by Steve Alten
Curiosity captures her attention. It is her mother’s personal effects.
She removes the dusty photo album and opens the torn book flap, accidentally spilling half the unbound contents.
A yellowed black-and-white photo of her mother and father taking their wedding vows.
A legal document signifying Madelina Aurelia’s adoption by her foster parents, the Moreheads.
Madelina’s second-grade report card—all As.
A few disturbing watercolor paintings. Several more photos of her mother as a teen.
She fingers the sealed manila envelope. Tearing away the yellowed tape, she reaches inside, removing several old newspaper clippings and a black-and-white photo of a frightening old man.
On the back of the photo is scrawled: Uncle Don Rafelo.
She unfolds the aged newspaper clippings. Each story concerns her great-uncle, reputed to be a Nagual—a powerful Mexican witch.
Lilith reads, her schizophrenic mind absorbing the information like a sponge.
15
OCTOBER 31, 2027: BELLE GLADE HIGH SCHOOL, BELLE GLADE, FLORIDA
Students mill about the patched tarmac schoolyard, waiting for the sixth period bell to ring. Dozens hang in groups, smoking by the seven-foot-high chain-link fence. Others are preoccupied with palm-sized computer games. Shirtless boys play full-court pickup basketball.
Lilith kneels behind one of the basketball poles, then turns to Brandy. ‘Okay, we’re here. Now what?’
Do as I told you.
‘They’ll hurt me.’
Not this time. Get ready.
Lilith’s luminescent blue eyes follow the game.
Dante Adams dribbles between his legs, then launches a wild shot at the opposite basket. Ronny Ley grabs the defensive rebound and pushes the ball up court. Evading a defender with a crossover dribble, he pulls up in front of Brett Longley at the three-point arc and shoots.
Swish.
Lilith dashes onto the court and grabs the basketball before it hits the ground, then takes off running.
‘Hey! Crazy bitch, come back here!’
Lilith races for the seven-foot-high chain-link fence … and hurdles it.
Jaws drop. The boys swear out loud, watching helplessly as the teenaged girl dodges traffic and ducks behind a fast-food restaurant.
‘Come on!’ Ron, Dante, and Brett scale the fence. The three boys cross the street, then cut between a row of shrubs bordering the rear of the hamburger joint.
Lilith is waiting in back, seated atop an open steel trash bin that is surrounded by a rusty brown, eight-foot-high wooden fence.
‘There she is,’ whispers Dante, his rage tinged with lust.
‘Know what? I think she’s playing with us,’ Ron says. ‘You had a good time Friday night, didn’t you, girl? I think you want some more.’
‘Let’s do her right here,’ says Dante. Reaching up, he grabs Lilith by her ankles.
‘Get off me!’ She kicks at Dante and Ron as they drag her down, pinning her to the ground.
‘Hey, come on, easy guys.’ Brett backs away, but is unable to tear his eyes away as Dante pulls up Lilith’s skirt, grabbing for her underpants.
This time, a fully sober Lilith slips inside the nexus.
She immediately springs to her feet, rising through invisible waves of energy. Ron and Dante’s expressions morph into disbelief as she lunges for them, grabs them by the hair, and smashes their skulls together with all her might.
The violent collision sends blood and bone spouting in slow motion through gelatinous waves of energy.
Lilith stares at the dueling crimson streams, then turns her attention to Brett.
The boy has turned and is attempting to flee.
Lilith kicks him in the buttocks, launching him facefirst into the side of the steel trash bin.
The bruised teen collapses. Bleeding and barely conscious, he struggles to crawl away on all fours.
‘Finish him.’
Lilith turns in shock, the nexus suddenly filled with an icy aura.
The old man is tall and gray-haired, his appearance striking. A long aquiline nose, like that of a hooked eagle, dominates his wrinkled Mesoamerican face. The left eye is a piercing azure-blue, the right eye hazel and lazy, always glancing sideways. Loose silky white clothing hangs from his bony frame.
‘Who are you?’
‘You know who I am.’
‘Uncle Don? Why are you here?’
‘I’m here to guide you. Now finish the last one quickly, before someone sees you.’
‘I … can’t.’ She doubles over, the lactic acid buildup excruciating.
Don Rafelo seems to glide through the invisible waves of energy as he approaches. ‘You can’t finish him because you’re weak. Move aside and learn.’ Don Rafelo reaches down to Brett. Gripping the boy’s skull in the knotty fingers of his right hand, he twists, shattering the boy’s cervical vertebrae, severing the spinal cord.
Brett collapses flat on his face—dead.
Don Rafelo turns to Ron and Dante and inhales deeply, ‘tasting’ their diminishing life forces. ‘You did well. These two are close to death. Help me get them into the trash bin.’
Lilith complies.
The trash truck will arrive three hours later. By nightfall, the remains of the three teens, along with the rest of the debris, will be deposited in a dirt pit located atop ‘Mount Trashmore,’ a man-made mountain of garbage located twenty miles south of Lake Okeechobee.
8:10 p.m.
The motel clerk fingers his goatee as Lilith lays the five crumpled twenty-dollar bills she has stolen from Quenton’s wallet upon the coffee-stained front desk.
‘That should cover my uncle’s room for the rest of the week.’
The clerk scoops up the money, then hands her a key, his grip lingering a second too long. ‘Let me know if there’s anything else I can do you for.’
She ignores his leer, then heads outside.
Don Rafelo appears from behind a parked car. He follows her to Room 113.
The room is musty, reeking of mildew. Lilith turns on the air-conditioning, the antiquated unit growling to life. ‘Okay, Uncle Don, I’ve done everything you’ve instructed, now I want to know how you found me.’
Don Rafelo lies back on one of the twin beds, staring at her. ‘I never lost track of you, even when your parents tried to escape me by fleeing to America. I’m the one who arranged your parents’ marriage.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of their bloodlines. Each of us possesses a life force, Lilith, something the Western World refers to, with much distortion, as the soul. Harbored within your genes are two powerful animating forces. The first was created long ago by the joining of two ancient bloodlines, one Mayan, tracing back to the days of Kukulcán, the other Aztec and the lineage of Quetzalcoatl. But it is the second life force—the Rafelo bloodline—that allows us to tap into the darker forces of the universe. It is this dark force that chases you across the Earth like a cold wind. It is spiritual in form, yet it possesses the ability to manipulate the other.’
‘I don’t understand. Where is this dark force? Where’s it coming from?’
‘Another place, another time. You will feel its presence as you move closer to our homeland and the Gulf of Mexico. The dark force is powerful, it reaches out to embrace you. It is what summoned me from Morelos to guide you.’
Lilith’s azure eyes widen. ‘I want this power. Teach me!’
The old man grins. ‘That is why I am here.’
When Lilith Robinson stumbled upon her parents’ belongings, she’d discovered a treasure trove of materials highlighting the life of her great-uncle, Don Alejandro Rafelo, a man whose roots dated back to fourteenth-century France, and his ancestor, Grégor Rafelo.
Grégor Rafelo was born outside Paris in 1397. Like his father before him, he became a career military man who served as a special guard under the command of Gilles de Rais. Competent and brave, Grégor was assigned to Joan of Arc’s g
uard and fought several battles at her side, bloodbath after bloodbath.
Following the relief of Orleans in 1429, the thirty-two-year-old Rafelo returned home to his family, distraught over all he’d seen. Months later he turned to religion, converting from Christianity to Albigensianism.
The Albigenses (named after the town of Albi, in southern France) were an offshoot of the popular Manichaean dualistic system, which believed in the separate and independent existence of a god of good and a god of evil. To the Albigenses, the god of good was Christ, who, during his stay on earth, became an angel with a phantom body that allowed him the appearance of a man. The god of evil was Satan, who was responsible for imprisoning the soul in the human body.
By living a good life, the Albigenses believed a person could earn his soul’s freedom after death. Failure to achieve righteousness during one’s lifetime would result in the soul’s being reborn again as another human being, or even an animal. Everything material, including wealth, food, and even the human body itself was considered evil and abhorrent. As such, the sect held that the traditional Christian Church, with its corrupt clergy and immense material wealth, was an agent of the Devil.
The Christian Church, in turn, viewed the existence of the Albigenses as the single most important heresy of the Middle Ages. When peaceful attempts to convert the group failed, Pope Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade. By 1230, most of the Albigenses had been brutally suppressed, leaving much of southern France desolate over the next two centuries.
The secret sect of the Albigenses that Grégor Rafelo joined was divided into two groups, the simple believers and the ‘perfects,’ derived from the Greek word katharoi for ‘purified.’ Perfects were extremists who renounced all possessions and survived only on the donations provided by other members. They were forbidden to take oaths, to eat meat, eggs, or cheese, or to have sexual relations. Haunted by the blood on his hands, Grégor Rafelo sought ‘perfection,’ a decision which made life extremely difficult on his wife, Fanette, and their adolescent son, André.
Refusing to honor his father’s orders of celibacy, fourteen-year-old André left home, seeking refuge with Grégor’s former commanding officer, Gilles de Rais, a man whose own extensive wealth and power was in direct contrast to the beliefs of the boy’s father.
The conversion of Grégor Rafelo to Albigensianism was a slap in the face to the Church. Within a week of André’s leaving home, his father was arrested by the Inquisition, under charges of heresy. He would spend the remaining thirteen years of his life in prison, the ideal environment for one seeking ‘perfection.’
As for André Rafelo, his destiny would follow a different path.
Gilles de Rais had accompanied Joan of Arc to Reims for the consecration of Charles VII, where he had been appointed Marshal of France. He remained by her side until her capture, at which time he retired to his estate in Brittany.
Gilles was a wealthy man, having inherited extensive domains from both his father and maternal grandfather. In addition, he had recently married Catherine de Thouars, a rich heiress. So well off was Gilles that he earned a reputation for keeping a more lavish court than the king.
Young André was taken in by Gilles and made a herald, but the boy’s personality grew on Gilles, who soon took the adolescent into his confidence.
In July of 1435, the Rais family secured a decree from the king that restrained Gilles from selling or mortgaging the rest of his properties. This financial setback turned the desperate Gilles to alchemy, eventually leading to his burgeoning interest in Satanism. Having lost much of his wealth, Gilles hoped to regain his riches through the knowledge and power of the Devil. Over the next five years, he and André would delve into witchcraft and the occult, worshiping Satan in ceremonies later termed the ‘Black Mass.’
At the Black Mass, the celebrants would don vestments similar to those of the Christian priests, except the chasuble had the addition of a goat’s figure, an animal associated with the Devil. Other parodies of the Church included crosses suspended upside down, inversions of Christian prayers, a blessing with filthy water, animal sacrifices, and the use of a naked woman’s abdomen as an altar. The Black Mass culminated in a ritualistic orgy, and occasionally—a human sacrifice.
It was André Rafelo, one of the cult’s high priests, who introduced this new blasphemy into the ceremony.
In September of 1440, Gilles de Rais was arrested and brought to trial in Nantes. There he was condemned for heresy and the abduction, torture, and murder of more than 140 children.
André Rafelo fled France for the Harz Mountains of Germany. There, he established secret covens, which formalized the supernatural traditions of Devil worship, witchcraft, and the ways of the Black Sabbat. Years later, he would travel to Africa, where he would learn the secrets of eating from the skulls of the dead to steal their souls.
Rafelo would father twelve children by three wives and live to see the births of seven grandchildren and two great grandchildren. After his death, his clan’s influence would spread overseas when his great grandson, Etienne Rafelo, set sail aboard a supply ship bound for New Spain (Mexico).
The history of the Central American people traces back long before the arrival of the first Europeans. The first ‘true’ Mexicans were seminomadic tribes who first appeared in Mesoamerica around 4000 b.c. Eventually they settled and became farmers, growing avocado, tomatoes, squash, and corn—a hybrid of wild grass.
Then, sometime around 1500 b.c, He arrived.
He was a long-faced Caucasian with flowing white beard and hair. Mesoamericans had never seen a white person before, let alone a bearded man (the Mayans being genetically incapable of growing facial hair). But the stranger was unique in other ways, for he possessed a wisdom far greater than anything the Indians had ever seen. The Caucasian elder quickly became their leader, and was soon revered as a god-king.
There are no records that tell us his name or his people’s name, but the natives of this low-lying region along the Gulf of Mexico eventually became known as the Olmec, the mother culture of all Mesoamerica. Under their teacher’s tutelage, the Olmec would unify the Gulf region, their achievements in astronomy, mathematics, and architecture influencing the Zapotec, Toltec, Mayan, and Aztec cultures that followed over the next two thousand years.
Almost overnight it seemed the jungle-dwelling Olmec went from being simple farmers to the architects of modern society. They established complex structures and extensive ceremonial centers. They were the first in Mesoamerica to record events. They originated the ancient ball game, and created great public works of art, which included the famous Olmec Heads—monolithic skulls fashioned from basalt, many of which weigh nearly thirty tons.
The bearded one’s presence soon became known throughout the region. To the Maya and Toltec he was the great teacher, Kukulcán, to the Aztecs he was Quetzalcoatl, the Plumed Serpent. And though he promised his people he would one day return, the god-king’s eventual departure around A.D. 1000 left Mesoamerica in utter disarray. Many peoples, like the Maya, turned to human sacrifice, their actions meant to appease Kukulcán and lure him back from the great beyond.
Five hundred years later, the first ‘official’ Caucasians would make their way into Central America from Europe, bringing with them tyranny and death, and something more—
—the Devil.
Hernan Cortez was a Spaniard who had earned his reputation as both explorer and Conquistador. In 1519 the governor of Cuba, Diego de Velázquez, commissioned Cortez and his forces to invade and conquer Montezuma’s Aztec empire. Armed with eleven ships and five hundred men, Cortez set sail for the Yucatán Peninsula, homeland of the Maya. Making his way north along the Gulf coastline, he founded the first Spanish settlement, La Villa Rica de Vera Cruz (modern-day Veracruz). As his men realized the daunting odds facing them, Cortez ordered his ships burned, fearing desertion. The vastly outnumbered Spanish would either win their battle or die trying.
What Cortez never suspected was that
the outcome of the war would be decided by something else entirely—a case of mistaken identity.
When Montezuma, the Aztec leader, received word that a bearded white man had arrived from the sea, he believed Cortez to be none other than Quetzalcoatl, returning as he had promised from the grave. Ignoring a series of foreboding omens from his Nagual (witches), the Aztec leader sent emissaries to escort the Spaniard and his army directly into the capital city of Tenochtitlán, a near-impregnable island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. The stunned Spanish, impressed by the size of the city and its numerous temples and canals, were treated like gods. Feigning friendship, Cortez waited until the right moment, then ordered his army to attack, the bloody slaughter becoming the opening blow of an all-out war that would last more than two years.
