He looked at the holograms, possibly for support. One of the women nodded to urge him onwards. The council had been meeting on a daily basis since I had arrived here. Now they seemed to have arrived at a consensus.
‘We have a proposition for you.’ He finally said.
‘I’m listening.’
‘First we need to give you more insight into the situation.’ He took a deep breath and continued.
‘As you have already been told,’ dirty glance at Panat.’ The forces originated with the dawn of man. They have been around since man upset the balance of Nature. You are one of the forces that keep the balance on this world. There are five in total. The four that the bible and other religions refer to: Conquest, Famine, Death and War. And then there is you. Together you make sure that man does not overwhelm everything—that there is balance. In reality, that means that the forces are the origin of many human catastrophes. War and death are part and parcel of being human. But they are controlled by Nature through the forces. The four other universally known forces work on a large scale. Their impact is usually extensive. Many humans die in one instance, restoring the balance. You—Primal, are different. You were created for the more precise terminations. Balance sometimes requires the excision of a certain individual instead of a large number. That is your task. The others are Nature’s cannon, you are her sword. Because of you, larger numbers of humans do not need to be eradicated.’
Was that supposed to make me feel better? That I wasn’t a mass murderer? This was a lot to take in. I just sat and listened. New questions popping in to my mind with every sentence Kahdi expressed.
‘Each force has its own clan of Watchers. They have been linked for thousands of years. The Watchers do not intervene directly, they steer the force in subtle ways.’
‘Manipulate you mean.’ I couldn’t stop myself from commenting.
‘If you want to call it that.’ He continued unperturbed. ‘We try to aid the force if needed. That is in small ways, but sometimes a larger influence is needed. In all this, we stay inconspicuous. Even if direct contact is unavoidable, the force must never know of our existence.’
‘Do the others know of their part in the balance?’ I asked.
‘No. At least not all of them, not in detail. There is one who is aware, but we will get to him soon.’ He paused to take a sip of the tea he was offered.
‘Why not?’ I wasn’t letting him off that easily.
‘If the forces were aware of their role, then they could go overboard. Killing all humans, and that is too much. There is no balance in that.’
I let that go for the moment, filing the information and questions for later. I was curious what the proposition was.
‘The forces can never all meet. That is another reason we intervene. If you meet, or are near each other, the impact you can have on humans is intensified exponentially. The results can be catastrophic. If the forces knew of each other, they may want to meet. And that is too much of a risk.’ He explained. ‘Most of the time.’ His last comment was not lost on me. A strange addition. So sometimes they should meet?
‘You are here. That was a shock to us. Not only because of the rules that we abide by, the main one being—no direct contact.’ He took a deep breath. ‘There is another reason why we were so terrified of your arrival. Why it impacted us so much, and why it caused many to leave.’ Once again, he looked to the holograms and the elders for strength.
‘It happened once before.’ He turned to look at the hologram of a dark man who was obviously very emotionally impacted by the story to come. ‘Azazel.’ Kahdi spoke the name softly. ‘He is the force that the bible calls Conquest in the Book of Revelations. In later interpretations, he is named as the Anti-Christ. A fallen angel, who was banished from heaven. This viewpoint is substantiated by many other religions: Islam, Judaism, Ahmadiyya. They are closer to the truth than they know. Azezel is not an angel. He is one of the forces of Nature. So much older than Christianity or any of the other so-called contemporary religions. The ancient ones, of the Aboriginal or Native Americans recognise him for what he is. A tool of Nature.’
Kahdi sat down, sipping his tea again. The dark man in the hologram picked up the tale. ‘The current Azazel has been around for more than twenty-six-hundred years. My clan have watched him and his predecessor since the dawn of time. This Azazel was always one to question everything, to push the boundaries. In that he resembles you. He managed to figure out more than we wanted. That was in part due to his powers.’
Ok, so what were his powers? Another question for later.
‘He ambushed one of my clan and picked his mind. The information he gathered intrigued him and he decided he would search for—and meet—all the forces. The danger for the humans was not an issue for him. He has no love for mankind. Other than as playthings. He managed to find the location of War and Famine, exponentially increasing the hardship for man. He was hell-bent on getting all the forces together to see what the ultimate effect would be, just for fun. This, the council could not allow to happen. It would mean mass extinction.’ He paused. ‘The council decided that intervention was needed. One of the remaining forces was steered in the direction of Azazel to defeat him. To kill him.’
‘Kill him?’ My surprise was great. ‘I thought we couldn’t be killed. That we were immortal, or is that only me?’
’No, not just you, all the forces are basically immortal. There are only two ways they can die. One is if they will themselves into destruction, and the other is by the hand of another force.’ I glanced at Panat, he shrugged. He had left hat one out in our earlier conversation.
‘You can wound or kill each other.’ Kahdi added. ‘Any wounds that are inflicted on you by another force cause you to react as a mortal.’
‘And can be fatal, if extensive enough.’ The dark man continued. ‘There was a massive fight and Azazel was badly wounded. But not fatally. He disappeared. Later we found out that one of his Watchers had taken pity on him and nursed him back to health in secret. The rest of the clan was clueless. They knew he was alive, we can sense that, but not where he was. They were soon to find out.’
Kahdi picked up the tale again, it was too much for the dark man.
‘Azazel recovered and took his revenge on his clan of Watchers, blaming them for his failed plan and his wounds. He almost wiped out the entire clan. His vengeance was brutal. He tortured men, women and children. Hunting them down to the ends of the earth. Only a few remain. These, he still hunts. Since then he has gone rogue. He is a loose cannon. He is hell-bent on disrupting the balance, on achieving revenge on the very force he was part of. In that he has manifested himself as the Anti-Christ. He is after Nature herself.’
‘Do you know where he is?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we do. He is not exactly inconspicuous. He lives the life of a Jet-Set playboy, corrupting all around him.’
‘Aze’ I said. Remembering the meeting between Bharata and Neerav. The dots were beginning to connect here. ‘And you can’t get to him.’ I was beginning to dread what the proposal could be. The hairs on the back of my neck were upright and shivers ran down my spine. The Primal force inside of me screamed at me to leave, to run from this place. Light fur covered my back and arms.
‘No, we can’t.’ He left the rest up in the air.
‘That is where you come in’ one of the female holograms finally said.
I stayed silent.
‘You are the only chance we have of terminating him and stopping him from devastating humanity. We cannot harm him, as you said, he is immortal to our weapons, and he knows this. You are the Sword of Nature. You are the only one who could do it.’
Once again, I was being coerced into murder.
‘If he dies, will that be the end of the force?’ I asked.
‘No, if he dies, another will rise to fill his place in the order. That will take many years and he will be easier to handle.’
‘I thought you didn’t control them—us.’ I interrupted.
‘And we will with him.’ The dark man added.
All was silent. The impact of what they asked me to do was overwhelming.
I was to kill again.
This time one of my own kind.
I had just found out that I was not alone and now they wanted me to kill one of the few beings that experienced the same things I did. One of the only creatures that I could possibly relate to.
It was all too much. I needed fresh air.
Standing up, I looked at all the people there—physically and virtually. They remained mute. No one knew what to say. Turning, I left the room and stormed up the corridor to the elevator. I needed to get out of here. Conflicting emotions were rampant in my head and body. The bloodlust, anger, sorrow, frustration.
Panat followed me, he joined me in the elevator and pressed the correct button. Seconds later we arrived in the back room of the community building. Throwing open the doors I ran outside and kept on going.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
David was reluctant to disturb Azazel. His boss could be notoriously bad-tempered. And he had a feeling that today was about to become one of those days.
There was a phone call.
‘Azazel’ he said with more conviction than he felt. ‘There is a call for you from Bharat.’
As expected, Aze reacted with irritation. He had been unmistakably clear that Bharata was not to call him unless there was a life or death issue. With that he meant “don’t call me at all.” What part of “don’t” hadn’t been clear? The so-called emperor was a vexing man at best. A pain in the ass was closer to the truth.
Azazel looked up at David. He was renowned for acting out his anger on the messengers, so David was anxious to give him the phone and get out of the room as soon as possible. Holding out his arm with the phone as far as it would stretch, he hoped that Aze would take the annoying object.
‘What the fuck does Bharata want now?’ Azazel ranted, true to form.
‘Uh… It’s not Bharata. It’s his advisor Abhor.’
‘What?’ Azazel was flabbergasted. In what world did the advisor think he could just contact him directly? It was ridiculous. He debated what to do. On the one hand, he was mad as hell, on the other he was curious. Why wasn’t it Bharata? Was there something wrong there? He decided to take the call. If there wasn’t a significant enough reason, he would at least have fun blasting the advisor’s brain. He would pick it first, then slowly fill the man’s mind with strange and frightening thoughts.
He took the phone from the relieved David, who then turned and almost ran out of the room.
‘What do you want?’ Azazel asked in a cold voice.
The high-pitched voice of the advisor aggravated Aze even more. He had met the man once—a miserable, shifty and conniving being. Absolutely revolting.
‘There is bad news, sir.’ At least he was respectful.
Azazel waited silently for the man to continue. That unnerved the advisor.
‘I have to inform you sir, that our beloved emperor is dead.’
‘What?’
‘He has been murdered sir. Brutally murdered.’
Now that was an unexpected turn. He hadn’t seen that coming.
‘How?’ His questions were short and to the point. This unnerved the advisor even more. The man was thankful that he was so far away.
‘It was a bloodbath. We do not know what happened. His throat was ripped out. Almost as if an animal had done that—a tiger probably.’
‘Where?’
‘In his chambers sir, that is why it is so strange. No such animal was seen in the palace. The guards would have noticed. And the cameras would have picked it up.’
‘Who was in the chambers when he was killed?
‘As far as we have been able to find out, only his Sadhu.’
‘No one else?’
The advisor thought for a moment. Then added ‘And of course the woman in the cage.’
‘What woman in what cage?’
‘My lord the emperor had taken a fancy to a British spy. A beautiful woman that I had managed to capture. He was obsessed with her and kept her in his chambers so that she could see that he was a good man. He wanted her to love him.’
Human logic never ceased to surprise Azazel. The Emperor had locked a woman in a cage so that she would learn to love him? Was he demented or what?
But somewhere in the back of his mind, something was nagging at him. There was a sense of deja-vu. He just couldn’t place it.
‘What happened to the woman?’ he asked.
‘She is missing sir.’ Came the tentative reply.
‘Where did she go to, do you have any idea?’
‘No sir. We have combed out the whole city, and the region. But we have not been able to find her.’
‘What about the Sadhu?’ Azazel asked, dismissing the idea that the woman could have anything to do with the Emperor’s death.
Bharata had spoken about the Sadhu. His old friend who was now the holy man. Though they had never met, Aze knew that the Sadhu had a big influence on Bharata.
‘We have not been able to find him either sir. We have searched through the whole country’ came the answer from the other side of the world.
‘When was he seen last?’
‘The cameras picked him up stumbling out of the palace.’
‘Was he wounded?’
‘We don’t know sir. We only saw that he was supported by one of the maids.’
Alarm bells started ringing in Azazel’s head.
‘What maid?’ he asked. ‘Have you interrogated her?’
There was a pause. Then Abhor carefully said ‘we do not know which maid it was sir.’ He hastened to add ‘We have questioned every maid, but none of them admitted to helping the holy man.’
How stupid could these people be? Azazel was stunned. Was it really possible that they had not made the connection?
‘Could the “maid” be the woman from the cage?’ he asked sarcastically.
It was silent.
‘That would not be possible sir. The Emperor would never let her leave the palace. Not even to support the Sadhu, Sir.’ He was adamant.
‘Not if he was alive at the moment that the Sadhu left.’ Aze’s sarcasm was completely lost on the advisor.
‘But how would they have been able to escape the monster that killed the emperor?’ Abhor was quick to observe.
No, they wouldn’t have, Azazel thought. Not unless … …
‘What did the woman look like?’ he asked.
‘Why do you ask sir? She is not important.’
‘That is for me to decide. What did she look like?’ he raised his voice, irritated that this flea of a man would dare to question him.
‘She was a beautiful woman. Her skin was like light coffee, neither white nor dark. Her hair was a deep brown and flowing down her back.’ The man proceeded to name every trait that he could remember. And there were a lot. He had lusted after her.
‘Yes, yes. But was there anything special about her?’ Aze interrupted him.
‘Special? ‘The man thought for a while. He had mainly focussed on the woman’s body. ‘Yes sir, there was. Actually, something quite like you.’
‘What?’
‘Her eyes sir.’ Azazel’s hairs stood on end. ‘Her eyes were yellow. A brighter colour than yours, but just as rare.’
Understanding hit Azazel like a brick wall. It was her. She was back.
‘Primal.’ he said under his breath.
’Sorry sir, what did you say?’
‘Never mind.’ He needed to get all the information he could. ‘The Sadhu, where did he come from?’
Confused, the advisor racked his brain. First, they were talking about the woman and then back to the Sadhu. Strange. ‘I believe he came from Nepal or Tibet sir.’ He answered
and dared to add ‘why do you ask sir?’
Azazel ignored the question. ‘Find the man.’ He ordered. ‘Get me any information you have on his family or where he came from. And quickly.’
‘What about the woman sir?’
‘Forget the woman, she is out of your league.’ Aze answered. ’Get back to me with the information about the Sadhu.’
‘What about the Shiva? And the Emperor’s plans?’
‘They can wait.’ Azazel broke off the connection.
Azazel sat back in his chair.
She had returned.
There was a new Primal.
He was filled with contradicting emotions. Trepidation, because the previous Primal had almost killed him, and excitement that there was once again a reincarnation. Someone like him.
This changed everything.
He was no longer interested in Shiva. It had been fun while it lasted. The effect on humanity was enormous and manipulating Bharata into causing a global war had been entertaining in itself. But now that was all pushed to the background.
Primal was back.
And she would warrant his complete attention.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Just when I thought I had heard it all, Panat dropped the bombshell.
‘Your predecessor was the one who attacked and almost killed Azazel.’ He stopped to let the news register.
‘What happened?’ I demanded.
I was sick of the secrets here. They wanted me to do a job for them—a murder, but still they insisted on withholding information.
Kadhi was furious at Panat that he confided in me. That he regularly told me more than the council wanted. I ignored Kadhi. That was just about the only way I could keep myself from physically attacking the man. I think Panat knew that. Kadhi was blinded by tradition and his unrelenting fixation on the rules. He could not see any further than what had always been, and in that he was joined by the council. Almost as one, they backed him. The only two who were more flexible were Panat and Joseph—the dark man in the hologram. Joseph was the leader of the few remaining Watchers of Azazel’s clan.
The Beast Inside Page 11
