Ancient Echoes

CHAPTER 26



New York City

JENNIFER VANDENBURG QUIETLY walked out of her daughter’s bedroom, leaving the door open so she could hear if Felicity called her. The girl slept. Finally.

In a comfortable seating nook in her master bedroom, Vandenburg drew in several deep breaths, then settled back in a pale green wingback chair, a lamp table at her side. She was running out of time. Rempart still hadn’t been found. She had arranged everything so carefully: Rempart, the sabbatical in Idaho, the field trip, even the maps. She had thought of everything, yet, she had nothing to show for it.

Her thoughts turned to the paramilitary group Phaylor had used years earlier. Was this strange disappearance the same as happened to them out there?

If trained military men couldn’t survive, how could a professor and some students?

No! She refused to think that way. Her plans would work.

Some might have thought her crazy, but she had proof that she was right.

Years earlier, Calvin Phaylor had tracked down a bizarre set of bones found in Central Idaho. No one could identify exactly what sort of animal they came from—some unclassified creature which made it easy to denounce the find as a clever hoax. But one thing no one could denounce was the scientific evidence that the bones had no normal age degeneration. The cellular degradation seemed to have slowed down so substantially, as if the creature had barely aged, as if it could live almost forever.

As if it could be immortal...

Thus began Phaylor’s obsessive interest in the area, an interest that led to his downfall and her rise.

Even now, after all she had learned, the rational part of her mind shouted that alchemy was bunk and a sham. But at a much deeper level, the idea that since everything in the physical world changed and developed, such change could be controlled, felt right. Since change could be sped up or slowed down, if slowed, life would naturally be extended, perhaps forever.

She lacked only the process to create a philosopher’s stone, the key to all alchemical change. The book in Idaho explained how to do it. Once she had that book, no one could stop her.

She would get the book. For Felicity’s sake.

And, as the full ramifications of immortality struck her, she smiled. For Felicity’s sake…and for her own.