by Amy Lignor
“Ain’t it cool?”
“You’re such a geek.”
“Look who’s talking, Madame Librarian.”
Leah frowned. “I happen to be a very cool librarian.”
“Whatever makes you happy, Mrs. Lowery,” he stated, pulling her to his side.
The new title seemed to hover in the air for a time.
“If you want to keep your name, it’s okay.” He grinned. “After all, Tallent certainly fits you well.”
Gareth watched her steady gaze; it was as if he could see the wheels turning in her incredible mind. He meant what he said, but if he had a choice, this was one time he wanted Leah to let her heart make the decision.
“Nah,” she finally uttered. “I think I’ll take Lowery. Leah Lowery. Yeah, that works.”
His entire body grew warm as she spoke the words he wanted to hear. “I love an old-fashioned girl.”
“Saves time, too,” Leah replied offhandedly.
“Time?”
“Sure. When you kick, it’ll be much easier for me to get everything. With the last name already in place, there’s less red tape.”
“Very funny.”
“Then I can go off to some island somewhere and buy myself a whole herd of pretty, tan neoi to do my bidding.” Her eyebrows wiggled on her forehead.
He laughed. Yet another reason why Leah was perfect, he thought to himself. Money and objects actually meant nothing to her. Her own family’s wealth was grand, yet all Leah wished for was to receive the same love, honesty and respect she offered to others. These were certainly the most priceless gifts he’d ever gotten from a woman, and the easiest wish he’d ever granted in return.
“Your parents did a great job, you know,” her voice held true emotion. “Even if it was for only a short time, you turned out pretty damn wonderful, Lowery.”
“They were great people.”
He sighed. Leah’s wit had offered him a small reprieve from the harsh memories, but he knew they had to regain focus in order to find answers as to what, if anything, his father had been doing here long after he’d been given the title of corpse.
“I think Kathryn believed our parents were crazy long ago. But after what we saw in Glastonbury, she—”
“—converted,” Leah nodded.
Glastonbury, he thought. The place where a gate actually did exist. God, how he wished he could find his parents and tell them that they’d been right all along—that everything they’d believed so strongly in had been proven to be true by their own children.
Gareth thought about his unyielding faith. The theory of God versus Satan was at the center of it all—good and evil dancing in unison. He knew why people had to grab on to the sweet faith that promised a beautiful paradise was waiting for them when death came knocking. Only trouble was, no matter how sweet faith might be, people always forgot that it came hand-in-hand with the most evil creature imaginable.
CHAPTER 7
He stopped walking. Turning his attention back to the ancient ruins, he perused the area where strong men once practiced in order to become the greatest of athletes and most beloved by the citizens of Pergamon.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched his prey exchange a loving embrace and began to get anxious. The duo was walking as if they had not a care in the world. They assessed various things but didn’t seem to be studying one thing with any need or desire. It was as if the couple were on vacation, not an actual mission.
His blood pressure started to rise. Something had to be here. Why else would Leah Tallent choose Pergamon to explore? Anxiety was boiling in him now. He wanted to rush forward, take her by the hand, and make her join forces with him. Kill Lowery and leave him behind—let his bones turn to ash and join the rest who already lay entombed in this endless swath of dirt.
Taking a deep breath to calm down, he watched Leah suddenly turn around and look back in his direction. Letting his body relax, he immediately edged closer to one of the groups that was touring the site, attempting to camouflage himself as just another sheep in the herd.
Waiting for a few moments, he took a chance and turned ever so slightly, gazing out from behind the black shades that were protecting him. Slowly, the librarian turned back to Lowery and once again began listening to him speak. But just as the relief from not being discovered flooded through him, he watched her beautiful chin rise up like a bullet shot from a gun. It was as if Leah had transformed into a wolf before his very eyes…catching the scent of her very own prey.
In less than a second, Leah dashed from the path and out of his sight.
His heart beat faster. She’s found something.
CHAPTER 8
Leah tried to calm the paranoia that seemed to be pulsing through her veins. There’s nobody back there, she yelled at herself.
The groups behind them milling around were made up of sightseers. Families, newlyweds walking hand-in-hand, school groups—they were all yapping at, to, or with each other, and the looks on their faces ranged from excitement to boredom, depending on the age.
She seriously had to relax. As she turned back to Gareth and scanned the area just ahead of them, her gaze fell on a set of stone steps off to the side of the path.
“And we find Athena yet again,” Gareth said, following her gaze.
Leah felt the chill in her bones. “Her temple is in Athens.”
“She was big all over. A large statue of her actually sat in the middle of the library here, and there was a temple dedicated to her as well.”
Without another word, Leah sprinted off the path to explore the spot. Her mind buzzed with excitement. It wouldn’t be the first time the Goddess Athena had led them in the right direction. “Where was her temple?”
He pointed at the small steps that rose up to meet a square marble base. “Unfortunately, you’re looking at it.”
Leah raced up the steps and walked around the empty square. Rich, green grass grew within the area, making the spot a complete opposite from the brown soil dying of thirst that made up the rest of the acropolis. The location was also decorated with small, white flowers that looked even more out of place. There were no cracked columns to be found anywhere near the site, but interspersed in the clumps of inexplicable blossoms were small piles of black and white stones.
Leah felt immediate disappointment. “There’s nothing here.”
“I think Athena already led us as far as she can,” Gareth spoke softly.
“Or maybe she’s abandoned us completely because we took her stuff and then let some scuzzbag run off with her shield.” Sighing, Leah kicked the glossy stones.
After a moment, she stared down at the odd piles. “Wonder what these were for,” she mumbled.
Joining her on the small base, Gareth examined the stones. “I’m sure you know.”
“I’m sure I do, too.” But it would help if I could find my brain, Leah thought.
She could feel his supportive hand on her back. “Athena was celebrated as the Goddess of Wisdom and Justice here, not the Goddess of War. So this is probably where the judgments took place.”
“I thought all sacrifices were made up on the Altar of Zeus?”
He nodded. “Those were sacrifices made to the gods. But there was a justice system for all the common folk back then. This would be where a person would come to plead their case, then each member of the jury assembled would place a stone into a large urn. If the accused received more white stones than black, they were innocent.”
“And if mostly black, they were shit out of luck.”
“Something like that.” He grinned. “I suppose that’s when the guilty ones were taken up and thrown on the sacrificial altar.”
Bending down, Leah picked up a pile of the glossy stones and let them drop through her fingers, creating a zebra-colored waterfall. As the stones rained down, Leah caught the last one in the palm of her hand and turned the smooth disc over. She looked up at him. “One side is black and the other is white on this one.”
Gareth’
s brows furrowed. “Never heard of that.” He shrugged. “Maybe if they got that one, the accused got to pick their own punishment?”
“I’ll take death behind door number two, please,” Leah whispered, holding up the multi-colored stone to study it further. “Maybe if this one was pulled out of the urn it meant Athena hadn’t made up her mind yet.”
“Then the accused would have to just sit around and wait for a verdict,” Gareth agreed.
Leah gripped the unique relic in her hand. “They would go mad while they waited around to see if they’d live or die.” She stared at him. “Can you imagine? All alone with your thoughts. I don’t think I could handle that.”
Stretching her back, Leah caught sight of the dark clouds amassing above their heads and felt a sudden shot of panic. Soon the bright, sunny day would be erased. As she evaluated the ominous view, all Leah could think was that the mighty Athena had been watching them from her unknown home and decided to finally bring judgment down upon their heads. They were the pilferers of Athena’s grave in Athens; they were the thieves. And the goddess’s verdict was: Guilty.
Leah tried to dismiss her bout of terror as nothing more than childish fears, but it was no use. “We need to move faster.”
CHAPTER 9
Watching from behind a column, he saw her gait change. Almost as if a bolt of lightning had struck her, Leah’s stride turned short and quick. She was moving away from something, and Gareth had taken off to follow her around the next bend.
Once they were out of sight, he moved forward. He was well-aware of the comments being made all around him. Guides were yelling at their groups, turning them around and leading them back down the acropolis. They had spotted the approaching storm, and were announcing to one and all that they should travel back down to the café and wait undercover until any weather threat had passed on by.
Like the couple before him, however, he didn’t care what Mother Nature had in store. All he was interested in was finding out what was buried here in Pergamon. And the only way to do that was to follow Leah Tallent every step of the way.
Walking up the small steps, he got down on bended knee in an attempt to find a clue as to what Leah had taken from the ground. Small flowers and shiny black and white stones were all he could see. There were no markings in the grass. Nothing had been dug up; nothing seemed to have been removed.
Standing, he gave a frustrated sigh and moved forward. He knew Leah was on the trail of something. She was headed toward some kind of treasure…and he was already reveling in how much fun it was going to be to take that treasure away.
CHAPTER 10
The thunder rumbled. The air had turned so cold that it felt as if the sun had plummeted into the pit of Hell and been replaced by an icy wind. Leah’s heart beat fast. She could swear she felt someone behind her, gaining on her, attempting to stop her from finding a clue that would help in the search for Gareth’s father. All she hoped was that the clue she was looking for didn’t turn out to be a pile of bones.
Spotting the carved pilasters jutting from the ground, like hands reaching for the sky, Leah moved up the small incline toward the two broken monuments sitting side-by-side. Holes had been bored in the top of each, waiting for the architect to return and finish what he’d begun. “What’s this?”
She thought she heard him chuckle. “Drawn to them everywhere, aren’t you?”
Leah peered over at him. “Huh?”
“This place you should know above all things.”
Hearing a drawer of the card catalogue open in her mind, Leah whispered, “The library.”
“The famous Pergamon Library,” Gareth agreed.
“Why famous?”
Moving closer, he touched her cheek. “This data is most definitely in your wheelhouse, so to speak.”
“I’m not firing on all cylinders yet, it seems.”
“Only the Library at Alexandria was larger than this place back in ancient days.”
She nodded slowly as the data seeped into the forefront of her mind. “That’s right. Pergamon held over two hundred thousand documents—one of the greatest collections. It would’ve eventually surpassed Alexandria—a fact which made the rulers of Egypt as mad as could be.” She paused. “Guess Pergamon shouldn’t have stepped on the toes of the big guys.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” he said. “To stop Pergamon from rising in stature, the Egyptians and their allies decided to make it a crime to export papyrus to this part of the world. They wanted to make sure no one dared outshine the perfect place of learning that Queen Cleopatra had created.”
Athena. Cleopatra. Both of the names Gareth spoke had been huge players on this journey. Locations dedicated to both women had held secrets that she and Gareth had found, leading them further down an extremely dark tunnel. Shaking the memories away, Leah tried to clear the fog from her brain.
She heard his soft voice in her ear, “These guys in Pergamon were smart, though. They came up with their own parchment and figured out how to bind documents instead of using scrolls.” He pressed his palm against her back. “Which means this place is basically your very own mother ship calling you home.”
“This is where the book was invented,” Leah mused. She actually felt a chill at the thought, but she had no idea if it came from the dread of what was still lurking here for them to find, or the sheer passion she held for libraries and what they provided to the world. “What happened to it all, again?”
“When the Library at Alexandria was destroyed, Marc Antony wanted to impress the woman he loved. So he decided to loot this building and give all the books found here to Cleopatra.”
Leah could feel the spokes begin to turn inside her so-called wheelhouse. “Satan’s stone. We found that buried in Cleopatra’s Mines.” She turned to look at him. “Maybe Marc Antony found it here and took it with the rest of the stuff. If he did, that could mean Satan’s crown that everyone’s looking for was also here at one point. If all that nonsense about the devil dwelling here was fact, wouldn’t he have been wearing it?”
“I suppose.”
“Maybe there are clues here regarding the crown, which could end up being a link to why your dad was here. According to the journal we found, he had to have been part of some dig here.” Her voice lowered, “Maybe some scumbag in Daniel Bauer’s family tree found out about your parents’ discovery that night back in New Mexico and planned to kidnap them so they could help with all this. Fake an accident. Get two extremely smart people on their team by force…? Bauer certainly wasn’t the first to go after this supposed crown worn by Satan. He was just the latest in a very long line of idiots who wanted to rule the world.”
Gareth’s eyes grew small, he looked as if he was trying to reason Leah’s thoughts in his own mind. “That’s a stretch.”
“Up until now everything we’ve seen and done has been a stretch.”
“True. But even if you’re right—even if Satan’s crown was hidden here at one time, there wouldn’t be any clues left now. Earthquakes took most of this place out, Leah. If anything had been left behind by Satan, of all beings, it would be impossible to find.” He looked around at the broken structure.
“Yeah, well, we do have a tendency to trip over the impossible,” Leah muttered.
Walking through the remants of the open library, she looked up to witness a bizarre marking. Etched into one of the crème-colored pillars was the figure of a bull. On its head rested a crown, and just a few inches above the beast was a five-pointed star.
“The Minotaur,” Gareth said softly. “It looks like…”
“The cover of the journal that we found your father’s picture in.”
She craned her neck, struggling to see better under the now overcast sky. Catching sight of yet another etching, Leah took a step back. Her mind ran wild as she turned her head slowly and stared over her shoulder. Her breath caught in her throat. “Gareth.”
As if hearing the sudden alarm in her tone, Gareth closed the distance between the
m and surveyed the image on the wall. Painted by the hand of a master, the all-seeing eye was open wide. Yet…it was white. Vacant. Dead. It looked like all of its power had been removed.
Turning away, she stared back out at the acropolis. “Gareth.” She heard him turn around, his body now behind her, staring at the new spot that had her mesmerized.
“It would make sense for Satan to have sat there,” she pointed, gazing at the small tree growing right down the hill from the library. Planted beside a flat marble foundation, the tree’s bark was pitch black; the limbs were thin and gnarled. “It would probably be fun for him to sit on a throne that was being watched over by a blind eye that could see no evil.”
A shot of pain raced through her hand, making her jump. Glancing down, Leah watched as the colorful hue began to return to her own marking. The tattoo of the all-seeing eye seemed to be coming back to life, obliterating the scar Bauer had left behind. “What the…?”
She glanced at Gareth who was also watching the metamorphosis. “It’s as if it’s…it’s—”
“Healing.”
“This is crazy,” he whispered.
Leah suddenly didn’t care if it was crazy. She’d take any kind of ‘sight’ she could get right now, even if it came from some type of magic she still didn’t believe in.
“Jesus,” Gareth muttered, looking at the marble foundation spread out before them. “We’re staring at Satan’s Throne.”
This is insane, Leah thought. “Here we go again.”
CHAPTER 11
Gareth’s hand was like a vise; a grip of sheer ice around her wrist. Leah could feel his body tense beside her as they walked slowly down the steps of the Pergamon Library, following the blind eye’s guidance.
“This was where the Altar of Zeus stood.”
Leah spoke quietly, “I’d say it’s a swell spot for an altar where innocent people became chalk-outlines for the enjoyment of a deity that didn’t even exist.”
