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“Will I be able to ride a camel, Mama?”
Helen laughed, the sound like the ringing of bells in a cathedral, deep and beautiful, and Cassandra’s chest swelled. She’d made Mother laugh.
“Yes, you and Ajax, too. I will get you one with two humps so you can ride together.”
Cassandra wanted to ride a camel by herself, but she said nothing. She knew her mother never liked her excluding her twin.
Her mother walked forward, gently cupped Cassandra’s face in her hands. Cassandra could feel her warm, soft palms on her flesh, see her mother’s boundless love for her in her brilliant blue eyes. “I must caution you. Where we are going, it will be dangerous. You must promise me, Cassandra, that you will listen to me, to every word and obey me.”
“Are bad men coming for us, Mama?”
“There are always bad men, but we are Kohaths, we are the chosen ones. We alone can protect the Ark, and you and your brother, as twins, are the most powerful of any Kohath who’s lived in the past two centuries. When we find the Ark, I want you and Ajax to open it together.”
“I want to open it myself.”
She saw a flash of concern in her mother’s eyes, but she said calmly, sweetly, “No. You must work with your brother. You must share. It is never more true than with the Ark. Now, hurry, grab your bag, let us go find your brother. Our adventures are only beginning.”
And Helen stepped back into the doorway. The air began to chill, the light became brighter, and her mother slowly faded away. Cassandra felt tears running down her cheeks, mixing with blood from the wound on her forehead. She was alone, she’d always been alone, even when she’d had to share with her twin, but not like this, no, not like this.
She remembered that trip, hot and boring and they dug in the sand all day, until that morning she and Ajax had wandered off and fallen into a partially dug well and had to be rescued. Helen had sent them back to England.
A small light appeared, and Helen was back, in the far corner of the vault. Cassandra ran to her.
“Mama! Where did you go?”
But Helen didn’t appear to hear her, didn’t look at her or acknowledge her. She was there, yet she wasn’t. Suddenly, Cassandra saw her standing on the edge of a mighty cliff, its granite sides flat and smooth. She was wearing a flowing robe and she looked young and incredibly beautiful. She was shading her eyes, looking into the distance. Once again she faded away.
She appeared again, this time near the door, and Cassandra didn’t understand. “Mama, why are you playing like this? I’m here, I finally found you.”
Helen wasn’t alone. She was arguing with their father. Then David Maynes slowly turned empty eyes toward Cassandra. “You killed me, my own daughter killed me, and she knows, oh yes, your mother knows.” When he reached out his hand to her, she couldn’t move, could barely breathe. She saw the flesh fall from his arm and his skeletal hand locked hard around her throat. “My only daughter, my favorite child, you know I always loved you more than Ajax, my second Helen. But you didn’t love me, did you? It was always your mother and only your mother, only the damned Kohaths. And then you had me poisoned. Your own father. It is time you answered for your sins.”
Cassandra felt those skeletal fingers begin to tighten around her neck. Still she couldn’t move. But then she realized she was alone, her father’s hand wasn’t choking her to death, her father was gone.
Her mother’s notebook, it was putting these visions into her mind. She threw it against the far wall, watched it bounce off onto the floor. But the visions wouldn’t stop.
She saw her grandfather sit up from his grave, burial earth falling off his body, and he was holding the cherubim’s wing. “I gave you and your brother everything I had, yet Ajax murdered me. I knew you carried insanity from your father’s line, yet I hoped and prayed, as did your mother.
“You have murdered wantonly, even my poor Burnley, devoted, loyal to me, a better person than either of you. You and you brother are damned, Cassandra. I denounce you. You do not deserve to be Kohaths.”
She wanted to scream it wasn’t so, she wanted to explain, but the words choked in her throat. She saw all of them then, standing in the doorway, shaking their heads at her—from Appleton Kohath to her brother—and there was Lilith and that bitch, Elizabeth St. Germaine, who would have exposed them all if Cassandra hadn’t stopped her. She screamed, “You failed, Lilith, you deserved to die! Mother, it wasn’t me, it was Ajax. Not me, really, not me!”
There were so many of them, faces she was sure she’d never seen before, and they were advancing on her and she knew they would kill her. She yelled, “Mama, help me!”
But Helen stayed in the doorway and watched them drag her down to her knees.
“I am sorry,” she heard her mother’s sad voice, “We tried so hard to teach you, to show you what you must do. You and your brother are so very smart, so focused, but you were twisted, I saw it, as did your grandfather, yet we continued to pray, to hope. Until I had to face the truth. Your grandfather tried and tried to help you, until you came to kill him.
“Your grandfather was forced to kill so many thousands of innocent lives in Beijing for you to find my camp and the cherubim’s wing and the misleading map of the Ark I created for you. And I saw clearly that neither of you looked upon the wing or the map as the path to learn and understand and embrace your calling. You wanted the Ark for the power it would give you.
“I am sorry, Cassandra. Your brother is dead, lost forever, and you will join him shortly.”
“But where is the Ark? Please, Mama, tell me, I want to see it, I have to open the Ark, feel its power filling me. You’ll see, it wants me, it will recognize me. I will become one with it. You have to believe me, I swear I will use the power only for the good of the world. I swear it!”
Tears ran down Helen’s face. “It breaks my heart, even though I knew this would come to pass. The Ark will always be safe, now and forever.”
Her mother was gone and Cassandra was alone. The room was chill again, the air dry. The dead were no longer there to kill her. She rose slowly to her feet. The notebook, where was it? She had to find it, it had to be here, the ghost of her mother couldn’t have taken it.
She looked wildly around, then ran into the antechamber. She saw her enemies standing there, staring at her. Nicholas Drummond held her mother’s notebook in his hands. How had he gotten it without her seeing him?
