Rise of the Mystics Page 33

  The 49th had the Fourth Seal. He’d felt the shift in him the moment it had happened, only two hours earlier. And for the first time he wondered if he might fail.

  Against the Fifth Seal there was no defense. But she didn’t have the Fifth.

  She’d found surrender, a state of being that very few ever found. Yes, the 49th had tasted the full power of surrendering into the light beyond polarity, but even this could be choked out by the concerns of this life.

  He strode down the corridor to the West Wing, following the Secret Service bimbo with skinny hips. If the woman had any idea who she was, what power she had, what fabric she’d been cut from . . .

  But she didn’t, and he was here to make sure she never did. That none of them did. Ever.

  “He’s waiting,” she said, motioning at the door.

  “Splendid.”

  Calvin Johnson was pacing by the second sofa, sweating, wrung out like a used dishrag. He spun to the door when Vlad stepped in.

  “I just received a call from Karen. She was taken by those fugitives, for heaven’s sake! She wants to bring them in. They have her in a panic.”

  “And she has you in one. Good. You should be in a panic.”

  The man’s faced darkened. “This isn’t what I signed up for! I’m the president of the United States! If you think you can push me around, I’ll . . .”

  Vlad moved and was behind him before he could finish his threat. Hand in the man’s hair, jerking his head back so his neck was bare to Vlad’s grip. He cut off Calvin’s windpipe and spoke reason into his ear.

  “It’s too late to whine like a little girl. Everything’s going along perfectly, give or take. One misstep from you now and I’ll bring this whole office down around your ears. Better yet, I’ll make sure the courts do it for me. Death would provide you with far too much comfort. Nod if you understand me.”

  Calvin nodded.

  “Good. Now, before I let you breathe I’m going to tell you what to do. Let her bring them in. Do whatever they want you to do, I don’t care. Just make sure Rachelle Matthews is at that security summit tomorrow at one, second session. She’s the only thing that matters to you now. If I fail tomorrow, I’m gonna slaughter every last world leader at that summit, and that will be on you. If I go down, this whole world’s going down. Clear?”

  A quick nod.

  Vlad relaxed his grip and stepped back, straightening his new jacket. “Well, that was simple.”

  Calvin staggered to his desk, grabbed a glass, gulped some water, and coughed.

  “You caught me in a bad mood,” Vlad said. “I doubt it will change. Mind your manners.”

  It took a full minute for the big man to calm himself. He was no idiot, but even the most logical and well-intentioned human was stupid in the grip of fear.

  Calvin seated himself in his special chair behind the cherrywood desk, straightened his phone, his pen, a pad of paper and a paper clip.

  He put his elbows on the desk and looked up. “Okay, tell me what I need to know.”

  “You called off the bombings?”

  “Yes. Karen insisted.”

  “Do you think you can trust her?”

  “Yes. She’ll take the fall if it comes to that.”

  “No. You’ll take the fall. I’ve had my fond moments with her.”

  “I want to call off StetNox. The only crime that’s been committed so far is the placement of a harmless piece of malware on a billion connected devices. Please tell me you won’t activate it.”

  “I don’t care about your silly cyber war, but it’s going wide if I fail. Like I said, I’m taking the world down with me. Play your part and it won’t come to that.”

  Calvin eyed him carefully. “So what you’re saying is that I’m finished.”

  “Most definitely. If I fail, very finished.”

  “Fail to what? I don’t even know what you’re trying to accomplish here. Stop a girl from Project Eden from doing what?”

  “From finding the Fifth Seal before the Realm of Mystics is destroyed. For this alone Teeleh sent me! If she succeeds, all is lost.”

  This drew a blank stare. So Vlad brought things back to this Earth.

  “We may very well be at this world’s most critical juncture since the light bringer came back to life two thousand years ago. You’ll know that tomorrow, assuming you’re still alive. When will they be here?”

  The president sat back and drew a deep breath. “It’s too risky during the day. Their faces are plastered all over the internet. After dark. I’m still making the arrangements. It’s not easy, you know.”

  “Great accomplishments never are. When you meet them, you’ll put up a fight. It’s madness to allow her entry into the World Security Summit—that sort of thing. She mustn’t suspect. Tell them I was here and out of my mind with rage.”

  The president closed his eyes and shook his head as the full scope of just how compromised he was continued to sink in.

  “Only the 49th. Do what you like with her handler. This Steve fellow.”

  Calvin opened his eyes. “They’re with some crackpot. Karen was a bit hysterical so I don’t know where they picked him up, but he claims he’s Thomas Hunter. Some—”

  “Thomas Hunter?” Vlad’s irritation shifted to something closer to fear. “You’re sure?”

  “That’s what she said. It’s not him, of course. He’s dead.”

  So . . . The old mystic had found a way to send Thomas of Hunter through. It was how she’d found the Fourth Seal.

  “It can’t be him,” Calvin was saying. “Please tell me I’m not losing my mind.”

  “Of course it’s not him. But Rachelle may think it is. She’s a dreamer from Project Eden, given to delusions of grandeur. If she brings him, humor her, but if she insists he go with her to the summit, refuse. I need her alone.”

  The president nodded. “Tell me one thing,” he said.

  Vlad lifted an eyebrow.

  “If your only objective is to stop Rachelle Matthews, why not just kill her? You told me you can’t, I just don’t understand why.”

  His answer would make no sense to the man, but he gave it anyway.

  “Teeleh forbids me from killing her. If I kill her here, she’ll die there, and we need her alive there to reveal the Realm of Mystics. It’s the only way to destroy it. Otherwise I would have killed her in Eden.”

  Calvin blinked.

  “But technically speaking, I can kill her.” Vlad strode for the door. “And if it comes right down to it, believe me, I will.”

  32

  AFTER LEAVING the sea, I slept in the desert night next to Talya, and there I dreamed.

  In that dream I was in a cabin with Thomas Hunter, drinking a trickle of water squeezed from his hair. In a rush, the full meaning of the first three seals filled my mind once again. I was aware that I was dreaming, and this me was screaming encouragement to the me who was being reborn as the 49th on Earth as each seal entered my consciousness.

  It was then that she who was me found the Fourth Seal on the door of the cabin. I was asleep in Other Earth, but when she put her hand on the cross, uttered those words, and experienced the Fourth Seal, my entire body in Other Earth began to shake violently even as I slept.

  I was aware that my right shoulder was burning, and I knew that the Fourth Seal had found me. If Talya had been awake—and he might have been, for all I knew—he would have seen a slender girl lying on the sand, shaking like a leaf in the wind as the full power of the Fourth Seal filled every cell of her body.

  Then I was with Thomas in the dream, deciding my fate. I still had the final seal to find.

  The next awareness I had was of a bright light shining down on me. The sun, I thought. I’m in the desert and it’s day.

  I opened my eyes and bolted up, gasping. I jerked my sleeve up and stared at the red cross that had manifested on my shoulder as I slept.

  A low chuckle on my left broke the stillness and I turned.

  Talya was picking at h
is teeth with a twig, watching me. “You like?”

  Something had shifted in me. Everything felt new. Not necessarily different, but new, as if the world around me was still terra firma but now alive with an energy I’d never known.

  “When you actually surrender the old, you actually experience everything as new,” Talya said.

  I slowly stood, scanning the desert, the tree line to our right, the blue sky above. I didn’t know how to describe what I was seeing, maybe because in some ways I was seeing for the first time beyond what had blocked my sight.

  Talya said that everything not done in a binding to the light, a binding called faith, was called sin by the ancients. It was best understood as being off center or missing the mark or blindness, not simply deeds done. Whatever was not done in faith was sin. So even most lived in sin most of the time, experiencing powerless lives.1

  But I had surrendered out of the world of sin. It wasn’t a bad world as much as it was a blind world.

  I was seeing as Inchristi.

  And in that sight everything looked alive as if for the first time. Everything was the same and radically different at the same time. Greens were greener, the sky was bluer. Even the sand seemed to be alive.

  All was held together Inchristi.

  Talya had asked me if I liked it. There was no need to answer the question. It was impossible not to like this. I was home.

  “Not quite yet,” Talya said. “Tomorrow.”

  What is shown to be in the one who sees, dear daughter?

  The voice washed over me like a sweet, warm breath and my heart jumped. The final finger, pointing to the last seal!

  “The Fifth Seal!” I said. “I have to find the Fifth Seal.”

  “You do.” Talya stood and flicked the twig away. “And you must know that you will be tempted to bind once more to the cares and concerns of the world, which so easily choke out all four seals. It’s easy to once again want what used to be so comforting to the earthen vessel. And you always get what you truly want.”

  But I was too distracted by my quest for the Fifth Seal to ponder his words.

  “What is shown to be in the one who sees? It’s the fifth finger. Do I have it in the other world?”

  “She will when she dreams tonight.”

  “What if Vlad gets to me before then?”

  “If she abides in the Fourth Seal, he won’t.”

  “Will she?”

  “Will you?”

  With those words my momentary concern fell away. My place was to see in each moment to the extent I could, not worry about whether I might see in the next moment.

  I faced the desert. Talya hadn’t told me what to expect, only that my way would be treacherous. Resting now in new sight, I couldn’t imagine anything being treacherous. How could it be, if I’d surrendered my attachment to this earthen vessel?

  “There was a teaching,” he said. “A man was cleansed of what blocked his sight. But the accuser that blocked his sight went out and found seven more like himself, and they returned to find the man’s mind ready to be blinded once more. So the man entered an even deeper blindness. That’s how, 49th. It’s common.”

  Even then, after all I had been through, I felt no concern.

  “Remember, they can only accuse. Fear is their greatest power. When the evil man comes against you, turn the other cheek. The only thing you require is the armor of your true identity, as Paulus so eloquently put it. Your resistance is being who you are: the light of the world.”

  I looked at him. “You’re leaving me again?”

  He walked up to me and lowered himself to one knee.

  “I return to the Realm. They need me now. You must go alone, 49th.” He searched my eyes, and I thought I could see tears building. “I am so proud of you. No matter what happens now, know that. I see no failure in you, even if you fail. Promise me you’ll remember.”

  I choked up. Not with sorrow, but with love. I cupped his head in my hands and kissed his forehead.

  “I promise.” Then I dropped to my knees too and threw my arms around him like the child I was. “I love you, Talya. I will always love you!”

  His long arms held me close. “I am so honored to know you.”

  After a moment of silence, he cleared his throat, stood, and walked toward the horses. He led my pale mare back, saddled and ready.

  “Follow the desert due south. When you see the black cloud in the east, head toward it.”

  I looked south and east, seeing only a bright blue sky. “Just head for the black cloud? What am I supposed to do?”

  “You’re supposed to follow your heart.”

  What is shown to be in the one who sees? Find the Fifth Seal.

  “What if I can’t trust my heart?”

  “You can always trust your heart. It’s your mind that gives you trouble. Your cognitive perception.”

  I wasn’t sure I knew the difference, but I nodded anyway.

  “You must go.”

  He handed me the reins and I swung into the saddle.

  Without warning, Talya slapped the mare’s rump and it surged forward.

  “The Fifth Seal, 49th!” he called out after me. “Bring us the Fifth Seal!”

  I twisted back. “I will.”

  Little did I know what I was saying.

  I RODE six hours by my estimation before I saw the black cloud, high above the desert. Each stride of my mount felt like a step into newness. I had no concerns, no fear, no conflict of any kind. I was simply the daughter of Elyon, riding in a dimension that had been created for me, where I could be the light. In it but not of it.

  Honestly, I could hardly wipe the grin from my face. I replayed my time with the boy over and over, enchanted by his staggering power and innocence. To say that he was Elyon would be a mistake, because God could not fit in a box called boy. To say that he wasn’t Elyon would also be a mistake, because he was. And that also made me smile, because it made perfect sense to me.

  Not to my earthen vessel mind, but to my eternal mind, which was my heart, I supposed. How could the earthen vessel’s mind describe, much less grasp, the infinite?

  It couldn’t, but the heart could.

  Follow your heart, Talya said.

  So I did.

  It led me east toward the black cloud. A thundercloud, maybe. But it didn’t move with the breeze. So what kind of cloud was it?

  The reason I didn’t see it for what it was until I was only a few miles away must have been because I was so caught up in the wonder of the Fourth Seal, my surrender out of suffering and into light.

  But then I did see it, rotating around itself like a gathering hurricane stuck over a valley. It wasn’t a cloud.

  I stopped my horse and stared.

  It was Shataiki. Hundreds of thousands of them.

  “Hmm.” Curious.

  I still felt no fear. I saw them with my eyes, but I wasn’t perceiving their fear, not even when I crested a low dune and saw into the valley ahead of me.

  I pulled up, stunned.

  It was the same valley I’d met Qurong in a few days earlier. Only now his army wasn’t in the valley. It blanketed the northern hills, a sea of horses and Horde and mallets and axes and spears and sickles. Unmoving. Dark. The Elyonite army hugged the slopes on the other side of the valley, leaving a wide swath of vacant desert with something posted in the center. A cross of some kind.

  Beyond the valley, the Great Divide rose on the horizon. Above the valley, the swarm of Shataiki slowly churned.

  I felt no fear because I knew I could easily pass through the valley without being harmed. I could use that power just like Talya had used it. Was I supposed to?

  As if in response to my question, two lines of horses, one from each side of the valley, broke free from the main bodies and surged toward me, still a mile distant.

  I clicked and my mare headed forward, straight toward the center of the valley.

  The two columns of warriors reached me when I was halfway, sweeping wide and behi
nd to cut off any escape. But they didn’t concern me.

  The cross suddenly did, because I could now see they’d hung a man from it.

  Jacob? Where was Jacob?

  I looked at the columns to my left and right, each roughly a hundred paces from where I rode, watching me warily.

  And Jacob? Talya had told me he was returning as agreed.

  I blinked and studied the nearly naked Albino on the cross, head hung, hair covering his face. It was him, I could feel it in my bones.

  Now unnerved, I spurred my mount and took it into an easy gallop, eyes fixed on that cross. Immediately, the columns to my right and left matched my movements. A dozen Shataiki spiraled from the throng above and streaked toward the cross, where they landed on the body like vultures intent on feeding.

  I spurred my mount faster, thinking only that I had to save Jacob!

  Two smaller groups broke from the hills and galloped toward the center of the valley to meet me. I recognized Aaron with his escort on the right, Qurong and the priest, Ba’al, on the left.

  They reached the cross thirty seconds before I pulled my mount to a walk, fifty paces from the scene. I was breathing hard now, knowing that I was sliding into fear and trying my best to let it go.

  My demise was one thing. But Jacob? I didn’t want him to suffer!

  All of Talya’s and little Maya’s and Soromi’s and the boy’s teachings on letting go whispered to me, but my attention was on the body. I still couldn’t see his face.

  “She’s Albino!” Ba’al croaked on my left.

  I pulled to a stop, staring up at the man hanging from the beams. For a few breaths, no one spoke. It was just me ten paces from the cross, and the high commanders of both armies seated on horses flanking me.

  Ba’al left Qurong’s side and nudged his horse to the base of the cross, pale eyes on me, unblinking. In his hand, a long spear.

  “Do you love this one, wicked witch?” he rasped.

  I studied the man on the cross, letting fear wash through me. Do not resist, Talya had said, so I didn’t, but I wasn’t liking it.

  What is shown to be in the one who sees, dear daughter?

  Ba’al spoke over the gentle voice.