Legacy of the Watchers Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Nancy Madore

  Damn! It was really in there!

  Beth looked around the ground for a sharp rock. Maybe she could jiggle the box loose, or somehow cause a fissure in it that would allow her to wedge in her key and pry it out. Finding what looked like the perfect rock for the job, she pressed the point of it into one end of the box. It suddenly gave way, even as the other end popped out. Beth stared at it in surprise. The little metal box was rounded on the inside, so that pressing one end or the other made it slide open, like a tiny circular drawer. She slipped one finger into the box—that’s all there was room for—and felt around. There was something in there! After fidgeting with it a moment she pulled out a ring.

  Beth drew up and sat on her haunches so that she could get a better look at the ring. It was a simple, lopsided band of bronze-colored metal that was badly tarnished. Her first impression was that it was ugly, but she knew from watching the Antiques Roadshow that an item didn’t necessarily have to appear valuable to be valuable. Often, it was the junkier looking item that ended up being worth a fortune. Could this ring be a valuable antique? It was obviously very old. Examining it more closely, Beth saw that it had tiny marks carved into the side of it that looked a little like the ancient inscriptions she’d seen in museums. Perhaps this was an important relic from the past. Or maybe the markings signified something else. She thought of Bilbo Baggins’ ring in The Hobbit.

  Why was Wayne coming here for this ring now? It seemed unlikely that he would be seeking hidden treasure. If that Swiss bank account statement was accurate, then Wayne already had millions.

  If the worst happens, visit Brisbin at Highgate Cemetery.

  Given the circumstances, this statement seemed aptly translated to; ‘If the worst happens, get the ring.’ So what was so great about this ring? Did it have magic powers or something?

  She thought again of Bilbo’s ring in The Hobbit—and she huffed. And yet, how did she know there wasn’t some power associated with the ring, either real or perceived, that made it worth hiding—and possibly even dying for?

  Beth vaguely recalled passing an antique shop on her way over to the cemetery. It might not hurt to get a professional opinion about the ring. But then again, if the ring had something to do with Wayne’s death, it might put her life in danger to let anyone know that she had it. It was even possible that the ring had been stolen from a museum.

  Beth sat there until her legs started to cramp. Then she slipped the ring on her finger and got up to leave.

  Chapter 18

  Manhattan, New York

  The press release might have gone out late, but in the end, that hadn’t mattered one bit. The phones hadn’t stopped ringing since Nadia went public with her masquerade ball to bid a ‘Farewell to Hollywood.’ Everyone wanted to get involved. Volunteers, sponsors and early donations were flooding in. And it was clear that the price of the tickets wouldn’t be an issue. Even at fifty-thousand dollars a head, it looked as if the event would sell out early. Nadia was too busy to feel tired from her late night with Gordon and Clive, although there were moments when she felt as if she were moving in slow motion. But the work had to be done—and she was afraid to put too much on Georgia after what she’d been through.

  But overall, Georgia had come through the ordeal remarkably well. She’d pretty much accepted that it had all been a bad dream, a hallucination brought on by a bump on the head. This seemed to fit with her perception of the events—which she perceived as being out of her control. Much like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Georgia just kept hoping she would get ‘home’ again. And finally she had. If she only knew how close she came to being lost forever—Nadia shuddered at the thought.

  But Georgia seemed fine; though she refused to elaborate any further on her ‘dream’ other than to simply say that it must have been triggered by the incident with the copy machine. Nadia didn’t press for details. She didn’t want to hear how Georgia watched Nadia extract a magic ring from the center of the copier in order to make monsters appear. It was, Nadia supposed, the copier that finally convinced Georgia that it really was just a dream. The first thing she did upon returning from the hospital was to step up to the copy machine and press the ‘start’ button. Had the machine worked, Georgia might have lost it then and there. But when the same error message from the morning popped up, Nadia saw Georgia’s entire body relax. The machine was the same as when she left it that morning. Nadia had not unjammed it by removing a mysterious ring—because that part had been a dream.

  Nadia watched Georgia guiltily; well aware of what she was looking for. Once Georgia established that the copier was, in fact, still jammed, Nadia approached her.

  “No more work today,” she said, taking Georgia by the shoulders and coaxing her away from the machine. And for the first time since they found her in the library, Georgia looked directly at Nadia. But her eyes still seemed haunted.

  “I just…that copier was in my dream,” she said, as if trying to make sense out of it. “It must have been on my mind when I bumped my head.”

  Nadia almost sighed in relief. Georgia would be all right as long as she believed that it was all just a bad dream. And it seemed as if she would be able to believe that.

  But every now and then, Nadia could feel Georgia’s eyes, studying her as if she were a puzzle to be solved.

  Nadia pretended not to notice—which was hard to do while carrying so much guilt. Sometimes there wasn’t anything she could do to keep her face from growing hot with mortification, at which point she would turn quickly away and pretend to do something else in order to escape Georgia’s prying eyes.

  But it was good to have Georgia’s sweet, attentive expression back. Every time Nadia recalled the cold, calculating look of Lilith in Georgia’s eyes she cringed.

  Luckily, they were both too busy to think about much else besides the masquerade ball. But as Nadia went through her list of contacts, she found herself thinking about Wessler’s ten. Who might they be? Poseidon said they were drunk with power. That described many of her best clients. Charity was, after all, a kind of entertainment for the rich and powerful. Even the most ruthless businessmen enjoyed being magnanimous when it suited them. And they could be quite generous at times—just as they could be shockingly callous at others. Much like ‘God,’ they could ‘giveth,’ or they could ‘taketh away,’ pretty much as they pleased. It was all about control. They might strip an entire country of its resources, leaving millions of people to starve, but they wouldn’t miss an event like Nadia’s masquerade ball for the world. In fact, she was counting on most of them to make a much higher donation than just the hefty cover charge.

  Nadia had never really thought about her donors in this way before. This was the world she had to operate in, such as it was. Getting donations from the rich and powerful was her job. She liked it. And she was good at it.

  But this time, as she made her way through her contact list, Nadia singled out all of the men who fit Poseidon’s description. It was an unpleasant task. These were people who had always been very supportive of Nadia and her causes. She felt a little like a traitor as she searched for their pictures online and emailed them to Gordon.

  Finally, when Georgia left for lunch, she called Gordon.

  “Did you find anything yet?” she asked.

  Gordon was grim. “We identified the location of T.D.M.R.’s target,” he said. “It’s Japan.”

  Nadia was too stunned to speak.

  “There are two faults that meet on the main island of Honshu,” he went on. “The Median Tectonic Line and the Itoigawa-Shizuoka Tectonic Line. The two faults come together in the middle of the Ibaraki Prefecture—where over three million people live. That’s where they were planning to send all that energy.”

  Nadia still didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could say.

  “Are you still there?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “There are thirty-two cities in the Ibaraki Prefecture,” he told her. “Not to mention the towns and villages.
And that’s just at the point where the two faults meet. A hit like that would set off earthquakes all up and down those lines, just like it did the San Andreas. It would wipe out most of the island!”

  “Could we be at war with Japan and not know it?” wondered Nadia.

  “No,” said Gordon. “There’s no doubt in my mind that Wessler’s ten were acting independently.”

  “Well that’s it then!” she cried. “We can expose them and you can get your job back! It wouldn’t even matter if we were at war with Japan—no one would go along with killing three million innocent civilians! And you said yourself; this kind of ecological warfare is in direct violation of the Geneva Convention. We don’t have to sneak around anymore. We can get some help from the outside!”

  “Nadia…think about what you’re saying,” said Gordon. “What do you want to do…call the police? ‘Hello, police? There’s a djinn in my ring who says California wasn’t an accident. Our head of defense planned the whole thing.’”

  Nadia could feel herself growing frustrated. “But you must know people,” she said.

  “Let’s say we do get someone to believe us,” said Gordon. “What are they gonna do?” When Nadia didn’t reply Gordon answered the question for her. “They’ll have to go by the book,” he said. “They’ll have to follow procedure. Which means it’ll be handled the same way the other investigation was handled.”

  “Then we could go public with it,” said Nadia.

  “Go public with it!” exclaimed Gordon. “Assuming we live out the day, what then? All we’ll be doing is alerting T.D.M.R. that we’re onto them. They’ll have this thing covered up so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

  Nadia snorted. “You sound just like Clive,” she said.

  “Well…he’s starting to rub off,” said Gordon. “I hate to admit it but I really miss working with Will. Somehow Clive seemed less annoying when there were the three of us.”

  “That’s it!” exclaimed Nadia. “Let’s go to Will! He’ll have to believe us!”

  “Nadia, you cannot breathe one word of this to Will,” said Gordon.

  “But why?” she asked. “He won’t be able to justify T.D.M.R.’s actions this time. They’re doing exactly what he accused you of doing—worse! At least you were trying to make things better. They could be trying to wipe out an entire nation, for all we know. If Will could turn you in, feeling as he does about you—and he does care about you, Gordon; he was just telling me the other night how much he misses you—think what he would do to those monsters are using our United States military to cause all this!”

  “I can’t take that chance, Nadia,” said Gordon. “If what I’m doing gets out, I will go to jail. Do you understand? Jail. A tiny room with bars on the walls. That’s where you’ll find me. I will be the one who goes down in history as the criminal here, and the rest of the story will be buried like the truth always is. You saw it, Nadia. You saw how things were handled in Alaska. I’ve seen it over and over again. Someone on our side makes a mistake, they find a fall guy—that’s me, Nadia—and then they bury all the details in paperwork. Is that what you want?” When Nadia didn’t answer he asked her again—“Is it?”

  “No!” she exclaimed. “Of course that isn’t what I want! What I want is…is—I want someone to help us make this right! I want to get the whole damn world to stand up against these jerks! I want to stop lying to Will!”

  “Okay, those are nice little dreams to have,” said Gordon. “But they aren’t realistic. No one is going to risk their ass to help us. The whole world is going to side with the officials—not us. And if you tell Will the truth you will be sending me to jail.”

  “Dammit!” cried Nadia. “Where’s the sympathy I’ve come to rely on from you? You’re turning into Clive.”

  Gordon laughed. “I’m turning into a cynical son-of-a-bitch, if that’s what you mean,” he agreed. “Look, Nadia, do you trust me? I mean, do you trust that my motives are pure?”

  “Yes, of course!”

  “And Clive? Do you trust Clive?” he persisted.

  “Yes.”

  “And you?” he asked finally. “Do you trust yourself?”

  This time Nadia hesitated. And then she wondered why she hesitated. She’d been so sure about Gordon and Clive.

  “Yes,” she said finally.

  “Nadia, Clive and I trust you,” said Gordon. “We know you want the right thing. And we know you’re capable of doing it. We all want the right thing. And we’re all capable of doing it. This time, we’re not going to run on emotions. We’re going to think before we act. We all have to agree before we do anything…remember?”

  Nadia took a deep breath. “Yes, I remember,” she said.

  “So for now, it’s just us,” said Gordon. “Agreed?”

  Nadia hardly hesitated at all this time. “Agreed.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” said Gordon. “We’ll seek help when it becomes necessary—and then we’ll have to choose that help very carefully.”

  “So where does that leave us?” she asked.

  “We just got another piece of the puzzle,” said Gordon. “When we get together again, we’ll see if Poseidon knows where it fits. I got your pictures and added them to my collection. We’ll run those past Poseidon as well. Hopefully he’ll be able to identify Wessler’s ten.”

  “Why Ibaraki, Japan?” she asked. “Any ideas?”

  “None,” said Gordon. “Ibaraki is just one of Japan’s many industrialized regions. They have a little of everything, though the focus seems to be nuclear energy.”

  “Wait…is Ibaraki anywhere near that nuclear power plant that was hit by a tsunami a few years back?” she asked.

  Gordon hesitated. “Fukushima is just north of there, yes,” he said gravely.

  “You don’t think…?” Nadia couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought.

  “I don’t know what to think,” said Gordon. “But let’s not jump to any conclusions. We need to talk to Poseidon again.”

  “I have plans with Will tonight,” she said. “It’ll be hard to put him off two nights in a row.”

  “Clive has stuff to do too,” said Gordon. “Can you sneak away any time tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I’ll figure something out,” said Nadia.

  “We need to find out who trapped Poseidon in the first place,” said Gordon. “That could lead us to who’s behind this.”

  “You don’t think Wessler was acting on his own?”

  “Could be,” he said. “It’s possible that he just stumbled onto the ring, like your great-grandfather stumbled onto Lilith’s ring. But it’s more likely that someone who knew what happened either told him about the ring or gave it to him.”

  “You mean someone from Poseidon’s past? But that would have to be a Nephilim.”

  “Or an angel,” said Gordon.

  “But…the angels were trapped in the abyss!”

  “Only the Watchers,” said Gordon. “According to Poseidon, Uranus was one of the angels that helped put them there.”

  “So you think the Others, or the Supreme Ones—or whatever they’re called—could be behind this?” asked Nadia, growing more alarmed by the minute.

  “I don’t think anything yet,” said Gordon. “It’s just an idea I got from you, actually, when you were pointing out the similarities between the Supreme Ones and Wessler’s ten last night.”

  Nadia sighed again. “This just keeps getting worse and worse. I’m beginning to wish that someone would convince me that this is all just a bad dream, like we did with Georgia.”

  “How’s she doing?” asked Gordon.

  “She seems fine,” said Nadia. “She’s looking at me funny.”

  “Hmph,” said Gordon. “That was a close one.”

  “Too close for comfort,” agreed Nadia. A thought suddenly came to her. “Does this mean we’ll be going back to the beginning with Poseidon?”

  “Yep.” She could hear from his tone of voice that Gordon was just as eager to hear Pos
eidon’s story as she was. “We get to hear the history of the Greek gods first hand—from one of the most notorious gods in the bunch!”

  “However do you endure it?” she joked. Then she hung up the phone, wondering how she could joke in the midst of such turmoil and uncertainty. She supposed that this was the essence of life—to find the silver lining in any cloud, no matter how dark it seemed. She’d seen it many times. People whose suffering was the greatest were often the most eager to find that silver lining. At least that was the case with the ones who survived. Those who let the disaster define their lives were the real victims.

  Nadia supposed that she could list herself among the surviving class after all.

  Chapter 19

  London, England

  The antique shop was much less impressive on the inside than it was on the outside. It was located in a beautiful old building that was probably a renovated antique itself, but its interior was dark and dusty and packed to overflowing. Beth made her way to the back of the store through a narrow hallway that was walled on either side with old furniture. She heard noises in the back that sounded like they might be coming from an office.

  “Hello?” she ventured.

  A man who looked about as old as most of the antiques suddenly appeared from around a corner. He eyed Beth suspiciously. “Well?” he prompted.

  Had this been an exclusive shop with a professional staff, Beth might have been intimidated. But, somehow, this crotchety old man put her mind at ease. She couldn’t, for example, imagine him contacting the police to report a stolen museum piece. But on the flip side, could she really trust his opinion about the ring?

  Though he wasn’t the most conscientious merchant she’d ever encountered (the store was a mess and he almost seemed put out by the appearance of a potential customer), the old man did have an intelligent face. His eyes sized her up knowingly. Perhaps he knew that she wasn’t there to buy anything. Hopefully he knew a thing or two about antiques as well.