“I was afraid you’d forgotten.”
Nidaba lowered her head. “I would never forget. I... I even made a gift for you.”
Natum smiled broadly, his white teeth gleaming in his copper-skinned face. “You did?”
Nodding, Nidaba shyly opened her pouch and extracted a tiny piece of a clay tablet, already baked hard by the sun. She handed it to him.
Natum held it in his palm, and drew it closer. He looked down at it and read aloud the symbols she had inscribed. “‘Nidaba. Eannatum. Forever Friends.’“ He pressed his lips together and closed his hand around the small piece of clay. “Thank you, Nidaba. I will treasure this always.”
She tipped her chin up. “Even when you are a great king and your people shower you with gifts of gold and lapis?”
“This bit of clay is more precious than any of that could ever be.” He opened his palm and looked at it again. “And no mistakes!”
“I had a good teacher.”
“As did I... I hope.” He looked a bit nervously toward the area Nidaba had set up. Candles stood in a circle, and a libation of honeyed wine lay at the ready, beside a dish of salt.
“We’ll soon find out. Have you decided what your request shall be?”
He licked his lips. “Does the priestess Lia know we are doing this, Nidaba?”
Nidaba shook her head. “The priests and priestesses of the temple are planning a stuffy initiation rite for you, to be held in the temple cella, as befits a future king of Lagash,” she told him. “It will be very boring, and I assure you nothing of note will happen.” She smiled. “I’ve learned many secrets, the greatest one being that magick works best when practiced outside, beneath the sky, bare feet in the grass. But if I told them I thought so, I would be condemned for heresy.”
“So might I, if we’re caught,” he said.
“Are you afraid?”
Holding her gaze with his, he shook his head slowly.
“Come, then.” She took his hand, and again the tingling bolt rushed into her, and into him. This they had taken note of, discussed, but neither could explain it. Nor could they explain what happened next.
“My petition to the Gods should be one made for the good of all the people of Lagash, rather than for my personal good.”
“Kingly already, are you?” she teased.
“I am trying to be.”
What a wonderful leader he is going to become, Nidaba thought, but she did not say it aloud. She wouldn’t wish to fill his head with too much arrogance or pride.
“The fishermen have been complaining of dwindling catches,” Natum said. “So I will petition Enki to send an abundance of fish into the waters of the Euphrates.”
Nidaba lifted her brows. “It is a good request,” she told him.
They walked together to the circle, and while Natum sat down in the center, preparing himself for the rite, Nidaba walked ‘round, lighting the candles one by one. Then she moved to the center and sat down, facing Natum. He lifted his palms, and she hers, and the two pressed their hands together. And together they began to chant the incantation.
“Enki me en. Uta am i i ki Enki . I am of Enki. I conjure thee, Enki.”
The sky darkened, and thunder rumbled in the distance. The waters of the Euphrates began to lap against the shoreline.
“Ana-am ersetam nara-am! By Heaven, by Earth, by the river!”
The winds increased, and Nidaba felt a rush of power coursing through her body. She knew Natum felt it too when his fingers laced with hers, clenching tight.
“Amesh ikiba ul ishu-u! Water without taboo!”
Lightning flashed, striking so close by that she felt the jolt sizzle up into her body from the ground, and her eyes flew open. They met Natum’s, and she nodded once. Together they stood, facing the now roiling black waters. They lifted their joined hands, extended their forefingers side by side to point to the waters, and shouted, “Fill the Euphrates with Fish, Enki! Akalu!
Lightning flashed again, this time striking the water itself and causing a huge spout to arise in its midst. The force made the hairs on Nidaba’s nape stand erect, and her skin tingled. Then, slowly, the odd wind died, and the sky cleared. And when it did, she stared, wide-eyed, as fish leapt and jumped amid the now calm waters in numbers she had never seen before.
Nidaba turned to Natum and said, “You must tell no one of our rite, Natum.”
“But why?” He was breathless, his brows arched in wonder as he watched the fish bounding and diving about, where before the waters had appeared barren. “We—look what we did, Nidaba! We caused this. We must tell!”
“No.” She shook her head firmly. “What do you suppose the High Priest of the temple would say of a child who could command such powers as we have just done? More powers than anyone in the temple? More powers than the High Priest himself can command?”
“The High Priest is my father’s most trusted adviser!”
Nidaba swallowed hard and looked at him intently. “I know more of the man than you, Natum. Please, if you are my friend, you will not speak of this.”
He stared hard into her eyes. “Is it so unusual, what we’ve done here today?”
“Unheard of, Natum. We are a powerful force, you and I.”
He nodded once, smiled gently. “Yes. We are that... and more. Because you ask it, Nidaba, I will tell no one.”
“Thank you, Natum.”
Leaning forward, he kissed her cheek very gently. “We are friends,” he said. “There are no thanks needed.”
When he left her there, alone, she wondered which was the greater miracle. The fish splashing about in the water, or the warmth his kiss had left on her cheek.
Chapter 3
“NOW, DO YOU understand what to do?”
George was frowning at Nathan in absolute concentration. “I can do it. Just the way you said.”
“I know you can,” Nathan told him, patting him hard on the shoulder.
They were sitting in a parked car in a rural part of New Jersey, across the street from a century-old building that still had the words “Brooker Asylum” chiseled into its stony face. It was dark outside. Midnight, and neither the moon nor so much as a single star managed to pierce the gloom. A steady drizzle misted the windshield. And it felt damn cold outside.
In his pocket Nathan had a small bottle of ether and a gauze pad. He hoped he didn’t have to use it, but if he did, he figured it was far better than the alternative.
George opened the back door with a gloved hand and got out of the car, bowing his wide back against that cold, misty rain. Nathan glanced beside him at Sheila, who sat behind the wheel. “And you, Sheila? Are sure you want to go through with this?”
She pursed her lips. “If you’re determined to do this, then so am I. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. And I don’t, you know. I don’t like it a bit. This is completely unlike you, Nathan.”
“It’s more like me than you know.” Like the man he’d once been, he thought vaguely. Not the one he’d become. Not the one Sheila thought she knew.
“Ah, you’re talkin’ in circles again. If you knew the woman in the photograph, Nathan, why didn’t you just say so? The authorities would have let you take her—unless she’s totally insane.” Sheila widened her eyes. “Is that it, Nathan? Are you bringin’ a lunatic into the house?”
Nathan took a breath to bolster his waning patience. “It wouldn’t be safe for this woman if anyone were to know where she was. I can’t explain any more than that, Sheila, and I’d appreciate it if you would stop asking me. Just... trust me on this.”
“Oh, sure, and suppose you’re caught? What then, I ask you? Is this crazy woman worth getting yourself thrown into the pen?”
He stared at the building in the distance, with its barred windows and safety glass, and he thought of the woman he’d seen yesterday, sitting inside, a captive of this place and, perhaps, of her own mind. And he nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact, she is. She’s worth... anything.”
�
�They likely have security cameras,” Sheila said, continuing the argument she’d waged all the way out here. “I don’t suppose you’ve thought of that.”
“As a matter of fact, I have. It’s been... taken care of.” He couldn’t tell her that he’d called up a bit of the magick he’d learned from the very woman he was about to rescue. But he had. His magickal skills were rusty, but not forgotten. Some things, once learned, were never truly forgotten. He only wished he’d thought to disable the cameras when he’d visited here yesterday. Perhaps no one would make the connection.
Sheila tipped her head to one side. “I swear, I’ve never seen you like this, Nathan.”
“I haven’t been like this. Not—not in a long time.”
“Maybe you’ll explain that remark to me one of these days.”
He turned toward her, touched her cheek. “It means a lot to me, you and George standing by me like this. Insisting on coming along when I would have done it alone.”
“You couldn’t get by without us, and you know it. Go on with you, now. Fetch your woman and let’s be away with her.” She glanced toward the hospital and shivered. “This place gives me chills.”
Nathan nodded, pulled on his gloves, and got out of the car. “Keep it running, Sheila.” Then he closed the car door and gave his lapels a tug. Hunching his shoulders against the frigid autumn wind and slashing droplets, he crossed the narrow drive and walked along the winding path up to the old brick building. It was grim, this place. Dead leaves skittered across its lawns and sidewalks. The bricks were uneven, chipped in places, and the bars installed when the structure had been built in the 1890s remained in the arching windows. They had never replaced them with the modern mesh equivalent. The place looked like a prison. Dirty and cold. A Gothic nightmare. No night sounds reached him beyond the rustling of the dead leaves and the whisper of the cold rain. No crickets chirping. No night birds singing. But he could hear, on another level. A deeper level, even though he tried to block his own empathic tendencies. Ghosts of this building’s past lingered, howling and shrieking in their madness, their torment too powerful to filter out.
No such sounds pervaded the nights around the building anymore, he supposed. Today, the terror of insanity was drugged into slumberous submission. Just as Nidaba had been when he’d seen her here the day before.
The front doors opened easily, and he walked through a foyer that looked shockingly modern—so much so that he’d been startled by it when he’d first seen it the day before. There were padded chairs and magazine racks, and a reception desk with no one in attendance, since visiting hours were long since over. The main doors stood before him, and they too were unlocked. They led only to an admitting area, a nurses’ desk, and a row of administrative offices. The patients were housed on the second through fifth floors, with every stairway and elevator inaccessible without a key. His patient, Nathan mused, was in room 419. For a bit longer, anyway.
He nodded toward the fire alarm on the wall in the dim reception area, and George followed his gaze and nodded back. They’d planned this. Rehearsed it. Gone over it. Nathan was as prepared for tonight’s adventure as he used to be when leading his army into battle. He’d bought clothes, prepared a room for Nidaba, and researched this building. He’d even studied blueprints. He was ready.
Something stirred inside him. Deep down. Adrenaline, excitement even, surged in his veins, and he thought for a moment that he felt more alive than he had in years.
George backed into a shadowy corner to count silently to one hundred, just the way they’d planned, and Nathan went through the second set of doors. A nurse looked up from a folder at the desk and said, “Visiting hours ended at seven.”
“Yes, I know. I wanted to see one of your doctors,” he lied. “Dr. Sterling. Is there any chance she’s still here?”
“You a friend of hers?”
“A... colleague, actually. I was hoping to discuss a case with her.”
The woman’s expression eased a bit. She had a pinched look about her, even then. Narrow nose, skin a hint too pale. She didn’t get a lot of sun. “I guess you didn’t hear, did you?”
“Hear?” Nathan’s senses went on alert.
“Dr. Sterling’s in the hospital—she’s critical. One of the patients upstairs attacked her yesterday.”
“What?”
Nodding hard, the nurse rose from her chair, smoothed her dress. “Stabbed her,” she said. “It’s a miracle she didn’t bleed to death on the spot.”
“I can’t believe this.” Nathan’s mind raced. He pinched the bridge of his nose, fighting the certainty that there was more to this than he was just now hearing. “I just saw her yesterday afternoon. When did this happen?”
The nurse shrugged. “The alarm went off just after four. We found Dr. Sterling outside our Jane Doe’s room on the fourth floor, but Jane was still trussed up nice and neat. All the patients were accounted for, in fact. I still can’t figure it out.” She rubbed her arms, gave a little shiver. “No one saw anything unusual. It’s as if a ghost did it. I’ll tell you, it makes you want off the night shift in this mausoleum.”
The woman had been stabbed—right outside Nidaba’s room. By someone who had managed to go undetected. And only minutes after Nathan’s own visit. Could all that be coincidence?
“Did they... did they find a weapon?” he asked slowly.
“No, actually, they didn’t. Whoever it was took it with them. But we searched all the patients’ rooms and—I suppose whoever did it probably hid the weapon somewhere before running back to their room. You know, some of these psychos are sharper than we give them credit for. Obviously.” She shook her head. “Poor Dr. Sterling.”
Nathan was so shocked to hear all of this that he nearly forgot his plan. But his nerves were bristling, and he didn’t like the feeling of static dancing up and down his nape and forearms. Like a storm in the air. Something was very wrong here.
He vowed to get to the bottom of it all later, but now he steered himself back to the subject at hand. He glanced at his watch, then pretended to sniff the air. “My God... is that smoke I smell?” he asked.
The nurse sniffed, frowning and tipping her head to one side. “I don’t smell anything.”
Right on cue, George hit the fire alarm in the waiting room. A bell went off, and the nurse flew out from behind the desk, her key ring in hand. Others came running. She raced to the stairway doors, to the control panel there. Inserting her key, she turned it and hit a button to release the main locks. According to the building’s plans and renovations, the individual rooms would still be locked, and the elevators would go to the bottom floor and shut down. But now the stairways and all the exits were unlocked. They would not be that way for very long.
The nurse ran to the first landing. Nathan headed up, too, only a few steps behind her. He could hear others coming behind them, but he knew the staff would be thin at this time of night. Still, that wouldn’t stop them from questioning his presence, if George didn’t hurry up and...
Before he completed the thought, the lights went out. “Good man,” Nathan muttered under his breath. He shrugged off his overcoat, revealing the white lab coat he wore underneath it, folded his overcoat over one arm, and continued up the stairs. At each landing the head nurse shoved open a stair door and shouted behind her, sending a handful of her staff onto that floor in search of the fire. The emergency lighting finally kicked in, but it was dim.
“Do we evacuate the patients?” someone asked at the first landing.
“Not yet. Let’s just make sure this isn’t another false alarm first.”
Nathan bit back his instinctive response to that. He wanted to chastise the fools. If the fire had been real, their hesitation could have cost lives. But it wasn’t real. And he was concerned only about getting one patient safely out of here.
At the fourth floor, he simply went in with the rest as they spread out to check the rooms. His eyes were sharp, even in low light. Years of immortality tended to hone all
of the senses to new levels. He chose one nurse, a small blond woman who blinked like a mole at him in the darkness when he said, “I think it’s coming from in here” and led her straight to Nidaba’s door.
The nurse didn’t even hesitate, and the others were racing down the halls, running from room to room, getting further and further away. She unlocked the door, and Nathan gripped her hand, tugged her inside, and closed the door behind them. “Don’t you smell it?” he said. “Over there, by the window.”
The nurse hurried forward, and he quickly moistened a gauze pad with the chloroform in his pocket, recapped the bottle, and moved up beside her.
A second later, his hand was covering her face, and she was slumping in his arms. He laid her down gently, carefully. “Sorry about this,” he said. “I didn’t have a choice.” Mentally, he willed her to forget this incident, but he had to hurry. He had no idea if the command would take.
But there was just no more time. He hurried to the bed where Nidaba lay still, eyes closed, totally oblivious to the alarm sounding throughout the halls.
At least she wore no straitjacket now. They must put it on her only when forced to be in the room with her. He scooped her into his arms and headed to the door. He looked up and down the hall, but the searchers had moved past this point and the path to the open stair door was clear. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and he ran. He reached the stairway, raced down it, and emerged at the bottom after three flights.
A burly attendant appeared as Nathan crossed toward the reception area. He hadn’t seen Nathan yet, but he would at any second.
The attendant started to turn toward Nathan, and George’s shadow fell over the man. Sensing it, the attendant whirled, but not in time. George picked the man up by the front of his shirt and tossed him aside like an unwanted toy. The man struggled to his feet, stumbling toward the control panel to reengage the locks, as the stampeding of a dozen pairs of feet thundered down the stairs. George ran ahead, opening the doors, and holding them as Nathan carried Nidaba through. Nathan heard the locks engage as he passed. They’d only just made it out in time.
Eternal Love: The Immortal Witch Series Page 71