The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection

by Carolyn McCray

  Tok coaxed her away from the table. “Please, do not make this more painful for either of us.”

  Rebecca struggled, trying to ask the bastard some hard questions, but her brain betrayed her. It simply didn’t want to argue. Whatever drug they gave her made her compliant. Yielding. Fighting the effect, Rebecca pictured the last time she saw Brandt. Not only was he alive, he was also firing. The sergeant had survived everything else this asshole had thrown at him, and he could survive the poison gas.

  Getting her bearings, Rebecca stood, taking a quick survey of the room, which was more of a subterranean library than a chamber. While the walls had clearly been hewn from rock, they had a polished surface that glowed in the low light. Along each wall stood heavy oak bookcases filled with ancient parchments. So that’s what gave the room its soothing musty smell. But the single most important item in the room was the silver-engraved pedestal with a single skeleton encased in glass.

  “Where am I?”

  “Beneath the Knot’s enclave. Now I have answered two of your questions, might you grace me a turn?”

  With Tok seeming so polite, and combined with the drug’s mellowing influence, Rebecca might have been lured into a sense of safety. But she noticed the parrot feather necklace hanging around Tok’s neck.

  Rage boiled away any lingering effects of the drug as she hissed, “That’s the chief’s!”

  With a smile like a puppeteer whose strings had just been revealed, Tok rose to his feet. “In his culture, to the victor go the spoils.”

  The true horror of what that meant hit her. “You killed the tribe. You killed them all!”

  “Because they did not tell me what I wanted to know.” Any conciliatory effort vanished, replaced with cold observation.

  “Neither will I,” Rebecca growled.

  Shaking his head, Tok signaled to his translator. “You make me resort to such tawdry measures.”

  Petir dragged a semiconscious Lochum into the center of the room.

  “We have not yet given your professor the antidote to the inhalant gas. Hold your tongue, and he might never return to consciousness.”

  Lochum’s head lolled to the side, his tongue partially protruding. A bit of saliva dripped down his shirt. To see her once-energetic professor in such a state rattled her. Worse, Brandt might be in the same state or dead.

  “Is glory worth more to you than this man’s life?” Tok asked.

  The sergeant would never tell this bastard what he wanted. Hell, Lochum wouldn’t even tell Tok. Rebecca would be no different.

  Attempting to crawl, the professor tried to say something, but slack-jawed, the words died before they could be spoken. Her own head buzzed, and the drug’s insidious suggestions begged her to comply.

  “I don’t negotiate with murderers.”

  Tok’s lips curled down, and the translator’s voice became impassioned. “And how many would die if you found the last set of bones? Did you consider the wars and the countries in ruin? What are a handful of lives to avoid such global tumult?”

  Rebecca braced herself against the glass case, trying to appear strong when really her legs felt ready to buckle. “Whatever.”

  “You say that with such ease, but look beneath your hand.”

  Despite herself, Rebecca glanced to the skeleton that lay under the glass, but once you’d seen a couple of proto-Christian skeletons you’d seen them all. Upon brief inspection the bones had belonged to someone mature in years. There was mild spondylosis along the spine. The pelvis confirmed it to be a woman who had birthed at least one child.

  Breath caught in her throat as she snatched her hand back from the glass case. This wasn’t just any skeleton. “It’s… It can’t be.”

  “But it is,” Petir answered. “There lies Mary, mother of Jesus. The Blessed Virgin.”

  Pulling her hand back, Rebecca had forgotten Tok’s assertion that his sect held Christ’s mother, and now he suggested Mary lay beneath her fingers?

  “If you doubt, simply look at the inscriptions. If you trust me in nothing else, trust that the body is Mary’s.”

  Even on cursory glance, Rebecca found at least three separate passages that applied to the Virgin.

  Tok wasn’t lying.

  As much as Rebecca braced herself against it, seeing the Virgin did stir something within her heart. A welling of awe. Not trusting her voice to hide the wave of emotions, Rebecca remained silent.

  “Mary is the Knot’s founder. It was she who emboldened our forefathers to take whatever measures were necessary to protect what is most sacred to us. I am but a humble servant of hers.”

  She refused to believe such a thing, and it must have shown, for the translator began reading from the bones: “In all His glory we must keep this most sacred secret. I, Mary daughter of Anne, wife of Joseph, and mother of Jesus, do so seal it until God himself hath opened it.”

  Petir turned to her, his voice transforming into Tok’s words. “Do you hold yourself equal to God, Dr. Monroe? Or even Mary?” Tok walked closer, scrutinizing her face. “Oh, but I have forgotten. You don’t believe in such things. You only want the bones to prove there is no God. Is that not true?”

  Rebecca refused to meet the man’s eyes.

  “After all that you have seen, you still think random electrons control man’s fate?”

  “I’d rather have radiation than any God who would empower the likes of you,” she sneered.

  “For all you scientists strive to disprove the Almighty, you only serve to validate His existence.” Tok knelt beside Mary, putting his hand to the glass. “The universe spirals toward entropy, Dr. Monroe. Balance and harmony are but brief respites to the relentless forces of nature that aim to disperse, to devolve. Is that not what your science teaches us?”

  “There are opposing forces that maintain a dynamic equilibrium.”

  To this, Tok smiled. “What you call opposing force is what I call God. What you call ‘good radiation’ is simply His hand at work. This gene you search for isn’t a ‘smart’ gene. It is the ‘God’ gene.”

  Her scathing retort died as Lochum went into a grand mal seizure.

  “He has minutes. No more.”

  How she wished Brandt were here. He would have some scheme, some plan, to transform her helplessness into an advantage.

  Rebecca spoke without thinking. “For every answer I give you, you will do something for me.”

  “Such as?” Petir asked, for Tok.

  “Awaken Lochum. I’m going to need him.”

  * * *

  Despite the toxins in his bloodstream and the spasms of his body, the professor still felt the sharp needle penetrate his chest cavity, then his heart. He felt every milliliter of antidote pumped into his ventricle. Within a few beats, his fit subsided and his lungs took in full breaths.

  Lochum’s eyes rolled back in his head as the drug brought on a sense of euphoria. All his cares washed away on a gentle tide.

  “I thought you said he would wake right up?” Rebecca asked anxiously from his side. The girl really needed to learn how to relax.

  Lolling his head onto her shoulder, Lochum tried to say, “I’m fine,” but the words came out cracked and garbled.

  “Drink,” his student said, as she brought a glass of water to his lips.

  After a sip, the professor cleared his throat. “Truly, I am recovering.”

  Tok stepped forward. “Then it is time to compensate us for your first boon, Dr. Monroe.”

  “I need all the bones you have in your possession,” Rebecca demanded as if she had any influence here.

  Tok inclined his head gracefully. “But of course.”

  As he glanced around, Lochum realized just how many remains the Knot had recovered.

  The Virgin was protected within a case, but three alcoves had been hurriedly carved in the stone wall and housed the newly discovered remains.

  Gaining his feet with only a little nausea, Lochum found the Baptist—intact. Even the femur bone he had lost in the Bu
dapest caves had been recovered. The next recess held James, but only half of the skeleton was intact. Lastly, Magdalene. They had so little of her left. This familiar of Christ had her skull crushed during the cave-in back in Istanbul, and only her right arm and the upper half of her spine had survived.

  So little.

  Then he turned toward the case and viewed the magnificent skeleton.

  Mary.

  Others clamored over the Holy Grail, but the cup was nothing but the vessel that caught Christ’s blood. This body, this woman, held the Grail, felt the receptacle become heavy with her son’s blood. Lochum did not search for such a paltry object. He had found history itself.

  And Mary was every bit as beautiful in death as she was reported to have been in life. The professor knew Rebecca had doubted Tok’s testimony that Mary was the Knot’s founder, but Lochum believed him wholeheartedly. Just glancing at these white bones, and you knew they had not spent a single moment underground or in any ossuary box. These remains had been cared for since the moment of her death until now.

  She was pristine.

  Across the case, Tok stared at Lochum, but his voice rose from the man behind him. It might have been disconcerting if all else in the past day had not been equally surreal.

  “Dr. Lochum, I hope you will abide by the bargain Dr. Monroe and I have struck.”

  “Why no, I shall not,” he announced then looked Rebecca squarely in the eye as he continued, “for I need no incentive. I shall help you find Christ freely and of my own accord.”

  * * *

  “Lochum!” Rebecca scolded, then lowered her tone. “Archibald, give yourself a minute to get your bearings.”

  But the professor seemed not at all confused as he circled Mary’s body. “I need no time, dear child. I am resolved.”

  She stammered. What in the hell was Lochum up to? Could he be feigning help as she had or was he actually, truly, offering to assist the sect that had been trying to kill him for more than a decade?

  “They’re the ones who set up St. Petersburg. Paris. Bunny. Everything and everyone who’s been destroyed has been at their hands.”

  Her professor just shrugged. “And I now concede to their superior firepower as they concede to my superior intellect.”

  Tok didn’t seem inclined to agree, but the words coming out of Petir’s mouth did. “We complement one another’s skills.”

  Rebecca didn’t believe for a moment that Tok had instructed his translator to say such a thing, for a hard look passed between the men. Lochum didn’t seem to notice as he added, “Together we shall find Christ.”

  “The one who suffered upon the cross,” Petir echoed.

  Gritting her teeth, she prepped for an argument of epic proportions, but Lochum casually turned to her. “Why you are surprised, Rebecca, I do not know. You heard Brandt back at the dungeon, and for once, the soldier was correct. To think I will ever publish such a find is ludicrous, so why should I not take place myself at the best advantage?”

  Lochum indicated the ancient remains surrounding him, then the volumes of papyrus and scrolls that lined the walls. It was a veritable cornucopia of knowledge. In addition Petir supervised technicians who brought in cold cathode lights to assist them in the examination of the artifacts. They were better supplied than in Paris.

  “Because they will kill you once you are done,” she hissed.

  “And if somehow I escaped, they would kill me as well. Is it not better if I am to die that I do so fulfilling my life’s quest?”

  What in the hell did you say to that? His logic was flawed, but what could she argue in front of Tok? The professor’s sudden capitulation doused any slim chance they might have had to manipulate their way into escape.

  “Now then, may we get to work?” Lochum asked in a nonchalant air.

  * * *

  “Sarge!”

  Brandt barely registered muddy water sloshing into his nostrils, let alone the distant shouts.

  “He’s over here! He’s down! Where’s Svengurd?”

  A part of the sergeant’s mind recognized Davidson’s voice, but another part just wanted to surrender to the suffocating pressure in his head. Brandt could feel the private pull him up, but in no way could he help.

  “Lopez, I can’t tell if he’s breathing!”

  Suddenly the corporal was flashing a penlight in Brandt’s eyes.

  “Crap. I can’t find any major wounds,” Lopez continued as he took the sergeant’s pulse. “He shouldn’t be in this bad a shape.”

  “It’s like they’re sedated or something,” Davidson ventured.

  Lopez shook his head. “Poisoned more likely. Inhalant.”

  “Did you find the civilians?” Davidson asked.

  “The archaeologist is dead, but no sign of Monroe or Lochum,” Lopez answered as he pulled out his med kit.

  “What the hell happened?” Davidson asked.

  Brandt wanted to answer, to tell them everything, but his throat would not respond. Now stimulated, he realized the chamber was a foot deep in mud with more on the way. His breath became ragged as the sergeant felt his diaphragm contract on its own. Forget drowning, his body had commenced shutdown.

  “You’ve got to do something!” the private demanded of Lopez.

  “You don’t understand. There could be fourteen million things wrong with him. Each and every one of them has a different treatment.”

  Davidson grabbed the corporal by the wrist. “Just give him something to wake him up, then maybe he can fill in the blanks.”

  Lopez rubbed his palms together over the med kit. Out of the corner of his eye, Brandt could see three syringes. “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

  “There’s got to be a better way,” the private groaned, and Brandt silently agreed.

  “You wanna fucking pick?” For the first time, the sergeant heard doubt in the Latino’s voice. When Davidson didn’t respond, the corporal went back to his syringes. “Catch a tiger by the tail.”

  Decision made, Lopez pulled out the syringe. “Help me raise a vein.”

  As the injection went in, it felt like someone had mainlined Krispy Kreme Donuts, Jolt Cola, and cocaine into Brandt’s bloodstream. His body arched up and instead of wheezing to breathe, air came in gasps.

  “Sarge!” Davidson yelled as he tried to keep the sergeant down.

  “Damn it! I told you I shouldn’t give him anything!”

  When Brandt’s body slammed back down to the floor, his heart beat in fits and starts, but he felt strength course through his veins and into his muscles. Words, however, were still a painful proposition.

  “Svengurd,” he managed to choke out.

  “On it,” Lopez said as he grabbed his med kit and left Brandt’s side.

  The sergeant had to concentrate to get a single question out. “How?”

  “How? What? I don’t understand.” Davidson said.

  “Find?”

  Putting the tourniquet on Svengurd, Lopez answered, “Yeah, a bunch of terrified grad students fleeing the Mosque wasn’t too hard to spot.”

  “Who doesn’t look that traumatized after meeting Lochum?” Davidson added with a snort.

  Lopez chuckled. “But that brunette with the rack? Ouch! She was so hot, she burnt a hole in my heart.”

  Normally Brandt would have put a cork in their banter, but keeping oxygen in his lungs consumed his concentration. Still, the look he gave them must have been enough, because the private cleared his throat.

  “Yeah, anyway, once we heard the student’s story we explored the dungeon, but we found the whole thing collapsed.”

  Testing his newfound vigor, the sergeant tried to rise to his feet, but his balance lagged behind his will.

  “Gotcha, Sarge,” Davidson said as he struggled to help Brandt to his feet against the rapidly rising water level.

  “Water?”

  Leading his shoulder, the private explained, “Yeah, we kind of need a refresher course in explosive devices near water mains.”

&
nbsp; “Hey, we needed the pressure to blow through all that mud,” Lopez commented as he helped Svengurd up.

  The tall soldier had a wild look in his eyes as his teeth chattered uncontrollably, not looking like a traitor at all.

  Pushing the word out, Brandt said, “Evac.”

  Lopez and Davidson looked at one another. Clearly neither wanted to be the first to give the bad news.

  “What?” Svengurd croaked.

  “It’s a ways. In about hip-height water.”

  Brandt shrugged off Davidson’s help but tilted precariously, nearly dragged under by the building current.

  “Yeah, obviously when we devised this plan you guys weren’t poisoned,” the private said as he steadied Brandt again.

  “Shot,” Svengurd said, sticking his arm out.

  The corporal was right. They would never make it without more go-juice. Brandt offered his vein as well. “Another.”

  Lopez backed away from them. “You guys are both tachy already. And you want more?”

  The sergeant gritted his teeth. “Now.”

  Davidson pulled up Brandt’s sleeve. “You heard the man.”

  The second injection became crystalline fire in his vein. The pain seared his lungs and his brain screamed, but Brandt gained his balance. After the shot, Svengurd flailed so badly that Lopez had to contain him, but within seconds, the tall corporal stood on his own.

  “Go,” Brandt commanded.

  Wet cement was easier to walk through than the surging mud as they made their way back into the dungeon, then Davidson led them down a one of the side tunnels.

  “This isn’t the …” was all Brandt could get out before he stumbled.

  “Trust us, it is!” Lopez yelled out over the rising water, draping Brandt’s arm over his shoulder.

  With the assist, they made it through the last bit of tunnel and sloshed onto a rocky shore. Collapsing to the ground, he rolled over onto his back. Utterly and completely exhausted. An electrocution one day and poisoning the next surpassed even his sense of duty. If Tok didn’t have Rebecca in his mute grasp, Brandt would have thrown in the towel.

  “Come on,” Davidson urged.

  “Can’t walk any farther,” Brandt admitted.