Danielle had never been particularly oversexed. Although she did enjoy sex, it was not first and foremost in her life as with so many of the women she knew. And she could not remember ever having experienced a ‘nocturnal orgasm’. Until last night, that is. She tried to put the experience out of her mind, but the effort was futile.
She slipped into the shower, making the last few minutes of it a cold one. After getting out, she put her makeup on. It didn’t take her long because Danielle’s natural beauty did not require much embellishment. A little dark eye shadow and mascara to offset her blondness. A touch of lipstick and that was that.
Danielle was a small woman—five two and barely one hundred pounds—with natural blonde hair that had just enough wave to give her the body she liked without perming it. She liked her hair long, but for work she usually wore it up in a French twist or sometimes pulled back in a braid. Her eyes were blue, large and expressive in a small oval face accentuated by high cheekbones, her nose small with a slight up-turn, her lips full, her teeth perfect. (Grampy Joe had seen to that with countless visits to the dentist and orthodontist while she was growing up). He believed you could tell volumes about a person based on the condition of their teeth. Danielle was not at all certain of this but she was grateful that he had been diligent in seeing to her dental care.
Danielle returned to the bedroom where she dressed in jeans and a light cotton blouse. She did not bother to dry her hair on this morning, nor did she braid it or twist it up. Instead she simply combed it wet, certain that in this Florida heat it would be dry in five minutes or less.
She put the chamois wrapped object in her pocket and left her apartment. She took the elevator down to ground level, walking through the echoing basement of the condominium complex to her car, a bright red BMW, her one and only extravagance.
Grampy Joe’s memorial service wasn’t until two this afternoon so she decided to go to work for a few hours to try to get things organized in preparation for her journey. She had to stop and catch her breath when these thoughts struck her.
Journey?
It was true, damn it. She’d known it from the moment she’d touched the object. It was as if it had been waiting there in that hidden cubby all these years for her to find, and now her true destiny, her true purpose in life had finally been cemented.
She spent the morning at the hospital talking to friends, colleagues and patients, trying as best she could to explain why she was going away, all the while knowing that it was herself she was trying to convince. She did not tell them what was actually going on, of course. How could she? The truth was preposterous, perhaps even insane, and if she’d mentioned her real motivations to her superior, a small bespectacled man by the name of Dr. Weldon Frey he would probably have had her committed.
Oh yeah, Weldon, by the way, I’m leaving because I’m going to join a man whom I don’t even know exists. A man who makes me come in my dreams like I’ve never come before, a man who I’m going with to find and help the new messiah save the world from greedy and destructive forces. And afterwards we’re going to travel in a beam of blue light to a strange foreign land with three suns and fields of amber grain. And by the way, Weldon, I know all of this because a magical object shaped like a pyramid told me so. And you ought to see what else the object can do. When you touch it, it pulses in sync with your heartbeat and gives you a direct link to past, present and future. And believe me you don’t want to see the future.
Sure, that would do the trick. She decided against this strategy and instead explained to him that following her grandfather’s funeral this afternoon she was embarking on a little vacation. That she needed to get away, that she had been planning a vacation to Paris in two weeks anyway and that she would just leave a little earlier.
“Will you still go to Paris?” Dr. Frey asked in a careful tone.
“No, I don’t think so. Those were plans Greg and I had, and since then we’ve had a little . . . falling out.”
“Oh.” Dr. Frey gave a sage nod. “Sorry to hear that. Where will you go then?”
“I don’t know,” Danielle replied. “I haven’t decided yet.” This, at least, was the truth.
“Are you all right, Danielle?” Dr. Frey asked with concern.
“I’ve never been better, Weldon. My grandfather’s death has opened my eyes to some harsh truths, and I’m just stepping back and looking at life from a different angle. That’s all. When you’re young I don’t think you’re actually aware of your own mortality until it comes up and slaps you square in the face. Seeing Grampy Joe dead like that made me realize that life is fleeting and there are certain things a person must do to complete his mission in life, so to speak . . .”
Danielle’s voice trailed off when she saw the look of concern on Dr. Frey’s face. She knew that he had sensed the change in her, but strangely she didn’t care. She wanted to laugh out loud with triumph but knew that it would be the wrong thing to do.
“Do you believe in destiny, Weldon? Do you believe that each individual has a place in history that’s cast long before that person is ever born?”
Dr. Frey viewed Danielle for a long moment, as if he were attempting to decipher her enigmas through the intense depth of her eyes. “If you’re asking me what I think about your life, Danielle, it’s not my place to comment.”
“Do comment, Dr. Frey.”
“Okay, then. You’re doing wonderful work here. I don’t have to tell you that. But obviously you’re not . . . happy. I can see that now.”
Danielle did not reply. Her emotions were much too complex to be labeled happy or unhappy. That was too black and white. There was lots of gray area that even she did not fully understand. How could someone else have understood?
“I think that this is your destiny,” Frey said in an obvious attempt to convince her to stay on. “The hospital, the patients, the staff, they all count on you. You’re kind, you’re gentle, you have a rare confidence in your abilities that does not translate into cockiness or smugness as it does with so many other doctors, instead it gives you an air of self-assurance and competence that’s very reassuring and almost . . . well, angelic.”
Danielle blinked in surprise. She didn’t like that word all of a sudden and the sound of it made her recoil in shock, and a feeling of deep dread washed over her in repellent waves.
“Did I say something wrong, Danielle?” Dr. Frey asked, seeing the dark look on her face.
“No! No, Weldon, it’s just that, well, I had no idea you thought of me in such a way. Angelic is not the way I would have described myself.”
“It’s true, though, Danielle.”
“No it’s not, Weldon. I’m human. I have human faults. Just like everyone else.” Danielle turned away in embarrassment. “But thank you just the same.”
Dr. Frey’s expression remained steadfast. “And furthermore I believe most of the staff feels exactly the same way. I get a sense about you, Danielle. I . . . wouldn’t want you to do anything . . . rash.”
“You don’t think I intend to come back, do you?”
“I don’t know what I think. I know that the murder of your grandfather has devastated you. I just don’t think it would be prudent for you to react too harshly to the tragedy, that’s all. Are you contemplating not returning?”
Danielle had to stop and catch her breath. The man had read her like an open book. It was crazy, no doubt about it. The craziest thing she had ever considered. It was just not like her. She’d always been so pragmatic, practical to a fault. Everybody knew that. The funny part about it, though, was, she wasn’t contemplating at all.
Something bad was going to happen to the world. She didn’t know what exactly but she knew that it was true and she felt strongly that she was destined to be somehow a part of whatever it was. Good or bad, she needed to get on with it. Her destiny no longer remained here in this hospital with these wonderful people who had helped to shape her into the person she was. Her true destiny lay out there somewhere in an unknown time
and place.
Grampy Joe never lied but he certainly had died. Murdered. By individuals or factions beyond her comprehension. And through his death he had given her a gift. And now her life was laid out before her like a roadmap, and the urgency and exhilaration she felt overrode every other emotion her mind and body could conjure. She knew what she was about to do. Every part of it was somehow planned out in her instinctive regions, and it had been done almost without her assistance. She was about to go to that bank, draw out all her savings, empty the safe deposit box of its strange contents and hit the road. It was insane. And she had no proof that what she sought even existed. She only had her intuition, her gut, and those things told her, in complete contradiction to what her intellect said, that it was all real and that she’d better get moving because time was short.
Trust the object, it will show you the way.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Just give me some time and I’ll make a decision. I’ve already arranged for Drs. Bernard and Salinger to take over my duties while I’m gone.”
And so Danielle did the completely irrational. Following Grampy Joe’s memorial service she turned his house-key over to members of the church, people who were happy to take and distribute his remaining possessions to the needy. She instructed them to lock the house after leaving and told them she would be in touch.
Afterward she went back to her condo and closed the place up, taking only necessary items, clothing and personal things. She called the power and phone companies with instructions for them to temporarily discontinue service. The bank closed at five and she just made it, drawing out a portion of her savings and retrieving the file from the safe deposit box. She had checks and credit cards and she took a portion in traveler’s checks. Afterward she hit the road, heading north toward the Florida Panhandle where she picked up Interstate 10 and headed west toward Alabama, Mississippi and beyond, not knowing where she was bound but confident that instinct would lead the way. She crossed the Florida border into Alabama at ten fifteen and stopped for a late dinner. Afterward she hit the road and continued west, onward toward her destiny.
CHAPTER 3
Somewhere east of Burbank, Texas, 2:15 am, July 4th.
Two hours and sixteen minutes after the arrival.
Jason La Chance had had his fill of war, of senseless death and wholesale destruction. Twenty-four hours home from Afghanistan and he wasn’t actually in a hurry to go home. Home was Maine, but there was little waiting for him there. While in Afghanistan his only surviving parent, an alcoholic mother, had died. He’d gone home on a whirlwind emergency leave and buried her. The leave was supposed to have lasted thirty days, but after just a week Jason had caught a military hop back to the war zone. His troops needed him more than an empty house and a dead mother did.
Jason barely remembered his father. He’d died when Jason was six, crushed beneath a truckload of logs when the winch he was using to cinch the load had failed.
Jason had no siblings, no wife or children; he’d had a girlfriend when he went off to war but she’d soon found someone tangible to keep her warm. There was a house waiting for him in Maine, the one his dead mother had left for him. If you could call it a house. More a rundown double wide with peeling paint on an acre of scrubland bordered by swamp. It was Jason’s if he wanted it. He wasn’t sure he did.
He’d joined the Army after graduating from college with a degree in wildlife management. A year later he graduated from officer’s candidate school as an infantry second lieutenant and was put in charge of a company of three hundred men bound for Iraq. They were misfits mostly, kids without jobs, some without motivation, others too gung ho for their own good. Most had no clue about what they were getting themselves into. After his first tour in Iraq Jason had signed up for another, and then a third, this one in Afghanistan, as if war was just a walk in the park. Nothing to it.
In truth Jason was a nurturer, a protector, and he had mistakenly believed that by being there in the thick of it he could somehow have an influence over the lives of those he’d vowed to lead and protect. But it wasn’t to be. War was cruel and random and the harsh realities kept smacking him upside the head. By the end of his third tour he had become disillusioned and weary of flirting with the reaper. He’d seen some of his best men blown to bits by IEDs and he’d narrowly escaped death himself from a sniper’s bullet. He still wore the scar on his left chest where an AK-47 round had nearly punctured his Kevlar vest, shattering three of his ribs and collapsing his lung. After three long tours Jason La Chance came to his senses and got out.
After processing out of the army through Fort Hood, Texas he had considered buying a car and driving to Maine, but in a moment of insane inspiration he thought better of it. He needed time to gather his thoughts, to clear his head. What better way to do it than to hitch home. Stupid, right? Here’s a guy with three years of army combat pay and two reenlistment bonuses squirreled away in the bank and he decides to hitchhike.
Screw it. That’s what he wanted to do.
Before leaving Fort Hood he shipped his duffel bag with nearly all of his worldly possessions (which hadn’t been much) to his mother’s address in Maine. His address in Maine. It was still hard for Jason to wrap his brain around the fact that his mother was gone and the place was now his. He had left instructions for the mail carrier to leave the stuff on the front porch.
The only thing Jason carried with him was a small backpack with a couple of changes of clothes, toothbrush and paste, shaving gear (which he was seriously doubting he’d use) his wallet which contained three hundred dollars in cash and one credit card. He wore a watch on his left wrist; a good watch, not expensive, but good, waterproof, with an illuminated dial, and, around his lower leg, beneath his trouser cuff rested a canvas sheath that contained an army combat knife. Paranoid? Not really. Although Jason was very good at hand to hand combat, he knew that it was a dangerous world and sometimes you just needed a little backup.
Around his neck Jason wore something his grandfather had given him before he’d died. Granddad had told him that it was a powerful and important talisman and that someday he would need it. Jason’s mother had balked at the old man’s silly romanticism, but Granddad had been adamant in his belief in the talisman’s powers. “Don’t let anyone take it from you,” he’d told Jason in a stern voice. “It was meant for you and only you.” The last thing Granddad said to Jason before he’d died was. “Trust the object. It will show you the way.”
Perhaps it already had, Jason thought. Three combat tours, two purple hearts, both a silver and a bronze star and here he was, alive and walking on American soil. Life was pretty damned strange.
The object in question was a small golden pendant in the shape of a triangle. There were markings on it that looked like nothing else Jason had ever seen. He thought they might be Egyptian hieroglyphs, although Granddad had never told him that. No matter, it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and because it was a gift from his dead grandfather Jason had coveted it. Sometimes on the desert late at night while gazing up at the stars Jason would pull it from beneath his collar and clutch it in his hand and think about his grandfather, who had been a very wise and mysterious man. And sometimes if he held the object tightly enough, Jason imagined he saw beautiful things, strange things, and sometimes disturbing things. And on occasion he imagined that the object was glowing, pulsing in sync with his beating heart. When this happened he would quickly put it back beneath his shirt and try to forget about what he’d seen.
Jason had been twelve years old when his grandfather had given him the object, and he had worn it through high school and then college and finally through his three tours of duty in the Middle East, rarely taking it from around his neck, never flaunting it and never forgetting what his grandfather had told him. “Trust the object. It will show you the way.”
Jason’s mother had been overly fascinated by the object, and Jason knew that she’d wanted to get her hands on it, perhaps hawk it down at the l
ocal pawn shop to buy booze. But Granddad had been adamant in his insistence that it was meant for his grandson and only him. Jason’s mother had respected the old man’s wishes, even during her darkest days of alcoholism and rage, and this had surprised Jason a little. He always figured she’d find a way to get it from him.
The object had been quiet for a very long time now and Jason suspected that the only real power in talismans was the power of individual faith. And after the past four and a half years he wasn’t sure how much of that he had left.
Fifty miles east of the town of Rusk, Texas, and two rides into his journey Jason was making his way along a deserted stretch of Highway 84. His ‘very good watch, the waterproof one with the illuminated dial’ told him it was two twenty am. The thought struck him that it was the fourth of July. “Happy freaking Independence Day,” he said under his breath.
A small but steady warm breeze blew across the desert. Above him a million stars shone like fine diamond chips against the blackness of an enormous night sky. He’d gotten used to the stars in the Middle East. For the most part there were no city lights to block their illumination, just miles and miles of nothing all the way to the horizon, which gave him views so spectacular they left him virtually breathless. Jason enjoyed being under the dome of the galaxy, as he liked to call it, allowing him a species of comfort that nothing else could. When most of the guys in his unit had been indifferent to the night sky and its vast mysteries, Jason had been comforted by it, not because of any earthbound faith, but for reasons much more complex. For Jason it put things in perspective, made him realize that we were not alone in the grand scheme. He didn’t know if he believed in aliens exactly, but he knew in his heart that God would not have created such a vast space if he hadn’t intended to fill it with life. It made him feel less alone to think that there were others out there somewhere, perhaps more intelligent than us, civilizations that had managed somehow to eclipse all the destructive tendencies of humans. Probably a naïve belief, but what the hell, a guy had to believe in something.
Song of Ariel: A Blue Light Thriller (Book 2) (Blue Light Series) Page 5
