The Serpent's Curse (41 page)

Lily couldn't get enough of the story, partly because she and Wade had had no idea what had happened before they got to the airport, nor that they had both recovered—then given up—their halves of Serpens. Neither Terence nor Inspector Yazinsky had had any news from Greywolf, either about Roald and Sara or about Darrell and Becca. Everyone had kept checking phones, but there had been no word.

Bright morning light streamed in the stained-glass windows of the nave, crisscrossing the floor in shapes of shadow and color. Darrell felt peaceful for the first time since his mother had been kidnapped.

“I keep thinking we should be holding Serpens right now,” he said, gazing up at the brilliant gold altarpiece, then back at them. “We should have the relic right here in our hands. Cursed or not, I think we'd be able to deal with it. It's supposed to be ours. I mean . . . well . . . we should have it, end of story.”

There wasn't much else to say. They all felt the same.

“I keep wondering if the umbrella man is out there somewhere,” Wade said, scanning the vast nave of the abbey. “Not that we'd know it if he's in disguise.”

“No problem,” said Darrell. “Lily can spot a wig fifty feet away, right, Lil?”

She laughed. “Just one of my talents.” Then she sighed. “I guess we go back to Texas now? Just like that?”

Wade grumbled. “No one wants to, but we don't know where to start searching for the next relic, do we? Only Galina does.”

In a day or two, their London rest would be over. Lily's and Becca's parents were due to arrive to take them home. There would be all sorts of craziness trying to justify all they'd done, but Darrell knew that when the girls' parents saw his mother safe and heard how she wouldn't be there if not for the two girls' help, they'd realize that there had been no choice. They would all have to work out their individual returns to Austin, however, and even how safe that might be, given how the Order forced them from their homes. That was as big a question as anything else.

But then, only one thing
wasn't
a question.

They'd made a solemn oath, the four of them, that they were “totally and completely and absolutely” committed to the relic quest. And Darrell's mother and stepfather were just as committed. They had no real idea where to start looking for the third relic—a giant obstacle, but they'd overcome obstacles before.

Lots of them.

Wade was the first to see a familiar-looking boy trot across the marble stones to them.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Julian Ackroyd said. “All safe and sound?”

“Neither,” Darrell said, “but good enough. How's your dad?”

“Fine. He's tied up with the London foundation until tonight, but I've just gotten off the phone with him,” Julian said. “Paul and Marceline are back in Paris and doing all right, but both will be out of action for a while. They reported that there's not a stitch of information on Galina Krause right now. When she disappeared from Red Square in the chopper, she might just as well have been swallowed up by the storm. Dad's people are searching, but you know . . .” He trailed off.

“She'll discover where the next relic is,” Becca said, as if it pained her to talk. Her brow was furrowed again. “She'll do what she can to rebuild the Eternity Machine. She'll destroy the world.”

“We might be able to help with that,” Julian said. “Honestly, I've never seen Dad so into anything. Me, either, actually. He's dedicating a whole division of our foundation to stopping Galina Krause. We're not letting this go.”

“Thanks for that,” said Wade, watching Becca's expression darken as Roald wheeled Sara out of Poets' Corner and across the floor toward them.

“Which brings me to the real reason I wanted to meet you here in London,” Julian said. He swiped his phone. “In addition to helping with the London activities of the Ackroyd Foundation, I've been doing some work. I believe you know this man?”

They leaned over the picture to see a tall, white-haired man in a long black leather coat standing by a river. He had close-cropped white hair and a stony expression.

“OMG, that's Markus Wolff!” Lily said. “He killed us in San Francisco! Well, almost!”

“He said he would finish the job if he ever saw us again,” said Darrell.

“Markus Wolff,” Julian said, “works exclusively for Galina Krause as a sort of personal archaeologist.”

“And personal assassin,” Lily added.

“There are boats behind him,” Becca said. “Where was this picture taken, and when?”

“This morning on the Thames, not two and a half miles from here,” Julian said, closing his phone. “During the current renovations of the historic area, the remains of a trading barge from the early fifteen hundreds have been discovered. The question is, what's so interesting to Galina Krause about an old boat?”

“A boat . . . ,” Becca murmured.

Wade stepped next to her. “A clue to another relic. A definite clue.”

“You must be Julian!” Sara said softly, raising her hand to him as Wade's father wheeled her to a stop.

“I am!” Julian took her hand with a broad smile. “I'm happy to meet you, Sara Kaplan, and
so
happy to see you up and around.”

“No way can you keep my mom down,” Darrell said.

“And you won't,” Sara said, her voice coming back to her. “Does anyone know where Galina's gone to? I have a score to settle with that . . . young woman.”

Wade nearly laughed, then told her about Markus Wolff being seen at the riverside. “If Wolff is there, it has to mean something.”

Sara nodded sharply. “All right then.” She locked eyes with his father, then with each of the others. “We're going to the river. The hunt is on.”

“Yes!” said Darrell, slapping Wade's shoulder and giving Lily a high five. “It's on, all right. It's on until it's done!”

Julian smiled. “My limo is just outside. “We can be there in ten minutes.”

As they hurried across the marble floor of the abbey and out into the bustling noisy streets of London, the children knew there would nevermore be an atom of doubt.

They were on their quest once more.

They were the
Novizhny
.

They were Guardians.

North Sea

October 30, 1517

Evening

T
he whole thing was no more than a blur to Helmut Bern's fevered mind.

There'd been a flash, and something like a hundred-foot blade going through his chest, and he'd been sucked through an industrial-strength garbage disposal, ground down to nothing, and his bits reassembled. In the proper order, he hoped.

You there, sir . . .

But where in the world was he? His eyes ached when he glanced around.

You there, sir . . .

He appeared to be on the deck of an ancient sailing vessel. His stomach twisted. The ocean was stupid. As the ship tumbled up and down over ridiculous waves, he shivered under a filthy, mouse-ridden blanket of some kind. He was very cold. And also hot. His face felt like a frying pan. But why wasn't he at Greywolf? And where was the woman? And Kronos?

“You there . . . sir,” a voice said in German.

Some tedious man bent over him. He was dressed in a variety of cloaks and sashes and belts as if it were Halloween.
Is that a sword at his waist? Good God!

“You, there, Brother—”

“Yes? Yes? What's wrong with you?” Helmut snapped. “I hear you. Where the devil am I?”

“Where . . . Brother?”

“Where!” Bern snapped at the man. “As in
at what location
! And why do you keep calling me ‘brother'?”

The ship rolled suddenly, lifted like a speedboat, then crashed into the waves again. Lord, the air stank. He tried to sit up but couldn't get his legs unstuck.

“You wear the cloak of a monk, sir,” the man said.

Monk? An image flashed across his mind. Yes, yes. He
awoke
some hours ago surrounded by stone, didn't he? A church? Kronos! He saw it. Kronos was in a church. And he had stumbled out of the place and there was the shore, and a ship and . . . He must have blacked out after that, because suddenly he was here.

“What bloody year is this?” Helmut asked.

The Halloween man arched back as if the question were idiotic. He had intelligent, thoughtful eyes, creased with worry and study, perhaps.
A scholar,
Helmut thought.
But a swordsman, too.
The man was pleasantly bearded and tanned, well built, perhaps forty or forty-five, with a slouchy velvet hat perched on his head to complete the costume.

“The year of our Lord 1517, sir.”

The gears in Helmut's brain stuttered. 1517? Copernicus had taken a sea journey from Cádiz in Spain in 1517. He himself had programmed the very coordinates into Kronos. But . . . no! It couldn't possibly be! Could it? Had he, Bern, actually done it? Had he actually managed to program Kronos I to send him back safe and sound into the past, with such absolute accuracy? He
was
a genius! Here was the bloody proof!

For the first time, Helmut peered closely at the man standing over him. The look of his face, as clear as it could be through blurry eyes, was as identical to the portraits as any face could be.

“Ha! Ha-ha! You are he!” he cried. “You are Nicolaus Copernicus!”

“Do I know you, sir?” he said. “You rather remind me of someone I once knew.”

“When did we leave Cádiz? And where are we bound?”

“Cádiz, sir?” said the man he suspected to be Copernicus. “We did not leave Cádiz.”

A cold knife blade of fear entered his spine. “Not Cádiz? But . . . then where is this bloody ship
going
?”

“Brother, we are en route to England.”

“England? England!”

Crouching closer, the man set his palm over Helmut's forehead and eyes. “But there will be time for talking later, friend. You are unwell. . . .”

Helmut swatted the hand away and tried to rise, but the deck still refused to let him go. He looked down at the position of his legs. There was something wrong with them. And his fingers were curled, his wrists as weak as rope. He tried to examine them more closely, but seawater kept dripping over his eyes. The skin of his hands was dark red, as if he'd fallen asleep under a sunlamp. His cheeks were raw, and the salt spray stung him. Hot and cold again, both at the same time. “What in the world . . .”

“I know these sores,” the man said. “My own brother . . .”

Was Copernicus speaking of his own brother?

The poor Andreas, who everyone knows died of . . .
leprosy
?

It came at Helmut with the force of a tsunami. The journey in Kronos had not only taken him to the wrong place and time, it had done something else to him. The particle injection! The radioisotope! It had sickened him!

Just then a shape moved behind the astronomer. Was this the legendary young assistant, Hans Novak, creeping behind his master?

But it was not Novak. It was not a boy at all. It was a girl. Long brown hair, wet, clinging to her face. A . . . parka . . . a modern parka; her cheeks wet, splashed by salt waves; bearing a crazed, puzzled expression; . . . and . . .
I . . . know her!

“I know you!” Helmut screamed in English. “The American girl from Greywolf! They called you . . . Becca! What . . . what are you—”

Yet in that instant, just as she focused before his eyes, the girl vanished from the deck, as if the very air and waves had washed her into oblivion. Or back into the future from when she came.

“I am lost! Lost!” Helmut cried at the top of his lungs. “Bring me home!”

“Sir?”

“Bring me home! Bring me home! Bring me home!”

TO BE CONTINUED in
The Copernicus Archives: Becca and the Prisoner's Cross
. . . and
The Copernicus Legacy: The Golden Vendetta
.