The Templar's Legacy (Ancient Enemy) Read Free

She kept up a chatter of small talk and ignored any nervousness or impropriety on my part. Soon, I found myself relaxing and chatting back. Miracles do happen.
    ***
    We sat down with our plates stocked from Frankies lunch buffet. I was a little self-conscious when I saw she’d only taken one slice of pizza. I tried not to grimace as I looked down at the four large slices piled on my plate. I didn’t need to worry. She didn’t even look at my plate. She just put her hand around the cross at the end of the necklace she wore, bowed her head in prayer, and then crossed herself. I’d never actually seen somebody cross themselves except in the movies. Being from a family of (lax) protestants, we didn’t do that. I wondered if that would be another strike against me in her eyes.
    In addition to being a goofy, love-starved teenager? added Spring.
    Yeah that , too. Now, please leave me alone so I don’t look like an idiot , too?
    I could feel the reply to that behind Spring’s mirth, but she didn’t need to state it aloud.
    Spring retreated while Colette and I chatted over our lunch. It consisted mostly of her plying me for information about my life. During a pause in the conversation, I asked the question that I’d held in check from the first moment I saw her. “So, why did you come here?”
    “Eeu, I am learning the psychology, of course.” ‘Eeu’ is French for ‘um’, but a hell of a lot sexier. Her lips puckered slightly when she said it as if she were ready to give me a kiss. It was mesmerizing.
    Close your mouth , boy. You’r e drooling.
    I shook my fantasies out of my brain.
    “No, I mean, why here? Why the middle of Ohio? There are a lot of places you could have gone besides our cloudy, little town.”
    She took a delicate bite of her pizza, chewed, and spoke around the small mouthful. “Oh, she is easy. I wanted to go to a place that was not like Paris. I was tired of the city and I’ve never been in Ohio. Dr. Anderson, he is a well known psychiatrist, and it will be good for my learning record to work with him.”
    “Oh, really? He’s well known?”
    She laughed and, with a toss of her head, dealt with a disobedient strand of her kinky brown hair. “Of course, if you did not know this, why are you here?”
    “Well, it kind of happened by accident.”
    “So what do you do with the doctor?”
    “Well... I’m... teaching meditation to some of his patients to see if it can help them.”
    “Oh, you practice the meditation? What type do you practice?”
    “Um...” I’d only ever heard of one type of meditation. “Transcendental Meditation?”
    “You follow the teachings of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi?”
    “Uh, yes, he’s very good.”
    He’s dead you know, said Spring.
    Crap, how do you know?
    I pay attention.
    “Finn, what is that you wear under your shirt?”
    The change of topic took me by gratified surprise. “This? Oh, it’s just a stick I found.”
    “A stick?”
    I pulled out my Caduceus from under the button-down shirt I wore to the clinic. It’s an ultra-hard, dense, black piece of driftwood about 4 inches long, roughly wedge shaped with the wide end flattened a bit and the other end narrowing to a wavy, uneven point. I’ve been told by the ghost of an ancient warrior priestess that it’s a piece of the Earth’s long-gone Tree of Life. She didn’t actually tell me what that was, or what had happened to it.
    Colette’s eyes grew larger, and she reached for it. “Oh, she is beautiful. May I hold her?”
    I shook my head and pulled back. I had no desire to explain any odd feelings she might get from it. “No, I, uh, I don’t like other people to touch it. It’s, uh... very special to me... I hope you don’t mind?”
    She gave me a momentary queer look and then waved my concern away. “It is nothing. Where did you get this stick?”
    “Oh, I found it near one of the Native American burial mounds here in Ohio.” Actually, “‘under,”‘ would be more accurate.
    “There