The 49th Mystic Read online

  I wasn’t sure even I knew. But I was sure they would want to know. The whole world would.

  “How far out? The helicopters.”

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  My mind spun. “Vlad said the whole town would blow. We have maybe twenty-five minutes. You said you planted the explosives as a safeguard, I’m assuming to cover your tracks in the event of a meltdown. He found access to whatever triggers those explosives, right?”

  His face went white. “It’s on a countdown? Where’s Smith?”

  “He’s gone. Can you defuse the explosives?”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “He vanished when I brought the sky down. Can you defuse them?”

  He shook his head. “No. Half of them are buried under the town. The triggers are—”

  “Is there a way off the mountain?” I looked at the building that blocked the main road to our right. The only way in or out by road. “Through the control center? Three helicopters can’t carry a hundred and forty people.”

  “The control center’s rigged, and if we could defuse the explosives we would have done it last week.” He faced me. “A hundred and forty? Should be 152 without Simon.”

  “He wasn’t the only one who died.” I had to get him focused. “And if this whole mountain comes down—”

  “There’s no chance of that. The cliffs and town, yes, but not the tunnel or the mountain. It’s solid rock, ninety-four feet at its thinnest, right through. No one was ever going to find or compromise this place—even from the sky it looked just like it always looked, a sinkhole. The seal both camouflaged and protected it from above. It took us two years—”

  “We’re running out of time.” I couldn’t see Peter among the gathering residents. He was still in the valley. “You’re sure we’re safe this side of the tunnel?”

  “Sorry. Yes.” He paced. “Without question.”

  “Then take me back in,” I said, stepping past him. “We have to find the rest. All of them.”

  THE NEXT TWENTY-FIVE minutes brought a flurry of activity.

  Steve had regained a measure of command and worked methodically, doing his best to put a dent in an overwhelming guilt that had been building for days. He instructed Walter, the only other man besides the pilot who’d come with him, to group Eden’s residents at the turnaround, clear of the tunnel in case there was any blowback.

  The moment we were airborne, he radioed the inbound police and gave them specific instructions. They would have fifteen minutes to clear stragglers and any dead bodies they could find.

  My purpose for being there was only to offer my voice. Not all in the town were as strong-willed as Barth and Linda. Many had hidden themselves, struggling to cope with minds fractured by the discovery that their lives were a lie. Hearing a strange voice bellowing out instructions over a bullhorn might not persuade the most damaged.

  But if they heard my voice over the helicopter’s PA system, they would believe. I was the girl who’d stood up to Vlad. The blind one who could now see.

  On our first pass, we picked up Jerome Clement, a farmer who’d hidden his two children, Smitty and Cassandra, in a grain silo east of town. Then Old Man Butterworth on the same pass. He’d taken his rifle and was hunkered down in a large pile of hay bales, a hundred yards past the silo.

  Peter still wasn’t among those who’d made it out, and my urgency grew.

  “Peter! We have to find him!”

  “Simon’s son?”

  “He lost his mother and father both. We have to find him.”

  What if he’d gone deep, overwhelmed by the deaths of his parents?

  Trucks and cars spilling over with residents snaked up the switchbacks as we made that first pass. My father still raced through the town, leaning out the window of his red Toyota truck, shouting his warning over a bullhorn. He’d loaded several dead bodies in the bed, Simon and Hillary among them.

  The large black helicopters arrived and started making their rounds while we were on our second pass. By then the vehicles snaking up the blacktop had thinned to a dozen at most. We found three more stragglers, among them Betsy and her poodle, Puddle.

  Betsy, who always had some form of eczema on her arms and neck. Today, only two days after learning that all her memories of childhood trauma had been implanted, the rash was gone, leaving her aged skin clear.

  How many others had experienced spontaneous remissions of various conditions since learning they’d only been believing their programming? Most were probably still clinging to various forms of fear. Not Betsy. Betsy was smiling.

  But there was still no sign of Peter.

  By our third pass, my father’s red truck was the only vehicle to be seen heading up the road. There were still horses and cows, chickens, goats, and maybe a pet or two, though I doubted the latter—their owners would have taken them as part of their family. But the livestock were in the fields, and Steve assured me that there wasn’t enough rock in the cliffs to cover all the fields. At least some would survive.

  I prayed he was right. But Peter was still missing and we were running out of time.

  “We have to find him!”

  “We’re cutting it close.”

  “Go in again.”

  I used the bullhorn, calling Peter’s name for the whole valley to hear, but he still didn’t show himself. I could only hope that he’d gotten out some other way, but I worried that he had no intention of leaving the valley.

  On that fourth and final pass, we picked up my father just beyond the tunnel.

  “Still no sign of Peter?”

  My father shook his head.

  I didn’t know what to think.

  “Everyone else made it?”

  “I’ve asked the group twice—no one else is missing anyone.” He turned heavy eyes and stared at the gathering, some still dazed, others animated and talking. “Barth said he buried Miranda in a hole by the hydro. I don’t think we have enough time to retrieve her body.”

  I wondered if Barth would be prosecuted for murder. Most of me hoped not. Innocent by reason of insanity, just like the whole world, I thought. Every last human on earth was acting out of their programming, however lost. Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

  Either way, the real fallout of Eden would soon shake the world. They would all hear about the blind girl who could see—the one who’d brought down the synthetic sky. And then what?

  And then the 49th Mystic would bring a sword to divide. Elyon, help me . . .

  “One more pass,” I said.

  “We’re out of time,” Steve said. Radio chatter squawked on the speakers. The two helicopters were pulling out, heading back to refuel before returning with others to begin the evacuation to Salt Lake.

  “I want to see it from the sky,” I said.

  Steve nodded. “Take her up, Jake. Give us a view of the valley, but stay clear.”

  From our view a thousand feet above the town, Eden looked like a perfectly peaceful piece of heaven dropped into the center of a lush green bowl with red walls. White and beige houses lined squared streets around the large church. Not a structure was out of place by even a foot. The perfect picture of law.

  It was the first time my father had seen Eden from the air. He gripped my hand and stared down, unblinking. There was little to say now. Either Vlad had initiated a detonation countdown or he hadn’t.

  Regardless, it no longer mattered to the residents. They would be picking up the pieces of their lives for years to come, and those pieces would form a whole new way of thinking. They would experience their own metanoia, taking them beyond the imprinting of the world.

  As Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” Many in Eden wouldn’t simply recover; they would soar and lead others to rise above the confines of society’s programming. Some might sink into despair and never recover—time would tell.

  My heart broke for Peter, but there was nothing I could do now
. Was this his journey? I would ask Talya if I ever got out of the Elyonite dungeon.

  My father turned his head from the window and leaned forward to Steve, who was seated next to the pilot. “How much time . . .”

  A soft rumble cut him off and he turned his head back.

  Billowing dust came first as tons of explosives let loose their ferocious energy under the town and in the cliffs. I prayed no one had been left behind.

  The blast’s concussion hit the helicopter—a gentle jolt at our altitude. Then secondary explosions erupted from the billowing clouds of dust. The cliffs were collapsing like waterfalls of stone, caving in on all sides.

  I’d never seen a demolition on television for the simple reason that I’d been blind until five days ago, but I imagined this one would be considered a work of art by those who made tearing down the old to make room for the new their life’s work.

  Wasn’t that everyone’s life work? You could not put new wine in an old wineskin, Talya said. The old mind in the valley of the law was the old wineskin. And now it was no more.

  My father pulled away from the window and dropped his head back on the headrest, eyes closed. Tears ran down his face. I leaned over, drew my legs up on the bench seat, and rested my head on his thigh. It was over.

  But I knew that wasn’t true. If not for me, Project Eden would still be intact and unaware. Lost. Now they were free. Was I, the 49th Mystic, really expected to do the same thing for the rest of the world? I couldn’t imagine how. Nor wanting to.

  And yet the white, the green, and the black seals were on my arm. I was the 49th Mystic. Two more seals awaited me. Against the Fifth Seal there is no defense, Talya had said. I had to find the Fourth and Fifth Seal before the Realm of Mystics was destroyed, or all would be lost.

  I closed my eyes and let the beating rotor drown out my thoughts. It was over for Eden.

  It was just beginning for the rest of both worlds.

  39

  VLAD SMITH was his name. Here they had called him Marsuuv. Leedhan. A shape-shifter spun from the shadow of death.

  It was good to be home.

  He stood in Ba’al’s Thrall, patiently awaiting the ruler’s arrival, gazing at all the instruments that struck fear in minds bound by polarity. The priest stood to his right, silent as ordered, still in shock at his arrival.

  David lay on the table next to the Book of History in which he’d written, awake in the world of Eden, all but dead here. Actually, Eden was now a pile of rubble. A nice thought. But it no longer concerned him. He, not being human, had vanished from that place when written into the book, unlike David, who existed in both worlds now.

  The door crashed open and a man with heavy dreadlocks strode into the room. “What’s the meaning of this?” Qurong, supreme ruler of all living Horde. He took one look at Vlad’s naked body and stopped short.

  “Qurong, is it? So good to finally meet you.”

  “And who in Teeleh’s name are you?”

  Vlad smiled, and with that smile shifted from human to his natural form. Leedhan, with translucent skin the color of the full moon, one eye blue, one amber.

  “Who am I? The law, the yin of the yang, the darkness that hides the light, the fear that betrays peace, the illusion that masquerades as reality, the Shadow of Death.” He raised his brow. “Should I go on?”

  Qurong glared at him but was visibly unnerved all the same. Such was the disposition of all great warriors facing those whose power vastly exceeded their own. At least he had the good sense to know it.

  “He is Marsuuv,” Ba’al rasped, finally finding his voice. “The one from Teeleh who has come to crush the Mystic.”

  “Yes,” Vlad said. “That one. The one who’s waited for centuries in an ancient reality for this day to come. But it isn’t I who’ll crush the Realm of Mystics. It is you. Unless, of course, you want the lamb called Albino to force the lion Horde into submission.” He let the man drink in his words. “Do you?”

  Qurong’s self-assurance drained from his face as he surrendered to Vlad’s power. He slowly dipped his head.

  “Is that a yes, you want to be forced into slavery, or a no, you don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Then you’ll do exactly what I order. Say yes.”

  Qurong glanced at Ba’al.

  “Not to him, to me. Say yes.”

  “Yes,” the ruler said.

  “Good. Then I’ll be direct. You will take your full army east to the Great Divide. Not in a month, not in a week, but now. In war, you will crush all Albinos. Beyond the city of Mosseum, you will be led to the Realm of Mystics, and you will destroy it. Not a single Mystic must live to spread Justin’s lies. Do you understand?”

  Qurong hesitated, then nodded.

  “If you will, sire,” Ba’al dared to venture. “I was to understand that the 49th must betray her way and—”

  “She will!” Vlad interrupted, walking to the table. He picked up the Book of History and studied David’s unconscious form. “And to that end I will need your prisoner.” He strode toward the door. “Have him ready to travel in an hour. I need a bath and respectable clothing.”

  “Of course. Where will you take him?”

  Vlad turned at the door. “To the 49th Mystic, naturally. My work has only just begun.”

  40

  The sun was high over Talya’s head when he crested a barren hill and looked down at a vast network of canyons carved into a broad plateau. The Natalga Gap. He brought his mount to a halt with a simple thought, then settled in his saddle. The lion Judah stood under a scraggly shade tree, eyes fixed on the empty lands ahead.

  Empty but for a solitary figure mounted on a pale stallion half a mile distant, staring his way.

  So . . . Thomas of Hunter still paid attention to his dreams—not of the other world, but in this world. Talya had summoned him here in one.

  He’d heard countless tales of Thomas of Hunter’s exploits, some of them surely fabricated by his enemies. Depending on who was telling the tale, he was a ghost, a wraith, a god, a coward, or simply a mighty warrior against which no one could prevail. In the end, they all pointed to one seemingly indisputable fact: the whole earth had been shaped by this one man from another world.

  And would be again.

  Without Thomas of Hunter, there would be no bridge between the worlds. No 49th Mystic, even though Thomas knew nothing of the way of the Mystics.

  Now, the 49th needed him. Even more, Thomas and his Circle needed her.

  Talya looked over at Judah, who sensed his gaze and turned his big head, seemingly aware of the gravity of the moment.

  “The legend lives,” Talya muttered. He faced that legend and nodded. “Come what may.”

  He took his mount down the slope to the Natalga Gap.

  To the fate awaiting them all.

  To Thomas.

  The Story Continues

  Rise of the Mystics

  October 2018

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  You’ve just finished the first book in the two-book saga Beyond the Circle. Two worlds hang in the balance of the final two seals. Rachelle will surely go from the frying pan into the fire, Vlad is only just beginning, and Thomas Hunter’s world will be turned inside out. There is no defense against the Fifth Seal, but getting to it will cost everything.

  We are all on the same journey of discovering ourselves in this world, just like Rachelle. It’s the journey from fear to love, from darkness to light, from blindness to sight.

  If the journey draws you in any way, please visit The49thMystic.com. There you will find much more: additional content, behind-the-scenes interviews, and more of Yeshua’s teaching in The Forgotten Way, including a daily guide that will assist you in taking the same journey Rachelle is taking to find and know the truth of who you are in this reality we call the world. Dive deep.

  Ted Dekker

  Ted Dekker is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of more than forty novels, with over ten million
copies sold worldwide. Born in the jungles of Indonesia to missionary parents, he lived among cannibals. His upbringing as a stranger in a fascinating and sometimes frightening culture fueled his imagination, and it was during the lonely times as a child that he became a storyteller.

  Dekker’s passion is simple—to explore truth through mind-bending stories that invite readers to see the world through a different lens. His fiction has been honored with numerous awards, including two Christy Awards, two Inspy Awards, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Award, and an ECPA Gold Medallion. In 2013, NPR readers nationwide put him in the Top 50 Thriller Authors of All Time.

  Dekker lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with his wife, Lee Ann, and their four children, Rachelle, JT, Kara, and Chelise.

  The49thMystic.com

  Talya’s Journal

  on The Forgotten Way

  Key excerpts from the journal of Talya, who herein did transcribe those teachings of Yeshua, Paulus, Johnin, and Petrus as written in the ancient Books of History called Scriptures.

  (Talya’s personal notes in parentheses.)

  Organized by Rachelle, the 49th Mystic

  Relating to Chapter 14

  1) There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (God cannot fear loss, for God is perfected in love. Indeed, God is love.)

  First Book of Johnin 4:18

  2) From that time Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent (metanoia, change your cognitive perception, go beyond your knowledge), for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (already here and in your very being).