by J. R. Rain
“It’s fine.” There was a third chair, so I sat. “So what were you guys talking about?”
“Hope was just telling me about how she can time travel.”
“You mind telling me, too?”
“Of course not, silly,” said Hope. “Well, I have to tune into something very small, because to travel in time and to fit through dimensions, the smaller the energy, the better. Once my energy is connected, it’s almost like when you and I talk without talking.”
“Like when we use our audial skills?” I asked.
“Yep. Exactly like that.”
Connecting with my animal energies was the first thing my father had taught me, even before he’d taught me how to set up energetic shields. He also taught me that everything had an energy field. Quantum physics proved this. All humans have the ability to connect with any living and nonliving thing, simply by deep meditation. However, it could take years for the average person to access this ability. For people with psychic skills, it was much easier to access. And faster.
“Then what happens?” I asked her, truly fascinated.
“Once I’m connected, I stay with the energy and I make the request of where I want to go and be. I have to show the place in as clear a picture as I can, which can be hard because I’m going back in time. Sometimes, I get it wrong. It’s kind of like half the time, because I’m still working on it. The really hard part is equalizing my energy with the guide, which is sometimes the tiger moth, and sometimes a hummingbird. It just depends on who I feel the closest connection to at the time. It’s not always easy or quick.”
“How often have you traveled back in time?” Noah asked.
She shrugged. “A couple of dozen, I guess. We started by going back in small increments of time, like five minutes, then ten. I eventually went all the way back to the Gold Rush, which was what we were studying in school. I stayed there for a day and watched. It was pretty cool. Then I came back. I got in trouble for staying so long.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You said we. Who’s we?”
“Mr. Simms and my teacher, Gary.”
“He’s a teacher at the school?” Noah asked. He looked at me. I shrugged. This was news to me. Then again, I obviously wasn’t privy to all the goings-on at the school.
“Yes. He wanted us to just call him Gary.”
A silver hummingbird with a crimson chest buzzed around us for a moment and then went on his merry way, discovering a feeder close by. I filed it in the back of my mind to check into later. Hummingbirds and their energy were something I connected highly with and, usually, when one of my guides made an obvious presence, there was information that I needed to access. I checked in for a few seconds to see if there was anything dangerous close by, and didn’t get a positive affirmation on it, so I tuned back into the conversation.
“Does this Gary know how to time travel?”
Hope nodded. “He does, but it’s not as easy for him. It’s not easy for any adult, really.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Gary tried to say that it was because young energy is more open and connected to all energies around us, and our guides are more willing to help us. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but he said that he was able to travel a lot better as a kid, and that he wanted to teach me, so that my skills could grow.”
Something wasn’t sitting well with me. “How old do you think Gary is?”
“I don’t know. Like your age, maybe.”
That would put him around thirty.
“What does he look like?” Noah asked.
“He’s really tall, brown eyes, brownish hair.”
“Did you like him?”
She shrugged. “No. Not really. I didn’t really like anyone at the school. They kept us there and I felt like they were just using me. I felt like a robot. That’s why I escaped, and then Orlenda took me. The only one I cared about there was my mom.”
The subject had circled back to her mom, as it always would do, until I finally told her what I knew. Which I did now, and it was one of the hardest things I had ever done.
Chapter Thirteen
“Are you okay, sweetie?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” said my little sister. “I always knew she was different. I always knew that we were different. I guess, well, I guess none of what you told me is a surprise.”
Too young to be so cynical, I thought. But could I blame her?
“Hope,” I asked, pushing on, since I did have questions of my own. “Did all the kids at the school have a mom? And a dad?”
“No dads, and no, not everyone had a mother. Only a few of us. There was me, a boy named Brian who is like Noah—he reads the past really well. A friend of mine, Rachel, who is an empath, can not only detect what people are feeling, but she was being trained to change those feelings within them.”
Noah whistled. “That’s a new one.”
For a brief second, a thought of John and what his abilities once were flashed through my mind. He couldn’t change the way people felt emotionally, but he could heal them. “Anyone else have a mom?”
“A couple of the older kids. But I didn’t really know too much about them.”
Now why would only a few of these kids have pseudo-moms? The only conclusion that I was coming up with was that these few kids were exceptionally special, and had around the clock “watch” service. In other words, these kids were so valuable to the program that Simms needed them controlled at all levels, every second of the day.
Yeah, something big was going on.
“I seemed to be the only kid who had shown the possibility of being able to time travel who was living up to my potential,” Hope said.
“It’s why you’re a wanted kid,” Noah said.
I gave him a sharp look.
“It’s okay, Kylie,” she said. “I know I am. I want to stop Orlenda and Grant Simms. They both want me because I can time travel.”
“Hey, why does everyone look so serious?” asked a voice from behind us. We all looked up to see that Ayden had found us.
“I’m telling Noah and Kylie about how to time travel and that we have to stop Orlenda and Grant.”
“Sounds like a party.”
“Hardly,” I said, and caught him up.
“Well, I have news, too,” he said. “I was able to tune into our friend, Orlenda. She was holding a meeting with two Russians. They didn’t appear too pleased with her. In fact, they appeared to be making some threats from what I could gather. She handed them a photo of Hope.”
“She is double-crossing a man named Ivan Propokensko,” said Hope, jumping in. “I heard her tell this to Echidna. She was going to take his money. She planned to have Echidna and someone named Geryon assassinate him. She’s been selling my ‘services’ to the highest bidder.”
“How do any of these people even believe that you can go back in time?” Noah asked.
“I don’t know,” Hope said.
“Orlenda can be very convincing,” I said, since I knew the woman well. “Besides, she may not have told them what Hope can do. She just may have simply promised them the power and control that they crave. Sweetie, do you know who else she made deals with?”
“A Middle Eastern man. I don’t know his name, and a Chinese woman that she called Lucy, but I know that’s not her real name.”
“Right. Okay. So, Orlenda is raking in the cash by making promises that she never plans on delivering because she planned to use you herself, but to do what?”
“To find the one who is good and the one who is evil, so she can destroy the good, and work with the evil,” Hope said. “At least, that’s what I heard her say.”
“And, Grant Simms?” asked Ayden. “Do you know how he fits in?”
“No,” Hope said. “I’m sorry.”
“I think we all need to set up some strong shields,” Ayden said. “And keep them up. Lord only knows who’s listening to us now.”
It was good advice and we did so now. Each of us chos
e a quiet spot in the garden, where we could meditate. I called upon a lioness, and since I was standing on monastery grounds, I asked Mother Mary to seal the shield around me. None of us shared who or what we used for our shields. It was personal and, by sharing, we would be breaking universal codes. It was kind of like wishing upon a star, or tossing a penny into a wishing well. One could not reveal the wish without compromising it.
When finished, Ayden stood and clapped his hands. “Who’s hungry?”
* * *
Before lunch, Sister Marie-Luce set a gift wrapped in golden paper before Hope.
“I was told to give this to you,” she said to the girl.
“Really? By who?”
“Saint Eligius,” said the nun. “He is the saint of clockmakers, which you will need, and also the saint of horses, which I think you will need as well. What little girl doesn’t? Open it.”
Hope opened the box and took out a locket. It was made of gold, which made my eyes bug out a little. It also looked old. Mostly, it looked expensive. Hope opened it, revealing a timepiece within. She closed it and turned it over. On the back of the locket was a cross.
“It’s so pretty,” she said to Sister Marie-Luce. “Thank you!”
“You will know when you need to use it. Now, let’s feast and then we’ll discuss what I’ve seen.” I noticed Noah and Marie-Luce exchange glances, as if they’d shared some kind of knowledge together. I frowned.
After a short prayer, we gorged ourselves on roasted chicken, potatoes, greens, and fruits. Dessert was a delicious chocolate cake. Afterward, I wanted to ask Marie-Luce what the locket meant, but could tell by the way she’d looked at Hope that the gift was meant only for her and that she would understand the use of it at some point on this journey.
Leave it to Ayden to be the one to look directly at Marie-Luce as soon as he’d swallowed the last bite of his cake and ask, “Okay, Sister, what have you seen?”
Chapter Fourteen
“This document you seek of good and evil can be found at the Qumran caves. Cave four, to be exact, where the Book of Enoch was discovered.”
“The Book of Enoch?” Noah said.
“Yes,” said the nun. “The book was never canonized and is not recognized by the Catholic Church. Some say it was not written from the Divine.”
“What about cave four?” Ayden asked.
“There were eleven caves where the scrolls were found, not far from here,” Noah said.
“That’s correct,” Marie-Luce said. “There are sections of the Book of Enoch that some say have not been made public. I do not know who has those fragments. I cannot see. And, so the way to retrieve them is...”
“Go back in time to when they were written,” I said.
“You have got to be kidding me,” said Noah. “For pages? In a book?”
Ayden held up a hand. “Sister, what do you know about the Book of Enoch?”
“There is much to the book. It is very apocalyptic. There is the Book of Watchers included in the first section of the Book of Enoch, which details the fall of the Watchers who were angels who had been dispatched to Earth to watch humans. They lusted for the human women, and their leader, Samyaza, instructed them to procreate with human women. Their children were known as Nephilim, considered to be savage giants who pillaged the earth and endangered humanity. Samyaza taught humanity weaponry, sorcery, and other violent ways. God eventually destroyed the Nephilim in the great flood where he first sent Uriel to warn Noah of the coming cataclysm. According to the book, the Watchers are bound to valleys of the Earth until Judgment Day, kept in chains until then.”
“What does this have to do with anything?” asked Noah. “What does it have to do with us and the girl and time travel? Why should we give a damn about this book?”
Sister Marie-Luce said, “It has to do with everything. Most importantly, it has to do with the end of days.”
“End of days?” said Noah.
“Or, to put it even more dramatically. The end of life as we know it on earth.”
“And you have seen this, sister?” asked Ayden.
My old friend didn’t immediately respond, but when she did, she nodded only once. “I have seen glimpses.”
“Glimpses of what?”
But she wouldn’t answer, and for that, I think, I was thankful.
Chapter Fifteen
“What if we didn’t send Hope all the way back to when the Book of Enoch was written,” said Ayden.
“What do you mean?” I asked. We were all sitting around the small pond. Sister Marie-Luce was in prayers with the other nuns.
“I mean, we know where the sites are. We know when the scrolls were discovered. We can send her a few years before the actual discoveries were made, or we send her while excavations were occurring and she poses as a young Bedouin shepherd, which is who discovered the first set of scrolls anyway.”
Noah shook his head. “You’re asking a child to go looking for something she isn’t sure how or where to locate. She won’t have the tools to do an archaeological dig.”
“Then send her back to when the scrolls are first discovered.”
“She’ll be noticed by others and may have to explain herself,” I said.
“Pick your poison,” said Ayden. “None of the scenarios make much sense, but sending her back thousands of years sounds just too...crazy and dangerous.”
He had a point. All of it sounded crazy and dangerous. What the hell was in this book?
Noah sat forward. “What if we had a map of where we might find these particular scrolls?”
“And I may be able to connect psychically to the past and pinpoint exactly where she might find the scrolls,” added Ayden. “Especially if we had a relic from that time period.”
“That’s wishful thinking,” I said. “I don’t mean to demean your abilities, but—”
Ayden cut me off. He had that faraway look in his eye that we all sometimes get. “I’m getting something. Wolf.”
“Wolf?” I said.
Ayden nodded, eyes staring. “It’s your buddy at PSI. He’s got access to a map. It’s something that is in a file—a computer file. All sorts of maps and directions as to where to locate certain scrolls, items, things of importance. It’s not just Dead Sea Scroll stuff. It has information on the school and a lot of other things. I don’t know, but I’m telling you that Wolf has access.”
“Does he know that he has this information?” asked Noah.
“That I don’t know,” Ayden said. “Simms probably had him encrypt it. Either way, I think you need to call Wolf. He’s our guy.”
Noah shook his head. “That could be dangerous. Even with energetic shields around us. Once one of us has direct contact within the PSI, we risk breaking it and exposing our location.”
I knew what Noah said was true, but I had to agree with Ayden. “If Wolf has access to a map and is willing to help us, then our goal could be attainable. Without that intel, it’ll be like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
“And why do we need this damn book again?” asked Noah.
“We don’t,” I said. “But Orlenda does—”
“She doesn’t just want the book,” said Hope. “She wants to change history, too.”
“So that settles it,” I said, standing. “First we find the map, and then the book, and then save the world. Who’s in with me?”
Ayden grinned. Noah shook his head.
“Good enough,” I said. “I think I better make the call and take the risk.”
“Why you?” asked Ayden.
“I can move faster alone. And I know the city better than either of you.”
“I’m going with you,” said Ayden.
I shook my head. “Look, there are three of us, and Hope. If I go outside of these walls and something happens to me, there will at least be two of you to protect my sister. And out of the three of us, I’m the only one Wolf will talk to, if he talks at all. And if Simms has these maps, he’s probably here with a new team b
y now anyway. Where Orlenda is, is anyone’s guess.”
“She’s here,” Hope whispered.
“What do you mean she’s here?” I asked.
“I was listening and I found her. She told a driver to take her to an address in Tel Aviv. That’s near here, isn’t it?” Hope asked.
“It’s about an hour away on the coast,” I told her. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure,” she answered, and gave us the address she’d heard. I memorized it instantly.
“Okay, guys. If I’m not back in one hour, go see Sister Marie-Luce. She’ll know where to send you. We’ll deal with Orlenda when I return.”
Ayden took my hands. “I’ll be tuning into you the entire time.”
“I know.”
I headed to the back gate after grabbing my backpack from the room. Noah met me there.
“Be careful, Ky.”
I smiled up at him, his blue eyes getting the best of me every time. “I will. I promise.” Then I walked through the wrought iron gates leaving my team, my sister, and the safety of the monastery behind me.
Chapter Sixteen
John’s head hurt.
He’d looked as much into the future as he could and what he’d seen wasn’t good. There was going to be a major showdown. It wasn’t just Orlenda involved in trying to find Kylie and the team, and take them out. There was this Russian guy that John had gotten a read on. He knew who the ass was—Ivan Propokensko. John knew who most of the people were that Grant Simms considered enemies.
John considered Grant Simms enemy number one, and he knew the man’s days were numbered. There was going to come a day soon when John would take his target out, but he needed him first and he needed to locate him. It was clear to John that Simms had set up, or had someone set up, a very strong energetic shield in order to not be found. It was working because Grant Simms had appeared to have fallen off the radar.
At least, off John’s radar.
He wondered if Kylie was also trying to locate Simms. It appeared to John that the team was working without PSI help. He thought that it might have to do with the fact that Kylie had discovered the school—the prison—where Grant Simms was cultivating his own designer brand of psychic children. That wouldn’t have gone over well with his girl, Ky. John smiled at the thought of her strong will and backbone. When it came to certain things, ethically, Kylie wasn’t one to back away or step down from a fight.