by Ted Dekker
The farmer took over when they neared the city, and Johnis stared ahead, pretending to listen. But his mind was gone, and his hands were sweaty, and his heart was breaking for Silvie.
Ted dropped him off in front of a towering glass building with huge red letters that spelled out SPARTAN HOTEL and left to find his brother.
The moment Johnis stepped past the double glass doors, his worst fears were confirmed. The main atrium was closed off with yellow tape, behind which a dozen police officers worked over several bodies on rolling beds.
“Silvie?” He leaped over the tape and sprinted to the first body. A white sheet covered the victim’s head. “Silvie?”
He ripped off the sheet. A man.
“Hey!”
He bounded to the second body, discovered it was another male.
“Hey! Hey, you can’t do that!”
As was the third victim.
He whirled to the approaching office. “Where’s Silvie? And Karas?”
“Out!” The officer jabbed his flashlight at the door. “This is a crime scene, buddy.”
“Please, I need to know if Karas … Kara Longford is one of the victims.”
“Out!”
Another policeman stepped in from his right, grabbed Johnis by his arm, and escorted him past the yellow tape.
“Please,” he whispered, begging, “Just tell me if there were any women among the victims. I have to know.”
“Are you a relative?”
“To whom? One of the victims? How would I know unless you told me who they are?”
“Speak to OIC.” The officer shoved him past the door and pulled it firmly shut behind him.
Johnis turned around, saw that several officers were watching from beyond the glass, and faced the street. He stood on the sidewalk, immobilized by indecision.
He was one among a sea of onlookers in a huge city of blazing lights, and he was alone. Lost. A dozen alternatives screamed through his mind.
He could hijack a Chevy and try to find the Jet field. Foolish.
He could take an officer captive and force them to take him to Romania. Absurd.
He could stand atop the police car parked in front of him and begin to scream at the top of his lungs. Hold up the one book in his possession. Hope that the cameras would put him on the Net so that Alucard could come after him ., .
But he couldn’t risk giving up the book now, not even for Silvie’s sake. Could he? Alucard now had six of the books. The one in Johnis’s belt was the only thing that stood between the Shataiki and—
Johnis caught his breath. The riddle in the desert pool exploded in his mind.
The west was this world, he knew that now—paradise gone amuck. But how would the Dark One destroy this world? By doing what the legends said he’d done once before. Release the Shataiki from the desert reality into this one. What if the seven books could create a breach between the worlds, allowing the Shataiki to physically swarm into this world, destroying it as they had after breaching the barrier between the Black Forest and the Colored Forest?
What if evil showed itself in physical form in this world as it had in his world? The sea of humanity in front of him became Horde? This was something for which Alucard would patiently wait two thousand years.
He withdrew the black book tucked in his belt. Turned it in his hands. Fanned through its blank pages. According to Karas, the original seven blank Books of History didn’t work like the rest of the blank books.
One of the original books could take you to a simulation called Paradise.
Four books could take you from one world to the other.
All seven books could undo the rules that governed these books and create a breach for the Shataiki. Maybe worse.
Tears of desperation filled his eyes. I’m sorry, Silvie. 1 don’t know what to do.
“Johnis.”
He spun to his right. A woman stood on the sidewalk, her arms by her sides, heels together. She wore jeans and black boots. A red blouse hung on her thin frame. Her hair was long and dark next to skin so pale that it seemed to glow in the night.
All of this Johnis saw in a blink. But it was the scar on her cheek that his eyes settled on. His heart jumped.
“Darsal?”
Her eyes scanned the street as she hurried to his side. “Come with me.”
“What … how’s this … I thought—”
“You thought what they think. That I’m dead.” She took his arm and guided him down the sidewalk, glancing around nervously. “Do I look dead to you?”
“What … what happened?”
She spoke in a rush, quickening her steps, “I just flew in from Turkey, where I’ve had my head buried in the caves for two weeks. And what do I see? A news story of Silvie, standing on a stage, holding up three Books of History. I got here as soon as I could.”
Darsal looked at him. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“We all thought you were dead.”
“Karas made herself known. I made myself dead. They have the three books?”
“How long …?”
“Ten years, just like Karas. Where are Silvie and the books?”
“But Alucard had your book!”
Darsal stopped. “You … you’ve seen him?”
“They took me.”
“Miranda. To Romania.” She walked again, practically dragging him now. “I had to let them have the book to complete the illusion that I was dead. I’d arranged for a doctor to confirm it, take my body, but the book left no doubt. One book by itself was no use to me anyway.” She paused. “Where is Silvie?”
“They have her.”
Again Darsal stopped. Fear spread through her eyes. “And the books?”
Johnis took a breath and looked at the book in his hands. It shook slightly. “Six of them.”
Her eyes dropped to his hands. Then back up to his face.
She spun and began to run. “Hurry!”
Johnis gripped the book tight and ran after her. “Where?”
“They’ll be coming! We can’t let them have that book!”
He sprinted after her, around a corner into an alley. And then she began to run, really run, like the wind.
As did he, feeling a surge of confidence with each step.
They flew by an old drunk, who must have wondered what had been slipped into his drink. She came to a puddle and took to the air, leaping twenty feet, with Johnis in the air behind. They landed lightly and sprinted on without missing a step.
Darsal’s car waited on a corner a mile from the Spartan. She vaulted over the roof, threw the door open wide, and spun in. Clearly she’d had plenty of experience.
Johnis slid in beside her and slammed his door. “Its a Chevy?”
“As a matter of fact”—she jerked the car into gear and it surged forward—“yes.”
Johnis looked at her. “A good choice.”
“You’re the expert?”
“Granted, I’m useless in most things here, but I know a thing or two about Chevys.”
“It’s a bit disorienting at first. I found some clips from your episode in Vegas. You’ve done just fine.” Darsal forced a smile.
The last ten years had made her a hard woman, he could see. Elyon only knew how she’d managed on her own for so long.
“Billos—”
“I don’t want to talk about Billos,” she snapped. “Only one thing matters now.”
“Silvie,” he said. “They have Silvie and Karas.”
“The books,” Darsal said. “First we lock your book so deep in a vault that no one finds it. Ever, if need be.”
“And then?”
She stared ahead and blew out some air. “Then we go after your girlfriend.”
he night air smelled of Shataiki. It was all Silvie knew for certain.
Miranda had chained their wrists and ankles, taped their mouths with gray cloth, and pulled seamless black hoods over their heads before summarily dumping them into a jets cargo compartment.
All was lost. Silvie allowed herself silent tears. Her ploy had failed miserably. She replayed the events in her mind over and over and concluded that their mistake had been in underestimating Miranda. Who could have guessed that she would have been able to overpower so many guards and catch them with the books without having to trade Johnis? Johnis’s warning had come too late.
His voice echoed in her head. I hit her with enough force to break her hack. She’s infected.
Infected by Alucard? This is what gave her the strength to overcome the guards. Their only hope, however slim, now rested in the other words he’d spoken into her ear. I have one. I have one, Silvie.
He had a book. But one book was no advantage against Alucard.
The flight had lasted hours—how many, Silvie could not estimate. She only knew that the air was cool and quiet, which led her to believe it was night, when hands had jerked her to her feet and had pushed her from the aircraft.
They’d traveled up twisty roads for an hour and finally came to a stop—still night, as far as she could tell. Still not a word from Miranda, or anyone, for that matter. They were hustled through cool, damp air into what she guessed was a stone chamber or hall. She could tell because of the feint echo that came with each breath Karas took.
A door thumped shut behind them. Still no word.
They were led by chains down the hall into a stairwell. Down, down, feeling their way along the stone walls on either side. And she knew when the first scents of Shataiki reached past the hood that they’d entered Alucard’s lair.
The floor flattened, and they slogged over wet ground. Beside her, Karas protested with a muffled cry. The odor of sulfur was strong enough to make one blanch—unlike Silvie and Johnis, Karas had been away from the Shataiki scent for ten years.
A soft popping sounded high overhead. Worms nestling in their own gook. Silvie swallowed. A hand tugged on her chain. She stopped. For several long seconds they just stood there. She could hear a flame crackling, could smell the smoke mixed with the scent of rotten eggs. Heard the worms she imagined overhead.
The sound of someone breathing. Nails clicking on the stone floor.
“Take them into the main chamber.” Alucard. Silvie’s blood froze in her veins. The voice was low and breathy, backed by a growl that reached into the pit of her stomach.
They were led deeper, down another flight of stone steps, wetter and slipperier than the previous one. She could hear the same squealing they’d heard below the monastery in Paradise. Worms in torment, far away.
Her desperation deepened with each step she took. They must be a hundred feet below the earth’s surface now. Maybe twice that. Even if Johnis did find a way to the castle, there was no way he could save them.
She’d loved him. She’d kissed him, and she’d known with that kiss that she would marry him. If she died in the next ten minutes, she would cling to that memory, that single moment of comfort between them.
I love you, Johnis. I love you.
She slid, caught herself on a rail, then eased her foot to the next step. Her chain tugged.
I love you, Johnis. I love you.
The cry from the tormented worms grew at an alarming rate. And with the clunk of a latch and the protest of rusty hinges opening, the squealing became a scream, directly overhead.
Silvie gasped under the tape. Again someone pulled her forward.
They entered the room of screaming worms; she could smell them, hear them, feel their slime underfoot, taste their foul odor. It was a vast room, judging by the echoes off the stone walls.
A hand stopped her. The chamber fell to silence.
It occurred to her that she was panting through her nostrils. Dizzy from the hyperventilation, she tried to calm herself.
“Move,” a gruff voice commanded. Hands shoved her.
She stumbled forward, tripped over a ledge, and fell headlong onto a three-foot-high riser. Karas grunted beside her. They were hoisted to their feet and clamped into brackets on the wall.
The hoods were ripped from their heads, tape from their mouths. A hooded guard with large red lumps on his face turned and walked away from them.
Silvie gazed at the chamber near the guards torch as he slumped toward the large black door through which they had entered.
The room was perhaps one hundred feet per side. Dozens of columns bridged the span from the wet floor to the ceiling. The worms nested there: gargantuan worms that looked like white logs twisting slowly in their own mess. Thousands of them, interwoven in a blanket that looked twenty feet thicker on one end than on the other.
A sizable table engraved on all sides with Teeleh’s winged serpent image sat squarely in front of the wall adjacent to them.
Larger worms clung to three of the walls, including the wall they were chained to, but the wall facing the single ornate table was free of not only worms but also their mucus. Dry stone ran from floor to ceiling. And on this wall …
Silvie blinked. She’d seen this. These concentric circles. Exactly like the circles on the covers of the seven Books of History.
“Its a gateway,” Karas said. “They’ve built some kind of a gateway!”
The door slammed shut, pitching them into darkness once again.
She could hear the worms writhing in wetness. The thought that one or more might slide over them made her shiver. She tugged at her chains and was rewarded with nothing more than a rattle to break the stillness.
“Are you okay?” Karas asked.
“No. Honestly, I think I might be dead.”
Silence.
“You heard him,” Karas said.
Another shiver went through Silvie. “It’s him.”
“Alucard.”
“He doesn’t have all seven books,” Silvie said.
“He’s going to use them to open a gateway,” Karas replied, casting no confidence behind the notion that Alucard wouldn’t soon have the seven if he didn’t already.
“You can’t know that.”
“Don’t you see?” Karas was whispering with urgency now. “The Books of History are a gateway to truth, to understanding, to knowledge, to history! They connect what can’t be seen with what can be seen. The other world with this world—we experienced that ourselves.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s going to use the books to connect the two worlds,” Silvie said, though she wasn’t so confident.
“Why else would Teeleh send him here? What can he do here that he can’t do there? Teeleh intends to wipe out Earth with a virus that makes the Raison Strain virus look like a common cold.”
“With Shataiki,” Silvie said. “He invaded the Colored Forest exactly as the legends say. Now he will invade this world.”
“With Shataiki.”
hatever Darsal has done during the ten years since the books deposited her in this world, it has brought her wealth and resourses that might be as extensive as Karas’s, Johnis thought.
She’d whisked him to the airport, where a jet waited, fueled and whining on the runway. They would make one stop in a city called New York, where she kept one of her homes; then they would cross the Atlantic for Romania.
Stopping to secure the sole book in their possession would cost them an hour, but Darsal was unwilling to risk putting all seven books in the same country, particularly Romania.
Johnis agreed. They were only two or three hours behind Miranda, if their calculations were right. Securing the book would put them into Bucharest four hours after Silvie, assuming Alucard had taken her to the same mansion he’d taken Johnis to.
“Which he has,” Darsal said, spitting to one side on the runway as they boarded the jet. Alucard had done many things in his time, but none of it compared to what he intended to do now in that unholy place.
The jet flew at twice the speed of sound, fa
ster when it climbed out of the atmosphere. This meant little to Johnis, as long as the book was safe and they reached Silvie while she was still alive.
“Tell me, Darsal,” Johnis said. “Tell me everything.”
She sat across from him in a black leather chair, legs and arms crossed. Her eyes diverted to the night sky over the Atlantic.
I cant.
There was enough emotion in those two words to strike fear into Johnis’s heart. “You can’t? Why not?”
“Because not everything can be spoken of easily, Johnis!” she snapped. “You’ve spent a month or two of your life frolicking about on this grand adventure. Try ten years and see if you can survive!”
She pressed her fingers together to cover her nose. Closed her eyes. “I’m sorry; that wasn’t called for.”
“Well …” Well what, Johnis? You have no clue what horrors Darsal has suffered these past ten years. “We’ve all paid a price.”
She was about twenty-seven years old now, he realized. But ten years without the harsh sun had been kind to her face. Her hair was very dark next to her pale cheeks. Something about her had changed, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Her nose, perhaps? No, it was that she’d lost weight.
Karas had been a child in the other world and had grown up here without the benefit of fighting the Horde. Darsal had been a well-muscled warrior, who’d thinned out in a world without constant battle. In some ways, she was more beautiful than he remembered.
But life here had hardened her in other ways.
He wanted to ask her about Billos. About what she knew of Alucard. The books. Karas. All of it. But Darsal looked distraught, tapped out, nearly ruined.
So Johnis told her about their own journey, starting back in the forest, chasing her and Billos into the desert. Finding the Black Forest. Landing outside Las Vegas. Stealing the Chevy.
Instead of grinning at their antics, Darsal unsuccessfully fought back tears, managing only a smile or two when he described how he’d mastered the Chevy.
He told it all, hoping to remind her of home. To reconnect. And then he sat still, letting her process.
“I have something I have to tell you,” she said softly, refusing to look Johnis in the eye.