“Well, don’t you look like shit,” Ray said.
Mantu lifted his head and laughed quietly. “Ray. Goddamn you. It’s about time you came to see me.” He had a bushy beard and his dreads had grown out and thickened. He was dressed in the basic Brotherhood getup of loose white linen pants and shirt. His cell was small but clean. The bed had a real mattress and the toilet and sink had a curtain that could be pulled around them for privacy. He even had a desk, piled with books and sheaves of paper.
Ray stuck his hand through the bars. Mantu grasped it tightly. “I can’t believe they let you in here,” he said. His eyes looked tired—red, bloodshot, underscored with dark circles.
“Jeremy is throwing me a bone. He wants me to help him. To visit the artifact site.”
“Quid pro quo,” Mantu said. “That’s Jeremy, all right.”
“I’m a brother, now,” Ray said.
Mantu’s eyes widened. “They finally got you?”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “They tricked me. I wasn’t prepared.”
“No one ever is.” He shook his head. “But that’s just step one. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Ray turned to the tyler. “I know you’re going to stay here, but can you stop staring at me? You’re giving me the creeps.”
“Don’t even try,” Mantu said. “Hey, tyler, at least bring my visitor a chair. C’mon. Do a brother a favor just this once.”
The tyler walked across the room, picked up a chair, and set it down next to Ray.
“Do they ever talk?” Ray asked. The tyler went back to his position by the door and stood in the order’s peculiar manner—like a relaxed but poised martial artist. Ray sat and scooted the chair closer to the cell’s bars.
“Nope. They don’t laugh, either. I tried, believe me. Hit ’em with all the best of my routines. The three-headed hooker, the horse with the tiny dick and the mermaid, even the one about my grandmother’s diabetes farts. They’re stone-cold, humorless bastards. Sometimes I talk to them anyway. It’s the only company I have except for my good man Vinod.”
“Hello” came a voice from across the room. A thick Indian accent.
Ray hadn’t even noticed the man in the opposite cell. Vinod was sixtyish, his ink-black hair streaked with gray and slicked tightly to his head. His sparse mustache reminded Ray of an adolescent boy’s. He was wearing thick-lensed glasses that made his eyes seem enormous and two-dimensional.
“Hello,” Ray said.
“Hello, Ray. Mantu has talked about you on many occasions.” His voice was all monotone, without inflection. Like a telemarketer robot. “He says you are his favorite white boy. A cool motherfucker and a stubborn bastard.”
Ray stared, struggling not to laugh.
Mantu smiled and nodded across the room. “Tell him why you’re stuck in this shithole with me.”
“I broke into the Brotherhood’s primary server system,” Vinod stated.
“He poked around where he wasn’t supposed to,” Mantu added. “Jeremy’s files, private communications, code names for our operatives, that sort of thing.”
Vinod smiled. It was the most forced smile Ray had ever seen. “I was testing our security but Brother Jeremy did not see it that way.” He blinked several times. “So he sent me here to punish me.”
“I’m sorry,” Ray said.
“Oh, it’s okay, Brother Ray. I broke the rules. I got caught. It’s not so bad. I can’t use computers but I still have books.” He pointed to a pile of hardbacks and paperbacks next to his bed. “Do you like science fiction, Ray? I like space operas and stories about artificial intelligence.”
“I know a kid you should meet,” Ray said.
Mantu cut them off. “Vinod, my man, let’s table that for a bit, okay? I only have a few minutes with my friend Ray, here, and I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
Vinod’s expression didn’t change. Just the same forced, toothy smile. “Okay, Mantu, my main man. It’s cool, brother. I can chill silently.”
Ray coughed into his hand to hide his laughter.
“Vinod’s been picking up on my South Philly stylings. Hey, Vinod, tell Ray what I’m gonna buy you when I take you to Philly with me.”
“A motherfucking cheesesteak, a cold forty, a fat blunt, and a smokin’ hot sister in boots and a short skirt.”
Ray and Mantu both laughed out loud.
“What’s going to happen to you?”
Mantu sat with his bare feet up on his desk. He leaned his head back and sighed. “Fuck if I know. No one really talks about the penalty for breaking the Obligation. Because no one ever breaks it. But it ain’t gonna be nice.”
“Who is your lawyer? Do they have lawyers here?”
Mantu laughed. “No lawyers here, no jury. Just the Council of Nine. Eight brothers and sisters and Jeremy.”
“I’m sorry, Mantu,” Ray said. “I can’t help but feel responsible for this. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t broken the rules for me.”
Mantu lowered his feet from the desk and turned his chair to face Ray. “You can’t blame yourself for this, Ray. I made the decision.” He lowered his voice. “Remember when I told you why I decided to break my vows? Right before I dumped Brother Ramón’s ass in the jungle? I had been catching a bad vibe from the leadership. Things were different with Micah. He was straight-up as it gets. No head-fuckery from that man, just a hundred percent dedication to the mission. I believed in what we were doing in Blackwater. But when I got here, something felt different. It took me a while to really home in on it, but when I did, that feeling that something was wrong wouldn’t go away.”
“But you kept trying to bring me here.”
“They were pushing me to bring you in. For your own good, Jeremy said, and I believed him. Well, I mostly believed him.”
“It was more than that.”
“Yeah, that was clear from the beginning. You’re a traveler, and a natural one, too. That’s a rare gift, and it makes you valuable. And you’ve met some things that his best travelers can’t even get near. That’s what he cared about—getting you on the team. I told him to go fuck himself, that you had the right to say no and I wasn’t going to drag you here against your will. He wouldn’t have cared if I dropped you off at the gate hogtied with duct tape over your mouth—you were a prize, and he doesn’t like losing a prize. But I said no. I signed up for this bullshit. You didn’t.”
“So you don’t think I should go with him to the site? He told me it might help him find Ellen and William.”
“I can’t tell you what to do. Maybe it will help him find them. He’s been trying to tap that thing in the jungle for a long time, I know that much. And he’d cut off his own balls if it meant he could take out Lily. She’s killed more brothers and sisters than I can imagine, and each death cuts him deep. He might be crazy, but he cares about all of us—even me. So I have no doubt he’s trying hard to find her. He’ll do whatever he can to find that bitch and turn everything for miles around her into a smoking crater.”
Ray shook his head. “I don’t think I can do it, though. Especially after everything that happened at Sabina’s.” He held up his hand. He no longer bandaged the wrinkled knot of scar tissue where his ring finger had once joined his palm. “Because of this. Because I don’t want to get that close to permanent insanity again. I’m done with ancient magic and spirits and monsters. Fuck that shit, Mantu.”
“Then listen to your instinct. Don’t do it.”
“But what if he’s telling the truth? And if he needs me so badly, maybe I can bargain with him to get you out of here. I’ll go, see the artifact, do whatever the hell he wants, if he lets you go.”
“No. No way. Don’t bargain for me. I did the crime, now I’m doing the time. He won’t go for it anyway; he takes the Obligation very seriously. Ain’t gonna happen, Ray. You take care of yourself, okay? Do what you need to do. Find your woman and her boy.”
Ray nodded. “Maybe there’s another way to get you out of here.”
Mantu laughed. “Look around! This place is a fortress. I’m not going anywhere.”
A bell sounded.
Mantu stuck his hand through the bars. “Thanks for coming to see me. It means a lot.”
Ray grasped his hand. “I’ll come back.”
Mantu smiled. “And soon, I hope. In the meantime, hang in there, brother.”
The tyler hurried him through the door.
“You’re serious? You know where they are?”
Jeremy nodded. “I got confirmation this morning. Lily is there, too, or will be soon—a compound in the Canadian Yukon.”
Ray felt as if someone had plugged him into a wall socket. “How did you find them?”
Jeremy motioned for Ray to walk with him. They were in the meditation gardens, flanked by rows of bright flowers glowing in the early morning sun. Two tylers followed a few paces behind them. “We’ve known about this particular location for some time. The remote-viewer teams determined a while back there were a large number of children on the premises. For what purpose, we don’t know, but Lily has been collecting gifted children for several years.”
Ray took a deep breath. It was hard to believe this was happening. “So your psychics found them? Are you sure they’re right?”
“Not just the viewers. One of our remaining allies—a very reliable source in what remains of the U.S. military—told us that a woman and a boy matching Ellen and William’s descriptions were taken there. But we don’t know why Lily’s there, what she’s doing, or how long she’ll stay.”
“So we need to act fast,” Ray said.
“Yes. I have a strike team preparing as we speak. My very best soldiers.”
“I’m going,” Ray said.
Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “If you wish. I can’t stop you, and I will hold up my end of our bargain. But it won’t be an easy trip, Ray. Getting across the U.S. is extremely difficult now, especially with our network in ruins. There are no guarantees you will make it there. And no assurances you will find the two of them. Or even come back alive.”
“I understand.” He was not negotiating. “When do we go?”
Jeremy clasped his hands behind his back. “The team will have a briefing tomorrow night, then you’ll leave as soon as supplies arrive. A day or two at most. Much of what we need is being flown in. You’ll be traveling to a place that is very, very cold and very remote. As you can guess, we don’t have a lot of heavy coats and snowmobiles here.”
“I’m ready.” He’d been thinking about this moment for ages, but now that it was here it felt unreal. He needed to calm down, too, because he was ready to jump out of his skin.
“You realize I am taking a huge risk in allowing you to go. You’re not trained for this sort of assault, and you will be taking the place of someone who is. And what would normally be a purely offensive operation—taking out the whole compound—has now become a search and rescue mission as well. That adds even more complications.”
Ray swallowed. “I appreciate that.”
“I know you do, Ray.” Jeremy rested his hand on Ray’s shoulder. “I’ve meditated deeply on this. It has been clear since Micah told me about you that you have a part to play in this unfolding story. As do Ellen and William. How and why you are part of it, and how it will come to an end, I don’t know. That’s beyond my understanding and even the reach of our best oracles. But now that the real endgame is under way—and these are the days we have known would come—it is clear you became a player in it for a reason.”
“Finding the two of them is the only thing I’ve wanted since I got wrapped up in all this. Just tell me what I need to do.”
Jeremy stared into Ray’s eyes. “There is one thing. That favor for me.”
Ray gritted his teeth. Of course. As Mantu had warned him, Jeremy’s generosity came with conditions. “Damn you, Jeremy.”
“We can leave in an hour. We’ll take the copter and be at the dig site by the afternoon.”
Ray lowered his head. “Goddammit. You know I can’t say no now.”
“We help one another here at Eleusis,” Jeremy said. “That’s how we accomplish the Great Work—doing what needs to be done, with charity and generosity for the good of all sentient beings.”
Ray blew out a long stream of air. Always platitudes.
“The tylers will escort you back to your room and bring you when we’re ready to go.” Jeremy turned and the tylers stepped forward.
“Wait,” Ray said.
Jeremy stopped.
“Let Mantu go with us. To get Lily.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Ray, you know I can’t—”
“Bullshit. Of course you can. He’s trained. He’s probably one of the best you have. He can prove his loyalty. Make up for breaking his obligation.”
“And take the chance he’ll go off again? Disappear with you somewhere? I’m sorry. That is not negotiable.”
“It’s negotiable if you allow it to be. You can snap your fingers and let him go.”
“No. I’m sorry. The rules were not made by me. They are quite literally carved in stone. I have no choice but to enforce them.”
Ray closed his eyes and sighed. At least he had tried. “Okay. But let me see him again. Before I leave. One last time. Since I might not make it back.”
Jeremy nodded. “Fine. You may visit him tomorrow.”
The tylers stepped forward.
“See you soon,” Jeremy said.
Ray had to close his eyes for the last half of the trip. Beneath the motion sickness was a creeping dread. He wanted to believe Jeremy—that he would be safe, that the thing they’d found in the jungle was just a harmless artifact. But his knotted guts said otherwise.
“Ray. We’re landing. Hang on.” Jeremy was smiling, his eyes bright with anticipation. Ray didn’t like that look.
Once they were out of the copter Jeremy wasted no time. “Let’s go,” he yelled above the engine noise. “It’s just down that trail.”
Ray’s nervousness got worse as they walked. When the trail opened into a clearing he felt his legs about to give way. Something similar had happened the first time he’d seen the jagged rocks that made up the formation called the Hand in Blackwater. He’d puked and passed out, scaring the hell out of Ellen and William.
Ahead of him was a dome. Huge, maybe seventy-five feet across, white canvas stretched across a geodesic frame. Two people were walking into it through a doorway. Ray froze. They were wearing biohazard suits.
Jeremy turned and pushed through the two tylers. “Are you okay?”
“No,” Ray said. “Why are they wearing those hazmat suits?”
“It’s a precaution for those who need to stay down there and work for extended periods. There’s a large pool of organic liquid surrounding the object, with a layer of mercury on the top. But it’s not harmful if you don’t touch it, and we’re only staying for a little while. So don’t let the suits spook you.”
Ray swallowed. “If something fucked up happens to me, I swear, Jeremy—”
Jeremy held up his hand. “You can leave if you need to. But I think you’ll discover your fear is unfounded; most people find its energy stimulating and enjoyable. Even healing, in fact. They want to stay as long as possible because it seems to recharge their batteries, physically and mentally.”
Ray breathed deeply. Once again, he was being told not to trust his instincts.
“And while you’re there, remember to do as I asked. Just start talking to me. I’ll be holding the recorder. Say anything that comes to your mind. Thoughts, images, feelings.”
“I’m already feeling something. And I don’t like it.”
“That is valuable, too, but I think it’s simply based on things that happened to you in the past. Sometimes we innately fear things that will turn out to be transformative. Fear can be a great gift.”
“Fine. Let’s get it over with.”
Ray nearly turned and ran the minute he stepped through the door into the dome. A tunnel sloped sharply down into the ground, but on the surface, on a raised mound of dirt in the center of the dome, were half-excavated skeletons arranged in circle. Small skeletons, their feet pointing to the center. Branching out like petals of a flower.
Skeletons of children.
“What is this, Jeremy?”
Jeremy stopped in front of the tunnel. “Those skeletons were found at the original dig by a team from Berlin. The ancient people of the area buried their children here, directly above the object.”
Ray blinked. “Like some sort of offering?”
“No. They couldn’t have been aware of the artifact’s existence. We carbon-dated organic elements in the soil at the artifact’s level to around two hundred and fifty million years ago. It would not be an exaggeration to say it has now rewritten everything we know about history. Not to mention biology, astronomy, physics…” His eyes widened. “Everything.”
Ray stared at the bones. They were so small.
“But most important, it may be the sacred seed carrier mentioned in the True Scriptures. The Light Bringer—the mother vessel that carried the germs of life and consciousness across the vastness of space.”
Ray’s mouth was so dry it hurt to talk. He pointed at the circle of bones. “This…this is how they laid us out. With our feet in the middle like that. When I was a kid. In Blackwater. When they were using us to summon the lights.”
Jeremy seemed distracted. “Well, yes, that is interesting, and of course I made the connection myself. But this practice, this circular style of burial formation, is transcultural. We’ve seen it in Asia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. So don’t let it worry you.”
Easy for him to say. “Were they sacrificed?”
Jeremy nodded. “Yes. Many of the bones show signs of trauma. Knives, mostly, and some blunt force wounds to the head. Broken ribs indicating removal of hearts. But sacrifice was common among these people. Being sacrificed was considered an honor—the victims went willingly to give their lives to the gods. So we can’t judge their actions by our modern standards.”
The fuck I can’t, Ray thought.
Jeremy turned to the two tylers. “Please help Ray if he needs it. It’s an easy walk down, but steady him if necessary.”
The tylers nodded. Ray held up his hand. “Wait. If I decide to run, stay out of my way. And if I get sick or start acting crazy—you’d better bring me up right away. Understand?”
“Certainly,” Jeremy answered. “Let’s go.”
Ray followed Jeremy down a series of cinder-block steps. The tunnel was supported by thick beams and sheets of plastic stretched across the ceiling. Bright LEDs were strung from beam to beam like Christmas lights. He couldn’t tell if it was just his claustrophobia, but his entire body was going wobbly.
And there was something else, too—like a sustained bass note from a concert speaker that made your guts ripple. A deep, heavy bodily vibration. It actually felt kind of pleasant. Jeremy held out his hand. “We need to be alone,” he said, and the man and woman in hazmat suits stepped around them, their faces vague and shadowed behind plastic, and headed back up the tunnel.
“Now,” Jeremy said, his smile widening, “only a few people in the world have been privileged to see what you are about to see. An artifact so old it may have brought certain forms of life to this planet like a cosmic seed carrier. Sent to us, through time and space from an unknown world by unknown beings, bringing the spiritual and biological energy of a thousand suns.” He pulled apart a black plastic curtain and clicked on his digital recorder. The tylers ushered Ray inside.
The thrumming force of the object was like walking into a tough, invisible membrane. The tylers helped Ray sit down on a bench. His eyes were vibrating, wiggling in their sockets, and it was hard to focus.
It took him a moment to understand what he was looking at. A pool with a layer of liquid mercury on its surface. In the center of the pool was the top half of a black sphere, about ten feet in diameter. It looked like it was made of highly polished stone, so shiny and mirrorlike it shot off sharp, blinding beams from the artificial lights.
“My God,” Ray whispered. His fear was obliterated now. He wasn’t quite sure what he was feeling, but the energy coming off the object was blasting through him, bathing each of his cells in its raw power. The feeling was almost sexual, like the intensity right before an orgasm. “Jesus Christ, Jeremy.” He struggled to say something but his eyes were glued to the obsidian surface of the object as it appeared to grow in size. It was growing, as if he was being pulled into it.
And just like that he was somewhere else. Lost in blackness.
“What are you seeing, Ray?” Jeremy asked.
“Stars,” Ray whispered. Thick nebulae and swirling spiral galaxies against an impossible emptiness. And out of it, moving at a speed that made no sense, the artifact traveled. “It’s moving.”
“Good, good,” Jeremy answered. “Keep it up.”
A blue and white globe. The Earth, expanding in his vision.
“Coming to us. So…long ago.” The object plunged through the Earth’s atmosphere, burning hot and red like a coal, and crashed into the watery surface, rippling outward with an explosion of waves, blasted ferns, and vaporized thickets of swamp grasses.
The artifact was telling its story, unfolding it like a movie in his head.
“Don’t stop talking.” Jeremy was giddy, but he seemed a thousand miles away. “Just tell me what you’re seeing.”
The movie jumped forward in a time-lapse blur of growth and decay. Winds and rains and floodwaters swirled and receded. Animals mated and killed around the object, spilling their life’s fluids, their flesh and organs congealing and melting into the soil. As the parade of animals died and rotted, dark earth and snarling vegetation rose, and the black sphere was swallowed by the soil and loam and water and rocks.
“Animals. Buried. Then people.”
Humans, dressed in skins, feathers, and shells and unaware of the black orb below them, danced, made love, and prayed. They piled up stones in a circle, burned fires, cut off the heads and carved out the hearts of their sacrifices. A blur of limbs and song and guttural liturgies rose and fell with the rising and setting of the sun.
“It’s…the center. The people…feel it. Even though it’s underground. It’s reaching out to them.”
“Yes, yes. Good, Ray. Don’t stop.”
Time slowed. Strange lights visited the site, appearing, hovering, and quickly vanishing in the sky above it. Drawing more people. A group of naked children were brought to a clearing above the object. Led by tall men painted all in black ocher, save for their giant white exaggerated eyes.
“Men. Painted black. Tall men. Bringing a bunch of children.”
The children were made to lie down, their feet together in the center of the stone circle, heads outward, arms by their sides. The flower formation. Just like him, Kevin, and the other children at Blackwater.
“No,” Ray whispered. But it was too late. And he couldn’t make it stop, couldn’t unsee what was happening.
“Tell me, Ray. Just tell me what you see.”
But he couldn’t speak. The knives came down, black, gleaming stone blades, just like Lily’s terrible Uzzul’uüš. Waves of them plunging and slashing. Gushes of blood spraying, then leaching down, through the soil, pulled into the heart of the black sphere. And then it was over and then more time passed and it happened again. And again. More children, every time the stars locked into the right positions in the sky.
The black-painted men brought women, too, dancing ecstatically, coupling in wild orgies in the dirt with each darkening of the moon.
It wanted them—their sexual energies, their worship, and their blood, and especially the blood of the children. Over and over again, they came, they fucked in the dirt, brought their children and murdered them, bathing in the growing energy of the black sun beneath them in an endless cycle of death.
And then it changed. Ray felt his mouth open, but before he could scream it pulled him in and showed him—
Now. This is happening right now.
Another one of its kind, embedded not in quicksilver but warm, shifting sand. Men with computers and one with a video camera. Somewhere in the Middle East, wearing thawbs and kaffiyehs. The man with the camera lifted it to his face. Another pointed at Ray and started shouting in Arabic.
A flash of light.
Then another sphere, in a jungle. South Asia. Surrounded by a huge, barbed wire fence and soldiers with automatic rifles on the perimeter. One man, meditating in full lotus position on a blanket, suddenly opened his eyes and stared right into Ray’s. I see you, he said with his mind. Who are you, traveler?
Make it stop.
And still another, embedded in frozen earth. It was so cold Ray shivered as the icy wind clawed into his marrow. A woman in a thick, fur-rimmed coat stood before the object, her head hung as if in prayer. Her hooded face hidden in a circle of fur and shadow.
The energy was so wild now, so strong, he felt like he could fall into it and never get out. And, to his horror, he realized he would have welcomed that absorption. Complete dissolution of everything he was. Annihilation in its overpowering hypersexual void.
Something was coming out of it. Something hungry.
The woman in the fur-lined hood raised her head. Opened her eyes. Looked straight into his.
Ray’s screams rose in pitch with the deafening blast of noise inside his head.
Lily’s laughter broke through it all. And then everything went the most lifeless, sterile, and empty shade of white.
He came to in the helicopter, strapped into his seat. Jeremy wiped his forehead with a cool rag. “Ray. Good.” He smiled. “You did well. You’re okay. We’re heading back to Eleusis.”
Ray wiped his eyes. His head was pounding and his muscles ached as if he’d just run a marathon. “I told you,” he said. “Goddammit, Jeremy, I told you.”
Jeremy nodded, his eyes downcast. “I’m sorry you had a bad reaction. It was clearly a bit overwhelming for you, and for that I am deeply sorry.”
“It wasn’t a bit overwhelming. It is wrong. It is very, very fucking wrong. It’s evil.”
Jeremy looked bemused. “Ray, our fears color our impressions. Your body and mind were not prepared, and it shocked you. So your—”
“Bullshit.” Ray leaned forward, his face in Jeremy’s. “I saw what it is. It feeds on blood. The blood of children—and they kept feeding it. It lives on death, just like the thing Crawford summoned.”
“Ray—”
“And this isn’t the only one. There are more of them.”
Jeremy raised his eyebrow. “More? More artifacts?”
“And she has one of them! Lily. Fucking Lily. She looked right through it and saw me. She knows, Jeremy.”
Jeremy turned and stared out the window. He pulled at his beard. For a moment, he seemed genuinely unable to respond. The sky had grown dark with storm clouds and the helicopter rocked and rattled. “We’ll talk about this further when we get back to Eleusis,” he finally said. “You need to process your experience. Evaluating it properly takes time and distance.” He turned to Ray, expressionless. “But I have to say, it would shock me to learn she possesses a similar artifact. To be honest, I find it hard to believe what you saw was objectively real.”
“Oh, it’s real. I felt her, Jeremy. It was as if she was standing right there, looking right into my eyes. As real as you are.” Ray pressed his hands against his temples. This was migraine-level pain. “Jesus. My head hurts.”
“You took quite a hit,” Jeremy said. “Rest. We’ll be back home in an hour.”
Home, Ray thought. He didn’t consider the compound at Eleusis his home, any more than the dozens of places he’d stayed since he’d escaped Blackwater. He didn’t have a home anymore. The old world was gone, anyway, Baltimore likely in flames and ashes like so many other cities. The school where he once taught empty, the children dead or fleeing or huddled in basements or refugee camps. That life was so far gone, so dead, it was hard to mourn it.
But Ellen and William—they were still alive. Jeremy had said so.
But Jeremy also lied.
Another stab of pain hit him squarely in the center of his forehead. He squeezed his eyes shut. This time he would find out.
The rain began to fall as the copter landed. Ray was sent back to his room to rest while Jeremy called for an emergency debriefing in the Atrium.
His rest was short-lived. The tylers showed up to escort him just as he was nodding off. Ray hadn’t been inside the Council of Nine’s governing chamber, but he couldn’t help but laugh inwardly every time it was mentioned, envisioning a convocation of elves and dwarves and wizards in pointed hats discussing quests and magical rings. But when the broad doors of the cavernous amphitheater opened he was awestruck. Across the hall the members sat at an enormous polished marble table the shape of a crescent moon. A white candle burned in front of each of them beneath a ceiling so high and lost in shadow it seemed to blend into the night sky. Ray and the two tylers flanking him were the only audience members, so they sat front and center below the elevated table. Ray was still feeling the aftereffects of his mental trip into the sphere, his eyes wincing with every dull thud of pain in his head.
He had seen most of the Council members around the compound. Four women, including Claire, and four men, all in their Brotherhood-issue whites. Jeremy whispered to a tall black woman to his left. Her hair cascaded down her back in thin, graying braids. She looked at Ray, nodded without expression, and turned back to Jeremy.
None of the members were smiling, even Claire, who seemed to be avoiding his gaze. They all looked disturbed.
Jeremy stood. He lifted a gavel and rapped it twice on the marble. Everyone stood, including the tylers. Ray considered standing, then remained seated. To hell with their rules of order.
“The Council will open in due form in the Neophyte degree, with all rituals suspended in the presence of the profane.”
Ray snorted. I’m profane. Isn’t that nice.
The assembly and the tylers touched their foreheads with two extended fingers, then their mouths, then their chests. It reminded Ray of something he’d seen at Catholic Mass as a kid.
Jeremy banged the gavel once. Everyone sat except for him. “This emergency dispensation is now open.” He eyed the assembly, one by one, then nodded to Ray. “As most of you know, I took Ray to the artifact site earlier today. Because he is a natural traveler, and one who has had direct contact with a number of intriguing entities, I was very curious to discover his impressions of the object’s origins and the quality of its energy.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The Atrium vibrated.
“His observations ran counter to mine. And they contradicted all that we have observed in the two years we’ve been studying the object. His physical reaction was extreme, and I have little doubt what he told me was an honest account of what he perceived.”
“Gee, thanks,” Ray muttered. No one looked at him.
Jeremy motioned for him to stand. “Ray, please tell us your impressions of the object, as clearly and honestly as you can.”
“Well, okay.” The eyes of the Council members were on him. “You saw it. I went into some kind of trance as soon as I was near the thing. At first, I saw it moving through space. From someplace very far away. Light years or whatever. It hit the Earth, smashed into the ground, and blew up. Like a nuclear explosion. Then time just…started flying by. Like millions of years, a time-lapse movie kinda thing. I know that sounds bizarre.”
“Please, Ray, no need to edit yourself.”
Ray cleared his throat. “Over time it was gradually covered in rock and dirt. Back before there was any kind of life. Well, maybe there were plants—I saw plants when it landed. And then animals and people, well…I guess they evolved. That part happened fast. People, early humans, started coming to the site, like they were drawn to the spot where it was buried. They piled up rocks, danced around them, and then they started sacrificing children. Over and over again, for I don’t know how long. Hundreds, thousands of years, I guess. It was like…a movie that kept repeating itself, with new people, new costumes, but always the same thing: killing children, cutting them open, to feed the thing buried beneath them.”
The room was eerily quiet and cold.
“Tell them what you saw next,” Jeremy said.
Ray felt like an icy spider was skittering up his spine. “And then I saw more of the artifacts. There are others like it. Right now, in different parts of the world. In the jungles of Asia, I guess, and in the desert, and then one somewhere very cold and remote.” He breathed deeply. “The people near those other artifacts saw me. Like I just popped up in front of them. They freaked out.”
“Go on,” Jeremy said. Several of the Council members looked among themselves, then back to Ray. But no one spoke.
“One of them…one of the people who saw me…was Lily.”
More silence. A few astonished glances. Several of the members stared at him in disbelief.
Jeremy motioned for Ray to sit. “Thank you, Ray. I now open the floor for questions and discussion.”
Ray sat. Let them stew on that.
The tall black woman turned to Jeremy. She had a rich, deep voice and a singsong cadence. “Brother Jeremy, as you know, this is all very surprising. For years we’ve studied the object, and none of our travelers—nor any of our best scryers, for that matter—have discovered anything similar to what we just heard. While there was clearly sacrifice associated with the site itself, we’ve had no indications that the object in any way desires such activities. So this report from our new brother Ray is quite unusual.”
Jeremy nodded. “Yes, Sister Malaika, everything you have said is true.”
Sister Malaika’s eyes burned into Ray’s. Her gaze made him insecure, as if he was being caught in a lie. “Although you have told us many times that Ray is a naturally gifted traveler—and I have no reason to deny that assertion, or your history of his documented contacts—I have to wonder if his regular incidence of traumatic encounters predisposes him to seeing things that aren’t there. If his bias has colored his perceptions.”
Ray’s face burned. “Wait a minute. I know what I saw.”
Jeremy held up his hand. “Ray, let her finish. You’ve told your story; now the Council is open for questions.”
Sister Malaika nodded her thanks. “Brother Ray, I am not questioning your honesty. I believe you saw what you told us. But sometimes people who have been traumatized—especially natural travelers like yourself, who have not undergone the extensive and thorough training of our confraternity—see things filtered through their fears, not as they actually are. The energies associated with this artifact are extraordinarily powerful, and when encountered by someone without sufficient training and discernment—”
Ray shook his head. “I can’t believe this shit.”
Sister Malaika smiled as if he were a petulant child. “You don’t understand. We’re not saying you’re lying, only that such enormous energy, when it flows through the unprepared individual’s sphere of sensation, can sometimes trigger images that we fear, or distorted memories from our past—not what it is actually trying to communicate to us. Much like a garbled message on a phone with poor reception.”
“This was not garbled. It was her. I felt her. She was looking right at me. Like you’re looking at me now.”
A thin Asian man with a shaved head raised his hand. “Jeremy, his vision does accord with what we now know about Lily’s location—the compound in the Yukon territories.”
Sister Malaika shook her head. “Ray was aware of that fact as well—before he was brought to the object. Am I correct, Brother Jeremy, that you told him her location?”
Ray’s fists clenched. “Yes. Jeremy said Lily was somewhere in the far north. But that does not—”
“Please, Ray.” Jeremy stood. “Everyone must have a turn to speak. You will have a chance to answer again.”
Ray muttered under his breath. He could see where this was going. It was clear in the eyes of everyone behind the marble table.
Sister Malaika smiled. “Thank you, Brother Jeremy.” She folded her hands on the table in front of the candle. “I’m not against taking appropriate precautions. If Ray’s vision was accurate—and I am not ready to say it is—then Lily has likely breached our wards of concealment. She will be quite capable of triangulating our location if she has locked on to it.”
Claire stood, her eyes on Ray. “And if so, we are sitting ducks.”
“That is a very big if, Sister Claire,” Sister Malaika said. “We would be trusting Ray’s feral abilities over the years of research of our most well-trained specialists. None of whom have determined that the artifact is one of many, nor that it is in any way malevolent.”
The Asian man raised his hand again. “Perhaps we can repeat today’s experiment, with a proper set of controls.”
Sister Claire nodded. “I’ll go. I believe we should all go—the full Council. If we form the proper energetic conduit, we will be able to feel what he is feeling and see through his eyes. And then we can judge for ourselves.”
Sister Malaika whispered to Jeremy. Jeremy rapped the gavel and everyone sat but him. “Sister Claire’s suggestion is well taken. If we disregard Ray’s vision, and we are wrong, then we are lost. If we trust his vision, and he is wrong, we will have wasted years of work with the object. And as we are so close to utilizing its energies, we may be dooming ourselves with our uncertainty. Time, as you are all aware, is precious.”
“Wait,” Ray said. He stood up and the tylers jumped to their feet next to him. “You’re right. Time is precious. Which is why I’m leaving tomorrow with the team that’s going to hunt that bitch down. You promised me, and you are not going to stop me.”
Sister Malaika’s eyes widened. She looked to Jeremy.
Jeremy gazed at the Council. “I told Ray he could be a member of the strike team.”
“Without consulting us?” Sister Malaika stared. “A civilian in place of those who have trained for years for this sort of mission?”
The Council fell silent, all eyes on Jeremy. He nodded. “For some time now—even before we found Ray in Guatemala—I have felt very strongly that he was crucial to understanding the artifact. Yes, his is a wild and unfocused talent, chaotic and uncontrolled. But he has touched the entity that Crawford summoned—the unspoken one that left a pile of corpses in Blackwater, one of them our dear brother Micah. Ray made contact, and it entered him. And he survived. He killed it. He is singular among all of us in that respect. Not just a traveler, but someone who was possessed by, and then physically destroyed, a being of the Qlippoth.”
“Yes, we are aware of his history,” Sister Malaika said. “And so you believed he might provide some sort of key to a deeper understanding of the Light Bringer. To discern its creators. Their history and their intentions.”
“Yes, sister,” Jeremy said.
Thunder rumbled again.
“And I didn’t want to do it.” Ray pointed. “But he pushed me. When I found out you had a team going to find Lily, I told him I’d go see the damn artifact, kiss the fucking thing like the Blarney Stone if he wanted, as long as I could go on that mission. Because the two people I love the most were taken by Lily, and I’ve spent what feels like half of my life trying to find them.”
The Asian man touched Jeremy’s shoulder. “Brother Jeremy, it is quite unlike you to work outside of the Council like this.”
“I find it very disturbing,” Sister Malaika said.
“Your judgment and leadership have never been questioned,” Claire said. “Not once since the Great Council when you were chosen.” She looked around the room. “You have led us through many difficult days, and now through the most critical trial of all, when everything our brethren have worked for through the millennia hangs in the balance.” Her eyes found Ray’s. “And I am not about to question your decisions now. If you felt it was necessary to bring Ray to the artifact, then I am inclined to believe he was meant to deliver the message he gave us.”
Ray exhaled. Finally. He sent his approval with his gaze. Sister Claire got it; he could see it in her eyes.
“Perhaps,” Sister Malaika said, her eyes shifting to Claire and back to Ray. “But I would like to offer another possibility.” She stood and stepped behind Jeremy, putting her hands on his shoulders. “I must speak freely, dear brother. Please understand my words are not meant to hurt, but only to help us address this unfortunate dilemma with the necessary candor, while upholding our most sacred and inviolable obligations.”
Jeremy nodded. “Of course, sister.”
Sister Malaika paced slowly behind the Council. “In your written evaluation of our new brother Ray—which we all have read, yes?—you indicated he had been through a number of very traumatic ordeals. As a child subject of Project Mirror, then again as an adult in Blackwater when he witnessed the ritual of the G’thalk’atu. And at the hands of the bruja Sabina, when he unfortunately disfigured himself.”
“Yes,” Jeremy answered.
Ray’s teeth scraped. His face began to flush.
“Prior to that horrible incident”—her gaze settled on his maimed hand—“Lily poisoned him with a servitor. A hybrid insect-automaton, according to your notes, Brother Jeremy. From Mantu’s description of its effects, the poison was aimed at his astral and etheric bodies. What the Black Brotherhood calls a naz’qazgla—am I pronouncing that correctly, Brother Hikaru?”
The Japanese brother nodded. “Proto-Ursprach is difficult for anyone. But that is close enough.”
“Such poisons of the left-hand path take root in the etheric marrow. Naz’gazgla is called the root eater or sometimes the soul maggot. It may go quiescent, but it never leaves its host. It will always be lurking.”
Claire turned to the rest of the Council. “What is your point, sister?”
Ray stared, shaking, his pulse throbbing in his temples, his headache near blinding. Now that she had mentioned it, his phantom finger flared with pain.
Sister Malaika stopped in front of her seat. She leaned forward, her hands on the table, and when she spoke her breath made the candle flame dance. “We’ve been working with the artifact for more than two years. I have spent weeks at a time with it, as have most of you. None of us have sensed anything like what our recent initiate is telling us. We are all agreed that a breakthrough is near—that this horrible tide of violence against us may hang in the balance, and that the artifact could be the means of our victory. My question to you, my brothers and sisters, is this: Was Ray sent to warn us? Is he somehow the only one—among all of us—gifted enough to see the true identity of the artifact?” She walked around the table, and stood facing Ray. “Or, perhaps, does the naz’qazgla still run through him? To put it very simply, is he still under the control of her?”
Ray jumped but the tylers were on him before he could move. They twisted his arms behind his back. “Get the fuck off me!”
The Council members rose, a few of them backing away from the table. Jeremy pounded the gavel. “Brothers and sisters, please! Enough!”
“Look at him,” Sister Malaika said, her face twisted in disgust.
“Fuck you, God fucking damn you—” Ray’s arms felt ready to snap.
Sister Malaika turned to face Jeremy. His eyes were wide, his face ghastly white. “Brother Jeremy, if you brought him here, and he is a snake of her making, then I fear that you may be in need of your own judgment.”
Another boom of thunder, as if on cue, and Ray was led, screaming, out of the Atrium and into the pouring rain.
Ray’s cell was next to Mantu’s and across from Vinod’s.
“You know what I saw was real,” Ray said through the bars. “You saw what happened to me. That was not bullshit. It was her. If anyone knows that, it’s me.”
Jeremy nodded. “I do believe what you experienced was real—to you. But Sister Malaika’s concerns are also real. She pointed out my liability and lack of judgment in this complex situation, and correctly so. I should never have promised you a seat on the strike team without consulting the Council first. That was a failure of my leadership. And she posited something I hadn’t considered: that Lily could be using you to throw a monkey wrench in our work. It is something we must contemplate.”
“Jeremy, you know—”
“Just like we must consider the possibility that your vision is real. I promise you we will address this quickly. It will require an examination by the other travelers, but I swear it will not have the same consequences as your visit to the artifact.”
Ray clenched the bars of the cell. “You need to let me out of here so I can go with the strike team. You need to honor that promise to me.”
Jeremy shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
Ray felt blood rushing to his face. “Jeremy, don’t fucking do this. I need to go with that team. The whole reason I’ve been going through all this Brotherhood shit is to go with them to find Ellen and William.”
“The team is leaving as soon as the supplies arrive, and I’m afraid that will be before we can properly evaluate your vision and ascertain its veracity.”
“You promised him,” Mantu said from his cell. “He’s been doing everything you asked.”
Jeremy sighed. “Several members of the Council have questioned my judgment in allowing you to go on such an important mission. Not just Sister Malaika, but the majority. It is the most critical opportunity we’ve had—and perhaps our last chance—to cut off the head of our enemy. Everything we have worked for, everything our brothers throughout our order’s existence have fought and died for, is under threat. Our very existence hangs in the balance. We are facing possible extinction. Turning the mission into a rescue operation adds an enormous number of complications.”
Ray glared. “You’re not going to help Ellen and William?”
“Micah would never have pulled this shit,” Mantu said. “You know that, too.”
Jeremy’s expression hardened. “Micah died in service to our order. He understood the sacrifice he needed to make.”
“And he did it to help this man you’re talking to,” Mantu said. “He gave his life for Ray. Because he knew Ray was important to how all this is going down. Ray destroyed the whole operation in Blackwater. He met the thing that Crawford summoned, and stopped it from going feral. Who knows what it would have done, hopping from one person to another, if he hadn’t killed it? And now you’re denying him the chance to find his family? You’re going against everything this organization stands for.”
“Says the brother who broke his obligation,” Jeremy said.
“Fuck you,” Mantu hissed. “What is your obligation to, Jeremy? To the Brotherhood? Or to that fucking black rock buried in the jungle?”
The only sound breaking the silence was the hum of the air system.
“Please, Jeremy,” Ray said. “Please.”
“I am sorry, Ray. Truly sorry. But I will make sure that the team does everything in their power to find Ellen and William and return them safely.” He lowered his head and turned. The tylers kept their eyes on Ray as Jeremy stepped to the door. “Tomorrow night we’ll bring you to be examined. I promise you that we will weigh everything you’ve said. Until then, I suggest you rest and try to remain calm.”
Ray saw red at the periphery of his vision. Once again, every hope he had evaporated. “You lying motherfucker.”
The door closed and the lock clicked.
Vinod stared, expressionless. “I am sorry, Ray. I believe you. Brother Jeremy and Sister Malaika and the rest of the Council are sick. Very sick.”
Ray pressed his face between the bars. “What do you mean?”
Vinod started pacing. “I saw the artifact, up close. It is hiding its true self.”
“What?” Mantu shouted. “Vinod, why didn’t you mention this before?”
“You did not ask,” Vinod said.
“I wish you weren’t so literal,” Mantu said. “How did you figure that out?”
“I was with Sister Malaika. Just the two of us. We had lunch. Cheese and mango slices. And limeade. Then we went down to it and meditated in front of it. I told her it was lying to her, and the others. It wanted to be activated, and it needed people to do it, so it was telling her what she wanted to hear. And it was making them sick from its power. The Council. But they didn’t know it because it felt so good. She didn’t want to believe it, Brother Mantu, my man.”
Ray heard Mantu throw something against the wall of his cell. “Jesus Christ, Vinod. Malaika knows this?”
“She said she didn’t believe me. She told me to keep quiet, that my abilities were…” He struggled to recall the word. “Compromised.”
“She’s the one who’s compromised.” Ray ran his fingers through his hair. It was starting to make sense. “Did you tell anyone else?”
“No.” Vinod sat on his bed. “She is one of the Nine. No one would listen to me. They think I’m odd anyway. ‘On the spectrum,’ it says on my original assessment. ‘Gifted savant with limited communication abilities and emotional and social skills.’ ”
“That’s why they stuck you here,” Mantu said. “Not because you were poking around in the network. Because you know what that thing is.”
“You may be correct, Brother Mantu, my man.” Ray detected just a trace of emotion in Vinod’s monotone. Sadness, maybe. A man who had given up a long time ago.
“We have to get out of here,” Ray said. “We have to warn the others. I got the feeling some of them didn’t buy Malaika’s bullshit. Especially Claire. And I need to get on that strike team plane.” He was shaking. The enormity of what was happening was rushing up on him like an unexpected ocean wave.
“If you can figure out a way to cut through these carbon steel bars, I’m all ears,” Mantu said. “Vinod, you’re the certified genius here. Any ideas?”
Vinod stared. “There is no way out,” he said quietly. “The tylers would stop us. Two at the door, two at the entrance to the complex. I know the codes for the cell locks, if they haven’t changed them—67834, 67835, and 44372. And the code for the main door to get into corridor B is 224.”
“Well, that’s nice, and I’m glad you paid attention, but it still looks like we’re fucked,” Mantu said. “Unless you can teleport.”
“That would be my assessment as well, Mantu.” Vinod reclined on his bed.
Ray buried his face in his hands. The hum of the circulation system, and the throbbing of his heart in his ears, were the only sounds in the room.