Return of the Grail King

by Theresa Crater

  It had started earlier, maybe in Prague. The Thirty Years War at its heart had really been the Rosicrucians fighting the Holy Roman Emperors, trying to wrestle back control. Frederick V had taken his English bride to Prague to establish a different sort of New World Order, an enlightened society based on the metaphysical teachings of old. The Northern European kings had supported them, but James I doomed the rebellion when he reneged on his promise to come to their aid. What if there was something to a leader who was schooled in states craft and metaphysical knowledge—just as Merlin had declared Arthur to be? Frederick had been a mystic, and John Dee, who had spent time in Prague, had also advised Queen Elizabeth. But what did all this have to do with King Arthur?

  Tahir interrupted his thoughts. “There is some reason you are reviewing the history of Anne’s family.”

  Michael took a breath to protest, but Tahir’s cell phone rang.

  Tahir answered it in Arabic, then switched to English. He looked up at Michael, his bushy brows raised. “It’s for you,” he said, and held the phone out.

  Michael put the phone on speaker. “Hello?”

  “Michael, thank God we reached you,” Dr. Abernathy’s voice rang out. “Something’s happened to Anne.”

  “What?” Michael stood up, dislodging the cat. “Is she all right? Is it the baby?”

  Abernathy explained that they’d found Anne in the temple unconscious, that she could not be moved. That they had tried to banish the spirit holding her captive to no avail.

  “Spirit? What spirit? Some spirit is stronger than Grandmother Elizabeth and the Lodge?”

  A wry chuckle rose from the phone. “We can hardly believe it either.”

  “Do you know who it is?”

  “Well, yes. It’s Mordred.”

  Michael stood dumbstruck in the middle of Tahir’s living room. “Mordred?”

  “Yes. He keeps saying he should rule.”

  “Rule? Rule what?” Michael’s hand flew to the back of his neck. “When did all this happen?”

  “We’re not sure. Elizabeth found her earlier today. We tried you immediately, but it seemed you’d already gone out.”

  Michael remembered switching off his phone so he could sleep. Had he checked it before leaving for the site? But he’d still had the crystal then. “I have a theory about how he got in, but the timing is off. I still had the crystal key when this seems to have happened.”

  “You lost your crystal?”

  “I wouldn’t say lost,” Michael objected, feeling like a child being scolded by a parent. “It was stolen.”

  “Stolen?” Dr. Abernathy shouted. “We should have sent Arnold with you.”

  “Arnold couldn’t have done anything.” Michael told the story all over again, pacing the room. “I felt a sting at the back of my neck as I was leaving the ceremony for pulling Excalibur from the stone. I’d noticed a dark, brooding figure on the fringes of the crowd earlier. Perhaps it was Mordred. Maybe he took the crystal, although how he could have taken a physical object from the astral plane is beyond me.”

  “Mordred hadn’t been born by that time,” Abernathy objected.

  “True, but maybe he was there on the astral, like I was. Maybe that gave him access to the crystal key somehow.”

  “We must think about it,” Abernathy said. “While you were traveling in Arthurian England, Anne has been jumping through the Isis and Osiris story in Egypt.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Abernathy shared Elizabeth’s visions of Anne’s experiences. “Her last trip was to Avalon, though. At the end of the ritual, everyone in the temple saw where she was on the astral. She joined Guinevere for her wedding to Arthur.”

  Michael and Tahir stared at each other. “What is going on?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “But the timing is off. I still had the crystal when Mordred broke into the temple and entranced Anne.”

  “Time is flexible on the inner planes. You know that. This is the strongest theory we have so far. You need to recover that crystal while we work to dislodge Mordred here.”

  “I still can’t believe he bested Grandmother Elizabeth.”

  “Well, it wasn’t really him who beat her.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “We attacked Mordred with the consolidated force of the group—”

  “That should have done it.”

  “But Anubis blocked us.”

  This stopped Michael in his tracks. “The Opener blocked the attack?”

  “He did.”

  “Did he explain? What does Grandmother Elizabeth say about it?”

  “We all heard him. He said, Not yet.”

  There was a prolonged silence. Tahir scooted closer to the phone. “Dr. Abernathy, we will work on recovering the crystal, but Michael must remain here for a little while longer.”

  “No, I have to get back to Anne,” Michael said.

  Tahir reached out a restraining hand. “Her safety depends on solving this riddle and getting the crystal out of Mordred’s hands—if he has it.”

  “Who else?” Michael said, arms raised.

  “It’s the best idea we have.” Dr. Abernathy said. “Anne and the baby are fine for the moment. Winston is taking care of her in the temple and we’ve hired a nurse. Someone with metaphysical training in addition to her medical expertise.”

  “That’s good,” Michael said, then he heard muted voices in the room with Abernathy. Abernathy answered back, but Michael couldn’t make out his words.

  Abernathy’s voice came clear again. “I have to go. There are other things going on.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Tell me,” Michael demanded.

  Abernathy exhaled heavily. “Someone has hacked the family accounts.”

  “Hacked?”

  “Yes, and the money stolen.”

  “What?”

  “The Le Clairs are broke,” he said, “for the moment.”

  Michael waved his hand, dismissing this. “The museum will take me back. I can support my family.”

  Abernathy let out a broken laugh—Michael did not understand the sums of money they were talking about—then seemed to catch himself. “Good man. Let me know how things turn out with Tahir’s plan.”

  Michael heard Arnold shouting in the background, “Now, Abernathy.”

  “You go,” Michael said. “I’ll talk to you later. Take care of Anne,” he said, but the connection had already been severed.

  Michael turned to Tahir. “So, what’s your idea?”

  “We need to go to the Serapeum.”

  Michael was too surprised to respond.

  “Get some rest. I’ll make the arrangements for tonight.”

  Abernathy followed Arnold into the Gerald’s home office to find a scrawny kid in a black hoodie and ripped jeans giving orders to a woman well into her thirties. He recognized her, but couldn’t remember from where.

  “No, no, no,” the kid said, “these need to be all in a row and connected to the same processor.” He picked up a handful of cables. “Do I have to do it all myself?”

  “I was just going to do exactly what you said, Night Wing.” She laid heavy sarcasm on the name.

  Then Abernathy remembered. The woman scolding the kid was Dana Goddard, head of cyber security at Maris Corporation. She stood behind the computer tower, hands on her hips, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved tunic. Not her usual three-piece navy blue skirt suit with modest heels. They must have called her in on the weekend. Was it the weekend? He’d lost track.

  “And I can’t keep calling you Night Wing. What’s your first name?”

  The boy scowled at her as if she’d asked for some unorthodox intimate encounter. “I’m not going to tell you that.”

  Arnold snorted. “Preston Westwood III, meet Dana Goddard.”

  “How did you—” A flush of red crept up the kid’s neck. He was a typical rich kid. Left alone by his busy parents ten
ding to their fortune or vacationing halfway around the world. Trying to pass himself off as a genius from the wrong side of town.

  “Now, let’s get back to putting these machines together,” Arnold snapped.

  The two worked in silence for a few minutes, then the kid grabbed the chair in front of the bank of monitors, linked his own laptop to the system, and flipped a switch. They sprang to life. His fingers flew over the keys and rather than the company logo, the screens filled with different charts, a couple of maps, a list of what looked like phone numbers, and then gobbledygook that Abernathy felt sure was computer code.

  Dana pulled up another chair, and the two talked, pointing at different monitors. Soon the map on one monitor sprouted red lines that jumped from New York City to the Philippines, to Croatia, then to Siberia, Belarus, and finally to Somalia.

  “Gotcha,” Preston said with immense satisfaction.

  “So, this attack originated in Somalia?” Abernathy couldn’t imagine how a country in such chaos could support a high-tech attack like this.

  “No,” Preston rolled his eyes. “It means the cloud service provider is there. The attack could have originated from any computer with access to them.” He turned back to the monitors and clicked. A list populated on another monitor.

  “What’s that?” Arnold asked.

  Preston waved his hand at the three older men standing behind him, but addressed himself to Dana. “This will take forever if I have to explain everything to these troglo—”

  “All right, there’s no call for that.” Dana turned to Gerald. “Sir, the attack originated from the cloud service provider in Somalia. We’re hacking into those servers to generate this list of computers that have used them. Then we need to find who owns those computers. Once we accomplish this, we’ll see if any of those companies has ties to Maris.”

  “We’ll want to check for connections to the family and this list of organizations.” Gerald gave her a hand-written list. Abernathy caught a glimpse of the first few.

  International Council of Princes

  Noble Order of St. Germain

  Royal Dragon Order

  Royal House of Forester

  Templars of Saint Joseph

  Temple of Columbia

  As Dana scanned it, a look of confusion grew on her face. “I’ve never heard of these companies, sir.”

  “They’re not companies. They’re—” Gerald shook his head as if trying to throw off lifelong habits of silence “—secret societies, some hundreds of years old. Their members might have reason to attack us.”

  “If you say so, sir.” Dana looked skeptical.

  “How long will this take?” Gerald asked.

  “Hard to say. We could find something immediately or it could take hours. I’ll let you know as soon as we have a list for you to study.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Ah ha!” Preston shouted. “Take that, you bastards.”

  Gerald frowned. “What?”

  Dana put her hand on Gerald’s shoulder and said in an undertone. “Don’t mind him, sir. It’s like a computer game to him. But he’s good. Together, we should be able to crack this.”

  “I’ll be in my—” Gerald blinked and looked around.

  Abernathy guessed he’d been about to say ‘study’, but that’s where they stood now. The room had been taken over by the cyber security team. “Let’s adjourn to the library,” he suggested, but Gerald walked toward a monitor displaying a growing list of companies linked to the Somalian servers.

  “Look at this, Abernathy. Institute for the Workings of God,” he read out.

  “Bank of Vatican City? Don’t they have their own computers?” Abernathy asked.

  Gerald looked at Dana. “Is there a way to find out the amount of these transactions?”

  “Assuming they’re banking records. These could be anything—memos, emails, personnel files, illegal dossiers on public figures, real estate holdings. You name it.”

  “Can we open the files?”

  “I doubt we can gain access to them,” Dana explained.

  “Oh, please,” Preston said. “I can crack anything.”

  Typical teenage hubris, Abernathy thought. But the kid had a reputation. They certainly had promised him a pretty penny if he succeeded. Not that he needed money.

  The list continued to populate.

  Central Intelligence Agency

  EU Intelligence

  Coche Industries

  Zenel

  “That’s a Saudi Arabian company, isn’t it?” Abernathy asked

  Gerald just nodded.

  Chinese Offshore Oil Corporation

  Royal Holland Oil

  Britannia Petroleum

  “Seeing a trend here?” Gerald commented.

  “Looks like the usual suspects, as the saying goes,” Abernathy said.

  United Germanic Bank

  Suisse Credit Financial

  Dana snorted. “Now their bankers.”

  Knight Corporation

  “What?” Gerald jumped back from the monitors. “That can’t be.”

  “Is that Valentin’s company?” Abernathy asked.

  “Who is that, sir?” Dana asked.

  Gerald shook his head, the habit of secrecy too deep even faced with this situation.

  Abernathy came to his rescue. “Mr. Knight is an esteemed head of one of those spiritual organizations Mr. Le Clair gave you a list of.”

  “Abernathy—” Gerald objected.

  “This information is to be kept in strictest confidence,” Abernathy said to Dana, who nodded. Preston didn’t look up. He took a step toward the kid, whose eyes remained glued to the screens. “Is that understood?”

  “Whatever, man. I don’t care about your moldy old secrets.”

  Somehow, Abernathy doubted this was true. Hackers thrived on secrets. “When can you get into the files that were sent?” he asked.

  “Man, I’m looking for your data. It could be stored here.”

  “Excellent. How long—” Gerald asked.

  “Forever if you keep hanging over me.”

  Abernathy put a hand on Gerald’s shoulder. “Shall we adjourn to the library?”

  “Good idea. Arnold, would you ask Estelle for some tea and sandwiches?”

  Preston’s head popped up. “How about pizza?”

  Abernathy tried not to laugh at Gerald’s chagrined expression. “Get them whatever they need,” he said to Arnold, who’d been standing in the doorway observing everything.

  Chapter 10

  As soon as he got back to the room, Michael made another call to The Oaks to check on Anne and spoke to Abernathy again.

  “Anne and the baby’s vital signs are stable, but she is still entranced. Grandmother Elizabeth will sleep next to her and Mary Shak will keep vigil tonight. She has medical training.”

  “I should be there,” he said.

  “Elizabeth agrees that you need to recover the crystal. If Mordred has somehow gotten control over it, he will have a great deal more power than he would otherwise.”

  Michael shook his head. “If you two think that’s what I need to do, then I will. But I’ll come home as soon as I can.”

  “Of course. What’s the plan?”

  “Tahir won’t say. He said he’s taking me to the Serapeum.”

  Abernathy chuckled as if he shared a secret. “Enjoy your trip.”

  Michael ended the call and took a quick shower. With a large white towel wrapped around his waist, he pulled the curtains in the room tight, blotting out the bright Egyptian sun pouring down outside, leaving the room in almost total darkness. Still, he could feel the solar pull and wondered if he’d sleep. He threw the towel onto the bathroom floor and got in bed. He was certain he would toss and turn with his worries for Anne and his son. He felt certain it was a boy now. He wasn’t entirely sure why. He flipped onto his side and fluffed up the pillow, ready to try and still his thoughts. But sleep took him immediately. And then dreams.

  Michae
l felt his loins stir at the thought of the duty he would perform tonight for the land and the powers that ruled moon, sun, and stars. He half listened as Merlin reviewed the responses he should make to the Lady in the well-known ritual.

  Merlin pulled at his robe to get his attention.

  “What?” Michael asked.

  “Haven’t you been listening, you big lout?”

  “Sorry.”

  Merlin just snorted in reply. “Now lean down, Arthur.”

  Arthur? He was watching through Arthur’s eyes. The young man turned his head and Michael glimpsed the Tor rising behind him before he slipped into the back of the king’s mind to watch.

  Merlin hoisted up the heavy crown for the Horned Lord, the antlers reaching out in nine points, three times three. Arthur braced himself and Merlin fit the crown on his head.

  The sound of women chanting rose and fell from the crest of the Tor. Merlin grasped his staff, the twisted oak crowned with a crystal that seemed to light up of its own accord regardless of the rays of the moon or sun. It brightened when Merlin thumped it against the ground. The old wizard bent his head, listening to the chant. One of the planetary signs in his plush purple robe gleamed out and Arthur took a step back, but Merlin grabbed his hand.

  “It’s time.” They stepped out of the small hut at the base of the Tor and started the climb up. Arthur balanced the stag crown with one hand and pulled up the ceremonial robe with the other, feeling less than manly at this moment when he was to embody the cosmic male principle. Irritated, he pushed this thought away, focusing on the growing power of the chant. Something flashed white at the corner of his vision, and Michael glanced over to catch the white flag of a deer’s tail as it bounded away into a copse of ash trees.

  They crested the hill and the Lady of Avalon came into view, standing in front of the sacred fire, arms spread in welcome. “All hail the Horned Lord,” she cried out, and the priestesses echoed her, “All hail.”

  Arthur made the proper responses, already detaching from his daily self, and the priestesses parted into two columns. Arthur took a deep breath, steeling himself to walk through this gauntlet of feminine power, a birth canal, a death channel. Merlin strode beside him through the corridor they formed, their mysterious voices swirling around Arthur, taking his measure, encouraging him, somehow caressing his skin like the promising brush of a lover’s lips. His shyness melted as the sexual energy rose from them, the scents of rose oil and myrrh, the whispered suggestions.