The Englishman was in a fetal position on his side. The blood had stopped flowing out of his neck, and his skin was the color of pure white paper. She’d never seen so much blood. She pulled off her bloody sweater and put her right hand into the clean right sleeve. Gingerly, she gripped the handle of the sword.
She pulled the sword handle straight up, away from the man’s body. The blade remained lodged, and his body shuddered from her effort. She jumped back away from him and almost lost her footing in the pool of blood. Bile rose in her throat. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath.
She approached the body again, bent over, gripped the handle, placed her left foot on his back, making sure that it was on an area of his shirt already completely saturated with his blood, and pulled with all her might. The sword broke free all at once, and she nearly fell over backward.
A small trickle of blood flowed from the open wound at his neck. She turned her eyes away from it before she saw too much of what lay beneath his skin. She reached for Heath’s knife, positioned it over the cut in his neck, closed her eyes, and slid it back down into the wound.
She stood back up, battling mightily not to throw up, and wiped the sword’s edge with the clean right sleeve of her sweater. Once, twice, three times. The sword’s metal seemed to glow from within. She turned back to the filing cabinet and wrapped Excalibur in its ancient leather covering.
The front door swung open and Dafydd rushed in. He was covered with blood as well.
“Come on,” he said. “Heath said to store the sword somewhere safe and meet them at the hospital.”
They turned to leave. Standing in the hallway was a man, silhouetted by the bright sunlight.
“Carys?” asked the figure.
She froze. He looked familiar, but it took her a moment for her brain to untangle exactly who she was looking at. He was tall, with a wide figure and thick blond hair. She blinked.
It was JJ.
“JJ, what are you…?” she began to ask.
“Are you two hurt?” JJ asked as he moved swiftly toward them. He grabbed her arm. His grip was strong.
“What are you doing here?” Dafydd asked.
JJ surveyed the room slowly, ignoring the question, seemingly immune to the blood splattered everywhere, the dead body in the middle of it. She studied his face, confusion roiling her mind.
“What happened?” he asked, seemingly in shock.
“Your father,” she said. “He was shot. We were meeting with the tribe for some research and—”
“He was shot? Why?”
She checked herself. She was still guarding the secret, a compulsion stronger than the shock of the carnage that surrounded her.
“Why are you here?” she asked.
“My father called me,” said JJ, spinning slowly to survey the room. “He said he had something he wanted to show me.”
Carys pondered this with the one remaining logical section of her mind. The bond. Father and son. Stronger than anything. He wanted to share his victory with his son. Finally. After all this time.
“We should go to the hospital,” said Dafydd.
“Yes,” said JJ, with a blank look. “I don’t know where it is.”
“Carys can go with you,” said Dafydd. “I’ll follow you in Harper’s car.”
“What is that?” JJ pointed to the sword, wrapped in leather in her arms.
“It’s an artifact,” she said. “Your father will explain it all when we see him. Let’s go.”
“Carys,” said Dafydd. “The manuscripts.” He pointed to her tote bag, lying in the blood on the floor. She reached down and picked it up.
As they left the tribal office, police sirens wailed in the distance. Dafydd put the sword in the back of the Range Rover and hopped in. “Don’t lose me,” he said. “I don’t know where we’re going.”
JJ remotely unlocked the doors of his car. Carys got in on the passenger side, putting her bloody sweater and tote bag by her feet. “I’m so sorry, JJ. Your car is—”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s the least of my concerns right now.”
She pulled her cell phone out and mapped the address of the hospital.
They pulled onto 6A, and JJ eased into the slow traffic, Dafydd following closely behind.
“I’m so glad he called you,” she said.
JJ just nodded slightly and smiled. “Yes,” he said.
“How much did he tell you about what we were doing?”
JJ drove on quietly, staring straight ahead, then turned to her.
“I know everything,” he said.
This was new. She thought JJ knew nothing.
“When did he tell you?”
“He didn’t tell me,” he said. “He told my mother a long, long time ago. She told me.”
“I’m…I’m surprised. I thought Nicola and I were the only ones who knew.”
JJ nodded.
“My father told my mother because he was trying to explain why he couldn’t spend more time with her when she was sick,” said JJ.
They approached a junction, and she looked at the map.
“We make a right here,” she said.
JJ did not put on his blinker. As the turn approached, he continued straight.
“You missed the turn,” she said.
He stared ahead.
“JJ,” she said. “That was our turn back there.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ll reroute it,” she said. “Do you want me to drive? Are you okay?”
“My father has been shot. So I suppose no, I’m not okay.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Pull over at the next driveway and I’ll drive.”
“But on the other hand,” he said, “I actually feel better than I have in a long time.”
She examined his face and began to see something she hadn’t noticed before. He didn’t look upset. He looked completely relaxed.
“You want to know the last thing my mother said to me before she died?” he asked.
“Your father isn’t going to die,” she said. “He’s strong. He’ll pull through.”
JJ smiled at this and looked over at her.
“That’s not what I was getting at,” he said. “Do you want to know what she said?”
“If you want to talk about it.”
“I do,” he said. His eyes were steel. “She said, ‘Promise me he will never find what he’s looking for.’”
Carys looked at the side of his face, trying to make sense of the words. Slowly, like ice melting, she began to understand.
JJ turned to her again, his eyes burning brightly.
“She hated him,” he said. “So did I. He abandoned us. From before my earliest memory. He was there. But he wasn’t. Know what I mean?”
She knew.
“For a long time,” he said, “I had no idea how I would keep my promise to her. Then he lost his mind. And finally there was a way.”
Her hands were cold. He was driving faster now, ten miles over the speed limit. Four police cars roared past them headed toward the tribal office, their lights flashing and sirens wailing. She turned to watch them pass. Heath must have made it to the hospital and reported the shooting.
“But he’d hidden the monk’s manuscript,” said JJ. “It was the one thing that would have allowed him, if he ever did get better, to pick up where he left off and find that tomb. So I had to get rid of it. But I didn’t know where it was. He didn’t even tell my mother where it was. I knew it was in a vault in the house somewhere, but I could never find it. So, once I got power of attorney, I decided to do two things. First, get rid of all the source material that proves what’s in the monk’s manuscript. Without the library, the monk’s tale was just a wild, unprovable story about a warrior. But I also had to find the monk’s manuscript and the tran
slation and get rid of them too.
“That’s why I called Sothington’s in the first place. I knew they’d send you to do the appraisal for the library sale. I knew my father and Nicola would eventually show you the manuscript, and I also knew my father would ask you to take up his hunt. He talked about you all the time, you know.”
He glared at her.
“He said you could practically read his mind when it came to manuscripts. You weren’t supposed to accept his offer. Once you found out about the monk’s manuscript, you were supposed to put it into the estate, make it part of the collection like a good, law-abiding rare-books authenticator. Then I was going to sell it all off—manuscript included—and my father would never be able to find the tomb.
“But you didn’t play by the rules, did you?” said JJ, his face seething with hatred. “You stopped the sale, you accepted my father’s offer—you stopped everything in its tracks. This thing would have been so smooth; no one would have gotten hurt. No one would have gotten killed, if you’d just played by the rules.”
JJ looked at her with an expression of the purest contempt.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “It’s not important that you understand. All that matters is that now I’ve got the monk’s manuscript.”
Carys, through the fear gathering slowly in her gut, noticed that JJ didn’t seem to know about the Morfran manuscript. Which, with the monk’s journal, was lying at her feet.
“Even if my father recovers and somehow manages to find the tomb, he’ll never be able to prove who’s in it.”
He smiled to himself, basking in his victory.
“I kept my promise,” he said. “So, as I said, I’m feeling better than I have in a long time.”
Another piece clicked silently into place in her mind.
“You hired Gyles?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said JJ. “Once your idiot boss called off the sale, I did some research of my own on Gyles, who was so obviously in on the scam to blackmail me. I’m surprised you didn’t see it. It took quite a bit of digging—Martin Gyles is very good at keeping himself hidden away, but I’d have no right to my doctorate in computer science if I couldn’t figure out how to hack him.”
He smiled to himself.
“Found out Gyles, or I should say JB—that’s the name he uses to do all his dirty business—was just the kind of person I needed for the job.”
“What job?” she asked.
“I offered him five hundred thousand dollars to find and steal the monk’s manuscript and the translation,” said JJ. “I told him it led to an ancient treasure and that he was free to launch his own search once he could prove he had grabbed the books. Part of the deal was he had to snatch the books before you found the tomb. But he didn’t play by the rules, either. He decided he was just going to let you find that tomb and then he’d sweep in and steal everything in it. He thought all I wanted was the manuscript. But the point was for my father to never find the tomb. Gyles didn’t understand that.”
If she could toss the tote bag out the window, she could at least warn Dafydd. He’d stop. At the very least, the books would be out of JJ’s reach. Carys slowly lifted her bag and placed her hand on her window button. JJ glanced at her and hit the driver’s side master lock button. The locks thunked down like the lid of a coffin.
“Then, I got lucky,” said JJ, smiling as if he were telling a funny story. “Remember the day you came to the house and you and my father were marking up the map where he thought the King was buried? Well, he put a big X right where you were going.”
He turned to her and looked hard at her face. She had gone entirely numb.
“JB texted me yesterday to say he’d have the manuscripts today,” said JJ. “Said there was a meeting at a tribal office and the books would be in hand by end of day. I came down to make sure things went the way I instructed. Good thing I did. Looks like his man really screwed up. I’m beginning to think that Gyles is as big of an idiot as your boss. Now I’ve got everything and all Gyles has is…well, nothing. No treasure, no money, no manuscript. Teach him to fuck with me. And he doesn’t know that I know his real identity. He still thinks I only know him as JB.”
“JJ,” said Carys. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. “Please pull over.”
“No,” said JJ.
“I’ll scream,” she said. “I’ll break the window.”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun.
“Go ahead,” he said. “It’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
JJ took a right down a narrow lane off Route 6A, somewhere in Dennis. Dafydd turned in after them, then slowed down and beeped the horn. It was clear to him now that they were not going to a hospital. He beeped again, the sound getting more urgent. The car bounced down the rocky narrow lane.
She started to text Dafydd, but JJ saw and pressed the gun into her side.
“Put it down,” he sneered. She obeyed. She wanted to turn around, warn Dafydd off. All she could do was sit and watch this nightmare unfold.
“You don’t know what you’ve done,” she said softly. “Gyles is not an idiot. Not at all. He has people everywhere. He’ll hunt you down.”
“Oh, I know exactly what I’ve done,” said JJ. “I leaked Gyles’s little nom de guerre to some very bad people he’s doing business with in Syria. I’m not at all concerned about Gyles. Gyles is finished. Payback for trying to rip me off.”
Bushes scraped the car’s sides, setting the metal yowling like a distant scream. In a few hundred yards, they emerged into a clearing along the shore of a small, swampy lake. A long boat dock stuck out about one hundred and fifty feet. Carys quickly scanned the shore, looking for houses, people, anything. There were none.
“Get out of the car,” said JJ.
She had to think. She had to stall.
“Get out of the car!” JJ yelled. It was the first time he’d raised his voice. She opened the door and got out. JJ got out, keeping the gun trained on her. Dafydd pulled up next to them and jumped out.
“JJ,” said Dafydd, “what the hell are we—”
JJ raised the gun into view, and Dafydd raised his hands.
“What are you doing?” asked Dafydd.
“Take that thing out of the back of the Rover and put it in my trunk,” said JJ. “Do it now or I’ll shoot her.” He pointed the gun at Carys.
Dafydd hit the button on the key ring, retrieved the sword, and put it into the opened trunk of JJ’s car.
“Now walk around to the front of my car,” he said. “You too, Carys.”
He wiggled the muzzle of the gun at her. Slowly, she walked to the front of the car. Her legs nearly buckled out from under-
neath her.
“Kneel down,” said JJ. “Both of you.”
Dafydd searched her face.
“Dafydd,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll be okay,” said Dafydd. “Just do what he says.”
“Please, JJ,” she said. Her hands were shaking. “Don’t do this. You’re not a murderer.”
“Yes, I am,” he said. He walked around behind Dafydd and struck him once in the back of his head with the butt of the gun. Dafydd dropped forward, unconscious. Before she could react, she felt a sudden searing pain on the back of her head and the world went black.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
The hillside filled the entire landscape. It was soft and wet and strewn with oddly shaped rocks. Carys moved slowly across it, as if her feet were being pulled back down by hands. Each step she took was leaden. Her vision was blurry and darkened. She looked down. Her feet were nearly black with mud, but it was thinner than mud. A strange odor, tinged with something like metal, or meat, penetrated her nostrils.
And her lungs.
She could not breathe. The air itself was choking her. She raise
d her hands to her face to wave it away, but the gray sky and the space around her were composed of something denser than air. Every move she made was constrained, as if the air were struggling to push her down.
She screamed, but no sound came out of her mouth.
Up ahead, standing on top of a small rise in the middle of the hillside, was Lestinus. His cloak flowed around him in great billows. She tried to call for help but was mute. If she could only reach that hill, if she could reach Lestinus, she knew she could get away from whatever it was that was holding her. But no matter how hard she tried, the heavy air would not let her go.
Lestinus turned and saw her. His face brightened into a smile. She wanted to raise her arm to wave to him so he would come help her, but it was too heavy and she was so tired. Lestinus took a step toward her, then another, and soon he was running toward her, hard and fast, his cloak flowing out behind him. He moved more swiftly than she could imagine ever moving again. She watched him, her heart glad and peaceful. It had been so long.
Lestinus stopped a few feet short of her. He raised both his arms and held them out to her. Then he opened his mouth. The words that emerged from him did not sound human. They were instead like a clean, high note, with a visceral sharpness—a clear, perfect sound, a crystal glass being struck.
“Suscitate viveque!”
The words penetrated right to Carys’s bones and filled her muscles with a freezing bolt of energy. She was pulled rapidly up, as if a great hand had reached down out of the leaden gray sky to yank her heavenward. As she ascended, the world went black again.
When the light returned, she was surrounded by green murk and impossible cold. Water. She was in water.
Her lungs were screaming. She tried to swim up. But she was going nowhere. Her head was hitting something.
Slowly her eyes cleared and she saw that she was in a car. The Rover. It was in the water. And next to her in the back seat was Dafydd. He was completely still. She reached for him. Shook him. Nothing. A small bubble of air escaped from his lips. Carys reached for the door handle and pulled it hard. It would not open. She looked around her for something to smash the window with and saw the silvery wobble of a pocket of air in the back, near the rear window, as the Rover descended into the murky, brackish water. She struggled to pull Dafydd over the back of the passenger seat to get him to the air, but her lungs were screaming for a breath. She let go of his arm and swam over the back seat to the air bubble, popping up into it, gasping in the oxygen, once, twice.
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