The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (48 page)

  "Oh, my God," Kathlyn
breathed. “It’s… over.”

Marcus had his hands on her; he
wasn't about to let her out of his grip. "It’s over, sweetheart. It’s
over."

It was difficult to comprehend.
“Fayd,” she breathed. “He did it.”

“Did what?”

She was torn between awe and
sorrow. "He sacrificed himself for us. Even now, he sacrificed himself as
if he was meant to repeat the pattern."

“What pattern?”

She continued to stare at the
crumbling hillside. "He attacked one of the creatures and created enough
of a diversion for us to escape." He looked at her husband. "If I
hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it. He died so we could live, Marcus.
Just like he had before."

Marcus gazed down at his wife,
pale and coated with dust. She was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

 "What do you mean,
sweetheart?"

 She didn't even know where to
start. Glancing over his shoulder, she noticed Jace lying on the ground several
yards away with Gary and Dennis standing over him.

 "How is he?" she
called to them.

Gary shook his head. "He
made it out of the cave, but that's it." He sighed heavily and pushed the
dirty hair from his eyes. "This has been a very costly excursion, Kathlyn.
But you know what? I wouldn't have missed it for the world. I don't think any
of us would have, not even Deverona. This is a Kathlyn Trent adventure for the
books."

The others nodded in agreement,
torn between the horror and fascination of it. Kathlyn didn't know what to say.
Everyone seemed to be standing around, dazed but glad to be alive. Juliana
stood over by Jace, tears in her eyes and Lynn's arms around her.  It had been
a costly excursion, indeed.

A feeling of exhaustion enveloped
Kathlyn and she stumbled back, into her husband, and wrapped her arms around
his neck. Her stomach was cramping and all she wanted to do was sleep. Marcus
picked her up and cradled her.

"Get me out of here,"
she whispered.

He didn't ask her any more
questions. Time for that would come.  She was alive, and that was all he cared
about.

CHAPTER
TWENTY TWO

 "You're sure you don't want
to pursue this?"

It was a warm afternoon in the
Valley of the Kings. Kathlyn sat across from Marcus in the administrative tent,
a pensive look on her face. In shorts and a tee shirt and the ever-present
duster, she looked none the worse for wear after the events of a week prior.
Except for the gash on her cheek, which was healing nicely, she was nearly back
to her normal lovely self. But her mood was dark.

"No," she said after a
moment. "I'll tell Ballard something, but I don't want to do a program on
the angels. I'd prefer just to let it go for now."

Marcus crossed his thick arms;
cleaned and combed, he also looked as if he hadn't been to hell and back only
recently. Once again at the helm of his own dig, he too was trying to forget
what had happened.

"The film crew is over in
the mess tent," he said. "They're ready to start filming. Do you want
me to go chase them off?"

The World Geography video crew
only stirred up unpleasant memories, but they were memories to be dealt with
nonetheless. Kathlyn shook her head to his question.

"I'll do it. I have to be
diplomatic, or else Ballard will never support me again. As it is, I'm going to
have a hard time brushing this off after I pushed it so hard to do a segment on
the angels of Iraq. At least McGrath was more understanding about it."

"Jobe is pretty good that
way. He's not in it for the money."

"Yes, but there is still an
explosive scientific find to be considered."

Marcus watched his wife, her
depressed manner. There was no proof of her claims, nothing to back up her
statements should she decide to go public with this. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,”
he said quietly. “I really am. I know how hard this is for you.”

Kathlyn lifted her eyebrows in
resignation. “Since blowing up the cave and Fayd's death, there’s just nothing
left. CeMEH isn't talking; in fact, they’ve gone out of their way to denounce
me and twist things out of proportion. They have the skeletons of the original
four angels, but they’ve retreated into a world of suspicion and lies and I’ll
never get any cooperation out of them. It would only be my outlandish word that
winged creatures have survived to this day and age.”

He knew that. “You’re a lot of
things, Kathlyn, but you’re not a fool. You know your limits and I won’t argue
with you. But my support would hold a lot of weight.”

 “Without any evidence, you’d
just sound like a man who simply didn't want to disagree with his wife.”

He couldn’t disagree. "All
right. Do what you have to do. But if you want to reconsider, you've got a
whole group of people who can corroborate your story."

Kathlyn threw her hands up.
"That's not the point. I can't even explain half of what happened. It
started with the skeleton of an angel and ended up with us nearly losing our
lives. I still don't know why, exactly, I had those visions of Fayd killing the
angel we found in the fossil river. I don't even know if he had some inkling of
a past life where he was some sort of demon slayer, or if he experimented on me
to make amends in this life for the demon he killed in another. I don't know
what that Curious creature was trying to tell me, or the meaning of all of
those glyphs in that cave. I have theories, of course, but no larger picture
that obviously comes together. And I don't think I'll ever know for sure."

Marcus was thoughtful. "I
think you hit the nail on the head when you said they were freaks of nature, a
dying race that tried to perpetuate their species by mating with human women.
Primitive man concocted stories about demons and devils to explain their
existence."

She shrugged. "Maybe."
Removing her feet from the tabletop, she puffed up her cheeks and exhaled
heavily. "I may do a program on them at some time and in some variation,
but not right now. If you really want to know the truth, I don't want to deal
with it right now. I'd just rather forget for a while."

"I understand."

"I know you do. I appreciate
it."

The phone rang. Marcus answered
it. "Hello, Jobe," he eyed his wife. "No, she's standing right
here. Why?"

Kathlyn watched Marcus' eyebrow
lift. "Really? And?"

"What is it?" she
whispered.

Marcus put his hand over the
receiver. "The Vatican has issued a statement supporting CeMEH in condemning
your actions in Iraq.”

"Now there’s a surprise.”

"McGrath wanted you to hear
it from him before you saw it on the news. Something about how you entered Iraq
illegally to dig for relics, destroying valuable historical sites in the
process.”

“Oh yeah? What valuable sites am
I alleged to have destroyed?”

Marcus relayed the question to
McGrath and came back. “An Islamic site, apparently.”

She rolled her eyes.
"Terrific,” she said. “Now the Muslims will be all fired up at me.” She
jabbed a finger at her husband. ”They should really blame CeMEH, you know.
They’re the ones who kept the Vatican representative bottled up in Amman while
they sent de Tormo out as a phony. No wonder the guy returned to Rome pissed
off."

Marcus smiled at her, sensing her
irony. "Jobe also says that the bone fragments we sent for DNA testing
turned up."

It was an unexpected bright spot.
"They did? I thought they were gone forever!"

"They're running Carbon-14
testing on them. You sure you don't want to do something with World Geography?"
He said something to McGrath, then turned back to his wife. "This is
proof, Kathlyn. Now we have something solid if you want to go forward."

It was mysterious that the
fragments turned up. Strange how they turned up the same time The Vatican came
out swinging at her. Kathlyn couldn't even guess at the logistics of that
quandary, but she knew a few ancient bones chips wouldn't be enough to
substantiate her claims. She shook her head.

"No," she turned away.
"It's not enough. Tell McGrath... tell him to lock the fragments away
somewhere. I don't know what I'm going to do with them."

Marcus relayed the message and
hung up. He hated to see his wife defeated, but he knew the truth of it.
Kathlyn Trent had faced demons and had won. But the world would never know the
half of it.

"Come on, Dr. Trent,"
he said, taking her by the hand. "Your public awaits."

Kathlyn let him lead her out into
the bright sunshine. She thought of what she was going to tell the people from
World Geography. Against the golden hills of the valley behind her, she thought
she heard a faint hissing noise.

 Turning sharply, she listening
to the cliffs. They were silent. After a moment, she turned to keep pace with
Marcus, attempting to ignore the eerie feeling that swept over her. It was like
she was being watched. Maybe someday, the world would know the truth about the
demons of hell. They were still there, somewhere.

Someday she'd have her proof.

EPILOGUE

"Push, Kathlyn! Push!"

She was pushing as hard as she
could. She felt like she was pushing all of her insides out. But the baby was
wedged in the birth canal, refusing to budge. When the contraction passed,
Kathlyn fell back against Marcus, panting like a rabid dog.

"You're doing great,
sweetheart," Marcus kissed her sweaty forehead. "It's almost
over."

She licked her dry lips. Her
entire body was in an upheaval.  Four hours of the hardest, fastest labor on
record had brought her to this point. Two solid hours of pushing had not gone
by unnoticed.

"God," she grunted.
"This hurts like hell. What happened to my goddamn epidural?"

"It wore off an hour ago. I
need you to feel these contractions, remember?" The doctor sitting between
her legs was the same one who had delivered the twins. He was young, hip, and
very good at what he did.

"How's her heart?"
Marcus looked over at the EKG monitor they had Kathlyn hooked up to.

"Fine," the doctor
said. "Steady as a rock. Okay, with the next contraction, I need you to
give a really hard push, okay?"

"What the hell do you think
I've been doing?"

 The doctor grinned beneath his
mask. "No back talk. Just push."

Another contraction seized her
and she grunted, bearing down with all her might.  Marcus supported her back,
counting out the contraction. The nurse had her hand on the top of Kathlyn's
enormous belly, pushing down to help. The doctor used what looked like a giant
suction cup, fixed to the baby's head, to aid in the delivery. Finally, he
crowed.

"I have a head," he
said, setting the suction cup aside. "Okay, Kathlyn, give me another big
one. One more and we'll slip this kid right out of there."

She had had enough of pushing.
Her energy was spent. "Does it have horns?" she gasped.

The doctor lifted an eyebrow at
Marcus, who lifted one right back at him. "Well? Does it?" he asked.

The doctor shook his head.
"You two are a couple of strange ones.  You wouldn't let me do any
ultrasounds the entire nine months, but now you're asking me if it has
horns."

"Does it?"

"I know that all women in
labor think their children are devils, but...."

"Does it have horns?"

"Contrary to your
suggestion, it does not."

Kathlyn started laughing,
exhausted and elated. Marcus grabbed her hand and kissed it.

"Oh, thank God," she
breathed, verging on tears. "It's ours, Marcus. It's ours!"

He didn't say anything. He just
kissed her again and again, too relieved to speak. Another contraction seized
her and she bore down, pushing the baby all the way out. Shaken with relief,
Marcus strained to catch a glimpse of it.

"Well?" he demanded.

The doctor held the baby up and
put it right on Kathlyn's chest. "Congratulations on your daughter,"
he said. "You have a beautiful sister for those two big brothers."

Kathlyn swooped over the baby,
wiping the wax-like coating from her hands, running her fingers over the
child's head. No horns, no wings, nothing to suggest this was some freakish
experiment. Once, they had agreed to terminate it. But after the child survived
the trip through the caves and subsequently grew stronger, Kathlyn didn't have
the heart to end the life. Marcus, though not in complete agreement, had
supported her. They had a fifty-fifty chance, and it had paid off.

Kathlyn was so happy she began to
cry.  Marcus hovered over them, tears in his eyes.

 "She gorgeous," he
said emotionally. "Just like her mother."