Veil of the Goddess (15 page)

But that didn't mean she couldn't be making a horrible mistake.

Ivy laid the long section of the Cross on the ground facing north/south, the tip almost at the head of the mosaic goddess, then stepped back, studied what she'd done, and made a microscopic adjustment.

Although the Beretta hadn't done much against the sheep-monster, Zack suddenly wished he'd thought to bring one of the Kalashnikovs with him rather than leaving them in the van where they couldn't help anyone.

"Can I—"

She gestured him to silence and then set the cross-piece at right angles the long piece, in the center rather than at the end so that it made a sort of compass diamond.

Zack had thought he was immune to the sensations Ivy experienced. He couldn't detect the colors Ivy saw, but something hit him like a hard kick in the gut.

The force was internal rather than something physical, but it still bent him over, rocked him back on his heels. “Wow!” He shook his head hard to clear it.

"Do you have any idea what the hell—"

His mouth fell open, his question only half-asked when he got a good look at Ivy.

She looked the same, but also completely different.

She was still the tall, more muscles than curves, woman she'd been since he'd first seen her in the killing zone in Mosul. But now she radiated a sexual appeal that any Hollywood movie star would have given her firstborn child to achieve.

"There was power there that had been locked up too long,” she said. “It needed to be set free. Don't worry, I don't think we're going to see any transformed animals here."

"You're beautiful,” he breathed.

She squinted at him. “Huh?"

He stepped closer to her. “I don't know how I could have missed it before, but you're, like, a sex goddess."

"Zack, get real."

He got real. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.

For a second, he thought he'd misread the situation, that she was going to resist him. It would have broken his heart if she rejected him because she was the ultimate woman. Ivy embodied what he'd searched for until he'd become convinced it was a myth, one of those fantasy dreams that keep men from accepting what they have, leave them miserable no matter what they found. But Ivy was real.

And she was going to reject him.

To his surprise and pure bliss, she didn't.

Her lips, soft and warm, met his.

Her kiss was sweet wine, intoxicating, powerful, filling him with a rush of emotion he didn't want to analyze, only savor.

"I don't understand what's happening,” he admitted when he came up for breath. “I've never wanted anyone like I want you right now."

He kissed her again, let his arms roam down her back, enjoying the sensual delight of the hard muscles of her shoulders and the firm roundness of her bottom.

She kissed him back, then slowly pushed him away.

"I don't think this is a good idea, Zack."

Talk about a mistake. It was a terrific idea.

"Why?” He brushed a knuckle against her cheek. Simply touching her sent a wave of power through him, made him feel like he could climb a mountain naked, stand at the top, thump his chest and challenge the gods.

"You feel the power of the temple, not anything that comes from inside yourself. I was wrong about there being no transformation. Remember that sheep that changed into a monster? That's you."

He shook his head. “I'm not a monster, Ivy. I've just had my eyes opened. How could I have missed seeing that you're an angel?"

"I'm not an angel, and you're not yourself. Come on, Zack, wake up."

If this was dreaming, he didn't want to wake. Still, he wasn't going to argue with her. How could he argue with the perfect woman?

"Help me with the Cross, Zack."

"Huh?"

"We've got to get back to the van. I've got a nasty feeling that whatever happened here is sending off alarm bells in Washington, or wherever it is that the Foundation has its headquarters."

Zack wanted Ivy, wanted to have sex with her, make babies with her, sacrifice himself for her. But he also needed to protect her. If she thought there was danger, that was good enough for him. He reached down and grasped his section of the Cross.

The instant he touched the iron-hard wood, he realized what he'd done. “I just made an idiot of myself, didn't I?"

An idiot? He'd almost raped her. It was odd that he hadn't really noticed how attractive she was, but there were a lot of attractive women in the world—and he'd been raised well enough not to go around attacking them just because he thought they were sexy.

"Yeah. But then, so did I.” Ivy grasped her own section and looked around the temple. “But we'd better get our butts in gear while we still can."

Despite the weight of timber on her back and the broken ground they had to cross, Ivy broke into a run as soon as they had cleared the temple.

Zack glanced back and almost tripped in a double-take. The dusty mosaic glowed like new. It was probably a lighting effect, but the temple walls glistened with what looked like fresh whitewash. And he'd been sure the roof had fallen in: it now seemed intact.

"Hurry, Zack. We don't have long."

Ivy shoved her section of the Cross into the back of the van, grabbed the keys from Zack's hand, and opened the driver's door. “I'll drive. See if you can spot the kid."

Zack looked like he wanted to argue but simply nodded.

She shoved the shifter into reverse and gave the big Mercedes gas. She didn't want to believe the CIA would launch missiles against an archeological site as valuable as this, but she'd been underestimating their capacity for pure nastiness ever since she'd come to Iraq.

"He's over there on the beach,” Zack reported.

"The kid?"

"Yeah, Cejno."

She leaned on the horn, then shifted into four-wheel drive and pointed the van toward the beach.

"If we get stuck, we're dead,” Zack reminded her. “Sand is tricky."

"We're in a hurry."

"We won't go faster if we can't move."

She leaned on the horn again.

Cejno looked up, then laughed and waved.

She rolled down her window. “You've got thirty seconds to get in the van, kid. If you don't make it, we're leaving without you."

He waved again, gave a hand up to an attractive and completely naked middle-aged woman, kissed her on the cheek, then ran to join them.

"I don't know what happened to me in that temple,” Zack said as they waited for Cejno to join them. “All of a sudden, I saw the true you for the first time. I mean, you were still Ivy, but everything about you was perfect and I'd never realized—"

"Shut up, Zack. You're not making me feel any better. That was a temple of Aphrodite. She's the love goddess, you know, Venus to the Romans. We used the Cross as a key again and unloosed the power that had been bottled up inside it for centuries. Naturally you'd have a sexual reaction."

She didn't want to think about her own reaction. Because she hadn't suddenly seen Zack as different and perfect the way he claimed he'd seen her. He'd been exactly the same person, but she'd still kissed him—and enjoyed the kiss.

That she'd taken advantage of Zack's magic-induced confusion to kiss him senseless made her feel a bit like a pervert.

Fortunately, Cejno joined them in the front seat and quickly dominated the conversation, providing at least a bit of distraction from her shame.

"It was amazing.” Cejno was so excited, he had problems keeping his volume down. “I was on the beach and there was this woman. She was French, I think. Very pretty. Did you see how pretty she was? All of a sudden, she wanted me. We could hardly understand each other because her English is worse than my own, but no talking was to happen. I had no idea how it is with a woman, really."

He looked away from them. “I talk the big story, and no doubt you find me very sophisticated. But in my city it is not so easy to find a girl whose father and brothers will not be guarding over her all the time."

"So you had a good time?” Zack suggested.

Cejno brightened. “Oh, my, yes. A very good time."

"I just hope she doesn't get pregnant.” Ivy wasn't getting into this male sex-bonding thing.

"She looked a bit old for that,” Zack said.

Like that would matter. “Aphrodite is the goddess of fertility. Have you ever thought about why the Bible is full of stories about women way past childbearing age having babies in the Bible? Power over fertility is important, is a manifestation of deity."

"Aphrodite isn't real,” Zack assured her. “And those Bible stories aren't about Aphrodite or any other fertility goddess. They're about the Lord."

"There is no God but God,” Cejno, the not-so-good Moslem agreed.

"Maybe.” But Ivy wasn't convinced. Something had happened back in the ruins. The more she learned, the more there seemed to be a connection between the Cross and all sorts of ancient and long-buried religions.

For the next few minutes, she concentrated on keeping on the road while putting as much distance as she could between the three of them and the Temple she'd opened.

Zack scanned the horizon in what they both hoped was a bit of pointless paranoia—until he suddenly froze.

"You might want to give it a bit more gas."

"What do you see?"

"Looks like a navy fighter squadron."

Which meant Americans. At least she didn't think the Turks had aircraft carriers.

They were in the Mediterranean theater now, which meant they might be out of range of spy planes and black helicopters based in Iraq, but they were close to home base for the U.S. Navy Sixth Fleet. Like the rest of the U.S. military, it had been denuded to help support the Iraq war, but it was still among the largest force concentrations in the world.

"Maybe sending that temple-opening calling card wasn't the smartest thing we've ever done,” Zack suggested.

"If it had anything to do with Monique, it was very smart,” Cejno argued. “Very very smart."

"Even if it ends up killing you?"

Cejno shrugged. “Who cares? I can die now: now that I have lived."

Ivy would never understand men. She figured that was a sign of her intelligence.

The Navy fighters circled over the abandoned city, but they didn't bomb anything. Whoever was flying those fighters probably didn't want to have to explain to the Turkish authorities why they'd destroyed a priceless cultural artifact.

That didn't mean they weren't going to investigate, though.

Helicopters move more slowly than jet fighters, but their van was still in the hills overlooking the abandoned city when three of the lumbering beasts crawled over the horizon and headed directly toward the temple.

Ivy veered to the side of the road looking for a turnoff where she could safely close her eyes and use her newly developed senses to find a hiding place.

"Keep moving,” Zack said.

"They'll spot us."

He shrugged. “Maybe. But do you really think the Foundation has Cross-finding equipment on every ship in the fleet? I'm betting it will take a little while for them to get it here. And we're better off putting some distance between us and them than just sitting here and waiting for them to show up with all of their forces."

She'd just been thinking about how irrational men could be, but she couldn't argue with Zack's logic. Besides, even if he were wrong, it wasn't as if they could hide forever.

They were a hundred kilometers up the coast from Anamur when Ivy screamed and clutched her head.

Zack grabbed the steering wheel as the heavily loaded van veered off the road. Wrenching it from Ivy's unresisting hands, he managed to mostly avoid a scrub tree that grabbed at them, sacrificing a few paint shavings in return for staying alive.

He yanked up the emergency brake and finally breathed again when the van crunched to a stop.

"What was that about?” he demanded.

Ivy opened her mouth, but not to answer. A gob of blood gushed out.

Before they'd discovered the Cross and the Foundation had forced them to run, Zack had been on his fourth tour in Iraq. He knew was first aid. What he didn't know was how to deal with serious internal injuries.

He was going to have to assume that whatever had hit Ivy was something he knew how to deal with.

"Out,” he told Cejno.

"Where should I—"

"Get some water from the back. And some clean rags if you can find any."

Cejno nodded, happy to be given a task.

Zack wished someone would tell
him
what to do, take this responsibility from him.

Ivy's pulse was fast, fluttering. She murmured something, but she appeared unconscious, unresponsive to his words or touch.

He rinsed Ivy's mouth out with water Cejno brought him and made sure her windpipe was clear. He knew how to do a pocket-knife tracheotomy, and he'd try it if he had to, but he wasn't sure his patient would survive the exercise.

Ivy moaned as he shifted her on the van seat, but she didn't say anything coherent or regain consciousness. The tracheotomy was out, but that didn't give him any answers.

"Hospitals would ask many questions,” Cejno told him as he passed Zack another bottle of water. “They would demand to see the passports."

If it came down to a choice between that and letting Ivy die, he'd take his chances with the Turkish medical system. He hoped that wasn't a decision he'd have to make. Ivy wouldn't thank him if he got her turned over to the CIA torturers.

One possibility no first aid class had ever mentioned was putting her back on the Cross. It had saved her at least once already. But he knew so little about how it worked, what its risks might be, and whether using it might have sent the signal that the Navy had used to home in on the Temple back in Anamur, that he was reluctant to do that as long as Ivy didn't seem to be getting worse. He'd try it before he resorted to the hospital, though.

"Those men in evil helicopters. Perhaps they do something that hurts Miss Ivy,” Cejno said.

It was as good an explanation as any. It would also mean he'd underestimated how long it would take the Foundation to respond to sighting the Cross, or perhaps he'd never shaken them as completely as he'd hoped. Either way, the search was back on, in spades.