She brought the cup to Don, who accepted it gratefully with both hands. He took in the steam, and then gulped down a hot mouthful.
“Just the way I like it, Mona. Even after all this time, you remember. Thank you,” he said.
She looked into his eyes and could tell he was sincere.
“Don, you shouldn’t have come here,” she began, bracing herself for what she knew would be an argument.
“Where else could I go?” he asked simply. He had a point, she acknowledged.
“Those men who came, they were probably with the FBI. They were probably sent to investigate you. Running away only makes you look guilty.”
Don put down his coffee cup and sighed. He looked like someone who was trying to explain something simple, like nuclear physics, to a truculent child.
“But I’m not guilty. I don’t know where Hope is. I’ve told you already.”
Mona poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from him.
“Don, it is not that simple. You can’t just say you don’t know and expect everyone to believe you. There will be evidence. There will be facts that can prove or disprove what you are saying. Please,” she continued, running her hand through her hair in frustration, “please try to understand. If you’re innocent, it is much better for you to stay put, to stay where they can keep track of you, and to let the evidence play itself out.”
Why are you doing this? she screamed at herself. Call the police. He took her; you know he did. But she couldn’t. Not yet. She couldn’t spook him. It would be better for them all if he turned himself in—or even better, brought her to Hope.
“Mona,” he said, reaching out and grabbing her free hand. She froze. “The evidence will show that I am innocent. Then what will you do?”
She looked into his eyes. There was sadness there. And fear. But not guilt. Not one shade of guilt tainted the sincerity that shone from them.
Her mind faltered. What if he was telling the truth?
A huge abyss opened before her. She had never even contemplated a scenario where Don wasn’t the culprit.
“That’s not possible,” she whispered, trying to pull her hand free. Don’s grip only tightened.
“For years, Mona, I’ve been telling you. They weren’t done with Hope. She’s meant for something special. That Mark of hers—”
Mona disentangled her fingers, her face flushing with anger over the old craziness resurfacing. “I don’t want to hear it, Don. That is a coincidence. It means nothing. We have put that behind us.”
She heard herself reciting the same lines of the same argument, years and years of frustration rushing back at her, her voice on edge with the same sharp desperation. It used to be that her proclamation marked the slamming of the door on the conversation. The end. No more. But this time Don wouldn’t stop.
“You never believed me, but I knew they would come back for her. I thought my job was to keep her safe, but when you asked me to move out, I realized something. I couldn’t shelter her from her destiny. My job was not to stop her fate; it was to prepare her for it. To keep her safe until her time came. It was Divine Providence that we separate so that I could give myself over fully to her training.”
His eyes were shining with intensity of purpose now, and she felt herself start to get a little sick.
“I was the one who taught her how to run—did you know that? I even taught her how to drive—did she tell you about that? We practiced evasive maneuvers, especially. And she knows all the books of the Bible. Almost all of them, anyway. I had her memorize things, especially from the prophets, just in case.” The corner of his mouth tugged up a little as he reminisced. “She has very strong opinions about Genesis, by the way. Just like you.”
Mona pushed her coffee cup away, not caring when it spilled all over the kitchen table. She stumbled from the table, hands over her ears as if she could block out Don’s words, until she got as far away from him as the kitchen would allow. Still his voice followed her.
“You don’t have to worry, Mona. She’s ready. For years they would come to me. They came in my dreams—beautiful creatures, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. They told me to prepare the way.
“When she wanted to come to live with you, they stopped coming. That’s how I knew it was time to let her go. The police can try to find her, but they will search in vain. God’s plan is in motion.”
Oh my God, she thought. What has he done with her? What is he plotting for her to do? Her mind raced, sifting through his rantings to find any clue of where to find Hope. But there was nothing.
“Don,” she said with ragged breath. “Do you really believe that? That Hope is off on some heavenly mission?”
She waited as he thought over her question.
“I do,” he said simply.
“A mission to do what?” she demanded.
He stared into the dregs of his coffee cup, obviously disturbed by her question. “I don’t know.” He looked up from his cup, his eyes full of fear and doubt. “What if she’s not ready, Mona? What if I didn’t prepare her enough? What if she’s in danger?”
He sat there in his ill-fitting clothing, his awkward haircut barely disguising the thinning of his hair, looking for all the world like some soft, suburban refugee playacting as a survivalist. He was the man who had had it all and walked away from everything, everything, to protect his daughter from whatever it was he imagined still threatened her.
At that moment, she knew she would never sway him, never get him to believe anything different, never get him to admit to anything if he had, indeed, spirited Hope away. And even as she thought it to herself, she began to doubt he could have done anything serious to Hope. Not when he seemed so hell-bent on protecting her.
Later she would give in to the guilt. She’d wanted to put the past behind her, and in doing so, she had been willfully blind to what was going on in Don’s household. He had truly lost his grip on reality, and she would never forgive herself for not seeing his craziness for what it was, for chalking it up to harmless eccentricity. For trying to avoid it out of shame.
Or out of hope. Deep down, she’d never stopped wishing for things to go back to the way they were. That’s why she’d never divorced him. That’s why she’d never spoken up about his crazy accusations. She hadn’t even put away their wedding pictures. How could she have accepted that the man she had fallen in love with all those years ago was really gone?
But she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of wallowing in her guilt right now. She needed to be strong. So she had to try another tack.
She took a deep, steadying breath. “Then don’t you think you ought to tell the authorities?”
Don’s aura of uncertainty only deepened.
“Yes,” he whispered, looking down at his hands. “I suppose I should. But they’ll never believe me.”
“You can’t be so sure of that. If you’re telling the truth, they’re bound to come around to your side. And like I said, if you keep running, it just makes you look guilty.”
She was prodding him now as if he were a little child, using the same tone of voice she’d used on Hope as a toddler when she was trying to convince her to take a nap. Reasoning with an unreasonable person was never a sure bet, but it was all she had right now. She looked across the vast expanse of the kitchen and gave him an encouraging smile.
“Do you believe me, Mona?”
She was caught in the tractor beam of his look as he pinned her down with his question. Her mouth was dry when she tried to answer him, and it took her several tries before she could speak.
“It doesn’t matter what I think, Don. What matters is that you do the right thing. For Hope.”
“Of course. For Hope,” he repeated, looking down at his hands again. “For Hope.” He dropped his head further, as if in acquiescence. “You’d better give me the name of the FBI agent you’re working with.”
Her head jerked sharply up. “What?” She felt her face flush, and saw from the look of amusemen
t on Don’s face that he already knew. “How—?”
He smiled serenely at her, his crisis of confidence now forgotten. “The angels told me all about him, too.”
twenty
Once again, I pulled the curtain back from the motel window and peered outside. In the fullness of night, there wasn’t much I could see. The lonely lamps that dotted the parking lot stood like beacons and cast shadows that time and again I assessed for threats. Did that shadow just move? Was there something there, waiting for me to let down my guard?
I let the curtain drop back into place and sighed as I leaned back on my uncomfortable perch. The tiny alcove by the window was not meant for sitting. The edges of the wall poked into my already tender skin. I jumped lightly down and began pacing the room.
After Michael’s warning, there was no way I could let myself sleep.
My body, on the other hand, begged to differ. My bones ached, and my taut skin was now becoming itchy from the unnaturally rapid healing process.
I needed something to do, something to occupy my mind. An idle flipping of television channels found nothing but old sitcom reruns and infomercials. There was nothing abandoned in the meager closet, no hotel magazine touting local tourist traps. I rifled through the drawers and pulled out the Gideon Bible I’d rushed past earlier in the day.
It will have to do, I said to myself ruefully, as I fanned through the tissue-thin pages.
After years of my father’s tutelage and the monotony of Catholic school, I could recite countless verses by heart, had no need to even look at the delicate pages and the tiny type to remember the stories and commands that unfolded between the covers of the book. Except for the book of Genesis. I frowned as the pages fell open to its opening words.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
The little lamp next to the bed seemed to sputter and then righted itself. I eased onto the bed, plumping up the hard pillows as best I could to cushion me as I leaned back against the wall, and I settled in to read.
I’d always hated Genesis. Once you got past the dramatic creation of the world in the first chapter, it struck me as very misogynistic, what with the “Eve out of Adam” and “woman tempted” bits. Every single son of Noah named and numbered, but the women mentioned only by their roles, nameless wives and daughters who add not a whit to the story. Add to that the endless lists—this river became that river, so-and-so begot so-and-so—and it was a real snooze.
But I seemed to remember it had the story of Lot’s wife, and some mentions of Nephilim. And since I didn’t really know it, it might manage to keep my attention, so I dug in to read.
I was barely into it when my mind began to wander. Unconsciously I was skimming the pages, barely registering their words as I kept one ear listening for the sound of rustling wings. Had the Fallen Ones been following us all along? I thought back to our visit to Enoch. Enoch, whose name I would undoubtedly find in one of these never-ending lists in Genesis. I shuddered as I remembered the shadow that had seemed to pass over me when he’d disappeared. Had that been the Fallen, hunting me down even then?
I mindlessly turned the page, my eyes scanning without registering anything at all, when a verse caught my attention: And it came about when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.
Brother against brother, the Prophecy had said. I scrambled up and ran to my purse, rifling through it for the piece of crumpled paper Enoch had given me for safekeeping. I smoothed it out, running my fingers hastily over my scribbled notes, looking for the translation that had been jotted in the paper’s margins. Hands shaking, I traced the words as I read them aloud:
The Key of Righteousness perverted Brother against Brother,
Child against Father, and rent the curtain of Heaven with the sins of Man and Angels’ doubt.
With this Key, the Bearer shall come and the Gate shall open, spilling out Heaven’s glory, and letting those desirous amongst you to ascend once more.
The Bible slipped from my hands, falling with a solid thud to the floor as last night’s dream came rushing back to me. The dirty hand that lifted the rock and killed the guard-who-wasn’t-a-guard—that wasn’t just the confusion of my overtired brain. It was a vision of Cain killing Abel in the field. And the Key of Righteousness wasn’t a key at all. It was a rock, the only weapon that someone at the dawn of time would have had at his disposal, the most likely thing a farmer would have used to strike out in jealousy against his own flesh and blood.
I fell to my knees, scrambling through the pages to find the one I needed once again. I raced through the rest of the passage. Cain was banished to wander and was sundered from his family, who rejoiced when God sent them another son to replace the one that Cain had killed. Child against Father. It said nothing about “Angel’s doubt,” but I was certain. This was the Key. We had to find the ancient weapon that Cain had used to slay Abel.
And then what? I was feeling dizzy, my head spinning as everything began to fall into place.
Then those who would, will ascend into Heaven. That’s what the Prophecy ordains, Henri whispered. You must tell Michael.
I jumped, startled by his sudden presence in my mind.
“But if I tell him—” I left my sentence unfinished. Then he may have no further use for me. I bit my lip hard, willing myself to be strong.
He can’t kill you yet. The Prophecy says the Key must be in the hands of the Bearer. Your mission is not yet finished. You must go with him to find the Key.
Yet. It was an ominous word, full of portent. Yet. I fingered the delicate markings on my neck. How odd, I thought, that this thing I have hated my whole life might be the only thing protecting me now.
“Do you know where it is?” I whispered to Henri, my voice trembling.
No. But Michael will know.
“How?”
He will know.
“But what do I do when we get there?”
I paused, waiting for Henri’s advice, but he didn’t respond. “Henri?”
He was gone.
“Great, just great,” I grumbled. I turned back to the Bible and scanned the rest of the story, then the whole book. Nothing more about what happened to Cain other than that he went to some place called Nod and had a son. Like a zombie, I closed the book and slid it back into the drawer from which I’d taken it.
All of this would be so much easier to understand if I could jump on the Internet and search. Once again, I banged up against the harsh reality of my captivity.
I felt a hard lump in my throat. At times, it was so tempting to forget, just to pretend that Michael and I were on this quest together voluntarily. But it wasn’t altogether true. And now, as we started to close in on the object of our search, it was even more important for me to remember that.
I need to sleep, I realized with a start. This might be my last chance. Tucking the paper with the Prophecy under my pillow, I huddled under the covers and willed myself into a dreamless rest.
When I woke up, Michael was sitting on the chair, staring at me.
I sat up like a shot, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “How did it go?”
He smiled, grimly. “I don’t think we have to worry about Ana and Jimena’s safety anymore. They’ll face no more danger than that of your average young girl in that hellhole of a town.” His face contorted with rage as he spat his next words. “It should be wiped off the face of the earth.”
He could do that, I realized with a start. “Like Sodom.”
He frowned. “Yes, like Sodom. But that is not my job—not right now, anyway.” He made a great effort to wipe the anger from his face and nodded at the bed where I sat. “I take it nothing out of the ordinary came up while I was gone?”
I gulped.
What are you waiting for? Henri pr
odded.
I looked intently at Michael. “I didn’t see any of the Fallen Ones, if that’s what you mean.” I chose my next words carefully, watching for his reaction. “But I think I may have figured out what the Key is.”
He gaped at me, wide-eyed.
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter how,” I insisted—it seemed better, again, not to tell him about my dreams. My voice was rising, the words tumbling out of me as I rushed to share the secret I’d discovered. “Remember how the Prophecy talks about brother fighting against brother? And turning child against father? I think it’s talking about Cain and Abel.”
The color drained from Michael’s face. “The rock.”
I nodded excitedly. “I knew it! See, you knew what it was before I could even tell you.” I dug the crumpled piece of notebook paper out from under my pillow where I’d tucked it away for safekeeping, and I smoothed it out on his lap, pointing to the relevant passages. “I don’t understand it all—I mean, why would it be called the Key of Righteousness? And I don’t understand how it is the rock’s fault that Cain turned on Abel, but the rest makes sense. He killed his brother and turned his family against him. It has to be the rock.”
Michael touched the paper as if he was afraid of it.
I looked up into his worried face. “You’re not saying anything. Am I right?”
He pressed his lips together before nodding curtly. “You are correct.”
I jumped up and did a gleeful dance. “I knew it!”
He eyed me warily. “This isn’t some game of trivia you are playing, Hope. What you’ve discovered only increases the danger.”
I stopped mid-strut, his words sending a chill through me. “I know,” I whispered.
“I don’t think you do. Please sit.” He gestured toward the bed. I perched on the edge, watching the lines of worry that seemed to etch themselves into his skin before my very eyes. He smoothed out the Prophecy again, his fingers wandering over the words as if reading them again would somehow change their meaning.
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