Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (25 page)

“I’m sorry they made me go. I was terribly worried about you. I wrote.”

She nodded. “They never gave me any of your letters.”

He took her hand. Was it because the path was rocky and so hard to navigate without stumbling? Or was it a gesture of friendship? Or more? Surprisingly, the connection Jac had felt to Theo when they were young was still strong. It was a tensile thread that had stretched all these years. For a moment she thought of Griffin. How their connection too had lasted over so many years. And how she was never going to be happy with Griffin’s shadow in the way. Low down in the pit of her stomach she felt a sudden emptiness and thought about what had happened after the lightning storm. The baby had been conceived in love. It deserved to be mourned with love. But she wasn’t ready to give herself up to the grief, not yet.

They were almost at the top when one of the rocks Jac stepped on came loose. She felt as if she was about to lose her balance, but Theo’s grip tightened and steadied her.

She’d regained her stability but her heart was racing. Theo was still holding her hand.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

The ocean was on their right. They were only four feet off the sand. Nothing to be afraid of. She looked up. The summit was only another foot.

He noticed her assessing the height. “It’s not very high. And it’s all sand below. Nothing to be afraid of this time. I promise.”

So he remembered.

“Theo, when we were at Blixer Rath . . .” Suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what had happened.

“Yes?”

“I know there was an accident and that I slipped on the rocks and fell into the lake. But why did you leave so suddenly?”

“Prejudice.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Even there in that bastion of alternative thinking, they feared what they didn’t understand. And they didn’t understand us.”

“What about us didn’t they understand?”

They’d reached the top. He sat down and dangled his feet off the edge. He was right, even up here it wasn’t a big drop. She sat beside him. This perspective offered a different view of the shoreline as it curved in and out, creating bays and harbors. So much of it looked unspoiled and undeveloped and very much out of time.

“My brother and I were always at each other,” Theo said. “Even though I’m a year older, he was always taller and stronger. He used to try to beat me up. He never managed to hurt me, but I’d go into some kind of state whenever it happened. For a few hours after be very much out of it. A dissociation, they called it.”

“They?”

“The
theys
who couldn’t help me with it.”

“That’s where the Clinic of the Last Resorts came in.” Using her old name for it, she smiled. Theo smiled too. “So did something like that happen at Blixer after my accident? Did you black out?”

He looked at her. “You really don’t remember?”

“Barely anything. I know we’d made one of those rock circles that looked like your drawings. And we sat inside and did our meditation thing. And then you gave me some kind of drug. Was it a mushroom?”

He nodded. “Not really smart of me, but yes, a mushroom.”

She told him what she remembered about the climb up the mountain and then the fall. “I woke up in the infirmary and found out you were gone. Why?”

“They threw me out, Jac. They claimed it was because I’d broken so many rules. The final straw being giving you that magic mushroom. But I think the real reason they threw me out rather than let me stay and continue to work with me was they thought I’d pushed you.”

“But you didn’t. For some crazy reason I jumped.” She closed her eyes. Tried to bring back more of that long-ago day. “I don’t know why, but I did. Why didn’t they ask me?”

He shrugged.

“Why would they say you pushed me? I don’t understand.”

“Growing up I was different, difficult, moody. Didn’t fit in. My brother was the opposite. The golden child with a million friends. Great at school, at sports. Well-adjusted. Never could do wrong. There was no reason for him to be jealous of me, but he was. He was always making fun of me and picking fights. You know how kids are, I didn’t want to go to my parents and tattle. I just wanted to win him over. But nothing I did ever mattered. Never. When we were young and he’d try to beat me up, I usually managed to protect myself. But then we had one fight that turned really bad. I was just trying to keep him off me, to stop him from hurting me. I pushed him away. He lost his balance and fell and hit the side of his face on a table leg. It was a horrible bash and he lost most of his sight in that one eye. I went into some kind of psychotic state after that, or so I’ve been told. I didn’t talk to anyone for over four months. Stopped eating. They said I was trying to starve myself. Saw a million doctors. Took all the pills they gave me. Even tried to take them all at once one night and do some real damage. After that I was sent to Blixer.”

“And what happened to you after you got home?”

“My father was furious and shipped me off to boarding school.”

Jac felt sick. Somehow this was her fault. “How was that?”

“Awful.” He stood. “And boring.” He held out his hand to help her up. She took it. Once they were both standing, he continued holding her hand. She felt a surge of sensation.

“Now this way,” he said leading her down the rocky slope.

The sun had broken through the clouds and the light over the sea was a liquid yellow—the kind of light the impressionists tried to capture in their plein air canvases. “Monet was a master at capturing this atmosphere,” Jac said, thinking of all the times her mother had taken her to see the painter’s work at the Musée Marmottan or L’Orangerie. She had a flash of the last time she’d been there, over the summer, with her brother.

Maybe after this trip she’d go back to Paris for a week and spend some time with Robbie. He’d be able to help her figure things out, to separate the past from the present so she could contemplate the future.

Theo let go of her hand and jumped off the rock. It was only a three-foot leap down to the sand. Reaching up, he held out his hands. “Jump, Jac. I’ll catch you.”

She looked. Not a very big jump. Nothing to be afraid of. Yet she was. It was an irrational fear. She took a breath. Focused on his eyes. And jumped.

A second of weightless falling. Utter panic. As if she’d left her body. As if she were lost. Would never find her way back. Would—

His hands grabbed her around the waist.

From this spot on the beach it was only a few minutes’ walk to a huge rock formation. Slabs of indigenous rocks placed on pillars created a covered alleyway.

“This way.” He pointed inside.

They walked a few meters down a stone hallway. Almost immediately she smelled a fire. A thick, acrid bitter birch or fir fire. Her nostrils were full of the ancient earthy scent. Not unpleasant but foreign.

“What is this place?” Jac asked, stopping.

“Legends say going all the way back to the seventeenth century, witches and devil worshippers used to meet here. Archaeologists
who’ve worked the area say that much further back than that it was a pagan site. Are you worried about going in?”

“No,” she said, and followed him inside.

They reached the innermost circle. His steps crunched. It was a small sound, but one that she recognized. She looked down. The ground around the hearth was littered with shells and bones. Shivers ran up and down her arms. Cold pinpricks warned her of a flare-up.

No, don’t slip back. Stay.

Jac was sliding into a netherworld of unfamiliar voices and smells and feelings that belonged to . . . to whom?

“Jac? Are you all right?”

Theo’s voice pulled her back like a lifeline to the present.

“I’m fine. How much is known about this configuration?”

“Archaeologists think that these rocks have been here for over six thousand years.”

“It looks like part of a Celtic ritual site,” she said.

They continued on under a stone archway. On the other side was a second grouping of stones, wide slabs evenly placed every three feet. Row after row of them. Theo walked among them with a lot of authority. He obviously knew this place very well.

“It’s familiar, isn’t it?” he asked.

She nodded. “Just like the rocks on the beach. This is another of the places I drew at Blixer.”

“Yes, you drew all these places. It’s something about us. Something that scared Malachai. We had some kind of psychic bond. It’s one of the things I wrote you about. Even the accident at the end. You were doing what I wanted to do. I wanted to jump off that cliff. But you did it.”

“I don’t understand. How is any of that possible?”

“I don’t understand either. Not what was between us, not what it meant. Not if it still exists. But maybe now that you’re here we can find out.”

She nodded. “Maybe we can.”

They’d reached the far end of the dolmens and the remains of a pyre.

Jac leaned over to examine it. She sniffed the air. “Can you smell that?”

Theo shook his head.

“It’s a mineral scent, mixed with pinewood, almost sweet.”

He sniffed again. “I can’t smell anything. You can?”

She nodded.

“Do you know what it is?” he asked.

She took in another whiff. “No. I’ve never smelled it before.”

Theo pulled a book of matches out of his pocket, searched through the rubble and found some kindling. It took him two tries but he managed to ignite a small fire. Jac breathed in the smoke. She felt the scene waving around her. The old sensation that suggested a hallucination. The telltale shivers that presaged an episode ran up and down her arms.

She tried to do her breathing exercises but the air was filled with the foreign odor. She tried to fight back against the attack. The firelight illuminated the stone columns, throwing the carvings on their surface into relief. She hadn’t noticed them before, but she focused and examined them now.

Birds flew up and around the pillars, wings spread, heading upward. She’d never seen any photograph of this site that she knew of, and yet it was familiar.

Theo is going to take me into the next stone chamber now,
she thought.
And when he does I’m going to see the altar.

And he did. And she did.

“Reports are that the Romans will be here in less than twenty days,” Owain said. “Can you gather some skins of mead? Some fruit?”

“You’re going on a retreat?” Gwenore asked.

He nodded. “I need to consult the gods and ask for visions for new insight.”

“I don’t understand. Aren’t we prepared for the Romans?”

“They say that this isn’t a small band of outlaws. These soldiers are traveling in a large group, ravaging everywhere they go.”

“But you and the warriors are prepared—”

Owain interrupted. “Not if we’re outnumbered.” He shook his head. “We need guidance.”

Gwenore nodded. His wife knew better than to argue. If he needed to go she would prepare his food and make do without him. He was well aware she was nervous. Even though she was a strong woman and afraid of nothing else, she had an unfounded fear of these retreats. Now he reminded her not to worry.

Outside the hut, their eleven-year-old son was working on his totem. Each novitiate had to complete this ritual task before being ordained. Brice was almost done carving the animal from the hazel tree stump.

Owain had been proud of how quickly Brice had understood his instructions.

“In the never-ending and age-old search to learn the secrets of creation, a priest needs more than wisdom; he needs to connect to the mystical realm where answers hide,” Owain had explained. “A totem will aid you in your quest for magical knowledge. It will be a bridge between the physical world and the metaphysical one.”

“The totem is the animal I’ll merge with?” Brice had asked.

“Yes, son. Each animal or bird offers different attributes. An owl gives insight. A wolf makes one more alert to dangers.”

Discovering what animal you needed help from and then creating one’s own meditation tool to call upon for strength and understanding during the tough life ahead was a process that in itself built strength. Brice had been working at his for over four months, and in that time Owain had seen his son becoming a man.

Owain was proud he would be the priest to initiate his son into the Druid class. He would have the privilege of taking Brice to the secret ceremony deep in the cave where light never penetrated, close to the center of the earth and the spirits of the animals. Aided by the incense made from stones, and a sacred drink made from macerated herbs, he would show Brice how to engage in a dance with his animal familiar until he found that ecstatic place of growth and understanding. Of otherworldly knowledge.

They had already visited the holy site once. During the winter, Brice had been taken blindfolded into the inner sanctum, where he’d inhaled the incense and drunk the liquor and talked through a dream incubation. A journey designed to help the boy discover his animal familiar.

Brice had seen a cat. He’d found his spirit guide. The creature whom he would forever after be able to communicate with during magic hours: dawn, twilight and midnight in the sacred cave or in the ancient woods.

The step after that was for the novitiate to give the spirit a physical form. And so Brice had been spending a period of time every day carving his cat.

It was a fitting animal for a priest. Cats guard the secrets of the otherworld and are liaisons with mystic realms. Protectors of esoteric knowledge, cats can open the gates through which a priest can see the future and gain insight.

Like his father, Brice was dark-skinned and tall. He was a smart boy with a gentle soul, who cared for people with a rare compassion. That he had inherited from his father. From his mother he’d inherited a sense of humor and mischievous ways, which could sometimes make Owain outwardly angry but, in private with Gwenore, always made him laugh.

And like Gwenore, the boy questioned everything.

As one of the elder priests of the tribe, Owain performed ceremonies and rituals that helped his people to live and prosper. Gwenore’s questions were not always welcome. They sometimes bordered on anarchy. Rules were meant to be blindly obeyed. She didn’t believe that. And Owain worried that her curiosity didn’t always set a good example for their son. Or for the other women who looked up to her. He couldn’t change her though. She was too strong-willed. And he wasn’t sure he would have wanted to. She was his heart. From the first time he beheld her, standing beside Roan, his brother, Owain wanted her. And for the first three years of that marriage, Owain had spent part of every day fighting just how much he wanted her and cursing the gods for the injustice of her having chosen his brother.