King's Crusade (Seventeen) Page 14

  She left out the part about the carving of the trishula in the second cave and the embalmed hearts.

  A hush fell over the room when she stopped talking. Alexa watched Jackson carefully.

  The Harvard professor stared blindly at the floor for what seemed like minutes before slowly raising his head and looking at her. Unease clouded his eyes. ‘Have you died?’ he asked quietly.

  She kept her face blank. ‘No.’

  ‘And Reznak?’ said Jackson.

  ‘I believe he has perished ten times before.’

  His gaze was unwavering. ‘How does it feel?’

  ‘From what I’ve been told, it’s like going to sleep and waking up again.’ She wondered if he had been hoping for a more spiritual experience. Belatedly, she recalled what Sadik had said about Jackson; he was also a professor of philosophy and religious studies.

  ‘Huh. So, none of that “white light” stuff then?’ he continued, confirming her suspicions.

  ‘No.’

  Jackson studied her quizzically. ‘Is that why you’re so strong? Because you’re an immortal?’

  She did not reply immediately. ‘I am…unusual among the immortals,’ she said finally.

  ‘Oh.’ He mulled over her words. ‘What else can you people do? I mean, do you have other supernatural abilities?’

  Alexa blinked rapidly to hide her confusion. She had assumed Jackson would be nervous and frightened after what she had told him. Although he had seemed troubled mere seconds ago, she could no longer perceive any apprehension in his eyes. Instead, the Harvard professor looked eager to learn more.

  His reaction left her feeling strangely off balance.

  ‘We’re stronger and faster than humans,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘And we heal more quickly.’

  ‘How quickly?’ said Jackson doggedly.

  She removed her jacket and showed him her arm. The scar from the bullet wound she had suffered in Port Said had almost disappeared.

  ‘How long does it take to recover from a death?’ he murmured, his gazed fixed on her skin.

  Alexa shrugged. ‘It depends on how powerful the immortal is. It may be minutes for some, an hour for others.’

  He looked up. ‘And your fighting skills?’

  ‘We practice a lot,’ she said. ‘After all, we have hundreds of years in which to perfect them.’ She did not see the need to tell him that she had mastered all the combat arts before she reached immortal adulthood.

  Jackson digested this for a while longer. ‘All right,’ he said finally. A guilty grimace flittered across his face. ‘I guess I should come clean as well.’

  Suspicion blossomed at the back of her mind. ‘What do you mean by that, exactly?’ she said coldly.

  He removed a grubby piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘I grabbed this off the table in the back room of the beer hall.’ A wry smile darted across his lips. ‘I might have had time to get my hands on more if I hadn’t needed to go after a certain somebody.’

  Alexa’s fingers twitched. She was starting to feel the urge to shoot him again.

  She took the sheet from his hand and studied the clusters of paired numbers and equations that covered the first few lines. ‘Are these Cartesian coordinates?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jackson.

  She glanced at him. ‘What do they mean?’

  He shrugged. ‘My best guess? They’re position vectors indicating distance and direction.’ He sighed. ‘Unfortunately, they mean nothing without a point of origin.’

  ‘Could this be a map to the location of the tombs?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘Possibly,’ he replied.

  The satellite phone rang in the silence that followed. Alexa looked at the number and answered the call.

  ‘Have you told him?’ said Reznak without preamble.

  Her gaze shifted to Jackson. ‘I have.’

  ‘You can guarantee his silence?’ said Reznak after a pause.

  ‘Yes.’ She decided not to tell her godfather how close Jackson had been to the truth in the first place.

  ‘Good,’ said Reznak. He sounded relieved. ‘There’s someone in Rome who has intelligence on our secret sect. I’m sending Fawkes and Carrington to collect you.’

  Alexa went still. ‘Is Dragov in Italy?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware,’ said Reznak. ‘He seems to have vanished off the face of the Earth.’

  ‘And this other person?’ she said.

  ‘He’s an old friend,’ said Reznak. ‘Be kind to him.’

  Surprise flashed through her. Reznak’s contact in Rome must be a very close acquaintance indeed. She wondered why she had never heard of him before.

  ‘Fawkes will give you further details when you see him,’ her godfather continued. ‘Oh, and Alexa?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The monk is on our side. Don’t kill him.’ Reznak ended the call.

  Alexa stared at the phone.

  ‘We’re going to Italy?’ asked Jackson, interrupting her thoughts.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, still puzzling over her godfather’s last statement. ‘Reznak found somebody in Rome who has information on the sect.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She looked up and detected concern in his eyes. ‘Nothing,’ she stated in a firm voice. She glanced at the bed. ‘I’ll take the couch.’

  Concern was replaced by incredulity. Jackson scowled. ‘You’re kidding, right?’

  In the end, they shared the bed. Instead of the unsettled night she had anticipated, Alexa’s eyes closed the minute her head hit the pillow. She was lulled into a deep and restful sleep by the sound of Jackson’s breathing and the heat of his body close to hers.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The Gulfstream jet stood parked outside a private hangar at Ataturk airport the next morning. Alexa stopped the Taurus close to the aircraft and walked toward the two men waiting by the steps.

  Jackson studied the silent figures as he followed in her wake. ‘Are they immortals as well?’ he said quietly.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. ‘Yes.’ She greeted the two men briskly and climbed the stairs to the cabin.

  ‘I see you’re still in one piece,’ said the man called Carrington. He grinned at Jackson wryly, the scar on his cheek pale in the sunlight. ‘I didn’t think you’d last a day with her.’

  Jackson stopped at the foot of the steps. ‘She does take some getting use to,’ he admitted with a faint smile. He felt Alexa’s gaze on his face and turned to find her frowning down at him.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  The flight to Rome took just under two hours. Jackson spent most of it furtively appraising the immortals while he pretended to study the photographs from the excavation of the caves in Egypt. He did not have to look at them again; the images were engraved in his mind.

  Although he had lived with his suspicions about Reznak’s origins ever since he came across the photograph of the archeological dig in Constantine, the truth had turned out to be more shocking than he had ever anticipated. The revelation that two races of powerful supernatural beings had walked the Earth with humans since before the dawn of civilization had turned his entire world and belief system upside down in a single night.

  Jackson knew it would be some time before he fully came to terms with the disquieting disclosures Alexa had made; he had been careful to hide the full extent of his reaction from her. It was not every day that he came across the most incredible discovery in human history. Her warning echoed in his mind once more. He was now a marked man, so to speak.

  He looked up from the computer display and found her observing him with an unfathomable expression.

  It amazed him that she looked so human. Even more troubling was his growing attraction
for her.

  The fear that had gripped him when she went chasing after the men from the beer hall in Beyoglu had shocked and almost paralyzed him in its intensity. The bitter taste of it still lingered in his mouth. That was when he started to realize the escalating strength of his feelings.

  Sharing a bed the night before had only intensified his physical desire for her. Stopping himself from reaching out and touching her had been sheer, unadulterated torture.

  A self-deprecating smile crossed Jackson’s lips at that thought. If she suspected even half the wanton things going through his mind, she would no doubt put him out of his misery with one of her guns. But probably not before she broke a few bones.

  A voice behind him interrupted the dangerous turn his thoughts had taken. ‘Those the pictures from the boss’s trip to Egypt?’ asked Carrington.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Jackson. He was similarly surprised by how normal Reznak’s men appeared to be. Carrington came across as friendly and quick-witted. Fawkes was harder to read; although the pilot was polite and accommodating, his eyes were as old and as inscrutable as the Sphinx.

  Carrington swung himself in the seat across the aisle. ‘Do the scriptures mention anything about who might be behind this supposed secret sect?’ he said.

  Jackson saw Alexa tense behind the immortal. ‘I don’t have access to the full transcriptions, but from what I can gather from these images, they don’t appear to mention any such group,’ he replied casually.

  Her brow furrowed. ‘You’ve translated the cuneiform scripts?’

  ‘Yes, some of them,’ he admitted with an awkward shrug. ‘What I’ve deciphered doesn’t make any sense to me, though.’

  She studied him for a moment. He could tell from her expression that his words did not please her in the least. ‘It would be in your best interests not to examine them too closely,’ she said finally, a trace of reservation modulating her voice.

  Jackson felt a sudden thrill dart through him. Was she worried about him?

  ‘If you find out any more of our secrets, I might be forced to kill you,’ she continued, quashing any such hope.

  Carrington froze. ‘What secrets?’ he said, his gaze swinging slowly between the two of them.

  Alexa turned to the immortal. ‘He knows.’

  Carrington’s eyebrows rose. ‘You mean—’

  ‘Yes,’ she interrupted in the same cool tone.

  The immortal looked dumbstruck. ‘How?’ he blurted out. He glanced at Jackson distractedly before scowling at Alexa. ‘Is the boss aware of this?’

  ‘I told him. And yes, Reznak knows.’ The look on her face discouraged further questions.

  Carrington looked at him uneasily before disappearing in the direction of the cockpit.

  Jackson saw the immortal exchange heated words with the pilot. ‘He doesn’t look too happy.’

  Alexa’s gaze shifted to the window. ‘The choice to tell you about the existence of immortals was mine to make,’ she said calmly. ‘I will handle the consequences.’

  He wondered whether that statement included taking care of him if he ever broke his promise to her. He could think of worse ways to die.

  A cold wind was blowing from the northeast when they touched down at Fiumicino Airport an hour later. The gray clouds marching across the sullen sky held the promise of an afternoon downpour.

  The Gulfstream jet turned off the landing strip and taxied up to a private hangar at the far end of the grounds. Jackson exited the plane behind Alexa and paused at the top of the steps.

  A stationary, black sedan stood some hundred feet from the nose of the aircraft. The driver’s door opened and a man in a dark suit stepped out.

  Alexa headed toward him. Jackson followed slowly in her wake.

  The stranger watched them cross the tarmac. He handed the sedan keys to Alexa wordlessly when she reached him.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said curtly. The man’s blank expression did not change. He turned on his heels and walked to an SUV with tinted windows that had pulled up outside the hangar.

  Jackson eyed the other vehicle curiously while they climbed in the sedan. ‘Is that one of Reznak’s men?’

  She turned the key in the ignition. ‘No.’ She glanced at him impassively. ‘He’s a Hunter.’

  He frowned at her words. The night before, Alexa had touched briefly upon the hierarchy of the councils that governed the two immortal societies. The way she described it, the Hunters were the police force and bodyguards of the nobles who ruled the immortal races. In Jackson’s eyes, they sounded very much like the councils’ private armies.

  ‘He looked nervous,’ he commented. Alexa remained silent and guided the sedan off the tarmac.

  Carrington and Fawkes watched them leave from the steps of the jet. They were staying put on Reznak’s instructions, in case the information supplied by his contact directed Alexa and Jackson to another port of call. Carrington had thawed slightly in the last half hour of the flight and even grumbled a stilted farewell when they left the aircraft. Fawkes remained resolutely poker-faced.

  The pilot had provided them with a phone number for Reznak’s associate in Rome. It directed them to an answering service where they were instructed to leave a message and their contact details. Jackson could only presume they would be notified of the specifics of their meeting when they reached Rome.

  They took the motorway and headed east toward the capital. Hills and villages dotted the flat and mostly rural landscape around them. Winter had turned the normally green landscape stark and gray. Less than ten miles after they left the airport, they turned north onto the ring road that encircled Rome.

  They had just entered the outskirts of the city when the satellite phone rang.

  Alexa brought the handset to her ear. She listened for several seconds before ending the call abruptly. ‘The coordinates for the point of contact are 41.902° North, 12.457° East,’ she said in a clipped tone.

  Jackson’s eyebrows rose as she handed him the GPS. ‘This is all rather cryptic, isn’t it?’ he said while he entered the data in the machine. ‘I mean, who is this guy?’

  Traffic thickened when they crossed into the Aurelio quarter of the town. The cream and terracotta apartment blocks crowding the skyline gave way to imposing mansions built in the Romanesque and Renaissance styles. The dark clouds scattered and sunlight streamed down from the lightening sky.

  Jackson looked around. He had been to Rome several times in the last twenty years and knew the city fairly well. The neighborhood was starting to look eerily familiar. Minutes later, they crested a hill west of the river Tiber.

  ‘Isn’t that the Vatican City wall?’ he said slowly, staring straight ahead.

  Alexa looked unfazed as she gazed at the towering, fortified rampart rising beyond the junction they were headed for.

  Jackson looked down at the device in his hands with a sinking feeling. Reznak’s contact was leading them straight into the sovereign territory of the Holy See.

  They drove past the entrance to the Vatican Museum on Viale Vaticano, turned south by the Piazza del Risorgimento, and went under the Porto Angelica. Seconds later, Alexa parked the sedan along a side street on the left.

  They got out of the vehicle and walked the rest of the way. The GPS beeped after eight hundred feet. They had reached their destination.

  They stopped and looked up at the Obelisk in the center of St. Peter’s Square.

  ‘Well, this sure beats a crummy bar in the backstreets of Istanbul,’ said Jackson dully.

  Although the monument was supported by four bronze lions and flanked on either side by an impressive granite fountain, it was overshadowed by the magnificent Renaissance church behind it. At the head of the large elliptical piazza enclosed by a pair of massive, semicircular Tuscan colonnades, the travertine stone tha
t made up the facade of St. Peter’s Basilica glowed warmly under the midday sun; above it, Christ and the Apostles looked down benevolently upon the crowded square.

  Alexa’s eyes flickered over the sea of people while she dialed a number on the satellite phone. ‘We’re here,’ she said curtly into the mouthpiece and disconnected.

  It was several minutes before they saw a short, elderly figure in a black cassock approaching swiftly from the north of the piazza. Although the man was not wearing the purple sash of his office, the pectoral cross he wore and the ring on his finger indicated that he was an archbishop.

  The stranger’s gait visibly slowed when he saw them waiting in the shadow of the obelisk. A hesitant expression dawned on his lined face. He stopped several feet from where they stood. ‘Signorina King?’

  ‘Si,’ said Alexa with a brief nod.

  ‘I am Monsignor Francesco Lorenzio,’ said the archbishop in a rich, cultured accent. His wary gaze shifted to Jackson. ‘And this would be?’

  ‘Professor Zachary Jackson,’ said Jackson pleasantly. He extended a hand.

  Recognition dawned in the archbishop’s blue eyes. His face brightened. He crossed the gap that separated them and shook Jackson’s hand warmly. ‘You are the Professor Jackson, of Harvard University?’

  Jackson glanced at Alexa. ‘Yes, I am,’ he replied, bemused.

  ‘I read your recent paper on the initial findings coming out of the Paracopan project in Honduras,’ said the archbishop amiably. ‘It was truly fascinating.’