| |
An intrusive sound in the wakeful world alerted her, and Ann fought the stranglehold of sleep, slipping in and out of consciousness. A vibrating boom brought her upright.
Ann groped the night stand for her gun. It was missing. She wracked her brain for where she left it. Hanging on the door with her belt and holster? At the station in her locker?
A deep grogginess shrouded her vision and mind. She tried to get her bearings, but the room was unfamiliar. Then she remembered.
Harmony, not Salida. Dad’s house, not your shitty apartment.
Of course her gun wasn’t on this nightstand.
The clock showed wee-hours-of-the-morning early. Three thirty. The TV flickered from the other room. She hadn’t even turned it on earlier. She cocked an ear and listened. The page of a book turned.
She sidled to the door and peeked into the living room. Her vantage point revealed the dark TV screen. The light came from somewhere else.
Ann dropped to her knees and peered under the bed.
Bingo.
She gripped the handle on her dad’s Louisville Slugger. Baseball bat in hand, she grabbed the knob, jerked the door open, and lunged into the living room with a still-drunk war cry.
No one was there.
Maggie’s book lay open on the coffee table, a blue-white light radiating from the pages. The same color her veins had glowed when Maggie breathed on her palm. The light wasn’t like a halo or a beam or anything. The pages themselves seemed to be made of it. A low hum, more felt than heard, emanated from the book. Or maybe from the light. Or maybe in her head.
A page turned of its own volition.
Ann backed into the bedroom and shut the door. When she released the knob, her hand shook.
“You didn’t see that. It could be light from the window and a breeze from . . . the furnace vent.” She swallowed and nearly choked on the dryness of her throat. “You’re tired. You’re stressed. Still a little drunk. You. Did. Not. See. That.”
Everything in her wanted to go back to bed, to curl beneath the covers and sleep off the residual effects of Sailor Jerry, but one little piece of her wanted to prove to herself it wasn’t real. The part of her that needed to see something to believe it. Her rational, detective mind. She tore the door open.
The book still spilled forth angelic light. The feeling of the hum increased, vibrating inside her body.
“Dammit.”
She leaned toward the coffee table and used the bat to flip the book shut. The light turned off. She went back into her room. Behind her, the pages fluttered. The light pulsed twice then stayed steady.
Ann froze. She turned around an inch at a time, eyes wide. That didn’t happen, and yet, her rational mind couldn’t come up with an explanation. She didn’t believe in this stuff.
Keep telling yourself that.
Seared mark, glowing veins, Maggie in the vision. All things she couldn’t explain, but believed anyway.
Ann let out a sigh, propped the bat against the couch, and sat. The light sucked into the center of the book, leaving the room in darkness. She picked it up and turned on the nearest lamp.
The leather cover was warm, and for a sickening second, it almost felt like human skin. The open page was about a third of the way in.
Just as before, when Maggie showed her the book, she could read it. The pages spoke of Sophia and the Protectorate.
Ann skimmed the text. Sophia meant knowledge and wisdom, and this Sophia and Louise’s Pistis Sophia were the same person—a person who might actually exist.
The day Sophia is born into being, manifesting in physical form, returning to the material world to protect us from darkness, our duty as Protectors increases tenfold, for Yaldabaoth shall rise again and destroy the material world, for it was not only his creation, but also his demise. Should Yaldabaoth come to full power, he shall seek vengeance upon Sophia. Should Sophia expire before her time, the End of Days shall be upon us and all of humanity shall be smote from the earth.
Ann snorted. The End of Days. And Yaldabaoth again. What did Raghib say? He would be vengeful toward Sophia for defeating him. Assuming she believed any of this, if Sophia manifested while Ann was Protector, Ann’s job was to save the world. She let loose a bark of a laugh.
“I’m still drunk.” She had to be if she considered believing any of this.
She flipped to the back of the book to the list of names and dates. The page her dad left her was the last one.
Bram Logan’s offspring.
She flipped back several pages to where the list began.
The title heading read: A Genealogical Study of the Protectors of Sophia.
The first date was so long ago, Ann thought Jesus probably walked the earth at that time. Assuming Jesus had actually walked the earth or even existed to begin with. The name with that date was—oh, surprise—Yeshua.
Bull. Shit.
The second name was John. Ann thought back to her brief time dating a churchy guy and thought she remembered John was an apostle.
“This can’t be real.” She needed to say the words out loud to the silent room. Maggie said her grandpa did the study. Ann wondered if the Protectorate had given him that task during his rehab. Seemed like a good method to get someone’s mind involved in a new way of thinking.
Lines drawn in the margin connected names to other names. For some Protectors the line connected to the word offspring instead of a name. Some of the offspring entries had dates listed next to them.
Protectors’ children whose names had not been recorded?
For other offspring no date was listed.
Maybe Protectors who never had kids.
Or maybe they were killed before they could pass the torch to their offspring.
Like Dad.
All of the names had “deceased” written next to them, except Bram Logan. For a second, Ann thought maybe he really was still alive somewhere, living under an alias. After all, she only had a dismembered finger and a video message.
While the video message sort of confirmed his death, it wasn’t an official document stating as such. She’d accepted he was dead, though, because if he was alive somewhere and had been ignoring her calls for help this whole time—well, that would hurt even more than him being dead and gone.
Then a thought occurred to her. What if he couldn’t call? Raghib said they’d all gone into hiding to protect their families, but how could he do that to her?
The safety deposit box, if there was one, had to have answers. Something to discount the message in the DVD, an explanation of where he was and why he couldn’t be there for her. An explanation of the finger. Anything. Something.
She flipped back to the page about Sophia and reread the passage. Ann didn’t want to believe it, but the truth was as clear as the light that had shone from the book.
Maggie said if Ann had the book and kept it safe, she would be safe too. Raghib’s words confirmed it. Bound by blood and soul.
Ann had to protect Maggie.
She sat back against the couch. The book in her lap warmed her thighs. On a whim, she lifted her hands from the edges and spoke to the pages.
“Show me how to protect her.”
The book didn’t budge. Ann flipped through, but the only passage she could read was the one the book had just shown her. The rest remained in Coptic Egyptian. Ann turned to the back pages and studied the list of names again. Ran her finger down the columns as if she could divine something by osmosis through her fingertips.
The book cooled in her lap. It must’ve been done telling her its secrets for the night. She closed it and set it on the coffee table.
Protect Maggie, keep the book safe, save the world.
“All I want is my normal life back.” A tear slid down her cheek. “I can’t even look at a gun.” Her words filled the silence, but they didn’t help her answer the questions swirling through her mind, addled as it may be with the lingering effects of too much cheap spiced rum.
She lay down on her back and stared at the popcorn ceiling. Sometimes she imagined she could see faces in the texture. Sometimes she tried to find them. Tonight, the ceiling faded to dark as mental exhaustion overtook her.