Once Every Never Part 24

"Oh, it's all arbitrary nonsense. He claimed he was being spoken to from the beyond, haunted by the spirit voice of an ancient Druid. One who demanded the restoration of the greatness of the Celtic Tribes-a true return to the glory of the Island of the Mighty. Honestly. He's completely mad. And when the authorities came close to catching him one too many times, he faked his own death. I knew it wasn't true. I think Ceciley did, too. She's just been in denial all this time. Poor deluded thing."

"What's her connection to him?"

"She was also a member of the Free Peoples back in the day. I always suspected that she only did it because she was rather nutty over Morholt."

"But Stu had his eye on someone else," Al said. Good lord, thought Clare. Maggie's blus.h.i.+ng.

"I don't think it's safe to return the torc to the public eye at the moment," Maggie continued, brus.h.i.+ng aside the comment. "Dr. Jenkins doesn't take Stuart Morholt seriously, and I don't think she'll believe your story about Boudicca's curse. To this day she denies she was even with us at Glas...o...b..ry Tor. No. I think we have to risk returning the torc to its rightful owner."

Clare blinked. Honestly, it was the last thing she'd expected Maggie to propose. "You mean ...?"

"I think we must go to Bartlow and walk your Druid's spiral path."

Al was staring openly at her. "I thought you said it was all mystic mumbo jumbo."

"I did," Maggie replied grimly. "But I didn't say it wasn't real."

"MILO?" He'd been silent for almost a full two minutes. Clare could hardly blame him, now that she'd told him exactly what she needed him to do.

She s.h.i.+fted Comorra's brooch from one leather-gloved palm to the other, rea.s.suring herself that she had it with her so that she could leave it with the princess in her tomb. It seemed only right, somehow. Still, Clare was having ma.s.sive second thoughts about the whole scheme. It was one thing to send herself hurtling through time and s.p.a.ce, but another thing entirely to enlist Milo to play host to the disembodied spirit of an ancient mystical warrior prince. It really was asking too much.

"Milo?" she said again. "You seriously don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"Right," he said finally, raising his head and smiling faintly at her. "I remember you saying you didn't want me to be a hero."

d.a.m.n. I never should have opened my big mouth. "That's so not what I meant and you know it," she said, frowning up at him. "I just meant you don't have anything to prove to me."

"I know that, Clare."

His eyes were so blue it was almost like staring up into a cloudless sky. Clare found herself getting lost in his gaze.

He grinned. "But maybe I have something to prove to myself. I mean, hey-what kind of self-respecting geek chickens out from an actual paranormal experience? I'd have to turn in my Ghostbusters proton pack and my Green Lantern ring. Plus they'd bar me from the San Diego Comic-Con for life."

Clare grinned back. "I love it when you talk nerdy to me."

"Ooh," he leaned down and whispered in her ear, "when all this is over, remind me to read you poetry in Elvish."

"Elvis wrote poems?"

"Can we shelve the canoodling till a later date, guys?" Al suddenly appeared beside them, effectively putting a stop to the nerd-flirting. "I have limited reserve nerve for this mission and I'd rather not have a complete mental breakdown before we achieve our objective."

Maggie finished double-bolting her office door and joined Clare, Al, and Milo in the middle of the room. They had decided that, before heading out to the middle of Cambridges.h.i.+re to find the Bartlow Hills tumuli, they would first test whether Connal's spirit could indeed be transferred into Milo's consciousness. Since they wouldn't be able to get into the tomb without Connal's help, they had to find out first if the magic worked.

Clare pocketed Comorra's raven brooch and nervously picked up the silver cuff from the table. She held it out to Milo, who reached out a hand.

"Wait!" Clare said. "For luck ..."

She stood on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. Before Milo could turn too bright a shade of pink he took a deep breath, plucked the silver cuff from Clare's palm, and slipped it over his wrist. Maggie and the girls watched, horrified, as Milo's eyes suddenly flew wide and he opened his mouth in a silent scream. The muscles of his neck stood out in sharp relief and veins in his temples began to bulge. His hands grabbed for the sides of his head and collapsed forward, landing hard on his knees as he went down on all fours.

"Milo!" Clare shouted and dropped to the ground in front of him.

"Dude ..." He started murmuring like a chant, his body rocking back and forth. "Dude ... dude ... dude ... chill ..."

"Milo?" Clare reached out but he flinched away from her.

"Chill ... seriously ... I'm here ... I ..." He wrapped his long arms around his own shoulders, hugging himself as if to keep from flying apart. "I'm right here. Let me drive. Let me drive, man ..." Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. "Dude ... Connal. Chill out, man ... this hurts ..."

Staggering to his feet, he backed into the corner of the office, his shoulders jamming up against the shelves, rattling the skull, and batted the gla.s.ses off his face. The girls and Maggie watched, spellbound, as Milo became ... spellbound. His posture altered. So did the carriage of his head and his facial expression-all subtly, but distinctly. Clare could've sworn that, for the briefest instant, his blue eyes actually darkened to Connal's almost-black brown.

"Clarinet ..." Her name rasped out from between Milo's lips in a voice that was definitely not Milo's.

"Connal?"

"Aye ..." He shook the yellow hair from his eyes and stared wildly around the room. At the books and furniture and high, plate-gla.s.s windows. At the electric light fixtures and the computer whose screen saver swirled with brilliant colours and patterns. He took a hesitant step forward and looked down at his own feet. At the jeans and sneakers he wore, at his hands ... at the watch on his-on Milo's-wrist. He fingered the fabric of the T-s.h.i.+rt he wore.

Then he lifted his gaze and peered at Clare as if she was hard to see. "This is the Otherworld?"

"This is my world," she said quietly and picked up his gla.s.ses, handing them to him.

He put them gingerly back on his face and blinked. Then his gaze s.h.i.+fted to where Al stood, one fist jammed against her mouth so that she wouldn't scream. "You." His voice was lower than Milo's by almost an octave. The words came out as guttural and musical at the same time. "You are ... Allie?"

Al nodded and squeaked out, "I'm your cousin. His cousin. Milo's cousin."

He nodded, his expression turning inward. "Milo ..."

"Is he there?" Clare asked.

Connal nodded and smiled, the muscles of his face tight. "He is. I can see things. Know things. Through his eyes ... his mind ... It is an interesting experience."

"I'll bet," Clare said, and took him gently by the arm. "I'd like you to meet someone." She looked over to where her aunt stood open-mouthed in awe. "Mags?"

Maggie stepped toward the young man who only a moment before had been someone else entirely.

"Connal." Clare took Maggie by the elbow and drew her closer. "This is my aunt, Doctor Magda Wallace."

"The blessings of the G.o.ddess fall upon you, Doctor Magda Wallace." Connal's voice was rough, but he inclined his head toward Maggie in a gesture of respect.

"I ... I ... it's very nice to meet you, young man," Maggie stammered, as star-struck as if she'd just met one of the Beatles. Which for an archaeologist, Clare supposed, she kind of had.

"Milo?" Clare shook his arm a little. "Are you still in there?"

He turned to her, and after a moment smiled the ghost of a familiar smile. "Still here, Clare de Lune," he said, his voice sounding far away. "It's a little crowded in here all of a sudden, but yeah ... I'm still here."

"Still in the driver's seat?"

"Yeah ... yeah. I'm still driving. Maybe though, just to be on the safe side, somebody else should take the wheel on the way up to Bartlow." He dug into the pocket of his jeans and tossed the keys to the Bimmer to Maggie. Then he winked at Clare. A wink that could have been Milo's own-or not. It looked as though it took a lot of effort. "C'mon," he said, his face s.h.i.+fting through unfamiliar expressions as he headed toward the door. "Let's go."

23.

It was just before moonrise.

Clare, Al, Milo, and Maggie stood in a circle on the plat form at the summit of Bartlow High Hill. The land all around them seemed touched with magic that evening. Deep shadows pooled in the contours of the countryside like dozens of black lakes as a big-bellied harvest moon rose, casting a silvery-golden glow on the gentle swells of far distant hills. Milo-Connal, really-turned his face toward the kiss of the moon's light as it lifted above the bowl of the Earth, balancing on the edge of the horizon for a long moment like a tightrope walker on a high wire. Then it lifted free and began its slow and stately pa.s.sage, sailing across the face of the indigo sky.

Milo closed his eyes, and when he opened them again his blue gaze had been replaced with the Druid prince's dark, haunting-or maybe it was haunted-stare. He held out a hand to Clare on one side and Maggie on the other. Clare stripped off the driving gloves she'd been wearing and took his hand. Maggie took the other, and then they both held out their other hands to Al, who swallowed nervously before reaching out to close the circle. As the silver cuff on Milo's wrist began to glow Clare was struck by an illusion of the fox and raven coming to life, chasing each other around and around in an endless circle. Milo's lips started to move, mouthing silent incantations in the same way Connal had done in Bouddica's tomb. A sudden surge of electrical energy flowed through them and Clare gasped, closing her eyes against the sensation.

"Look," Connal's voice said after a moment. "See."

Clare opened her eyes. The world around her ...

"It s.h.i.+mmers," Al breathed. "Oh wow, Clare ... you were so right."

Maggie and the girls looked out over the transformed landscape that glimmered faintly, as if dusted with starlight.

"Do you see that?" Clare said, her voice barely a whisper in the cool night air. "There is a path ..."

"There is indeed," said Connal as he dropped Maggie's hand, "but only for those with the sight to see."

Still holding on to Clare, he stepped off the wooden platform and led them onto the sparkling track-a gleaming, phosph.o.r.escent trail that wound around the hill. It bent and twisted into spirals and whorls, knotting and writhing like the patterns on the Battersea s.h.i.+eld. Or like the designs on Comorra's brooch. The walkway looked as though it were made of thousands of fireflies, their tiny sparks glinting in the droplets clinging to the dew-wet gra.s.s.

Milo's feet moved with unerring certainty as Connal's spirit led them around and around the hill. Every time the path intersected with the modern wooden staircase Connal simply walked through it as if the stairs were an illusion. As if they didn't exist.

Clare and the others followed in his footsteps until suddenly ...

"Claaarrre? Whaaaatt's haaaapeeeniiing ..." Al's distorted voice echoed all around her as Clare glanced wildly about. Everything was sparkling fiercely now. Not just the path but the trees and the hills and the night sky. The air itself s.h.i.+mmered and danced as if they stood in a snow globe that some giant hand had just turned upside down. Clare heard Maggie's sharp intake of breath and then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended. Gone. All the billions of sparkly lights just winked out. It was utterly, completely, terrifyingly dark.

"Clare?" Al whimpered.

"Hang on ..." Clare fumbled for the tin candle and safety matches they'd found in an emergency kit in the trunk of Milo's car, half-buried underneath a bunch of old vinyl records and a cricket bat. But even before she lit the wick, the stale, cold, earthy smell of the place told Clare where they were. The illumination from the thin yellow flame of the candle proved her right. They had done it. And now they stood in the middle of the vaulted central chamber of Boudicca's tomb.

"Okay," Al said weakly, standing paralyzed beside her. "I'm gonna faint now ..."

"Al!" Clare shook her a little. "It's okay-we did it!"

"I know. That's why I'm going to faint."

"Don't be scared." Clare brought the light up between them, the ghoulish shadows it cast undermining her words.

"You're joking, right?"

"No." Connal answered for her. "There's nothing to be afraid of here."

"Now I know you're joking."

"Alice," Maggie said kindly, "I guarantee we are the only living things in this chamber. The barrow has been sealed shut for almost two thousand years. There's no one else here!"

"Well ..." A voice echoed off the high stone roof. "No one else except me."

AL MUST HAVE jumped a foot and a half when she heard Stuart Morholt's voice. Maggie used a particularly vibrant swear word, and Clare just hung her head, defeat was.h.i.+ng over her.

"I don't believe this," she groaned.

"Oh believe it, my dear Miss Reid," Morholt said, his smile ghastly in the glow of Clare's candle. The gun in his fist gleamed in the light.

"How did you find us?" Clare asked, her voice leaden.

"Yeah," Al said, "how? I totally got away clean from your stupid hideout."

Morholt rolled his eyes. "I totally let you."

"What?"

"I put a two-way GPS transceiver in your computer bag." Morholt knotted his arms across his chest, a self-satisfied sneer lifting one corner of his mouth. "I figured that if you could act as Miss Reid's homing beacon, you might as well act as mine. You're such clever things, you two. I gambled that you would eventually find the tomb. As much as she doth protest, I knew that our intrepid time traveller simply wouldn't let it go until she'd found this place." He turned to Clare. "And I vowed that when you did I'd be right behind you. In a somewhat worse-for-wear Bentley, I might add. Don't think I've forgiven you ladies for that."

Clare glared at him. It was frustrating in the extreme that he was right.

He winked at her. "Curiosity, meet cat."

"Fine," she muttered. "So that's how you tracked us to Bartlow. How did you follow us down here? Mystical GPS?"

"When I said you were clever, I didn't necessarily mean you were smart." Morholt shrugged. "I'm not sure how you managed to work out the exact pattern of the spiral path, but I can tell you that footsteps in wet gra.s.s tend to leave a pretty clear impression under the light of a full moon. You left a trail the village idiot could have followed."

"I guess that means you should drop off your 'Idiot' job application at Bartlow Village Council," Clare shot back. "Maybe they're hiring."

Morholt's sneer went a bit brittle. "You little-"

"Stuart, will you for once in your life stop being such an a.s.s?" Maggie burst out. "Just for one moment! Look where you are. Where we are. Think about it. This is not a game."

Morholt turned to Clare's aunt, his dark eyes glittering. "I never for an instant thought it was, Magda. That was always your failing. Perhaps you'll admit now that science doesn't have an answer for everything."

"Neither do you," Clare said. "I think this is all a big game to you. You yammer on about honour and glory and Boudicca's righteous wrath. But I've been there and I've seen what happened and I know some of the people involved. They're not some abstract concept in a history text. They're not just a couple of dry lines written by that whatsisname guy-"

"Tacitus," Al murmured.

"Right." Clare nodded. "The Iceni were people and they hurt and loved and died just like people do now."

"Died and left behind a legacy that should not be lying forgotten in a tomb where it can do no one any good," Morholt said. "I'd wager there is enough treasure here in this one tomb for me to build an empire and dedicate it to the ideals of the forgotten tribes of this island." His voice rose as he spoke, echoing off the walls of the chamber.

Clare wondered if he really was that deluded.

"Which reminds me." He pointed the gun at Al. "Hand over the box."