It was at that moment that she heard an unearthly shriek, then a frantic battering as of flailing legs. Frightened, she called Emma’s name again, sprinting upward as fast as she could. The second shriek caused her to stumble. She almost fell, holding herself off the ground by grabbing onto the tip of a low-hanging branch.
Redoubling her effort, she reached a small plateau in the center of which was the bloody corpse of what appeared to be a golden jackal. She’d encountered a pack in North Africa several years ago. The thing had been literally ripped to shreds. Its body, almost completely inside out, lay sprawled on the ground, one leg still quivering in galvanic muscle memory. Its head was nearly wholly bitten off.
She looked around, wide-eyed. What could have done this? A gray wolf, a brown bear? What predators were hiding out here?
“Emma, where are you?” she called. And then more loudly, “Emma!”
The birds had gone still; the dragonflies were absent without leave. Weird, unidentifiable insects, crawling out of the churned-up earth, were drinking the fresh blood, bathing in it. Overhead, in the permanently twilit world, a large velvety bat whooshed by, too close for comfort. She could sense the carrion animals gathering for the feast.
Hearing a stirring up ahead, she picked her way forward. She stepped over the gory remains of the jackal, and as she did so found herself in terra incognita.
17
Lalibela, Ethiopia: 1918
GIDEON SHAW WAS NOT HIMSELF; HE HADN’T BEEN HIMSELF from the moment of his peculiar conception. His mother, a striking beauty, dark and smoldering, of uncertain Eurasian provenance, would have been a prize catch for any number of millionaire playboys, international plunderers, princes, counts, or dukes, in those days when titles actually meant something. Like Wallis Simpson, she could have been the cause of monarchies toppling. Instead, she had fallen head over heels in lust with a man who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. For Chynna Shaw, love had nothing to do with how she felt about this man, who never told her his name, who never asked for love, who, it seemed, was, like her, uninterested in love. It never occurred to her to ask his name; his anonymity was part of his extraordinary charisma.
They spent three weeks in a state of heavenly bliss, and then he was gone, as abruptly as he had appeared, leaving Chynna alone, delirious, and astonishingly pregnant, in the sense that her term lasted all of three months. Or perhaps it only seemed that way to her, considering the state of rapture that remained her constant companion until the birth of her son. She named him Gideon, after the heroic figure in the book of Judges, who defeated the vast Midianite army with three hundred soldiers.
The nuns to whom Chynna turned for succor after she was released from the silk ligatures of lust did not much care for the name, seeing as how Gideon was an Israelite, a judge and hero of the Old Testament. They would have much preferred she name her son John, since, after all, the convent was located in the birthplace of Saint John, the Baptist, three hours from Jerusalem. But that was not to be. Chynna had a mind of her own, and as it turned out, not even the mother superior of the order or the father confessor, who visited the convent regularly, could sway her when her mind was made up.
“I obey the word of God,” Chynna would say to them, or anyone else naïve enough to question her motives “not yours, nor anyone else’s.”
She brought Gideon up in strict Catholic fashion, which, as may be expected, mollified her mother superior. It also allowed her the kind of leeway unthinkable for the nuns—for Chynna had never taken the veil—of the convent. There came a time when Chynna became aware that keeping Gideon inside the convent was no longer a good thing. Accordingly, she sent him to school in Jerusalem. He walked three hours each way, until she was sufficiently convinced that he was a competent enough horseman. Then she bought him a knife with a wicked blade and taught him how to defend himself by throwing it with deadly accuracy. And like all his basic skills, such as walking, talking, and reading, he mastered this one with eye-opening rapidity. By the end of his first year at school in Jerusalem he was speaking Arabic and Hebrew, which, after all, were not that dissimilar, as well as Latin and Greek. His schoolbooks were in one of these four languages.
He was a near-perfect student, invariably coming in first in all his classes. But soon enough Chynna discovered that her strange son was stranger than she could have imagined. For one thing, his interest in the occult was so intense and persistent that she found herself having to keep his bizarre experiments, his obsessive research into the occult, from everyone in the convent. He of course ignored her pleas for him to give up this interest. For another, the nature of his occultism disturbed her profoundly. One day she discovered him setting fire to a wooden crucifix and, when it had turned to charcoal, turning it upside down. He was wrapping the charred upended rood in crimson cloth when she came upon him, having rushed to their chamber, urged on by the smell of burning wood. Their rooms had no fireplace, so she knew something was amiss. She had no idea of how far amiss until she witnessed what he was up to. Without her knowing precisely what it was, her gut informed her in no uncertain terms that it was an evil beyond the imagination of the mother superior. It was, she was convinced, pure evil.
Not long after that, with Gideon’s manipulations of occult instruments escalating, she thought it wise to move out of the convent that had been her home for so long. She found it surprisingly difficult. She missed the daily chores and devotions as much as she missed the nuns she had worked and prayed beside. But as for Gideon, he was fully liberated from what he once told her was a prison of body and soul. When his experimentations slithered alarmingly into the infernal, he became too much even for the one woman who was bound to love him, and so after 101 sleepless nights of prayer she delivered him into the heart of Jerusalem, there to make his fortune or to run afoul of, if not God, then certainly the authorities.
It is dreadful for a mother to feel compelled to abandon her son, but Chynna’s soul-searching had convinced her she had no other choice. Had they stayed together one of them would have wound up killing the other. In the blue twilight of the day they separated, without a word being said between them; she returned to the convent, threw herself on its collective mercy, and was received with open arms. Three months later, she completed her studies and took the veil. She never saw her son or, indeed, the world outside the convent walls again. She died in the arms of the two novices who tended to her when she grew ill with an undiagnosable fever that resisted all treatment. The novices swore that in the moments after she took her last breath an eerie fog descended upon her. The novices attending her fainted dead away. But those were strange days, indeed. Soon whispers began to circulate of nuns cutting themselves, having visions, receiving nocturnal visitations. The father confessor was sent to discover the truth or falsehood of these allegations, but he died in mysterious circumstances inside the walls. Not long thereafter, the place was abandoned, the building burned to the ground by terrified townspeople.
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, Chynna’s son grew in power and prestige in the grand and vicious manner of sultans, kings, robber barons, and popes.
Every detail of this nefarious history Conrad Shaw knew by heart, plus the origin of it. He knew what it was that Chynna had lain with—Gideon’s intensely charismatic father, his own grandfather. It preyed upon him like a parasite eating at him from the inside out. His whole life up to the point of this confrontation in the bowels of the Ethiopian church had been a search to rectify the horrific original sin that had been perpetrated on Chynna Shaw, and that dogged his heels and would dog the heels of every Shaw who came after him, unto eternity. Unless, that is, the grandson who had yet to be born could turn the tide. He had seen this, had been born seeing it in his mind’s eye.
Now, at the moment he said to his father, “Do it! If you’re going to shoot me do it now!” he put himself between Gideon and Yeats. This was done not only to protect the poet but also to keep him from seeing what transpired between son and father.
�
�You know I won’t kill you,” Gideon said under his breath.
“You can’t kill me, Father. Just as I can’t kill you. We are—”
“Do not say another word!” Gideon, brought up short, looked horrified. “I forbid you to speak the word.” He glanced around wildly. “Not anywhere, but especially not here, where the dead are imprisoned, where the shadows are not shadows. Where”—he shot a furtive look over Conrad’s left shoulder—“that thing has dominion.”
“That thing has a name, just like its three siblings.”
Gideon snorted. “Huh! I defy you to tell me which one this is.”
“It’s Typhos, Gideon.”
“How can you tell?”
Conrad smiled thinly. “Once, a long time ago, I told you a secret. Look how that turned out.” He shook his head.
“Whatever you delude yourself into calling it means less than nothing. Neither of us can control a Sphinx; that’s all that matters.” He brandished the pistol. “Now back up.”
Conrad shook his head. “You have to pay for killing Ibrahim. He was my friend.”
“Don’t be absurd. You have no friends. You learned that from me. We use people, then throw them away when they’re of no more use. That’s our stock-in-trade, who we are.” The pistol’s muzzle swung back and forth, like the head of a spitting cobra, searching for its prey. “You always were a child stubborn beyond endurance. I suppose now you will force me to kill the other one to make my point.”
Conrad stood resolute. “I want that gold rood.”
Gideon laughed. “It will never be yours; this I swear.”
And he stepped quickly to the side in order to bring Yeats into the field of fire. At the same time, Conrad tilted his head back, shouted at the top of his lungs, “Typhos, djat had’ar!” Typhos, he is come!
Gideon’s face drained of blood as behind Conrad the Sphinx began to stir. At first it seemed like an optical illusion caused by the low light simmering in the unnatural darkness. Then, a fraction of an inch at a time, the head turned in their direction.
“How in the name of—!” Gideon’s eyes fairly bugged out of his head.
The Sphinx lumbered off his plinth, strode on taloned paws toward Gideon.
“God in Heaven!” Gideon cried.
“Too late, Father. You are too far away from God. He can’t hear you.”
Gideon raised the pistol, fired three shots at the oncoming Sphinx, then threw the empty pistol at him. The gun struck the Sphinx in the throat, which only caused him to open his terrifying jaws wide as he lunged at Gideon. Just before they snapped shut, Conrad’s father ran through the slim space between two stone columns, vanishing into a shadowed channel.
Conrad held up his hand. “Guard my friends until I return,” he told Typhos in Tamazight. Then he set off after his father.
He heard Yeats calling over and over from behind him in a voice strained by shock and terror, but he paid him no mind. He directed all his energy into finding his father and putting an end to the original sin once and for all.
Perhaps a thousand yards on, the channel narrowed down, forcing him to divest himself of his backpack before turning sideways into order to keep going. The walls, of sledged rock, gradually turned unnaturally smooth until they were like two sheets of glass. This was fortunate, as he might have had great difficulty negotiating the passage otherwise. He had his torch with him, but the light was failing. A bit farther on it began to flicker. The batteries were discharging, and his spares were in his backpack. He went to move forward but found that he couldn’t. He couldn’t step back, either. He was stuck.
He relaxed his body, willing his bones to become molten, but it was no use. He regarded his own reflection, staring back at him as if from an infinite distance and at the same time startlingly close. And then he started, seeing his father’s reflection as well. But that was impossible. There was only room for one person, and barely that, where he was. Nevertheless, there Gideon was, looking not at him but at his own reflection. It was like stumbling into a darkened traveling carnival and finding himself in a fun house, constructed of mirrors that distorted reality. Reaching out, he pressed his palm against the perfectly smooth wall, blotting out his father’s reflection. His own was obscured as well.
His torch beam flickered again; he took his hand away to fiddle with it. That’s when he noticed something odd: Gideon’s reflection didn’t look like a reflection at all. He squinted, peering at the wall. He saw his father moving, just as if...
Reversing his grip on the torch, he slammed the back end of it against the wall as hard as he was able considering the cramped quarters. Jagged lines appeared in the wall, radiating from the spot he had hit. Aiming for ground zero, he smashed the torch into the wall again and again.
It shattered as if it were made of dark glass.
Then he stepped through into the netherworld beyond.
18
Valletta, Malta: Present Day
“STOP!” AYLA SNAPPED. “YOU’RE HOVERING OVER ME LIKE I’m sick.”
“You are sick.” Bravo leaned in closer. “Or you were.” He held out his hands. “Let’s find out which it is.”
She slipped her hands onto his, palm to palm. He didn’t enclose them but let them rest on his hands, as if he and Ayla were playing a game of slap hands.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“Cold hands, warm heart.” But the smile she attempted was full of fear. Last year, just around the time they boarded one of the Gnostic Observatines’ private jets Bravo had called for to take them to New York, she had regained full knowledge of what had happened to her from the time she had held the manuscript in the lab at Addis Ababa to that moment.
“You’re clear,” Bravo said, lifting his hands from hers. “Not to worry.”
Except he himself was worried. His thoughts were filled with Emma. He was in an agony of not knowing. What pain must she be in? Was she still alive in the state that he knew her? Was she already gone, gobbled up by the Fallen?
They were at present on the wide veranda of a hotel in Valletta. The sun was down, the Mediterranean night soft as velvet. A gentle breeze swept in from North Africa. The stars were out, looking down on them as if with contempt.
“I don’t need a penny to divine your thoughts,” Ayla said. “You’re worried about Emma.”
He nodded miserably. “I feel as if we should try to find her as quickly as possible. Then I remind myself what she almost did to me. Going up against the Fallen inside her without a way to protect ourselves and save her would be sheer madness.”
Ayla indicated Elias, stretched out on a rattan sofa on the other side of the veranda. “The blue flame drove her back once. Why not again? Maybe if he applied more of it the flame would consume the Fallen.”
“And what if it consumed her as well?” He shook his head. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to put Elias in mortal danger. And as for Emma... how on earth do we exorcise the demon out of her without killing her?”
Ayla, keen beyond measure when it came to divining what was in the human heart, said, “Bravo, there’s something you’re not telling me, something vital.”
Bravo looked away for a moment. When his gaze resettled on her she was taken aback by the sorrow and pain it contained.
“Bravo, what is it? Please tell me.”
“I don’t understand what happened.” His voice was low and rough, a tone she had never heard before. “How did Emma read the Testament? Why did she read it when I explicitly told her not to?”
Ayla looked at him. “Your sister was already compromised by the Fallen. That must have compelled her to ignore your warning.”
He nodded. “She was not equipped—” He broke off abruptly, swung his gaze away again, looking out across the lawns, into the heavy night. He came back to her slowly, almost reluctantly. “According to the Nihilus, the Testament is evil in more ways than we can imagine. For those who come at it unprepared, unprotected, the words of Lucifer slowly turn a reader’s mind toward its ulti
mate darkness.”
Ayla’s sharply indrawn breath was like another arrow in his heart. “You mean Emma...” She could hardly get the words out. “You mean you believe Emma is already lost?”
“Not yet,” he said, “but soon.”
“How long?”
“Two days, three at the most. The Nihilus was quite clear on the subject. The time to turning depends on the inner strength of the reader.”
“Then we have three days. Emma is very strong, Bravo. You saw to that.”
That much was true, anyway. But, at the moment, it seemed cold comfort. “I don’t think we can do it, Ayla. I don’t think we have enough time to save her before she becomes... she becomes our implacable enemy, becomes one of the Fallen.”
“We’ll find a way,” Ayla said, but she shuddered nevertheless. “I know we will. I have faith in you—in us.”
She saw his face go gray and he winced. Placing her palm against his swollen cheek, she said, “How much does it hurt?”
“Less when you do that.”
She ignored his compliment. “I understand you not taking the painkillers; they screw with your cognitive process. But have you been taking your antibiotics?”
“I have.
“Ayla—”
“Shhh,” she said. “Just relax.”
Elias gave a little snort. Even in sleep he clutched the bronze rood. His chest rose and fell in slow rhythm; his expression was peaceful. Bravo’s eyes closed, his breathing slowed almost to that of the boy.
“Ayla.” His voice was soft, dreamy.
“I’m here.”
“Turn your thoughts toward Elias.”
“What? Why?”
“Just do it. Please.”
His silken tone rippled through her; unaccountably, his use of her name compelled her to comply.
“Don’t look at him,” Bravo whispered. “See him in your mind.”
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