Cursed Presence (Trilogy of the Chosen Book 2)

by J. M. LeDuc

  “It’s the last place they’ll look,” Brent said. “Now, keep your voice down.”

  “So, what’s the plan? Do we wait here for back up?”

  Brent bruised and bleeding, cut the stuffing out of the back seat of an armored transport. “None coming,” he said.

  Jonathan jerked forward, trying to sit up. The pain had a different plan.

  “Don’t move, sir,” Brent said. “You caught some shrapnel in your back and your head’s in bad shape.”

  “If there is no one coming, what do you propose?”

  “The objective hasn’t changed,” Brent said. “We’re getting out of this hell hole.”

  Swain could sense the intensity in his voice. He decided not to push further.

  “My leg’s busted up. I need to triage it before we make our next move,” Brent mumbled.

  Jonathan’s sight slowly returned. Blurry, but able to see, he watched Brent cut a steel spring from the seat frame. Using a lighter, he heated the metal until it was a fiery red. Without flinching he stuck the wire into the hole in his leg and cauterized the wound. The injured Swain was baffled when Brent emitted nary a sound.

  The bleeding stopped, Brent used the stuffing to pack the wound, wrapped his leg in duct tape and laid down, in the seat, to rest. They both drifted off to sleep.

  Some time later, Jonathan Swain opened his eyes. Blinking, he could tell his facial bones were broken. Through blurred vision he realized that he was alone. Fear and anxiety overrode the pain and he willed himself to sit up.

  As he began to open the door, Brent spoke. “Please don’t, sir.”

  Startled, Swain turned quicker than his busted body wanted and pain shot through his chest.

  “Your ribs are broken. Take shallow breaths and try not to move.”

  Through gritted teeth, Jonathan responded. “Where did you go?”

  “A little reconnaissance. The guards think we died in the blast. That’s our window of opportunity. We need to move now, while it’s still dark. The morning light will give us away.”

  “Get yourself out. There is no way I can travel. My eyes are no good and I can hardly breathe.”

  “That’s a negative, sir. I’ll be your eyes and legs. I just need you to do exactly as you’re told. Affirmative?”

  Swain nodded.

  Two days later, Brent made it to an SIA safe-house, handed Jonathan Swain over to U.S. operatives and faked his own death.

  The memory faded back from once it came, which brought Brent back into the present. “Why me, Amadeus?” he asked, continuing to rub his thigh.

  “I can’t be sure, but I have a theory. From what I have been able to comprehend, the Enlightened One will come from the line of Noah’s chosen. That means he has to be an Ambassador of the Endowment. It is my theory that The Dark One wants to face off against someone of high moral and ethical fortitude. It would make his victory even greater. There is also the formula. If Lucifer ever gets his hands on it, it really would be hell on earth.”

  The conversation continued a while longer. “Ambassador, you have been given a lot to try to digest. I suggest you pray on it and ask God to help you make up your mind.”

  Brent thanked the Cardinal. “I’ll get back to you with my decision,” he said.

  With the cardinal off the line, Brent invited Lucille to take a seat. Chloe stood, pulling out the chair adjacent to hers. As she ambled to her seat, Lucille seemed a little shaky. Brent looked at her. She’d aged in the hour she’d been gone.

  “Lucille, please tell me what you know about all this. I can tell whatever it is, it’s weighing heavily on your heart.”

  Placing the small chest on the table, Lucille prayed a silent prayer before she began. “What Cardinal Bullini has told you is true. You were chosen, predestined, to be the Enlightened One.”

  “How do you…”

  “Please allow me to say all that I have to say before you ask questions. I’m afraid that if I stop, I won’t be able to continue.”

  Brent nodded.

  “I know this to be true because I was foretold of your destiny by the Archangel Gabriel before your birth.” She looked away and swallowed hard. “I know how your mind works, so I know you’ve had your suspicions. You probably surmised that I’m your mother. Those suspicions are well-founded. I am your real mother.”

  Chloe squeezed Brent’s hand in silent support. He did not squeeze back. Instead, he lowered his head.

  “Your grandfather, Jacob,” Lucille continued, “did not lie to you about the car accident. There was a traitor in the inner circle of the Endowment. On the day your father was to be named as the next Ambassador, he was killed in a car bombing.

  “Your grandfather had wanted to take us out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate the occasion. As usual, I was running late, so I told your father to get in the car and I’d join him in a moment. The next thing I remember was the explosion. I could feel the reverberations through my entire body, and I knew immediately what happened.”

  Lucille wiped the tears as they streamed down her face. “I was a complete basket case after your dad was murdered. I couldn’t shake the feeling that you’d be next. The Endowment had been in our family for more than a century and I knew that whoever had killed your father would come after us next. Your grandfather tried to calm my fears, and contacted a man in the inner circle who also happened to be a government agent. That man was Joseph Conklin.

  “Joseph, with the help of SIA operatives, found the leak and removed it. He didn’t know however, if information had been passed to other potential threats. That’s when your grandfather and Joseph staged my death by sinking our sailboat off the Pointe with, supposedly, me on board. Joseph was named the next Ambassador, with the stipulation that you would succeed him. I only agreed to the plan when Jacob said that he would raise you. He figured that with the Endowment out of the family there would be little risk.

  “It was ten years later, the year you turned twelve that Joseph and I married.”

  Lucille looked up to see Brent staring down at the table. “Brent, look at me.” When he didn’t move, she repeated, “Brent, please look at me.” When he did, she continued. “I never stopped loving you, and I was always close by. I was the teacher’s aide when you were in kindergarten. I was your babysitter when you needed one. I always wore a disguise, but it was me. I was present when you graduated from high school and college and when you received your officer’s commission in the Army.”

  She reached across the table and placed her hands on top of Brent’s. She felt his muscles tense.

  “The last year of my life has been the happiest. I just hope you can forgive me.”

  Brent started to say something, but Lucille stopped him. “Not yet. I’m not finished. You promised and a man always keeps his promise.”

  Her words triggered something in Brent’s distant memory. Images flashed through his mind as he recalled hearing those exact words, spoken by many different women in his life—the teacher’s aide, the lunch lady, the librarian (the woman he looked up to, the one who started him thinking about becoming a librarian) and many others.

  The last person who said those words to him was Lucille, when he reunited with the Phantom Squad to rescue Chloe and Maddie from Donavan Ferric.

  “When you were chosen as a member of the Phantom Squad,” she said, “I lost track of you. But a day never passed that didn’t include prayers for your safety. I went to church every day and prayed for your safe return. I prayed for the day when I could tell you the whole truth. Most of all, I prayed for your love.”

  She slid the chest and envelope across the table. “In the chest you’ll find everything that pertains to The Enlightenment. No one has seen what’s inside since they were originally placed in the chest in the second century of Our Lord. It is said that if anyone but the Enlightened One should try to open it, death would befal
l them. The envelope contains a letter from Joseph. In a note he left for me in his will, he asked that I give this to you when this day came.”

  Brent accepted the chest and envelope with almost an inaudible ‘thank you.’

  He cleared his throat. “You were correct in assuming I knew you were my mother.”

  “How? When did you know?”

  “The night you were attacked in your townhouse. Just before I found you, I came across a broken picture frame in the hallway. I kicked it aside to sweep the shattered glass out of the way. When I did, a small picture slipped out from behind the large photo of you and Joseph. It was a picture of a younger you, with your husband and a baby. At the time, I thought the man was Joseph. And the baby…well, I just figured that if you wanted to talk about it, you would.

  “Later that night, in the hospital, I took the photo out and looked at it, really looked at it. The child looked eerily familiar. But since my grandfather made sure to get rid of every picture taken before the ‘accident,’ I couldn’t quite place it. Then I looked at your husband. His features resembled Grandpa’s. That was my first clue. The second came the next day when you gave me your cross which acted as a key to the safe deposit box.”

  “What was it about my cross that made you suspect?”

  Brent reached in his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. Tucked between the leather and silk lining was the picture. He slipped it out and handed it to Lucille. “My dad was wearing the same cross in this photo.”

  Lucille’s eyes welled up when she looked at the picture. “I thought this was lost forever,” she said. “After Jake was killed, Jacob, for security reasons, made me destroy all of my pictures. I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them all, so I kept this small one and hid it behind the picture in the hallway. I never wanted to forget what a beautiful family God had given me.”

  “May I?” Chloe asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Lucille said and handed her the picture.

  “He was very handsome.”

  “Thank you. He looked a lot like Brent and even more like his father.”

  An awkward silence followed.

  Lucille again placed her hands on Brent’s, but this time he pulled away. “Brent?” she said.

  He gazed at her with moist, hollow eyes.

  “I was blessed to be raised by an amazing man, a man of strength and tenderness, a man who was quick to please and slow to anger. He was also a man of incredible ethical and moral fortitude, and yet, he was never judgmental of those who were less so. He didn’t just teach me how to live and love; he showed me. But, most of all, he was a man of faith. He looked to God for answers to the little things as well as the big, and he always thanked Him for all he had, even when he had very little. But…” he hesitated, then looked down at the picture. “…for all he was, he wasn’t my mother.”

  Brent looked into his mother’s eyes. “After I realized who you were, I was angry. I couldn’t understand how a mother, no matter the circumstances, could abandon her child.”

  Tears began to flow down Lucille’s face.

  “When I found out about the Endowment, I better understood why you did what you did and I thought I was all right with it. I knew that when the right time came, God would tell you to let me know.”

  “You thought…you were all right with it,” Lucille said.

  Brent squeezed his eyes shut, pushing away a tear. He looked from Lucille to Chloe and back to Lucille again. “I couldn’t ask God for a better family, or a greater gift than what I have in front of me, but I have some pent up emotions that I have to figure out before I can say or do anything”

  Brent sat, deep in thought. He looked at his mother and wife, a family he did not want to lose, yet wasn’t ready to fully accept.

  “Now what?” Chloe asked.

  “Now I need time to think,” Brent answered, tracing his fingers across the top of the chest.

  “Would you like for us to leave you alone?”

  “It’s me who needs to leave. I’ll go where I can clear my head.”

  The women looked at each other and, in unison, said, “The beach.”

  Brent didn’t want to smile, but couldn’t help it. She knows me well, he thought.

  Lucille looked at the chest. “What about this and the letter?”

  “You said it can’t be opened by anyone but the Enlightened One. Until I decide if that’s a road I want to travel, I won’t be able to, nor will I try to open it. You’ll have to hold onto it a little longer.”

  “Can we go with you?” Chloe asked.

  “I won’t stop you if you want to come. This decision has as much to do with the two of you as it does with me.”

  Brent told Maddie she wouldn’t be able to contact him for a while and left headquarters by way of the tunnel.

  Heading into the tunnel, he heard two sets of footsteps behind him.

  CHAPTER 32

  A gentle breeze blew in off the gulfstream when Brent arrived at the beach. A few scattered clouds shared an otherwise blue sky while the ocean, sparkling, greenish-blue, sent to shore barely a ripple of a wave.

  As a teenager, Brent hated this kind of day. No waves meant no surfing. This day, it was different. It was just what he’d hoped for; a tranquil ocean to help him clear his head and, more importantly, to help him hear God if and when He spoke.

  He left his shoes on the sand and walked to the water’s edge. He looked up, closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face as he stood where the water ran up the shore and broke over his toes before turning and receding back into the ocean.

  With eyes still closed, Brent’s senses grew keener. He felt the heat of the late morning sun warm not only his face and body, but also his soul. While the warmth of the heavens seemed to saturate his every cell, Brent raised his arms toward the glory of God.

  Almost immediately he felt lighter on his feet, as if the compression of earth’s gravity had less of an effect.

  He heard the water roll up towards his feet and was able to perfectly time the amplitude of the sound to the water’s contact to his skin. He heard seagulls and egrets fly overhead. Their sounds changed as they descended from sky to sea, hunting for their late-morning meal.

  Smells of the shore flooded his olfactory passages. Brent smelled the lingering scent of suntan oil and the ocean itself. Sounds and smells mixed with the textile feeling of the sand and water beneath his feet, intertwining with the heat of the sun and the gentle breeze caressing his face. Together, smell, sound and touch composed a symphony in his mind.

  His breathing slowed and became shallow. His pulse decreased in amplitude and rate while his heart beat with less effort and less often. He was soon lulled into a trance-like state. As his conscious thinking began to retract, his subconscious began to open up. He slowly dropped into a squat-like stance.

  Chloe and Lucille waited on the sand about fifty feet up the beach. Watching, Brent nearly put them into a trance as well. So intent were they at watching him that they were slow to notice the change in weather.

  The breeze was no longer gentle. It blew hard and cold.

  “Do you feel that?” Lucille asked.

  “Yeah, what’s up with the wind?” Chloe asked, brushing hair from her eyes. “It’s really starting to blow.”

  “It’s beginning.”

  “Huh? What’s beginning?”

  “Joseph warned of visible signs when the Enlightenment began. He said it would begin with changes in the weather. The wind picking up is just the start. Look up.”

  Chloe looked toward the sky. Thick, dark clouds rolled in and over each other, racing to see which one would reach Brent first.

  The waves also intensified. Gentle ripples present when Brent first arrived gave way to large swells, eight to ten feet high. Sets of waves changed from sweeping, high rolling crests and troughs to angry walls of water that cli
mbed almost straight up before they crashed in upon themselves. Simultaneously, the tide rose to a point where waves crashed directly in front of Brent. The more violent the weather became, the more peaceful he appeared.

  Soon, the beach was dark as night. Chloe looked to the sky again. Just north and south of them, skies were clear.

  “I have never witnessed anything like this before,” she yelled. Awestruck, Lucille said, “That’s because it’s not natural. This is an act of God!”

  Just when conditions couldn’t get worse, thunder and lightning exploded from the Clouds. No delay between them. Thunder rattled the ground at the very moment the skies lit up by flashes of lightning. Seconds later, the heavens let loose with rain. Hard and thick. It felt as though they stood under a waterfall.

  Chloe’s attention shot from the sky to Brent. Squinting to keep her vision clear, she pointed and yelled, “Look.”

  A cone of protection surrounded Brent. Directly above him was a beam of white light illuminating him. Within it, there was no thunder or lightning, no rain nor wind. Not one strand of his long brown hair blew.

  Lucille and Chloe were frozen to the sandy ground. Lucille tugged forcefully at Chloe. She pointed high above. The clouds were now shaped in what could only be called an angelic being. Before their eyes, they saw the same vision Cardinal Bullini had described earlier that morning.

  Hovering over them was the archangel Gabriel. Their eyes met his and they froze with fright. He blessed them with the Sign of the Cross and a warm breeze blew through them, bringing instant peace and harmony to body and spirit.

  The Archangel turned his attention toward Brent. The two women watched as his and Brent’s lips moved. They knew he was speaking with Gabriel, though they heard not a whisper.

  “Why can’t we hear anything?” Chloe asked.

  “Whatever he has to say is only for the Enlightened One.”

  When the conversation ended, Brent knelt down and bowed his head. Gabriel pulled his sword from its sheath, grasping it with both hands. He lifted it high over his head and brought it down, hard and fast. Chloe and Lucille gasped in horror. The sword cut right through Brent’s side?