Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (32 page)

And in her hands, held together in front of her midsection, was the red orb.

“Poor Jacob,” she said softly, almost sadly.  “All you had to have done was ask for it.”

I gasped, the last breath I could take for a very long while.  The explanation for why I felt so
normal
again crystalizing in my brain.  The red and blue orbs were finally together, their energies, or so Merlin had explained, cancelling one another out.  I felt neither the constant darkness nor the anger in the presence of the blue orb, nor the compulsion when it was just out of grasp.  I’d accomplished my mission, which meant I could finally return to Helena and…

Helena.

The name sounded odd in my mind.  It wasn’t one I’d thought of in quite some time.  Ever since I’d left Britain.  Since I’d…

It all came back to me.  Memories.  Experiences.  Actions.  Decisions.  The life I’d lived since setting out from Judea months ago.  Everything I’d done came flooding back into my mind in what seemed like an instant.  Everything. 

Everything…

Vincent.

At first, I couldn’t quite find a response for the memory of his death.  No immediate reaction came to me.  But then I found myself dropping to my knees as my hands flung up to grip the back of my head, tearing at my hair as I screamed and yelled, the realization that I had murdered the man I’d almost considered a father consuming me.

***

I had no way of telling how much time I’d spent weeping on the floor before I was jerked to my feet and flung backward by a powerful hand.  I flew through the air for only a moment before I fell into a rigid chair and was left to sit there with nothing but my thoughts and tears.  I heard the sound of someone moving beside me, but then Remus’ voice boomed through the tiny room.

“There is no need to intervene, Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni,” he said.  “Had I wished to harm either of you, you would know it.”

“A warrior never lowers her defenses when she feels threatened,” I barely heard her say, my attention drawn solely to my palms in my lap.

“A cautious axiom,” he responded.  “Do what you will.”

There was no reply, and I was thankful.  I didn’t need the distraction right now.  I needed the time to focus, to torment myself over the memory of what I had done.  I’d been responsible for so much.  So much.  But nothing like this before.  I’d
killed
Vincent, the memory replaying itself over and over in my mind.  All I could see was my knife driving downward, puncturing his shoulder, all the way to the hilt.  Nothing could make the image of his face twisted in pain and forgiveness dissolve from my mind.  I would force myself to stare at it in my memories forever.  I’d never allow myself to forget it.  I’d always keep it there.  A…

But even I couldn’t just ignore the presence of Remus in the room, especially not when he knelt before me so that his eyes were level with my own.  I lifted my head, keenly aware of the tears plastered all over my cheeks, not caring in the slightest that I’d just displayed how weak and cowardly I really was to this god-man.

“I know what troubles you, Jacob Hunter,” he said, his voice almost sympathetic.  “It is a horrible thing to suddenly experience what the mind has worked so hard to conceal.  But the unfortunate truth is that unless you never hoped to truly find the red orb, this eventuality could never be avoided.  You were bound to remember these memories eventually.”

His words shredded their way through my sorrow and grief, their relevance too poignant to ignore.  Finally, someone had told me exactly what I’d needed to hear exactly when I’d needed to hear it.  I couldn’t remember another time when I’d had such a luxury, and now that my mind had been returned to me, I knew it certainly hadn’t happened with Merlin either.

My mind suddenly seemed clearer.

“The blue orb was yours,” I said hoarsely, and he nodded.  “How did you deal with its power?”

“I didn’t have to,” he replied.  “It was destined for me.  Meant for me.  It was never intended to be wielded by anyone other than myself.”

“Why?”  I asked.

“It was an ill-fated gift, Jacob.  A curse.  Once mine, now yours.  I am sorry.”

I shrugged, trying to hold it together.  “Not your fault, I guess.”

“No, it was not.  It was Merlin’s.”

I looked up.  “What?”

“I promise I shall explain,” he said as he rose to his feet, lowering one of his massive hands in my direction.  “But first I must show you something.  Come.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to, not with all the memories swirling through my mind right now.  It wasn’t just my memory of Vincent that kept me at bay, but of Helena as well.  My beautiful, wonderful, caring Helena.  My Helena, the one that had lost our son and came seconds away from being lost herself, but surviving, only to later learn of my disappearance – as she must have.  I’d abandoned her.  I’d left her alone after promising I’d never leave her again.  What’s worse was that I’d left with the woman she hated more than anyone else in the world.

But thinking of Agrippina was enough to jar me from my misery, and I looked up to see that she was really here, still standing in the threshold of the door with the red orb in her hands.  Her beautiful face appeared completely innocent as she stood there, her long blonde hair falling past her shoulders, groomed impeccably.  She looked more out of place than any of us in this dingy place, and that alone gave me the strength to look up at Remus as he held out his hand.

“How did she get here?”

“All in good time, Jacob.  Now come.”

I sighed deeply.  I wanted nothing more than to wallow in disgust and self-hatred or lash out and strike Agrippina down, but there were still too many mysteries left to unravel.  I wouldn’t do anyone justice by sitting here forever.

I nodded and took Remus’ hand, and I felt like a baby holding onto an adult’s index finger.  He pulled me up effortlessly before returning to the cabinet he’d retrieved the orb from earlier and pulled out my shoulder bag. 

“Here,” he said, holding it out for me after he placed the blue orb within it.  I took it carefully and peeked inside, still unable to believe that I was in the presence of the blue orb without the evil side of me rising to the surface.  I looked up and saw that Remus had shifted so that he could pluck the red orb from Agrippina’s hands.  He held it out for me, but when I didn’t immediately take it, he jerked it at me, saying, “Do not worry.  They won’t activate on their own or if they make accidental contact with each other.  They will be quite safe in here together.”

I nodded and slipped it into the bag, hearing a glass-like clinking sounds as they bounced off each other.  Somewhat satisfied they were safe, I looked up again to see that Remus had already left the room in absolute silence, leaving Agrippina, Boudicca, and I alone in the room.

I glared at Agrippina, just seeing her face tightening my resolve.  “What’s going on?”

“Come, Jacob,” Agrippina whispered, grabbing me by the shoulder and pulling me after her.  “We must not delay.”

I let her, falling in beside her as we passed through the doorway and stepped into a hallway.  It was narrow and dim, with sporadic light features that glowed about as brightly as the moon on an overcast night, providing the area the same spooky atmospheric effect as well.  The hall was long and devoid of doors, except for one at the very end.  We crossed the distance quickly, and Agrippina reached out and gripped the door, sliding it to the side like a pocket door.  She had to struggle with it initially, but she was quick to open it, and I glanced at it as we passed by, noticing that it appeared more like an elevator door instead of a closet door, and that perhaps it had once been powered.

When I returned my attention forward, my eyes widened in bewilderment at where the hall had deposited us.  We were standing on a balcony not unlike the one old-man Remus and I had found ourselves on in my mind only minutes ago, except this one was just as dingy and deteriorated as the control room, but still the similarities were unnerving.  I looked up tentatively, not sure I wanted to be reminded of the black holes and bright pinpricks of light that dominated the sky, but when I looked up, I found nothing of the sort.  In fact, I found nothing at all.  On this world, apparently, there was
nothing
in the night sky.  There was no moon, no stars, no celestial bodies of any kind, just… nothing.  It was a great, big, amorphous mass of emptiness and darkness.

I struggled to look away from it, but when I did, I found Remus standing at the end of the balcony, his back to the nothingness.  I took a step forward, only vaguely aware of Agrippina and Boudicca entering the area behind me. 

“So all that,” I said, waving a hand behind me toward the control room, “was just a dream?  A figment of my imagination to fill in all the illogical gaps to this story?  Just my mind using pseudoscience in an attempt to rationalize the orbs?”

He shook his head with a frown.  “Incorrect.  That world was of
my
making, not yours, implanted in your mind to show you the truth.”

I replicated his frown.  “The truth?”

He gripped his hands behind his back and took a commanding step toward me.  The two of us were now standing in the very middle of the balcony. 

“I know more about you than you know about yourself, Jacob Hunter,” he said as he loomed over me, “but it was not until you came here that I learned
exactly
what you already knew, or that you had met Faustulus and had been granted knowledge I am perplexed he would grant anyone at all.”

“Faustulus?”  I mused, when finally it clicked.  “You mean Merlin?”

“If he was who he in fact said he was,” Remus said as he dropped his head. “A name I was not yet privy to until I met you.”

I shook my head in utter confusion, everything and nothing making sense all at the same time.  “Just hold on a second.  Too much of this shit is already flying well over my head.  Let’s go back and start at the beginning.  If you really are Remus, you must be over seven hundred years old!”

He waved an arm casually.  “Time moves slower here.  Much slower.”

I looked out into the darkness, but quickly averted my eyes and squeezed them shut, its penetrating nothingness bringing me closer to insanity than my entire time with the blue orb.

“And where the hell is here?”  I asked, blinking rapidly to clear my eyes.

His face was extraordinarily morbid.  “My prison.”

“Why call it that?”  I asked, before risking a glance back at the nothingness, but having to tear my eyes away from it quickly.  “You brought yourself here.  You and Romu…”

Remus snapped his head at me, his eyes almost literally ablaze as he glared at me in the darkness.  “You know nothing of the truth, Jacob Hunter!  Faustulus showed you lies!  I wished to show you the truth, until your wench destroyed the only means to
show
you anything.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, big guy,” I said, pumping out open hands with my arms as I backed away.  “Let’s stay calm here.”

Remus continued to glare at me.  “You have yet to see me anything but calm, Jacob Hunter.  If you thought I enraged the day of my altercation with Romulus, you have yet to see anything at all.”

The idea that Remus could see inside my mind when he’d had me hooked up to his mind control device thing was one thing, but the idea that he could store my entire life’s memory in his mind was something completely different.  That was something completely unexpected.  Merlin had showed me that Remus was quite special, but now I understood that he was even more so.

I glanced over at Boudicca, thoughts of a powerful individual reminding me of her own presence, but then I caught sight of Agrippina.  As I remembered my time in Britain, I too remembered my time with Agrippina since, only with complete clarity now.  I remembered how she’d tricked me into teaching her how to shoot using living, breathing humans as targets, how she’d manipulated me into thinking those men at the inn had been attempting to rape her, and how she’d very nearly coerced me into a coital act I would never forgive myself for, all to gain my trust so that she could lead me here.

To Remus.

Rage seemed like an appropriate emotion at the moment.

“You had the red orb this whole time?”  I demanded, taking an imposing step toward her, and then another and another.  “Keeping it from me?  Hiding it from me?  Dangling it in front of me like a carrot on a stick for me to follow?!”

She stepped back and her face made it clear that she was suddenly very afraid of the anger in my voice and the imposing steps I took toward her, but she couldn’t go far before she bumped into Boudicca, who didn’t even flinch.  She looked at the large Briton pleadingly but when Boudicca offered no suggestion that she would help, Agrippina looked back at me nervously, her eyes flitting back and forth between Remus and me, silently pleading for him to help, but he didn’t move to help either.

“It was not my decision, Jacob,” she said, her voice uneven.  “We decided you wouldn’t believe any story I could devise concerning how I came into ownership of the orb.  We knew you wouldn’t trust me.  So we had to make sure you discovered everything on your own.  I simply… nudged you in the proper direction.”

By now I was nearly upon her, but her simple use of a certain pronoun stopped me.  “
We?
”