Chapter Seventeen
Thane shook her until her eyes fluttered open in the dark. For a few moments, he knew that mentally she wasn’t in this world. Another hard shake, and she inhaled sharply before focusing on him.
“Why did you wake me up?” she said, confusion morphing into quick irritation. “I was having an important dream.”
Nice. He saved her life, and she was mad. “Because you weren’t breathing. I’m pretty sure even angels need air.”
She sat up in her bed, still somewhere between here and there, and frowning. “I feel fine. Perfect, in fact.”
He moved to the side of the bed, trying to calm his ragged nerves and ease the tension in his body. He rubbed his chest. It was as if he were connected to her somewhere deep inside him. “Do you always stop breathing in your sleep? Because I would have noticed before.”
She stared straight ahead. “It’s a transmitter.”
The sudden change of topic completely threw him. “What?”
She pulled the crystal out from under her pillow.
“You’re sleeping with a rock,” he noted.
Reya smiled. “Yes, but the rock is a transmitter.”
As if that made everything all right. It was the middle of the night, and he’d woken up filled with dread that something was very wrong and a pain in his chest. The hotel air-conditioning unit was quiet, which was the only reason he had realized she wasn’t breathing. He was still trying to catch up.
He rubbed his eyes. “And it’s transmitting what?”
“I don’t know,” she said, swinging her legs around so she was sitting next to him, her body warm and naked. “But I just dreamed about it. Although I think it was more of a past life memory than a dream.”
He was barely able to keep up with the whole Atlantis thing and grid thing and crystal thing. He wasn’t ready to come to terms with the past lives thing. Besides, he had no desire to see just how big his karmic debt was.
“Tell me about the dream,” he said, hoping to cut to the chase so he could catch a little more sleep before his body reminded him just how naked and warm she was.
“I was in the city. The same one from Chu’s book,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest and holding the crystal in front of her. “The center was just like we saw, identical except there were people, thousands of people, walking through and living in the city.”
In the faint light of the crystal, he could just make out her face. She was completely enthralled in her story.
She held the crystal perpendicular by the point. “The crystal was placed at the top of the pyramid. Exactly the same as in the photo, with all the statues positioned around it. The crystal tilted, activated, and received, or sent, a transmission.”
“What kind of transmission? Like a communication?” he asked.
“I don’t know because you woke me up,” she said, pinning him with mock annoyance and smiling.
“Excuse me for trying to keep you alive,” he replied.
Her gaze lingered on his for a few moments, and he caught a flash of sadness. “It’s fine.”
It’s fine? Not even a thank-you. He’d be mad except he had a feeling she would question why he’d saved her. “You think the dream was real enough to trust?”
She nodded. “Definitely. I was there, I saw it work.”
Despite his best efforts, he found himself falling into the reincarnation gig. “Do you remember anything else about that lifetime?”
Reya closed her eyes for second. “No.”
She was a multidimensional being. You’d think that would come with some perks. “I thought you said they let you remember your past lives.”
“Parts of them,” she muttered. “Apparently, only the things that I need to work on.”
He really hoped he never had to remember his past. “Okay, so it’s a transmitter. Why would Surt want a transmitter?”
“I’m afraid that’s an Orson question,” she said, wrapping her arms around her long, bare legs. “We’ll need to call him.”
He had really hoped they wouldn’t need Orson again, because frankly, all he did was make Thane crazy. But it looked like he was also their only link to the netherworld.
Reya yawned. “Maybe I’ll dream about it some more.”
He had other ideas but he stuck with the important stuff. “If you stop breathing, I’m going to wake you up. I don’t care if you’re witnessing the big bang.”
She smiled brightly. “I didn’t think you cared.”
He cared more than he wanted to and far more than he should. “Look, I don’t even know why I woke up, but if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be talking. So until I’m sure that this was a fluke, we are stuck together like glue.”
“I’ll give you points for the original pick up line,” she said, smiling knowingly.
“It’s a keeper,” he said. “Back to bed.”
She slid over to her side of the bed and wrapped the covers around her. He tried a few different positions but nothing was convincing his body that it wasn’t getting sex right now. He didn’t know why she’d stopped breathing, and despite her assurances that she was immortal, he wasn’t exactly sure in which world she meant. There were so many. He was taking no chances, and it wasn’t just because he needed her to catch Surt. It was much more, went much deeper, and that’s the part that was going to keep him awake.
He finally settled on his side with his back to her. She turned her back to his. Their backs pressed together. He could feel the warmth of her body against his, close enough to hear her breathing. His erection was right there with him.
It was going to be a long night.
* * *
Martin stood in front of Ronald Smith.
The penthouse apartment was simple yet luxurious with a nice view of Manhattan. The floors were marble. The ceilings were tall and dotted with recessed lighting. A massive, art deco chandelier hung in the center. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed a bright, sunny day.
Why was he here again? He should be someplace else, but he couldn’t recall where.
“So they realize who I am,” Ronald Smith said, walking around his desk toward Martin. “Reya, no doubt. We used to be together. The name is Surt.”
Martin nodded, torn between his strange surroundings and the man who was talking like they’d known each other forever. How did he get here? He couldn’t remember.
Surt sat on the edge of the desk facing Martin, who was seated in a chair. “And they want you to gather information about me.”
“Yes,” Martin said. “I think.”
Surt smiled. His teeth were straight and white, but his eyes were black. “I will provide you with everything you need to know.”
“Thank you,” Martin said. Part of him wanted to leave, but then where would he go? Where was his car? What day was it?
“I want you to keep in close contact with them,” Surt said, drawing Martin back to the present. “And tell me everything you learn about what they’ve learned. What they are doing or planning to do. Can you do that for me?”
“Of course,” Martin said. He had a dull headache that circled his head like a crown. “Do you want me to call you?”
Surt stood up and walked back to his chair behind the desk. “That won’t be necessary. Just tell Charles.”
Martin frowned at the marble floor. Did he know a Charles? Nothing was coming to him. In fact, he couldn’t focus on anything. It was disorienting, but at the same time, it didn’t scare him. “Who is Charles?”
Surt sat down and hitched his head toward the door.
Martin turned around slowly, a feeling a dread coming over him. His skin crawled, and his stomach lurched. Chills raced up his spine as he raised his gaze.
By the door stood a black creature. A dwarf of a man. Or what used to be a man. Martin didn’t think he was a man anymore.
* * *
Orson nodded. “You did have a past life in Atlantis.”
Reya knew it. It was too real not to have happened. At least she wasn’t going crazy. Not yet. She held up the crystal. “This was there, too.”
He sat on the chair in the hotel room with his notebook on his lap. “Then it must have been there at the same time. Perhaps not that exact one, but one with similar energy.”
Thane was lying across one of the beds with his hands behind his bed. “Reya thinks it was used as a transmitter. Like for communication.”
“That’s very possible,” Orson said. “Crystals of this purity were used for many things on Atlantis. Data storage, healing, astral travel, movement between dimensions, teleportation, energy transmission, and communication.”
She frowned at him. “You didn’t mention any of that before.”
He shrugged. “I know a lot. You didn’t ask.”
Thane gave her an unhappy look, but didn’t say anything. He was on his best behavior, and she appreciated not playing referee between them. She wondered if it had to do with sex. It had definitely helped her mood.
“Which one of those does Surt want to use this for? Which one couldn’t he get himself?” she asked.
“He wouldn’t care about data storage,” Orson said. “Or healing, astral travel, or teleportation. And he can already move between dimensions.”
“That leaves us with energy transmission and communications,” Thane said. “Tell me, could he disable the grid with this thing?”
That scenario had been haunting Reya but she didn’t want to believe it could happen, or be allowed to happen, again.
Orson shook his head. “Hard to tell. It would depend on the crystal. You wouldn’t know unless you tried it.”
“Would a Gridworker be able to tell?” Thane pressed.
“Only if they’d been activated,” Orson said. “We don’t have any activated yet.”
Reya sighed. “Can’t you just turn one on? For like a few minutes?”
Orson smiled his patient smile. “There’s no turning it off. It wouldn’t be right to do that to anyone without proper preparation.”
“But it’s perfectly fine for Surt to burn them in droves,” Thane said, his tone steely. He sat up and swung his legs off the side of the bed, looking bigger with every move.
“No,” Orson said. “That’s not fine. We want to stop that.”
Thane drilled Orson with a stare that would have terrified a normal man, but Orson wasn’t normal, or a man. He was beyond all that, and he didn’t flinch.
“Okay, let’s try this one,” Thane said. “Would Surt be able to transmit negative energy through it?”
“Not likely.”
Reya felt her mouth drop. “Not likely? Because last I knew, only light could go through the grid. Not likely wasn’t even on the table.”
“Negative energy wouldn’t be able to go through it,” Orson said.
She raised her eyebrows. “But?”
“It could damage the grid,” Orson relented. “The grid has been greatly weakened in the past few days.”
“So all he needs is the crystal to break it,” Thane said, crossing his arms.
Reya shook her head in disbelief. How come the only ironclad laws were aimed at her? All the other ones seemed completely negotiable.
“No,” Orson said. “He’d have to have the pyramid to do anything with the crystal. They go together.”
She was so afraid he was going to say something like that. “Where’s the nearest pyramid?”
Orson pursed his lips. “You aren’t going to like this.”
Thane laughed. “Let me guess, you don’t know.”
“It was lost a very long time ago,” he said.
“How do you lose a pyramid, Orson?” Reya asked.
He looked at her. “You hide it in the biggest city in the world?”
* * *
Thane didn’t want to think about some kind of ticking time bomb under his city, but things were leaning that way. They walked through the building to Jim’s office. He’d called this morning to say he had something. Now Thane was kind of hoping it was nothing.
How did this get so big so fast? Surt had to be pushing the buttons. If he had the same abilities that Reya did, that would make sense. Reya had a moral compass that gave her discretion and restraint over her sizable powers. Surt, not so much.
Speaking of Reya, she looked rested and ready to rumble this morning as she walked beside him. She’d breathed normally the rest of the night, and he knew that because he’d spent it wide awake. It had given him time to contemplate his life. Aside from his parents, Reya, and a few close friends, it ended up being a mostly discouraging exercise. It made him wonder why he’d even bothered to come back again. The only reason he could think of was to stop Surt. Turned out it was a damn good reason.
The city had woken quietly this morning and there had been no new deaths last night, but the city remained on edge. People had no idea what was lurking around the corner, or worse, under their feet.
He wanted to shake each and every one of them by the shoulders, and say, “Wake up. It’s just beginning.”
He’d probably get committed for doing that though.
Jim launched out of his chair to greet them when they showed up at his office door. He was animated and far too happy for this early in the morning. Few other people were around.
“Let me tell you, this was a challenge,” he said with a wide grin and pulled them into his office. “I don’t usually spend so much time trying to figure something out. It was really awesome.”
Jim closed the door behind him and motioned to two chairs. He turned the computer monitor around so they could see it and sat down. “Okay, so this is the first image you gave me. I scanned it and cleaned it up a little, and then rerendered the lines so they were straighter and proportional.”
A 3-D image came up and rotated slowly on the screen.
“No matter how I placed it, it wouldn’t match up to any maps of the city or the surrounding areas or pretty much any civilized nation,” Jim said. “I flattened it at every point, I cropped it, I spun it. Nothing matched. At least not close enough to raise any flags.”
As Jim talked, Thane watched him. He looked pretty scruffy. Plus there was a pile of empty coffee cups and take-out containers strewn across the desk. “Have you been here for the past two days working on this?”
Jim nodded, his movements a little jerky and overshot. “Yeah. I couldn’t leave. It was like a calling.”
Thane eyed Reya, who raised her eyebrows and smiled. The angel strikes again.
Jim continued, “Then I thought, forget the maps. Let’s see if there’s anything in the design itself.”
He clicked the mouse a few times on a dropdown menu, and the rendering changed dramatically. “I thought maybe there was more to this thing than what was here, maybe this was just a section of something much more complex. So I let the program organically replicate the characteristics of the original form.”
Long lines began to grow out of the original form, reaching out and curving around back into itself. The image expanded from the center out to a full-blown and complex geometric shape.
When it was done, Jim pointed to it. “This image has hundreds of vertices, pentagrams, and dodecahedrons. Roughly speaking, this is a Metatron’s Cube.”
“Geometry?” Thane asked.
“Exactly,” Jim said. “Imagine my surprise!”
Reya shook her head. “Does it tell us anything?”
“Nothing yet,” Jim said and did more fast clicking on the screen. “Until I added the other two images in the program. I did the same thing with those.”
The second image started as a sort of seed, and then blossomed into another intricate pattern. More geometry. Then the third joined them. They were the missing pieces Stewart had mentioned. Thane watched in rapt attention.
When the three merged, the center lit up where they matched. There were points within a circle at the top connected to a rectangle underneath, then a triangle with a line pointed downward. Within the body of the symbol were multiple triangles and circles.
“It’s a crystal,” Reya said softly.
Jim looked at it and cocked his head to the side. “I suppose. It’s actually called the Tree of Life.”
“Does that fit into a map?” Thane asked.
“Not yet,” Jim said and pointed at the screen. “But look at this. This isn’t random. Someone planted this in your drawings. Someone who knew complex geometry and mathematics. Just this much is fascinating.”
Thane felt the disappointment to his bones. With Surt breathing down their necks, he’d hoped for an answer, a location, something. “Do you think there’s more to this?”
“Yeah, I do. I’m going to run this through my maps database. I just need another day, and I’ll have it,” he replied. “Although I probably should go home tonight. My wife is ready to divorce me.”
“Thank you.” Reya stood up first. “Concentrate your searches on the city.”
Jim got to his feet and shook her hand. “Will do.”
“We really appreciate the help,” Thane told him. Then he and Reya left empty-handed.
“So we have nothing,” Reya said once they were outside.
“We have the Tree of Life, which looks a lot like our crystal. It must mean something,” Thane said, trying to sound more hopeful than he felt. He realized that he always felt better standing next to Reya. So what was going to happen when she left for her destiny and he left for whatever his was? He decided not to go there.
Morning sun streamed between towers of buildings. Car horns created a kind of city symphony. Steam rose from the sewers. They stood on the sidewalk and watched the world move.
“How would you hide a pyramid in a city?” Reya asked aloud. “It would stick out.”
“You’d think,” he said. “Maybe it’s really small.”
Reya shook her head. “No, it would have to be in proportion to the crystal, probably close to the size of the one in my dream. About ten feet across at the base and six feet tall.”
Thane thought about that. “On top of a building?”
“Perhaps,” Reya said, nodding as she warmed to the idea. “How would we find that?”
He smiled. “Ever been to the Top of the Rock?”