Rise of the Mystics Read online

  I could see that half the auditorium was filled. Security was heavy at the back, where I guessed the president would be sitting. Which meant we wouldn’t be sitting in our usual place. Bummer.

  That’s what I was thinking when Cynthia spoke.

  “Hello, Rachelle.” She smiled and her voice was warm.

  “Hi.”

  “I understand religion was a big part of your experience in Eden. We’re in a church today, though I’m guessing it’s a lot fancier than the one you attended. What do you think of religion after going through what you have?”

  It was the worst kind of question she could have asked. I was confused about religion, but saying that would sound dumb, wouldn’t it? Heat from embarrassment rose up my neck.

  “You don’t have to answer,” Steve said quietly.

  I glanced at the arched ceiling, the huge stained-glass window over the entrance at the back. Like Eden, only in Eden’s church the stained-glass circle was over the platform. Memories flooded my mind, and I was speaking before I had the good sense to think through my words.

  “I think most religion preaches a form of false law, blinding people to who they actually are as the light,” I said. “The law’s a system of fear and control based on punishment, because fear has to do with punishment. It’s like the sky in Eden. Something has to give or people will never be free to know who they really are.”

  They’d all gone silent, and I could tell by Cynthia’s look that my answer had taken her off guard. I thought I’d spoken well, right? But on meds, my thoughts were never crystal clear. Maybe more explanation would help.

  “Well, that’s an interesting way to put it,” the newswoman was saying. “Are you saying you disapprove of religion in general, or just the kind of religion you experienced in Eden?”

  I don’t disapprove, but I think it could do a better job of helping people see themselves the way the Father sees them, I wanted to say. But another thought interrupted me. A word.

  StetNox. It was so loud and so strange that I blinked, losing track of the question. I looked at Karen Willis, who was staring at me. The word had come from her. And I heard more.

  She’s just given us more than we could have possibly hoped for.

  “What’s StetNox?” I asked, forgetting where I was.

  She didn’t react. She didn’t even blink.

  “I’m sorry, Rachelle. Maybe it’s too early for an interview.” Karen turned to the reporter. “Let’s try another time, Cynthia. Bury this, will you?”

  Cynthia nodded. The cameras winked out. Someone else tried to ask a question, but Karen shut the man down with a hard glance.

  She shook our hands again, smiled, and told us to enjoy the service. She had to get back to the president. A man named Charles would show us to our seats.

  I sat next to Steve, halfway down the long sanctuary, eyes fixed on the choir filing in as the organ played. “How’d I do?” I whispered.

  “You did just fine,” Steve said. “Although I’d refrain from mentioning anything about religion or politics in the future.”

  “I thought I said it well.”

  “You did.” He patted my hand. “I’m not a religious man, and I don’t know what you mean by the law, but—”

  “It’s a term from the Bible. The law of sin and death that the early church wanted to return to. And for the most part have, like a dog to its vomit. Christians will get it.”

  He stared at me. “You remember all that?”

  I shrugged. “I guess so.”

  The choir stood in perfect order dressed in white robes, and their director led them in a hymn. The sounds of the organ and harmonizing voices filled the grand auditorium. I actually liked the liturgy of the Episcopal church—it was different enough from Eden to give me some distance.

  The service continued with more songs, some readings, communion. President Calvin Johnson sat near the back, head down in reverence when I glanced back. Steve nudged me. Not appropriate.

  But I couldn’t resist casually glancing again as Reverend Galloway seemed to be wrapping up his teaching on the grace of the cross. This time when I looked, the president was gone. They must have slipped out during the choir’s performance halfway through the sermon. They didn’t usually sing during the sermon, but the song illustrated a point the pastor had just made. Or maybe they’d done it knowing the president had to leave. A song was always a good time to slip out.

  My head was still turned and Steve was nudging me again when a thundering explosion at the front of the sanctuary shook the building.

  I spun back, ducking. Dust billowed, sweeping toward us as part of the ceiling above the platform fell. Huge chunks of concrete slammed onto the stage. The huge wall behind the pulpit was gone. Screams filled the air.

  I crouched in my seat, stunned, thinking of the choir and the reverend, who’d been on that platform. Bloodied bodies lay in the rubble. Someone had blown up the front of the church!

  Steve was pulling me by the hand, practically dragging me to the aisle. He was following a man in a dark suit who was waving us to the same side door we’d entered through.

  “This way! Hurry!”

  I stumbled on a fist-sized hunk of debris but caught myself on a chair. Steve tugged me forward.

  “Out, we have to get out!”

  His panic made mine worse. I covered my nose and mouth with my arm, squinted so the dust wouldn’t get in my eyes, and ran. The air in the hall was clear, but we didn’t slow down. Not until we burst from the building.

  I sprinted out onto the lawn and spun around. The whole front of the cathedral had caved in. People were still running from the main entrance, crying out. Somewhere far away, sirens were already blaring.

  “In the car! I’ll take her.”

  I turned to see that the dark-suited man was motioning me to a large black sedan. Steve grabbed my arm and turned to me.

  “It’s okay, Rachelle. That’s Tom. He’s DARPA security. They’re always with us when we leave, just to be safe. Go with him. I’ll be right behind in my car, okay? Just go.”

  So I went, sliding into the back seat of the black sedan, still wondering what had happened to the reverend, the choir members, visitors on the front rows. People had been killed! How many? More than twenty, I thought.

  Maybe it wasn’t a bomb. Maybe a furnace or something had blown up.

  Within a minute we were winding our way through streets I’d never seen before. Tom was at the wheel, adjusting his course based on information he was getting over a headset. From what I could gather, he was avoiding blockades, which were already going up.

  It was all surreal to me, the girl on meds in the back of a big black sedan, being raced to safety.

  All I could think about were all the people who couldn’t have survived such a huge blast.

  Maybe someone had tried to kill me. But no, that was ridiculous. Who was I? This wasn’t Eden, and even if it was, Vlad wasn’t . . .

  I caught myself. Vlad had forced my father to write him back into this world. What if this was tied to that? But that seemed absurd.

  The president, then. Someone had tried to assassinate the president? But that was pretty far-fetched too, right?

  Or was it?

  The drive seemed shorter than usual even though we went the long way. Somewhere along the way, Steve’s car had fallen back. Or maybe he’d gone a different route.

  The moment the black sedan lurched to a stop in the underground parking structure, Tom was at my door, throwing it wide.

  “This way, hurry!”

  I clambered out and followed, running because he was running. Down the steps, not the elevator. We passed the rec room door walking fast and headed down the hall to the back of the center.

  Only then did I think something might not be right, and I pulled up.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Tom turned back. By the long look on his face I knew he didn’t like whatever he was thinking. And then I heard his thoughts.

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bsp; Poor girl . . .

  Something sharp stung my neck and I cried out, grasping for it.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” a voice whispered behind me. An arm wrapped around my waist. “Time to sleep.”

  Then I was falling from consciousness.

  Into another world.

  12

  FOR THE FIRST time in many days, I had dreamed. I’d fallen asleep in the cave close to Jacob, who offered me warmth and comfort, and woke at DARPA as Rachelle, a mere shell of my former self. They’d fed me drugs for four months. I didn’t know who I was anymore.

  But this me in the cave, slowly emerging from that dream, had a clear mind, unaffected by DARPA’s treatments. Physical effects and skills transferred between realities, but not state of mind, or I would have lost my memory here as well.

  But there, it was worse than I could have imagined! I was completely lost, back in a kind of blindness, maybe even deeper than before.

  I was reeling from the loss of my father, angry and desperate. Worse, totally naïve. Details filled my mind. My words at the church, the explosion, the frantic return to DARPA, where they’d stuck a needle in my neck.

  Who had? I didn’t know. What were they going to do to me? Who’d blown up the church? What was happening?

  My eyes fluttered open, and the stone ceiling came into view. I was in Other Earth. We’d escaped from the Elyonite dungeons and followed the moon to this cave.

  Follow the finger to the moon.

  I jerked up and searched the cave. Light streamed in from the entrance, ten paces away. I twisted and saw that Jacob stood at the rear wall with his back to me.

  Jacob, who’d saved me. Who was protecting me. Jacob, who was Horde, and who I maybe loved even though I didn’t really know how to love a man in that way.

  He turned. “You need to see this.”

  My dreams began to fade as my waking reality took over.

  “What do you mean? What is it?”

  “See for yourself.”

  I scrambled to my feet and hurried to the back wall as he stepped aside. The markings came into view.

  “I could swear this wasn’t here last night,” he said.

  “Or we missed it in the darkness.”

  “Regardless, the writing makes no sense.”

  I stepped closer.

  What is seeing beyond

  What you think should be?

  “It’s the fourth finger!” I whispered.

  “Pointing to the Fourth Seal.”

  My heart was hammering. “Yes.”

  What is seeing beyond what you think should be?

  Jacob reached for the wall and pushed with his hand. Nothing.

  He faced me, speaking quickly. “What is seeing beyond what you think should be? I think this wall should be solid. It should be, but maybe it’s not.” A pause. “You try it.”

  I lifted my hand, and the moment my palm touched the cold stone surface, the entire wall began to shimmer with light.

  I gasped and jerked my hand away as what had just been solid rock vanished, leaving a tunnel that reached a hundred feet through stone before opening to a bright sky. And under that sky, a wide, grassy ledge that abruptly ended at a cliff.

  Jacob stood aghast. “Teeleh’s breath . . .” He looked at me. “What did I tell you?”

  I took his hand and started to walk. “Come on.”

  “Inside?”

  “Until you can go no farther. So we go, because we can.”

  Déjà vu flooded my mind as we walked through that tunnel. I’d been here before? The sensation nearly swallowed me when we stepped into a shallow meadow, crossed the grass, and looked over the cliff to the vista below.

  We’d come to a massive circular sinkhole carved into the high plateau. Cliffs ran the full perimeter, falling three hundred yards to a gnarled and twisted desert landscape at the bottom. In every other respect, its similarity to the sinkhole in Eden, Utah, left me breathless.

  The meadow we stood on was a wide, fertile ledge that ran a third of the perimeter before petering out. A hundred paces to our right, a grove of pine trees rose around a small pond. A red pond.

  “This is it?” I asked. “It’s just an ugly hole in the ground.”

  “Not the Realm of Mystics, surely. What are you looking for?”

  “I don’t know. What am I looking for?”

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” a voice asked behind us. I spun around to the familiar timbre of Talya’s voice. He stood, staff in hand, beside his pale steed, not twenty paces from us. His lion, Judah, stood at the top of the cliff above us, staring intently at a group of boulders north. “What are you looking for?” He stepped forward. “Or more pointedly, what are you seeing?”

  My heart was in my throat, and I ran for him without thinking. The emotions of the past week crushed me, elevated me, screamed through me, and when I reached him I didn’t slow. I threw my arms around his neck and clung to his body as if I were a young child and he my returning father.

  Talya dropped his staff and wrapped me in his long arms. There were a thousand things I could have said, but none of them could have possibly expressed my experience since he’d left me to find myself at the Great Divide.

  “Easy now.” He chuckled. “This jar of clay is much older than yours, you know.”

  I released him, suddenly unsure if my response was inappropriate. What did I know of the Mystics’ traditions?

  “On the contrary, dear daughter,” he said, sensing my thoughts, “you will soon see that you’re only just beginning to behave in your true way.” He kissed the top of my head and stood back, blushing.

  “Sorry . . . I just . . .”

  He reached for my sleeve and pulled it up. Saw the three bands of white, green, and black now a part of my flesh. Tears misted his eyes, and the fingers that held my tunic trembled, if only slightly.

  “Good,” he said, releasing my sleeve. “Very good. Tell me what they mean to you.”

  I searched my mind and put the seals in my own terms.

  “The First Seal is white: Origin is Infinite. He is light and can’t be threatened or disturbed because he’s infinitely complete and all-knowing. Nothing can bother or compromise him or what he knows. He isn’t subject to polarity.”

  Talya gave me a nod. “And?”

  “The Second Seal is green: I am the Light of the World. Inchristi is me and in me.” I stopped, recalling my encounter with Yeshua and Justin when the Elyonites had blinded me. “I saw him,” I breathed, flooded with emotion. “I’m the light, made of his fabric. He told me I had the same glory he had. Like Justin, I can’t be threatened or harmed. That’s who I am, and I’m only temporarily in this earthen vessel, which is made of . . . dust. I’m in the world of polarity but not of it.”

  “And?”

  I felt like a student who’d just received her doctorate at a very young age.

  “The Third Seal is black: Seeing the Light in Darkness is my Journey. I’m here in this world, the valley of the shadow of death, to see who I really am as the light. Seeing is a new perspective of the mind. Metanoia. And what you see is the kingdom of heaven, which is everywhere.”

  He smiled. “Well done, 49th. You are learning through your own experience in the valley of shadows. Awakening to who you’ve always been is a beautiful journey.”

  “Yes.” But part of me didn’t think my journey had been that beautiful.

  “You will when you find the Fourth and Fifth Seals.” He cleared his throat. “You’ll forgive me for allowing you to experience those shadows so deeply and so quickly. Life typically teaches us the futility of the law through years of suffering, but we don’t have that kind of time. I had to . . . rush things somewhat.”

  “There’s nothing to forgive.” I lifted his hand and kissed his knuckles.

  “I trust you’ll thank me with as much grace in the coming days. The seals are easily forgotten until you have all five.” He looked over my shoulder. “So this is Jacob, son of Qurong.”

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nbsp; Jacob was staring up at Judah. Talya followed his eyes and clicked. The lion rose and leaped from the cliff, then quickly made his way down to the meadow.

  I stepped out and dropped to one knee as Judah trotted toward me. Laughed when his large tongue licked the side of my face. Wrapped my arms around his huge head. “I missed you.”

  Talya nodded at his lion. “Greet our new friend, Judah.” To Jacob: “Don’t worry, he won’t bite you.”

  The lion sauntered toward Jacob, who stepped back, unsure. Judah stopped five feet from him and looked back, just as uncertain, tongue hanging.

  “Go on. Give the boy a hug.”

  Judah closed the distance between them, rose on his hind legs, and set his large paws on Jacob’s shoulders. Had it been me, the lion’s weight would have knocked me flat, but Jacob was as strong as Judah, and he held his ground, though clearly none too comfortably.

  The lion licked him once, then dropped back down before returning to Talya’s side, where he lay down, panting, staring off at those boulders again.

  “You see, Jacob,” Talya said, “the lion perceives no threat in you, Horde or not. But teach him differently and he would as likely tear off your head as give you a kiss.”

  “This was a kiss?” Jacob grinned wryly.

  “From his perspective, yes.” Talya picked up the staff he’d dropped and approached Jacob near the meadow’s edge. “From another perspective, it might be called a lick. Which is it? What do words really mean? It all depends on perspective, doesn’t it?”

  Jacob glanced between us, then gave Talya a nod. “Indeed.”

  “Like your perspective of me,” my teacher continued. “In one moment you might see me as an enemy. But in that same moment, seeing with different eyes, you might see me as a savior. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  Talya walked past Jacob and stopped at the edge of the sinkhole, gazing at the vast vista before him. “And what if I could teach you to see no threat? No anxiousness over the lack of food in the coming day, no fear of loss, no anger at having been struck on the cheek. How do you suppose you would experience life then, son of Qurong?”

  Jacob and I stepped up to either side of Talya and followed his eyes to the gnarled landscape.