Now, after Dragar and the current help from the modern Knights, things were a lot clearer. Suspicion was the catalyst for many unfortunate events in history, whether there was truth behind it or not, and although she didn't see eye to eye with the separate sect of Templars who had hunted them, she finally understood their reasons. Paranoia and fear made men, and women, do desperate things.
Forgiveness was supposed to be in her genes, had been a strong trait of her personality all her life, but she didn't know if she could ever forgive the men who had so brutally killed her innocent sisters.
These thoughts consumed her while her ride closed the distance on Jerusalem. When they reached the outskirts, it brought a smile to her face no matter how many devastating things had happened here. There was an underlying tranquility despite the political upheaval she leeched from the ancient city. No matter how many wars or bombs or battles had or would be fought here, Minna felt the spiritual pull of the rocky terrain, the cobbled pathways and old structures as if it were a stepping stone to heaven itself.
Paying the driver after he dropped her off at a cafe, Minna bought a local paper and a cup of coffee, careful to keep a low profile. She couldn't rent a car because they would ask for too many forms of identification that she didn't have, and didn't want to use. But there were tours to the Dead Sea by private parties and she memorized two of the numbers to call to arrange it. If one didn't work out, the other probably would. With dusk closing in, she would have to wait until tomorrow to depart.
That left her to find somewhere to spend the night out of the public eye. Not a difficult task for a girl who'd spent the youngest years of her life living off the landscape.
***
The Dead Sea stretched out before her, a glistening pool of blue with solidified chunks of salt lining the shore. Foothills and mountains rimmed the body of water, adding a jagged silhouette against the horizon. Heat beat down from a sun propped up in a cloudless sky.
Minna took it all in with a deep breath of familiarity. The last time she had been here, the terrain looked much the same, yet different. No signs of life other than the water had been visible back then, no resorts dotting the landscape. No people, few animals. The heavy salinity level of the Dead Sea made it impossible for it to sustain life either within the water or without.
Now, several hotels and spa type establishments nestled right up to the edge of the Sea. The tour she'd rented a ride on held eight sightseeing passengers plus the two guides. They drove the fifteen miles in a somewhat abused van that nevertheless got them where they needed to go in good time. The visitors, all of them from out of the country, were a chatty bunch: two Germans, three American college students, a couple from Britain, twin sisters hailing from Japan and herself.
During the ride, she'd made small talk with all of them, gently deflecting questions that got too personal. Once they were on the ground, Minna pretended to explore and examine the unusual salt deposits while separating herself from the group. With care, she worked her way over a particularly rough patch of ground and along the front of a sharp edged foothill with pocked caves facing the water.
Several times she checked to make sure no one was watching. Even if the others discovered which one she'd went into, and came back to check for themselves, they would never find what she was looking for.
Still, she took precautions before entering through the narrow mouth of a cave. Many people had been here before her, and thousands would come after. As dark as it was, she could still see the worn places on the rock where hands had smoothed the stone down and remnants of tourists remained in other places: a dropped pen cap, a skinny scrap of paper, the signature Bill H. was here written on the wall with a Sharpie marker.
Minna pressed deeper, squeezing past a jutting piece of rock that nearly cut the rest of the cave off from the front. A large boned person would have extreme difficulty overcoming that obstacle. But she was petite and slender and stretched her hand up to elongate her ribs to fit. Gloomier still back here, where the light from the mouth didn't bleed through as thoroughly, the cave widened out again and branched off in two directions; left, and right. Setting a hand to the wall, she followed it by feel rather than sight when she sank into the deeper recess of the fork to the right. She'd brought along a small pen sized flashlight but didn't need it.
An array of scratches and gouges marred the surface of the rock and she read them like braille, fingertips rising and dipping, skimming with increasing familiarity. All of a sudden, her hand sank into nothing. The hole, three feet wide, didn't stop her moving forward. When she felt cool stone again, she counted three steps and stopped. Turning to face the wall, she rose up on her tiptoes, arm stretched above her, following a scratched guide up to a set of indentations roughly three inches deep. There was no pattern to them, and they were not the only ones in the wall. The depression to the left of the center was almost too high for her to stick her thumb into and push.
Nimble, she stretched until she felt the small rock give.
A hiss slithered through the confines of the dark cave.
Minna stepped back to the dark hole and flattened her palms on a piece of rock lining the bottom of the big gouge. She had to use all her weight to make it slide down the five inches she needed. It rumbled and gave her trouble.
After all, it hadn't been touched in two thousand years.
Sweating with exertion, she lifted her palms off after it sank the required depth. To the left, where the rock had been, was a slit in the stone the width of a manilla envelope and four inches high. Her fingers came into contact with a leather encased object and carefully, she withdrew it.
Minna couldn't see, but her mind's eye provided details as if a light was shining right down on the book she removed. The spine and cover consisted of worn leather bearing symbols and runes. It cracked and dust billowed up when she opened it. Coughing, she waved at the air in front of her face.
When her hand came down, it settled on a stiff, leather page. Catching the edge, she turned five more pages before halting. Skimming again, her fingertips encountered several smaller discs of clay surrounding a larger one nestled into niches in the leather. The small ones were the size of half dollars, the large one the size of a tea cup plate. On the surface of each, depictions of different things lurked.
The sun.
Insects.
Ripples, like water.
The large disc had myriad symbols; stars, the earth, the moon, the ocean and flames.
Minna paused when her hand moved back to the smaller disc depicting the sun. Once she cracked the seal, there was no going back. There would be no replacing this disc, although she didn't think they would need to when the time came, and no hiding the phenomenon from any person on earth.
If she took this step, she could never reverse the consequences. Not just from the population, but from the Guardian.
Her thoughts turned to the Garden. Green, beautiful, vast. Waterfalls spilled over high cliffs and short ones alike, making pools at the bottom as clear as bathwater. Palms and oaks and redwoods all owned space there, sometimes together, sometimes in their own groves. There were trees unlike any other humans had set eyes on as well.
Trees she sometimes missed seeing.
But did she miss that perfect tranquility so much she was willing to give up this life to have it? Perhaps if there had been other people inhabiting Eden, too. When they went back, there would be only three. Conversely, it was no kind of life being hunted into the ground.
She glanced down as if she could see the disc in the dark. Tracing the outline, she weighed her decision one more time.
Tranquility, or companionship. Safety, or stimulation.
Life, or death.
Picking up the disc, she held it between her fingers.
The snap echoed much louder in her ears than it did in the cave.
Chapter Ten
An hour after the break of the seal in the cave, Alexandra popped her eyes open to see the ceiling of the hotel room. She
had slept most of yesterday afternoon and early evening away, leaving her restless and pacing all night. Dracht had come and gone in bed, sleeping in short shifts that she noticed as a hazy kind of afterthought between dreams. When they were both awake, they wiled away the hours planning where to go from here. How to get out of the city and across the Mediterranean.
Gauging by the sunlight streaming in through the windows, there was a handful of hours left in the day. So far they'd been lucky that the hotel hadn't rented this particular room to anyone else. Flinging her legs over the side of the mattress, she rubbed sleep out of her eyes and stood up.
Dracht sat in a chair by the window, rolling the cap on and off a bottle of water. He glanced over. “Feel refreshed?”
“Better than I was yesterday before we slept at all,” she admitted with a yawn. “Think we're safe enough to start making our way through the city to the coastline again?”
“Probably. I think we should go when dark falls. It'll hide our movements.”
Alex stepped over to the window and peeled the curtain further back to look outside. She squinted while her eyes adjusted to the light change. There were no suspicious people lurking around the hotel, no strange vehicles in the parking lot.
“Sounds good to me,” she said and let the curtain fall back into place.
“Will you be all right up here while I go down and grab us some food and another couple waters to take with us?” Dracht asked, rising up out of the chair. He set the bottle on the table with a thump.
“You know it, big guy. Get me two waters, will ya?”
He tugged a piece of her hair when he walked by. “I'll think about it. See you in ten.”
“I'll pack up while you're gone.” She swatted at his hand and missed when he snatched it away. Alexandra would have bet ten years off her life she wouldn't have ever had this kind of relationship—budding friendship—with a Templar.
At the door, Dracht winked and let himself out.
Alex hit the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and started packing up what little she'd left on the counter. Toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush. Dracht didn't have any personal belongings out at all. In less than ten minutes she was done, bag by the door, face splashed with cold water and hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Dracht returned exactly when he said he would, hands full of bags and drinks. Using his boot to close the door, he shuffled off a bag to her so he could throw the locks and follow her to the table near the window.
She ate her hamburger and fries with more relish than she might have a month ago. Man, she would miss the hell out of french fries. Dipping one in a gob of ketchup, she jammed it in her mouth and was just about to speak around it when the sunlight streaming through the crack in the curtains doused to a strange color like pewter.
Dracht threw down his food and was up on his feet, gun in hand, before Alex could even set down her burger.
Was someone about to come through the window? They would have had to scale the side of the building to do that, which wasn't out of reach of determined men. Almost choking, chewing and swallowing painfully, she got up and sought out the extra gun for herself.
Dracht stood to the side of the split in the curtains, then peered through the opening with a stunned, perplexed expression. The pewter dimmed further, as if someone had pulled the plug on the sun, sinking the room into a deep gray gloom.
“What in the mother of god...” Dracht lowered his weapon, nose to the window, staring up at something she couldn't see.
“What is it? What'd they do?” She checked the clip on the gun and crowded him; if it was safe for Dracht to be looking out, it was safe for her to.
For three full seconds, Alexandra didn't comprehend what she was seeing. The sun had turned black. Light that filtered through looked like the twilight time in the early morning when mist clung to the treetops. Darker, though, spreading out through the atmosphere and over the earth as an eerie gray film.
It was one of the creepiest things Alexandra had ever seen.
When her brain caught up with itself, when realization hit, she accidentally dropped the gun and gasped. The weapon hit the toe of her boot and landed on the floor.
“Oh, oh no.” It couldn't be.
“What is that, Alexandra? I've never seen the sun do that before, not even during a full eclipse.” Dracht stared at the sky with the same look Alex figured she'd been wearing a moment before.
“Someone's broken one of the seals.” Alexandra let that sink in. Really sink in. Stepping away from the window, forgetting about the gun, she tried to figure out what was going on.
“What seal? What are you talking about?” He twisted his shoulders and head around to see her but didn't leave the window.
“I'm talking about the apocalypse, Dracht. Armageddon.”
***
Evelyn flinched at the strong odor searing through her nostrils. She turned her head away only to have it come again, more potent than before. Coming to with a snap, she opened her eyes. A man stood in front of her waving a small white stick under her nose. The details were still hazy while her mind tried to catch up with the sudden return to consciousness.
Jerking upright, she tried to raise her hands in defense but realized her wrists were secured to the cushioned arm of a wingback chair. When her vision cleared, a gentleman with sharp features, jet black hair and green eyes came into view. He wore a strict suit of black offset by an ivory shirt and ice blue tie.
“Good, you're awake,” he said, returning to the corner of a large, polished desk where he took a seat on the edge. Tossing down the stick, he wiped his fingers on a damp cloth and regarded her like she was a bug under a pin.
More details filtered in: a large, round shaped office with windows arching around one entire side. Floor to ceiling, they let in an enormous amount of sunlight. A potted ficus sat near a set of cherry bookcases filled with tomes whose spines she couldn't read but that looked expensive and detailed nevertheless. She took all that in with her first scan of the room.
With a twitch of clarity, she finally remembered how she got here.
“Where's Rhett?” she asked, swerving her attention back to the well dressed man.
“Don't worry about Rhett right now. How are you feeling?” A considerate tone accompanied his question.
“I'm not saying anything else until I know he's okay.” If these were her kidnappers, the elite of the elite, they had her up high somewhere in a room far removed from the one the sect of Templars kept her in.
“He's fine. A little angry at being detained, but fine. I'm Roth Bryant. You are?” He tilted his head forward in anticipation of her name.
Evelyn licked her lips and tested the strength of the rope that bound her to the chair. Thin but strong and somehow soft. It didn't chafe her skin like the ones the Templars used. A pleasant scent hung in the air, over riding the clinical sting the smelling salts left behind.
“I want to see him.” The cleanliness and professional state of the room felt bizarre in accordance with how she was being detained and held for questioning. As scary as the underground room beneath the church had been, there was something psychologically sinister about this she couldn't put her finger on.
It seemed too...normal. It infringed on the belief that public places were relatively safe and that nothing bad could happen in such a bright, well lit room.
The man, Roth, considered her request. After a full thirty seconds, he pushed to a stand and crossed to her chair.
Evelyn immediately recoiled, expecting to be struck. All he did was turn her chair a quarter degree to the right. He was strong under the monkey suit that probably cost as much as the down payment on a small mortgage.
A large flatscreen television sat flush against the paneled wall and Roth reached for a remote that sat on a stand a few feet below it. Depressing a button, he brought the TV to life. Scrolling through a menu made of roman numerals, he chose VIII and the screen went from blue to a shot of an enclosed room with steel walls and a chair wit
h Rhett sitting in it. Stripped to the waist, bandages ripped off the two bullet wounds on his shoulder and side, he looked like he'd already been worked over two or three times.
Bruises marked his face, his chest, his arms.
Fury replaced the disorientation and confusion. She sat forward like that might help her assess his condition better. He was conscious and staring at something across the room from him that was out of camera angle range.
“Rhett! What have you done to him? I demand you release him.” Evelyn found her tongue, finally, and glared at Roth.
“We all know why we're here, don't we?” Roth asked in a conversational tone. He didn't look at the TV, but at her. “So let's save everyone time and heartache and cut to the chase. All my bosses want is the location of Eden. You give us that, and we'll release both of you.”
Evelyn didn't believe him. Release both of them? These men might not believe what the Templar sect had, that she and her sisters were spreading evil over the earth, but she knew the location and that made her dangerous. These men wouldn't risk her leaving here to spread the word elsewhere.
“I'm not telling you anything.” She maintained eye contact with Roth.
“I think you should consider your answer again.” He never raised his voice, didn't openly threaten her.
Yet she felt threatened anyway. Shifting in the seat, she glanced briefly at the TV then back to Roth. “I don't have anything to say.”
He tilted his head forward an inch. “Are you positive?”
Calm, cool and collected, Roth regarded her in a way that made her skin crawl. It was the impassive, determined gleam in his green eyes, so different from the blatant hate of the Templar sect, that told her this man was capable of anything.
She said nothing.
Roth set the remote down and pulled a cell phone out of the pocket of his suit jacket. Pressing one number, he waited only a moment for someone to answer.
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