God's Lions - The Dark Ruin

by John Lyman

  “He probably did. After all, he’s one of the Perfecti.” Mendoza paused as he studied the map. “I hate to say it, Evita, but guys like Wehling are kind of spooky.”

  “Spooky or not, that’s where we’re headed, Javier. Now, let’s get moving, because in a few hours the roads will become too clogged for travel.”

  CHAPTER 41

  In the late afternoon of their second day hiding in plain sight, Pope Michael, Leo, and Eduardo Acerbi had settled into their rooms on the third floor of the Hotel Amalfi, but not all was well. Since their arrival, Eduardo had remained bed-ridden, racked by sudden fevers that came and went. The young Jesuit physician who had been summoned by Francois had pumped fluids and antibiotics into the old man, but still he lingered in a semi-conscious state, refusing to go to the hospital. Staring up into the doctor’s eyes, he just kept repeating that he only wanted to remain alive long enough to make a two-day journey to Turkey before he died. But despite his pleas, the doctor was forced to tell him that he would never survive a trip of even one day.

  Sitting at his bedside, Leo and Pope Michael recited a few simple prayers for a man they had come to admire. Every now and then Eduardo would stir, repeating over and over that he had to get to Turkey before it was too late.

  “I wish there was some way we could contact Evita,” Leo said, thumbing his rosary. “As a Cathar, she could tell us what his spiritual needs are right now.”

  The pope reached out and made the sign of the cross on the old man’s forehead before opening a window to let some fresh air into the room. “I have heard it said that in some religions, when a person is dying, the windows must be left open so that their soul can escape its earthly bounds after they pass over.” The pope smiled as he felt the breeze on his face. “Even though Eduardo’s not a Catholic, I offered him the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick yesterday. He refused it of course, as I knew he would. According to his Cathar beliefs, he should be receiving the Cathar rite of consolamentum right now. They believe in the transmigration of souls, and should he die, he may be at the stage of piety where he can go into the light and never have to return to this earth again.”

  “You never fail to amaze me, Your Holiness,” Leo said. “How is it that you seem to know so much about other religions?”

  “As the spiritual leader over a billion souls, Cardinal, it is my responsibility to know all that I can about the religions of others. It is only through our understanding of one another that we will have any chance at all of achieving some kind of peace among the religions of the world.”

  It was no wonder this man had been chosen by the College of Cardinals to be the spiritual leader of the Church, Leo thought, for in a few simple words he had captured the very essence of his papacy.

  Looking back into the room, Pope Michael saw that Eduardo was sleeping peacefully. “Let’s give him some time, Leopold. Hopefully the medicine the doctor gave him will do its work.”

  Quietly, the two men stepped through the door and padded down the hallway to the pope’s room. The summer rainstorms of the past few days had finally moved on, so they decided to venture out onto the terrace to enjoy some sunshine and wine while they silently contemplated their next move.

  Leaning back in his wicker chair, Pope Michael’s eyes drifted across the street to the dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica. “So near ... yet so far away, eh Leopold? I wonder what’s going on behind those walls right now.”

  “Bishop Morelli informed me this morning that Vespa is maintaining contact with Cardinal Acone. He believes the cardinal is waiting for something, but exactly what remains a mystery. Maybe now would be a good time to return, Your Holiness. Francois assures me that he and his men can protect you.”

  “Is that what you think, Leopold? Do you think I’m afraid to go back for fear that something may happen to me?”

  “No, I’ve known you too long to think that, Marcus. You’ve never seemed afraid of anything. I was merely suggesting that we might do more good if we were back on the inside instead of sitting here sipping wine on the outside staring at the walls.”

  “You don’t know how close I came to walking back through the gate this morning, Cardinal, but we have to be patient. I believe there’s some kind of timetable to all of this, and soon Acone will be forced to show his hand. Sooner or later he’s going to have to pull the trigger, and that’s when I’ll pay him a little surprise visit.”

  A knock on the door prompted Leo to set his glass down and move back into the room. Peering through the peep hole out into the hallway, he could see the distorted image of Francois Leander, his nose inches away from the door. Quickly Leo ushered him into the room and closed the door behind him. “Francois ... you look a little out of breath. What’s up?”

  “I just received a visitor, Cardinal ... a pilot from the Israeli Air Force.” Leander handed Leo a sealed envelope. “He told me to give you this and that you should read it right away.”

  “Why don’t you join us on the terrace,” Leo said, eyeing the envelope. “Would you like a glass of wine?”

  “Thank you, Cardinal. That would be most welcome.”

  While Francois settled into a chair next to the pope, Leo tore the envelope open and pulled out two folded sheets of paper. “It looks like Lev Wasserman’s team has uncovered something new encoded in Exodus, Your Holiness. Here, have a look.”

  Taking the first page, the pope quickly spotted the words dark star and final transition circled in red. Below them, also circled in red, was the word Antichrist. Crowding in next to the pope, Leo and Francois began reading over his shoulder as he came to the last phrase on the page. The serpent from Asia will ascend to the throne of Saint Peter following the transition.

  “The serpent from Asia?” Francois said out loud. “What does that mean, Your Holiness?”

  “It’s probably referring to modern day Turkey, which means that Cardinal Acone will become the next pope. What’s today’s date?”

  Francois’ voice began to break slightly as he spoke. “August the fifth, Your Holiness.”

  “And when was Adrian born?”

  “August the sixth,” Leo responded.

  The pope gently laid the paper on the table and looked across the way into Vatican City as he repeated the words again. “The serpent from Asia will ascend to the throne of Saint Peter following the transition. That must be a reference to Adrian’s transition into the Antichrist, and evidently Acone will become the next pope sometime following the event. The code also mentioned the dark star again, which means the transition is somehow connected to it.”

  The pope looked at Leo with a renewed sense of vigor. “We don’t have much time, Leopold. We must find a way to observe the dark star, especially on the 6th. If I’m right, Adrian’s transition will be announced tomorrow by an event in the heavens, and the dark star is the key.”

  “I’ll get to work on it right away, Your Holiness. The Jesuits run the Vatican observatory, and Morelli and I can drive up there tonight.”

  “Good. We must keep our eyes on that star.” The pope looked down at the second page in Leo’s hands. “What’s that?”

  “An intelligence report from Danny Zamir. It seems the Turkish authorities are watching the hills outside Orencik in Turkey, but so far nothing has happened. Also, Team 5 apparently went on a little fact-finding mission to Iraq and discovered some kind of monster computer hidden beneath Acerbi’s compound in Babylon. They’re calling it a quantum computer, and according to them it’s the most powerful computer in existence. Apparently, the technology used to build the thing was all just theory up until now. They also discovered something else ... a computer disk made from sapphire and platinum, and they claim it’s thousands of years old.”

  Pope Michael sat up in his chair and let out a low whistle. “It’s all beginning to fit. I believe the mystery of how the Antichrist plans to take over the world has just been solved.”

  A knock on the door caused everyone in the room to jump. Pulling his gun from under his coa
t, Francois moved to the door and peered into the hallway. “It’s the innkeeper.”

  The pope waved his hand. “Let him in.”

  Entering the room with his head held low, Arnolfo wiped his reddened eyes. “Please, Your Holiness ... you must come quickly. Mr. Acerbi has just passed away.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Adrian Acerbi was following behind the thing that had once been his mother as they walked through the tall brown grass that covered the hills outside Orencik. Every now and then the thing would turn and look back at him with his mother’s gaze before continuing over the next hill, until finally they reached the edge of the blackened crater.

  All morning long Adrian had tried to think of ways to escape, but he was surrounded by troops in the middle of a barren landscape with nowhere to hide. Other than the sound of shuffling footsteps and the occasional grunts from the soldiers, the silence in the hills was absolute as they made their way down into the crater under a cloudless sky interrupted only by the occasional spinning cloud of orange-colored dust kicked up by the sudden gusts of hot wind.

  Half walking and half sliding down into the crater, Adrian was prodded by a soldier who looked at the boy with a mixture of curiosity and loathing. It was obvious to him that none of these men wanted to be here, tasked with babysitting a sixteen-year-old boy and his mother, nor did they understand why they had been ordered to escort them out into the hot, dusty hills surrounding an isolated village in the Turkish countryside. All they had been told by their commander was that they were to guard the boy and his mother with their lives and await further orders once they reached their objective.

  As soon as they had all descended to the bottom of the crater, the men stared up in awe at the towering stone blocks positioned on top of a raised area in the very center of the crater. Walking over jagged rocks and tufts of brown grass that poked up through the cracked dry crust beneath their feet, the men were puzzled by the existence of such an ancient structure situated in the middle of an obvious volcanic crater. Who had built it—and why?

  But the question on all of their minds was the question of why they were there. What was so important about an old woman and a boy? Did they have something to do with some new archaeological find? Did they know the location of a great treasure buried beneath the ruin? Whatever the reason, the soldiers had done what they had been ordered to do. Now all they could do was wait for a call from their headquarters telling them what they should do next.

  Stopping below the raised area, the commander stared at the circle of blackened stone and headed for the stairs leading to the raised floor of the structure, but as soon as his boot touched the bottom step he froze as he saw a misty red haze beginning to form over the bottom of the crater. Trained to spot and avoid traps, the commander slowly began to back away, but it was too late, for unbeknownst to him and his men, they had all just stepped onto a satanic welcome mat that had been laid out for those who had not been warned about this little piece of hell.

  Even now the dark angel was watching. Like some kind of twisted celestial fireman, he had waited for thousands of years to extinguish the flame of hope that shone from within the soul of a simple boy who had been born to rule over a world of darkness. But there was still one hurdle that stood before him. Satan would need the boy’s permission. Since the day when Lucifer had been cast from heaven—since that day when he had appeared as a serpent in a garden and first tempted man—the battle for souls had raged for thousands of years between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And in this war between heaven and hell, God had dictated that, in the absence of mortal sin, a person would have to give freely of their soul before Satan could lay claim to it.

  But despite his impetuous nature, Satan had learned to be patient. He knew his time was coming, and as mankind entered a state of technological wizardry in the 21st century, millions had begun to shun the idea of a soul living on after death. As mankind progressed intellectually amid wars triggered by religious extremists, many began to turn away from God in the belief that religion itself was behind all of the wars and resulting social ills that continued to plague the world.

  Rather than come together in the new millennium and live alongside one another in peace, the enlightened people of the 21st century continued to drift farther apart, and mankind did what it had always done—it turned on itself. Atheism suddenly became fashionable among the intellectual elite, and just like wheat, Satan’s harvest of souls increased year after year—and the coming year promised to be his largest harvest yet. The field was fertile and the day of reckoning was upon the Earth, and only those who believed knew what was coming.

  In a gigantic cosmic whirlwind, the signs in the heavens were beginning to align, announcing to the world that mankind’s tribulation was at hand. The time for the Antichrist’s rule was fast approaching, and the Evil One knew that he would have to use all of his powers of deceit—powers he had employed time and time again against a species that flew like moths to a flame, choosing physical pleasure and material gain on Earth over eternal life in heaven. Now was the time for Satan’s ultimate temptation, and failure was not an option. This was the spot where Adrian and his brother Rene had been born into the world, and it would be here that the divine spark that still burned within the physical body of Adrian Acerbi would be extinguished and replaced with something else.

  Drawn to the place of his birth, Adrian now willingly allowed his mother to lead him past the soldiers and up onto the paved floor of the ruin. Reaching out, he ran his hand over one of the obsidian-like towers of rock. Through his fingertips he could feel the energy, as if the entire structure was electrified, and with a growing sense of excitement, he spun around as the reddish haze began to flow through the columns. And he heard laughter—laughter all around him. It came from all directions at once, echoing in staccato bursts with a hideous, otherworldly quality that rose in intensity until the laughter turned into a series of elongated shrieks.

  With an instinctual sense of dread, the soldiers continued to back away from the Dark Ruin as they readied their weapons for whatever was coming—because there was no doubt in their minds that something was coming. Slowly, as it began to grow dark, the soldiers looked over their heads at an unbelievable sight. An enormous black orb was blotting out the sun, smothering the crater in darkness, and with the darkness came a stiffening breeze that quickly grew into a fierce wind, bending the tall grass to the ground and lifting spinning columns of dust into the air as hot currents swept down into the crater. In a matter of seconds the soldiers were blinded, and as they shielded their eyes from the blowing dust they began to feel tiny pinpricks of pain all over their bodies.

  Within seconds, the men were screaming in agony as they dropped their weapons and fell to the ground, writhing in pain. Strangely, Adrian and his mother remained unharmed. Nothing seemed to affect them as they stood in the center of the ruin surrounded by a swirling maelstrom. With a sense of detachment, they watched as the soldiers screamed out in pain, their weapons useless as blood began to soak their uniforms from within, until finally they lay still in grotesque, twisted positions that reflected the last moments of their earthly lives.

  Looking up into the dark, silvery-streaked sky, Adrian saw flashes of what appeared to be a winged creature circling the crater, its red eyes glowing in the darkness. It would suddenly appear and then disappear in his field of vision, and as he spun around trying to catch a glimpse of the thing once again, a hot wind brushed his face. Beneath his feet, the ancient stone platform had become translucent, and he could see all the way down into the black depths of the earth as flashes of light revealed weathered carvings on the dark pillars that rose all around him. Misshapen, demon-like faces appeared in bas-relief tableaus that wrapped around each column, and at the tops of the columns there were carvings of enormous snakes, their heads twisting inward toward the center of the circle, their forked red tongues flicking outward.

  Above the circle, other winged creatures suddenly appeared from the
red mist and flew over the platform before disappearing between the columns just as the sound of laughter returned. Falling to his knees, Adrian pressed his hands to his ears and closed his eyes in a vain attempt to hang on to the last vestiges of his humanity. Maybe if I just close my eyes all of this will stop.

  “Adrian!” It was the voice of his mother.

  Opening his eyes, Adrian looked up into the terrified face of his mother shrouded in a black mist. She blurred in a rapid back and forth motion, and he could see something peeling away, like a snake shedding its skin, until finally the creature that had been inhabiting her body flew up out of the mist surrounding her, leaving a trail of hideous laughter in its wake.

  Taking her by the shoulders, Adrian shook her and looked into her eyes, and then, as if awakening from a dream, his mother’s gaze returned and she grabbed his arm and squeezed. “Adrian!”

  “Mother?”

  The winged creature returned, swooping down and passing between them, causing Colette to scream as she placed her hands over her face and peered through her fingers. Watching her reaction, Adrian suddenly realized that the thing inside her was now gone and that he was looking into the sweet face of his mother. Looking around, he held her frail body in his arms as if to protect her from the thing he knew was still around and could return at any moment. “Mother ... it’s OK ... you’re safe now!”

  “What’s happening, Adrian ... where are we?”

  “We’re back in Turkey ... in some kind of old ruin.”

  “Turkey! Where’s your father?”

  “I don’t know. He left. You weren’t yourself, Mother.”

  Colette stared at her young son with wide eyes. “Adrian, listen to me. We need to get out of here. You’re in great danger. Your father and I ...

  Collette screamed again when she looked past her son and saw rows of yellow eyes staring out from between the black columns, and sitting in the center of the ruin, a winged creature was moving its leathery body from side to side as it folded its black, red-veined wings and watched them through slits that revealed a pair of blood red eyes. Slowly, the creature rose up and extended its monstrous head to within a few inches of Adrian’s face. “Say goodbye to your mother, human!”