She Wakes (30 page)

    Soft lips touched her neck.

    She smelled the foul stench of her and remembered how it was supposed to end-the sudden rending-what she’d seen her do to herself a thousand nightmare years ago on the mountain.

    He’d wished for fire.

    He’d damn well got it.

    He was halfway over the rim of the hole, trying to get to her, knowing the wounds in his leg made it impossible, when he felt a sudden heat and turned to see.

    The figure came straight toward him, naked, streaming flame- long bright filaments of flame like a red-yellow swirling fog burning off into the air around him

    He walked amid a raging holocaust.

    A man. Or what had been a man. Something magnificent now and terrifying.

    “Hecate!” The voice breathed crimson fire.

    The dogs ran yapping away in confusion, ears flat, tails dragging.
Apollo
, he thought.

    Something he had made.

    

    

    And Billie heard the hissing come from deep in Lelia’s throat, felt her fingernails retract like cat claws and saw the eyes light up with an inner glow, a liquid phosphorescence that moved from the eyes through the rest of her body like a flood tide surging, saw her crouched above her, hair standing on end, nipples long, erect, teeth bared in a wide feral snarl.

    In the darkness of the cistern she was the only light.

    She saw her muscles contract, tighten.

    Then suddenly she moved, crawling up over Billie’s body like some great pale spider. Up along the passageway to Dodgson and whatever called her name.

    

    

    He had come to her.

    She crept toward him through the cistern.

    What she was informed her fully. In this she and Chase were alike now.

    The others meant nothing. Not even Dodgson. She could not recall his name.

    He was a vessel to carry the fear of her, from which the Other would drink, and change. Nothing more.

    She moved toward a convocation that had not been seen for over two thousand years on earth and which even then through all the ages before had been glimpsed only through veils of drunkenness, drugs and dreams in the raging minds of her initiate. A mummery of the drama that had made the world and continued to create it still, in time, matter and space-that birthed new worlds even now billions of light-years away in the dissolute awakening of a great imploding star. Toward her dumb show she climbed, toward her Easter passion. The spider in the heart of the rock. The rock in the heart of the flame.

    He fell back from the edge of the cistern as though a fist had slapped him down.

    Such was the force of her.

    Above him lightning crackled. He smelled ozone heavy on the atmosphere.

    She emerged blue-black, drifting, luminous.

    It wasn’t Lelia.

    The form was hers but the face, the eyes, the bearing-all had transmuted into something hard as steel yet delicate and light as air. He saw a grace she had never had in life and saw that mixed with a great brute strength and something more. She was beautiful-unbelievably, perfectly beautiful-and terrorizing. As though changed to liquid stone- unnatural.

    She looked at him, her head turning slowly.

    The heartlessness of spiders. The tenderness of wolves.

    His heart thudded massively in his chest. He closed his eyes, squeezed them tight. He could die under this gaze now.

    She could kill at a glance. Medusa.

    He pressed hard against the rockface, his wounds, his pain forgotten.

    He opened his eyes and she was staring into the column of flame that Dodgson knew was a man. A stutter of static electricity raced between them. Pale bolts of blue and yellow. Beside him the rockface glimmered.

    She reached slowly deep inside her belly.

    When her hands emerged again she held something writhing, crawling.

    She held it aloft.

    He heard a voice that was not a voice. He had the urge to scream. The rockface shuddered.

    
I give this to you.

    He saw a child, tiny, covered with the blood and mucus of birthing, so small she could have held it in one hand-and it lived, it smiled. Its teeth were sharp and pointed. Its mouth drooled dark arterial blood.

    Across from her the fires dimmed for a moment. He saw the man show suddenly through, the eyes of Jordan Thayer Chase blinking and flickering with a mute human sorrow.

    Then the look was gone. The eyes blazed again, pools of roaring flame.

    He saw the dead standing ringed about her. He saw Xenia. Eduardo. Danny.

    She held the child out to them.

    
And you,
she said.

    She turned to Dodgson.

    
And to you.

    He felt it like a curse.

    Then her hands were empty.

    He saw her smile and turn her hands out and over toward Chase in an age-old gesture of invitation, saw her step forward-a single step, yet firm, final-and then saw Chase move to where she stood and reach for her, take her in his arms, the real Chase now and not the thing cloaked in flames, the man, as naked as she was. She wrapped her arms around him and seemed to go softer suddenly. Then opened her mouth to him.

    He saw the lips pull back.

    He saw teeth like the fangs of vipers.

    “No!" he screamed, a warning lost in the rising wind, in thunder. Yet for an instant Chase looked at him, seemed to recognize him there against the rocks for the first time. His eyes were old and tired, knowing. In his face Dodgson read courage and inevitability.

    Her head struck down.

    The jugular broke. Suddenly they were bathed in blood.

    He saw Chase’s arms tighten swiftly behind her back and thought, A reflex, a spasm, but the strong arms pulled at her, pulled her down and the fire flared again as blood spurted over them, sizzling. He saw his hips draw back-her teeth still deep in his neck, eyes ecstatic-and then plunge forward as he entered her.

    She howled, tore her dripping mouth away from him and howled in rage, in pleasure and pain, struggled, clawed at him, but his arms held fast and he plunged into her again and again while the flames rose high around them, scorching the brush along the rockface, illuminating Dodgson trembling and holding tight to the rock and screaming into her screams like a single breath in a hurricane.

    Above him lightning flashed and suddenly he saw her flesh go white and transparent as the flesh of a maggot, saw the red and blue of veins and arteries, saw heart, lungs and larynx working while her body thrashed and pounded him. He saw Chase rise up and dig hard and finally burst blindingly inside her in a bright red column of flame that filled her, scorched her. He heard her cry of joy ride brilliantly through the electric night sky.

    And fell in a sudden blast of purest light.

    

    

    Billie.

    He had awakened to find himself lying in her arms. It was near dawn.

    Beside her a bit of scrub was still burning.

    Now the Balthazar tumbled through the waves.

    The seas were relatively calm and that was good because Dodgson had little experience with boats. She sat next to him on the fly bridge, drinking scotch from a paper cup. They’d found it below.

    Along with a pair of bodies, male and female. Older people.

    Billie shivered. Even with the blanket on she couldn’t get rid of the lingering cold. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to use the woman’s clothing either. She’d taken some peroxide, iodine and bandages from the cupboard in the hold and she’d taken the blankets and the whiskey. That was enough.

    Morning dawned while they were still some minutes from shore, bright and clear, a gleaming red glow on a glittering sea. In the distance they could see the town, the small squat whitewashed houses climbing the hill from the port in long uneven rows. She thought of the zigzag maze of streets and wondered what they held now, what harvest the night had brought them. She’d been told the Greeks were resilient. She thought they had better be.

    She finished the whiskey and came around behind him.

    “Rob? It’s over now, isn’t it?”

    She thought of the bodies lying below.

    There were deep dark smudges under his eyes.

    “Yes. It’s over.”

    “What happened last night? What did you see?”

    “I’m not sure,” he said. “Give me a while. Then we’ll talk about it. We’ll figure it out together.”

    “All right.”

    She could see the tall masts of ships in the harbor.

    Dodgson slowed their speed a little.

    The world began in terror, she thought. She did not know why the notion should come to her now, staring out at the tranquil sea.

    But all at once she knew she disagreed with him.

    It wasn’t over.

    The knowledge came from inside her. Perhaps Jordan Chase would have a name for it but she did not. Nor did she know what it meant for her, good or bad.

    All she knew was that inside her. faint as whispers, something stirred.

    

    

    He’d thought that they would never return, that it was unthinkable after all they’d seen. But three months later here they were, drawn back nearly the way Chase had been, sitting outside a taverna on Matoyanni Street in Plaka drinking coffee in the sun on a bright September morning.

    Dodgson read the
Athens News
. Billie sketched the entrance to a painter’s studio off to his right, the crisp shadows on the walls, the old brass lantern, the open window painted red. He’d glance up from his paper now and then and see the calm concentration on her face, the assuredness, the deft strokes of pastels across pad, her fingers smudging-subtle softenings of detail.

    He read the newspapers with uncommon interest these days.

    There were a couple of stories he was following.

    The Greek government had finally fallen. Observers had been predicting it for months-but now that it had finally happened there was a great scrambling for position.

    His interest in Greece had not abated. He was following the political players in the drama as closely as possible. There was one he liked. Interestingly enough, a woman.

    In Washington State, Mount St. Helens had erupted again. A survey party was missing-among them two prominent geologists and a nature writer with whom Dodgson had long ago had a brief acquaintance. But he watched the story less for the news of the writer than because in one early item, printed the day after the mountain blew, there was mention of an overnight crime wave in a nearby town.

    So far there had been no follow-up.

    

    

    In Paris they had executed their Iranian terrorist. Nice they’d found a little courage again.

    “What time does it open?” Billie said. “I know you told me, but I forget.”

    “Eight.”

    “What time’s it now?”

    He looked at his watch. “Seven twenty-five.”

    “I’m almost through. Just give me a sec.”

    ‘Take your time.”

    “No. We want to beat the crowds, remember?”

    He caught the waiter’s eye. “Paracalo. Logariazmo, neh? Eikareestoh."

    “Paracalo." The man nodded and hurried inside. The only place in Greece where anybody seemed to hurry was Athens.

    No. Not true. Xenia had hurried.

    “Your Greek’s getting pretty good, Robert.”

    “Right. I can order food and ask for a check. Find the toilet. Maybe board the bus. That’s about it.”

    She leaned over the table and smiled. ‘Tell me you love me.”

    “I love you.”

    “In Greek, you fool.”

    “S’agapo, and I do.”

    ‘Tell me you want to fuck me.”

    “Thelo na se gamiso, and I do.”

    “You’d better.”

    He did have more words and phrases than he ever had before, even a rudimentary grasp of grammar. It felt odd sometimes to be studying a language he wasn’t really using. He hadn’t done anything like that since college. But he found that it was helping him to relax and think- and both were highly necessary if he was to continue writing about Margot. It was a rough book for him to do. And maybe that was why it was far and away the best he’d ever done.

    “What do you think?”

    She held up the sketch. The doorway, the window, the shadows. She’d nailed this one perfectly. It was simple and utterly without waste. The true colors observed and then incorporated into the mix of colors as she wished them to be. A blend of impressionism and realism-with a touch of Georgia O’Keeffe thrown in for good measure.

    “I think you're amazing. In the time I’ve known you, in just these few months, you’ve…”

    “Blossomed?”

    “Yes. Incredibly!”

    “Bloomed?”

    He laughed. “Definitely.”

    He watched her box the pastels and slide the box and sketch pad into the small black backpack…

    “Glad you think so, Dodgson. I’m pregnant.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “I said I’m pregnant. Pay the check. I’ll tell you all about it.”

    

    

    They trudged the steep slope to the Acropolis. The road was practically empty now. They were going to be among the first to arrive. Later it’d be mobbed with cars and buses filled with tourists from every country in the world. Dodgson had seen it once that way and didn’t need to again. The crowds had put him off on ruins, period. Billie on the other hand had never seen it at all. She'd meant to, at the end of the first trip. But at that point all either of them wanted was out of there.