“We are wanderers,” Bravo said without missing a beat. But his heart rate went through the roof. Tanis Ahirom was his grandmother, Conrad’s first beloved. Ahirom was not an uncommon Phoenician name, but Tanis and her family came from this island. “We search for the meaning of history.”
“History?” Haya cocked her head.
“Your island, your home, has a great, long history.” Bravo grinned at her. “Once upon a time, Arwad was a very important place.”
“Is it now?” Haya asked.
“Well, I suppose it could be.” Bravo shrugged. “No one knows.”
“Is that why you have come?” Kamar asked with suspicious eyes. “You are not Muslim, but you wish to take that which was our ancestors’, yes?”
“No,” Bravo said firmly. “We’re not tomb raiders; we collect nothing but knowledge.” Not quite true, but there were moments in life when telling the truth was substantially more dangerous than telling a white lie. He leaned forward, looking at Haya, rather than her mother, feeling this was very important now. He was traversing a razor’s edge. What he said next was of paramount importance. If he turned this woman against him, he could forget about finding what he was looking for.
“Haya,” he said, “I have a surprise for you.”
The girl’s eyes lit up. “A surprise?”
“No gifts,” Kamar said sternly.
“But what is it?” Haya’s voice was high, plaintive. “What is the surprise?”
Outside the windows, mended sails billowed in the wind. Gulls called plaintively. Rough voices on the beach, raucous laughter, soon fading.
“My grandmother’s name was the same as yours.”
The girl’s eyes opened wide. “Haya?”
“Not the beautiful name your mother gave you,” Bravo said. “Your equally beautiful family name: Ahirom.”
“Really?” It was Kamar who responded, her voice tight. Bravo wondered whether she was going to go for a weapon hidden somewhere about the room. “I very much doubt that.”
“Her name was Tanis. Tanis Ahirom.”
Kamar sat very still. In fact, she seemed scarcely to breathe. “Describe her, please.”
There were no pictures of Tanis, but Conrad had described her to a young Bravo, his eyes closed against the sun, but seeming to gather strength from the light and the heat. Such was the loving detail of his grandfather’s description that Bravo felt that he had actually met her. He closed his eyes, and spoke as Conrad had spoken to him so many years ago.
After he had finished, there followed the deep silence one experiences in a library or on a battlefield when the fighting is over, relief replacing fear. Not even Haya moved a muscle, attuned as she was to her mother’s moods.
“Tanis Ahirom,” Kamar said slowly and deliberately, “was my mother’s eldest aunt.”
Reaching around her child, she poured them more tea, then filled her own cup. “Please.” She gestured, lifting her glass in the manner of a formal toast. “Let us drink.”
And with that the bond between them was complete. Bravo was part of the family.
*
“NOW,” KAMAR said, after she had cleared away the dishes and had sent Haya off to school, “tell me about your traveling companion.”
“I think it’s best if she tells you herself,” Bravo said.
“As you wish.” Kamar sat with her hands in her lap, an expectant look on her face. Her fingers were long and slender, as Conrad had said Tanis’s had been. “So, Ayla...” Her hands lifted, wove complex patterns in the air as an inducement for her guest to speak, before falling back into her lap.
“My father was Conrad Shaw, Bravo’s grandfather,” Ayla began, but was forestalled by Kamar’s knit brows.
“But how is that possible?”
“Conrad was an older man when he met my mother,” Ayla continued, regaining the strength of conviction. “I never knew about Tanis; I don’t think he told my mother about her.”
“Well, why would he? I’m sure he loved your mother,” Kamar said wisely. She looked from Ayla to Bravo and back again. “So you are Bravo’s aunt, yes?”
She nodded. “Strange as it seems.”
Kamar chuckled. “Well, in this family, my dear, nothing is ever strange.” Her hands fluttered again, as if she were a conductor leading her orchestra in a prelude. “Tell me, Ayla, what is your mother’s full name?”
“My mother passed last year.”
“Ah, pity.” She had a way of making you sure that she was sincere. Her eyebrows lifted, another inducement.
“Her name was Dilara Tusik.”
“Her married name, yes?”
“That’s right. But how—?”
Kamar shrugged. “Some things one simply knows. So.” She slapped her thighs in emphasis. “The name she was born with. Out with it, my darling!”
“Balbi. The name she was born with was Dilara Balbi.”
Kamar jumped up, crying, “Astarte and Baal!” invoking the names of the two principal gods of the Phoenicians. “I knew it! There was something in your bearing, something behind your eyes, and I knew. I knew!”
She appeared beside herself with delight. “I’ve waited so long for this moment.” She was pacing back and forth, her expressive hands moving in a blur. “I had given up hope, you see. I had begun to lose faith. And then, lo and behold, an Ahirom and a Balbi are washed up onto the shore of my home. Not on any other place on the island, mind you. But here. Here where I am!”
“Kamar, what do you mean you were waiting for us?” Bravo asked.
Their hostess raised a finger, a mischievous smile on her face. She left them alone for some minutes, disappearing behind a beaded curtain into one of the bedrooms. Ayla glanced at Bravo, but he just shook his head. Neither of them knew what Kamar had in mind.
She returned holding a box of tulipwood, banded in bronze. She carried it with the reverence reserved for something beyond price. Setting it down between them, she produced three small keys. It took all three of them, used in turn, to unlock the box. She lifted the lid, brought out a golden apple. Reaching into the oilskin sea pouch gifted to him by Captain Kreutzer, Bravo showed her his golden apple. The two were twins.
“My God,” Ayla exclaimed, “what does this mean?”
Kamar looked at them in turn. “In the beginning, there were three golden apples. One each was gifted to the three families that ruled Phoenicia—the Ahiroms, the Balbis, and the Safitas.”
“My mother never told me—she never mentioned a golden apple.”
Kamar’s face darkened like the sky at the coming of night. “Yes, well, that is because the golden apple was stolen from the Balbis.”
“Who would do that?” Ayla asked.
Kamar hesitated. “After what happened... happened, the offending family name was stricken from all written records. It was as if it had never existed.” She shook her head. “But, of course, it did. One of them stole the apple and left this island, never to be found, though they were pursued by members of all three families, who banded together for this one purpose. It is said they searched for a hundred and one years, a mystical number for us, as well as other ancient peoples of the East.”
Bravo stirred. “What was the name of the family?”
“The family name is unimportant,” Kamar said. “These are most precious heirlooms. We are guardians. The apples have been handed down from generation to generation.”
“For what purpose?” Ayla said.
Kamar eyed her judiciously. “Let me answer your question with another. How did your mother pass?”
When Ayla remained silent, her gaze upon the floor at her feet, Bravo said, “She was beheaded.”
Kamar’s eyes grew fire bright. “Ah.”
“By one of the Fallen in human form.”
She nodded. “But of course. She was one of the immortals.” Leaning forward, she placed a hand on Ayla’s knee. Her touch was light as a finch alighting there. “I’m sorry. Truly sorry.”
And Ayla, nodd
ing, meeting her fierce gaze, knew she was, though Kamar and Dilara had never met.
After a short reverential silence, Kamar started up again, like a train that had switched from the local to the express track. “So. The person who stole the apple from the Balbis used it in a manner in which it was never to be used.”
“Who was it?” Bravo and Ayla asked together.
“Her name,” Kamar said, “was Chynna Sikar.”
*
CHYNNA SIKAR. The name reverberated through the folds of Bravo’s brain like a bullet ricocheting from wall to wall. Chynna Shaw, Bravo’s great-great-grandmother, was the one member of the family no one—absolutely no one—spoke of. Even Conrad. No one purported to know where she came from or anything about her origins. Kamar had just provided him the last link.
On one visit to the great library in Alexandria in Egypt, Bravo had come across a reference to her. His father had developed the habit of taking his young son, a voracious reader and astonishing polymath, with him to the library. What Dexter studied there was a complete mystery to young Bravo until one morning, when his father was called away by the librarian, he wandered over to the table at which Dexter had been sitting. A large tome, thick as his torso, was open. It was very old, its pages fragile with extreme age. He saw the names of the four most prominent families on the Phoenician island Arvad, as Arwad was called in ancient times: Safita, Ahirom, Balbi, and Sikar, of which this was an exhaustive history. What caught his eye, specifically, was that the word “Sikar” was partially rubbed out, a heavy line drawn through it. The one short paragraph someone had tried to destroy concerned a particular Sikar. There was a notebook and pencil just to the right of the book. On it, Dexter was attempting to reconstruct the paragraph in its entirety. The subject was Chynna Sikar—specifically that she had stolen something Bravo could not read, something clearly very valuable—from the Balbi family.
According to the author or authors of the book, it was an impossible feat—impossible, that is, for a human being. Even an invading army would not have found its hiding place, so the tome claimed. How then had Chynna Sikar done it? By occult means. She had help, this theory posited, dark help, conjured from the netherworld—the place between the Underworld and here where humans dwell.
“It was said that Chynna Sikar was a sorceress of exceptional powers,” Kamar said, as if reading his mind.
“Which was how she managed to steal the Balbis’ golden apple,” Bravo said.
Kamar pointed. “Is that it? The Balbis’ long-lost apple?”
“No. This one belonged to my grandfather Conrad. It’s the one belonging to the Safitas. But I believe he was searching for the stolen one. He wanted to right a wrong.”
Kamar stared at him, wordless.
Bravo waited a beat. “My great-great-grandmother’s given name was Chynna.”
Kamar was thunderstruck. “Are you saying—”
Bravo nodded. “After Chynna Sikar fled Arvad with the golden apple, she changed her name to Shaw.”
“I don’t—”
“It makes sense. No one in my family would speak her name; no one knew where she came from.” He told her what he had seen on his visit to the Alexandria library that fateful morning. “My father was very interested in her. Now I know why.”
His fingers skimmed the silken contours of both apples. “The rumors were correct. Chynna was a sorceress. Her powers were so great that it was believed she was somehow able to summon one of the Fallen to help her steal this apple. It was supposed that she was in thrall to the Fallen, that while in its power she was impregnated, and later, after it had abandoned her, she gave birth to Gideon, my great-grandfather.”
“A Nephilim!” Kamar gasped the words out, one hand to her throat, as if terrified to speak the name. “And you two are its descendants.”
Bravo nodded. “But now the narrative has been turned on its head. It seems far more likely that the Fallen was under Chynna’s spell, that she lured it with the promise of the golden apple, mated with it of her own volition, and, afterward, when she was done with it, banished it back into the netherworld from which she had summoned it with some dreadful spell using the apple she had stolen.”
Kamar frowned. “The Fallen are said to have long memories, that they never forgive. Which Fallen did Chynna mate with?”
“That I don’t know.”
Their hostess considered for a moment. “Listen to me, Bravo, I know the Fallen are here. I know what they want. They are far more powerful than even you realize. I would advise you to use every trick at your command to find out the identity of the one Chynna used for her own purposes and then discarded.”
Once more Bravo dipped his hand into the sea pouch. This time he brought out the gold rood. Kamar gasped audibly as he set it down beside the two apples.
“Is that...” Kamar almost choked on her emotions. “Is that the real thing?”
“It is,” Bravo said.
She looked up at him. “May I?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
Slowly, her hand reached out, her long, slender fingers wrapping themselves around the crucifix with infinite care. When she lifted it up to hold before her face, she was weeping. “How was it kept out of sight for so long?”
“There is something in the composition of bronze that defeats some of the Fallen’s powers. Conrad had the rood clothed in bronze armor, protecting it from both identification and use.”
“Bless him! Then there is a chance against the fall of eternal night,” she whispered.
44
Western Mediterranean / Arwad, Syria: Present Day
“LOOK AT THEM!” LILITH REACHED OUT TO TOUCH THE RAZOR-sharp tips of the ebon talons, then drew her hand back. “What the hell?”
“ ‘What the hell’ is right.” Emma looked into her eyes. Sunlight spun off the glossy surfaces of the newly grown talons. It was time to tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Salt air ruffled her hair, still thick enough to hide the stubs of horns sprouting up just above her hairline. Beyond the hull of the boat they had boarded at the southwestern cape of Cyprus rose Arwad’s ancient walls. The eighty-seven-nautical-mile journey was almost done. The boat swung around to starboard, skirting the scimitar-shaped southern shore, on the way toward the long breakwater toward the mouth of the harbor.
“It’s The Testament of Lucifer,” she began. “I told you I read it when I shouldn’t have. What I didn’t tell you is that, like Bravo, I am blessed with an eidetic memory. In this case, however, it’s a curse. I can’t forget what I’ve read; the Testament has a life of its own. The words, sentences, paragraphs, magical in their nature, are working on me. They’re changing me.” She pushed her hair off her forehead, revealing the beginnings of the horns.
Lilith grasped her. “Oh, Emma, no.” Her trembling fingers traced the circumference of the stubs that were threatening to break through her skin. “Oh, my God.”
“I’ve fought against it, Lilith. You don’t know how hard I’ve fought, but the opening of the portal, even for that short a time, strengthened the dark sorcery of the Testament. Conrad’s blue flame served as only a temporary respite.”
The look of horror on Lilith’s face made her appear gaunt, ashen. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“I’ll change. I won’t be Emma anymore.”
“And Beleth?”
“He knows. Beleth will die.”
“That’s why he’s in hiding.”
Emma nodded.
“Coward!” Lilith shouted into Emma’s face. “Get out here! Save her, you fucking baby!”
Emma’s eyes darkened, the sigil returning to her pupils. “I cannot.” Beleth’s deep voice rumbled out of Emma’s mouth. “I am only Second Sphere. I lack—”
“Think, Beleth!” Lilith shouted. “You’re from that realm. There must be a way.”
“Leviathan said I am a tactician, not a strategist, and he is right. My mind was not bred to see the big picture. I wi
n battles, not wars.”
“You have shit for brains, you useless thing.”
“Epithets will not win the day,” Beleth said evenly.
“Perhaps not,” Lilith spit, “but they make me feel a whole lot better.”
“What may make you feel better,” the Fallen Power said, “is that Emma’s fate is not set in stone.”
“You mean your fate isn’t set in stone.”
“No one wants to die, Lilith. Not even me, I find, now that I’ve met the two of you. Now that I understand... things I’ve never been privy to before.”
“But back to Emma.”
“Yes, back to Emma. She can still be saved. But there is a deadline fast approaching, after which the transformation process will have gone too far. If that happens, no one, nothing, will be able to stop it. I will die and she will become—well, she will become... something else, some dark angel enslaved by the words of Lucifer himself. A creature that, frankly speaking, none of us have ever before seen or read about. A creature wholly of Lucifer’s making. Not one iota of God will dwell in her heart or in her soul. She will be nothing... and everything.”
Lilith drew back, as if from a dreadful shadow, an enemy as yet unseen or fully formed. She stared into Emma’s face, blank but for those ferocious black eyes holding at their center the sigil of the Unholy Trinity.
“Emma.” Gathering her courage to her like armor, she grasped her lover’s shoulders. “Emma!”
But there was no answer. Only Beleth’s sorrowful stare.
“How long?” Lilith whispered. “How many days do we have?”
“I am not good with temporal matters, even when in this corpus,” Beleth said. “But I would say some way must be found to arrest the transformation, to reverse it before moonrise.”
Alarmed, Lilith said, somewhat breathlessly, “Moonrise when?”
“Tonight.”
Lilith gave a little cry of dismay. Despair gripped her.
Moments later, the boat glided alongside the dock, lines were tossed, the boat tied up. They had arrived at Arwad.
*
“THIS WAY!” Kamar, crooking a forefinger, hurried them along the shingle. “We must hurry! My husband is due back at any moment, and if he sees us he will try to stop us.”
Four Dominions Page 32
