by M. J. Rose
What if I am that firstborn reincarnated, Malachai had mused. Wouldn’t that ruin my father’s life, to know that now? That he had me all along and lost me twice?
Yes, this was all Malachai’s composition: his symphony of revenge.
“So are you going to give me what you owe me or not?” the kidnapper grunted.
“Let go of Quinn,” Josh said.
“You shut up,” Carl said to Josh, and jutted his chin toward Malachai. “This is between him and me.”
Malachai took a step closer to the altar, and then another. “Let go of her.”
“And give up the only currency I have? I don’t give a shit what else goes down, man. I want the money!” he screamed.
Josh understood the rest of it now. The kidnapper was supposed to exchange the child for the stones and then get away. Malachai would be there in the church with Josh and Gabriella. Not a suspect. One of the child’s saviors.
And then later—that night or the next day—there would be another exchange, and Malachai would retrieve the Memory Stones and the translations. They would belong to him, and he could do what he’d been waiting to do for so long—he’d rape the past.
Or at least he would try.
“So do I get the money or do I take the kid?” he snarled at Malachai. “This kid belongs to a professor—I’m sure she’ll pay to get her back! You’ll pay, won’t you, Mrs. Chase?” He asked, calling out to the back of the church.
“Yes!” Her voice was strong and sure and tortured.
Quinn, either from the sound of her mother’s voice or the pain of her captor’s fingers digging into her shoulder, started to cry.
“Shut up!” Carl screamed at her.
It looked to Josh as if the man’s nerves were starting to fray.
The crying grew louder, filling up the church.
Carl trained his gun on Quinn. “Do you have any idea how sick I am of listening to this kid wailing? Of getting jerked around? I want my money. Now.”
Quinn’s sobs escalated.
Josh stared at the kidnapper’s finger on the trigger, but out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed Malachai moving slowly toward him. “Give me the stones, Josh,” he whispered as he reached out. “Let me handle this.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Carl screamed, brandishing the gun.
Quinn’s sobs reached a level that was earsplitting.
Josh didn’t know what he saw that foretold the accident, but he knew what was going to happen a split second before it happened, and he threw himself forward, shoving Quinn back and out of the way and out of the path of the kidnapper’s gun.
He heard a shot and then its echo. As the echo died out he heard the sound of Quinn crying, and as she ran past him, he felt her body fan his face, a little breeze. He smelled fire. He heard Quinn shrieking out for her mother.
She was fine, he thought. Finally, she was fine.
From somewhere behind him, Josh heard Gabriella emit a soft, small moan. The pain that she expelled with that one sound must have weighed a million pounds.
Josh didn’t feel anything except surprise until the burning started, and then he could smell the jasmine-and-sandalwood perfume and the exhilarating feeling of time turning on itself and washing the pain away…
Julius is running fast through the streets of Rome. He can’t go fast enough. He stayed in the temple too long with his brother. Wasted—as it turned out—precious time trying to save Drago’s life, only to fail. Only to lose him. He will not lose her, too, he thinks. Sabina has been underground now for twenty hours. Her air will be starting to run out. She will be waiting for him. Worried. Not understanding why he is taking so long. Will she start digging? Can she get out of the tomb by herself with just the knife? Or will she pass out from lack of air before she thinks to start digging?
He can hear the footsteps behind him.
All he can do is go faster.
Faster.
Faster.
He has to get to the tunnel. It will only take a quarter of an hour to crawl through to the back wall of the tomb, where he will finally dig through to her side, inside the tomb, and get her out, and then together they’ll crawl back through the tunnel and disappear while it is still dark.
They’ve arranged for a safe hiding place for the night, where they will wait until Sabina’s sister, Claudia, brings the baby in the morning, along with her half of the Memory Stones, and they’ll spend the rest of their lives with Rome behind them.
Through the thick curtain of the centuries, Josh heard Gabriella saying, “Hurry, he’s been shot. He’s bleeding.”
He turns the corner and sees the thugs waiting for him. They must have figured out which way he was running and come around the other side to cut him off. There are six of them. Laughing and spitting out their rough epithets. He can’t turn back. The only chance he has is to do what they won’t expect.
Julius gulps down a huge mouthful of air and then takes off, running faster than he thought he’d be able to, almost flying, speeding right toward them, not caring that they aren’t moving. They will. Their instincts will push them to the right or to the left and he’ll slip through.
He sees a knife flash, but he doesn’t let it stop him.
Sabina is waiting. She can’t have much air left.
He runs faster.
They are laughing.
“Your temple is gone, do you know that?”
“All of them, gone.”
He runs at them, but he was wrong. One of them isn’t stepping aside. He lunges forward.
The blade flashes.
Julius feels the pain. Doubles over. Gags. They all laugh, congratulate one another. One of them kicks him. Blood drips from the wound in his side, black in the night. One of them sees it, though, and points.
“He’s making a sacrifice to his gods, his blood on the altar. Let the stuck pig go, let him bleed to death.”
They leave. Sound leaves. Julius stands up, staggers. The pain makes him double over. It doesn’t matter. It is only a minor irritation, a nuisance. He has to get to the tunnel he dug himself. He has to crawl through it and save Sabina, who is waiting for him to rescue her so they can, together, rescue their daughter, and together, the three of them, start a new life, so he stumbles on.
Gabriella was calling his name. “Josh? Josh? Can you hear me?”
He looked up at her, wanting so badly to stay in the present with her.
“Josh?” She was holding Quinn in her arms. The little girl stared down at him. There was a flame in the child’s wide eyes, burning into him, and Quinn was whimpering. “Daddy, Daddy, nooooo. Daddy, noooo.”
Julius can see Sabina holding their baby in the minutes before she passed her over to her sister. He had bent down over his child—a goodbye. Her eyes looked up at him. There was a flame in her fierce eyes, burning into him. How could such a tiny baby look at him like that? he’d thought.
He was back in the present, forgetting all of that, remembering, there was more than one criminal here, more than one man who must be stopped. Josh saw Malachai’s face moving out of his line of sight. He saw his eyes flash the same way they had always flashed whenever he’d talked about the stones. Josh needed to push up through the pain to tell them that Malachai was getting away, that he was taking the stones with him. Josh had to break through this haze of time folding back on itself to tell them to go after him, tell them Malachai was the one who had plotted out this whole charade, that he had the stones now, and he was getting away.
He had all of the stones now and he was getting away.
He had all of the power.
He was dangerous. Not just in the present. But for the future.
But when Josh tried to speak, all that came out was another sound: a long, drawn-out, soft shhhhh as he tried to quiet this child who was part of another child who was part of him, but Quinn continued crying, saying the same word over and over, “Daddy, Daddy.”
So it had been Quinn whom he had been fated to help. No
t Rachel. Not Gabriella. It was the baby he and Sabina had not lost as much as saved. Their child. Now this child. She had been saved again.
“Daddy, Daddy.”
The ringing was back. But this was a different sound. Circling closer. When he realized what it was, Josh tried to smile. The siren meant Bettina had understood what he’d silently asked her to do. Everything would be fine now. Malachai wasn’t paying attention to the sound; there would be no time for him to get away. The police would stop him. It was all fine now. The kidnapper. Malachai. They’d both be trapped.
It takes whatever strength he has left, but somehow Julius manages to drag himself down into the tunnel. The pain from his wound has turned to fire and the fire is devouring him. His insides are aflame. He gasps for a breath but he can’t get any air in his lungs. He can’t breathe. Julius cannot breathe. Panic fuses with pain. Sabina is waiting for him just at the end of this passageway, on the other side of that dirt wall. He tries to inch forward toward it. He can’t. Can’t even lift his head from the grime and muck and stones. So, this will be his tomb, too. This dank, dark narrow space. Here he will turn to dust and bones, rubble and ruin only a dozen breaths from Sabina. A dozen breaths that he doesn’t have.
His pain was ebbing, turning into colors that were swirling behind his eyes. His skin buzzed. Josh was made of blinding light, enough to illuminate a whole city, a light that invigorated him even as his eyes closed and he slipped into the familiar zone of another life, of a life in the past that had gone wrong, that he had finally put right.
If he died now, would someone see that strange aura above his own head?
What life would he live next?
They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes. For Josh, it was all of them, the people he’d photographed, the people he’d known, the people he’d loved, the people he’d been, so many people. The human chorus. The music of souls.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
While The Reincarnationist is a work of fiction, whenever possible I relied on the facts of history and preexisting theories about the subject of reincarnation to construct the backbone of this tale.
Life in ancient Rome, paganism, early Christianity and ancient beliefs in reincarnation, as well as the Vestal Virgins, are as history recorded them. So are the descriptions of Vestals’ duties, domicile and temple, as well as the rules they lived by. Their vows of chastity were sacrosanct, and they were buried alive for breaking them.
I have taken liberties when discussing their involvement with the Memory Stones—which are wholly my own invention, as are the Memory Tools.
Many of the locations in this novel exist. The Riftstone Arch is in Central Park; the Church of the Capuchins is where I describe it in Rome. Several tombs of Vestals have been discovered in various locations around Rome, but Sabina’s was not found, as there is no record of a Vestal by that name.
The Phoenix Foundation does not, unfortunately, exist. And while Malachai and Dr. Talmage are entirely fictitious, I was inspired by the amazing Dr. Ian Stevenson, who has done past life regressions with over 2,500 children.
Josh, Natalie and Rachel experience past life regressions in ways that are similar to those of people I’ve met and read about, but their stories are entirely my invention.
My own reading and research into reincarnation theory has been an ongoing process, and what I described in these pages was culled from the tenets and writings of those who have studied and believed over thousands of years. Included at the end of this novel is a list of books for those of my readers who wish to delve further into this fascinating concept.
Please visit Reincarnationist.org for more information.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This was my ninth published novel and the one I spent the longest writing, since before I even knew I wanted to be a writer, when my mother first introduced me to the idea of reincarnation. I missed her a little less while I was working on this book and I’m certain she would have loved it best of all.
Since this book was first published in September, 2007, much has happened to it and for that I’d like to thank: Dan Conaway, my wonderful agent at Writers House, for taking on this book’s second life; Lou Pitt for stewarding The Reincarnationist through the labyrinth of Hollywood and onto TV sets as Past Life; and every single person at MIRA who worked so hard on this book’s behalf.
I’d also like to thank the people who gave me advice, research or moral support along the way: Mayapryia Long, Mara Nathan, Jenn Risko, Jerry Hooten, Carol Fitzgerald, Judith Curr, Mark Dressler, Barry Eisler, Amanda’s father, Suzanne Beecher, Mark Nichols, David Hewson, Shelly King, Emily Kischell, Stan Pottinger, Elizabeth’s husband, Simon Lipskar, Katherine Neville, the Rome-Arch Listserv, Meryl Moss and all the International Thriller Writers.
My gratitude to each bookseller, librarian and every reader.
As always to my loving family: Gigi, Jay, Jordan, my father and Ellie.
And to Doug Scofield, for the calm in the storm, the eternal optimism and the music.
SUGGESTED READING LIST
Beloff, John. Parapsychology: A Concise History. St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Bowman, Carol. Children’s Past Lives: How Past Life Memories Affect Your Child. Bantam, 1998.
Chitkara, M. G. Buddhism, Reincarnation and Dalai Lamas of Tibet. A.P.H. Publishing Corporation, 1998.
Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death: The Burden of Proof. Harmony, 2006.
Cott, Jonathan. The Search for Omm Sety: A Story of Eternal Love. Warner Books, 1989.
Darling, David J. Zen Physics: The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation. HarperCollins, 1996.
Faulkner, Raymond, translator. The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Book of Going Forth by Day. Chronicle Books, 2000.
Fenwick, Peter, and Elizabeth Fenwick. The Truth in the Light: An Investigation of Over 300 Near-Death Experiences. Berkley Publishing Group, 1997.
Gauld, Alan. A History of Hypnotism. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Head, Joseph and Sylvia Cranston. Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery. Julian Press, 1977.
Jung, Carl Gustav. Man and His Symbols. Pan Mac-Millan, 1968.
Jung, Carl Gustav. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Pantheon, 1989.
LaGrand, Louis E. After Death Communication: Final Farewells. Llewellyn Publications, 1997.
Sabom, Michael B. Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. Harper & Row, 1982.
Shroder, Tom. Old Souls: The Scientific Evidence for Past Lives. Simon & Schuster, 1999.
Stevenson, Ian. Children who Remember Previous Lives. University of Virginia Press, 1987.
Stevenson, Ian. Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects. (2 vols.) Praeger Scientific Publishers, 1997.
Stevenson, Ian. Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy. University of Virginia Press, 1984.
Tucker, Jim. Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children’s Memories of Previous Lives. St. Martin’s Press, 2005.
Weiss, Brian L. Many Lives, Many Masters: The True Story of a Prominent Psychiatrist, His Young Patient, and the Past-Life Therapy That Changed Both Their Lives. Warner Books, 1988.
Woolger, Roger J. Other Lives, Other Selves. Crucible, 1987.
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ISBN-13: 9781460391587
THE REINCARNATIONIST
Copyright © 2007 by Melisse Shapiro.
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