Holdin' On for a Hero (60 page)

“I’m not asking you to trust Slater or Kinski or even Ian Drake, Senna. In fact, if I was in your position, I wouldn’t. But I am asking you to trust me, and you have to decide right now if you can do that because I need your complete trust if I’m going to keep you safe and alive.”

She had no idea if she was doing the right thing or not. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for what she had been thrust into. But she had to trust someone and at the moment the most likely candidate seemed to be Konnor. “I’ll do what you say,” she said.

He smiled and gave her a tight hug. “Please, get your things.”

In ten minutes they were pulling by the main house. Senna looked up at it and for a moment thought she saw a silhouette at one of the upstairs windows, but decided it must have been a trick of the light for when she tried to get a better look there was no one there.

Just as Konnor started to turn out of the drive, she touched his arm. “Wait. I have to go to the main house.”

“Why?”

She didn’t know how to tell him because she was not at all sure she understood it herself. All she knew was that she had to see the carved stone she had found in the metal box. “I…there’s something I have to get.”

Konnor frowned, but put the car in reverse and backed up. Senna jumped out and ran to the servant’s entrance. She let herself in without attracting attention and took the back stairs to the top floor. That was where she ran into her first problem. The room she needed to get into was locked and she didn’t have a key. For a split second she considered going to Minora, but quickly changed her mind. If she saw Minora she would have to try and explain why she was leaving and she wasn’t ready to do that.

An idea occurred to her and she dashed back downstairs. Konnor was waiting in the car with the engine running. He saw her and reached across to open her door. She bent down to look in at him. “I need your help.”

“What kind of help?”

“I need to get into one of the upstairs room and it’s locked.”

“You want me to break into your aunt’s home?”

“No, just one room.”

He hesitated then turned off the car. “Why not just ask someone for the key?” he asked as he got out of the car.

“No one has a key but Min and I don’t…I can’t see her right now. If I do I’ll either have to tell her the truth, which will upset her, or I’ll have to lie and I don’t want to do that. So, the easiest thing is just to get what I need without her knowing.”

“You want to steal something?” he whispered as he followed her inside.

“No, what I want belongs to me.”

He didn’t ask anything more but followed her silently up the stairs. She stopped in front of the locked door. He looked both directions in the hall then knelt down in front of the door. It took only a few seconds to open it. They went inside the room and Senna closed the door behind them.

“Here,” she whispered when she’d felt her way in the dark to the trunk. “Help me move this.”

He did as she asked, moving the trunk with little effort. She pulled up the loose board and retrieved the box. After replacing the board, she had him move the trunk back into place.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

“What is that?” He indicated the small box in her hands.

“I’m not sure,” she replied and when he gave her a look that she read as him thinking she was a lunatic, she added, “I’ll explain in the car.”

They encountered no one on the return trip. As soon as they were in the car and moving again he asked, “You want to explain?”

Senna ran her hands idly over the surface of the box. “When I asked Min about what my parents were working on prior to their deaths, she told me this was something my father had left specifically to me.”

“What is it?”

She opened the box, withdrew the incised stone, and placed it on the top of the box once she had closed it. Konnor looked at it and then at her. “What’s the significance?”

“I don’t know,” she murmured as she ran her fingers over the etched symbols.

“Do you know what those markings are?”

She shook her head. “I know they feel familiar but…no, that’s not true. I think it means Guardian.”

“I don’t understand,” he said after a moment of silence. “Why was it so important to get this if you don’t know what it is or what it means?”

“I don’t know, “she admitted, hesitantly placing her hand over the stone. “I just had to have it.”

She wanted to hold it, but was afraid after what happened the first time. But she told herself that it was illogical to think that a stone could have caused the experience. It was only an inanimate object with no means of affecting her. And yet, she was still afraid of it.

The remainder of the trip to Konnor’s house she spent trying to convince herself that the stone held no special power and that she was being foolish to be scared of it. When they arrived at Konnor’s she picked up the box with the stone still on top and carried it inside where she gingerly set it on the hearth and stepped back from it.

She turned to Konnor and he had his finger to his lips. This time she didn’t question. She sat down in front of the fireplace and stared at the stone atop the box as he swept the house for surveillance equipment.

When he returned to the den and sat down beside her, she turned to look at him. “You act like you’re afraid it’s going to bite you,” he remarked.

“Or send me into a parallel universe,” she said, only half joking.

“You want to run that by me again?”

She gave the stone another look. “It… This is going to sound insane, but the first time I held it, something happened to me.”

“What?”

“It was like…” She closed her eyes, trying to form coherent sentences to describe what she’d felt. “Like suddenly the world—this world—just vanished and I was being pulled through a dark vortex where images I couldn’t recognize or even identify swirled around me. It was almost like the energy was pulling me somewhere I didn’t want to go and it terrified me. All I could think of was escaping and the next thing I knew I was back again and my heart was pounding and I was sweating and…and hearing myself say it aloud, I realize that it makes no sense.”

Konnor regarded her in thoughtful silence for a time. “And you wanted it tonight because…” He left the question unfinished.

“That’s just it,” she said anxiously. “I don’t know. It’s like when we passed by the house I could…feel it, and I had to have it.”

“So why won’t you hold it?”

“I’m scared.”

“That the same thing will happen to you?”

She nodded and looked down at her hands in her lap. She was ashamed of her own fear and how impossible her story sounded.

“Your aunt told you that your father left this only for you?” he asked.

She nodded without looking up.

“The dossier I was given indicated that until his death, you and your father were virtually inseparable, that you were the most important thing in his life.”

“That’s how he made me feel,” she whispered.

“And knowing that, do you think for one moment that your father would leave something for you that he thought would harm you?”

“No, of course not!” She looked up, eyes flashing. “He loved me!”

“Then you should have no reason to be afraid, should you?”

Konnor made a good point, and one she had not considered. Her father would never have left her something that would bring her harm. And if he had considered it important enough to bequeath specifically to her, then she owed it to him to discover the meaning behind the gift.

“Why don’t you give it another try,” Konnor suggested. “For your father.”

With thoughts of her father foremost in her mind, she cautiously reached out and picked up the stone. As soon as her hand closed around it, the sights and sound of Konnor’s home vanished. She blinked in confusion then realized she was in Iraq, in the house she had lived in with her parents before they died.

“Dad!” Her heart leapt as her father appeared before her.

“Mouse, listen to me.” His tone was urgent. “I need you to pay close attention. This is very important.”

A frown crossed her face. She and her mother were getting ready to leave for the airport. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. But what troubled her was that she didn’t remember seeing her father before she and her mother left. Why was he here now and what did he want to tell her?

“The Gate must be guarded.” He looked into her eyes as he spoke. “Do you understand, Senna? Only the Guardian can control the Gate and the Guardian can never allow control of the Gate to fall into the wrong hands. It must be protected at all cost.”

Something pulled at her mind, like a forgotten memory. “What are you talking about, Dad?”

“Just listen to me.” He pulled a cigarette lighter from his pocket and pressed it into her hands. “When the top is opened on this lighter, you will think about the flame. Think about it being as big as a building, as big as a cloud. Think of how beautiful the flame is and how pure. The flame is like a shield. It will protect us all from harm. As long as the flame appears no one will hurt us and the Gate will be safe. All you have to do is will the flame to appear, to spread out like a cloud in the wind. Do you understand?”

She didn’t understand at all, but didn’t know how to tell him. He was so serious and it all seemed so vital to him. She couldn’t do anything but nod.

“Good.” His smile appeared forced. “When you get in the car I want you to wait until you pass the house where the man who sold us the rug lives. Do you remember him?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Good. When you pass his house, I want you to do as I’ve told you. Think only of the flame and how it will make us safe and I promise you that everything will be all right.”

“And if I do this, you’ll come home? Soon?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, I’ll do it.”

She had no idea why he would ask something so odd of her. It made no sense. But before she could ask she was suddenly in the backseat of a car, sitting beside her mother. She looked out of the window and saw the rug merchant’s house on her right. Without thinking about what she was doing she pulled the lighter from her pocket.

Think about the flame,
she told herself as she flicked open the top.
Only about the flame. It’s like a cloud, big and beautiful and it will keep us safe.

Her thumb pressed on the wheel of the lighter and a small flame appeared.
Think about the flame. Big like a cloud. Keep us safe.
A moment later a sound like thunder made her lose concentration. She turned and looked out of the rear window.

Where their house had once stood was now an enormous ball of flame. Like a massive cloud it billowed upward, spreading out in all directions as it sucked in the air around it.

“Oh my god,” she breathed. “What have I done?”

The lighter fell from her hands and suddenly she was in Konnor’s den, sitting in front of the fire with the carved stone lying on the floor in front of her. Konnor was watching her curiously.

“Oh, my god,” she repeated in shock. “What have I done?”

He reached over to take her hands. “What just happened?”

“Oh, god!” Her voice was a shocked whisper. “Konnor, I killed him! I killed my father!”

He pulled her into his arms and held her until her trembling stopped, and then he pushed her to arm’s length. “Can you tell me what you saw?”

She nodded and told him everything as fast as she could, before any of it could fade from her mind. When she finished he looked from her to the stone and then back to her. “And this is something you never remembered until now?”

At her nod, he picked up the stone and placed it on top of the box on the hearth. “And you’re sure this was an actual memory and not a hallucination?”

“No. How can I be? I thought I remembered everything that ever happened up until I was grabbed in the airport. Now…now, I don’t know. Is there more I don’t remember and somehow holding the stone triggered that memory, or is it my mind playing tricks on me and…Konnor, what if it’s real? What if I really did kill him?”

“Hold on,” he said, his voice calm and soothing. “First of all, maybe it was just a product of your imagination. Dr. Kinski went over this for hours with you and even under the hypnosis and drugs you didn’t remember anything about this, so maybe it’s not real.”

“Maybe,” she murmured. “But…” Her eyes grew round as something occurred to her. “But he didn’t!”

“Didn’t?” Konnor was confused.

“He didn’t go over this! We started with my mother and me leaving the house to go to the airport. Don’t you see? He didn’t regress me back to the house. God, Konnor, if what I saw was a real memory that means I’m the one responsible for my father’s death.”

“First of all, I don’t think you are,” he said. “You loved your father and wouldn’t have done anything to harm him. Secondly, unless the lighter was some kind of detonation device, then there’s no way lighting it could have caused the explosion. And finally, even if it was a detonator, your father knew it. He’s the one who gave it to you and told you what to do with it. So, if we consider that it was a detonator and he did know, then he wanted you to trigger the explosion.”