Chapter Nineteen #2
Lainie took a step back as if distance could separate her from what she was hearing. She’d thought Lucien insane but she knew Christien not to be. Yet why was he telling almost the same story? Why did he too believe in this treasure?
“It took eighteen months to get to Scotland,” he said.
“I traveled at night. The tide of hatred toward the Templars was growing, spreading across countries and continents. I had a mission and it was all I concentrated on. Finish my mission and I could die for there was no thought of living without you.”
Lainie swallowed past the lump in her throat, aching for her dark knight and his pain.
“I almost failed several times. I was weak with fever, dying with every breath I took. But it was not enough.” He pounded his fist against the headstone. “’Tis never enough. I was brought back from the brink of death and told I must protect the treasure for always.”
“What do you mean brought back from death?” she whispered.
Christien turned to her, his look intense, the knowledge of centuries engraved upon his face and reflected in his eyes. She took another step back, suddenly afraid.
“I died. And then I was resurrected, never to die again.”
Heartbeats of silence passed, Christien looking deep into her eyes, willing her to accept what he was saying and Lainie, pushing away the thoughts, refusing to believe.
“I don’t understand.”
“Yes, you do. I am the same man you met seven hundred years ago. I live still and will continue to live until the end of time. I am the keeper of the treasure of the Knights Templar—the treasure Lucien, now named Lucheux, wants to take from me. I am forever alive, yet dead inside until you came along.”
She shook her head, holding her hands out as if she could physically stop him from speaking.
Christien moved toward her. “You dreamt of us, Madelaine. You understand that you and the Countess of Flandres are one and the same. Is it not too much to believe I am the same man?”
Lainie swallowed and licked her dry lips. “How is it possible—”
Christien huffed out a laugh. “Oh, it’s very possible. God sent his emissary to pull me from the brink of death, to heal me of the fever and to thrust me back out into the world. Forever.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m all that stands between good and evil.”
There are people who want to get to me through you.
The words he said to her in the hospital suddenly took on a whole new meaning and chilled her.
“This evil.” She cleared her throat. “Is that what you meant when you said I wasn’t safe?”
“Yes.”
Fear leapt inside her but she bravely fought it down. “Who is… What is the evil?”
For a long moment he didn’t speak, as if he didn’t want to say what had to be said. The longer the silence stretched, the harder her heart pounded and the weaker her knees became.
“Christien. Tell me. Please. Is Lucheux the evil you speak of?” Good God, what was happening here? What was Christien in the middle of?
His eyes were like flint. “Yes. The treasure I was chosen to protect contains the seven seals. If they are opened…” His voice trailed off but he didn’t need to say more. His message was clear enough. If they were opened unspeakable things would happen, all leading to the Apocalypse.
She didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know, but she asked anyway because to deny it would be cowardly and she wasn’t a coward. “Lucheux. He’s the opposite of you?”
For the first time a shadow of a smile played across his lips.
“You could say that. He and Giselle were given eternal life by a demon of Satan. They are tasked with finding the treasure and opening the seals.” Christien’s lips thinned.
“’Tis the reason I was in Milwaukee. To keep an eye on them and contain them. ”
Even though she’d been expecting his answer, it still felt as if someone had body-slammed her.
Lucheux and Giselle. The people she worked for.
The woman who’d killed her in another life.
This couldn’t be happening. These were the things movies were made of, not something that happened in real life.
And yet, part of her believed. No, part of her knew it to be true.
It all made sense now. The clothes in Christien’s bedroom, Giselle’s hatred.
Is this why Lucheux never showed his face to her?
Had he known she’d been dreaming of him?
Yet she hadn’t dreamt of Giselle until the very end. How had they known?
A terrifying chill raced up her spine. He knew. The demon or Satan. One of them knew what she’d been dreaming. Had maybe even controlled her dreams?
“Now do you understand my fear, Madelaine? This is far worse than anything you could have imagined. And to think you were brought into the middle of it.” His teeth came together and a soft growl erupted from him. “It kills me.”
You are my Achilles heel. His words came back to her, bitter, full of irony.
“I was reborn to be used as a pawn against you.” The thought staggered her, frightened her more than anything else. She had been conceived to bring about the downfall of Christien. The downfall of the world.
“At first I thought that, but now I am not so sure.”
“How can you believe otherwise?” she cried. “We were in love all those centuries ago. To bring me back would destroy you. Distract you from your purpose.”
He grabbed her shoulders and looked at her fiercely.
“Your return didn’t destroy me. It gave me hope and reminded me what life is about.
Your return was every dream, every prayer, every hope come true.
Don’t ever believe otherwise. I love you, Madelaine.
Through centuries, through wars. Nothing will change that. ”
She blinked her tears away. This wasn’t a do-over like she believed. This wasn’t God’s way of righting a wrong, of bringing two good people together again so this time they could have a happy ending.
This was a disaster in the making.
“What I can’t figure out is why the attempts on your life? If you were sent as a distraction why kill you?”
“Giselle,” Lainie whispered.
“What about Giselle?”
“She killed me because Lucien wanted me. She still hates me.”
“I should have seen,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“How could you? You didn’t know Giselle and Lucien were lovers back then.”
“But I should have known.”
“Beating yourself up isn’t going to help us. We need to figure out what to do.”
“’Tis obvious what I have to do. There are two treasures to protect now.”
Lainie shook her head, her heart rending in two. “The Templar treasure is more important. What will happen if Lucheux and Giselle get their hands on it?”
She stepped away, creating more distance from Christien.
Christien looked at her sharply. “What are you doing?”
“Don’t you see? I have to leave you.”
“No!” He reached for her but she sidestepped him, her heart breaking, but her resolve firm.
“If I’m not around. If I’m…gone, they have no hold over you. You can concentrate on protecting the treasure.”
“You don’t understand, Madelaine.” His heart was in his eyes, the pain and terror of losing her so acute she felt it inside her. Her own emotions mirrored his, but this was one thing he wasn’t going to talk her out of. She knew what she had to do.
“I’m your Achilles heel.”
He winced. “No.”
“Yes.” She took another step away. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I will not allow this. You will stay beside me.”
“There are some things you can’t command, Christien. Some things are out of your hands.”
“Not this.”
Her dark knight. Her hero. The man of her dreams. She was dying inside, knowing what she had to do to make this right. To bring balance back into the world.
“You think you know, but you don’t,” he said. “You don’t know everything.”
He slowly made his way toward her and God forgive her, she couldn’t move away. Her feet were planted in the earth as surely as the roots of the tree growing a few paces away.
“When I was told of my mission—to live forever, to protect the treasure—I was also told of the key that would break the seals.”
Lainie stilled. “Key?”
“A key, Madelaine.” He reached out and lifted the silver key hanging around her neck, cradling it in his large hand. His fingers closed around the necklace and his worried gaze searched hers.
“This isn’t the key,” she said. “This was given to me by my mother and has been in her family for years.”
“I did some research into your family.”
Her heart nearly stopped beating and by the look on his face, she knew she didn’t want to hear what he had to say.
“You were adopted—”
“No!” She tore herself away from him, yanking the chain out of his hand. The fragile links broke and the key slithered through the severed chain to land on the ground.
“I’m sorry,” Christien said softly, knowing he was tearing her world apart, breaking her down piece by piece.
“You’re lying.”
Her pain was his pain and he wished to God he didn’t have to do this to her, but she had to understand running from him wasn’t the answer. She was as much a part of this as he was. “Ah, Madelaine. I would never lie to you.”
She swallowed, her eyes bright with unshed tears. And still he had more to tell her, more that would destroy her and shatter everything she knew about herself and her family. He hated himself for what he was doing even if it was necessary.
“Your birth mother and father were killed in a car crash while you were still inside her womb. The doctors were able to save the baby.” He touched her cheek. “You, Madelaine. You were adopted by the Alexanders when you were but days old.”
She shook her head, loosening the tears clinging tenaciously to her lashes.
He thought of her father in the nursing home, of her need to take care of the man who raised her as his own.
Her face was twisted into disbelief and a sliver of fear raced through him.
Would she ever forgive him for destroying her world?
He wished he had the ability to snatch the words out of the air, to not have to tell her the truth of her lineage. His only hope was that one day she would forgive him and understand the necessity. In the meantime he would die a thousand deaths knowing how much he hurt her.
“Your family lineage goes back a long way. A very long way. To biblical times.” He’d been shocked and awed to discover her ancestry and immediately knew he had to protect it at all cost.
“No,” she whispered, but this denial wasn’t as forceful as the others.
“The key isn’t a piece of silver,” he said. “The key is you. Your bloodline.”
She pressed a fist to her mouth and slowly sank to the ground as if her legs couldn’t hold her anymore.
He crouched before her, brushing her hair from her face. She cringed from him, breaking his heart all over again. He was destroying everything they built together and he wasn’t finished yet.
“There is more.”
She shook her head, her eyes wide and pleading for him to stop.
“There is another like you, Madelaine. You were a twin.”
A strangled gasp made its way around the fist still pressed to her mouth.
“I haven’t been able to locate her but I’m trying, using every resource at my disposal. We will find her, I promise.” He had to find her and protect her as much as he had to protect Madelaine.
Her eyes were dull, as if her mind was shutting down with too much information too fast. Christien tried to put on a brave face when inside he felt anything but brave. He was scared to death he’d crushed the best thing that had happened to him in over seven hundred years.
“So you see, Madelaine. You cannot leave me. You can’t run from me. You are needed because you are the key. I am as devoted to protecting you as I am to the treasure.”