by Lori Wilde
Adam never slowed. He stayed right on the limousine’s taillights.
“Adam, no!”
“He has Kiya.” Adam’s jaw was a rock of determination.
The signal arm was level with the top of the car. The warning whistle was earsplitting, the headlights blinding.
Harrison stopped breathing as the train hit the intersection.
Cassie touched that dark, empty place inside her. An ugly place she hadn’t been to in years and had hoped never to go to again. She was submerged by the fear. It consumed her and she was lost.
But then a funny thing happened.
She made friends with the darkness and the closed, cramped space. Came to grips with the fact that she was probably going to die without ever seeing her twin sister or her mother or Harry ever again.
But once she let go and accepted her fate, the fear vanished. She felt no attachment, only peace.
And forgiveness.
Pure, unconditional forgiveness for both herself and her mistakes and for the whole of humankind. She was filled to the core of her being with the wonder of it.
She forgave her father for running out on the family after her childhood accident.
She forgave poor old Duane, that lost soul, for locking her in the cellar.
She forgave everyone she’d ever known. Friends, lovers, enemies, and all those in between.
She forgave Demitri and Anthony and Tom Grayfield, who were so blinded by greed and lust for power that they did not understand what really mattered. She felt pity and she forgave them.
But most of all, she forgave herself. For the wrong roads taken, the foolish mistakes made, the people she’d unwittingly hurt.
Her heart swelled with forgiveness.
Forgive me, Harry, for not keeping the amulet safe. For not trusting you completely. For not fully appreciating you for who you are.
She lay in the constrained darkness of the sarcophagus and she was filled with a bright, expansive lightness.
Harry, she thought. Harry, Harry, Harry.
How she wanted to see him again. To touch him, kiss him, taste him.
Would she ever?
The limo stopped. She heard the men get out. Felt them lift the sarcophagus. Saw the gray swirling mist, the leering bull masks and black hoods as they opened the coffin lid and dragged her out in the rain.
Adam braked to a stop just in the nick of time. A second later, and they would have been delivery van roadkill.
But the limo had gotten away.
Cassie was lost to him. Harrison’s heart wrenched.
The train sped by, clickity-clickity-clack. He watched the cars slide past, dread mounting as the train continued on and on and on and the clock on the dashboard went tick, tick, tick.
Would they be able to find the limo? Was Cassie lost to him forever?
Thump, thump, thump sounded from the back.
“While we’re stuck here, we might as well let Boreas out.” Harrison sighed.
Adam shook his head.
Harrison reached over and pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Yes.”
“Hey.” Adam glowered.
Harrison got out and unlocked the back door to find Clyde Petalonus tied up inside.
Anthony and Demitri had carried the sarcophagus to the middle of the spillway of the Trinity River. A metal mesh fence had been erected across the cement barrier to prevent misdirected boaters from falling over.
The water was shallow at the top of the spillway, but swift. It rushed under the coffin, which was wedged tight against the fence, tumbling over the embankment into a mist of steamy fog below. The sound was a dull roar in Cassie’s ears.
They had taken her out of the sarcophagus and laid her on top of it, still bound and gagged. They dropped her in the water a couple of times in the process, and now she was shivering wet.
Tom Grayfield was positioned behind the sarcophagus, bracing himself against it to keep from losing his balance on the slick cement. Anthony stood to her left, Demitri on her right. The fence at her feet. Both Anthony and Demitri were clinging to the metal posts in order to stay upright. In their hoods and masks, they looked like dark creatures from a Star Wars movie.
Rain pelted them all. Lightning streaked across the bitter black sky.
“Do you have the rings?” Grayfield shouted over the noise of the river and the rumbling thunder.
Both Demitri and Anthony held up one-half of the amulet.
Grayfield spouted some more chants in a bizarre foreign language. Cassie inhaled sharply. He was performing his own perverse version of the legend of the star-crossed lovers’ reunification ceremony.
Solen was here, but there was no Kiya. That’s what Grayfield had meant when he’d said she would be Kiya’s standin. She wasn’t certain exactly what all that entailed. If the rings were rejoined now, would her soul forever be melded with Solen’s?
But how could that happen when Solen was long dead and crunched up like a smashed potato chip bag and she was very much alive?
“Get ready to meld the rings,” Grayfield cried and raised his right hand high over his head.
Lightning lit up the sky.
Cassie stared helplessly. A flare of lightning lit the knife blade clutched in Tom Grayfield’s upraised hand.
“Your brother believes he’s Solen,” Clyde said.
“What happened to him?” Harrison had commandeered the driver’s seat, even though he couldn’t see worth a flip without his glasses. He preferred his own driving to Adam’s kamikaze charioting.
“Adam’s got amnesia or something. He doesn’t recognize me a bit.”
“Yes, I do.” Adam scowled at Clyde. “You’re Boreas. You sold me into slavery and stole my birthright.”
“Boreas was a young and strapping warrior. Do I look like a strapping young warrior to you?” Clyde patted his paunch and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “I mean, honestly.”
Adam narrowed his eyes at Clyde and then glanced over at Harrison. “He’s Boreas. Right?”
“No, Adam, he’s Clyde. Clyde Petalonus.”
Adam pondered this, but said nothing.
“I don’t know what happened to your brother,” Clyde said. “But I can tell you what happened to me.”
The train finally came to an end, and the signal crossing arms rose. Harry bumped the delivery van over the tracks. They were near Forest Park on the Trinity River. There was a break in the overcast sky. The full moon playing a quick game of tag with the churning clouds. One minute the park was illuminated in a glow of light, the next minute cloaked in a bath of shadows.
Cassie, where are you?
Harrison fought off the black depression weighing down his lungs. He thought of her and remembered what they’d been doing when Cassie had found Solen’s half of the amulet.
They’d been so close to making love. Joining their bodies completely. Fused.
Now he might never get to be with her.
The sadness was too much to handle. He shut down his emotions, closed off his feelings, hid from himself. This was why he had stayed detached for so many years. It hurt too damned much to get close to someone.
“What did happen to you, Clyde?” he asked.
Anything to keep his mind occupied and off the stark reality that time was running out. Harrison guided the van through the park, straining his eyes to search for the limo. He wished for his glasses. He wished for a gun. He had neither. “How’d you end up in the back of this van?”
“Demitri,” Clyde grunted. “He roughed me up and stuck me in the back. If Adam hadn’t stolen the van out from under him and Korba, I don’t know what would have happened to me.”
“You know Demitri and Anthony Korba?” Harrison’s hands were clenched tight on the steering wheel. They’d lost a good five minutes waiting for the train. Anything could happen in five minutes. Cassie could die.
“And I know Tom Grayfield. We roomed together in college when he was dating your mother.”
“You knew my mo
ther?”
“I knew you too,” Clyde said. “Most serious toddler I ever met in my life. You never played with toys, but you were always taking things apart and putting them back together again.”
“Did you know my father?” Harrison held his breath.
“No. I just knew he broke your mother’s heart. Grayfield was a rebound fling for her. And Grayfield was just using your mother’s passion for the star-crossed lovers to help him get his hands on the amulet.”
“You were at Adam’s graduation from the University of Athens,” Harrison said. “You were in the photograph, in the background.”
Clyde nodded. “I couldn’t miss his graduation, even if he didn’t know I was there. I was as proud of him as if he were my own son.”
“Did you know about the Minoan Order?”
Adam perked up. “Minoan Order? I know the Minoan Order.”
“I heard rumors about Grayfield. I tried to warn your mother, but he was financing her dig and she didn’t want to believe the rumors. Later she did, and that’s why she asked me to look after Adam whenever he was in Greece with Tom. Mostly I had to do it from afar.”
“I didn’t know my mother was in Greece looking for Solen when I was a baby,” Harrison said.
“I’m Solen.” Adam raised a hand. “I’m right here.”
“You’re not Solen. You’re Adam Grayfield.”
His brother just stared at him.
Hoo-boy.
“How come I never met you before?” Harrison asked Clyde, trying hard to ignore his sagging spirits. They’d come to the end of Forest Park, and there was no sign of the limo.
“Tom and I had a huge falling-out over your mother. I was in love with her, you see,” Clyde said. “But Tom was the one with the money, and nothing meant more to your mother than her work.” He sounded sad, regretful.
Harrison left the park and turned onto University Drive. He had no idea where to look for the limo. The streets were empty. Lightning streaked across the sky. Raindrops spit upon the windshield. He turned on the wipers. They squeaked against the glass—Cassie, Cassie, Cassie.
The streets were empty. No traffic anywhere. He took University Drive to the freeway. If he circled around the overpass and headed east, he would have a bird’s-eye view of the park.
Cassie, where are you?
His heart wrenched. He could no longer deny his pain. He was going to lose her before he’d ever really had the chance to know her.
Adam tugged on his shirtsleeve and pointed out the window. “Look, look.”
A thick, hot blast of lightning electrified the sky.
Harrison glanced south toward the spillway of the Trinity River and his heart lurched.
There, in the middle of the river, were three men and a coffin.
CHAPTER 22
Whipping the van around in a dangerous and highly illegal freeway U-turn, Harrison prayed as he’d never prayed before. He lumbered over the median, crashed down into the westbound lane, and took the University Drive exit at twenty miles over the speed limit, tires squealing in protest.
“What is it? What’s going on?” Clyde exclaimed.
“Kiya,” Adam said at the same time Harrison said, “Cassie.”
What were Tom and his henchmen doing with the sarcophagus on the spillway?
A fragment from the scroll translation lodged in his brain:
In the elements lies the progression to immortality. Earth, air, fire, water. Two rings, two hearts, lovers reunited always. Life becomes death, death becomes life. Full circle.
He didn’t fully understand what it meant, but water had to be part of the ritual. He wheeled toward the spillway, heart in his throat, pulse pounding.
“There’s Grayfield’s limo,” Clyde yelled.
It was parked near the river’s edge. Harrison pulled the van up beside it. Lightning speared through the air, thick with ions, and smacked with a horrific jolt into a nearby tree.
They jumped and ducked their heads.
The tree burst into flames.
“This way, this way,” Adam said, running along the bank toward the spillway ahead of Harrison and Clyde.
Harrison knew what was happening. He felt the dread, the chill, the horror of it shoot straight to his bones.
They reached the spillway. The awful scene was backlit by the flaming tree.
Cassie lay bound and gagged on top of the sarcophagus. Anthony and Demitri were positioned at her sides, each holding a copper ring, extending them forward. Tom Grayfield stood over her, wearing the bull’s head. He had a large gold ankh on a chain around his neck. He was the Minotaur, and there was a vicious knife clutched in his upraised fist.
The wind whirled. The water swirled. The air was rich with the smell of damp, fertile earth; the lightning hot and brilliant.
If Harrison made one move toward Cassie, Grayfield could stab her through the heart before he was halfway across the water.
I can’t save her, he thought, and the despair was too much to bear. But he couldn’t let her go without a fight. Couldn’t lose her forever. Couldn’t let Grayfield win.
Think, think.
He had no gun. No weapon. No clue what to do.
The djed. Use the djed.
The thought rose in his mind, clear and strong. Use the djed. He pulled the djed from his pocket and raised it over his head, aiming at Grayfield’s ankh.
Harrison held his breath.
Grayfield finished his chant.
Anthony Korba and Demitri leaned forward over Cassie’s body to connect the rings.
Grayfield brought the knife down.
“Kiya!” Adam screamed and dashed into the water.
“Adam, come back,” Clyde called.
A bolt of white-blue lightning descended from the murky black clouds.
It hit the djed with a force so strong that it dropped Harrison to his knees, but he did not let go. Would not let go. Nothing could make him let go.
The lightning sparked, jumping the gap from Harrison’s homemade djed to the ankh around Grayfield’s neck. It shot veiny branches of voltage straight into his chest.
Grayfield’s body quivered as the electricity passed through him, welding him to the water.
But the lightning did not stop there. The energy frequency snapped and crackled as it leaped both right and left. It struck the two copper rings that Anthony and Demitri held in their hands.
It also fingered down from Grayfield’s legs, illuminating him in a ghostly blue glow that shimmered and danced over the water.
The water that Adam was trudging through trying to get to Cassie.
Horrified, Harrison watched as the electricity jolted up through his brother’s body.
*
The heat around her was intense, as was the eerie blue-white light. Cassie blinked, not understanding what was happening. Tom Grayfield stood above her, his body shaking, his eyes rolled back inside his bull’s head, the knife fused to his palm.
And then the blue electrical light was gone and Grayfield’s heavy frame slowly toppled forward.
Cassie raised her bound hands in a defensive reflex to block the blade that descended as Grayfield fell. She rolled her head to one side to keep from getting smacked by his bullish brow.
The duct tape stopped the knife. Grayfield’s head thumped against the sarcophagus and his body slowly slid into the water.
Lightning lit the sky again. Thunder cracked.
Frantically, Cassie began sawing her wrists back and forth against the knife blade, desperate to get free before Grayfield’s hand slipped down into the water with him.
To the left of her came another thump as Anthony Korba collapsed onto the sarcophagus as well, his cheek coming to rest against her knee. She almost kicked him off her, but then she saw that Solen’s half of the amulet was still clutched in his outstretched fingers.
The duct tape broke free, and she shook it off. She pried the knife from Grayfield’s hand and then ripped the gag off her mouth. Plucking the amulet fr
om Anthony’s fingers, she tucked the ring into the pocket of her blouse. She was leaning down to cut the duct tape from her ankles when she felt an iron grip clamp around her wrist.
“Not so fast, sister.”
It was Demitri, Mr. Nike himself. He looked a little dazed, but his eyes were deadly. In his other hand he held Kiya’s half of the amulet.
“Cassie!”
She turned her head to the right, saw Harrison and Clyde splashing toward her in the swift running water, and spied the mummy floating facedown in the water several feet from the sarcophagus.
“Harry!”
She tried to twist away from Demitri, tried with everything inside her to get to Harry, but Demitri applied so much pressure to her wrist, she feared the bone would snap. Helpless, she dropped the knife. It splashed into the river.
Demitri yanked her from the sarcophagus and through the water. He dragged her toward the opposite bank, scraping her knees against the cement spillway in the process.
She gasped against the coldness, against the pain, confused and frightened.
“Cassie, hang on. I’m coming!”
“Harry!” she called over her shoulder.
Demitri jerked her hard. “Shut up. Keep quiet.”
They’d made it across the spillway. She tried to look back, to see how far away Harry was, but Demitri kept tugging at her so hard, pulling her so fast, she could not see what was happening behind her.
Demitri’s got Kiya’s half of the amulet. I have to get it from him.
He was hauling her up an embankment, through a cluster of trees. Somewhere in all the madness she had lost her sandals. Thorns and twigs pierced her bare feet. Her knees stung from the cement burns. She kept stumbling and falling down. Demitri was relentless, never stopping, never even slowing.
What she needed was a plan. Unfortunately, she had nothing. If she could just slow him down long enough for Harry to catch up.
“Hey, Demitri, wanna blow job?”
“Huh?” Demitri paused.
Just as she’d hoped, natural male instinct momentarily outweighed the urgent need to escape his pursuers. But a moment was all Cassie needed. As soon as Demitri turned to see if he’d heard correctly, Cassie plowed her knee into his crotch with as much force as she could muster.
Demitri screamed and clutched himself with both hands, letting go of her and dropping Kiya’s half of the amulet as he sank to the ground, writhing in pain. The amulet made a faint clinking sound as it bounced off a rock.