Seduction: A Novel of Suspense (46 page)

Theo was the first one in the chamber. He had blood streaming down his face from a cut above his eyebrow. Ash followed, limping badly and holding his side. He was in serious pain. His nose was swollen and bleeding. Both brothers were filthy. Their clothes were ripped. Out of breath, hurting, they had exhausted each other.

“Are you all right?” Theo asked Jac.

“What’s wrong with her?” Ash shouted.

“Jac?” Theo called. And when she didn’t respond, said it again.

 • • • 

Owain knew that Jac wasn’t his name, but that it was the name of the body he was trapped in.

 • • • 

At the same time, Jac understood she was still reliving the life of the priest named Owain who had once lain here, in the innermost cave, his arms reaching out, his hands immersed in ashes, his fingers grasping bones.

 • • • 

Thoughts crashed into each other. Two consciousnesses struggled to make sense of the present and the past.

 • • • 

Theo and Ash stood watching.

 • • • 

Owain knew the brothers were in the future he’d dreamed of as he lay dying. The one carried Owain’s own soul. The other carried his son’s soul. And these two men were living out his and Brice’s karmic struggle. Still.

 • • • 

Jac tried to push off the waves of memory. Tried to find her voice. Her mind was still half in the priest’s body, half in her own. She was both Owain and herself simultaneously. She tried to form a word, any word.

“Brice,” she heard herself say.

 • • • 

Owain was looking at the stranger who contained his son’s soul. He could feel Brice’s aura. Sense his presence. He said his son’s name. “Brice.”

 • • • 

Theo was leaning over her. “You said that before too, Jac. Who is Brice?”

Jac wasn’t sure she was supposed to come back yet. Was there still more to learn? Should she remain with the priest who had starved himself to atone for his sin of doing what had been asked of him instead of what he knew was right?

“Jac, you have to listen to me. You need to come back.”

Yes, he was right. Theo was right.

The story she had to tell Theo and his brother about Owain and Brice and Gwenore would explain. The father and son were still working out their struggles lifetimes later. The father’s sense of failure was so overwhelming, it poisoned all his future lives. The son’s sense of
betrayal, and the guilt of having his mother kill herself rather than live without him, informed every incarnation he’d inhabited.

Jac had to come back. If she didn’t, these two men, Theo and Ash, would stay enemies forever. It was in her power to change that.

She was trying so hard to break through, her whole body ached. Her head throbbed and her ears rang in pain. She couldn’t do it. Not yet.

There was still something she had to understand about what had happened to Owain.

 • • • 

In what was left of the fire, Owain’s fingers touched a bit of metal. He felt the outline of a star. Its edges were rough. They cut his skin. The pain sent shivers up and down his arms. It was the star that Owain had made for Brice, forging it in the fire and hanging it over his crib. The star that represented the blemish that his wife and son shared on their skin and that marked them as special. Gwenore must have sewn it into the crown she had made for their son, that she had stayed up all those nights weaving with sacred herbs and amulets.

With a great effort, Owain pulled it out of the fire. He looked down at it in his hand. At the blood. He wondered how it had made a perfect circle around his wrist.

 • • • 

Jac realized she was staring not at blood but at the red thread that Eva had wrapped around her wrist and said would protect her. She had entered into this past holding on to the thread. Now it was time to use it to return to the present. She took a deep breath. It was like climbing.

Another breath. The burning sensation was lessening.

Jac took another breath. She tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Theo took her hands. Held on to them tightly. Too tightly. Something was pressing into her skin.

She pulled back and opened her right hand. Inside was a piece of roughly cut metal in the shape of a star. Theo was staring down at it. So was Ash.

Theo reached out and touched it. “Like the birthmark on Naomi’s neck,” he whispered. “The same strange seven-sided star.”

Jac had to tell Theo and Ash about the woman in her vision. She’d had a seven-sided star birthmark too, on her chest.

“Naomi. Gwenore. Two thousand years apart. Both branded by the same star. Souls connected. Both of you connected to both of them. To each other.”

“What are you talking about?” Theo asked.

“The star. Owain had made it for his son when Gwenore was pregnant.”

“Who is Owain? Who is Gwenore?” asked Ash.

“The three of them loved each other,” Jac was trying to explain. But there was so much to tell them. Where to start? Tell them they had been a family. But Owain had been forced to obey his gods. He couldn’t defy them and put his whole village at risk. And so he did what they asked him to do. He sacrificed his son.

They were both waiting for her to continue. She wasn’t sure if they’d understood anything she’d said. She was so tired but she had to tell them. They needed to know, so they could heal. But then she heard the loud scream of a police siren.

When Jac opened her eyes, she saw Robbie sitting by her bedside.
Her brother Robbie was here
. Her beautiful, kind and stubborn brother was here and watching her and smiling. The curtains in the pretty blue room were drawn, but golden shafts of light filtered through the slim space where they met. A big vase of dark red roses on the table perfumed the air with their sweet, voluptuous spice.

“Whew,” Robbie said. “I’ve been worried. We all have been. You’ve been sleeping for a very long time.”

“How long?” Her voice sounded hoarse.

“Two days, Jac. Two whole days.”

He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her forehead and kissed her. He smelled of so many wonderful scents: sandalwood and vetiver, ambergris and oakmoss and smoke. Robbie’s smell. Robbie’s smell that was comforting for its familiarity despite its mystery.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“It’s six o’clock.”

“In the morning?”

“At night.”

“How did you get here?” Everything seemed a wonder to her.

“When Theo and Ash brought you back, Minerva called Malachai,
who called me. He wanted to be the one to come, but I was closer and could get here faster. Last time I talked to him he was threatening to come if you didn’t wake up by tomorrow morning.”

She thought about that for a second. Why would anyone have to come? Then she started to remember. At first slowly and then in great gulps. Finding the second journal. Reading it. Ash’s being affected by the drug and his strange attack on her. The brothers’ fight. Her going deep into the past to find the memories of who they had been to each other. Finding the clues she needed to unravel their tragic past that informed their conflicted present. The human bones in the funeral pyre. And the strange-shaped star. The same shape as Gwenore’s birthmark. And the same shape as Naomi’s, Theo had said.

“I need to tell you what happened. And tell Theo and Ash who they are and what—”

“You can do all that,” Robbie said. “But first you need to have something to eat and get some of your strength back. You haven’t had anything in forty-eight hours.”

 • • • 

Eva brought Jac tea and toast with strawberry jam that Jac thought tasted better than anything she’d ever eaten. The sweet fruit studded the bread like little jewels and burst in her mouth. The fragrant tea was hot and bracing and she could smell the jasmine and green leaves as if she were standing in a field of them. All her senses were exaggerated. The sheets were silky against her feet and the pillows embracing. She could hear deep, luscious music coming from beyond the bedroom, full of inspiration and magnificence.

“I don’t feel the same,” Jac said.

“What do you mean?” Robbie asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“Is it better or worse?”

She thought for a moment. “Better.”

He smiled.

 • • • 

Once she’d finished eating, Jac took a long hot shower, dressed and then went downstairs to find everyone.

Eva, Minerva, Theo and Robbie were in the great room waiting for her. Eva had made coffee and put out a platter of biscuits. There was a fire in the hearth and the room glowed with the firelight and soft lamplight and smelled of the burning wood.

Minerva looked concerned but glad to see her. Theo seemed very worried and nervous. Jac knew he was blaming himself for what had happened to her. But nothing really had happened to her, had it? She thought she’d remembered most of the experience by now. Were there gaps?

“Where’s Ash?” Jac asked as she sat.

“In the hospital.” Theo said, his voice riddled with disgust. “He broke a few ribs. He’s under custody.”

“Under custody. Why?” she asked.

“Why? You really don’t remember? He attacked you.”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“Of course it was,” Theo said.

More and more of the scene was coming back to her. “No, it wasn’t,” Jac argued.

“Jac, he could have killed you,” Theo insisted.

“He was drugged. The same way I was. He must have been standing there listening to us read the journal for a long time. He was seduced by the Shadow’s offer the same way Hugo had been. Ash thought he could bring Naomi back. Or maybe it was Gwenore he thought he could bring back.”

“Gwenore?” Eva asked.

Jac nodded. “She was his mother . . . Brice’s mother. I’ll explain it all when Ash is here.” She looked from Theo to Eva and then to Minerva. “When can he come home?”

“They’re ready to release him to us,” Minerva said. “They just need to be sure you don’t want to press charges—”

Jac interrupted. “No, goodness, no. I don’t want to press charges. It was the scent. I know it was.”

 • • • 

An hour and a half later everyone was together. Robbie sat next to Jac on the couch. Minerva was opposite them, and Ash and Theo had taken chairs on either side of the fireplace.

Ash was paler and more bruised than Theo. He moved stiffly because of his ribs. He couldn’t bring himself to look at Jac.

Eva busied herself offering everyone refreshments. “Do you want some coffee, dear?” Eva asked when she got to Jac. “Or wine?”

Jac asked for wine. Eva handed her a long-stemmed crystal glass filled with a fine, dry vintage. Jac inhaled its bouquet and thought about how she was going to start explaining and what she was going to say.

Eva took a seat next to her sister. Everyone was waiting, looking at Jac expectantly. All except Ash. He still couldn’t face her.

Jac cleared her throat. Would they believe her story? Would they think she was insane? She’d spent her whole life worrying about that, hadn’t she? And where had it gotten her? She cleared her throat once more. The time for caring what people thought was past. She had a chance to heal the rift between these two men and avert further disaster and she was going to take it.

Jac shuddered, then looked at Theo. “I think in a past life you were a Celtic priest named Owain.” She turned to Ash. “You were Brice, his son. I think Naomi was Owain’s wife, Brice’s mother. Her name was Gwenore. If it works the way Malachai says, the way Hindus and Buddhists believe, we all come back in the same soul circles and get a second chance to get it right. Life after life, over and over until we finally manage it. You two are acting out a tragedy that happened thousands of years ago.”

Jac stopped. The most difficult part was coming up. How was she going to tell Theo that once he’d been a priest who’d sacrificed his only son? Or suggest to Ash that in this life he was punishing Theo for how Owain’s heinous sacrifice had destroyed Brice’s mother? How to explain to these men that the soul of the long-dead Gwenore—beloved wife and mother—had lived again in Naomi? And that the brothers, still stuck in their awful destructive pattern, had harmed her again?

They had been burdened with guilt through the millennia, but now, finally, they could learn from their past and make amends. It was their moment, their karma.

But what was hers?

As Jac reached for the glass of wine, the red thread still tied around her arm slid down her wrist. She stared at the insubstantial woven braid that had protected her.

“Eva?”

“Yes, dear.”

“It was your bracelet that saved me. I held on to it and it kept me tethered to the present. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, dear.” Eva’s smile was beautiful.

Jac could see in the older woman’s eyes that she wasn’t haunted by the past anymore. Since telling them all about the part she’d played in her grandfather’s death, she’d faced her demons and begun to move on.

That was what they all had to do.

For a moment Jac felt an overwhelming sadness. For all she’d lost, and for knowing she was going to have to finally deal with all that loss if she ever wanted to heal and move on. She touched the scarlet thread. As she fingered the silk and rubbed it against her skin, she realized part of what her karma was. It had been there all along, she just hadn’t seen it. Her job was to deliver these messages. Malachai had hinted at it on the phone, but she hadn’t understood what he had been saying.

Jac knew
she
was what Malachai had always been searching for.
She
was one of his long-lost memory tools. A
living
memory tool. That was why his instincts were to safeguard her. Why he hadn’t wanted her to come here. Jac was the embodiment of the objects he had devoted his life to finding.

Now that she knew, she would have to decide if she wanted to accept what that meant or walk away. But either way, she would confront the opportunity, tackle the challenge and decide. She’d spent too much of her life avoiding things. Her mother’s death. Her disappointment in her lover. Even the pregnancy that she hadn’t acknowledged until after she’d miscarried.