The Book of Names

by Jill Gregory

  She swallowed down nausea and whirled, rushing inside to the glass display case.

  Two gemstones emblazoned with Hebrew lettering glistened up at her—the amethyst and the emerald. Gad and Zebulon.

  Gritting her teeth, she smashed the barrel of the gun into the glass. It held. Cursing, she tried again, hitting it with all of her strength. Sweat poured down her face. The glass hadn’t even cracked. Yael closed her eyes, pictured the glass shattering, and slammed the barrel down again. There was an explosion of glass like crystal rain and triumph swept through her.

  A jagged shard sliced her arm as she reached past it for the stones. She ignored the fiery sting, clenching the amethyst and emerald in her palm.

  Was it her imagination or were the stones really glowing?

  There was no time to study them. She plunged them inside her sweat-soaked bra and a shiver washed over her, tingling down to her toes.

  Then Erik Mueller pushed Stacy into the room, away from the carnage on the balcony.

  “Yael,” David was shouting to her, his voice hoarse. “Get Stacy out of here! More Dark Angels could be on their way.”

  “No—I won’t go without you,” Stacy cried, trembling uncontrollably.

  Erik dragged her toward the glass door and the staircase beyond. “You have to go, child—the world depends on you!”

  “No!” She broke free of him, trying to run back onto the balcony, but Erik seized her arm.

  “You don’t understand. It’s too dangerous for you here—there are plenty of others who want to kill you—we have to get you out!”

  “Take your hands off her.” Yael had the gun trained at his chest. “Right now.”

  Stacy blinked at her in dismay. “Don’t hurt him. He let me out of that terrible room. He showed me the secret way out!”

  Yael bit her lip, her brain whirling with indecision, her body throbbing with pain. She tried to wrap her mind around what Stacy was saying, weighing it with what she’d seen herself.

  Mueller had found her on the stairs outside, trying to break into the Situation Room. He’d convinced her that he wanted to help save Stacy, that he’d had a change of heart. That all of his life he’d been blind, unquestioning—and wrong about the world of God. There was goodness in this world, he’d decided. He told her that he’d found it in a woman named Elizabeth. A woman he loved. And his sect had inadvertently proved it to him. Their systematic murders of the Lamed Vovniks had stolen goodness from the world, unleashing only destruction.

  Yael had been skeptical, but Erik Mueller had claimed he no longer wanted the world to end. He had a plan. They’d enter the Situation Room together, she pretending to be his hostage while maintaining possession of her gun. He’d struck his own son, then attacked Mofulatsi. He was intent on saving Stacy now, even as David choked the life from his flesh and blood.

  “Take her, Yael!” David shouted frantically. “Stace, it’s all right. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Yael sprang toward the girl. “Come on, Stacy. You heard him, he’ll catch up to us.”

  She grabbed Stacy’s arm and tugged her through the glass door to the landing. Erik watched them start up the stairs, turmoil roiling through him. He started to follow them, wondering if he’d saved his Elizabeth. Then he turned back, hesitating.

  Shouldn’t he now save his son?

  Before he had the chance to decide, Raoul staggered in from the balcony, his swarthy face now white as milk, his lower body bathed in blood.

  “Traitor!” the Dark Angel roared. He raised a gun and blasted a shot through Erik’s forehead. Erik Mueller dropped where he stood.

  Swaying, Raoul tottered back onto the balcony, ignoring the fire screaming from his thigh with every step. He was woozy. He was dying. He’d lost too much blood.

  David Shepherd was busy throttling the Serpent. He wouldn’t even see what was coming. With a sickly smile, Raoul aimed the gun straight at Shepherd’s head. He’d enjoy this last kill. More than any other since he’d put an end to his grandfather.

  With a gruesome smile, he pulled the trigger—and heard nothing but a hollow click.

  David started at the sound, turning his head toward it—and away from the man beneath him. He caught a dark blur at the corner of his vision and ducked just as the butt of a gun whizzed past his ear. Suddenly, one hundred and eighty pounds of blood-soaked venom flew at him. He rolled aside, wincing as the gun butt connected with his spine.

  The cane. Somehow David managed to snag it as he scrambled gracelessly to his feet. He was stunned that he could still stand. His lungs burning with every breath, his broken ribs searing, he faced the killer.

  With sour breath and a power honed by years of training, Raoul leaped at him. David rammed the tip of Crispin’s cane into the Dark Angel’s bullet-torn thigh. An agonizing scream sang from his throat as he hurtled backwards, cracking his skull against the jagged rock wall.

  David drew a shaky breath, repulsed by the gore. At least Raoul wouldn’t be killing anyone ever again.

  And Crispin . . .

  David turned, his eyes narrowing. Crispin had managed to crawl to the front lip of the balcony and to drag himself to his feet. He leaned over, bellowing into the cavern below.

  “Come out, you fools! The Hidden One is escaping! Up the . . .”

  David slammed into him, raising the cane, but he’d underestimated the power in Crispin’s upper body. With one arm, Mueller grabbed the cane from him, knocking David off balance and nearly over the balcony. Teeth bared, Crispin shoved again, and David’s torso dipped over the ledge.

  He jerked himself back, and suddenly felt a strange sensation in his hip—the amber in his pocket seemed to tingle. A shot of adrenaline zipped through him like an electrical jolt.

  “You wanted the agate, Mueller? Then why don’t you go get it?” He punched Mueller in the gut, then grabbed him by his belt and heaved him over the balcony.

  Mueller hit the ground before a scream could gurgle from his throat.

  Then David was running, barreling down the stairs, sprinting for the reception area. He had to find the agate.

  His gaze skimmed the toppled ouroboros, the bodies . . .

  His heart stopped.

  Dillon.

  David rushed to him, sank to his knees. He groped for a pulse even knowing he wouldn’t find one. Dillon was already cold.

  Grief swamped him. And so did shame. How had he doubted his truest friend? How could he leave him here now?

  He glanced toward the auditorium. The door was creaking open. Nearly two thousand Gnoseos—restless for their deliverance.

  Find the agate.

  Frantic, he pushed himself to his feet. That was when he noticed the bishop’s ring. The ring Dillon had risked his life to retrieve.

  Quickly, David bent to tug it from his friend’s finger. As he did, he saw the agate. An inch from Dillon’s sleeve, glowing like seaglass. As he snatched it up, both stones from the breastplate of Aaron seemed to shimmer in his palm, more brightly with each passing second.

  He was beyond wondering how the agate had come to land so near the ruby. He was beyond wondering anything except how to get out of here alive.

  There was a murmur of voices, people were beginning to trickle from the auditorium. Clutching the stones in his bloodied fist, he sprinted for the stairs.

  And then he was running, running for the surface, running for his life.

  He heard a shout. Footsteps pounding. They were coming after him.

  How far ahead were Yael and Stacy? he wondered dizzily, his chest heaving with every step. He wouldn’t make it. His vision was wavering and he was dripping a crimson trail of blood. Weakness numbed his legs.

  But he couldn’t stop.

  Trembling, he pushed on, slipping once on the condensation slicking the steps. Then he reached the second landing. He climbed more, heard scuffling feet and female voices above him. Yael and Stacy.

  Angry shouts and sounds of pursuit drove him on.

  By the tim
e he stumbled into the warehouse, he could barely stand. Avi Raz caught him, dragged him through the room filled with boxes, more boxes than had been there before, and now swarming with dark-suited men carrying walkie-talkies and guns.

  “Thanks . . . for bringing . . . the cavalry,” David gasped.

  Avi was soaked with sweat. “You got up here just in time.”

  All around them, other men were bustling about, positioning cables and wires and explosives with deliberate urgency. Some were hustling the women who’d escaped toward ambulances.

  Then David was sucking in fresh air, squinting into the daylight. Staggering with Avi to the loading platform behind the building where Stacy and Yael waited in the back of an idling delivery truck.

  They were miles from the warehouse at 8 Angel Passage when the explosion roared through the secret bunker far below the city of London, collapsing the lair deep within the earth. Miles from the tunnels where the Gnoseos swarmed like wasps in a hive, buzzing with their anticipation of victory, even as the fiery blast annihilated them from the face of the earth.

  With a single blast that shook London like an earthquake, the sect that had plotted for centuries to overthrow the world God created was reduced to a whirling underground maelstrom of cinders, smoke, and ashes. The Tower of London stood firm, as it had for centuries, and the china in Buckingham Palace barely rattled on the royal shelves.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  WARSAW, 904 MILES AWAY

  While the ground shook beneath London, thirteen-year-old Stanislaw Nowicki climbed the stairs to the bimah in his small synagogue. As he prepared to don his tallit for the first time, he recited the special bracha for putting on the prayer shawl and took a deep breath. Then the rabbi pointed to the line in the Torah where Stanislaw would begin to read his bar mitzvah portion.

  And as he chanted the ancient Hebrew in a clear young voice, the waters of the River Thames quieted once more.

  COPENHAGEN, 412 MILES AWAY

  Lise Kolinka bent toward her thirteenth birthday cake, lips pursed, her face bathed with the glow of candlight. As she closed her eyes to make a birthday wish, rain began to pound from the skies over Arizona. By the time she had blown out all of her candles, there was a downpour in the American Southwest, extinguishing the virulent wildfires, washing the mountains clean, renewing the scorched earth.

  CHICAGO, 4,261 MILES AWAY

  Keisha Jones spent every Saturday working alongside her aunt Doris at the Stony Island food pantry on Chicago’s South Side. Today, on her way to help sort donated canned goods, the thirteen-year-old girl jingled the spare change she’d found in the street. When she handed it to Mrs. Wallace and learned it was enough to buy one family eggs and bread for the entire week, a shiver of happiness radiated through her. She decided that next week she’d donate half of her babysitting money, too.

  And off the coast of Japan, a tsunami that was roiling deep beneath the sea eased itself back down across the ocean floor, settling like boiled water taken off the burner.

  SHANGHAI, 7,073 MILES AWAY

  Chen Ho sat beside his beloved grandfather, patiently reading him the daily newspaper. He had to repeat things often because his grandfather was hard of hearing as well as blind. But Chen didn’t mind. His homework would wait—his mother’s father had few pleasures left to him besides keeping up with the outside world and drinking his nightly glass of beer.

  As Chen turned the page, he saw that his grandfather had fallen asleep. A smile settled over his heart. He folded the paper, knowing exactly where to pick up later.

  At the same time in Turkey, a cry of joy went up as rescuers unearthed a dozen children miraculously found alive beneath the rubble of a schoolhouse.

  In Mathiaka, Sierra Leone—in Luvena, Russia—in Tokaji, Hungary—and in twenty-eight more villages and cities around the world, a new generation of Lamed Vovniks reached the stage of spiritual maturity, one by one.

  Pure of heart, their souls filled with goodness and compassion, not one of them realized—not one of them would ever know—the awesome power of their very existence.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  ONE MONTH LATER IN ISRAEL

  LAKE KINNERET (SEA OF GALILEE)

  Tiberias’s waterfront promenade was brilliant with swaying palm trees, packed food stalls, and strolling tourists as David scanned the throng for Yael. When he spotted her at the opposite end of the tayyelet, he felt a small shock at the sight of her in lemon-yellow capri pants and a black silk t-shirt. Somehow the image he carried in his mind always had her in that green silk jacket and black skirt she’d been wearing the morning she strode into Rabbi ben Moshe’s study and demanded he give her the agate.

  The agate was back in Jerusalem now. Along with the amber, and the other stones from Aaron’s breastplate they’d recovered from the Gnoseos.

  His journal was in his hand. This would be its final journey.

  As he wove his way through the crowd toward Yael, the events of the past month whirled by in a blur. He’d spent a week in Santa Monica with Stacy as a guest of Meredith and her husband. It hadn’t felt as strange as he’d imagined, being in Len Lachman’s house. Stacy had wanted him close. So close he had been.

  He was still on a leave of absence from Georgetown. Still reeling from the deaths of Dillon, Hutch, and Eva.

  Still hurting from the bruises and broken ribs. But those injuries would heal and fade. He only hoped Stacy’s memories would as well.

  The strange thing was, she hadn’t wanted to know much of what had precipitated her ordeal. David had been planning to tell her that he’d explain when she was older. But there’d been no need. Instinctively, it seemed, Stacy had asked few questions, appearing comfortable to let go of what she’d been through. Lamed Vovniks, he remembered, had no idea who they really were.

  Meredith had taken her for a few sessions with a therapist, who’d pronounced Stacy untraumatized by her ordeal. David was content to wait until she wanted to know more.

  As he skirted a family hurrying toward a falafel stand, he caught the glint of silver earrings swinging from behind Yael’s dark coppery hair. She was close enough now that he could see her smile. See the strands of multicolored glass beads at her throat. See the smooth swing of her hips.

  She slowed as she neared him, the smile blooming in her eyes. She rose up on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his for a feather of a second.

  “I’ve rented the fishing boat. We have it for the entire afternoon.”

  “Should we take along a picnic?”

  She smiled.

  An hour later, they were far from the noisy shoreline, alone on the blue wooden boat, heading for deeper water. The sea was calm, glistening in the sunlight like a jewel beneath the city of Tiberias, which—like Safed—was one of Israel’s four holiest cities.

  The Israelis called this lake the Kinneret, the Christians knew it as the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus recruited his apostles from among the fishermen who toiled there.

  David waited until they were surrounded by nothing but sky and water, the people on hillsides a distant blur.

  Then he set down his oars. As Yael watched in silence, he lifted his journal from the seat beside him and dropped it over the side of the boat. It floated for a minute, the pages going soft as the cool water washed against their ink. And then the red leather book slowly disappeared beneath the glassy surface, sinking to the bottom of the lake, taking its holy secrets to the deep.

  Yael glanced at the sack of food beside her, then carefully maneuvered her way across the boat to sit beside David.

  “Before our picnic, there’s something I’d like to ask you.”

  “Ask away.”

  “I’ve received an invitation to be a visiting professor at Georgetown for the next term. Did you by any chance have something to do with that?”

  David struggled to keep a poker face, but he could smell her perfume, and that made it difficult for him to resist a smile.

  “What if I did? Would you consider it?�
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  She pursed her lips and stretched her long legs before her as if studying the salmon-colored polish gleaming on her sandaled toes.

  “I suppose it would depend. Is there much of a social life for the faculty?”

  “Well, you’ve already missed the Labor Day picnic. But Dean Myer fries a mean turkey for his New Year’s Day bash. I don’t have a date.”

  “Fried turkey . . . ” Slowly, she turned toward him. “That might just be the best offer I’ve had today.”

  She wrapped her arms around his neck, her hair falling back as she tilted her face up to his. “I do have a few qualms about your East Coast winters.”

  “Not to worry. I think we can manage to keep warm.” David kissed her then, as the boat drifted. He lost himself in the softness of her lips, the lull of the sea, and the peace of knowing that the secret names of the Lamed Vovniks were concealed once more.