Catrina. I pressed my fingers to my lips and then gripped the steering wheel again. She was the only acquaintance I had much to do with anymore, and because I didn’t entirely trust her, I’d been extremely discreet with my connections to her. Other than an occasional professional contact, I’d simply never been able to keep a female acquaintance for long, so I’d pulled back, I’d withdrawn, isolated myself. I’d thought somehow it was my fault, that I was too cold, too distant. Why else would my newest women friends, year after year after year, not return my calls or ever show up for a planned lunch? Friendships seemed out of the question for me. As soon as a promising friendship started, it was over, and not once did I ever know why the other woman had dropped me. If what Eric was saying was true, becoming friends with me had probably cost them their lives.
“Catrina. How did you know about Catrina? The old man knew about her, too.”
Eric sobered. “I work for him.”
“Who?”
“Myrddin.”
“I thought you worked for Josh.”
“I do. But I’m Myrddin’s inside man. I’m the one who took him food through the tunnels and kept him alive. Unfortunately I couldn’t get him out of there without blowing my cover, so he insisted on staying. Everything he knows, I know. He’s given me full authority to speak for him.” Not even a smile. “So you don’t know why all this is happening?”
“No. I mean, Myrddin was talking crazy stuff in the vault, but…I’m not sure about any of it.” Too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Everything I’d thought was real had been shown to me for what it was: an illusion.
“Centuries ago, there was a group of women. They were enemies of the Adrianos. Quite possibly the only people the Adrianos ever feared. They were scattered to the corners of the earth and nearly wiped out. Max Adriano dedicated years of his life to tracking down their descendants and decimating their growing ranks. The manuscript in the trunk—that’s what he used to find them.”
“Myrddin told me. The family crests in the margins. A reverse genealogy,” I murmured above the patter of rain.
He thought about my interpretation, then agreed. “A sort of reverse genealogy, yes. Instead of finding the ancestors, he found the descendants. He also found their tiles. Generations of his forefathers have been searching for them. But Max? He was methodical, ruthless. That’s why Myrddin and I hoped to keep you away from the palazzo. And to keep you from getting that manuscript in the first place.”
The rain lightened and a ray of sunshine struck the automobile. I pushed the accelerator with more confidence.
“The bad information you passed to me on the San Francisco job. You did that intentionally.”
He nodded. His gaze raked across my face. Something sparked at me—a desperate tenderness, a wish, a desire that could not be requited. “Better that you be in jail and that manuscript in safe hands than you bring it back to Simon. Max lost it before the advent of photocopying, so there was only one copy. He took it with him to Poland to track down a family there, and while it was out of the Adriano vault, it was stolen and later fell into Nazi hands. All these years, it’s been lost. It showed up on Simon’s radar after the Berlin Wall fell, and he’s been chasing it ever since. The private investor you took it from refused to deal with the Adrianos—bad business deal from years ago—and would never have sold it to them. It was incredibly valuable to Simon, mostly because it was the key to finding his enemies and making sure they never discovered their heritage.”
And I had delivered it to Simon personally. The book was my history—and apparently my destiny. “And Myrddin told you all this?” The story seemed to match the scant bit of information I’d been given in the vault.
“Yes. Myrddin told me he’s been fighting Max and his boys for several years now, since before the time I joined Adriano Security on the recommendation of my college roommate—Josh. Max and Myrddin were old friends, closer than brothers, the old man told me. Myrddin has dedicated the remainder of his life to tracking down those of your kind before the Adrianos can find you.”
The rain in front of us suddenly vanished. The road was dry. I glanced in the side mirror and saw nothing but blackness behind me. Except the blackness was getting closer, closer. I urged the accelerator all the way to the floor.
“Whatever happens to you and me,” he said, “we can’t let that manuscript or those tiles fall back into Simon’s and Caleb’s hands.”
I glanced in the mirror. Benny sat calmly staring out the window at the sunny fields, his headphones securely clamped over his ears while he lost himself in what must have been an incredible story to hold his attention through most of the storm. He couldn’t see the storm behind us, only sunshine ahead.
I could only hope that Simon hadn’t discovered my daughter, but I couldn’t think of any easy way to ask Eric, not without tipping him off. Eric had been astonishingly candid with me, almost as if he had only a short time to get his point across and disappear forever from my life as so many other acquaintances and potential friends had.
There it was, then. All that hidden Scorpio intensity, better seen with my intuition than my eyes. I wanted to see it close-up. I wanted to touch it. I wasn’t positive that I could trust him, but I could work with him. For the moment, at least.
Eric shifted in his seat. His eyes glinted at me in the odd light of the sun ahead and the black clouds behind. “Faster,” he urged.
I stomped the accelerator. He didn’t need to tell me.
“They shouldn’t have found us,” I said. “The three men in the gray BMW. They shouldn’t have been behind us. They found us after you removed the tracker.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“That, I do not know. Unless you had a second tracker on your car, and that’s entirely possible.”
A drop of rain hit the trunk of the car. Odd. The storm was catching up with us even though the wind outside was blowing against it.
“Drive faster.”
“The polizia—”
“Don’t worry about the police. You can outrun them. The weather? No.”
I kicked the accelerator to the floor. The fields and the occasional automobile we met all blurred past. The speedometer needle rose until I could no longer see it.
“Myrddin said something about the Adrianos being able to control the weather. Is it true? Does Simon have some kind of new technology?”
“No, not new technology. It’s ancient.”
Rain splattered across the back of the Mercedes. The storm was catching up with us. Again. We wouldn’t be able to stay out of it much longer.
“I know you’re not fond of making plans,” I said to Eric in the seat beside me, “but I think it’s time to make an exception.”
Eric shot me a resigned look. “All right then. We’ll find a place to stop. Defense will be a problem, though. We have only one weapon between the two of us. Unless you have something hidden under your seat.”
I shook my head. The evening before, Eric had taken my sole weapon, the one I’d taken from the guard at the entrance. I knew better than to arrive at the palazzo with any kind of weapons hidden inside or under the automobile—Adriano security always confiscated them and made me look bad to Simon. I was expected to have some kind of weapon on my person, and in most cases I had to surrender that at the security gate, as well. So generally I didn’t even bother.
“No other weapons,” I said. “Nothing but our wits.” A few raindrops splashed on the windshield. “If we could find a church—”
He laughed. “You think sacred ground would keep the Adrianos at bay? That’s never happened before. They’re not vampires or zombies. They’re mortal men.”
I sniffed. “Mortal men who never die of natural causes. I’ve heard the rumor.”
“It’s because of the ley lines under the palazzo. And under their other estates. The ley lines keep them healthy. Since I’ve been at the palazzo, I’ve been more…vital than ever in my life.” He’d paused a
s if to say virile but thought better of it. Still, the pause was enough to make me bite my lip. “After a few days on the grounds, you start to feel invincible.”
“The ley lines. The rivers of energy.”
“Not just that. Power. Power to communicate. Power to heal. Power to kill. Energy isn’t evil. It’s pure. It’s all in how it’s used, and they’ve learned how to harness it. When it’s tapped into, it’s like opening a door. Some keys open doors and some keys keep them tightly locked.”
“That’s how they’re able to send storms to block our path.” I gritted my teeth. How could we fight that kind of power?
“Exactly. They’ve been experimenting with weather manipulation for at least a decade. The first big test was in the States. They were able to hold the jet stream in place for days. Endless rains. Broken dams. Flooded the Mississippi River and St. Louis. It was a big story then. In those days, there weren’t that many weather anomalies. Now you’ve got tornadoes popping up out of blue skies and hurricanes that defy explanation.”
“All because of ley lines? I thought they’d been around for years. I know I read about them when I was a kid.” I heard about them once or twice, too. Mostly from Bohemian types who pretended to be psychic. “I’d never really considered them to be a scientific fact.”
“Not just ley lines. More to it than that. It’s the tiles, and who knows what else? Simon’s become a little too interested in hunting down artifacts that emit unusual energies. Radiological electromagnetic energy fields.”
I nodded. “Myrddin told me. They’re some kind of energy waves that affect the brain, right? Makes people hear things or see things.”
“Some people, yes. Not many. Not until recently. Most people who experience it won’t even talk about it. They don’t want anyone to think they’re crazy.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Do you feel it? See it? Hear it?”
He shook his head. “It doesn’t seem to affect me directly. I do know, though, that there’s more of this energy in the world than ever before. As the world becomes more populated and ‘civilized,’ the elements that give off this type of energy are brought together and the energy is magnified exponentially. For millennia they’ve been left alone, buried under continents or oceans, but now they’re being combined in ways they haven’t been put together before. Like your ancestors did in the tiles.”
“They’re benign when they’re separate?”
“Everything emits an energy signature. Even inanimate objects. But put certain energies together…”
“And they change? Like in chemistry? Put hydrogen and oxygen—two gases—together and you have water?”
“Yes. The energies are different now. More people are feeling them. It’s like the vibrations in the air have been ratcheted up a notch or two. The Adrianos have been studying the side effects of these energies for several years now. There’s been a dramatic increase in anxiety attacks, depression, neurological disorders, especially in the States, where commerce and affordability make it possible for the average citizen to own objects that once sat thousands of miles apart. Chunks of New Age crystals. Jewelry with stones from all over the world. Some energies weren’t meant to be mixed.”
“The Adrianos mixed these new energies? These radiological electro—”
“No. The evolution of our race did. The Adrianos simply know how to use them.”
A wave of rain washed over the automobile and was gone, almost as if it were the outer concentric circle of a hurricane.
“Eric, like I said before, I think we should find a church.”
“And like I said before, it won’t do any good. Simon and Caleb will not care that we’re in a church. The Adrianos’ ties to the Church are not holy. The Church is just another tool in their arsenal, and Simon may give his sons Biblical names to prove his devoutness to the pope, but it means nothing beyond politics.”
“Actually, Monsieur Cabordes, I wasn’t thinking of sacred ground. I was thinking of higher ground. We need the advantage of being able to see them coming.”
“I have a contact on the coast. With some persuasion, he may be willing to shelter us for a few days until we can get our bearings.”
“Great. How far?”
“About fifty kilometers.”
“That’s not going to work. We’re almost out of petrol.”
We stared at each other. I flexed my aching fists on the steering wheel. The BMW wasn’t close by, as far as we knew, and the storm would hold it at bay. Cat was in Paris and too far away to be of any help at the moment. We had the tiles, the book, the boy, one gun and each other, but once again we were running out of options.
Eric studied the road ahead. “There. Up ahead, where you see that clump of trees. Turn there. There’s a monastery up on the hill. Not a church, but it has the advantage of height.”
I followed his advice, unable to keep my eyes off the sinking fuel gage. I was amazed we’d made it this far. The storm hit us from the side as I pushed down the tree-lined road toward the hill. The monastery had been built into the earth, and while it was centuries old, it wasn’t vacant. Like many old holy buildings in the European countryside, it had been converted into a cross between a hostel and an inn.
“We’re going to stay here?” I asked. The storm dumped water all around us so that we could see nothing of the monastery except the lamps on the posts outside.
Eric nodded once. “We’ll be safe for a while. As long as it’s storming, they can’t track us. Even military weapons have trouble tracking targets in bad weather, so we’ll use Simon’s disadvantage to our advantage. As long as the storm rages, it buys us time, and time is what I need to get Benny safely to his father.”
I turned the key and killed the engine. “And I need to find a way to slip away unnoticed while you’re taking Benny back.” That meant this would be my last night—my only night—with Eric. I’d probably never see him again. And I wanted to see him again.
“You have to get away,” Eric agreed. “We’ll have a day, probably. Maybe two if we play it well.”
“And if we don’t?” My doubts started to set in. The Adrianos would most likely catch up. Despair washed over me. Not only might this be my last night with Eric but my last night, period. “Simon thinks I know more than I do.”
“Aubrey, Simon will simply dismember everyone you care about, appendage by appendage, until you tell him about your ancestry or make something up. Then, after you’ve told him everything to his satisfaction, he will very quickly, very quietly, very efficiently put a bullet into the temple of everyone you care for, make you watch and then do the same to you. Simon is no killer. He’s a cold-blooded assassin and he’s just as efficient and courteous about it as he is when he’s glad-handing at a gala fund-raising event.”
I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath again. I forced myself to exhale. “Simon promised to turn me over to Caleb when he was done with me.”
“Caleb, on the other hand, is less concerned with efficiency than Simon. He will keep you alive for days. He will employ sexual tortures you can only imagine. He will deprive you of oxygen until your brain is damaged beyond repair. After that, he will keep you alive a few days more, long after your spirit has left you. Or he might drug you and fill your mind with irreversible madness, then turn you loose on the streets of Naples, slobbering and biting your tongue—”
“Stop! Just stop it!” I yanked my head in Benny’s direction. “Don’t let him hear you.”
Eric shook his head. “He’s listening to stories of a boy and his dragon. He can’t hear me. Can you?”
“I read you loud and clear, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I won’t let Caleb do that to you, Aubrey. I swear by the Holy Mother, I won’t let it happen.”
My throat tightened and I looked away. I knew what I had to do. Something I’d rarely done in the past decade.
“Will you…Eric, will you help me?”
He smiled, but there was no joy in it, only sadness. “D
o you trust me?”
I liked this man. I really did. I liked his sense of integrity and his love of children. I like everything about him, including the way he looked. I wanted to know him better and I thought by the look in his eyes that he might feel the same.
But did I trust him? My head said no. My heart said no. But my gut instinct screamed yes. I told myself I had no choice, but I knew it was a lie designed to protect my heart.
“Yes.”
Chapter 11
Inside the lobby of the monastery-inn, I carefully peeled back the curtain and peered out the window. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t see anything anyway. Even if it hadn’t been night, the raging storm outside blotted out any light that was left.
“Signora,” the man behind the desk pleaded. “Come away from the window. You will be struck by lightning.”
I smiled at him. He was a little younger than Eric but not nearly as handsome. His hair was close-cropped, except at the fringe, which hung low into his dark eyes. My presence aggravated the frown lines on his face. He fidgeted with a halogen lantern, setting it on the desk for quick retrieval if he needed it during the storm. He pocketed a small flashlight.
I shook my head at him. I was less worried about lightning than I was about a sniper’s bullet. I permitted the heavy curtain to fall back into place. I had no idea if any of the Adriano henchmen were out there or how long we had before they found us, but for the moment, we were safe. We were alive. Thanks to a storm, no one could find us—yet.
“Signora, please,” pleaded the night manager. “Go to your room. Enjoy your husband. Sleep. Storm so bad. You not go anywhere tonight.”
I pursed my lips. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should go enjoy Eric. I might not get another chance to find out what made him catch his breath besides running for his life.
Lorna Tedder Page 14
