“Yea, yea. I’m leaving.”
Their walk around the lake was over far too soon. They arrived back at the little souvenir shop as Serena’s friends were just coming out of the theater the shop was attached to. Serena introduced Rion to Kelly, Jasmine, Marci and Celeste.
Serena’s awestruck quartette of friends were having difficulty simply introducing themselves. Was this guy for real?!
Rion’s modus operandi should have been to just wave good-bye to all of them, but, he couldn’t just leave a newblood Invicti alone—the girl was really bright to his senses. The look on Serena’s face and her own feelings told him she wasn’t exactly wanting him to leave either—ever. He needed a way to get her alone again, somehow. She needed to know who she was.
Rion turned to Serena. “Tell me you’re not leaving so soon?”
“We have classes tomorrow,” Marci frowned.
“All of us came with Serena,” Kelly offered. “We have to leave with her.”
“I understand.” Rion didn’t hide his disappointment. Still, he wasn’t about to just let her leave alone with the possibility of someone else discovering her.
Serena seemed to sense Rion’s disappointment and even reticence. She had barely spent half an hour with Rion and now Kelly evidently had it in her mind to ruin any time she might have left with him. “Give us a minute, guys. We’ll meet you by the entrance.”
Rion and Serena watched the girls walk off toward the front of the park. “I’m sorry, Rion. Kelly can be a bit abrasive. She means well.”
“It’s okay,” he smiled, knowing he had have at least a few more minutes alone with Serena. They walked slowly toward the entrance, much more closely together than when they had walked around the lake. Rion’s hand found Serena’s and they locked fingers as they walked. The feeling she gave him as they held hands moved Heaven and Earth within him.
“I don’t suppose you’ll be coming back here any time soon?” Rion asked, a hopeful tone in his voice.
“I can,” Serena offered. “Are you asking me out?” she smiled, hopeful that that was what he had in mind.
“Ah, well, I guess I am. Although, maybe a theme park you visit often isn’t the best for a first date.”
“I can be flexible,” she assured.
“How about dinner tomorrow night?”
“Tomorrow night?” Serena smiled. “You don’t let any grass grow under your feet, do you?”
“Not with someone as beautiful as you.”
Serena blushed a smile.
“I know a great restaurant downtown, right on the River Walk. La Paris.” Rion spoke the name of the restaurant with a perfect French accent. “My apartment is in the same building, actually.”
“La Paris?” Serena had only been there once. The fashionable five-star was expensive and high-class. The all-vegan menu drew crowds from as far away as Houston and Austin. “You live downtown?”
Rion nodded.
Serena was totally intrigued now. The Pierson Tower was new and not a cheap place to live. Serena was quickly realizing that Rion wasn’t exactly a poor college student.
“Alright, Superman, you’ve got yourself a date.”
“Superman?” Rion smirked at the nickname.
Serena smiled wryly as the two exchanged phone numbers.
“Serena—” he began, his eyes meeting hers. “I don’t suppose you could do me a favor—make me a promise, actually?” There was a deep sincerity in his tone and a feeling that moved through her that she couldn’t explain. Like this was was really important to him somehow.
“What is it?”
She watched him remove his ring, then place it into her hand and close her fingers around it.
“What are you doing?” she asked, giving him a curious look.
“I want you to keep this with you.”
“Your family ring?”
“I know, it sounds a little strange, but—it’s kind of an odd custom my family has had for a long time, when we meet someone new.”
Serena opened her hand and slipped the way to large band over her finger. Both chuckled.
“I know it’s not your size, but, maybe you could put it on a chain; wear it around your neck. For me. Please?”
His piercing blues met her eyes. Serena completely melted like a puddle with his hands holding hers. She was intrigued by the touching gesture. The gold band was heavy and felt really valuable. “Rion, I—I just met you, I can’t take gifts like this.”
“Then it’s not a gift. Just think of it as something to keep me in your thoughts and feelings.” He smiled. “You can give it back later.”
She nodded.
“It’s really valuable. Try not to wear it out in the open where others can see it. Keep it against your skin.”
“Okay.” She smiled at the odd romantic gesture. “Anything else I need to remember?” They began walking now toward her friends who’d gathered at the front entrance, Rion’s fingers once again locked in hers.
“Yea. Just one. Whatever you do. Serena, please—don’t take it off. Ever.”
“Ever?” She smiled.
He stopped walking, his eyes meeting hers again. It was as if she could somehow feel the seriousness of his feelings deep within herself for a brief moment as his hand briefly touched the side of her face.
“Ever.”
Momentarily stunned by the sudden rush of feeling and emotion, all Serena could do was nod.
Rion said good-bye to all of them and then watched them disappear into the parking lot with Serena grabbing more than a few backward glances. Soon they were out of sight.
Wow. He sighed heavily to himself disappearing back into the park. The day had been a whirlwind of surprise. He had stumbled upon a nascent newblood—someone he was all but sure could be Invicti. Beyond that, the woman was seriously hot. But there was something more about her, something he just couldn’t put his finger on. It was like she already knew him, knew his name somehow. He needed to see her again. He shook his head. Rion, I so hope you are not going to regret this.
2
Y ou’re late, Harlan.” Frank glared.
“Yea, well, this time I have a good reason.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” the DHS Secretary grated.
“I do,” Diane quipped. “Where did you end up?”
The president looked with a raised eyebrow at the two of his inner circle as Harlan sat down next to Diane and across from Frank. “What are you two up to?”
“A Masonic Temple, of all places,” Harlan answered Diane’s original question.
“A what?” Frank raised an eyebrow. That would be the last place he’d expect someone with Harlan’s inspiring intellect to be.
“The Scottish Rite Masonic Temple, down on 16th.”
“I know where it is. What were you doing down there.”
“Snooping,” Diane chimed in.
Harlan nodded.
“Don’t tell me you’re still on this Books of God kick?”
“Books of the Gods, Frank,” Diane corrected—again. She looked at Harlan. “Did you find the pages?”
“Yea, but their librarian wouldn’t let me ‘check them out’, so to speak. And they won’t allow photocopies. I did grab a few pictures with my phone, though.”
“What are you two after?” the president asked.
“We’re on a treasure hunt, Brett, to find as many extant pages as possible of the Books of the Gods.”
“And?”
“So I found something in one of the older fragments we dug up in Belize.”
“Belize?” Frank re-entered the conversation. “You’re talking about the Mayans then?”
The President’s interest was suddenly taking root in the conversation as he listened to his team banter back and forth.
“We are,” Harlan nodded.
“So what was so interesting about the Belize fragments?” Frank was still half scoffing and also interested at the same time.
“Not much, other than the fact that it men
tions the cities of the gods.”
“Cities?” Frank’s gaze shot between all of them.
“So these gods, the Ra,” Harlan continued, “at one time there were like millions and millions of them, all over the world. We really thought they were just in one place, in and around the Middle East.”
“Right,” Frank nodded, “the cradle of civilization. That area, it’s called the Levant.”
“You’re only getting part of the story, Frank,” Diane corrected. “There isn’t just one cradle of civilization, there’s like four or five, or six or seven of them, depending on who you talk to.”
Frank nodded. He was familiar with the debate.
The president, however, was not. “Really—?” he leaned forward to hear more.
“One of these cities of the gods was evidently located in or around the Nile River delta. Another was somewhere along the Yellow River in China. And another, was somewhere around Mesoamerica, in what is now modern Belize.”
“Wait a minute,” Frank was connecting the dots. “All of the areas you’re talking about were sites of some of the more advanced civilizations, more than two thousand or three thousand years ago.”
“Or older, much older,” Diane offered.
“Everywhere there’s a Ra city talked about with the Belize book fragment, we find what we’ve been calling an advanced human civilization. They have advanced agriculture and farms, advanced construction, deep knowledge of math, science and astronomy—and massive temples dedicated to the gods.”
“So, Diane,” the president began, popping a few Nicorette. Normally he would have lit up by now, but Diane had read him the riot act about that months ago. “All of these ancient civilizations, it’s like they all died out. Why?”
“They didn’t all die out, Brett; only some of them did.”
“Still. Why? If you have advanced knowledge like this—”
“We think they were destroyed,” Harlan added.
“By who?”
“We’re not sure. The fragments don’t say. What is clear is that the gods were at war with each other.”
“I’ve heard that,” the president nodded. He was pretty sure the Seven were part of these ‘gods’ in some way and they sure as hell didn’t like someone called the Sentinels. “So, what happened to their cities? The gods’ I mean,” the president asked.
“Destroyed, in their war. All of them—” Diane frowned.
“That’s too bad,” the president grimaced.
“—all but one. Their capital.” Her gaze leveled with the others in the room.
“Huh? Are you telling me that there’s an entire city of these gods that survived their war?”
“That is what the Belize fragment alludes to. Yes.”
“How do you hide an entire city in this day and age?” Frank asked rhetorically.
“Well, if Leavenworth is any indication, you bury it.” Diane offered.
“That’s not a city, Diane,” Frank countered, “it’s just an installation. A base of some kind.”
“You don’t know that,” she argued. “We don’t know how far that place extends or even what it’s connected to.”
The president raised his eyebrow at Frank, who was saying nothing. “Harlan, what did you find in the library at the Masonic Temple?”
“Yea, so it was kinda weird. I met with a thirty-third degree Mason by the name of Fergusson Kentigern.”
“Because that sounds American, not.” The president chuckled at his own joke.
“No, he’s not, I could barely understand his English. I flew him in from Scotland, a place called Orkney, in the northern Scottish Isles. He’s the foremost authority on the Kirkwall Scroll.”
“And that is?”
Frank took over. “We studied the Kirkwall in one of my Hebrew classes. It’s basically a floor cloth about twenty feet long and six feet wide. It’s a kind of rambling pictorial mish-mash of the history of the Israelites as they entered Egypt and then left to form their own civilization. It has pictures of the Ark of the Covenant, badly written Hebrew along with a bunch of Masonic symbols.”
“Israelites? What the hell do the Israelites have to do with Scotland? Or the Masons for that matter?” the president asked.
Frank shrugged. “It’s like anything else we’ve uncovered from the late Middle Ages, seventeen or eighteenth centuries—people creating artifacts and using them in an attempt to add legitimacy to their religious and political causes. The Catholic Church has been doing it for centuries. The Freemasons claim they have history going all they way back to Shem and Noah.”
“That’s all true, Frank,” Diane offered. “There is just one problem with your history here; the Belize book fragment predates the Kirkwall Scroll by nearly two millennia.”
“So?”
“So—the paleo-Hebrew inscribed on the Kirkwall matches the same phrases found in the Belize MSS.”
“Bullshit.” Frank scoffed. “We just discovered that fragment.”
“Not bullshit,” Harlan defended Diane. “Here, have a look at the pictures I took of the Kirkwall copies they had downtown, and compare them to our page three of the Belize fragment.”
Frank took Harlan’s phone and swiped through the images. Diane and Harlan along with the president watched him study the images; observing with interest as his eyes drew wider. He pursed his lips, now shaking his head. He handed the phone back to the Chief of Staff.
“Well?” the president asked.
“It’s the same writing, Mr. President. But that’s not Hebrew. Or even paleo-Hebrew. It’s something, but—”
“I’ll tell you exactly what it is,” Diane interrupted. “It’s the writing of the Ra. The original language of the gods.”
“Diane, do you realize what the hell you’re saying here—that the Freemasons built the pyramids. That they learned the language and math and geometry of the gods?”
“I know exactly what I’m saying, Frank. And I’m pretty damn sure at this point that they did.”
Frank leaned back in his chair with an exasperated sigh, “Ahh, God. We can’t make these kinds of jumps to conclusions, people. I’m a well-studied archeologist with a minor in paleography. We don’t have enough data.”
“Screw the archeology,” the president leveled. “We don’t have decades to chase this stuff down with scientific methods, Frank. I need answers and I need them yesterday, not tomorrow.”
Frank nodded, his lips pursed, frowning.
“So these Masons,” the president continued, “They knew the language of the gods?”
“Apparently some of them did. How else would you learn their knowledge?”
The president agreed, nodding. “So this city, the capital of the gods, where was it? Atlantis?”
Frank groaned, rolling his eyes.
Diane ignored him. “The fragment doesn’t say. It could be anywhere, but most likely, it was originally in one of the seven cradles of civilization.”
“Originally? What does that mean? I thought you said it was still around somewhere?”
“It was moved, apparently. Hidden from humanity and the gods who were attacking them.”
“To where?” the president asked rhetorically, his finger thumping his upper lip in thought.
“Mount Olympus, maybe?” Harlan posited.
“Your kindergarten knowledge of Greek mythology is underwhelming, Harlan.” Frank shook his head.
“Well, that is where it was, right?”
“Olympus would put the city within close proximity of the Levant, Brett.” Diane offered. “Those legends had to come from somewhere.”
“I can’t believe you people are even seriously talking about this,” Frank scoffed, again.
“So where would they move it to, Mr. Harlan?” the president asked.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I’m just playing our game, you know, tossing out ideas like we always do.”
“Olympus was home to the twelve Olympians,” Frank began. If they were going to be playing th
is game again, the group needed a bit more information. “Zeus, Poseidon, Hera, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and the rest. Each had their own kind of domain on Olympus and they would all meet in a common area to discuss matters.”
“Thanks, Frank.” The president continued to muse. “So three thousand years ago—or more, the gods uprooted their capital and moved. Where would you go?”
“Someplace quiet. Out of the way, maybe?” Harlan proposed.
“We’re at war, remember.” Diane chimed in.
“Yea, good point. These gods are pretty tough. I don’t see them turning tail and running. That doesn’t sound like them to me.”
“A fall back plan then?” she offered. “Maybe they were regrouping. Consolidating their forces. They were killing each other off, after all.”
“But to where?” Harlan asked.
“These gods, they’ve always been recluses with us—kind of there but not there, as it were,” the president asserted “Three or four thousand years ago, they sort of withdrew from us. Left us alone. Went into hiding. Where would you go? Where is as far away from the Levant as you can get?”
“The other side of the world?” Harlan asked. “We weren’t really there yet.”
“I think that’s a good possibility.”
“The Americas, probably.” Diane agreed. “North. Central. South, maybe?”
“So maybe they came to the Americas?” the president continued.
“Or—” Frank suddenly had an epiphany. “—maybe they were already here.”
“What?” Diane shot him a glance.
“Don’t you get it. They were fucking already here!” Frank stood up now, a smile crossing his face. All eyes were now on him. “Oh, Jesus, I don’t believe this. All this time it was right in front of our faces.”
“What was?” the president asked.
“The home of the gods! It wasn’t the Levant at all. It was fucking Mount Olympus.”
“You’re losing me Frank.” The president frowned. “Watch the language.”
“Holy shit!” Now Harlan stood up, his eyes focused on the Homeland Security Secretary.
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