“What happened to your dream-link block signals?”
“I have the technology at the condo, and at the cabin,” Lopez said. “It’s not possible to install in a moving vehicle, and I never expected to need it in here.”
To Drew, Lopez’s excuses sounded like rambling nonsense.
“You need to take over the driving,” Drew said. “I have to take care of Alexis.”
At the next turn-off, Drew got in back and Lopez took over the driving. Once settled amongst the blankets and pillows in the back of the van, Drew extended his arm around Alexis. Enveloped safely by him, her tiny body collapsed, and she began to sob. Obviously she knew something terrible had happened to her mom. Drew merely held her until long after she had quieted down.
“Alexis, remember when Mr. Oscar died?” His whisper referred to a painful period a few months prior when her turtle had died.
“Uh huh,” came the teary reply.
“Remember how you felt sad, but your mommy told you how Mr. Oscar was in a better place?”
She nodded.
“You know, now Mommy is in a better place.”
“Mommy is with Mr. Oscar now?” Drew could tell she was trying to align the situation with her limited experience with the world.
“Well, Angel, Mommy can see Mr. Oscar now whenever she wants to, but she is in a place that’s even more beautiful.”
“When is she coming back?”
The frog in Drew’s throat nearly prevented him from responding.
“Let’s get some rest, and talk about that in the morning. All right, Angel?”
Having calmed some, she looked completely exhausted. Half-mast eyelids sagged even lower.
“Hector, is it safe for her to sleep?”
Lopez looked at his watch. “We’re almost there. We’ll be at the house before she goes into REM sleep. Make sure she has this, though.” He tossed the medallion to Drew. “And let’s keep a very close eye on her.”
Drew put the medallion to her chest and wrapped the blanket tight around her to keep it in place. He stroked her forehead until, after some time, she slowly succumbed to sleep.
Once the little one lay dormant, Drew climbed into the front seat of the vehicle now high in the mountains. Aside from Kat and Alfonso behind them, there were no other headlights.
“Hector, what happened?”
“Do you really want the details?” Lopez’s tone implied that he didn’t.
Drew hung his head. “Where did she go?”
“When someone is killed in the Spatium Quartus their body transports there.”
There was nothing in Drew’s hands, but he wanted to throw something, hit something, or choke something. He hated feeling helpless.
“Their bodies just disappear?”
“Drew, each year in the United States, there are hundreds of thousands of missing persons cases. It’s impossible to count international numbers, but the consensus is that they are increasing exponentially.”
“I thought Luzveyn Dred was implanting bits of his dimension into people’s minds, not killing them!”
On some level, he knew he was searching for any reason not to believe that Nadia was dead, but her body was gone. That couldn’t just be rationalized away.
“Most of the time,” Lopez said. “I think deaths in the Spatium Quartus are accidental. People can take only so much of the torture. I suppose the microscopic tumors multiply to a point where the brain can no longer conceive that they’re not already part of that dimension. So, as they die, they’re pulled to the Spatium Quartus.”
“So Nadia got to a point where she just couldn’t take it anymore?
“No, Drew, what happened to Nadia tonight was pure vengeance. Luzveyn Dred killed her on purpose.”
“Why?!”
“You can’t expect Luzveyn Dred to make sense,” Lopez said. “He’s not human, he’s more of an ‘it’ than a ‘he.’ He’s like pure desire, pure craving unleashed, but never satisfied.”
“How could I have let this happen?”
“Drew, don’t blame yourself. There was nothing you could have done. There wasn’t anything that any of us could do.”
Someone was to blame for killing his girlfriend and leaving Alexis motherless. If it was not him, and if it was not Lopez, then who was responsible?
“Hector, I may not want to hear them, but I need to hear the details.”
As Lopez relayed the specifics of Luzveyn Dred’s murder of Nadia, it felt as though someone was spraying a never-ending supply of lighter fluid on his campfire of anger. Drew wanted revenge.
Lopez must have read the look on his face.
“Drew, anger and hate are powerful motivators, but they will prove to be useless to conquering the evil that we are facing—perhaps even detrimental.”
He glared back as though no one in the world could understand him. Then, as abject sorrow sank in, he realized Lopez might be right. The oft-times corny words of his AA program that had been drilled into him carried special meaning in this situation.
Nothing, absolutely nothing in God’s world happens by mistake.
“I’ll tell you this,” Drew said, determination in his voice, “I will help set straight what has been done tonight. Hector, I want you to know, no matter what it takes, no matter how long it takes, I am going to help you defeat Luzveyn Dred.”
- Chapter Twenty Five -
Tapusscar turned off to head up the mountain toward where Stanley had suggested he look for the group. In less dramatic fashion than how he’d obtained it, he’d swapped the Nissan Pathfinder for a charcoal gray Dodge Ram Charger. He’d swiped it from a freeway motel lot, and figured it would be morning before anyone noticed it stolen.
He cracked the knuckles of his good hand and thought of the blonde woman. He would find her; he would capture her. Once seized and secured, they’d play a game his father taught him. Father had called it “le Bourge.” Robert le Bourge had been a medieval Bulgarian who’d converted to Christianity. He moved to France, became a Dominican friar, and then involved himself in the Inquisition. In 1239, acting as an inquisitor, he had ordered 183 people to be burned alive, en masse.
In Father’s version of the game, the participant would be tied, standing up, arms out. Eventually, their legs would sag, so the bindings would need to support their weight in an upright pose. Next, the inquisitor would demand answers to important questions. If and when the subject refused to answer, or answered incorrectly, they would be slapped from right to left. The next wrong answer resulted in a knuckle-first punch from left to right. Between rounds, various parts of the captive’s clothes and flesh could be set ablaze. Each subsequent round added a more dangerous and torturous instrument in the hand of the interrogator. The right-to-left strike of the apparatus utilized the blunt side, the left-to-right blow, the object’s sharp or lethal edge.
Once, not long before Tapusscar had left his parents, the game had progressed from a hairbrush, through eight or nine weapons, to a sickle. Tapusscar had not answered wrongly while his father held that implement. He had no doubt that Father would use it.
Playing ‘le Bourge’ with the woman who had broken his wrist, Tapusscar would find out everything he wanted to know. He would make her betray those she worked for, so he could hunt down the insurgents. His primary focus was reclaiming the medallion and delivering it to his Master. However, he would also have some fun, and hit her with questions such as, “What do you fear most?”
He hoped she would attempt to resist his will, refuse to answer, and lie to him. He suspected she would, and the anticipation made his balls tingle with excitement.
The truck wove back and forth up the southern California mountain pass. Tapusscar smiled.
I will find her.
- Chapter Twenty Six -
One day prior to Night of Nights – Lake Arrowhead, California
At half past midnight the van made its way down a tree-lined, gravel path into a clearing. As they approached a series of buildings, Drew shook h
is head in amazement. Calling the secluded, modern facility a cabin was the equivalent to calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground. The compound contained three large structures: a main house, a guest house, and a garage. Designed to look like an old hunting outpost, Drew soon learned that the buildings contained more satellite equipment, assault weapons, and ammunition than most police precinct headquarters.
They pulled the vehicles into the garage, a warehouse-sized building able to hold at least ten cars, and began to unload. Drew gingerly carried the still-sleeping, blanket-wrapped Alexis out of the garage, through the cold, and into the house.
Once she had been tucked away in a bedroom and they had lugged the bags into the house, the four gathered in the nerve center of the facility. The room, which resembled a cross between a high-tech Fortune 500 boardroom and a military command center, contained an oblong conference table surrounded by high-backed, black leather chairs. Around the room, flat-screen computer monitors and plasma TVs provided surveillance of the compound and its perimeter. TVs, tuned into CNN and MSNBC, silently reported national and international events.
Standing just inside the doorway, Alfonso put his hand on Drew’s arm. “I am so sorry about Nadia.”
Drew was silent. Kat moved in close and wrapped her arms around him. She hugged and said nothing. On some level, he knew that none of it had really sunk in. Lopez lifted a telephone receiver from the conference table.
“I know one guy that ain’t getting those damn medallions back to Italy!” He looked away. “Hey, it’s Lopez. I need an airport net spread over southern California. Ready? Male passenger flying solo, or with a male companion. Tickets booked since 10 PM. Departure early tomorrow morning. Final destination Rome or Naples. Then, crosscheck that list with the passport database, and fax me their pictures ASAP.”
Apparently, the government had built a pretty complete mousetrap.
Once all were seated, Alfonso pulled a tattered Bible from the briefcase he’d brought in from the car. He opened the book where a maroon bookmark held the spot, and requested that Kat read Revelation 6: 7-8. She skimmed through the page, and finding her place, took a deep breath.
“And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of earth.”
Lopez took the book from her, flipped back a page and began scanning.
Her face pensive, Kat spoke slowly. “This is the Book of Revelation. Are we to believe this is really happening?”
“By definition, a revelation is a vision, or a dream. They’re not necessarily fixed. We have the power to change this – to stop it. ‘Power was given unto them over the fourth part.’ What do you suppose that ‘fourth part’ of the earth refers to?”
Kat flicked her hair back behind her ears before answering. “I guess you mean, Spatium Quartus, the Fourth Dimension.”
“Yes,” Alfonso said, “and according to the studying done by Padre Gennaro, it is only the beginning. From Revelation, it’s clear that at some point, things progress from the Fourth Dimension and spill over into this realm of earthly existence.”
Lopez was mumbling under his breath as he read. “Come and see… behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown… to conquer… second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see… another horse that was red… a great sword… the third beast say, Come and see…”
For a moment, Lopez looked like a haggard man who had struggled for decades against forces more powerful than himself.
“‘Come and see’—Luzveyn Dred has said this to me. Are you are saying that we are dealing here with the end of the world?”
“According to Padre Gennaro, unless something is done about it, yes.”
“And you’re saying that Luzveyn Dred is one of the beasts, one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse?” Drew asked.
“With all your questions, I’m surprised you haven’t asked about the verse on the back of the medallion.”
“What does that have—”
“It’s Thracian—that’s how we traced it back to Spartacus.”
“What does it say?” Lopez asked eyes wide, as though he’d already guessed the horrible answer.
“It reads, ‘Come and see.’”
“But,” Drew said, “that was before, long before Revelations was written.”
“Yes,” Alfonso said, “The Book of Revelation was written hundreds of years after Spartacus.”
“Wait,” Lopez said, tapping the Bible, “there’s more. ‘He was cast out into the earth.’”
“That’s Revelation 12: 9,” Alfonso said.
“‘And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.’” Lopez looked at Kat. “NOCTURN?”
Her expression was blank.
“NOCTURN,” he repeated. “‘He was cast out into the earth.’ Where is NOCTURN set to send us to the Spatium Quartus?”
“Holy shit, dude! ‘Into the earth!’”
“You guys want to include us in your little conversation?” Drew asked.
“Back in the eighties, after OIA was abolished, I was attempting to link to a subject deep in a military bunker who I thought had information involving the OIA ambush. So, I pointed the NOCTURN satellite sensor underground, into the earth, transported and ended up in the Spatium Quartus. I was so shocked I used my medallion and got the hell out of there immediately. When I told my colleague, Tabatha, she investigated and found wave-like signals, similar to the frequency of brainwaves, present in the earth. It’s as though the Spatium Quartus has its own dream-print emanating from underground. So, she modified NOCTURN, and the rest is history.”
Drew couldn’t believe it. “She just shot you into the center of the earth?”
“NOCTURN doesn’t transport you anywhere. Just your brainwaves are linked.”
“Yes but at some point, like with Nadia, you can actually be pulled there.”
“Correct,” Kat said. “When you’re killed in, or your body becomes overloaded with SQ.”
“What about all this other stuff?” Lopez pointed to the Bible. “How do we interpret what comes next and what it all means?”
“We don’t need to. In fact, that is precisely how the Bible gets messed up by man in the first place. Everybody’s got a–” Alfonso took a deep breath and exhaled. “Look, I don’t need to know how electricity works in order to turn on a light switch, or change a light bulb. What I’m saying is that we might never figure out the meaning behind every piece of symbolism. Do we need to know the specific significance of the white versus the red horse in order to defeat Luzveyn Dred? If we focus on the big picture, hopefully, we can not only get through this, but we can save those from whatever catastrophe Dred is planning.”
Kat slid the Bible in front of her.
“Okay then, we’d assume this fourth dimension deal has happened. The fifth seal?” she asked.
Alfonso began quoting before she could begin reading it.
“‘And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held.’” He looked down and stared at his folded hands. “Padre Gennaro thought that because so many have been murdered for their beliefs, that this seal would be impossible to pinpoint. But the day I saw his body sprawled out in the basilica, the symbolism made me wonder. Then, tonight, when Luzveyn Dred mocked the memory of Padre Gennaro, I knew for certain.”
Beeps from Lopez’s computer interrupted them. Lopez went to the screen and began scrolling through passport pictures.
“Gotcha! Mr. Timothy Rackman…my ass!”
Kat looked at it. “That’s definitely our Stanley. US Airway
s flight 64, departing at 7 AM from LAX stopping in Philadelphia, then heading to Rome. How are we gonna get him?”
Lopez looked at his watch. “I’ll contact some law enforcement friends and we’ll head to the airport in a little while.”
Alfonso turned to Lopez. “I’d intended on returning to Italy anyway, and could give you a ride. Even after you apprehend this Stanley, it might be wise to head to Italy to prevent whatever the Sogno di Guerra is planning to do with the medallions.”
“Hey, yeah,” Drew said, “How does the Sogno di Guerra fit into all of this?”
“They’re the arm of Luzveyn Dred here on our planet,” Alfonso said. “If he’s attempting to breach our dimension, they’re working to bring that about.”
“Do we have any way to know how that breach will happen?” Lopez asked fidgeting with the telephone.’
“We have a big one. If we assume the opening of the seals continues the process, then opening the sixth seal tells us what happens. If we can figure out what it means, we have a chance at stopping it.” Alfonso motioned to Kat to read.
“‘Revelation 6: 12: And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind–’”
“Wait!” Drew’s interruption silenced the room. “A volcanic eruption produces earthquakes, blots out the sun, and produces its own weather system. I’m not sure about the moon turning to blood, but a cyclone could form above the volcano that would distort the colors of things in the sky.”
“And the stars falling to earth?” Alfonso asked, but his face showed that he was already thinking through the answer.
“The volcanic rock spewed into the air is incredibly hot and it could glow at a high altitude. Once high enough, it cools and falls to earth. Many people in Pompeii were struck by these rocks falling to earth at lethal speeds.”
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