The Jealous God

by Brendan Carroll

  “You can’t do that, Lucio,” Mark Andrew said wearily as he dragged a footstool in front of his Brother and sat down. “If I tell you who the father was, you must promise me you will do nothing. Say nothing.”

  “I can’t promise that.” Lucio shook his head.

  “It was not exactly rape. She did not know what she was doing. In fact, she didn’t believe it until it became obvious she was with child. Omar told me after he was shot, he suspected what had happened and who had done it. I found it very hard to believe… accept.”

  “But the baby could have been his.” Lucio was in terrible straits, running hot and cold between anguish and anger.

  “No. Now you must calm down and listen to me. Omar is my grandson. I would not breach confidence with him, but you are my Brother; and you loved her as much as he did, I’m sure. So I will tell you this with the assurance you will not break confidence with me. Ruth, was by marriage, my granddaughter and Bari is my great-grandson. I can neither disavow nor deny the truth of this.”

  Lucio nodded.

  “Ruth has rejected Omar’s attentions ever since he returned from the underworld with Il Dolce Mio. She apparently could not accept him in his present form. The baby could not be his.”

  “Santa Maria!” Lucio leaned back in the chair. “But that is understandable! She just needed time…”

  “No. He told me she was still in love with you, and his new appearance was too far removed from you for her to ever accept him again.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “Perhaps, but Omar knows what he is talking about.” Mark shrugged. “He did not hold it against you, nor even Ruth, apparently. Their marriage was arranged by his father. There was never a great deal of spontaneity in their relationship, though, they undoubtedly loved one another. I believe it was a bit one-sided, myself.”

  “But how does he know I am the reason for her rejection? Did she tell him? Surely…”

  “Do you need to ask? Who is Omar Kadif? What is he? He knows! But he is more honorable than ever we gave him credit. He never complained to her about it. He blamed himself. That is one of the reasons he was so desperate to catch up with Jozsef Daniel. He had made a pact with Anna. If she could vanquish the Ancient One from Jozsef’s body without damaging the body, he could, in essence, have his identity returned to him.”

  “I cannot believe this.” Lucio was stunned again. “An abomination!”

  “Not really. I think I can understand Omar’s reasoning. It is very much in line with his father’s way of thinking. Lemarik’s logic, so to speak, is what got him into St. John’s body, if you will remember. The mighty Djinni saw no reason to waste a perfectly good body. Anna, too, is much like her uncle and her grandfather and was in full agreement with Omar in this respect. She intended to rid the world of the Ancient Terror and then leave us and take up her place in the heavens with Jozsef Daniel, her husband. She told me as much in Arabia these were her plans.”

  “There are many things in the Universe that elude the minds of men, Lucio. Anna had very good reasons for what she planned to do. It was not suicide she was contemplating as I at first thought. She has another destiny. I never gave her much thought at all. I should have paid more attention to her. She was… is a creature of great power, unsurpassed beauty, grace and wisdom. When we were tied to our petty concerns, she was engulfed in total reality. Her world was not our world. She did not belong here. She came, she saw, she conquered."

  "Our little system here could not contain her power. Only the Ancient Evil stood in her way and her undying love for Jozsef. If ever she can find her beloved Jozsef Daniel, they will go their own way, and we will bless our stars if ever we have the good fortune to run into them again some day. Whatever she did when she confronted him in Haiti, obviously, went wrong. We have now lost both Jozsef and Anna and we still have to contend with the Ancient One.”

  Lucio had calmed down considerably though his stomach was rolling. This new information made him physically ill.

  “Who was it?” he asked again.

  “You must swear to me you will say nothing, do nothing,” Mark Andrew told him. “Swear it!”

  “Swear? I have not sworn anything in all my life other than my oath to uphold the tenets of the Order. What shall I swear on, Brother?” Lucio asked him tiredly.

  Mark Andrew reached for Lucio’s dagger and pulled it from the scabbard. He took the Italian’s right hand in his own and held up the knife.

  “Swear it on your blood.” Mark Andrew gazed at him expectantly.

  “What?!” Lucio sputtered, frowned at his hand and then at the knife.

  “Swear it on your Holy Blood and seal it with mine.”

  Lucio took the knife and hesitated only briefly before making a small cut on his wrist. Mark Andrew held out his own right arm, and Lucio made a matching cut on Mark’s wrist before pressing the two bleeding wounds together.

  “I swear it, before God,” he said quietly.

  Mark Andrew smiled slightly and then nodded.

  “Ollroighty then!” The Knight of Death stood up and looked at the bloody smear on his skin. “Ruth’s child belonged to Bari Kadif.”

  Lucio’s mouth fell open again as his wrist bled quite freely on his light brown pants.

  Mark Andrew turned on his heel and left him alone in the room.

  ((((((((((((()))))))))))))

  The days dragged on and the hunting and camping trip were promptly canceled in order that the members of the Order could journey to Sicily and attend the funeral of their newest member’s wife. The days turned into weeks, and the weeks, into months.

  Jozsef Daniel’s power and influence grew at an incredible pace. Within six months, while the rest of the world looked on in disbelief, the great democratic superpower in the western hemisphere fell into total chaos. The infection spread south from Belize, Honduras and Guatemala into Panama and south into Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina. North into Mexico, the United States and Canada. No one could stop the war that had cost millions of lives and left the cities and governments of half the world in smoking ruins. The people were starving by the end of the fourth month in several countries, but the army of the Haitian despot known as Emperor Supreme Henri Christophe II continued to grow in size and strength, absorbing the wealth and military superiority of the fallen nations.

  Hundreds of thousands of refugees left the continents and fled to Australia, Asia, Europe and even Africa in an attempt to escape death. The huge influx of desperate homeless and for the most part, penniless refugees placed a tremendous strain on the rest of the world and further hindered any hope of assistance to the ailing continents. The disaster had taken root and spread so fast, most of the people of the rest of the world were hardly over the shock of the realization; before they were inundated with financial and political problems of momentous, unimaginable proportions.

  Omar Kadif had spent the last three months in New Babylon simply trying to keep ahead of the reports, futilely attempting to contact anyone who might be willing to listen to him in the fallen countries that had once been part of the New Order of the Temple. The Emperor Supreme who had turned out to be the former president of Haiti, a virtual non-entity in the world of international politics only a half year earlier, refused all of the Prophet’s attempts to reach him. The man simply acted as if the rest of the world did not exist. He shut down the airways and North and South America seemed to simply drop off the face of the earth. Very few, if any, communications of import came out of the stricken lands and absolutely nothing was allowed in.

  Half of the economies of the remaining New World Order Alliance nations collapsed within a month after the fall of the United States, and the world seemed to come to a grinding halt. Many people simply committed suicide, either individually or in groups and many more went into hiding in the more remote areas, believing the Apocalypse had come at last. The Order left Scotland temporarily and reconvened in New Babylon in an effort to help the Prophet try to maintain and reconstruct s
ome semblance of civilization. They had to prepare to combat the forces of Emperor Henri II, which they were quite sure, were coming their way. By the end of the sixth month, a strange sort of quiet had fallen over the world; and it seemed everyone was holding their collective breaths, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  The members of the Red Cross of Gold knew perfectly well who was behind Henri II, but they had failed utterly in their attempts to find him. Even with the help of all their combined mystical powers along with Lemarik’s constant searching, they could learn nothing of the elusive Jozsef Daniel. He seemed to have amassed a great deal of mystical power of his own to accomplish his more obvious objectives.

  Slowly, but surely, Asia and Europe began to peek out from behind closed doors, and people returned to work in silent shock. There was less laughter, less hope and less of everything including food, clothing, medicines, fuel and all the niceties that had once made life better for those who could afford them. A tremendous program was haphazardly enacted to help the people crammed into refugee camps. Disease, of course, was helping clear out one problem while causing numerous others. Nothing, in anyone’s imagination, could begin to compare to reality.

  The Order stayed in New Babylon while Mark Andrew and his brother, Luke, traveled alone across Europe to the Netherlands and then down into France where they were finally allowed to cross the channel into England by special permission of the new king of the beleaguered nation. England’s King William Henry had closed his borders almost immediately, and the British Isles had escaped the main onslaught of the refugees.

  Anyone who knew anyone or had any connections, however small, with friends, relatives or business acquaintances in the ‘Old World’ had left the war ravaged lands of the west and forced their way back to their real or imagined roots. It would take years, if not centuries, to sort it all out. Ireland had taken a terrible influx of Americans claiming Irish roots, and, before the borders were closed, they were inundated with thousands of homeless people in desperate straits. The Isle of Ramsay and St. Patrick’s, however, remained isolated and untouched, fortunately. The activities of the Templars there successfully, albeit regretfully, rebuffed the numerous boats full of the people turned away from England, Scotland and Ireland, helping them when and where they could, while protecting their island from the onslaught, that would have been ultimately disastrous. Incredibly, they were able to accomplish the distasteful feat with very little bloodshed, sending the people who landed on the shores away with refreshed supplies and directions to seek refuge in the more southern ports along the coast of Portugal, France and Spain where the Fox was concentrating its westernmost efforts to receive and disperse them to points further inland. One of the lies they concocted to help in their efforts to turn people away, was a well-placed rumor that the monks on the islands gave refuge to persons suffering from highly contagious diseases such as ebola, avian flu, leprosy, West Nile virus and resurgence of both small pox and bubonic plague. They kept bonfires made with alchemical concoctions that smelled horrible and emitted black smoke burning on the shores at night and showed up in their patrol boats wearing haz-mat suits. The special effects and the rumor usually worked wonders.

  The entire operation was haphazard and ill-defined. Many people were lost and separated from their families. Many, many more died, and the churches across Europe found it impossible to care for the children who arrived without parents, relatives or friends of any sort to sponsor them. The situation was worse than appalling, communications were sketchy at best, and the vast majority of refugees found themselves on foreign soil without hope and without direction. The crime rate sky-rocketed in and around the refugee camps, and soon, they began to look more like concentration camps with armed patrols, roving K-9 units, guard towers and concertina wire strung on everything from street signs to trees, depending on the location.

  The lack of proper medical attention for the infirmed and chronically ill took a rapid toll on the population of not only the camps, but the indigenous populations, as medical supplies became scarce and then non-existent. Plague and famine threatened at every turn. This only added to the feelings of contempt, mistrust and dislike for the ‘foreign invaders’; and the people, at first willing to help, began to withdraw their support. Then began to display open hostility toward the unfortunate residents of the disease-infested camps. Skirmishes and mini-wars broke out openly in Germany, France, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain as vigilante groups warred openly with roving bands of criminals with machetes, knives and axes. Italy, Greece, Turkey and many of the eastern nations and kingdoms flatly refused to accept any more refugees, and the situation continued to descend into the depths of chaos. Less hospitable still were the North African nations of Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, countries already faced with hunger and disease from centuries of economic depression and age-old religious conflicts.

  Omar used all of his powers and exhausted himself personally trying to coordinate efforts to care for the victims as well as make ready for war. The news ran non-stop on the televisions and radios, as well as, through the Internet, but it, like the state of affairs, was chaotic, disorganized and fraught with stories touted as the truth without verification. The Prophet made a daily appeal each morning asking for cooperation and help from his followers, instructing them which television and radio stations to listen to, which news agencies to believe, appealing to the masses to remain calm and follow the instructions of the officials in charge, wherever they might be.

  Mark Andrew, Luke Matthew and Luke Andrew soon ran into trouble, as did many of the Council Members and apprentices, as they became more and more exposed to the public eye. Those with the presence of mind and ability to maintain a reasonable semblance of normalcy in their lives, began to notice these select individuals, and their connection to New Babylon and the Prophet. In essence, the Order’s cover of secrecy and anonymity was destroyed.

  When Luke Matthew and Mark Andrew crossed the English Channel and stopped at the first English checkpoint, they presented their papers with the King’s stamp of approval, traveling permits from Omar Kadif and passports issued by the Holy Roman Emperor; they were summarily arrested and taken to London. They were placed under tight security in Buckingham Palace to await an audience with the King. They were assured, in spite of the presence of armed soldiers outside their doors and windows, they were not prisoners, but merely being placed under protective custody to await a meeting at the King’s convenience. He sent apologies and greetings and bade them to forgive him for detaining them, but cited the state of emergency as his excuse and kept them waiting.

  Luke Matthew was beside himself. He did not want to stay in London, waiting on the pleasure of the English King whom he absolutely refused to acknowledge as true heir to the throne. King William Henry was just another in a long line of Kings Luke had failed to recognize and appreciate. He’d not recognized a rightful heir to the English throne since Queen Elizabeth had beheaded Mary, Queen of Scots. Even James I had not met with his approval. But Luke Matthew Ramsay’s opinions of English royalty made very little difference in the overall scheme of things. To Mark Andrew, it was quite distressing, as he was forced to share the relatively cramped confines of three rooms in the palace with his irate, disgruntled and totally unhappy brother.

  After languishing for three days in seclusion with Luke Matthew pacing the floor, complaining endlessly, and making empty threats, Mark had finally threatened to cut out his brother’s tongue, thereby, sending him into a brooding, but much appreciated silence. Luke’s logic dictated Mark Andrew should simply use his powers to extricate them from the King’s custody, so they could go on about their business. Mark tried to explain to him it would not be wise and would be best to hear the King out since they were, in essence, subjects of the Crown that had taken back control of the entire British Isles with the consent of the people some few years earlier. Like it or not, they were subject to the laws and the rule of the land, unless they wished to create more trouble by appea
ring to be above the law and outside the King’s authority. They would hear him out, be cordial and polite and then, if necessary, if things went sour, they would leave come hell or high water. Luke had accepted his brother’s judgment, reluctantly, making the dire prediction Mark Andrew’s words were most likely a prophetic vision rather than the simple use of an old adage.

  On the morning of the fourth day of their rather luxurious captivity, they were escorted out of their quarters, out of the palace and onto a private yacht on the River Thames, where, they were told, the King was waiting to meet with them, far from the prying eyes of the local populace and news agencies. King William Henry was, indeed, on the yacht. He met with them in the elegant stateroom, dressed, oddly enough, in his pajamas. Mark Andrew had thought it most peculiar, but Luke Matthew had told him the King simply wanted to show them how unimportant they were to his Royal Asininity.

  “I have often wondered about you, Sir Ramsay,” he spoke to Mark Andrew without preamble after the steward announced them. “I have heard many legends and stories about you and your brother.”

  “If you have some questions, your Highness, I would be glad to tell you what I can, if you will allow us safe passage to Scotland. We merely wish to check on our home and see if we can return there. We’ve been unable to learn anything of the state of affairs in Lothian since the war turned against the New Order in the west. If it pleases you, we would rather pass through on personal business, than as representatives of any official capacity.”

  “Oh and I thought you were emissaries of the Prophet.” William Henry smiled at them and held up his ornate tea cup to his servant.

  “He has asked nothing of us. Surely you are in direct contact with New Babylon. If he wishes to confer with you, then I’m sure that would be his prerogative.”

  “Aha! You see?” The King looked about at the various members of his cabinet and personal entourage as they smiled and nodded briefly. “That is the problem, Sir Ramsay. Your words and attitude seem to convey the idea I am subservient to Omar Kadif, which I assure you, I am not.” The king leaned forward and lowered his voice. “You see, England is a sovereign nation answerable to none. It is not Omar Kadif’s prerogative, as you say, to contact me! Oh, quite the contrary. If I feel the need to speak with the Prophet, I will send word to him. I have graciously allowed his troops to use my shores, and I have selflessly allowed my Royal Navy and my army to help repel this invasion of political criminals and paupers from our lands in order to better protect the interests of the British Empire.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “Omar Kadif’s empire has fallen, and it is his lack of foresight and political savvy has brought these misfortunes upon us. He does not know where to place his trust.”