“Aunt Shira gets ticked off by the slightest thing,” Rachel said. “Once she refused to eat at the Mine, because the food wasn’t cooked her way.”
“Okay,” Kimberley said, frowning. “Are there only two options left in this story for us? What if she’s not laying everything out for us as she should?”
“Meaning?” Aiden asked. “She’s lying to us?”
Kimberley nodded. “Maybe,” she said. “Sounds like she’s trying to persuade us to do a particular thing.” This line of thought encouraged another line of thought and she turned to Rachel. “You said the Gray Ones usually killed your targets as soon as you make contact with them?”
The little girl nodded.
“Then, why is your Aunt Shira still alive? Why have we not seen those things and that crazy guy for some time now? We’re sitting targets, right?”
“You’re saying they must have met her before we got to her, Kim?” Aiden wondered aloud.
“Yes,” Kimberley said. “I think they even struck a deal with her.”
“Which deal?” Rachel asked.
“To lie to us in exchange for her life?”
Aunt Shira had stopped ahead of them. She made to raise the book, but stopped midway and turned back. “There’s one other thing I forgot to tell you. You could strengthen the Ice of Masada.”
“Is that the name for a place?” Aiden asked her.
“No, that’s the collective name for the book’s protection against the Gray Ones,” Kimberley enlightened him with. She turned to the German Jew before her. “Are you saying the Bookbearer could make this protection stronger?”
“Yes,” Aunt Shira said.
“But I’m doing my best, Aunt Shira,” Rachel protested. “I can’t do more than I am doing.
“That’s because you’re a weak Bookbearer, my child,” Mrs. Braun, or Aunt Shira, told her niece. “You need a stronger Bookbearer or…or Bookmaker in order to unleash the full strength of the Ice of Masada.”
“Which is you,” Aiden said. “You can now help us unleash the full strength of this Ice of…Masada.”
“No, my dear,” the middle-aged woman said. “If you let me, I will give the book back to its original masters. That’s the only way to end this madness and…and be freed from the chains I’ve borne these many years.”
Kimberley gaped at the German Jew. Rachel’s uncle, Ezra, had said the exact same thing in a different situation. “Give her back the book.”
“What?” Aunt Shira didn’t expect that.
“Return the book to your niece, Mrs. Braun,” Kimberley repeated. “It is hers to decide what to do with.”
“I’m a Bookbearer as well, Miss Kim,” Aunt Shira said.
“It’s Miss Reyna, Mrs. Braun,” Kimberley corrected with a sigh.
“Okay, young woman, I get that,” Aunt Shira said. “But what if I don’t want to return the book? What if I am right and would have to take the book by force?”
“Aunt Shira, what are you saying?” Rachel began.
“I won’t do that, dear,” her aunt allayed.
“Then, why are you saying it?” Kimberley demanded.
“I may have to do that if you three do not agree on what to do about this dire situation very soon, Miss Kim,” Aunt Shira said coldly, glaring at Kimberley.
Both women moved at the same time, Kimberley putting out a foot for the older woman, who wanted to distance herself from her younger opponent, but could only crash to the ground instead.
“What are you doing, Kim?” Rachel shouted, going down beside her aunt. “She did nothing wrong!”
“Can’t you see she wanted to run with the book?” Kimberley told the surprised girl.
“Or she’s just trying to avoid what you just did to her?” Rachel put forward.
“You always trust people blindly,” Kimberley berated. “Can’t you see that this has been her plan from the day we first met her?” She looked at Aiden for support and he nodded in agreement, visibly not sure of his position.
“Maybe,” he said.
“She has been helpful to me, to us,” Rachel cried. “She’s just trying to help us. Please don’t treat her like this again.” She helped her aunt to turn on her back.
Panting, the middle-aged woman spat out earth. Her new foe towered over her.
“I’m sorry for this,” Kimberley said, her right hand outstretched. “Just hand over the book to your niece and I won’t do worse things to you.”
“The book is not yours to decide who holds it or what happens to it,” Rachel said angrily.
Kimberley said nothing. She looked at Aiden, who could only look on.
“I’m sorry, too,” Aunt Shira said, stretching out her own hand. “I don’t know what got into me. Please help me up?”
Kimberley stooped and obliged the middle-aged woman. A big mistake, because the next instant, her feet were brushed off from underneath her and she fell on her left hip.
“Aunt Shira, don’t!” Rachel screamed, drawing back with Aiden.
The woman Kimberley had tried to help picked up a fir branch and struck the Portwood police sergeant on the head. Luckily, Kimberley blocked her face with her crossed hands the second time the branch came down.
The loud crackle of gunfire stopped this assault, Aunt Shira falling backward with the force of the bullet.
Kimberley flung the fir branch at the lone soldier turning to aim his rifle at her, and charged him as soon as the wooden weapon confused his aim. She brought him down with her momentum and knocked him out with an uppercut.
Dizzying pain numbed Kimberley’s forehead and her hands came out from this part of her head blood-stained. She had an ugly gash from the fir branch attack.
More bullets wheezed past from a group of shrubs forming a thick wall through which the first American soldier had emerged, and Aiden pulled Rachel down with him in a squat. Kimberley seized the knocked-out US soldier’s M1 Garand, rolled over on her stomach and returned fire.
The shooting stopped all of a sudden and someone cried out on the other side of the undergrowth blocking Kimberley’s view. She crawled on all fours to the thicket and parted it. The person she saw on the other side holding his right flank while lying on the ground she had expected to see after hearing his familiar voice.
“Sergeant Bradley,” she confirmed. The man made to go for his gun and she cocked her Garand. “Don’t try it, dear. You’ve already lost the fight. Now, throw your guns over to my side, nice and slow.”
The US Army sergeant obeyed her and fell back on the ground, panting. “I need help!” he screamed.
“Which you’ll have to get yourself,” Kimberley said coldly. “What did you do to Private Ralph and his mates?”
“Gus is dead,” Bradley said flatly. “The other two surrendered and are chained to the Jeep, waiting for my return.”
Kimberley tried to hide the gratitude in her voice by sounding curious. “Whatever happened to search and destroy?”
“The colonel is still busy at….”
“Told you not to follow us,” the Counter Intelligence Corps agent admonished him.
“You killed my man,” Bradley accused, struggling as he got up.
“I didn’t,” Kimberley said. “I just knocked him out. Now, turn round and leave this place, or I’ll make sure I plant a bullet in your head next time we meet, okay? Am I clear on this?”
“Crystal,” the man replied as he dragged himself away. “What about my man?” he called out after some silence.
“I’ll make sure I tell him the same thing when he comes round,” Kimberley assured the sergeant. “Now, move along, please.”
“Sure thing, agent.”
Kimberley watched the obstinate army officer disappear in the direction they had all come from before breathing a sigh of relief.
“Aunt Shira!” Rachel cried behind her.
“She’s trying to get away, Kim!” an exhausted Aiden shouted beside the little girl. He lacked the strength to do anything.
Ki
mberley turned her attention to the woman lying on the floor a few feet from her current position. She’d forgotten all about the drama that had played out minutes before the two US soldiers from the Jeep attacked, since she thought that Rachel’s aunt had already died.
This could not be farther from the truth.
Mrs. Hannah Braun, or Aunt Shira as her niece fondly called her, had the white book raised above her head while whispering some unintelligible words.
“What’s she saying?” an alarmed Kimberley asked Rachel, covering the short distance between her and the dying woman without waiting for the little girl’s reply. She went for the book, but it was too late. Glaring light shot out from the ancient codex and the Gray Ones appeared with their human minion.
This time the book did not produce an icy mesh for those it protected. If not for the long relationship Kimberley and her two time-traveling companions have had with it, they would have lost their lives there and then.
Instead, two apparitions held Kimberley, scorching her wrists in the process, while three faceless fiends surrounded the two kids time-traveling with her.
“What have you done?” Rachel asked her aunt. “You betrayed us!”
“She did no such thing,” Carl Bain said, taking the book from the dead Aunt Shira’s rigid right hand. “She did the right thing.”
“How?” Aiden asked.
Carl Bain paused briefly, looking directly at the boy. “She could have given my masters the book as soon as she took possession of it,” he said, “but she took time out of love for your friend here to inform you guys of the futility of your quest before urging you to hand over your possession to my masters without delay.”
Rachel closed her eyes and whispered some words, clenching her fists.
“Sorry, my dear,” Carl Bain told her, “but this time, your chants will not work, because a Bookmaker and superior Bookbearer handed us the book willingly. Save your magic for another day.”
“You will never succeed,” Kimberley said, gnashing her teeth against the pain her two captors were inflicting on her. “Your friends will never leave this world with the book.”
“Wrong, my dear,” Carl Bain countered. “Watch me succeed.”
Kimberley twisted and turned to no avail. Her wrists were on fire. She looked at Sergeant Bradley’s man, who must have died when the Gray Ones appeared. He still lay in the position her uppercut had forced him into.
“My masters will go now, and I must do so with them,” her tormentors’ human servant said. “But first, where is my package, my dear? I need it right now.”
“Go to hell.”
Carl Bain boiled. He exploded in rage, unleashing a blistering volley of fire at the woman struggling between two demons. This natural element engulfed his target, causing her more pain than she had ever felt in her entire life as her horrendous persecutors released her and she crashed to the ground.
“No!” Rachel screamed, stepping forward and tearing up. “Kim, no!” Her voice shook as she cried.
Aiden held her back with tears in his eyes. He knew that confronting the Booklords guarding them would be a dangerous thing to do in the situation they’d found themselves in.
“You monster!” Rachel shouted at Carl Bain as Kimberley’s body burned between them.
“You should be happy I didn’t kill you as well,” the American hustler said, strolling up to the Portwood police sergeant’s corpse. He extinguished the flames with a wave of his hand and bent down to search for his package in her pockets. Smiling, he brought out the small silver box from her left pants pocket.
Something familiarly tiny also came out with the silver box.
“Damn it!” Karl Bain muttered and disappeared with his infernal masters.
The white book, the American hustler’s silver box and this familiarly tiny object fell to the floor right where he previously stooped.
Now unhindered, an exhausted Aiden forced himself to get to this spot with Rachel.
“What do we do?” the confused Bookbearer asked him.
“Quick, take us out of here,” he said, pocketing Carl Bain’s silver box.
“With her body?”
“Yes, with her body.” Aiden failed to notice the other object on the ground since the grass had hidden it from his view.
Rachel pulled out her pen, picked up the book and flipped it open. She scribbled on it and held Aiden’s left hand as he took Kimberley’s burnt right hand.
They all vanished into thin air, but Kimberley’s tiny gold cross remained where it fell from Carl Bain’s right hand.
Chapter 17: Chernobyl
CARL BAIN felt his head squeezing as his floating body kept whirling in what he knew to be an infinite abyss. Inhuman voices coming from the deepest part of this void had all but turned him deaf from their incessant clamor for his death. These strange vociferations blamed him for failing to retrieve the white book from its Bookbearer during the last attempt at this apparently simple task. The debacle in Germany, according to his infernal masters, was clearly his fault, and he must suffer the consequences, just as he had done immediately after every other previous failure.
Fear gripped the American hustler as he continued to spin in the unearthly haze these demonic apparitions had thrown him into. Unlike the other times this horrible experience had occurred to him after an unsuccessful campaign to seize the white codex, the intensity of his suffering had increased twofold. His head ached like crazy and he could only shut his eyes in response.
These were now forced open and the demon leader filled his view.
“Why are you doing this to me?” he cried. “What have I done to deserve this?”
“Your fault,” the spirit being appeared to say. “Death awaits you.”
“How is it my fault this time, huh?” the suffering man snapped, glaring at the hollow face before him. He got a higher dose of hellish headache for his trouble. “Please stop,” he begged.
“One more chance,” the shifting form torturing him conveyed.
“Yeah, you keep repeating that,” Carl Bain said. His headache became unbearable. “Just wanna go home with what’s mine,” he cried and the throbbing pain reduced. He cursed the misfortune that had befallen him, breathing hard.
The spirit entity stared blankly at him with invisible eyes. “One more chance,” it repeated. “A new plan.”
“Whatever,” the American thug said. “Hope it doesn’t fail again this time.”
The demon before him remained unperturbed. “Success, failure or death,” it conveyed. “One choice only. Do not frustrate effort.”
“I do my best,” Carl Bain said, wishing he could see beyond the hollow representing a face before him.
The Booklord communicated some more and, for once, the American it had been torturing smiled.
“Can’t wait to do more of that,” he said. “The boy is next.”
* * *
“Aiden, what’s happening?” repeatedly wafted into his dream, until he grudgingly opened his eyes. He rubbed them and the blur cleared. Rachel standing over him got his attention.
“Where’s Kimberley?” he asked her, sitting up. The little girl had the white book with her, and held it as if her life depended on it. Her sad look told Aiden what he needed to know. “She’s not here with us,” he concluded.
“Do you think she’s dead?” Rachel asked.
“I don’t know,” her fellow time-traveler said. “Maybe she made it, but got separated from us.”
“How is that possible?” Rachel asked.
“Everything is possible right now,” Aiden said. For one, his wounds from his last journey had all disappeared, and he knew that the time travel they’d all been subjected to must have had a hand in that miracle. He just hoped that his dear police friend had undergone a similar transformation, despite her having lost her life before his very eyes during their German journey. He didn’t want to believe the impossible…yet. Kimberley wouldn’t leave them in this timeless void of nowhere the book had remande
d them in, would she? Of course, she was still alive. He didn’t want to believe any other thing. “Where are we?” he asked his younger companion, looking around with a frown on his young face.
Aiden sat on a couch in what appeared to be a tastily furnished living room. Five armchairs were arranged with this couch around a low wooden table, and before this arrangement, an old-fashioned box TV set sat on a table adjacent to a part of the room’s wall. “Where is this place?” the young boy wondered aloud, getting up. To his right, near a staircase, plates of unfinished meals lay out on a dining table having four identical chairs around it. “I feel like I just finished eating, Rachel, with you…and…and some other people?”
“Feel so, too,” Rachel agreed. “Who are these people, and…and where are they?” she asked.
“We’ll soon find out,” Aiden said. He noticed the open entrance door first and moved towards it, knowing that he could be in for a nasty surprise.
Rachel hesitated before following the boy from Portwood. “You must be missing your parents like I do,” she said.
“I don’t have any,” Aiden said. “Lost them when I was younger.”
“I-I’m so sorry,” his companion stammered. “Shouldn’t have brought that up.”
“It’s okay.”
The little girl calmed down. “I-I hope to see Father again, someday,” she said.
“Sure you will,” Aiden assured her. “Everything is possible right now.”
“Including that?” Rachel asked him, pointing at the window near the main door. Outside, a dark sky prevailed above a bald man who slammed the trunk of his car and turned towards the door.
“Aleksandr! Kateryna!” this man called out in a foreign language. “Where are you two? We have to go now!”
“Can’t understand a word apart from the names,” Aiden said, having stopped to listen. “Wonder who he’s talking to?”
“Us?” Rachel suggested. Could she be Kateryna?
“Here you are!” The tall woman coming down the stairs spoke the same foreign language. She seemed quite angry with the two at the entrance door.
“Hi,” Aiden began. His new acquaintance disregarded this greeting and grabbed Rachel’s right arm before getting to him. Once she took his right arm, a wave of change zapped through his body and he became someone else without knowing it. “Mama, where are we going?” he asked the woman in Ukrainian.
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