When Jared hopped in to drive the car, Rebecca knew something was wrong.
“Nasty thing about that car accident,” Mr. Thomas said, motioning for her wrist. “I’d like for my doctor to check on your hand, too.”
“I had it x-rayed.”
“Yeah, but that’s the problem with wrist fractures. So many little bones in one place. Sometimes they don’t show up immediately.” Even Mr. Thomas looked cold. “Jared, secure the back.”
“Yes, Mr. Thomas.”
A divider slid in place between the back and the driver’s cabin, leaving Rebecca covered in cold sweat and with a racing heart.
“Give me your phone,” Jenny said—her cold eyes and tone chilling.
“Why?” But she did anyway, trying to keep the unease out of her tone.
Jenny went through it with determination, then took out the battery and the SIM-card before putting the phone in her pocket and the other stuff in another pocket.
“What’s going on?” Rebecca asked, looking at Mr. Thomas, but he didn’t answer her. He just sat there with a grim expression. “Look, you can’t just treat me like this. What’s going on?”
“I’ve got an idea for a road trip game,” Jenny said. “We could role play. I’ll be Rebecca, and she’ll be Meino. Then one of you can be the flight attendant who drugs her ass.”
“What?” Rebecca gasped.
“Surprised?” Mr. Thomas asked. “You sound surprised. Is that because you didn’t expect us to know or because you’re surprised that we suspect you of having a hand in it? With the car crash and everything.”
Jenny reached over quickly and grabbed Rebecca’s sleeve. Rebecca pulled her arm free and stared at her angrily.
“Yeah, if that was sprained enough for a doctor to splint it, then clenching your fist like that would have hurt,” Mr. Thomas remarked.
“You were on that plane just like Jared arranged to make your move easier,” the man Rebecca didn’t know said.
“I can prove the car crash!” Rebecca said.
“Hopefully with more than that.” Mr. Thomas pointed at her arm.
“But staging a car crash is nothing compared to drugging the employees of a private airstrip in their beds before planting your own people on the plane.”
“Mr. Sullivan is right,” Mr. Thomas said. “We’ve spoken with the missing employees. We’ve had them checked out by a doctor and did a full tox screen. Wonder if it’s the same drug as the one used on Meino. It would look awfully suspicious if that was the case, wouldn’t it?”
What threw Rebecca off the most was the fact that they spoke as if they had Meino in their possession. That wasn’t possible. There was no way they could have found him. That Meino had been drugged had to be an educated guess on the basis that it was a lot easier to find the drugged employees. The rest had to be a guess.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Rebecca crossed her arms, not caring that she was showing attitude. Who in their right mind wouldn’t show attitude when being accused of something? Yeah, that was the way to go—not the whiny damsel in distress approach.
“You know what, Jenny? Assemble her phone again and call her brother, Tavi. Maybe he’ll fill her in,” Mr. Sullivan said.
A hollow sensation filled Rebecca, and she watched with dread as Jenny assembled the phone, thumbed through the contacts, and held the phone out for Rebecca to see that the call was connecting. It didn’t even ring before it went to voicemail. The ruthless and knowing look hit home.
“What have you done with him?” Rebecca whispered.
“What did you do with Meino and Burkhart?” Mr. Thomas asked while Jenny once again dismantled Rebecca’s phone.
“Who’s Burkhart?”
“Who, indeed.”
Whatever light came through the tinted windows of the car dimmed further, and Rebecca looked out to see where they were. An abandoned industrial complex, by the looks of it. The van stopped, and Jared got out and opened the back door.
“I’ll take care of the luggage,” Mr. Thomas said, ushering the others outside. Jared’s gentle nature was all but gone, and Rebecca didn’t appreciate when he grabbed her arm hard and pulled her from the van. Three men stood waiting—Pritchard Browman, Alex Rhoden’s boyfriend Dominic, and a young man she’d never seen before. He was young and tall, and he had long black hair and piercing blue eyes.
“Kaleb, if you would do the honors,” Pritchard growled.
The young man stepped forward, grabbed Rebecca around the waist to pull her close, and then he stepped to a side as if they were dancing. A sickening feeling rolled over Rebecca as the young man grew pale and his skull grew into horns. She tried to scream and push herself away, but before she could get the air into her lungs to do so, he let go and she stumbled away, throwing up.
What kind of Demon was he? Oh, God, she should have expected that, should have expected the Collectors to really be in that deep, but she’d only heard of Demons, she’d never really seen one.
She grabbed the silver crucifix around her neck and began to pray even before the last of her in-flight meal had left her body. But when she looked up, she was alone. The van was gone, too. Dominic stepped out of thin air in front of her.
“Oh God, you’re a Demon, too,” she gasped and turned to run, only to run into Pritchard who held her at arm’s length with a disgusted look on his face.
The young man, Kaleb stepped out of nothing with Jenny and Mr. Sullivan, and it surprised her when Mr. Sullivan leaned forward and retched. Kaleb left again, and the unfamiliarity of the whole situation shocked Rebecca enough to not know what to say or do. She just knew that everything was so far outside anything she’d trained to prepare for.
She scrambled back and looked around to find a place to hide. That gave her the opportunity to finally take in her surroundings enough to realize that she definitely wasn’t in the same industrial complex as before. The windows were different. The walls were different. It wasn’t even industrial. It was more like an underground car park without all the cars.
“Rebecca, you need to listen to me very carefully now,” Jared said, his eyes still without the warmth she usually found when they were turned on her.
“What did you do to Tavi?” she responded.
“Who do you work for?”
At remembering who she served, strength and a sense of righteousness surged through her. “God!” she sneered.
Dominic laughed loudly, his deep voice booming in the emptiness of the huge structure. He was the only one who seemed to find that funny, though. “Let me do it. I have served a thousand soles trapped in that illusion, so I have plenty of experience with breaking the naked and inconvenient truth to the disillusioned mortals destroying their own souls on a lie.”
Served souls? Demons didn’t serve souls.
“Have you ever heard of the Earned?” Dominic asked, walking closer to her.
“No.”
“I am an Earned. I am that of God’s creations who balances mortal sin. Lex talionis.”
“If you work for God then I would have heard of you!”
“No, you wouldn’t. Do you know why?”
Rebecca’s mind raced with thoughts, and she tried to remember if she’d ever heard of any of God’s creations called that. Then she shook her head vigorously. “You’re a Demon, he’s a Demon, and you work with him.” She pointed at Kaleb.
“The reason why you’ve never heard of my kind is because you work for a human-made institution with more innocent blood on their hands than any other,” Dominic continued, apparently indifferent at being labeled a Demon.
“No, you lie!”
“And every time a human breaks one of the fundamental laws and causes death or destruction on another soul, my kind are the ones who balance that indiscretion out of love for your soul.”
“No!” Rebecca shook her head again and backed away.
“I can prove it,” Dominic offered.
“Why not just force her?” Jenny asked.
“Because so far her soul is almost clear. I can see it from here, thanks to Kaleb’s selfless act to raise my life’s purpose.”
“She kidnapped Meino!” Jared said.
“And I kidnapped her. The layer is cleared and sealed,” Kaleb said.
That made no sense.
“Would you like to know what the layer is?” Dominic asked, but he didn’t wait for her answer before he continued. “When you hurt someone deeply, meaning you break one of the fundamental laws, then you steal energy from another soul and add it onto your own as a layer. It creates protrusions which are harmful to both you and the one you stole it from. It is my purpose to serve you and the soul you stole from so both can once again be whole and healthy and reach its full potential under God. I do it so that you can return to God with a clean soul to be reborn and reach your full potential.”
“That would make you an Angel.”
“No. In the great scheme of things, I would be their... cousin, I guess.”
“Nephew.” Kaleb stepped forward. “Have you ever met an Angel, Rebecca?”
“Angels are messengers to the chosen few or warriors in Heaven,” Rebecca stated.
A bright light appeared next to her, and she screamed, jumping back only to find herself with her back against the wall. A man stood where the light had come from, and he was still bright. Something waved behind him, and his head glowed.
“We are messengers, yes. So heed this message. Trust in the Earned to serve you as is their purpose.”
The man’s voice was awe-inspiring and booming in a way the architecture didn’t allow. Then he disappeared again.
“What you fail to remember, mortal, is that just because you believe in a one God who created all doesn’t mean He didn’t create stuff you don’t know about,” Kaleb said. “Like the Earned. Just because the only Gargoyles you’re not scared of are the architectural drains on churches doesn’t mean that the huge and ominous Gargoyles aren’t created to watch over humanity and shield them from the real evil. You destroy what you don’t know without even realizing that someone as omnipotent as your God has created way more than your limited mind can even begin to grasp.”
“That’s not true! The holy scriptures tell us of all we need to know!”
“Need to know? Are you referring to the Bible?” Dominic asked.
“Yes!”
“Then tell me why the New Testament was collected by a sun worshiper. Tell me why some of you fear science, when all it can do is tell you about all your God has created? Tell me why your God would make mankind capable of critical thinking yet the ones who deny that ability and spend the least amount of time relishing in His gift are the ones who believe in God the most.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Rebecca argued.
“Of course it doesn’t, you haven’t activated critical thinking. And I know you’re intelligent. Jared, Nathan, and Alex tell me you are. Now stop talking. You will be given peace and time to think.” Dominic took her by the arm and led her through a door and down a corridor.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To your room. You will stay with me until your soul is clear and until the veil of ignorance and hate has been lifted from your eyes.”
“No!”
“Rebecca?”
She stopped at the sound of her name, shouted in a familiar voice. “Tavi? Oh no, Tavi, are you here? Where are you?”
“Next door to you, actually.” Dominic pulled an iron door open. He pushed her inside what looked like a cell about as comfortable and sparsely decorated as a cell in the convent of the Silent Sisterhood.
Tavi was still yelling for her and commanded Dominic to stay away from her.
“I said I can prove that I speak the truth. It will not hurt you. I’ll then leave you to search for answers in your own way.”
“Whatever you show me is just magic of the Devil,” she whispered as she backed up.
“I have proven it to more than one thousand people.” Dominic stepped closer, but Rebecca had nowhere to run. He was too big and too fast for her to get around him and make for the door. Even if she managed, where would she go? She had no idea where she was, and the man had stepped out of nothingness.
Dominic cupped his hand in front of her, and she tried to bat his hands away before he touched her inappropriately. But he didn’t. As he drew his hands away from each other, a sphere appeared in front of her, and she gasped and stepped closer to the wall.
“What’s that?”
“Your soul. By the looks of it, your stay with us will be brief.” Dominic waved his hand, and the sphere sank into her body again. “Three meals a day, and the warm water is turned on at eight. I’ll have a few sets of clothes brought to you before then.”
Dominic left the room and closed the door. The deadbolt clicked into place.
Now what?
Character list – Gargoyle Rising
Meino – Mechanic from Hamburg
Burkhart – Gargoyle
Nathan Grewe – Linguist in the Order
Lucien – Nathan’s Shadow and lover
Jenny – Shadow Master and Nathan’s best friend
Ethan – Jenny’s Shadow
Mr. Sullivan – Jenny’s mentor
Rebecca – New Knight Templar
Tavi – New Knight Templar, Rebecca’s partner
Father – Head of Rebecca’s faction of New Knight Templar
Jared – Protégé – Rebecca’s target/fake boyfriend
Mr. Thomas – Jared’s mentor
Ms. Theresa – Archivist in the Order who lives in Scotland
Ms. Alvilda – Archivist in the Order
Mr. Talbot – Wizard, living in Australia
Vibeke – Mr. Talbot’s wife and protégé
Ms. Stephanie – Operative in the Order
David – Operative in the Order – married to Ms. Stephanie
Kevin – Operative in the Order – childhood friends with David
Gualdo – Ms. Stephanie’s protégé and stepson
Mr. Henry – Of the Order
Pritchard Browman – Mr. Henry’s protégé and curator
Alex Rhoden – Pritchard’s son and protégé
Kaleb – Demigod, Earned, Half-breed
Professor Gershman – Demigod, Earned, Nathan’s favorite professor
Dominic – Demigod, Earned, Alex Rhoden’s lover
Sam-El – Angel
Mr. Sellman – Wizard in the Order
Manuel Schäfer – Wizard in the Order
Steinmann – The Sellman Gargoyle
About the Author
Meraki P. Lyhne is a Danish author with a love for the paranormal and space opera. He has been writing space opera since 2007, but paranormal erotic romance is a newer love. Closing the door to his writing-den, he delves into elaborate stories and researches ancient religions, mythologies, and arts of the world to be inspired, so he can create new creatures of the paranormal.
Meraki is transgender and was formerly known as she/her.
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