Dawn of Revelation

by A N Sandra

  “Where is the good cell phone?” Tilly asked at last when all the cameras were in ruins in the wastebasket beside the dressing table.

  Maddy moved slowly and Tilly was aware that she still hadn’t spoken since she’d been Tasered. With a series of jerky motions, Maddy dumped her purse out onto her bed, but there was only one cell phone in her purse. The one she had before starting One Tough Customer. The two of them looked around the room carefully, but Tilly was already sure that the security guard had taken it out of Maddy’s purse when he put Maddy in her room.

  “We’re beaten.” Tilly tipped the last of her glass of wine to her lips. “For right now. But I’m so done. Done. I’m getting out of here, even if I have to leave my sewing machine.” That hurt. Many people had cars that cost less money than her sewing machine and Molly was such a vindictive witch that Tilly knew she wouldn’t get it back if she left it. Tilly was getting angry and scared enough to leave it. She had plenty of money from filming the show to buy a new one anyhow, but would they just be able to walk out the door? The psycho guard had already Tasered Maddy...

  “This whole situation is so screwed I can’t even get perspective on it,” Maddy said. “We’ll have the rest of the wine, we’ll try to sleep and sort it out in the morning.”

  “We’re in a pile of crap,” Tilly said. “I don’t think sorting crap will fix anything.”

  “Sorting out crap usually doesn’t work,” Maddy agreed. “That’s why we have wine.”

  Both of them topped off their glasses, thinking of Billy’s attempted rape of Maddy, the belligerence and the attack from the security guard, of the chips taken from them that killed people, and Tilly remembered Daniel telling her about the protesters who had their throats cut not far away. Even though they thought they had removed all the surveillance in the room, they were too paranoid to talk about anything that mattered. They just sipped their wine quietly.

  “I guess I’m a little tired,” Tilly finally said. They had been up since five-thirty a.m. and a glance at the clock showed that it was now well after midnight.

  “This is so not what I thought would happen when I took Molly Hollister’s table,” Maddy said, tipping the last of her wine way up in the air to get the last swallow.

  “You and me both.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Ancient Times

  The vineyard is holding up well,” Barden noted to Ursu, walking calmly through the vines his father had planted and his mother had nurtured throughout his lifetime. In the recent years since Elania had passed away Barden had cared for the vines himself, enjoying the rhythm that came from working with nature so closely. Many other things were not going well around Barden, but his garden was flourishing.

  The world was in smoldering ruins and the people left in it were becoming more savage. Destroyed by the unnatural thirst for power over fellow mortals, humankind had turned on itself in the worst ways. The overt accumulation of resources by a few truly power-mad people was blocking the majority of the population on earth from clean water and fresh food, even though there were plenty of both. Energy sources abounded, but raw fusion tactics were turning farmland and wilderness into wastelands for profit as the greedy reached to take what they wanted with not a thought to what was left behind. Witchcraft (the sinister attempt to control other people through spiritual means) had enslaved the thoughts of many with the result of blood lust that ranged from obvious blood drinking to open human sacrifice.

  Not everyone was trying to exploit their fellow man through devious means. One man, a devout follower of the original creator, was building a very large compound, presumably to keep the wicked out. Everyone, rich and poor alike, mocked Noah as he and his three sons worked at building the compound. Despite mockery Noah and his sons made the compound with detailed craftsmanship. Every aspect of the gopher wood compound, from floor to ceiling, was expertly fitted together and sealed with great care. Noah’s grandchildren were kept inside the compound to keep from becoming “contaminated” with the iniquity abounding, but the mothers of the children came and went from the compound and two of them were even the children of the children of celestial beings. Even Noah’s own sons had not been immune to the desires of the flesh to cling to what is not of Earth.

  “Our time is short,” Barden told Ursu softly. Barden was not an old man, even by mortal standards. There were thousands of mortals with no celestial genetic connections who were hundreds of years old on earth at that time, but Barden had crowded many lifetimes into his sixty-four years. He had explored thousands of miles of territory with Ursu in his early youth. In his later youth he had taught himself to play more than a dozen musical instruments and mastered them all. As a young adult he had enjoyed his children, dozens of them, and tried to save the world with various hopeful plans. None of his plans had brought lasting peace to the Earth, and Barden felt terrible about bringing children into such a world. Before he had been old enough to think through the consequences of his actions he had brought a great many children into it.

  “I have tried so hard,” Barden sighed. He knew that if his friends who were also of eternal fathers and mortal mothers heard him they would scoff.

  “No one accepted your plans because men did not want solutions,” Medalon would have said if he had heard Barden feeling sorry that no one liked the energy solutions he had come up with. “They like waste,” Medalon would have finished with deep judgment. Barden could not have argued much with Medalon. A significant part of the human race seemed to enjoy waste and destruction. Barden had been concerned for the more innocent people, the masses who were led by the worst leaders, but innocent people often followed the worst leaders.

  “You should have worried about solutions for us and not them,” Braxion would have interjected. “We are suffering because we tried to belong with them. Our parents had the right ideas. We should have remained apart.”

  Barden would have had to note that there was logic in that idea also. Braxion and Medalon had also fathered children with multiple women, having no resistance to eager women when they were young. Their fathers had been faithful to the earthly partners they took. As eternal beings they had been devoted to the women they followed into the physical realm. But the three sons Rory, Valon, and Randon fathered were not monogamous. They were lovers of many, conquerors of those who tried to subdue them, and tormented artists who pulled creations from other realms into the one they occupied without fully understanding their own works. If their fathers had been able to guide them through their lives, so many things might have been different, but their fathers were absent, and their mothers had been distracted with missing the men who had loved them so fully. All their mothers had died young, partly from helping to raise too many grandchildren for mortal women to handle, partly from deep longing for the eternal men who had left them. The supernatural companion pets Barden, Mendalon, and Braxion’s fathers had left them protected them and aided them in every endeavor, but did not govern them because even their eternal natures were not meant for control.

  “Why are you looking so pensive,” Braxion asked Barden, coming up behind him casually.

  “I was thinking of you, and you came,” Barden noted needlessly. “You just slipped in.”

  “Synchronicity,” Braxion replied. Braxion was as handsome as Barden, and like Barden, Braxion was so tall that he was quite intimidating. He looked at Barden with a smile. “Even mortals are capable of it often. Besides, the things that keep mortals out of your home don’t apply to me.”

  “I knew you would say I should not care—” Barden began.

  “Then you know what else I should say,” Braxion cut in. “There was never any hope for mortals once they took up witchcraft and blood drinking. Our fathers didn’t want us to fight. They wanted us to have a good life, but we should have fought the others. The half-mortals who were children of the enemy. Who increased their power by drinking innocent blood. We should have fought them while there was hope. The others like us kept to themselves. They have built
a wonderful society. We could have joined them at the beginning—”

  “But not now,” Barden spoke over Braxion. “They excluded so many and were so rigid. They will not have us now, and I would not go to them if they would. Their island kingdom may be wonderful, but the rules they live by...”

  Braxion had no answer because Barden was right about the unwillingness of the others like them to accept Barden, Medalon, or Braxion into their bright society of higher learning and fine moral living at this late date. The rest of the half mortals who were not Blood drinkers had created a city that was closed to all who were not in complete agreement about what it should be. Mortals lived among the half mortals who had created it, but they were orphans, cared for and raised by the sons and daughters of eternal beings, they were not converts to the ideals of the partially mortal, they were servants of those ideals, which Barden, Medalon and Braxion all found distasteful. Now that the world was at the end of its hope and resources the civilization of Atlantis would not allow itself to be a refuge for the half mortals who had refused to join them in the beginning.

  “There is no morality without choice,” Braxion conceded. “How is your crop?”

  “Wonderful,” Barden smiled. “I shall make wine that will be remembered for generations with these grapes… look at them.”

  “If there are generations to come, I will be glad,” Braxion said graciously.

  “I will take some of the wine to Noah. His youngest son is married to my oldest daughter.” Barden grinned. “He can keep it in his compound and drink it in safety for the years to come when we are gone.”

  “If Noah has years to come I’ll be just as happy.” Braxion frowned just a little. Behind him was his enormous pet bird, Avem, resting next to Ursu. The two of them breathed in sync, and Braxion felt himself unable to worry about the future with both of them so close. There were no plans that could be made to save a world that did not want to be saved. But just because he wasn’t worried didn’t mean the problems weren’t real.

  “Help me pick grapes,” Barden suggested. Neither of them was good with idle time.

  “Hand me a basket,” Braxion answered. The two of them worked together harvesting ripe grapes in the afternoon sun which didn’t bother them the way it bothered mortals. All children with eternal fathers had more resistance to heat and cold than ordinary people.

  “That’s all we can harvest today,” Barden said after surveying the vines with scrutiny. “The rest isn’t ripe yet, but I have enough to start a batch anyway. I will age it in a silver vat. It tastes so crisp that way.”

  “However you make it, I will enjoy it,” Braxion grinned. “I’ve been lucky that you make the best wine and Medalon makes the best beer.”

  “I didn’t care for the batch he made with the really hot peppers.” Barden smiled. “I shouldn’t have had the second mug… I felt the peppers coming right through me later.”

  “That was good going in… but not good going out,” Braxion agreed. “You’re the one who grew the hottest peppers, though. They tempted Medalon to use them.”

  “The cross between the shark pepper and the blue coals pepper made good sauce,” Barden said. “They weren’t good for anything else.”

  The evening passed as Barden and Braxion crushed grapes and worked in the winery until they felt hungry and retreated to Barden’s kitchen to eat. Barden still lived in his father’s house and his mother’s baskets and linens were strewn about the kitchen. There were no servants in the house, Barden had enough energy to take care of himself because he had never needed more than three hours of sleep in his life. It was also impractical for a woman to live with Barden. He could never commit to just one woman, so he had never married. Elania had helped him raise several of his children before she died in the lovely stone home. She was the only mistress of the home her true love had built for her.

  “Lots of tomatoes?” Barden asked as he began fixing enormous salads for himself and Braxion.

  “Yes… you’ve been doing some painting,” Braxion looked outside the kitchen door to several huge boulders Barden had brought to the back porch and painted various things on.

  “I’m already bored with it,” Barden said. “I have some nice pieces for the garden, but I’m done now.”

  “The one of Ursu looks quite real,” Braxion commented.

  “Wine?” Barden asked.

  “Do you have to ask?”

  The two men settled on large cushions to watch the sunset while they ate. Ursu and Avem suddenly leaped off the kitchen steps where they had been enjoying smoked fish.

  “Invaders?” Braxion dropped his plate and snapped to his feet while Barden did the same. Both of them paused at the top of the stairs to see where the animals had gone. Both animals were on high alert at the bottom of the stairs. Barden reached for his favorite weapon. A crystal his father fashioned for his mother that shot blinding light at an aggressor. It had kept his mother safe on many ventures into town before she had found it easier to stay home. Barden always kept a knife on his person and so did Braxion. Their knives were meant to be tools as well as weapons. Both men checked their knives as they looked ahead. They could see farther than normal mortals, across the huge garden.

  They were unprepared for the number of people struggling over the distant garden wall. The stone walls Rory had built almost seventy years before had been built to withstand unwelcome intruders. Until this moment they had repelled those who would trespass with an unpleasant current of electricity that would stun anyone trying to get across.

  “I count two hundred and twelve,” Braxion said.

  “The Blood Drinkers must have found a way to ground the current,” Barden observed. “I feel ridiculous holding a couple of weapons while they all come rushing.”

  “I think between the two of us, Avem, and Ursu, we could kill half of them,” Braxion replied. Avem and Ursu were wriggling with desire to fight, but neither man gave the word.

  “The ones who are crossing are gorging themselves on peaches,” Barden noted. The savage people who had made it into the massive garden had thrown themselves at the orchard with great abandon. The trees were being climbed, broken and plundered. “My father planted all those trees before I was born, and they fed my mother and I and my children.”

  “You aren’t rushing to defend them,” Braxion noted.

  “None of those people really want to hurt me, they are hungry and thirsty and depraved servants of the Blood Drinkers. I have no desire to kill starving people.”

  “They’ll come to the house and try to kill you when they aren’t so hungry,” Braxion said. “The Blood Drinkers will make them.”

  “Yes, they will,” Barden said. “I’m going to gather a basket of things, and we’ll be going, I think.”

  “Wise decision,” Braxion replied regretfully. “We’re not too old to fight, you know. We’re being kind.”

  “We are,” Barden confirmed. “If we wanted to die right here we could make a real mess of them first.”

  Barden put his mother’s shawl and some of his favorite tools in a large basket his mother had made with no wasted time. It was odd to think he was not coming back even though he knew that once the mob outside reached the house there wouldn’t be anything left to come back for. With a light grin he added a large crock of wine and nestled it into the linen carefully.

  “I’m ready,” Barden told Braxion. “Your house?”

  “If it’s still there, yes,” Braxion answered. “If you give me another crock of wine to carry I wouldn’t mind. No sense in leaving all of it for them.”

  “If the way they are eating fruit is any indication, they will not take time to appreciate good wine.” Barden chose a beautiful grey crock and handed it over. “Now wherever we go we will be welcome.”

  “For a bit at least.”

  The two friends slipped away in the dusk with Avem and Ursu bringing up the rear of their small party. As they moved away from the house they could hear the hoard advancing. A terrible scream m
eant someone had fallen into the well. Screams of delight could be heard as the hoard found the wine.

  “Half of them will kill the other half by morning, fighting over your things,” Braxion grumbled. “We’re leaving to save them, but they can’t be saved from themselves.”

  “They’re mortal,” Barden sighed. “When they serve evil things go bad quickly.”

  CHAPTER 14

  August 11th, Blythe, CA

  Bud was maneuvering a particularly difficult stretch of road with a full load of hay on the trailer when his phone buzzed. He tried to ignore it, but it seemed to be particularly angry buzzing. Before finding the ivory box, a buzz was a buzz, but after more than two months in possession of it, he found that he was in tune with machinery on a different level. He had accepted that life with the box was not going to be perfect. At least some aspects had not gotten easier. The quarry being sold, Twilight being gay, the world as he knew it possibly ending. And yet there was a sense of calm that seemed to transcend ordinary frustration. Bud never picked up his phone to check the caller ID, but the buzzing seemed so urgent that against his better judgment he did what he would have yelled at his kids for doing and looked. Danica. She could wait. The road he was on curved dangerously with a sharp drop off and he was already probably going a little fast. The phone buzzed again. Damn. Bud pushed the Bluetooth button and Danica’s frantic voice filled the cab.

  “Oh God! Bud! Come home now!”

  “Honey, I’ve got a full load and I’m going down Pit One. I’m going to Weed and then—”

  “They took him! They took Brock! Bud! They took him!”

  Her words were so panicked it took Bud moments to process what she had said while Danica’s sobs filled the air.