Dust to Dust (10 page)

It was all so complicated. Blake Reynaldo knew there was something different about her, but because he was her friend, he didn't really question it. He accepted her and worried about her, and that was nice. She couldn't really remember her own father, it had been so long since she'd lost him, but he had been kind and moral and strong like Blake, so in a way Blake compensated for a loss in her world. She loved animals, loved her work, and as for going silently to the rescue in small ways, there was no place better than L.A.

Scott—and the drawings she had been doing—seemed to threaten the level of comfort she had found.

There was applause all around; people were rising, talking. The movie had come to an end, and she hadn't really seen a minute of it, Melanie realized.

She looked around. Lucien was already gone. She looked over at Maggie and Sean.

“He's gone off to meet your new buddy, Scott,” Maggie said.

“Oh.”

It should have made her happy. Lucien would find out who—or what—he was.

Instead, she felt a growing sense of unease. Something had begun that she couldn't stop. She was on a roller coaster, and there was no getting off.

Why me?
she wondered.
Why not Lucien, who's so capable, so wise, who's learned so much through the years? Why not Lucien, who already knows the nun in Rome who might have the answers?

“That was wonderful, and it was so delightful that you all joined us,” Judy said.

“Our pleasure,” Sean assured her.

“But we'd best be getting on home now,” Maggie said.

“So, Blake, you know those guys we met this evening from a police case?” Sean asked, ignoring her hint.

“Yup. Strangest damned thing, and sad,” Blake said. “An old couple was attacked by a group of thugs. Scott and two friends of his—Zach, who was here tonight and another guy—were visiting L.A. and saw what was happening, so they tried to help. They got beat up, too—plenty good. But they didn't run. They really wanted to save that old couple. We caught the killers, though, and the trial's coming up in a few months. We'll need all three of them to put those bastards away for murder. He's quite a guy—I hadn't realized he'd moved out here. He's one of the good ones, you know?”

One of the good ones.
Blake thought so, and she believed in Blake.

But he'd been in Lucien's dream, a dream of darkness and death.

She felt Maggie's hand on her shoulder. “Time to be getting on home,” she said.

“Where'd Lucien get to?” Blake asked.

“Oh, don't worry about him,” Sean said. “He'll find his way.”

They'd been packing up as they talked. Now they picked up the ice chest and the rest of their supplies and headed out of Hollywood Forever, along with the throng. People were chatting about the movie, the quake, work, meeting for dinner or drinks, and Melanie loved it, loved to feel herself a part of it.

But after they left Judy and Blake and were sitting in Melanie's car, with Sean driving, the silence between them suddenly seemed heavy with doom.

“You're going to be fine,” Maggie said suddenly.

“You know, I can always take some time off from work and go to Rome,” Sean said. “I mean,
we
could go to Rome with Melanie,” he amended.

“No,” Maggie said. “I think this is something Melanie has to do alone. We'll see what Lucien says when he gets back.” She hesitated. “I think that maybe…well, we may be needed here.”

“Maggie, stop,” Melanie groaned.

“I wish I could,” Maggie said.

 

Despite the fact that around a thousand people were leaving the cemetery all at once, Scott wasn't surprised that Lucien found him. Zach was preoccupied with Suki and her friends, and he didn't even seem to notice when Scott said that he was going to take Lucien down Sunset for a drink.

He knew a hole-in-the-wall place where the music was live but low-key. Loud enough to keep others from overhearing their conversation, soft enough that they could actually hear each other. Once they were settled in a corner booth, the man finally asked the question he'd been waiting for.

“So, what's your story?”

“Why don't we start with you?” Scott suggested, taking a swig of the long-neck he had ordered.

“What's your role in all this?” Hell, the man had to be wrapped up in it somehow—Scott had seen him
long before they had met. In a dream. A dream about catacombs and corpses.

“I'm seeing you and a very good friend of mine following a strange path, and—I'm trying to figure out how the two of you came to be on it,” Lucien said.

Scott stared at him. “Actually, I saw you first, long before I ran into Melanie, and I believe that you saw me.”

Lucien nodded. “Yes,” he said flatly. “I saw you in a dream. But…I'm not an earth sign.”

“Maybe it all means…something else,” Scott suggested.

“Maybe. I don't have the answers yet. But I don't think so. I think you're on the right track with the zodiac thing. Melanie is a Virgo. And you are…?”

“Capricorn.”

“Another earth sign. Stubborn—if I remember my astrology. Headstrong, ready to batter down walls.” Lucien took a sip of the red wine he had ordered. He winced slightly, as if the taste were just slightly off. “So tell me, what…are you? Why did I run across you in a dream?”

“It's seriously bizarre, sharing a dream with a stranger,” Scott said. He wasn't really surprised by it, though. Since the night in the alley, not much surprised him. It worried him, disturbed him, though. It…felt like more than just wading into a fight against some local toughs. It felt like the prelude to something…important.

“So?” Lucien persisted.

“You dreamed of catacombs, right? Of skeletons and a light?” Scott asked.

“You saw what I saw,” Lucien said vaguely. “And I think it means something important, I just don't know exactly what yet. I believe I'm here to be a catalyst, though. I think I was even warned about it years ago—in Rome.”

“Seriously? In Rome?”

“Yes. But enough about that for now,” Lucien told him. “I want to hear your story.”

“All right,” Scott said, wondering why it felt so easy to confide in the other man. “It began not long ago. Several months ago, actually. I was here in L.A., out drinking with friends. We tried to be heroes. Dumb move,” Scott said with a casualness he didn't actually feel. “An old couple was being attacked—you heard the cop tonight. My buddies and I jumped in, and…something happened to me. Something I still don't understand, except that it changed my life.”

“Zach—the guy tonight. He was there.”

“Right.”

“But nothing has changed in his life?”

“Not that I know about.”

“What happened that night? Why have you changed and not him?”

“Like I said, an elderly couple being attacked. The old guy took my hand and…well, it was like something in him passed to me. Ever since, I can just about keep the earth on its axis. Big exaggeration. But I'm a lot stronger than I used to be. Crazy strong. And fast.”

Lucien leaned forward. “What about the Capricorn thing? Where did that come in?”

“It's what the old man told me before he died, and
maybe it's nothing, just the hallucinations of a dying man. But according to him, I'm supposed to find other earth signs, and then someone called The Oracle, and then we save the world. Or part of it. Hell, I don't know.”

“What about before?” Lucien asked.

“Before?” Scott said.

“Yeah, any unusual talents, strengths?”

Scott laughed. “Yeah, I was a graphic designer, a good one. I still am. Only difference is that before, I was a normal, happy guy. And now…”

“And now?” Lucien persisted.

“Now…I'm waiting. Your turn. What do you know?”

“Nothing, really. Melanie Regan is a good friend—and she's suddenly developed an ability to draw.”

“Wow. I feel so sorry for her,” Scott said dryly.

“She's not happy, either, seeing as she's drawing things like earthquakes—right before they happen.”

“So—why is she going to Rome?”

“Simple. She's coming into it from a different direction, but she's looking for the Oracle, too,” Lucien said.

“And that's all you know?” Scott asked.

Lucien hesitated. His choice of wine was a deep red, nearly maroon, cabernet. He took a long sip and studied his glass. “All right. There are a group of people across the world who are slightly…
different
from everybody else. We have a loose gathering, called the Alliance. We're friends who support each other and fight…problems. I think you and Melanie might be the first ones called upon to solve a really big problem that's
going to involve all of us in the end.” He hesitated again, which struck Scott as strange. Lucien was clearly a confident man, and even he seemed to be having difficulty coping with whatever was going on. “Since the dream…I keep having this strange, random thought running through my head.”

“Okay. What is it?”

“‘The blood of the pure is toxic to the darkness of evil.'”

“‘The blood of the pure is toxic to the darkness of evil,'” Scott repeated. “Great. As in human sacrifice?”

Lucien shook his head. “No. Definitely not. But I suppose it will all come clear sometime. And maybe it has nothing to do with the problem that you and Melanie are being called upon to solve.”

“And do you have any idea what that problem is?” Scott asked.

Lucien arched his dark brows and offered Scott a dry grimace. “The problem? Why, the end of the world, of course. Armageddon. The Doomsday Prophecy.”

E
ven before Scott Bryant sat down beside her, Melanie knew that it was going to happen.

Of course he had the seat next to hers.

She stared out the window as he sat down. He didn't speak, as if he were waiting for her to say something first.

“That just happened to be your seat, right?” she asked.

He didn't glance her way as he found his seat belt and buckled it. “No. I asked at the gate, and they switched me here. I told them I had a friend on the flight. I'm assuming we're intending to be friends?”

They needed to be friends, she thought, then wondered how he could behave so rationally when she was finding it impossible.

She let out a long breath. “Sure. Friends.”

“I spent a few hours barhopping with your friend Lucien last night, so that makes us friends by proxy or something.”

“Barhopping?” she asked.

“No, not really. We only hopped into one bar. But the conversation was definitely an eye-opener.”

“Oh?” she inquired.

According to Lucien, he hadn't said much of anything about her to Scott—though he
had
told him about the Alliance and Sister Maria Elizabeta—only tried to ascertain the source of the man's power and what kind of quest he was on. In the end he'd been left with his original belief—that the world was in danger of ending, and somehow both she and Scott had a role to play in averting the apocalypse.

“Lucien thinks that we might be part of an ancient prophecy,” Scott said.

“Right. The Mayan Doomsday Prophecy,” Melanie agreed.

“What do you think?” he asked her.

She laughed. “I have no idea. I'm trying to figure out how the Mayans and the ancient Greeks and Romans, and a lot of other cultures, all ended up with the same belief that the world's going to end in 2012.” As she spoke, she tried to figure out why she felt so on edge around him. She knew she didn't dislike him, so why did she feel so compelled to stay away from him? She thought it had something to do with the sense of dread that had descended on her the night she first drew on that cocktail napkin. It certainly wasn't anything about the way he looked. He was striking looking, and he even smelled good. The problem was that she
did
like him—she was fascinated by him, in fact—but he seemed to have as much bizarre stuff going on in his life as she had in hers.

But he wasn't trying to run away from it. He was going to face it, whatever it was.

And that only made her admire him more.

Maybe that was it. Most of the time she only let herself get close to those she already knew well. Who knew her well. Who accepted her for what she was.

Scott had made a point of sitting next to her. He wanted to work with her, to be friends. Maybe he even liked her.

But how would he feel, once he really knew her? Knew all the truths there were to know about her?

Right now, though, he wasn't worrying about what she might be; he was thinking about her earlier comment.

“It's a small world, we all know that,” he said.

“Yes,
now,
with all the technology we have,” Melanie agreed. “But we're talking about centuries ago. The world wasn't so small then. Great civilizations rose in the Middle East, while elsewhere human beings were barely out of their caves.”

“True, but maybe there are, and always have been, deeper forces at work,” he pointed out. “Natural forces.”

“Such as?” she inquired skeptically, though she found that she was smiling.

“Lately I've begun studying all kinds of prophecies and religions. Historians believe that a comet doomed Harold the Saxon during the Norman invasion of England. William the Conqueror won a battle, and then went on to take a country. Why? The people believed they had lost. They thought the comet foretold it. Or what about the people who believed that the black plague was the end of the world—God's punishment on his evil and misbehaving people? There's a problem
with that, though. Why would God punish all the innocents along with the so-called evildoers?”

“You're losing me,” she told him lightly.

“Like hell,” he said with a laugh. “Okay, look at the Greek and Roman gods, and then at Norse mythology. Then, take a look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Look at the old Mesopotamian gods, look at the gods of the ancient Egyptians. Wherever you look, religion centers on a supreme being, and then his—or her—helpers, family, whatever, often lesser gods and goddesses. I was born in New Orleans to a Catholic family, a Buddhist might be born in India, and usually faith is simply a result of birth and upbringing. Which faith is right? None of us knows. Faith is belief. And I'll take it a step further, even though I know it might sound a bit weird, since so many wars have been fought over religion.
They're all the same.
It's just a matter of how we see things. The reality stays the same, it's the perspective that changes.”

She stared at him. “Maybe you should go work for the United Nations,” she told him.

He grimaced. “Hear me out. Perhaps the Mayans and the others had a way of reading nature that we've lost and foretold a danger that really is destined to arrive. Perhaps all the ancient societies were right about the forces of nature—fire, air, earth and water. Did I ever really believe in astrology before? No. Did I have fun now and then reading my horoscope? Sure. But that was then and this is now. I met a man in an alley. I tried to save his life, and I failed, and he told me that I was Capricorn and I had to find the other earth signs and then the Oracle. Since that night, my world has changed. I
can only believe it's for a greater cause, so I can try to find that cause, or I can lose my mind. You're a Virgo, right?”

“August thirtieth,” she admitted.

“We're both earth signs, then,” he said.

“You do realize that this all sounds like a load of bull?” she asked.

“I have nowhere else to go, nothing else to try,” he told her.

“Well, you need to follow your road, and I'll follow mine,” she told him. “I just…I just work better, think better, alone.”

“Ah,” he said.

“I'm not trying to be mean, honestly,” she told him.

“No offense taken,” he assured her. “I'll be close, though, if you do find that you need me. Even you must have to admit sometimes that you need someone else.”

“I already admitted that—but none of them would come with me,” she heard herself say.

“Because they know I'm there,” he said. There was a spark in the intense darkness of his eyes, a humorous lift to his mouth. He really was a gorgeous man, she thought, and she looked away. She didn't want to be drawn to such a gorgeous man, one who thought about others, who was intelligent and rational—and forgiving, no matter how rude she might be.

“What if we're all crazy, just making up this scenario?” she asked him.

“Rome is a big city,” he said. “But when it comes to prophecies of doom, it might prove to be as small as the rest of the world.”

A flight attendant's voice came over the speakers. They were third in line for takeoff. Time to Rome, twelve hours and thirteen minutes.

It was going to be a very long flight.

 

Scott loved flying first class. The enclosed seats flattened out like beds, he had a workstation, and his own DVD player, and a long list of movies to choose from. His seat neighbor—he couldn't actually call her a seatmate, she was so fully encapsulated in her own little pod—had immediately pulled out a tourist guide to Rome and was studying avidly, ignoring him. Scott hid a smile, because he could tell that despite her seemingly intense concentration on her guidebook, she was watching him.

When dinner came, she opted for the steak, while he went with the fish. The presentation—for an airplane—was pretty good. He saw her wrinkle her nose as she cut her meat.

“What's wrong? Shall I summon the waiter?” he teased.

“Smart aleck. It's fine. Just—they overcooked it, that's all.”

Scott looked at the meat, which still had plenty of pink in the middle. “Didn't you want it cooked?” he asked her.

She smiled at him suddenly, a teasing glint in her eyes that he found slightly unnerving. On-purpose-unnerving, even.

“Raw works for me.”

“And here I would have seen you as the tofu type.”

“I'm quite fond of sushi, too,” she assured him. “Raw fish.”

He realized at that moment that she seemed to be erecting a wall between them. It was almost as if she wanted him to find her strange, as if there were a distance she needed to keep. But when she wasn't trying to build that wall, she was wonderful. Her smile was natural and quick, and her eyes lit up irresistibly. Odd that she had the strength and agility of Bruce Lee when she looked like a porcelain doll.

They ate in silence. Scott found himself wishing that they were in a restaurant—at least he could have broken the silence and asked her to pass the salt. But she actually made a point of putting on her earbuds and listening to music. He reached down into his backpack and offered her his noise-cancelling headphones.

“No, no, it's all right,” she assured him.

“Please—I'm just going to watch a movie, so the cheapies will be just fine for me. Please.”

She accepted the headphones. “All right. Thank you. The little ones…are like pins in your ears.” She hesitated. “These are really good ones. You must love music.”

“‘Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,'” he quoted.

“And you're a savage beast?” she teased.

“I don't really know, do I?” he asked her seriously.

She shook her head. “The world is full of beasts. We often characterize them as savage, but in reality they're just living their lives.”

He hadn't been expecting that answer. “Okay,” he
told her. “I can see that. The wolf hunts because he has to eat.”

“Something like that,” she said lightly.

She gave up on her meal and leaned back. The flight attendant came back and cleared their dinner trays, and he ordered a Jack Daniels and Coke, thinking it might help him sleep.

He opted for a vampire versus werewolf movie from a couple of years ago, and as he sipped his drink and watched the film, he was aware that Melanie was checking out the screen every now and then. He noticed her grimacing at certain scenes. At last he turned to her. “You don't like the movie?”

“Actually, it's not all that bad. Political struggles between the vampires and werewolves. Kind of a neat concept. Some are good, some are bad, and some go to war. Hey, that's life, right?” she asked.

 

“Um, excuse me, may I get past you? The restroom, you know.”

“Certainly.”

“Then I won't have to bother you again.”

“You can bother me anytime,” he assured her.

“I'm going to come back and go to sleep,” she told him. “I really won't be bothering you again.”

Right. And I'm not supposed to bother you.

He got up to allow her to exit. She took her carry-on along with her, he noted, not just a toothbrush and toothpaste.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and hurried toward the restroom.

She returned a few minutes later and shoved the carry-on back under the seat. She glanced at him and said, “Thank you. All done. Won't be moving again.”

He frowned. There was tiny trail of red at the corner of her lips.

“Did you cut yourself?” he asked.

“What?”

“Did you cut your lip? You weren't shaving off a mustache or anything, were you?” he teased.

He was startled by the surprised look of horror she gave him; it quickly disappeared as she wiped her mouth and seemed to settle a disciplined mask over her features. “Must have scratched myself…I don't know.”

He reached out and wiped away the smidgeon of red that remained.

“There. Don't worry—I won't tell anyone about the mustache,” he assured her.

“I don't have a mustache,” she replied indignantly. “Okay, everyone does, but I'm so blond…oh, never mind.”

She began adjusting her chair, ready to go to sleep.

He leaned back to watch the end of his movie, absently rubbing his finger. It was sticky from touching her mouth.

He watched the screen. One of the vampires sank huge fangs into a victim's neck. Stage blood flowed.

He rubbed his finger again.

He looked over and studied her face. Her eyes were closed, honey-colored lashes sweeping her cheeks, and he marveled at the porcelain perfection of her skin and the delicate bone structure beneath. He examined her
lips, generous and sensual, warm red against her fair complexion.