Simantov

by Asaf Ashery

  “In essence, we’re looking for a possible connection between the spiritual and the material, between the heavenly and the earthly. Here the malachite comes in. In principle, its lines and the way they flow indicate the direction of the energy. The stone that the Naphil held created a series of contracting circles, called Bull’s Eye, which points to introspection, a connection to the Third Eye. I think the solution is here, inside us, among us; we just don’t seem to see it, because this has to do with something so ancient, with such small circles. It’s as if someone dropped a pebble into a lake a million years ago, and now we’re trying to find the original location from the eddies reaching the shore.”

  “Except that here we’re not dealing with a pebble in a lake but with a raging hurricane.”

  “In Ukraine we have a saying: the quietest place is in the eye of the storm,” said Larissa.

  “Not only in Ukraine. When a hurricane hits, there’s usually a tract of several kilometers with only light winds,” said Yariv.

  “The woman who taught me how to read cards said that when there’s so much noise around, we must return to the base, to the quiet in the storm,” said Larissa. She shuffled the cards and picked out the Major Arcana.

  “At the base you get the answers. The story of the cards has three parts: beginning, middle and end.”

  “Past, present and future,” Mazzy echoed, as if trying to convince herself.

  “You want to do it?” asked Larissa.

  “No…”

  “Then quiet. The first card is past.”

  Larissa turned over a card. The Empress. She presented it to the group.

  “Past. She’s the great mother. Woman. Nature. She represents the beginning of life, but also the sense of ending and death. There are pomegranates on her dress, which are like the components of an atom bomb: the tiny bits, the primary parts.”

  Mazzy stared at the beautiful, noble woman on a throne, scepter in hand, a stream flowing to her left, green trees behind her, and stalks of grain at her feet.

  “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake,” Elisha muttered.

  “The silence, the base, the smallest circle, the beginning,” said Izzy.

  Larissa drew the second card: an angel with spread wings and a golden crown, pouring the fluid of life from one chalice to another, one foot standing in the water, the other on land.

  “Temperance, merging. This is a woman and an angel. A chance to make peace between conflicting faiths inside us. The mingling allows belief to turn into action and to test it against the difficulty of reality. This is the present, the middle,” said Larissa, with a tinge of surprise in her voice.

  “Compromise. On his breast he has a triangle inside a square: this means three and four. Again seven. And it is situated at the chakra of the heart, which is the one connecting the three superior ones with the three earthly ones…” Before she finished the sentence, Mazzy noted the change in her voice that now sounded more hopeful.

  Everyone fell silent, though, when a tall man riding a winged chariot hitched to two sphinxes, black and white, appeared on the next card. Crescent moons adorned his breastplate, and on either side there were the turreted towers of a walled city.

  Mazzy had seen this card, not long ago.

  “Future. The Chariot is the seventh card in the Major Arcana, representing the contradictions of the physical world. The soul must maneuver in this world, even though it is spiritual. We must find our way to victory.”

  “God helps those who help themselves,” said Yariv.

  “And what about those who cannot help themselves?” asked Izzy. “Those who have given up or who are about to drown, or those who don’t even realize they are in a storm?”

  “If people can’t help themselves, and God doesn’t help them, then we’re their only recourse,” said Mazzy, with a look that turned her comment into a reproach.

  “I think I know how to help Him help us,” said Elisha. He was standing next to Larissa, speaking with confidence, his eyes sparkling as if something inside him was starting to radiate.

  “So you know how to find the eye of the storm?” asked Larissa.

  “Sort of. Except this is not water flowing, but more like what Izzy was talking about, a current of electricity, of energy. Perhaps a reference to Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot. If I continue with Izzy’s idea, then the base is a transformer of energy. Suppose we’re talking about a network of electric wires. I want to turn on a bulb, bring light into the world. I won’t connect the wire directly to the power station, the source; the bulb would burn and break. We need a system of transformers that will channel the energy and prevent us from burning. Each transformer has a certain capacity, just as each lens transmits a light wave of a certain length. In Kabbalah, we talk about such transformers, this electrical system, in terms of a tree. I am still talking about plus and minus…”

  “The Third Eye!” Izzy interjected. She understood better than the others what he was referring to.

  “I’m supposed to believe in the Third Eye?” asked Yariv.

  “You don’t believe in physical-spiritual duality?” asked Izzy.

  “Not really, no.”

  “You believe in science and philosophy, don’t you?”

  “More. Don’t take offense, Elisha, it’s not personal.”

  Elisha wasn’t going to argue. He beamed at Yariv indulgently.

  “So listen a little, in the name of science. The Third Eye is located in the center of the forehead, about one centimeter above the eyebrow. Near the pineal gland. You know Descartes?”

  “I think therefore I am, and stuff like that?”

  “Right. So Descartes called this gland “the seat of the soul.” Do you know what it produces? Melatonin. It’s not a regular hormonal gland; it works as an electric transformer, mediating between the retinal nerves and the secretion of melatonin. Essentially, it explains to the body the difference between light and darkness, between sleep and waking.”

  “And what is this supposed to prove?” asked Yariv.

  “That there are parts of our body that transmit energy, like neurotransmitters that process information and create physical manifestations. In this case, a hormone resembling adrenaline that is released into the pineal gland,” said Izzy.

  “But how does this connect to what Elisha said earlier?”

  Elisha pounced on the piece of paper, drawing new lines between the various numbers. He was still smiling, which was starting to get on Yariv’s nerves.

  “Why are you smiling?”

  “Because now I know exactly what we need to do to discover the names of the fallen angels. We agreed that we’re looking for a link, a transformer that can distribute the energy so we can crack more than one at a time. The power is within us. Our Third Eye is a triangle. A triangle we’re already familiar with. Larissa’s cards help her look forward, Izzy’s talent is to look at the energy in real time, and I have the ancient lore. Future, Present, Past.”

  “So how does this relate to the links in the chain? A triangle? Why is a geometrical shape an answer to your equation?” Mazzy tried to spur the man to explain further.

  “We already know that we’re facing a Naphil, which equals a hundred and seventy. But we need to find its basis. The basis of a triangle contains what Adam did when he tried to define something, to understand it. He gave it a name. So we have a Naphil, but we are missing a name. ‘Missing name’ in gematria is six hundred and eight. Add this to the hundred and seventy of the Naphil and you have the sum total, the whole. Seven hundred seventy-eight, which equals the most important quality we have in this struggle.”

  “Three times seven plus one?”

  “The basis, the beginning, the thing we have in front of our eyes. Past, present, future. The value of Past is two hundred seventy-two. Present equals twenty-two, and future four hundred eighty-four. Together it is seven hundred
seventy-eight, which is equal to the only advantage we have over the Nephilim – Humanity.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Karina Klobtaza was the brightest star on the Children’s Channel. Despite her weird name and thanks to her intriguing looks, she filled the theater to the rafters, and the shrieks of the children and the cheers of the adults were heard all the way up.

  “Open wide.”

  She opened her mouth as wide as she could, and her mother’s hand groped her gums, making sure the three dangling teeth were aligned before she went on stage.

  She couldn’t wait for her baby teeth to fall out, so she could be fitted with a bridge until her perfect smile was restored to its previous glory.

  “Two minutes to go,” a man with earphones and clipboard announced.

  Karina sat in front of the make-up artist as he applied the eye shadow above her famous blue eyes, familiar to anyone who had ever driven along the Ayalon Freeway and encountered her memorable billboard.

  The make-up artist curled her long lashes and added rouge to her cheeks and gloss to her lips. The girl looked at her mother indulgently, but the latter frowned. This was not the time for displays of affection; Karina wondered when would be the time.

  “A little more hairspray, so the stylist won’t be mad at us.”

  Karina squirmed in her seat; she hated this part, the unpleasant noises coming from the can and the cold mist spewing so close to her scalp. But the make-up artist carried on, sprinkling glitter onto her high cheekbones. The cleavage of her cowgirl outfit only heightened them, and since there was nothing protruding in the front, this was camouflage to maintain an illusion.

  “You’re not pressured by all these performances?” a reporter asked the star.

  Knowing that her mother would answer for her, she didn’t even bother to turn her head.

  “Pressure? You should have come to the Hanukkah festival. The ‘Little Princess’ has only two performances a day: matinee and evening. Karina is big enough so that we don’t have to wait for a holiday. Other stars from the Children’s Channel have to wait for school holidays when parents take their kids out. With Karina, it’s the children themselves who drag their parents to the show. She can fill a stadium.”

  “When you say ‘big enough,’ you mean mature?”

  “Let’s just say that she’s very mature for her age. She has ambitions and knows what she wants. She once saw a Shirley Temple movie and knew right away what she wanted to do. So I enrolled her in a tap dancing class and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Karina had never heard of Shirley Temple, but she had heard her mother tell the story so many times that she was ashamed to ask.

  “Thirty seconds to show time.”

  She got up, put on the belt and other accessories. The brown cowgirl hat was carefully placed atop her golden curls.

  She ran along the hallway and climbed the steps to the stage. Once in the public eye, she sashayed across the stage like a model on a runway. When she reached the center, she started to dance, thrashing her body, smiling triumphantly and winking at the front rows.

  Karina whipped her two pistols from their holsters and shot in the air, releasing pink clouds of smoke. The music blared and the dancers around her swirled their lassos. She leaped through their loops, took her miniature whip from her belt, and cracked it. It was the high point of the show for her, before the last song and the pony ride around the stage. She always cherished the feel of the whip in one hand and the gun in the other.

  Karina raised her eyes to the balcony, proudly looking at her mother, that stern looking woman who lately had become even more severe. Her mother, who had always impressed upon her that she was part of something much bigger, more ancient, a formidable female power.

  Her mother, who used to tell her about the first woman and the fate that befell her, who explained why it was important that the crowds come to see her and adore her and love her, just like she herself did.

  Over the last few days, her mother had taken to practicing more often, with her own belt, with the long adult whip and the weird, ancient gun whose bullets shattered anything that stood in its way.

  Confetti began to pour from the ceiling, colorful ribbons and shimmering glitter, landing on people’s heads. She saw the pony charging toward her and positioned herself to jump.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  High above the rooftops, Barakiel spread his wings.

  Seconds earlier a close formation of three assailants had pounced on the black sedan of the Klobtaza family. They landed on the roof, clawed their fingers through the metal, peeling from the vehicle as if it were a moving tin can. Despite the mother’s cries for help and the struggle of the girl’s bodyguard, they extracted her from the mother’s arms and flew her upwards. The mother shot at them, but the bullets just whizzed above their wings as they disappeared into the clouds. The abductions chapter was now complete; the seven year-old girl was the last.

  There was a distinct, cloying sense of finality in the air, a feeling that things were about to change. During their confining earthly existence, the Nephilim had experienced no excitement. Each day and each year resembled the preceding one, an eternal prison routine.

  But over the last few weeks a new wind had been ruffling the Nephilim’s feathers.

  Saharel flapped his wings in the air. The wind whistled through his thick plumage.

  “Do you hear that sound? It’s the whirr of the wings of history!”

  The others emitted a hearty laugh. Barakiel laughed too, but suddenly the laughter echoed around him and he was surrounded by rows of white teeth, closing in on him like a school of sharks.

  Barakiel drew his blade, but his assailants had already drawn their celestial flaming swords and were dancing their lethal dance around him. Sunrays were breaking through the clouds, lighting up the dancers’ faces. As blade hit blade, sparks flew.

  Excruciating pain shot through Barakiel’s shoulder. Feathers flew all around as the wing detached and fell like a severed branch. He tried to ignore the pain, flapping his remaining wing, but the attempt only made his head point in the wrong direction, and he started to fall. The fear was intense. Someone could still help him. Even if he hit the ground, he wouldn’t die. He’d recover. It might take hundreds of years, but he’d pull through. He was still an angel. Angels never died. A gust of wind came from above and a hand gripped his nape, stopping his fall.

  Lifting his terrified eyes, he saw Azazel. The last vestige of hope was gone. A terrible epiphany hit him as he realized that the laws protecting them from humans did not apply in these circumstances. Azazel knew his name; he didn’t need to use it to harm him.

  With a precise and swift motion, a perfect strike, he was beheaded; his golden locks were now in the grip of Azazel’s white fingers. The glorious headless, wingless body of what for millennia had been an exiled angel now spiraled downward until it hit the hood of the abducted girl’s car.

  An explosion and ball of fire completed the demise of the fallen angel.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The last time the Athaliah faced Mazzy, she had been surprised at the changes the detective had undergone. But now the circumstances were different, and the sense of surprise had disappeared. The Athaliah depended on the backing of The Order, but during the short ride from the crime scene, Mazzy had made it quite clear that the balance of power had changed. Knowledge is power. Mazzy had the knowledge, and the Athaliah had to back down and yield. She had no time and no answers.

  There was something different about Rachel’s girl. Change that had first been noticed in the emergency room, but had since grown in Mazzy.

  Some primordial power, implacable, untrammeled, feral, pulsating, human.

  Mazzy gazed at the murals. The eyes that looked back at her were intelligent, penetrating, resolute, warm, honest, and cruel. There were women with different hairstyles and colors, some severely braided, others blowing in the wind. Portraits of the seven Maidens of the Order examined he
r with a measure of justice and mercy.

  Now Mazzy understood the urgency of Libby’s words when she had given her the important information.

  Mazzy stood next to Yariv, whose presence the Athaliah did not welcome.

  “You said you’d come alone.”

  “I changed my mind. You should be more flexible. It’s not the first time, and certainly not the last. Let’s not make an issue of it. We don’t have time, and right now I should be with my team planning our campaign.”

  “I can’t let a man in here.”

  Yariv stood at the door like a rebuked child. He shrugged and turned to leave. Mazzy stopped him. She pointed a finger at him, fixing her gaze at Lilith’s Daughter. Yariv froze in his tracks.

  “So let him wait somewhere while we talk.”

  The Athaliah thought for a moment, then turned to her secretary.

  “Judith, get someone to accompany Chief Inspector Biton to that room downstairs…”

  “We just allocated it to the other gentleman…”

  The Athaliah considered the options. Mazzy was getting impatient.

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The space I was thinking about is now serving another purpose.”

  “What purpose?”

  “The remains of the Naphil from the last abduction. It’s not something you can leave in a hospital without explanation.”

  Mazzy would ask for the whole picture later. The two women were at a preliminary stage now, assessing each other’s power, and Mazzy knew she had the upper hand.

  “It’s okay, Chief Inspector Biton is not unused to corpses. In fact, this could be a learning experience for him.”

  Yariv straightened up, as if to show the women that he was ready for action. The Athaliah motioned with her hand; Judith smiled benignly at the male visitor, and she led him down a spiral staircase. The two women were left alone.

  “Would you like something to drink?”

  “Something hot. Tea.”

  The Athaliah was about to press the button for her secretary when she remembered that the latter was busy showing their guest the way. It had been years since she had to perform any service for others. When she turned the faucet, it spouted a thick red liquid. The fluid of life. She took a deep breath, trying to control her revulsion.