The Stolen Gospels

by Brian Herbert

  If she disposed of him, though, there would be no opportunity for her plan. It was a wild design, one that had occurred to her on the spur of the moment, perhaps without thinking it through adequately. Now she had time to think, and recalled her strange visions, especially the one she apparently shared with Lori. The Chairwoman had never heard of a shared paranormal experience, but from the odd expression on Lori’s face she suspected it had actually occurred, and that Lori knew it, too. If that was the case, did the girl understand what had occurred?

  Does she know things I don’t?

  Dixie Lou focused her memory, and again recalled seeing the bright, amorphous shape with the teenager. At first it had been separate from her, and then it had seemed to merge with her and encompass her, like a ghostly mist flowing into her body. Why did this seem so much clearer to her now, revealing things she hadn’t noticed before? Did some memories work like that, coming back more vividly than the original experience? Or was this particular memory flawed?

  Not flawed. There is something more to remember.

  Her head pounded from the effort, but nothing came. The vision-image blurred, becoming charcoal fuzziness, and then nothing at all.

  She tried again, but it only made her head hurt more.

  She was missing something, forgetting something. But what?

  On the bed Alex stirred, and his eyelids flickered. Then he drifted back to sleep.

  Dixie Lou reviewed more details of the memory, and became increasingly disturbed. Lori with a shadow-shape . . . a baby is born . . . Dixie Lou backing away in terror.

  Frustrated, she pounded her fist on a table.

  At the noise, Alex stirred again. His gray eyes opened and stared at her. Did he recognize her? His lips quivered but no words came out. He grimaced in pain, then closed his eyes and slipped back into slumber.

  * * *

  Like a concerned mother, Dixie Lou stayed with him, and that evening Alex returned to consciousness. His light black skin was scraped and cut, but she wasn’t thinking about his injuries.

  “We have things to discuss,” she said, in her soft drawl. “You’re not a slow-witted dolt, are you? Not what we’ve been led to believe you are. Instead you’re a sneaky, treacherous kidnapper, a rotten little traitor.”

  Warily, he glanced at a short-barrel gun on her lap, by her hand. Her right forefinger rested inside the trigger guard, behind the trigger. His own mother with a gun? It seemed incongruous, and yet, he’d seen her do terrible things.

  “I’m not what I appear to be?” he snapped. “You should talk! I’m not like you at all. No matter what you say, I’m not as bad as you are. I haven’t murdered anyone!” The top of his head throbbed.

  She narrowed her gaze menacingly, adjusted the gun so that its fat barrel pointed at Alex. “So this is your real voice,” she said. “That was a nice acting job, the slow speech, the simple vocabulary and dull gaze. You recovered fully after that motorcycle accident in Athens, didn’t you? The things you said to the doctors were faked, weren’t they? You’re with the BOI. What sorts of tricks did they teach you? The art of assassination, perhaps? Were you assigned to kill me?”

  “If I had been, you’d be dead.”

  “Maybe we’ve been watching you longer than you realize, Alex.”

  He didn’t respond, wondered how much his mother had discovered about his secret life, if she knew he was involved in sabotages at Monte Konos, or the clandestine efforts to improve conditions for the stud knights. If so, she must think it was a BOI plot, which was totally wrong.

  He met her gaze, saw questions in her dark brown eyes, and uncertainty. No, he decided, she didn’t know very much about him; she might try to bluff, but he wouldn’t tell her anything.

  “Answer my questions,” she demanded.

  “Your questions are unimportant,” he said, in a flippant tone. “Lori and I saw you kill the guard.”

  A nasty smile curled her lips. “You bumped your head in the storm drain, causing you to imagine wild, untrue things.”

  Alex described the subterranean passageway in detail, how he and Lori had been hiding in shadows, watching Dixie Lou shoot the guard in the back of the head, perhaps with the gun she now held.

  As she listened, Dixie Lou shook with suppressed rage, and her eyes flashed. “Witnesses saw you and Lori by the body of the guard.”

  “Two other witnesses saw you kill her.”

  Running a finger over the gun barrel, Dixie Lou said, “You’re mistaken about what you think you saw.”

  “An hallucination caused by my head injury?” He touched his head lightly, felt a sore bump and rough, chaffed skin.

  “You’re beginning to understand.” She leaned closer, said, “I can influence the council to spare your life.”

  Alex shook his head at her lie, lowered his gaze. He knew about Title 8 . . . the clause in the UWW charter that gave its Chairwoman the power to determine the fate of an accused prisoner. He decided to prod her a little before mentioning this.

  “Am I being charged with murder?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Where are my friends?”

  “Not your concern,” she drawled. “Worry about yourself, Alex.”

  “Have you brought that gun here to kill me?”

  “Just keeping my options open, sliding from moment to moment. Perhaps I’ll let you tell your story to the council, and I’ll tell what I know, that it wasn’t a guard I killed. It was a provocateur, an enemy agent like you.”

  “A BOI agent dressed like a house guard? You’re making things up, Mother, lying. You think you’re good at it, but I can tell.”

  She smiled. “It would be so easy to have both of you executed for the murder of the guard. Or I could just throw you and your little friend off the cliff.”

  “You’d do it, too, wouldn’t you? Your own son and an innocent girl. I’m ashamed to admit you’re my mother.”

  Dixie Lou felt a compulsion to strike out at him, but suppressed it. For the moment. In a low, urgent tone she said, “The council has decided to confine the kidnappers in cells of two, for observation.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There will be eavesdropping equipment in each cell, and we will analyze the conversations to determine degrees of guilt.”

  Her son looked at her blankly.

  “Your cellmate will be Lori Vale,” she said. “Siana Harui and Yonney Zakheim will be in another cell, and the rest of your robber band will occupy other cells, two by two. Each of you will have only one person to talk with, and we will decide which of you is the more or less guilty.”

  “More or less guilty? What are you talking about?”

  With a crafty smile, Dixie Lou replied, “Each cell is a little courtroom, and in that courtroom one of you will be declared more guilty than the other. That person will be executed, and the other will be saved.”

  His head jerked back. “That’s not justice. You’re insane.”

  Her eyes sparkled with a fanatical gleam. “Maybe so, but I’m also smart. And you, Mr. Sanity, are my prisoner. Which is better, then, to be sane or insane?”

  Disgusted, Alex shook his head.

  In reality, Dixie Lou had made up this form of incarceration and punishment herself, without council approval. She didn’t know if she would execute one person from each cell after all, or if she would inflict some other form of creative punishment on the kidnappers. Whatever she decided, she was confident that she had the council votes to prevail.

  With her gold-ringed hand she patted Alex on the arm. “Don’t worry, Son. You’re a good actor, and maybe you can make Lori look more guilty than you are.”

  “I won’t do that to a fifteen year old girl! Lori is the most guiltless of all of us. Saving the she-apostles is the only mission she’s ever been on.”

  “Each of you will have to prove your comparative innocence. We will be watching, and listening.”

  “Between me and Lori, the guilty one is obvious. Why don’t you kill me
now?”

  “And spoil the fun? No, I’d rather do it my way, in my own time.”

  “Let me speak directly to the council. I’ll tell them the truth about Lori’s innocence.”

  Her upper lip curled, a snarl. “Speak to them from your cell. They’ll be behind the two-way mirror.”

  Dixie Lou was enjoying this moment immensely. Her thoughts swept inward, transporting her away from the conversation, to an entirely different realm. She had been thinking things over on the way here while traversing the corridors and stairways of the ancient monastery, trying to figure out where the mysterious Lori Vale fit into the mysterious events surrounding United Women of the World. The Chairwoman expected to learn more by observing her in the cell.

  Dixie Lou’s belief system was complex and personal. For her, the occult held dominion over the world, a supernatural force (or combination of forces) that she couldn’t explain and which guided her and all living creatures along the paths of their lives. Convinced that she received warnings and commands from this alternate realm, she always followed her own gut feelings; she did what her instincts told her to do.

  She believed Jesus existed as a historical figure, and that he rose from the dead following his crucifixion . . . a process that could undoubtedly be explained by the occult, or even by science. Similarly she believed in the she-apostles and in their modern incarnations. Dixie Lou did not, however, subscribe to the Christian view of a bearded God in Heaven, and had seen no evidence proving Jesus was the Son of God.

  All such contentions sounded like wild speculation to her, insupportable by common sense or written evidence. Likewise, she did not think the She-God actually existed, despite the fact that some she-apostles had spoken of this entity. To her the concept of She-God was merely a tool, a unifying figurehead for United Women of the World to use, enabling them to advance their goals. The she-apostles certainly understood this, and so did she.

  But at times she wavered, and found herself leaving the door to another world open a crack. Maybe, just maybe, there really was a God. But even if a deity existed—God, She-God, or whatever—the possibility of a heavenly entity watching her never gave her any feelings of regret for the people she had killed. All had deserved to die anyway, having foolishly placed themselves in her path where she had to slaughter them.

  But now, with the door of her belief system open just a little, an intriguing new thought surfaced in Dixie Lou’s consciousness, like an object bobbing to the surface of a pond, from way down deep. What if her own actions were the product of an opposing, Luciferian, force? That might offer a more plausible explanation for some of the strange events in her life.

  It also suggested fascinating possibilities for the missing twelfth she-apostle, the “She-Judas” who in collusion with Judas Iscariot was said to have done a bad thing, damning her soul for all of eternity, along with her more notorious male cohort. This suggested that the two of them owed an allegiance to Satan.

  A shiver of raw pleasure coursed Dixie Lou’s spine.

  Chapter 32

  Have mercy upon us, O She-God, have mercy upon us.

  —Psalm 123:3, as amended in the Holy Women’s Bible

  Profiled in the low morning light, she resembled a black witch as she entered the cell and looked around. Her long nose was downturned, with a prominent chin and bony cheekbones. But when she faced Lori, her features softened and she smiled.

  “Someone is here to see you,” Dixie Lou announced. She wore a long black dress. Glittering gold earrings dangled from her ears.

  Lori had been lying on her bed, off to one side of the doorway. In her confinement, she had lost track of time, but thought it must be sometime in the afternoon. She sat up now, and stared past Dixie Lou at the doorway. “Who?” she asked.

  “Why I am, dear,” Dixie Lou said.

  “No, I mean who else is here?”

  “Why you are, dear.”

  “Don’t tease me.” The bantering surprised Lori, and she tried to figure out Dixie Lou’s mood. It wasn’t quite cheerful; instead it had a cruel, scornful edge to it.

  Placing her hand on the girl’s shoulder, Dixie Lou said, “Patience, child. Some things cannot be rushed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dixie Lou turned and left.

  Moments later a much taller form filled the doorway. “Hello, Lori,” a man’s voice said.

  Her heart raced. With corridor lights behind him she couldn’t see his face, but there was something familiar in the voice.

  He stepped into the room.

  The door closed behind him. A lock clicked.

  Lori suppressed a cry. It was Alex Jackson. He wore a navy blue coat zipped halfway up, and jeans. His pewter eyes were flat, emotionless. Scratches and bruises covered his face and hands.

  “Are you OK?” she asked.

  “I was knocked out for awhile, slammed my head into something in the storm drain system. How about you?”

  “I was out cold, too. Then, when I found a way out of the storm drains, your sweet mother kicked me.” Lori pointed to her own forehead, which was still red and chafed.

  Her gaze riveted on his as he moved closer to her. His eyes were probing and intelligent, his movements lithe. She began to tremble.

  He touched her hand. “It’s all right,” he said, a gentle tone.

  Lori couldn’t stop shaking. “I’m glad you’re better,” she said, because she’d been worrying about him.

  He knelt in front of her. “I wish things could be different between us, that everything wasn’t so complicated.”

  “What do you mean?” The teenager’s heart pounded against her chest. She saw Alex’s pewter eyes darken, and in the poor light she couldn’t read them. . . .

  Alex was in a quandary. He wanted to stay near Lori, to defend her, to save her life if necessary. But not under these circumstances. He wasn’t sure how to save her from execution; his mother didn’t care about anyone but herself. She was worse than ever, now that she was the Chairwoman of United Women of the World.

  “I’m here to protect you,” Alex said. He ran his fingers through Lori’s auburn hair, which hung loosely around her shoulders. It was a gesture with which he intended to comfort her. Noticing the red area on her forehead, he commented on it as he removed his hand.

  “I’ll be all right,” Lori insisted.

  Alex struggled with his anger toward his mother. The woman had to be stopped . . . any way possible.

  The teenager, so innocent and so strong despite the hardships she faced, smiled at him.

  He leaned close and was about to whisper in her ear, telling her the latest plan in his mother’s twisted mind . . . only one survivor per cell. Then he had a second thought, and pulled back. No, it would be better not to do that. His mother would only find a way to make things worse. He didn’t believe for an instant that someone would be eavesdropping impartially, rendering a “fair” judgment on who was the most guilty and who was the most innocent. . . .

  “What’s the matter?” Lori asked, looking at him intently. She touched his hand.

  “A great deal,” he said. She saw his eyes mist over, and he looked away.

  Lori seethed. The witch-mother had something to do with it. Oh, how Lori hated that woman! Why had she sent him here, and why was he behaving so oddly?

  Still on his knees, his head slumped against her leg, and he began snoring; he had fallen asleep. Low voices came from outside the door. Lori couldn’t make out the words but thought it sounded like women, perhaps the guards who had been posted at her door ever since the attempted rescue of the she-apostles. Then she heard an unmistakable drawl. Dixie Lou spoke Lori’s name, and Alex’s, but the rest was unclear.

  Presently the catacomb cell grew quiet, leaving Lori to consider her predicament. She was being forced to share this confined space with the Chairwoman’s son, both of them prisoners.

  Closing her eyes, Lori tried to bring to mind the image of the baby’s face she had seen almost three days bef
ore, in the strange vision shared with Dixie Lou. My baby. Now something began to materialize, a child’s countenance which subsequently filled in with details so that she could make out the features: Large blue eyes, prim mouth, stubborn chin.

  The image moved her, and with each passing moment the face grew brighter and more alive, suffused with illumination like the moon in the night sky.

  Yaloda, she thought . . . an ancient word, she realized, though she didn’t know where she’d heard it. Innocent child.

  The glowing image faded away. In its place was something she found unsettling, an intense blackness, of a deep and disquieting hue. Like a hole cut in the fabric of the universe.

  Something bumped into Lori, jolting her, and she opened her eyes. One of Alex’s arms had flopped against her leg. He was still asleep but snoring fitfully, as if experiencing a nightmare.

  She eased him onto the floor, put a pillow under his head and blankets over him.

  Chapter 33

  The gospels of the she-apostles were missing for nearly two thousand years. In 1945, a fragment of the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) was discovered in a buried earthenware jar at Mt. Jabal-al-Tarif near Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Later, more female manuscripts were found in ancient catacombs at Alexandria, also in Egypt. And recently, the reincarnated she-apostles began to appear miraculously, in the form of children. One by one we obtained custody of them from their parents.

  —UWW press release, timed to coincide with publication of the Holy Women’s Bible

  Alex sat on a bench inside Lori’s cell, staring at her as she slept, worrying about her safety. She was beginning to stir. He saw her eyelids flicker, and open. Her lavender eyes were strikingly beautiful, filled with surprise at first, and then irritation.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Now tell me what’s going on.”

  “I don’t really know.”