by Stacey Nash
“We’re sorry.” Cynnie touches his arm. He pulls away and shoves his hands in his pockets. “We didn’t go to visit Mae.” She glances around the empty lot. “Come with us and we’ll fill you in.”
Like hell she will. The pressure in my forehead tells me I’m doing a shitty job of hiding the shock on my face. It’s damn hard to school my expression to neutral, but somehow I manage, even though I could kill her.
Harris tucks his chin under and tips his cap up, weighing her offer. After a long silence he looks up to say, “All right, but wouldn’t the internet be better than the library?”
“Yes!” Cynnie says. “Of course, I always forget you have that.”
“Good point,” I say. “The library will have access.”
“We can take the van.”
“I’ll come with you,” Cynnie says.
I eye my bike longingly yet again, not game enough to leave Cynnie alone with Harris. Christ only knows what she’ll divulge, probably my whole life history. With a sigh, I release the key from my fingers, letting it fall against the base of my pocket.
We pile into the white van, Cynnie taking the front seat and leaving me to sit on the floor in the back of what seems to be a stripped vehicle. Harris doesn’t speak the entire way there and neither does she, thank god. She has her face turned to look out of the side window.
After about ten minutes we pull up in what looks—from my place in the windowless back—like a parking lot almost as empty as the one we just came from. Harris cuts the engine, but doesn’t unclip his belt.
“So,” he says.
“So,” I reply before Cynnie can make the choice for us, but she cuts right in anyway. “We’re chasing the guy who messed up my face.”
She flicks both of her pointer fingers toward her cheek which now looks pretty good, albeit a little off-color with a yellow tinge.
Harris shakes his head. “You should have said so.”
“It’s a little more complicated than just going after him . . .” Cynnie’s shoulders rise. She’d better not be going to tell him about the keys.
I cut in just in case. “We can’t catch up with him. It seems like he’s on some sort of mission, but we’re always too late. Hence the research.”
“What sort of research do you need?”
“History,” Cynnie says. “Do you know anything about Alexander the Great?”
Harris unclips his belt and spins around in his seat to face her. “Alexander the vertically challenged. Sure I do.”
“The catacombs under Alexandria?”
“They have nothing to do with the legendary commander. They weren’t built until well after he died.” Harris whips out his cellphone and goes to an internet search engine.
Heck, I’m surrounded by history buffs.
“Yup, almost four hundred years’ difference.”
Cynnie flops against her seat. “There goes that idea.”
“What was it?”
“Well, he’s been to Pella and Alexandria, which both tie into my theory. But it was the catacombs he visited, which . . . well, they don’t actually connect to old Alex, so . . . yeah.” She shrugs.
“They could have,” I say. “The people who created them may have . . .” Inherited the key or heard of it. I trail off not sure how to say it without mentioning the keys.
“Why’s he chasing Alexander the Great, anyway? And what are you guys going to do when you catch up with him? And,” Harris twists around and glares at me over the top of the vinyl seat, “how the holy guacamole do you know it’s that guy, anyway? I take it you’re going from scanner activity? Which means it could be anybody you’re chasing.”
Seems like Harris is onto us.
I hold his glare. “It’s him.”
Harris stares at me, clearly waiting for more of an answer that I don’t intend to give. He’s the first to break eye contact.
I reach into my pocket, passing over my keys to grab the photographs that rest against the inside lining. Pulling them out, I pass them into the front, scooting up between the bucket seats. Cynnie grabs them. Probably because I haven’t had the chance to show her yet, but something about those snake carvings is special. She looks at the first photo for a few minutes, then flicks through the rest until she gets to the one with text. It gets a fair examination before she flicks through them all, until she reaches the first one again.
I lean between the seats to see better and she runs her thumb over the snake.
“What do you think?” I ask.
“I think I can see two swords, a shield and a cloak.”
Harris leans in too, our heads far too close for comfort—all three almost touching—but I need to see where the cloak is. The sword and shield are obvious, but after thinking of nothing but this image for twenty-four hours I haven’t been able to see anything else.
“The serpent goddess of Egypt: protector of country, pharaohs and other deities. Otherwise known as Wadjet,” Harris says.
Cynnie smiles. “The cloak.”
“What? That makes no sense,” he says, but he’s wrong. It makes a hell of a lot of sense. The cloak’s biggest duty is protection, but that snake looks nothing like Mae’s pendant.
“It’s a symbol,” Cynnie says.
“Oh, the snake is a symbol of protection. Got it. But the weird thing is the shield.” Harris braces his arm on the dash, so he can lean right in, scrutinizing the photo. “It’s not Egyptian at all . . . it looks more—”
“Greek,” Cynnie says. “That looks like Medusa on a goddess Athena shield.”
“Yeah, but this is in Egypt. Why is there Greek art under an Egyptian city?”
“You think it means something?” I ask Cynnie.
She nods. “Absolutely.”
I shuffle back a little, into my own space. “Can either of you read the script?”
I learned to read a little Latin and Greek at school, but that isn’t familiar. My training was cut short at eleven years old, so Cynnie has a good seven years on me. She flicks back to the photo with the words. “I can read Greek, but that looks like ancient Greek.”
“I can’t read it, but this can.” Harris holds up his phone. He touches an icon on the screen and then takes a photo of the photo. A few seconds later his phone beeps and English words appear on the screen. Impressive. Some technology on the outside is getting as good as that in the Collective. Guess it seeps out. The words on his phone read: And he said, “I lay my sword down with you, Father.”
“By the founders,” Cynnie says. “I think that means the sword.”
My mind whirls to catch up. “If he had the Torith—” I slap a hand onto Cynnie’s shoulder. “That’s going to really help us.”
Harris stares at my hand. “Why do I feel like you’re not telling me everything?”
“Because we’re not, but trust me, it’s better if you don’t know. I promise it won’t put anyone in danger. It will actually save people.”
“And we were telling the truth. It is about Nik and we are after him,” Cynnie adds.
Harris holds her stare for a long while, readjusting his cap. He’s weighing us again and Cynnie must feel it too because she reaches out, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Trust us.”
Finally, Harris takes a deep breath and says, “Just make him pay, all right.”
“We will.”
She’s right, that message is a hint to where we can find the sword. And we’re going to use it.
Chapter Twenty
Jax
We never make it inside the library. Instead, Harris drives us to the same burger joint on the wharf that we ate at the other day and we sit on the grass talking about where the sword could be. It’s obvious Nik’s chasing the sword, rather than the cloak, and he thinks that Alexander had it. Why else would he be pulled off the frontlines to sniff around historical sites? My father wouldn’t trust searching for the keys to anyone but his favorite son that’s why. Cynnie doesn’t mention the keys. She must have gotten the hint that no matter how much she trusts Ha
rris, we shouldn’t tell him. It’s for his own safety as well as ours and for the sake of the keys, too; the smallest number of people who know about them the better.
Harris balls his burger wrapper and tosses, but it misses the mark and bounces off the side of the trash can. “So whatever this sword is, you think Alexander buried it with his father?”
“Yes.”
Theras only knows how Cynnie can be so certain. The general doing that doesn’t make any sense, but at the same time it’s all too coincidental. “Why would they carve that phrase in a place which wasn’t built until centuries after his death?”
Cynnie swings her attention to me. “It’s pretty obvious that it’s a quote, probably copied from somewhere else and I think the reason it’s written there, is as a direct reference to the sword. That’s why it’s surrounded by symbolism.”
Harris flops back on the grass, shoving his hands under his head. “That doesn’t answer the question. I think you’re forcing it to work.”
“It’s worth a shot,” I say, “but how would they know where he buried the sword? It’s probably not even there anymore.”
Cynnie sighs. “Unless everyone thought it was just a plain old sword.”
“Do you think it actually is a sword? The shield doesn’t look like a shield.”
“No,” she says.
I press my fingertips against my aching temples. This is getting way too complicated. “So who was his father then, and where the hell is he buried?”
Harris props himself up on his elbows, like this is some kind of picnic. As if it’s not doing his head in too. “Philip II of Macedonia and I believe his public resting place is in Vergina.”
Cynnie screws up her nose.
“Northern Greece,” Harris declares, before I can say anything about the name that’s begging to be ripped off.
“So that’s where we need to go?”
“Well . . . no, there’s a rumor.” He retrieves his phone from his pocket, tapping his way through a few screens. “Ah, there it is. Alexander took his father’s body to the family’s hometown—all his siblings still lived there. They buried Philip in the family tomb and the public resting place,” he glances up at me, “never held Philip’s body because he was laid to rest at Pella.”
“How do you know all this shit, man?”
“I told you, history’s my major.”
“You’re at college?” I ask.
“Was.” He lays flat on his back and pulls the baseball cap down over his eyes. Of course that badge in the center isn’t a sports team. Now that I’ve looked closer, I can see the logo reads Zombie Response Team. “When all these attacks started happening Frank needed me, so I’ve dropped out for a bit. I’m halfway through my freshman year.”
“Where’s this family tomb then?” Cynnie asks.
“In Pella.”
“I’ve been there,” I say. “It’s just an archaeological dig.”
“Does that matter? So long as you beat the son of a . . .” He glances at Cynnie and swallows his curse. “If you beat him there, who cares where the tomb is. You’ve got him.”
Cynnie shoots me a sly look. “Looks like we’re going to Pella.”
“I’ll cover you,” Harris says.
He’ll what? He looks deadly serious, judging by the firm set of his jaw.
“No, no. We can’t ask you to do that, Harris. It’s . . . what if you get hurt?” Cynnie shakes her head.
“I didn’t mean I’ll come with you. I meant I’ll cover you from here. Make sure you get away without a hitch from our port-all.”
Cynnie visibly relaxes and everything in me starts to hum with excitement, because this is a good plan and we stand a solid chance, we could actually beat Nik there.
“That’d be great. We’ll go tonight.”
***
Well after midnight, Frank still paces the warehouse floor as if he’s waiting and there’s not a bottle in sight. Hopefully, he’s just sweating on the scanner to sound and not waiting to catch us out. Somehow just the thought of letting Frank down weighs more heavily than actually letting Beau down, something I’ve done often. I might be one of Beau’s best fighters, but I don’t always follow his rules because sometimes they’re downright stupid. Like not going after Mae’s dad. He was totally disposable to Manvyke, so it was only a matter of time and time wasn’t something we could risk.
“Looks like he’s trying to keep himself awake,” Cynnie whispers, right by my ear.
I place my palm against the wall and peek out again. “You might be right, he’s getting slower.”
“I wish he’d just fall asleep already.”
“Yeah, well. Not much we can do about it.” I push my back up against the wall and slip down against it. Surely he must be tired. My eyes feel a little heavy, as if I haven’t slept since we were in the catacombs last night. Probably because we got back just before dawn. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, the soothing cool air as pleasant as the silence softening the air.
I’m shaking.
My eyes spring open and Cynnie’s nudging my shoulder. “Wake up. It’s time to go.”
Must have fallen asleep.
A string of expletives balance on the tip of my tongue. How could I be so stupid? All these nights of next to no sleep: sneaking out after Nik, waiting for someone to attack us in our beds, it’s all catching up with me. Damn you, Johnny.
She nudges me again.
“All right,” I whisper, “I’m coming.”
I push myself up to rest on my haunches and peer around the wall. Sure enough, Frank’s in his usual spot, his head back and mouth hanging open, while his snores bounce of the concrete floor. Harris stands at the computer already, no doubt setting the coordinates for Pella. Good man. Cynnie and I creep across the warehouse and I scoop the port bands up from where they’re lying next to Frank’s flopped leg. Just as I rise, he mumbles and his foot jars up. I jump to the side with my heart pounding a million beats a second and my attention glued on Frank, who sucks in a loud rattling breath and blows it out with a shudder, resuming his slumber. Cynnie wipes the back of her hand over her brow. Phew, all right. That was a little too close. Sliding the bands over my wrists, I raise a questioning brow at Harris who nods the cue we’re all set to go. I take Cynnie’s hand as we both step onto the mat and port out.
When I open my eyes we’re not in the same place I ported to last time. We’re off to the left of the archaeological dig.
“Wow,” Cynnie says, “there’s not much here.”
“Yeah, should make this easier.”
She lets out a mocking laugh. I don’t care what she thinks though, it will. Easier than if we were somewhere like the bustling streets of a city.
“Better get to work then.” I stride off toward the dig site, the tall fluted columns in my sights. They’re a similar style to those often used in modern Collective architecture, only these ones are broken; some of them are missing their tops, others crumbling away in sections. There isn’t much here. The base remains: brick walls, hollowed out foundations, half-decayed steps leading up onto a higher floor. It’s impossible to tell what was what. I trail my finger over the length of what must have been a wall. How the hell do we figure out what to look for or where he was buried? After circling the ruins at least three times, and studying the cylindrical hole I found last time, I find Cynnie examining the remains of a tiled floor. She looks up at me. “I say we wait for him, but not out in the open. We don’t want him to see us the second he arrives.”
Honestly, there aren’t any good hiding spots. We’re in the middle of a valley with almost no vegetation.
“When he arrives, he’ll have a plan in mind. He has to have a clue about where or what to look for. He must have followed at least more than the one measly clue we found.” Shading her eyes, Cynnie glances toward the setting sun in the distance. “Surely.”
I look toward the nearby hill, and that’s where we need to be. “We’ve got to find a spot where we can see everything
and he’ll be exposed. Sure, he’ll see us coming, but we’ll watch his every move from the hills and not budge until the timing’s perfect.”
“Good plan,” she says, walking away.
I retrieve my blade from the inner pocket of my jacket and flick the catch so it springs open. For all we know, Nik could already be here. I didn’t get a chance to look at the port-all, and Harris probably didn’t do a global search for recent activity.
Following Cynnie along a foot-worn path, I continually look around. No way in hell will I let him sneak up on us. He’s put Cynnie through enough already; she’s only just healing. It’s weird, but I have this need to protect her—like she’s my responsibility. No one deserves the beating he gave her, no one. It was so damn wrong.
Pushing the anger aside, I cast a sweeping gaze around again. It’s a strange sort of countryside here, nothing like home. The ground’s more stones and gravel than grass and the land is almost barren. Maybe it’s a result of the dig. Cynnie leads us up to the left, toward a small knoll at the base of the mountain. The little lip provides cover, but we still have a clear view of the ruined town. Not ideal, but it’s the best spot.
We sit on the ground and wait under the early morning sun that beats down hot and strong. A drink would be nice; my throat already feels like sandpaper and who knows how long we’ll be here. Lucky for us it’s only spring or the heat would be unbearable.
“How long are we going to wait?” Cynnie asks, as if she’s had the same thought.
“As long as it takes.”
She scrunches her brow. “It could take days.”
“Then we’ll wait days.”
“Harris can’t cover for that long.”
She glances over the knoll for a few seconds, then slips down, arms wrapped around her middle. Did she see something? My gut twists in anticipation and I take a quick peek. Nothing. Only a few minutes pass then she does the same thing again, only now she rocks on her heels. I sneak another look too, still nothing. Must be nerves, but she needs to sit the hell still. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her. I didn’t think it through; her seeing Nik again probably wasn’t a great idea. There are other places she could be other than about to directly face her attacker. Shit, she probably needs to talk about what happened and I’m just . . . she needs Mae, not me.
