Forever: A Novel of Good and Evil Love and Hope Read online

  “Stop it!” Adam ordered over his shoulder. Darci, he thought hard but received no answer. Why, oh, why hadn’t they practiced sending thoughts back and forth instead of just from her to him? Now he wanted to shout for her, call her name. He wanted to know where to find her.

  “Which way?” Adam asked as soon as they reached the big room with the vending machines. When he’d been here with Darci just a few days before, this room had seemed almost homey, now it—

  “Even to me this place feels creepy,” Taylor said. “Didn’t Darci say that you two had visited here before?”

  “Yes,” Adam said, “but then it was. . . .”What could he say? That it had been a place of fun? Could he tell them about Darci stuffing candy bars down the front of her cat suit? Could he tell how she’d curled herself into a tiny ball on a shelf?

  “Why is it different now?” he demanded of his sister. When he’d met her, he’d been hostile because he didn’t trust her, but now he was beginning to realize that Darci had been right and he should have trusted this woman who had been through so much. If he had trusted his sister, if he’d told about the mirror that he’d found hidden under a cheap print, maybe they could have looked into it and seen what was going to happen to Darci. Adam had been told that the mirror showed what could happen; the predictions could be altered.

  After they’d left the motel, Adam had driven back to the Grove. He’d skidded into the parking lot and jumped out of the car before the engine stopped. Taylor and Boadicea ran after him, and entered the guest house to see an empty room. But a crash from the bedroom that had been Darci’s made them run to that room. Adam had thrown the bed over and was on his knees pulling up a trapdoor.

  “This place was an icehouse, and a stream flowed under here,” Adam said. “I requested this house because I needed a hiding place.” Reaching into the darkness beneath the trapdoor, he pulled out a hoard of weapons, guns, rifles, pistols.

  “What do you want?” he asked Taylor, looking up at him.

  “I’ve never . . .” Taylor began, looking at the weapons in horror.

  But Boadicea wasn’t shy. She stepped forward, picked up a nine-millimeter Luger from the pile that Adam was bringing up, and chambered a round.

  Both men were looking at her in speechlessness. “She likes anything that can be used to kill,” she explained.”I did not have toys as a child.”

  Adam looked at his sister with respect. For the first time he thought that, possibly, her hatred of this woman was deeper than his.

  “Show him what to do,” Adam commanded his sister as he nodded toward Taylor; then Adam went to his room to pull on a black Lycra running suit that was very much like Darci’s cat suit. Returning to the bedroom, he tossed a similar garment to Boadicea. “Put that on. You’ll be able to move better in that. And do you have something you can put on?” he asked Taylor. The man’s bags were heaped in a corner of the room.

  “Yes,” Taylor answered, and ten minutes later, the three of them were out the door.

  And now they were in the tunnels. They didn’t dare use flashlights but wore the night-vision goggles.

  “Which way?” Adam asked his sister as they stood at the mouth of the three tunnels leading out of the main room.

  “This one,” she said, then led the way down the smallest tunnel. Adam’s running suit fit her sleekly. She had on a wide leather belt that carried pouches of ammunition and three pistols. In her hands was a short rifle that was illegal in the U.S.

  Adam carried the same weapons but, also, concealed inside his shirt was the dagger that he’d taken from the cage.

  They had not gone far when Adam halted them. “I hear something,” he said. Instantly, the three of them stopped and listened, but there was nothing. There was no light at either end of the space, no movement, nothing.

  Adam signaled for them to move forward, but within a few steps, they reached a crossroads, and, once again, he stopped, again listening.

  Adam? he heard.

  For a moment, his eyes blurred with tears. She was alive! Darci’s voice was faint, weak even, but she was alive. Here! Here! he wanted to shout to her, but he couldn’t get a message to her. She just had to trust that he was near, and she had to keep talking.

  “Are you hearing her?” Taylor asked.

  “Yes, barely,” Adam whispered, then leaned back against the wall and listened with all his might. Talk, Darci baby, talk to me, he tried to send her. Let me know where you are.

  Adam? Are you there? came the words to him, if possible, even more faintly.

  “This way,” Adam said. “I think she’s this way.”

  But Boadicea put her arm on his and stopped him. “That is not the way. Something is wrong. That is not the way to the chamber where she performs the sacrifices.”

  “Don’t say that word again!” Adam snapped. “I heard Darci’s voice and she’s this way. Are you with me or not?”

  For a long moment, Boadicea seemed to consider that question. “I want her reign of terror to end,” she said. “And only Darci can do that.”

  Adam, I’m here. Can you hear me?

  “Darci is talking to me,” he whispered, then started walking faster.

  Adam, come to me. I’m afraid.

  “Something is wrong,” Boadicea said from behind them. “Something is very wrong.”

  Adam stood still while he made a decision he knew would affect several lives. On one hand he didn’t trust this tall woman, but on the other, he tried to imagine the hatred she must have inside her. “Lead us,” he said at last, but his eyes held warning of what he’d do if she was lying to them.

  Boadicea didn’t hesitate as she led them through the tunnels, moving swiftly, never looking back to see if the two men were following her.

  “She memorized the way,” Taylor said to Adam when they paused for a moment to wait for Boadicea to see if a corridor was clear. “She’s lived this escape in her mind for years and her belief in this escape—and us—is what’s kept her from giving up hope.”

  When Boadicea motioned for them to follow her, Adam followed her, Taylor behind him. But he came up short when Boadicea stopped abruptly before a dark doorway. “I do not understand,” she whispered. “This is the chamber. This is where they should be.”

  “Looks like she knew you were lying to her,” Adam said, “and she did some lying of her own.”

  “But the mirror showed me that . . .” she began, but trailed off, puzzled.

  “Didn’t you tell me that the mirror shows what could happen and not necessarily what does happen?” Taylor asked as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette lighter. There was a candle on a brass holder attached to the wall. He lifted it and lit the candle, holding the torch in front of him as he walked through the doorway, Boadicea and Adam behind him. “Is it just me or does it seem strange to anyone else that these tunnels are empty of people? There aren’t even any guards here.”

  “She has done something unexpected,” Boadicea said as she stayed close behind Taylor.

  He lit a couple more candles, enough to see the room they were in. Along the walls in the hollowed-out room had been placed tall, carved stone panels. Holding the candle aloft, Taylor examined one of them. “Someone has robbed some crypts. First century, I’d say.”

  “Yes. Many thieves work for her,” Boadicea said, then turned back toward the doorway after only a moment’s glance at the stone altar that stood in the middle of the room. The mirror had shown her what that altar had been used for, and she knew what had caused the dark stains on it.

  Taylor followed Boadicea out of the room, but Adam hesitated as he stared at the altar in fascination. He remembered having seen a hideous pile of stone like this one.He remembered....

  “Come, brother,” Boadicea said softly as she held out her hand to take his. She well knew what he was on the verge of remembering, for the mirror had shown her what had been done to her brother when he was a child.

  Once they were outside the chamber, the three of t