by Melissa Roen
Julian still had a set of keys to my villa. Logic dictated this would be the first place he would come. I couldn’t leave a note. Looters might break in before he got here and vandalize my home. Abdul’s security people or Slava’s could toss my home, looking for clues to my disappearance. I would have to take the laptop with me.
I stood on my bed and sprayed these words on the wall: “Where the blue star shone…” and signed it with the symbol of the new moon, with a small star nestled like a kiss in the crescent’s curve.
I’d already stayed longer than I should have. I locked and barred all the windows and doors. I stuffed the laptop into my bulging pack.
I shouldered my backpack, turned on the alarm and locked the door. The sun was fighting to break through the mist as I let myself out of the garden gate. I checked the rounds in the Judge one last time and clicked off the safety. I crept through the vegetation until I had a clear view of the travelers’ camp. They were still wrapped in the folds of sleep. Then, I slipped away as silently as a wraith along the path to sanctuary in the mountains.
I was nearly to the training center when I stopped to check if Carpe Diem had weighed anchor and put out to sea. I could see whitecaps harried by the strengthening winds of the mistral. The blanket of fog had been swept from the bay.
I’d only seen the Carpe Diem under cover of darkness and fog, but I scanned the eastern sector of the bay, looking for any yacht of approximately her size, or flying the Israeli flag. But the water on the eastern side of the bay was too rough, so no boats sought shelter there. The wind whipped the tops of large swells that pounded against the base of the cliffs. The water had been dead calm when I’d swum for freedom at dawn, but now an intense storm was brewing, and no boat would want to be caught far from land.
A number of yachts were anchored in the lee of the presqu’ile of Cap Ferrat, where they would be protected from the strong winds and waves. I couldn’t see her flag at this distance or the name on her hull, but one of the yachts was similar in length and displayed the tell-tale silhouette of a Feadship.
I’d hoped to see evidence of the plan in motion by the absence of the boat, which should have already slipped anchor and set sail for the rendezvous in Santa Margarita. Instead, weather confined the boat to the bay. It was past noon. With a sinking feeling, I suspected they probably knew I was no longer a guest on board; or maybe the yacht was still at anchor because Anjuli hadn’t made her escape.
I hadn’t stopped to think through how Abdul would react when he found out I’d abandoned ship. I hoped the blow to his pride would dissuade him from searching for me. I owed him an explanation for spurning his protection and help, but I didn’t have a very convincing one to offer. My decision had been made on intuition and faith the instant Julian’s message had arrived, after waking from my nightmare about abandoning my loved ones to certain death.
If I were wrong about the message, I was now alone and trapped, threatened by the insurgents’ advance from Cannes and Slava’s forces to the east. I had little to offer either side except, perhaps, the gratification of violence and revenge.
I could see the first line of dark clouds mounding on the horizon. Anyone putting out to sea today would be running before the storm. The Carpe Diem looked seaworthy and her crew was experienced, but she would be no match for the fierce tornadoes that would rage.
Maybe it was already too late, I thought as I shouldered my bulging backpack and headed up the trail for the training center. Too late for any of us to escape.
Buddy didn’t answer my call. The sacks of dried food hadn’t been touched, and there was no sign of him around the center grounds. I did what I’d done the first day I tried to win his trust all those months ago. I sat on the same patch of grass, my back turned to the main building, closed my eyes and waited. But as the first hour dragged by and the second one commenced, I didn’t feel his eyes watching me. All I heard was the wind rustling through the trees overhead. The center felt abandoned. I realized, with a lump in my throat, that Buddy was gone.
I don’t know what I’d expected, except that he would be here to greet me as if nothing had happened and all was forgiven. He had no reason to trust me now.
I could see the storm closing in on the coast. It would probably reach the Astrarama later this afternoon. I needed to be settled in before it struck. My heart was heavy as I started up the trail. I worried about Buddy being out there alone in the coming storm, but I had only myself to blame. Tomorrow, I resolved, I would start over, locate him and win back his trust.
Happily, I had the foresight to move half of my supplies to the Astrarama back at the end of August. I must have always known, on a subconscious level, that here on the peak I would ultimately retreat and make a stand. I’d left the Colt and extra ammunition, a stash of gold and enough water and food to last me four months if I rationed my supplies. There were five bags of dried dog food for Buddy, too. In my pack, I had my Glock and the Judge, as well as all the extra ammunition I could carry. There were cans of fuel in the garage, as well as Arnaud’s Land Rover, if I was forced to retreat deeper into the Maritime Alps or make a run for the border with Italy.
I had to assess the worst-case scenario if I’d been wrong about Julian. I knew the fighting would spill over from Nice. In the next weeks and months, marauding bands from both sides would be looking to loot the coast from Cap Ferrat and as far east as Italy. I couldn’t look to Monaco for sanctuary anymore.
I could only hope that I was far enough off the beaten path to hide out until the worst had blown over. Perhaps I could risk a midnight sortie in Arnaud’s Land Rover to bring up the rest of my supplies from home.
Gusts of wind rattled the dome of the Astrarama as I completed my inventory and settled in. Rain lashed the coast and would reach the peak in an hour’s time. I was too restless to stay inside. I worried about Buddy, out there in the coming storm. I picked up my binoculars and scanned the hills below, looking for a flash of gold weaving along the paths. I had an hour, at least, before the storm hit.
I grabbed Arnaud’s rain slicker, my Glock and a high-powered flashlight and shoved everything in my backpack. I had time for one more search on the trails by the training center.
The wind must have been gusting eighty kilometers an hour by the time I reached the training center. The trees were thrashing before the force of the coming gale. I scoured the trails between the center and the Astrarama, my voice growing hoarse after screaming his name into the wind for the last hour. The advancing wall of storm covered half the sky. I felt the first drop of rain and knew I was out of time. The wind howled between the buildings, and a door from a shed was wrenched from its rusted hinges and cartwheeled away, narrowly missing me. I checked all the kennels and storage rooms one last time. There were no more places to look.
It weighed on my mind that Buddy might have followed me last night. He might have been hit by a car and lying dead by the side of the road. Or he might be lost below, with no friend or shelter. Unless he’d hidden all day because he no longer trusted me, something had happened to him. Otherwise, how could he have vanished?
The storm reached full force when I was still about two hundred meters from shelter. I could barely make out the outline of the dome through the falling dusk and the sheets of rain. The wind tore at me as though it wanted to fling me off the heights, and the path became a gauntlet slick with mud and slippery stone. I fell just before reaching the viewing deck. My hand came away sticky with blood, my knee lacerated by the sharp edge of a rock. I hauled myself up on the deck and ran towards the shelter of the back door.
The back-up generators kicked in when I clicked on the lights. I stripped off my rain-soaked clothes in the kitchen and let them fall to the floor. I examined the gash. I wouldn’t need stitches, though the cut was seeded with gravel and debris from the mud-strewn path. I was chilled to the bone, and there was no hot water. I toweled off, cleaned and bandaged the wound. I put on two thick sweaters I found in Arnaud’s closet and fleece-line
d sweatpants.
I huddled on the couch under a mound of blankets and nursed a mug of tea with a healthy slug of whiskey and tried to warm up as the storm beat on the dome. This morning at dawn, I’d been so sure. It had felt so right. But here, alone, while the storm howled outside, my courage and faith drained away. I’d counted on Buddy’s presence and affection to lean on while I waited, but now I didn’t think I’d ever felt so miserable and alone in my life.
The lights flickered off and a couple of seconds later, came back on. I realized I’d forgotten to bring in the battery-operated lanterns from the garage shelf. I didn’t relish the idea of cowering in the dark if the generators were knocked out by the storm. I needed those lanterns, and though I was finally comfortable and warm, I would have to venture out once more into the fury of the night.
It was only twenty meters to the garage and workshop, but the spotlight was burned out next to the back door. I shone the flashlight light around the yard, the beam too faint to penetrate the inky blackness that surrounded the dome. Thunder rumbled, and a fork of lightning briefly illuminated the scene before my eyes.
I was soaked to the skin by the time I unlocked the door and wrestled the wind to open it. I grabbed two camping lanterns off the shelf and locked the door behind me. I played the beam across the ground separating me from the dome before braving the elements. That’s when I saw the pair of eyes watching me from the shadows by a shed halfway across the yard. I could see the rectangle of light from the open back door, spilling into the night, and realized that I’d left my gun inside. Something or someone was there in the dark between me and the rectangle of safety.
There had to be something I could use to defend myself in the garage. I slowly set one of the lanterns down. The other I clutched to my chest. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was my only defense. My back was to the garage door. I didn’t take my eyes off the patch of darkness where the creature crouched, as my hand searched blindly behind me for the lock.
There were boars with wicked tusks to gore soft, human flesh, here on the heights. One could be watching me and getting ready to charge.
Or might someone have heard me calling Buddy’s name and followed me back to the dome?
Refugees from the fighting, or other escapees from the Farm, like Luca and Joanna, might have become lost in the storm and sought shelter here. Desperate and willing to do anything to survive.
My skin crawled as I remembered the back country psychopath, his incisors honed like daggers and the serpent’s tongue flicking at me between his fleshy lips. Could he somehow have tracked me to the Astrarama, and even now, was he licking those lips in anticipation of the revenge and what horrors he would visit upon my flesh this night?
Were Slava’s ghouls and night crawlers waiting out there in the darkness, intent on mischief of another kind? Had they found me already? My heart pounded as I remembered the naked hunger crawling across the face of the hag.
Had my escape from Carpe Diem been for nothing? Was it all going to end here?
I was about to spin around and unlock the door when the shadow moved and crept out of the darkness towards me.
Head lowered and shivering in the rain, Buddy limped into the rectangle of light. I was across the yard in a couple of strides and fell to my knees. I wrapped my arms around him. The tension and worry that I’d held in all day poured out of me and fell on his coat.
“It’s okay, sweet boy. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. You’re home now,” I cried against his shaking form. “I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I thought I was protecting you. I’m so sorry for hurting you. I swear I’ll never leave you again.”
Lightning cracked overhead, and thunder boomed across the night. I could feel his heart beating under my hand as I crouched in the mud and hung on while the heavens poured down on our heads. Then, I felt his warm tongue licking my hand.
“Dog” is “god” spelled backwards. Buddy had come back to show me that through forgiveness, we find redemption.
Staring at the light that spilled from the doorway, I’d never been more grateful for warmth and safety.
“Come on, Buddy. Let’s get you dried off and fed.”
I led him inside.
There was no dawn as the storm raged on for a second day. The blackness of the night lightened to charcoal gray, while the fury of the winds and waves pounded the coast below. Tornadoes spun off from the storm front, effectively cutting off escape by sea. I wondered if Anjuli and Abdul were at this minute waiting for Carpe Diem to pull into port in Santa Margarita. I thought of Bilal and prayed the yacht hadn’t put out to sea. No matter how skilled her crew, she wouldn’t have been able to run before this storm. Even if I had stayed on the Carpe Diem, I was never destined to escape. For all I knew she, her passengers and crew were resting on the bottom of the sea.
But on the bright side, no helicopters would fly, either. The storm would make Anjuli’s trail harder to follow for Slava’s trackers. At least for today, everyone was pinned down. Even the rebels in Cannes couldn’t press their advance. But when the skies finally cleared in the next days, another sort of firestorm was poised to rain hell down on all our heads.
CHAPTER 32
HOME OF THE GODS
It had been a week, cut off from the world. No word from Julian, even though I turned on the cell phone to check for messages every day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. There was one from Giovanni. I didn’t answer. Maybe if we survived, one day I could send him word.
The storm ended on the third day, and I crept down to a vantage point, as close to the coast as I dared, to survey the damage. The anchorage off Cap Ferrat was littered with the masts and listing hulls of half a dozen boats. Others had probably sunk and come to rest on the bottom of the bay. The port at the village of Saint Jean was a shambles, and a yacht had been flung by the winds onto the beach at Paloma.
The grotto and cove at la Mala were submerged, and a maelstrom of waves swamped the villas built down close to the shore. I saw a tornado had hit land on the peninsula and cut a swath through the parasol pines. Only matchsticks of timber and debris were left of the stately villas caught in its direct path. Miraculously, my home had been spared, though a pine had been torn from its roots and flung at a drunken angle across the red tiles of the roof. As much as I needed the extra supplies still stocked at home, I couldn’t risk venturing back one last time until the waters receded.
Every night, the sky was illuminated by rocket flares and the echo of gunfire as the fighting crept ever closer. The front lines were now only kilometers from the airport. The sky was veiled day and night by a pall of smoke. I hadn’t seen the stars all week. A great city was about to fall, just like in my dream. The firestorm was coming and would burn everything in its path. It had been a week now since I received the fateful text message, but Julian was still lost to me in the hell below.
Last night, I awoke to silence, the rumble of the guns from the killing fields hushed, and saw, for the first time in a week, the majestic swath of stars shining above. I wheeled the telescope onto the deck and searched the familiar constellations, and unknown worlds, spreading in a dazzling profusion before my eyes
My gaze swept past Betelgeuse and Rigal. There was Orion the Hunter, stalking the night sky, in amorous pursuit of the Pleiades. And the Seven Sisters did, as Lord Tennyson so eloquently declaimed, “Glitter like a swarm of fireflies, tangled in a silver braid.”
In every ancient civilization on Earth, the Pleiades were revered. From the desert tribes of North Africa and the Pharaohs of Egypt to the island kingdoms of Polynesia; for the aborigines of the Australian outback to the nomads of the Far East steppes or the citizen-philosophers of the Greek archipelago, legends swirl around these brilliant, blue stars.
North American Indians’ legends denote the Pleiades as a sacred place and believe it is where a soul returns to upon its death. For the Mayans and Aztecs, the star cluster of the Pleiades was the home of Gods.
Quetzalcoat
l was one such god, a bearded white man who lived among these tribes for a time, taught them mathematics and astronomy, and shared with them sacred knowledge from the stars. He foretold of many things to come. The record of his predictions is written in hieroglyphics on the walls of their stone pyramids. And eerily, so many of these prophecies have come to pass.
When Quetzalcoatl’s time on Earth drew to a close, he transformed into a feathered serpent, then ascended to his home among the Pleiades. With the promise he would return to usher in a new world, a new age.
Indeed, almost every tribe in the Americas, from the Incas in South America, to the Plains Indians of North America, too, have legends of a bearded white god—though he was known to them by other names—who, two thousand years ago, traveled and lived among them for a time, teaching them the sacred ways.
I saw the hour was late and was ready to turn in for the night, when I noticed low in the eastern portion of the sky, a new star rising from the Pleiades. As it rose ever higher, its color magically intensified until it blazed blood-red.
I stood there mesmerized, and goose bumps ran up my arms as I wondered if the Red Star Kachina—the Purifier from Hopi legends—had finally appeared.
Later, as I lay shivering in bed, feeling all alone in the world, except for the reassuring bulk of Buddy warming my feet, the pulsing image of the red star followed me down into dreamland and haunted my sleep.
Today, I observed, from a stand of oak trees, the last stretch of road that led to the valley of Laghet. I haven’t been back to Laghet since that fateful day when we fled the wrath of the tornado at Lac Saint Cassiens. I haven’t spoken with the nuns, either, since that day when hope died.