He was alone then, Nathan reminded him. Now they were five and that would make all the difference. He advised Nathan that the owner of The Book would take that into his calculations for the trial, the test that they were about to set out on. The owner would not easily let go of what they desired, the book that they believed and hoped held the keys to what they each desired. As for himself, he only hoped to become the spring hero of his youth, and be able to resist bending to the powerful heel of men. That was all he sought.
After he’d announced his contribution to the pot, Nathan proclaimed, “we will seek The Book of Yulen, and triumph.” Then, as Nathan recovered at the clinic, he arranged the payment to the owner of The Book. On that sun-filled day, they would leave for it, for the only copy ever made, no other copy existing. On the flimsy promise of a man, they pinned their expectations that should they complete the test, The Book, its secrets, their dreams, would belong to them.
“There’s Nathan,” he heard Russell say.
“Just when I thought the repo man had gotten him,” Sammy said, getting up and going outside with the others.
“Five-hundred horsepower,” Nathan said, coming around from a four door Range Rover. “It should be able to handle any terrain our beneficiary throws at us.”
“And throw he will,” Gus said, and as he did, all eyes turned to someone walking toward them.
“It’s Leeda,” Russell said.
“You couldn’t miss her from a mile away,” said Sammy.
“Somebody invite her?” Nathan asked.
“She has got to be the most gorgeous yulen I’ve ever seen,” said Sammy.
“She is lovely,” said Gus.
“Kind of a female Nathan,” Russell said.
“Hi, fellas,” Leeda said arriving. “Got room for one more?”
“Sure, Leeda,” said Sammy.
“Wait a minute,” Nathan said.
“I can be of help, Nathan. Five males, you’ll get tied up in knots and need someone to untie you.”
Yulen nature did not succumb, at least not easily, to the attraction of their own, anymore than to the attraction of men or women; however, Leeda’s exquisite beauty allured them just as any other aesthetic form might, and they did not resist the simple pleasure.
“Did you think we were going on some military campaign, Leeda?” Sammy said, referring to her black over-the-knee leather boots over leggings, and two-row brass button, snug fitting jacket that resembled a nineteenth-century officer’s tunic.
“Maybe . . . ,” she teased. “Are we going into battle, Nathan?”
“No. But we won’t all fit in this vehicle,” he said.
“You can sit on my lap, Leeda,” Sammy said.
“Nathan, what’s the point of owning a car store if you can’t get us what we need?” Leeda said to him.
Twenty minutes later, Nathan returned with a six door Range Rover stretch. Its doors unlocked as he pulled up to the waiting group. Leeda opened a door, and started in.
“I’ll set next Leeda, Sammy said.
“Gus,” Nathan said, you next to Leeda.”
“Thank you, Nathan,” she said. “Come on, Gus.”
“Everybody else sit where you want,” Nathan said.
Shawn took the front passenger, Russell and Sammy the back row.
As the Range Rover pulled out, Russell said, “Hey, Leeda didn’t pay. She didn’t contribute to the pot.”
“I’ll pay for gas, Russell.”
The others laughed.
“Will that be alright?” she smiled to Russell.
“I think with you along, this’ll be a really nice trip, Leeda,” Russell said.
>
Macon Early stood at the shadow end of his church’s cross, cast by the day’s first light over Louisiana. His sons and he looked at their captive on the ground. “Undo his lock,” the Reverend said, and Joseph with Joseph Henry did so. When they stood T up, the open mouthed gator seemed to hiss a resentful farewell.
“You remember your friend’s last name, son?”
“And where he lives,” Joseph added.
“Leave Pa talk!”
T’s tired hanging head lulled side to side.
“Bring ‘em to the stump,” Macon said, his sons’ smirks turning into broad grins when the Deacon added, “and bring me the broom.”
“Sure thing, Pa,” Joseph said agitated. “I’ll git it!”
“No one could question my forbearance with you,” Macon said, walking behind T flanked by his two tall sons. “You forsook my pity, my offerings of salvation, and you obligate me, without desire or anything in me that wants to rake out your punishment, to do so. And yet, I’m going to offer you one last chance as I’d hope any of my boys in your circumstances would be offered. Give ‘em your blade, Josiah.”
“Pa?”
“Your blade.”
All of them standing in front of the stump at the end of the glade, Josiah handed T a hunting knife he slid from a sheath.
“Because I know I have been righteous,” Macon Early pronounced, and spreading his hands, “I know I needn’t fear the retribution of The Lord. I tell you that if I have been unjust to you, mister, you strike me now with that blade and kill me dead, and to my boys I say that if he do, they not harm you in turn, but let you leave this swamp in peace.”
“Pa, got the broom, broomstick, Pa,” Joseph said, running back.
“Now go ahead boy, kill me dead with the knife you hold in your hand. Kill me dead Lord if I have transgressed . . . Smite me Lord if I have been untrue. Your messenger, your bringer of justice, your servant, smite me Lord!” Macon’s call to his lord sent the surrounding songbirds and other land creatures to flight.
T held the knife, and the Early boys moved away, Joseph confused. Practically unrecognizable T would have looked to Nathan, his normally gorgeous looks eaten by the swamp and late season of his yulen cycle. He stood pale, dusty, and spent, as the hanging moss from the towering elms. True to the demands of his yulen nature, he let drop the knife from his hand.
“I am your obliging servant, oh merciful Lord,” the Reverend Early intoned to the heavens.
“Hallelujah!” his sons praised. “Hallelujah!”
Reverend Early’s outspread arms slowly closed. “Give me the broomstick,” he said, his arm stretching to his simpering youngest.
T turned around to face and lower onto the stump, but instead of bending down, with every stitch of strength left in him, he began to run, and before they could react, he’d gotten away from the group.
“Pa, he’s gettin’ away!” young Joseph said, but the others only started walking toward the edge of the lump of ground that was their father’s founded church. Strolling, they followed T’s struggle to reach the edge of dry land, and there they saw him stop and look back.
“You ain’t gonna use the broomstick, Pa?” Joseph said disappointed. “He’s gonna get away!”
“He ain’t goin’ nowheres,” Joseph Henry said, and with that, T entered the swamp water.
The older boys grinning, T hollered in pain from the water burning his skin as he waded into the muddy. Joseph saw two alligators slide into the water, and he brightened. “This is better than NASCAR—ha-ha.”
“And God made the beasts of the earth,” the Reverend Early said, raising his hand and watching the two sets of eye casings traveling toward T struggling in the water. “Made them according to their kind, and the livestock according to their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”
“I don’t think he can swim,” Josiah said.
“I don’t think they’re gonna take ‘em by the head,” said Joseph Henry.
“Darn, they’re goin’ down.”
“No, one’s stayin’ on top.”
“Whahoo!” Joseph called, when one of the gator’s legs grabbed T and turned, its tail sending a shower of water. “Whahoo!”
“He’s got ‘em.”
“Like to play with ‘e
m a little.”
“Yeah.”
“Whahoo!”
“There he goes. Down.”
“Comes the other.”
“Down.”
“Down.”
“Like nothin’ ever happened.”
“Gone.”
“Gone.”
“Pack your things, boys,” Macon said, turning back toward the tabernacle. “Lock the church. Go into New Orleans. Get yourselves washed, haircuts, your teeth cleaned and straightened. Buy some nice new clean duds. We’re headed to Saint Tro-pay.”
“Whahoo!”
VI
The gleaming Range Rover’s wheel rims whirled like kaleidoscopic mirrors over a French autoroute. Nathan and his recruits in pursuit of The Book of Yulen sat quietly in the sound dampened cabin.
“And another thing, Leeda,” Russell said abruptly to her in the bucket seat before him, “you didn’t take the blood oath.”
The others chuckled, and Leeda smiled cutting an upheld wrist with an imaginary knife. She then looked out the window and reflected on what lie ahead. She had no idea where they headed or clue of what awaited. All she knew was that she wanted to be there, with them, and the pleasant feeling of communion with others of her own, the only other living things like her. Strange and exciting the feeling that they were joined by race. It brought a tiny but beautiful tingling sensation around her middle. She would take things as they came, just as she’d always. Like them, she’d lived in scores of places, usually leaving unexpectedly. In her last place, Turkey, the man who’d fallen in love with her, discovered what she was. To keep her, he cooperated in luring her quarterly need. Regrettably for him, his last arranged provision for her end of late season need, failed to appear. However, since he happened to be where the other should have been, he served just as well.
When his wife connected the dots of her husband’s disappearance, the police came calling. At the police station, she bribed her way to the ladies room “for half an hour,” took the first train out of Ankara Central Station, and eventually ended up in Switzerland, where she happened on Sammy at a bullion bank. In between swigs of high proof vodka at a local bar, he told her about the discovery he’d heard about in Saint-Tropez and the invitation from one of theirs to visit and undergo the operation that everyone in the Land Rover subsequently underwent. A loud voice broke her musings. Russell wasn’t still going on about a blood oath, she thought, turning her attention to the cabin. She’d thought he’d been kidding.
“I mean it,” Russell said to everybody. “Being here wasn’t easy for me to do. I don’t think it was for any of us. And we took a solemn oath. A solemn oath, didn’t we? To stick together and not waver. To stay the course to the end of the journey. United.”
“That we did,” Gus said, respectful of Russell’s seriousness and the truth of what he said. “That we did.”
“At the hospital, we each cut our palm with the scalpel Nathan used to cut his, and we mixed our blood, united, solemnly, truthfully.”
“And here I didn’t pack my scalpel,” Leeda said. “And we don’t carry weapons.”
“Lot of good they’d do us,” Sammy said.
“I don’t think Leeda has to—”
“Yes she does, Nathan,” Russell insisted.
“It is more than a matter of the money, I suppose,” Gus agreed.
“It is,” Russell said.
“Well, do you have a knife handy?” she turned to Russell.
“No.”
Leeda looked around the cab. She noticed the decorative golden metal adornments on the stiff upright collar edges of her officer style tunic. Pushing her nails under them, she pulled them off, and felt their sharp edges. “These’ll cut, she said, and with the edge, she cut the tip of her forefinger. “Russell?” she said, handing him the metal triangle and the second one to Gus.
“Oh my God,” Sammy said, practically rolling his eyes as Russell and Gus cut into their index fingers and then held them out to her.
“Am I supposed to say something?” she asked.
“No, this will be enough,” Gus said, as their bleeding fingers touched, and they then handed the edges to Sammy and Shawn.
“Wouldn’t firm handshakes do as well?” Sammy said.
“Come on Sammy,” Shawn smiled, holding out his cut finger to them.
“I hope there’s a section in this book on how to get rich quick,” Sammy said, holding out his bleeding finger, “because there’s not going to be an ounce of blood left in me before long.”
“Nathan?” Leeda said to him, holding one of the sharp edges.
Nathan raised his hand back over his shoulder. She cut his forefinger, and as blood spread over the surface, she reached and placed her mouth on it and sucked, looking at his eyes on her in the rearview mirror.
“Uhh, hello . . . ,” Sammy said. “We’re bleeding back here.”
Letting go of Nathan’s hand, Leeda touched hers to Sammy’s and Shawn’s, and when finished, pressed her cut finger against her palm. “Do you feel better now, Russell?” she said.
“It was really for you, Leeda,” he said. “Don’t you feel better?”
“Yes. Yes Russell I do. Thank you,” she said, glancing to Nathan’s reflection in the rearview mirror. “I really do.”
“Has that navigation system told you yet where we’re going?” Sammy asked.
“No,” Shawn said, watching the monitor on the front dash. “It doesn’t give a destination, only shows twenty kilometers ahead at a time.”
“So we don’t know where we’re headed?” Sammy said.
“We’re headed north,” Nathan responded.
“Beats headed to the toilet, I suppose.”
“Calibrating the navigation system to accept direction through the book owner’s—”
“We really should find out his name,” Sammy interrupted.
“Conrad Hain is his name,” Gus said.
“I was saying,” Nathan continued, “we were delayed at the dealership while they calibrated the navigation system to accept directions via Hain’s account.”
“The directions come in allowing us to only see twenty kilometers ahead,” Shawn said.
“Doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence in him,” Leeda said.
“Just how trustworthy is this guy?” Sammy asked.
“I truly believe he will keep to his end of the bargain,” Gus said. “If we pass the test and make it to where he is, he’ll give up the book. But be prepared as I have warned you to meet with every strange and unusual difficulty he can manage to throw in our way.”
“You’re not talking about meeting up with trolls, elves, and things like that?” Russell asked, looking concerned.
“Oh please, Russell,” Sammy said, and the others laughed.
“I don’t think so, Russell,” Gus said. “But Hain will try to break us one way or another.”
“Right now I’m already feeling broke. Maybe because—I am broke,” Sammy said. “A chapter in this book on where to find buried treasure would be nice.”
“I don’t really care about that,” Shawn said.
“It’s not what we’re after, I know,” Sammy continued, “but it’d be a nice addition to any newfound—what? Powers?”
“I don’t care about that,” Shawn said.
“What do you care about?” Russell asked.
“I, I don’t know,” Shawn said, turning away, looking out the window. But in fact he did know what he cared about and what he wanted from the trip, and looking at the country scenery going by, he thought about it.
For him, it was just about things being as they were then. It was about just being a part of the group, the gang, together. He’d always been a loner—as he knew Nathan was. His whole life as far as he could remember, he’d been alone, always living alone, traveling alone from place to place, and always fleeing from wherever he landed when the heat eventually turned up, as it always did.
The eleven health clubs he owned in the U.S., he kept in different names
and states to benefit from the extra cover of operating in unconnected jurisdictions. It didn’t always help, and it was an inefficient setup, but it was safer, and safety trumped everything.
After he heard about Nathan’s discovery through a yulen acquaintance who he’d hired to manage one of the health clubs, he left for Saint-Tropez. Being warmly welcomed by Nathan into his fledgling group, became for him the greatest feeling of his life. And that feeling in the car, kind of warm and fussy he smiled to himself, he hoped would never end. “It’s kind of like being on a sailboat,” he said to the others.
“What?”
“This. Like setting out on a sailboat traveling the open sea.”
“I’m sure Nathan really appreciates the thought,” Sammy said. “You know, being on the ocean, on a sailing vehicle, a flying one maybe, a sailing flying car.”
Shawn shook his head humored, and clammed up.
“It is like that, Shawn,” Leeda said. “Like being on a lovely voyage, together with others like yourself, and not alone. For once, not alone, enjoying it, breeze on your face—”
“Please don’t open the windows, Leeda,” Sammy said.
“Breeze on your face,” she said, closing her eyes, “sun kissing your face, your head.”
Shawn nodded.
In 200-meters turn left, the navigation system announced. Make a left turn onto Route 10 in 200-meters, and continue north-northwest.
“Sun on my face, sun on my head,” Sammy quipped, eyes closed, leaning against the window. “I think I feel like Christopher Columbus felt.”
“Except Columbus knew where he was going,” Leeda turned smiling to him.
VII
Nearly dusk, the Range Rover drove along a country road, low hills in the distance before a setting sun.
In 100-meters, you will arrive at your destination on your right, the car’s navigation system announced to the passengers.
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 6