The 49th Mystic Page 38

  “I’m going to try to save Eden.”

  I said that, but I don’t know if I believed it because as far as I could see, I was out of options. What was I supposed to do, find all the explosives and figure out which wires to snip? Gather a divided town and convince them all to hide in bunkers? The best I could do was hope that Vlad had lied about the explosives, though I was sure he hadn’t.

  What is lost that can never be lost?

  Or I could find the Third Seal.

  That strange calm came again, and this time it lingered. With the other two seals, their truth had been suggested to me before I experienced them, so I assumed I’d already been given the answer to the third riddle. But what? The seals weren’t information or dogma. I had to know them. Experience them intimately.

  We jogged to the edge of town and were crossing the greenbelt behind Bill’s Hardware when my father grabbed my arm, gasping. “No . . .”

  “What is it?”

  “The sky just went dark except . . . his face . . . Vlad’s face is on it, covering the whole thing. It’s him . . .” His voice broke. “He’s grinning down at us. At the whole town.”

  The Shadow of Death bore down on Eden, mocking us all. Vlad was alive. Reminding us that we lived in a bubble that he alone controlled.

  What is lost that can never be lost?

  A slight vibration ran up my spine and sent a faint buzz through my skull. Distant voices were shouting; somewhere far away a gun fired. But it all sounded detached to me. My mind was doing something other than listening to sounds here.

  Vlad was alive. But that wasn’t entirely true. I was the one who was alive.

  In one fell swoop, my first encounter with Justin filled my awareness. Me, holding a stone that was my life, my mission, all that I would experience. My veins filled with light, because I was the light of the world, like him.

  My dad was talking, but he sounded far away. I lowered my eyes and looked at my arms. Immediately I could see them, the real them. Once again my skin was translucent; once more I could see my veins, flowing with light beneath my skin.

  I glanced up but was still blind. My father was pointing, talking frantically. He couldn’t see the light. I looked down again . . . But I could see. The light was right there, flowing through my veins, casting an ethereal glow through my arms and body.

  The ancient mystic Paulus had seen this light when the scales fell from his eyes. Talya’s words on the cliff returned to me: Let the scales fall from your eyes.

  Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Because that shadow is nothing to fear but fear itself. You can’t defeat a shadow. You need only turn to the light, ignoring the shadow cast by the earthen vessel.

  Polarity. Light and dark. And I was the light as well.

  I didn’t need to defeat Vlad, I just needed to bring down the illusion created by his shadow. To collapse that view of the world so that we could see another world already present. The solution was to remove the scales that blinded me to true sight.

  What blinded Eden to the world beyond this valley? The sky . . . The bubble . . . Any thought of its crumbling brought fear. And for good reason. Even if there was a way to bring down the sky, doing so would leave us in the wasteland.

  A distant and low chuckle reverberated through the valley, as if originating from the image on the dome above us, but I couldn’t be sure because it seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  From me, I thought. From my own mind.

  I looked up at my father and spoke with an authority that surprised even me. “Get to the courthouse as quickly as you can. Find your way to the basement—there’s a key by the door in Hillary’s office. Flashlight’s in the basket. Get down to the cells and lock yourself in.”

  “What?”

  “He needs you. He’s coming for you.”

  “What about you?”

  “Go. Run!”

  He ran.

  37

  I WALKED straight for the fountain in the town square, but I didn’t feel like I was walking on the soles of my own feet. Of her feet. I wasn’t walking on the soles of Rachelle’s feet, because Rachelle was only the label of my earthen vessel. My true identity wasn’t that temporal flesh, that avatar, that jar of clay. I had only joined with it for a very short time called “this life,” which ended almost as soon as it began.

  Beyond her was me. The eternal me who was the light of the world because I was Inchristi.

  And as Inchristi, there was no problem, because it was finished—death was no more. Like my true Father, who could not be threatened or compromised in any way, I too was safe. Fear was caused by the shadow of death only to the extent I aligned with it rather than to the light that I was.

  Rachelle the earthen vessel saw a problem, but that problem wasn’t shared by the me who was the light.

  What is lost that can never be lost, daughter of Elyon? The question whispered through me, gentle and inviting.

  My skin was tingling. Simon Moses had once preached a story about a man called Stephen who had seen a great light and stood in perfect peace as he was stoned to death. That light was the law, Simon declared.

  Simon had the wrong law. The light wasn’t the law of death. It was the law of grace.

  Whether I saw it or not, I was the light of the world. I stood by the fountain and felt like Stephen, embraced by a light that also filled me. Inchristi is me.

  “After all you’ve been through . . . You didn’t really think a bullet or two would solve your problems, surely not.”

  I stopped five feet from the fountain and turned to the voice, clicking. Vlad stood in front of the door to the church, arms crossed, chewing on something, maybe a toothpick. His eyes glowed red and were as plain to me as the tattoo on my shoulder.

  Shadow Man. The accuser. Had he seen my father? Worry gnawed at my mind. My earthen vessel mind.

  “You still don’t understand who you’re dealing with, do you?” he said, lowering his arms, descending the stone steps. “It’s only you and me now, so let’s be boringly plain, shall we? You think the shadow isn’t real? How absurd. Just look around you, sweet pea. I see a very big problem. And in”—he pulled something from his pocket—“fifty-seven minutes, every last soul in this stink hole you call Eden is going to feel that very big problem. At least for a few minutes. Then they won’t feel anything because they’ll be dead.”

  “There is no death,” I said.

  “Of course not. But that doesn’t make it not real. Real is what your mind thinks it is. And I’m just getting started with you.”

  Keep your eyes on me, dear one. Don’t be afraid of the shadow. A slight tremor shook my lower jaw and I breathed deep, settling into the voice of my Comforter.

  “An illusion is an illusion because people see it as real,” I said. “And that illusion has as much effect on any human as the truth. Like you say, our tissue-tops can only process what our algorithms know based on a system of logic and beliefs. But there’s a way beyond that illusion. A way to see Inchristi, and in that sight I know you cannot harm the true me.”

  “No? Well, as it turns out, I’m about to introduce you to a whole new form of harm.”

  “To my earthen vessel,” I said. “Not to me.”

  He stopped, ten paces away now, staring at me, toying with that toothpick between his teeth. He chuckled.

  “My, my, we’ve been a busy girl in yonder place. Learning more than the mind can hold, are we? We have the white seal and the green seal and we are quite proud of our progress.”

  He spit the toothpick out.

  “You’ve caught on to the fact that religion’s fear is like this synthetic sky over our heads, protecting all the frightened little fearmongers inside from a threat that keeps them on the straight and narrow but is utterly powerless in this life. The 49th does so well. But you still have two very significant problems.”

  “Do I?”

  “You’re blind again. And if you think I’m done blinding you,
you underestimate me. Again and again, isn’t that what I promised? The whole world will hate you. And I mean all of it, not just this stink hole. Through you, I’m going to blind them. Keep them powerless.”

  Fear pulled at me. The unfairness of my blindness . . .

  The story from the Gospel of John tripped through my mind. Why was this one born blind? Whose sin caused it? Neither her sin, nor the sin of any other, but so that God’s glory would be revealed in her. That was my story.1

  It was the story of everyone. I, the 49th Mystic, represented all of humanity. The experience of finding light in the darkness was somehow worth all of that darkness. The very point of it.

  “And that’s the other problem,” he said. “You still feel fear.”

  But that wasn’t me. It was her, my earthen vessel. Shadow Man’s only purpose was to blind the earthen vessel, but even being blind, either physically or spiritually, didn’t change who I was as the daughter of Elyon. It only changed the experience I had of this life.

  “Yes,” I said. “She does.”

  He slowly paced to my right. “She?”

  “Rachelle,” I said, lifting my eyes to the sky. Lift your eyes and you will see the harvest is ripe . . . “My earthen vessel.” My voice sounded distant to my own ears.

  “Your earthen vessel is who you are!” he snarled. Fear laced his tone. I was chipping away at his confidence. “I’m going to help you know that.”

  He was accusing me, but I didn’t care. My face was turned up, and I imagined his face grinning down at me from the sky. So easy to believe it was real. The law. Simon Moses’s law. Fear-based religion. Protecting us from what? The wrath that would crush us if we didn’t follow that law?

  Meaning fell into my mind and I blinked.

  “The fallout . . .” It was all I said because he was coming for me, a black wraith with red eyes.

  My instincts took over and I shifted to my right. It’s all I did, just a simple shift. But flowing with such power, my movement was blindingly quick and I sidestepped him easily.

  His lower body slammed into the concrete pool, shattering the wall; his head struck the fountain top, smashing it into a hundred pieces.

  Let go, daughter.

  The words breathed through me and the world stilled. It was true—focused on protecting myself from Vlad, my mind was distracted by its fight-or-flight programming. I had to let go of that part of my mind.

  Tell me, what is lost that can never be lost?

  The Third Seal was the only hope for Eden, and I could feel it pulling at me.

  I looked up at the sky again, even as Vlad snarled and rushed me like a battering ram. This time his arm struck my shoulder, but I was turning with the impact and the blow only spun me from my feet. I landed on my back, staring at the synthetic sky, and half of me was already rolling to my feet to evade another blow.

  Turn to the light, dear one.

  But the other half was breathing the voice.

  I let my muscles relax and I lay still, ignoring the alarm bells clanging in my mind.

  Don’t be afraid of the shadow light creates.

  Then that shadow was over me, twisted with darkness. He grabbed my waistband, plucked me from the ground, took two long steps, and slammed me down on the broken fountain. The blow to my back knocked the wind from me.

  I knew that no amount of effort would free me from the powerful grip pinning me to the concrete.

  “That’s better,” he said. The darkness faded from his face and he gave me a wink. “Much, much better.”

  He lifted his head.

  “Who is the father of this child under my fist?” he roared. “I’ll give you to the count of three to present yourself, or I’ll rip her throat out. And don’t think I need her, because I don’t. I need you!”

  It was a lie, he did need me, but my father would believe him. Fear sank its teeth deep into my mind again. The fact that I was feeling it so strongly generated its own fear, because it meant I was slipping. Then spiraling.

  I began to panic and my mouth responded, beginning a cry of objection that was cut short when he slugged me in the solar plexus.

  “One!”

  Tears stung my eyes. I tried to speak, but my lungs refused to work.

  “Two!”

  “I’m here!” I heard my father running down the church’s stone steps. “Let her go. Please . . . Just don’t . . .”

  Vlad released me and was on him before he could finish the sentence. I don’t know where he struck my father, only that the crunching blow rendered him unconscious before he hit the ground. By the time I had twisted my head, fearing the worst, I saw that it had already happened.

  My father lay in a heap with one leg folded awkwardly under his body.

  DAVID BLINKED once, then opened his eyes. A charred stone ceiling shifted in shadows cast by wavering torchlight. He was back. Rachelle . . .

  He jerked up, felt the restraints bite deeply into his wrists, and collapsed back onto their stone table.

  “He’s awake!”

  It was his tormentor—the priest who had worked on his fingers. But his fingers no longer concerned him. Only two thoughts did.

  Vlad had Rachelle.

  He no longer needed her alive.

  David had spent his whole life protecting his daughter. Every waking moment helping her cope with her blindness in the cruel world of darkness. Nothing but his daughter’s safety mattered to him. There was now only one way to save her.

  The one called Ba’al walked up to the table, gray eyes bloodshot.

  “You’re awake.”

  Tears filled David’s eyes and spilled past his temples.

  “It doesn’t have to be painful,” Ba’al said. “The choice is yours. But I will help you make the right choice if you insist. In this way, pain can be your friend.”

  “If I . . .” David’s voice hitched and he cleared his throat. “What happens if I write?”

  “You don’t know? You will return Vlad to us.”

  “Here, in this dream?”

  Ba’al hesitated, then dipped his head. “Yes. To this dream.”

  “Away from my daughter?”

  Another hesitation. “Yes. Away from your daughter.”

  “Then I’ll write,” he breathed.

  “You’ll write?”

  “Yes. I’ll write.”

  “A wise choice.” To the other priest: “Give me the book.”

  HOW CAN you describe the connection between a loving father and a daughter who has depended on him for guidance and love her whole life? How can you fathom the fear she might feel at the prospect of losing him?

  I can’t describe the connection. I can only describe the momentary terror that washed through me as I lay on my back, facing the sky. I couldn’t bear to look at my father, crumpled on the ground.

  Everything that I thought protected me in this life teetered on a razor’s edge. If not for the words I heard next, I might have died there.

  What is lost that can never be lost? Look beyond the finger. See what it points to, daughter.

  It wasn’t the meaning of the words that calmed me. It was the sweet, soft, caring, and yet utterly unconcerned way in which I heard those words that flooded me with warmth and eased my panic.

  So why should the evidence this valley presented fill me with fear?

  I closed my eyes. I wanted to see another world. I had to see the unseen. The realm that was here and now and flowing with light. The one I’d seen with Talya.

  That’s good. Trust me. Look past the evidence that blinds you. See the light.

  Tears burst into my eyes. “Elyon,” I croaked, barely audible.

  Tell me who I am.

  You are infinite. You are love. You are the light. Nothing can threaten you.

  And who are you?

  I’m your daughter, made in your likeness, the light of the world. I’m Inchristi. Nothing can threaten me either.

  Never. Now tell me, what is lost that can never be lost?


  My perception, I thought. Even when I don’t see the truth, I’m still seeing. Sight can be lost, but it’s never really lost. It’s only seeing something else.

  The moment I thought it, heat spread through my extremities and warmed my fingers. But there was more to the Third Seal. What is lost? What is not lost?

  A journey.

  Even when I was lost in the journey of life, I was still going somewhere. Right then, feeling so lost, I was still on a journey of some kind.

  What journey?

  The journey of perception. Of learning to see.

  Open your eyes, daughter.

  The heat had spread up to my face, burning hot now. I opened my eyes and saw the air was flowing with wisps of colored light, sprinkled with a thousand tiny stars, like fireflies twinkling on and off, not only above me but all around me.

  I was seeing what normal eyes could not see.

  And there was more. The sky . . . The image of the seals on my arm now filled the entire sky. A white band, glowing like a polished pearl. Origin is Infinite. Inlaid with a green band, me in the world of creation. I am the Light of the World. And now a deep black core that shone like polished onyx. Perception . . . Blindness was and always had been my only challenge.

  My pulse pounded—no other sound now. Just the crashing of a heart on the verge of uncovering a hidden treasure. The sky . . . like scales that blinded. Let the scales fall from your eyes.

  The sky was blinding us, I thought. It was blinding the whole world to the sight of the unseen. The light. My journey in this life was to see the light. I knew this already, but now I was experiencing it on my own. Knowing it.

  Barely able to breathe for the anticipation coursing through me, I slowly lifted my hand so my palm faced the sky, spread my fingers wide, and spoke the words that filled my mind.

  “Seeing the Light in Darkness,” I breathed, “is my Journey.”

  My body was that of a girl, laid out on her back, helpless. But in the next moment, white light erupted from my body and shot to the sky with a ferocious hum. It pierced the core of the black circle, then spread to the outer white band.

  The moment it made contact with the outer ring, the sky detonated with a blinding, silent flash, brighter than any sun.