Green: The Beginning and the End Read online

  “This was here?”

  “As I said, the cave was here. It’s my only escape from the dark priest’s prying eyes. He has servants in the walls.”

  At least one of the shelves was stuffed with volumes from the Books of History. But the Horde could not read the books; Thomas had established that much long ago. To the albino, the words read perfectly clear, but the scabbing disease turned this truth to nonsense in the Hordes’ minds. Their scribes were obsessed with writing their own history in plain bound books, a way of legitimizing their own failure to read the Books of History.

  Everyone wanted to create his own history. There was nothing as powerful as the written word; history had taught them all that much.

  “You can read the Books of History?” Thomas asked to be sure.

  “No one can.”

  “Albinos can.”

  “That is a lie,” Qurong said simply.

  There was no way to prove otherwise. He could just as easily pretend to read from the books and Qurong would never know the difference. Such was the nature of religion, plied by man to control the masses.

  “But we didn’t come down here so you could admire my library.” Qurong crossed to the desk. “You say you can give me what I need to destroy my enemies through these books.”

  He opened a drawer and pulled out a canvas bag bound by rope. He untied the bundle and withdrew colored Books of History, one by one, setting them on the desk. Six of them. The binding of each one a different color.

  Qurong faced him. “So show me.”

  Thomas walked up to the desk and reached for the books. “May I?”

  “One. And only one.”

  “Of course.”

  He picked up the green book. They were all bound by old leather embossed with the same concentric rings, the symbol for completeness. Elyon’s stamp.

  The Circle.

  Thomas traced the symbol. “Have you opened these?”

  “They’re empty.”

  Blank! But Michal said these were a key to both time and the rules that governed the other blank books.

  He pulled the cover back. The page was smothered by blood. It had been used. Thomas’s heart pounded at the prospect of entering.

  “Let me have your knife.”

  “Don’t be a fool.”

  “Do you want to do this or not?” Thomas snapped. Then he considered a possibility that made him second-guess himself. What if he vanished into the other world without the books? How would he ever make it back? He couldn’t conceive of going without knowing he would return to Chelise and the Circle. To Samuel. To Jake.

  Michal had all but demanded he use them. So he would.

  “Do you have any rope?”

  “What for?”

  “Trust me. Rope.”

  Qurong eyed him, then plucked a length of twine from a stand beside the desk and tossed it. “I’m now relegated to trusting my gravest enemy,” he said.

  “Don’t be thick, old man. I don’t have any harm in mind. We are in this together.”

  “And just what are we in for?”

  Thomas bound four of the books together with the top cover held back to reveal the first page stained with blood. He then tied the bundle of books to his arm. “I need your knife. Trust me, if this works you’re going to love—”

  “No!” Qurong slammed his hand down on the books, pinning them to the desk. “Enough trust!”

  Perhaps he had been too hasty. Thomas lifted both hands to calm the man.

  “Easy. I thought I’d already explained. These books unlock time. You and I can vanish”—he snapped his fingers—“and wake in another world where it will all become clear to you.”

  “Assuming this nonsense is true, what truth do you speak of? How will this save the Horde?”

  “I can’t explain it. You’ll have to . . . to trust me. The world will become clear in ways you’ve never imagined. Think of it as a gift, one that will save far more than you—”

  “Just that?” Qurong snarled. “Just ‘trust me’? I am the supreme commander of the Horde kingdom, and I rule all of the known world. I am not a servant for you or for Ba’al or for any other living creature to toy with!”

  Thomas’s eagerness was partly to blame for Qurong’s frustration.

  “Listen to me, you old crustacean!” He was shouting. “My son Samuel has just joined the half-breeds! They will rain rage and fire down on you for the torment you’ve caused them all. The Horde will be drained of blood, and the Shataiki will feed on your precious kingdom! Now give me your knife!”

  CHELISE PULLED up sharply at the sound of Thomas’s voice murmuring urgently down the tunnel.

  She’d entered the city from the south, through the familiar gardens that she once frequented. The journey took longer than she’d hoped, for the simple reason that unlike most albinos, her face, even without the scabbing disease, would surely be recognized by any who caught a glimpse of her.

  But she knew a secret way in, behind the stables, via an alley that she’d used numerous times as a girl. Then through a low basement window that she was glad to find had not been boarded up.

  She’d donned a cloak from a closet behind the kitchen, then crept through the servants’ quarters with one objective on her mind.

  Find her father.

  Find Qurong, who would know what had happened to Thomas. She would make sure he knew of her love for him after ten years without a word.

  Naturally, she could live without Qurong. Had lived without Qurong. But without Thomas, she wasn’t so sure. He’d been her lover since the day she learned how to love, really love. He’d shown her the Great Romance. She’d begged Elyon for Thomas’s life with every step she’d taken.

  The palace was buzzing, and she’d hidden behind a pile of barrels in the pantry. Still, she could hear whispers of an albino who’d come, and that could only be Thomas. No one seemed to know where Qurong had vanished to.

  Her first thought was of his library. She’d slipped into the root cellar that led to the tunnel, found the door into the secret passage open, and descended on light feet.

  And now . . . her breath hung in her chest. He was alive! Thomas was alive and with her father, whose voice reached her now.

  “Just ‘trust me’? I am the supreme commander of the Horde kingdom, and I rule all of the known world. I am not a servant for you or for Ba’al or for any other living creature to toy with!”

  “Listen to me, you old crustacean!” She was astounded that Thomas would use such language with her father.

  “My son Samuel has just joined the half-breeds! They will rain rage and fire down on you for the torment you’ve caused them all. The Horde will be drained of blood, and the Shataiki will feed on your precious kingdom! Now give me your knife!”

  It took a moment for the words to form meaning in Chelise’s mind. They claimed that Samuel had joined Eram and intended to wage war on the Horde, but that was . . .

  How could Samuel consider such a thing?

  “Thomas?” She started to run. “Father!”

  THOMAS REALIZED he’d pushed too far. Panic began to set in. Once angered, Qurong wouldn’t be easily overcome. A woman’s voice yelled down the tunnel.

  They both spun toward the gate. They were discovered! Patricia?

  Now! While Qurong was off balance. He had to move now!

  Thomas whirled and snatched Qurong’s knife from his belt. Slashed his own palm, barely aware of the pain.

  Qurong swung his arm to retrieve his weapon, raging like a bull. Thomas ducked under the blow and grabbed his other hand. Tugged it toward him, blade ready.

  For an absurd moment they each pulled at the hand, Qurong desperate to be free, Thomas knowing that his plan to win Qurong by taking him now threatened his own mission to return.

  “Father!”

  The woman was behind them, at the gate, screaming. Not just any woman, not Patricia, not Horde.

  Chelise.

  Qurong faced her. As he flinched, Thomas seized
his last hope. He yanked the man’s hand, sliced his fingers, and thrust both his hand and Qurong’s hand onto the blood-smeared page.

  Immediately the world began to spin, and his heart stopped.

  It was working.

  He twisted back, saw Chelise fading at the gate, eyes wide.

  “Save the Circle, Chelise! Save them from Samuel! I’ll be back!”

  But everything had gone black.

  CHELISE’S BLOOD ran cold. They were there inside the library, in a tug-of-war over her father’s hand, when she cried out. Her father looked up, stunned by her appearance.

  Thomas had moved like a man possessed, slashing Qurong’s hand with a knife, slamming their bleeding fingers onto a stack of bound books.

  Thomas twisted his head; she knew with one look into his wide, green eyes that he was the same man she’d always loved.

  “Save the Circle, Chelise! Save them from Samuel! I’ll be . . .”

  Before he could finish, he vanished. They both disappeared—knife, books, and all—before Thomas could utter another syllable.

  There one moment, grappling and bleeding, gone the next.

  She stood in the gate, stunned. It had happened. This other world Thomas had talked to her about so often as they lay next to each other under the stars was real. Not that she’d doubted . . .

  But she had.

  She walked in. Stepped through the space her father and lover had occupied just seconds earlier. His world was not only real, but it had taken him again. She cried out, fists tight. How could he do this? Both of them! Gone! She could kill them both.

  Save the Circle, Chelise! Save them from Samuel! I’ll be . . . Back. He meant back. I’ll be back.

  Samuel . . . What had the boy done? Dear Elyon! She had to get back to Marie and the council.

  Chelise turned and ran from Qurong’s library.

  She had to get back to her only son. To Jake.

  23

  “HOW LONG since we injected them?” Kara demanded. “We have to bring them back.”

  “Twenty-three minutes,” Monique replied, peering through a microscope at a sample of Janae’s blood. “It’s working. Thomas’s blood is destroying the virus.”

  “Already?” The pace of its effectiveness was alarming. “You’re sure?”

  “Take a look.” Monique straightened and looked at the isolation room where Billy and Janae still dreamed in fits and moans. Whatever was happening in their minds, they had to stop it.

  Kara bent over the eyepiece and acquired the virus, a microscopic organism she’d always thought looked like a lunar lander. “How can you . . .”

  “Dear God, help us,” Monique breathed in such a dreadful tone that Kara thought one of the two might have just died.

  “What?” She jerked back from the microscope. “What is it?” They were too late, she knew it! Too late for what, she didn’t know, but this whole thing had been a bad idea from the start.

  Monique stared, pale faced, at the isolation chamber. Two techs stood inside with their backs to the observation windows, fixated on the two gurneys. Only they weren’t any ordinary techs in white lab coats.

  One was a man dressed in a long black cloak, like a gothic priest. The other . . .

  Kara’s pulse went from heavy to a dead stop. She recognized the clothing worn by the second man, and his morst-coated dreadlocks. She hadn’t seen anything similar in three decades, but this image had haunted a hundred nightmares in that time.

  Horde.

  The one dressed in black turned around and stared out at her.

  Kara felt faint. This was her brother looking at her. He was older, not much, and his face appeared hardened by time, but there was no mistaking Thomas, not in a thousand years.

  “Thomas?” Monique breathed beside her.

  “It’s . . .” Kara didn’t know what it was. Thomas—yes, Thomas!— or a vision of Thomas. The man with dreadlocks turned around. Gray eyes. Most definitely Horde, covered by the scabbing disease.

  “We’re dreaming,” Kara said. She glanced at two lab techs to her right and saw that if she was dreaming, so were they. One had dropped his clipboard and left it by his feet as he gawked.

  When she turned back to the room, Thomas was walking toward the door. He opened it. Stepped out.

  Spoke.

  “Kara . . . forgive me, I know this is a shock.” He gripped four books with bleeding fingers, the top book open and smudged with fresh blood. “I . . . I made it back,” he said.

  She could hardly breathe. “Thomas?” A stupid thing to say, but nothing else would come.

  His green eyes darted around, as wide as she’d seen them. He was as shocked as she. His lips slowly twisted into a quirky grin. “Wow.”

  The emotion of seeing Thomas, who had been lost to this world, crashed over her like a pounding wave, and she made no attempt to stop the tears that flooded her eyes. She uttered one halting sob and stumbled forward.

  She rushed the last three steps and hugged him awkwardly. There was so much to say. Endless questions. But at the moment her mind was blank. She could only cry.

  The Scab crept from the isolation room in a crouch. “What magic is this?” he demanded loudly. “You’ve cursed me!”

  Thomas eased away from Kara and addressed him. “It will be clear. I told you to trust me; now you have no choice. We’ve arrived.”

  The door swung open and two guards burst in, saw the Scab, and leveled their handguns. “Steady . . . no sudden moves.”

  “Lower your weapons,” Monique said, motioning the guards to stand down.

  The laboratory adviser, a biological engineer named Bruno, spoke in an urgent voice from behind them. “Miss Hunter, I urge you to step back. The chance of contamination is unknown.”

  The smell, Kara thought.

  “Ma’am, I urge isolation immediately.”

  The sulfuric stink of the Scab’s rotting flesh had filled the room. There was no telling if or how the scabbing disease would spread in this world.

  “No,” Thomas said. “If the disease spread easily, I would have brought it back with me years ago, when I shifted realities.”

  But Monique shook her head. “You were only dreaming then. And this . . . You’ve brought one of the Scabs with you?” But rather than backing off, she walked up to him, eyes fixed on his. “Seal the laboratory’s perimeter, Bruno. Leave us.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “Now, Bruno.” Eyes still on Thomas. “Out, all of you.”

  They backed off and headed to the decontamination chamber like scurrying mice. The Scab was dressed in a leather tunic, not battle dress. Cracks on his face ran with sweat that marked the morst paste with long jagged streaks. His eyes, though gray, looked bright with panic.

  “End this!” he thundered.

  “I don’t think you understand, Qurong,” Thomas said. “This isn’t just a vision that I or you can end. We’ve unlocked time with the books and are now in . . .” He stopped and glanced around. “Where exactly are we?”

  “Raison Pharmaceutical,” Monique said. “Bangkok. Hello, Thomas.”

  His eyes settled on her. “Monique.”

  “In the flesh,” she said. “As, it seems, are you.”

  “Why did we come to this location?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Over thirty-five years here,” she said. “And there?”

  “Ten years since I last came. But why would I return here, to this exact spot?”

  Qurong wasn’t following them in the least. “How can this be? We were just in my library. I’ve awakened in a land of albinos.”

  “Listen to me, Qurong!” Thomas seemed downright perturbed by the Horde leader. “What have I been saying all along? There’s more to the world than your little city and gray water. In this world you’ll find no Horde. We’re all albinos, as you call us. Not albinos, but human, without your skin disease.”

  “How is that poss—”

  “
You’ve had a thick skull to deny Elyon, but now you’ll face the truth. Am I delusional or is this really happening?”

  Qurong stared about, but it was impossible to know what he was thinking.

  Kara stepped up to Thomas and touched his cheek. “It’s really you. You’re alive.” Her mind was still spinning, trying to make sense of what was happening. Dreaming was one thing, but this . . . he’d just appeared out of thin air!

  “Your blood,” Monique said.

  “What about my blood?”

  “Maybe you returned here, and now, because of your blood.” She glanced at the room behind them, and Thomas followed her eyes.

  “You . . .” He spun back. “They have my blood in them?”

  “Yes. They . . .”

  But he was moving already, flying past a startled Qurong, into the room, up to Billy’s gurney. He slapped the redhead’s face with his open palm. Crack!

  “Wake up! Wake up, get out of there!”

  He bounded over to Janae and slapped her cheek hard. “Up, up, up!”

  “What are you doing?” Monique demanded. But they knew.

  “Wake them! You can’t let anyone into my world. The books . . . it’s far too dangerous!”

  “We did it once.”

  “Never again.”

  “They’re dying!”

  “Then let them die,” Thomas snapped, spinning back. “Who are they?”

  “My daughter,” Monique said. “And Billy, the one who first wrote in the Books of History.”

  “What is this madness?” Qurong raged.

  As if in answer, Billy’s eyes opened and he groaned. He pushed himself up and looked around groggily.

  “What . . . what’s happening?”

  “Billy?”

  They turned to Janae, who was trying to sit up.

  Monique rushed to her daughter’s side. “Lie down, both of you. You’re in no condition to get out of bed.”

  Recognition slowly dawned in Janae’s expression. Like a deflating balloon, her face wrinkled with scorn and bitterness.

  “No!” she cried. She yanked the IV needle from her arm, pushed her mother away, and staggered from the gurney. “You have no right! Where is it?”