They watched quietly as the younger, brasher Alexander wandered the market in the center of the village, almost as if he were killing time.
Then they saw her.
King did a double take when he saw the woman. He could not believe his eyes. He was looking at a woman that looked almost exactly like photos he had once seen — of his own mother.
THIRTY-SEVEN
“That’s her…”
Alexander spoke with a reverence that made King take note. He’d known his friend for years now, and heard the man in every kind of mood. But the sudden appearance of his lost love in the busy village market had taken the man’s breath away.
The woman, like Lynn Machtchenko in her younger years, had a slim build, but wider flared hips. Her hair was lustrous and dark, cascading over her shoulders in waves. High cheekbones and a subtle smile made her face come alive. Not a man in the market could keep his eyes off her. She looked to be about twenty-five, but Alexander had said she would be closer to forty. No matter which way you looked at her, Acca Larentia was a stunningly beautiful woman. If she didn’t look so very much like his own mother, King could see falling under the woman’s spell. Alexander had told him story upon story about the woman’s tenderness and generosity as well. Her beauty was only a bow tied around an amazing package.
“I thought my father was your descendant,” King said. The likeness to his mother left no doubt that she’d been the one to pass on Alexander’s bloodline.
“Actually,” Alexander said. “Both of them are.”
While Alexander’s bloodline had been thinned over millennia, having two parents descended from the man rather than just one made King’s and Asya’s blood a little more…Herculean…than usual. King wondered if that’s what had drawn Alexander to him, but he didn’t ask. It was ancient history now.
King turned to watch his friend admiring the woman. He felt an odd satisfaction at seeing Alexander’s eyes wide with wonder, where before there had always been something dark in them. In the future, when they had first met, King had taken that look for deviousness, planning and machination. Over time, he had come to know it instead as a look of dark bitter regret — regret at the life lost with his wife in the pursuit of eternal life for them both.
As King watched, Alexander’s look of hopeful joy turned sour. King reached out and whispered, “Your wait is almost over.”
Alexander turned and started away from the village, back toward the lake. King raced to keep up.
“That’s not the problem, Jack,” Alexander’s voice was almost a growl. “I screwed up the timing. We don’t have five years to prepare.”
“I’m afraid to ask. How much time do we have?”
“Closer to five hours. It happens tonight, Jack. She’ll return from the village on her own. She pokes around the house and stumbles onto my secret lab. She’ll find the Forgotten. They look famished. They haven’t been fed in some time. In those days—these days — I was lazy about such things. Left on their own, they go mad. But kept in herds and fed in captivity, they thrive.” Alexander’s face was lost in remembrance for a moment. King let him have the space instead of prompting him for more.
They kept up a fast pace, hiking along the trail back toward the lake. Just when King thought Alexander wouldn’t speak again, the man cleared his throat.
“You remember how it will happen?”
King nodded. “She’ll find them parched. Offer them a drink.”
“That has always been my assumption. I never saw it happen. When I came in, the cup and the water were on the floor, her body laid out of reach, but sucked dry and withered. She offered them a drink. They accepted. Tonight. We have to get there first. We have to stop her, and we have to create a perfect duplicate corpse — but I’ve had no time to practice her face.”
“Will the look you had tonight be enough for that?” King asked.
“It will have to be.”
They circled the lake in silence and the afternoon turned into evening. The sky filled with rich hues of deep blue and streaks of orange as the sun set behind the hills southwest of the lake. The few people in the area had already retired for the night, and the duo had the trail to themselves.
Alexander’s villa sat high up on the side of a hill, almost 1500 feet above the level of the huge lake, but Alexander led King away from the hill, and around to the north of it.
“There’s a tunnel entrance on the other side that leads directly to the lab. We’ll go in that way.”
They circled around the hill until the gloom of the oncoming night cloaked the forest in shadows.
Alexander led them closer to the base of a rocky wall, and they trudged through the forest until the going was so difficult, King thought he might trip over a tree root.
Alexander stopped suddenly, as if he heard something.
“What is it?” King whispered.
Alexander let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s been so long, I’ve forgotten exactly where the stone is. I think we have to go back a bit,” Alexander chuckled.
“I thought you were supposed to be a genius.” King smiled.
Alexander’s tension melted away slightly. “It’s not like that time in Poseidonia, you knew where you were going…”
“How am I supposed to know the difference between a temple to Poseidon and a temple to Hera, when they don’t even have any Doric columns yet?”
Alexander smiled. “I told you those wouldn’t come for another few hundred years. I’ve never seen a priestess so angry.”
King rubbed his cheek. “I can still feel that slap.”
They moved back the way they had come, Alexander mumbling to himself and running his hand along the rock wall as they went. King could just barely see the man moving his arm in the deepening dusk.
“Aha!” Alexander stopped and hugged the rock wall, stretching his massive arms around a huge protruding rock. The man took a huge breath and then struggled until King could hear a grinding sound. Alexander rolled the massive round stone to the side, revealing the dark yawning mouth of a cave.
“That’s a little Biblical, isn’t it?” King asked, raising an eyebrow. He was frequently amused, and sometimes disturbed, by Alexander’s stories of the hubris of his youth. He had certainly seen improvements in the man’s behavior over the last two decades, and he attributed the change to their friendship. Alexander himself professed to not having had nearly enough close friends over the years in whom he could confide.
“It was practical at the time. No one else around would have been able to move the stone but me.”
Alexander stepped into the darkened tunnel. King looked around and voiced his concern. “Should we close it up after us?” He couldn’t see how it could be done, but it went against his nature to leave his six unprotected.
“No need,” came the soft reply from down the tunnel.
King walked cautiously into the dark, feeling for the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, but they were broad enough to allow Alexander to move through them swiftly. Then something occurred to King, and he slowly pulled his sword from his belt.
“Why are you whispering?”
The reply took a second, and King knew he was about to receive bad news.
“I forgot to tell you something.”
Before King could ask, he heard a low snarling sound that rose in volume until the bass of the growl shook his bones, like amplifiers at a rock concert.
“I forgot to mention the dog.”