“My son?” Omar looked about in panic.
“Omar Kadif’s son.” One of the Fox colonels corrected him. “The Prophet’s son has told us all about you.”
“He’s lying!” Omar shouted. “Ruth!! Ruth!! Come out here!!” He tried to get away from them, kicking and yanking free of the terrified guards. He ran back up the stairs, shouting for Ruth, knocking both of the officers against the railing. He stopped long enough to throw down two marble statues from their niches in front of the men.
Ruth opened the door and stepped into the hall, pulling on a house robe, just as the second statue crashed to the floor sending up sparks and flying chunks of rock.
“Omar!!” she shouted in alarm and confusion.
“Ruth!! Tell them!!” He reached the top of the stairs as shots rang out below him. Ruth screamed, and then fell on the floor as stray bullets zipped past her head.
Omar jerked forward under the impact as some of the bullets hit their mark, striking him in the back. He fell to his knees on the balcony, unable to believe what was happening. Ruth continued to scream as he crawled toward her, trailing dark lines of blood behind him.
“Ruth, it’s Bari! It’s Bari!” he called to her once more before toppling on his back. The five men rushed up the stairs and knelt beside him.
Ruth was pulled to her feet and someone hugged her tightly.
“Mother!” Bari shook her and pulled her hands from her face. “Mother! It’s alright! It’s alright now! I’m here. I’m going to take care of you, la mia cara.”
Ruth looked into her son’s eyes and then fainted against him.
(((((((((((((
Mark Andrew kept one hand clamped on Levi’s neck as they carried him haphazardly back to the house. It took Konrad, Marduk and Nergal to carry the unconscious priest up the winding walks and across the lawn. Seamus and Paddy half-carried, half-dragged the little healer with them and the Tuathans followed at a distance behind the Lord of the First Gate. When they reached the porch, Nanna turned back and gave orders for the Tuathans to surround the house and stand watch. He did not enter the house, but hunkered down on the porch in the shadows.
Inside the house, they laid the priest out on the billiard table. Mark held on as best he could, staunching the flow of blood while trying not to choke him to death in the process.
“Selwig!!” he shouted for the healer.
Seamus and Paddy presented the frightened Selwig and hefted him onto the table.
“Do what you can for him!” Mark Andrew told him.
Selwig dumped the contents of his yellow bag onto the table and began to rummage through the various items in great haste. He found a leather pouch and poured a brown powder in his hand. Selwig's eyes were wide and his face very pale and a trail of blood trickled down his face from a cut over his left eye. He blinked rapidly, took a deep breath and steadied himself as he leaned over Levi's neck.
“I’m ready.” He nodded and held his hand over Levi’s chest.
Mark Andrew let go of the wound and stepped back. Selwig clamped his own smaller hand and the powder over the gash and sat very still. Konrad picked up Levi’s right wrist and felt for a pulse. He was still alive. Still breathing, but he had lost a great deal of blood. Mark turned on his fellow watchers and glared at them with open animosity.
“If ye’d not come ’ere interferin’ in me wark, this wud not ’ave ’appened!” he shouted at them. “I’m sick t’ death o’ yur meddlin’! Now look wot ye’ve done!”
He drew the golden sword and they fell back from him.
“Adar!” Nanna’s voice called to him from outside. “Adar! Lay down your weapon!”
“I canna do thot!” Mark Andrew shouted over his shoulder. A red haze obscured his vision. He lowered his head and stood blinking rapidly at al Sajek and Gerald Lorn.
“You can and you will!” Nanna’s voice drifted through the haze in his head. “You cannot kill them! You know that!”
“I can and I will!” Mark advanced on them and they stumbled backwards. Neither of them had drawn their weapons.
“No, you can’t,” a woman’s voice startled him. “Mark Andrew? Come outside and sit with us.”
Mark turned slowly toward the sound of her voice. She stood in the door, dressed entirely in white like a vision straight out of one of his dreams.
“Meredith?” He blinked at her in confusion. He was covered with blood. Levi’s blood. It was like a nightmare.
“Mark.” She smiled slightly at him and held out her hand. “Come outside. Please.”
“Meredith.” He thought that he must have passed out and was now dreaming. She was walking toward him. She was stopping in front of him. She was smiling at him as if nothing had ever happened. She took hold of the hilt of the sword and pushed it down.
“Konrad,” Meredith said softly and smiled at the frozen Knight of the Apocalypse. He still stood holding Levi’s wrist limply in his hand. She glanced at Marduk and Nergal. “You two. Both of you!” She jerked her head toward the door. “It’s time to settle this thing.”
Mark shook his head and the silver trinkets in his hair jingled. He looked back at the billiard table where Selwig was working on Levi with Paddy and Seamus’ help. All three of the diminutive creatures were on the table now, laboring to save Simon’s son.
“Meredith,” he said her name again and felt as if he were drifting in a cold bath.
“Come on now.” She linked her arm through his and drew him toward the door.
When they stepped into the gloom on the porch, Mark looked about for the Lord of the First Gate, but he was gone. Farther along the porch, a figure dressed in a white Templar uniform sat rocking in a wicker rocker, tapping the toe of his tall, black leather boot with the tip of his silver and gold broadsword.
Meredith pulled him along the porch. The cool breeze of the night brushed his face and he shivered.
“John Paul?” He stopped a few feet from the chair.
The Knight stood up and smiled at him.
“Papa.”
John Paul smiled at him and he felt the world crash in on him.
John Paul caught him when he fell and eased him into the rocking chair. Meredith picked up his sword and propped it against the wall carefully.
“Now what?” Al Sajek asked sourly as he slumped onto the steps and propped his chin in his hand like a petulant child. “How long do we have to wait on sleeping beauty?”
Nergal plopped down beside him and began to trace his finger over the wood of the porch railing. He had no intention of taking on Lord Adar and Lord Nanna! Not even with the assistance of Marduk and all the boggans in the underworld.
“You will wait until the cows come home if necessary, Bucko,” Meredith told him and kicked at him with her booted foot.
Marduk looked up at the woman in astonishment.
“Have I sunk so low?” he moaned and looked up at the moon. “Anu! Why have you deserted your son?”
“Shut up!” Merry kicked at him again and then bent to look into Mark’s face. He was sleeping very peacefully. She ran one hand down his face and then looked at the blood on her hand. “John?” She turned to her son. “Could we put this off for a bit?” she asked and he frowned at her. “Puh-lease?”
“Mother.” He shook his head slowly.
“Just help me clean him up a bit and then we can sit down together and discuss this thing,” she said. “I saw a very nice old tub upstairs… you know? The kind with real brass claws, sitting on crystal spheres?” She began to tug on the Knight of Death's arm. “And one of those funny toilets with the tank waaaay up high. And you should see the antiques up there. I love this place! I wonder why he never told me he owned it?”
John Paul sighed audibly, picked up his father and threw him over his shoulder effortlessly as his mother continued to expound upon the beauties and amenities of the house and grounds. Meredith recovered the golden sword and admired its beauty briefly. She glanced back at al Sajek and Nergal and the line of Tua
than horses visible in the yard beyond them.
“Don’t run off now,” Meredith told them over her shoulder as she followed John Paul into the house. “We’ll be right back now.”
Nergal nodded and Marduk rolled his eyes.
“Now look what you’ve gotten us into!” Nergal snapped at his companion as soon as they disappeared.
“We can just walk out of here,” al Sajek suggested and glanced at the lighted windows behind them. “They can’t hold us.”
“No?” Nergal shoved him viciously. “Then why are you just sitting there?”
“I would like to hear what my brother, Nanna, has to say.” Marduk shrugged. “We have lost the treasure… whatever it was. We have a bit of time to spare. We might learn something useful.”
“Ohhhh. So that is it? And I thought you were afraid of Nanna,” Nergal spat in disgust.
“Ho, Lord Marduk!” Lemarik swayed across the lawn toward them. His sparkling armor peeked from beneath his purple robe and a long plume of matching feathers fell from his helmet. “Lord Nergal! Did you miss me?” He held up a small brass bottle in front of them.
“You!” Marduk looked away from him. “One day I will have you again, my friend.”
“But this is not that day.” Lemarik stopped in front of them. “You forgot your Djinni.” He tossed the brass bottle on the ground in front of them.
Marduk scooped up the bottle and pulled out the leather-covered stopper. He shook the bottle over the steps, but nothing happened.
“Ohhh. Ahhhh.” Lemarik leaned forward and smiled at him wickedly. “He’s not at home. Too bad.”
“What did you do with my soldiers, you purple worm?” Marduk threw the bottle across the yard. None of the black-clad horsemen had come to the house with them.
“I buried the dead ones,” Lemarik said and brushed between them on his way up the steps.
“What did you do with the live ones?” Nergal turned to watch him as he inspected everything on the porch.
“I buried them as well. Ohhh. This is very pleasant. Jasmine would like it. I must build such a place for my beautiful Jasmine.” The Mighty Djinni sat on the porch railing and pulled a long, slender pipe from the pocket of his robe.
Chapter Seventeen of Twenty
who can tell a man what shall be after him under the sun?
“Spirit of the Wanderer of the Wastes, Remember. Spirit of the planet of time, Remember! Spirit of the Plane of the Hunter, Remember.”
Omar sat on the considerably less than pristine floor of the tiny cell in the heart of the police station. There were two burly guards posted outside the steel door. He had been stripped searched and given only a pair of paper pajama pants, no shoes, nothing. The guards did not know him. They were told he was a lunatic… suicidal. No one had come to question him about anything. It was very difficult to believe that his son could have pulled this off so soon. They had been back in New Babylon no more than a few weeks.
“Ninib, Lord of the Dark Ways, Remember. Ninib, Lord of the Secret Passages, Remember,” he muttered the words of the invocation of the watcher of the Seventh Gate. He had no sword. No magick circle. He imagined or tried to imagine, the circle around him. Tried to envision his sword planted in the ground in front of him.
The room darkened slightly and seemed to fill with a gray mist, obscuring the lines of the door in the barren gray wall in front of him. A shadowy form wavered in front of his face. It was almost impossible to concentrate in the smelly confines of the graffitti-covered room. His mind was still reeling from what had happened; from what he had sensed in his wife’s bedroom. Bari had been there. In his mother’s room, but even Bari could not have been so foul, so evil. Surely he had been mistaken in his rage over the visions in his scrying dish. Surely his son could not have been so corrupted and debased by his brief association with Jozsef Daniel. But it had taken only seconds for the evil one to take the gentle Jozsef and make him into a monster.
The form wavered and the light returned. He’d lost his train of thought… yet again. He began the invocation of the Ninib Gate, forcing his mind clear of all other thoughts. Ninib, Adar, the mighty Hunter. Adar, Lord of the Seventh Gate! He had to contact his grandfather and his father. He had to tell them what was happening here… they were so far away.
“Ninib, knower of the secrets of all things, Remember. Ninib, knower of the ways of the Ancient Ones, Remember.” He redoubled his efforts and closed his eyes as the room grew dim once more. He was yanked to his feet and thrown on the small, hard bed, face down and a heavy weight descended on his back as he struggled.
“I told you to watch him!” a voice shouted in the room. “He is very dangerous, y'know!”
“Hold him!” Another voice very near his ear shouted. He felt his hands being cuffed behind his back and then his feet, though he tried hard to get away from his captors. Someone pressed his face into the mattress, almost smothering him. He gave one last great effort and the pressure increased on the back of his head and his air was cut off. Within a few moments he lost consciousness altogether. When he opened his eyes, he was lying on his side with his hands behind him. It was not the best position he could think of and quite painful. He tried to pull his arms up, but when he pulled on his arms, his feet came up as well. The cuffs on his wrists were attached to the shackles on his ankles. All he could manage was to turn on his stomach and he was too close to the edge of the bed. When he could no longer stand the pain in his shoulders, he turned and ended up on the floor on his stomach with his feet in the air behind him. His face was pressed against the cold concrete and his breath was knocked from his lungs for several seconds.
“Hello!!” he shouted. “Help me up here!”
He heard a slight bumping at the door, but nothing happened. No one came to help him. Now he could not even sit to perform the invocation. The chain pulled on his wrists unless he held his feet up. He had gone from bad to worse and the room was quite chilly. He began to shiver in the thin paper trousers and he had numerous sore spots, especially where the two bullets had entered his back. These were burning as if coals lay on him and the matching spots, the exit wounds on his chest, and his left side were equally painful. They had placed bandages on him, but given him nothing for pain. Had he been a mortal man, he would have been dead already. Why did they no longer believe him? Surely they could see he was the Prophet. That he had to be the Prophet! Who else could have survived the shooting and still be able to move about? The answer to that question made him groan. He wondered what his son had said that had convinced them.
“Spirit of the Wanderer of the Wastes, Remember,” he started the invocation, this time more quietly. He had to succeed in spite of the condition in which he found himself. He had done it before while hanging over a foul pit in the Abyss. He could do it again. He knew he could. Hell, he had to!
(((((((((((((
Mark Andrew lay in the hot soapy water in the antique iron tub on the second floor of the mansion on Lake Canandaigua. In his mind, he drifted on the surface of a warm blue sea, surrounded by playful dolphins and soaring sea birds. The sun was warm on his face and his hair drifted lazily about his head. It was peaceful and serene here. Someone was calling to him, but he did not want to answer. He did not want to awaken from this dream. Did not want to leave Meredith again. She was with him here. He didn’t know where she was, but he could feel her nearby, smell her. He wanted to see her, but he was afraid to open his eyes, afraid that the illusion would fade. Afraid that…
“Adar!” One of the dolphins nudged him and water washed over his head and his face, entering his nose painfully. “Adar!” The dolphin insisted on bothering him.
The water flowed into his face, over his head and in his mouth when he reflexively opened it.
Mark Andrew sputtered and his eyes flew open.
Lemarik stood between his knees in the tub, leaning over him, gazing into his face curiously.
“Great Scot!” He floundered and sank in the tub before being p
ulled up quickly by one arm.
“You will drown yourself, my father.” Lemarik frowned at him. “It is not safe to sleep in the bath. You will breathe the water and become one with the fishes!”
“Where is everyone?!” Mark pushed himself up to a sitting position and smoothed his hair back out of his face. “What am I doing in here?”
“Meredith brought you here.” Lemarik said as he stepped from the tub perfectly dry. “You were quite messy.”
“Levi!” Mark started up out of the tub and the door opened. “Meredith! Merry? What are you doing here? Where is Luke Matthew? What has happened?” He sank again under the soapy water when his feet slipped on the smooth surface.
Meredith had found towels for him. She handed one over and laid the other on the edge of the tub.
“Everything is fine, Mark,” she told him. “I tried to find you some clean clothes. I hope these will do.” She draped a black bundle over a table near the tall, narrow window. “Levi is going to be all right. Your little healer is quite talented.”
“Selwig?” Mark Andrew frowned. It had not been a dream. This was not Merry Ramsay, this was Meredith. And Nanna. The Lord of the First Gate was here as well! He was downstairs.
Ashmodel had told him that Meredith had been given to the Lord of the First Gate. He’d thought it only metaphorical. The First Gate was similar to purgatory, was in fact, where Purgatory began, where souls of the lesser sinners went to atone for their transgressions.
Meredith sat down on a brass and velvet chair, folding her hands in her lap, smiling at him with evident joy.
“I have wanted to see you, Mark,” she told him. “I have never stopped thinking of you.”
“Ahhh.” Lemarik raised up with a long-handled brush in his hand. “Shall I scrub your back, Father?”
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