by Aiden James
“It’s one of more than a dozen possible locations for the ‘real’ Arc of the Covenant, since there are imposters throughout the world—thanks to the Knights of Templar planting fakes to protect the true location,” said Roderick, when Cedric peppered him with questions after he and I briefly discussed the possibility of the Damascus Coin sharing the same vault, or even a different one, buried beneath the treasury building or the actual church itself. “The genuine article isn’t here in this country any longer, although I do believe it was at one time, after the Templar agents brought it to Ethiopia from a hidden vault in Jerusalem during the first Crusade. They subsequently removed it again in one of the later campaigns in the twelfth century. For all we know, the real one might well lay hidden in France, Scotland, or Canada—my favorite three possibilities.”
“Well, regardless of where the Arc is presently located, I can damn well guarantee that my last coin is not here,” I said, taking a moment to peer outside through our room’s lone window. Soft rain pelted the glass and the area behind the hotel was poorly lit, making us easy targets to study if Kaslow or anyone in his employ were watching us from an unseen post in the darkness. “If Dr. Anderson can’t tell us anything useful—and that’s if we find him before he’s dead—we might never catch up with Kaslow.”
“Why would Kaslow lead us here if he didn’t intend to provide bread crumbs to keep us on the hook to follow him?” asked Cedric, while staking ownership to the lone bed in the room.
He made sure the mattress coils wouldn’t tear through the bed’s worn fabric as he lay down; his hands behind his head and his feet kicked up, as if he had commandeered a backyard hammock. Roderick and I deferred to Cedric’s dibs on the bed that night, since he required much more sleep than either of us did. His youthfulness was similar to the blessing bestowed upon Amy, Jeremy, Alistair, and Beatrice, but instead of coming from the Tree of Life crystals, Cedric’s return to his early twenties from mid-sixties came from his time in Paititi, a sacred realm hidden above Lake Titicaca in Bolivia.
“Was it just to find the professor, you think?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the only thing that makes sense, since I don’t feel the coin’s call—even faintly. In fact, if I knew nothing of the legends that tell of at least one of my blood coins being in the possession of Thomas and others down through the early ages, I would never believe that any of my coins were ever here.... I feel nothing—not even a faint tremor. So, unless the Damascus Coin is presently buried near the earth’s core below us, it isn’t here. I’d stake my very soul on it.”
“I thought we had already determined that we wouldn’t find it here, my brother,” said Roderick, armed with his open laptop and determined to use the hours before daybreak to scour the Internet for anything that could further aid our search. The hotel’s Wi-Fi access was the deciding factor as to why we chose it over other inn-options in the area. “The biggest thing is to find Dr. Anderson—hopefully alive and coherent enough to tell us where to look next. As you know, this particular coin has changed hands numerous times, and its presence has been reported in nearly every European nation—in the past three hundred years alone. So, we’re going to need a lot more information than we presently have, if we want to gain precious time on Kaslow.”
“He has all the cards,” I whispered, disgustedly. “Just like it’s been since he survived Bochicha’s realm—”
“And, then helped Hurakan destroy Paititi,” added Cedric, cutting me off. “I must have a serious death wish to be pursuing this shit with y’all.”
“You can stay here and we’ll come back for you after we check out the Church, obelisks, and also the partially buried churches we talked about earlier tonight,” Roderick told him. “I realize that Tampara imparted better healing to you than the Tree of Life crystals afforded everyone else, in regard to partial immortality. But you can still be easily killed by Kaslow, Cedric, and the son of a bitch knows it.”
“He could kill you, too, you know,” Cedric retorted, sitting up when Roderick responded with one of his catbird smirks that I loathed almost as much as Cedric did. “You and I might think we’re invincible, Rod, but really only William has proven he can’t die—and that’s only because he can reincarnate. But Kaslow? ...You remember the security camera footage from Bennevento that you showed me from last summer, when the fucker walked through a smelting furnace in the Ukraine and the flames and molten steel didn’t singe a single blonde hair on the asshole’s body?”
“When was that?” I asked, surprised Roderick had left me out of the loop on that incident.
“Almost a year ago, in August,” he told me, after casting an irritated glance at Cedric. “You and Beatrice were still working through your grief about Alistair... you didn’t need anything else added to your plate.”
“The hell you say, brother!” I hissed, feeling a familiar surge of anger welling to the surface. “You don’t think that if I had known what Kaslow was up to that I might’ve taken that into consideration when we began making plans for our spring Civil War tour? Hell, I assumed that none of us had heard anything from that sick fuck in over a year!...”
I stopped myself from saying anything else, since all I could see was red. A deluge of tears and lashing out with bitterness that would surely be regretted would soon follow if I didn’t stop then. Roderick and Cedric looked alarmed and prepared to approach where I stood, as I continued my vigil by the window. I waved them off.
“It was never intended to hurt you in any way,” Roderick said softly, from where he stood. “Knowing that Kaslow had returned to our reality and did it in a war-torn area is not the same as stalking us in Mississippi and Tennessee. Kaslow loves war—you know this. Implying that he would just as soon come after what amounted to fawns feeding in a meadow, and chose that over wartime bloodshed.... You know as well as I do that it isn’t his normal M.O....” His voice started to crack, and I could tell my accusation had reopened his own emotional wounds from losing Beatrice, Amy, and Jeremy that hadn’t begun to heal any more than mine.
“You left out how he loves to hate for hate’s sake even more than watching soldiers and revolutionaries kill one another, Rod,” I said, determined to sound compassionate, knowing I would regret anything harsher. “Kaslow loves violence, yes.... But he can’t resist striking innocence for the sake of old grudges. I can’t help but think he is toying with us right now; and I can scarcely believe we will discover a living English historian waiting for us later today.... If Dr. Anderson is still alive, I’d bet my entire net worth that the man will certainly wish to God he wasn’t.”
Nothing more was said between us about this subject, and nothing else for at least an hour. Cedric somehow managed to sleep, and as the clouds broke and the dawn’s light began to creep in through the window’s curtains, Roderick and I began to map out our day.
Since Kaslow had given so little to go on, we decided to knock out the obvious places first. Once Cedric was ready to roll, we stopped at a local restaurant for breakfast and then headed for the main tourist attractions. Yes, it felt strange doing this—like searching for a hidden bomb at Disneyland. Even so, I expected Kaslow to follow some symmetry to his former life and ‘habits’. Thinking about how he had played us all back in the States, especially in Shiloh and Corinth, I kept an eye out for something to not jive with the local environment. Trouble was, since the area was unfamiliar it could be anything.
The weather was perfect, and as expected, St. Mary’s Church and the adjacent ‘Treasury of the Arc of the Covenant’ attracted a number of visitors. We walked through the areas left open to the public, as if we wanted nothing more than to marvel at the architecture that marks the style of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and dream of what lay hidden behind its guarded doors. But, also as expected, there were none of the attendant physical symptoms, such as my throbbing left arm that I had experienced at Shiloh when the Stutthof-Auschwitz Coin suddenly appeared. The Damascus Coin was nowhere near this place, and after we determined
Dr. Anderson was likely absent as well, we moved on.
It was the same experience when we visited the famed black obelisks—some rising roughly thirty meters into the air. One of these Azumite monuments stands in Rome today, after being transported there after World War II. Yet, for us it proved to be another waste of time. Other than marveling at how centuries of exposure to wind and other elements had eroded some of the intricate images carved onto the monuments, there remained no sign of my coin or the good professor.
“Cedric, do you think you can hold off stopping for lunch until we have a look in the last location we’ll visit today?”
I could tell from the tiredness in Roderick’s voice that he shared my growing dismay, and I believe he began to consider that Kaslow had successfully duped us.
“Sure,” said Cedric. “But once we’re done with everything on your list, are we just going to hang out here while we wait for something to hit us on the head?”
“Maybe... or maybe not,” I interjected, as I could tell that Roderick wasn’t in a teasing mood. “But it might take a few hours to get through the churches of Lalibela. There are a dozen of them—either carved into cliffs or carved directly out of bedrock. Roderick and I had spent time examining the bedrock structures when we journeyed through the northern section of Africa, following the last Crusade.”
These churches—which are usable structures cut from rock—are among the most extraordinary architectural creations on the planet. Completely unique, the bedrock versions have always been my personal favorites, created with deep moats surrounding the church structures. And, considering that these churches were constructed more than eight hundred years ago, the painstaking approach to the work and artisanship is something that leaves me truly in awe.
When we arrived at the Lalibela site, surprisingly there was almost no one present aside from us... And yet despite the few tourists and guards dotting the area, a familiar feeling came upon me. And it wasn’t simply because a cloudless sky had become overcast during the past half hour. I was about to ask my companions if they felt anything odd, when Cedric remarked about it.
“What in the hell?” he mumbled under his breath, looking around him while trying to pinpoint where the sensation originated.
“It’s him, isn’t it?” asked Roderick, to which I nodded. Kaslow managing to alter his energy signal was an aspect that I could tell was deeply troubling for my druid buddy.
“No shit?” Cedric sounded impressed.
“He’s watching us from somewhere close,” I confirmed, leading the way to the first church. “Bet we find Geoffrey Anderson very soon.”
But it took nearly an hour to find our man... the contact who could tell us where to search next for the Damascus Coin.
It wasn’t until we reached the fourth church on our list—one of the most prominent structures, called the ‘Bet Giorgis Church’—that we heard something... a man moaning. Oddly, there was still no one else around at the moment, and as we stood above the two-story edifice it sounded like the painful groans originated from inside the first floor of the church.
“Careful, it could be a trap,” I advised, when Cedric scurried down the western side of the stone moat to get to the church. Roderick and I followed close behind.
“We don’t have time for caution!” Cedric called over his shoulder. “It sounds like the dude is hurt badly. You hear him? He knows we’re coming and... what in the hell?!”
“Cedric? Wait—don’t go in there!” warned Roderick.
We ran to catch him as Cedric stepped up to a figure in one of the doorways, hanging from what looked like a cross made of heavy iron chains attached to railroad spikes driven into the church’s stone doorframe.
“Dr. Anderson? We’re here to help you—we’ll get you down from this!” said Cedric, his voice frantic despite a noble effort to remain calm. “Who did this to you?”
Really, who else could it be? And my earlier prediction about the former history professor preferring death over what he would endure at the hands of Kaslow was spot on. We had seen pictures of both historians when we visited with Bennevento the day before. Both were older gentleman, with Geoffrey Anderson being a virile sixty-six year-old and the slender and frail looking Corillo being closer to eighty at the time of their abductions. The death images of Dr. Corillo were disturbing enough, as Bennevento told us that some of his body parts had been severed while he was alive.
I had assumed that Kaslow delivered his worst cruelty between the two men to Corillo. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Anderson was clad only in a loincloth, and it appeared that a halo of barbwire had been wrapped tightly around his head—and then to ensure it remained in place, it was imbedded into his skull with nails.
Much longer and thicker nails were driven through his hands and feet, and then bent to form loops to attach to the heavy iron links that formed the makeshift cross.
Was this gruesome portrayal of Jesus and His death at Golgotha for my benefit? Even the professor’s side had been pierced, and a mixture of blood and bile poured down his right leg from the wound.
“Check his back,” I asked Cedric, my voice dampened to a whisper. “What do you see?”
Cedric looked and shook his head without answering.
“I haven’t seen tears and welts like that since I watched the slave diaries on PBS a few years back,” he finally replied. “My God... what kind of devil would do this to another human being?”
“Dr. Anderson,” said Roderick. “We’re here to help you. Can you understand what we’re saying?”
Roderick gasped, as the bloodied mouth opened after the professor nodded in unspeakable agony. To all our horror, Dr. Geoffrey Anderson would never speak again... one needed a tongue to do that, and his had been torn out. I realized then the blood dripping from next to his eyes most likely indicated those organs had also been removed.
Cruel enough that Kaslow had brought us out here on a wild goose chase. but beyond comprehensible that he would make someone suffer so, and just to prove a point. Draconian behavior at its very worst!
Kaslow the demon king was far, far worse than the KGB version of the bastard could ever be.
Suddenly, the poor wretch that was once a jovial and well-respected historian struggled madly against his chains, as terrible wails emitted from his throat. Though he could never tell us anything about my blood coin or any other subject, his primal fearfulness told me enough.
“Kaslow’s near—Dr. Anderson can sense him... maybe he smells him. Maybe—”
My advisement to Roderick and Cedric was cut short. Blood spattered upon us all, and it took me a moment to realize that Dr. Anderson had just received a pair of crossbow bolts into his body. The first one split his head down the center and the other pierced his heart—either one killing him instantly.
I whirled around in time to witness another pair of bolts shredding the air to reach us. Roderick’s reflexes mimicked mine, and we escaped unharmed. However, one of the bolts ripped into Cedric’s lower back, and he collapsed onto the unforgiving stone steps below the doorway, writhing in terrible pain.
Viktor Kaslow stood above us, dressed in a black sari lined with gold; his crossbow ready with more bolts aimed at Cedric’s prone body. He smiled as he took aim. Instinctively, I stepped in front of my injured friend, leaving myself only a moment to internalize the fact that I might well be leaving this earth at any moment for the brief transition into a new body. Destined to awaken in some other time and place, and very likely far away from Azum, Ethiopia. Most definitely, I would return too late to save the lives of my last dear friends on Earth.
Surely, our enemy considered the prize before him as he held me in the crossbow’s sight. An easy checkmate and the elimination of the last obstacles standing in his way, he could now officially begin his quest to conquer the world. Hell, Kaslow had my last coin in his possession, which like all of my other blood coins, came with powerful and dark attributes to assist in the vilest of schemes.... Or did he have i
t?
Roderick joined me where I stood, while also keeping an eye on our critically injured cohort. Kaslow took his hand off the trigger and lowered the crossbow, studying us for a moment while he chuckled to himself. Then he turned away, dissolving into the air around him. Only a light breeze moving through the area, that carried the scent of decay and brimstone, bore witness that the Russian madman had ever been there.
Chapter Nine
We almost lost Cedric.
If not for the advanced technology in Roderick’s latest cell phone, we would have. There was no way we could slow the bleeding and carry our wounded buddy out of there. In the end, the choice was to wait for Roderick’s medical contact in Cairo, Egypt to contact a trusted associate in Addis Ababa, who in turn placed an emergency call to the local hospital in Azum. The medical treatment provided to Cedric was primitive compared to the States, and significantly worse than in Egypt. But the Azum medical team did arrive more quickly than I expected. Best of all, they managed to stem the bleeding. Cedric now had a solid chance of surviving the plane ride to Cairo, and my optimism increased after Roderick produced a trio of milky-green crystals I never expected to see again.
“They once belonged to Alistair, and if you’ll remember, Judas, you allowed me to take them along with a pocket watch I gave him three Christmases ago. They would be keepsakes to remember him by, and apparently now I have another use for the crystals,” he explained, after Cedric on his IV-loaded gurney was lifted into the plane for our three-hour flight to Cairo.