“Directions?”
“No.” He shook his head. “All the nations surrounded me; but in the name of the LORD I will defeat them.” He looked up from his phone. “Sounds kind of like a battle right? I know there were a lot of battles in the bible.”
“And just as many in New York, too,” Jon murmured. “That’s it. I’m calling the witch doctor. She said she would help us if we got hung up, right?” He dialed her number into the Bluetooth console of his green SUV. She picked up after a ring.
“I knew you knuckleheads couldn’t get far without me.”
“Dr. Timoko, were there any battles on Long Island that are near bodies of water?” Key asked. “And yes, I understand Long Island is surrounded by water but any specific ones? Maybe where they lost or don’t stand a chance?”
“What makes you think they lost,” Aiden asked. “It says nothing about losing.”
“It says they will defeat them,” Key answered. “Which means they haven’t yet. It’s worth a try.”
“That’s pretty specific, but specificity is good because there was only one battle on Long Island near a body of water where such a declaration would make sense. The Americans had just declared independence from Britain and they were losing. Badly. Having Britain and their allies on their shore would certainly feel like “all the nations” were surrounding them. Congratulations, boys. You’re looking for Brooklyn. More specifically the New York Harbor.”
Brooklyn, New York
“Good job on cracking the scripture, everybody, but uh…what now?”
Jon looked out over the bay, his foot propped on a parking bumper made out of mottledmolted wood. Aiden stood at Key’s side, looking at the warehouse in front of them. Apparently, they both recognized it in some way. “This…,” Aiden tried as he took a step closer to it. “This is where they brought me after they kidnapped me. George’s Tire World.”
“It’s also where we tracked Shen down to,” Key said with a frown. “Out of all the places on the harbor, this place was calling me. I don’t know why,” he finished with a mummer. He looked down at the grey pebbled covered ground. “How are we supposed to find one damn rock in an entire city?”
“It’s a cornerstone right?” Jon said as he continued to look out over the water. “Shouldn’t we look for places that would have a cornerstone? Or mainly, something with a right hand?”
Aiden glanced over his shoulder at his friend. “A right hand?”
“The right hand of the LORD is victorious! The right hand of the LORD is exalted!” Jon recited dramatically. “Sounds like something a bunch of men used to losings would yell out after they finally won. So if they won, we would need to look for a symbol of their victory.”
“That makes sense,” Key said, sounding somewhat impressed by Jon’s deductive thinking. Key kept forgetting both he and Aiden were Jon former federal agents. Clues were their thing. “What would have a cornerstone and a right hand and be a symbol of victory?”
“Liberation.” Jon pointed out over the bay, in the same spot he’d been staring. Aiden turned and followed Jon’s outstretched finger. He began laughing as it all clicked for him as well.
The Statue of Liberty.
“Wow.” He reached over and slapped his friend on the back. “Good job, agent.”
Jon smirked. “’Preciate it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE
The ferry ride from Battery Island was painless–or as painless as Aiden had expected. He’d taken the ferry once before with Jin. She reveled in history, her focus decidedly on the African and Asian continents but she got a small thrill from American history as well. So he was practically dragged to Liberty Island by an overexcited woman who talked more than she breathed.
Because of their adventure, he’d known which tickets to get that would grant them the access they would need, he knew which ferry was the quickest and he knew how to avoid the passengers that were most likely to throw up over the choppy upper New York Bay waters. Whatever Key did to mask the presence of their guns as they went through the security check helped as well.
They arrived on the island, surprisingly with limited complaints from Jon because “I hate boats,” and pulled up just shy of the base of Fort Wood, the eleven pointed base of the statue and pedestal. The tour led them through the museum, up the stairs and flowed out until they were standing on the Fort Wood level of the structure. They looped the statue until they were facing its western side.
“Okay, so we found the cornerstone. It doesn’t have any funky cryptic words like that funky cryptic door that swept us off to that funky cryptic death island you failed to tell us about last time,” Jon said, eyeing Key. “So what do we do now? Does Aiden rub on it like a magic genie? Is there a pocket-sized version we can have because, you know, we have to use it on an actual person? I hardly doubt I can stick this entire statue in my pocket, you know. Security is going to be tight with me if I attempt that. Also the Coast Guard. The FBI, too.”
“Jon, sweetheart?” Key tried.
Jon answered with a cocky grin. “I like sweetheart. You should always call me sweetheart.”
“Fine. Sweetheart? Shut up,” Key bit out. He grabbed his phone out of his pocket and took a picture of what they were looking at. “I’m calling our very own personal pocket encyclopedia.”
Dr. Timoko’s voice rang out as Key put her on speakerphone. “When I said call me when you needed help, I was hoping you would limit it to like, one phone call.”
“I live to ruin other people’s hopes,” Key said, a hint of playfulness in his voice as he sent her the photo. “But we really do need your help. We’ve found the cornerstone but uh…”
Dr. Timoko was silent then she sighed. “No, you’ve found the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty. That’s not the cornerstone the scripture alludes to.”
“Yeah, tell us that up front next time, okay, demon lady,” Jon quipped.
“I’m giving you all that I have. I don’t know where it is either but I can still help you figure out the clues. I decided to look some things up after our last conversation because somehow I knew you’d been intellectually needy.” There was some tapping on a keyboard before Dr. Timoko began again. “Based on my research, Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor, was very, very adamant about the abandoned Fort Hood being the site of his work. Now Auguste Bartholdi was a freemason and the correlation between Freemasonry and alchemy has been made numerous of times. They especially speak highly of Nicholas Flamel.”
“I’ve heard that name before,” Aiden murmured. When Jon and Key looked at him expectantly, he elaborated. “He was a writer from Paris who gained this reputation as a wizard or something after his death. Reddit loves him.”
“You go on Reddit?” Jon asked, his lip hitched.
“Sometimes,” Aiden grumbled. “They’ve got really good discourse.”
“I don’t know what a reddit is but Aiden’s right. However, he was not a wizard. He was an alchemist,” Dr. Timoko corrected, “who was infamously noted as the creator of the Philosopher Stone. The stone you’re looking for.”
“So a Freemason whose secret society of secret people idolized a wizard who created a super-secret stone. How does that help us?” Jon asked.
“Just trying to help you connect the dots. When they began to dig up the ground at Fort Hood to prepare it as the base of the pedestal, their engineer discovered heavy masonic stones hidden beneath the surface.”
“Masonic stones?” Aiden echoed.
“Yes. Charles Stone was quoted as being surprised by them. If we are to believe rumor, Auguste was… not so surprised.”
The looks on everyone’s faces let Aiden know they’d all come to the same conclusion. “Where are those stones now?”
There was a snicker over the line. “You’re probably standing on them.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY
“How do we know we can trust her? This Charlie woman?” Tahir whispered.
George sighed, laboriously. “You know, you’ve got to work on this. Ever since you
got the skinny on Rooke, you’ve been acting like a paranoid jive turkey and–”
“Wait,” Rooke turned towards George, his eyes wide and his mouth parted with barely restrained incredulity. “Did you just say jive turkey?”
George touched his fingers to his mouth. “I think I did.” When Rooke began to guffaw at his expense, George shot him a look. “I’ve been here a long time, son. Sometimes my slang gets mixed up. But you,” he said, pointing at Tahir. “You’ve got to relax. I’ve known Zicon for a while. Zicon wouldn’t tap someone in who wasn’t trustworthy.”
“Zicon was also Shen’s right-hand man for a considerable amount of time and probably helped him plan Jin’s murder.”
“And,” George said, turning to pin Tahir with a glare, “so was Jerome but I didn’t see you firing off any questions last we talked to him.” Tahir mouth dropped open and closed before she sat back. “If she said she found someone, she found someone.”
“You know I can hear you right?” Zicon said from the driver seat.
“Yeah. Me, too,” Charlie echoed from the other side of George.
True. They were packed inside of his Lincoln MKT, the SUV he kept in storage most of the year, riding down Highway 95. They were forty-five minutes into their trip from New York to Bala Cynwyd, a suburb in Philadelphia.
George glanced at the woman Zicon and Imane had introduced as “Charlie.” She was young, maybe a year or two younger than his daughter. Her hair was cropped short and colored differently from the picture Zicon had shown when he first mentioned her. As George continued to look at her, he noticed her shoulders were tense, her back ramrod straight and her head pointing straight forward. She seemed deep in her thoughts. Considering what she’s just learned, George wasn’t the least bit surprised. She’d looked as skeptical as someone who’d just been told that angels exist.
It was a talent–to know when to slowly introduce a human to the spiritual world, or to slap them across the face with it. With Charlie, her right cheek was stinging.
At least she was helping. George just wondered how in all the realms they were going to pull this off.
It was quiet after that. Even with Fela Kuti’s afrobeat laced colonizing cursing sounds blasting in the cabin, no one spoke other than Tahir and Rooke’s random bouts of bickering. Charlie broke the silence, a move George wasn’t expecting.
“When I first moved here four or five years ago I would volunteer. Senior citizen homes, hospice care or psychiatric wards, that sort of thing. It’s where I met Khione. Khione was special and we…connected. Nobody knows her real name. She appeared one day with her stillborn child clutched in her hands. Doctors think that’s when she had her break, mentally. She recovered enough to be discharged and now she spends most of her time under the care of her niece, Omi.”
“This is your candidate?” Rooke asked.
“Yes,” Charlie said. “I speak to Omi often, maybe once or twice a week. Khione attempts suicide often. She gets admitted, recovers and then is discharged. The cycle will drive you mad. She is angry with the doctors. So much anger when her attempts to take her own life are foiled.”
“I don’t blame the doctors,” Imane replied softly. Zicon reached over from the driver’s seat and softly rubbed the inside of her wrist. “Life is important. It’s sacred.”
“It is but Khione wants to die and she wants to die for a very specific cause. I think…I think this is the moment she has been waiting for. I have trouble believing Khione’s reason but I can’t argue with someone’s belief.” Charlie rubbed her eyes tiredly. “But let me make myself very, very clear. The choice is up to Khione and only her. If this falls in line with her belief then she will be the only person who can make the decisions. She says no, all of you are shit out of luck. I can’t offer up every suicidal person to slaughter.”
It was silent in the wake of her speech. Talks of death will do that to people. George’s hand tightened around his hat. George wasn’t sure if he could hold back pressing Khione. If it were up to him, he alone would shoulder the guilt of the terrible thing they were going to ask Khione to do. It didn’t make him feel good to know he could do something so horrible. Regardless of her mental state, regardless of her own desire to die, to ask her and to give her the ability to do so went against everything that he believed in. That if George hadn’t seen so many horrors in his life, he’d throw up right in his truck. But if he had to, he would.
He would corner her, he would pressure her.
“Does she know we are coming?”
“Yes…uhm…it’s complicated,” Charlie said, her head tilting until it leaned up against the window. “You’ll see when we get there”
CHAPTER EIGHTY ONE
Home of The Living Sacrifice
Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania
Khione sat by her window, taking in the idyllic view of the Bala Cynwyd suburb. There was a mother teaching her son how to ride a bike on the sidewalk. It looked like they’d just taken off the training wheels. Every time he fell, Khione winced. She could feel pain. Not the physical pain, no. She felt the fear as he slipped from his bike, the shock from the hitting the ground, the knowledge that pain would follow soon after.
Khione was an empath.
I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy. I’m not crazy.
They said she was crazy–the doctors, the police officers, the social
workers. They said that she’d suffered a mental break. Suffered. They said that she needed to be guarded. Omi knew better. That’s why she loved Omi. She loved Chris, she loved Monet, and she loved Moses, Derrick, and Josh–because they knew better.
Her Keepers.
They understood that what seemed insane to others, seemed logical and prop Hatshepsut ic to those who were initiated with the wonders of Khione’s purpose. They knew. She wasn’t crazy. They understood.
Chris, Derrick, and Joshua stood by the door, on alert. They were always on alert it seemed. Some days, she wished they would relax, listen to Omi’s soulful humming, sit back in an armchair, and let their stress melt away. Sometimes she wanted their wives to make them relax, but their wives were just as high strung as their husbands.
It’s because they knew. It’s because they understood. They knew she wasn’t crazy.
Omi sat by her side, rubbing oil into the soft spaces between Khione’s fingers, the lavender scent wafting up to her. The house was still fragrant of the sage Moses had burned earlier and the food Monet had cooked. The sun dipped below the tree line and filtered between the leaves, casting intricate patterns on her wall.
She’d read the message in the leaves. She’d seen the message in the bones.
“Charlie is coming home.”
Omi’s head snapped up and Joshua immediately left his post by the door to cross the room, standing in front of her like she’d said something preposterous. She always knew Charlie would come back. It was her purpose.
“It’s time.”
“Impossible,” the poet said. She put a cool hand against Joshua’s forehead and forced the feeling into his body, so that he could feel what she felt, so he could know what she knew. It’s how they became her Keepers in the first place.
His eyes fluttered as he welcomed it. When she was done, his eyes parted slowly and he nodded once, his acceptance of her truth. He looked back at Derrick and Moses and Chris. “She is coming.”
Khione smiled as her Keepers began to prepare in a flurry of movement, at peace with her destiny, at peace with her fate. “It is time.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY TWO
Charlie knew.
Her father had been a Keeper. Her grandmother had been a Keeper. Her great-great-grandfather had been a Keeper.
Charlie was a Keeper. The difference between her and those in her family who came before her was, she didn’t want to be a Keeper. She had dreams. She had goals. She had aspirations.
She’d seen her father sacrifice for the living sacrifice. Her grandmother perished sacrificing for the living sacrif
ice. She’d seen what happened when fate or destiny superseded personal want.
Charlie didn’t want it. Charlie believed in free will. She didn’t think fate or destiny existed. It was bullshit. She was in control of her life. No
one else. Not a deity, not angels, not strings. She was the only thing she had control of.
Yet, fate was funny. The faster she ran away from it, the faster it ran towards her. In her sprint towards a career, towards freedom, she’d met Shen. Shen paved the way for her, funding a tuition she couldn’t hope to pay by herself but because she met Shen, she learned of Jin Amaris.
At the time she didn’t know. She didn’t know Jin Amaris would bring her full circle to where she’d first met the living sacrifice, then to Philadelphia, where the Keepers lived, to where she used to live. When Zicon told her his reasoning for looking her up after months of their agreed-upon silence, she had feigned surprise, anger, apprehension.
The look on her face as the puzzle pieces fell into place was harder to hide. It didn’t matter if he picked up on it or not. She had the solution to his problems.
Khione.
The Empath. The Living Sacrifice. The Belief.
“I have something to tell you,” Charlie said to Zicon seconds after George pressed a finger to the doorbell. The six of them were all huddled on the small porch of Khione’s house. George was staring through a side panel window, seeing if anyone was home. The house was dark and it was possible they were sleep. It was one in the morning. Tahir and Rooke were speaking amongst themselves, their voices low so she couldn’t hear. She guessed it was about the message they’d received in the car from “Key”, another angel, about a stone.
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