Once Every Never Part 25

Al hesitated. But Morholt seemed to have little patience to spare with the girl who'd dented his Bentley. He c.o.c.ked the hammer back on the pistol with a click that was shockingly loud in the gloom.

"Now."

Al reached into her bag and pulled out the rosewood box that held the torc. She handed it to Morholt, who flipped open the lid.

It was empty.

"What the h.e.l.l?" Clare gasped.

Morholt pointed his gun at Al's head. "Cute," he snarled. "Where is it?"

"It was there! It was right there! I swear!" Al said frantically.

"It can't be," Milo said faintly. His voice was thin but, Clare noticed, it was his. Not Connal's. "Something we didn't take into consideration. The torc-it's already here. Once we crossed over the mystical threshold into the barrow, both versions of the torc couldn't exist in the same place. I'll bet it's still around Boudicca's neck, because"-he glared meaningfully at Stuart Morholt-"in this timeline here inside the tomb, it hasn't been stolen yet."

"Right you are. An oversight I aim to correct."

"I know you ..." Milo spoke again, only this time it wasn't Milo. The s.h.i.+ft was subtle, but Clare recognized Connal's intonation taking over once more.

Morholt raised an eyebrow. "Of course you know me. Or did I jar loose a few neural pathways when I knocked you on the head?"

Connal took a step forward, hands curling into fists. "I know what you are," he said in a low growl. "You seek to take that which isn't yours. You remind me of the Romans."

For a moment Morholt frowned in confusion and his gaze s.h.i.+fted between Milo and Clare-he had no way of knowing that the handsome young computer geek was toting around the consciousness of one of the very people Morholt claimed he'd taken up the legacy of.

The self-professed Druid waved his gun at the real Druid and said, "Back off, hero. All of you. Stand over there," he ordered, motioning them toward the rough stone wall they could just make out in the gloom.

"Milo," Clare whispered into his ear, "can you get a grip on Connal, please? Try to explain the concept of 'gun' to him." She watched as Milo's face contorted through a series of expressions as if he were having a silent argument with himself-which in a way, Clare supposed he was. Then he shook his head sharply and the tendons of his neck seeming to relax a bit. He let Clare guide him toward the wall while Morholt knelt carefully and shrugged out of an enormous backpack. He pulled out a jumbo-sized glowstick-obviously he'd remembered the effect of s.h.i.+mmering on electronics and had made allowances-and with a crack, twisted the plastic tube to activate the chemical luminescence. In the eerie green light Clare got a good look at him. Morholt was dressed head to toe in a black jumpsuit with so many pockets and zippers and snaps it looked as if he'd mugged an eighties hair band and stolen their gear. He wore black leather gloves, military-style boots, and a Batman-worthy utility belt.

As he raised the sickly-green illumination over his head it revealed the true spectacle of the contents of the tomb.

Even Clare-already knowing what was there-was affected by the sight.

On the great stone bier Boudicca's skeleton lay upon a long carpet of red hair, the great golden torc resting on fleshless collarbones that gleamed a pale chartreuse in the green chemical glow. The queen's once-rich garments had been reduced almost to dust and the iron sword that had lain on her breast had rusted away to almost nothing-only the bronze hilt remaining intact in the cage of her skeletal fingers. Everywhere else in the tomb precious stones winked and gold and silver and bronze glowed, but it was the sight of that corroded blade, a warrior sword reduced to brittle shards, that Clare couldn't drag her gaze away from.

Because that was what Boudicca had been, first and foremost. A warrior.

Queen, mother, wife, even woman-those things had been secondary. "Diplomat," Clare thought, hadn't even made the list. Instead her fierce pride had won out over everything else-including her need to survive. It had cost her life. And the lives of seventy thousand other men and women, and Clare simply could not wrap her head around that. Comorra dead. Connal wounded and weeping, living broken for the rest of his days-however many more there had been. Londinium burned to the ground. And all for what?

For honour.

For vengeance.

For Andrasta ... Clare flinched at the words that whispered in her mind in the husky voice of the queen. Her glance flew to the bier where the remains of Boudicca lay.

Still dead, she thought, trying to steady herself. Still lying there. Not even a tongue left in her skull that could have spoken those words.

Clare took a deep breath. In the uncertain, goblin-green light the shadows leaped and danced on the barrow walls like giant raven's wings spreading wide on phantom winds. But that was just an illusion. And the voice Clare had heard was just a trick of her overheated imagination. She was sure of that. Mostly sure ...

Stuart Morholt unzipped another compartment of his pack, removed bricks of what looked like modelling clay, and stacked them in a little pyramid.

"Is that what I think it is?" Milo asked in a cracking voice.

"It is, if you think it's plastic explosives." Morholt withdrew a handful of batteries and inserted them into a little black box he pulled from another pocket. A light on its side blinked red and green. Satisfied, he took out the batteries and put them back into the pocket. "Just in case. We don't want any stray zotting to fry my detonator now, do we?"

"s.h.i.+mmering," Al barked. "And what the-detonator h.e.l.l?" Morholt chuckled. "I, in my wisdom, foresight, and extreme cleverness, saw fit to bring enough C-4 with me on this little expedition to bring down half of Mount Everest." He patted the bulky pack affectionately. "I'd planned on using it to get into the tomb ..."

Clare was agog at the damage he could wreak. "You were going to blast your way in here?"

"Yes." Morholt grinned unpleasantly. "But fortunately I had you, Dorothy, to lead the way down the Yellow Brick Road. And so now I'll just use it to get out. I'll pack the original entry with the plastique and kaboom. Under this much dirt, even the local pub hounds won't hear a thing. Then off I'll go into the night, with the richest h.o.a.rd of treasure this side of the Valley of the Kings!"

"You can't do that! You can't blow a hole in Boudicca's tomb-"

"Oh, stop." Morholt's voice was cold. Hard. "Don't get all self-righteous with me, Miss Reid. How on earth did you plan on getting back out? Do you have a magic spell for that, too? No? I warrant a few dark, cold hours down here with no apparent egress-"

"'Egress'?" Clare interrupted him.

"Way out, you twit!" Morholt snapped. "And I'd hazard a guess that, after a few hours trapped down here, you lot would be begging for a couple of sticks of dynamite."

Clare thought about that for a moment. She turned to glance at Milo, who was frowning faintly. His eyes were cloudy and she wasn't sure how much of the conversation he-or rather Connal-had understood. It was true, they'd walked the path to get into the barrow. She wasn't entirely certain now that there even was a way out. Tombs were generally supposed to be one-way only, right? Maybe, once they'd returned the torc to its rightful owner, that would be it. Maybe they weren't ever meant to get out- A stack of folded canvas bags landed with a thump at her feet.

"Now, ladies, gentleman, if you please ..." Morholt gestured at the bags. "Start with the gold, move on to the silver, and then, if we have room, choose a couple of the nicer bronze pieces. You can leave what's left of Boudicca's sword-in truth, I abhor violence-but don't forget her anklets and the gold belt. And that rather lovely silver wrist cuff sitting on the bier at her feet."

"Oh, man." Al looked like she was trying to decide between getting sick or just plain fainting. "You want us to rob a corpse?"

"An historically significant corpse, yes." Stuart Morholt smiled coldly. "I'd pack that up too, if I thought Boudee's old bones could stand the journey. Alas, I'll have to settle for incalculable riches over academic worth."

Maggie's lips disappeared in a thin white line. She took a step forward, but Morholt just glared at her and held out the rosewood box. "Since you're the expert in handling antiquities, Maggie old girl, fetch me that neck ring."

"No. Shoot me if you want, but I won't desecrate that corpse."

"I think you will. Because if you don't, I'll shoot your niece." The gun swung to point at Clare. "And I am deadly serious this time. I'm very much done playing games with young Miss Reid."

"You really are a son of a b.i.t.c.h, Stuart," Maggie said. But she went and gently removed the torc without rattling a single bone. The golden neck ring was covered with a layer of dust, Clare saw, but otherwise looked exactly like the one that had lain in the box that Morholt held out to her aunt. Maggie placed it reverently on the velvet lining and Morholt snapped the lid shut.

"Put it over there, by the entrance, if you please." He indicated the tunnel through which they'd pa.s.sed and then went about emptying a basket full of gold and silver torcs into the bag he held in his hand. Maggie set the box down in the shadowy mouth of the pa.s.sageway and returned to Clare and the others.

"Good girl."

Maggie looked as if she was about to weep with rage. "Now, Magda, no sentiment or misplaced notions of archaeological significance, I beg you." Morholt waved at the bier. "The old bird would never have been discovered in the first place without the profound historical meddlings of your delightful young charge. And I'm quite sure Boudicca herself, were she here, would be the first to tell you that that"-he pointed to the remains on the bier-"isn't her and has very little to do with her. Those are sc.r.a.ps. Mortal remains. Her spirit, I'm sure she'd say, lives on."

"Are you?" said a voice of smoke and ashes from the darkness of the tunnel mouth. "Are you really sure? Why don't you ask her yourself and find out."

24.

Dr. Jenkins stepped out of the shadows and into the circle of light. There was something ... very different about her, and Morholt was the only one who didn't seem to notice it right away.

"d.a.m.n it, Ceciley," he said, barely glancing at her as he emptied another basket of ill-gotten booty into a bag and pulled the drawstring, stuffing it into his knapsack. "You were supposed to wait with the car and fend off any nosy locals. Can't you ever take direction?"

Ah, Clare thought. So that's how Stu was able to steal the torc so easily in the first place. Inside job. That's probably who he'd been yakking on his cell phone to back at the warehouse.

She looked back at the curator. Dr. Jenkins's gla.s.ses were gone and her lab coat hung from her shoulders in an almost cloaklike manner. Her hair, loosened from its severe updo, hung in waves past her shoulders, and in the light from the glowstick it looked redder somehow. She was barefoot. But the most notable thing about her appearance was that Boudicca's torc lay gleaming about her neck. The rosewood box lay open and empty at her feet.

"Oh, b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l," Maggie muttered. "Ceciley, you stupid, stupid wretch ..."

Smiling unpleasantly, Dr. Jenkins stood in a relaxed yet threatening stance in the mouth of the pa.s.sageway. "h.e.l.lo, Magda," she said in a low growl. "You're looking ... unwell. A bit pale. Perhaps it's the loss of all that smug superiority."

Suddenly the curator's face twisted even more grotesquely and she clutched at the torc around her throat as if it strangled her. She seemed to be going through what Milo had experienced when he'd slipped Connal's bracelet on. She panted like a wounded animal, gritting her teeth against the urge to scream, her eyes rolling white in her head.

After a moment her head fell forward and she looked as if she might sink to her knees. She thrust out a hand to steady herself against the wall.

"Ceciley?" Maggie took a tentative step forward.

Morholt finally interrupted his pillaging to look over at his accomplice. "What the h.e.l.l-"

Dr. Jenkins's head snapped up, her gaze zeroing in on Stuart Morholt. "Thief ..." she whispered, the word slithering from her lips.

The air in the chamber seemed to be growing hotter and stuffier by the second and Clare wondered for a panicked moment if they were using up all the oxygen. The shadows leaping up the wall behind Dr. Jenkins looked as though they were too thick. Shadows weren't supposed to be thick, Clare thought. They seemed to have weight. Dimension. Anger ...

Suddenly the pitch torches on the chamber's walls-cold and dead for almost two thousand years-flared to brilliant, roaring life. Al yelped like a puppy and Clare dropped her candle, snuffing out its meagre flame. Morholt's glowstick exploded in a shower of green spatters that sputtered and extinguished-but it no longer mattered. The angry, writhing swaths of crimson and orange light racing across the domed roof of Boudicca's tomb cast more than enough illumination.

Morholt swung the barrel of his gun in the direction of the curator. Dr. Jenkins flung her arms wide and the weapon flew from his hand to shatter against the rough-hewn stone wall.

"d.a.m.nation!" Morholt protested. "That was an authentic film prop! I stole that!"

Anger momentarily trumped fear and Clare pegged him with a disgusted stare. "You mean that it wasn't even a real gun? Oh, I hate you so much."

"I told you," Morholt muttered. "I abhor violence."

"Well that's too bad," Clare snarled. "Because I'm gonna kill you with my bare hands."

Morholt's eyes hadn't left Dr. Jenkins's face. He nodded at the curator. "You may have to take a number."

"I've already got mine," Maggie said, glaring at him sideways.

"Shut up, Magda!" Dr. Jenkins spat furiously. "You had your chance with him. You were just too blind and frightened to take up the mantle of the Druid Queen. You could have had everything-with Stuart at your side."

Morholt made a scoffing sound. "She would have been at my side, if anything ..."

"Oh, Ceciley." Maggie shook her head sadly. "Is that really it? All this time you've been jealous of my relations.h.i.+p with this ... this charlatan?"

"I'm hardly that!" Morholt said hotly. "You were there the night I opened that portal. You cannot possibly deny my power in the face of that. My abilities ..."

Dr. Jenkins's laugh was tinged with an edge of hysteria. "Your abilities. You had nothing to do with it. You don't even know how you managed it. But you are right about one thing. Dear precious Maggie here turned her back on the greatness of that achievement. And because of that, the sacrifice was in vain."

"Sacrifice!" Maggie was aghast. "You intended what happened to that poor boy?"

"What?" Morholt looked confused.

"Yes," Dr. Jenkins said flatly.

"No!" Morholt's complexion went ashen. "That was not part of the plan. It just happened. Magda-you know me better than that-"

"Which is why I never let you in on that part of the ritual, Stuart," the curator said. "You're weak. Sneaking. Power-hungry ... easy enough to manipulate. I may not have known exactly what would happen that night, but I knew something would. But we were never able to replicate the feat afterward-not without your partic.i.p.ation, Doctor Wallace." The way she said Maggie's t.i.tle made it sound like an insult. "But how ironic that this girl-this blood relation of yours-would be the one to cross over truly. The one to become our conduit and our guide. My path to Boudicca's vengeance ..."

The curator's head fell forward again, hair curtaining her features. Maggie took another uncertain step toward her colleague. Toward the woman who was once her colleague. The shadows roiled and coalesced, gathering around her. After long moments Ceciley Jenkins raised her head again, her dark eyes gleaming.

"For Andrasta ..." she hissed. Her voice held no trace of the curator's now-it was all Boudicca's.

She's transforming on a much deeper level than Milo did, Clare thought. She exchanged a worried glance with Al.

"Was I a p.a.w.n, too, my queen?" Milo took a step forward. The curator's eyes flicked over to where Milo had spoken in Connal's voice. In the language of the ancient Iceni.

"A game piece in your schemes?" he continued.

"Connal. My. What a surprise." Boudicca's gaze went flat and serpentine. Full of an old rage as harsh and indelible as a dried blood stain. "Yes, you were." She too spoke in the Iceni tongue. "An ineffectual one. You were supposed to die that night and lead my spirit warriors to victory. Not live to watch our home and people go down under the sandal of the Roman. And there will be a reckoning for that. The spirit warriors will see to it."

Clare was a.s.saulted once again with the image of Connal's remains in a gla.s.s case. "For the record? Their deaths didn't do you one d.a.m.n bit of good," she said. "Neither did Connal's. It didn't make a difference-and so it didn't have to happen. And for another record? I was the one who helped him escape that 'fate.' Me and Comorra. Would you punish her, too?"

"She is my daughter," Boudicca said simply.

"She is indeed," Connal said. "And she followed close behind in your footsteps, my queen. She lies in the next chamber."

The shadow of a frown crept over Boudicca's face.

"She drank from your cup."

"No."

Boudicca spun on her heel and stalked toward the ante-chamber where Clare had seen Comorra's body and where dead torches now flared to life. A moment of weighted silence filled the dark air. Then a keening wail, almost inhuman, drifted back toward the main chamber. It raised the small hairs on Clare's arms.

"Well that's a bit distracting," Morholt said, stepping toward the archway. "Right. I'll just go take care of this unforeseen complication ..."

Maggie put out a hand to stop him. "I really don't think-" "Magda." Morholt rolled an eye at her. "The poor woman is distraught. She needs comforting and, insofar as she is desperately in love with me, I dare say I'm the best party to offer it."

Maggie gaped at the utter brainless arrogance of the man. "To Ceciley, perhaps-although I have my doubts about that-but not to Boudicca."

"It's Ceciley's unrequited pa.s.sion that's made her vulnerable to Boudicca in the first place," he said as if explaining the matter to a child. "If I can reach her, convince her she has a shot with me, I'm sure I could distract her long enough to get out of this mess before all the breathable oxygen runs out. Trust me. Love is all-powerful." He hitched up his utility belt and stalked down the corridor.

"And stupidity," Maggie shook her head, "knows no bounds."