The Nostradamus Scrolls
Order of the Black Sun - Book 34
Preston William Child
Contents
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PROTECTING THE DAYS TO COME
1. AN EASY DAY
2. THE UNCERTAIN FUTURE
3. THE STRAINS OF FRIENDSHIP
4. THE ADVERSARY
5. THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF NOSTRADAMUS
6. THE INSPECTOR COMES KNOCKING
7. THE RETURN OF THE THREE STONE FACES
8. THE CAMERAMAN
9. FACE TO FACE TO FACE
10. THE FALSE PREMONITIONS
11. THE BOOK SHOP
12. THE ONCE AND FUTURE NEMESIS
13. THE UNDERGROUND
14. THE DESCENT
15. DUEL IN THE DARK
16. FATE
17. THE BUZZING FLY
18. ASCENSION
19. THE RISEN
20. LOST TROPHIES
OUT OF THE BOX
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Copyright © 2020 by Preston William Child
All rights reserved. No part of this publication might be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Publisher's Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
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PROTECTING THE DAYS TO COME
Nostradamus had seen what was going to happen to the world, and he had been sure to write down all of the visions that he saw. He wanted to share those visions with the rest of the world, but he knew that they weren't ready to see the things that he saw. He knew that the things he wrote—the things that would one day come to pass—needed to be protected, even after his death. He would allow some of his predictions to be seen by the world, but they would be tame and not nearly as interesting as the vivid ones he saw. Those would be kept separate and safe, away from the unprepared world. But he would need to make sure that those writings were protected for years to come until the people of the world were ready, if they ever would be.
Clement was a nobody in the eyes of his peers. He wasn't anyone worth noticing, and no one would dare ever to call him important. He couldn't deny that he wasn't meant to change the world. He knew he wasn't going to ever be as important as Nostradamus was. He didn't share those gifts of foresight that he did, but one thing he did share with Nostradamus was a desire to protect the future. It had been hundreds of years since Nostradamus left the mortal world, but his words continued to be safeguarded. There was so much more writing of his that had never been given to the public, and Clement was one of the few that had seen those lost writings—at least, he had seen the scrolls that contained them but never the actual words themselves.
Clement had spent years safeguarding the scrolls that supposedly told the future and had never dared look at them. He didn't want that responsibility, and the safest way to avoid it was never to let those prophecies grace his eyes. It was certainly tempting. Who didn't want to know what was going to happen years and centuries into the future? That kind of information would either be the greatest gift that someone could ever be given, or a terrible curse that would drive someone to absolute madness. He didn't want either of those things—he knew he wasn't worthy of such a gift and dreaded such a curse—so he stuck to what his ancestors had done, and protected the scrolls.
Sadly, some were willing to kill for that kind of knowledge, and they had been getting uncomfortably close to finding the lost writings of Nostradamus. In their current hiding spot, the scrolls might even be found, so Clement did something that none of his ancestors had ever had to do before. He took those old scrolls and decided that he was going to change the location of their resting place. He considered just destroying the parchments altogether, but that would erase the real work of Nostradamus from the world—something that he couldn't abide. No, he would just have to continue protecting them in their new location.
Clement took them deep down into the earth, among stone and darkness, hoping that no one would ever be able to find them down there. Unfortunately, some of the people that wanted the scrolls the most were hot on his trail, ready to kill him for the scrolls. They were even willing to follow him down there, where no one should have dared to tread.
“Give us the scrolls, Clement!”
Clement couldn't let his growing panic deter him from his task. It was his duty to protect the scrolls, even now, when they were so at risk. That was the time that he most needed to fulfill his obligation to the late Nostradamus. He needed to protect the future from the people that would abuse the writings of the scrolls. This was his chance to do that, and he wouldn't fail.
Clement had to keep going and not stop. They wouldn't be able to follow him forever, and if they followed him to the end of the path he was on, they would never make it out of the darkness. That was the kind of place that the remaining writings of Nostradamus needed to be—some place where it couldn't be found easily.
Clement tripped over some rocks, and a few of the pages slid out of his hands and into the all-consuming blackness around him. He couldn't worry about that right now. He couldn't turn back. He would carry the work of Nostradamus deep into the dark until he couldn't anymore. That was when it would be safe, and the work of that seer would be hidden from the world above.
Clement would give up his future if it meant protecting the future of the rest of the world. That's what Nostradamus would have wanted, and it was something that Clement was more than willing to do. The days to come might be horrific, or they might be entirely uneventful. He wouldn't see them now, so he wouldn't have to worry about what was going to happen. His future was already certain and already set in stone. He would fade into the darkness at the bottom of the world, and he would carry the knowledge of the future with him into that black hole underground where no one would be able to dig it up.
The future that Nostradamus saw wouldn't be able to be seen until it arrived. That was for the best, and that's how it would remain.
1
AN EASY DAY
David Purdue didn't know how he kept getting himself into such incredibly sticky situations, but they kept happening all the same. Things that used to make for relatively simple expeditions had become much more difficult lately. He just wanted to clear his head and get out of home base for a while—mostly because Nina was forcing him to leave his office—but what should have been an easy distraction led to him having bullets zipping past his head. If one or two of those bullets’ trajectories had been just a little different, he would have been killed. It was just lucky that his pursuers were piss-poor shots when it came to firearms. They really needed to steady their aim and take the recoil of their weapons into account if they ever wanted to hit something. Then they might have actually had a chance at stopping him.
Instead, Purdue was sprinting th
rough the jungle with his prize cradled under his arm. It was a totem from a long-dead Mayan tribe. It wasn't one of the more valuable items he had ever collected, especially in comparison to things like Excalibur, the Spear of Destiny, the remains of Genghis Khan, or even pearls that belonged to the Greek god Poseidon himself. In fact, he probably wouldn't even have been bothered to try and get it, especially now that he had so much else to worry about as the new leader of the Order of the Black Sun.
It wasn't something that he would have taken the time to seek out, or at most was something he would have sent one of the fresh-faced Black Sun recruits to find. It was supposed to be easy, but it was turning out to be a lot more trouble than he expected. That was the story of his life lately, and he had a feeling all of his troubles were connected to a mysterious old woman that had been plaguing him—but those paranoid thoughts were exactly why he was on this distraction of a mission gone wrong. He was supposed to be clearing his mind from conspiracies like that. Nina would be very disappointed in him, but it wasn't his fault that he was being met with more evidence at every turn.
Purdue weaved through the trees, hoping to outmaneuver the people chasing him, but he wasn't having much luck. There were many more of them than there was of him, so they had no problem covering a lot more distance. More bullets sprayed around him, breaking the bark off of the trees, sending wood through the air all around him.
He just had to get back to his plane, though now he wished that he brought along some backup from the Order of the Black Sun. It didn't seem like he would need any reinforcements or help on this one, and at the start, he had liked being able to do something on his own, but now, he sure could have used some assistance. Or he would have loved to have been able to see all of this coming ahead of time. Sometimes he didn't prepare as well as he wished he did.
“You!” someone yelled off to his right. He looked over and saw someone waving him toward them. “You! This way!”
For all he knew, it was just another one of these angry gun-toting pursuers. Sure enough, that thought barely passed his mind when he saw the man draw a weapon and point it in his direction. Purdue almost immediately sprinted in a different direction as the man opened fire, but the shots were even worse than the previous attempts on his life. It didn't even come close to Purdue. It took a few more shots for him to notice that he was intentionally missing Purdue, and wasn't even aiming at him at all. No, he was aiming for the people that were hot on Purdue's trail. Maybe he was someone on his side after all. That was a relief.
“I said this way!”
Purdue listened to him this time, and he didn't stop running until he was right beside his surprise rescuer. The man continued firing his weapon at the men who were after Purdue, providing him a nice bit of cover fire before taking off with him.
As Purdue ran beside the man, he wondered if maybe he was one of the newer Order of the Black Sun members that he just didn't recognize. They had recruited so many of them now, but most of their prospects weren't the kinds of people that would show up out of nowhere, waving a gun around. That was more like the older members of the secret society. Maybe he was one of them. It was hard to know, but Purdue was extremely thankful for his arrival.
“I guess I should be thanking you, aye?” Purdue said with a little laugh as he jogged beside the man. He glanced back and didn't see any of the pursuers in sight. He had stumbled into a rescue and hadn't even realized it. “Not to be rude, but just who the hell are you, though?”
“Not now,” the man said, taking a moment to look behind them too. “Wait until we're away from any possible prying eyes and ears.”
Purdue respected the man's decision and stopped asking questions. He followed him through the jungle and was relieved that they were heading in the direction of the plane Purdue hired anyway. That was convenient, and also a little strange. Maybe the pilot told this man where to find him, but even that didn't quite make sense.
“That's the totem, isn't it?” The man suddenly blurted out, peering at the sack under Purdue's arm. “That's what all of this is about? That right there is why those men were so keen on filling you with holes?”
“Aye...” Purdue said uneasily. “But how did you know that?” He knew for certain that he hadn't mentioned it, making it all the more strange that this man somehow knew.
“There's a lot of things I know, David Purdue.”
Purdue stopped jogging, and the man turned around when he stopped, looking somewhere between friendly and creepy—and creepy always won out. “You best start talking right now...”
The man smiled, glancing around like they were still being followed. “Can't you just be happy that someone came to your rescue? Why do you have to question it?”
“Because I've got questions,” Purdue said simply. “And you have got the answers, aye? I will ask again: just who the hell are you?”
“My name doesn't matter,” the man said. “All that matters is why I have come here, and you should already be able to see that. Since without me, you would be dead right now. They would have caught up with you, and they would have made sure at least some of their shots hit their mark. You are most welcome.”
“I think your name does matter,” Purdue said, already feeling nervous again. “But if you're going to be a cheeky bastard, how about you tell me who sent you at least because I don't think it was my friends.”
“It wasn't,” the man said. “But I'm sure you can figure out who did.”
Purdue's mind immediately went to the Old Lady that had been trying to ruin him, the same woman that had put his mind into such a stressed state of paranoia that he even needed to go on this “easy” mission to begin with. He was already sure that if he tried to explain what was happening to Nina, she would think he was just having some paranoid episode and making things up to try and justify his worry about the Old Lady. But this wasn't some anxiety-induced hallucination. This man in front of him was very real, and he was sure making it sound like he worked for the woman that had been making Purdue's life difficult.
“You work for her, aye?” Purdue pried, already aware of the answer. “That's what you're trying to spit out.”
“That's right,” the man said. “I've been watching you...and I've been watching you flounder. Also, I'm here for that.”
He pointed his gun at the totem under Purdue's arm. Purdue couldn't help but laugh. “Really? It's going to be like that? I put in all of the effort, and you swoop in and try to take it? This is sounding very familiar. Another nameless bastard showed up in Mongolia to take the remains of Genghis Khan after we found it. It didn't end well for him. Obviously, I said no. Yet here you are, trying to do the same thing...the Old Lady sure surrounds herself with a bunch of disgusting vultures, doesn't she?”
“That's rather rude,” the man said. “But vultures are fascinating creatures.”
The man pointed his pistol at Purdue this time. He wasn't trying to fend off any attackers coming up behind him, no, he was staring straight down the barrel as the nose of the gun was pointed directly at his face.
“Give it over,” the man said. “Now.”
“You will have to pull the trigger,” Purdue said honestly. “Because I'm not going to just hand anything over to you lot. Not a damn thing. But if you were going to pull the trigger, you would have already. It would have been that easy. You could have taken the totem with ease if you just put one in my forehead, right here.” He tapped his head for emphasis. “But you didn't. You had to have this little chat and make your point. I doubt the Old Lady wants such a quick, meaningless death for me after we've been having this little tug of war for some time now.”
“She doesn't care,” the man said. “She wouldn't mind if you dropped dead from a heart attack, were hit by a trolley, or if one of us vultures took a chunk out of your brain. You have just become an annoyance. I only wanted to give you the chance to see what you would do. You are as impossibly stubborn as they say.”
“Or impossibly smart,” Purdue said confidentl
y. “So if I'm so insignificant, then I'm going to have to call your bluff. I worked hard for this totem...and to be honest, all of this was supposed to go a lot more smoothly than this...and I'm not just going to give it up now. What's that old tired expression? You are going to just have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands.”
“Fine,” the man sneered. “I can do that.”
“Can you?” Purdue said, laughing in the man's face now. “Do it then. Come on, then, pull that trigger. Take your best shot.”
The man pulled the trigger, and no bullet came from the barrel. He tried a few more times. Purdue just smiled. He had counted the shots the man fired to help him escape. Purdue already knew that he was out of ammunition.
Purdue took advantage of the man's surprise to hit him over the head with the metal totem. It cracked hard against his brow, sending the man to the dirt. If this guy wanted the totem so badly, he should have been glad even to touch it for a second.
“Tell the Old Lady that I'm not just going to let her win. She should have known by now that I'm too much of a stubborn bastard, to let things happen that way.”
Purdue picked up the man's pistol and threw it as far as he could into the jungle. The nameless man was getting up, and Purdue sprinted away in the direction of his plane. Hopefully, his pilot was still there, or else he would be in a great deal more trouble than he was unfortunately already in.
The Nostradamus Scrolls Page 1