Dust to Dust (11 page)

Not the slightest hint of a scratch was in evidence.

Despite himself, he looked around the aircraft. The passengers were all in their seats, watching movies, working on computers, quietly reading or sleeping. The flight personnel walked down the aisles or gathered in the galley. No one looked as if they'd been attacked by a vampire.

Besides, there was no such thing as vampires, and the woman sitting next to him certainly wasn't one. Crazy. His thoughts had been crazy.

Then again, so was his world.

He turned off the DVD player. He wasn't sure if he had seen the end of the movie or not, but it didn't matter. He didn't intend to arrive in Rome already tired. He reclined his seat, stretched out and closed his eyes. Even if he didn't actually sleep, resting would be good.

For a while he thought about the woman in the seat beside him, and he wondered how it would be once they got to Rome. This whole trip might be pure insanity. He wasn't a cop or in any way qualified to hunt down the clues to solve the puzzle that his life had become. But he had to know what was going on. He might be plunging into danger, or entering the world of a cult, demonic or otherwise. He was heading to a foreign country alone, and he knew only a smattering of the language. The only thing he was sure of, thanks to Lucien, was that he was looking for an ancient church and a nun named Sister Maria Elizabeta. He might well not survive; he didn't think that his newfound powers stopped bullets. But he
had to go. If he didn't get the answers he longed for, he wasn't sure that he'd ever know peace of mind again.

He drifted to sleep at last, trying to practice some of his small knowledge of Italian silently in his mind.
Per piacere. Per favore. Grazie. Buon giorno. Benvenuti.
Great. He was going to get really far with that.

And then he was back in the catacombs, and though it was impossible so far beneath the ground, it seemed that a fog was swirling. The path was uneven, with jagged breaks, as if there had been an earthquake. Skeletal remains lay scattered about. A hand here, a tibia there, a jawless and gaping skull cast to one side.

He was walking toward the light cast by the sconces that burned at the entrances to the tunnels. Twelve of them. Twelve months, twelve phases of the moon. Twelve signs of the zodiac.

The earth was no longer ruptured here, but he couldn't escape the feeling that at any moment he could pitch forward….

Into an abyss.

The abyss from which the dark, swirling ground fog seemed to come. It had to be steam and gas, escaping from the earth's center, the cause of the quake, set free as the tectonic plates of the earth shifted.

It didn't matter where he walked, he told himself. He was dreaming. And yet, if he tripped in this dream, would it hurt? Would he bleed? If he fell deep into a never-ending darkness, would he live to wake up again?

The fog was dark, not like the silver mist he was used to. The fog was evil, he found himself thinking. An evil
that seeped from the ground. The thought disturbed him. For a moment he was tempted to run. But the light lay ahead. If he went back, he would be heading into nothing but the darkness.

The sound of a wind that couldn't begin to rise. He heard the clicking sound that meant the bones were coming together again. The skeletons were finding a way to guide him. To warn him? Or to send him forward to a worse damnation? He wasn't certain.

A skeleton, its shroud nothing but tatters, rose. He saw the broken face beneath the ragged fabric, saw the jaw that could not possibly work.

But the sound of words came on the wind.

“The light, the light, the light,” the skeleton whispered coarsely.

He knew that he would keep walking, would come to the place where the twelve paths met, and that he would see the dark figure there.

He felt a presence behind him. He spun around and was startled to see that Lucien was in his dream again. His expression was grim, but he nodded an acknowledgment to Scott. “Now this is bizarre,” Scott told him. He heard his own voice, a whisper in his dream.

“So it is,” Lucien agreed. “I didn't know that I would see you here again, but I know now why I am here.”

“Oh?”

“Because you cannot falter.”

“Then you should be going to Rome me with me.”

“I am not the one for that role. But I
am
with you. Helping you. Here.”

He strode at Scott's side, and he didn't falter. “We are reaching the circle,” he said at last.

And it was true. They had reached the light again, and the cloaked and hooded figure was there, standing next to the tomb. Scott thought this place might have been a chapel of sorts at one time. The oil lamp sat on that stone lid, the unknown figure standing by its side, like a sentinel.

Come to me…for the darkness threatens.

They both watched as the figure lifted its head.

For a moment Scott felt a sense of infinite peace. The face before him was old, very old, crinkled with time, and yet gentled with kindness and wisdom. The eyes seemed to hold the knowledge of the ages and a wealth of love. In his mind, he knew that this had to be Sister Maria Elizabeta, and he was anxious to touch her.

But the dark mist was becoming more prevalent. He turned slightly and he saw a rush of whirling, cloudlike darkness hurtling down all twelve passages toward them.

It was time to wake up.

He heard Lucien's voice, urging him. “Go, go! We've seen, but we cannot stay for the end until the end is changed.”

He looked back to the nun, so anxious to reach out and touch her.

But as he looked, the face changed. The kindly wrinkles of a long life lived in the pursuit of kindness were changing, the features rearranging themselves. As if in a movie, frame by frame, but quickly, a mask
was created, one of horror, with great gaping holes where the eyes had been and a fire burning within those holes. The lips curled up and inward, like a slash of cruelty against the teeth. The flesh faded and shrank, the cheeks sinking in. A twisted caricature of death suddenly looked his way, and a cackle, like a harsh laugh borne by the wind of darkness and evil, issued from the mouth as the darkness started to swirl….

“Scott.”

His name, spoken softly but insistently. He thought at first that he was choking in the dirt of the catacombs, but then he realized that he wasn't choking at all, he was being shaken.

He turned.

Melanie was leaning over him, her eyes wide with concern. He stared up into them, and it was only then that he realized he was on an airplane, surrounded by the living. The man across the aisle was snoring, which might have been the sound of the evil laughter he'd thought he'd heard. A flight attendant was hurrying down the aisle toward them, her brows drawn together in a frown.

“Is everything all right?” she demanded.

“We're fine. I'm so sorry. My friend fell asleep and had a nightmare,” Melanie explained for him.

The woman was still frowning. “You can't go saying things like that on an airplane, sir,” she said. “This is a new age of flying. We take words very seriously these days.”

He stared at her blankly, having no idea what he had done.

“I'm really sorry,” he said, as she turned and headed back to the galley.

He stared at Melanie, who was looking at him, but not unkindly. He took note of her eyes. They were so blue. But like Lucien's, they seemed to have a line of gold around the rim. He wondered why he'd never noticed it before.

“What did I do?” he asked.

She shrugged unhappily. “You cried out that death was coming,” she told him.

“What?”

“You said, ‘Death is coming, death is coming!' End quote. Luckily, most of the passengers are sleeping and didn't notice.”

“Lucien was there, in my dream. He told me to get out,” he said, wondering what her response would be.

She might laugh, or she might get angry.

She did neither.

“Then you needed to get out of the dream. You need to move fast whenever you hear him tell you what to do,” she said.

“What is he, then, a psychic?” Scott asked her.

She let out a breath of air. “Something like that,” she said. She hesitated for a minute. “Yes, he has amazing psychic powers. He can sense things and read people.” She looked at him, aware that he was staring at her. “It's a good thing. He's the head of…of our Alliance. He's strong. He has a vast store of knowledge. It's…good that he has a connection with you. Actually, he seems to have more of a connection with you than with me.”

“Does that…bother you?” he asked her.

She did laugh then. “Not in that way, trust me. Lucien has a wife, and she's…a dear friend, not to mention brilliant with a computer. We may be calling on Jade before this is through.”

We. She had said “we.” Maybe he wasn't going to be quite so alone after all.

“So you had the same dream as Lucien, of death and catacombs?” she said.

He nodded.

“I've dreamed of that place, too.”

“It's in Rome,” he said.

“Sister Maria Elizabeta will tell us more.”

Scott hesitated. “Could she be…the very evil we're searching to destroy?” he asked.

She stared at him. “I—I don't think so. Lucien would have known,” she said. “Why?”

“I saw her face.”

“When? Where? In a book?”

He shook his head. “In my dream. I assume it was her, anyway. And she was old and terribly wrinkled, but something about her was so beautiful, I couldn't look away. Then Lucien told me to get out—and she changed. She became a monster…a skeleton and a monster, just as the dark rush of…something…came after us.”

Melanie looked forward again, thoughtful.

“I can't believe that's possible. She's the Oracle. We have to believe that she's the Oracle.”

“And if she's not?”

“Then…I imagine…” Melanie began, faltering. She
gave herself a slight shake. “If she
is
the evil, then we have to destroy her.”

He leaned back in his chair. “My parents will be very angry.”

She looked at him again. “What?”

He shrugged, offering her a half smile. “I went to Catholic school. My folks will be really angry if I start beating up nuns.”

She leaned back and groaned. “Five more hours,” she said, then yawned.

“You can nod off,” he told her.

“I won't sleep. I'll watch over you—just in case you start dreaming, too,” he assured her. “I swear, I'll stay awake and hold a most devout vigil,” he said.

She laughed. “My cavalier,” she said.

She closed her eyes and eased back to rest.

He wasn't touching her, and yet he felt as if he were so close to her as to know her very soul.

He leaned back in his seat, hoping that the time would pass quickly. He was anxious to land in Rome.

Was the figure in the dark cloak and hood Sister Maria Elizabeta or the devil incarnate? He had to know. He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to block out the plane, to try to summon up the remnants of the dream. The place existed; he knew that it did. And the answers to the riddle lay in the earth, that he knew, as well.

He opened his eyes, not daring to keep them closed for long, and was startled to see Melanie sitting up and leaning over the small tray table, holding a pen and frantically drawing away.

“Melanie,” he said.

She didn't hear him. He realized then that she wasn't even looking at the paper. She was staring straight ahead.

“Melanie,” he said again, this time, more urgently.

Still she ignored him.

He watched her, wondering if he should shake her, do something more forcible to wake her. Then he glanced at the boarding pass on which she was drawing.

He saw the image take form.

She stopped suddenly and lay back down again. Her eyes closed, and she seemed to be sleeping as sweetly as any angel.

Scott picked up the drawing, lest a flight attendant take it away. He studied it for a moment, remembering his own dreams.

Melanie had drawn the doorway to their future—or to their deaths.

W
hen she awoke, Melanie found that Scott was staring at her, and she wasn't sure what his expression indicated. Hope? Faith? Even…affection? But he quickly masked his feelings and smiled. “Good morning. I'm glad you're awake. I didn't want to leave you alone, but nature is calling.”

“Hey,” she protested. “I've been half awake for a long time. I heard them announcing that breakfast would be coming through in a few minutes. This is an airplane, you know, not a hospital.”

He flashed her a smile, grabbed a toiletry bag from his backpack and left her. She was glad, though, that he hadn't left her alone. She hadn't dreamed, not a second, once she had fallen back to sleep, but it was nice to know that he'd been standing guard. Against what, on an airplane, she wasn't certain. But she was still glad. Despite what she'd said earlier, however, it troubled her that Lucien seemed to have such a strong connection to Scott. And she knew it wasn't an exaggeration on Scott's part, or hers, because Lucien had been the one to tell her that he'd met Scott in a dream.
The
dream.

About the catacombs and the land of the dead.

A few minutes later, Scott returned, looking clean-shaven and refreshed. He ran his tongue over his teeth and teased, “Minty clean.”

“I'm going to have to crawl over you again,” Melanie said. “I should have gotten out while you were up. Sorry.”

“Crawl away,” he told her. She caught his eyes, noticed the small smile curving his lips. There was definitely something sexual going on here. To her dismay, she actually felt a blush rise to her cheeks.

She returned just in time not to have to crawl over the breakfast cart as well as Scott, and she managed a reasonably coordinated re-entry to her window seat. The same flight attendant who'd been upset with him after his nightmare let out a sigh as Melanie struggled briefly with her tray. She smiled and thanked the woman anyway.

“There you see the true trouble with our world,” he told her, leaning close and whispering.

“The flight attendant is evil?” she asked him.

He leaned back, not responding at first except for that slight smile still on his lips. “I said something that scared her in my sleep, and now she thinks there's something odd about me. She doesn't know what it is, so, instantly, she mistrusts me. She would rather put up her defenses than take the time to learn what's going on. Isn't that what we all do all the time?”

“We're on a plane, and you were shouting about death. That's not a good thing to do these days.”

“Whatever. Here's my point. Planes aren't evil, men
are. People aren't afraid of planes, they're afraid someone evil, dangerous, might be on board.”

She paused in eating her cheese omelet. “What about a faulty engine?” she asked.

“Sometimes a faulty engine is traceable to human greed. Perhaps the airline didn't run a full maintenance check when it should have. Or the company that built the plane chose to use cheaper materials.”

“And what if everyone did everything right?”

“God does move in mysterious ways,” he said with a shrug.

“So your point isn't a point,” she argued.

He laughed. “Maybe not. Man doesn't create a hurricane or the sandstorms in the Sahara. I do think we're responsible for global warming, but ice ages have come and gone many times throughout the earth's history without our influence. Man didn't create volcanoes, and he still hasn't completely figured out fire. Who knows? Part of the Mayan prophecy has to do with the way the sun and the planets will align—and none of us can change the earth's orbit or control the sun. So maybe you're right and I don't have a point at all. Except that…well, at least currently, humankind's influence on the elements has caused calamity. And a prophecy can be self-fulfilling.” He looked over at her then. “So—do you believe in God? Allah? Jehovah? Odin, Zeus—a supreme being?”

“I get a choice, huh?”

“We all do.”

He was staring at her intently. She concentrated on her bowl of fruit and picked at it with her plastic fork. “Yes,” she said simply.

“So do you also believe in Satan? Or Hades? Or—”

“Good versus evil. Yes. And I believe in…life. And humanity.”

A male flight attendant picked up their trays, after offering them more coffee. Scott waited until he was gone. Then he drew something from his pocket. “I wasn't sure how to tell you about this, but you didn't wake up screaming. In fact, I don't think you were awake at all. But you did do this.”

She stared at him, stunned, as he produced her boarding pass. She had drawn over the airline symbols and the printing, and it took her a few moments to separate her pen marks from the flight record and make out what she had drawn.

It was a church standing on a hill. It appeared to be circular from the outside, and it wasn't in great shape. Plaster peeled, pillars were broken, and it bore a look of age and decay. It sat alongside a road, and all along the road were crosses, and she had even drawn the men dying on those crosses. The door to the church stood open, and someone seemed to be standing there, waiting, a dark figure in a hooded cloak. The drawing was unbelievably detailed. She winced; she knew that her fingers trembled.

“You should have wakened me,” she said.

“At first I didn't realize you were sleeping,” he told her. “You know, I spent five years at school studying drawing and design, and I couldn't do anything half that good. It's amazing.”

“You screamed out and I woke
you
up,” she said, still tense.

He shook his head. “We weren't about to get kicked off the plane.”

“They can't kick you off a plane.”

“Shot by an air marshal?” he suggested. “Or, more likely, have the authorities waiting for us when we get off the plane. Melanie, I would have been afraid to stop you.”

She inhaled nervously. “But…the earthquake. The things I draw happen,” she said angrily.

“Or happened,” he suggested. He pointed to the crucifixes along the road. “This took place two thousand years ago. It's the road that leads to the church. It's a map of the past.” He looked at the drawing thoughtfully for a moment. “And our future. This is where we have to go.”

“We already knew where we were going,” she said dully.

“Your drawings are important,” he assured her. “They may be creating a design.”

“A design? Of what?”

“I don't know, but it's part of what I do. I don't know what I'm talking about yet. But for either of us to pretend that these things aren't happening and that there isn't a reason we're here, being
drawn
here, is just foolish. We need to follow this path as quickly as possible.”

She didn't answer him, because just then the announcement to return their seatbacks to their upright positions and prepare for landing came on in English and Italian, and the entire plane seemed to spring to anticipatory motion. It had been a long flight.

She was eager to get off the plane herself.

Even if she wasn't eager to follow her “map.”

 

He should have known. They waltzed through customs, with Melanie demonstrating a seemingly perfect grasp of Italian. She charmed each person they met. And then, after they'd collected their luggage, he asked her, “Where are we staying?”

She arched a brow. “You came over here without a hotel reservation?”

“I had one, but I canceled it and figured I'd stay at your hotel instead. So where are we staying?”

“Maybe you shouldn't stay at my hotel.”

“Oh, no. We need to be near each other. Hey, I could wind up arrested, waking up in the middle of the night screaming about doomsday. You wouldn't want that on your conscience, would you?”

She stared at him with exasperation, but he knew she was going to give in. “You mean Lucien didn't creep into your dream to give you the name of my hotel?”

He shook his head. “No, and I forgot to ask him at the bar.”

She smiled, looking straight ahead.

“What? You're not going to tell me?” he asked. “Come on, I've proven to you that you need me.”

“You have?”

“You know you do.”

“I thought we'd proven that
you
need
me,
” Melanie said.

“Maybe we actually need each other,” Scott informed her.

Her smiled faded slightly, and she turned to study him with a strange look in her eyes. “Maybe I'm actually worried about you. Perhaps I don't want you getting hurt.”

He inhaled a deep breath. “Let's see, me, big tall guy. You, delicate blonde.”

“Member of the Alliance, a group of people who have a knack for handling situations like this, and hardly tiny and petite,” she corrected.

He started to protest again, but she waved a hand airily and gave him a perfect Valley girl impression. “Chill, dude. I wasn't going to make you take your own cab.”

She started walking. He grinned, shaking his head, and followed.

He was glad that Melanie was as well versed as she was in the language when their cab driver started to explain something about the route he was going to take.
“Permesso, per piacere,”
he said, then went on to talk about an accident that was blocking the street. Melanie replied easily, telling him it was fine, to take the best route he knew.

Scott had been to Rome several times. He loved it; there were few finer cities for an art student to visit. The art and architecture of centuries was layered atop itself, the genius of ancient Rome alongside medieval treasures and the brilliance of the Renaissance. All combined in a city that was vital and vibrant, alive and bustling. Rome had welcomed the modern world with a loving embrace while never forgetting the past. The airport was sparkling and new and navigable; it was
easy to catch a cab, and as they rode, he looked out the window and saw remnants of the empire alongside the magnificent architecture of the dark ages, along with the fabulous palaces of the powerful, relics of a time when the country had yet to be unified, and was a conglomeration of duchies and city-states.

“The Seven Hills of Rome,” he said, as if to himself.

She glanced at him.

“So you know the city?”

“Somewhat. And you?”

She was staring out the window. “Somewhat,” she told him.

“You speak Italian.”

“I speak a few languages. But I see that you know a bit, as well.”

“Really? How?”

“I can tell when you understand what someone is saying. It's in your eyes.”

“Catholic boy. I had some Latin,” he told her.

“Ah.”

The Eternal City. The Palatine Hill, the Coliseum and the ancient wonders still seemed to dominate the landscape. It was good, Scott thought—they provided a sense of place at all times, even as they reminded a visitor of how much time and history this place held, and the strange workings of society through the years.

They moved through the city, alive with bumper-to-bumper traffic, honking horns and a sea of humanity, and Scott watched as they traversed the Piazza Venetia and passed the enormous monument to Victor Emmanuel, who became the first king of united Italy
in 1861. Built in the late eighteen hundreds, it was grand—and definitely a landmark, but he preferred the older masterpieces, the multitude of churches built throughout the centuries, baroque, medieval, rococo—intricate and detailed, almost to a fault.

They drove by the Coliseum, and Scott stared toward the stretch of the Forum beyond. The stray cats of Rome found a home among the pillars, the last remnants of a great empire. They were as common as the tourists flocking over the ruins with their maps and guidebooks. Then he frowned as he looked up at the sun, then back to the ruins. There was the strangest display of light and shadow that day. He thought that maybe the plentiful cats were creating the flitting shadows, but when he blinked and saw nothing, he leaned back in his seat for a moment, thinking that he was really tired. Night-owl flights and time changes always played havoc with his system.

“What?” Melanie asked him.

“Shadows,” he said.

“Shadows?”

“In the Forum. Look, it's like they're dancing between the pillars.”

She looked, but they were already rounding the Coliseum, and the Forum was fading into the background.

At last they turned down the Via Veneto and passed by the Capuchin monastery. He knew it well. Visitors could visit the very special altars there, built of bones. The brothers had practiced a strange form of art, creating magnificent designs from the bones of their
deceased: intricate patterns on the walls, chandeliers of pelvic bones, candles set in skulls, creating chapels and altars where the living could reflect. They didn't fear the dead, or desecrate them; they honored them with their work. He suddenly found himself remembering an epitaph he had read there once, written for the skeletal figure of a long-gone brother, still clad in his brown robes.
As you are now, so I once was; as I am now, so shall you be.