The 49th Mystic Read online

  David shoved his finger at the door, heat flushing his face. “Get out!”

  Smith stepped up, grabbed his shirt, and threw him against the wall like a rag doll. David’s head crashed into the drywall and he dropped to his seat, dazed. He tried to get his feet under him, but they refused to respond in any helpful way.

  “Stop!”

  Smith was already moving, as if in slow motion from David’s perspective. Bending over Rachelle. Pricking her finger with something he’d withdrawn from his jacket . . . Then David didn’t know what he did, because Smith’s body blocked his view.

  Smith shoved the object back into his breast pocket and touched Rachelle’s eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “Welcome to the world of the seeing, pumpkin.”

  Rachelle suddenly sat up, eyes wide, screaming.

  Startled, David finally clambered to his feet. Vlad Smith turned and walked toward the door.

  Rachelle’s scream faded, but her mouth and eyes were still stretched wide. And then, as if her plug had been pulled from the wall, her eyes and mouth snapped shut and she collapsed back onto the table.

  David lurched toward the bed.

  “Well done, David,” Vlad Smith spoke softly behind him. He heard the door opening. “The world as you know it ends in six days.”

  David reached the bed, only one thought on his mind: to wake Rachelle from her sleep. He grabbed her arm and shook her. Her head wobbled, but she remained peaceful and oblivious.

  He shook her harder. “Wake up. Wake up!”

  She lay dead to the world. Which could only mean that she wasn’t merely sleeping.

  Panic pushed reason from his mind. He slapped her face. “Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

  But she didn’t.

  He grabbed her wrist to check her pulse even though he could see that she was still breathing. But checking her pulse wasn’t always easy due to her anemia. He released her wrist, dropped his ear to her chest, and heard her heart beating rapidly.

  The pounding of feet outside was followed by the door swinging open and crashing into the doorstop.

  “What happened?” Miranda asked. “I heard a scream and . . .”

  “Wake up!” David shook Rachelle violently, lost in fear.

  Miranda shoved him aside and grabbed Rachelle’s wrist, instinctively checking for a pulse. “You’re hurting her! Tell me what happened.”

  “I . . . A man came in and did something.”

  “Something? What are you talking about?” She snatched a small flashlight from the counter, clicked it on. “What man?”

  David’s mind couldn’t find the appropriate words to explain.

  Miranda opened Rachelle’s eyes with one hand and shone the beam into each pupil. “No dilation.” She quickly pinched Rachelle’s arm, then listened to her heart with a stethoscope.

  When Miranda straightened, her face had paled.

  “What’s happening?”

  “She’s unconscious.”

  “I can see that! What else?” he demanded. “What’s happening?”

  “She . . .” Miranda hesitated. “I think she might be in a coma.”

  3

  I REMEMBER falling asleep on the table, and even in that sleep I could feel the cool liquid flowing up my arm as Miranda administered CRISPR. After that I can’t remember.

  I can’t remember because the deep pain that filled my eyes and slammed into my skull ripped all thoughts from my mind. I was screaming, I do remember that. My world had gone black.

  I felt dis-membered from the reality I had known as Eden. Cut off from all dreaming, all thought, all reality. For a beat that lasted both forever and for only a split second, I didn’t seem to exist. I was dead to life.

  In the next moment I was re-membered. Meaning I was fully aware of my physical form, but in a different state of consciousness. In a dream, I thought.

  In every other dream I’d had, I couldn’t tell that I was in a dream. This time I could. A lucid dream.

  I sat up, palms planted on the ground. On the sand. I was in a desert. I twisted and scanned the horizon. Everything was fuzzy. Real and clearly recognizable, but not sharply defined. Rolling dunes rose tall behind me and in front of me, boulders and shallow canyons maybe a hundred yards away.

  Another nightmare. I knew it had to be because my hands were shaking, like I’d just come out of a horrible situation that I couldn’t remember.

  I was wearing filthy, torn pants and a thigh-length blouse—a white cotton tunic that looked as if it had been dipped in dirty water before drying. It was large and slipped off one shoulder. I had dusty bare feet with a cut on my right heel. My lips were dry and chapped and my throat felt like a gunnysack. And there was something off about my body. Something wrong. Something . . .

  I looked down and saw it immediately. I was more developed. I wasn’t mistaken, I was older. Maybe only a few years, but I definitely knew my body well enough to tell the difference. And my skin wasn’t pale.

  I pushed myself to my feet and looked around, feeling dread. My footprints were visible in the sand dune to my right. By the looks of it, I’d lost my way in this desert and collapsed.

  Movement above caught my attention and I tilted my head up. Two flying creatures were high in the blue sky. Birds—huge, fluffy white birds that looked like flying squirrels, only much larger.

  The creatures descended toward me.

  I stood frozen on the sand, thinking I should run. But there was no way to outrun them, so I remained still, hoping they would leave me alone after satisfying their curiosity.

  Instead, they circled once before floating down to the sand not twenty feet from where I stood. I took a step back. With wings folded, they looked more like huge plump bats or Ewoks, two feet tall with green eyes. They didn’t look menacing, but when had that ever meant anything?

  I’m not sure I was breathing at this point.

  One of them, the slightly plumper one, was smiling, then waddling toward me with a pronounced limp. He tripped on a stone and flapped his wings to steady himself, and I saw that part of his right wing was missing.

  I took another step back, glancing at the other one. The stern one with a fixed face.

  “Greetings, daughter of Elyon,” the plump one said.

  I blinked. They could talk?

  “I am Gabil, mighty warrior of Elyon, and the serious one behind me is Michal, wise one. Not that I’m not wise.” He paused. “You can see us?”

  “Of course she can see you,” Michal said, waddling forward. “Do you think she’s just staring at the sand?”

  “You can’t blame me,” Gabil said. The creature stared at her for a long moment, then stuck webbed fingers at the end of its wings into its ears. “Can you see what I’m doing now?”

  “Please, Gabil . . .”

  Gabil turned to his partner and quickly offered his defense. “Didn’t I tell you she could see us?”

  “Yes, you were right. Now stop with your antics or you will frighten her.”

  He faced me. “But you see what I am doing, yes?”

  He waited for my response, so I finally gave him one. “I’m dreaming,” I said.

  “Dreaming? Then you didn’t see what I did? Can you see all of me or just a part of me, like a white patch of fog?”

  “Gabil . . .” The other one wobbled forward. “Please don’t mind him. He’s—”

  “I just want to be sure,” Gabil said. “Can you see?”

  Half my mind was telling me that talking to a fluffy white bat was impossible. “You . . . You stuck your fingers in your ears.”

  “Aha! I knew it!” He pumped his wounded wing, fist clenched.

  I nearly smiled.

  “We are Roush,” Gabil said, bowing with one wing folded across his plump belly. “Servants of Elyon.”

  Michal looked up at me in all seriousness, ignoring his comrade. “And you, my dear. Who are you?”

  “I’m Rachelle.”

  “Rachelle?” He glanced at my shoulder. “Y
ou’re a long way from home, Rachelle. How did you get here?”

  “And how can you see us?” Gabil piped in.

  I looked at my bared shoulder and saw that I was marked by a tattoo—a pencil-thin line forming a black circle maybe three inches in diameter.

  “I got here because I’m dreaming,” I said. “In reality, I’m in a town called Eden, which is in Utah. And that’s also why I can see you. This is a dream.”

  They exchanged glances, and I saw concern in their eyes.

  “Dreaming?” Gabil said. “Don’t be absurd. To dream, you would need to be asleep, yes? And yet I can see you as clearly as you can see me, and I will tell you without the slightest doubt that you are most definitely awake.”

  “Here I am. But there I’m sleeping on a table in a hospital. And there I’m blind. You’re a little blurry, but the fact that I can see you at all is proof enough.”

  For a long beat both of them just stared at me.

  “Then you’re saying that I, Gabil, slayer of Shataiki and celebrated warrior despite several minor setbacks, am only a dream?” He spread his wings wide with all the grandiosity of a mighty ruler. “That I, who can protect the Albinos and vanquish Teeleh with a single swipe of my foot”—and here he executed a rather funny-looking kick—“do not even exist?”

  Now I couldn’t help but give him a smile, if only a hint of one.

  “Not like this, Gabil,” Michal chided. His eyes held mine. “Please forgive his enthusiasm. He refuses to accept his new limitations. A terrible battle only last year, you understand? If anything, he’s more determined to prove his value.”

  “Do you know Thomas of Hunter?” Gabil blurted, oblivious to Michal’s prodding. “I taught him all he knows. He too once thought he was dreaming.”

  Michal snapped his right wing wide to silence his comrade, who settled back with a sheepish grin.

  “What my friend means to say,” Michal went on, “is that you are not the first to dream of the histories. It is well known that Thomas of Hunter also dreamed of them. Although I was under the assumption that gateway was permanently closed. Evidently I was misinformed.”

  “What histories?”

  “This place you think you are from. Utah. There is no Utah now, but there once was, over two thousand years ago. It’s written in the Books of History. Did you just wake up?”

  My head spun. “No, I’m still sleeping.”

  “I mean here,” he said, pointing at the sand. “Did you just wake up here?”

  “Here? Yes. But not there. There I’m—”

  “As I said, Utah is only a dream. If you ask the right questions in that dream, you’ll see that it is all an illusion. You were dreaming of the histories while you were sleeping here. That is all. Just like Thomas of Hunter once did.”

  Was it possible? Logically, yes, I supposed. But if so, why couldn’t I remember this place?

  “Who’s Thomas of Hunter?” I asked.

  Michal was taken aback.

  Gabil started to lift his wing. “He’s the one I taught . . .” He fell silent and lowered his wing when Michal held his up.

  “You mean to say that you’ve never heard of Thomas of Hunter?”

  “No.”

  “But of course you have. The whole world has. Most certainly all Albinos, of which you are one. And most certainly all Elyonites from the far side, of which you are one.” Michal indicated the tattoo on my right shoulder. “A Mystic by your marking. So you see, you have heard of Thomas of Hunter, you just don’t remember. What do you remember?”

  I lifted a hand to my forehead and ran my fingers through my hair, trying to make sense of things.

  “Nothing about this place,” I said. “Other than waking up on the ground.”

  “The Horde must have forced her to eat the poison,” Gabil said.

  “But how did she get here? Elyonites have never crossed the pass to this side of the Divide.” Michal waddled to my left, eyes fixed on me with even greater interest now. They were utterly serious. I’d never had a dream remotely similar to this one.

  “You remember nothing?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Then Gabil is correct. You’ve been given the poison that erases your memory.” He paced quickly now, fingers on his chin. “In truth, you are from the far side of the Great Divide, where you must return. There, your memory will surely come back to you.”

  “What if she’s the one?” Gabil asked.

  “It’s not for us to decipher,” Michal said.

  “What one?” I asked.

  “Never mind,” Michal said. “Now you should also find the rhambutan fruit. Consuming it will keep you from dreaming. If you stop dreaming, you won’t dream of the histories. You can never trust such dreams. Some are true but many are—”

  A gasp from Gabil cut him off. I quickly followed his stare to the dunes. A white horse plunged down the slope, leaving a trail of churned sand that covered my footprints. On this horse was a rider in a white robe that flowed as he leaned into the wind.

  Both of the Roush dropped to their knees, heads bowed low, facing the onrushing rider.

  I stood where I was. Two things kept me from running. First, the Roush were clearly lovable creatures. I thought I could trust them. They did not cower but bowed to honor the visitor. But even more than the Roush, the very atmosphere seemed to have shifted. A palpable calm settled around me, as if the air itself revered this man.

  The horse slowed to circle us. I turned with him before he stopped not ten feet away. The rider’s eyes, like the Roush’s, were green, and looking into them I was transfixed with assurance and wonder. His hair fell to strong, broad shoulders. On his feet, brown boots were laced up to his knees.

  The man swung off his horse and walked up to me, watching me intently, smiling. He reached for my right hand and placed a kiss on my knuckles. A faint pulse of power rode up my arm, a warm vibration that might have startled me if not for the fact that it seemed entirely natural. Like an echo of something I already knew.

  He dipped his head. “So good to see you, daughter.”

  I managed a slight nod.

  “The poison they fed you has distorted your vision, yes? Would you like me to heal your eyes?”

  “I . . .” I cleared my throat. “Can you?”

  He winked at me, then lifted both hands and delicately touched my temples.

  A flash brighter than any star blinded me and I recoiled. As quickly as it had come, the light vanished. And with it, my old view of the world, replaced by new sight.

  My view of the man shifted into a clarity so vivid, so sharp, so real that I snatched my hands to my mouth and gasped. His eyes, only a moment ago green, were now such a bright green and so beautifully formed that I thought they might be a dream within my dream.

  He was smiling. “Not a dream, my dear. You are merely seeing again the way you were made to do.”

  I stared at the dunes beyond him, the sky above, the two Roush still bowing on the sand. I could see every hair of their fur, every feather on their wings, every grain of sand. I’d never seen so clearly in any dream, definitely not when awake.

  “It’s a beautiful world, isn’t it?” he said.

  I looked back into his eyes, drawn into the mystery of them.

  He glanced over my shoulder at the dunes. “We don’t have much time, so I need you to listen carefully. Yes?”

  Each word he spoke seemed to reach into me and touch my bones.

  “Yes,” I said. Then again, “Yes.”

  “Good.” He lifted his hand and drew my hair from my forehead, like a loving father. “All men, all women, all humans yet breathing live in fear in its many forms, even as they strive to find peace in this life. Though seeing, they do not see, just like you.”

  My eyes were wide. “But . . . I can see . . .”

  “Can you? My dear, you don’t even recognize yourself yet.”

  “I don’t?”

  “No. When you do, if you can, the world will change in t
he blink of an eye.”

  His words were gentle but true to the core, as if each syllable was a force. A knot filled my throat because he was describing my blindness in Eden, surely.

  “It’s no mistake that you’ve been allowed to feel the fear that resides in the hearts of all, fear both known and unknown. You, dear daughter, have been chosen to show them the way beyond fear in this life. Only when the shadow of death is vanquished can the lion lie down with the lamb.”

  His words rang so true that I accepted them.

  “First, you will bring the world to a point of great crisis,” he said. “Then you will show them the way out of fear. Do you understand?”

  No. No, I didn’t understand. But as he spoke it I didn’t care that I didn’t understand. I just took it for the truth.

  “Yes,” I said, voice thin.

  “But to show them the way, you will need to resolve your own fear. The blind cannot lead the blind. To be set free from your own fears, you must rediscover the Five Seals of Truth before the appointed time. This is your quest now. Time is short. Follow the narrow way that few have found, a way unknown by flesh and blood. The seals will cost you everything and show you a power far greater than you can possibly imagine. Then you will truly see what is yet unseen.”

  His words swirled through me and stilled my breathing.

  “Only if you succeed in finding the seals before the appointed time will you be able to complete your task and lead all who follow out of the suffering that enslaves. Do you understand?”

  “Seals?” I didn’t even know what to ask. “What are they made of?”

  “Truths, not objects. You will see.”

  “This isn’t a dream?”

  “No more or less than the other,” he said, removing his hand. “The seals are equally powerful in both.”

  My knees felt weak, and for a moment I thought I might fall. But that would not do, so I stood as firm as I could, considering the implications of his words.

  He lowered himself to one knee, scooped up some sand, and cupped both hands around the grains. Gave it a squeeze. Then opened his fingers to show me a round lump of stone the size of a baseball.