Destiny of Coins

by Aiden James

  She had the presence of mind to keep her panicked voice low as she pointed at a hulking figure moving toward us. The figure began to run.

  “There’s no time to waste—get inside now so we can shut the door!”

  I wasn’t able to prevent the slight whine obliterating my intent to remain calm—or, at least sound composed as I urged everyone to get their asses moving. Everyone knew by then it was Kaslow. Hell, we’d been expecting him for hours. But, I daresay those of us familiar with this soulless fiend were ill prepared for the physical changes I glimpsed just before sprinting into the adjacent tunnel with Francisco.

  Kaslow had already made it back to the prime of youth by virtue of the Tree of Life crystal piece lodged in his chest—Alistair and I had witnessed that fact in Hong Kong. However, his chiseled features somehow seemed sharper now, and his cold steel blue eyes were aglow as he grimaced.... If it had been any other time, perhaps, he would’ve seemed cartoonish. Sort of like a DC comic book character. He wasn’t near enormous or green-skinned like the Hulk…but Kaslow was substantially bigger since our last face-to-face confrontation. Bigger, as in taller and wider.

  “It almost doesn’t look like him,” said Alistair, in awe, dropping back to run beside me after Tampara closed the door behind us. Since the lock was on the other side, we would only have a brief reprieve before Viktor pursued us into the tunnel. “He’s almost as tall as Tampara. What in the hell is making him change like that?”

  “I don’t know, yet,” I said, thinking my boy might be exaggerating Kaslow’s new height to a degree…although the Russian was surely closer to seven feet from his previous six- foot-four stature in Hong Kong, slightly taller than the former KGB assassin had stood in his mortal state. “Just promise me that you’ll keep running until you and Amy are safe. And whatever I end up having to do to keep the two of you among the living, roll with me on it. You got that, son?”

  He didn’t answer me, but my hardened stare as we followed Rafael sprinting down another tunnel was enough to get him to nod. My boy would keep his word.

  We reached an intersection of several converging tunnels, and by then Francisco had moved to the front with Rafael. Meanwhile, a loud explosion behind us announced the ancient door separating the caverns from the castle had just been destroyed. Our Essene hosts motioned for us to quietly follow them into one of the tunnels to our left—one far narrower than the previous two tunnels, which had brought to mind images of angels in full flight racing through chasms hewn to accommodate their wingspans.

  This tunnel led to a steep stairway. After carefully descending single file to the bottom, Francisco entered a code into a small keypad on the right side of the wall. A steel door appeared in front of us that gleamed from soft green ambient lights imbedded in the stone wall surrounding it. The door slid open.

  We stepped into darkness that immediately gave way to several overhead recessed lights in a room much larger than I expected for a bunker. It housed several couches, a small modern kitchen and eating area, as well as what looked like a state-of-the-art entertainment/theater system. A small restroom was also present, in the room’s far right corner.

  The door closed behind us, while another booming thud resounded in the tunnels behind us. I prayed Kaslow was unaware of where we were at the moment. Knowing his penchant for reading my thoughts, I consciously sought to forget about the lighted door and anything else that might tip him off to our present location.

  “We should pray Kaslow doesn’t find this place,” Francisco advised, nearly mirroring my private musing. “In the meantime, please feel free to make yourselves at home.”

  “Shouldn’t we be keeping our voices down?” worried Alistair, when Francisco’s powerful voice reverberated throughout the room.

  “This haven is soundproof, similar to the big recording studios in the western world,” Francisco advised, moving over to a desktop computer near the theatre console. He turned it on and immediately a large plasma screen on the widest wall came to life. A menu of security options appeared and after selecting one of these, two rows of boxed camera images filled the screen. “We will be able to monitor any activity going on in the tunnels closest to us, as well as a few remotes that are deeper in the cave system. Also, for those of you worrying about what recourse we’ll have if Kaslow finds us, there is another tunnel we can access through a hidden door inside the restroom. That tunnel leads to the main highway through this region of the Andes, about seven kilometers to the east of the castle.”

  “How long do you think we’ll be in here?” asked Amy.

  She seemed much calmer now, affectionately rubbing Alistair’s shoulder. He, on the other hand, was still just as tense as he’d been moving through the tunnels. He shot a grateful, loving smile to her that she reciprocated in kind.

  Amy’s question was directed to Roderick, of all people. Perhaps she figured the guy who spearheaded this coin-searching expedition should know the answer to that million-dollar question.

  “Until Kaslow finds us,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention.

  It wasn’t my intent to squash the lovebirds’ hopes or anyone else’s optimism. And, no one seemed to share my pessimism. Although, I damned well guarantee at least one other person in that room believed this was a possible outcome. Alistair and I had seen enough of Kaslow’s determination—including the fact he had miraculously beaten certain death twice in our presence—to realize he had the means to outlast us if we planned to head back the way we came.

  I decided to throw in a somewhat realistic ray of hope. “Or, at some point we’ll utilize the additional escape route Francisco gave us.”

  “What about your coin, Pops?” said Alistair, eying me worriedly, as if my latest glib response deserved a rebuke. “I would think he might double back to the castle and look for it while we’re in here. If he finds it before you do, Kaslow wins.”

  Great point, and one I had briefly considered. However, during the past two hours the coin’s call had become much more subtle, and then undetectable altogether, roughly forty-five minutes ago. Maybe the damned thing could cloak itself from evil, and this was a trait of the coin that hadn’t been elaborated upon.

  “Your father doesn’t know the location where it has been hidden for almost three hundred years,” Francisco advised. “I have yet to reveal that information to him. The coin has had several homes inside the castle, and the last time it was moved was when Giuseppe de la Serna tried to steal it from us.”

  “I take it this location change took place before my visits with Yael?” said Roderick, moving over to one of the couches and sitting down. Cedric took the opportunity to check the refrigerator for what I assumed was something alcoholic to sip on.

  “It was indeed long before my ancestor’s murder,” said Francisco. “It was during the reign of Yael’s great uncle, Zalik ben Shaphan, who was our Superior from 1562 until 1614.”

  He paused to enlarge one of the camera images on the display screen. The image showed Kaslow trotting through a tunnel away from us. Strapped to his back were a number of automatic rifles, grenade launchers, and something that looked an awful lot like a miniature version of the fusion generator/reconfiguration beam devices, or FGRs, that Petr Stanislavsky had used to uncover the Garden of Eden in Iran.

  “There is a legend almost as old as the coin itself—and perhaps you have heard this, as well, Judas,” continued Francisco. “When it was first brought to this continent, it was wrapped in cerecloth, and the cerecloth was said to have come from the leftover burial materials used to prepare Joses’ body when he crossed over into the afterlife. The ‘Singing Coin’ was said to be sleeping when wrapped inside this particular cerecloth. And, for the first century of our stay here in the Andes, the coin was always wrapped in its protective cover, and no one could hear its call. However, when the shroud material began to decay—despite having been dipped in the very wax that bathed the rest of Joses’ burial shroud—the two were separated, in order to preserve the cerecloth. It is th
e only thing we have handed down to us from this brother of Jesus.”

  “Something tells me there’s a point to this latest story of yours,” said Cedric, obviously disappointed the refrigerator contained only bottled water as a beverage. “I’m thinking William might be right about Kaslow, so I hope you’ve got enough time to tell us how it all ends.”

  He pointed toward the middle screen, where Kaslow had slowed his pace moving through the tunnels. The Russian was walking now, and would occasionally close his luminous eyes and sniff the air.

  No storyteller likes to be shut down—even if for fairly valid reasons. But, Francisco did move to finish making his point.

  “As Roderick and Judas have correctly stated, the coin without its wrapping can still only be heard by the most righteous and unholy of individuals,” he said, his tone less enthusiastic after Cedric’s barb. Like the rest of us, his eyes were trained on the video screen, and as he zoomed in to the image Cedric had pointed to, all of us moved closer to the screen to get a better view. “Giuseppe was not a good man, and he tried to steal the coin after finding its location. Like so many before him, he was mesmerized by the coin’s uniqueness, and believed the Holy See should be the owner of this ‘holy relic’ of Christendom. According to Zalik’s diary, this Franciscan envisioned himself as some sort of hero if he could bring the coin back to Europe.”

  “Is that all? Surely there is more,” said Alistair, When Francisco grew silent while typing new commands into the computer.

  “Giuseppe obviously failed, and had it not been for my ancestors’ fear of the Conquistadors, they would’ve killed him on the spot,” continued Francisco, smiling at my boy after finishing his latest command input. “Instead, Zalik destroyed the map Giuseppe had made of his journey to the castle. Then, several of Zalik’s most trusted men led the embittered monk back to La Paz blindfolded. It almost proved to be our undoing, as Giuseppe remembered enough to recreate the map, which is the very one Kaslow apparently used to find the castle. Fortunately for us—at least back then—the Spanish were focused on procuring gold and precious gems, and not at all interested in a seemingly meaningless silver relic. Giuseppe eventually returned to Madrid empty handed. He died in poverty in 1609, and it was nearly seventy years later that his diary ended up in Rome, after a Vatican Cardinal heard the legend of the Franciscan monk who had witnessed the most unusual coin attributed to you, Judas, as part of the blood money payment.”

  Francisco’s voice was compassionate. Nonetheless, the words cut through to my very core. I might’ve been sucked down into a terrible void if not for what he said next.

  “Would you like to behold your coin, Judas?”

  “What do you mean?” A logical question, but I knew what he meant by his query. “It’s not in the castle, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  If he had been worried about everyone’s attention earlier, certainly all eyes were upon him now.

  “Here it is.”

  He pulled out a piece of yellowed cloth from his breast pocket and handed it to me. Even before he did, my left hand began to tremble horribly, like a crack-starved junkie about to take a hit. I could see the soft blue glow in circular form beneath the ancient cerecloth that still bore wax residue from nearly two thousand years ago.

  Roderick saw it, too—his eyes said as much. Everyone else could at least discern the significance of what was placed inside by palm by this latest Essene Superior—the very last of his kind, according to what he told Roderick the night before.

  “Can we see it?” asked Amy. Her gorgeous green eyes were filled with childlike wonder.

  “Maybe later,” I told her, while images of my Lord’s night of betrayal swirled ever closer. All that protected me from the onslaught was the cerecloth of the disciple who picked up the coin as I fled Simon Zelotes’ courtyard.

  “It will have to be later,” advised Tampara, drawing everyone’s attention back to the plasma screen. “Look!”

  Viktor Kaslow was no longer meditating and sniffing the air around him. He had found one of the cameras and torn it out of its perch, and now brought it close to his face, giving us a less than lovely view of those garishly chiseled features that were once handsome, and his cold steel-blue glowing eyes. But it wasn’t the worst aspect for me…that came from the feeling he looked right at us.

  Realization spread to everyone else, amid hushed gasps.

  He chuckled in response, and smiled menacingly.

  “Peek-a-boo, I see you!”, he sneered into the camera’s audio recorder. “See you in a few!”

  The screen went blank, and before we could begin the discussion of what in the hell to do next, the bunker’s lights flickered. The floor began to tremble beneath our feet. Those of us who had seen firsthand the FGR technology in action understood all too clearly that the world outside our bunker room was disappearing. Within the next minute, Kaslow would be dropping in on us for a visit.

  Chapter 14

  One might think the smart thing to do was access the secret doorway in the restroom and scurry into the tunnel that would take everyone to safety several miles from the castle. It was, in fact, exactly what Francisco and Rafael set out to do in an orderly fashion. But all hell broke loose when the first bright blue rays from Kaslow’s FGR seeped into the bunker. The left far corner of the room began to disintegrate, and what was left of the cave wall on the other side of the bunker’s cement façade collapsed into the room.

  Everything still attached to the walls on either side of the growing hole in the corner either disappeared before our eyes or fell on the stone floor eroding beneath the carpet. The large plasma television screen exploded as it fell face down…but that event happened before the screen reached the floor. Part of it looked impossibly stretched, as the molecules that made up the screen’s frame were pulled into the FGR’s powerful sapphire beam.

  The enormous human holding the device stepped over the crumbled wall fragments, his heavy boots resounding loudly as he turned off the FGR and laid it on the table. Without saying a word Kaslow surveyed his mostly terrified audience and pulled out a semi-automatic Steyr, equipped with a silencer. Not that such discretion mattered at this point.

  He pointed the gun at Rafael’s head. I understood the tactic, as did Cedric and Roderick, since one of our Soviet enemy’s favorite tactics during the Cold War was to take the weakest member of a group of captives and immediately put a bullet between their eyes. Then, he would calmly introduce himself and use the bleeding corpse as a reminder of his willingness to use the most brutal means available to coerce cooperation from everyone else.

  There wouldn’t be time enough to intercept Kaslow this time—at least not by Roderick, Cedric, and myself. We were the only ones with the rare skills to offset his cunningness as a human being. But the last of this monster’s humanity was long gone—we already knew this. Rafael was going to die. Even this mild-mannered Essene recognized his fate, closing his eyes and placing his right hand over his heart while murmuring an ancient prayer.

  I froze, I admit. To try and overpower Kaslow would mean several more of our companions would wear bleeding holes in their foreheads. Kaslow’s only distraction was to leer contemptuously at Alistair and Amy. My boy clung tightly to his beloved, his arms trembling as he moved to shelter her. No matter how I ran the various scenarios through my head, they all resulted in the likelihood that only Tampara, Roderick, and I would remain standing with Kaslow in the next twenty seconds.

  We needed a miracle. I never dreamed it would come from a mortal human being.

  “Both Rafael and I are ready to be with Elohim, and enter His eternal joy—something you will never experience!” said Francisco, with what turned out to be the perfect blend of serenity and confidence.

  He stepped in front of Rafael, who stopped trembling upon Francisco’s announcement. Francisco brazenly moved closer to Kaslow, whose weapon was now trained instead upon the Essene Superior’s chest. Francisco’s behavior made me wonder if he had an in
kling he would die that day, and it was why he told Roderick last night the long reign of Bolivian Essene Superiors would end with him.

  Meanwhile, Kaslow snickered with deep contempt. But the fact he hadn’t shot anyone yet made me wonder if Francisco’s unexpected behavior had thrown a small foil into the fiend’s plans. It certainly had done something…and as Kaslow glared angrily at the unflustered ruler of the castle, I had the sudden inspiration to make a move. The idea that occurred to me could be no more insane than Francisco’s maneuver, but it certainly carried the risk of losing everything.

  I acted upon it anyway.

  While the immortal monster focused his ire upon Francisco, I quietly stepped away from everyone else. Kaslow’s FGR had pulled away enough of the wall to where I could likely squeeze through a small opening next to the bunker’s main entrance. Once I was within a few feet of the crevice, I opened my palm and pulled away the cerecloth from my coin. It took incredible willpower to push aside the rush of memories that flooded in from the shekel’s touch upon my skin. But a false move here would prove fatal to more than just me.

  Kaslow’s initial response was almost magical. The coin glowed in the most intense cerulean shade I had ever seen—including my Lord’s eyes from the past night’s dream and even the FGR’s intense blue light. The coin pulled Kaslow’s complete attention, and his malicious scowl from a moment before faded into a look of child-like wonder. Surely, Francisco and Roderick witnessed the intense color as well as Tampara—at least their expressions matched our enemy’s awe.

  As for the others, they couldn’t detect the coin’s magnificent sheen, as I expected. Instead, they looked at me with either surprised or horrified expressions. I’m sure it looked as if I was bailing on them all, and had only waited to flee the bunker until I could taunt Kaslow with the prize he coveted.

  It brought a slight impish smile to my face. After all, I had yet to deliver my verbal insults to him.