“Who is, then, Grandfather?” Ibrahim whirled like a dervish. “Show me so that I may end your torment and the torment of the others imprisoned here.”
Now a darkness closed around them unnatural and asphyxiating. Ibrahim’s taper was extinguished without even a momentary flicker. Even Conrad’s torch beam dimmed, as if its batteries were dying.
Grandfather Gebereal’s voice had vanished, buried beneath shadows that seemed to shift along the muscled flank of the Sphinx. Crossing to the beast, Conrad mounted the plinth, reached up, and shoved his hand into the Sphinx’s open mouth.
“What are you doing?” Yeats cried.
He felt around for what he knew must be there, but the mouth was empty. His heart plummeted. Someone had been here before him. Someone who must have known...
“Turn around, all of you,” a deep, stentorian voice commanded.
Conrad was the only one of them who recognized the voice, and his worst fear—the possibility he had kept as far as he could from his consciousness—was realized.
As they turned they confronted a man well over six feet tall with a shock of white hair worn long down to his back of his neck. If it hadn’t been for the red flecks, like chips of fire, his deep-set eyes would have been almost colorless. His angular face was roughhewn, his handsomeness hard-won, as if painstakingly carved from granite. He possessed a loose-limbed informality unusual in a man of his generation, which was clearly rooted in the nineteenth century.
“Gideon,” Conrad said.
The tall man tipped his head fractionally toward Yeats. “Conrad, what have we here?”
A chill like a knife thrust went through Conrad’s guts. “Never mind. The question is what are you doing here?”
“The same as you, Conrad.” He gestured with a thrust of his chin. “This is the second of the Four Sphinxes. You know where another one is.” Conrad knew Gideon was alluding to the chamber buried beneath the Gnostic Observatine Reliquary in Alexandria, Egypt; he’d been there at least a half-dozen times with this very man.
“What did you take from this one, Gideon?”
The tall man smiled. “I find it interesting that you call me Gideon.”
“That is your name, is it not? Or have you lied to me about that as well?”
Choosing not to answer those questions, Gideon held out his left hand, opening it to allow Conrad to shine his torch on to it.
“A gold crucifix.” Conrad frowned, looking dubious. “That’s what you found inside this Sphinx?”
“A rood, yes. But not any rood, Conrad, as you might well suspect, having come here for it. But I arrived first, and now I have it.”
Ibrahim’s eyes fairly bugged out of his head when he saw the gold crucifix. “That belongs to my grandfather!” he cried. “He showed it to me when I was just a boy.”
“Quiet, you!” Gideon shouted. “You people are no concern of mine.”
“That is why he and everyone else are trapped here.” Ibrahim stepped forward, as if magnetized to the gold crucifix. “Don’t you see, Conrad, it’s not this beast; it’s the rood.”
Gideon raised his right hand, which held a pistol. “Stay where you are.”
“There is a symmetry to this.” Ibrahim came on. “I understand why my grandfather called me here.”
Gideon clicked off the safety. “I’m warning you.”
“I am here to right this wrong.” Ibrahim, still approaching, gaze fixed on the rood, appeared not to hear the warning.
“Don’t!” Conrad shouted just before the tall man squeezed the trigger.
The first bullet staggered Ibrahim, but such was his intent that he kept coming. The second bullet spun him around so that he was staring directly into Yeats’s eyes. There was a pleading in them. And then the third bullet tore into him, and he crumpled to the ground.
“Gideon.” It was Conrad’s turn now. “What have you done?”
“Only what had to be done.” The tall man turned the gun on the other two men. “Stop, Conrad. I have three more bullets in this pistol. You better than anyone know how fine a shot I am. Don’t make me pull the trigger.”
But Conrad, gathering speed, was rushing forward. “Do what you have to do, Father. Just do it!”
Part 2
The Rood
16
Halicarnassus, Turkey: Present Day
THE INSTANT LILITH SWAN FIRST LAID EYES ON EMMA SHAW an electric pain went through her so powerful that her knees literally went weak, obliging her to half-collapse onto a chair in the outdoor café where Emma was sitting. That half collapse, that act of letting go, so simple and yet absolutely impossible for her up until this moment, was nothing compared to her attempts at getting her breath back.
Her cheeks were flushed; her heart rose up of its own accord and stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Her fingertips tingled, her feet were suddenly numb, and she rose out of her body as if it did not exist, hovering in the perfumed air of the café secreted in the center of Bodrum, striped awning keeping the blazing sun off the patrons eating, drinking, talking, laughing as if nothing untoward had happened. But it had. Never before had Lilith had such a reaction to anyone or anything, and she did not know what to do with the feelings. She could not talk to the waiter when he came to take her order, could not admonish the gaggle of twentysomething girls swinging their backpacks into her shoulder as they passed, poking one another and giggling incessantly.
In fact, for the moment she did not know where she was, why she was here, or what she should do. The sight of Emma Shaw in the flesh sent all other thoughts scattering to the four winds. Of course, she had seen photos of Bravo’s sister, but, truth be told, she’d never paid much attention to them, concentrating on Bravo, figuring Emma as peripheral and, therefore, of not much import. This in addition to the fact that, as is true with many people, the photos did not in any way, shape, or form capture whatever ineffable energy came off Emma in hot waves, inundating Lilith.
Four days ago, Lilith stood on the deck of a hired gulet, cutting through the cerulean water of Gökova, a narrow gulf of the Aegean Sea in southwest Turkey. Through the blinding sunlight, she caught sight of the harbor fronting Bodrum. Now a playground for the rich and famous, the modern city of Bodrum was built on the site of Halicarnassus, an ancient Greek city.
It had taken her that long to find Emma Shaw through a combination of Obarton’s contacts and showing Emma’s photo to waiters and shopkeepers. Now here she was, not twenty feet away. Lilith felt like a teenager with her first head-exploding crush, in all its mad hormonal glory. No, but there was something more, much more at work here: she felt as if she had been living someone else’s life, as if it were a dream from which she was just now awakening. She no longer knew who she was or, more accurately, who she had been, because as had been made abundantly clear, she was now someone else entirely. A stranger had walked into her brain, taken up residence there.
Just in time she manufactured a cough in order to hide the moan that escaped her half-parted lips like an air bubble rising from her oceanic depths. The cough, sharp and clear, happened to come at a lull in the conversations around her, and the object of her tremulous desire turned her head.
Lilith, transfixed, felt like slipping under the table, although it was too late even for that fantasy, for now Emma Shaw was looking directly at her. Lilith’s insides turned to jelly. Was that a smile on her face? The half smile of a Mona Lisa—or of a crocodile. Lilith wasn’t sure, in her mesmerized state, which of those she wanted it to be. “Can I have both?” she whispered. “Please.”
And like a somnambulist, she found herself rising, felt her feet moving one step at a time, closing the distance between Emma Shaw and herself.
“Dear God,” she whispered to herself, “what is happening?”
What was happening was that the moment she reached Emma’s table she sat down on the empty chair without asking permission or even saying hello.
Now there was the smile, for sure. “Do I know you?” Emma’s voice pie
rced her like Cupid’s arrow. It was high and low, cool and fiery. In just four words? How was that possible?
I am someone who loves you now and forever. She wanted to say this so badly her chest burned and her cheeks flushed. Instead, she steeled herself to say, “My name is Lilith.” And then her mind, reaching for an instant of clarity, allowed her the blessed relief to say, “I thought I recognized another American.”
Emma laughed, the high-low trill sending shivers down Lilith’s spine. Her hands were clasped together under the table, knuckles white with strain as she kept their trembling from betraying her.
“There are a lot of Americans here in Bodrum,” Emma said, the echo of her laugh lending her words an adorable lilt.
“But almost all with tour groups.” Lilith’s tongue, thick and sluggish, almost caused her to stumble over her words. “You’re alone, like me.”
“Are you homesick, like me?” The voice had changed, but so subtly Lilith almost missed it. The image of the crocodile smile came to her unbidden.
“Uh-huh.” Lilith nodded. “I suppose I am.” She reached far down into her oceanic depths, trying to relax her body one section at a time. “I thought... well, now I’m about to tell you it seems foolish.”
“No, no.” Emma Shaw gestured, her beautiful arm in motion. “Please go on, Lilith.”
Her use of the name caused Lilith’s eyes to close momentarily. “Okay, well, here goes. I thought we might—I mean just possibly, and if it’s not overstepping the bounds of stranger to stranger—be homesick together.”
Instead of answering, Emma turned, flagged down a waiter. “Two coffees,” she said, and then, turning back to Lilith, “and something luscious to eat, no?”
*
LILITH THOUGHT she would pass out with ecstasy, but of course she didn’t. Nevertheless, the ecstasy stayed with her, perched in her head and, simultaneously, stretching luxuriantly between her thighs, as if it had a double life, being in two places at once, like an advanced physics experiment.
She would have liked nothing better than to pull herself together, but that purely rational part of her was so far away it could scarcely be heard, and, anyway, the fire inside her had already gone beyond a flash point.
The food came and she ate with gusto from the small plates, following Emma’s lead. She desperately wanted an alcoholic drink, preferably three, to silence that tiny pinpoint of rationality that was still ping-ponging around the outskirts of her brain, but she felt the request might reflect badly on her, as if she were trying to get them both drunk for nefarious purposes, which, now she thought about it, wasn’t so far from the truth.
“Are you here on vacation, or... ?” Emma asked between bites.
“Or,” Lilith responded. “I’m an amateur archeologist. My interest lies in Halicarnassus, not Bodrum.” Her smile felt artificially stretched, as if she’d just had plastic surgery. Had she said the right thing? Should she have pretended to be a tourist? Surely that would have been the safest thing to say. She had no way of knowing until Emma said, “Then our interests coincide. I’m heading out to the ruins tomorrow morning. Perhaps you’d care to join me?”
Lilith’s heart flipped over. “I’d like nothing better.” She was appalled; this had come out of her mouth before she’d had a chance to vet it. It terrified her to sound so eager; what was wrong with her, anyway? Now the rational pinpoint irised open and for a moment she was able to take a step back, observing the scene as if she were an innocent bystander. What have I done? What am I doing? she asked herself. And then the iris closed, the pinpoint flew away to regions unknown, and she was able to delude herself by affirming that she was simply doing what Obarton had tasked her to do: get close to Emma Shaw, find out what her connection with the Fallen was, and from there draw out their secrets through Emma’s throat. Did it matter in which way she chose to accomplish these tasks? Did it matter that she might have fun along the way? No, the voice inside her head said emphatically, it did not.
“Good.” Emma speared a dolma, brought the glistening morsel to her lips. “It’s settled then. My name is Emma, by the way.”
Lilith speared the last dolma. “What time do we leave?”
*
THEY LEFT Bodrum at 6:00 a.m. sharp, while the tourists were still snoring in their comfy beds and the shopkeepers were rubbing sleep from their eyes. The morning was already warm, the sky cloudless. It promised to be a glaringly hot day. Emma Shaw appeared unconcerned by this—or perhaps “oblivious” was a better word. She wore hiking boots, lightweight cargo shorts, and a khaki shirt. A backpack was a hump between her shoulder blades.
“Ready to take on history?” she asked Lilith. She didn’t wait for an answer but struck off toward a rattletrap truck, whose diesel exhaust was doing its part in polluting the morning. They climbed aboard. An old man with a lined face, a prominent nose, and a moth-eaten felt cap steered them grimly through the city streets, shifting gears as if they were punches he was throwing.
“Where are we going exactly?” Lilith said after twenty minutes or so of heading almost due north.
“I told you,” Emma replied neutrally. She was staring through the filthy windscreen, past a nearly vertical crack that seemed with every bump and jolt to threaten to shear the glass in half.
Lilith was about to say that, in fact, Emma hadn’t told her but, analyzing the other woman’s intense expression, decided to keep her mouth shut for the time being. A fly, metallic green in the sunlight, batted itself against the windscreen until Emma snatched it out of the air, slammed it down on the dashboard, and left it there, a smear with broken legs.
“Is something wrong?” Emma asked after a time, causing Lilith to start as if she had been stuck with a cattle prod.
“Wrong? I don’t... What d’you mean?”
“You keep staring at me.”
How can she know that? Lilith asked herself. She hasn’t even given me so much as a sideways glance. “I... well, you’re very beautiful.”
“And you haven’t seen beautiful women before?”
All in, Lilith thought, heart in her throat. “Not like you.”
At this, Emma Shaw at last turned to regard her. “Indeed.” Then, in a magisterial gesture, her head swung back, and she was staring out the windscreen again.
Undeterred, Lilith continued to stare at her, working to commit to memory every square inch of Emma’s face visible to her.
“You’re doing it again.” Emma’s lips barely moved, her voice was barely more than a murmur, yet there was an intimate tone to it that thrilled Lilith to the tips of her toes. “Am I really so fascinating?”
“To me.”
Turning, Emma reached out, cupped the back of Lilith’s head with one hand, drew her gently toward her half-open lips. The kiss, when it came, was nothing like Lilith had ever before experienced or even dreamed of. In fact, as an adult she had done her best never to kiss anyone, as it would inevitably bring up her unthinkable sessions beneath the sweating farm animal into which her uncle transformed in her presence.
The kiss may have lasted a long time, but for Lilith it was over too soon, oh, too soon. When she blinked, Emma Shaw was back in her position, staring out the windscreen. On the other side of her, the driver, still grimly clutching the steering wheel, appeared oblivious to his passengers. Everything was as it had been before the kiss, and Lilith found herself wondering whether she had hallucinated the whole thing. But her lips tingled, the lower one throbbing where Emma had given it a love bite. A heat rose from the juncture of her thighs and she began to sweat through her clothes. Nothing more was said for a long time afterward, but the atmosphere inside the truck cab had thickened. Lilith’s nostrils expanded at the new musky smell.
Sixty-five minutes beyond the last jumbled outskirts of Bodrum, the truck turned off onto a muddy track that headed steeply upland. They turned to the left and entered a dense forest of cedars of Lebanon, umbrella pines, and various deciduous trees. The old man, leaning slightly forward, committe
d his entire attention to keeping the truck from banging into an erupting root or scraping against the trunk of a tree. Ten minutes later, the truck rolled to a stop at the edge of a sun-baked glade.
“We go on foot from here,” Emma announced.
Lilith swung neatly out of the cab and Emma brushed past her. Immediately sweat broke out all over Lilith’s body, and she quickly stepped into a patch of shade. Emma gave her a wry grin, brushed past her closer than was necessary as she struck off into the forest, Lilith at her heels like a hunting dog.
The path—for it was no more than that—wound steeply upward. Loose gravel and stones clattered down after them, lifting clouds of dust in their wake. A sharp bend to the left brought up another sharp turn just ahead, causing Lilith to lose sight of Emma, and she stopped for a moment as if that would help her gain her bearings. But the truth was except for the path she was completely lost. But then she heard a soft rustling from up ahead and mounted one of the path’s steeper humps. Moments later, she came upon Emma, who stepped out of deep shadow on the side of the path and repeated what had happened in the truck. This time the kiss lasted longer. Lilith could taste Emma as their tongues met and twined.
“Here,” Emma said, pulling away, leaving Lilith feeling like warm taffy, pulled out of shape. She handed Lilith a canteen. “Drink. It’s a long climb from here.”
Lilith unscrewed the cap, drank deeply. The water was cold and sweet.
The instant she handed the canteen back, Emma was off up the slope, so fast that once again Lilith lost her in the dense underbrush. She could hear the soft musical calls of the birds, some of which rushed by her in a flutter of wings. Dragonflies hung in the wells of sunlight like diadems. She called Emma’s name, but hearing no reply she doubled her pace in order to catch up.
Soon enough she could hear the soft plashing of water and guessed they were nearing a waterfall. The scents were rich and sweet. A blue-and-white butterfly flitted beside her head, a brief companion, before lifting away toward the treetops.
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