Sword- Part One

by D B Nielsen

  I drew in one shuddering breath. Then another. And another. Every time I felt the pressure building in my chest, squeezing my lungs tight, I released the breath I was holding. Concentrating on solely breathing in and out seemed an enormous effort of will, as if I needed to retrain my brain to perform so simple an act. But agonised by losses far more cutting than the bite of the dagger upon my throat, I rejected sympathy and self-pity.

  ‘I’m all right. It’s not your fault. You’re here now,’ I attempted to reassure my father and his colleague with a wan smile.

  ‘Pardon me, Miss.’ A police detective appeared at my side, squinting nervously at my name badge. ‘Miss Sage Woods, is it? I’m Superintendent Jeffries and I need to ask you to come with me.’

  As if wavered to instability by his words, the late afternoon sunlight in the Great Court briefly plunged to shadow.

  My father looked grim. I could tell that he didn’t like the idea of his daughter going anywhere with the police nor being ignored, and his response to the Superintendent was terse, conveying his acute displeasure. ‘For heaven’s sake, this is ridiculous! Can’t this wait? My daughter has been through enough as it is! The paramedics haven’t even checked on her yet!’

  As he spoke now to the Superintendent, I could tell my father was barely controlling his anger. Making myself small, I listened, hardly daring to breathe.

  Superintendent Jeffries, a tall, lean man with a receding hairline who reminded me a little of Prince Philip, stepped forward, swallowing the frog in his throat. ‘I apologise for the confusion, Sir. I’m afraid the paramedics have been delayed by the museum visitors needing attention outside. Some of them sustained injuries in the rush to evacuate the museum.’

  ‘I understand your predicament.’ Dad stated sympathetically, but the line of his mouth suggested his dissatisfaction and his tone was curt. ‘But until my daughter is seen to by a paramedic, I’m afraid she will not be going anywhere ... and certainly not without me.’

  I knew the symptoms of Dad’s anger. Usually it was banked. He probably only lost his temper once a year, if that. But watch out when he did. His voice was tight but low. He didn’t shout. Didn’t need to. His words were abrupt – as if he was firing them off, one by one, like a machine gun. Each one clipped but articulate. Aimed right at his target.

  The Superintendent exchanged looks with his superior. Obviously no stranger to power plays, the Assistant Commissioner was unimpressed. But then he looked over at me and our gazes locked. He stared at me for a long moment, and then gave a nod to Jeffries.

  The Superintendent winced. ‘Very good, Sir. We’ll organise for your daughter to be seen by a paramedic as soon as they’re able and then, perhaps, she’ll be up to answering a few questions.’

  With that, Superintendent Jeffries headed across the Great Court towards the museum’s entrance, skirting the crime scene in his path in search of an available ambulance crew.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. Slowly, deliberately, I eased myself out of Dad’s embrace to plant a small kiss upon his weathered cheek. He suddenly seemed a lot older than his forty-six years. Behind the steel-rimmed glasses he wore, his eyes held a bleak, defeated expression.

  That, too, was my fault.

  In as many months as we’d been living in London, the pinnacle of his life’s work had been stolen from him and he’d witnessed both his eldest daughters hospitalised – in this very museum, I had carelessly placed myself in danger by walking in front of a swinging stone relief and was only alive thanks to St. John’s quick thinking, and Fi had fallen down a deep sinkhole in the forest whilst taking Indy for a walk; both of us requiring treatment – and now this. He was probably deeply regretting his decision to relocate our family to London for the sake of an artefact – not knowing the true significance of the object he valued so highly.

  Poor Dad.

  It was he who needed comforting now – and it was easier for me to concentrate on someone other than the dead guard or myself. He gave me a conflicted look and slowly stroked my hair, falling loosely now about my shoulders, escaping from where I’d ruthlessly restrained it in a bun that morning.

  The organised chaos around us continued. The Metropolitan Police cordoned off the museum with a barricade of police cars so that only emergency personnel gained access, but still the curators rushed in and rushed out again. Whilst the authorities kept at bay the news reporters, the distressed relatives of staff members, and nosy members of the public who threatened to enter the premises, they didn’t count on one very determined, irate Nephilim.

  Just then I became aware of a disturbance similar to a frisson of charged energy in the air, not from any noise for St. John’s approach was utterly silent as he moved across the creamy marble floor, graceful as an ice skater, but because of the crackling tension which emanated from his fury. Simmering. That was the word. Anger seemed to swirl around and in him, building to a boil. The atmosphere was thick with his arrival, a contagion passing from one person to another, infected as they were with his presence.

  ‘Sir, you can’t–’ A young, inexperienced police officer attempted to detain him but St. John ignored him and everyone else; his eyes fixed entirely on his goal.

  He was across the Great Court in less than a dozen strides, cutting a path through the police and paramedics who yielded before him as the Red Sea parting before the Israelites, coming to stand close to me without so much as touching me nor attempting to remove me from my father’s care and possessively claim his right as my fiancé. Brilliant jade flecked with gold gazed down on me with an unfathomable expression.

  Then, ignoring the scuff marks and dirt on the marble floor that would stain his immaculate black trousers, he lowered himself to one knee so that we were eye-to-eye and asked, his voice tight, controlled, ‘Sage? Are you all right? What happened?’

  ‘I’m f-f-fine,’ I stuttered in response. I lied.

  Feeling both nauseated and hollow at the same time, I bit down hard on my lip. There was so much to tell him but I just ... couldn’t.

  Watching his beautiful face in the flickering, waning afternoon sunlight, loose golden curls falling artlessly around it, almost forming a halo, I felt much too vulnerable. The light played over his features like a Rembrandt painting – half in light, half in shadow – revealing then concealing his true self. The play of light offered him up in fragments – Nephilim. Historian. Templar Knight. Keeper of the Seed. A puzzle, an enigma that would need careful consideration and patience for one to know this man fully – which I could not quite resolve into a whole, no matter how hard I tried.

  The infinitesimal space between us held a chasm of countless secrets. Just the thought of telling him the truth – that I was responsible for an innocent man’s death – weighed me down, made me feel so heavy that I thought I would fall through the ground beneath me into an endless abyss. I was tense with worry that he could see into my mind, read my thoughts, and that he might realise I was not the person he thought I was.

  I couldn’t answer him. Under the thousands of glass panes of the museum’s Great Court I felt exposed, under the white light. Instead, my father answered for me and the words broke over my head in soft waves, white foam washing around me.

  St. John was silent for a long moment, his emerald eyes intensely assessing me across the inches that separated us. I could sense when his eyes touched upon my injuries, making the heat creep up my throat and face. Ducking my head slightly to mask my anxiety and shame, I knew that such a flimsy barrier as the chestnut curtain of my hair was not going to shield me from his knowing observation. That green gaze missed nothing – not the red mark upon my cheek, nor the sharp, deep cut where the blade had sliced the smooth skin at my throat, or even the tender bruises on my upper arm beneath my uniform – narrowing at the sight of my blotchy, tear-stained face and puffy, red-rimmed eyes. He exhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring in repressed emotion.

  ‘I’m fine.’ This time I spoke with an assertive tone, hoping to reassure him.
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br />   ‘You are not fine. They harmed you,’ he contradicted me. St. John’s normally mellifluous voice was dead with rage.

  He did not say that my attackers might have killed me – both of us knew that this wasn’t really possible since my lifeblood was inextricably tied to both the Seed and to its Keeper – but neither my father nor Ted Boyle knew this and probably assumed that such a threat was real. Luckily for me, the men who had held me at knifepoint and killed the security guard had not known this or they might have abducted me instead – though, whether they still remained ignorant of my true bond to the Seed, I wasn’t certain.

  I opened my mouth to protest when we were interrupted by the untimely arrival of the paramedics. All conversation ceased and both St. John and Dad moved back to provide room for them as the perfunctory examination began with my blood pressure being taken, and my wounds cleaned and bandaged. The no-nonsense attitude of the paramedics – a strapping young man who seemed capable and efficient in carrying patients on stretchers or pushing them in wheelchairs, accompanied by his partner, a slight, toned blonde whose athletic appearance would have misled others to view her as a personal trainer – gave St. John sufficient proof of the lie I had now twice told. I winced in pain at the brisk, clinical manner of my handler, the pretty blonde, when she swabbed the wound at my throat, which caused a vein to throb in St. John’s temple and his eyes to darken.

  There would be hell to pay!

  As if matters couldn’t have got any worse, Dr Porterhouse bustled over to our ever-growing group where a huddle of people now gathered around us, his body language indicating his agitation.

  ‘Robert! Thank God you’re still here!’ Dad’s colleague called in distress as he reached us, ‘Ah! And St. John too! Good, good. Come with me – quickly, both of you – I am in need of your expertise. Ted, you may accompany us if you wish – as a scholar in Assyriology, this catastrophe affects you too – though I’m afraid we have no use for fanciful legends at this moment.’

  My father’s brows rose in astonishment. ‘James? Good lord! What is the matter? Calm yourself, man.’

  Muddled in appearance as any care-worn, elderly academic, the curator said, ‘This upheaval has struck at the very heart of our museum – a staff member dead, another injured, and untold damage to some of our most precious, priceless pieces – no, you must come with me now. Hurry. There is no time to lose. The winged bull monumental sculptures – every one – have been broken. There are significant cracks in their foundations which may be irreparable.’

  ‘Good God, Porterhouse, you’re not serious?’ Dr Boyle interjected.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s true. I’m not quite certain but I fear that the base may no longer be able to bear the weight of the monument,’ Dr Porterhouse finished aloud as the paramedics attending to me finished up their business and went to look after the injured outside the museum.

  I felt Dad stiffen beside me, inhaling a deep breath, as he exchanged a loaded look with St. John. Reading their troubled expressions, I knew the worry now was the instability to the statues’ structural integrity.

  ‘You should go,’ I offered.

  Dad eyed the plum coloured swelling on my cheek doubtfully.

  As no one made a move to rise, I became annoyed. Cutting off any protestations with an emphatic, ‘Go! Dr Porterhouse needs your assistance! I’ve told you I’m fine!’ in case they were still concerned about my welfare, I gestured to my father and St. John to make haste.

  But St. John remained stubbornly rooted.

  ‘You go, I’ll stay with Sage,’ he nodded at my father.

  Dad flung him a harried smile. ‘The police want to question her. Maybe I should stay – first Safie with Interpol, now this–’

  ‘I’ll stay with Sage,’ St. John cut in, echoing his earlier statement sombrely. He crossed his arms over his chest, immobile as any statue of antiquity, enough to rival those in the adjoining gallery.

  I wanted to scream in frustration at such possessiveness. Dad and St. John were showing their true colours again – wanting to protect me in their usual heavy-handed manner and acting as if I wasn’t even there. I was beyond angry. I felt the blood beating in my ears.

  My father removed his steel-rimmed glasses to rub a hand over his face, smoothing the furrows that marked his brows. Then, replacing them, he said, ‘Very well. I don’t expect that this will take long but if I am not back in time–’

  ‘I know what to do,’ St. John said with a touch of asperity. ‘Don’t worry, Robert. I won’t let anything happen to her.’

  Still looking unconvinced, my father reluctantly turned away to follow behind Dr Porterhouse and Ted Boyle, leaving me with St. John. My heart thudded dully at the thought that I was on my own. Instantly, St. John moved over to me, his hand heavy on my shoulder.

  ‘Well? What happened, Sage?’ His jade gaze was hard upon mine, trying to delve into my mind and divine my thoughts. With infinite gentleness, he brushed the pad of his thumb against the corner of my eye and it came away wet.

  ‘Sage, mon cœur?’

  I felt cold, from the tips of my toes to the hairs on my head, a jarring cold.

  ‘I was lucky. The security guard wasn’t so lucky.’

  St. John said nothing, then gave a low sigh. His hand tightened upon my shoulder – not in anger but in concern.

  ‘What really happened, Sage? Tell me. From the beginning.’ His tone was not encouraging. Doubtless he thought I would start blubbing if he displayed any further tenderness towards me and, if that happened, he’d never learn the truth of what had occurred – it was a mark of how well he knew me.

  ‘Where were you?’ I countered hotly, ignoring his question. My hands were fisted at my sides and I had to force my fingers to slowly uncurl, unclenching my fists – although, at that moment, I longed to hit him. Unreasonably, my anger was directed at him – as if what had happened was in some way his doing. ‘Why weren’t you here?’

  He dropped his hand from my shoulder as if stung. There was a pained expression in his eyes. ‘Believe me, Sage, I wish I had been here. But I was with my brotherhood in conclave. Unfortunately, the rooms we occupy are warded against all those with angelic origin, which means no communication with the outside world. No one listens in and, in turn, we cannot be distracted by external chatter.’ Bitterness and self-loathing laced his tone. ‘I should have been here. I made you a promise. I failed to protect you.’

  I stared at him in surprise, taking in the coiled tension of his stance. My anger seeped away with the realisation of how unjust I was being. Stepping forward, I tipped my head up to confront him. ‘St. John, you can’t blame yourself. You can’t be everywhere at once. And you can’t always be here to protect me. I told you once before that I could protect you, if necessary, and look after myself.’ Again, I felt a sharp pressure in my chest, a reminder of my own guilt. Oh yes, I could take care of myself! I thought bitterly. Just look where that had got me! And the security guard dead!

  I felt exhausted. I wasn’t ready yet for St. John to know about what had really happened.

  At my fierce words, St. John reached for my hands and held them tight in his own, almost cutting off my circulation. A little muscle in his jaw twitched as he replied, ‘You don’t understand, Sage. Even though I wasn’t there to protect you, two of my brothers were assigned to perform that duty in my stead. I trusted them implicitly.’

  Unaware, I made a slight sound; between a half-choking sob, half-hysterical laugh. I felt a sinister prescience. ‘What? What does that mean?’

  ‘They too failed to protect you – though they weren’t at fault.’ St. John waited, his look gravely steady. ‘They were poisoned.’

  ‘P-poisoned?’ I was stammering in shock, bewildered. ‘B-b-but how? Are they–’ Swallowing hard, I couldn’t go on. I felt death press in around me. Sensitised to my moods, St. John pulled me into a close embrace. I was immediately assailed by the strong, masculine scent of his sandalwood aftershave lotion and calmed.

 
‘I don’t know. It is too soon to tell. Injected. Ingested. It could be any number of methods,’ he admitted, banked anger in his smooth voice. ‘They will recover in time, but this poison is not one that I’m familiar with. Whilst it cannot kill them, it is a corrupting influence. It taints their very nature, calling to the darkness in their blood, slowly driving them mad.’

  Even within the circle of St. John’s embrace, I gave a shiver. ‘Oh my God! Those poor men!’

  More victims. For my sake. My fault.

  Stroking the loose tendrils of my hair, St. John murmured, ‘Never believe I would have knowingly left you in danger, mon cœur.’

  I opened my mouth to reply but, at that moment, Superintendent Jeffries stepped forward with a polite cough, interrupting our privacy. He appeared slightly embarrassed.

  ‘I apologise for this intrusion, Miss Woods, but the Assistant Commissioner insists it is urgent.’ The Superintendent checked his watch. ‘They’re waiting for you, Miss. If you will follow me, please?’

  I looked warily up at St. John. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. It occurred to me then that I might have to lie to the police. Fi would be able to do it – correction, had already done it – but I wasn’t good at lying. And lying to the police seemed ... immoral somehow, even if it was for a good reason.

  However, St. John took charge and manoeuvred me as if I were boneless. I leant on him for support, absorbing some of his strength and stood shakily on legs that had turned to liquid. We followed in Superintendent Jeffries’ footsteps, although I had no real recognition later of where he took us; just another empty office space in the labyrinth of the museum.

  He pulled up and pointed to a nondescript door. ‘In there. You’re expected. Good luck, Miss.’

  ‘You’re not coming?’ I asked, my eyes widening in bewilderment.

  Jeffries shook his head. ‘My orders are to leave you here. I have other business to attend to. Keep your chin up, Miss.’ He gave me an encouraging wink. ‘Don’t keep them waiting.’