The many eyes shifted again, and this time remained locked on the three remaining invaders.
This is why the Sentinelese didn’t attack. They knew the Cherub was coming.
They knew what we have been denying since we first saw it.
“It’s real,” she said.
Rowan gave a nod. “It’s real. It’s all real.”
“Then there is no hope for us,” Talia said, the throb in her head growing more intense as her heart rate increased.
“There is,” Mahdi said. He bent down, retrieved his knife and Talia’s spear, and added. “Go. Both of you. To the yacht. Now! Go!” Then he charged the Cherub, which seemed as surprised by his reckless action as Talia and Rowan.
She wanted to stop him. To save him. But there was nothing they could do aside from run into death’s grip alongside him, or abide by the soon-to-be dead man’s wishes, and survive.
“Let’s go!” Rowan said, helping her run into the sea, angling away from the Cherub.
Mahdi threw the spear, plunging it into the creature’s side. There were no illusions about him being able to slay the beast. He was simply buying them time. If they could get in the water, get lost in the waves, and swim under them, perhaps they could reach the yacht. Beyond the island’s borders, maybe the Cherub would let them live?
“This isn’t going to work,” she said, slowing.
Rowan tugged on her, still fighting. “Just keep moving.”
Mahdi shouted as he swung his small knife, stabbing the creature’s thigh. He stabbed twice more before being picked up.
Waist deep in water, Talia felt her foot strike something solid. They were wading through the dinghy’s remains. She looked down and saw a distorted, but familiar shape, and stopped.
“What are you doing?” Rowan asked, and he tried to pull her deeper.
Mahdi screamed. He was held aloft, just as Ambani had been before being crushed, the Cherub’s fingers buried in his body. Talia had undergone the same thing. Remembered the vision of her past.
It set me free, she realized. It was judging me.
But she had no idea what secrets were in Mahdi’s past, or what the verdict would be.
It can’t simply be judging between good and evil. That’s not it’s job. It’s a protector. It needs to know if we’ll keep the island’s secrets.
She had decided to do as much before setting foot on the island, but would Mahdi? She wouldn’t take that risk.
She pulled free of Rowan’s grasp and plunged beneath the waves. When she came back up a moment later, she had her recovered long bow and three arrows, the first one already nocked and being drawn back. As Mahdi’s cry of pain became shrill, she unleashed the arrow.
It sang through the air and punched through the back of the Cherub’s head. Its body went rigid, but did not fall.
She fired again, the second arrow finding its mark just a few inches to the side of the first.
The Cherub turned its head, its eyes drifting toward Talia as she drew the bowstring back once more. The rest of the creature’s eyes moved from Mahdi to her.
“Talia…” Rowan’s voice was full of warning and regret, but he didn’t abandon her.
She fired the third arrow, striking the creature’s head once more. The eyes in its head closed like a mother losing her patience, but struggling to remain in control. Then the rest of the eyes followed suit. The Cherub twisted one way, and then the other, flinging Mahdi free. He toppled through the air, crashing into the water twenty feet away, where he sank beneath the surface.
Rowan swam to him and lifted him up, feeling for a pulse. “Alive.”
Talia smiled and then her vision faded. She saw Rowan dragging Mahdi toward her, and then nothing.
She remembered water. And floating.
She was stretched and pulled, arms aching. And then weight returned. She was lying on something hard and flat.
A floor.
Her eyes opened. Rowan lay beside her, gasping for air, slowing. Easing. Looking back.
They were on the yacht. Mahdi lay on Rowan’s far side, chest rising and falling. They were alive.
“How?” she asked.
“I’m a good swimmer,” Rowan replied with a weak smile.
“I meant, why? Why are we alive?”
“Geula.”
“Where did you hear that?”
“What does it mean?”
“Redemption.”
His smile grew. “That’s what I thought.”
“Where did you—”
“A Sentinelese woman. Before she gave me my hatchet and let me go. And after declaring me Herev Lohetet.”
Talia’s eyebrows rose until the shifting skin moved the wound atop her head. “Flaming Sword? You?”
“All of us, actually. I think. We’d be dead otherwise, right?”
“If it was real,” Mahdi groaned, lying still.
Talia tried to comprehend everything she was being told and everything they had experienced. Her modern mind told her none of it was real. That they had simply seen visions. But visions couldn’t kill people, destroy boats, or pick her up. She’d been in the Cherub’s hands. Felt its fingers around her. Inside her. But drugs could have a profound effect on the human mind. Unreality could feel real. They could have spent half their time on the island tripping hard, believing they were fighting monsters while the Sentinelese put on a puppet show.
But her heart…her heart said something else.
“Real or not, the island needs to be protected from the world.”
Rowan laughed. “It’s the world that needs protecting from the island.”
Talia smiled. It was the truest thing she’d ever heard in her life. It was also the last thing she heard before passing out again.
Epilogue
“Hey Starsky, the raft is floating,” Talia said, her voice calm.
“Copy that, Jungle Princess,” Rowan said over the secure channel while steering the commandeered Sandal-Foot Resort yacht. While he hadn’t spent a lot of time behind the wheel of a boat, and certainly not a hundred-foot-long pleasure ship, it handled like a dream despite the rough seas. “En route.”
Despite the seriousness of what they were attempting, Rowan was smiling. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed this. The code names. The adrenaline rush of sneaking through the dark of night.
“Madman, what’s your status?”
“Standing by,” Mahdi replied. He wasn’t fond of the codenames, but he understood the need for them. If they were to accomplish their goal, secrecy was paramount. He had chosen Madman, not in honor of Winston’s nickname for him, but to reflect the kind of man the island had made him—the kind of man willing to rush toward danger, rather than away from it. He was a new man. It helped that they had used Talia’s money and connections to sneak his family out of Palestine.
“Try to look nice,” Rowan said.
“When do I not look nice?”
“It’s a bunch of white rich kids from the U.S. You’re from the Middle East. And have an accent.”
Talia’s voice laughed over the radio.
“I will smile,” Mahdi said. “But they do not have a choice. Am I right?”
“In a few seconds they won’t,” Talia said. There was a pause and then a distant whump.
Rowan cut the engine and coasted to the blinking dive flag. He looked out of the wheelhouse window and watched Mahdi pulling Talia from the ocean, dressed in a wetsuit and carrying a small detonator. She hurried across the deck and climbed the stairs to the wheelhouse, stepping inside and closing the door behind her.
“Worked as planned.” She clicked the detonator button a few times. “Charge went off in time with hitting the reef. They’ll be going down fast.”
It was a similar plan to the one they believed Chugy had implemented on Ambani’s behalf. The plan was to strand them on the beach, leaving Winston to kill the duped trio, and survive the night for a morning pickup. They’d found evidence as much in Ambani’s office at the Sandal-Foot
Resort, which Talia had bought at auction following his ‘death at sea.’ The yacht had been part of the package deal, and the resort was now their home.
As Talia began shedding the wetsuit, the distress call came right on schedule.
“Mayday, mayday, this is uhh, shit, what’s the name of our boat?”
“I don’t know, man. It’s a rental.”
“Fuck. Uhh, we’ve hit a reef outside North Sentinel Island. We’re taking on water.”
Just take your finger off the damn button, Rowan thought.
“Can anyone hear me? Uhh, over.”
The unsecured radio crackled and Rowan depressed the call button. “Copy that, son. I’m not far. Heading your way now. How many should I expect to pick up? Over.”
“Eight,” the kid replied. “Over.”
“Eight,” Rowan said to Talia, no longer transmitting. “Eight kids.”
“Eight idiots,” Talia said. Over the past three months, she had worked hard to educate the resorts scattered throughout the Andaman Islands, about the Sentinelese and the dangers they presented to their guests…with certain details withheld. Despite the warnings, there were still people willing to venture to the island with the desire for a cheap thrill, with the chance of discovery, or just from plain carelessness.
“What are you all doing out here?” Rowan asked over the radio.
“We’re YouTubers,” the kid said. “Thought it would be fun. You know, get video of some naked tribe people. I heard they boink on the beach. Uhh, over.”
“Like I said.” Talia peeled the wetsuit leggings off, standing in just her bikini. “Idiots.”
Rowan throttled forward again, heading directly toward where the small boat had anchored before Talia had cut the line. He turned on the flood lights, illuminating the stranded and quickly sinking boat. Eight young men and women stood in the back, waving their arms.
“We see you!” the kid shouted through the radio. “We see you!”
“No shit,” Rowan said to Talia, rolling his eyes. “Maybe we should leave them.”
“Aww, Starsky, if you can find redemption, maybe there’s hope for them, too.” She kissed him gently, a promise of things to come…in the privacy of their villa. While they had come to the conclusion that much of what they had experienced on the island was real, they still believed the smoke, or perhaps the island itself, altered the way people thought. Lowered inhibitions. Returned people to a state of not caring about such things, the way that life was meant to be, or so Talia said. But the bond forged during the trials experienced on the island was real, as was the attraction between them. It had simply become less…public.
A small outboard motor roared to life. Then the dinghy, driven by Mahdi, cut through the water, clearing the reefs with no trouble. The petrified teens boarded quickly and without hesitation. Within minutes, Mahdi was on his way back.
As they neared the yacht, Rowan killed the flood lights. In the dark, not one of the kids saw Mahdi put on a sharp-toothed clown mask. “Ready?”
Talia smiled and handed him a werewolf mask. Her mask was human, but the face was melting. “This is my favorite part.”
As Rowan put on his mask, Talia assembled her new blowgun and took out eight darts, each tipped with a psychotropic concoction of her own creation. Combined with the horrific masks, the kids were guaranteed to have the worst nights of their lives.
But they would survive.
In the morning, they would awaken on a beach, not far from their own resort, clearly intoxicated and missing a rented boat. The ensuing trouble would ensure they never returned to North Sentinel Island, and would land them on a shit-list shared between the area’s resorts, a list that had been started by the Sandal-Foot Resort’s new owners. A list that already had thirty-five names on it.
Thirty-five people who had been spared the tortures of stumbling upon forbidden land.
Who had unknowingly avoided judgment by an ancient tribe tasked by a higher power to protect the island, and their monstrous Cherub.
Who had been saved by the newest members of the Flaming Sword…all of whom vowed to never set foot on the island again, so help them God, and of whom they had all begun to reshape their opinions. Mahdi attended a mosque with his family. Talia had found a synagogue, and was reconnecting with her roots. And Rowan attended a small church, started by missionaries and run by Andaman tribespeople.
While the differences between the religions spurred lively discussions, the story of Eden bound the three together, and as the Nigahl—the Redeemed—they worked day and night to protect the secret with which they had been allowed to live, and to prevent the outside world from stumbling upon it.
When the last of the eight kids’ pupils dilated and they were all laid back in a drug induced stupor, Rowan dropped anchor, jumped onto the aft deck and turned their night into a living hell.
As the teens screamed at horrors he couldn’t see, experiencing wild trips on their own and as a group, he couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing had been done to them. There was no denying that Emmei, Sashi, Chugy, Winston, and Ambani existed, but had they died?
When these kids woke on the beach the following morning, they might all recall their rescuers being murdered, or becoming monsters, or being murdered by monsters. Perhaps the true nature of Ambani’s expedition was to simply pass on the torch from one team of protectors to another.
It was a nice theory.
Helped him sleep at night.
But every time he saw the island, and felt all those eyes staring back, he knew the truth: that normal life on planet Earth was separated from the supernatural by a thin veil, which they had crossed through and crawled back out of, bearing fresh scars and a new mission.
It had been real. All of it. And now Talia, Mahdi, and he stood watch, attempting to keep the two worlds apart. So far, they had succeeded, but he knew they would eventually miss someone. And if the story of Eden was true, what other ancient stories, beasts, and locations were real? He’d been studying the Old Testament with Talia and Mahdi in relation to their new job, pondering ancient mysteries and creatures.
Despite all their time, energy, and resources, there were two questions that had remained unanswerable: If the supernatural is real, who is safeguarding it from the world and who is keeping the world safe from it?
And then there was another question. No one had asked it aloud, but he believed all of them were thinking it. To give it voice would be to invite temptation, and eventual doom.
His mind flitted back to the island, past the sand, through the manicured jungle, and deep inside the overgrown garden, back to the yellow-lit paradise none of them had reached. That was where their journey had ended, and the question began:
What is in that yellow light, and how can I reach it?
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A NOTE FROM JEREMY
I don’t normally write about what is real and what is not real in my novels, but I feel like it might be necessary this time. Let’s start with what is real. North Sentinel Island exists, as do the Sentinelese who populate it. They really do greet visitors with violence, and other strange behaviors, like sex acts on the beach. Some of the violent encounters detailed by Ambani are fabrications, but many are not, and some, like the actual wrecking of the Primrose have been slightly altered. Basically, the Sentinelese really are an island-dwelling tribe that has never had meaningful or positive contact with the outside world, living at a stone age technological level.
Now, as for Eden, its existence falls into the category of belief. But the details of that place, as detailed in the Bible are mostly accurate in the story. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (a long name for a tree) was the tree from which Eve plucked the forbidden fruit and then shared it with Adam. ‘That wasn’t in the novel,’ you say. Ahh, but it was! Remember the dead tree in the cave, with the footprints casually approaching and then running away? Mystery solved. The second tree is the Tree of Life (a much more concise name), which is guarded by
Cherubim (plural!) wielding a flaming sword. Now, this is where I took some artistic license, both with the Cherubim’s monstrous appearance, and with making the flaming sword a tribe. Other than that, there is no reason the island, an actual paradise untouched by the outside world for 60,000 years, couldn’t be Eden—the location of which is never revealed in the Bible.
Whatever the truth is, I suggest not visiting the island to find out for yourself. Whether the Sentinelese really are a tribe of people guarding the Tree of Life, or simply a primitive island-dwelling people, you’ll likely never leave alive.
Though this is one of my freakiest novels (and that’s saying a lot), I hope you enjoyed the ride! If so, and you’d like to see more books like this (or maybe a movie deal for it...oooh) then help spread the word! The best thing you can do to help this, or any novel, is by posting a review on Amazon, and if you have the time or inclination, on Goodreads and other bookselling sites. Every single one makes a difference and helps Amazon determine which books it will recommend to other readers. Facebook posts, Tweets and good old-fashioned word of mouth is great too.
Thanks for taking the journey down this rabbit hole of doom with me, and I hope you’ll come back for the next!
—Jeremy Robinson
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Going to keep it short and sweet this time. There are a cadre of people upon whom I rely to support my writing efforts and bring you the best novels possible. Kane Gilmour, my amazing editor whose dedication to the stories sometimes surpasses my own. Hilaree Robinson, and my three amigos, Aquila, Solomon, and Norah, you continue to inspire me…though not for stories like this one, because, weird. Roger Brodeur, your continued support and proofreading is always welcome. For Hebrew translations and phonetic transliterations, I need to thank Kati Takacs, Edward G. Talbot, Aaron Brenner, and Bhil Heath. Any errors that remain are my own. And to Lyn Askew, Julie Cummings Carter, Elizabeth Cooper, Dustin Dreyling, Jamie Lynn Goodyear, Dee Haddrill, Becki Tapia Laurent, Sharon Ruffy, Jeff Sexton, and Kelly Tyler, my dedicated special ops team of proofreaders, you guys rock and helped make this book shine.
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