Judgment Stone (9781401687359)

by Robert Liparulo

  He slid over the sill, thinking, Lord, just get me home, please . . . and stopped abruptly, caught on something.

  Glass shattered to his right . . . more and more of it as Artimus panned toward him. The gunner wasn’t visible yet, but he would be in seconds.

  Jagger found the thing hanging him up: a grenade. It was in a pocket high up by his shoulder, easy to miss. He yanked it out, pulled the pin, and tossed it across the room. It rolled into the hallway. The machine-gun fire stopped and the barrel flashed away.

  The grenade exploded, and the last thing Jagger saw as he slipped over the sill was the sword on the floor. Leaving it behind—not having used it—pained his soul. He felt a heavy weight descend upon him, the burden and guilt of all the people Bale was yet to murder.

  [ 78 ]

  “Hurry! Hurry!”

  “Calm down, Jag,” Owen said, slowly maneuvering the jet around the bend in the road. “This isn’t a dune buggy.”

  Jagger was constantly moving, looking out the windshield, the side cockpit windows, rushing back to peer through the cabin windows. He was sure the Clan would pursue them. Bale had been conscious when Jagger went out the window. Certainly he’d send at least the machine-gun-packing commando after them.

  “Come on!” he yelled from the cabin.

  The jet’s nose angled around the bend, and they were facing the long, almost-straight road on which they’d landed. Sound from the engines rose in pitch, becoming the soundtrack of a thriller movie. The plane began moving, eating blacktop faster and faster.

  Standing, Jagger leaned close to the windshield, one knee on the copilot’s seat. He watched for the driveway into the home, guessing its position until the jet’s lights swept over it. As they passed he followed it with his eyes. His heart skipped a beat. Someone—a silhouette against the house lights—was jogging toward the road.

  “Someone’s coming,” he said. “I think he’s got that big machine gun.”

  “How close?”

  “Halfway to the road from the manor.”

  Owen blew out a raspberry. “We’ll be in the air before he reaches it. That gun can bring us down, though, so I’ll fly straight off the road for a while before turning.”

  He said something else, but it was lost to a thought that Jagger should have had earlier. “What about the children? We can’t just leave them with Bale still there.”

  Owen turned his eyes away from the makeshift airstrip for a second to smile at Jagger. “The kids?” Owen said. “They’re all safe in the woods, and they won’t return until they’re sure it’s safe. Bale doesn’t have the Stone to find them, and I think he’s got more important things to concern himself with, like healing and tending to his wounded.”

  “Then what?” Jagger asked.

  Owen shrugged. “Never know with Bale. He might go on his merry way, stirring up as much trouble as he can.” He paused. “He might come after the Stone.”

  “When?”

  “A few weeks, a few years.”

  Jagger nodded, thinking, Let him come. I’ll be ready next time. He remained standing until the nose lifted, then the whole plane, its lights flashing on treetops as they flew over them, close. The ascent was steeper than he expected, and he staggered back. He pulled on the back of the copilot’s chair and climbed in over the armrest, like trying to board a moving swing. He leaned into the corner of the seat and twisted toward Owen.

  Owen’s face was a study in horror. Bloody, beard matted with the stuff, scrapes and cuts—all of it masking a grim face that could have been carved from granite.

  “Are you all right?” Jagger asked.

  Owen paused before answering. He looked at Jagger. “We had a chance to rid the world of Bale.”

  “No, we didn’t. If we had tried, right now we’d be the ones without our heads.”

  Owen glared out the windshield, shook his head. After half a minute, he said, “When we’re at altitude, I’ll set the autopilot and wash up, grab a few winks. I can use a painkiller. You?”

  Jagger ached all over. “Yeah.”

  “In the medical bag near the bed,” Owen said.

  But first Jagger fished into his pocket for the satphone. He hit redial and wanted to throw the phone when he got Gheronda’s voice mail again. He retrieved Owen’s doctor’s bag and returned to the cockpit seat. Owen’s idea of a painkiller was over-the-counter Tylenol. “Nothing stronger?” Jagger said.

  “Take two.” Owen grinned. “Bet Bale needs a lot more.”

  “Put me and Bale together, and we could clap.”

  They looked at each other and began laughing. The relief Jagger felt at surviving their encounter with the Clan, getting the God Stone back, was like waking from a nightmare. But it only took a few moments for Jagger to remember his nightmare wasn’t over. Thinking of Beth and Tyler, the Tribe after them, his stomach felt like twisted ropes. But for the next few hours there was nothing he could do. Best not to let speculation and worry gnaw at him; he’d be exhausted by the time they arrived at St. Catherine’s, a less effective fighter—and all he wanted to do was go all warrior on the Tribe.

  “Any more grenades?” he asked.

  Owen shook his head. “I’m wondering if there’s even a handgun onboard.”

  That didn’t bother Jagger as much as it should have. He was so angry and so psyched up from the action at the orphanage, he felt he was the best weapon he could possess anyway. A walking, talking nuke. He’d focus his fury and rage and protective-daddy instincts and become a Tasmanian devil of leave-my-family-alone destruction. The plan: get to one Tribe member and use his or her weapons—and his own rage—on the rest.

  That made him feel better, having a plan of action, no matter how vague.

  Now take your mind off it. An hour out, you can get into warrior mode. For now, rest and relax. Yeah, right.

  He leaned over and shook Owen’s shoulder. He said, “You did it. You wanted the Stone back and you got it. Honestly, I had my doubts.”

  “O ye of little faith.”

  Jagger looked out at the darkness through the windshield. He didn’t think Owen was being witty; the man was assessing Jagger’s spiritual condition. And it was true. He saw God as a presence, maybe benign, maybe not, but it didn’t matter because for the most part He was hands-off. Yeah, maybe His angels milled around humans, but more as witnesses than helpers. The irony of Jagger’s actually seeing angels, of being saved by them, and still doubting God’s active, loving involvement with man was not lost on him. Maybe it was that he was truly cursed—not just with immortality but with stubbornness when it came to faith. Or maybe it was seeing the barn full of brutally murdered men, women, and children: what had God or His angels done for them?

  As if reading Jagger’s mind, Owen said, “I know retrieving the God Stone will ultimately save thousands of people, but right now I’m more elated that there are two hundred and eleven children, plus their guardians, alive now who wouldn’t be if God hadn’t used us to intervene.”

  Jagger smiled. All those faces staring at him, their little hands waving. What he’d felt at the time, but didn’t want to admit, was that they were waving good-bye.

  He was nicely settled into the copilot seat, angled against the cabin wall, almost facing Owen. He stretched a leg out and gave Owen’s arm a kick. “Did I hear Bale call you Mr. Mondragon?”

  Owen glanced at him, didn’t say anything.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Owen shrugged. “It wouldn’t have helped. My involvement was a long time ago.”

  “Involvement? You started it. You established the philosophy. Even a century later, it’s churning out kids who are changing the world.”

  “That’s God’s work, not mine.”

  “Still, did you have to be so coy?”

  “It becomes habit, Jag, doing things and burying them in the past.”

  “You’re being humble.”

  “Doing things like that is no different from tithing. It’s giving back to God. I can
only do it because God gave me the resources in the first place. The credit goes to Him, not me.”

  “It wouldn’t have been bragging if you told me.”

  “I didn’t mean to be deceptive.”

  Jagger looked at the GPS. They were over Bulgaria now, west of Varna. Below them a smattering of lights in a landscape of blackness.

  “How long to the monastery?”

  “Fourteen hundred miles, give or take. Three and a half hours to Sharm. But we’ll need to refuel, that’ll take at least an hour.”

  “Refuel?”

  “Boanerges’s range is only fifteen hundred miles, and we’ve already gone from Varna to here. If we had the Clan’s plane . . . that thing’s range is almost six thousand miles. Then, from Sharm, it’ll take an hour, hour and a half to secure a helicopter and fly there.”

  “How long if you bypass Sharm El Sheikh?”

  “Bypass?” He flashed Jagger a puzzled look. “What are you thinking? Parachute again?”

  “If need be, but . . . you landed on that road.” Gesturing behind him with his head.

  Owen didn’t say anything, just stared out the windshield. Finally: “That road that runs up the valley is pretty straight.”

  “It is.”

  “It’s long enough.”

  “Longer than the road in front of the orphanage.”

  Owen glanced at him. “Egyptian P.D. will freak out.”

  “It’s Beth and Tyler, Owen.”

  “I’m just saying.” He nodded. “Sharm is south of St. Cath’s, so we won’t be bypassing it.”

  “Okay.” Waiting.

  “Landing at the monastery will cut our ETA by at least an hour, probably more like ninety minutes.” He paused. “All right, let’s do it. Besides, Egyptian prisons aren’t as bad as they say.”

  Pushing his luck, Jagger said, “And you’re sure about having to refuel?”

  “Unless you want to crash before we get there.”

  “How close would we get?”

  “Jagger.”

  [ 79 ]

  Bale rested his backside on the overturned desk, checking that his tourniquet was adequately preventing more blood loss. He felt weak and lethargic, a condition he hadn’t experienced in a very long time. His stump was throbbing and so was his head.

  Lilit had survived getting tossed the length of the hallway by a grenade, with only a few lacerations on her legs, back, and arms, and a patch of missing hair on the side of her head. Now she was crouched beside Hester, tugging off the leather mask. She kept touching her bald spot and pulling at the hair around it. She stood and dropped the mask onto Hester’s chest.

  “She’ll be up and around within a week,” she said. “Him . . . I don’t know.” She looked at Therion, sprawled facedown in a pool of blood by the door. “Couple months, at least.”

  Pointing, Bale said, “Hand me that, will you?”

  Lilit picked up his hand and gave it to him.

  “Find something to hold it in place, will you?” Bale said. “Get the healing started.”

  She moved off toward the back of the room. Bale stood up and lifted a drawer out of the desk, looking down into the hole at the supplies that had fallen out.

  He was half sitting on the desk again, holding his hand to the stump while Lilit unrolled a spool of duct tape around the gap, when Cillian walked in. Bale asked him, “Where’ve you been?”

  “Gathering weapons, putting them in the car.”

  “Jet’s all fueled?”

  Cillian nodded. “Topped off in Varna.”

  “All right,” Bale said, pushing up off the desk, pulling his arm away from Lilit. “We gotta get going, fast. Help Artimus put these two in the car.” He indicated Hester and Therion. The circle of cardboard from the tape clung to his wrist. He scowled at it, held it up to Lilit, who tore it off.

  “Where we going?” Cillian asked.

  Bale gave him the same look he’d given the cardboard circle. “To get the Stone back.”

  [ 80 ]

  Having ascended all the way to the peak without sighting Jordan or the woman’s son, Phin bounced and leaped down the trail. He recognized where he was and decided to take a quick detour. He moved off the trail and moved horizontally across the mountain. A few minutes later he reached the clearing where they’d launched their attack, where they’d put on their Future Warrior Systems. He hopped up, landed flat on his feet, and bounced onto the outcropping where Toby had kept an eye on the monastery. He could look into the entire compound, but most of the lower levels were blocked by rooftops. The gardens were the farthest away and least visible, especially in the dark. He panned his gaze to the archaeological dig, all but the area nearest the wall in plain view. Two big rectangles of blackness against the grayer terrain marked the excavation holes. He turned to jump down, then turned back. The faintest of light—a candle?—glowed against the wall of the lower hole.

  “Gotcha,” he said, and leaped off the outcropping.

  [ 81 ]

  Gheronda had led Beth through a maze of rooms and passages. They had climbed rungs nailed to a wall and gone through a hatch in a ceiling into a dark room that filled her nostrils with a dank odor, with a subtle smell of decay. She felt a bit like a wine connoisseur, sniffing the air, trying to determine the composition of an underlying scent. Gheronda struck a match and lighted a candle. Beth gasped quietly. In the corner of the small room lay a dead cat, its eyes sunken in, lips pulled back from its fangs. Gheronda pulled a blanket off a cot, kicking up a cloud of dust, and tossed it over the animal.

  Now Beth sat on the edge of the cot, praying that Leo would find Tyler and they would be safe.

  Gheronda crossed the room and sat beside her. He wrapped spindly fingers over her clasped hands and said, “Tyler will be fine.”

  She tried to bend her trembling lips into a smile and couldn’t. She said, “Bad things happen to good people,” and let a sharp laugh ride out on a single breath at her use of the cliché. “I . . . uh . . .” She pushed hair off of her face and hung her head. A teardrop fell onto Gheronda’s hand. She whispered, “I think I caught a little of Jagger’s skepticism.”

  Gheronda squeezed her hands. “About what, dear?”

  She watched two more tears fall onto the old man’s hand, then said, “God’s intentions.” She glanced at him. “I know the Bible says that God works for the good of those who love Him, but . . .” She sniffed, looked into the monk’s eyes. “I want my son. With me. Safe.” The tears poured out; she had trouble catching her breath. “You can’t tell me he’s going to be fine. You don’t know that. Look who’s after him! Killers!” She dropped her head again. “If Tyler dies, how is that good?”

  Gheronda started, “Dear—”

  “I know, I know.” Her words rolled over his. “Evil is man’s doing, not God’s, but He allows it, doesn’t He? How can He do that?”

  “Because He loves us.”

  She turned an incredulous looked to him. “Bad things happen because He loves us?”

  “Evil stems from love.”

  “What?”

  “God is love. All creation is an expression of that love. He desires that all creatures reflect the love with which they were created.”

  She said, “He wants us to love Him back. What does that have to do with—”

  “Shhh,” he said, patting her hands. “Love can’t be forced, can it? It can’t be coerced. For love to be genuine, it must be freely given, freely chosen.”

  “Free will,” she said. “The freedom to choose love . . . or not.”

  “So for humans to love—love others and love God—there must be the possibility of choosing against it.”

  “Of choosing evil.”

  He nodded. “People do, and we bear the consequences of that, the consequences of our own bad choices and those of others. You and Tyler are suffering because of the Tribe’s decision to choose evil.”

  Beth said, “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “As much as you hat
e it, if they didn’t have the ability to harm us with evil, you wouldn’t have the ability to love Tyler, to love Jagger, as much as you do.”

  She looked at Gheronda, unable to prevent her feelings from showing on her face, a deep frown, eyebrows threatening to slide away. “I’m so scared.”

  Gheronda pulled her into his arms. “I know,” he said.

  She pressed her face into the material of his robe. “God is with us; I know that,” she said. “I just . . . I just want Him to do more.”

  “He’s helping in ways we don’t see,” he said. “You don’t think we escaped from Elias without help, do you?”

  Beth sniffed. She thought about what the fragment of the God Stone had revealed. She believed that angels were with her son at that moment, that he wasn’t alone with the Tribe after him. But did that mean he was safe? She said, “Do you think angels were in that room with us when Elias came in?”

  “I do.”

  “Like . . . how did they help? Did they tell Leo to shield us, to shove us through the door?”

  “Something like that,” Gheronda said. “Maybe they pushed him into us, or made him move just a bit faster than he could without them.”

  She remembered how Elias had aimed away from them, panning the flame toward them, giving them the second or two they needed to get through the door. She said, “Do you think Elias aimed right at us and an angel knocked the barrel aside?” Could they do that?

  Gheronda shrugged. “Or something even more incredible. God exists outside of time; He’s everywhere, ‘everywhen.’ What if, when Elias was learning how to use that thing—ten years ago, fifty years ago—God showed him the advantages of sweeping across a target instead of aiming right at it? What if God did that only because He knew this day would come and He wanted to give us those few seconds of grace?”

  God working for her benefit, for this one specific blessing, even before she was born . . .

  He watched her thinking, processing. “Or it could be simply that you pray,” he said. “That’s one way you’ve exercised free will. You’ve asked God for help.”