End of Days

by J. F. Penn

  Echis nodded. "I can confirm the transit details and will ensure the sarcophagus is brought here as soon as it arrives."

  The Cardinal took a deep breath. "There is a woman who will travel with it. Samael believes she can hear the Great Serpent speak, that she channels His thoughts."

  Echis grunted. "You believe this?"

  The Cardinal hesitated, thinking of what Samael had told him about Lilith. Then he nodded. "The risks are too great to lose one of us to the other side of the venom trance. She is a conduit until He is risen."

  "And when we bring her here?" Cerastes grunted.

  The Cardinal nodded. "She will be the first sacrifice to the Great Serpent, as it has been foretold."

  "There has always been a woman in the prophecy," Cerastes said. "But what about the seals? The alignment is only days away."

  "We have four of them. There are still three more to find." There was a heavy sense of disappointment in the room and the Cardinal felt it was all directed at him. It was time to change tack.

  "What of the preparations for the battle at Dabiq?" the Cardinal asked Cerastes pointedly.

  The city in Syria was mentioned in a hadith describing events of the Malahim, roughly translated as Armageddon. It was meant to be the site of one of the End Times battles between Muslims and modern Crusaders, one of the reasons that extremist groups had captured it and lured western forces into battle there. The Rome of Revelation was represented by the troops of the United Nations and the European Union.

  "We're continuing to bait Allied troops," Cerastes said. "We captured some western reporters and we will be–"

  "I don't need to know the details." The Cardinal held up his hand. It was much better not to know the atrocities that Cerastes had set in motion, although a few lives mattered little now.

  After all, life was not about maximizing human wellbeing. It was about doing God's will and being His instrument to bring about the End Times. The serpent was just one of the important parts, a visible symbol of the end. Once events had gone far enough, the End Times would be declared and the Unbelievers would be punished.

  The Cardinal knew that he would be the only one left standing. His faith was unshakeable. The Great Serpent would destroy these others and the world would be cleansed of the Unbelievers in the days after.

  When he had first joined the Church, he had believed that the whole world could be saved and that somehow people would turn back to God. But over the years, he had seen enough to know that they just needed to start again. It was time for a purge, a cleanse, another type of Flood.

  God's reset point on the earth.

  "Ezekiel prophesied that fire and brimstone would rain down on the enemies of God's people," Echis said, interrupting his thoughts. "Have you organized the Allied troops?"

  The Cardinal nodded. "If Cerastes amps up the atrocities, I can guarantee that there will be more bombs from the Allied forces. We will spark the tinder box, don't worry. The more violence in the Middle East, the more the fundamentalists claim the End Times. When the Great Serpent emerges, the battle will truly commence."

  Echis grinned, his teeth glinting in the semi-darkness. "Then we have much to do, brothers. I'll send word when the sarcophagus is here."

  "The thousand years are ended." The men intoned the words together and then went their separate ways into the dark.

  17

  Vatican City, Rome, Italy.

  The mention of the Pergamon Museum made Morgan start. It had only been a few nights since she and Jake had run through it to the Ishtar Gate to find the pictures that led them to the seal. Her anger still simmered at losing it again. With the attacks on her own family and then on Martin, Morgan was determined to beat Samael to the remaining seals.

  The tourists crowded even closer as the guide ignored Morgan's small group in the typical Italian way and continued her talk.

  "There are copies of the sculpture in many of the great museums of the world, including the Louvre in Paris, the Uffizi in Florence and the Grand Palace of the Knights of St John in Rhodes."

  This last comment caught Morgan's attention.

  The Knights of St John were also known as the Hospitallers, a medieval Catholic military order with a papal charter to defend the Holy Land. Unlike the Templars, who had been destroyed or at least driven underground by persecution in the fourteenth century, the Hospitallers persisted through history. Like the Church itself, they had survived the rigors of history and still protected secrets held since the Middle Ages.

  This original Laocoon statue was such a tourist attraction within the walls of the Vatican that Morgan couldn't imagine how a seal could still be hidden here. But people didn't visit Rhodes for a replica of the Laocoon.

  As the guide moved off, Morgan sidled back around the sculpture to Jake and Martin.

  "Fancy a dip in the Aegean?"

  Rhodes, Greece.

  Morgan waited for Jake and Martin at a cafe on the edge of the harbor near the ruins of Our Lady of the Castle cathedral. The guys were sorting out accommodation and it was good to have a little time out. The pace of the ARKANE missions could be brutal and her bruises still smarted from the bombing at Delphi.

  She looked out across the azure sea and sipped a cold Mythos lager, enjoying the refreshing fizz while the alcohol helped her relax. Rhodes was closer to Turkey than the mainland of Greece and the island was a haven for sun seekers, particularly as winter descended on Northern Europe. Morgan was grateful for a sliver of sun on her face. The climate here was similar to Israel and even the air smelled similar, salt fish on the breeze with a hint of citrus and olives. But she had no ties here, no memories and no chance of bumping into people she knew. Here she could pretend to be just a tourist, not a secret agent on the hunt for what might prevent the End of Days. Part of her wanted to melt into the tourist crowd, find a little place overlooking the ocean and just rest.

  "Not a bad spot you've got here."

  Morgan looked up to see Jake beaming down at her. He'd changed and now wore a blue striped t-shirt and light chinos. He looked ridiculously good. Morgan smiled back.

  "Glad you like it."

  "I think more of our missions should involve Mediterranean islands." Jake sat down next to her. "Martin's back at the hotel room. He's calmer now so he's sifting through piles of ancient data on Near Middle Eastern seals. Fascinating stuff." He faked a yawn. "But we're field agents, so we need to be in the field." He gestured to the waiter for a beer. "Important agent things to be doing, after all."

  He was quiet for a moment and they both looked out over the water, finishing their beers as they watched people stroll by. A couple stopped on the waterside in front of them, arms woven around each other. Their loving smiles were a glimpse into a relationship that Morgan found herself envying.

  Jake cleared his throat. "Time to go?"

  Together, they walked up the hill along the Street of the Knights towards the fortress, passing tourist trap shops along the way. The Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes was as imposing as its name, a medieval castle that towered above the town and the harbor, looking out over the ocean. Built in the Gothic Provencal style in the fourteenth century, two massive crenelated towers flanked the entrance. Silhouetted as they were against the blue sky, Morgan could easily imagine archers leaning over to shoot down invaders of old. The past was drenched in blood and the Catholic Church had shed more than its fair share. But then how different were she and Jake to the warrior priests of the Hospitallers?

  They entered the gates into the inner courtyard. It was lined with a colonnade that offered shade from the hot sun.

  "This is a pretty cool place." Jake's grin was infectious and Morgan couldn't help but smile back.

  They walked into the inner fortress and entered the Great Hall. A grand staircase filled one end of the room and at the top, Morgan could see the Laocoon replica. It overlooked the lobby in full view of the tourists below, who clumped together in a few groups around other areas of interest. Sec
urity guards were spaced out around the room and despite their Greek nonchalance and air of relaxation, they carried guns on their hips.

  As they headed slowly towards the statue, Morgan took Jake's arm.

  "Remember what you did at Santiago de Compostela?" she said in a quiet voice.

  He nodded.

  "I might need some kind of distraction like that again if I find something."

  "Gotcha. I'll wait for your signal." Jake headed off in the opposite direction.

  Morgan climbed the stairs towards the sculpture and a moment later, she stood in front of it. This Laocoon was clearly inferior to the original. It was a little smaller and although all the essential features were there, it was missing the smooth lines and the overall impact was less emotionally intense. Whereas the sculpture in the Vatican resonated with the death throes of a father trying to save his sons, this one merely seemed like decoration in a castle built for fighters, not art critics.

  But there was something about it that puzzled her.

  She examined it more closely, trying to remember the Vatican statue … then she saw it. The altar that Laocoon the priest sat on was marked in a different way. There was a carving of a serpent on it, the ouroboros, the snake forming a circle with its tail in its mouth. Morgan couldn't recall seeing that on the Vatican statue. It looked like some kind of button.

  She turned around and looked across the hall. Jake was standing on the other side facing her, right next to a painting of Hospitaller Knights marching towards Jerusalem. He had his head stuck in a guidebook but she could see that he was alert for her signal, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She nodded at him.

  His shout rang out across the hall as Jake fell to the floor and began rolling around, faking an epileptic fit by the look of it. The guards turned towards the sound and ran to the balcony. Morgan only had a minute before calm would be restored.

  She quickly turned to the statue and ran her fingers over the ouroboros. She pressed it hard and a little drawer sprung out the back with a small round package wrapped in dull ivory cloth inside. She picked it up, slid the drawer closed and put it in her backpack, then walked swiftly towards the exit. Behind her, security dealt with the continuing uproar as curious tourists huddled around the drama.

  By the time Jake strolled back to the bar on the waterfront an hour later, Morgan had ordered two more beers and was halfway through hers. She looked up at his approach.

  "Took your time." She pushed back a chair for him.

  "I had to convince the nice doctors I was OK to leave."

  "Nice work back there."

  Jake gave a fake bow. "At your service. Now what did you find?"

  Morgan pulled open her pack to show him the wrapped package. "It's definitely another seal. It matches the others."

  "Do you really think these are the seals of Revelation?" Jake asked.

  Morgan stared out at the blue ocean before them. She and Jake rarely talked about what they believed in terms of faith, but both of them had seen enough strange things to believe the seals could be real. "Patmos is only a few islands northwest of here."

  Jake raised an eyebrow quizzically.

  "That's where John, the author of the book of Revelation, had his visions. Some say he was the apostle John, the one that Jesus loved, and the same author as the gospel of John. But textual analysis says otherwise. He was more likely a Christian exiled to the island during the persecution of Domitian. Father Ben once told me that he was likely in a fasting state when he wrote some of the visions but he certainly used a lot of Jewish prophecy in his work. Verses from the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, Psalms and Isaiah pepper the text."

  "And the seals?"

  Morgan shrugged. "Seven is a sacred number in various numerological traditions and it's used over 700 times in the Bible. Seven days to create the earth. The Sabbath is on the seventh day. There are seven hills in Jerusalem, and seven trumpets to sound the end."

  "Seventh son of a seventh son."

  "That's not actually in the Bible."

  Jake grinned. "Iron Maiden is just as inspirational."

  "What's puzzling me is who hid the seals," Morgan said. "If they are some kind of device that will open a sarcophagus, then why hide them near snake symbols?"

  "Perhaps they were hidden by those who worshipped the serpent?" Jake mused. "Think about it. You've lost your sarcophagus. Some ancient do-gooders have buried it far away but you still have the seals. You know you won't live to see it opened but you trust that the Brotherhood of the Serpent, or whatever it's called, will eventually rise again and find the sarcophagus. So you hide the seals where they would know to look, in the very places that are sacred to the snake."

  Morgan nodded. "Makes sense, I guess. So where's the next one?"

  As she sipped her beer, Martin came scurrying along the waterfront, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hands. His shock of blonde hair stood up in clumps where he had been pulling it. The frown had deepened across his forehead, making him look much older.

  He came to sit at their table and without so much as a hello, he thrust the papers at them, finger stabbing at an image on the top. "This must be it!"

  18

  Rhodes, Greece.

  Morgan looked down at the image Martin pointed at. It was a stone carving of a serpent curled around a circular object, its body wound through an ankh symbol. Next to it, the falcon god Horus wore the crown of Egypt and another cobra sat proudly at its feet. Martin stumbled excitedly over his words.

  "The ouroboros you saw on the Laocoon, the snake eating its own tail. It's an ancient Egyptian symbol representing renewal and rebirth in the cycles of life. In the Book of the Dead, it's related to the god Atum who rose from the chaos of primordial waters in the form of a serpent. Later sources use it as a symbol in alchemy, linked to the Philosopher's Stone."

  "Egypt?" Jake looked hopeful. "It's been a while since I've visited."

  Morgan thought back to when Jake had lain in hospital, injured by the demon in the bone church while she had gone hunting for the Ark of the Covenant. Egypt had been a revelation, but also a place of violence and death, and she had no desire to return anytime soon. But it seemed she would have little choice in the matter.

  "So where's this carving?" she asked.

  "The goddess Wadjet, portrayed as an Egyptian cobra, is on the wall of the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor," Martin said triumphantly.

  "That circular object certainly looks like a seal." Jake peered more closely at the picture.

  "It's a sun disk," Morgan said. She tipped her head on one side, trying to recall the symbolism associated with the goddess. "But I seem to remember that the first image of a snake curling up a staff was Wadjet shown as a cobra curling up a papyrus leaf in the pre-Dynastic era around 3100 BC. The symbol was later adopted by many Mediterranean cultures in various forms, such as the biblical graven serpent and the Greek caduceus."

  "Exactly," said Martin. "I've run algorithms over the remaining cultures of the world that relate to snakes. But all the rest are much further away: the nagas in India and the Far East, the Rainbow serpent in Australia, and Quetzalcoatl in Central America. All these fall outside the parameters of what are considered likely to relate to the seals. But Egypt …" He shrugged.

  Jake raised his glass to the setting sun.

  "To Luxor next, then. But for now, I just want to finish this beer."

  Grand Canyon Snake Valley Retreat, USA

  Lilith knew she was taking too much of the venom, but increasingly she preferred the altered state of consciousness to her real life.

  She spent her time curled up on top of the sarcophagus, crooning to the hidden life she knew pulsed beneath her. In her more lucid moments, she recognized that she was on the edge of what many would call madness. But something greater called to her. He whispered dark truths in the darkness and she listened, storing up the drips of poison in her heart.

  Time seemed to both slow and pass like lightning. She barely ate and her ribs sho
wed through the thin skin of her chest.

  But she liked that.

  She counted her ribs in the mirror every morning and watched the vertebrae of her backbone undulate. Although she had a pathetic thirty-three vertebrae and twenty-four ribs while the serpents had several hundred. Her body was inferior but it could still be useful. He had whispered that to her.

  She would be His vessel.

  She didn't know how, but she had to make sure she was there when the sarcophagus was opened. So she waited as if in hibernation in the darkness of the crypt. The time would come when she would act.

  Lilith wasn't surprised when the door finally cracked open. The voices of men filtered down from outside and the sound of footsteps echoed through the vault. She rolled from the sarcophagus to stand in front of it. Her heart beat fast and she felt a little dizzy as she stood. She needed another shot of venom, but Samael had the vial she really wanted. Perhaps he had returned?

  But it was Krait, the boorish security man, who walked down the stairs. He looked at her, his expression momentarily shocked before he hid his response.

  In his eyes, Lilith saw a glimpse of what she had become. She must look like a physical wreck, but the man had no idea where her mind had been. He would be far too weak to take the venom trance.

  She raised her chin, standing tall, her hand resting on the sarcophagus. But now she noticed the dirt under her nails and how ragged they were.

  "What do you want?"

  Krait pushed her aside. "Samael's orders," he said gruffly. "We're shipping the casket out of here. You're coming too." He glanced at her disheveled state. "Get changed and pack. We're flying to Israel this afternoon."

  "Where's Samael?" Lilith asked, desperate for her next dose of the purest venom.

  "Egypt," Krait grunted.

  Luxor, Egypt.

  The plane banked over the dark green curve of the Nile, and Morgan looked down on the ancient city of Thebes. It was an open-air museum and a mecca for any wannabe archaeologist. The massive temple complexes of Karnak and Luxor dominated the heart of the city. On the opposite side of the Nile lay the West Bank Necropolis, with the temples and tombs of the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. Much had been discovered under the sands of the desert here, but surely much was still buried, hidden well and now forgotten. How little our lives matter in the grand scheme of history, Morgan thought. But that was comforting somehow, for when her body was dust, these magnificent monuments would continue to stand.