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When Mel, freshly showered and dressed, emerged from the bathroom the next morning to go to the kitchen and fix up some breakfast, she was greeted by the sound of a sizzling frying pan. A hearty voice accompanied it, singing, "Oh, you take the high road, and I'll take the low road, and I'll be in Scotland before you, but me and my true love will never meet again on the bonny, bonny banks of Loch Lomond!"
She couldn't help but giggle as the voice continued, "'Twas there that we parted in yon shady glen, on the steep, steep side of-flip, damn you, flip! Come
flip over! Not like that, oh, dammit, come on . . . just flip over like . . . yeah, like that, just a little bit more . . . aw,
"Talking to your breakfast, are you?" The dark-haired Southerner walked into the kitchen and watched in amusement as Kaitlyn continued her battle with the omelet in the frying pan.
"No, to yours, more like," the distracted linguist replied, poking her spatula into the frying pan. "Morning, Mel! Hope you don't mind my taking the liberty of preparing breakfast, but I think I'm getting the hang of this now. That hopeless failure of an omelet over there, that's mine, so don't eat it," she admonished, indicating a slightly burned, shapeless mass of fried egg and cheese that looked appetizing nonetheless. Across the table from it lay a plate containing a flat, if slightly tattered omelet. "As you can see I did a little better with Janice's breakfast. Maybe third time'll be the charm. Aha! There we go!" Kaitlyn slid a nicely shaped, perfectly cooked omelet onto a third plate and placed it on the table with a flourish.
"Party down here this morning?" Janice appeared in the doorway, slightly flushed from sleep and still a bit shaken by last night's revelations, but otherwise dressed and ready for the day.
"Not really," Mel replied, bending to give her lover a kiss. "Kaitlyn got the idea to beat us both to breakfast though."
"I'm not complaining." The archaeologist sat down with a smile.
"Coffee, toast, and omelets all around," Kaitlyn announced calmly. "You'll pardon the look of the things. Don't take it personally."
"You're up awfully early," Mel observed. "Special occasion?"
"Not really. I just did some more work on Rhonwyn's lifesong last night, is all." Kaitlyn took a gulp of coffee. "Got some interesting information out of it."
"Well, share then!" Mel urged, taking a bite out of her toast.
"To sum it all up, after her big argument with the clan Druid, she took off and somehow managed to get out of Britain, wandered for a while, and ended up on a ship that wound up in Constantinople. She hung around Constantinople for a while, picked up some combat skills, found good use for being well-versed in Greek and Latin at the royal courts, then got sick of it, and headed west." Kaitlyn gestured with her coffee mug to punctuate the last statement.
"Toward Greece," Janice concluded.
"Yep, and this fragment ends there. Hell of it was . . . you know how old she was?" Kaitlyn asked. "Of course you don't. Rhetorical question. Twenty. She was twenty."
"Only twenty?" Mel asked in surprise.
"Only twenty," the graduate student replied. "Here's the scary part-I was twenty when I took off for Harvard and my parents got so upset."
"And they told you that you were basically on your own." Mel's eyes grew wide as she grasped the connection. "My lord."
"'Course, it could be a coincidence," Kaitlyn amended. "Got a weird gut feeling that it isn't one, though. Whatever . . . if it is or isn't, I guess I'll find out." She shrugged. "Get on out of here, you two . . . go take a walk or something. I'll clean up in here, and start in on another scroll afterward. But please. Go off and do something relaxing." She winked and waved them off.
Mel started to protest, but there was a strange sort of "Don't argue with me" glint in Kaitlyn's eyes, both playful and insistent. With an appreciative smile she got up from the table, pulling gently on Janice's arm, and the two of them headed for the door.
With dirty dishes in her hands and a bittersweet smile on her face, Kaitlyn watched them go. Then, she went to the sink and set to work on the dishes, singing to herself as she did so. "O, tell me, Sean O'Farrel, tell me why you hurry so? Hush me buchal! Hush and listen! For it's almost time to go. I bear orders from the Captain: get ye ready, quick and soon, for the pikes must be together by the rising of the moon!"
tell me that this tie matches!" Janice emerged from the capacious closet in the bedroom she and Mel shared, frustration written across her features. Five previous attempts to coordinate her tie with her suit had met with the translator's disapproval, and she was starting to feel like she was running out of options.
"It's perfect," Mel assured her with a smile. She surveyed her lover's outfit and nodded approvingly; the deep midnight blue, almost black, of the suit material contrasted strikingly with Janice's reddish-gold hair, and it fit her perfectly, accentuating her slender, well-toned form. The archaeologist had carefully brushed her hair back and tied it neatly into a ponytail that fell down her back in a shimmering cascade. Mel pulled the smaller woman into a gentle embrace. "You look wonderful."
Janice breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I was afraid I was going to have to go borrow one of Kaitlyn's ties."
They laughed together. Mel had noted earlier that day that the young linguist hadn't worn the same tie twice in the two weeks since she'd been staying with them.
"Mel, sweetie, you look absolutely stunning!" Janice declared, holding the Southerner at arm's length and looking her over. As far as Janice was concerned, Mel looked stunning no matter what she wore, but tonight a soft peach floor-length gown, offset by a gold-and-silver bejeweled necklace-which Janice had had made for her, patterned after the style of Xena's chakram-made her resplendent. Her long black hair, usually pulled up into a bun, was left to flow freely about her shoulders; Janice was relieved that Kaitlyn's jeep, which they'd decided to take to the university that night instead of Janice's smaller pickup, had a collapsible roof. Mel's hair looked gorgeous, and she would have hated to see it get windblown.
Janice glanced into the mirror to adjust her tie and button up her suit jacket, critically eyeing her collar. She turned as Mel spoke her name.
That odd, distant, almost foreign look, the same one Janice had seen in the dining hall back at Harvard, was clouding those ice-blue eyes again; that near-imperceptible shift in tone was shading her voice. "Don't let Kaitlyn drink too much at the dinner tonight. She'll start talking a little too freely." Abruptly, the look and the tone were gone, dispelled as quickly as the morning mist.
"How do you know that?" asked Janice curiously.
Mel blinked. "I . . . er, I didn't."
"Just like you didn't know for sure, back at Harvard, that we could trust her?" Janice felt a sudden twinge of understanding. She grinned. "Mel, I think that ancestor of yours is talking to you again." Kneeling, she buckled up her dress boots and then stood again. "Come on, let's get going. We don't want to be late."
They met Kaitlyn in the downstairs hallway. "Looking good, kid!" Janice remarked. The linguist was decked out in a light brown suit and yet another tie that Mel and Janice hadn't seen before. Her usually rumpled dark hair was carefully slicked back, and for the first time, the two older women noticed that their friend's right ear was pierced four times, three times in the earlobe and once up in the outer cartilage, about three-quarters of the way up.
"Didn't that thing hurt?" Mel asked, looking at the topmost silver hoop.
"Hurt like hell," Kaitlyn affirmed. "Don't ask me why I had it done. I was drunk at the time, I think." She checked to make sure her cigarette case was full, and tucked it into her shirt pocket. Tilting her head in the direction of the door, she asked, "Shall we?" With a gallant gesture, she added, "After you two, of course."
They arrived at the University of South Carolina in good time; much to Janice's relief, Kaitlyn had put the roof up on the jeep, and much to Mel's relief, the young linguist had kept most of her daredevil road antics curbed. Granted, they'd been going down the road at a remarkably high speed, but no wild swerving or sudden braking had accompanied the velocity. Kaitlyn drove like Janice did, that was for sure, but with one significant difference that made the Southerner much prefer having her partner behind the wheel: When Janice drove, she displayed the same fierce concentration and intensity she poured into everything she did. When Kaitlyn drove, she did so with a casual coolness, almost carelessness, that was more than a bit disconcerting.
Kaitlyn parked the jeep and killed the engine, pocketing the keys. With a concentrated effort, she actually opened the door and climbed out, instead of vaulting clear over the door as she usually did-of course, since the roof was up, jumping the door was somewhat impossible. Janice and Mel climbed out of the passenger side. They'd all managed to fit, quite comfortably in fact, in the front seat of the capacious vehicle, which was just as well; Kaitlyn had declared, rather emphatically, that there was no way that she was about to let one of them sit in the back seat.
"What? Split you two up? You kidding?" she'd asked with a snort that indicated what she thought of the idea. "Not even for twenty minutes."
At any rate, they'd arrived safely and were now on their way into the building where the dinner was to be held. None of them were exactly looking forward to it, which made Kaitlyn wonder briefly why exactly she'd been in such a rush to get there. About half a second later she remembered: she always drove that way anyway.
she chided herself.
A quick glance over her shoulder toward Mel and Janice did little to reassure her, as she noticed that they looked no more enthusiastic than she did.
The cigarette case and lighter were in her hands almost before she realized it, and in a matter of seconds she felt herself relax as she exhaled a stream of smoke.
"Chin up, kid, it's just a couple of hours," Janice said around the cigar clenched in her teeth. Truth be told, though, she wasn't quite sure if she was talking to Kaitlyn, to herself, to Mel, or to all of them. "Let's get this over with."
As luck would have it, the first person to greet them as they entered the dining room was none other than Professor Trent Mitchell. He made his way toward them, a patronizing smile spreading across his face as he approached.
"Terrific," Janice muttered. "My favorite person." She gritted her teeth and tried to look nonchalant as Mitchell came up to them.
"Ah, Doctor Covington, Miss Pappas," he announced, in that sort of tone of voice that drips of contrived cordiality, but leaves a nasty aftertaste of hostility. "How very nice to see you here this evening." His gaze fell on Kaitlyn, and he was barely able to keep his expression from betraying his distaste. "Miss Velasquez. It certainly has been a while."
"That it has, Professor Mitchell," the graduate student replied calmly, completely within her professional demeanor, though she was cringing inside from being called "Miss."
Not long enough, you bastard, she added mentally. The summer before she'd started graduate studies at Harvard, she'd gone on a short-term dig in Brittany with a group that comprised students and faculty from several different schools; Mitchell had been among the group. She suppressed her rising anger at the remembrance of how much he'd hounded her then, because of her solitary nature and her single-minded devotion to the task at hand. She had to spend the next few hours dealing with Mitchell; best not to make them worse than they were already going to be.
Mitchell sighed inwardly. Still no success with provoking the girl . . . not yet, anyway. But there was always the rest of the night to achieve that. Clearing his throat, he continued, "Have you ladies met our guest of honor this evening?"
Trying hard not to laugh at Kaitlyn's barely-contained look of revulsion in reaction to Mitchell's epithet "ladies," Janice said carefully, "We've met before, yes. Melinda and I are both acquainted with Doctor Jones, and I believe that our colleague, Miss Velasquez, has encountered him before as well." She held back a smirk, hoping that Kaitlyn-whose calm expression was threatening to twist into disgust-wouldn't realize that she was being deliberately baited.
With a tiny sigh at the honorific, Kaitlyn confirmed, "That's right. I've met him."
Just play nice and low-key, and get this evening over with, she admonished herself.
Don't need your damn temper to get the better of you now.
"Well, well, well . . . Kaitlyn Velasquez?" a voice cut in from behind Mitchell. A deep, somewhat cocky voice. A familiar, rather unwelcome voice. It spoke again. "You're a long way from Massachusetts."
Kaitlyn's gaze suddenly snapped toward the direction of the speaker. Most people would have balked at the informality of the address, but as far as she was concerned it was better than having to be called "Miss" again. She nodded her head curtly in the direction of the older archaeologist. "Doctor Jones." There was only the barest hint of acknowledgment in her voice, nothing more.
The look on Jones's craggy face went from forced affability to obvious surprise as he took in Kaitlyn's companions. "Doctor Covington. Miss Pappas," he nodded toward them. More for the purpose of irritating Janice than anything else, he flashed a charming smile at Mel, only to be rewarded with a haughty look from her, and a warning glare in her lover. He addressed Kaitlyn again. "I didn't realize you knew them, Velasquez," he said in a considerably unenthusiastic tone of voice. Sensing the tension, Professor Mitchell chose that moment to silently excuse himself and engage in a conversation with another faculty member.
Kaitlyn gave Dr. Jones a bored, lazy glance. "As a matter of fact, Doctor, the reason I'm here is that Miss Pappas and Doctor Covington have asked for my assistance in a research matter involving aspects of Celtic culture." The linguist, accompanied by her colleagues, calmly started walking toward the elevated dinner table on the far side of the room.
Dr. Jones followed them across the room, doing his practiced best to keep up without seeming too annoyingly persistent. "That so?" he asked, trying to shoot another charming smile Mel's way. The only answer he got was a second brief nod from Kaitlyn, and a hard-eyed stare from Janice. He gave up, not sure that he wanted to deal with an irate archaeologist. Besides, he had no way of knowing exactly what Kaitlyn had told them about that little incident back in Williamstown three years ago . . .
They took their seats. Mel was seated between Janice and Kaitlyn, near the end of the long, raised table that faced out over the rest of the smaller tables where the guests who'd paid to come to this benefit dinner were seated.
"Ah, Miss Pappas!" The department head, Daniel Webber, greeted her enthusiastically. "You look absolutely lovely this evening." Mel sighed.
They're always nice to the one with the money. She was more than a little bit tired of the games and the endless political posturing.
Dr. Webber's greeting to Janice was notably less enthusiastic, just as Mel had expected, and for which she was genuinely incensed. With the bare minimum of cordiality and politeness, he addressed Janice. "Doctor Covington. How nice to see you." Then, noticing Kaitlyn, he looked back at Mel. "I don't believe I have had the, ah, pleasure of being introduced to your friend here?"
"Doctor Webber, this is Kaitlyn Velasquez, a colleague and a graduate student at Harvard. She's working with myself and Doctor Covington on the Xena Scrolls," Mel replied quickly.
"I see," he replied dubiously. "A graduate student? What field are your studies in, if I may inquire?" He looked Kaitlyn over curiously, almost appraisingly, with the kind of look Kaitlyn recognized as meaning "Are you sure you meant
she?"
The young linguist endured this surveillance easily; it was something she was used to. "Celtic Studies," she said calmly. "I hope to have my dissertation completed in a year's time, at the most; after that I intend to pursue my doctorate."
"And what are you writing your dissertation on, Miss Velasquez?"
Kaitlyn gritted her teeth and blew out her breath slowly.
If I get called "Miss" one more time . . .! "I'm trying to determine what the role of women was in the society of the ancient British and Irish Celts. It's quite interesting, really; I don't have much to turn to in the way of reliable research material, and I've had to do a lot of the work myself, collecting evidence and reconstructing the language and history based on what I find. But I enjoy the challenge."
Dr. Webber nodded slowly, interested despite himself. "Is that so? What was it that-" He was about to carry on the conversation, but the chairman of the event tugged on his sleeve with an apparently urgent question. "I'm sorry . . . if you'll excuse me . . ." He hurried off.
"Nice conversation," Janice remarked dryly, as Webber and the chairman walked away.
Kaitlyn shrugged. "I seem to wind up in a lot of those."
Much to Mel's relief, they had managed to make it through the soup course without incident; Kaitlyn hadn't had much more than about a third of a glass of wine so far, and thankfully Dr. Jones had been too preoccupied with other conversations to bother them much.
There had been one uneasy moment in the middle of the hors d'oeuvres, though. Professor Steven Lowder, the acerbic older man who taught some of the high-level archaeology classes, had swept a critical gaze over Kaitlyn and inquired acidly, "So, is this how teaching assistants at Harvard look these days?"
The silence that followed the question had been loaded. Janice had reached stealthily for Mel's hand under the table as they watched their young friend, waiting for her response. Mel had seen Kaitlyn's jaw tighten, just the tiniest of movements. Then the young linguist had replied coolly, "I certainly can't speak for all of them, but I haven't noticed myself setting any trends lately." The expression on her face had been a silent dare:
Push me too far and see if I won't push back.
That expression had not been lost on Professor Lowder, who had simply nodded and dropped the subject. Wisely, nobody else chose to pursue it, either.
Mel's attention was drawn back to the current goings-on by a voice. "Miss Pappas, is it true that you and Doctor Covington are continuing to work on the Xena Scrolls?" It was Franklin Malone, a fairly new addition to the university faculty, and one of the few who wholeheartedly supported Mel and Janice's work on the Scrolls. He had just completed his second semester teaching at the university, one semester less than Janice had. The young professor leaned across from the other end of the table, eager interest written on his face.
Mel nodded. "Yes, Professor Malone, that is true, we are still working on the Scrolls." She smiled and added, "I declare, the work on them never seems to end!"
Mitchell took a sip of his wine and asked smugly, "Perhaps you and Doctor Covington have gotten yourselves into a bit more than you expected to? As I understand, Miss Velasquez here has been helping you with some of the work lately."
Janice jumped in. "That's right. She's proven to be invaluable in helping us piece together some cultural aspects of the Scrolls that we were having trouble with before."
"Cultural aspects?" Mitchell's voice dripped skepticism. "Doctor Covington, how much historical evidence do we have that Xena existed? How much mythological evidence do we even have?"
Janice opened her mouth to respond, and found herself casting about desperately for something to say. Historical evidence? There was nothing really specific to speak of, just a few vague accounts of warlords, a frieze of dubious origin in the British Museum's storeroom that depicted a female warrior, and, well, Xena's leathers and armor, and Gabrielle's clothing, back at Mel's estate . . . Mythological evidence? Xena sure wasn't listed in Bulfinch's.
If only this damned war didn't make archaeology so difficult! Janice thought for the umpteenth time.
We might have more evidence to work with! "Well . . ."
Kaitlyn noticed her friend's distress.
So Mitchell wants to try the public humiliation route tonight, does he? Well then . . . two can play at that game. With a reassuring glance at her friends, she jumped into the conversation. "Professor Mitchell, in the course of my studies I've observed that history tends to be written by the winners," she remarked coolly.
"Oh?" put in Professor Lowder from the other end of the table, interested despite himself.
"It tends to be, yes." Kaitlyn sipped her wine, set the glass down, and looked around the table. Her dark brown eyes sought out Mitchell's, Lowder's, those of every skeptical person there; there was a fire smoldering in their depths that belied her cool demeanor. "For instance, Professor, we don't have much information about Celtic culture that exists on very good authority. Now, granted, this is partly because writing was simply not part of Celtic convention on the British Isles for quite a long period of time. However, the written records that we do have are based almost entirely on the observations of Caesar and the Roman conquerors, and depict the Celts from the Romans' limited, uninformed perspectives." She paused for a breath before going on.
"On a similar note, the role of women in Celtic society-and for that matter the role of women in many ancient societies-is not very carefully detailed in any of the written records, owing to the fact that most of these societies were, or eventually became, male-dominated." Kaitlyn took another sip of the wine and leaned forward, ready to continue. She was in her element here and loving every second of it. Any opportunity to get in a few jabs at these chauvinist academic types was an opportunity she took.
"If we extend that to ancient Greek society, what do we have?" Kaitlyn continued. Her speech was more accelerated and her gestures more animated, in the way that Mel and Janice had come to recognize as meaning that their friend was excited about the subject matter. "Observe the exploits of the heroes in Greek myth. Hercules, Jason, Odysseus, Prometheus, Achilles, Cadmus . . . all men. Again, a male-dominated society produced male heroes. Literature often sets precedents for a society. What effect would records of an unconventional female warrior's exploits have on this society? Would those in control be willing to risk those effects?"
Kaitlyn's smile was enigmatic and challenging. "Besides which," she added with a smirk that she just couldn't hold back, "Much of Western civilization has been built around a religion whose central figure's historical basis is sketchy at best. Look at all the things that have been done in the name of Christianity, and outside of the Bible, Jesus is only mentioned in the works of one secular writer. Professor, if the trends I've discovered, in the course of my research on ancient Celtic culture and history, are any indication at all, I believe that the likelihood of Xena's existence is quite strong indeed."
Janice hoped her jaw wasn't hanging halfway to the floor after Kaitlyn's spiel. Now
that was audacity. The table had fallen noticeably silent and most of its occupants were regarding the graduate student with a mixture of apprehension and a bit of grudging respect, and Janice found herself wondering if shock and offense were also among everyone's reactions. The possibility of that was good, she realized with a twinge of worry. Hoping that nobody would get too mad, she turned her attention back to the conversation.
"So you believe you may be able to help them prove the authenticity of these Scrolls? That Xena really existed?" Mitchell was asking Kaitlyn, in an acid tone.
The linguist wiped her mouth on her napkin and merely nodded, the barest hint of a smile flickering across the right side of her face.
Better get them off this subject, and now! she decided.
I'm walking a tightrope as it is on this topic. Time to steer away. And I know just the thing . . . "I've done it before," she said, simply and pointedly.
Much to Janice's amusement, Mitchell's face fell immediately. "That's right," he replied in a tone that could only be described as sullen. "The Taliesin Stones."
Mel shot Janice a confused look, silently wondering if her lover knew anything about this particular aspect of Kaitlyn's past. In return, Janice gave Mel a wide-eyed "don't look at me" stare. Kaitlyn hadn't mentioned anything about any "Taliesin Stones" to them, and Professor Mitchell hadn't included them in his list of Kaitlyn's references. If his behavior now was any indication, Janice could see why.
Dr. Webber looked surprised. "The
Graddfeydd of Taliesin?" he asked incredulously. "You were involved in the research on them?"
"That's right," Kaitlyn said simply. She didn't go into more detail, but in truth it had been some of her own work that had been responsible for proving that the legendary bard Taliesin had in fact existed. When a set of ancient stones in Cornwall, two years ago, had been discovered to have inscriptions in an obscure form of the ancient Celtic Ogham script, Kaitlyn had doggedly worked on translating them. It was a job made more difficult by the fact that most of the work she had to do She'd spent almost a year to do so, despite the general academic consensus that there was no way to accurately reconstruct the essence of the inscriptions. The resulting information had proven to be the key, giving enough evidence to prove Taliesin's status as an actual historical figure.
This had the interest of a good portion of the company now, and the conversation rapidly shifted to inquiries about Kaitlyn's work with the Taliesin Stones. Kaitlyn did her best to keep the conversation on that subject, keenly aware that the more she could divert people's attention from details about the Xena Scrolls, the better. For a while it worked; people were curious about the Stones. Kaitlyn fielded a good number of questions, and as a side bonus, Dr. Jones was almost completely left out of the conversation.
It couldn't last forever, though. Kaitlyn knew her shot at delaying the inevitable was up when a grim-faced man, who looked to be in his late thirties, turned the conversation abruptly back to the Scrolls.
"Doctor Covington, with regard to your work on the Xena Scrolls, what exactly was the nature of the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle?"
Janice looked at the man, who was seated at a guest table right up front, near the dais where the faculty table was located. She felt a chill go through her. The man was impeccably dressed, his hair perfectly groomed, and his features what would generally be considered attractive. In short, he gave off all appearances of being a perfectly respectable, well-to-do American man; but Janice couldn't shake the feeling of danger that she got when she looked at him. A sidelong glance at Kaitlyn and at Mel told her that they were picking up on it, too.
Her mouth dry, she forced out the words. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm a little unclear on that. What exactly do you mean?"
The man fixed his eyes-a pale shade of blue, so pale that they were almost grey-on Janice. With a jolt, the archaeologist noticed the cold, dark intensity lurking deep in those seemingly benevolent eyes. "I mean just that," he answered in his effusive, polished-orator's voice. "According to your translations, Xena and Gabrielle were constant, ah, traveling companions. Have you determined what exactly the true nature of their relationship was?"
Mel cut in, her voice icy. "They were good friends, Mister, ah . . ."
"Dobson," the man supplied.
"Well, then, Mister Dobson," the aristocrat continued in clipped tones, "all the facts as we have them are exactly what is presented in the translations of the scrolls. And those scrolls represent Xena and Gabrielle as being best friends." One eloquently arched eyebrow seemed to challenge the man to further questioning, even though Mel was frightened of what he might ask next.
"I see. Well then. Thank you, Miss Pappas, Doctor Covington." The man fell silent then.
Oh shit, Janice thought, remembering Kaitlyn's words at their first meeting.
I hope this doesn't mean that someone else has reached Kaitlyn's conclusions about the Scrolls. She felt Mel's hand seek hers out beneath the table, and responded with a light caress full of as much reassurance as she could muster. The room was uncomfortably silent for a few agonizingly protracted seconds.
"So then!" Dr. Webber declared, clapping his hands together emphatically. "Doctor Jones, do tell us all about your most recent expedition . . ."
Chapter Sixteen
Leaving the dinner party turned out to be almost as agonizing an experience as the party itself had been. Mel and Janice had been feeling extremely tense ever since Dobson had posed his question, and couldn't be sure whether or not they were imagining a subtle shift in the other faculty members' attitudes toward them. Even Professor Malone seemed a bit reserved when he wished them well in their continuing work on the Scrolls, as he always did. They found themselves constantly worrying that someone would approach them and press the issue of Xena and Gabrielle's relationship, and that raising such speculations might also bring up questions about their own relationship.
In between accepting carefully tempered congratulations for her work with the Taliesin Stones and answering questions about them, Kaitlyn fought off a growing uneasy feeling that she'd really said something wrong. Too late, she'd remembered that she was in South Carolina, and that her remark about Christianity, which would have been taken rather matter-of-factly up in Massachusetts, might not go over so well here in the more conservative South. Good one, kid, real good one! she chided herself. Not like you haven't freaked them out already with your whole clothes-and-attitude routine. What were you thinking? The linguist gritted her teeth as the sudden troubling thought came to her, that her subtle but deliberate slight of Christianity might have been related in some way to Dobson's question.
Somehow, the three friends managed to make it through the final rounds of social responsibilities unscathed, though their nerves were a bit frayed. They escaped to the jeep and piled in, immensely relieved to have the ordeal over with.
"I thought we'd never get out of there!" Janice exclaimed.
Kaitlyn slumped against the steering wheel. "You're telling me. Being sociable is a draining experience." She shook her head and fired up the ignition.
"Did you see the look on Doctor Webber's face when I introduced you to him?" Mel giggled. "I don't think he knew what to make of you."
"Mel, that's the whole point," Kaitlyn laughed. "Keeps 'em on their toes." The truth was, Kaitlyn liked to appear unconventional because it often forced people to re-evaluate their impressions of her after they got to know her a bit better. It was all part of her policy of being unpredictable.
"Nice going with that speech there," Janice added. "You saved my ass, and totally floored those stuffed shirts. Really impressive, Kaitlyn. Was that rehearsed?"
"No, but I've had to use the argument before. Or a variant of it, anyway. I had to improvise a bit." Kaitlyn's brown eyes glinted mischievously. "Just be glad I decided it was in our best interest not to throw in the part of the speech that had to do with all the great people throughout history who happened to be, er, as queer as three-dollar bills."
They headed home, Mel and Janice teasing Kaitlyn about her constant negative reactions to being called "Miss Velasquez." The linguist absorbed their remarks coolly and continued to drive, one arm threaded casually through the steering wheel and the other dangling out the window, a lit cigarette between her fingers.
Janice glanced up into the rearview mirror and saw a pair of headlights reflected there. The prospect of a car behind them worried her just a bit-the stretch of road they were on was fairly deserted, there were no buildings nearby and only a few lights in the distance.
"Are we being followed?" she murmured. That car behind them was about fifty feet away, but still a little too close for comfort.
Mel turned to look behind them. "What?" She looked at Janice in puzzlement. "Nobody else from the university lives out this way."
"Except maybe some of the guests who were there," Janice replied uneasily, eyes never leaving the rearview mirror. "I don't think I like this."
"Yeah, I'm getting a funny feeling myself," Kaitlyn remarked. She gave the jeep a little more gas, monitoring the headlights in the mirror. "You two keep an eye out." The strange tingling sensation that had started at the back of her neck was spreading now, running down her spine and making her arms feel slightly numb.
They drove in tense silence for a few minutes longer. Suddenly a loud cracking sound rang out from behind them. The jeep lurched to one side, and Kaitlyn cried out. She yanked the wheel hard and managed to get them back onto the right side of the road, then floored the gas pedal. The jeep roared ahead at close to ninety miles an hour.
"Fuck!" Kaitlyn swore, pulling her left arm back into the vehicle. She held her hand up. All that was left of the cigarette she'd been holding was the filter, shorn off cleanly just above the two gold bands that adorned the paper. The knuckles of her index and middle fingers were grazed and bleeding.
"What happened?" Mel asked, highly alarmed.
"Someone shot at us," Kaitlyn spat out, her voice grim. She threw the ruined cigarette out the window and stuck her injured fingers into her mouth. "That was a little too close for my liking."
Janice looked over her shoulder. "That car's keeping up with us," she noted. "Oh, shit."
Kaitlyn gritted her teeth. "You know that incident we've been worrying about? I think it just caught up with us. Hold on tight." She spun the steering wheel hard to the left and braked, bringing the jeep to a stop at a ninety-degree angle across the road.
"Kaitlyn! What are you doing?" Mel's exclamation went unheeded as the graduate student threw the gear into neutral and jumped out the car window, drawing her automatic pistol smoothly from the shoulder holster concealed beneath her suit jacket. "You wore that to the dinner party?"
Janice drew her own gun and opened the passenger side door. "I don't think now's the time to argue about it, sweetie," she growled in response to Mel's shocked look. She darted around the front of the jeep and flanked Kaitlyn.
"What the hell are you doing?" Kaitlyn yelled roughly at the oncoming car, both hands gripping the Colt .45. She aimed quickly, fired once, and the car spun to a halt, its left front tire blown out. Two men climbed out of it and started to approach. Kaitlyn stormed toward them, shouting, "There's enough bullshit going on, the other side of the Atlantic! Don't bring the fucking war to us!"
Mel, now crouched behind the jeep's hood, gaped at the young woman's boldness. "She's crazy!" she murmured.
Janice hissed, "Mel, stay there!" She tensed, suddenly frightened by the thought of the Southerner getting hurt.
"Whatever's going on, I'm not letting you deal with it alone!" Mel insisted, kicking off her heeled shoes and starting around the jeep.
"Mel, please, I don't want you getting hurt! Don't argue with me!" Janice pleaded.
"No, don't you argue with me!" The translator's voice was stormy as she ran to Janice's side. "Whatever happens, we're going to go through this together, do you hear me?"
Janice fought off her fear and gave in with a sigh, knowing that now was not the time to discuss this. Besides, there was no mistaking the firmness in her lover's voice, and no one won an argument with Melinda Pappas when she took that tone. The two of them hurried to join Kaitlyn, who had almost reached the men. The archaeologist followed Kaitlyn's lead and kept her gun trained on the men.
"What's the meaning of this?" growled the New Englander, stalking up to their apparent assailants. Her eyes went wide in recognition, in the glare of the headlights, once she got close enough to take in their features. "Dobson!"
The man nodded silently, his steel-grey eyes shimmering weirdly in the light. His companion, a heavyset Asian man whom Mel recognized from the dinner party, glowered at the three women. Mel noticed a pistol still dangling from his hand.
"Drop the gun," Janice ordered, gesturing at him with the barrel of her own revolver. The man balked, sneering wordlessly at her in challenge.
"Do it," Dobson ordered quietly. His companion complied reluctantly, letting the gun fall to the asphalt and kicking it toward Kaitlyn, who put her foot on it.
"Care to tell me why your friend here decided to shoot at us?" Kaitlyn asked in a deadly quiet tone. Her face was set in a hard, angry mask, her teeth clenched.
"There were to be no more gunshots, " Dobson answered in a maddeningly superior voice. "Just that one, as a message."
"A message?" Janice asked incredulously. "What the hell kind of message are you trying to send by firing a bullet at us?"
"A message," Dobson repeated simply, then fell silent.
Kaitlyn snarled and held her bleeding middle finger up in his face. "You ruined a perfectly good cigarette and fucked up my hand, you bastard. Messing with my fingers and my tobacco are big no-nos. You fucking shot at us. I want a better explanation than that."
Dobson laughed-the sinister sound contrasted chillingly with his wholesome, benevolent appearance "With regard to your work, Miss Pappas, Doctor Covington, Miss Velasquez." He ignored Kaitlyn's disgusted hiss and poisonous glare, and continued, "On those Xena Scrolls of yours. We believe you should forget about them entirely."
Make us, Janice thought, but wisely refrained from making the comment aloud. Instead she asked, "And why's that, huh?"
"Because I don't believe-we don't believe-that the world either wants or needs to know what those Scrolls contain."
That made Janice mad. She wasn't about to stand by and watch the work that both she and her father had devoted their whole lives to, and sacrificed so much for, be regarded in that manner. She growled at the two men, her face turning dangerously feral. "Why not? What are you afraid of finding out?"
Dobson jerked his chin towards the three women. "I think you've asked too many questions." His burly friend charged toward Kaitlyn, who easily sidestepped him, kicking his gun neatly into the roadside foliage as she did so. And they think my being a runt is a disadvantage? she thought. The man turned around and plowed toward her again; the young linguist drove her elbow solidly into his stomach. He doubled over, and Kaitlyn brought her right knee up, connecting solidly with his nose. All the while, Dobson stood, calmly observing the scene as Janice kept her gun pointed at him.
The other man recovered from the blow and backhanded Kaitlyn across the face. She staggered back. Her head was ringing, but she managed to keep her grip on her gun. He lashed out at her with a kick that she barely managed to deflect with a quick forearm block and a muttered curse.
It was Mel's turn to charge now, hampered though she was by her gown. With a strength the stocky man never expected, she yanked him around and drove a fist into his jaw with an audible crack. He grunted and fell to the ground, stunned.
Kaitlyn shook off the pounding pain in her head and stood over the man, aiming her gun at him. He struggled to his feet one more time, but the linguist deftly reversed her grip on the pistol, clubbing him hard across the temple with the butt of the Colt .45. At the same time, Mel slammed her heel into the small of his back, and he crumpled onto the pavement, unconscious.
For the first time, Dobson's expression changed, as though he hadn't expected that an aristocrat and a young woman barely five feet tall would be able to defeat the big man. "Ming?" he called doubtfully.
Ming? Kaitlyn thought, warnings sounding inside her mind. Where have I heard that name before? Try though she might to remember, the pain in her head prevented her from making the connection, leaving her with the frustrating sensation that the thread she grasped for was just barely out of reach.
"He's out cold," Mel told Dobson, coming to stand next to Janice. If anything was cold, though, it was her voice. "I think your friend has had enough fun at our expense tonight, don't you?"
Janice nodded her agreement, green eyes still smoldering. "We've dealt with people trying to stop us from working on the Scrolls before, you know. You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?"
"Hardly," Dobson rejoined with an ominous smile. He moved toward Janice quickly, but only took one step before the archaeologist's reflexes kicked in and she decked him. He joined his friend in unconsciousness. Janice slugged him in the head one more time for good measure, and dragged him back to his car.
"One of you two want to help me out here?" Kaitlyn called, struggling to drag the other man, the one Dobson had called Ming, back down the road. Mel hurried to assist her, and together they managed to haul his bulky frame back to the car and prop him up against the grill.
"That was fun," Janice said dryly, as they surveyed the two unmoving bodies. "We better get out of here before they come to."
"Way out of here," Mel agreed as they started back to their own car. "I don't think I like how this situation is turning out."
Janice helped her partner back up into the jeep and clambered up beside her, slamming the door. She looked across at Kaitlyn, who had gotten behind the wheel again. The younger woman's hair was tousled, and a thin trickle of drying blood came from one nostril. "You all right, kid?" Janice asked, concerned.
Kaitlyn started the engine, turned the jeep back in the right direction, and nodded as they headed for home at top speed. "I think so," she said, wiping at her nose with the back of one hand. Mournfully, she added, "But the dumb bastard got blood all over my favorite tie."
Continued in Chapter Seventeen
The Athenaeum's Scroll Archive