Chapter Twelve—Revelation
“Do you really think we’re being followed?” Sara asked.
“After what nearly happened to you, I’m not taking any chances,” Lucas answered and gave her a brief smile.
Why did he have to look so seductive? The smile wasn’t meant to be anything more than reassurance, but she could still taste those full, sensual lips slanted on hers and… If only she could convince him that she was not afraid of his wolf, even if it did emerge.
“You’re being quiet. Penny for your thoughts?” Lucas asked.
She felt herself blush. Probably not a good idea to tell him. “Just looking at the water,” she said as she gazed past him to the turquoise blue of the Atlantic. ‘It’s so much prettier that the water on the Texas Gulf.”
“That’s because this has a sand bottom and the other side is mud.”
“It’s flatter, too,” she said. “The Gulf in Texas always has swells of three to five feet.”
Lucas arched an eyebrow. “It might get choppier soon. Looks like a cloud bank on the horizon.”
She studied it. The clouds did seem unusually dark. “Probably just one of the afternoon tropical thunderstorms that roll through,” she said. “The last week of April is too early for the hurricane season.”
Big drops of rain began to fall as they drove into St. Augustine, and Sara took out an umbrella as they pulled up in front of the Cathedral Basilica near the heart of the city.
“Let’s see when this was built,” she said as they walked up close and she looked at the cornerstone. “1793.” She tried not to sound disappointed. “Too late, if the Sinclairs came here in the late sixteenth century.”
“This is the present church,” Lucas answered. “It may be on the same spot as the first church was. Let’s check out the cemetery. Your friend did mention a graveyard, not the churches themselves.”
Sara brightened. “That’s true. Let’s see if we can find an ancient oak tree and some rosebushes.”
Again, she was disappointed, for there were no trees big enough to be even a hundred years old.
The rain increased in intensity as they took cover in the car.
Lucas’s wet linen shirt clung to his body, outlining the hard muscles of his shoulders and arms. Sara longed to unbutton his shirt and dry that broad chest with a big, fluffy towel and then move down…
Goddess, will I never stop fantasizing? Then she realized Lucas was staring at her own chest. Glancing down, she saw how her wet T-shirt outlined the mounds of her breasts.
Her nipples hardened on their own accord, poking at the thin fabric.
Lucas tore his gaze away and cleared his throat. “There are actually three churches that belong to the Basilica,” he said as he quickly picked up the tourist information they had gotten earlier. “Want to check those out?”
“Sure,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound too steady.
The first one they drove past had a modern curved front with lots of glass. “This one is way too new,” Sara said.
They drove to the next one, located on Martin Luther King Avenue. “St. Benedict the Moor,” she read. “Sounds interesting.”
Lucas stopped the car and they braved the weather to make a quick tour of the graveyard, again with no practical results. As they returned to the car, Lucas pointed up.
“That rose window reminds me of the European cathedrals,” he said.
‘One of the earliest ones was at Abbot Suger, near Paris, in the 1130s. A century later, when the Templars were established in France, they placed them in Notre Dame, Laon, and Chartres.” He paused.
“They always had the windows face west, although later in England, the window in Westminster Abbey faced north and the one in old St. Paul’s cathedral faced east.”
She looked up at the large, circular, stained-glass window with its stone tracery radiating from the center. “The old Roman church dedicated those windows to the Virgin Mary, didn’t they?”
Lucas nodded. “They referred to her as the Mystic Rose.”
Sara shook her head. “The Mystic Rose was Mary Magdalene, not the Virgin.” She grew thoughtful. “There may be a link, though.”
“How so?” Lucas asked as he kept his gaze carefully fixed on her face and not on her wet shirt.
Really, she didn’t mind if he looked. She wondered how it felt for him to have her breasts fill his hands or if he noticed the contrast between the hard nipple and the soft flesh surrounding it when he suckled.
The thought made her breasts feel heavy and achy with need.
How could she break through that steel resolve of his?
She heaved a big sigh, which caused her breasts to rise and was rewarded to see him inhale sharply.
Maybe she could get to the man. Better to pretend she hadn’t noticed, though.
“Did you know there’s a theory that traces Galahad back through both Lancelot and Elaine’s bloodlines all the way to the Magdalene herself?”
He looked intrigued. “Tell me.”
“It’s all in a book called Bloodline of the Holy Grail by Laurence Gardner,” she said.
“Galahad’s roots go back through Lancelot I and II as well as Taliesin, Nascien, Anfortas, and Josephes, who was the Magdalene’s son.
” She paused, glad that Lucas still looked interested.
“He also addresses the ancient marriage rites of Mesopotamia and Egypt, where it was the female who gave strength and power to the male.”
“And your point?” Lucas prodded gently when she fell to thinking silently.
“The point is that the Roman church became male-dominated by the third century, but worship of the sacred feminine was alive and well in earlier times. And it didn’t die out. Mary had a daughter named Sarah who carried on the other bloodline.”
“Goddess worship?”
Sara nodded and looked back at the rose window. “West is the direction of the Otherworld where the goddess Arianrhod resides. If the Templars had the windows face that direction, maybe they were sympathetic to goddess worship.”
“An interesting theory,” Lucas said just as a bolt of lightning bounced off a light pole down the street and the crack of thunder jolted the car. “We can continue this conversation later. Right now, I think we’d better find a hotel.”
The idea of being in a hotel room with him was definitely appealing, but even as she thought about the possibilities of a hot shower, accidentally forgetting her robe, and emerging just wrapped in a towel, she knew he’d book two rooms. She sighed.
“There’s still plenty of daylight left. Why don’t we just head north and try to get out of this storm?”
Lucas looked up at the threatening sky with its dark clouds scudding lower. “Sounds like a good idea,” he said.
****
Two hours later, it no longer seemed like such a good idea. Not only had the blasted storm followed them up the coast, but they were now mired axle deep in mud, just off Highway 17, somewhere between Savannah and Charleston.
“My cell’s dead,” Sara said as she tried again to get the power to come on.
“With this rain, a tower couldn’t pick up the signal anyway,” Lucas said as he stared at his own cell phone on the dash.
It wasn’t working either. “By the Dagda, I havna seen rain pelting sideways, blinding a mon, since I sailed the Hebrides.” As if to answer him, the wind shrieked its fury, lashing at the rented SUV. He swore softly.
“At least we’re in the ditch,” Sara said, “in case this storm spawns a tornado.”
He glanced at her, a little amused that she could be optimistic under the circumstances. He was thankful she wasn’t the squeamish sort.
“Do you think we were run off the road on purpose?” she asked.
It was the question that he had been pondering.
The black car had been traveling much too fast for the road conditions—Bel’s Fires!
He’d been crawling along at fifteen miles an hour, barely able to see twenty feet in front of them—and the guy had crossed over the line, leaving Lucas no choice but to put the big car into the ditch.
And it was probably due to the protective spell of the Shield that he’d seen the car in the first place.
He was glad now that he’d brought it along.
“I don’t know.”
She looked at him, her eyes steady on his. “Was it Baylor?”
He had to admit, she had guts. There was no fear in her voice.
“I don’t know how he would have found us,” he said finally.
That was another thing that left him uneasy.
Balor rarely involved himself directly in any sort of confrontation.
Yet he had dealt with Sara himself and, assumedly, killed the two abductors he’d hired.
Changing his M.O. made him doubly dangerous, since Lucas didn’t know what to anticipate next.
He had other problems as well. Physical ones.
The wolf always responded to changes in weather and storms brought out the primitive urge to respond to nature’s frenzy.
Even now he felt his blood heat and he throttled the savage howl that rose in his throat.
He should get out and go for a run, but he didn’t want to leave Sara alone, not even with the Shield lying in the back.
As he looked at her, the wet T-shirt displaying the perfect outline of her breasts, yet keeping the creamy satin of her skin and the rosy color of her taut nipples hidden from him, he felt another basic urge take hold.
“Do you think we’ll have to spend the night here?” she asked.
His already stiff manhood grew harder and his balls tightened.
He groaned inwardly. How in Hades was he going to control himself if they were going to spend the next ten hours in this confined space?
But the truth was, he hadn’t heard any cars passing.
Even if one did, the ditch was deep enough that they wouldn’t be seen, especially with dusk approaching.
But he should try. He reached for the door handle.
“I can go stand on the road and try to flag someone down,” he said.
“No!” Sara grabbed his arm. “It’s getting dark and with the rain not letting up, you could get hit.”