Far Edge of Darkness

Chapter Fourteen

Feeble light from the torch Charlie carried barely pierced the volcanic gloom. Sibyl could see hardly anything beyond Charlie's outstretched arm—not even the width of the road. Their slow-motion flight, with Charlie limping ahead, felt like waking nightmare. Scores of terrified slaves, small landowners, and rich men like Bericus fled hovels and rich country villas alike, passing them on the road.

A few, Charlie had to fight for their horse.

Sibyl had never seen a man disembowelled before. She hid Lucania's face in the folds of her own ruined garments and swallowed down horror. Arm bloodied, sword bloodied, face and armor spattered with gore, Charlie gasped out, "Can you hold the torch?"

Sibyl simply nodded and held out one hand. "Hold tight, little Lucky," she whispered to Lucania. "Hold real tight." Sibyl clung to the horse's mane with one hand, drawing Lucania close in the crook of her arm and trying to tuck her dress around to form a pocket, then took the torch in her other hand and held it aloft for Charlie. She ignored the pain in her lower body. Ignored the fatigue which shook through her arm in almost no time.

Keep it high enough to do some good, she told herself fiercely again and again, fighting the pain of burning muscles in her arm. What you're going through is nothing. He's got to walk the whole way. On a ruined leg. Sibyl received fleeting, ghostly glimpses of running figures, panic-stricken faces. Heard cries for help, cries for lost loved ones in the darkness. Refugees carried their valuables and their families tucked into anything that would roll, or ran on foot if they had no other transportation. Helter-skelter, they all fled for the false security of the seaside town.

Sibyl shut her eyes and tried to close her mind to the images her memory insisted on producing: whole-body burns, blackened skin slipping off, blistered lungs and throats... . And two thousand years later, infants discovered abandoned in their cradles, women's bones found clutching those of their children, slaves and soldiers and bejeweled patrician ladies, hapless skeletons huddled together for safety which, ultimately, none had found.

How many more had died out in the farmland, slaves and peasants whose skeletons would never be unearthed?

For an aching passage of time, all Sibyl could do was hold back tears and the terror that their own skeletons would be among them. The one thought she clung to was that Charlie had found them. They were together. Whatever happened, they were together.

It was slim consolation, at best, but it was all she had.

Herculaneum, when they finally arrived—hours later, battered, bruised, exhausted—was in a state of panic. There was actually daylight, of sorts, over the town. The ashfall was blowing southeast, with very little falling on Herculaneum. Roof tiles and partially collapsed walls littered the streets. Sibyl craned around for a glance at Vesuvius and shuddered.

The umbrella-pine cloud hovered above the city, rent with flashes of red, yellow, even bluish fire. Glowing stones hurled aloft by the volcano shot upward, then arced outward and fell onto Vesuvius' upper slopes. They looked like insane bottle-rockets plummeting down out of the blackness.

Frantic householders hauled cartloads of possessions from some of the damaged houses. In front of others, men openly jeered at those who fled, scoffing at the danger. Arguments she overheard as they passed reminded Sibyl of hurricane watchers too foolish to leave the coast for shelter. Nothing would happen to them, so why miss all the fun?

"Look at it, the whole cloud's blowing toward Pompeii... ."

Others, panic-stricken, implored the gods to save them and ran for the sea. Sibyl's head throbbed, with a headache born of too little water, too much pain, and far too much fear. Her throat was raw from swallowed smoke and ash, too raw to call out warnings which wouldn't have been heeded, anyway. She shut her eyes to blot out images too stark to bear.

When the ground shook again, so violently the street cracked underfoot, Sibyl screamed. Charlie's horse screamed, too, and reared so sharply he dragged Charlie completely off the ground. Sibyl felt her tenuous grip on the mane slip, slide away—

The landing jarred everything in her. Charlie's helmet clattered away across the paving stones. Lucania fell on top of her, wailing in terror. Charlie battled the panicked horse. Someone nearby helped Sibyl to her feet, braced her while Charlie fought the horse down again and held him.

"Get back in the saddle!" Charlie yelled.

"Hold Lucania! I can't climb up while I'm holding her!"

She handed Lucania over to her father and started to haul herself up. Another earthquake hit. The street cracked farther open. A nearby wall crashed down. Charlie's horse screamed, a high, piercing sound—

Then dragged Charlie into the crowd, beyond Sibyl's view.

"CHARLIE!"

She ran after them.

Another wall collapsed, pouring rubble into the street between her and the fleeting horse.

"Oh, God, no, please..."

She climbed over the rubble.

In the distance, blocks away already, she could just see the panicked horse and—flopping awkwardly beside it, trying to keep up—Charlie. He clung to Lucania with one hand while the horse dragged him by the reins wound around his arm. Then the rubble shifted and more of the wall started to topple. Sibyl flung herself sideways, down, away.

By the time she was able to scramble after them, Charlie had utterly vanished into the crowd.

Numb with shock and horror, Sibyl ran—limping—in the direction Charlie had gone.

"Have you seen a soldier with a runaway horse?" she gasped out to people she passed.

A few pointed out a direction; others just shoved her aside. Sibyl kept running. Always, he was just a little farther ahead or down a twisting, rubble-choked side street. She couldn't catch up. Pain in her lower body reminded her with every jolting step that she'd been violently raped and beaten just hours previously. The bruises were beginning to stiffen.

"Charlie!" she sobbed uselessly, knowing he couldn't possibly hear her this time.

She had to pause for breath. Sibyl leaned drunkenly against a none-too-steady wall and sucked down filthy air through the filter of a torn piece of her gauze dress tied around her lower face like a bandanna. Her whole body shuddered. The streets were far more crowded than Sibyl had anticipated. Roman towns—including Rome itself—went to sleep virtually with the chickens. This evening, in doomed Herculaneum, a party atmosphere like a mad Mardi Gras had seized the city.

Citizens and slaves, like the revellers in a story by Poe, drank and laughed and chased one another in lunatic circles while red death loomed above their heads. She wanted to shout warnings and understood with a wrenching pain something she'd never guessed about time travel: people never changed.

How much time was left?

She set out again, asking about the runaway horse, the soldier carrying a baby, and was told, "That way, several minutes ago." Charlie and his runaway horse were headed toward the Decumanus Maximus. Wineshops did brisk business as patricians and plebeians gathered on street corners and beside fountains to talk about the volcano and debate the dangers. As she half ran, half stumbled past, Sibyl overheard snatches of conversation.

"... lots of times the ground's rumbled. And look at that quake we had twelve years ago, when the Magna Mater was damaged. I tell you, nothing will come of it..."

"... Tillerus and his family have already gone, slaves and all, spent a hundred-thousand sesterces for a fishing boat, I tell you, can you believe that stupid fool... ?"

"... wife's been screaming at me so long, I came out here to get drunk..."

"... never saw anything like it in my life, let me tell you, and I didn't get these white hairs overnight. Of course it's beautiful, never saw anything so awesome in my whole life. I'm going to sit right here all night and watch it, so pretty against the night sky, probably never see a thing like this again before I die..."

Sibyl wanted to cover her ears.

The Decumanus Maximus was a solid throng of people. Along the porticoed side of the street, vats of hot oil in the sausage vendors' stalls sizzled and spread the scent of frying meat into the night air, disguising the brimstone stench lingering like rotten eggs.

"Please, have you seen a soldier and a baby, a brown horse..."

The man whose arm she'd grasp shook his head. Sibyl kept asking. "That way," somebody finally said, "several minutes ago. Shouting for a priestess of the Magna Mater."

Sibyl swayed. "Thank you..."

As she ran, she tried to listen for her name above the babble of night noises in Herculaneum's streets. Staked out in the entrances to dark little alleyways and slouched beside the winestalls, painted whores did a trade nearly as brisk as the winesellers and sausage vendors. Some of the men looked nearly as scared as the prostitutes. These disappeared into dimly seen doorways to make frantic love, which sometimes could be heard above the street sounds as Sibyl passed hurriedly by. Other men lounged on the streets beside the women and caressed them beneath their short tunicas and joked and teased and plied them with wine until the prices went lower.

Sibyl barely heard music that drifted down from rooftop gardens to mingle with the roar in the streets. She concentrated on watching the shadows and the men in them and tried to ignore the crawling sensation between her shoulderblades. Somewhere just ahead, surely. She risked a call.

"Charlie! CHARLIE!"

Nothing.

Sibyl gained the basilica and paused again to catch her breath in the political heart and soul of Herculaneum. The basilica was where justice was dispensed, from the tribunal seat. Sibyl doubted that either Charlie or herself could find justice from that tribunal seat tonight, not even if the magistrates had kept the court open. If either of them were captured with slave collars locked around their throats, they wouldn't live to tell their story.

An archway next to the basilica led, as had been surmised, into the Forum, which was completely unexcavated in her own time. So much of the city lay in that direction. "Please," she caught the arm of a man coming from that direction, "have you seen a soldier carrying a small child? He has a brown horse and—"

"No. Let go of me, girl!"

He swung the lantern he carried at her. She ducked and ran the other direction, straining to see through the crowd for a tall, red-haired figure with a bad limp. Equestrian statues towered overhead at the entrance to the basilica. A bronze chariot and bronze horses loomed out of the near-darkness. The basilica was closed for the night and would not be reopened for nearly two thousand years.

Sibyl ran past the temple of the priests of the deified Augustus and the Forum Baths, across a narrow street from the House of the Wooden Partition. She asked a group of men standing on the corner and one of them pointed toward the sea. She cut down a side street past the House of the Mosaic Atrium, which overlooked the Mediterranean next to the House of the Stags, with its soaring sun terrace which overlooked the rooftop of the Suburban Bath and the Mediterranean beyond.

And ran slam into a tall man emerging from a narrow alleyway. "Hold," the man cried, steadying her. "You've nearly fallen, there, girl."

Sibyl dragged air into her lungs and glanced up—

Into Tony Bartlett's wide, shocked eyes.

"You!"

Sibyl twisted against his grip.

He hit her.

She landed in a heap at his feet, cringing from another blow. Her traitorous body remembered the beating Bericus had given it, didn't want another...

Tony laughed and dragged her to her feet.

"Well, well. Such a resourceful little sibyl, aren't we? Bericus will be so pleased to have his new pet back."

"Let me go! My God, Tony, isn't it enough to maroon me two thousand years in the past?"

He tightened a hand through her hair. He smiled slowly, the kind of smile a corporate shark wore when announcing a hostile takeover. "Oh, no," he whispered savagely. "Not nearly enough."

"But I can't possibly threaten you—"

He hit her again. Sibyl went to her knees, ears ringing, mouth bleeding.

"I didn't think you'd get rid of that memory block, but you did. Either those Army drugs aren't as good as Jésus thought, or you're a lot tougher than you look. Not that having your memory will do you any good. Not now." He smiled down at her. Sibyl whimpered.

His gaze lingered on the torn, transparent linen which revealed far more than it hid. Tony smiled directly into her eyes. "I'm in no great rush, Sibyl, dear. We have all evening." He dragged her up, pulled her against him. Tony's hand against her breast was almost worse than Bericus' brutal treatment. She thrashed against his iron-hard grip, then flinched involuntarily when he raised the back of his hand. Tony laughed softly and leaned closer, lips all but brushing her earlobe.

"I know how much you wanted me, when we were here before," he breathed. "I used to watch you work, Sibyl, in those tight little shorts, digging up all those lovely manuscripts for the old man." His smile sent chills down her back. She strained away as far as his grip would permit. His hand caressed her again, leaving her shaking. "I couldn't possibly leave without giving you what you want, Sibyl."

She gave a strangled sound that was part laugh, part choked disgust. "Me—want you—"

He slapped her, hard enough to bring tears to her eyes. She bit his hand in reflex, hard enough to draw blood. Tony backhanded her, sending her sprawling to the street. Sibyl lay where she'd fallen, deeply dazed by the blow. Her whole face ached. Not even Bericus had hit her that hard. Tony cradled his hand, then narrowed his eyes into dangerous slits. Very softly, he said, "You will pay for that before you die."

"Better not waste any time, then," she said thickly. "I'd sure hate to see you trapped here with me." The taste of his blood—and her own—was bitter on the back of her tongue.

Astoundingly, he chuckled. "Waste time? I have all the time in the world, Sibyl. Do you?"

She did not share his humor. Sibyl turned her face away and huddled miserably on the street. She didn't have the strength to stand up again and he clearly knew it. Bartlett, still chuckling, hauled her up and dragged her, stumbling, into the two-story villa owned by Publius Bericus.

She halted abruptly, just across the threshold. Her cheeks went cold. A tiny shiver crawled up her spine. She had been here before. Two thousand years from now—and three weeks ago.

The House of the Stags... .

She knew without looking that beyond the atrium would be one of two dining rooms. She knew the size and shape of the central garden that ran from the "front" of the house toward the sea, where wide windows had been placed on both stories to catch the spectacular view. She knew the outline and dimensions of the second dining room at the seaward end of the house, overlooking an arbor right on the primary terrace wall, almost overlooking the Suburban Baths.

Bericus undoubtedly spent many an enjoyable evening on that terrace or out in the arbor, watching the spectacular sunset over the Mediterranean and fondling whatever pet he'd brought into town with him. She even knew the number of rooms off the hallways that surrounded the garden, both downstairs and on the second floor.

In the entrance room where she now stood, hot air and occasional drifts of ash fell through the compluvium, a square hole in the ceiling. The frescoes on the walls were vivid, unscorched. Tony watched, smirking, as she touched painted, lifelike forms. And there were the statues, the famous one of the dogs bringing down the stag, for which the house was named, and the drunken Hercules, reeling backwards in wine-befuddled clumsiness, holding his naked genitalia in one hand in the classic moment of weakness so beloved by pagans, who were delighted by portrayals of virtuous, civilizing power momentarily falling into a state of ordinary humanity... .

"Enjoy it while you can," Bartlett murmured in her ear. His hand cupped her breast through soiled, torn linen.

Sibyl rammed an elbow into his gut. He grunted and dropped his hand. Sibyl whirled, trying to escape him, but lurched off balance and caught herself with one hand against the wall.

"Don't touch me!"

"Baby," he grabbed her shoulders, "before I split this hellhole, I'm gonna do a lot more than touch you." Tony backed her against the wall. His physical strength terrified her, left her trembling with rage and helpless hatred. He must have felt the tremors, because he smiled coldly.

"I owe you, bitch. For plans you screwed up. I had to make two trips, one to set up the deal in the first place and the second to ditch you. Did you think I planned to pay for that stuff with just you?" His tone was scornful.

"It was all set. Then you slithered out of the frameup. Jésus said we had to get rid of you. Says, 'See if you can go back and change it, Tony. Don't worry about a thing, Tony. I'll tell your wife you died brave if you screw it up, Tony, I'll even cry at your funeral.' My own brother-in-law..."

Sibyl wanted to shrink away, but was jammed solidly against the painted wall. He's mad. Genuinely mad. My God... When she tried to push free, he tightened a fist through her hair. "Forget it, bitch! You're going nowhere. I'll take my grief out of your hide, then be on my way."

His kiss was brutal. He drew blood with his teeth. Sibyl fought for a handhold in his hair, against his throat, anywhere. He pinned her wrists. His breath stank in her mouth. Sibyl squirmed, thought about a knee to the groin, decided she didn't dare. She couldn't risk any further injury. When he came up for air, she fought the impulse to gag.

"Not bad, little Sibyl," he grinned. He licked blood off his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. "I thought you'd fight harder. Guess you wanted me after all, huh?"

He ground his hips lewdly against her.

Sibyl snarled in his face. He just laughed and forced another brutal kiss. Sibyl came up spitting.

"So help me God, Tony, you'll pay for this!"

He just laughed. And kept laughing. The sound echoed off the walls and blended with the continuous roar of Vesuvius' wrath to form an insane harmony. Bericus—for better or worse—chose that moment to walk distractedly into the room. Tony immediately released her. Sibyl lurched away from him. She didn't care where she was going, just so long as she was just going. A moment later, Bericus collided with her. He swore and slapped her to the floor. Sibyl, too dazed to struggle against anything any longer, lay where she'd fallen. Please, don't hurt me any more, please...

Bericus dragged her up. "You! How did you get here?"

She simply hung in his grip, unable to answer. He snarled something she didn't understand, then dragged her toward the nominal front of the house, away from the sea and toward the kitchen. He locked her into a tiny, dark hole of a room and left her there, giving her neither food nor water.

Sibyl sat in near darkness for a long time, nursing her injuries as best she could and just listening to the distant sounds that reached through the thick-walled house. Voices... Traffic in the street... And beyond that, the endless, ominous roar of Vesuvius. The heat was stifling. Sweat trickled into numerous abrasions in the most sensitive parts of her anatomy. Every one of them stung like fire-ant bites.

Gradually, shock wore off, leaving her in the grip of mere pain and terror. Sibyl held herself and wept. She would cheerfully have killed any number of people to obtain a Tylenol-3 and a bucket of lukewarm water. She sobbed curses at Publius Bericus, at Tony Bartlett, at the man she had never seen, the man who had ordered this done to her: Jésus Carreras.

Occasional earthquakes, sharp, violent, rocked floor and walls. The villa groaned and trembled on its foundations. Each time the earth shook, Sibyl covered her head with both arms and waited for the roof to fall in on her. Eventually, fear of being buried alive—again—drove Sibyl to explore her prison. There had to be a way out!

But there wasn't.

There were no windows and the bar on the door was too strong. She discovered this only after bruising one shoulder. Sibyl concluded that either movie heroes were a lot stronger than she was, or they bashed open specially constructed doors. There wasn't a single piece of furniture in the empty room she could use as a battering ram, either.

So she sat on the floor in one corner and wondered how far Charlie would get before she died. Her mind moved in aimless circles. Part of her wondered why, exactly, people were being dumped back in time to die. The energy cost alone must be staggering. Surely there were cheaper, easier ways to dispose of witnesses? Of course, God knew where Jimmy Hoffa had ended up; probably in a sausage grinder somewhere. Or the foundation of a building. Organized crime had a way of disposing of folks where no one would think of looking.

Charlie's guess had been that all of this was to protect the secret of time travel itself. In the hands of the mafia... If you refused to dicker, you simply ceased to exist. Or maybe your family did. Talk about a big stick. But they didn't seem to be using it that way. Of course, neither she nor Charlie had been in on the palavers of the high muckety-mucks.

Who knew what they were really up to or how many poor souls had been disposed of already. Had they possessed the thing long enough to be up to anything substantial? Or were they still just feeling their way around, playing with it, seeing what could be done? Tony's comments about his trips suggested the latter, but she couldn't be sure and she needed to be.

And just who was the "old man" for whom Tony had secured the manuscripts, anyway? Not Carreras, Tony's brother-in-law—that much, at least, had been easy to see—but someone else, someone more powerful than Jésus Carreras. Someone Charlie evidently hadn't known about. She groaned and thumped her forehead with folded hands. She just didn't have enough information. "So what else is new?" Not knowing was the story of her life. Why should this be an exception?

Sibyl straightened her back cautiously and leaned her head against the wall. "All right, Sib, try to think this one through. We're not getting anywhere at this rate." She took a deep breath and calmed her thoughts.

The cost ratio still bothered her. If the only thing Carreras was using time travel for was witness disposition and artifact acquisition, he was a fool. Either he didn't understand what he had and how it worked, or simply didn't care.

She shivered despite the heat.

Somehow, she didn't buy that.

How in the world had he gotten hold of it in the first place? Who had developed it? Government research? A private corporation? University researchers? Tony had said something about Army drugs. The military, then? She sighed. It didn't matter nearly as much where he'd gotten it, as what he was doing with it now that he had it. If she were a mafia crime boss, what would she do with the ability to travel in time?

Sibyl didn't like any of the answers she came up with.

A slave finally came for her. When she emerged from her stuffy little prison, Sibyl gratefully breathed in cooler air, then coughed. Ash stung her nostrils and throat. When they passed the open doorway to the garden, the lack of daylight alarmed her. Darkness had settled deceptively soft violet wings across Herculaneum. Vesuvius still roared ominously in the distance.

"What hour is it?" she asked the slave, still peering into the dark skies visible above the open garden.

"It is past the eleventh hour," the woman replied, with a touch of surprise, "and nears the twelfth."

Sibyl gulped. Nearly the twelfth hour of daylight? The time was well past dinner, then, somewhere between 6:00 and 7:00 p.m. Sibyl's lips trembled so badly she bit down on them. Blood oozed from cuts Tony had left behind. Nearly 7:00 p.m.... That left maybe four hours before Herculaneum died.

The slave woman who had unlocked Sibyl's door peered uneasily toward the sky. The evening wind was brisk. It ruffled Sibyl's hair even under the shelter of the portico, but it wasn't strong enough to carry away the entire ashfall. Like hot snow, volcanic debris whipped around in eddies and evil little dust devils, then settled silently onto the garden and the baked clay roof tiles. The air smelled like one of Dante's Circles.

When a stray gust blew ash into their faces, Sibyl coughed and wiped streaming tears.

"It has been dark like this for hours," the slave woman whispered fearfully. She glanced toward Sibyl. "You were at the villa rustica when the mountain blew up?"

"Yes." The answer came out a little thickly.

"Then you and Master are very lucky. The wagon he ordered to follow his carriage has not arrived."

That probably had more to do with the slaves bolting rather than the volcano. Talk about a golden chance to run for it... .

"I am to help you bathe, Aelia," the slave said, forcibly tearing her gaze away from the black skies. Her voice trembled nearly as violently as the floor. "The Master wishes to see you again tonight."

Sibyl stumbled and braced herself against the wall. No... She couldn't endure another rape. She just couldn't. And if she complied with Bericus' orders tonight, she was lost.

"Please, tell me," she whispered, "has a soldier come to this house, looking for me?"

"A soldier? No, girl. Why would a soldier be looking for you?"

Rather than answer, Sibyl asked another question. "Has... has Master found his other new slave? Has Rufus the Gladiator been brought to this house today?"

The woman stared at her as though she'd taken complete leave of her senses. "No. There's been no one brought in today except you."

Thank God... .

Sibyl drew a quick breath for courage, then slugged the woman as hard as she could. The woman staggered back with a dazed cry of pain. Sibyl shoved her into the dark little room and dropped the bar in place. For long moments, Sibyl leaned against the closed door, shocked—horrified—at what she'd just done. Her hand ached, the knuckles abraded and swollen. I'm sorry, really, I'm sorry, but there was nothing else I could have done. The poor slave woman would die anyway, in just a few hours.

Sibyl shoved off and ran down the portico, heading for the "front" of the house where she knew of a way out through the kitchens. I know this house, its layout. I can get out of here....

Voices sent her trembling into the shadows.

Bericus...

He was arguing violently with a shrill-voiced woman.

"I tell you, Lucretia, I will hear no more of this nonsense! Either shut up and go to bed, or by Attis, I will cut that tongue out of your head!"

"Try it and my brother will make an Attis of you! Mother Cybele curse the day I agreed to marry you!"

They were between her and the kitchens. Bericus' wife was tiny, barely five feet tall, thin and frazzled as a dinette waitress. Her hair stuck out in all directions from a disastrous coif. She was not a pretty woman, although, once, she might have been.

"Get to your room!" Bericus roared.

Instead, his wife seized a heavy goblet made of lead and flung it violently. Publius Bericus ducked, almost too late. It clanged against the wall like a battered Christmas bell and crashed to the floor.

The Roman lady's face flushed deep red. The heavy platter that followed the goblet narrowly missed Bericus' head—

His temper snapped. With a soundless snarl, he crossed the room in one leap. Bericus seized the woman by the wrists and shook her once, hard enough to jar her teeth together with an audible crack. Lucretia screeched and reached into her coif. Then jabbed Bericus with a long, sharp pin. "Murdering parricide! Boy lover! Maid chaser!"

Sibyl watched, helpless in the shadows, while Publius Bericus beat his wife to the floor. He panted for breath when she hung limp in his grasp, then tossed her aside and bellowed for slaves.

"Take that bitch to her rooms! Lock her in!"

He stalked away. Trembling slaves bent to Lucretia, who hadn't moved.

"She's dead!" a terrified woman sobbed. "She's dead..."

The slaves ran, scattering into the house.

Alone with a dead woman, Sibyl skittered across the open room and plunged down a corridor. She found the kitchen, right where she knew it would be. "Mistress is dead!" Sibyl cried.

Slaves at the hearth stared, then broke and ran past her to verify what she'd said. Sibyl found water in a basin and gulped a dipperful, then snatched up a loaf of bread, some cheeses, a bit of fruit, and dropped them into fold of her torn Egyptian gown. She spotted a long knife—nearly as long as a gladius, with a wide, heavy blade—which had been left on a table from the butchering of a carcass.

She grabbed it and ran. Sibyl tucked the knife into a fold of her long dress and held the cloth closed around it. She would have given almost anything to rinse her stinging, bruised body with some of that clean water from the kitchen. But she couldn't reach the whip marks in her back, and anyway, there was no time. Bericus or Tony Bartlett might discover her at any second.

She dodged past the house wall into a dark, narrow street.

Where should I search?

When last seen, Charlie had been headed toward the waterfront. Trying to secure a boat? Fortunately, the House of the Stags was very close to the waterfront. Sibyl crept through the darkness toward the Y-shaped staircase that gave the nearest access to the beach. As she approached the dark opening that marked the entrance to the southeastern stair, a drunken man of nearly fifty lurched abruptly toward her. He seized Sibyl's arm.

"C'mere," he growled, trying to drag her into the dark, filthy space behind him. Sibyl snarled and whipped her knife into the open, dropping her food and not caring. She shoved hard against the shorter man and knocked him off balance. He let go and fell against one wall, then swung awkwardly with his free fist. Sibyl ducked and whipped the long blade against his throat.

"Go hunt other game!"

"Please," he gasped, "don't kill me, girl... ."

Spittle sprayed from wet lips. Sibyl brought her knee up sharply between the man's legs. He went down with a strangled scream. She hit him over the back of the neck with her balled fist, then ran for the stairs while her attacker lay retching on the street. Her legs shook so badly she could hardly keep her feet. She slid to a sitting position on cold stone and swore viciously in English. Then dragged the back of one wrist across her eyes. Dammit, she couldn't afford to go soft now. It was her life on the line. Civilized niceties were out the window.

So she regained her feet and plunged down the black maw of the stairs, which tunneled down through the first terrace and out into the open, where it turned to descend the face of the wall, meeting its northwestern counterpart at the bottom of the "Y." Wind caught her hair and gown, whipping them back from her face and body. Sibyl kept one hand on the cold stone of the terrace wall until she gained the wider steps at the bottom, which ran straight down to the beach.

She knew where she had to go. Sibyl figured it was the same place Charlie would try to go. She'd told him about unearthing the manuscripts on the beachfront. It was the one place they both knew about. He would go there to try to find her—or to find Tony Bartlett.

Tony...

If he knew of her escape, that was the most dangerous place she could go. Maybe he'd already left Bericus' house? While she'd been locked into that dark little room off the kitchen? Tony was certainly their only prayer of getting home again. Charlie would know that as well as she did. And Charlie was the kind of man to wait for him, ambush him, get hold of whatever it was he used to get back.

Tony Bartlett had to get back somehow.

I'll find Charlie again there, surely I will, and everything will be all right... .

She reviewed every scrap of information she knew about the waterfront's layout, trying frantically to remember where she might discover a safe hiding place from which she could scout out the territory, find out if Tony were burying his box of loot alone or if he had a score or so of "friends."

She didn't know the first thing about skulking in the darkness, or scouting the enemy, or laying out ambushes. What she needed was some good military training—

Yeah, right.

What she needed was a machine gun, about a million spare rounds of ammo, and a working time machine.

And Charlie Flynn with a sword in his fist, even better if he had one of those ban-list, high-capacity semiautomatics the press had such a field day with (she'd learned a lot in the few years since her grandmother's death).

The stairs emerged abruptly from between buildings. The sea was a maddened beast. Waves lashed up by violent undersea shocks pounded against the narrow beachfront. Every few seconds, wild surf foamed into the arched mouths of gaping black boat chambers. The next moment, the sea would retreat a dozen yards or more, sucked back by violent submarine turbulence, stranding helpless fish on the shore.

Then it would rush back and smash into the seawall again, completely submerging the little wooden quay. Wild spray fountained up against the seawall. Every time the sea smashed forward, the entire lower story of the Suburban Baths was inundated.

Xanthus' ship was missing. His sailors had probably been paid by somebody hours ago to take them to safety. A lantern out on the water marked someone's getaway by sea. The prevailing wind would blow them straight toward Pompeii and Stabiae and further danger.

But escape by sea was the only way out of Herculaneum now. At least the people in Stabiae had had time to get away from the ashfall and fiery surges. Many of the people in Stabiae would survive, even if the town was doomed.

Sibyl finished descending the long stairs to the stone chambers that lined the sea wall. Once she reached the beach, violent surf threatened to drag her down. Maddened breakers smashed across her body, foaming right over her head before sucking debris back toward the sea. She clung to the seawall every few seconds, waiting out the water before dashing another few feet forward while the sea retreated.

Given the hour, Pliny the Elder was probably somewhere offshore of Pompeii just about now, hampered by falling debris and the heavy, hot ashfall from landing. The fleet would come ashore at Stabiae, instead, where Pliny would take refuge with his friend Pomponianus. Impossible seas and contrary winds would trap and kill him on that beach sometime during the night. Sibyl shut her eyes, terrified that impossible seas and contrary winds would trap and kill her, as well.

Sibyl kept flush against the wall and gripped with both hands as she made her way through boiling water. Sand and salt water poured into her shoes. The breakers soaked her floor-length garments until their heavy weight tugged at her legs like diving weights, impeding her progress. She didn't dare let go of either the knife or the wall to hitch the dress to her knees.

The chamber she sought was well down the beach from the stairs. Sibyl endured several terror-filled minutes, creeping along past gaping boat chambers. She was nearly sucked out to sea when a breaker caught her in one of the broad openings and knocked her down. Sibyl clung to the beach with toes and fingernails and held her breath until the water receded, then scrambled back to her feet and lunged for the wall on the far side of the opening. She shuddered for breath and gulped down terror, but kept going.

Almost there... Just another few yards.

She finally made it and pressed back against the crumbling stone edge, then peered cautiously around the corner. Sibyl caught her breath.

Silhouetted against golden lantern light, his back turned toward her, stood Tony Bartlett. He was watching two slaves dig a deep hole near the back of the chamber, just where she remembered it. At his feet rested the heavy wooden box she had helped unearth less than a month previously... .

He was whistling the song she had grown to hate from their days on the dig, about the only man who'd ever been to hell and come back alive. There was no sign of Charlie Flynn or anyone else who could help her.

Okay, Sib, you've caught him, all right. Red-handed.

Just what, she wondered wildly, was she supposed to do now?