The Centaur (40 page)

“And you. You might as well say it, Dambretti.” She laughed and wrinkled her nose. “You have no idea how jealous I was of you when I was younger. I hated you then, too. We never got to be around Daddy very much and when you were involved, it was hopeless. He hated you so much and loved you at the same time. It was ridiculous. Even Meredith commented on it.”

“She did?” Lucio’s mouth was dry. This was not a topic he cared to discuss with anyone. She had gotten him completely off track. He had a mystery to solve and he had a wife!

“Of course. Mother loved you, too. That was what was so bizarre. You people made me sick!”

“I’m sorry we were such poor examples of humanity.” The Knight was trying desperately to think of some way to turn the conversation.

“Humanity? That’s just it, Lucio. Only
you
were human. None of us were. I think that was very unfortunate for you. Unfair. I have always thought bullies were disgusting.”

“Bullies?” He asked, losing all hope of dominating the discussion.

“Yes, yes, you know… angels mucking around with humans and all that? Can you believe it? John Paul used to warn against it
. John Paul!
How I loved to listen to him. His voice was like silk after a warm bath and his eyes! Bluer than blue and deeper than the deepest ocean. His soul was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen…” Nicole drifted off into her memories, and Lucio cleared his throat nervously. She jerked her head slightly and her cheeks reddened. “I loved him, Lucio. More than you can imagine, and he kept me pure. At least as far as he was concerned. I never touched him. At least not physically. In fact, in looking back, I think it would have been impossible. I loved him too much to touch him. Can you understand that, Lucio? Have you ever loved someone too much?”

“Maybe.” He looked away from her.

“What does my soul look like?” She asked after a moment. “Is it all sticky and pointy and ragged? Does it look moth-eaten and stringy? I shudder to think what it must look like… a mangy dog?”

“No, no,
la mia cara
.” He was at a loss for words. “It is beautiful. Just like you.”

She reached for his hand and squeezed it between both of hers.

“Tell me about my soul, Lucio,” she pleaded. “Is it really beautiful?”

He closed his eyes and began to speak the words of
Kahlil Gibran concerning the soul. “
The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea. And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes. Say not ‘I have found the path of the soul.’ Say rather, ‘I have met the soul walking upon my path.’ For the soul walks upon all paths. The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
” He opened his eyes on the last word and smiled a genuine smile at her.

“That was… grand,” she said softly and stared at him for a long moment. “I didn’t know you were a poet.”

“Those were not my words,” he admitted. “They came from a great man of the twentieth century named Kahlil Gibran. I once had more time to study words. I was especially interested in anything to do with the soul. It was sort of my peculiar interest, you might say.”

Nicole nodded and then laughed slightly. “This Catharine woman seems to have done wonders for your temper. You are truly a good man, Lucio, but I still hate you even so.”

“Good. Now tell me, what happened here?” He reverted back to the original problem quickly, but not before feeling they had put a great deal of bad blood behind them.

((((((((((((()))))))))))))

The incongruous ‘boat’ bobbed too high in the water, making it a very tedious vessel to keep afloat. Mark had to lean this way and that in order to keep the thing from capsizing and dumping its contents into the swirling drink. Maneuvering was out of the question. The rectangular box floated amidst an enormous raft of debris sweeping slowly through the streets of New Babylon. The Knight had hoped the flood would play itself out a few blocks from the palace walls and set them down in one relatively undamaged piece, but already they had floated at least six blocks from the palace and were on a collision course with the Tigris River. If they made it to the river, he knew their chances of making it to a safe port would be near zero. Selwig was wedged into the freezer section of the doorless refrigerator, while Mark took up the better part of the larger cooler section. He recognized the thing as one of two refrigerators that had been in the laboratory under the palace. His suspicions had been confirmed by the presence of several plastic pouches sharing his compartment with what looked like blood in them.

“Look out, Master!” Selwig shouted and pointed behind him. The thing had switched ends again and he had his back to the ‘bow’. He bent over his own knees as they were swept under the limbs of an almond tree. The refrigerator snagged on the tree and listed dangerously to port.

Mark threw his weight to starboard and Selwig scrambled to unhook the limb holding them in place and then they were racing along again, bobbing and banging into all sorts of floating hazards. A round propane bottle smacked into the ‘prow’ and they could hear gas hissing from the broken coupling as it veered away from them. Mark grabbed at a lamp post and managed to turn the box so he could see what was in front of them. They shot across an intersection and slammed into a brick wall, skidding down the side with a terrible screeching noise that drowned out Selwig’s cries, they crashed into the upper part of a first floor window. The Tuathan panicked at the sound of breaking glass and he used his feet and hands to push them off the building even though Mark was shouting to him not to. If they could have crashed into the building, they might have been able to get out of the makeshift boat and up to the roof of one of the taller buildings in downtown New Babylon, but they were soon back in the flow. They rounded another bend with less trouble and caught up with the spewing gas tank. Mark tried again and again to push the thing away, but it clung maddeningly to the side of the refrigerator as if stuck by magnetic force or evil curse. Selwig was shouting at him again as the box rocked, tilted and shipped water. He turned his attention to the Tuathan and saw too late the next challenge. A power line was down. Dangling wires from the side of a building skipped and danced across the surface of the flood ahead of them. Each time the wire touched the water, it emitted a flash and an audible pop before bouncing back in the air.

Mark’s brain had only enough time to grasp the gravity of the situation before they were under the wires.

“Hold on!” Mark shouted at the Tuathan and they stared at each other for what seemed an eternity before the next pop and spark, which ignited the gas spewing from the tank. The force of the blast lifted the refrigerator from the water and slammed it down on top of an ornate lamp post made of iron. The milky white globes exploded and the decorative point pierced the back of the refrigerator between Mark’s boots. Mark Andrew slapped at his hair and his head, expecting to be ablaze, but miraculously, he had survived the blast fairly intact. His ears were ringing and his right shoulder was numb. He tested their position for stability and found that he could move, if he was slow and careful. At least they had stopped moving… for the time being.

“Selwig!” He called and shifted onto his knees and leaned toward the freezer compartment. The battered box creaked and tilted dangerously, threatening to slip off its perch. His heart sank when the indomitable little healer did not pop his blonde head up to answer him. “Selwig?” He asked and inched his way forward, almost afraid to look.

The Tuathan was sitting cross-legged in the small compartment, slumped over with his head touching the bottom of the box in front of him, his ever-present yellow bag clutched to his stomach.

Mark reached over the partition and felt for a pulse in his neck. Finding none, he pulled the little fellow back and his head rolled limply on his neck in an unnatural fashion.

“Selwig!” Mark shouted at him as dread raised its head in his heart. “Wake up, little friend!” He shook the healer as much as he dared and then tried to pull him over the partition. The refrigerator tilted and would have gone back in the flood with a sizable hole in the bottom if he pushed his luck.

Selwig was dead. That much was certain. He looked over the side at the rushing water below. He couldn’t imagine what his next move might be. Despair set in at once as he realized how hopeless the situation was. He couldn’t even begin to position the healer on his back in order to perform simple CPR.

It was not right! It was not fair! The Tuathan would not have been in this condition if he’d not asked him to come. But Selwig was supposed to be immortal in the overworld. Luke Matthew had assured him that the healer had eaten the golden apples just as Merry and Rachel d’Ornan. He shouldn’t be dead, unless the blow had broken his neck.

Mark edged his way forward and checked the healer’s neck. His head wobbled around loosely. Broken, no doubt.

“I’m sorry, little friend,” Mark apologized to his faithful servant and then sat back in his end of the box. A bright red spray erupted as one of the blood pouches burst under his weight.

“Great Scot!” He shouted and grabbed the bag from under him. He tossed it over the side and looked at his hands in disgust. Covered with blood. The symbolism of the
sight was not lost on him. He cursed in Gaelic and grabbed up another of the bags, intending to fling it over the side, but he glimpsed something written on the peel-and-stick label that made him almost dump the entire box into the drink again as he scrambled to recover the slippery bag at the last moment. He held the bag in his hands and stared at the heavy black marks, unbelieving.

‘Sang du Dragon
multiplié par 100, Simon Peter d’Ornan, Berne, Switzerland.’
Dragon’s Blood!

How it had come to be in Jozsef’s lab was as mysterious to Mark Andrew as where they might have gotten Simon’s blood in order to multiply it. But those concerns took a back seat to the situation at hand. He grappled in his pocket for his pocket knife and punched a tiny hole in the bag of precious liquid. He squeezed a bit on his forefinger and then laid the blood carefully in the bottom of the tub so as not to spill it inadvertently. When he was in position, he made a cross on Selwig’s forehead and placed a bit of the blood on the healer’s lips before beginning the chant from the Wisdom of Solomon which would restore the healer if this was truly Simon’s blood.

Within minutes, Selwig sat blinking at him in confusion as he alternately patted himself on the head and squeezed his arms and legs here and there while the Knight of Death spoke incoherently in Gaelic. He could not imagine why Mark would be so happy when they were in such a plight.

“Master,” Selwig finally interrupted him. “The water is rising.”

Mark frowned and looked down. Water was burbling up through the hole in the bottom of the refrigerator.

“What are we going to do now?” Selwig asked him.

Mark checked the other bag of darker blood and found it labeled with Louis Champlain’s name. These samples had both come from Berne, Switzerland. Apparently, Abaddon had made quite a collection at his clinic in the Alps. He wondered briefly whose blood he had thrown over the side, but the urgency of their dilemma was much too great to ponder the question for long.

“We need a new boat, mate,” Mark smiled at him and began to scan the waters for something that might make a suitable replacement for the refrigerator.

Selwig’s brows knit together in a deep frown. He hated water.

Chapter Fourteen of Seventeen

He that
dasheth in pieces is come up before thy face

Abaddon opened his eyes, blinked rapidly in the darkness and then opened his second set of eyelids, gathering more of the faint starlight activating his night vision ability. He was still in the desert; his nose told him so. He was lying on his back, looking up at the stars. The pain in his neck was gone, and when he passed his hand over the area where the arrow had been, he found, with some surprise, the arrow was gone as well. Not only was the arrow gone, there was no wound. This was even more puzzling. He remembered trying desperately to dislodge the angelic arrow, but he did not remember being successful, nor could he remember or imagine how he might have removed the arrow without leaving a festering wound caused by the powerful poisons decorating the arrowheads. The dark angel groaned and sat up. His wings were crumpled about him and he worked quickly to straighten them out and fold them on his back in a more comfortable position. It would take some time before they were flight worthy again. As far as where he might be, again his memory failed him. The arrow had been terrible, horrible, the worst pain he had ever suffered and he was sure some of the bad universal karma he had amassed might have been paid off.

Another surprise awaited him when he tried to move his feet and legs. His feet were buried under a fairly large boulder, but his brain registered no pain. In fact, he could not feel his feet at all. Panic washed over him and he threw back his head, howling at the stars in cold panic. He had traded one form of slow death for another, but how? For several minutes, he struggled mightily against the boulder, alternately pulling fruitlessly against the rock, screaming his rising desperation into the desert night. If he could not extricate himself, his cries might bring some predator to put an end to his suffering more quickly. The thought of starving and thirsting in the desert sun for several days or weeks was unbearable. If he could not free himself one way, he would free himself another.