Lost City

Even though Austin knew about the mysterious workings of the Lost City enzymes, the logical part of his mind had never fully accepted them. It was easier, somehow, to believe that the formula for the Philosopher's Stone, misused, could produce ageless nightmarish creatures than to imagine that it could create a mortal of such astonishing godlike loveliness. He had assumed that the formula would extend life, but not that it could roll back the effects of fifty years of aging.

Austin found his tongue. "I see that Dr. MacLean's work was far more successful than anyone could have imagined, Madame Fauchard."

"Don't give MacLean too much credit. He was the midwife at the birth, but the formula for the life that burns within me was created before he was born."

"You look a lot different from a few days ago. How long did this transformation take?"

"The life-extending formula is too powerful to be taken at once," she said. "It calls for three treatments. The first two doses produced what you see before you within twenty-four hours. I am about to take the third."

"Why do you need to gild a lily?"

Racine preened at the unlikely comparison to a delicate flower. "The third dose makes permanent the effects of the first two. Within an hour of completing the treatment, I will begin my journey through eternity. But enough talk of chemistry. Why don't you introduce me to your handsome friend? He seems unable to put his eyes back into his head."

Zavala had not seen Madame Fauchard in her former, older incarnation. He knew only that he was in the presence of one of the most dazzling females he had ever encountered. He had muttered words of amazement in Spanish. Now a slight smile cracked the ends of his lips. The guns pointed in his direction did nothing to cool his appreciation for a woman who was apparently perfect in every physical way.

"This is my colleague, Joe Zavala," Austin said. "Joe, meet Racine Fauchard, the owner of this charming pile of stone."

"Madame Fauchard?" Zavala's mouth dropped down to his Adam's apple.

"Yes, is there a problem?" she said.

"No. I just expected someone different."

"Monsieur Austin no doubt regaled you with descriptions of me as a bag of bones," she said, her eyes flashing.

"Not at all," Zavala said, absorbing Madame Fauchard's slim figure and striking features with wondering eyes. "He said you were charming and intelligent."

The answer seemed to please her because she smiled. "NUMA evidently chooses its people for their gallantry as well as their expertise. It was a quality I saw in you, Monsieur Austin. That's why

I knew you would try to rescue yon fair maiden." She eyed their purple-stained skin. "If you wanted to sample our grapes, it would have been far less trouble to buy a bottle of wine than to bathe in them."

"Your wine is out of my price range," Austin said.

"Did you really think you could enter the chateau without being detected? Our surveillance cameras picked you up after you crossed the drawbridge. Marcel thought you would climb to the outside wall and come in that way."

"It was kind of you to leave the stairway gate unlocked."

"You were obviously too smart to take the bait, but we never dreamed that you could find your way through the catacombs. You knew the chateau was well defended. What did you hope to accomplish by coming here?"

"I had hoped to leave with the mademoiselle."

"Well, you have failed in your romantic quest."

"So it seems. Perhaps, in the interests of romance, you would offer me a consolation prize. At our first meeting, you said you would tell me someday about your family. Here I am. I'd be glad to tell you what I know in exchange."

"You could never equal what I know about you, but I admire your audacity." She paused a moment, crossed her arms and lightly pinched her chin. Austin remembered seeing the old Madame Fauchard make the same gesture of thought. She turned to Marcel and said, "Take the others away."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," Austin said to Marcel.

He stepped protectively in front of Skye. Marcel and the guards moved in but Madame Fauchard waved them away.

"Your chivalry appears to know no bounds, Monsieur Austin. Have no fear; your friends will only be taken a short distance away where you can see them. I want to talk to you alone."

Madame Fauchard motioned for him to sit in Skye's vacated chair,

and snapped her fingers. Two of her men brought over a thronelike chair of heavy medieval construction and she settled into it. She said something in French to Marcel, and he and some of his men escorted the prisoners a short distance, but still in view, while others dragged away the suits of armor.

"Now there are just the two of us," she said. "Lest you entertain any illusions, my men will kill your friends if you do anything foolish."

"I have no intention of making a move. This encounter is much too fascinating to end so soon. Tell me, what's with the high priestess outfit?"

"You know how I enjoy costumes. Do you like it?" Austin couldn't take his eyes off Madame Fauchard in spite of himself. Racine Fauchard was stu

"But you don't readily consort with a hundred-year-old woman." "Not at all. You've aged quite well. I don't usually consort with a cold-blooded killer."

She raised a finely arched eyebrow. "Monsieur Austin, is this your strange way of flirting with me?" "Far from it."

"Too bad. I've had many lovers in the last hundred years, but you're a very attractive man." She paused and studied his face. "Dangerous, too, and that makes you even more attractive. First, you must fulfill your part of the bargain. Tell me what you know."

"I know that you and your family hired Dr. MacLean to find the elixir of life he called the Philosopher's Stone. In the process, you killed anyone who got in your way and created a group of wild-eyed mutants."

"A cogent summary, but you've only scratched the surface."

"Scratch it for me, then."

She paused, letting her memory drift back through the years.

"My family traces its ancestry back to the Minoan civilization that flourished before the great volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini My ancestors were priests and priestesses in the Minoan snake goddess cult. The snake clan was powerful, but power rivals drove us off the island. A few weeks later, the volcano erupted and destroyed the island. We settled in Cyprus, where we went into the arms business. The snake evolved into the Spear, then to Fauchard."

"How did you get from spears to mutants?"

"It was a logical outgrowth of our arms business. Around the turn of the century, Spear Industries set up a laboratory to try to design a super-soldier. We knew from the American Civil War that trench warfare would make future battles a stalemate. First one side would charge, then the other, with little gain in ground. They would retreat in the face of the automatic weapons that were being developed. We wanted a soldier who would charge the trenches without fear, like a Viking berserker. In addition, this soldier would have super endurance and speed, and fast-healing wounds. We tried the formula on a few volunteers."