One With the Darkness (35 page)

She was hardly surprised to see the great metal strap that acted as a handle on a door barely visible because it, too, was made of stone. She glanced to Jergan.

Hurry, fool! Donnatella hissed at her. It’s fading even now. I feel it.

Jergan nodded. What was there to say? The whole thing had a feeling of inevitability.

Livia jerked the door handle with all her strength. It creaked open slowly. Inside there was a pit of blackness and a smell of decay.

Jergan held his nose. “Smells like a battlefield where no one bothered to bury the dead.”

She knew what it was. “It’s a Christian catacomb.” She had been here before, in some life, in some time. “They like to set their dead on shelves and let them turn to dust.” She felt Donnatella hovering inside her. The full feeling was approaching unbearable. Had she been here, or had Donnatella? It seemed almost as if they were one and the same. She couldn’t trust anyone who wanted control of her mind, especially one who had the same iron will and determination that she herself did.

“On your property?” Jergan asked.

She raised her lamp. “It probably has another entrance down at the bottom of the hill on the other side.” Stairs cut into the rock headed downward.

“Hard to believe this is what you couldn’t bear to leave.”

“It isn’t the burial ground. It’s something else.” It was just on the tip of her mind. “But it’s down there.” She started down holding the lamp high. Jergan leaned against the stone wall and staggered after her.

At the bottom of the stairs the smell was worse. Rats skittered away. But the corridor led ahead. She had been down this corridor before. In the dark. “This is going to be gruesome,” she murmured.

“I’ve seen death in my time.” His voice was grim.

They started ahead. Livia kept her eyes on the corridor ahead and not on the rotting corpses that lay in the rectangular niches on each side. The shadows from the lamp swung wildly, as it illuminated flesh moving and alive with maggots or already stretched and dry behind curtains of spiderwebs.

“Just the place to spend some time,” Jergan muttered.

The corridor ended in an archway. As they approached, she caught glimpses of gleaming gold beyond in the light from the swinging lamp. Was it a treasure of some kind? A feeling of unbearable urgency twisted inside her. She was approaching a crisis, both inside and out. She’d have a decision to make in a moment. It would change the rest of her life.

Livia walked forward into a large room. Jergan ducked his head to enter just behind her.

They gasped in unison.

A huge … something … made entirely of bronze loomed above them in the light. It was set with impossibly large jewels that sparkled in the lamplight. Wheels of every size with teeth around the outside interlocked in fascinating complexity. In the front was a long golden rod topped
with an immense diamond. Livia had no eyes for the dusty niches that rose behind it. The gleaming metal seemed to bang at her consciousness. Was this what Donnatella thought would save them?

“What is it?” Jergan whispered.

“I … I don’t know.” She rubbed her temples. Pain shot through her head.

Let me in! Donnatella was shrieking. You must let me in.

“It looks like a mill of some kind.” He glanced to Livia. “What’s wrong?”

She couldn’t answer. The fullness and the shrieking inside her were too much.

Then, as they watched, the entire huge contraption faded. It was as though she was seeing it through a light mist.

Then it popped back into clarity.

The headache stopped. The shrieking stopped. She could feel Jergan holding her shoulders. He was staring at the giant machine, too.

I can tell you. I can save you. Donnatella’s voice was calm. But you have to let me in.

“I won’t let you control me,” she said. She was looking at Jergan, though she was talking to Donnatella.

Was I really this stubborn? No choice, Livia. Your chance is fading even now. His chance.

“I don’t want to control you, Livia,” Jergan said, puzzled.

The mist rose again. The machine faded. Livia held her breath. It seemed forever until it again flickered back to clarity.

Do you love him?

And that decided her.

She did love him. And this crazy part of her that may or may not have lived through this whole thing before
thought it knew how to save him. So she would let Donnatella in.

Jergan’s head snapped to the side, listening.

How had she missed it? There were people in the garden above them.

Jergan looked at her. They both knew who it probably was. Praetorian Guard.

Now or never.

She took a breath and closed her eyes. “Very well,” she said out loud. “Do as you will.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected to feel, but the comfortable thunk of realization wasn’t it. She had a flash of a grave, on a hilltop in Montalcino. Sorrow washed over her, more sorrow and regret than she thought she could bear. Then a flash of a man, an incredibly handsome man with his father’s green eyes and dark hair. Gian. She knew with a certainty that she was already pregnant with Gian from her days and nights of making love with Jergan. A baby! So rare for their kind. Pride and love flashed through her. Other pictures, other flashes of emotion, sang in her memory, with strange houses and strange carts and strange people. Faster and faster they whirled. She was panting so hard she thought she might faint.

“Livia. Livia!” A voice cut through the whirl. Jergan was shaking her. “What’s wrong?”

She took a breath and held it. The carousel of images and emotions stilled. She knew what a carousel was. That was surprising.

She glanced to the machine, blinking. “It’s a time machine. A man named Leonardo made it. In the future, I am called Donnatella. And it brought me back from a long time in the future to rectify a terrible mistake I made. The
machine can take us forward to that time. But we don’t have long to use it. It’s fading.”

There were shouts in the garden above them. Jergan looked to the machine glowing there in the dusty catacomb. He frowned. “Are you sure?”

“For the first time, yes. Two versions of me can’t exist in the same time. So when Donnatella came back, she merged into me. That’s why I feel so overflowing and why there seems to be a part of me that talks to me, and knows what will happen. She’s been able to come out only in dreams or when I was drugged, because I wouldn’t let her take me over.” She saw his look. “I know how it sounds. But for the first time, I am absolutely sure I’m not crazy.”

He glanced again to the machine, then back to her. “I guess there has to be some explanation for this thing, and what has been happening to you. That is as good as any.”

She smiled. He was better at trusting than she was. Who would have thought it from a barbarian? “I had to acknowledge her and yield her a place.”

“Does she still talk to you?”

Livia raised her brows.
Donnatella?
she called. There was no answer. “I don’t know. But I know everything she experienced, everything she would have thought about what is happening. She thinks we can escape Caligula with this machine.”

“Now why would you want to escape us when we’ve had so much fun together?”

Both she and Jergan snapped their heads to the doorway. The emperor lounged on a staff, his head cocked, gazing up at the machine behind them. “We had to insist that this house be searched. You thought she was at Drusus Lucellus’s brothel.” This was directed at Chaerea and Asiaticus, directly behind him. “We would have missed her entirely. Luckily, your emperor is more astute than you are.” He
strolled into the room, followed by his advisors. A host of Praetorian Guard thundered into the passage behind them. Several could be seen in the arch of the entrance. “A machine, you say, that allows one to go back and forth in time? Interesting. How does it work?” Light increased as another lantern was passed forward to Chaerea. Livia saw Jergan glance around the corners of the room for another exit. There wasn’t one. At least not from this room.

“I … I don’t know,” she said. Could she pull the lever, draw her power, and escape with all these people in the room? It had taken some time for the machine to work the last time.

“Then you are clearly lying about its purpose.” Caligula fingered a great ruby winking in the largest gear. “A fortune, though, if it were dismantled.” He turned around, avarice gleaming in his eyes. “Decimus, we claim this thing for the Roman Imperial Treasury.”

Asiaticus bowed. “Yes, Caesar.” He couldn’t keep his eyes off the machine, though. Neither could Chaerea.

Livia thought frantically. There had to be a way to use the machine.

The emperor turned and surveyed Livia. “You have healed, Livia Quintus Lucellus, just as Decimus thought you could. We might use you for entertainment in the arena again, but we don’t have any drugs to hand. Therefore, you are useless to us. We wonder you haven’t disappeared already, witch.” He put a mocking finger to his lips. “Ah, but of course, you don’t want to leave this device, or this slave, behind.” He paused in thought. “If disappearing is your power, though, you can do no harm.” He made a sweeping movement with his hands. “So we will take your slave and your machine. Disappear now; go.”

Livia wet her lips. “You have no idea what you have
until I show you. Taking the jewels and melting the bronze would realize only a millionth of its value to you.”

“Really?”

Now she had his interest. “The future is richer than your poor imagination can conceive. There are whole continents full of gold, west beyond the gates of Gibraltar. Ships come home with treasure as ballast. And slaves? Oh, my dear emperor, slaves abound. Still, they are hardly enough to work the rich lands. These continents are called the Americas.”

“You are making this up.” But he wanted to believe. Even Chaerea and Asiaticus were at least speculating.

“I could not make up so wild a story. Did you know that the cult who buries their dead here someday rules the spiritual lives of most of the known world from Rome?”

“The Christ cult?” His eyes were wide.

She nodded. “The very same. They build a church across the river Tiber richer than anything you have ever seen.”

“But we have plans to wipe them out.” Chaerea sounded puzzled, as though if he planned it, a scheme could not possibly fail.

“You will only make martyrs and more believers, Chaerea.” She said it kindly, as though it came from experience. Which it did.

“A larger world to rule….” Caligula rubbed his chin. “We would see a demonstration of this machine.” This was clearly an order.

Livia managed not to smile. She glanced to Jergan. Their son would be so much like him. She might get him out of this yet. It all depended on the machine. “Yes, Caesar.”

She turned to the machine just as it misted over again.

“What was that?” Caligula yelled. The guards and
Chaerea pulled out their swords. Asiaticus stepped back a pace.

Livia held her breath. She could feel Jergan doing the same.

The machine snapped back to clarity. She took a breath. It had taken longer this time. “There is not much time to make use of this machine, Caesar, else it will disappear forever. And only I can use it. It takes a witch’s power.”

“Then do so,” he screeched. The fact that the machine had almost disappeared apparently had convinced him her wild story was true.

She glanced to Jergan, silently telling him to be ready, and turned to the rod with the diamond on it. She knew what to do. If she had enough power to run it. If the machine stayed in place long enough to try.

Livia called to her Companion, “Power!” She said it aloud, so they could hear it. Much more impressive. Her Companion had been strengthening minute by minute on the way home. Was it enough? The familiar feeling of power surging up her veins came over her. They would feel the vibrations in the room ramping up, just as she did. Thank Jergan for his precious blood, given when he had little to spare. She pressed down the whirling blackness at her feet. But she could hear gasps behind her as they saw it. Her hair began to float around her head. It was time.

She grasped the diamond knob of the lever and pulled. The huge gear above her began to grind, sending all the other gears into frantic motion. “Companion, more!” she shouted into the charged atmosphere. The feeling of life and power surged again. The gears spun faster.

She tried to concentrate only on the whirling machine. She would need even more power to bring on the glow. It would take everything she had.

It occurred to her, as she watched the gears whir faster, that maybe the fact that Donnatella came back had caused the changes between what was happening now and what Donnatella had experienced. Lucius dying. Caligula living.

“Power,” she screamed, and the word was torn from her belly. The surge was almost painful. She began to glow. “I need your strength, Jergan,” she shouted. He took her hand through the white corona of light and squeezed it. It did give her strength, even if she had said it only to get him into position to be flung forward in time with her.

They would go forward into time and skip the intervening centuries.

She and Jergan would not be here. Gian would not be born here. So everything he had done in the centuries between now and Donnatella’s time would not be done. Everything she had done. Would there be no Renaissance without her? That was unthinkable. And how would Leonardo know to make the machine? It was all too confusing.

Her body was taut inside the glow. The machine was a blur of movement. Things seemed to be moving faster.

Then everything slowed. She saw herself and Jergan, Caligula and the others, as from a distance through the glow in the room. Chaerea and Asiaticus were afraid. Caligula was laughing and laughing and couldn’t stop. This was the moment for action, and she wasn’t sure.

And then she was.

With a cry, she jerked backward, pulling Jergan with her.

She watched Caligula run forward, a maniacal gleam in his eyes. Chaerea grabbed for him. “I’ll rule a larger world,” the emperor yelled, losing his balance.