The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (24 page)

Her curiosity turned to something
of surprise when she saw who it was. A heavy-set Egyptian in filthy, rough
garments bowed repeatedly to her, awed and terrified to be in her presence.
Marcus stepped up behind his wife, buttoning his shirt.

"Hassan," he said in a
low voice. "What do you want?”

It was the man who had originally
told them about the angel. Kathlyn was rather sickened to see him with the
memories that suddenly flooded her mind. Although it wasn't his fault, the man
brought about a myriad of bad thoughts.

"Missus, missus," he
said in his broken English. "Taa'la maei!"
Come with me
.

Marcus was fluent in Arabic, unlike
his wife.  He spoke to the man in his own language. "Ayez eh?"
What
do you want
?

Hassan was terrified of Burton;
they all were. He was big and intimidating. He told him in Arabic. "I have
been asked to bring you and Missus back to the village. Something dark is
happening."

Marcus looked at him warily.
"We're not going back. We've done our work there."

"But there is more to show
you, something you do not know. It's very serious."

"What more is there to
show?"

Hassan swallowed, looking between
Marcus and Kathlyn. "Hell."

"What is he saying?"
Kathlyn interrupted.

Marcus sighed deeply. He didn't
want to tell her but he couldn't lie to her. "He's telling me that the
village wants us to go back."

"Back?" Kathlyn was
visibly distressed. "What in the hell for?"

"Exactly."

"Exactly what?"

"Hassan says something about
Hell. He wants to show us Hell."

Kathlyn looked at the worker, her
expression unreadable. Her mind rolled through the discovery of the first
relic, the angel that was perhaps something darker and more sinister in her
view. Uneducated people sometimes tended to be very superstitious and she had
to take that into account. But Hell would fit very well into her theory that
her first relic was a demon of some kind and it was a struggle not to allow her
imagination to run wild.

"Marcus," she said
slowly. "Ask him to explain what he means. What is hell?"

Marcus said something to Hassan,
who spoke quickly and made gestures with his hands. It looked to Kathlyn like
he was defining levels, as he moved progressively downward.  Marcus listened a
moment before hissing an explicative.

"What did he say?"
Kathlyn demanded.

Marcus' jaw ticked. He listened
to Hassan finish speaking before he translated. "He says the village has
been in Hell for the past few week, ever since we left the site the first time
around. Seems that the Iraqi soldiers came and scared them into hiding, which
we already suspected because the village was so damn deserted. The most logical
place to hide was the caverns in the small ravine to the west of the village.
Apparently, there are catacombs within those caverns several thousand years
old."

"So? And?" Kathlyn was
on pins and needles.

Marcus looked at her. "If I
understand him correctly, there are ancient stairs cut into the caverns leading
down into depths that those people believe are the upper levels of Hell. There
are apparently more relics in the depths of the caverns like the one we
excavated in the fossil riverbed."

Kathlyn had a strongly
apprehensive feeling about the entire thing. But as an archaeologist, she was
naturally excited about the prospect. She looked at Hassan, wishing she could
understand Arabic. "So why did they only show us the one in the riverbed
if they knew about the relics in the caverns?"

"It was a test."

"What kind of test?"

"To see if we were worthy of
their trust, I guess."

"And are we worthy?"

Marcus sighed. "According to
Hassan, Hell is stirring down in those caverns. He wants us to come and take a
look."

Kathlyn's eyes glittered.
"Well," she murmured softly. "I say we do as we’re asked. It
can’t hurt."

Marcus looked at her as if she
had gone mad. “Are you kidding? After what we just went through there?”

“Those villagers had nothing to
do with it.”

“But Kathlyn….”

She looked at him. “Marcus, they
trusted us to keep their discovery a secret and even though it wasn’t
intentional, we let them down. We brought the military there and basically
created this whole mess. Now they're giving us a second chance to earn that
trust. Don’t you see? It’s like they’re trying to reach out for help, and I
want to help them.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“No. I want to take a look
because God only knows, if any discovery we make will stop Fayd and his cronies
from their wild experiments, we’ve got to do it.”

“How will it stop them if they want
to clone the relic?”

“I don’t know.  But I’ve just got
this feeling that we should go. This isn’t over yet, not by a long shot.”

Marcus could only shake his head;
he knew there was no dissuading her. The woman was determined and, already
having seen the relic and the potential archaeological implications of that,
she had no doubt that there was some validity to Hassan's claim. Maybe it would
help her solve the riddle of the relic's origins. Maybe then, indeed, she would
be able to stop Fayd and his mad scientists. He wasn't going to fight her, as
was his instinct. He knew her well enough to know that she needed closure on
this mystery; they all did.  And it was her duty, as a scientist, to get to the
bottom of any mystery that involved her particular field.  But this particular
circumstance ran deeper than that.

 Marcus could see that he was
going to be away from his own dig again sooner than he had hoped.

"You're sure you want to
go?" he asked.

Kathlyn nodded firmly.
"Absolutely. I want my entire team with me."

"Pulling them out of Egypt
is going to slow down things here."

"You'll still have Lynn and
Dennis and Gary in Egypt. I need my team."

He pursed his lips in
resignation. "Whatever you say, doctor."

The more Kathlyn thought on
Hassan's words, the more intrigued she became. The adventurer spirit her
husband so often accused her of over indulging was beginning to roll at full
steam, just like it had when she had first been told about the angel in the
riverbed.  Now there was something else, something more that could help her
solve the riddle. She had to take that chance.

***

It was early in the morning, an
hour or so before dawn. Kathlyn and Marcus were sleeping like puppies in a
pile. The cellular phone began twanging the Star Spangled Banner and Kathlyn
slapped for the phone, almost knocking it off the table. Marcus groaned, half
asleep, as she answered.

"Hello?" she rasped.

There was a long pause at the end
of the line. "Kathlyn?"

Kathlyn seemed to wake up
instantly. She recognized the voice. "Oh my God...
Andy
?"

On the other end of the
connection, Leeves laughed. "Dr. McGrath called me earlier today to tell
me you were back. How the heck are you, honey?"

Kathlyn wiped the sleep from her
eyes.  "Very well, considering. How... how did you get this number? This
is my husband's cellular phone."

"I know. We spoke a few days
ago and he gave me the details of your abduction to see if I could pull some
strings and help. But I see you didn't need my help, as usual." It was
suddenly a wistful tone." So you're really okay? What happened?"

Kathlyn sighed and sat up in bed;
Marcus opened his eyes, listening to her.

"Hell, I don't even know
where to begin.  I guess it all started when we were asked to come to Iraq to
check out an odd discovery.  Did Marcus tell you about that?"

"No."

"It was an angel."

Leeves didn't say anything for a
moment. "An... an angel? Kat, are you sure?"

"That's what I thought in
the beginning, until we did some excavation and discovered that the skull had a
protrusion over each eye socket."

"Protrusions?" Leeves
repeated. "You mean, like...?"

"Yes, horns. That's exactly
what they were, horns," she smiled, sensing Leeve's shock on the other end
of the line. "So you want to hear all of this?"

"Jesus, I think I
should."

"I think you should, too,
We've got some serious things going on in relation to this that you need to be
aware of."

"Like what?"

"Cloning."

"What?"

Kathlyn told him the whole story.
Marcus had gotten up in the meanwhile, gotten dressed, went to the mess tent to
get them both some coffee, and returned.  Funny, it was the first time he could
remember not being jealous as he listened to his wife talked to another man. 
An old boy friend, even. He almost laughed at himself, thinking how much he had
grown in the past couple of years. The Marcus of old would have ranted and
raved at his wife talking with such familiarity to another man.

 The sun rose over the eastern
Nile, casting shades of pink onto the facade of Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple
and turning the tips of the mountains surrounding the Valley of the Kings a
brilliant gold. The camp was already up and moving, and Marcus stood in the
doorway of their tent, sipping his coffee and listening to his wife wind up her
conversation with the President of the United States.  Lynn strolled by on his
way to the dig site, dressed in his old jeans and tank top and his big heavy
work gloves. He grinned at Marcus, who merely nodded his head at him.

"What's up?" Lynn
greeted.

Marcus shrugged. "Kathlyn is
talking to Leeves, telling him about all of the bullshit with Fayd."

"Oh, man," Lynn swore
softly. "What is Leeves going to do about it?"

"I don't know," Marcus
said. "But Kathlyn and I are going back to Iraq."

Lynn looked at him a moment to
see if he was kidding or not. "What in the hell would you take her back
there for?"

Marcus sipped the steaming drink.
"Seems that those relics we found were only the beginning. Hassan came to
talk to us last night and told us there were more."

"More what?"

"I'm not sure. But it sounds
intriguing, and Kathlyn wants to check it out."

Lynn just shook his head. "I
don't know if I'd take her back there, not after what happened. It's like
asking for trouble."

"We'll be all right,"
Marcus said. "Besides, she wants to take the entire team and...."

"Juliana, too?"

"Of course. Why not?"

Lynn shook his head again. His
cocoa-colored eyes glittered with an unknown element. "Marcus, if she's
going, I'm going. I'm not going to let her run around in the middle of that
goddamn desert without me there to... well, you know."

Marcus fought off a grin.
"No, I don't know. Why can't she go without you?"

Lynn wasn't one to show his
feelings easily. He came from a family where men didn’t display their emotions.
"Because I don't want her to. While you watch out for your wife, I'll
watch out for her."

Marcus scratched his cheek.
"Do I detect something?"

"You don't detect
shit."

So many times Lynn had taunted
Marcus about his feelings where they pertained to Kathlyn. In a rare moment, it
was Marcus' turn to taunt Lynn.

"I think I do," he said.
"I think you kind of like that pretty blond girl. And I furthermore think
that she kind of likes you, too."

"Don't mess with me like
that."

"I'm not. I've seen the two
of you together. She likes you a whole lot. How come you haven't asked her to
dinner or something before now, you idiot?"

Lynn glared at him. Then, he
broke down in an easy grin. "Shut up," he muttered. "I haven't
had the time."

"Bull."

Lynn snickered and so did Marcus.
"Okay, so I'm scared of her. So what?"

"She's not going to jump
into your lap, Lynn. You better make a move on her before someone else
does."

Lynn's smile vanished. "Who
else is going to make a move on her?"

Marcus could see that he had him.
"Well," he shrugged his shoulders lazily. "There's always
Dennis...."

"Reams?" Lynn spat. "I'll
kick his ass. Has he told you anything?"

Marcus started laughing.
"No, he hasn't said a thing.  But you never know."

Lynn huffed and puffed like an
angry rooster. Before he could further snort, Juliana chose that moment to walk
up. Dressed in jeans and a white tee shirt, she looked sweet. Lynn immediately
jumped on her before she could utter a word.

"Juliana," he said.
"Would you have dinner with me tonight?"

Marcus clapped a hand over his
face. "Smooth, Lynn, very smooth."