Lorna Tedder

by Dark Revelations (lit)

  In the periphery of my vision I saw the movement of men as they stepped out from behind trees, columns, walls, gates, everywhere. Within a few slow, steady minutes, men in black and camouflage lined the way ahead. Every man had a weapon drawn. Every man was silent.

  I held my breath as I pressed forward. Benny snuggled closer against me. “Keep your eyes closed, sweetheart. I don’t want you to see anything ugly.” He nodded, and I felt the muscles around his eyes scrunch up as he turned his face into my neck. Trusting, sweet. Eric was probably to blame for that.

  Men kept coming out of the gardens ahead of me, lining the drive for as far as I could see, all the way to the main house and to the path beyond to the eastern tower of the four. Still, I had clear passage as long as I held their little prince. Clear passage to the tower. I’d known twenty paces ago that there’d be even less of a chance of escape for me than I’d ever dreamed. I was safe only until the “artifacts” I carried could be authenticated—or not. Simon wouldn’t kill me and risk losing the whereabouts of the real artifacts.

  My knee was killing me. I grimaced with every step.

  A man up ahead, a hulking blonde, stepped out in front of me, legs spread, his weapon aimed directly at Benny and me. I stopped.

  “Algernon!” I heard Eric’s sharp command from behind me. “Stop being a hero and move aside! She’s been promised a clear path to get the child to his father. No one’s to touch her until the authenticity of those artifacts has been validated.”

  Algernon’s smile quirked to one side. “Caleb says otherwise.”

  I knew what he meant. It didn’t matter if he killed me. He needed to shoot through Benny to get to me. As the old saying goes, two birds with one stone.

  I pressed Benny closer to me, holding his head tight against my cheek and his little legs wrapped furtively around my waist. He held on to my neck in a crushing squeeze.

  “Algernon!” a voice above bellowed.

  Benny shuddered. “Is my father angry?” he whispered. “Was my mother bad again?” I shushed him and he buried his face in my neck.

  I glanced up into the sun to see a shadow leaning out over the stone battlements of the northern tower. Another figure joined him, much thinner and smaller. Pauline. Josh and Pauline, already in position and waiting for me. As long as they stood toward the center, they couldn’t be seen from below, but if they moved to the edge, a sniper could pick them off from this distance. I was glad now that Caleb had once courted me with a candlelit dinner on the western tower, so I knew the layout of the semirefurbished ruins. But step close to the edge? The men on the driveway could easily take aim at me. I’d have to remember that when I took my place on the eastern tower.

  “Algernon!” Josh bellowed again.

  That startled me. I’d never heard Josh raise his voice. I’d hadn’t known he was capable of it.

  “Algernon! Put that weapon down! Dr. Moon has been granted safe passage to bring my son to me. If one hair on his head is harmed, I’ll come down there and kill you myself.”

  I smiled to myself. I’d known Josh for a long time, but I’d never seen him so passionate about anything. Tension vibrated in the timbre of his voice. For as cold as Pauline seemed as a parent, Josh was her polar opposite. At the moment, though, Josh believed I was a kidnapper, and so our previous friendly relationship was now in doubt.

  Algernon cursed in a language I’d never heard and stepped to the edge of the drive. He didn’t put down his gun, but he lowered it in deference to his employer.

  In the two minute exchange, my knee had stiffened, and it creaked as I took a step forward. I winced again, took another step, and kept limping. So much for not showing my weaknesses to my enemies. They all knew I was wounded. If I hadn’t been, I might have pretended to be wounded, the way a mother bird feigns a broken wing to lure a predator from her young. But this was real, and I was in real trouble.

  I limped past the main house, up the hill, a little farther. The incline would be slight but it was still an incline and I felt it multiplied in my tendons. Descending the hill would be even worse, but my plan was to escape in a different direction. Then again, most of my plans had not worked out so well recently.

  By the time I reached the gaping doorway of the eastern tower, I was almost dragging my right leg behind me. Benny hadn’t seemed too heavy when I’d first extracted him from the backseat of the Volkswagen, but now he seemed to be the weight of the world. Obviously Eric had noticed. He’d ceased giving me the obligatory shove forward.

  “Keep going!” he barked loudly from behind me. Then under his breath he whispered, “Keep going, Aubrey.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the henchmen on the driveway. They’d closed ranks behind us and stood at the base of the eastern tower. Not one of them came near the door or the tower walls.

  I frowned upward at sunlight seeping through the stairwell openings of the stone floors above me. Stairs. Stone stairs. God, why stairs? I’d known about the stairs when I’d formulated my plan, but my weight had been off my knee at that moment and my mind had not registered how much climbing stairs would hurt. I whimpered before I realized it.

  Eric moved in behind me. He must have heard me, because he scooped an arm around my waist, gathering me up and helping to pull me along the stairs beside him. No one was watching. He had to bear my weight, Benny’s and the fake artifacts in the tapestry over his shoulder.

  Three stories up, I emerged in sunlight and fell to the stone floor of the upper deck of the tower. Benny tumbled down unharmed beside me, and the two of us scooted to the center of the tower floor, where we wouldn’t be seen by snipers below when we stood.

  Eric didn’t bother to crouch. He stood to his full height and looked around, pointing his gun to one side but making it appear that he had the gun on me. “The players are all here,” he said without moving his lips.

  “My daughter? Do you see my daughter?”

  He squinted into the western sun, raised a hand to shade his eyes. Then he looked at the southern tower back to the western tower, and then to the north. “There’s a girl here,” he said. “I don’t know her. Never seen her before.”

  God. Oh, God! It was true.

  “Where is Dr. Moon?” I heard Simon’s voice coming from the south. Player number one on the southern tower. Josh and Pauline on the northern tower.

  “It’s okay, Duke,” Eric yelled back. “She’s right here. So is Benedict. And the artifacts. It’s all here.”

  “Then tell Dr. Moon to get to her feet. She’s tried my patience long enough.”

  Eric didn’t move. “Aubrey,” he whispered, “are you ready?”

  I shook my head. “No. But it doesn’t matter. I have to do this. Just…” I remembered the touch of his hand and the stroke of his palm against my hair. “Just remember what you said. That you won’t let Caleb take me.”

  He nodded. “I swear by the Mother.”

  “No snipers up there?” I asked.

  “None. Just stay to the center of the tower. No one’s going to take aim at you as long as you’re carrying either Benny or the artifacts. They won’t risk anything being dropped.”

  “She’s keeping the artifacts here for the exchange,” Eric called out. “I’m taking Benny back to his parents.”

  I heard Pauline’s waiflike voice thanking God and all the saints in Italian. Most likely she was terrified that her little insurance policy might get hurt in the exchange and she’d lose her prize position as the wife and mother of an Adriano.

  Benny opened his eyes and realized where he was. The tower. A tall tower. The poor little boy was afraid of heights, terrified of them. He grabbed Eric’s thigh and clung to him.

  “Come, Benny. I’m going to carry you back to your mother and father now, but I want you to wrap your arms around my neck and keep your eyes closed and hold on tight. And I will take you there. Okay?”

  The child nodded emphatically.

  Eric glanced back one last time before he started across the narro
w bridge to the northern tower. We locked gazes for a brief second. He seemed to will me to see the promise in his eyes. I swear.

  Chapter 16

  I rose to my feet, the tapestry loaded with fake artifacts drawn close to my chest, and watched as Eric made his way gingerly across the stone bridge to the tower were Josh and Pauline waited. It seemed to take forever for Eric and the boy to reach the other side. When they did, Josh grabbed Benny and hugged him while Pauline made a fuss over her baby boy’s mussed hair. My eyes stung, even though the reunion wasn’t mine.

  “Take my grandson below!” Simon ordered from the southern tower.

  As Pauline, Josh and Benny disappeared from sight, I scanned the other two towers. Simon stood at the edge of the southern tower, two figures behind him at the other edge but too distant for me to recognize. Caleb stood at the western tower, the sun behind him and in my eyes. I could see his silhouette but not his features, though I knew his physique all too well. A woman stood beside him, also in silhouette. She appeared to be taller than me, although next to Caleb she looked short.

  I fully expected Caleb to spew some profanity at me. His stance was defiant, and with the sun in my eyes I could tell no more than that, but it was enough.

  “Cabordes!” Simon shouted. “Get below! See to my grandson!”

  Eric shot me a helpless look. He paused for a split second, just long enough for Simon to frown. His Adam’s apple bobbed with a swallow. I knew I was on my own. And so did he.

  “Cabordes!”

  Eric raised his weapon skyward, nonthreateningly but so Simon could see it.

  “Do you have a problem, Cabordes?” Simon’s tone was one that I had heard much more often from Caleb, but Caleb remained silent, subdued, and leaned close to the woman at his side.

  “I would prefer to remain here, Duke.” Eric answered him strongly, confidently. I had been close enough to the man for the past twenty-four hours to feel the fear rise off him. “In case we need an extra weapon. Should she…try to escape.”

  Simon’s head jerked in a nod. “Very well. You may stay. But she’s not going anywhere.” Simon pivoted and called to me. “Dr. Moon? Aubrey! Aubergine de Lune!” Then he grinned. “My, you’re looking worse for the wear, aren’t you? Did you bring my tiles back?”

  I held up the tapestry bundle of clinking ceramics but said nothing.

  “I can’t hear you, Dr. Moon. Did you bring my tiles back?”

  “I have the tiles,” I yelled back in a hoarse voice. “I’m willing to exchange them for my daughter. To let her go free.”

  I heard a female voice protest and glanced back at Caleb and the woman at his side. She was questioning something, but I couldn’t hear her words on the wind. I saw her silhouette against the sun. I should know that profile anywhere. I’d seen it often enough in the photographs my private investigator had taken of Lilah and I remembered it, very tenderly from so many years ago…from Matthew when he’d been a young man, when he’d been alive and when he’d been mine.

  “And the book? Jeanne la Pucelle’s heresy?”

  “Actually, it was Isabelle’s heresy,” I mumbled under my breath, “and it wasn’t heresy at all.

  “Yes,” I lied. “I have your book.” I cringed at my own words. I’d spent so many years lying—lying to cover up, lying to be something I wasn’t. Maybe to some degree I’d always have to live a lie, but I didn’t have to like it. Not anymore. I didn’t want that kind of life. I wanted one where I could speak the truth and be proud of it, where I could be myself, where I could just be.

  “Quiet,” Simon said to someone behind him. I could barely see the figure of a woman and a man behind him, though I could tell that the man was one of the younger henchmen. Then Simon turned to the western tower across from me. “Caleb. Send her over to get the tiles.” He gestured at the woman at Caleb’s side.

  I squinted to see her. Lilah? It had to be. Again I saw the profile—beautiful. Shoulder-length hair pulled back into a ponytail that sprayed out around the back of her head. She was probably scared. She said something to Caleb, but I still couldn’t hear her words. I could tell that Caleb was talking to her softly. He didn’t seem threatening toward her as she shook her head, hard enough to shake her ponytail from side to side. Young, vibrant, full of life. I hadn’t seen her since she’d been ten years old. My arms ached to hold her again. But there’d be no time, no time at all. I have to get her out of here.

  “Caleb!” Simon thundered, and it surprised me to see Caleb startle at his father’s voice. “Did you not hear me? Get her out there—now!”

  Caleb scowled back at his father. I couldn’t actually see the scowl, but I could feel it in his posture. I held my palm above my eyes against the sun and squinted harder. I’d chosen the eastern tower as my own because of the scaffolding, because of my escape plan. I had probably waited a little too late in the day, because the sun sinking in the western sky put me at a definite disadvantage.

  “She says heights make her dizzy,” Caleb called back.

  Simon threw up his hands. “I don’t care if she’s—” I knew very little Italian, but I knew profanity when I heard it. “She’s expendable.”

  My heart caught in my throat. Expendable? Lilah?

  “Not if you want these artifacts!” I screeched back at him. “You let her stay where she is.”

  Simon ignored me. “Caleb, I told you not to bring her up here. You’re the one who made her a part of this.”

  “Father—”

  “I will not have you turned into a weakling by a woman. Do you understand me, Caleb? She might as well be of some use, and you’re too heavy for that walk or I’d have you out there on the crosswalk.” He gestured at the stone bridge between the towers. “Get her out there.”

  “My daughter!” I screeched loud enough that my throat ached, raw. “I’ll give you the artifacts. Just let my daughter go!”

  Caleb made an openhanded gesture. “Please, Father—”

  I’d heard Caleb desperate before but desperate in different ways. But I’d never seen Caleb Adriano like this. He conferred with the woman again. This time I saw her silhouette perch one hand on his chest. Briefly, calming. Then she nodded and turned toward me. It made my skin crawl to see her touching Caleb like that, and I prayed that he had not charmed her into his bed as he had with me.

  With cupped hands around his mouth, Caleb yelled back to me, “She’s coming over. You bring the tiles. She’ll meet you halfway.”

  I pulled the tapestry bundle close to me and stepped to the edge of the eastern tower’s wall. Despite the earthquake activity over the past few years, the crosswalks were still in place. Most of them, anyway. Between my tower and the one where Simon and the two other figures stood, a span twice the length of my body was missing. The crosswalk that Eric had traversed to the northern tower was still intact and even had stone guardrails. The crosswalk formed a square, with each angle being one of the towers, but it also formed an X between the towers, and X marked the spot of the exchange exactly as I’d directed. I would meet my daughter in the center and wait there with the tiles until she had crossed safely to the eastern tower and I would scramble back to join her, hook my utility belt over the scaffolding and swing her over the fence of the Adriano compound to safety. From there, while Simon figured out how to get to the tiles in the X, we’d scramble down to the opening of the tunnel Myrddin had shown me and hide there until we could make our way back to where Eric and I had hidden the car, even if it meant waiting for days.

  If I couldn’t get away with Lilah, I’d do everything in my power to slow down the Adriano henchmen so she could escape. I smiled to myself, realizing suddenly that I knew there was no way Simon would live up to his end of the agreement when it came to exchanging artifacts for my daughter. Then again, these weren’t the real artifacts.

  I stepped out onto the narrow crosswalk without bothering to put any pressure on the there-sometimes-and-sometimes-not handrails. I caught my breath at last. I felt safer here, up hi
gh, than on the ground. This was my turf, the air. I’d spent so many nights clinging to ropes and the sides of walls. I had no fear of heights, no fear of falling and—at the moment—no fear of the sudden stop at the end of a long fall. I limped forward, the bundle in my arms. Within seconds, I was at the center, waiting for my daughter.

  Lilah was much more timid. I’d spent the last decade hanging from threads and wasn’t afraid of heights, but this girl was. As terrified of them as Benny. She’d seemed so confident moments ago, yet now uncertainty took over and the light around her faded. She stepped tentatively onto the crosswalk, right foot first, and then sidestepped in my direction.

  Something about her profile reminded me of Matthew. Of one time in particular. We’d been at the Tor in Glastonbury, the mound where Druid priestesses had once gathered to learn and to heal, and we’d lain there in the grass and talked of the child I carried and how nothing else in the world mattered but being together. I’d reclined in his arms, full of joy, his child growing inside me, and I’d admired his profile against the misty sky.

  Lilah inched closer to me, one side step after another. A breeze stirred and caught her ponytail. It fluttered all the way to the clip close to her head. She bent her knees and rocked unexpectedly.

  “Don’t look down,” I called to her.

  The breeze slapped at her wide-legged pants, gathered at the ankle as if fresh from a fairy tale of harem girls and belly dancers. I couldn’t tell the color of the cloth with the sun behind her, but it glinted off the gold flat shoes she wore. I strained to see her face in the shadow. Would I see Matthew in her eyes as I once had? She looked down at her feet, her chin close to the leather vest she wore zipped to the neck. Sunbeams caught the gold of a hoop at one ear.

  I ached to see her face, to look into her eyes again. Would she recognize me? Would she hate me for having left her? Would she be happy that I wasn’t dead after all?