Lingering terror of thunderstorms, of lightning and murderous wind, held her immobile inside the boat chamber. She hunched her shoulders and watched, shell-shocked, as the night grew wilder. Memory—traitorous and cruel—returned her to the black night of her childhood when the tornado had ripped through their house, spewing lightning and death in its path.
Screams from very close by roused her from near-stupor. Vesuvius... New terror, more shockingly immediate, drove her to her feet. Sibyl stumbled out onto the beach, cringing from the lightning which now crashed all around.
Vesuvius had gone mad.
Fire crawled down its slopes. Great, surging waves of flame blasted upward and outward, not in a ground-hugging lava flow, but in a boiling, seething mass a half-mile high. She was unable to tear her gaze from it. It split into distinct waves as lighter elements separated from heavier components, gas from ash, ash from pumice, pumice from the ground-hugging pyroclastic flow...
All of it spilled down the mountainside. The first rolling wave blasted halfway down. Then the leading edge dissipated on the wind. But the weight and mass of the next surge was right behind it. Sibyl caught her breath in a sob that hurt her whole body. The second wave roared closer still, headed on a crash course for Herculaneum.
First surge at midnight, fourth an hour after that—it'll kill Pompeii—fifth surge 7:00 a.m., last surge 8:30, and it'll blast all the way to Misenum... .
Sibyl wouldn't have to worry about surges two through seven. Number one was going to kill her. Terror-stricken people fled right at her. The first refugees to reach her were the members of a wealthy family. They carried lanterns which swung insanely as they ran. The woman screamed, demanded to be taken away. Children cried or—worse—clung to their parents' hands and clothes, wrapped in terror too deep for expression. More refugees arrived. Some led hard-to-manage horses. People spread out along the seawall, sobbing frantically for boats.
Someone actually managed to launch one. A riot ensued as people swamped it, trying to get aboard.
Four minutes. How much time's gone? How much is left? WHERE'S THE DAMNED TIME PORTAL?
A heavy man slammed into, then past her. Sibyl stumbled badly. Curses scalded her ears. No boat in the chamber. More people crowded onto the beach. Lightning blazed. White faces lit with a hellish pink glow. The panicked crowd shoved into the boat chamber. Sibyl was pressed toward the rear by a throng that would soon be too thick to push past.
Oh, shit... .
Sibyl kicked and shoved. When people refused to give ground and let her past, she stabbed blindly with her dirk. Cries of pain sickened her. "Let me out! Let me through!"
Sibyl shoved until she stumbled onto open beach again. The sea sucked back from the seawall, crashed forward. She staggered into the wall, half dazed by the weight of water. How many minutes had passed? She glanced up at the mountain—and froze.
The surge was enormous. It was halfway to the city already. She whirled around to stare wildly, but the blinding white doorway in time was nowhere to be seen. For one agonizing moment, Sibyl was paralyzed by fear more intense than anything she had ever felt.
Then, surrounded by mad lightning and screaming people, an eerie calm settled over her. Panic-stricken cries, crashing thunder, the roar of the volcanic surge... All of it faded into near silence. It was hopeless. The blast alone would knock her off her feet, scour the skin from her body with blistering heat. But it was all she could do. And it beat running in frantic circles waiting to die.
Sibyl began to hyperventilate.
Who knew? Maybe she could hold her breath long enough to crawl through and spend a year or so in a burn unit somewhere, growing new skin... .
Then, shockingly, hands closed around her throat. She moved blindly, slashed out at her attacker. Too tall for a Roman... Lightning blazed. She found herself staring into Tony Bartlett's mad eyes. His face was waxy white, his features contorted. He was shouting at her, but she couldn't hear him. Sibyl broke his hold and windmilled backwards. She sucked down air. He lunged again. Sibyl stumbled away and was knocked down by a crashing wave.
She coughed salt water. Tried to get away from crushing hands. Why hadn't he died? Then an immense black shape reared up out of the night. A horse...
"CHARLIE!"
No familiar voice answered that primal scream. The horse stood on its hind legs, fighting a grip on its trailing lead rope. The man holding that rope wasn't Charlie Flynn. Then Tony Bartlett slammed into whoever it was and seized the rope himself. The horse's hooves smashed into the surf within inches of Sibyl's head. She lost sight of Tony as she scrambled to her feet. Another glare of lightning showed Tony astride the horse, clutching his shoulder and the horse's mane.
Then it happened.
Between them, a brilliant crack of white light opened out of thin air. Oh, God, please, it's too late, it won't open fast enough... Peripheral vision showed her a looming wall of fire bearing down on them. She could hear the roar as the fiery avalanche swept through the dying town. Could smell the brimstone stench as death blasted closer...
With agonizing slowness the sliver of white light widened. Became a bar. A window. Screams and sobs for divine help rose in a shriek behind her. A frantic look over her shoulder revealed a half-mile high tsunami of fire crashing down on her. Glowing white streaks and seething balls of incandescence flashed through it.
The cresting mass swirled orange and red where it was cooler. In places it was shot through with black smoke and pumice. It engulfed buildings, whole city blocks, sweeping down through the town at tornado speeds. Where the white streaks and glowing masses touched buildings, they ignited. People ran screaming toward the seawall in front of it, were swallowed alive... .
The leading edge was less than a block away and coming like a derailed freight train. The time portal wasn't quite as wide as a closet doorway. Just wide enough if she didn't misjudge.
Sibyl drew a frantic breath of air—
—and launched herself straight into the still-widening glare. Three feet away, Tony Bartlett kicked the horse after her. As she fell forward into the portal, Sibyl twisted, disoriented and lost. She caught a final, horrifying glimpse of Herculaneum. That glimpse burned into her mind with the force of nightmare: a woman with hideous buck teeth, dressed as a whore in a short tunica, stood frozen atop the seawall. The prostitute was pointing directly at the portal, transfixed, her form lit insanely by the light pouring out of the time doorway. Her mouth worked, shaping words...
Venus and Mars, help us—
The fiery avalanche caught her up and flung her to the beach.
I've seen her bones, the buck-toothed woman thrown from the seawall, I've seen her bones... .
Then brilliant white light blotted out everything.
Time crawled to a meaningless standstill. Sibyl twisted helplessly without reference points. She was spinning into nowhere... . Some unknown distance after her initial fall into the light, she felt a concussion along the length of her body. Something heavy had crashed through with her.
Tony and the horse.
She couldn't see them, couldn't hear anything. The surge was right behind her, but she couldn't see it, either. When I drop out the other side, it'll be right on top of me. If she crawled straight forward, it would blast through and kill her. Gotta get off to the side or maybe get behind it...