That was
not
a good trait in a scientist, regardless of the field. Add to it his penchant for playing fast and loose with personal-property laws—like the time he’d broken into her office and stolen the codex fragment bearing the transition spell that’d nearly turned him into a
makol
—and he was something of a loose cannon.
The thing was, he was
her
loose cannon. He was sweet and funny, and when things had been at their worst with Dick, Lucius had been there for her to lean on. And if there had been a spark or two, neither of them had acted on the temptation. Instead they had let it deepen their working friendship until it was a strong, steady piece of her life. That, along with knowing he wouldn’t have come into contact with the codex fragment if she’d been more careful about keeping it hidden, meant there had been no real choice to be made when she’d faced Strike and Red-Boar over Lucius’s rigor-contorted body, while his eyes flickered from luminous green to hazel and back. She’d traded her normal life for his, and though she regretted the choice, she wouldn’t undo it. Nor would she admit to Strike just how much Lucius had changed in the months since his partial possession, becoming withdrawn and secretive. Hell, she was doing her best not to admit it to herself. What she hadn’t been able to ignore, however, was how Lucius had started focusing his research more on the things she’d managed to steer him away from in the past . . . like the zero date, and the few sketchy rumors of a superhuman race of warrior-magi sworn to protect mankind.
She’d made him promise not to go there during his thesis defense, knowing that Desiree would crucify him if he so much as breathed a word about things the establishment considered barely a step up from tinfoil hats and Area 51, namely the 2012 doomsday and the Nightkeepers. Which was why she sent him a warning look and mouthed,
You promised
.
He nodded, but there was something in his eyes that made her wonder whether he was accepting her warning or telling her to mind her own damn business.
“Since we’re finally all here,” Desiree said pointedly, “I’d like to get started. If that’s okay with Anna, of course.”
Bitch,
Anna thought, but didn’t say. Instead she took the chair beside Thor and nodded. “By all means, let’s get started.”
By the time Lucius was about twenty minutes into his presentation, Anna was starting to relax a little, because he was sticking to the script, thank the gods. Then Desiree held up a hand, interrupting.
Lucius broke off in the middle of explaining his translation of a panel deep within the Pyramid of Kulkulkan at Chichén Itzá. “Yes?”
Desiree pointed to a badly eroded glyph at the lower right corner of the screen. “What about that one?”
Anna stiffened and tried to catch Lucius’s eye.
Don’t do it,
she mouthed.
Say you don’t know.
He avoided her gaze, but answered carefully enough. “There’s some debate about that particular glyph.”
“We’re working on it,” Anna interjected. “As you can see, it’s not in the best condition, which unfortunately means that we may never have a conclusive answer. Or maybe we’ll find a second occurrence of the glyph in the future. Regardless, it should be considered outside the scope of this project.” Which was academia-speak for
back off, bitch
.
“Your opinion is noted, Professor Catori.” Desiree didn’t even glance at Anna; she kept her unblinking focus on Lucius, a predator sensing weakness. “However, it’s not really a question of scope; it’s a question of propriety. I’m well aware of what Mr. Hunt thinks this glyph represents, and frankly I’m not convinced that the university is best represented by an academician who publicly defends the validity of the Nightkeeper myth.”
Lucius’s color drained, and he sent Anna an
oh, shit
look.
“With all due respect,” she said quickly, “that is absolutely beyond the scope of this thesis. There’s no reference to that particular myth anywhere in the text or supporting material.”
“With all due respect,” Desiree parroted, “it’s my call what is and isn’t within the scope of this committee meeting.” She shuffled through a small pile of papers, pointedly pausing at what looked like a printed screen capture of a message board dialogue. Glancing at Lucius, she said, “You go by the screen name ‘LuHunt’ on a number of the 2012 doomsday bulletin boards, right?”
Anna would’ve protested again, but didn’t figure it’d get her anywhere. The best she could do would be to sit back and let this play out, hoping Thor, Holly, and Dr. Young would see there was an agenda at work that had nothing to do with Lucius’s skills as a Mayanist . . . and further hoping they’d say as much when she brought a formal university complaint against Desiree.
Lucius looked at her as if he expected her to say something, to defend him, but what more could she do? To an extent, he’d dug his own grave. She’d told him to stay the hell away from that crap until after his defense. If he’d been posting on message boards with the dooms-dayers, there wasn’t much she could do about it now.
When he saw there would be no help forthcoming, his expression darkened, something shifting in his face so he almost looked like a different person—older and less open—as he met Desiree’s smirk with a glare. “I don’t see how my online presence should concern this committee. I’ve never put myself forth as a representative of this university or a member of Professor Catori’s staff while on those boards.”
Desiree arched one elegant eyebrow. “Shall I take your nonanswer of my question as an answer in and of itself?”
He hesitated so long that Anna thought he was going to play it smart. Then he sat up straight and squared his shoulders, suddenly looking less like a praying mantis and more like a taller-than-average guy who’d broadened out through the shoulders and gained twenty pounds or so of muscle while she hadn’t been paying attention. Before she could process that realization, he said to Desiree, “I believe in the Nightkeeper myth. So what?”
Anna winced, even though she’d warned him. Not that having an out-there opinion was a crime, but with Desiree gunning for the entire Mayan studies department and not being real picky about the actual legalities of the matter, he was effectively throwing himself on the academic sword.
Desiree tapped her manicured fingernails—which were pale mauve, rather than the more appropriate bloodred—against her lips. “You actually believe that ancient magicians from Atlantis—
Atlantis
, mind you—survived the flooding that came the last time this so-called Great Conjunction rolled through, twenty-six thousand years ago, and went on to shape, not just the Mayan Empire, but the Egyptians before them?”
“There are demonstrable parallels,” Lucius said before Anna could intervene. “For example, the dating of the Maya Long Count calendar begins circa 3114 B.C., which is well before the Maya were a people, before even their predecessors, the Olmec, started thinking about being more than scattered pastoralists and hunter-gatherers. It was, however, right about the time the first ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs started popping up, which many people consider the beginning of legitimate human civilization.”
Thor perked up a little. “You’re talking about von Däniken?”
Anna cringed. The Dutch pseudoscientist’s publication of
Chariots of the Gods?
in the sixties had been good in that it’d popularized the idea of connections and parallels amongst a number of ancient civilizations, prompting “real” researchers to investigate the possibility of trans-oceanic voyages long before the time of the Vikings. On the downside, it’d also popularized what Lucius often called the
Stargate
effect, i.e., the notion that most of early human civilization had been shaped by aliens.
Welcome to the tinfoil-hat zone.
“Not von Däniken per se, though he wasn’t entirely wrong,” Lucius told Thor. “The Nightkeepers were—maybe even are—far more than that. They were mentors, magi who lived in parallel with several of the most successful early civilizations, teaching them math and science, especially astronomy.” There was a subtle shift in Lucius’s face, making his features sharper, more mature as he said, “The commonalities between the Egyptians and Maya are too close to be coincidental—both religions were based on the sun and sky, and on the movement of the stars.”
Thor frowned. “I thought the Egyptians worshiped a single sun god. The Maya were polytheistic.”
“Exactly.” Lucius thumped the table, making his laptop jump. “The Cult of the Sun God was conceived by the pharaoh Akhenaton, who forcibly converted all of ancient Egypt from their long-held pantheistic religion to his new god, Aten. His guards slaughtered the priests of the old religion and defaced all of their temples and effigies, destroying millennia of worship in the space of a few years.” Leaning forward in his enthusiasm, he said, “That was when the Nightkeepers fled Egypt—the survivors, anyway. Most of them were killed in Akhenaton’s religious ‘cleansing,’ but a few survived. Those survivors eventually made their way to Central America, where they stumbled on the Olmec, who were just beginning to centralize, and were ripe for the teachings the Nightkeepers brought. Over time the Olmec, with the Nightkeepers’ help, eventually bloomed into the Mayan Empire. It’s . . .” He paused, then said, “It’s perfect. It all fits. Just look at the time line.”
Dead silence greeted that pronouncement.
For a second, Anna thought she caught a glint of satisfaction in Desiree’s eyes, but the dragon actually sounded sympathetic when she said, “That was what we were afraid of, Lucius. Given that, along with the disciplinary problems you’ve had in the past, your mediocre GPA, and the general lack of substantiated evidence underpinning your thesis, it is the opinion of this committee that you should not be granted the degree of doctor of philosophy in art history at this time.”
Anna wasn’t altogether surprised, but the punch of it still drove the breath from her lungs. When she got her wind back, she said, “I wish to formally appeal this decision.”
“Of course you do,” Desiree said, sounding as if she couldn’t care less. “The request is noted.” Shuffling her papers into a pile, she rose, indicating that the meeting was over.
She and the others filed out, leaving Anna and Lucius alone in the conference room. He hadn’t said anything since Desiree had made her decision. Anna would’ve thought it was shock and denial, except that neither of those things was in his face. Instead he looked . . . pissed. Resentful. Like this was somehow her fault.
“What’s that glare for?” she snapped, annoyed.
“Please. Like you don’t know.” He stood, towering over her, and for the first time she was aware of him not just as a man, but as someone significantly bigger than she. “I just got mowed down in the cross fire of the art history department pissing contest you and the Dragon Lady have going. You think I should be happy about that? Spare me.”
He gathered up his papers and the handouts the others had left behind, shoving them into his knapsack with jerky, angry motions.
Anna stood. She wanted to go to him, wanted to touch his arm, hug him, something to bridge the gap that’d grown between them.
What happened to us?
she wanted to say.
What happened to you?
But it didn’t take an
itza’at
seer or a mind-bender to know he wouldn’t welcome the contact or the questions. There was something seriously bad going on with him, far worse than she’d suspected.
“Lucius, what’s wrong? You can talk to me.” She reached out but didn’t touch him, just made the gesture and left it up to him whether to step toward her or away.
Something flashed in his eyes: guilt, maybe, or sadness. But it was quickly swept away by disbelief, then mirth. “Do you actually not know? Is it possible you’re really that dense?” He moved toward her, but didn’t take her proffered hand. Instead he leaned in and said in a low, angry voice, “Think about it, Anna. The crap with Desiree started right about the time you came back from your little mental-health break in New Mexico, and your not-so-saintly husband swore off other women, right? You do the math.”
He straightened and jerked the knapsack over his shoulder. Tucking his laptop under one arm, he strode away, not looking back.
Oh, hell.
Anna didn’t move; she couldn’t. She was trapped, not in the soul-searching that should’ve followed Lucius’s revelation, but in something that was a thousand times worse because it came with pictures and a sound track.
The vision caught her unawares, slamming through her subconscious blocks as if they were nothing, hammering her with the sounds of lovemaking, and the sight of her husband and Desiree twined together in the sort of raw, unabashed sex that Anna didn’t remember having had with him in years. Shock blasted through her. Heart-break. She’d known he’d had a lover, had dealt with it as best she could when they’d reconciled after the fall equinox. But seeing it, seeing the look on his face as he . . . She couldn’t bear it.
“No!” She clawed the air, slapping at the images that were buried deep in her soul, in the seat of her magic. “Gods,
no
!”
Pain seared the skin between her breasts, where the skull-shaped effigy rested. Inert in the months since Strike had returned it to her, the pendant’s power flared now, hot and hard. More images crashed through her, snippets of them together, sometimes naked, sometimes not. To her surprise she realized it was worse seeing them together clothed, strolling arm in arm along streets she didn’t recognize, telling her that they’d traveled together, that his frequent business trips hadn’t been all business.