A.K.A. Goddess (16 page)

We Are One.

Strong women can build, heal, love, protect. And yes, they—we—can suffer.

That’s why we need to be so strong.

Some of it must have gotten lost in translation. Specifics didn’t matter. Her message, Her truth filled me soul deep, cell deep—and I’d been right. I shed the Dr. Sanger I’d tried to be, objective and logical and unwilling to commit without proof, like a worn-out skin. The academic quest for myths no longer drove me.

Returning these cups, these strengths to the world—that was my quest now. Whatever Melusine was, a divine person or an idea or a universal sense of womanhood, didn’t matter. She wanted me to spread Her message. It was time.

Reality lapped back around me gently. One last, lingering message seemed to flow over me: And in return, I shall gift you….

And then I was kneeling, staring up at the shadowy statue of a snake goddess, mother goddess, goddess of love—and a survivor.

I shivered in the wake of the messages that had coursed through me, the connections I’d felt. Ecstatic—literally—I whispered, “Gift…?”

Two things happened at once.

I heard the stone door, far above me, scrape open.

And a scream burst within my chest, forced its way up my throat until I had to throw back my head. At the very moment good sense would have me fall silent, my own voice tore out of me and screeched through the temple. Then, as my voice fell shallow, I sucked in the deepest strengthening, energizing breath of my life—

Just in time to look up and see three beams of light stream down the last stairs, followed by three ski-masked men.

Like it or not, that was Melusine’s gift. She’d sent me her scream and, with it, the energy to face this latest sacrilege. It wasn’t a cry of despair after all.

Melusine’s famous scream held sheer, unadulterated fury.

I stood, intensely aware of the cool air on my skin, of the scent of onions off the man in front, of my own blood and bones and being. I’ve rarely felt so quietly assured. So strong.

“You’re not welcome here,” I warned the trio. “Go.”

The man in front came as far as the doorway and cut his light straight into my eyes. Everything had to be a weapon, didn’t it? I squinted against the glare, but didn’t duck. I knew the layout of this temple, whether I could see it or not.

“Scream all you want, Dr. Sanger,” he said, his accent…Texan? He so did not get it. “But you give us that cup, now.”

Why? Because he thought he had power over me? “No.”

He stepped into the sanctuary with his two coblasphemers.

“Give us the cup,” Tex said with condescending saccharin, reaching, “and we won’t have to hurt—”

I so neatly sidestepped him that at first his gaze didn’t track me. He jerked around as if I’d disappeared. Finding me again, his eyes narrowed. “Fine, honey. Have it your way.”

Tex grabbed at me, but his force made him as awkward as his flashlight. I evaded him so easily, we could have been playing a game of Tai Chi push-hands. Overextended, he stumbled.

I caught his elbow with my free hand and tugged.

His own vehemence sprawled him onto the rock floor. Hard. His flashlight bounced away.

The others surged forward. I turned to meet them, still calm, still clear. Hardly any thoughts about wanting to beat them senseless tempted me. We’d just call that Plan B.

Like Rhys said, my interest was the chalice. To protect the chalice all I had to do was reach the doorway.

Remember? The one with the stone bolt on the other side. But in the meantime…

Durga. Minerva. The Morrigan. There were warrior goddesses.

I tucked the Melusine Chalice against my hip, backing quickly clear of Contestant #1 and sinking to meet #2 and #3. Number Two had almond eyes like a bull terrier’s. He tried to tackle me, also full force.

I timed my pivot so that his attack flowed past me and into a stone column. He hit, hung, sank. Another flashlight escaped across the stone floor.

A third beam, erratic, telegraphed the next strike. I ducked under the third man’s blow into a low body check. His own momentum tumbled him right over me.

Tex, still on the floor, lunged for me. I vaulted him, grail still safely tucked. Landing with one foot, I kicked his breath away with the other. Next!

The third man rushed me, making me dance backward, just beyond his attack. I felt or heard or sensed the second man behind me, and I neatly sidestepped.

They hit each other, like stooges—and I laughed.

Big mistake. It was a martial mistake—a distraction. It was a karmic mistake—overconfidence.

And it was the one thing men most fear from women.

A gunshot shattered the room, spewing several ricochets. Even the two fallen men froze in that zany, crisscross illumination of dropped flashlights. I spun, tensing.

The first man, the American, sat on the floor by the altar, knees splayed, gun shaking in both hands. His eyes burned.

Worst of all, he and his gun sat between me and the door.

Damn, I hate guns.

“We will take that cup now, Dr. Sanger,” snarled the second man. He had a German accent that made me think of Nazi villains. He came toward me, reaching.

Unable to make the doorway, I backed toward the Melusine statue, raising a hand to strike him away.

He hesitated.

“You aren’t destroying this one,” I warned.

Tex’s gun spat out another shot, blue in the light-laced shadows of the sanctuary. Melusine’s stone arm broke off, splashed into the water, and sank. No!

Stunned, I watched it vanish into deep nothingness. The German, who stood nearest me, snatched at the grail—

And I kneed him in the balls.

With a grunt and a squeak, he went down.

Another gunshot. The bowl in Melusine’s remaining hand shattered, so that water now poured out of an unseemly hole in her stomach instead. They were destroying everything—and they didn’t even care!

“Stop it!” I yelled, my voice uneven.

“The cup,” demanded Tex. His hands weren’t shaking as badly now, but his fury felt palpable.

“Screw you!”

His smile had an ugly curve to it. His gaze on my bare arms and shoulders felt like an unwanted caress. “Well, now. You might have your uses outside of information, at that.”

Their threats were like Cliff Notes on dominator values—threats of theft, of rape, of destruction. But these were more than threats. So soon after Melusine’s visions of the physical being spiritual, their intentions felt even more repulsive.

“The cup.” Tex looked at his two companions and jerked his head in command. “Now!”

The man with dog eyes—the one not curled on his side whimpering—came toward me.

I screamed a warning at him, Melusine-style. Like a jaguar. Like a dragon.

He hesitated—and I figured something out.

I held the grail out over the well and, sure enough, he took a step back. “Any closer, and I drop it,” I warned. “If you didn’t want it for something, you would’ve shot it already.”

Tex said, “Now, don’t you count on that.”

“Her friend didn’t warn us she’d be this much trouble,” gasped the German. “I think we should get our money back.”

He meant Rhys. “You’re lying.”

“And you,” said dog-eyes, with a British accent, “are bluffing.”

“Am I?” Even I wasn’t sure. Just because they threatened to raze the sacred grove didn’t mean I could bear to burn it first.

Tex said, “You’re outnumbered and outgunned, honey. Be a good girl and we’ll play nice. That way you might just survive it. Do something stupid, though—”

“Like dropping the cup,” said the dog-eyed Brit.

“—and we play rough, and you probably won’t survive it.” The probably is what curdled my stomach. It implied methods slower and more brutal, more personal than a shooting.

“Why do you want the cup anyway?” I asked.

“Either way,” Tex said, not giving me the courtesy of acknowledgment, “we win.”

Bastards. Goddamned, hard-on-power bastards. Maybe there were times when you had to torch the sacred grove, after all.

“Funny definition of winning,” I said.

And with a single move backward, I stepped into Melusine’s well. Water closed over my head as the grail and I sank.

Deeper and deeper into nothingness.

About a year after the ice-cream parlor “incident,” Lex’s mother kills herself. She slits her wrists in a Jacuzzi.

“Poor woman,” my mom says, helping me into my coat for the viewing. “She gave up everything she was for that family. Promise me you’ll never do that.”

I ask, “What’s wrong with sacrificing for your family?”

Mom holds my shoulders. “It’s like giving blood, Magdalene. It’s a good and noble thing, heroic even, and you should do it as often as is healthy. But never, never become so committed to giving that you drain yourself beyond your own ability to survive. Then you’re no good to anybody. Do you understand?”

I don’t. How is loving one’s family like giving blood? But I don’t want to know. Not tonight. “Sure, Mom.”

“If you end up dating Lex again—”

“Mother!” I back away. “He has more important things on his mind than me. Besides, he never answered my calls or my letters. We’re definitely over.”

My parents let me drive alone to the viewing. The hordes of reporters seem horribly disrespectful. So does the crowd. Not all these people knew the Stuarts. Are they just publicity vultures? Worse—am I?

As soon as I step inside, I feel Lex noticing me. I approach him and his father, extending my family’s sympathies from behind the safety of cardboard words. Mr. Stuart barely touches my hand; he no longer recognizes me. Lex looks drawn and pale, like a tortured poet. He holds my hand for a long moment. I briefly imagine a current between us—a soul-deep recognition.

Then he responds with cool, equally cardboard graciousness. “Thank you for coming, Maggi. Mother always spoke highly of you.” He releases my hand and turns to the next well-wisher, and I feel guilty about imagining connections that don’t exist.

Mrs. Stuart’s bejeweled corpse looks more beautiful than I remember her, in a designer gown that leaves her arms bare, like a silent challenge for anyone to discern her wounds.

I whisper “Goodbye” and “I’m sorry,” though I don’t know what I’m sorry for, and I flee. I don’t see Lex as I leave, but I notice his cousin Phil surrounded by other men, his nose healed crooked. I’m surprised he didn’t get surgery to fix it.

The family car is across the street in the overflow parking—a long walk in my mother’s high heels. I fumble keys from my purse as I approach—and nearly scream as the dome light comes on and my door opens for me.

Lex is sitting in the passenger seat. I have no idea how he got in. “Get me out of here,” he asks, low and drawn. “Please?”

I drive him to a nearby park. We climb out at a deserted playground. He wraps me in his arms and rests his head on mine, and I hold him, and we stand that way for a long time.

I haven’t imagined the connection between us after all. It’s as sure as the breeze rustling my skirt, as real as the sound of our breath and heartbeat. Something still links us, even after a year. Now that I’m wrapped in it, I’m glad.

“One paper called it a ‘bloodbath,’” he whispers finally, his voice hoarse from so much—the loss of his mother, her own culpability, the media circus, the cruelty of strangers. I kiss his cheek, smooth his brown hair, and hold him until some small edge of the tension in his body eases.

He does not cry. I’m not sure he’s capable of it, but I know he needs to. So I cry for him.

He seems to take comfort in comforting me.

“You’re stronger than that,” he whispers, once, and I understand. He doesn’t mean I’m too strong to cry. He means I’m too strong to ever kill myself.

I think, Doesn’t that depend on the circumstances?

I think of what my mother said about drowning…and giving too much blood.

I sank, my hair flowing out around my head, the weight of my hiking boots pulling me downward. My hand still clutched the alabaster chalice that I would take to my watery grave before allowing bastards to misuse it.

Misuse us.

Then I felt the sudden pull of current—and I kicked in that direction, downstream, with all my strength.

Just because I’d hoped there might be an underground river feeding the well didn’t mean I had any expectation of surviving. Underground rivers are notorious for being…well, underground. As in, without a surface. But it was either swim like mad, using the water’s flow for speed, or just give up and die. I had no illusions. I probably would die. We all do, sooner or later.

But I’d be damned if I would go belly-up.

I shoved the chalice down the front of my camisole, like a truly awkward pregnancy, and prayed the shirt would stay tucked in. Both hands now free, kicking my too-heavy feet, I literally swam for my life. The current carried me farther from the guns. I aimed myself upward, the direction air would travel.

My insides began to slowly implode, and still I swam.

Have you ever been in a cave? You could drown in pure darkness, even without water. Only the wetness against my eyes told me they were open. I strained my head and face upward anyway, to keep my airway straight and conserve oxygen. I tried to exhale slowly, very slowly, to keep my lungs venting air. It wasn’t a long-term fix.

I kicked. Stroked. Needed to breathe.

My sense of running out of air didn’t hit me in the chest at first. It hit in my forehead, a pressure between the eyes. That pressure tightened into my sinuses, then my throat and then, finally, into a shrinking sensation in my chest. My kicks became wild, my strokes flails of desperation—

And then my face broke the water. I inhaled the thick darkness and, thank heavens, it was breathable. Air filled my lungs with the euphoria of life, and I laughed. I bumped my head on the cave roof, mere inches over the river surface, and laughed again. My voice echoed back at me from a million different directions, along with the sound of my splashing.

Alive, alive, alive. Goddess, life was wonderful.

After gulping more air, expanding my lungs, filling my throat, I swam crosswise to the current, blindly trying to find the side of the river. When I did, this time with a blow to my hand, I felt along the edge, expending too much energy kicking my weighted feet. Finally I found a slight ledge that the current hadn’t worn completely away. It wasn’t so high that I could sit on it, or so low that I could stand on it. But I could kneel, my neck strained upward to the air, and that was enough for me to work on continuing this “life” business.