The Tenth Legion (Book 6, Progeny of Evolution) (19 page)

Lorna took the
cup, self-conscious about having the others in the room. Ethan
placed his hands on the table top. Skeptically, Ed sat erect with
arms folded, the demeanor of a man impatient for some cheap magic
show to begin. Doctor Montana put a small metronome on the table
beside the tea pot, setting the mechanism in motion with the flick
of a finger.

“Let your eyes
follow the hand of the little machine.” He spoke through tiny, dark
lips.

Lorna got
comfortable, concentrating on the thin black stick that tick-tocked
in the silent room. The quiet drone of the doctor’s voice provided
the only other sound.

This isn’t
going to work.

Then she went
under.

Her body and
the others remained in Doctor Montana’s office, frozen in place
like a frame of movie film. She hovered over the scene. Everyone
seemed to be some distance removed, something like seeing them,
along with the room, through the wrong end of a telescope.

Turning away
from her reclined self and the men, she moved toward the closed
drapes.

An oval-shaped
hole floated in the middle of the curtains, darker than the fabric
background. At her approach, metaphysical because the corporeal
Lorna remained planted in Doctor Montana’s office chair, the dark
spot grew, becoming the size of a doorway. Inside, a slim woman in
a simple, cloth dress knelt in front of a hearth. Each wall of the
surrounding room, made of large rectangular stones, bore a covering
of symbols or pictures of men and beasts painted in bright yellows,
ochre, and shades of blue. The fire combined with the fuliginous
torches in the wall sconces to illuminate a round face with dark
eyes.

The woman had
a twinkle in her eye. “You are here,” she said cheerfully.

“Are you
Cithara?”

“I am. And you
are Lorna.”

“How do you
know me?”

“I have been
with you all of your life. The Christians would speak of me as your
guardian angel, but I believe it not to be so simple. Nothing God
does is simple.”

Lorna
recognized the room Cithara occupied. “You are The Lady.” Lorna
gasped.

“Yes. I came
to you in childhood dreams. Until this moment, I was but a voice
and a shadow.” Cithara stood and padded to Lorna with light,
catlike steps. Placing her palms flat against the invisible barrier
between them, she said, “I came to you as you will come to me in
another phase of the world. That is the cycle.” While they couldn’t
touch, the odors of burnt offerings from what Lorna always called
Cithara’s mediation room crossed the barrier. Lorna assumed the
smells traveled both ways.

“
Does
everyone have such a
guardian angel
?” Lorna matched her palms to Cithara’s. The thickness of
plastic wrap separated them, an impenetrable barrier.

“Yes, everyone
does, but only those with The Sight are able to see and speak with
them. Our worlds are parallel, yet they are also separated in time,
like two facets of a gemstone. These ideas always confused Poor
Aliff, may God rest his soul.”

“Aliff? He was
your husband?”

“For two
centuries, we were together.” She paused, brightening to enjoy the
memories sliding across her mind.

Questions
swarmed in Lorna’s brain. Not knowing what to ask first, she
speared one up at random from the darkness of her brain. “Are you
lycan or vampire?”

“I am vampire.
Aliff was lycan.”

Lorna regarded
the trim priestess with her luxurious brown hair in two large
braids wrapped and pinned on top of her head. “Your children—where
are they?” Great-pop would want to know.

“We had
thirteen. Eleven lived to adulthood. They have all passed away, but
their blood lives on. Some stayed nearby, but others settled
throughout the empire. I have descendants from Britannia in the
north to Parthia in the East to Egypt.” Gazing beyond Lorna at the
men in the room behind, she asked. “Is he your mate?” Her eyes
locked on Ed.

“Not exactly.
It’s complicated.”

“He is the
image of my Aliff, but he is vampire, is he not?”

“Yes, he is.
How did you know?”

“I came to him
in his youth, but he didn’t understand. However, I believe there is
yet hope for Ethan, his son.”

Ethan, the ESP
research candidate.

“Why did you
return to my dreams, so long after my emergence?”

“I have no
answer for God’s designs,” Cithara said. “Perhaps I am tasked to
deliver a message to you and The People.”

Lorna marveled
how in dreams or séances or whatever the hell she experienced, no
language barrier existed. Even words in an idiom unique to her time
somehow became understandable. The process worked both ways. Then
she remembered the questions Great-pop Jim and Toby wanted her to
ask.

“I would like
to talk more about how our fates entwine,” Lorna said. “But there
are matters of great importance for The Others I must ask you
about.”

“
The Others
…”
Cithara seemed to test the word in her mouth. “Is what you call us
in your time? Such a harsh word. Our name, The People, seems far
kinder.”

“Among us, you
are a great, revered prophetess. Our scholars study your writings
with deep interest. Some are disturbing. All are confusing. There
are questions. We need a better understanding of your prophesy in
order to make the correct choices.”

Cithara turned
away to face a mirror of polished metal hanging over the fireplace,
presenting Lorna a clean-featured profile of strong brow, straight
nose, rounded cheeks, set off by pitch-black eyes. “I am near my
end,” she said, as if the stare in the mirror had reminded her of a
neglected task. “The empire crumbles. That, we have in common. For
so long, our clan fought the Romans together with what they brought
with them, but now I see value in their sense of order. Too late, I
fear. The age of the barbarian will soon be upon us. A similar
catastrophe will overtake your time.”

“How? When?”
Lorna demanded.

Cithara faced
Lorna. She stood erect, slim molded arms at her sides. “I write
what God tells me. I do not understand all of it, but of this I am
certain. You are the key to the challenges ahead for humanity, as
well as for our kind.”

Undeterred by the deflective answer, Lorna reached into her
memory for more of the prophecies. “Who is the
treacherous
spawn
?”

“God has not
revealed his face to me. He is close to your leader, and will not
be identified until after he has done his work, but don’t despair.
The solution will reveal itself in you.” Pausing, she gazed into
the fire. When she continued, another seemed to speak through her.
“Soon, two great travails will visit The People. About the first, I
have told all. The second, greater one, comes from God and affects
humankind in its entirety.”

“What are the
signs of its approach?”

“Once I
believed Mari and Sugaar ruled the Universe. Now the Christian God
is everywhere. He is cunning to promise a rich afterlife and take
all sins onto Himself. In return, He asks His followers to believe,
repent, and ask forgiveness. But God is more complicated than any
of that. Sugaar, the sun and the giver of light, is but one of His
implements, like the rain, and wind. Although the Christian God
seems to occupy a special place of honor, He too is bound to God’s
bidding.”

Lorna wondered
where Cithara’s answer led, thinking how to steer the priestess
back onto the subject.

“Patience, my
child,” the older woman chided mildly. “A person of my years
exercises the privilege to answer in her own time and way. When God
began to reveal the fate of the world, He bade me commission temple
craftsmen to render images onto steles. In our time, no one
recognized or understood their meaning. I believe they are meant
for the future, for you.”

“Where are
these steles?”

Cithara
changed the subject, answering with maddening indirectness. “So
many questions from one so young. Be patient. Have faith. You will
understand everything when you are at peace with yourself. When you
were but a child alone among the other un-emerged children, did I
not tell you your destiny is still unfolding? Everything you
experienced in your life to this very moment, the good along with
the bad—the happiness, the sadness, all has prepared you for the
rest that is to come.”

At the edge of
patience, Lorna came close to shouting. “What about the
steles?”

“You will
learn about them after you are at peace with your parents.”

“My parents?
What do they have to do with any of this?” Lorna drew inward,
walling out any reference to her mom and dad, even from someone
with the gift of prophecy.

“They are gone
now and can affect you no more, yet you hold resentment for
them.”

“You, most of
all, should know what they did to me!”

“Yes, child, I
do. It was cruel and wrong, but each event blended to make you what
you are. After the abandonment, your parents were never the same.
They often wept for you.”

“I didn’t
know.”

“You can do
nothing to them they have not done to themselves, except to forgive
and let them go.”

Lorna
remembered Mike’s advice from his hospital bed. A quickening of
movement gathered behind her. “You must go now.” Cithara smiled in
the familiar way Lorna remembered throughout her life, in a manner
similar to her own. “We will talk again, now that you have
remembered the way.”

Lorna backed
away. While the room returned to her reality, the portal closed in
on itself. Sounds of breathing accompanied the metronome’s
repetitive natter.

“Lorna.
Lorna.” Ed held her hand, patting frantically. “Is everything all
right?”

Opening her
eyes, she wore a serene smile. “Fine,” she answered. “Everything’s
just fine.”

At the
debrief, she provided enough information to send a dozen
technicians scurrying to uncover the location of the steles as well
as evidence of the threats Cithara spoke about, withholding mention
of the traitor.

When they were
alone, Lorna said, “There’s one more thing, Ed.”

They were in
her condominium. “What’s that?”

“Cithara said
there was a traitor in the family.” Lorna conjured a picture of the
irascible Toby.

Ed became
defensive. “What do you mean?”

“Hey, don’t
kill the messenger. She told me someone close to you would hand us
over to our enemies. I think the prophecy might have something to
do with the plague she predicted.”

“I’m not going
to accept this.” Ed’s stiff tone told Lorna his opinion of the
idea. “I trust my family with my life.”

“Believe what
you want, but I recommend you take reasonable precautions.”

Ed flung
himself around, confronting her with his formidable countenance; so
close, the copper-colored spots of new stubble in the cleft of his
chin stood out on the paler flesh. “I will not investigate them
like common employees.” The Chairman threw a coat around his
shoulders. “I have appointments. Don’t wait up for me.”

In that
moment, a curtain descended between them.

For a few
moments after he left, Lorna sat in the silence, thinking about
what had happened. In retrospect, his departure worked for the
best. Further discussion would lead to argument, which could only
end badly. Ed needed time to process the information. Facing the
possibility someone you’ve known all your life, or worse, one of
your children, willingly planned to destroy everything you ever
worked for, took some getting used to. Eventually, she knew, he
would quietly check it out.

Was that our
first fight?

With Ed not
around, she took advantage of the solitude to try what Cithara
recommended-forgive her parents. After a shower, she changed into
bed clothes, brewing a pot of Earl Grey— “the favorite of lycans
worldwide,” according to the product’s ads. Turning up the natural
gas fireplace for atmosphere and dimming the lights, she sat in the
plush reclining chair.

“Okay,” she
said to herself taking a pensive breath. “Here we go.”

Remembering
Mike and the Twelve-Step program, she counted off the similarities
between that doctrine and Cithara’s recommendations. Both
recommended resolution of past resentments, even with the dead, to
put the living at peace. The same cavalcade of hurtful memories
associated with her parents since she first understood what they’d
done flooded in: the constant bickering over being saddled with a
pre-emergent, never having enough of anything, the sordid battles
about changing her soiled diapers.

Then, for the
first time, there followed the stark image of a couple consoling
each other in grief over the daughter they’d abandoned, spending
the rest of their lives in regret. Suddenly, she didn’t know what
to think.

Wiping a tear
from each eye, she positioned the chair to the limits of the
recline setting. From the horizontal position, her eyes gazed at
the ceiling heating grate, on past, through the next two floors,
out the roof into the night sky, beyond to the black vastness of
sidereal space, and at last into the nameless face of whatever
Higher Power existed out there.

“Mom, Dad. I
forgive you,” she began.

An hour later,
the malevolent mechanism of hatred coiling and turning slowly in
her chest since childhood stopped. It had been a part of her for so
long that she recognized it only when the deliberate grinding
rotation ceased. Filling the void, a warm sensation of calm seeped
through her soul, nourishing and giving peace.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

T
he next
morning, the Chairman’s secretary called to inform her Ed had to
take an unexpected trip to South America. The company’s largest
electrolysis facility in Rio suffered an unexpected shut down. The
volume of government contracts tied up with the project demanded
his personal attention. He’d be gone at least week. Also on the
agenda was the signing ceremony of a contract to build cargo
aircraft for the Brazilian Air Force.