Chapter Six—The Search Begins #2
She didn’t think he lost many battles, but the thought of him “surrendering” gave her imagination whole new ideas, like listening to him moan in earnest as she slowly…
Stop! That lopsided smile wasn’t helping matters.
It could melt glaciers. Big ones. Hello?
Remember the Three Losers? Don’t fall for a sinfully wicked smile again!
She lifted her chin. I’ll just keep this businesslike.
She sighed and mentally zipped his pants up.
She was glad Nim had stayed home. The faerie would have given her a good jab.
“Good. I’m glad that’s settled. When do we leave?”
“Not so fast.” Lucas sat down at the small table and motioned for her to join him. “Let’s take a look at these verses again.”
He shuffled some papers while she took a seat.
“I think the lines your friend brought up make it pretty clear we need to look for the Spear first,” Lucas said as he handed a sheet to her.
“But I don’t know about the second one. Roses climbing to heaven?
There are hundreds of thousands of trellises in gardens everywhere.
And a Druid’s tree would be an oak. Pretty common. ”
Sara studied both verses for several minutes.
“Hmmm. Dawn could mean that the Spear could only be seen in a certain light, perhaps.” She looked at the second verse and suddenly recalled Michael’s calling of the quarters during the full moon.
She sat up straighter. “Directions,” she said. “I think that’s a clue.”
“Huh? Ye doona make sense, lass.”
“Yes, I do! What direction does “dawn” come from? East. Are you familiar with the Tarot?”
“Fortune-telling?”
“No. The disc/platter/pentacle’s element is earth and its direction is north.
The Chalice, of course, holds water, so its direction is west, the direction of sunset and the Otherworld, according to Celtic legends.
The Sword is fire—as in the avenging archangel Michael—and fire’s direction is south.
And the Spear,” she said with emphasis, “is the element of air, whose direction is east, just like dawn.” She put the paper down triumphantly. “And Nova Scotia is east of here.”
Lucas gave her a little smile. “Unless the world has shifted off its base, yes.”
“Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go to Oak Island.”
“I still think we’re wasting both time and money to go there.
In over two hundred years of excavating, and millions of dollars spent, not to mention lives lost, nothing has been found.
” Lucas raised a brow. “There’s a reason it’s called the Money Pit.
It’s also privately owned. We probably couldn’t even set foot on it. ”
“Ah! I did some research on the internet last night,” Sara said. “It’s currently for sale. Now, if the owner wants to sell it, he’s going to have let people see it, right?”
“And we look like millionaire investors looking for a place to throw away our money?” Lucas asked.
Sara thrust her chin out. “Well, I’m sure a Scotland Yard man could figure out a way to gain access.”
Lucas hid a smile and gathered up the papers. “Has anyone ever told you you’re a wee bit stubborn?”
She looked out the window. “Never.”
The smile burst into a grin. “You aren’t too good at lying either.”
“That’s because I’m out of practice. I prefer telling the truth.
” Sara turned back to him. “Okay. Maybe I am a ‘wee’ bit stubborn.” Michael had used the word “tenacious” more than once, and even Brianna had cautioned her about being willful.
She had to be careful in rituals not to influence others by projecting her will.
Hmmm…she prodded the edge of Lucas’ mind just a little and got a fleeting image of a large dog curled up asleep.
And then nothing. His shield snapped up.
She found him watching her, his golden eyes trained on hers. “Are ye into mind games, lass?”
She got the distinct feeling that she was dabbling a toe into some very deep and dangerous waters. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He slid his chair closer, placing one hand on the back of her chair, his arm trapping her between the table and his body. With his other hand, he cupped her chin, forcing her to look at him as he leaned forward.
“Ye are a channeler, lass. I felt it yesterday. Who are you? What else are you?”
Before she could answer, she felt his mind touch hers.
It was with such strength that she felt as though she’d been pushed against a wall and held there.
Not that her willing body would have minded the actual physical act.
Trapped by his arms, his muscular body pressed hard against her breasts and abdomen, with no place to turn and every wiggle only increasing the pleasurable fiction…
By the Goddess, I can’t let him see that!
She closed her eyes and concentrated on making her mind go blank.
The pressure inside her head eased and when she opened her eyes, he had released her, a somewhat amused expression on his face. Dear Goddess. She hoped her face wasn’t flaming like her errant body was. She jumped up and started toward the door.
“I’ll just go and make the flight and hotel reservations.”
“One room or two?” Lucas asked teasingly.
Damn! He read my mind. She didn’t answer, but slammed the door behind her.
****
He shouldn’t have teased her, Lucas thought as they stood waiting for their luggage at the Halifax airport the next day. Not when he knew too well what the wolf could do and that he had to keep this relationship platonic.
But he hadn’t expected to enter into such a purely erotic and physical scene.
Even now there were moments when he could still feel the soft sponginess of her breasts crushed to his chest, the hard nipples penetrating his shirt.
Her soft belly had rotated against his and in a moment, if she hadn’t closed her mind off to him, he would have slipped a leg between her thighs and had her ride him… The wolf perked up its ears.
He groaned slightly as the baggage carousel began to turn.
All he had wanted to do was teach her a lesson not to go probing into other people’s minds uninvited, and look what it got him.
Sara affected him far more than any woman had since he joined the Templars.
This was not going to be an easy trip. At least she had booked two rooms.
They proceeded on to clear Customs and then to car rentals.
They grabbed some lobster rolls at the ever present golden arches and were soon headed west for the relatively short drive to Mahone Bay.
Once there, they turned left at Grandall’s Point onto the causeway.
Lucas had managed to get clearance through the offices of Triton Alliance and when they reached the gate near mid-island, they were dispatched through.
They circled the swamp and finally came to a small parking lot that had been used for workers of the many drilling projects that had been done.
It was just past noon and the calm waters of the bay reflected the deep blue of an almost cloudless sky. Spring this far north was still crisp and cool, and he noticed how Sara pulled her windbreaker closer.
“You’re cold. Do you want my jacket?” Before she had time to answer, he stripped it off and placed it around her shoulders. He lifted her hair out from under it and settled it on her back. He thought he felt a quick intake of her breath.
“You’ll freeze,” she said.
“This flannel shirt will be fine,” he said. He hadn’t felt really cold in centuries. “Come this way. The original pit is over there.”
They walked a short distance to a fenced-off area. “This is as close as you’re going to get,” Lucas said.
Sara looked frustrated. “There’s no marker or explanation or anything.”
“This isn’t a tourist spot,” Lucas answered, “at least, not yet. Depends on who buys it, I guess. But you’ve got to admire the intelligence of whoever built this.
” He pulled some notes out of the pocket of his jacket, his fingers grazing the top of her breast and smiled inwardly at her sudden intake of breath.
“Over two hundred feet deep, oak platforms every ten feet, charcoal filter at forty feet, coconut fiber found at sixty, and finally, at ninety feet, there’s an inscribed stone. ”
She looked up at him. “And a Halifax professor deciphered it to read that forty feet deeper lies two million pounds of treasure. I got that off the web.”
Lucas nodded, thinking how blue her eyes were in this crisp, clean air.
“So they kept digging deeper. Then somewhere below one hundred fifty feet, they finally hit a vault—cement, no less—but all that was recovered eventually was a piece of parchment with the letters ‘vi’ or ‘ui’ on it. But the real ingenuity,” he continued, “was the two flood tunnels that kept booby-trapping any efforts to reach the bottom of the pit.”
Sara’s brow furrowed in thought. “I think I read that they cross the island and were hidden in manmade beaches. Right?”
“Yes,” Lucas answered and stuffed the notes in his jeans.
Better not take a chance on touching her again.
The wolf’s ears were pricked forward. “Whoever designed this had more than a passing knowledge of advanced hydraulics, because those tunnels could move six hundred gallons of ocean water per minute.”
“Quite a feat,” Sara agreed, “considering this was all supposed to have been built over four hundred years ago. Now who, then, would have the kind of knowledge needed to build something like this?”
“Somehow I don’t think that’s a question,” Lucas said with a smile as he watched the sunlight glisten almost raven-blue off Sara’s dark hair. He resisted the urge to curl some of the silky strands around his finger.
“It isn’t,” she answered, seemingly unaware of his distraction. “Masons could have done it. Like the ones who built Roslyn Chapel in the 1400s. Men who descended from the Templars who fled to Scotland. The Templars were builders of great cathedrals in Europe, weren’t they?”