Again, the foul creature thrust his presence aside, the clash more jarring than any high-speed collision. Long moments passed as their wills wrestled for ultimate power. Each grip of the dark presence squeezed off a little more of Julian’s soul.
You can’t have her!
Julian threw every last bit of strength he possessed at the vile being that dominated his spirit. In one relentless attack, he battered the despicable creature back. Beat on it like a madman until it shriveled into the same corner he’d sought refuge in. He took a moment to assess his surroundings. Stood and took a step toward the door, intent on warning Chloe to run like hell.
Then, with a combination of rage and might Julian had never witnessed, the beast surged out of its confined prison. It slammed into his soul like a sledgehammer.
A low guttural howl broke through the room, and Julian heard no more.
CHAPTER 37
A high-pitched ringing jarred Chloe from a fitful sleep. She jerked upright with a gasp. Bright sunlight poured through the window, slamming her eyelids back together with a groan.
The whining siren sounded again. From her left. Near the bed. The cause slowly connected in her foggy brain.
Telephone.
She dragged herself off the couch where she’d collapsed into a comatose-like slumber hours after Julian’s departure. Long, mind-numbing hours where she couldn’t bring herself to do more than huddle into a ball and sob until her eyes were as fat as golf balls and her throat resembled sandpaper.
Stumbling across the room, she caught the receiver as the god-awful wail issued for the third time. “Hello?” The hoarseness in her voice made her answer little more than a raspy whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hello?”
Lucan’s rich baritone rumbled in her ear. “I have the results from our samples. I believe you would wish to see them.”
Oh God. Not him. Not now. Why wouldn’t he just go away? “Leave them at the front desk. I’ll pick them up on the way to the site.”
“Nay. I will not leave them with strangers. Dress. I am in the hall.”
She spun around to stare at the door. “The hall?”
It was useless, the line buzzed in her ear. Damn it! She couldn’t deal with him yet, wasn’t ready to look him in the face and demote him to the status of coworker. It’d take weeks to accomplish that, if it were even possible. If he’d just give her some space …
The light rapping on her door made space a fantasy. As determined as Lucan was, he’d stand out there all day. “Hold on,” she muttered. She glanced down at her wrinkled shirt and twisted jeans, and groaned inwardly. The last thing she wanted Lucan to know was that he’d kept her up all night. She’d like him to believe she could just wash her hands and be done with him.
So much for that idea.
She rubbed her eyes and trudged across the room. Unwilling to give him the slightest clue her heart tripped at the thought of seeing him, she cracked the door open and stuck out her arm.
Lucan pushed on the door. Firm. Insistent.
Chloe stumbled back with a squeak and glared at him as he strode inside, looking every bit as if he believed he had the right to be here. His arrogance doubled her annoyance. “I don’t want you here, Lucan. How hard is that to comprehend?”
Ignoring her, he made himself at home on the couch, opened both envelopes, and spread the four pages of documentation across the coffee table. He studied the papers so intently that for a moment, Chloe thought he hadn’t heard her. But in the next moment, he looked over the back of the couch and took her in with one sweeping gaze from head to toe.
“Aye,” he murmured as he turned back around.
“Aye? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Chloe came around to the front couch, indignant. “Why are you here? I don’t need you to translate radiocarbon-dating reports for me. I’ve seen quite a few in my life.”
He glanced up through his eyelashes, indifferent to her anger. “Aye, you speak falsely. You still wish to be near me as I wish to be near you.”
She blinked. Opened her mouth to speak, only to find no words. How in the hell could he know that from simply looking at her? It might be obvious she hadn’t slept well. But that only indicated she was upset. It had nothing to do with the fact her body cried out for him to take her in his arms, hold her close, and make this whole ugly mess go away.
She flounced down into the only open seat other than the bed—beside him. “If I look at this will you go away?”
“Nay. We have work to accomplish and agreements to come to regarding the Veronica.”
Chloe cursed her bad luck, along with his steely determination. He wasn’t going to make it easy to walk away. Then again, she shouldn’t have expected he might. He hadn’t made any of this easy from the day he’d arrived.
Sighing heavily, she leaned forward and picked up the envelope he’d sent to her preferred lab in Washington, D.C., where Dr. Noelle Keane had established the world’s premier radiocarbon-dating facility. A shame she’d disappeared. She’d dated so many of Chloe’s artifacts that Chloe felt she knew her personally and trusted her results implicitly. Whatever lay inside this envelope, she’d feel better about if the expert herself had dated the sample. Still, the facility’s reputation couldn’t be beat. She could be assured, regardless of who conducted the testing, the results were accurate.
She ripped open the flap and pulled out four sheets of paper similar to those Lucan had spread before them. Her chest tightened as she stared at the front page that documented what she had provided for testing. The next three pages would provide an analysis of the materials, regional comparisons to the organic and chemical compounds found in each tiny fiber. There would be a comparative analysis between the two strands, and on the very last page, she’d find what she already knew deep inside her heart. The Veil’s age. As much as she longed for all Lucan’s claims to be false, she knew it would place the sample close to the year A.D. 33, identifying it as originating in Judea.
Damn, this was a cruel, spiteful trick for God to play.
Trying to disguise the trembling of her hands, she set the documents in her lap and turned each page one at a time, letting them dangle over her knees. She skimmed the lines. Closed her eyes.
Silently swore every curse word she knew.
“This can’t be right,” she muttered as she tossed the paper onto the table.
Beside her, Lucan reclined with his arms behind his head. A self-satisfied smirk pulled at his full mouth and lightened his eyes. “Would you wish to review my findings? Or do you wish to argue the Veronica’s existence more?”
Not yet ready to concede, she snatched up his results, reclined in the cushions, and perused the same data. Only, at the bottom of his document, something else caught her attention. Something more unbelievable than the relic that came out of a medieval archaeological site.
Scrawled across the bottom where the scientist of record signed, the customary neat tight script Chloe knew so well read Noelle M. Keane.
An additional note filled the last quarter of the page.
Lucan, have Chloe contact me if she has questions —N. K.
Chloe rocketed forward. Her feet hit the floor with a thump. She flipped back to the front page, scouring it for the facility name. Nothing in the header. No address, no telephone number, no nothing. She turned wide eyes on Lucan. “Noelle?”
His smirk broadened into a wide grin. “Aye.”
A thousand questions filled her mind. Where? How? What had happened to her? Chloe blinked rapidly as she tried to choose which one to ask first. She and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities had been waiting on data she’d sent directly to Noelle when Noelle disappeared. Then nothing. Their results didn’t come. Phone calls went unanswered until Chloe finally received an evasive, “Dr. Keane’s no longer with the facility.” Internet searches yielded nothing—she’d tried like crazy to find where Noelle had taken another job just so she could continue to use her for field samples. Mutual professional a
ssociates hadn’t heard a word. For all intents and purposes, it was as if Noelle had dropped off the face of the earth and given up on her life’s work.
Lucan supplied answers before Chloe’s tongue could function. Although his explanation left a little to be desired. “I trust you will wish to speak with her. ’Tis midnight in America. Noelle sleeps. We will phone her after we finish our business. Are you friends?”
“Just professionally,” Chloe answered, bewildered.
Lucan snatched her hand and pulled her off the couch. He started for the door.
“Wait.” Chloe pried at his fingers. “Where are we going?”
“You shall see.”
Rooting her heels into the ground, she clawed at his hand. “I’m not going anywhere. Certainly not dressed like this. Turn me loose, Lucan. I’m finished with blindly following you around.”
Thoroughly indifferent to her complaints, Lucan merely gave her a smile. “You look beautiful. As always.”
Oh, damn. Now that was unfair. She tried to ignore the way his low voice made her stomach flutter. Looked away from his gaze before the intimate light in his eyes could melt the thin wall of ice she’d erected around her heart. But her legs gave up the protest, and she fell into silence as she followed him out the door.
At his room, Chloe waited in the hall, unwilling to confront the memories that would inevitably come if she stepped inside. Memories of all the passion they’d shared within those walls, along with the horrible confrontation and her request for his arrest. She couldn’t face the combination. Could only deal with the here and now, and even that made her uneasy if she thought about it too long.
He took only a moment to retrieve the reliquary before he hurried her out the front doors to his SUV. There he let her inside, handed her the heavy trunk, and jogged around the front bumper to slide behind the wheel.
“Where are we going?” Chloe asked again as they nosed onto the main highway.
“To give you the proof you require.” He glanced at her, then looked at her arm. “Do you have the serpents?”
With the question, she became aware of the band circling her bicep. Given her strange conversation with Julian and her crying jag, she’d forgotten all about the thing. Absently, she rubbed at it through her heavy sweater. “Yes.”
Lucan said nothing, but she couldn’t help but notice that the corners of his mouth lifted with the faintest hint of a smile.
She reclined her seat. He gave her silence, which she gratefully accepted. As they drove, her mind ran frantic circles. Noelle was a part of this. But what was this? Knights Templar, the Church, holy relics, seraphs—Lucan had told her so much, yet nothing that fit all the pieces together. No matter how much logic she put into his words, she couldn’t move beyond the implausibility of it all. Moreover, if she chose to believe him, she’d have to not only accept all the unrealistic aspects, but accept her brother might not be her brother at all. That alone seemed like betrayal. Give up faith in Julian? Condemn him? In a hundred years she couldn’t believe her brother had been touched by some unholy archangel.
Her gaze slid sideways to study Lucan’s commanding build. Nine hundred years old? That would explain his unique accent. If he were a knight, that explained a lot of things. He didn’t wear armor, but in every other sense he looked like one—slightly unkempt hair in the fact he didn’t cut it. Strong body. The chivalrous way he saw to her needs first. His confidence. And that damnable arrogance that both annoyed her and turned her on like nothing else.
She twisted her head to look in the backseat and swallowed roughly when she spied his sword. That too fit the explanation. Possibly more than anything else. If she closed her eyes and recalled how naturally he wore it, she could easily see him in full armor.
But damn … No. It was impossible. There was something else he wasn’t telling her. A missing link. Something that fit in between history and present day and explained all the lies. He didn’t work for the Church. That much she knew. He’d even admitted it. And this nonsense with her brother was nothing more than testosterone. Lucan didn’t like Julian, and Julian didn’t like him. Both for the same reason—her.
The Veronica though … Scientific data proved it could very well be what Lucan claimed. While it could fit a lot of other parameters, and she might easily dismiss it as just another piece of cloth from the early era of Judaism, the idea that random cloths would survive centuries was a bit far-fetched. Cloth deteriorated unless someone took care to keep it safe. And someone would’ve had to have a damn good reason to keep a cloth through centuries. That those someones kept it in such an obviously holy case made all her desires to discover a more plausible explanation ridiculous.
“Lucan, I can’t take this. Where are we going? And where’s your friend Gareth?”
“Gareth already awaits us at our destination.”
“And that is where?”
He took his eyes off the road long enough to reach across, meet her eyes, and give her hand a gentle squeeze. “To the European Temple of the Knights Templar.”
A shiver filtered down her spine. Uncomfortable with the pleasant grip of his fingers, she pulled her hand away.
CHAPTER 38
Four hours later, as the sun peeked over the high cliffs 46 miles northwest of Paris, Lucan brought the SUV to a stop at the closed gates to the château de La Roche-Guyon. He looked up at the keep perched at the peak of the cliff side and drew in a deep breath before he reached a hesitant hand across the console to awaken Chloe. As she stirred, he summoned the centuries-old facade he employed when it came to battle. Confidence. Outward calm. Show her naught of the nerves that shook his insides. But God’s teeth, she did not make this easy.
“We are here,” he murmured as her eyelashes lifted.
Scrubbing at her eyes, she brought the seat upright. She ducked her head to peek beneath the visor and stare up at the chalk-white mountain face and the château that lay at the base. “This is a temple?”
“In effect.” He opened his door and motioned for her to do the same. When they stood in the parking lot, amidst the colorful cars belonging to the tourists lined up near the front entry, Lucan covered the reliquary with his coat and stuffed it beneath one arm. With his free hand, he took hers, in part to still his own disquiet, for touching her calmed the anxiety thrumming in his veins. The other—sheer pride. He would not have any man within question whom she rightfully belonged to, even if all knew he had journeyed across the sea to retrieve her.
“We will go in through the side.”
She matched his quick pace, chin tucked against her chest to ward off the wind that rolled through the valley. Ahead, a brass-studded wooden door swung open in greeting. Gareth stood within.
Lucan pulled Chloe to a quick stop just inside the plain stone entry. “’Tis one thing you must know. Should any man offer you his sword, you need say naught when you return it. But we will use the tunnels in hopes of avoiding the distraction.”
She blinked, then furrowed her brows. “Offer his sword?”
“’They are bound to swear loyalty to you.” Before she could ask further questions he could not easily answer, Lucan gave Gareth a nod of readiness and struck off down an off-shooting corridor that wound behind the public-access buildings and the château proper to the chambers buried in the cliff.
He slowed, allowing Chloe to take in her surroundings at her leisure. Though he had long ago become accustomed to the sigils in the walls, the cipher that only those who upheld the Code could read, and the hand-tooled stone, he gave her time to trace her fingers along the chiseled marks. She studied. She admired. And yet she said naught. No single word slipped passed her lips until they had walked almost a mile and entered the vast central chamber of the inner sanctum.
Chloe stopped spellbound and gaped up at the mosaic ceiling and the elaborate arches carved into the natural rock. “Ho-ly…” She exhaled through her teeth.
“Aye, holy,” Lucan agreed as he surveyed the works of the masters and allowed the pres
ence of the divine to infiltrate his awareness. “Welcome to the temple, Chloe.” He lowered his voice in reverence. “’Twas built by the men who took their oaths just before I. Men whose hands were guided by the archangels. No more sacred place exists in this world. Not even the temple in America knows this greatness.”
He watched as her eyes scanned over gold gilt reliefs and life-size statues of knights, gargoyles, and the angels themselves. Observed as a shiver possessed her and she inched closer to his side, as if the magnitude of it all was too much to take in at once. He tugged on her hand, drawing her down a wide hall off the circular nave. “You may look to your heart’s content after we speak with Raphael.”
Wide eyes rested on him for a painstaking heartbeat that stirred to life all the deep emotion he had tried to stifle. The urge to sweep her into his arms, haul her against his chest, and devour her parted lips until she could not believe in anything but the magic that flowed between them struck like a fist of stone. His chest swelled so painfully he thought his ribs might crack. Saints’ blood, how could she not feel the same magnetic pull? How could she believe naught else but that they were fated? The very air crackled with the energy they shared.
Steeling himself against the uncomfortable tingling of his skin, he set his hand on the heavy iron knocker and dropped it against the aged wood.
“Yes?” Raphael called from within.
“’Tis I, Lucan.”
“Come in, Sir Lucan.” Raphael’s low voice drifted through the heavy wood. “Gareth, wait outside.”
Lucan pushed the door wide, allowing a golden wash of light to spill into the hall. He escorted Chloe inside, his nerves as unsteady as his pulse. He feared the hope that this meeting might change her mind, yet he could not stamp it out of existence. More than the oath of seraphs and the healing of his soul, he longed for her acceptance of their love. Of him. The man who had come to at last find faith in something—her.
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