The Devil's Due Page 2

  After surviving that trip, barely, they'd traveled twice more - once to 1906 San Francisco to save a man's life, and Simon's in the bargain, and then again to 1942 London to help a friend and fellow traveler, Evan Eldridge, lost in time. That's where they'd met Jack.

  After completing their mission and dropping off Evan in 1906, Simon and Elizabeth returned to present day Hastings. Once there, arrangements were made for the contents of Sebastian's study to be sent to California. Getting themselves back to California wasn't so simple. Not being able to travel via conventional means due to Jack's complete lack of any modern-day ID, the three traveled directly to Santa Barbara, thanks to the watch and key Teddy Fiske had made for Elizabeth. And now, finally, the contents of Sebastian's study had caught up with them.

  Inside the crate on the top level they found several books by Flemish alchemist John Fontaine, a stone bound with fine gold twine, and a Cleromancy kit. Elizabeth opened the small leather pouch and poured the contents into her hand. She set aside the dozen or so black and white beans and studied the two bone-carved dice with various runes on each side.

  The divination by casting random lots was an ancient practice that transcended geography. From the Chinese I-Ching to ancient Rome, many cultures practiced some variation on the theme.

  Elizabeth put the beans and dice back into the bag and dug into the crate. “Sebastian really got around, didn't he?”

  Simon wrapped the small African fetish he'd been holding in a rough, colorful cloth and set it on the table. “Yes,” Simon said. “So many different times and places.”

  Sebastian's adventures must have been incredible, Elizabeth thought, as they unwrapped one mysterious item after the next. She'd read some of Sebastian's papers on the occult, but they couldn't capture the feeling of holding an actual mystical artifact in your hand. She started to open a small ivory box, but stopped and looked to Simon when she heard him let out a short, quick breath.

  He sat forward on the sofa, elbows coming to rest on his knees, a worn red leather book in his hands.

  “Simon?”

  He looked up and his eyes were bright with excitement and emotion. He held up the book. “His journal.”

  Elizabeth scooted down the sofa to sit at his side. “Have you seen that before?”

  He shook his head and turned the book over in his hands. It was well-worn red leather with faded gold lettering that read: Chronicles. Simon picked up a dust jacket and handed it to Elizabeth. “It was hidden inside this.”

  “Just So Stories,” Elizabeth read. “Kipling?”

  Simon smiled at a fond memory. “He used to read them to me when I was very small, years before he started telling me his other stories.”

  Sebastian's “other stories” were wild accounts of things like his brunch with the Death Eaters of Peru and fighting zombies in eighteenth century Paris — fanciful tales that just happened to be true. Stories that had led to the amazing collection they had in front of them.

  Sebastian's watch had let them travel through time, but the origin of the Council and its true purpose and even Sebastian's involvement remained a mystery. Elizabeth looked down at the book in Simon's hand. Until now. Maybe.

  “He must have meant for you and no else to find it. Why else would he have put that dust jacket on it?”

  Simon nodded, but kept his eyes on the book. Elizabeth knew memories of his grandfather were bittersweet. Sebastian died saving Simon's life and it was a guilt Simon carried with him to this day.

  Elizabeth inched closer to him and rested a hand on his back. She could feel the tension in his muscles. “We don't have to do this now.”

  Simon huffed out a breath, turned to her and offered a reassuring smile. “It's all right. As you say, he meant for me to find this. Now, let's find out why.”

  Elizabeth tucked up her legs underneath her as she settled into the sofa and listened to Simon's deep, rich voice read Sebastian's journal. They spent the next few hours going through it. The book chronicled most of Sebastian's adventures in wonderful detail. He was a vivid storyteller and his passion for his work bled through every page.

  “Despite all I have seen in my travels,” Simon read, “I am still staggered to my very core at that moment when the impossible becomes real. The rabbi folded the piece of parchment upon which he had written the word 'shem', a truncated version of one of the Kabbalistic names for the divine, and placed the paper into the Golem's mouth.”

  Despite the fact that this had happened years ago, hundreds of years ago according Sebastian's journal, Elizabeth still shivered at the image of the large, clay human figure of the Golem waiting to be brought to life.

  “The rabbi spoke words so softly to the creature, I could not hear them, but the Golem did and he lurched forward, the inanimate animated.”

  Elizabeth felt herself leaning in, enraptured by the story.

  “Under the rabbi's careful guidance, the Golem performed menial physical tasks, cleaning and carrying heavy objects and the like. The creature was well under his control, until that fateful night he forgot to remove the parchment from its mouth. It was a miracle the rabbi wasn't killed. He surely would have been had I not been there that night.”

  Simon peered over the top of the journal and caught Elizabeth's eyes. He arched both eyebrows in surprise and pleasure and then resumed reading. “To this very day, no man has dared set foot in the attic of that synagogue in Prague again.”

  After Simon read the last entry, a visit to ancient Mesopotamia, he closed the book and rested it on his knee. “He told me some of these stories when I was a boy,” he said. “If only I'd known then that they were true.”

  “He certainly was far from the silent observer in some of those,” Elizabeth said. There had been several adventures where Sebastian had consciously interfered. In fact, in some of them, the reason he'd gone there in the first place appeared to be to save someone's life.

  “Yes, the non-interference edict he mentioned from the Council doesn't appear to always apply, does it?”

  She reached for the book. “May I?”

  Simon turned and the book slid off his knee and onto the floor.

  “I'm sorry.” Elizabeth moved forward to retrieve the book. “Is it okay?”

  Simon picked up the book and surveyed it for damage. “No harm done.”

  Elizabeth let out a sigh of relief and as she moved back into the sofa, she noticed a piece of paper had fallen out from between the pages. She reached down and picked it up. “This fell out,” she said as she held it out to Simon.

  He took the paper and unfolded it. The air in the room went suddenly still.

  Elizabeth leaned closer to see. It was a list with a dozen or so names with dates and locations. The first entry on the list made Elizabeth's blood run cold.

  Manchester Arms, New York City, 4 PM August 20, 1929 - Simon Cross.

  Chapter Three

  “What is this?” Elizabeth asked, a feeling of unease welling inside her. “Why on earth is your name on this list?”

  Simon stared down at the piece of paper as shocked as she was. “This is just a few days before he saved my life.”

  “Saved both of our lives.”

  Simon pushed himself off the sofa. Pacing was a good idea. Elizabeth was tempted to join him, but seeing this list ripped open an old wound for Simon and now he would need his space. Simon strode back and forth, reading and rereading the list.

  When she and Simon had gone back to 1929, the gangster King Kashian kidnapped her. Simon rushed after her and would have been killed if Sebastian hadn’t come to his rescue at the very last second. Sebastian had died saving Simon, died in his arms, and the memory of that day still haunted him.

  But Sebastian hadn't been there for Simon. At least that's what he'd told him. Elizabeth tried to reason it aloud. “When Sebastian found you, he told you he was there to study King.”

  “Yes, that's what he said.”

  The pain in his voice at the memories cut right to Elizabeth's hear
t. She stood and came to his side. He looked down at her and she could see he was trying hard to rein in his feelings. She put a supportive hand on his back and they both turned back to the paper in his hands.

  At the top of the handwritten list in the left hand corner was the name “Cross” and to the right of that above the names, “in absentia luci, tenebrae vincunt.”

  “What does that say?” she asked.

  Simon furrowed his brow as he translated the Latin phrase. “In the absence of light, darkness prevails.”

  “That sounds like some sort of motto or creed,” Elizabeth said. “I don't recognize it though.”

  Simon nodded, deep in thought.

  “Maybe these were assignments from the Council,” Elizabeth offered. “Like the rabbi and the Golem? Light and darkness.”

  “Possibly,” Simon said.

  “Look at the handwriting. All the other names and dates were written by the same hand, but your entry, it's slightly different. It's not quite the same.”

  Simon pulled himself out of the past with an effort and stared down at the list. “It's all his handwriting, but the spacing is odd, as though it was added to the top of the list after the others were written.”

  “Maybe Sebastian found out you were going to be in danger and put you to the top of the list?”

  Simon ran a hand through his hair and massaged the back of his neck. “But how did he find out? And who are these others on the list? What's the connection between us?”

  Elizabeth put a comforting hand on Simon's arm. “I don't know. Maybe the Council knows.”

  Simon's jaw clenched. Just the mention of the Council was enough to pique his anger. He'd always blamed them for his grandfather's death. Now, it seemed, there was more to it than just an assignment gone wrong.

  “Sod the Council,” Simon said under his breath. He glared down at the list, willing it to give him the answers he sought. “Grandfather meant for me to find this, not them. He wouldn't have hidden it in the Kipling dust jacket otherwise.”

  Simon stared at the yellowed piece of paper and then sat down heavily on the sofa. Elizabeth eased next to him and knew he was right. “This list meant something to him. It was important, important enough to hide from the Council. Important enough for him to risk his life.”

  Simon ran a hand through his hair and nodded his head. “Yes.”

  “These other names. Do any of them mean anything to you?” The names on the list felt random. The dates and locations spanned centuries and continents.

  “No, I don't think so,” Simon said.

  “Maybe they're all like you were? In danger from the dark? King certainly qualifies.”

  “Yes,” he said with a deep frown. Simon hardly needed to be reminded of what King was or what he'd done.

  “Yes, but Council rules are strict on non-interference; he was firm about that.”

  “But then he did a fair amount of interfering, didn't he? With the Rabbi? With others? With you? And thank God he did.” Elizabeth put her hand on his leg. “I get the feeling the Council has two sets of rules and they break either when it suits them. I don't trust them, but I trust your grandfather. If he made this list, it meant something to him. You meant everything to him.”

  “I'm hardly important,” Simon said and waved off Elizabeth's reply. “In the grand scheme of things.”

  “I don't know. How many people have a watch? How many people in all of history have traveled through time? Dozens out of hundreds of millions? I'd say that makes you kind of important in the grand scheme of things.”

  As unlikely and uncomfortable as he found the idea, she could tell he was considering the possibility.

  “Maybe these people are at risk from the darkness? That absence of light thing,” Elizabeth continued. “Maybe the darkness is another way of saying some sort of occult phenomena that changes things, like King, like the Golem. Unbalances something. And Sebastian's list is a way to put things right? To light the darkness.”

  Both she and Simon thought about it for a moment as they stared at the list. It was terrifying and exhilarating to contemplate the idea. If there was some dark force that was unsettling the balance of the world… Sebastian had specialized in the occult, which definitely qualified as darkness. She and Simon had battled something dark and unearthly in New York, and again with Madame Petrovka and even the Shard.

  “It's possible,” Simon said, looking at the list.

  Elizabeth grabbed her laptop and started researching the names on the list. It was clear it would take a lot more than some good Google-Fu to find out anything about most of them. One of the names could have been a French bakery owner or politician. Or maybe even an artist. Another name showed up in the search results for those lost in a disaster on the Mississippi. But, most of the other names brought up nothing. Considering the dates went back over two hundred years, it wasn't all that surprising. Unless the people were famous, it was unlikely there would be much in the way of records on the Internet.

  There was one name, however, that Elizabeth recognized.

  “This one,” Elizabeth said suddenly, running her finger along the name under Simon's. “Alan Grant, Hollywood, I know that name. It might be a different Alan Grant, but…”

  She did a quick search and brought up a large image of a still from a movie - a handsome man, with sandy blond hair and pencil thin mustache, in his early forties. He was dressed as a buccaneer and using a dagger to rip through a giant sail as he sped down toward the deck of a large ship. He had a giant cutlass in his other hand and a broad, gleeful, wicked grin on his face.

  Simon frowned. “Surely, it must be another Alan Grant.”

  “The Sword of the Seven Seas! I loved that movie.”

  Simon's expression was so flat it was almost concave.

  “Alan Grant? The Lost Musketeer? Midnight Masquerade? He was a huge star.”

  “I didn't watch many movies growing up. Once I was at school, it was mostly Monty Python.”

  “And big points for that,” Elizabeth said. “But you don't know what you're missing. Those old movies, they were so much fun.”

  “At some point it must have stopped being fun for Mr. Grant or he wouldn't be on the list, would he?”

  “True.” Elizabeth did a quick search and found Grant's bio, but it wasn't very helpful. “His credits just stop.”

  “In 1933?”

  Elizabeth nodded.

  Simon folded the piece of paper with the list and leaned back into the sofa cushion, letting his neck rest against the back of it, and looked to the ceiling. He looked tired. Heck, he was tired; she was tired. They'd been at this for hours and hours, and the emotional toll of discovering his grandfather's real reason for traveling to New York was starting to show.

  “It's late,” Elizabeth said. “Why don't we go to bed and we can talk about it tomorrow.”

  “We leave for Europe tomorrow.”

  In the excitement of it all, she'd nearly forgotten about their honeymoon. “Right.”

  She nestled closer to Simon. He reflexively put his arm around her and she put her head on his shoulder. They both stayed silent and still for a few minutes.

  Finally, Elizabeth said, “We don't have to go.”

  Simon lifted his head and peered down at her. “Are we talking about Europe or…”

  “Either, both. I don't know.” She sat up and turned to face him. “I know I'm always the one pressuring you to go. And I don't want to do that. Not with this. As unlike me as it is,” she said with a grin, “I will go wherever you want to go. This one has to be your choice.”

  Simon took her hand and caressed it. Finally, his fingers traced the edges of her wedding ring. “No, it's our choice. Together?”

  “Agreed.” Elizabeth covered his hand with hers and then added, “You go first.”

  Simon laughed and brought her hand to his lips. “I'm torn. I feel as though I owe it to my grandfather to finish what he started, but I owe you so much more. I owe you a life.”

&n
bsp; “Just for a moment. Forget me; forget Sebastian. What do you want?”

  Simon thought sincerely about the question for a moment and then said so softly Elizabeth could barely hear him, “I want to go.”

  He looked at her and his expression and voice grew stronger. “A good man died to give me a second chance. I don't want to waste it being a tourist, when I can make a difference. If there is truly a darkness out there, and I believe there is, I can't walk away knowing I could do something about it. I don't know why he chose these people or made this list, but I want to follow it. And I want you with me wherever it leads.”

  Elizabeth sat up a little straighter and smiled. “I was hoping you'd say that.”

  Simon tugged on his ear in thought as he debated their choice. “We could, of course, go to Europe and deal with this when we return. 1933 isn't going anywhere.”

  Elizabeth had considered that. “It would be like an itch we couldn't scratch though. We have a chance to live history, to be the light. The rest just kind of pales in comparison, doesn't it?”

  “It will probably be dangerous.”

  “No doubt.”

  Simon frowned.

  “We still have Teddy's key,” she said. Teddy Fiske's key allowed them to travel with the watch at will instead of waiting for an eclipse. It had saved their lives in London. “And it's not like there's a war going on or vampires lurking about.”

  “That we know of.”

  “Good point.”

  Simon shifted to face her. “Who knows what sort of dangers Alan Grant faces; what sort of darkness there is there?”

  Elizabeth smiled. “It's a good thing you're an expert then, isn't it?”

  Simon tried to frown, but couldn't quite manage it. “We don't know anything about that time.”

  “Ah,” Elizabeth said with a widening grin. “But we know someone who does.”

  ~~~

  Simon folded his arms and leaned back against the kitchen counter. “It's a terrible idea.”