The Templar's Code (57 page)

Raising his hand, Panos caressed a bas-relief carving of an eight-pointed star that was set in the middle of the pilaster. “It’s beautiful.”

Admittedly baffled, Edie wondered what she was missing. Saviour Panos had killed four men to get the Emerald Tablet, and yet since entering the sanctuary, he’d given the relic little more than a passing glance.

“Ah, yes, the octogram. In Islamic art it’s known as the
khatim sulayman
,” Caedmon remarked. “You clearly have an affinity for the symbol.”

An affinity?
Was Caedmon being for real? Try deadly obsession.

“According to legend, King Solomon used the symbol to capture an evil jinn. A jinn, of course, being a demon similar to Asmodeus,” Caedmon continued in a surreally calm tone of voice. One that belied the deeply etched lines of pain that furrowed his brow.

Why was Caedmon placating the bastard? And ruining her carefully conceived plan.

Prior to their arrival, she’d spent two hours on her hands and knees painstakingly examining every square inch of the sanctuary. In addition to the concealed trap that she’d fallen into when she and Caedmon had first discovered the chamber, she found one other trap. This one cunningly placed dead center in front of the niche. Emphasis on the word
dead
.

And to lure the bad guy, she’d placed her colorful bait—the Emerald Tablet—in the carved-out recess. All she had to do was get Panos to walk over to the niche
before
he pulled the trigger and killed them. Because she was fairly certain that was
his
plan.

“You ought to check out the octogram that’s on the back of the Emerald Tablet,” Edie said enticingly, hoping to nudge the monster in the right direction. “It’s a real beaut. Takes up the whole backside of the relic. In fact, it’s my understanding that the octogram is the key to unlock the secret of creation. That’s why the Emerald Tablet is such a holy relic.”

The sales pitch took, Panos
finally
deigning to glance at the green crystalline tablet displayed in the niche.

“He will be so pleased,” Panos cryptically murmured as he stepped toward the altar.

Holding her breath, Edie counted the steps until the bastard unexpectedly plunged to his death.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a quick moving blur. Turning her head, she saw Caedmon, a feral gleam in his eyes, rush toward the altar.

“Caedmon, don’t!”

To Edie’s horror, he ignored the shouted plea.

Like uncoiled springs, Caedmon’s cuffed wrists thrust upward into the air, then looped over the top of Panos’s head. With a grunt, he yanked the other man against his chest, strangling him with the metal chain that linked the two cuffs.

Panos wildly thrashed against Caedmon, the two men no more than three feet from the trap. Having a height advantage, Caedmon managed to hold firm.
Grimacing. Grunting
. His face a mask of pained determination. With his left hand, Panos impotently clawed at Caedmon’s face. In his right hand, the Greek still held fast to the revolver. Given their close proximity, he obviously realized that he risked shooting himself if he fired it.

Edie, hands fearfully clasped to her mouth, stood frozen in place. With no weapon at the ready, she was afraid to intervene. Afraid she might break Caedmon’s deadly focus. Given the amount of pain that he
had
to be suffering, what she was witnessing was nothing less than heroic. Superhuman, in fact.

Face beginning to turn blue, Panos suddenly used his revolver in an unexpected manner—he forcibly rammed the butt of the weapon against Caedmon’s battered left hand.

Caedmon raised his manacled wrists, releasing the hold on his blue-faced captive. Gasping, he recoiled from the other man.

With a sickening sense of certainty, Edie knew how the violent tableau would end. As soon as Rico Suave caught his breath—which could be any second—he would kill Caedmon!

As though reading her mind, Panos bared his teeth and growled. A savage animal. “I’m going to blow a hole in your conniving heart,
boutso gliftie!
” he hissed, his malice recharged.

Hearing his intention so bluntly put propelled Edie into action. Like a snapped rubber band, she lunged forward, her survival instincts kicking in.
Literally.

Falling back on the six weeks of kickboxing that she took at the YMCA, she quickly advanced on her target. She’d taken the course three years ago, so there was only one move she actually remembered. Probably because it was the only one she’d mastered with whambam proficiency—the side kick. Able to hear her instructor’s voice in her head—
Slide! Chamber! Kick!—
Edie assumed an offensive posture. Funneling her fear into one dynamic, quick motion, she smashed her hiking boot into Saviour Panos’s crotch.

The wailing howl that ensued was perversely gratifying.

As expected, the wounded gunman doubled over—a defensive move programmed into the male DNA—shielding his groin from another attack. Bleating, he muttered what sounded like a string of foul epithets in a foreign language.

Caedmon quickly jabbed his right knee upward, catching Panos in the chin. The hard-hitting knee strike sent Panos reeling backward. The younger man gracelessly windmilled his arms, attempting to regain his balance. Still holding the revolver, he crashed into the stone altar.

Edie instinctively ducked, afraid the loaded gun would accidentally discharge.

Grunting, Panos bounced off the edge of the rough-hewn altar, staggered several feet, and—

Vanishing without so much as a whimper. Or a foul-mouthed curse.

Caedmon, slack-jawed, stared at the gaping hole. “My God.”

Edie exuberantly thrust her right fist into the air. Recalling her favorite episode of Lassie, she happily exclaimed, “Timmy’s in the well!”
Yeah, boy!

Euphoric, she rushed over to Caedmon, who calmly peered into the hole. “A deadly fall from grace,” he said dispassionately. No love lost.

Her cheeks moistened with tears, it took every measure of self-control
not
to fling herself at her battered warrior. Instead, she stopped a handbreadth in front of Caedmon. Ever so gently, she brushed her fingers against his bruised cheek.

“Worse for wear,” he said matter-of-factly, preempting her inquiry. “Let’s leave it at that.” Then, one side of his mouth quirking upward, “Your bravado gave me quite the scare. I don’t know whether to kiss you or throttle you.”

“I’ll settle for the former. The latter will have to wait until I’m suited up in my fishnet stockings and black leather corset.” She shakily laughed, her emotions all over the map. “Aren’t you the one who said that ‘bluff can move mountains?’ Although”—she glanced at the hole in the floor—“as crazy as it sounds, I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

“I’m afraid that nothing short of death would have stopped him. Survival of the fittest at its most horrific.”

Sidestepping the death trap, she walked over to the niche behind the altar. “All that trouble and he never did take the bait.” She removed the relic and carefully retraced her steps, purposefully
not
peeking into the hole. “I don’t know about you, but I am ready to blow this joint.”

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than the skin on the back of her neck prickled. In that instant, she intuitively knew. . . . A dark shadow loomed behind them. She warily turned her head toward the entrance to the sanctuary, halfway expecting to see Saviour Panos—Rasputin-like—having survived the deadly plummet.

“Good God,” Caedmon uttered.

Her thoughts exactly, stunned to see an armed white-haired man standing in the entryway.

“I . . . I don’t . . . don’t understand,” she sputtered. “We thought you were dead.”

“Still among the living as you can plainly see.”

Caedmon gaped at the resurrected gunman, shocked. “I am as confused as Miss Miller. How can you be both dead and—”

“Alive? A bit of smoke and mirrors, as they say. Or porcelain and bathwater, in this case. Please forgive the subterfuge. A necessary ploy to force your hand. We have not been properly introduced. My birth name is Merkür de Léon. Americanized many years ago to Lyon. Spelled with a
y
,” he added, obviously amused by the “ploy.”

Still flabbergasted, Caedmon stared at the elderly man who all along had been pulling the puppet strings.
The kindly Dr. Lyon
. Professor emeritus at Catholic University. Although not so kindly that he didn’t carry a firearm. A Smith & Wesson 9mm revolver. Eight rounds in the clip, one in the chamber. Which meant that Dr. Lyon, professor emeritus, had nine shots available to him. Of course, he only needed two to kill them. An easy enough prospect given that he and Edie were utterly defenseless. Nowhere to hide. And nowhere to run.

“Where is Saviour?” Dr. Lyon scanned the room, his eyes suspiciously narrowing.

Caedmon quickly glanced at Edie. A warning.
Whatever you do, love, don’t reveal that his homunculus tumbled into the pits of hell.

“Your neophyte suffered an unexpected bout of claustrophobia, which prompted his early departure.”

“Yeah, he had a real bad case of spelunkphobia,” Edie snickered.

“Since there’s only the one exit, Saviour ordered us to retrieve the relic while he awaits our egress
above
ground. I’m surprised you didn’t cross paths.” Caedmon strove for a calm façade, ignoring the searing bolts of pain that continuously pulsed from his battered left hand. Refusing to show any weakness.
Smoke and mirrors
.

With a nod of the head, Dr. Lyon accepted the deceit as payment in full.

“All in all, well done, sir!” Caedmon congratulated with hale good humor. “We respectfully concede the field and award you the prize. Edie, if you would be so kind as to set the Emerald Tablet on the stone altar where Dr. Lyon may properly examine it.”

“Um, right . . . be happy to.” Always a dependable teammate, Edie did as instructed.

Like guests summoned to dinner, the three of them gathered at the altar: Dr. Lyon at the head of the table, Caedmon at the foot, and Edie, the hapless diner in the middle. And of course, the silent, uninvited guest Saviour Panos, who’d been cast into the pit just prior to the dinner gong.

Dr. Lyon’s eyes glimmered with unshed tears as he stared at his “dinner plate.” Utterly bedazzled. As Caedmon had been when he first set eyes on the sacred relic.

“I’m admittedly curious as to how you learned of the Emerald Tablet,” he conversationally remarked.

Long moments passed before Dr. Lyon finally tore his gaze away from the relic. “I was approached by Jason Lovett regarding the Paleo-Hebrew inscription that he unearthed in Arcadia.”

“Paleo-Hebrew is an ancient version of the Semitic language,” Caedmon said in a quick aside to Edie.

Like a lover caressing the beloved, Dr. Lyon smoothed his hand over the intricate gold-inlaid design, Edie having set the relic on the altar, backside up. “The Templar inscription proved to be a Latin transliteration. Properly translated, it reads ‘Thoth’s stone.’ ”

“Aka the Emerald Tablet,” Edie said. “Which is how you knew that the Templars had taken the relic to their secret New World colony.”

“No sooner did I read Dr. Lovett’s extraordinary e-mail than I knew it was the Fourth and
final
Sign.”

Taken aback, Caedmon’s head jerked. “Do you honestly believe that the hand of providence—”

“I
am
the chosen one!” Dr. Lyon snapped. “It is my destiny to have found the Emerald Tablet.”

Although tempted to point out that
he and Edie
unearthed the sacred relic, Caedmon held his tongue.