The Mark of Cain

by A D Seeley

  “Will you tell me about it?” she asked, unlocking her door and gesturing inside because she realized that they were still standing on the stoop.

  “Now that depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On if you’ll let me buy you dinner.”

  “But my paper….”

  “I’ll order take-out.”

  Despite herself, she was intrigued.

  “Okay. And you’ll tell me everything?” she said as they walked into her apartment, Inac being a gentleman by shutting the door behind them.

  “I’ll tell you what I can.”

  Once the food had been ordered, they both sat on the couch. Nervous to be so close to him alone—Crystal wasn’t home—she grabbed a round decorative pillow that matched the ugly couch and set it in her lap.

  “Okay. Start,” she said, hugging the pillow close.

  “Where would you like me to begin?” he asked.

  “At the beginning. You said that an ancestor of yours started it?”

  “Yes.”

  “When? And why?”

  “About 2700 B.C. And because it was his way of getting all leaders answering to him. You see, it’s political in nature. All sorts of leaders are a part of it. Think of it sort of like the United Nations. The people in it, representing different countries, all play nice together,” he said with a sexy grin. With a flippant wave of his hand, he added, “Wars are discussed. Alliances are made. That sort of thing.”

  “But you aren’t a leader of any country. How come you’re a part of it?”

  “An Adamson has been, and will always be, a part of it.”

  “No matter what?”

  He nodded.

  “Are you going to get in trouble for telling me about it?”

  “Nope. You see, I’m not going to tell you any secrets or who else is a part of it. You won’t know anything you can’t find out second-hand with a lot of digging. And yes, they are on the Internet. It just takes more than the half a second Google search,” he added with another grin.

  Too eager for answers now that she was getting some, she ignored his jibe and asked, “So your ancestor, Sargon the Great, formed it because he wanted power?”

  “More like craved it,” he said, momentarily showing his teeth with a feral grin. “He had to have it.”

  “My professor said that some of history’s greatest and most powerful leaders were in charge of it at different points. People like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Saladin, and Vlad the Impaler?”

  “That’s true. Especially when it came to the greatest conquerors in history. Most great leaders in history were leaders of the Mokolios as well, and those who weren’t were usually the leader’s proxy. The sect was obsessed with power, and power meant war. They’ve done some amazing things over the years.”

  “Like what? What are they responsible for?”

  Inac didn’t answer. He seemed to be determining what he could tell her. He was just opening his mouth to answer when the doorbell buzzed; their Chinese had arrived. Inac waited until after they’d settled back onto the couch and were eating their Lo Mein to answer.

  After swallowing a bite he’d impressively taken with chopsticks, Inac said, “The Mokolios are indirectly responsible for the death of Christ.”

  “But that’s horrible!” If he was part of a group that would do that, then maybe Tracker was right about him.

  “Is it?” he asked so quietly that it stopped her internal mutterings. “I mean, is it really? If Christ hadn’t died, Christianity never would have had staying power. You, as a Christian, Hara, wouldn’t have the belief that He died for your sins. You wouldn’t have the belief of Him resurrecting. Christianity never would have made it to the Dark Ages if He hadn’t become one of the world’s most famous martyrs.”

  He was right. She didn’t want to believe that Christ dying was a good thing, but it really was the basis of her entire life.

  Using a fork to move around the noodles—she hadn’t been able to take a bite yet because she was still in shock from the new knowledge—she said, “But I doubt they had altruistic intentions….”

  He smiled before taking another bite.

  “You’re right,” he said, “They had revenge in mind. If they’d known then what would transpire because of it, they never would have done it.”

  “Revenge? What could they have had against Christ?”

  “Not Christ. God,” he said with a flash of his teeth as though the very word disgusted him. “It was why they watched for the supposed ‘coming’ of His son for years. The Herod in the New Testament wasn’t acting on his own fears, but on the Mokolios’ need for revenge, for it was their leader who gave Herod his crown. He ruled as the Mokolios’ proxy. Funny how history never remembers the truth….”

  He was making light of the situation, but she had never heard such a horrible thing in her life and was still in shock.

  “But why?” she finally blurted out. “What did God ever do to them?”

  “That, I’m not at liberty to discuss. However, I will tell you that the Mokolios haven’t always been under the helm of a sane leader. If you accept that, then that will explain a lot of what they did. Sometimes they didn’t even have a reason for the atrocities they committed.” Again, he said it like he didn’t think it to necessarily be a bad thing.

  She just nodded. He obviously wasn’t going to go into why they hated God at the time of Christ.

  “But God and Christ are the same person, so wouldn’t they have something against Christ if they had something against God?”

  Again, he looked her in the eye. “Are they?” When she questioned him with her eyes, he added, “The same person?”

  “That’s what the Holy Trinity is….”

  “That’s only one interpretation of what the Holy Trinity is. But would Christ really pray to himself on the cross? Would He ask Himself to forgive the people crucifying Him? Maybe Christianity has been altered over the years. Have you ever thought of that possibility?”

  She didn’t want to think about that right now. They weren’t here to question her beliefs. They were here to get information for her paper.

  Ignoring his philosophical questions, she asked, “So how were they indirectly responsible?”

  He smiled, like he knew that she was avoiding what he had asked. “The leader found Judas Iscariot and sensed conflict in the man. You see, at the time, Judas was hurting for money. He was going to lose everything he owned and, deep down, he blamed Christ for that since it wasn’t until he began following Christ that he was bound to lose it all. History doesn’t teach this little fact, but he had borrowed money from the donations Christ’s followers had given to pay his debts, and had lost those too. He was pretty desperate to keep that a secret, but he knew it would come out soon. That’s when the leader of the Mokolios found him. He just happened to remind Judas of the reward being offered for Christ’s arrest. Judas basically said that he couldn’t do it because he didn’t want Christ to die if that was His sentence. The leader then answered something along the lines of, ‘If He is truly the son of God as He so claims, then no human man could harm Him.’”

  “And that worked?” Despite herself, she was fascinated in learning what had really transpired that had caused Judas to betray Christ.

  “Well he turned Him in, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah,” she said, finally taking a bite of food as she let it seep in. Once it had, she asked, “Why isn’t all of that in the Bible?”

  “Plenty of reasons. For one, are you sure that a Mokolio didn’t help translate the Bible?”

  “But…they couldn’t!” she cried, almost spitting out her food. “You said they hated God!”

  He shrugged. “They’re masters of every language. Even ones that have long been forgotten. That’s where their name comes from. Loosely translated in a language that is so ancient it doesn’t even have a name, it means ‘Owners of the Earth.’”

  She was horrified. If a God-hating society was responsible
for translating the Bible, then how much of it was false?

  “Don’t worry, though,” he said, probably upon seeing her world crashing down around her. “They only messed with things that had to do with them. They didn’t want to appear in history written by so-called ‘prophets’ and ‘disciples.’ In fact, only a couple of members from the sect are actually mentioned by name. And don’t even ask who because I’m not going to tell you. Just know that before you get yourself all worked up.”

  “Were they always bad then? Are their deeds all as horrible as that?”

  He shrugged as he took another bite of noodles. “Sometimes. It always depended upon the sanity of their leader. But even mad men have their uses. Think about the scientists who were before their time and killed as heretics. They were considered mad, but today their teachings are almost scripture themselves in the scientific community.”

  “So what have they done that’s good?”

  “They were responsible for the Age of Enlightenment. Of course, they were responsible for the Dark Ages as well, but…” he said, shrugging again. “That just goes to show you how different the sect was depending upon the sanity of the leader. Before you judge them, know that, if not for them, we’d still be living in the Dark Ages today. The sect has always been comprised of the most brilliant minds of the time. As you probably know, sometimes brilliance can bring about madness.”

  “What about now?”

  “At the moment, the leader is the sanest of any of them.”

  “So they’re doing good?” She just couldn’t believe that Inac could be a part of something evil.

  “At the moment they’re pretty much neutral. They aren’t doing evil like when Vlad the Impaler had been in charge, but they aren’t doing the good they did during the Age of Enlightenment. They’re kind of just chilling, keeping the world in as much control as possible. Right now a lot of countries are interested in warring with one another, to gain the world for themselves, but the sect leader is sick to death of war so he’s forcing them to behave. If anyone doesn’t listen, then they’ll be killed. You might be interested to know that the sect has been involved in every war in history. Maybe not every disagreement, but any of the major wars.”

  “But that’s doing good; stopping war, I mean. It sounds like you have a good leader now.” She was so interested in what he was telling her that she hadn’t eaten more than a bite of her noodles.

  He laughed. “He still has a pretty bad temper, though, so who knows when that could take over.”

  “But there are wars going on right now…?” The thought just occurred to her. If they were stopping the fighting, then how come people were still dying?

  “Not involving anyone from the sect.” He furrowed his brow before amending, “Well, some countries are part of the sect, but their wars are against people not in the sect. Besides, nobody’s really winning any of them. The leader will only get involved in wars if he has to.”

  “But why not? If he can stop the wars, then why doesn’t he?”

  “Because it’s human nature to war. He can’t stop everyone from fighting. Especially those who deserve to be attacked for violence they’ve committed. Besides, he can’t tell those not in the sect—like small terrorist organizations—to stop fighting, and he hasn’t really had much interest in the third world.”

  “You just mean that he won’t get involved unless it challenges his interests.”

  He looked her over for a moment before saying, “That’s partly it. But really, if someone deserves to be attacked, then they deserve what comes to them. Some countries have attacked sect-controlled ones first. Can the leader really tell them not to protect themselves or retaliate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they’ll just be bullied until all of their countrymen are dead or enslaved.”

  “So why doesn’t the whole sect get involved when that happens?”

  “We don’t like world wars, which is what would happen if they did. When wars get that large, the sect loses money. Wars aren’t cheap, you know.”

  “Well that just makes it all better,” she said with a sarcastic snort.

  “We don’t get involved in squabbles. We have more important things to do. Besides, the leader lets each ‘elected’ person run their own country to a point. He wants a life so, as long as they aren’t ruining things, he gives them some leeway to do their own thing. If not, can you imagine one man ruling billions of people firsthand? He wouldn’t have any time to enjoy himself. I mean, think about it, we re-elect a president at least every eight years because that much time without a vacation and the leader will no longer have a fresh pair of eyes. If he can’t change things by then, he won’t ever change things.” He seemed vaguely annoyed. When she kept staring at him with the unbelief she felt, he added, “On top of all that, the leader likes things challenging. If the whole world coexisted perfectly, then he wouldn’t have anything to work at to obtain. Right now his eyes are set on the Middle East. The Middle East is very dear to him and he hates seeing it torn apart by civil wars.” With a curl to his lip, he said, “He despises civil wars, or really any war based on racism and sectarianism. There is no point in murdering your own brother because he was born to a different tribe or believes in a different god….”

  She ignored that, instead scoffing as she asked, “So what on Earth could be more important than world peace?”

  “There’s a prophecy that we’re trying to keep from being fulfilled.”

  That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. When he didn’t go on, she asked, “What kind of prophecy?”

  “The kind that I’m not at liberty to discuss.”

  His terse reply let her know that he was finished with the interview. She had another question, though, that she had to have answered before she could drop the subject.

  “And where do you fit into all of this?”

  He smiled, obviously trying to charm her with it.

  “Me?” he asked. “I’m just an Adamson.”

  Chapter Nine

  ***

  Inac couldn’t believe everything he’d told Hara. None of his wives had even known the Mokolios existed, let alone had heard stories about them. There was just something about her that made him want to be honest, as well as she responded so well that he enjoyed conversing with her.

  She was probably the only living person he could honestly say that about. He enjoyed talking to her so much that his gut had even wanted to tell her the absolute truth; that he was the one who had founded it, and that he’d always been the leader. But his head had won that battle. Everything would be lost if she knew the truth about him; if she knew he was Cain.

  Because of how disarming she was, he hadn’t talked to her in days. He just had to give adequate time between his big reveal and moving forward. If he didn’t, then he might end up prolonging the inevitable. As much as he no longer wished her harm, if he didn’t get rid of her, he would have obsessed for five hundred years for nothing. His life’s work would be meaningless. She had to die.

  A few days had worked wonders in clearing his head. During that time he’d become reacquainted with the man he really was; with the murderer that God had cursed and Marked so all would know him. He remembered what he had to do and would take care of it. The days had been what he’d needed to push the emotions away. Now the part that enjoyed her company was safely locked away. He just had to get this over with quickly before that part of him found its way out into the open again.

  “Hey you,” he called to Hara as she walked up to him. He was waiting by her car outside her school.

  “Hey yourself,” she said with a large smile. “You remember Tracker,” she added, gesturing toward the boy beside her. Did the puppy always have to follow her everywhere?

  Acting as though he wasn’t annoyed by the kid’s presence, he said, “Of course I do. And how are you today, Tracker?”

  The kid just glared at him in much the same fashion as he had last Thursday when the kid had shown up at Hara’
s for study group, which had thus ended the evening. Inac still hadn’t had the chance to make a move on Hara…but that would change tonight.

  “What are you doing here?” Hara asked. “And how’d you know where to find me?”

  “I’m here to give you a surprise. And Crystal told me what time you got out of school.” Obviously he’d already known, but he’d asked Hara’s roommate so that Hara wouldn’t know he’d been following her.

  “What kind of surprise?” she asked, her smile widening.

  “Come with me and find out,” he said, gesturing toward his black and silver bullet bike parked behind her car.

  “You want me to ride with you on that?” she asked in a voice suggesting he was mental…which he was. But she didn’t need to know that.

  “Yeah,” he said, making a show with the best smile in his arsenal. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

  “Nuh-uh. I’m wearing a skirt.”

  “You always wear a skirt. Besides,” he added, holding up a pair of denim shorts in her size, “I brought you these to put on under it. Now you don’t have any more excuses.”

  “What about a helmet? I only see one.”

  “That I bought for you too.”

  “You don’t wear a helmet?

  “Don’t you know I’m invincible?” he asked, making it sound like a joke even though it was, in actuality, the truth.

  Hara laughed but, to his dismay, Tracker’s scowl deepened as though he believed what Inac was saying. Something tugged at the edges of Inac’s mind, making him think that the kid knew more about him than he was letting on….

  Inac had good instincts; instincts that were telling him that this kid’s hatred of him wasn’t just because Hara liked Inac versus him. The kid had the look of one who knew Inac’s true intentions. But, if he did, then he would have warned Hara….

  For the first time in his life, Inac doubted himself. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it. Right now, he had to work on Hara so that he could kill her already.

  “Come on, Hara,” Inac plead. “Or do I need to play Angel versus Devil with you?”