Eden's Eye (The Gates Book 1)

by Leonard Petracci

  “You’re using it right now, Caleb, to close this gate! And what’s more, you won’t have a choice. That necklace is the very mark of Cain, handed down by the Lord himself when he exiled Cain, when he laid his curse upon him. By the very word of God, anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over. That is what protects you, Caleb, just as it curses you. But I can help you, child. I can set you free from the tyranny of millennia, the tyranny that plagued me in my later life.”

  “Thanks so much for the gift, grandmother. I really appreciate it—I’ll be sure not to drop it down the nearest drainage pipe when I return back to the surface. And now, I should be going. As for your offer, I refuse, and this gate is closing.” I bent down on a knee, dropping the bracelet onto the fabric as she raised a hand over her face.

  I watched the bracelet fall, the clear crystal taking in the silver light, seeming to draw it in like a whirlpool. Its descent slowed as if it were passing through honey. Then the clasp touched the fabric, and silver light exploded outward, the wood of the tree screeching as vibrations ran up into the branches, the earth itself quivering. My grandmother shrieked as the fabric’s thickness expanded, the sheet now glowing as bright as a full moon, buzzing with power as all the holes and tears writhed and mended themselves.

  The silver chain around the trunk shattered, dissolving into a cloud of powder. Before it settled, I saw a face in it, a masculine face whose eyes met my own in the instant before it collapsed, a face whose mouth was locked in a perpetual scream.

  “You’re a fool, child!” shouted my grandmother. “A damned fool! Cursed, a curse nearly as old as time itself, a curse by those that you serve now! And you will never escape it without my help, child. Never!”

  “I’d rather die than let you near me.”

  “Then die you will! For the last few centuries of my life, my hands were bound tighter and tighter by my enemies, forcing me to keep the gates shut, forcing me to bend beneath them! And they will do the same to you, make you a slave. I shall not tolerate seeing that happen again, I shall not tolerate seeing you throw away your power!”

  And from within the hole, she raised her hands, screaming again as they touched the barrier.

  “That necklace, it protects you from men, child. But oh, there is much worse. So much worse that I can summon, old friends in the darkness. And I summon them now! I summon them so you may know what you are up against, so that you may know what could be under your command!”

  Behind me, a series of howls permeated the air, and I turned to see a cluster of shadows twice as tall as myself, standing on their hind legs with their heads tilted upward, heads the shape of wolves’. Sinewy muscle flexed in their chests, extending in knots to arms that ended in thick claws, with sharpened nails that reached several inches farther.

  Bats swirled to their left, a vortex of dark shapes tunneling down toward where another form stood, his red-tipped fangs visible despite the distance. In his hand he held a skull, and he threw it, the shadowy mass rolling to a stop at my feet and wisping away in smoky tendrils as it rolled toward my shoe.

  And to his left another thing appeared, a being seemingly made of all sharp edges, its joints grinding together as it moved, a crow perched upon its shoulder. Then it was joined by another monstrosity, a snake as thick as a minivan, its head rearing twenty feet into the air and spitting venom, the liquid fizzing wherever it made contact with the ground.

  “Little lord!” called Iaco from the edge of the tree. “Little lord, that would be our cue to go. Unless you intend to stay! Forever that is! Run!”

  More sounds joined the chorus as I turned. Yowlings, screamings and more followed me, joining the screeching voice of my grandmother. I stumbled again on an apple as I ran, quickly recovering as they drew closer.

  “You may now have the power to lock the gates,” screamed my grandmother’s voice, “but I had that power for far longer, And I know where the cracks are—the backdoors, the secret entrances. Not only will you be cursed from above, but also below! Run, child, until you are ready to run back to me! Until you realize that you exist to do their dirty work, to keep their hands clean!”

  Chapter 52 - Holy Ground

  The square window expanded in midair as I sprinted toward it, the open box giving me passage back to Earth. With each step I heard the sounds around me of the monsters my grandmother had summoned. In the corners of my eyes, I could see wolves weaving through the trees, their jaws snapping and spit flying. The sky above was filled with bats and the buzzing of enormous insects, diving down toward my face as I zig-zagged, their momentum embedding them into the ground like arrows as they missed.

  I leapt when I reached the box, sailing into the cellar and skidding along the stone floor, nearly colliding with Liz as I decelerated.

  “Close it!” I shouted as the box shrank back to normal size, the wooden splinters conjoining again to form a whole. “Now! Close it!”

  Liz lunged forward, pushing the lid of the box just as the head of a bat emerged through it, its body wriggling through the narrowing crack, snarling as half of one wing was severed at the base. It rolled as dark blood spurted from its side, flapping its one good wing and emitting high pitched squeaks. Curved white teeth gnashed together as it brushed against my shoe, latching onto an untied lace and climbing upward, fist over clenched fist.

  “Get!” I shouted, shaking my foot to try to kick it off, but the bat screeched as it continued to climb, its body several pounds and nearly a full foot in length.

  “This is a holy place!” shouted Matthew beside me, raising his hand as his palm began to glow. “Begone, evil! Begone, by the will of God!”

  Blue light erupted from his palm, a concentrated beam that engulfed the bat in a blazing white fire, incinerating its writhing body in seconds and leaving my shoelace untouched.

  “What the hell was that?” I shouted at him as the room descended again into darkness.

  “It appeared to be a bat,” he answered, and I shook my head.

  “No, what you just did. What was that?”

  “This is holy ground,” he replied, “and no creature from the depths should ever set foot here. I merely directed the will of God to expel the evil from this place.”

  “So what you did, it only affects evil? That’s why my shoelace is unharmed?”

  “Precisely,” he answered, and he turned to Liz. “Now that the task is complete, it is time for us to leave. There is much for him to learn, much that we need to teach him.”

  “And who says that I want to come with you? What if I don’t?”

  “It’s your decision to make,” said Matthew, raising his hands and pointing to the box before starting up the stairs, “but you’ve already seen the alternative.”

  “He’s right,” said Liz. “You’d best come with us, Caleb. We’ll show you how to fight them. How to stand up for yourself.”

  You exist to do their dirty work, came my grandmother’s voice in my head as I nodded slowly.

  “What about the box?” I asked, pointing at where they had left in on the floor.

  “It’s safest here, in the monastery, so long as the door is locked. I can keep a watch over it through Mary, and the stones that built the monastery are old, holy, designed to contain it.”

  “Alright,” I said, and I started to follow her up the stairs. But then I doubled back, snatching the box off of the ground and placing it in my pocket.

  I would keep it closed, of course.

  Unless Liz and Matthew ever decided not to tell me the full truth.

  Then I knew I could use a second opinion. Iaco’s.

  ***

  Shankey sat in the seat next to me as we left the monastery behind, riding away in Liz’s car. We left the streets behind, the cemetery behind, the library behind. And I left Oakley behind.

  I knew she would be better off without me, without the constant threat of death over her shoulder. Without the dangers that I would bring down upon her.

  But I also knew the way
I felt about her. And how, ever since I had gone blind, she had been my only true friend. But now, as we drove away, as I prepared for a new life, she would no longer be a part of it. She wouldn’t even know that she had ever been involved in it.

  And again, despite my feelings, that was for the better.

  But I had another feeling as we drove away, a more physical feeling near my shin. The skin had turned bright red and was starting to blister.

  Chapter 53 - Shatter

  Oakley hated history class.

  For the most part it was due to her teacher, Mr. Crines, who taught the class as if he had been around longer than most of the accounts he read, his voice seeming to accumulate dust in the air from its lack of inflections, the monotone creating the perfect source of white noise to cause her eyelids to droop. Then there was Chris, who was assigned to sit next to her in that class, and had gone out with her for a few weeks after taking her to a haunted house a few blocks away the year before. It never worked out with Chris, but Oakley wasn’t sure why. In fact she had no good reason why, but every time they were together she felt uncomfortable. As if it somehow didn’t fit together, that it didn’t feel right.

  And it should have worked out—Chris was tall, the quarterback of the football team, and had a quick-witted sense of humor. But inexplicably, it just hadn’t.

  Ever since she’d broken it off, things had been awkward between the two of them. And the assigned seating only made it worse.

  She sighed, huffing just loud enough that Mr. Crines raised an eyebrow before returning to the ancient Roman defenses against barbarians and the ultimate fall of Rome.

  “Inevitable,” Mr. Crines intoned, writing the word on the board. “After the barbarians slowly chipped away at the empire, and not helped by issues from within, there was no alternative—”

  But again Oakley was not paying attention, choosing instead to doodle on her desk, or to twist the bracelet around her arm, examining the chain. It was her favorite accessory, though try as she might, she couldn’t quite remember how she had acquired it. She’d had it before dating Chris, so he hadn’t given it to her. Maybe it had been a birthday present, or a spontaneous decision at the mall.

  Regardless, she knew she had no reason to love the bracelet. It wasn’t particularly expensive, nor was it expertly crafted. Just as she couldn’t explain why she didn’t love Chris, she couldn’t explain why she did love the bracelet.

  She removed the clasp and placed the bracelet on her desk, rolling it on the wood, the stone making a clicking sound with each rotation.

  “Ms. Young, if you would please refrain from distracting the rest of the class,” rang out Mr. Crines’ voice, and she jumped, knocking the bracelet to the ground. It fell face down, the stone slamming first onto the hard tile, and with a crack that sounded louder than should have been possible from such a small source it snapped in half, bits of stone scattering around the floor.

  “Sorry, Mr. Crines!” she said, and she reached over the edge of the desk, her fingers making contact with the pieces of broken stone.

  She gasped, her eyes closing as her head filled with images, as emotions flooded over her. As she knew where the bracelet had come from, and who had given it to her.

  As she remembered.

  And in the distance, so far away that Oakley would be unable to hear it, there was another crack, this time the breaking apart of crystal. It was accompanied by a ripping noise as a silver sheet of fabric began to tear, and a hole at the base of a tree in a particularly old garden opened.

  End of book 1

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  Other books by Leonard Petracci:

  Til Death Do Us Part

  Genre: Dystopian, Sci Fi, Crime

  Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01GT7BOV6

  Summary:

  Frederick Galvanni is the thief of the century, but it’s not his first time claiming the title. For Frederick and the inhabitants of his world, reincarnation is real, but people are always reborn in the country in which they died. Now Frederick seeks to pull off his greatest heist yet—enter a maximum security prison, where souls are trapped through reincarnation, and assemble the greatest criminal team that has ever lived.

  But for Frederick, the heist is just the beginning of a plan centuries in the making: a plan of revenge for unforgivable crimes committed a millennium before. And in this world, even death cannot keep Frederick from success.