by M. J. Rose
Each night, Julius and Lucas had continued to meet and plot in secret, often joined by Julius’s brother and fellow priest, Drago. This procession was part of those plans.
Nine weeks before, Sabina had stopped trying to hide the pregnancy. She would be buried alive as custom and law dictated, one week after her child was born, in a tomb they had built in the hills near the sacred grove.
No one knew that Julius was the father, so his punishment had not yet been meted out, and he’d been free to work on the tomb. They’d made a show of its construction: bringing in artisans to create an elaborate fresco and a detailed floor mosaic.
During the past week, as they put the final touches on her resting place, Sabina had sat nearby, nursing, cooing and smiling at her baby. But she wasn’t the only one watching. There were spies everywhere. In fact, Julius was counting on them. So the digging was carried out during the day in plain sight of the bystanders who came to watch.
It had been so long since a Vestal had been buried alive, the citizens of Rome found great symbolism in the upcoming event. With the last Vestal’s death would come the death of the old ways.
But once everyone had left and the sun had set, late each night under cover of the deepest darkness, there by the sacred grove, where Sabina and Julius had been meeting as lovers for so many years, where he had found out she was carrying the child who would be her death sentence, he and his brother worked on the secret of her grave until their fingers bled.
Pagans believed that after they died their souls were reborn and given a chance to right the wrongs they had done in their last life. As long as Julius could move the earth with his hands, nothing was going to stop Sabina from having a chance to be reborn in this life.
From her perch on the funerary dray, Sabina looked from her child to Julius, who walked on her other side. Now her eyes glittered with unshed tears. They’d be saying goodbye to each other soon. Their life together, the way they’d known it, would end. There would be no more meetings in the grove, no more nocturnal swimming in the pond. Julius wouldn’t see her skin dappled with the moonlight under the oak trees that had sheltered them and hid them for so long.
Tomorrow both of them would start the next step of their journey.
He smiled up at her. Courage, he mouthed to her, knowing she couldn’t hear him with the crowds jeering and shouting.
Courage, my love.
In her lap, her hands were empty. She was not allowed to carry anything into the tomb with her. The box was tucked inside a girdle, its bulge covered by her robe, its edges digging into her ribs: her dowry for her next life. The most treasured of all the treasures was going into the grave with her. For more than a thousand years the Vestals had stood guard over the sacred fire and what had been hidden under its hearth; it was only right that Sabina would guard it in her next life, as well.
* * *
They had arrived at the tomb. It was time.
She looked over at her sister and the baby she’d entrusted to her. Leaning over, she kissed the child’s soft cheek. “I’ll see you soon, my little one.” Then she looked at her sister. “You remember what to do?” she asked Claudia, who nodded, too overcome with tears to speak clearly.
“If the worst happens, the treasure is worth a fortune. Neither of you will ever want for the rest of your lives.”
“Don’t talk like that…nothing is going to happen. It’s going to work out.” It was dangerous to say anything else.
Sabina put her arms around her sister and her baby and held them, feeling her daughter’s little fists beating on her chest as she struggled to reach for her milk.
Finally Sabina let them go.
Julius and Lucas helped her off the dray and down into the tomb. Quickly they went over the plan—knowing the crowd was outside, and if they spent too much time underground it would be suspect.
Lucas left first, climbing up the wooden ladder.
Julius took Sabina’s hands.
“Sabina—” he whispered.
She shook her head. “No, shh.” She put one finger to his lips. “There’s all the time in the world for us, you’ll see.” She sounded so sure of herself, he thought. So certain. But the tears running down her cheeks belied her optimism.
She stood up on her toes and kissed him, hard, on the mouth, trying to say everything that she couldn’t articulate with words. Julius tasted salt on his lips but didn’t know if it was her tears or his.
Chapter 46
New Haven, Connecticut—Monday, 10:18 p.m.
“Are you all right?”
His heart was ripped open. He was overwhelmed with sorrow and wanted to go back. To her. To Sabina. To their child.
“Josh?”
Gabriella’s voice was coming from far away, and he knew he needed to follow it. Feeling the awful wrench of leaving, he panicked as Sabina’s face dissolved in a great blue-green wave and he reached out for her.
“Josh?”
It was taking too long to reconnect to the present. He should say something, but he couldn’t find the words yet. He nodded. Took a deep breath. “I’m fine.” He was shocked to see his hands on her arms. He’d reached out for Gabriella? The confusion only intensified when he realized he was glad he had. He wanted to be holding her. It felt right.
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I have lousy timing,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Because…because you’ve had a horrific few days, because too much has happened, because it’s late.”
“No, I’m okay, Josh,” she said, and from the way she looked at him, she didn’t seem to be thinking it was too late.
They were in the shadows, protected from the street and from the glass windows on either side of the door where her baby-sitter or her father might be watching. Josh pulled her closer and kissed her. It was immediately intense. Too intense. He let her go.
“It’s been a long time for you, too, hasn’t it?” she whispered.
He nodded, and this time she kissed him.
The world fell away and he stopped thinking. He gave up the dream of Sabina for just these few minutes. His nerve endings came alive and his blood warmed. It felt so damn good to feel her body pressed against his, to know she was responding the same way he was.
And then the rain started again.
They separated, and she had a pleased but still hungry look in her eyes.
That was when he realized that hers had been kisses that he’d never had before. There was nothing familiar or known about the smell of her or her taste or the way they fit together. Her hair was soft on his cheek, but he’d never felt it before. He kissed her again. Fell into a darkness that was deeper than the night sky. Her fingers gripped his arms and she leaned far into him. A sadness started at the center of his pleasure, and the two emotions did battle. Giving in to one meant giving up on the other.
Josh had wanted her touch to be familiar to him. For so many nights and days and weeks and months, the search for proof of reincarnation, his past and the woman who inhabited it, had haunted him. Now Gabriella would haunt him, too, tantalize him as something he couldn’t allow himself to have. But for now, for one night, he could feel her skin on his skin and hear her breathless oh as sensations overwhelmed her. It wouldn’t hurt anyone, would it? If, just for a few minutes, he hid inside her kiss?
The rain was falling and the wind was blowing, swirling around them, an embrace outside of their embrace, cocooning them in a whoosh of cool air that separated them from the rest of the world.
And then the sadness won the battle with the pleasure, and Josh let go of her. He couldn’t stay. He couldn’t do that to either of them.
Chapter 47
New York City—10:30 p.m.
Rachel arrived at Harrison’s apartment after walking up and down the block outside his building, fighting with herself for almost fifteen minutes about whether or not to meet him as planned. The sound of his voice on the phone, inviting her over, worked on her like a ma
gnet. It was so damn stupid, but she’d never felt that kind of pull to a man before. Her uncle teased her about it and she regretted confiding in him. Maybe she should stop being afraid, give in and see where it took her. Chalk up her fear to naiveté—certainly not with men, not with relationships, but with love.
As she paced she mentally listed off all the reasons she’d logically be drawn to him: he was an art consultant who dealt with paintings, sculptures, antiques and jewels for collectors. All beautiful things. He reeked of taste. Of culture. He was good-looking. And perhaps more than anything else—even though it made no sense—Harrison was elusive. She couldn’t quite reach him—not the secrets of him that she sensed were many and were buried deep. And Rachel found that more attractive than she would have imagined.
Upstairs, Harrison greeted her at the door with a chaste kiss on the cheek that was somehow erotic because of the way he held her upper arm so tightly. As if he was holding back, but barely.
“I’m just finishing up a meeting. Come in, it won’t take too long.”
Rachel thought he was going to leave her in the living room while he returned to his office, but he brought her with him.
His apartment was both his home and office. Smart and sleek, decorated in tones of gray with silver accents, the penthouse boasted large floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over a nighttime city that sparkled like diamonds.
Harrison poured her a Scotch just the way she liked it: expensive and neat. He gestured to a chair to the left of his desk while he returned to the phone call he’d interrupted to let her in.
She sipped the drink, caressed the seat’s baby-soft leather and tried to keep her eyes off of him. At one point, he caught her staring and smiled.
After a few volleys of conversation that referenced an expensive painting, Harrison opened his top desk drawer and pulled out some papers, and in the process Rachel spotted a very small black gun.
The crazy sensations assaulted her. The humming and the music that wasn’t really music lulled her, pulled her from the sights and sounds of his office in that moment and took her somewhere else. Instead of sitting in the glass-and-chrome library looking out over the city, she was suddenly in a wood-paneled library with windows that faced a hillside. On the wall were Renaissance paintings, good ones, and the man who sat at the desk, exactly where Harrison had been sitting minutes before, was someone very different.
He was attractive, but in his fifties. No jeans and Armani jacket, but rather some kind of formal, old-fashioned suit. And they weren’t alone anymore. Standing to the other side of the desk was a poorly dressed young man with mean eyes and greasy hair.
The man who had taken Harrison’s place looked at her seductively. On the desk in front of him, on the tooled-leather blotter, a small black revolver gleamed in the lamplight. He never looked at it while he carried on his conversation with the thug, but it was a bigger presence than any of them.
“We can’t be responsible for a robbery, can we? In fact, we should offer a substantial reward for any information leading to the capture of the thief or the thieves.” He nodded knowingly.
She needed to get away. From both of the men. From the gun. But she felt trapped, as if time had turned into metal straps that were holding her back. She tried to speak, but it felt like she was pushing rocks out of her mouth. All that she managed was a mangled cry, and then everything changed back to the way it had been before, except for the panic she was experiencing.
Harrison was worried. Solicitous. Talking to her softly, asking what he could do, how he could help. Rachel asked him why he had a gun, and he convincingly said he needed protection with all the paintings and jewelry that he brought in and out of his office. It made sense. But the feeling that she was in danger, in a very real way, stayed with her even as she sat there and drank with him and talked with him.
When he reached for her again and kissed her, she was surprised to find herself moving toward him, not moving away. Wary but pulled by a curiosity and force she didn’t understand. How could the darkness in him and the shadows that surrounded him work like an aphrodisiac?
When, smoothly and expertly, he proceeded to seduce her, she didn’t stop him.
With his head on her breast, whispering to her, touching her so lightly his fingers felt like feathers on her skin, she convinced herself that she was being crazy. That there couldn’t be anything wrong with a man who could make her feel that way. And then it happened.
A quick flash.
The other man had taken Harrison’s place again. He was making love to her now. But not as gently. Not as carefully. He was greedier, hungrier. In the background, distracting her, were colors—but connected to what? She couldn’t tell. She saw the deep verdant emeralds, night-sky blues and rich-wine reds, all so beautiful she couldn’t stop looking at them, not even for the man who was inciting pleasure and pressure between her legs. But what were they? She tried to focus, to figure it out…and then she was back in the present, with Harrison, as he brought her to a finish that shook her whole body and she slipped back into the colors and vanished inside of them.
Chapter 48
It was two o’clock in the morning. The window was open, and the breeze offered a soothing embrace. One lamp shone down on the desk, but the rest of the room was shrouded in darkness. He’d had the idea that he would try to block himself off from his reality and create a separate physical existence for this experiment.
The six stones were laid out on a deep blue velvet cloth that covered the blotter. The emeralds, sapphires and ruby glowed.
It had been written that these jewels would open up a doorway from the present to the past, but all the ancient texts alluded to the magic process in elusive terms. He felt as if he were adrift on the sea in a boat that kept him afloat, but that he did not know how to steer.
Every religious ceremony has specific steps. Just as a Mass was not an arbitrary group of prayers and actions, there was a set of steps attached to these stones, as well. A process. Instructions. But what were they?
Professor Chase’s papers hadn’t revealed anything. Neither the notes that had been taken from her apartment in Rome, nor those that had been stolen from her office in New Haven. There was no indication that she had any idea what the markings on the surface of the stones were. He needed her to translate them.
If she could.
Chase was renowned for her knowledge of ancient languages. Of course she could—or she’d know who could. She was his key to how to harness the stones’ power: a dangerous, awesome power.
Weren’t the highest echelons of the Church worried about the magic of the stones? And for good reason. If man discovered that Nirvana was within his reach—if it was in his own hands, not in the hands of God—what authority would the Church hold over him?
He had waited a long time, but the wait was almost over. From the first step of the plan, years ago when he got the diary excerpts to Gabriella Chase and Aldo Rudolfo, he’d patiently waited, and now those seedlings were mature trees that would soon bear fruit.
There was a lot to do now in a very short period of time. He sighed. It was a long and deep expression of desire and fear and trepidation. He hated involving other people. Risking the safety of innocents was an affront to his morals, but he was out of choices.
Three men had died so far, and he’d have to live with that forever. Blood stained his soul. Would probably stain it deeper before this quest was over. But didn’t all great efforts require sacrifice?
He’d give the gods one last chance to reward him before he moved on to the inevitable and heinous next step.
Separating the six stones into two groups, he held the emeralds in his left hand and the sapphires and the single ruby in his right. Shutting his eyes, he focused on the feeling of them, the sensation of their edges biting into his flesh. There were so many historians, so many collectors, so many religious men who would pay him all of their fortunes for what he was holding, but no amount of lucre could entice him to give up this t
reasure.
Concentrate, he told himself.
Concentrate on the stones.
He knew how to pray. He knew how to meditate. He knew the power of emptying your mind of minutiae and letting nothingness come to the forefront. That kind of meditation was not a miracle. Not holy. But it had always had a mystical and magical effect on him. It took him away, it settled his ghosts.
The Father. The Son. And the Holy Ghost.
He almost laughed at the perfection of the phrase in this context, but instead concentrated on wiping his mind clean.
First the cleansing.
Then the emptiness.
Stay with the void.
Experience the hollowness.
Now let the colors swim.
Blood-red slipping into ruby, turning scarlet, soaking up darkness and developing into a royal purple. Then reversing it. Seeing the purple, adding light to it so it transformed to lavender, then rose, then blanching the color so it tinged to pink, pushing in light so it was the merest pale, blushing white. Now reversing the process, pushing some color back in, graduating the roseate tone to vermilion, dissolving it to dark wine-red, burning it into inferno red, sliding the embers into sunset’s glow and then a glowing torch’s orange.
He was deep into the meditation.
See yourself. See who you were. Know who you were.
He repeated it.
See yourself. See who you were. Know who you were.
There was a blue-blackness now like a cold night sky. He swept through it. It was the sky over every country, every age. The answers were there, deep inside the galaxy, he knew that, now to just reach for them.
What was the secret of the stones?
