“Careful, I am still tender from that street orgy in Germany!” he moaned playfully. Nina’s smile waned into a wince of guilt at the mention of her tardiness that almost sealed Sam’s doom.
“Oi, it was not your fault,” he soothed with a hand on her back that sent a pleasant shock through her body on contact. “Now, tell me how you are doing with the arsenic problem.”
“There is nothing better to report than last time, old boy,” she shrugged. “I will live, but there is some damage done that will probably pose a problem for the rest of my life.”
“What manner of damage is that?” he asked, standing closer.
Sam’s close proximity brought with it the alluring odor of his skin and Nina breathed him in deeply without letting him see.
“Look, I can deal with it. It is just…” she wanted to tell him, but she hesitated. Nina wanted to share her weird recounting spells with him, because for some reason she reckoned he would understand.
“Tell me.”
That was all she needed to hear from him. Nina turned to face Sam, her hair slithering from side to side in the wind, bringing moments of shadow to her eyes. He smelled so good she almost felt faint this close to him. First scouting the double glass doors for others who might be within earshot of her insanity, Nina studied Sam’s eyes.
“I think I can tell the future?” she uttered unwillingly, sounding extremely uncertain of her words.
“You’re asking me?” Sam replied with a perplexed frown.
“No. No,” she sighed and looked down for a second to gather her thoughts and prepare for another attempt. “What I mean is…I have, on a few occasions before, known what was going to happen.”
“Like precognition?” he asked sincerely.
“No. Yes. It is not so much seeing what is going to happen,” she stuttered, “but rather living it. And knowing what is coming because I have already lived it in vivid recollection — living it…twice.”
Nina’s whisper was quivering with doubt, a testament to the argument between her logic and her experience.
“Like…like…déjà vu?” Sam asked with a tinge of intrigue in his voice. His hand found her arm under the blanket and Nina could feel his fingers lock gently around it. With a mild tug he brought her closer to make sure she was alright. The petite brunette rocked dangerously on her weak legs as a dizzy spell gripped her, as had been befalling her several times a week since she had last seen her doctor.
“Nina, are you with me?” Sam urged loudly now, on the verge of summoning help, but she recovered in his arms and he wondered if Nina did not stage the moment to be close to him. The thought excited him no end in his endless aching for her to admit her feelings for him. If only that were the truth, he would be ecstatic, but Nine Gould was not the type to allow her tender side to show.
“I’m alright. I’m okay, Sam,” her voice came and faded as her eyelids fluttered. He could see that she was not faking it by her frighteningly pale complexion. “Jesus, what happened? Did I fall?”
“No, you just buckled a tad, you freak,” Sam replied in humor, but inside him a fear rose that Nina was not healing as well as she led on. It was quite typical of her to keep a tough exterior to hide her true suffering, after all.
“Apparently the damage I sustained through playing host to this deadly concoction, is mostly psychological they say. I fear it might be neurological, Sam. What if my brain short circuits? What if I get a stroke and I am left helpless and crazy all at the same time?” she ranted, her voice riding the gust in a rising and falling volume that echoed through the desolate woods below the elevated castle.
“For one thing, you need to calm down, otherwise just that will happen!” he insisted, still holding her close to him. His hair was in disarray and his eyes reflected the concern he harbored. “Listen to me. You will be fine. The very fact that you are still alive speaks volumes about your resilience. Besides, it has been months of recuperation and treatment, and you are getting better every time I see you. Don’t be daft! You’ll whip this shite in no time, darling,” Sam assured her. He was blissfully unaware of how he addressed her, but she took note the moment he said it.
“What?” she asked, wanting him to repeat it.
Sam realized at once what he said and launched a rapid correction.
“What? I was being endearing,” he said forcefully, but he could feel his ‘fool rush’ warm his body, the adrenaline rush one gets when saying or doing something embarrassing.
“Endearing?” Nina pestered him with a witty pout. “Whatever you say…”
She found her footing and when he released her she playfully added, “…darling.”
Sam scoffed and looked away to apparently take in the view again.
“Jokes aside, Sam, I am just afraid there is a time bomb in my brain. I have lapses in experiences, not time. It sounds crazy, but I get a constant feeling that I have lived a scenario before, so much so, that I could even foretell Petra’s name before I officially met her!” she continued.
Sam looked at her with a puzzled expression.
“And you have been getting it since we almost lost you at the Valhalla site?” Sam asked, referring to their previous excursion where Nina almost succumbed to the poison the Nazis had administered to her.
“No, only lately,” Nina answered quickly, but then she realized something pivotal and stood frozen for a moment as the fact dawned on her, “…lately. Since I was to meet Petra Kulich!”
Her eyes grew wider as the explanation evaded her, yet allowed her the first point in her insight. “Sam, it started with Professor Kulich’s visit! What the hell would she have to do with my psychological condition?”
Sam thought about it for but a second. He pondered on the chain of events that brought him and Nina together on this project and what it entailed. There was the German Captain and his killer mercenaries, the young boy with the tarot card, adopted by a suspected crooked philanthropist. Then there was Kulich and her pal Igor at a site where the Black Sun had hidden stolen treasures, the very same subject of the assignment he was on in Germany where his colleagues were executed for searching for the same loot. Another factor was the alleged thief who stole from this very hoard a deck of cards said to be evil. Sam gasped. And all that came back round to the one tarot card Radu was obsessed with, the pursuit of which they are now traveling to Romania for. Full circle.
“Oh my god!” he exclaimed, his hand slipping through his hair as he found some sense in it.
“What?” Nina impelled.
“Too long a story to explain, but Nina, you are far from crazy! Christ, I can’t believe this is actually remotely plausible!” he cried out, and started pacing like a madman.
“Sam Cleave!” Nina shouted. “Don’t make me kick you in the pipes to snap you out of it!”
When Nina voiced her warnings of physical violence it was hardly ever empty threats, so Sam stopped and stared at her, hand still lodged in his hair.
“Tell me why I am not crazy. I like that part in particular,” she coaxed calmly.
“Your déjà vu is still a mystery to me, but by my own observations none of this is mere coincidence. I am not sure how to wrap my mind around it, because by god, it is way out of my range of accepted phenomena,” he rambled. He grasped Nina by her upper arms and looked her straight in the eye. “But believe me when I say that all of this, everything that had happened to us thus far since you were hired by Professor Kulich, is connected.”
“Connected how?” she frowned.
“All the people you and I have collectively encountered so far are somehow connected!” he whispered loudly. “They all know each other through third parties. All of this…it is as if…I don’t know…”