The Granite Key (Arkana Mysteries) (25 page)

“There is one more artifact I wish you to see. Wait please.” She left the office briefly and returned with a small gold object in the palm of her hand. She held it out for her guests to inspect. “Exquisite, is it not?”

Cassie studied it for a moment. “It’s some kind of bug but I can’t be sure what. Is it one of those Egyptian scarabs?”

“I believe it’s a chrysalis,”
Griffin
offered uncertainly. “A cocoon for a butterfly?”

“That is so,”
Xenia
affirmed. “The chrysalis was yet another symbol of transformation and regeneration to the Minoans. But look at the mark on the head.”

“A lily!” the visitors exclaimed in unison.

“Not only that, I believe it matches the pictures you have brought.”

Griffin
feverishly checked his photograph of the key. “It does, it does! Look at the two lilies flanking the Linear B text. They are identical to this one.” He looked intently at
Xenia
. “Where did this come from?”

“Ah, that is where we have a little problem,” she hesitated. “It was bought from a private collector. He thought it may have come from Karfi.”

“But there’s nothing there!”
Griffin
’s tone was despairing.

“Karfi?” Cassie repeated, for once not mispronouncing the name.

The Scrivener explained. “Karfi was the Minoan last stand if you will. Once the Dorians overran the island, many of the original inhabitants fled to the Lassithi plateau. An area high in the mountains which would have been very difficult for an invading force to take.
 
Karfi was the last known Minoan settlement. It was built into the side of a mountain and was sloppily excavated by archaeologists in the 1930s. There’s really nothing to see there but rubble.”
Griffin
ran his hands through his hair. “This is maddening. Our clearest connection to the key and we have no idea where this object originated.”

“I have a thought,”
Xenia
suggested tentatively. “Perhaps the Pythia can help?”

“Cassie?”
Griffin
looked at the girl blankly.

The trove-keeper wordlessly held out the gold chrysalis toward Cassie.

“You want me to…” The girl trailed off. She gulped. It was one thing to touch relics under Faye’s guidance but she had no idea where this odd little bug had come from. It might be another tainted relic for all she knew. Still, if she could finally do something other than trail around and ask questions, maybe there was a reason for her to be part of this mission after all. Fortunately, she was wearing the obsidian pendant Faye had given her. She gripped it tightly in her left hand and held out her right to take the artifact. Drawing in a deep breath she said, “OK, here goes nothing.”

She found herself walking in a procession. There were people ahead of her carrying torches. This time, the part of her that was Cassie was still around, like someone hovering just over her shoulder, watching the spectacle. The other part of her was a woman wrapped in a shawl. It was cold and there were snowflakes in the air. The woman was part of a group walking down a long narrow ramp that seemed to lead underground. There was a square doorway ahead. As she passed under the doorway, she realized she was in a burial chamber. She felt very sad. There was a square box in the center of the room. It seemed to be made of clay
—
some sort of terra cotta casket. There were decorations painted on the clay: birds, flowers and numerous horns of consecration with double axes at their center. A priestess was performing a ceremony. She was pouring liquid into a bowl and chanting. For the first time, Cassie registered that the woman was holding something in her right hand. Looking down, she realized it was the chrysalis. The woman in her vision walked up to the casket and Cassie could see that the lid was covered with funeral gifts
—
jewelry, miniature vases, small golden axes. The woman gently placed the chrysalis on the casket and touched her hand to the double axe painted on the lid.
 

Cassie blinked. She was back. The other two were looking at her intently.

“Where did you go?”
Griffin
asked in a slightly worried tone.

“I was attending a funeral,” she said tersely. “It was loads of fun.” She told them exactly what she had seen.

The Scrivener seemed to view her with a newfound respect. “That’s very helpful,” he said at last. “It sounds as if you were in a tholos tomb. That’s a type of burial chamber.
 
The fact that it was partially underground suggests a Mycenean design rather than Minoan but no matter.
Xenia
, are there any tholoi near Karfi?”

“Yes,” the trove-keeper assented. “There are a few cemeteries near the settlement and a number of tholos tombs. Some are partially below ground.”

“Excellent!”
Griffin
sounded hopeful once more. “By tomorrow Erik will be here and we can search the Psychro cave and the cemeteries around Karfi.”

“Oh good,” Cassie thought to herself. “More underground stuff.” She decided that if she ever owned a house someday, she’d get one that didn’t have a basement.

Chapter 36
– A Plot In The Country

It was almost midnight when Leroy and his charge arrived in Heraklion. Hunt was annoyed that they had rushed off the mainland to
Crete
with no advance warning. Apparently, Junior’s talk with the preacher hadn’t gone too well. The old man must have lit a fire under the kid because they left the minute after he got off the phone. The Nephilim groupies chartered a boat to take them from Pylos to Heraklion.

Daniel was pretty quiet on the trip over. Hunt watched him staring at those blasted photos of the key until they were like to burn a hole in his eyeballs. No sense asking the kid what he thought he could see there.

Once they docked in Crete, Leroy was introduced to another one of the boy’s faithful flunkies
—
some weedy little islander named Nikos. He gave Hunt the once over and then pulled Daniel off to the side to whisper to him. Kept looking back over his shoulder at the cowboy. After a couple of minutes of gesturing and pointing, they walked back toward him.

“Brother Nikos says you must come with us,” Daniel told him hesitantly.

“I just gotta ask. Is he your actual brother? ‘Cause the way your daddy keeps collectin’ wives, I figure maybe he’s got a couple stashed away in
Greece
too.”

“No, Mr. Hunt,” Daniel said stiffly. “Brother Nikos is my spiritual brother not my biological brother.”

“Well, considering how many acorns is hangin’ off your family tree, you can’t blame a body for askin’.”

Daniel doggedly repeated his earlier statement. “Brother Nikos says you must come with us.”

Lerory rubbed his neck irritably. It was late, he was tired from doing nothing all day and the last thing he needed was to get prayed over. “Now I already told you son, I ain’t sleepin’ in one of your confounded compounds.”

Daniel looked around the dock area nervously. “Brother Nikos says he has something important to tell us. Something he can’t say here.”

Hunt’s annoyance faded as curiosity took its place. “Well now, that sounds like it might be worth the trouble. But you tell him from me that once he speaks his piece, he’s gonna hustle me back to a hotel in town. You got that?”

“I understand English, sir,” the local said. “I will do as you ask. But now you must come. My car is parked over this way.”

Hunt shrugged and hoisted his duffle bag. “Whatever you say, Brother Nick.”

“Nikos,” Daniel corrected anxiously. “His name is Brother Nikos.”

“Ain’t that what I said?”

***

Twenty minutes later they were driving through a landscape that was darker than dirt. Hardly any lights anywhere. Daniel was up front with his new best friend giving Leroy the back seat all to himself.

Hunt tried to make conversation. “So you got a compound out in the sticks here too? Jeez, you Nephilim got more hidey holes than a gopher.”

“No sir,” Nikos answered gravely. “There is no compound. We are going to my brother Dimitrios. He has a farm house some distance from the town.”

“Guess one of you Nephilim boys made good, huh? He got a house of his own and don’t have to share except maybe with his twenty odd wives and such.”

Nikos corrected him. “My brother Dimitrios is not of the Blessed Nephilim, sir.”

“How’s that?” Hunt asked blankly.

Daniel tried to explain. “Nikos is a convert to our brotherhood, Mr. Hunt. The rest of his family was not born into our faith.”

“Well, don’t that beat all,” Leroy chuckled. “Quite a pickle, Brother Nick. You got a brother who ain’t a brother. I tell you what. You gotta come up with another word for them that joins your blessed whatsit and stop callin’ everybody brother. It’s downright confusin’.”

They drove in silence for ten minutes until another thought occurred to Hunt. “So how come we’re goin’ for a confidential chit chat at your brother’s house. Who ain’t even a brother, by the way?”

“Brother Nikos lives at our
Athens
compound,” Daniel explained. “Because he is Cretan by birth, I asked him to come here ahead of us and begin to search the ruins at
Knossos
. We have no compound on the island where he could stay so he asked his brother for refuge.”

“Uh huh,” Leroy said. “So if you gotta stay with Brother Dimitrios too that means you’re gonna have to break your taboo about not eatin’ outside of a sanctuary, ain’t that right?”

“Where two Nephilim are gathered, that is a sanctuary,” Daniel intoned piously.

“I knew he’d weasel around it someway,” Hunt thought to himself. “This better not take long,” he said aloud.

“An hour and no more,” Nikos assured him.

Leroy leaned his back up against the car door and tilted his hat brim over his eyes. “Well good. You wake me when we get to your fake brother’s place.”

***

It took twenty more minutes for them to arrive and exchange pleasantries with Dimitrios and his family. It might have gone quicker but none of them spoke English.

The three men were shown out into the garden where a table was set for a late night snack of bread, olives, and feta cheese. Nikos and Daniel refused spirits and primly asked for tea while Hunt cheerfully accepted a glass of ouzo. Dimitrios was obliging enough to leave the bottle near at hand.

Once they were sure the family had retired, Nikos began to explain himself in a whisper. “I believe someone else is looking for these markings you sent me to find, Brother Daniel.”

“What?” Leroy sat bolt upright, alert for the first time since leaving
Chicago
.

Daniel nervously picked apart a piece of bread. “But that’s not possible. Who else could know about the granite key?”

“At
Knossos
I saw three of the Fallen. Two women and a man. They were walking through the ruin looking for the same strange markings you wanted me to search for.”

“That so!” Leroy’s interest was piqued. “What’d they look like?”

“The Fallen man was young, in his twenties, with light brown hair. He spoke with a British accent. One of the Fallen women was Greek and middle-aged. The other was an American, a teenager with dark hair. They called her Cassie.”

“Well, don’t that beat all!” Hunt exclaimed, slapping the table with his palm.

“Mr. Hunt, please!” Daniel shushed him like a spinster librarian. “The family will hear you.”

Leroy ignored the admonition. “So little sis was in the game after all. Lord almighty! Gotta say I didn’t see that one comin’.” He poured himself another drink.

Nikos continued his account. “They spoke of Linear B and the granite key. I followed them. At one point, I brushed close enough to see the papers they were all looking at. Each one had a copy of the symbols on the key.”

“How can that be?” Daniel’s voice was shrill, panicky. “Nobody had that information.”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, son, but somebody did. That antique dealer who I got the key from in the first place.”

“You?” Daniel gave him a puzzled stare.

“Guess your daddy didn’t tell you all the odd jobs I done for him, huh? Well sir, I’m the one he sent to find that doodad in the first place. It come from a fancy antique store. Lady who ran it had herself a terrible accident. Bumped her head and didn’t get up no more. Left behind a little sister. Gal named Cassie.”

“This can’t be happening,” Daniel murmured. His pasty complexion was ashen.

Ignoring the young man’s distress Hunt addressed Nikos. “So what else you find out?”

Nikos stared worriedly at Daniel for a moment before transferring his attention to Leroy. “I do not believe they found anything at
Knossos
. I followed them for the rest of the day. They went to a vineyard in the hills and stayed there for two hours.”

“My kinda folks. Civilized,” Hunt said approvingly. “They know when it’s time to take a break and sip somethin’ in the shade.”

“After that, they returned to their hotel in Heraklion.”

Leroy felt an adrenaline surge. “So you know where they’re stayin’?”

“Yes, I can take you there in the morning.”

Hunt rounded on him. “Boy, we ain’t got that kind of time!”

Daniel was sitting with his head in his hands, moaning an inarticulate prayer.

Leory shook him roughly by the shoulder. “Listen up, son. I need you to get on the horn with your boys. You got anybody else on the island, you call out the reinforcements. I need them brethren to take turns watchin’ the hotel through the night. Keep tabs on these folks.”

“Why?” Daniel bleated

“Son, you ain’t seein’ the big picture here. You think they’re gonna steal your thunder and get them bones before you do. That ain’t gonna happen.”

Daniel gaped at him dumbly.

“Don’t you get it yet, boy? They’re gonna do your work for you. All we got to do is stay out of sight and follow them around awhile. Odds are they’ll lead us straight to your buried treasure.”

Leroy withdrew the SIG Pro pistol from its holster. He checked the magazine. “Brother Nick, you think maybe you could scare me up some extra .357 bullets for this thing?”