My Merlin Awakening (21 page)

“Indeed.” Rourke watched Grey, who’d meandered closer to the pool. Rourke turned back to Matt. “What is it?”

While Matt explained about Medusa’s blood, I wandered to the pool. I sat down on a bench in front of a prickly cactus and wished my outside shell also had its razor-sharp needles. I touched the amulet. It sat once again on my neck, an albatross weighing me down.

Vane sauntered over to me, but remained standing. “Still mad?”

“I’m not mad,” I said shortly.

He rocked back on his heels. “What did I do wrong?”

The sun shone directly over us. I squinted to look at him. “Why do you think you’ve done something wrong?”

“You’re a girl.”

As if that were enough of an explanation.
I scowled.

He shrugged. “It’s how you think. Are you hungry?”

“No, I’m not hungry,” I snapped. Actually, I was a little. I’d only picked at my breakfast this morning. But, no, how was I supposed to tell him that I’d chosen… the amulet. Did it matter that the choice left my stomach churning with acid?

“Do you want to beat up some gargoyles? They’re easy targets.”

I glanced at Colin. His red hair sparkled in the sun. Wearing casual trousers and a sweater, he spoke in low tones to several other gargoyles. A girl gargoyle laughed at a comment he made. I heard Colin call her McKenna. The gargoyles all wore such normal clothes and looked… well, normal.

“We’re all friends now,” I reminded him.

“And you’re wondering how long these friends will be friends?”

I nodded.

Vane’s lips twitched. “Don’t worry, DuLac, they won’t eat you in your sleep. They may be beasts, but they’re not wild.”

“Funny.” I rolled my eyes. “If they’re beasts, I may be one also. I still don’t understand how I have gargoyle blood.” I’d only learned about my mixed blood a short while ago and no one had much explanation for me. “Matt said gargoyles were born, not made.”

“Someone in your ancestry was a gargoyle,” Vane said. “But you’re a regular. Don’t worry. Grey would know.”

Colin’s head snapped to Grey.

“He heard us,” I hissed to Vane.

“Gargoyles have excellent hearing.”

“You knew?” I said, aghast.

Colin watched Grey curiously. He left the other gargoyles and approached us. “If you’re attempting to needle us, it won’t work. We’re under orders from Rourke.”

Vane glanced at Rourke. He slumped a bit in his seat. His face was lined with fatigue.  “How long until the old man loses his grip and you revert back to rabid dogs?”

Colin scowled. His hands fisted at his sides.

So much for not being needled.
I stood. “Ignore, Vane, please. He’s menstrual.”

Vane put his arm around my shoulder and hauled me against him. “Our sword-bearer, so adorable.”

Colin crossed his arms over a muscled chest. He peered down at Vane, whom he topped by several inches. “I had a report this morning that you almost killed a gargoyle in a club last night.”

“He’s not dead?” Vane gave a mock yawn. “Gargoyles. It’s like trying to rid oneself of a pestilence.”

Colin’s face mottled with red color. “Wizards. They act as if they’re so superior, but in truth, they’ll whore their magic to anyone who pays.”

 Since Colin was practically shouting now, I wasn’t surprised when the other gargoyles started to move toward us. The wizard guardians, who’d been milling at the entrance in case we needed to bolt, straightened to attention.

“Colin,” Rourke said simply.

The gargoyle forced his shoulders to ease. With a glare at Vane, he turned on his heel.

Matt marched up to us. He held up a hand to halt Colin. “We need to leave right away. We need to get to the Akrotiri ruins before dark.”

“You know how to open the snake?” Vane asked.

Matt shook his head. “That’s why I need to look at the ruins.” He turned to me. “Bring Excalibur.”

Rourke said, “We’re lucky the ruins just reopened after being closed for seven years following an earthquake. It completely collapsed the roof.”

“Earthquake.” I met Matt’s eyes. Understanding flashed between us, the vision of the tsunami still thick in our minds. “Seems to happen a lot.”

“Indeed.” Rourke stood up unsteadily behind us. “I’ll take the car, but it will be faster if you go ahead with Colin on the ATVs.”

Sylvia frowned, her gaze locked on Rourke. “I’ll go with you.”

***

ATVs were apparently a common mode of transportation around the rocky terrain of the island. It took us about an hour to get situated on the hulking machines and down to the village of Akrotiri. It took Vane and Grey about five minutes to become experts on them, despite neither one having ridden one before. To my surprise, the machine seemed to purr for me fairly well. Matt, with his usual disgustingly capable way, mastered the ride as soon as he touched it. Blake and Gia sat on one together. Gia drove. Colin and another gargoyle led the way.

We passed a bustling tavern to turn off toward the excavation site on the eastern shore. The sun had started to sink a bit in the sky when we reached the ruins. It sparkled as it touched the roof, a hulking sheet of stainless steel plates supported by galvanized pipes, which protected the buried city below.

“Ten meters of pumice fell on the city,” Colin told us as we parked next to other ATVs. We mixed in with the other tourists. A sign in the front spoke glowingly of the recently renovated roof. Colin presented passes to guards at the entrance and we hurried inside.

Under the volcanic rock, archaeologists had found a perfectly preserved city, a snapshot in time. I took a breath. It didn’t taste right. It tasted of panic and horror.

Yellow artificial light bathed the eerie tomb. We picked through the dusty ash and half-height crumbling walls into an area where the buildings, some two or three stories high, sat solidly erect.

Matt led the way. I had no idea what light-bulb of an idea he had us chasing down, and as usual, he wasn’t telling. Somehow I found myself between Vane and him. Both flanked me in full bodyguard mode. It should have bothered me. I wasn’t frail. However, inside this forgotten city of buried despair and inevitable death, I was glad for their support.

“There were no bodies found.” Vane flipped through a pamphlet next to me. “The historians think they might have fled the city when the ash started and gone to a nearby shore to wait for boats.”

“Rourke says among the gargoyles, it’s rumored that many of them escaped to Aegae. It is possible. I believe the Minoans traded a great deal with Triton’s people. It explains their great wealth of knowledge.” He pointed inside one of the preserved buildings to a rectangular slab with a hole. “It’s a bathroom. They had indoor plumbing.” Behind ropes to ward away tourists sat large pots beneath windows of buildings, still completely intact. The narrow streets of the small city barely contained the three of us.

Matt walked through the small town to a low building marked “Xeste 3.” Vane found a description in the pamphlet. “Two stories high with fourteen rooms on each floor. Many frescos. There are ceremonial rooms at the back.”

“That’s where we’re going,” Matt said, pointing down. He lifted up a rope and went under the flimsy blockade to the ruin.

“What if someone comes?” Gia hissed at me.

I glanced around. No tourists or guards seemed to be around. Not that it mattered. Between wizards and gargoyles, no museum guard stood a chance. I shrugged and hiked down. The entrance led to a dark passageway with cramped steps going up. To the right, I saw Matt continuing down the short passageway into the rooms. He held a small fireball to light the way.

“Convenient working with wizards,” Colin commented. He came in immediately behind me, holding a flashlight.

I stepped into a long rectangular room with partitions in the doorways that led to other rooms. Matt and Vane stood in the center of the room. Matt’s fireball rose in the air to illuminate the area. Nothing but dirt and stone shone on the stripped walls.

“The frescos have all been shipped to the museums,” Colin said.

Vane took out his cellphone. “We don’t need them. I’ve hacked into Princeton University’s computer system. They did 3-D modeling of the frescos.”

“How do you know that?” I asked.

Vane gave me a crooked smile. “I have electronic eyes everywhere.”

Gads, I hoped not.
Then, I remembered when Vane showed some video footage of Matt and me on our first date and I wondered if he really did. It was a scary thought.

“How are you getting any reception in here?” Grey asked as he squeezed inside the room. The space was fairly big, but with eight people inside, it didn’t seem like it.

With a few clicks, Vane pulled up an image. He waved a hand in the air. “
Likhati
.”

A faint outline of the frescos appeared against the walls. I squinted at the picture, unable to see the watercolor images in the low light.

“Little help,” Vane said to Matt.

Matt waved his hand. I gasped. In thick oil paint, colorful frescos of aquamarine swallows dancing between red lilies appeared. Around them, a host of blue monkeys were in various activities. One strummed a harp, another played with a sword, and another held the sword’s scabbard. With an eerie feeling of familiarity, I touched the knife at my side. Matt had shrunk Excalibur before we left Athens.

Matt shook his head. “This isn’t it.”

We went to the next room, past the partition. It was a dead-end, but the room extended up into the first floor. Once Matt lit the area, my eyes went immediately to a small flight of five steps that led down to what amounted to a hole in the ground.

“The guide book called this the Lustral Basin.” Vane peered down over the hole.

Frescoes lined the bottom of the walls as well as the top. There were many pictures of colorfully dressed women. Behind us, two shapely maidens wore elaborate jewelry.

Straight in front of us, though, stood the most interesting part of the fresco. On the bottom, three maidens were painted in various positions. The first maiden was mostly naked with a hand offered out. The middle maiden was sitting on a knoll. In a sorrowful pose, she held her foot, which was bleeding. The last maiden’s head was turned away, looking off into the distance.

“An initiation ritual on the north wall.” Vane read the inscription for the painting on his phone.

Matt pointed up to the top part of the wall. Next to a large window, a maiden sat on a stepped altar or throne. To her left was a blue monkey and to the right, a griffin. The maiden held the griffin with a rope while he tried to climb the throne. The monkey was presenting the maiden with a bouquet of flowers.

“Look at her hair,” he directed.

Long flowing locks on the maiden’s head supported a crown of dots decorated by a looping band that ended in two spiral tongues. I followed the line of dots from the crown to the maiden’s shoulder. A snake slithered up her neck and moved horizontally through her hair, flicking out its forked tongue.

“Medusa?” Vane asked.

Matt took out the bronze snake from an inner pocket of his biker jacket.

Vane pointed to the left wall. It had a picture of a man on the bottom and some kind of plant above. He tapped on the touch screen phone. “Wait. There’s more. This piece is spread out over several rooms. Let’s bring it together.”

He waved his hand. The picture changed. Spread out across the bottom wall, four men, three naked youths, and one older fellow performed some sort of ritual. The older man held what looked like a jug in his hands.

“Remind you of something?” Blake said from behind me.

I nodded. On initiation to Avalon Prep, we’d drunk Lake water. While I had kept my clothes on, what happened after the drink had left me more naked than I’d ever been in my life.

“Lake water?” Vane asked, following our train of thought. “But in the fresco, it’s red, not blue.”

“But what does it tell us about opening the snake?” I asked.

“Yes, what does it mean?” Rourke’s voice came from the doorway. The cane dragged loudly against the stone floors. Sylvia and Deirdre ducked in after him. They looked around at the frescoes with wide eyes.

“Impressive,” Rourke said.

“More than impressive,” Matt said. “It’s the answer. Look at the three maidens. They are leading you toward the east wall.”

We all turned to the right. The fresco showed a pair of horns from which red drops dripped down to an altar.

“Blood,” Vane said.

“We need a daughter of Apollo,” Matt said. He opened his coat and pulled out a miniature bow. With one word, it grew until it became a regular sized bow. He floated it to me. I took it. Everyone in the room, apart from Matt and Vane, stared at me.

“She is a daughter of Apollo?” Sylvia said.

“Full of surprises, aren’t you, lass?” Colin commented.

He didn’t know the half of it. Somehow, my family line had been blessed or cursed, depending on how you looked at it, by Apollo. It was the reason Matt and I would never be together. Prolonged physical contact between us blocked his visions.