Now that his suspicions had been verified, Painter had another concern.
Was he too late?
8:00 A.M.
RACHEL AND Monk secured her uncle’s temporary belly wrap, using Gray’s shirt. Uncle Vigor had lost a fair amount of blood, but the bullet had passed clean through. According to Monk, nothing major seemed to have been hit, but he needed immediate medical attention.
Uncle Vigor patted her hand once she was finished, then Monk helped him to his feet and half carried him.
Rachel hovered alongside them. Gray joined her, putting an arm around her waist. She leaned a bit into him, drawing strength from him.
“Vigor will be fine,” Gray promised. “He’s tough. He’s come this far.”
She smiled up at him, but she was too tired to put much emotion behind it.
Before they even reached the first tier, a booming voice echoed down to them, using a bullhorn again. “SORTEZ AVEC VOS MAINS SUR LA TÊTE!” The command echoed away, to come out with their hands up.
“Déjà vu,” Monk sighed. “Pardon my French.”
Rachel lifted her rifle.
A second command in English followed. “COMMANDER PIERCE, WHAT’S YOUR STATUS?”
Gray turned to the others.
“Impossible,” Kat said.
“It’s Director Crowe,” Gray confirmed, shock in his voice.
He turned and cupped his mouth and yelled back.
“ALL CLEAR DOWN HERE! WE’RE COMING UP!”
Gray then turned to Rachel, eyes bright.
“Is it over?” she asked.
As answer, he pulled her to him and kissed her. There was no mysterious light this time, only the strength of his arms and sweetness of his lips. She sank into him.
Here was all the magic she needed.
8:02 A.M.
GRAY LED the way up.
Monk helped Vigor, carrying him under his good arm. Gray kept an arm around Rachel. She leaned heavily against him, but she was a burden he was happy to bear.
Though relieved, Gray kept them armed this time. He was not walking into another ambush. Rifles and pistols in hand, they began the long trek up to the kitchen. Bodies, burned or electrocuted, littered the tiers.
“Why were we spared?” Monk asked.
“Maybe that lower level sheltered us,” Kat said.
Gray didn’t argue with her, but he suspected it was something more than that. He remembered the suffusing glow of the light. He sensed something more than random photons. Maybe not an intelligence. But something beyond raw power.
“And what happened to the treasure house?” Seichan asked, staring out at the empty expanse. “Was it all a hologram of some sort?”
“No,” Gray answered as they climbed. He had a theory. “Under powerful conditions, flux tubes can be generated within a Meissner field. Affecting not only gravity, like the levitation we’ve already seen, but also distorting space. Einstein showed that gravity actually curves space. The flux tubes create such a vortex in gravity that it bends space, possibly even folding it on itself, allowing movement across.”
Gray noted the looks of disbelief. “Research is already being done on this at NASA,” he pressed.
“Smoke and mirrors,” Monk grumbled. “That’s what I think it was.”
“But where did it all go?” Seichan asked.
Vigor coughed. Rachel stepped toward him. He waved her away, only clearing his throat. “Gone where we can’t follow,” he said hoarsely. “We were judged and found wanting.”
Gray felt Rachel begin to speak, to mention the false key. He squeezed her and nodded to her uncle, urging her to let him speak. Maybe it wasn’t all the fake key. Could Vigor be right? Had they brushed against something they weren’t ready for?
The monsignor continued, “The ancients sought the source of primordial light, the spark of all existence. Maybe they found a doorway into or a way to ascend up to it. The white bread of the Pharaohs was said to have helped these Egyptian kings shed mortal flesh and rise as a being of light. Maybe the ancient alchemists finally achieved this, moving out of this world and into the next.”
“Like traveling along the labyrinth,” Kat said.
“Exactly. The maze may be symbolic for their ascension. They left this gateway here for others to follow, but we came—”
“Too early,” Rachel suddenly blurted, interrupting.
“Or too late,” Gray added. The words had just popped into his head, like the flash of a camera bulb, leaving him dazed.
Rachel glanced to him. She lifted a hand to rub her forehead.
He saw a similar confusion in her eyes, as if the words had come unbidden to her, too. He glanced over the lip of the tier down to the shattered glass floor, then back to her.
Perhaps Raoul was not the only one affected by the light.
Had an echo been left inside them? An understanding, a final message?
“Too late…or too early,” Vigor continued with a shake of his head, drawing back Gray’s attention. “Wherever the ancients fled with their treasures—into the past, into the future—they have left us with only the present.”
“To create our own heaven or hell,” Monk said.
They continued in silence, climbing tier after tier. Reaching the top level, a group of French police waited, along with a familiar face.
“Commander,” Painter said. “It’s good to see you.”
Gray shook his hand. “You have no idea.”
“Let’s get all of you topside.”
Before they could move, Vigor stirred from Monk’s arm. “Wait.” He stumbled away, one hand on the wall.
Gray and Rachel stepped after him.
“Uncle…” she said, concerned.
A short distance away stood a stone table. It seemed everything had not vanished with the library. A leather-bound book rested on the table. Its glass case, though, was gone.
“The ledger,” Vigor said, tears welling. “They left the ledger!”
He attempted to pick it up, but Rachel motioned him aside and collected it herself. She shut it and tucked it under an arm.
“Why leave that behind?” Monk asked, helping the monsignor again.
Vigor answered, “To let us know what awaits us. To give us something to seek.”
“Dangling the proverbial carrot before the mule,” Monk said. “Great. They couldn’t leave a chest of gold…okay, maybe not gold…I’m damn sick of gold. Diamonds, a chest of diamonds would be fine.”
They hobbled toward the stairs.
Gray glanced back one more time. With the space empty, he noted the cavern’s shape, a cone-shaped pyramid balanced on its tip. Or the upper half of an hourglass, pointing down toward the glass floor.
But where was the lower half?
As he stared, he suddenly knew.
“As it is above, so it is below,” he mumbled.
Vigor glanced back to him, rather sharply. Gray saw the understanding and knowledge in the old man’s eyes. He had already figured it out, too.
The gold key was meant to open a gateway. To the lower half of the hourglass. But where? Was there a cavern directly beneath this one? Gray didn’t think so. But somewhere the cathedral of knowledge waited. What had hung here was a mere reflection from another place.
Like Monk said. Smoke and mirrors.
Vigor stared at him. Gray remembered Cardinal Spera’s mission: to preserve the secret of the Magi, trusting that the knowledge would reveal itself when the time was right.
Maybe that’s what life’s journey was all about.
The quest.
To seek the truth.
Gray placed a hand on Vigor’s shoulder. “Let’s go home.”
With Rachel under his arm, Gray climbed the stairs.
Out of darkness and toward the light.
EPILOGUE
AUGUST 18, 11:45 A.M.
TAKOMA PARK, MARYLAND
a cognizant original v5 release november 24 2010
GRAY PEDALED down Cedar Street, p
assing by the Takoma Park Library. It felt good to feel the rush of air and the bright sunshine on his face. It seemed like the last three weeks had been spent underground at Sigma command, in meeting after meeting.
He had just come from a final debriefing with Painter Crowe. The meeting had centered on Seichan. The Guild operative had vanished like a ghost as they’d left the Pope’s Palace, stepping around a dark corner and disappearing. But Gray had found a token from her in his pocket.
Her dragon pendant.
Again.
And while the first pendant left at Fort Detrick had plainly been meant as a threat, this one felt different to Gray. A promise. Until they met again.
Kat and Monk had been at the debriefing, too. Monk had sat fiddling with his new state-of-the-art prosthesis, not so much uncomfortable with his new hand as he was anxious about the coming evening. Kat and Monk were going out on their first real date. The two had grown close after returning to the States. And oddly enough, it was Kat who had moved things forward and asked Monk out on tonight’s dinner date.
Afterward, alone, Monk had pulled Gray aside, half giddy. “It’s got to be the mechanical hand. Comes with a two-stroke vibration mode. What woman wouldn’t want to date me?”
Despite the flippancy, Gray saw the genuine affection and hope in his friend’s eyes. And also a little terror. Gray knew that Monk still bore some trauma from his mutilation, some insecurity.
Gray hoped that Monk would call him tomorrow, tell him how everything had turned out.
He shifted his weight to one pedal, knee out, and skimmed low around the corner onto Sixth Street. His mother had asked him to come to lunch.
And while he could’ve refused, he had been putting off something for too long. He glided past the rows of Victorian and Queen Anne cottages, dapple-shaded by a canopy of elms and maples.
He made a final turn onto Butternut Avenue, hopped the curb, and braked into the driveway of his parents’ Craftsman bungalow. He snapped off his helmet and carried his bike onto the porch.
He called through the screen door. “Mom, I’m home!”
He leaned the bike against the railing and opened the door.
“I’m in the kitchen!” his mother said.
Gray smelled something burning. A bit of smoke hung about the rafters.
“Is everything all right?” he asked, crossing down the short hall.
His mother wore jeans, a checkered blouse, and an apron snugged around her waist. She had dropped her hours at the university to part-time, two days a week. To help care for things at home.
Smoke filled the kitchen.
“I was making grilled cheese sandwiches,” she said, fluttering her hands. “I got a phone call from my TA. Left them on the griddle too long.”
Gray eyed the pile of sandwiches on a plate. Each was charred on one side. He fingered one. The cheese hadn’t even melted. How did his mother do that? Burn the sandwiches yet still keep them cold. It had to be a skill.
“They look fine,” Gray said.
“Call your father.” She waved her dishtowel, trying to waft out the smoke. “He’s out back.”
“More birdhouses?”
His mother rolled her eyes.
Gray crossed to the open back door and leaned out. “Pop! Lunch is ready.”
“Be right there!”
Gray returned as his mother set out some plates.
“Could you pour some orange juice?” she asked. “I need to get a fan.”
Gray stepped to the refrigerator, found the carton of Minute Maid, and began filling the tumblers. With his mother gone, he set the carton down and removed a small glass vial from his back pocket.
A gray-white powder filled it halfway. The last of the amalgam.
With Monk’s assistance, he had done some research into the m-state powders, how the compounds stimulated endocrine systems and seemed to have a strong ameliorative affect on the brain, increasing perception, acuity…and memory.
Gray dumped the contents of the vial into one of the glasses of orange juice and used a teaspoon to stir it.
His father entered through the back door. Sawdust speckled his hair. He wiped his boots on the rug, nodded to Gray, and dropped heavily into a chair.
“Your mother tells me you’re heading back to Italy.”
“Only for five days,” Gray answered, nesting all three glasses between his palms and carrying them over. “Another business trip.”
“Right…” His father eyed him. “So who’s the girl?”
Gray startled at the question and bobbled some of the orange juice. He hadn’t told his father anything about Rachel. He wasn’t sure what to say. After their rescue, the two had spent a night in Avignon together as matters were sorted out, curled in front of a small fire while the storm exhausted itself. They hadn’t made love that night, but they had talked. Rachel had explained about her family’s history, haltingly, with some tears. She still could not balance her feelings about her grandmother.
Finally, they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms.
In the morning, circumstance and duty had pulled them apart.
Where would it lead now?
He was heading back to Rome to find out.
He still called daily, sometimes twice daily. Vigor was healing well. Following the funeral for Cardinal Spera, he had been promoted to the position of prefect at the Archives, to oversee the repair of the damage done by the Court. Last week, Gray had received a note of thanks from Vigor but also discovered a message hidden within the text. Below the monsignor’s signature lay two inked seals, papal insignia, mirror images of each other, the twin symbols of the Thomas Church.
It seemed the secret church had found a new member to replace the lost cardinal.
Upon learning this, Gray had shipped Alexander’s gold key to Vigor, the real gold key, from a safe deposit box in Egypt. For safekeeping. Who better to secure it? The fake key, the one used to trick Raoul, had been fashioned at one of the many shops in Alexandria known for their skill at counterfeiting antiquities. It had taken less than an hour, performed while Gray had freed Seichan from Alexander’s watery tomb. He hadn’t dared transport the real key to France, to the Dragon Court.
General Rende’s testimony and confession while in custody proved how dangerous that would have been. The litany of atrocities and deaths stretched back decades. With Rende’s confession, his sect of the Dragon Court was slowly being rooted out. But how thoroughly or completely would never be known.
Meanwhile, closer to Gray’s heart and mind, Rachel continued to sort out her life. With Raoul’s death, she and her family had inherited Chateau Sauvage, a bloody inheritance to be sure. But at least the curse had died along with Rachel’s grandmother. No other Verona family members had been aware of the grandmother’s dark secret. To settle matters further, plans were already under way to sell the chateau. The proceeds would go to the families of those killed in Cologne and Milan.
So lives slowly healed and moved forward.
Toward hope.
And possibly more…
Gray’s father sighed and tipped back in his kitchen chair. “Son, you’ve been in an awfully good mood lately. Ever since your return from that business trip last month. Only a woman puts that kind of shine on a man.”
Gray settled the tumblers of orange juice on the table.
“I may be losing my memory,” his father continued. “But not my eyesight. So tell me about her.”
Gray stared at his father. He heard the unspoken addendum.
While I can still remember.
His father’s casual manner hid a deeper vein. Not sorrow or loss. He was reaching out for something now. In the present. Some connection to a son he’d perhaps lost in the past.
Gray froze by the table. He felt a flare of old anger, older resentment. He didn’t deny it, but he let the heat wash through him.
His father must have sensed something, because he settled his chair to the floor and changed the subject. “So, where are tho
se sandwiches?”
Words echoed in Gray’s head. Too early…too late. A last message to live in the present. To accept the past and not rush the future.
His father reached for the spiked glass of orange juice.
Gray blocked him, covering the cup with his hand. He lifted the tumbler away. “How about a beer? I think I saw a Bud in the fridge.”
His father nodded. “That’s why I love you, son.”
Gray stepped to the sink, dumped the orange juice down the drain, and watched it swirl away.
Too early…too late.
It was time he lived in the present. He didn’t know how much time he had with his father, but he would take what he could get and make the very best of it.
He crossed to the fridge, grabbed two beers, popped the lids on the way back, pulled out one of the kitchen chairs, sat down, and placed a bottle in front of his father.
“Her name is Rachel.”
Act One
First Blood
Chapter 1
May 23, 7:32 A.M.
New Orleans
The Bronco crushed through the debris left by the hurricane and bounced off yet another hole. Lorna nearly hit the roof of the cabin. The car slid to the left on the wet road. She eased off the accelerator as she fought for control.
The storm had stripped vegetation, sent creeks overflowing their banks, and even floated an alligator into someone’s swimming pool. Luckily the worst of the dying hurricane had struck further west. Still, with such downpours, Mother Nature seemed determined to turn Orleans Parish back into swamplands.
As Lorna sped along the river road, all she could think about was the phone call. It had come in twenty minutes ago. They’d lost power at ACRES. The generators hadn’t kicked in, and a hundred research projects were threatened.
As she rounded a final oxbow in the Mississippi River, the compound appeared ahead. The Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species occupied over a thousand acres downriver from New Orleans. Though associated with the city’s zoo, ACRES was not open to the public. Sheltered within a hardwood forest, the grounds included a few outdoor pens, but the main facility was a thirty-six-thousand square-foot research building that housed a half-dozen laboratories and a veterinary hospital.