A.K.A. Goddess (17 page)

Every move splashed echoes and dripping noises around me.

First step—dig my ball cap out of a cargo pocket and blindly slide it back on, to conserve body heat. Second step—grope off the boots. Unfortunately, that would make me lose body heat. But it’s almost impossible to swim any distance in hiking boots. Hypothermia wouldn’t matter if I never made it out.

I compromised by leaving on my socks.

Knotting the bootlaces together, I temporarily looped them over my neck like a yoke. Then I untied the wet T-shirt I knew was still on my waist. Fumbling in absolute darkness, I knotted the sleeves of the shirt together to make a pouch for the boots and the grail. I tied the whole pack to my belt loops, doing square knots by feel, making the most awkward fanny pack ever.

It might be easier to swim without the boots entirely. But I had every expectation of needing footwear when I got out.

That taken care of, I pulled my cell phone from its pocket, just in case. Not surprisingly, it wouldn’t turn on. I tried several times, with increasing desperation. What I wanted, even more than the very slim chance of getting a signal, was light.

Just a little bit of LED light in this pressing, crushing, suffocating darkness.

Nothing. I pocketed my phone, and that was that.

“Who would you have called anyway?” I asked myself, hugging my knees to my chest to slow any heat loss. A million echoes seemed to repeat my question, long enough for me to know the answer.

You’d think I’d want to call an SOS number, the French version of 911. Instead I thought, Lex. Between his money, his connections, and his general refusal to take no for an answer, Lex Stuart could do almost anything. And he would—for me.

I’d never realized how deeply I believed that until now.

No matter what organizations he belonged to, or how questionable his moral code might turn out to be, he would be there for me. If only my piece-of-shit phone worked.

Instead, I would just have to save myself. Myself, and the Melusine Chalice. Regulating my breath—see, I could breathe, despite the darkness—I launched myself back into the river’s current and swam wherever it was pulling me.

Blind.

Sometimes I touched something—something that moved, against the cave wall, or something that bumped me as it swam by in the darkness. Then panic would press down on me, heavy as the darkness. I just kept swimming.

What choice did I have? I was already lost, underground, underwater. In freaking France. If I panicked, I would drown.

Period.

Then something as bad as panic snuck under my defenses.

I started shivering.

Damn. When you’re hypothermic, mental processes are the first thing to go. I had no idea how long I’d been shuddering as I swam, muscles increasingly tense, before I realized what that meant.

Again I floundered my way to the river wall, fumbling along until I found an outcropping where I could rest—and dig out the packaged cookies and juice box Rhys had given me.

Rhys. He hadn’t really told the Comitatus where to find me, had he? Not for money. Not after the way he’d kissed me in the chapel. Not after the heartbreaking story he’d told me about Mary and leaving the priesthood…unless that’s all it was.

A story.

I’d fumbled the empty packages back into my cargo pocket before I realized that I was lost, alone and dying in the darkness—and I was worried about littering. Then I laughed. Partly because it was just too silly not to.

And partly because the food energized me—and digestion would generate a little badly needed body heat. Again I pushed off and swam. Hours passed. I began to shiver again, with no hope but to keep moving.

Then the current itself failed me.

It weakened, almost vanished—and I swam into solid rock.

Luckily, my hands hit stone before my head did. I still cried out, panic taking the lead. My cry echoed from high above me. Great—I had plenty of air, now that it was the end of the line. Nowhere else to go. Just uncontrollable shivering.

Just failure.

No. Think about this, Maggi. You’re a freaking Ph.D. Think.

Okay. The current that had been my only compass was gone. Why? I was so cold. The water had been going somewhere. Where? Maybe if I just rested. It had to be escaping somehow. How?

“Melusine…” I whispered, images from her story playing through my head like a bedtime story. The spring where her lover found her, where the story began….

With a burst of clarity, I understood. I was in an underground lake now, not an underground river. But water doesn’t just stop. It had to be continuing toward the ocean from some part of the lake. Just…deeper down.

Oh…goddess.

With a prayer for strength, I dove. Searched the black rock with my cold-palsied hands until I ran out of breath. Kicked upward, broke the surface, drank in the air.

Then I repeated it. Again. And again.

My swimming got more clumsy. My shivering slowed—which is a very bad sign. And then—

Finally, finally I felt the rush of water along my seeking hands getting stronger. Now I had somewhere specific to dive for, feeling along the wall, getting an idea for just how deeply the fissure where the water continued was buried. Assuming there was room for me to follow it out of this lake, who knew when or where it resurfaced…?

If at all?

But I wouldn’t die here. If nothing else, I wanted my body to wash out somewhere and be found, Melusine Chalice and all. I wanted my family to know what had happened to me. I wanted a grave for Lex to visit.

So I trod water on the surface one last time, practicing my deep breathing, and then I dove. And headed for the fissure.

And swam into the close, underground tunnel.

The current picked me up. I followed it, moving as fast as I could, bumping elbows and hands on the close rock walls. I began to feel that “starting to drown” sensation again—the pressure in my head, the squeezing in my chest, the fear. Then I had to swim upward, hoping I’d gone far enough to not surface into sheer rock, hoping there would be more pockets of oxygen somewhere. My world began to blur around me. My chest seemed to implode.

I kept kicking, more and more weakly, clumsily, flailing—and then surfaced with a great, gulping breath into blessed air.

Air, and trees, and fading, end-of-the-night stars.

I’d escaped the caves. With the Melusine Chalice.

Somehow I made it to the water’s edge and staggered out. Somehow I managed to tear boughs of leaves off some trees before I collapsed to the ground, drawing them over me.

I still wasn’t out of the water—metaphorically speaking, this time. If the hypothermia had progressed to the point that my body’s core couldn’t warm itself, I would still go into shock, shut down and die. But at least I would die under the stars.

Instead I woke in leaf-dappled sunshine—warm, summer sunshine.

“Thank you,” I whispered upward, at the tree branches and the blue sky and the rest of my life. I used the grail to drink from the spring that burbled out of the river beside me, then washed off as best I could. There had been no second vision.

Then I walked, found a road and hitched a ride. The businessman who stopped for me told me he was heading to Chinon, so I asked that he drop me off at the train station.

En route, I tried to decide whether to call Rhys to meet me, or to go on to Paris alone. He was probably innocent.

On the other hand, last night hadn’t exactly shown the male of my species in the best light. I’d given far too much for this cup—including turning into a thief of antiquities despite my best efforts—to risk it now.

At the station, I purchased a telephone card at a vending machine. But before I could insert it into the public telephone, I caught the word “Fontevrault” on a television newscast and turned to look at the waiting room’s television set.

Fire.

Film footage showed the interior of Fontevrault’s church, which had sustained smoke and water damage. According to the anchorwoman, firefighters were called to the abbey when alarms sounded and discovered smoke seeping out from one wall. After some debate with the historians, they broke through what turned out to be a stone doorway and discovered a hidden vault—and wreckage. Some sort of cloth hangings had burned beyond recognition. Hidden carvings and monuments, previously unknown, had suffered destruction unlike any seen since the mobs of the Revolution.

I sank onto a bench, there in the waiting room. Now I felt sick. The tapestries…? The statuary…?

I’d done this. Of course I hadn’t set the fire, or smashed the carvings. And yet, by figuring out the nursery rhyme, I’d led the Comitatus to Melusine’s sanctuary—and look what had happened.

But the real blame lay square at the feet of three evil men who got their jollies by ruining something they could not begin to understand.

Like damned Charlemagne cutting down the damned sacred groves of the damned Saxons.

It made those people my enemy. Every last one of them.

And it made the tiny, guttering hope of Melusine’s grail, with its message of creation and strength and partnership, all the more crucial in this poor, broken world.

Had I felt guilty for stealing the grail? If I’d played by the rules, look what would have happened.

The news camera panned a concerned crowd outside the Fontevrault Abbey, showing support for this grand historical site—and I saw Rhys. The camera did not focus on him, only skimmed past, but it was him.

And he was standing beside an average-looking man whose build and suit and bull-terrier eyes I recognized from my fights last night. One of the Comitatus.

Screw that.

I called Aunt Bridge’s hospital room. They said she’d been released, so I called her apartment, waking her up. I asked her to find someone trustworthy who could put the Melusine Chalice on display without a repeat of the Kali Cup disaster. I told her I would call her later and arrange a safe place to meet.

“Is Rhys with you?” she asked.

Rhys. I shut my eyes against my confusion. “No. If he calls, you can tell him I’m all right, but don’t say anything else for now. Nothing. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

If anybody was tracing the call, hopefully I’d been brief enough to stop them.

I bought a ticket on the TGV to Paris. With two hours before it left, I went out into Chinon long enough to buy some basics. A waterproof gym bag to carry the grail. A towel and other toiletries. Breakfast. I was exhausted, so I let myself nap in little spurts for the barely one-hour train trip.

With the gym bag wedged safely beside me.

When I got off the train in Paris I wasn’t feeling much more competent, but at least I could relax a little. There’s a wonderful anonymity that comes with large cities. Despite my fatigue, it wasn’t difficult to catch the Metro to a station I vaguely remembered from my early twenties, then find a hostel where I’d once stayed with my cousin Lilith. Lex and I had been broken up at the time. Again.

This was about as anonymous as I could get without walking into someplace blind.

Like most hostels, The Four Geese catered particularly to kids backpacking Europe, but it wasn’t exclusively for youth. I didn’t need to meet an age requirement, and they were happy to give me a separate room for a friendly bribe. It wasn’t luxury—the size of my bathroom at home, with one set of white iron bunkbeds, one metal-and-plastic folding chair, peeling pink wallpaper and one small window with a stained white curtain. To use the phone I would have to go to the lobby—or, better yet, a public phone somewhere else. To use the bathroom or shower I would have to go to one of the portables that sat in the middle of a plain little courtyard, serving all the guests. Neither bunk had sheets or pillows, just a thin, striped mattress.

That’s laying low for you. I locked the door, climbed onto the top bunk, used the wrapped Melusine Chalice as my bumpy pillow. I thought of what I’d helped the Comitatus do to Melusine’s sanctuary. I cried.

And finally I slept.

When I woke, I felt great. Stiff, from my alabaster pillow and my marathon swim. Deeply saddened about Rhys and Fontevrault. Hungry. But it’s amazing the difference a good sleep will make. Being alive was a nice upper, too.

And I had the grail.

Even more than food, I wanted a shower. I didn’t dare think about what might’ve been swimming around in that dark cave with me, but I knew I wanted it out of my hair. So I took my gym bag with me, locked the door behind me and crossed the courtyard to the portable shower.

This was why I’d made sure the gym bag was waterproof. I wasn’t about to let the grail out of my sight even long enough to bathe! I locked the door, turned on the shower and, waiting for the water to warm up, brushed my teeth and my hair. Only then did I climb under the warm spray.

Bag first.

It stayed between my feet while I sudsed myself up and scrubbed myself off—hair, skin, everything. This was another of life’s luxuries, like a good sleep, that we don’t always appreciate until we’ve had to go without.

Along with the grime, some of my despair washed away.

Things were looking up. I wouldn’t have to keep the grail for long; just until we arranged for it to be safely displayed, living proof that supposedly ancient goddess cultures had lasted well into the eighteenth-century. Then I could figure out all the other confusing aspects of my life.

Like how to become someone powerful enough to go after those sons of bitches Comitatus.

By the time I shut off the shower, I felt better. Stronger.

Then, as I reached out past the worn curtain for my towel, someone grabbed my wrist.

W ith one slick twist, I freed myself, dove out of the shower at whoever had grabbed me—

And pulled my punch a breath from Lex Stuart’s nose.

He backed quickly out of reach. Holding my towel. When his wide, hazel eyes drifted down my wet, bare body in appreciation, I regretted pulling the punch.

“You’re a hard woman to find, Mag,” he said calmly. “Nice to see you’re staying in shape, though.”

Son of a—

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

“I could leave, but if I open the door, someone might see in. Not that I’d blame them for looking…”