The Eye of the Wolf (43 page)

          She slid the heavy
door closed, grimacing as the old door echoed through the stillness. Her tread
was cautious as rubber-soled shoes worked noiselessly across the marble floor.
Her heart hammered in her ears, drumming out everything. Her breathing was
labored; she felt as if she could jump right out of her skin. She skirted
around the ancient pews, following the aisle towards the altar. She paused in
the darkness, her eyes drawn up to the crucifix where Jesus hung, forgiving all
sins. Silently, she prayed for forgiveness for what she about to do.

          She made a hasty
sign of the cross before moving on. A beam of light shot across the gleaming
floor as she flicked on the flashlight that had become such a handy tool. The
light searched the names and dates engraved in the floor. Ancient rulers and
their queens. Dates and people long relegated to forgotten history. She moved
noiselessly from marker to marker.

          She stilled when
she came to the marker she sought. Her breath caught in her throat as she
paused, unsure what to do next. Sadness filled her at the thought of all that
would be lost if she carried out her plan, if she became the tomb raider she
had planned to be.

          She ran a hand
through her hair and huffed out a breath. It was now or never. She hitched a
pant leg to kneel before the long dead queen. It was the voice from the gloom
that froze her.

          “You’re going to
need a crowbar if you intend to open that.”

Mikayla turned slowly, the flashlight piercing the
darkness in the direction of the voice. Her mouth was dry, and her heart beat
wildly as the coldness of those gray eyes pierced her.

“You know, Mikayla, you might have shared with me
your intention to go grave robbing. I can be pretty handy sometimes.” Will
reclined casually in one of the pews just steps from where she stood. His
posture was ridiculous compared to the steel in his voice. He remained where he
was, but his eyes imprisoned her.

Mikayla swallowed, her heart in her throat. Her
voice came out as a whisper. “Whatever do you mean?” She tried for an innocent
look and tone, but she knew he wasn’t buying what she was selling. She kept her
eyes locked to his as he slowly stood from his seat. He moved slowly as he
raised a shovel from the seat and slung it over his shoulder.

Mikayla’s eyes widened slightly, but she held her
ground as he crossed over to her in three long strides. He loomed over her,
anger creasing his face, but his movements were casual even as his voice was
clipped. “So, Mikayla, where are we digging and what are we digging for?”

Mikayla swallowed again and stepped back.

Will’s smile was feral; white teeth gleamed through
the gloom. “Luv, if I wanted to kill you, I could have done it many times
before.” He grasped her chin firmly in his fingers and pulled her close.

His fingers pinched harshly and she willed herself
to fight his strength, but found herself to be too weak. They were only a
breath apart; his eyes locked on hers, freezing her blood.

“Tell me why, Mikayla.” His breath was hot on her
face. “Tell me why you are here.”

There was silence as he waited for her reply. His heart
beat madly in his chest, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

The silence was deafening as time ticked by. Mikayla
stared into his eyes seeking the honest adventurer. She only found ice and
anger. She swallowed once and was pleased that her voice was cool, like a
professor should be.

“I am here to pray, Will. Why else would I be in a
cathedral at midnight?”

He smirked slightly at the imperious tone. He
released her chin, shifted the shovel to his other shoulder, and then reached
into a pocket. All along, his eyes never left her face; a smirk permanently
plastered to his lips. One eye brow rose as his fingers held up a yellow
Post-It-Note. Mikayla’s eye brows rose also, but she said nothing.

Will’s smile grew wider. “You’re good, Mikayla, but
not good enough. What are you up to?”

Mikayla plucked the Post-It-Note from his fingers
and read her own neat hand. She folded it neatly and pushed it into her own
pocket. She tucked wild hair behind an ear before meeting his eyes again. She
turned and strode several feet away. She shone the flashlight on a name in the
floor when Will stood behind her. Her voice echoed off of the solid walls of
the cathedral.

“If you want it, it’s in there.”

Will tossed the shovel aside and climbed from the
hole he had dug in the dirt beneath the foundation of the cathedral. He still
found it a disgusting practice to bury important monarchs and their families in
the floor of the cathedral so that the congregation of the church would never
forget them and the dead monarch would forever be on sanctified ground. It was
gross; there was no other word for it.

He wiped the sweat from his
brow and sipped from the thermos Mikayla held out to him. She climbed down in
the hole to begin her shift at digging now that he had done all of the hard work
by removing the slab of marble floor and the rocks that created the
foundation.  She flashed a smile bright enough to rival the sun at him.

“I guess, today, history really
is a treasure hunt, but” she held up a warning finger, “don’t tell my
students.”

With a snicker, he leaned back
against one of the heavy carved pews that lined the cathedral where the
citizens of Amor worshiped each Sunday. His earlier anger forgotten as the
spirit of adventure took over. The scrape of the shovel in the dirt and Mikayla’s
occasional muttered swear word echoed off of the high, arched ceiling painted
in murals of conquests and peace, King Malachi’s angelic face, wreathed by a
halo beamed down on them while King Henry frowned. Will wondered for just a
moment if King Henry had ever smiled during his reign, but then, Will knew,
Henry hadn’t had much to smile about. Lost at sea. A rebellion by the people
who inhabited the island against the foreign invaders. A bride from the local
people simply to prevent any more rebellions, a connection among them. Murdered
on the walls surrounding the beginning of the Secluded City, some said by his
son, King Richard.

The cathedral was dark except
for the lanterns and flashlights that surrounded their work space. Mikayla had
been right, he supposed, to come under the cover of darkness, when the bishop
and his clerics had retired to their house next to the cathedral and it would
be empty. People surely would have taken offense to their current activity.
They were, after all, digging up the body of a queen.

Will shuddered. The thought of
their actions creeped him out, but the part that wasn’t creeped out knew their
actions were for the best because he knew the Wolf wasn’t done.

Will glanced briefly into the
hole where Mikayla stood, the dirt now about waist deep. Her hair was pulled
back into a messy tangle in a rubber band. She wore all black, dressed to steal
in like the thief she was. She was incredibly sexy in the slimming black that
clung to curves. He wore simple jeans and a t-shirt, knowing they wouldn’t be
interrupted. The worshipers of Amor were similar to church-goers of other
civilized nations. Church was for Sunday, end of story.

He took another slurp of water
and jumped back into the hole. He took the shovel from Mikayla and dug in. He
used the physical exercise to keep his mind blank. He focused on the task at
hand, not allowing thoughts of the Wolf or the deaths of the innocents to sneak
back in. When he couldn’t focus on the digging, he focused on Mikayla and
loving her under the sun that afternoon. A fairytale moment, she had called it
and had laughed at herself, reminding him that she didn’t believe in fairytales
and Prince Charmings. He smiled up at her just as his shovel hit wood with a
hard thunk that shook him to his toes.

Mikayla grabbed the shovel from
his hand as he clambered out of the hole. He picked up the crowbar.

With her heart in her throat,
Mikayla watched as he wrenched at the rotted wood with the crowbar, the
creaking and breaking of the wood echoing throughout the chamber. A chamber
designed to echo the heraldic sounds of angels, not death.  It was the
smell that assaulted them first, the decay from a time lost to others but very
much alive on Amor. The putrescent wood pealed away revealing scraps of purple velvet.
The lady’s bones, small and fragile, remained as she had been when laid to rest
eight hundred years before. Her dark brown hair flowed down to her white
shoulders, curtaining the bone that was once her face. Rings, necklaces, and
bracelets glimmered in the muted light reminding the resurrectionists that at
one time, this woman had been a queen. Her hands were clasped around a rosary,
ivory beads, golden cross. Her satin gown was tattered from the years, but the
beauty it once had was obvious.

Mikayla swallowed stiffly. She
hadn’t realized that opening the tomb of someone, a person who had once lived
and walked the earth would affect her so. She wanted to think about the
historical find; the clothes and jewels added to the burial procedure were
excellent historical research that should be recorded. Questions still remained
about how people during the Middle Ages dealt with the death of kings and
queens. Here was a fine example that should be studied and recorded, except…The
smell was sickening, but it was the emotional upheaval that caused her to
wretch, her head turned away from the body, prayers for the lost queen raising
to heaven through upturned eyes.

Will blinked back tears from
the smell. He reached into the coffin and felt along the side of the skeleton,
careful to not disturb the person of one of his ancestors. He felt nothing
except tattered scraps of fabric that broke loose when his fingers brushed over
her person.

Behind
her fingers, Mikayla mumbled. “Will, check her hands.” When he frowned quizzically
at her, she gestured for him to get moving, to remember what the translation
had said. “Remember, it said, ‘Look to your mother’s hands.’ Maybe he meant
literally!”

Will
shrugged and pried the bony hands apart, brittle fingernails breaking as he
moved the arms that had remained in one position for eight centuries. The
rosary slipped from its position. He felt the fabric beneath her hands, looking
for anything, but his search was fruitless and he knew it. He shook his head
and put her hands back, careful to wrap the rosary as it had been before their
rude interruption on her eternal rest. He placed the rotted lid back over his
ancestor and began filling in the hole, defeat evident in every move.

Mikayla
nibbled on a nail. “Did someone get here before us?” She wondered aloud.

Will frowned into the hole. “I
don’t think so. Who else would know to look here. You said you translated it
with the help of a friend in the States. There isn’t anyone else here that
would have that kind of knowledge. Even Kankaredes and Dejeune couldn’t
translate the message.”

“Then where did we go wrong?”
She frowned and began to clean up the mess they had created as Will slid the
foundation stones and marble back into its place. She felt defeated. Her first
attempt at archeology and treasure hunting was a failure. She waited patiently
as he whispered a fervent prayer for the dead over the tomb, wishing her back
to eternal rest. Together, they blew out the lanterns and exited the cathedral,
stealing down the hill into the dark unaware of shadows that moved with them,
following each step, following each move.

She leaned against the railing
of the deck, watching the sea gulls soar in the thermals above the water. As a
child, she had wondered what it would be like to be a sea gull, soaring above
the water, free of even gravity’s restrictions. It always seemed the birds were
having fun that humans couldn’t comprehend. She wished, even for a moment, that
she felt that freedom, to do as she pleased. If she had that freedom, her
suitcases wouldn’t be packed and her plane tickets ready for a flight in the
morning. If she were really free, she would beg Will to run away with her. But
she wasn’t really free, and he wasn’t running anywhere.

She sipped the iced tea in the
glass, listening to the friendly clink of the glasses and remembering another
time when ice had clinked in a glass, sun shining above her head and a handsome
man sitting across from her in the grass, telling her stories of his childhood
lived in a fairytale.

Fairytales.

Mikayla shook her head,
wondering why, right at that moment, her mind should skip back to fairytales
and the many times she had denied that they existed. She had living proof, if
fairytales existed, Will would ask her to stay with him, pledge his love and
marry her. She would be Cinderella to his Prince Charming, but she knew, the
next morning, she would climb aboard the chartered flight, along with the other
tourists, and return to her life in Washington with beautiful, if not
bitter-sweet, memories of a land far, far away.

He had left her alone that day,
disappearing at dawn to finish with the preparations for the largest ball ever
held on Amor. All people, whether citizen or guest had been invited to attend
the black-tie affair. Her own dress hung on the bedroom door, airing out after
arriving that morning from France, according to the box label. She hadn’t even
looked at it, allowing him to hang it up for her before rushing from the house
to live up to his obligations. His last words had been a reminder that he would
meet her in the ballroom at nine o’clock. After that, he had gone, leaving her
to herself, perhaps not wanting to witness the packing that they both knew had
to be done. She had put it off long enough.