The Ophelia Prophecy (7 page)

Moment by moment, a new world was opening up to her. A world where other landscapes existed. A world where there were pockets of humanity who hadn’t submitted to their enemy.

“The existence of this city of yours perplexes me,” he continued. “But we’ll save that for later.”

They’d reached the end of the ditch, where light streamed through a slightly askew, final section of roof.

Beck reached up and grasped the wire, his shoulders hardening as he shifted the section to one side. Then he stepped onto a ledge cut into the turf, grunting as he hoisted them both out of the hole.

He eased her down onto hard-packed earth. “Stay on the path here and you won’t get wet—it’s bog all around. The path will take us to the road. Pavement’s a bit broken up, but I think you’ll manage.”

The others seeped out of the bog around them, and Beck motioned to the priest. “You take the lead, and I’ll bring up the rear. Finn…?” The greasy little man strode over to join them. “You and Alice are in charge of the prisoners. Don’t let your guard down for a second.”

“Will do, boss,” replied Finn, managing another lewd smile her direction before he turned to his charges.

*   *   *

Pax remained on alert, watching and waiting. He knew the best strategy was to keep quiet and cooperate until his captors began to relax their vigilance—as much as it went against his nature. He also knew better than to underestimate them, despite the unlikelihood any of them had military training. But it was only a matter of time until their inexperience loosed an opportunity.

As they made their way along the ribbon of broken road, he tried to view this cold, damp place through Asha’s eyes. Her departure from Sanctuary had been equivalent to stepping onto an alien world. She was wet and muddy and must have been cold, but she hugged herself for warmth and kept moving, gaze constantly shifting to take in everything. Budding oak trees, moss-covered stones, early spring blossoms … it must seem a riot of growth to a child of the desert.

When they reached the turnoff for the abbey—clearly marked by rusty but still intact signs in both English and Gaelic—Beck and his people stopped to confer. Iris cast Pax a warning glance as he took a couple slow steps toward Asha. He was risking refreshing his captors’ watchfulness, but this was important. And it could be the only chance he would get.

Alarm flashed in her eyes as he approached, and he watched her gaze scan toward the leader.

“Don’t trust him,” he said in a low voice.

Her gaze snapped back to his face.

“Get away from her,” ordered Finn, waving a blade as he returned his attention to the prisoners.

Pax stepped back toward Iris, whose scorching gaze was eloquent:
What the hell are you doing?

He’d followed his instincts. Iris didn’t know he’d told Asha who they were, which made an alliance between Asha and Beck dangerous. If he could insert a sliver of doubt, it might stop her from telling the man everything.

That much made sense to him. What
didn’t
make sense was the fact he also felt a real concern for her safety—concern that served neither him nor his sister.

But these people would not have survived on squeamishness. Beck’s charm was calculated to relax Asha’s guard. To earn her trust. No doubt his next move would be to assess how they could best exploit her.

It might not mean they would hurt her. But then again it might. And enemy or not he wasn’t okay with that.

But as she’d chided him on Banshee, she wasn’t stupid. He’d paid close attention to her conversation with Beck. Beck had asked her a direct question about Pax’s identity, and she had evaded. This would make it much harder for her to tell the truth later. It suggested she had doubts of her own.

They followed the road through a series of car parks, over a footbridge, and onto a paved walk that rounded a lake en route to the abbey. The building was picturesque, designed to look like a castle though clearly built in more recent times. The gray granite façade included crenellations and little towers, but there was nothing defensive about the rows of large ground-floor windows.

The setting was romantic in the extreme, with the abbey reflected in the still, dark surface of the lake. Trees lined the path, twisting to bow at water’s edge, and hills loomed on all sides like silent sentries.

Visible signs of human habitation were subtle. An empty bucket left beside the path. A shirt caught in the branches of a tree. A dozen peat bricks left in a jumble on the overgrown lawn. Nothing that would have attracted attention from a Scarab. They were more concerned with actual activity on the ground. Smoke, or signs of agriculture.

As they approached the arched entry doors, propped open with stones, the cry of an infant pealed forth, stamping the silence irrevocably—
here is life
.

“Take the prisoners and secure them with the other one,” Beck said to the priest. “I want you to keep watch on them personally.” The priest nodded. “We’ll question them later.”

“What about the human woman?” asked Finn.

Pax noticed Asha moving subtly closer to the leader. Beck fixed the scarred man with a look so severe it made him shuffle back a step. “She’s not a prisoner, and she’s not your concern.”

“Let’s go,” the priest said to Finn.

Beck started across the section of pavement in front of the abbey, motioning Asha to follow. Her gaze flickered to Pax before she turned, and he didn’t miss the flash of uncertainty.

Good
.
It’ll make her careful
.

*   *   *

Asha followed Beck around the end of a wall dividing the abbey from the lake, and they scrambled down a short, grassy slope to the main path. The asphalt walkway had been riven by time and tree roots, and rough-edged hillocks made it impossible to walk without watching the ground.

At the path’s end was a small chapel tucked in the shadow of a rocky, near-vertical slope. Constructed of stone, the structure was neat and perfectly preserved, down to its pretty arched window.

“What’s this building used for?” asked Asha.

“My quarters. No one will disturb us here.”

Beck held the door for her, but she hesitated. One corner of his lips crooked up. “You haven’t gotten over being afraid of me.”

She leveled her gaze at him. “I know almost nothing about you.”

“True enough,” he agreed with a nod. “We can talk outside if it’d make you more easy. But the weather’s taking a turn.”

Beck moved into the chapel and picked up a couple of oblong, earthy-looking bricks.

“If you come in I’ll get the fire going. It’s against the rules before dark, but with the wind and rain picking up I think we’re safe enough.”

He tossed the bricks into a stove that looked to be a recent addition. It rested next to a window, its rusted pipe fed through a broken pane, with cloth stuffed around it to keep out the draft. The stove door was missing.

As he worked on the fire, Asha hovered near the doorway, scanning the compact building’s mostly empty interior. Where the congregation would have sat there was now a long table and two remaining pews. A mattress rested on the dais, and next to it was a nightstand constructed of books. Three stubby candles had been placed on the top volume, and Asha winced to see wax had pooled and run over onto the spines of a half-dozen others.

More boxes of books had been shoved against the back wall, under the biggest window. The glass panes were clear rather than stained, and would let in the morning light. She had no experience with preservation of physical books, but she knew it was not an appropriate place for storing them.

“Now then, we’ll soon have you warm.” Beck stood up as fingers of orange flame caressed around the straight edges of the peat bricks. The space filled with a pleasant, earthy aroma.

He dragged one of the pews closer to the fire.

Her heart beat faster with each step she took into the room. But the damp cold was a more powerful influence for the moment, and finally she sank into the pew.

As Beck moved onto the dais, she stretched her arms and legs toward the stove, rubbing her forearms while she kept one eye on her host.

Turning his back to her, he removed the Manti guns from his waistband and began to undress. Her eyes jerked back to the fire, heart in her throat. She’d half risen from her seat before she realized he was changing his wet clothes.

Her gaze moved furtively over his shoulders and back, and she thought of Paxton. Like him, Beck was tall, broad, muscular … and scarred. Below one shoulder blade was an irregular patch of shiny, pink skin.

“What happened to your back?” she asked without thinking—he’d know now that she’d been looking at him.

He glanced over his shoulder, and her cheeks flamed.

“Burned,” he replied. “The bugmen torched our refugee camp. Only a handful of us survived.”

Asha had never known anyone who’d experienced direct conflict with the enemy. The virus had done most of their work for them. “I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.”

She went back to staring into the fire, and a few minutes later he joined her on the pew, leaving a gentlemanly gap of about an arm’s length between them. Still, she fidgeted in her seat.

He leaned his elbows on his knees, spreading his long fingers in front of the fire. “I want to hear
your
story, Asha. How did you come to be taken by those two?” He kept his gaze on the crackling peat instead of her, and she sank against the back of the pew, breathing a little easier.

“I don’t know exactly.”

He frowned into the flames. “I don’t understand.”

She collected the pieces together in her head, assembling them into the most coherent explanation she could, considering the gaping holes in her memory.

When she finished, he studied her with furrowed brow. “Have you ever lost your memory before?”

“No. I mean—not as far as I know.”

“Do you think someone’s tampered with it intentionally?”

The tension from her shoulders eased down to settle as weariness in the center of her chest. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve all but given up trying to figure it out.” Tears stung her eyes, but the heat dried them before they could fall. “I just want to find a way to go home.”

“Tell me about home,” Beck prompted in a low voice.

She studied his softened features, and the sympathy she felt from him warmed her inside as the fire had warmed her out, loosening her reserve. But as she told him about Sanctuary, he looked increasingly confused.

Finally he shook his head. “I don’t understand it, love. I can’t think of why the bugmen would leave you alone like they have.”

“They’re superstitious about the rock formations—the arches and pinnacles. The Manti have a sort of reverence for … for naturally formed anomalies.”

He eyed her skeptically. “But you were picked up there by this captain.”

She nodded. “Near the border. I didn’t know they ever came that close. But I don’t think he was supposed to be there.”

Beck’s lips parted, and his gaze distanced as he thought about what she’d said. She could see that something didn’t sit right.

“You have web access in Sanctuary, and working computers?”

“Working computers, and our own network. But there
is
no more web, as far as we know.”

He leaned forward. “So how did you come by the information in your Archive?”

“The data was all collected and preserved by the woman who founded our city, Ophelia Engle. It was just a refugee camp back then. She’d been preparing for global apocalypse for thirty years.”

The name “Ophelia” tickled at Asha’s memory for some reason, but before she could chase the thought down its hole, Beck said, “Thirty
years
?”

Asha nodded. “She had a crawler that downloaded and dumped data onto storage drives. She put some thought into what to collect, but none into how to organize or tag it. We’re still sorting out the mess.”

“Is she still alive?”

“No. About fifteen years ago she suddenly went crazy. Or crazi
er
. Drowned herself in the Colorado River. That’s when everyone started calling her ‘Ophelia.’ But a small group of people who were close to her took the whole thing very seriously—believed she was a prophet, and kept records of all the crazy stuff she’d said.” Until their leader disappeared a year later. Along with his data drive.

“Sounds like a woman worth knowing,” replied Beck, smiling in an attempt at lightness.

Asha returned the smile. “I don’t remember her very well. But I wouldn’t have a job without her.”

Sitting back from the fire, Beck said, “So the information in your Archive is all dated.”

“Yes, purely historical. Older than the war now—more than twenty-five years.”

“And you have no interaction with the Manti?”

His expression had sobered, and she began to feel uneasy. “No. Why do you ask?”

“Because it doesn’t add up, love. I can accept that they’re spooked by your city. I know far less about them than you do. But I don’t imagine they’d have to set foot in it to destroy it. I’ve seen what they can do. They must have a reason for leaving you alone so long.”

Coldness spread out from her belly as she remembered a question she’d asked Paxton back on Banshee. A question he’d never answered.

Why does an amir need to send his son to watch over the defenseless remains of his conquered enemies?

*   *   *

Impervious to the ages as the abbey appeared from the outside, the inside told a different story. All those signs of human habitation Pax had watched for on their approach were contained within the building itself. Lines for drying laundry, stacks of fuel for their fires, piles of animal bones and other refuse. The opulence suggested by the building’s exterior had been rubbed out completely. Furnishings were spare and battered. Smoke had blackened the walls.

The people themselves—mostly women and children—were raggedly clothed. Pinched, soiled, and watchful. Children clung to their mothers’ legs, wide-eyed. One woman rested against a wall bouncing a fussy infant. As her gaze shifted to the doorway, where he and Iris waited with the others, she cried out and hurried from the room.