“Hammer the wound on the top of his shoulder.”
Evelyn, eyes widening, snapped a look to the monitor. Someone entered the line of the camera in front of Rhett, a tire iron in his hand. Rhett watched him with wary, cold eyes, his expression giving nothing else away.
“No!” A scream ripped from her throat when she saw the stranger in the room lift the tire iron and bring it down hard on the gunshot wound she had given him in an alley in Egypt. She had only taken a chunk out of the top of his shoulder instead of shooting him straight through. When the iron hit it, fresh blood burst from the wound and Rhett jerked back in the chair, releasing a shout of pain. It lanced straight through her, that sound. Rhett, who'd done so much, risked so much, was now suffering because of her refusal to speak.
How far would she let it go? How far would they go?
All the way. She knew it without having to be told that they would do whatever it took to get what they wanted.
Roth lowered the phone. “Now then. Where. Is. Eden?”
Evelyn couldn't look away from the monitor. Fear ate at her insides like a live animal, gnawing and shredding, creating new wounds of her own. If she led Roth on a wild goose chase across the world, searching in vain for Eden in places it didn't exist, how would he extract his vengeance? It might buy her time to think of a way to get her and Rhett out of here, but if she failed to free them, and Roth discovered she'd lied, she knew he would force her to watch something even more horrible happen to Rhett.
“If you thought the last injury was bad, it'll be nothing compared to what I'll do to him next,” Roth informed her.
His informal, conversational tone infuriated her. Grated on her nerves. Every muscle in her body ached with tension at the thought of Roth getting on his phone to order another heinous crime against Rhett.
Roth lifted the phone to his ear again. “Take a--”
“No! Wait!” Evelyn shouted at the top of her lungs when Roth got impatient and started to order another strike. “I need a piece--”
Her words faded when the orange glow streaming through the windows suddenly turned gray. Different than when clouds moved in front of the sun, different than the eerie pall of an eclipse. This was bizarre, unnatural, strange.
Roth must have thought so, too, because he looked startled when he glanced at the windows the same time she did. The sun was too high to see from the office but the rays it cast down were proof enough that some event was happening with it.
“What the hell is that?” Roth stalked to the tall windows and looked out. Looked up.
Evelyn couldn't leave the chair. She watched shock and confusion cross Roth's face.
“What's going on? Why is the whole day so gray out there?” she asked. A tickle of memory teased her senses, ancient and primordial, something she couldn't grasp onto to understand as stressed out as she was.
She needed to see the sun.
“It's black. The sun is...black,” he said. The cool, collected gentleman fled in favor of growing disbelief and bewildered fear.
The sun is black. Black sun, red moon. The apocalypse.
“Let me up, let me see it! ROTH!” She shouted at him, jerking her body in the chair to try and move it. Loosen the ties on her arms. Something. She couldn't just sit here.
Roth stared upwards as if angels themselves were descending from heaven, mouth moving with silent words of awe, shock.
In the hallway outside the doors to Roth's office, Evelyn heard running feet. Urgent whispers. People were noticing, of course they were noticing—no one in the world would miss it. Evelyn knew that either Ashrael or one of her sisters had broken a seal. They all knew the location, knew what to do if the time came. It was one of the other reasons they'd been allowed to leave Eden, marked, sent on a mission to make good in the world.
If, when, all the signs came that signaled the imminent downfall of mankind, they were to break the Sixth seal. Evelyn wouldn't have thought they were to that point quite yet. Yes, wars were erupting all over the middle east. Humans were increasingly greedy, hungry for power any way they could obtain it, even if it meant lying, cheating or stealing from their fellow man. Governments were perilously close to either forcing or coercing the people to insert a chip that would track them where ever they went.
No place on the face of the planet would be safe. Your life would not be your own. Everything you ever did, ever thought, ever experienced would be saved and processed by people whose only motivation was to corral and contain and control you. Of course the guise was that it was for your own good, a precaution, a speedier way to exist. Nothing was ever fast enough anymore, from the ATM machine to the fast food restaurant to the connection to the internet.
Soon, humans would be rushing around at mach three, barely time to breathe, complaining everything was still too slow.
And wasn't she even guilty of some of that? Her reasons for not wanting to return to Eden were because she'd become used to and addicted to the incessant stream of stimulation provided by television, radios, computers and the millions of people who lived here with her. Life was convenient these days, something to do always at her fingertips; games, music, travel, conversations by telephone and streaming video. A glut of overindulgence awaited around every corner. She had become just one more product of the millennium, another body paying taxes, mind warped by a continual onslaught of infomercials and disinformation coming from every possible direction.
Discerning the truth in the twenty-first century was like trying to count every star in a midnight sky; impossible.
The thought of going back to Eden, without its telephone poles and electric grids and special effect movies and chili-cheese fries seemed dreadfully boring.
Despite all that, the sharp downward spiral, Evelyn still thought there was a glimmer of hope out there. She'd seen it first hand; the teacher staying past the school hour to help a child in need, volunteers in hospitals and shelters and food lines, someone stopping to help another with a flat tire, a bill paid by an anonymous donor to an elderly citizen whose heat was about to be shut off in the dead of a brutal winter, firefighters and policemen risking their lives on a daily basis, the military men and women fighting in honor of their country. She'd seen the people at barbecues and fairgrounds and beaches all with their smiling faces tilted to the sun, basking not in the heat but the sheer joy of living.
For those moments, only being alive mattered.
There was still something here left to save. Humanity was not at its end. Somewhere there was a middle ground, a peace between commerce and nature.
Rough hands on the binds at her wrists startled her back to reality. Roth used a pocket knife to slice through the ropes.
“Do you know what this is? Did you or your sisters do something between the time you left the stronghold and the time we caught you? Did you?” he demanded.
Yanked to her feet, she stumbled when her legs threatened to give out. They were asleep from too much time in the chair. She thought Roth might have entered a state of denial on the heels of his awe and fear. The unknown had a way of affecting people strangely.
“I don't know what's going on, just let me see.” Evelyn didn't need to see; she knew this was nothing normal. At the window, she touched her temple to the cool glass and slanted a look up toward the sun. It looked wrapped in fine, black cloth with brackish rays streaming down.
Someone had definitely broken a seal. Living as long as she had, with so little change in the earth itself regarding cosmic disasters, seeing the sun like that shocked her. She could imagine the panic that must slowly be gripping the populations of the earth as they realized something catastrophic was happening.
Not even Roth's admission that he'd known she was at the stronghold or his guess that she, Alex or Minna might have set this off could shake her from her fixation with the sun.
What she did know, was that they had to get to Eden as soon as possible. With the mark on her wrist, she was safe from certain kinds of death during the apocalypse, but
she could still drown or burn to death, among other things.
Snapping a look away from the window, she met Roth's gaze. “I can tell you that I didn't do this. But it's an undeniable sign. Do you have family? Children, parents, a wife? Brothers and sisters? If you value their life along with your own, then you need to let Rhett and I go. I might be able to stop this before it's too late—I can't do it locked in a room tied down to a chair.”
Roth's composure fled. He frowned, then yanked her close, almost nose to nose, by her arm. “Do you think I'm stupid? Maybe this is a trick you're capable of in times of dire need, hm? Maybe you and your sisters have a gift for making biblical type events happen--”
“Are you crazy? We're not capable of magic,” she shouted. “That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, that someone could just snap their fingers and make the sun go black. Tonight, the moon will turn red. It's part of the prophecy, just like what's happening with the sun. Chaos is going to break out shortly, is probably starting already. If I can't get where I need to go, there will be no stopping this.”
“You're taking us with you. The hell if I'm just letting you walk out that door after all this time and effort. We need several hours to gather our families--”
“What? You actually believe I'm going to waltz you somewhere safe? There is nowhere safe!” It was half truth, half lie; once the apocalypse was too far advanced, nowhere on earth would be safe. But all who made it past the gates of Eden would survive. The thought of tainting that sacred place with men like Roth and his ilk, people who had helped advance the world to what it was today, turned her stomach. She'd rather die than be stuck in Eden with only them.
Out in the hallways, she could hear the panic escalating. The situation outside was not righting or fixing itself and tonight, after the sun sank below the horizon, the red moon would rise and edge the panic into pandemonium.
Evelyn stood her ground against Roth, breathing fast and shallow, refusing to glance at the television to see how Rhett was doing. If she didn't press upon Roth to release her, right now, Rhett wasn't going to make it anyway. It might already be too late, but she had to try.
Roth, after several minutes of tense, silent internal debate, shook his head. “You, nor he, are going anywhere. Your little ploy about stopping this in time is just a desperate attempt to gain freedom. We'll see if a red moon rises. If it does, we'll decide what to do then.”
“If you wait that long, you won't like what comes next.”
Chapter Eleven
The sanctuary was a deceiving bit of property. It sat on a cliff overlooking the ocean, but the majority of the stronghold wasn't above ground—it was beneath it. There were no gates and no guards to bypass, only a long drive on a road posted Private Property. Trees crowded the pathway after two curves, then broke away to expose a rather modest structure built of stone.
Less than a thousand square feet, the building resembled a maintenance shed more than it resembled a home, with no windows anywhere on the four walls. Security was tight, with cameras angling in from five different positions, all invisible to the naked eye unless one knew where they were hiding.
A steel enforced door was the only way in or out. To open it required a key for the lock, a long sequence of numbers for the keypad, and the correct thumbprint for the thumb scan.
Inside was an elevator shaft and a stone spiral stairway beyond another door that needed to be opened the same way as the first one. The elevator only worked with a correct sequence on the keypad.
After a two flight descent, the elevator doors slid back to reveal a subterranean home. A large room with polished floors, rugged walls and a high, jagged ceiling sported updated, modern furniture in earth tones that complimented the design. Three bedrooms, an office and an interrogation room were located off the living area. A galley style kitchen sat to the right with a view of the elevator and stairway door.
The biggest draw of the sanctuary was the ceiling to floor windows along one entire wall. Cut out of the cliff face, it overlooked a commanding view of the ocean. Bulletproof and all but impossible to breach with the treacherous rocks below, the panes allowed copious amounts of light to pour in unabated.
Dragar had found Roman stirring a drink in the kitchen when he'd arrived and they'd wasted no time getting down to brass tacks.
“She what?” Roman queried, looking shocked.
“Disappeared. I don't know what happened to her. One second she was in the restroom next to me at a truck stop, the next she was gone.” Dragar rattled ice around his glass. Christian was in the interrogation room, asleep. He let him have his rest for now.
The debate about Minna went on for several hours before Dragar finally woke his son. They had an extensive discussion where Dragar leaned on the young man regarding honor and his commitment to the cause.
He did not mention where his brothers were, or that the daughters of Eve were with them. Dragar especially did not announce Minna's disappearance.
After dinner, Dragar checked the supplies in the large storeroom off the kitchen. They kept three months worth of food here at all times and Roman had added to that as he'd asked. Eight more flats of bottled water were stacked against the wall and the shelves were full. If they needed to stay down here for an extended stay, they were ready to go.
Their routine settled into an easy blend of sleep, exercise—rope skipping, free weights, a rowing machine—and keeping up on current events. The fifty-three inch flatscreen blared news from all over the world.
What none of them could have predicted or imagined, was the wane of sunlight one afternoon, as if clouds blanketed the sky, turning the whole day gray. It drew all three men to the enormous windows, where they saw it was nothing as innocuous as a brewing storm.
“My God,” Roman breathed, hands flat against the glass.
“What the hell?” Christian stared at the anomaly with confusion.
Dragar said nothing at all. It did not take superior powers of deduction to understand this was more than a solar flare or a simple eclipse. He suspected he was not the only one wondering at the coincidence of the daughters of Eve's existence coming to the fore in conjunction with this event.
What he did know was that he had two other sons out there, unreachable by phone or any other device, exposed to the chaos that was surely coming.
***
“Armageddon? Are you kidding me?” Dracht faced Alexandra while the full effect of the black light filled their hotel room.
“I wouldn't ever kid about something like that.” She could hear people starting to come out of their rooms in the hallway. A distant squeal of brakes heralded a crack and crash when one car bashed into another.
The chaos was starting.
People didn't know what they were seeing, and those who did were about to react in unimaginable ways. From crying to panicking to mayhem.
“Why is it happening now? Does this have to do with you and your sisters?” Dracht looked out the window again.
“It's been in the prophecies forever but it doesn't have to do with me and my sisters specifically. We knew it would happen someday—but I have to be honest, I didn't expect it this soon. We all know where the seals are, and part of our mission here wasn't just to spread goodwill among men. When we saw all the signs of humankind's demise, we were supposed to begin the apocalypse. We all had the power to, but none of us ever thought we would be the ones to break the first seal. The Guardian of the East Gate has the power and so do several other Guardians walking the earth. It could be one of them. Maybe it really is time.” She realized that while she'd rambled, she had slung her bag over her shoulder in preparation to leave.
Dracht left the window, leaving the bottle on the table. He bent to pick up the gun she'd dropped, dark eyes serious and sharp. “So what you're saying is that the End has begun.”
She nodded and took the gun when he handed it to her.
“Is there no way to stop it?” he asked.
“It depends. I mean, it isn't like t
hey rehearse this, you know? It's not a play or a game. But, it's possible Evelyn or Minna decided that the world had devolved to the point of breaking a seal. Especially with all that's gone on lately. Humans have hovered on the brink for a long time but with genetically modified food and clones and wars and famine and now the slow spread of chipping—it could be that one of them thought the scales had been tipped. If you ask some people, we've been in decline for a lot longer than the last decade. If it is Ev or Minna, and I got there before too many more seals were broken, then maybe we can stop it. Maybe. Once the first seal is broken, the Guardians are alerted. If the second seal goes, thousands of people will die--”
“What's the second seal?” Dracht asked, clear strain in his voice.
“The first is the black sun, red moon. Tonight, when the sun sinks below the horizon, a red moon will rise. The second seal will release a plague, and the third seal will bring rain. Rain like in the time of Noah, though the entire earth won't be covered. Those are all smaller seals of the Sixth Seal itself, like precursors. If the Sixth Seal itself is broken—it's bad news. Earthquakes and epic storms and volcanoes erupting. Hell on earth. Breaking the Sixth Seal is step one. Then it's the First through the Fifth Seals to call up the Horsemen and if they break them all, the apocalypse will be unstoppable.”
“So these are smaller seals that belong with the Sixth,” Dracht said, as if he needed to get his facts straight. He had his hands up, gesturing to an invisible main seal and others around it.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Are there other seals that belong with the other main ones? The First, Second--”
“No, no. The Sixth Seal is the only one with separate, smaller seals.”
“And there will be no place left on earth to hide if all the seals are broken?” A muscle twitched in Dracht's jaw.
“No place on earth. We would be safe in Eden, though. We've always known we'd end up back there one day. It will be the place those who survive it start over.”
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