Those visions frightened Sibyl at one level.
At another level entirely, she felt something soft and liberal and naïve die within her. And found she didn't mourn its passing.
Nobody raped Sibyl Johnson and got away with it.
It was a hard, bitter lesson, but she understood at last why Granny Johnson had proudly displayed a needlepoint sampler which read, "A woman with a gun is nobody's victim."
Sibyl took a deep breath and let it out silently.
Hating Bericus and Tony Bartlett wouldn't help her find Charlie and Lucania. Sibyl kept doggedly on toward the House of the Stags and pressed flat against buildings or recessed doorways any time she saw groups of men with torches or lanterns. Terror of recapture left her trembling in the darkness long after such groups passed by. Her progress was excruciatingly slow. Once Bericus himself stormed past her hiding place, several of his slaves trailing behind him like the wind-tossed tail of a kite caught in a storm.
She huddled in the recessed niche where she'd taken refuge for long minutes, until her heart stopped its triphammer lurching. Eventually, she found the courage to set out again. Sibyl finally gained a vantage point that let her observe the entrance to Bericus' townhouse. Looks clear and quiet... .
She carefully searched each of the streets adjacent to the house—there were only two, since one side abutted the House of the Mosaic Atrium and the fourth side was an open sun terrace—but found no trace of Charlie, his daughter, or his horse. She returned to a vantage point from which she could watch the entrance and prayed Bericus didn't spot her.
At least an hour later, the door opened. Several of Bericus' slaves emerged furtively. Their low voices carried above the rumble of the volcano.
"I still say this is madness!"
"That mountain isn't? I'll risk Bericus, but not that fiery mountain!"
"Well, even if the mountain don't get him, maybe the Emperor will! I tell you, they're on to him! Why else would a soldier be after him? Him and that sibyl he bought? You heard what his carriage driver said. She warned him this morning and he took her anyway and now Vesuvius is on fire and the Imperial Army's sent a centurion after him! Just watch and see if I stick around another night!"
Sibyl watched them leave and chewed her thumbnail ragged. Charlie had come and gone. Had discovered she was missing and ridden on, searching elsewhere. But where? Again, logic dictated only one possible destination: the beach. He would know they had to get away—and that the sea offered the only real escape left them. She groaned and clenched her hands together.
She couldn't think of a likelier destination. With or without her, he had to get out of the city. And they were running out of time. It had taken what felt like hours to maneuver her way from the waterfront through town to this vantage point.
And now she had to go back. Had to face those appalling breakers again. So tired she could scarcely make her legs hold her weight, Sibyl hauled herself back to her feet. Did she dare the sea stairs? They looked dark, safe... . She decided to risk it a second time, since that was the closest way to the beach. Sibyl found the entrance and groped her way downward in utter blackness.
By the time she fled down the steps into the breakers, the night was well advanced. A quick glance at Vesuvius left her chilled. Gouts of flame tore upwards. Funnel-shaped coils of fire and glowing ash which cooled into darkness on their way up were eventually lost in the stratosphere-climbing blackness. Up to twelve miles above Vesuvius' crater, sheets and curtains of fire tore through the sky, caught by cross winds at various elevations. That fire shivered and licked southeastward with every gust of high-altitude wind, toward Pompeii and Stabiae.
Sibyl couldn't be certain, but felt at a primal level she might have only minutes left in which to activate the recall gadget. Tony warned me I'd need fifteen minutes. Do I have fifteen minutes left? She found shelter in the dark lip of a boat chamber. Far out toward the horizon, nearly invisible between wave crests, Sibyl saw the winking light of lanterns as someone made a last-minute dash for safety. She didn't have the courage to hope that someone might include Charlie Flynn and his beautiful little girl.
She turned away from the crashing stretch of earthquake-ravaged breakers and swore softly. Then, tears stinging her eyes, she dug into the pouch at her waist. The reassuring glow of the LED display startled her for a moment. She'd half forgotten modern niceties during the past few days. Sibyl paused briefly. Was that all it had been? A little less than a week, subjectively? She shook her head. A week in the life of a time traveler... .
She wasn't entirely certain of the wisdom of activating the recall button this close to town, but a sense of extreme urgency had crept across her. That urgency prevented her from seeking a quieter spot outside town. The hole in time was undoubtedly going to be spectacular, if what she'd seen on a back road in Florida were anything to judge by. There were still far too many people up and about for her to feel comfortable about opening the portal here. But when the column of ash and gas belching out of Vesuvius began to collapse, it would race down the slopes as a fiery avalanche and separate into two equally lethal phases.
Not as though there would be witnesses to the second phase. No one living in Herculaneum would need to worry about the slow-moving pyroclastic flow of molten pumice and mud which would eventually engulf the city and bury it beneath sixty feet of solid rock. They'd be long dead from the fiery surge of two-hundred-degree gas, ash, and pumice which would rip through the city at speeds of anywhere from one hundred sixty to four hundred eighty miles per hour.
Even at its slowest speed, the surge that killed Herculaneum would reach them in a fraction more than four minutes after it blasted its way clear of Vesuvius' crater.
And I need fifteen minutes... .
Sibyl stepped out of her shelter and waded cautiously into the wild breakers. She cast a final look at the virulent red glow of Vesuvius' eye—
The shape of the eruption cloud had changed. Its color shifted wildly, shot through with whitish-yellow masses, punctuated by tornado shapes and flaring sheets of withering orange and red.
"Forgive me, Charlie."
She mashed the recall button.
Nothing happened.
Not that she was certain what to expect.
The glow from the LED display remained unchanged. Uneasily she looked again toward Vesuvius, then back at the display screen. Then blinked. And held her breath.
The numbers were changing.
Sibyl watched, transfixed. What, exactly, did those numbers mean? Absently, she rubbed the hairs on her arm, then paused to frown. Every hair stood erect, like winter-dry fur on a cat, shedding static electric sparks every time it's petted.
The air smelled like lightning.
Deeply uneasy, Sibyl backed farther into the arched boat chamber. From that refuge she watched in silent awe as a time storm brewed above the narrow beach at Herculaneum. Seemingly nothing more untoward than an extension of the black hell boiling out of the volcano, thick black clouds formed out of nowhere and clustered low above the furious sea. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud.
The lightning was pink.
Despite possible dangers, Sibyl felt herself drawn out into the open to watch the display. She stood her ground against the sea and stared. Massive, cloud-splitting bolts stabbed from the time storm into the roaring volcanic eruption. The air began to tremble as violently as the ground.
A cracking bolt blasted into wave-churned sand not five feet from Sibyl. She jumped backwards even before she screamed. Slowly, through the numbing aftershock of thunder, it occurred to Sibyl that in order to get through the time doorway, she would have to run a gauntlet of that lightning. Sibyl slid to her haunches in the boat shelter. Oh, God, I have to go through that... .