin.

  Then the lawyers had arrived, bearing letters signed by Kirra herself. Taylor had been ordered never to come around again, not to contact her, not to call. Ever.

  Ada was not finished. “She couldn’t believe it when they told her you’d been with that other woman. What was her name?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  She sniffed a whole world of disdain. “Like to break my heart, hearing Kirra cry like that. Seemed like days I held that baby girl. Just sobbed and sobbed, clutching them awful pictures, I had to pry her fingers loose.”

  Taylor stiffened. “What pictures are you talking about?”

  “Your mind’s caught by the wrong hook, you.”

  “Kirra had photographs? Of me and that woman?”

  “It ain’t what she was having or not having. It’s what you been doing.”

  “I should have known.” Dormant embers reignited in full force. Taylor had spent countless hours fretting over how Kirra had heard about him and the other woman. There was only one place she could have obtained pictures of that night. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “On account of how it’s not important.” What she saw in Taylor’s gaze caused her to add, “On account of how you’d probably go out and follow one stupid act with another.”

  Fitting the pieces together after almost two years still blistered his mind. “Amanda had detectives photograph me. Then she gave the pictures to Kirra.”

  “Look at me, son. What does that matter?” She took aim with a rigid finger. “Fact is, you were the one caught lying there in Jezebel’s arms. You’re the one broke that child’s heart. All on account of you never learning the first lesson of a good life. The only lesson.”

  “I’m going to find her, Ada.”

  “What if she don’t want finding? What if she don’t want finding by you?”

  “I hear different.”

  “Is that so? Who from?”

  “Amanda.”

  Ada laughed out loud. “You be taking her word?”

  “Why would she lie about this?” His thoughts burned with crystal clarity. “You know as well as anybody what she and old Jack Revell think of me. But she came to me, Ada. Think what that must have cost her. She came to me.”

  Ada pulled the pot off the burner and emptied it into the sink. “I don’t trust that woman a single solitary inch, no.”

  “The family thinks Kirra might be in real trouble. I need to see if that’s true. If she is, I want to help.”

  Ada mulled that over a time. “You know she’s been studying over to the college.”

  “Flagler. Yes.”

  “There’s one professor she was always going on about. A monk, goes by the name of Pellecier. A good man, is what I hear. Best go talk with the father, you.” A glint of heated iron shone from her gaze. “Maybe he’ll be showing you what you never saw fit to learn from me.”

  MIDWAY BACK TO TOWN, TAYLOR PLACED THE CALL TO Amanda. But when the phone started ringing, he shut it off. This was something he wanted to handle in person. He entered downtown almost glad for the closeness and the heat. It suited his mood right down to the bone.

  Flagler College was built in the same ornate Spanish style as the hotel. The college was a lovely place drawn from a well of deep pockets and lined with a heritage that had nothing to do with Taylor. He might call this his hometown, but there was little he held in common with this college or its haughty air.

  The halls were mostly empty, as he had caught the place in the humid interlude between summer school and the fall term. He found a lone administrator enclosed within her airconditioned tomb, resentful over her confinement and the day she was missing. “Yes?”

  “I am looking for Father Pellecier.”

  “And you are?”

  “Taylor Knox.”

  “I’m sorry, the name means nothing to me. Are you a former student?”

  “No.”

  “A visiting official, perhaps?” Her eyes held the gleam of one who had spent hours waiting for the chance to put someone down. “A job seeker? Because we do not normally give out information to people who just wander in off the street.”

  “I am here on behalf of the Revell family and foundation.”

  From the woman’s response, he could only assume that the college was among the foundation’s recipients. “Do you have some ID?”

  He handed over a company card. She studied it, undoubtedly hoping for sign of forgery. “Father Pellecier is away for the summer.”

  Taylor opened the folder to the back page, which was a transcript of Kirra’s last three terms. “Can you tell me if any of these other teachers might be in town?”

  “Where did you get that?”

  “From the family.”

  “Student’s transcripts are confidential material. Are you another one of those detectives?”

  “I am not.”

  “Because I’ll tell you the same thing I told them. You can’t come traipsing in here and expect me to give you a solitary thing.”

  “Could you describe the detectives to me, please?”

  “Certainly not. If the family wants information about one of our students, they can go through proper channels.” She raised her voice as he started for the door. “Don’t you turn around when I’m talking to you!”

  Taylor shut the door and spotted a janitor grinning at him from further along the hall. “How you doing?”

  “Better than you, I ’spect,” the janitor chuckled. “Miz Landy’s a piece of work, ain’t she?”

  “I bet the students all adore her.”

  “Yeah, they gots some different names for her. But I ain’t gonna be saying them, no.”

  “I can imagine.” Taylor extracted the transcript. “Do you know if any of these people are
around?”

  The janitor wore a gray coverall that up close smelled of floor polish and summer sweat. “Sure. Dr. Preston, he’s most always here. Near ’bout lives in his lab, that man.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “Environmental sciences. They gots themselves a new building down off Treasury Street. You know where that is?”

  “Sure.”

  “Go round back. Dr. Preston, he don’t answer the front door for nobody.”

  “You wouldn’t know where Father Pellecier’s gone for the summer?”

  “Same place as every other holiday, I ’spect. He keeps track of all them old books over to the city historical society.”

  “The building down on the waterfront?”

  “That’s the one.” He went back to his mopping. “Loves them old books, that man. Knows more about this town than any man alive.”

  Taylor left the college’s main building by the north exit and headed straight for the river. The city’s historical society was housed in one of the oldest surviving homes, built by a merchant voyager a century and a half before America became a nation. When he buzzed and explained who he was and why he was there, the receptionist refused to open the door. When he buzzed again, she offered to have the police escort him away.

  Taylor stepped from the porch and paused beneath the shade of a live oak. Clearly Amanda’s detectives had left a bad taste in more than one person’s mouth. He was unoffended by the reactions only because he was so irate with Amanda herself. She might be able to repair the damage her minions had wreaked here in St. Augustine, but there was no hope of her ever mending fences with Taylor. None.

  Taylor recrossed the street and headed back inland. Newcomers were charmed by the quiet brick streets and the old cedar houses and the Spanish moss and the rivers and the rich architecture. The older families watched as their neighborhoods became picked clean of lifelong friends. Taylor walked streets made ever more unfamiliar by imported money. Pickups in driveways were being replaced by Porsches. Wind chimes sang where once old rockers had creaked. And not a single voice greeted him along a street he had once claimed as his own.

  The spector of Amanda Revell stalked the superheated afternoon right beside him. That she had ordered detectives to follow him came as no surprise. That she had shown photographs of him and another woman to her own sister left Taylor limping in pain and rage.

  Taylor was so wrapped up in the newest addition to the Revell saga that he didn’t see them until they attacked.

  One minute the road was empty. The next, a dark van pulled alongside him. The rear door slid open and three men jumped out.

  Taylor fought the arms that tackled him. Then one of the others hit him with something, a pipe or a hammer or a stave.

  He did not pass out completely. Not until they bundled him into the back of the van and struck him again.

  chapter 4

  TAYLOR AWOKE TO DARK AND PAIN AND A SEWER’S stench. He did not rise. His head thundered so that even the slightest motion nauseated him.

  Even clawing his fingers through the slime caused star bursts behind his eyes. Taylor drifted in and out of consciousness. His clearest thought was that this made as fitting a place as any for his tomb.

  When he next awoke, he was far more alert. Which was not altogether a good thing. Because with the keener awareness came a greater sense of fear.

  Taylor opened his eyes but saw nothing. Even in the pitch black, he knew exactly where he was. The smell alone was enough to take Taylor back to earlier times. He had played here for years. He knew it well enough to know that his fear was justified. The water sloshing below his slimy perch was all the warning he needed.

  He was positioned on a stone ledge scarred by decades of carvings and lumps of old candle wax. The slime came from the sea that twice each day rose to cover his shelf.

  Slowly he pushed himself up to a sitting position. Everything hurt, especially his head. He touched the back of his skull and felt a sticky warmth where the attackers had struck him. But he was far more troubled by the seawater that drenched his feet when he swung his legs over the ledge.

  Taylor felt along the damp wall behind him. He extracted a loose brick that had been used as a hiding place by generations of local children. He pulled out the waterproof container of matches and the larger one of candles. He struck a match. Even before he got the candle going, he knew he was in very serious trouble.

  The Minorcans’ first task for their Spanish masters was to build the fort where Taylor now sat. The Castillo de San Marcos was a star-shaped masonry fortress, the oldest in America. It was positioned upon a camino cubierto, a man-made spit of land between the outer islands where St. Augustine Beach and Vilano Beach now stood. The fortress looked directly into the open waters between them, situated where it could protect the deepwater channel and the empire’s maritime fleet.

  The fortress dungeons had two ways in. The main door was nail-studded and ancient. Tourists were brought to the tight stone stairs, shown the door and the rusting chains, and told of the Spaniards’ cruelty to their indentured Minorcan slaves. But there was a second way in, a tunnel whose secret was passed on from one generation of kids to the next. Three centuries back, seawater had entered the dungeons and cleared away the refuse with each tide. Nowadays, however, sinking foundations and rising tidal currents meant the chamber filled to the top. Taylor felt the water edge higher up his shins and knew the tide was coming in. Waves boomed against the outer opening, sloshing water through the chamber with the noise. It was only a matter of time.

  Holding his candle high, he dropped off the ledge. The water was almost waist deep, the currents strong enough he needed his free hand to keep his balance. He waded across to the stairs leading up to the door. Of course it was locked. He turned and stared at the opposite wall. The tunnel through which tides surged was completely underwater. But he saw it anyway.

  For kids of nine or ten, the tunnel was a tight run of maybe forty feet. The last time he had crawled through was at fourteen, lured by a girl who promised him enough to make him do the impossible. He had been a skinny kid, little more than bones and muscle and testosterone. Even so, he had scraped away skin coming and going.

  Driven by desperation, he waded toward the opening. The closer he came, the stronger surged the currents. He found a handhold on the slimy wall. Bracing himself so as to keep the candle aloft and alight, he measured with one foot. The aperture was impossibly small. Hot candle wax encrusted his fingers as he made his way back to the ledge. He wrapped up the remaining matches and candles and fitted the brick back into place. If he didn’t make it out, he’d want to face his demise with at least a trace of flickering light.

  He took another look around his prison, then planted the candle on the ledge. He forced himself forward, working against a current that grew stronger with each thunderous wave. His breath was a heaving bellows fueled by fear.

  He submerged and checked out the opening with his hands. The tunnel’s confines made him gag. The next booming rush of water was strong enough to dislodge his hold and push him back ten feet. He came up into utter dark and realized the tide had surged over the ledge, extinguishing his candle.

  The blackness was suffocating now. He breathed deep. Over and over. He pushed away the fear as best he could. When the current began sucking back, he went down, extending one arm above his head and clenching the other by his side. Even so, he had to jam himself in.

  He clawed his way forward. There was just enough room for him to crawl slightly with wrist and elbow and knee and ankle. He scrabbled inch by inch, jamming back with his feet, scraping with his toes, reaching forward with his one hand. He stared bug-eyed at nothing.

  Midway through he became jammed so tight he could not move at all. Not an inch. The harder he struggled the tighter he was trapped. He could not move either forward or back. Taylor opened his mouth and screamed his frantic fury. He broke free because the expelled breath shrank him just enough.

  Only now h
is lungs were heaving great reflexive lunges for air. His entire body burned with the need to breathe.

  He became wedged tight a second time. Then his forward hand felt the sharp-edged stone border. The tunnel’s end was just ahead. He ripped and twisted and finally caught a fraction of a ledge with his toes. He pried himself forward two more inches. He took a firmer grip on the ledge and hauled with all his might. One leg of his trousers ripped as he scrambled out.

  His arms reached together toward the silver illumination overhead. He kicked and swam with his back arched like a bow, his mouth already opened to take the breath he had to have now.

  He exploded into the air, flying up so hard he emerged almost to his waist. He shouted gulping gasps of breath. The fortress was a looming shadow cut from the stars.

  Perhaps he saw a human silhouetted on the ramparts. He could not be sure. When his vision fully cleared, the image was gone. The old place was said to house an army of ghosts.

  chapter 5

  TAYLOR’S RIPPED TROUSERS AND SHIRT MADE THE sound of wet laundry in the wind as he walked. But there was no wind that night, nor did he see a living thing. This was by choice. He headed north from the fort, making his way through the cypress and wild palms that bordered Matanzas Bay. Up ahead was sanctuary in the form of another North Town escapee, a young woman with whom he had stepped out briefly, back before Kirra had captured his heart. Taylor had to repeatedly halt and support himself on whichever tree was closest at the time. His vision came and went in waves. His thoughts swirled worse than his eyesight.

  The woman’s home was at the base of a curved cul-de-sac. Beyond the neatly trimmed lawn and the sparkling pool he could make out the lights of Vilano Beach glimmering in the distance. The night was a vast summer swath of heat and crickets and lightning beyond the horizon. A faint breeze brought in the strong odors of wetland muck as he rang the front bell.