with Caleb.
Revenge just might be better the second time.
The visions flew at him like a desperate flock of ravens, plucking at his mind’s eye, showing him…
… the lighthouse on the cliff, and the main home, where Robert and the red-haired man approached the front entrance… the icy landscape above, sprinkled with stardust on the fresh snow, where the research station burned, churning fiery smoke into the sky… a Sno-Cat, racing from the wreckage on huge rolling treads… Phoebe’s face, behind the Plexiglass. Orlando Natch, unconscious in the back…
In the dark, using the only muscles he could still control, he smiled. Come on sis, don’t be too long. He saw her…
… on the CB, making a distress call to Fort Erickson… a research installation bursting with activity, men racing to Sno-Cats and snowmobiles, hooking up digging equipment and ice-breakers…
And then, as if satisfied with what they had shown him so far, the visionary black birds pecked away with renewed vigor, excited at having undivided access to his exposed senses. Look this way, they cried, and he saw his son, Alexander…
… standing outside the silver vault door, hands pressed against the reflective surface, while in the square window that mane of curly red hair, those familiar blue eyes, trapped inside, yet exuding triumph…
Caleb pushed his memory, recalling a hotel room years ago, in Alexandria, and those eyes peering at him from a crack in the door. Who…?
And then he saw new visions of…
… sprawling scenes of an arid landscape, with ruined pillars over an archaeological dig site on a hill; and then a scene of a medieval castle basking in the sun, before… again, the view of a giant green-hued metal head, a crown of spiked rays, those regal eyes
… a huge underground cavern lit by sickly yellow light, and a host of cold, dead eye sockets set below helmets… an army waiting patiently in the darkness, brandishing spears, swords, bows, protecting something beyond immeasurable walls…
Caleb moaned-a sound he barely heard, his spirit soaring now, glimpsing simultaneously…
… Phoebe’s Sno-Cat, followed by the armada of rescue vehicles, arriving at the collapsed site… the Sodus Lighthouse, hurtling now down the basement stairs, through the underground passage to the vault door, over Alexander’s shoulder, through the door, inside, where that man, that familiar man kneels cross-legged, holding the artifact, the greenish-blue aura dancing from the Emerald Tablet.
His face is bathed in its kaleidoscopic hues, and he suddenly looks up, cocks his head, and his eyes lock on, staring straight into the vision’s point of view. He smiles…
… and Caleb rocked back into his body, screaming. That face! It was the person he had seen through the door in Alexandria. The Morpheus Initiative member who’d had a premonition of disaster under the Pharos and had stayed behind, had warned Caleb.
“Xavier!” he shouted, his lungs burning. “Xavier Montross!”
4
Lydia Gregory-Crowe didn’t see them coming.
One minute she had been sipping her cup of steaming Armenian coffee, the next, two armed men in black ski masks had guns to her head. She tried to call out to warn Alexander, but remembered he was back at the lighthouse, most likely prowling in its basement, playing make-believe or whatever he did down there.
Seconds later, she was led out onto the front lawn to meet the last two people coming out of a black jeep. A red-haired man with brilliant blue eyes stood first, glanced at her, smiled, then looked down to the lighthouse. Lydia started to pull herself free, struggling until she saw the next person emerge from the passenger side of the jeep, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Hello, Lydia. Sorry to drop in like this.”
Her expression went from anger and fright to outright shock.
“Robert!”
“Can we not point guns at her?”
The man beside him sighed. “In a minute. Lydia, where’s Alexander? Where’s your son?”
“I’m not telling you-you, who the hell are you? What do you people want? Robert, did they abduct you?”
“Settle down, Lydia. I know this might look a bit like overkill, but Xavier didn’t want to take any chances. Not with something of this magnitude.” He sighed. “We’ve come for the tablet.”
Lydia’s bright green eyes sparkled. “The Emerald Tablet? What-? Wait, you think it’s here?”
Xavier Montross brushed past her, heading to the lighthouse entrance as the rising sun glinted off the mist- shrouded bay. He turned his attention to the tower. “Oh, it’s definitely here. Your husband, it appears, never quite trusted you.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “Maybe it had something to do with your not being entirely honest with him from the beginning about who you were.”
“The fact that I was a Keeper had nothing to do with my feelings for Caleb.” She held up fists, wrists still cuffed. “And you. I remember you. Skipped out on the team in Alexandria.”
“Saved myself, more like it, from their stupidity. Saved myself for more important things.”
Lydia released a long breath. “Well, I don’t believe you. Caleb didn’t take the Emerald Tablet. He couldn’t.”
“He could,” Montross said, heading to the entrance, “and he did. It’s been right under your nose, all these years.”
Robert followed, helping Lydia along after dropping his cigarette in the snow. “Your son knows too.”
“Impossible. I would know if Alex were keeping such a secret.”
Robert smiled. “A mother doesn’t know everything, not in this case, Lydia. He’s more his father’s son.”
“How can you be sure?”
Robert pointed. “Ask him. He drew it.”
Montross grinned, moving quickly now to the steel door, blazing in the rising sun. “I’ll show you my sketches later. Over a hundred of them, some drawn during the past decade, but most over twenty years ago, when I was a boy.” He blinked at her, then reached for the door. “Even then, my destiny was clear. Even then, this day was in my sights.”
Lydia shot out her bound hands, caught her brother’s collar with both hands. “Robert, you can’t allow this! If the tablet is down there, you can’t let this man-anyone other than a Keeper-get his hands on something so powerful!”
Robert held his sister’s cuffed wrists, and looked into her eyes. “Don’t worry, he’s going to give it to us. And then it will finally be where it belongs. He only needs to read a portion of it, something his visions have shown him. Don’t ask me to explain it all.”
“If you don’t know his true motivations, why would you take this risk? Our father taught us better than that.”
“Don’t bring him into this. The Emerald Tablet, and all its ancient knowledge, is our birthright. Bad enough our ancestors had to wait over two thousand years for its release, keeping the damn secret, but then to have an outsider steal it away?”
“Caleb’s not an outsider.”
“Not anymore, true, but-”
“He was a Keeper, truer to the cause than we ever were.”
“You’re softening, Lydia. Too much in his shadow, I think.”
Lydia glared at him. “You should have just come to me, I would have talked to Caleb.” She pounded his chest.
“Enough,” Montross said, then turned to his men. “You two stay up here. Keep an eye on them.”
Robert’s head snapped around. “‘Them?’ But-”
“Don’t worry, Robert. I will still give you what you want, but first, I must do this alone.” He reached into his
