Secrets Of The Serpent's Heart (The Arkana Archaeology Mystery Series Book 6) (3 page)

Chapter 3—Formal Invitation

Zach surreptitiously checked his watch. It was almost nine PM. He glanced across the table at Hannah who was scanning a menu. The two sat in a booth at the village diner. They’d just walked over from the tiny local movie theater where they’d caught an early show. Unlike the multiplex at the mall, the town’s lone theater stubbornly clung to the tradition of showing only one movie per week. Fortunately, it was a film that both Zach and Hannah had wanted to see. After sharing a tub of popcorn to stave off hunger for a few hours, they’d gone to the only restaurant on the green that was still open.

Much as Zach enjoyed having Hannah to himself for an entire evening, he was acting on Arkana orders. He’d leapt at the chance to be of service. As a tyro, the boy hadn’t been trusted with anything more confidential than filing budget reports. This assignment was as close to top secret as he was likely to get for a while. Faye had told him to keep Hannah out until shortly before curfew. On Friday night, that meant eleven o’clock. His ancestor had been vague on the details but apparently she had some secret business to transact. Since Faye planned to return before their date was over, it would circumvent any awkward questions from Hannah about the old woman’s whereabouts. The mission suited Zach perfectly. He had an agenda of his own to pursue with his girlfriend this evening.

The waitress returned to take their orders. Once she left, Zach leaned over the table and said, “Hannah, I’m a junior this year.”

She gave him a quizzical look. “Yes, I know. And I’m a sophomore. Ever since school started last fall.”

He smiled nervously. “Well, there’s this thing. It’s sort of like a rite of passage for guys my age.”

She peered at him and whispered, “You haven’t started drag racing, have you?”

“Drag racing!” His head jerked back in surprise. “Where’d you get an idea like that?”

“Well, I was watching an old movie last night called
Rebel Without A Cause
and the high school boys in the movie were drag racing. Personally, I think you shouldn’t try something like that. In fact, I don’t think your car would hold together long enough to go over a cliff.”

“Over a...” Zach’s mouth hung open. “What?”

“It’s very dangerous and you shouldn’t try it. I’m sure Granny Faye wouldn’t want you to either.”

The boy shook his head in disbelief. “What you’re talking about isn’t a drag race. It’s a chicken race.”

Hannah scowled. “There weren’t any chickens in the movie. They were racing cars.”

Zach gritted his teeth and tried again. “No, I mean what you described is called a chicken race. Usually, it’s when two guys aim their cars straight at each other and whichever one swerves to the side first is the loser because he ‘chickens out’. Get it?”

“Oh, I see.” She nodded sagely. “Then what’s a drag race?”

He shrugged. “That’s just two guys racing against each other over a short distance. Whoever has the fastest car wins.”

“So that’s the kind of racing you do. Drag racing?”

“I don’t drag race!” Zach exclaimed.

“Good.” Hannah gave a relieved smile. “I’m glad I was able to talk you out of it in time.”

“I never said...” Zach threw his hands up helplessly just as the waitress returned with their soft drinks. Removing the paper cover from his straw, the boy dipped it into his soda glass, eyeing his companion warily. “Can we get back to the topic?”

“I thought we were on the topic. I just convinced you to stop drag racing.”

“How can somebody as smart as you be soooo linear?” he demanded loudly.

Hannah sat up straight in the booth, clearly offended. “You don’t have to bite my head off, Zachary.” She only used his full name when she was annoyed with him.

The boy moderated his pitch. “I was trying to explain about a rite of passage that happens to juniors in high school and it’s got nothing to do with poultry or engines.”

The waitress came back with a tray and served them both veggie burgers and fries. She thumped down bottles of ketchup and mustard and then retreated back to the kitchen.

When they were alone, Zach tackled the subject once again. “This rite of passage that I was talking about is a school event that only kids in my class get to attend. Of course they can bring whoever they want.”

Hannah gulped down a mouthful of burger and stared at him. “Some of my friends were talking about that just the other day. It’s a dance, isn’t it? A special dance.”

“That’s right.” Zach nodded with relief that he’d finally gotten her to focus. “We call it Junior Prom and I’d like you to be my date.”

The girl gave a dreamy smile. “I would get to dress up, wouldn’t I?”

“Sure.” The boy warmed to the topic. “All the girls wear fancy dresses. Not long ones like for Senior Prom but fancier than regular clothes. The guys wear suits and ties.”

“Oh, my.” Hannah seemed flustered but excited by the prospect. “When Granny Faye took me shopping for school clothes we looked at dresses like the ones you’re talking about. They were made of shiny, gauzy fabrics. In my whole life, I never saw anything as fine as that.”

“Not likely.” Zach snorted with derision. “When you were living with the Nephilim, they made you dress in old horse blankets.”

She giggled self-consciously. “You’re not wrong about that.” Then her eyes glazed over as her imagination switched into overdrive. “And I would have to get my hair done in a salon. And wear evening makeup and maybe some jewelry. Granny Faye showed me a beautiful necklace of hers. She said I could borrow it if ever I went anyplace fancy.”

Zach propped his hand under his chin, watching her make plans. It was nice to see her so happy. She’d come a long way from the scared runaway who’d taken refuge with his grandmother. Hannah kept up a steady stream of chatter for several more minutes. He wasn’t really listening. He was just basking in the glow of her excitement. The way her eyes sparkled made his head spin.

Finally she paused to catch her breath.

Taking advantage of the momentary lull, Zach grinned. “Should I take all of that as a ‘yes’?”

“Oh, Zach!” She beamed at him. “I’ll get to be a fairy tale princess for one night. Like Cinderella. Absolutely, I’ll go with you.” She paused. “There’s just one thing...” Her tone was tentative. “Do you think you might be able to borrow your father’s car that evening? Even though Cinderella rode to the ball in a pumpkin, it didn’t have a bad muffler and polka dot spray paint on the doors.”

“If I ask to borrow the sedan, you know he’s gonna make me clean out the garage,” the boy warned ominously.

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Hannah countered.

“My family’s garage hasn’t been cleaned out in five years.” Zach groaned at the prospect.

“Then I’ll just have to ask my Fairy Godmother to help you out.”

“Unless your Fairy Godmother has a wand that doubles as a grenade launcher, it’s not gonna cut any ice with my dad.”

Hannah giggled mischievously. “My Fairy Godmother’s name is Granny Faye.”

“Oh, that Fairy Godmother.” Zach laughed. “Well in that case, she’ll get my dad to hand over the keys before you can say ‘Bippity Boppity Boo’.”

“For such a tiny soft-spoken lady, she certainly seems to have a lot of influence over people,” Hannah observed.

Maddie motioned with her head. “Let’s adjourn to the dining room, shall we?” By now the table had been cleared.

Faye took a chair at one end. “Would it be too much trouble to ask for another cup of coffee? I don’t have as much energy as I once did for late night meetings.”

“Oh, of course.” Cassie darted into the kitchen and put on a fresh pot while Maddie took a seat at the end of the table opposite Faye.

Erik wandered to the refrigerator to grab a leftover sandwich. He silently returned to the dining room and sat down on Maddie’s right.

Griffin retrieved cups and saucers and carried them to the table for Cassie to pour.

After gratefully receiving her beverage, Faye swept her gaze around the apartment. “I never got the opportunity to visit you in this place before. You’ve done a lovely job of decorating, my dear.”

The Pythia shrugged. “It’s just your basic one-bedroom suburban apartment with post-modern decor. Big on the grey-and-chrome accents. I rented it furnished. All of Sybil’s antiques are in storage. I figured if Leroy Hunt ever got a bead on me again I could decamp a lot quicker if a moving truck wasn’t involved.”

“A wise precaution, I’m sure.” The old woman stirred cream into her coffee.

Cassie deposited the coffee pot in the center of the table and then sat down next to Griffin. Focusing on Maddie, she asked, “So what’s this pow-wow all about?”

“First off, sorry to end your special day with a business meeting,” the Chatelaine began. “But this is probably the only chance we’ll all have to talk face-to-face before you leave.”

“You’re leaving?” Erik asked sharply.

Cassie nodded. “Within the next couple of days, Griffin and I will be heading back to Asia to find that frozen river of ours. The Himalayas ought to be thawing out about now which means we can start hunting down the fifth relic.”

“The final relic,” Faye added quietly.

“You’re right.” The Pythia felt startled. “I’ve been so focused on staying one step ahead of the Nephilim that I forgot. This is the last one. Once we get this artifact, we’ll know where the Minoans hid the Sage Stone. And after we snag the Sage Stone, it’ll be game over for the bad guys.”

“Not exactly,” Erik countered. “We still don’t know how the Sage Stone fits into the Nephilim’s grand plan.”

“And just what is their plan?” Maddie directed her question to the Paladin. “You’ve been overseas for two months now scoping out their satellite compound operations. Were you able to learn anything new?”

“Not as much as I wanted to find out,” Erik admitted, “but enough to make me nervous. Tonight I flew back from Spain and what I saw there is the same as everyplace else. It looks like the intel you got from Hannah when she first showed up didn’t only apply to their headquarters.”

“You mean to say they’re setting up some sort of military operation at each of those far-flung locations?” Faye asked.

Noticing that the Memory Guardian’s cup was empty, Cassie grabbed the coffee pot and poured a refill while the Paladin continued.

“Yup. They’ve got armed guards posted at the entrance to each of those places with surveillance cameras mounted above the gates. Wherever I went, I made it a point to chat up the locals and they all had the same story to tell. No weapons and no cameras at any of the compounds as recently as a year ago. Then two strangers showed up in the neighborhood. I was able to ID one of them as a Nephilim named Joshua Metcalf. The odds are pretty good that he’s another of Abe’s sons. The other guy is an outsider by the name of Orvis Bowdeen. I did some checking on the guy. His friends call him Chopper. He’s ex-military and a crony of Leroy Hunt’s.”

“The Nephilim aren’t known for fraternizing with anyone from the outside world,” Griffin observed.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it fraternizing,” Erik said. “From what I was able to piece together, the Nephilim needed Bowdeen to provide weapons training to their own people. He also helped set up their surveillance systems at each satellite compound. After Bowdeen finished his part of the set-up, Joshua would show up to hand pick the best of the trainees for some kind of secret mission. Not sure what that is yet.”

“Global weapons training, surveillance, covert ops,” Cassie murmured. “It sounds like Metcalf is building an army.”

“That’s what worries me,” the Paladin agreed. “I know all this activity links back to Aboud and his secret lab but I’m not sure how.”

“Any progress on that front?” Maddie asked.

“Not much. Once my road construction gig ended, I didn’t have an excuse to hang around that spot anymore. I picked up a stint as a sanitation worker but the lab incinerates everything. There was nothing to sift through but ashes so I still don’t know what lethal concoction the good doctor is cooking up.”

“You might not know what it is but we all know who’s gonna get it,” Cassie noted gloomily.

“It’s not the ‘who’ that bothers me,” Erik objected. “It’s the how and the when. Until we know that, we can’t do anything to stop them.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Faye interjected.

They all turned to look at her in surprise.

She continued. “I realize this hardly constitutes an action plan but you must remember that Abraham Metcalf rules a religious cult. The bedrock of their organization rests on nothing more tangible than a set of bizarre beliefs. If you can shake those beliefs you may yet succeed in dismantling their military plan.”

Her listeners traded puzzled looks. Apparently, the Memory Guardian was still several steps ahead of them.

Faye gave a small smile and elaborated further. “I’m convinced that whatever nefarious scheme the Diviner intends to launch won’t begin until he has the Sage Stone in his possession. Although I’m at a total loss as to why our pagan artifact holds such sway over a fundamentalist Christian, we can be sure that it plays a major role in his plans. Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of chasing it halfway around the world.”

“All the more reason for Griffin and me to get gone,” Cassie said. “The sooner we find the fifth relic, the sooner we can claim the Sage Stone.”

“Easier said than done, I fear,” the Scrivener retorted. “I still haven’t completely solved the meaning of our latest riddle.”
 
Without being prompted, he repeated the clue. “‘The kindred stir upon the high sharp peak where the river flows red to the serpent’s heart. Under the lawgiver’s glare, its coils tremble in the mirror at the lion’s feet.’”

“Which means?” the Paladin demanded.

“Something far more obscure than I’ve been able to comprehend. We have learned a few things however. The first line refers to a river originating in the Himalayas which travels to a location called ‘the serpent’s heart’. The reference puzzled me until I remembered the Minoan fondness for astronomy. Our African relic contained an entire constellation map and I thought the golden serpent we collected in India might be designed along the same lines. If you’ll recall, the artifact was a rearing serpent with emeralds spaced at various intervals along its head and body. The center of the serpent’s body featured a large ruby. After some digging, I was able to determine that the constellation in question is called ‘Serpens’. It bears the distinction of being the only constellation which is divided into two parts, the serpent’s head and the serpent’s tail. The brightest star in the serpent’s head constellation is a red giant known as ‘Cor Serpentis’ or ‘the heart of the serpent’.”

“Makes sense.” Erik nodded. “The emeralds in our snake artifact must have been positioned to match the other stars in the constellation. The ruby was supposed to stand for the serpent’s heart.”

“Quite right,” the Scrivener agreed. “The constellation itself has some unusual features. It’s very faint. In fact, Cor Serpentis is the only star which can be easily seen and only during the summer in the northern hemisphere when one is facing south.”

“We thought maybe the mention of the serpent’s heart in the riddle was a directional pointer,” Cassie chimed in. “In riddle speak, it’s a sign that we should be following a river that runs south.”

“This is all very promising,” Faye said. “You know the origin point of the river and the direction it flows.”

“But wait, there’s more.” Cassie nudged the Scrivener. “Tell them, Griffin.”

“I was able to partially solve the second line of the riddle as well,” Griffin said.

“‘Under the lawgiver’s glare, its coils tremble in the mirror at the lion’s feet’,” the Pythia repeated helpfully.

“Yes, I believe both ‘lawgiver’ and ‘lion’s feet’ refer to a second constellation – Leo the Lion. Alpha Leonis is the brightest star in Leo. It is commonly known by the name ‘Regulus’ which translates to mean ‘lawgiver’. Depending on which graphical illustration of the star cluster one uses, Regulus is either depicted as the lion’s heart or, more significantly for our purposes, as the lion’s foot.”

“So you’ve got a snake, a lion and a river that runs south. If you put them all together, what does it mean?” Maddie urged, growing impatient.

“Unfortunately, the meaning of the riddle in its entirety continues to elude us,” Griffin demurred. “The whole truly is greater than the sum of its parts. Briefly, we know that we are to search for a river that originates at approximately thirty-one degrees north latitude. We are instructed to follow this river southwards. The reference to the snake’s coils trembling under the glare of the lawgiver seems to caution us to make this journey only during the summer months when Leo rules the sky and Serpens is most visible. Quite a sensible suggestion, I might add, given the climate of the Himalayas. The snake’s trembling coils may also refer to the constellation’s reflection in the river. Beyond that we must speculate. The Minoans have consistently hidden their artifacts in sacred mountains so we will need to find one in close proximity to our mysterious river.”

“Why would the river be mysterious?” Erik challenged. “The Minoans practically gave you its GPS coordinates.”

Griffin smiled thinly at the Paladin’s offhand remark. “In that respect, we are suffering from an embarrassment of riches. Sanjiangyuan Reserve in southeastern Tibet contains the headwaters of no less than three major Asian rivers. As ill luck would have it, they all begin in such close proximity to one another that the latitude offered in our clue could apply to any of them. We have the Yellow River flowing eastward across central China, the Yangtze which parallels its course further south, and the Mekong which flows through Cambodia and Vietnam all the way to the South China Sea. ”

“When Griffin showed me a map of eastern Tibet, I couldn’t get a sense of which river it was,” Cassie admitted. “For what it’s worth, I did get a strong feeling that we’d found the right general vicinity. The Minoans were in the mountains of eastern Tibet and they followed one of those river valleys to the spot where they hid the fifth relic.”

“You aren’t just going to cruise down those three rivers and trust to luck, are you?” Maddie asked skeptically. “You’ve got to have a systematic approach.”

“We do have a tentative strategy,” the Scrivener assured her. “We’ll begin with the northernmost of the three bodies of water – the Yellow River.”

“We’re going to target matristic archaeological sites that follow the course of the river,” Cassie added. “Odds are the Minoans would have looked for a goddess-friendly place to stash their artifact.”

“Because my knowledge of Asian culture and archaeology is sketchy at best,” Griffin said, “we’ll need to rely heavily on the expertise of local trove-keepers to assist us.”

“That sounds like a reasonable way to begin.” Faye smiled approvingly. “I’d suggest you contact the Hongshan trove-keeper first. He’s been monitoring finds near the North Korean border. I realize that it’s a bit far afield from the Yellow River but he has an encyclopedic knowledge of Neolithic China and may be able to guide you to the right place.”

“Ah, yes. The Hongshan keeper. I met with him a few times shortly after I was appointed Chief Scrivener. I’ll contact him first thing tomorrow,” Griffin said.

“I guess that means I’d better start packing.” Cassie began clearing cups and plates.

“Gracious me! Look at the time.” Faye consulted her wrist watch. “If I don’t leave immediately, the young people will get home before I do. Hannah wasn’t to know about my absence.”

“Sounds like you’re the one who’s got a curfew, not them,” Maddie said.

“Doesn’t it though.” Faye rose to depart.

Taking that as their cue, the others stood up, collected their coats and headed for the door.

Cassie received another round of birthday congratulations before bidding them all goodnight.