Authors: H. G. Nadel
Eternal (25 page)
“But what if it hadn’t worked?”
“I thought it was worth the risk. I knew if I lived, I would have found a key to extended longevity and possibly proof of an eternal soul.” He lowered his voice until she had to lean forward to hear him. “And if I died, I believed I would finally be with my son.”
“You wanted to die?”
“No. I wanted my son to be alive. And you know what, Julia? He is.” His eyes shined. “As I left my body, I saw him, floating in a divine light. He told me we’d be together again one day, but not now. That’s when you brought me back. Only I wasn’t alone on the trip.”
“Fulbert.”
“Yes. I tried to fight him. But … he was strong.”
“But he’s gone now?”
His eyes looked up, as if tracking an internal inventory of his brain. “Yes. But while Fulbert shared my brain, I saw everything he saw: past, present, future. I know about Heloise and Pierre, about you and Austin. I know the hell you went through before, and I’m so sorry to have put you through hell again. I’m just so sorry.”
Julia put a hand on his arm. “I can forgive you, on one condition.”
“Anything.”
“Help me break the news about all of this to my dad. I don’t know whether he’ll be elated that we made breakthrough research or furious that I went behind his back.”
But when I tell him that I saw Mom, he’ll forgive me.
Julia smiled at the thought.
“It’s a deal.” Bertel grimaced. “Happy to help another skeptic in the Jones family take an enlightened path, although I’m sorry to have been the one to personally introduce you to the dark side of the supernatural.”
“I’m just glad you’re back to your old self, Dr. Bertel.”
A woman’s hand touched her shoulder. “Excuse me, miss?” It was one of the paramedics.
“Yes?”
“Detective Moore is refusing to go to the hospital unless you come with him.”
“Oh, is he?”
“You look as if you could use a trip there too. That’s a pretty nasty cut on your hip.”
She looked down. The cut was minor compared to before. The one on her knee had vanished, leaving only dried blood behind. “You should’ve seen me before … never mind. After you.” She gestured for the young woman to lead the way.
As Julia limped after her, Tyler floated into view. “Jeez, Julia, I’m so sorry. Bertel said he was with the FBI. He had ID and everything. He said Austin was a bad cop. When I agreed to talk to you for him, he Tased me. I felt like I was floating outside my body, like a balloon at the end of a long string.”
“The silver cord,” Julia muttered.
“Then you, like, pulled me back in. What the hell are you screwed-up scientists up to?”
“It’s a long story. But I’m sure you’ll like it. There are zombies involved.”
“No fair to make fun of me just because I like video games.”
“I’m not making fun. This is for real, Ty. I’ll explain later. But right now I need to go.”
“So you can ride to the hospital with your new boyfriend?”
Julia pressed her lips together and nodded.
Tyler gave her a sad smile. “He seems like a good guy.”
“He is.”
“Sorry I wasn’t.” Julia was surprised to see Tyler’s cheeks so red. She didn’t know he was capable of embarrassment, much less shame.
She kissed him on one burning cheek. Then, as she stepped back, she saw a movement out of the corner of her eye. Tyler turned toward the movement, then pushed Julia out of the way of a large stone clattering into one of the ambulances behind them.
“Are you crazy, Rob?” Tyler yelled. He sprinted over to his friend, grabbed a slingshot from his hand, and threw it to the ground.
“That catapult is mine!” Rob yelled.
“Snap out of it!” Tyler threw a punch to Rob’s chin that knocked him into the sand. “Hey Julia, will you come here and do your mad scientist Taser routine or something?”
Julia obliged. While Tyler tried to explain to Rob what just happened, she joined the impatient paramedic. She spared one glance back at Tyler, who was helping Rob limp away.
“I thought you had it in for her, man,” she heard Rob say to Tyler.
“That was the old me.”
Julia chuckled and then turned to step up into the ambulance, where Austin was sitting up, waiting. “Problems with your old boyfriend?”
“Says the guy whose old girlfriend just drowned him,” she quipped.
“Really, really, really old girlfriend.”
“Let’s forget about the past. All I care about is spending the future with you.”
He pulled her close and kissed her deeply. She could feel a thousand years of longing, waiting, suffering, suddenly coalescing into a passion both overwhelming and tentative. She could feel the hunger in his kiss along with something more. Desire. Not to conquer but to unite, to fuse the two halves of the same soul kept apart for a millennium.
As he pulled back to gaze into her eyes, she knew one thing for certain. Even if all hell were unleashed on the earth tomorrow, their love could survive any condition, overcome any obstacle, pass any test. Their love was eternal.
EPILOGUE
G
enevieve breathed in rhythm with the splashing of her feet as she ran through the surf. She glanced over her shoulder and smiled as she saw the tide washing away her footprints. She thought she heard a gunshot over the sound of the waves, but she didn’t stop or even slow down. She’d waited too long for this return to life to give up her newfound freedom so soon. She knew the soldiers would soon be looking for her, if they weren’t already.
Police,
an answering thought echoed.
Right, police.
Whatever they were called, she hoped some of the new recruits from the beach party would kick up enough of a disturbance to distract them for a while.
Genevieve risked another glance over her shoulder and saw beams of light bouncing through the dark.
Lanterns,
she thought,
maybe torches. Flashlights,
an answering thought echoed back to her again. Somehow, she was able to pull the knowledge from Nadia’s brain while maintaining control of her body. “They’re far enough away—now’s a good time to make a break for it.” She cut across the beach at a run, until she reached the Pacific Coast Highway.
She stared at the few metal carriages—
cars. Yes, of course
—cars driving past, until she saw what she was looking for: A middle-aged man driving alone in a car that looked expensive. A man who yearned for power would likely also be a man who yearned for young flesh. She started to wave, but then realized she should stick out her thumb.
It worked. He pulled over and opened the passenger door. She ran over and hopped in.
“Your clothes are soaked! Are you okay?” His eyes held genuine concern.
Genevieve gave him a worried look, confident her attractive young face and body would do most of the work for her. “He threw me in the water, even though he knew I wasn’t a strong swimmer. I had to get away.”
He shook his head. “You poor thing. I understand. Get in, get in.”
“Thank you sooo much. You’re a life-saver.”
He smiled. “Where you heading?”
“The dream capital of the world.”
“I’m not going all the way to LA, but I can get you to Huntington Beach.”
“Perfect.” She put a hand on his arm. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”
Genevieve settled back into her seat, smiled, and sighed. She knew that with Nadia’s knowledge of this modern world, she could have more power than she’d ever had in England, during a life that was growing more distant with each minute. And she would use every bit of it for revenge.
On a remote section of beach, two men dressed in black walked toward a teenage boy who was carrying an automatic weapon. Before the kid could make a move, one of the men pulled out a handgun at lightning speed. He shot the young man right through the heart. The gun had a silencer; and between that, the surf, and an early morning breeze, the muffled report was lost. The men picked up the body, propped it up between them, and flung an arm over each of their shoulders, so that anyone seeing them in the twilight might assume the kid was drunk, not dead. They carried him to a waiting van.
The van was painted with a scene from the Arabian Nights, but the three men waiting inside looked anything but whimsical. Dressed in black, their mood matched their attire. One sat behind the wheel; one slid open the door for the pair on the beach to throw the body inside; and one jumped out with a bucket and filled it with the trail of bloody sand the dead boy had left behind, removing all tell-tale evidence of the murder that had just taken place. On the back of the bucket man’s right hand was a small black tattoo: a cross inside a circle, with two words written beneath it:
Vigil Dei. God’s Watcher.
He then jumped in the van, slid the door shut behind him, and said, “Go!”
The man who’d slid open the door pulled a cell phone from his pocket, his hand bearing a matching tattoo. “We believe we got the few who remained after the girl freed most of them,” he spoke into the phone. “It seems Fulbert’s method was slower than hers. However, one is still at large—a young woman. We’ll find her and remove her. But a few teenagers have some idea about what happened, as well as at least a couple of the police.” He paused to listen. “Very well, Your Excellency.”
Nearly 7,000 miles away, a white-haired man dressed in a long black tunic hung up an antique telephone. He clenched and unclenched his right hand, which was emblazoned with the same tattoo as that of the five men in the van at the beach. He walked across a large room furnished with centuries-old antiques and stopped at the floor-to-ceiling windows, where he pulled aside one of the heavy drapes to look out over the busy city. The sight of sunset turning the stones of Paris to gold usually soothed him.
But not today.