Tima woke to the panicked cries of a child. She threw back the covers on her bed and rushed into the guest room where Henry sat up in the middle of the bed wailing. John Carter slept through the shrieks. Tima scooped up the boy and wrapped him in her arms and carried him back to her room, patting his back and making soft hushing noises to try and soothe him. She sat down on her own bed and rocked him. When his cries turned to whimpers, she sat him back and looked him over, making sure he wasn’t injured. “What’s the matter, sweet boy? Did you have a bad dream?”
“Momma ...” He sniffled and set to crying again.
Tima pulled him back into her and ran her hand over his coppery blond hair, kissing his head. “She’ll be home soon. I know you miss her.”
“The Devil’s trying to get her.” He trembled as he sniffed.
“Aw, baby.” She rocked him. “Your mother is a strong woman. The Devil would be a fool to try and take her on.”
“I don’t like that Devil.” Henry snapped. “That Devil is mean.”
Tima’s heart broke for the boy. He had a vivid imagination, and his dreams clearly reflected that. He’d never been without his mother. She did her best to comfort him, but she wasn’t Lauren. Still, she had to do something. “Well, don’t you worry about your mother. She’ll show that Devil who’s boss. Come.” She hoisted him up and put him over her shoulder. “Let’s go find something good for breakfast. Are you hungry?”
“I hungy.” John Carter came around the corner, dragging his blanket with his Buzz Lightyear toy under his arm.
“Of course you are.” Tima chortled. “Come. How about some knaffeh? Have you had that before?”
“No, Auntie Tima.” Henry said. “What is knaffeh?”
“It is better to show you than to tell you,” she said.
By the time she set the plate of knaffeh in front of them, the boy’s nightmare seemed forgotten. She plied them with scrambled eggs and warm chai until the main course was ready. The boys’ eyes grew round as she served each of them a generous portion. The cheese pastries were the perfect combination of sweet and savory, creamy and crunchy.
Ahmose made an overt act of inhaling the aroma of her mother’s kitchen as she came in and found the boys with their faces covered in syrup, pistachios, and cheese. “Mumma, what did you make? That smells so good.”
“Come make a plate.” Tima beckoned as she sat at the table sipping her tea.
“You made knaffeh? You never made knaffeh for me when I was little.”
“I made it for you now,” Tima said. “I’ve been practicing my baking skills lately. I love having little ones to bake for again.”
“Well,” Ahmose scoffed as she made a plate and came to sit with her mother. “Don’t get any ideas about grandchildren from me any time soon.”
“You know I am not in any hurry.” Tima rose and refilled the boys’ cups. “Henry and John Carter have been wonderful to have around. They are such good boys.” She ran her hand over John Carter’s dark hair, then did the same to Henry. “What shall we do today, sweet boys?”
“Pway wockets!” John Carter enthused with his mouth full.
Henry looked up at Tima with sad puppy-dog eyes. “I want to go dig with my daddy.”
Ahmose rose and came over. “Have you ever ridden a camel?”
Henry’s face contorted. “A camel?”
“Why don’t we go out to the pyramids and ride a camel?” Ahmose picked up John Carter and tickled his tummy. “Then, Henry, if you want to dig like your daddy, I bet we can find some ancient Egyptian treasure.” That seemed to perk Henry up a little. “Mumma? Will you go with us?” Ahmose said to her mother.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll call my friend Dr. Novak and see if he’s got a team working a dig. Maybe they have a place for a couple of junior archaeologists.”
“So, when we finish our breakfast, we’ll get cleaned up and brush our teeth, and we’ll go.”
“What about Shemi?” Henry asked.
“Why don’t you finish up and you can go ask her if she wants to go?”
* * *
The police officer that cuffed Lauren had to physically lift her to her feet and hold her up. Her legs felt like concrete and the room spun around her as she was led outside. She stiffened and came to an abrupt halt when she came face-to-face with the three men who’d taken her from the café in Prague.
“What has happened here?” The ringleader demanded of the police officer.
“You’ll have to talk to Detective Kovač.” The police officer nudged Lauren to move, but the three men were blocking her path. The ringleader eyed her warily. Lauren was so numb all she could do was stare back at him.
* * *
“Kovač? Who is Kovač!” the man yelled over the other crime scene investigators, detectives and law enforcement people who milled around outside of the house, waiting for their opportunity to participate in the investigation.
Kovač walked out of his mother’s house, feeling weak; drained of all energy. He stepped aside as the gurney with his mother’s body was removed. He turned and glanced over at three men as they approached. “Kovač?”
He recognized the three men immediately, just from Lauren’s descriptions of them. His eyes found Lauren as the police officer shoved her towards the police car. He wanted to go to her, but he was also wary of her, in light of everything that had happened. The evidence suggested she had been the one who killed his mother.
“May I help you?” Kovač asked as the men met him at the step.
“My name is Captain Bertram,” the tall one said. “We’re with the Corps Gendarmerie.”
Tomáš’ expression dropped. “Gendarmerie? The Vatican Gendarmerie?”
“We are from a special branch of the Vatican Intelligence Service, to be precise,” he said, presenting his credentials. “We have been investigating the theft of several holy ...and unholy relics. The implications of these relics falling into the wrong hands is a grave danger to us all.”
“A special branch?” Kovač puzzled, inspecting the badge and ID. It was printed in Latin, some of which Kovač could read and understand.
“Yes,” Bertram said. “We are ordained to protect ancient relics and are tasked with preventing any foreseeable apocalypse. We do not enforce the laws of man ... we enforce the laws of God and the Holy See.”
“Aren’t you a little out of your jurisdiction?” The detective studied the two men over the captain’s shoulder.
“Ours is the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome. It is not a geographical jurisdiction,” he said patiently. “The Kingdom of God is our jurisdiction.”
That made Kovač do a double take. “That sounds like a load of garbage, Captain.”
“The Holy See is administered by the Roman Curia, that’s Latin for Court,” he said. “The papal bull that was our charter was signed in 1346. It is one of the Vatican’s oldest orders.”
The detective eyed the men warily. “Did you take my suspect into custody and question her a few days ago? Did you drug her?”
“Your suspect? Drugs?”
“Dr. Pierce,” he said, handing back the badge. He made a note to run a search through the department’s data base when he got back to the office. He’d call the Pope himself if he had to. All this cloak and dagger sounded like a farce to him. “She claims three men abducted her and held her for questioning before drugging her and returning her to her hotel. At the same time, two staff members at the university museum were murdered. Dr. Pierce was seen leaving with an artifact on video camera. She’s been in protective custody, and now the officer who was protecting her has been murdered in the same fashion.”
“I assure you; the VIS does not drug anyone we take into question.” The captain glanced back at one of his fellows. “This is quite troubling to hear.” He swallowed hard, shuffling his feet.
“She claims she was with you when the first two were killed. She has no alibi for the death of our officer.”
“We have reason to believe we know who may be responsible for these murders ... all of them,” Bertram said. “Is there somewhere we can speak?”
“We can speak here.” Tomáš crossed his arms. “If you have information regarding the cases I am working, then I’m listening.”
“Very well then.” Bertram cleared his throat. “Are you familiar with the legend of the Codex Gigas?”
“Quite.” Kovač snapped. He’d heard plenty about it from Dr. Pierce.
“The Devil has come to claim what is his, and he will stop at nothing to get the missing pages of the Codex, including murder.”
* * *
Lauren sat in the small room, trying to force her body to stop shivering. She had been given a damp towel to try and clean up after the lab techs had finished their evidence collection. Her borrowed clothes were still sticky, and her hair clung to her skin. A foul taste lingered on her tongue. She’d been sick several times since the investigators hoisted her up from the floor after they’d taken pictures and collected Zuzu’s cold and broken body from atop her.
She’d been photographed and had her fingerprints taken ... again. In handcuffs, she’d been placed in the same holding cell she’d been kept in before. Several other suspects sat on the benches; their feet secured in shackles. She sat with her head hanging, avoiding the horrified gazes of those around her. She had to think they saw her as some kind of an axe murderer.
Soon, she sat staring at the same public defender she’d seen previously. The same sick feeling she’d had the first time they’d hauled her to jail left her retching over the toilet in the cell repeatedly before they hauled her back to the interrogation room where she sat now.
Detective Kovač paced the room with his arms crossed, glaring at her. He was angry, she could tell. He’d been peppering her with questions for the last half hour, none of which she could answer. Her brain had shut down and it took every ounce of strength she had now not to pass out, throw up, or freak out. That same effort kept her from answering the sharp questions and accusations he threw at her.
Lauren just sat there. She felt numb. This was the third time in her life she’d ended up in jail. All three were unfounded. So far, she’d been cleared twice, but the law of averages were eventually going to catch up with her if things kept going like they were. The lack of blood on her shoes had been her get-out-of-jail-free card last time. This time though, she was covered in it. What else was she supposed to do? She’d walked in to find a twisted visage of Tomáš Kovač kneeling over Zuzu’s body with his hands at his own mother’s throat. Lauren had fought off the monster with nothing more than a kitchen knife and her unbound rage, which had quickly ebbed once the creature evaporated into thin air. She sat looking at the same face now and realized the slicing cut she’d made across the monster’s face had left no mark on the real Tomáš Kovač.
He finally pounded his fist on the table. Lauren flinched, gasping. “You killed my mother!” he roared.
She looked up at him, her mouth open as she tried to make her brain form the words and transmit the information to her mouth. Her voice came out in a faint gasp. “No,” she managed. She shook her head, and it made the room spin. “No.” She tried again. This time the word came out audibly. “I tried ... I did ... I tried to ... save her.”
“I don’t believe you!” he yelled in her face. “Who killed my mother?”
“Detective!” The advokát protested. “You don’t have to answer his questions.”
Lauren recoiled, torn between her better judgment and his angry words. She felt the need to tell him the truth, but she feared he wouldn’t believe her and anything she might say could be used against her. She knew she needed to listen to the advokát. A tear peeled down her cheek as she cowered, turning away.
“Who killed my mother?” he demanded. His hand pounded the table again and she suspected it was everything he could do not to strike out at her physically. Lauren turned, steeling herself against his anger, setting her jaw and pursing her lips as he demanded answer of her a third time. “Dammit! Who killed my mother, Dr. Pierce?” Kovač stood to his full height. His anger flamed red in his cheeks and he all but spat the words at her.
“Mister Kovač!” The advokát stood to move between the two.
“Who killed my mother!” He shrieked, rage turned his face red, and tears poured down his face.
“The Devil killed your mother,” Lauren cried, her tears matching his as they escaped her eyes.
“Dr. Pierce.” The attorney turned, catching her arm. “Don’t speak.”
The detective’s knees failed him, and he collapsed into his chair, his eyes locked with Lauren’s.
She held his gaze despite the waves of sobs that passed over her. “I’m sorry.” Lauren finally turned to her legal counsel. She swallowed hard, her lip still trembling. “I need to talk to the detective ... in private.”
The advokát looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “Dr. Pierce, I would advise you otherwise.”
“You are dismissed,” Lauren said. “Thank you for your services, but they are no longer needed.” Her gaze returned to Detective Kovač’s. “I will serve as my own advokát from here out.”
“But,” the advokát protested.
The detective stood and went to the door, opening it. The public defender glared at Lauren for a minute, her eye going to the detective at the door as she rose slowly. “You can call me back any time you feel the need for aid. You understand that, right?”
“I do,” Lauren said. She sat back in her chair until the door closed behind the woman. The detective returned to his chair, waiting for her to speak.
It took her a moment to collect her thoughts. When she didn’t take the initiative, his angry words came out with a calm restraint she hadn’t expected. “Some time today, Dr. Pierce.”
“I don’t expect you to believe me,” Lauren began.
“Who killed my mother, Dr. Pierce?”
“You did.” She managed. “You killed your mother.” She watched the color drain from his face. He sank back into the empty chair behind him, his gaze piercing into Lauren’s soul, and she began trembling again. She hadn’t realized she’d stopped. “But ... I saw the look in your eye ...” her teeth chattered. “Saw the rage ... the evil ... and I knew ... it wasn’t you.” His expression never changed. “Just like it wasn’t me ... in the museum.”
“I killed my mother?” he asked flatly, clearly not believing her.
“It looked like you ... at first ...” Her voice trembled as she closed her eyes against the memory. The face had been his, until his teeth morphed into fangs; his hands splayed into claws. She tried to explain the long forked tongue and the grotesque face. “But then it changed into something so horrific, so evil, I knew ... it had to be the Devil. It had horns, scales ... like a lizard ... it smelled like a reptile, like a corrupted version of something from a H.P. Lovecraft novel.”
At that, the detective’s features lifted from a scowl to a mocking smile. “You really expect me to believe ...”
“I know what I saw, Detective! Someone ... something ...this monster... is baiting us ... playing into our fears. I gazed into those eyes ...” She drew back, trying not to remember, but unable to put the vision out of her mind. “Those flaming red eyes ... pulsing with evil ... hungry for chaos and death.” She could hear her own voice going dark. “It could only be the Devil. Who else ... what else could it be?”
“Do you realize what this sounds like? It sounds like the ramblings of a mad woman!” he snapped, glowering at her.
“It wants you not to believe me. It wants us at odds. I could sense it. It will use us ... is using us against each other. It wants us to be confused. It wants you to believe I killed those people. It wanted me to think you killed your mother. It wants you to think I killed your mother.”
“It.” His jaw flexed. He stood, running his hand through the mop of blue-black hair, before he looked back at her over his shoulder. “It?”
“I don’t know how to explain it without you thinking I’ve lost my mind. Hell, I’m not sure I haven’t, but ... I’ve seen things. I’ve experienced ... things. Unreal things. I had a ... I don’t know ... call it a dream or ... a vision. I’ve been given a warning.”
He ran an unsteady hand over his five o’clock shadow, his eyes never breaking contact with hers. “You have visions?”
“A trickster comes like a thief in the night,” she quoted.
“A trickster.”
“Do you know who else comes like a thief in the night?”
“Let me guess. Death?”
“No, the Bible says the Lord will return like a thief in the night ...”
“So ... we have God to blame for my mother’s death?”
“This ... trickster wants us to believe many things, but the last thing I believe is that this has anything to do with God.”
“I’m even more confused.”
“Have you ever heard of the ancient astronaut theory?” Lauren asked.
“Ancient ... astronauts?”
“In short,” she paused taking a deep breath. “Any time you hear a story about God or gods, you substitute the word alien.”
His brow arched slowly as his blue eyes widened. She could tell he thought she’d lost her mind, but she gave him his moment of incredulity. “So now it’s ... aliens? Aliens killed my mother?” His incredulity was overt.
“Uh, huh,” Lauren said.
“God is ... an alien? Or this ... devil is an alien?”
“It’s just one theory,” Lauren said. “But ... if ... if it’s true and the ancient gods from the heavens really were aliens, then the enemies of the gods might also be aliens too.”
“The enemies of the gods?” he asked. “Is that why the Pope’s secret police were at my crime scene today?”
Lauren could feel the blood wash from her face. Her jaw dropped. “What?”
“The men you claimed abducted and drugged you. They say they are part of some secret order of the Vatican’s Secret Intelligence division. They are looking for the missing pages of the Codex Gigas. The same pages that brought you here.”
Lauren stared blankly at the wall. Her jaw flexed but the words wouldn’t form on her lips.
Tomáš sat back, tapping the table as he seemed to choose his own words carefully. “They told me the Devil killed my mother, too. They think there are evil forces at hand trying to restore the book, to restore this ... dark power that some believe it to hold. They think you are somehow involved in this ... plot.”
“And ... what do you think?”
He stood and walked over to the window. He ran a hand over his weary face. “I’m not sure what to think. I might have been a believer once, but ... well, that was a long time ago.”
Lauren stared at her trembling hands. Drying blood filled the cracks in her knuckles; around and under her nails, too. She cringed at the thought of the dried blood on her chest and neck. “I believe they might be right.” She finally broke the silence. “Dark forces are at play.”
“I think you need to tell me more about this book.” He came back and sat down in front of her. “Dark forces? Are we talking about bad people with evil intentions? Or are we talking demons from the Gates of Hell here?”
Lauren’s shoulder lifted. She had her suspicions, but she wasn’t sure he was ready to hear them. “According to legends, the Codex Gigas included a whole page dedicated to a sketch of the Devil who aided the book’s author with his task. Do you have your cell phone?” she asked. He humored her, pulling his phone out of his jacket pocket. He handed it to her. She pulled up the web browser and did a search. When she found the image she was looking for, she handed it back. “That’s the sketch of the Devil from the Codex.”
“Unnerving to say the least,” he said, studying it. The creature was depicted as having claws, red tipped horns, small eyes with red pupils and two long red tongues. Its skin was green.
“It’s unlike any other image of the Devil from that time period,” Lauren went on to explain most medieval representations of the devil, and how this one differed. His eyes lifted to hers. “There are pages of the Codex that are missing ...” She hesitated. “What if the Devil is working to collect all the pages? A completed grimoire may be needed to—” She stopped.
“That’s what the men from The Vatican said.” Tomáš held her gaze. “But in order to do what?”
“I’m not sure,” Lauren said. “But I do know one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If we don’t do something, more people could die.”
“The apocalypse?” He eyed her skeptically.
She froze. “Yes.” The statement was so matter of fact that there could be no doubt she truly believed the end of the world was at hand. “Exactly. If I don’t get those pages before the Dark One does, the world ... and everyone in it ... is doomed to the same fate; annihilation.”
“If ...” He shook his head trying to reconcile her words with those of the VIS. “If you’re right ... how do we stop it?”
“We? I. I have to find those missing pages before the enemy does. I have to find them.”
Tomáš crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to be sizing up the lies she must be telling him. He understood the kind of work she did from their previous conversations, but this was too incredible for any sane man to believe. Or was it? “So let’s say all of this cock-and-bull story is true. Any clue where to start?” he finally asked.
“I’ll play the Devils’ advocate, if I must,” Lauren stated flatly. “Supposing I am telling the truth ... because I am ... I do have one clue,” Lauren said. “Ever heard of the Sedlec Ossuary?”
“No.” Tomáš shook his head.
“The monster that attacked your mother told me about it,” she said. The detective’s look-alike in her dream had mentioned the ossuary and that there might be a page to be found at the ancient bastion. Now the trick would be to get the page before the demon and make sure no one died in the process.
“If this is going to work,” Lauren said. “I am going to need your help.”
Tomáš’ eyebrow lifted. Questions were written in his blue eyes that were clouded with grief. Lauren could feel his pain. “Why would I help you? Explain.”
“ I need you to trust me. I have to know I can trust you. I need you to understand that I was not the one who hurt your mother. I did everything I could to save her.”
“Did you really fight off a ... monster for her? With nothing but a steak knife?”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.” Lauren swallowed hard; her lower lip quivered; chills washed over her. The flashback played in the back of her eyes like a movie, and she was certain Kovač could see the fear on her features. “It was too late by the time I got downstairs. But ... I couldn’t let you ... it ... defile her. It never occurred to me it might turn on me.”
Tomáš recoiled. “It didn’t hurt you, did it?”
“I am certain it wanted to,” Lauren said. “I don’t think the knife would have stopped it.”
“So what did?”
Lauren looked at the manacles around her wrists that were attached to the bar on the table. She wanted to stand to stretch out her sore back; to run away and go home to Rowan, but she knew it was futile. “You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind.”
“You said it yourself,” he said. “We need each other. I need you to help me understand what’s going on because I’m having an incredibly hard time buying any of this. I’m sure you can understand why.”
“I can,” Lauren said. “I’m used to people thinking I’m crazy. Hell, I’m used to thinking I’m crazy.”
“Better tell me everything then,” he said.
Lauren told him. She told him probably more than she needed to.