by M. K. Gibson
Looking upon this place of power, I was moved to express myself as eloquently as I could.
“Holy shit.”
Riggs smirked and lit a smoke. “This is my temple. It’s not much, but I like it. What do you think?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
A Choir of Pissed-Off Angels
“Solomon,” I said.
“Yes.”
“The Solomon?”
“Yup.”
“The wisest king that ever lived?”
“Well, let’s just say history was kind to me. I mean, come on, I advised a couple of ladies to cut a baby in half.” Riggs laughed. “I was really stoned that day. Hell kid, I dabbled in magic and enslaved angels and demons alike. How wise is that?”
“Fair enough. But you’re saying that this place is the Temple of Solomon.”
“Yes. Jesus, are you that dense?” Riggs asked, shaking his head.
“I’m calling bullshit,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve seen some really kooky crap in the last few months. But there is no freaking way the Temple of Solomon is in an underground cavern beneath freaking Solomon, Kansas.”
“To be fair, it’s just one of them. My most recent. Still pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. And yeah, kid, I was once Solomon.”
“What?” I asked. None of this made any sense.
“You see only the flesh,” Chael explained. “The spirit beneath was once, among others, Solomon.”
“What do you mean ‘among others’?”
“That old soul,” Chael said, pointing at Riggs, “was marked a long, long time ago. Cursed. Never to enter the afterlife, above or below. Every death brought him back. A new form of flesh. Yet every memory from the former life carried over to the new.”
“Ahh, the old curses,” Riggs said, smoking his cigarette. “The big man upstairs really knew how to throw them around back in the good ol’ days. Born a baby, yet possessing the full memories of every life that came before. Stuck in a useless, non-responsive infant body for months, then having to go through puberty a decade or so later. Over and over. But it made rising to power each time easier, and potty training a breeze.”
“What did you do?” I asked. Chael just looked at Riggs and the pair of them laughed. Hard. Hell, I guess it was pretty bad.
“When this is over, you’re answering all my questions.”
“Sure thing, kid,” Riggs said, pushing the mag-lev forward.
As Chael and I followed Riggs into the temple, the big man turned to me. “You won’t like the answers. No one ever does.”
********
The temple was enormous. I couldn’t accurately describe the size or the magnitude of the hauntingly beautiful white stone complex. I felt that if I tried to express my thoughts of this magnificent place, in every beautiful, poetic way I could, it would somehow diminish its truly awe-inspiring grandeur.
The courtyard was perfect, down to the smallest detail. The stone was clean and smooth. Statues decorated the interior at select locations. Domed gazebos and benches were set strategically throughout the massive courtyard. This place resonated with life and power.
I felt as if there were people there right then, watching, moving, living, just out of sight. I felt that if I turned my head quick enough, I would see them.
We were not alone. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But everywhere I looked across the empty sea of stone, it was quiet. Peaceful, with only the perfect architecture. Yet there was motion at the corner of my vision. I’d turn to look, only to see nothing. Phantoms seemed to be there, at the corner of my mind like a song one tried to remember.
At the center of the opening courtyard, there was an immense working water fountain. Water bubbled and sprayed into the air from a statue in the center. The statue depicted two angels in a state of fighting, at the same time almost embracing. They were at one another’s throats, but there was a sadness in their eyes. They loathed what they were forced to do.
Other than the natural marble striations and artistically carved grooves representing cobbled interlaced stone along the courtyard ground, I couldn’t see a single seam where the stone fit together. It was as if the entire temple started as a single titanic piece of stone and had been whittled away by an insane master sculptor.
Well, considering I met Solomon, that could be a freaking possibility. I finished my smoke and was about to flick the butt into the fountain, but a growl from Chael told me that would be a mistake. And from the look in his eye, said mistake would cost me no less than three broken bones. I field stripped the smoke and stashed the butt in my pants pocket. Chael nodded in approval.
Past the courtyard, atop a set of semicircular steps, was a massive set of black stone doors framed in gold. The doors hung wide open, inviting us deeper into the temple.
“What’s through there?” I asked.
“Where we need to go,” Chael responded.
“That’s helpful.”
Through the giant black doors, we moved into the temple’s inner sanctum, a walled-off courtyard garden. Lush, green, exotic foliage created something of a maze in the enclosure as it grew in a chaotic pattern of life. The air was thick with moisture and the scent of growing things.
Everything in the garden was giant and colorful, making it impossible to get a sense of direction. The acoustics were off due to the growth, and I gave up using my hyper sense of smell because the garden was too pungent.
A white marble path led us through the garden. We walked quickly but did not run. I wanted to be able to pay attention to what was around us. We came into a clearing where the stone path joined other paths and formed a perfect circle with continuing pathways moving out from the circle, back into the garden at the cardinal compass directions.
At the dead center of the stone circle was what looked like a four-foot-tall stone pillar. Unlike the surrounding white stone, the pillar was made of a jade green crystal with tendrils of black and white smoky liquid swirling through it.
The pillar seemed to glow with a strange energy, emitting light alternating in color and intensity. The light coming from the well seemed to pulse in a rhythmic tempo. Like a heartbeat.
That wasn’t creepy at all.
I started to reach my hand out to touch the pillar. I wanted to see what made it glow like that. Riggs reached out and grabbed my wrist.
“Don’t.”
“Would it be bad?” I asked, pulling my hand back.
“Without the Key, it would scatter your mind. Or blow your hand off. It’s been a while, so I really don’t know. Let’s just file it under ‘it would be bad’.”
“Key?” I asked. “Key to what?”
“Why, the Well of Souls, of course.”
“That? That’s the Well of Souls?”
“No,” Riggs said. “That’s a portal stone. The real Well is . . . you know, just hang on. Things will become clear in a moment.”
Riggs reached into his pocket and pulled out something small. Looking over his shoulder, I could see it was an old ring. Ancient, and remarkably well crafted.
The ring was covered in carved script I didn’t know. Atop the ring was a small flattish disc with an engraved intricate pattern. The pattern was sort of pentacle shaped, but complex. Every time my mind tried to reason out the pattern, the pattern itself seemed to shift, preventing me from understanding it.
Groovy.
“What is that?” I asked.
“An exquisite gift,” Chael said. “For the hand that bears it shall forever know the burden of power. Of Life and Death. Of control and freedom and the illusion they both represent.”
Riggs nodded. “That it is. This little baby was the key to many of my successful ventures. I shaped many different worlds and times with this.”
“The Key of Solomon,” I whispered, realizing what it was I was seeing as my mother’s teachings came back to me. “The legendary seal of Solomon’s power and fortune. Some say it was gifted to him by a demon or an angel. The wearer gains dominance over demons.�
�
“Yup. And if you invert a few of the markings, dominance over angels as well. It’s tied to me and my bloodline, and it’s the only thing that can operate The Well of Souls. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Riggs said as he made his way to the portal stone.
He stood beside the stone and placed his hands on the glowing crystal. Energy began to well up around him in a nimbus of light. In a few moments, his light was soon pulsing in time with that of the portal’s.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw motion. I turned my head and there was nothing. Then again, just beyond my sight I saw something large and moving fast. I turned around and again, nothing.
What the hell was going on?
Something huge and menacing was just over my shoulder, so close I saw a pair of bright blue eyes.
“Shit!” I yelled, dropping to the ground and going into a shoulder roll. I came up with both blasters out and and aimed at . . . nothing.
“OK, what the hell?!”
“The portal is bringing us into phase with the others,” Chael answered.
“Other what?” I asked.
“The other temples,” Riggs answered. His hands moved along the portal stone’s rim like a maestro’s. “You see this one, this temple, is perfect like the others, down to the smallest detail. They are all identical. Each temple has a stone like this one, tuned to their respective Ley Line intersections. And when they are brought into synch using the Key, then we will be in all of them and none of them at the same time. The true Temple of Solomon and the true location of The Tears of God.”
Holy crap.
If Ley Lines were seams of power in the world moving data like the Ultra-Net, then this temple was a server. And the “true temple,” as he put it, was a digital construct like the old data cloud model, each temple compiling a bit of itself and dynamically reconstructing it in the ether. Well, I was impressed.
“When we come into full synch, you will notice some differences. Try not to freak out. And try not to piss off the temple’s locals.”
“Locals?”
Then the Universe seemed to warp and bend around me. Traveling the Lines before with Chael had made me puke. This made me want to rip my own skull off and vomit stomach acid and fire. I closed my eyes and tried to block out all of existence.
When I felt human again, I opened my eyes. I beheld the true Temple of Solomon. It was exquisite. Beyond mere words. A place where the divine and mortal worlds melded into one.
The architecture of the model temple beneath First Heaven was drab and mundane compared to the true temple. If what Riggs—Solomon—said was true, and each temple was a part of the whole, then the true temple was like seeing for the first time.
The stonework was of purest white, the vegetation of the abundant garden, the lushest greens. While there was no sun and no sky to speak of, light, pure light, radiated through the temple and deep within my heart.
It was beyond scope and reason. Oh yeah, and it was positively packed with a choir of pissed-off angels.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Whispers of the Dead
All around us were angels.
Lots of them.
Hundreds and hundreds of them.
They were beautiful. And terrifying. Some embodied the perfect human form. Some were monstrous—patchwork nightmares from the darkest corners of a hellish mind, like Mastema. Some looked like the Renaissance paintings, like men and women in winged form. Others were multi-eyed interlocking wheels of fire and eyes. And when my mind began to comprehend a form they were in, the form would then shift at the speed of thought to something else.
They ranged from normal height to towering taller than Chael. Some wore clothes while others none at all. Some were armed with ancient implements of battle. And some some stood weaponless, yet were somehow more formidable than those with weapons.
There was truly only one thing they had in common—they were all looking at us. And their brightly-colored eyes were blazing orbs of contempt and hatred.
“So,” I began, not really sure what to say at a moment like that, “what did the one angel say to the other angel?... ‘Halo, how are you?’ Eh?”
Crickets.
Eh, no accounting for taste.
The nearest angel approached us. He towered over me, easily eight-plus feet tall. He was human-looking, naked from the waist up, with downy-white feathered wings that matched his white hakama-like robed pants.
“Killer. You have returned here once more,” he said in a stern, authoritative voice, stating the obvious. “And you have brought the outcast. Explain yourself. Now!”
“Jophiel,” Riggs addressed the Angel, stepping forward and lighting a smoke. “I respect your authority over this choir. But you exist here, in MY temple, safe from the world only because I allow it. Now, don’t think the humor escapes me that you, of all angels, are trying to bully me out of here. But I’d watch my tone if I were you. I’m not my dad. I’ll kick your feathered ass. And my name now is Riggs. ”
The giant angel flexed his wings in a way that suggested a throwdown was seconds away from happening. The angel Jophiel looked down at Riggs and regarded him the way a cat regards a mouse.
I heard a slight clack-clack-clack sound. I caught Jophiel’s gaze drifting. Not at Riggs’ eyes, but to the ring Riggs wore. The ring that Riggs was gently tapping against his Zippo lighter. Not too loudly—just loud enough to reinforce its presence.
The Ring of Solomon. His Seal. The one that gave him power over demons. And by his own admission, the one that commanded angels as well. His ace in the hole.
“Forgive me . . . Riggs,” Jophiel painfully acquiesced. “But please, enlighten us on why that . . . thing is present?” he asked, pointing at Chael.
“Him? He is here to enforce what needs to be done. So please excuse us. I have work to do. Then we have to speak to them.”
Jophiel stood aside, then looked down at TJ and at me. His face darkened. “They were not to be permitted here.”
“And yet, here they are. Move.”
“You have broken the promise.”
“No,” Riggs corrected. “I’ve found a loophole. Move. Last warning.”
“You cannot,” Jophiel said, taking a step towards Riggs. Immediately, Chael took a step forward, blocking the smaller angel from coming towards Riggs.
“Return to your simple life in peace or remain and bleed.”
“I no longer fear you,” Jophiel hissed.
“You should.”
Jophiel drew a golden blade from his hip, a foot-long, dirk-like weapon. Instinctively I stepped in front of TJ’s unconscious form and drew a blaster in my right hand. The other angels in the garden drew weapons as well. The courtyard was now a nut hair’s width away from turning into the OK Corral.
“Try it,” Chael said, half smirking.
Jophiel obliged and attacked Chael in a violent and swift motion. Chael leaned into the attack like a masochistic freak. The angel’s blade plunged deep into Chael’s right pectoral. Chael then clamped his left hand on the smaller being’s wrist and squeezed until the bone audibly cracked.
Jophiel’s jaw clamped shut and quivered in silent pain. I gave the angel credit; he didn’t scream out. Jophiel then tried to pull away, but Chael’s grip was too powerful. The smaller angel kicked Chael in the knees and crotch, yet Chael said nothing. Did not move. He only regarded the flailing angel the way a parent observes a child’s temper tantrum.
Slowly, Chael reached out his giant right hand, grasping the squirming angel’s face. Chael’s powerful fingers began to close. Jophiel’s flesh and bone did little to stop him. This time, the angel screamed.
If you’ve never heard an angel scream, consider yourself blessed. Eons of reserved pain and mournful hate create sounds that cause the primitive human mind to revert into a feral-like state. I wanted to flee and hide in the darkest cave as if I feared a thunderstorm that rattled and shook the cosmos.
“Chael. Remember who he is,” Riggs said, and immediately
Chael stopped. Again, his eyes flashed a bright blue, and he looked at Jophiel as if he did not realize what had just happened. Compassion flashed across the giant man’s face, and he released his hold on the angel.
The other angels flooded around their wounded companion and cast hateful glares at the giant. Chael only held his hands up in an apologetic way, confused and sorry.
“Chael. Come,” Riggs commanded.
And like that, Chael’s bright blue eyes reverted to dead milky white and he obeyed. “Yes. The Tears.”
“Tears?” Jophiel whispered, holding his broken face.
Riggs leaned in close, keeping his voice low. “Salem, grab the kid and hurry up.”
“What’s up?”
“Just move,” Riggs cautioned.
Confused, I followed Riggs and Chael along the garden path, pushing TJ. I kept my weapons out, because everywhere I looked there were angels. Behind us, within the garden, everywhere. Watching.
“Where did they all come from?”
“The angels?” Riggs asked over his shoulder, not looking back.
“No, the original lineup of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. Yes, the angels.”
“There were many after G-Day who couldn’t function without the big man. Those who found their way to my temples, I’ve given refuge.”
“Why doesn’t that sound as altruistic as it should?” I asked.
“Because you’re not an idiot. Sure, I give them a home here in the True Temple, hidden away from the real world. But their presence also leeches just a bit of their remaining power back into the Well. And I use that power to do a lot of things.”
“Like?”
“Like keeping my city running.”
“You’re using them as generators?”
“About all they’re good for anymore.” he replied.
“That’s cold, man.”
Riggs rolled his eyes. “Please. It isn’t like most of them even have a purpose. I’m sure you’ve noticed a lack of their presence in this new world. At least here, they’re safe. And eventually, when they run out of power, they will be as human as you or I. Well, maybe not you or I, but regular folks.”
