«You see, there are two ways to reach the goal, a faster one and a slower one. Larìs, who is young, will follow this second way, will have plenty of time to consult the texts, assimilate what is contained in them, and learn to use, with the help of the Masters, her Third Eye, that of wisdom, the one with which she will be able to perceive the aura of the people around her and penetrate their thoughts, coming into contact with their mind. It is a long path that I, myself, have undertaken at the time, and which requires constancy, concentration, and application. For you, Aurora, who is instead keen to assimilate everything quickly and return to your homeland to fight against evil forces, I have a shorter way in-store.»
Clapping his hands, he called Hiamalè, who led Larìs out of the room, while from another door two young maids entered with a steaming herbal tea for the elderly patriarch. Roboamo drank carefully then, from a tray which was brought to him by one of the two maidservants, took a case and took out a syringe. «Papaverine. Inoculated into the cavernous body of the penis, it allows a lasting erection for a satisfying sexual intercourse, even for an elderly person like me. I will pass on all my knowledge and science to you by carnal conjunction, after which you will have access to the Sancta Sanctorum.»
The maids helped Aurora to undress and lie down on the cushions arranged for this purpose on the floor, then they took care of the old man, freed him of his clothes, gave him the injection, massaged him well, and when they understood that he was ready to consume the intercourse with the new arrival, they withdrew to a corner of the room. The sex with the old man gave Aurora immense pleasure. She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to the thrusts of Roboamo. At the apex of her excitement, reaching an orgasm, she realized that with the flow of semen a heat was penetrating her that pervaded her from tiptoe to the last hair. She was assimilating in one fell swoop all the knowledge that the elderly had accumulated in decades of permanence in that inaccessible place. At one point, Aurora realized that Roboam was motionless above her. He still had an erect penis, as a result of papaverine, but he was no longer breathing, he had expired. With a delicate movement, she moved aside the body of Roboamo and with no small difficulty disengaged herself from him. While the handmaids took care of the deceased, Aurora got dressed and was assailed by fear: how to reach the Sancta Sanctorum without the guidance of Roboamo? But then, concentrating, she understood that, in addition to knowledge, she had assimilated everything that was kept in his memory, and therefore she already knew the way forward to reach the goal. But there was more, the sex just consumed had transformed her, she had smoother skin, firmer breasts, slimmer legs, less thin hair, in short, she felt rejuvenated. She looked for a mirror, which returned the image of a twenty-year-old, the image of herself but with forty years younger. She touched her face with her hands as if to make sure that what she saw was real and not a vision. The wrinkles were gone, her green eyes shone, there was no shadow of opacity in the lens, the hair had returned to their natural light brown color. But it was not time to dwell on futile elements. She was to reach “Solomon’s Key”.
Trying to follow the memories impressed on Roboamo’s mind, she went down the stairs to the ground floor. In a room with decorated walls, she looked for a golden statue depicting a cat. At the neck of the latter, she noticed a medallion in the shape of a pentacle. She turned it and saw a passage open in the back wall, the only one on without windows. She entered a long, half-dark corridor, occasionally illuminated by the dim light of ancient oil lamps. At the end of the corridor, a spiral staircase went down to the basement, to another richly decorated hall. She went straight to a massive golden door, enriched with pure gold bas-reliefs, depicting episodes from the life of King Solomon. There was no lock to open this door, nor any other device. To access the Sancta Sanctorum a voice command is needed, different depending on the days of the week and the hours of the day. Aurora, calculating that at that moment she should have invoked the moon, uttered in a loud voice: «Levanah!»
The massive golden door began to slide inside the double-headed wall, leaving free access to the most secret of the temple rooms. In the center of the room, above a column of about one meter and twenty meters high, an ivory casket held the book and the ring with the seal of Solomon, the most powerful talisman of all time. Not without emotion, she opened the chest. The book was in its place, but not the ring. Those who had come before her had managed to steal him, ensuring a power that was not indifferent and difficult to fight, if used for evil purposes. But now the sorceress had no time to think, she had all night to be able to assimilate what Solomon had written many centuries before, which she had not received from the memory of Rehoboam, since he, even if he had access to the Sancta Sanctorum, never had had the courage to face the sacred text. When she was sure that she had learned all the formulas and the invocations by heart, she put the Key in the box and went out, going backward on the way made to get there. When she went out into the hall, she noticed that the first light of dawn was beginning to enter the windows. She rotated the medallion on the cat statue, returning it to its initial position, and the passage from which it had just come out closed again.
It was time to go home to Liguria, and this time the trip would have been short. She would use teleportation, which was one of the new spells she had just learned. But first, she had to take her leave from Larìs. She returned to the cloister, where the guest rooms were located, she met Ero and Dusai already up and conversing on the edge of the swimming pool. They both missed an appreciation of Aurora’s new appearance.
«Damn! If she had been that way the other day!» commented Dusai.
The sorceress avoided replying and knocked on Larìs’s door, which was still immersed in the world of dreams. Sleepily, Larìs opened the door and looked questioningly at the young woman. When she realized that she was her travel companion, she rubbed her eyes thinking she was still dreaming.
«Yes, it's me.» Aurora laughed. «I’m leaving, but we’ll stay in telepathic communication. When I need you, you will know, and you will be able to reach me as soon as possible.»
Then she brought her lips close to Larìs’s and kissed her.
«See you soon.»
Aurora came out of the temple and reached an isolated clearing, where she sat on the ground, taking care not to cross her legs, concentrated on the place where she was to go and pronounced the magic formula. As if captured by a vortex, by a kind of a whirlwind, her body vanished to reappear in Triora, inside her home.
«I am home!»
Chapter 4
We headed to the crime scene, which had already been delimited by the red and white plastic strips with the words “State Police.” The place was blackened by the fire and wet due to the water used to put it out, but what stroke most was the nauseating smell that we were forced to breathe. The smell of burnt human flesh, which still hovered in the air, was truly unbearable. When I first saw the body, I could barely hold back vomiting. At first glance it looked like a mannequin, bent over itself, leaning against a metal gate that closed a kind of cave, the human form blackened by the flames. There was no trace of the hair and, in some areas, bones could be glimpsed at amid some shredded skin. The shape of the breasts allowed one to see that it was the body of a woman. At the level of the wrists and ankles, there was something that looked like melted plastic strings, meaning that something must have been used to tie the victim to the gate. The coroner was carrying out the first tests on the body, while the men of the forensic police were waiting patiently for him to finish to start their work. Telling Mauro to wait for me, I approached them passing the barrier of plastic strips. Sensing my presence, the doctor raised her head and pulled off the latex gloves, shaking her head. The person who was holding out her hand to me was a petite woman in her thirties, with short dark hair, dark eyes, and a small golden nose piercing.
«Doctor Ruggeri, I suppose! Nice to meet you, I’m doctor Ilaria Banzi, coroner.»
«What can you tell me about this poor woman?»
«Very
