The Dark-Hunters (386 page)

“Yes,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. Who else would be dumb enough to claim a laughingstock as her progenitor?

Megeara flinched at that thought. In all honesty, she loved her father. Even when his grief and quest had robbed him of everything, even his sanity and health, she’d still loved him. How could she not? He’d been a kind, caring father to her when she’d been a girl. It’d only been after she’d hit her teens and started questioning his research and fervor that they’d grown apart.

“Atlantis is bullshit, Dad. All this research is. I don’t want to be on this stupid boat anymore. I’m young and I want friends. I want to go to school and be normal. You’re wasting your time and my life!”
He’d slapped her so hard on her fifteenth birthday that she swore she could still feel the sting of it.

“Don’t you dare spit on your mother’s memory. On my brother’s memory. They gave their lives for this.”

Six months later, so had Megeara’s brother when his diving line had tangled and his tank had run out of oxygen. That had been the final straw between her and her father. She wasn’t going to be Jason. She wasn’t going to give up her life for someone else’s dreams … ever.

So what if she’d promised her father? He was dead now. He’d never know she reneged. He’d died happy and she could finally put the past to rest and carry on with her life in America.

Like her grandfather, she intended to leave this country and never step foot on it again.

Cosmo handed her the plain white box, then left her alone to open it.

Megeara stared at it for several minutes, afraid of what she might find. Would it be some personal memento that would reduce her back to tears? She honestly didn’t want to cry anymore for a man who’d broken her heart so many times that she couldn’t even begin to count them all.

But in the end, her curiosity got the better of her and she opened the box. At first, there appeared to be nothing but crinkled acid-free tissue paper. She had to dig to the bottom of it all to find what it contained.

And what she found there floored her. She stared at her palm in the bright sunlight, unable to even fathom it.

There were two items. One appeared to be a
komboloi
—a string of worry beads similar in style to a small rosary that some Greeks used when stressed, only she’d never seen anything like this before. The age and design of it appeared to predate any form of
komboloi
she’d ever heard of. It had fifteen iridescent green beads made of some unknown stone that had been carved with tiny intricate family scenes of people wearing clothes unlike any she’d seen before in her research. The carvings were interspersed with five gold beads that were engraved with three lightning bolts piercing a sun. Where a
komboloi
might hold a small Greek piece such as a dime-sized medal, this one held a circle with writing that was similar to ancient Greek and yet very different. So much so that not even she who had been bred on ancient Greek could decipher it.

Like most artifacts fresh from a dig, the
komboloi
had a small white tag attached to it by a red thread where her father had written finding notes:

9/1/87

sixty inches down from datum (see pg. 42)

absolute dating: 9529 B.C.

green stone unknown/unverified

writing unknown/unverified

The anthropologist in her leapt to the forefront of what this could mean historically. If this date was truly absolute …

It showed a sophistication and metallurgy previously unknown. At that time, the Greeks shouldn’t have had this level of skill. In fact, the precision of the carvings and engraving looked as if they were done by machine and not by hand. Eleven thousand years ago, mankind simply did not possess the tools it would take to create something this intricate.

How could this be?

Intrigued, she turned her attention to the small leather pouch that lay in the bottom of the box. It, too, was tagged.

7/10/85

absolute dating: 9581 B.C.

metal unknown/unverified

Frowning, she opened the pouch to find five coins of varying sizes. They were old …
very
old and heavily coated with patina. Again, there weren’t coins this old. They just hadn’t existed at that period in time and especially not in Greece. Like the
komboloi,
the coins held that same peculiar writing, but beneath said writing was something she could understand. It was the ancient Greek words for “Atlantean Province of Kirebar.”

Dear God!

Again, the coins didn’t appear to be handmade, nor was their metal composite typical of anything she’d ever seen before. They were an orangish color, not silver, not gold, not bronze, copper, or iron—maybe a weird combination of those metals and yet that didn’t seem right, either.

What the hell was it?

Even with the patina coating them, the images and writing were as crisp, clear, and precise as those on a modern coin.

Her heart pounding, she turned the largest coin over to look at the back. There was the same foreign symbol that marked the
komboloi.
A sun pierced by three lightning bolts. And with it were the unknown words on top of the Greek:
May Apollymi protect us.

Megeara stared at it in disbelief. Apollymi? Who was that?

She’d never heard that name before.

“It’s a forgery.” It had to be, and yet as she looked at it, she knew the truth. These weren’t forged. Her father must have excavated them from one of his many digs in the Aegean.

This
was what had kept her father going even while the rest of the world had laughed at him. He had known a truth she’d denied.

Atlantis
was
real.

And if it was, then her father had been doubted by everyone … even her. Grief and pain tore through her as she recalled all the arguments they’d had over the years. She’d been no better than any of the others.

God, the fights the two of them had had over this. Why had he never told her? Why would he keep a discovery of this magnitude from her?

Unfortunately, she knew the answer.
Because I wouldn’t have believed it. Even if he’d shown it to me right in the ground where he’d found it. I would have laughed at him, too, then thrown it in his face.

No doubt he’d wanted to save himself the pain of facing
her
ridicule.

Closing the box, Megeara held it next to her heart as she regretted every nasty word and criticism she’d ever even thought about him. How much had those words hurt? She who should have had faith in him had been as cruel as everyone else.

Now it was too late to make amends.

“I’m so sorry, Daddy,” she breathed through her fresh tears. Like everyone else, she’d assumed he was crazy. Misguided. Stupid.

But somehow he’d found these artifacts. Somehow they were real.

Atlantis is real.
The words chased themselves through her mind. Staring out across the blue sea, she tightened her grip on the box as she remembered her final words to him.
“Yeah, yeah, I promise. I’ll look for Atlantis, too. Don’t worry about it, Dad. It’s in good hands.”
Those words had been rushed and passionless, and still they’d comforted him.

“It’s there, Geary. I know you’ll find it and you’ll see. You. Will. See. You will know me for what I am, not for what you thought me to be.”
Then he’d slept for a time and he’d died only a few hours later while she’d held his hand.

In that moment of his quiet passing, she hadn’t been a grown woman, she’d been a little girl all over again. One who only wanted her daddy back. One who craved someone to comfort her and tell her everything would be all right.

But there was no one in her life who could do that. And now that ludicrous, hasty promise meant something to her after all.

“I hear you, Daddy,” she whispered to the olive-oil-laden breeze that she hoped would carry her voice to wherever he’d gone, “and I won’t let you die in vain. I’m going to prove Atlantis exists. For you. For Mom and for Uncle Theron and Aunt Athena … for Jason. If it takes me the rest of my life, I’m going to fulfill my word to you. We
will
find Atlantis. I swear it.”

But even as she spoke those words that were filled with her conviction, she couldn’t help wondering if she’d be able to withstand the ridicule her father had borne all of his professional life. Just six weeks ago she’d been granted her doctorate from Yale and she was supposed to begin teaching in New York this fall. She was young to have attained so much, and great things were expected of her … by her and by the institutions and professors who’d bestowed that doctorate on her.

To walk this course would be nine kinds of stupid. She would lose everything. E-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. It was a massive step she was about to take. One from which she’d never recover.

My father believed it.

And her uncle and mother.

They had given their lives for this even while the entire world had laughed at them. Now a second generation of fools was about to follow the first down the road to ruin.

Megeara only hoped that in the end she would meet a better fate than that which had greeted the first.

Like father, like daughter.

She had no choice except to complete his quest because until she did, her name would be as worthless as his.

“Let the floggings begin.…”

CHAPTER 1

SANTORINI, GREECE, 1996

“My kingdom for a gun.”

Shaking his head at Geary’s hostile words, Brian calmly opened the car door for her as she approached their small taxi that waited in the heart of the crowded Greek thoroughfare. “You don’t have a kingdom.”

She paused on the sidewalk to glare at him. Given the fury in her system, she couldn’t believe he’d dare point out the obvious to her. She’d been known to verbally let serious blood when only half this riled. Truly, the man had no sense of self-preservation. “And I don’t have a gun—looks like I’m shit out of luck all the way around, huh?”

Still, he was his ever present calm self—which didn’t really help her mood. For once, couldn’t he get ticked off, too? “I take it you didn’t get the permits … again.”

She could have done without that “again” part. Really. “What was your first clue?”

“Oh, I don’t know. That stomping stance as you walked down the street, clenching and unclenching your fists like you’re already choking someone, or maybe it’s that way you’re looking at me like you could claw out my eyes when I haven’t done anything to piss you off.”

“Yes, you have.”

She could tell he was fighting a smile. Thank goodness he had the good sense to keep it hidden. “And that is?”

“You don’t have a gun.”

He snorted. “Come on now, you can’t shoot every Greek official who gets in your way.”

“Wanna bet?”

Brian stepped back to let her enter the taxi first. At six three, he was a good-looking man in his mid-forties. Very distinguished and intelligent. Best of all, he was independently wealthy and more than capable of financing their latest venture in futility without complaining too much.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t into bribing public officials.

Was it too much to ask that she find a corrupt financier? Surely Brian should have some vice, and at the moment she couldn’t think of a more self-serving one than that.

“So what do we do now?” he asked as he joined her in the car.

Geary sighed, wishing she had an answer. Her team was waiting on her boat at the docks, but without the permits that allowed them to excavate the mounds she and Tory believed to be a city wall, all they could do was dive over the surface of what they’d found and do nothing more than admire it.

Sad comfort that. It’d been the best lead they’d had in years. “I want another silt sample.”

“You’ve already tested and retested those.”

“I know, but maybe it will help to convince them to give us the permits.” Yeah, right. She’d been given the run-around particularly good and the words from her latest visit still rang in her ears.

“This is Greece, Dr. Kafieri. There are ruins all around us and I will not allow you to begin tearing up the floor of the Aegean, which is a busy shipping area, when all you can give me is another this-is-Atlantis story. Really. I’ve enough treasure hunters trying to pilfer our national history for their own gain. I don’t need any more. We here in Greece take our history most seriously and you’re wasting my valuable time. Good day.”

It was enough to make her want to bang her head on the man’s desk until he either relented or had her committed. This wasn’t about treasure, but trying to tell that to him had been as futile as trying to fly with wax wings.

“There has to be some way around this.”

Brian stiffened. “I won’t be a part of anything illegal.”

And unfortunately, neither would she. “Don’t worry, Brian. I don’t want to go to jail for this, either.”

But there had to be something else she could do.…

If only the pain in her head would let up enough so that she could think. But the throbbing pain, much like the official, seemed determined to ruin her day.

She leaned back in the seat and watched the beautiful buildings and landscape of the town drift by while people went about their business on the sidewalks. How she wished she could be carefree enough to roam in and out of the stores, shopping and laughing like the majority of them. Unfortunately, she’d never once been a tourist anywhere.

Geary Kafieri was always all work and no play.

Neither of them spoke as the taxi wended its way through the narrow streets to the dock where their research boat was waiting. While Brian paid the fare, Geary got out and made her way up the gangway to face their team with her gloriously redundant failure.

Tory met her first. At fifteen and very average in height, Geary’s cousin had long drab brown hair and thick glasses. She was an awkward teen who had more interest in her books than much of anything else. Even though Tory didn’t remember her father, Theron, she was just like him. Finding Atlantis was her only ambition.