The Sage Stone Prophecy (Arkana Archaeology Adventure Series Book 7)

by N. S. Wikarski

  “You are deluded,” the Pythia channeled in a merciless voice. “It was Satan who whispered in your ear, tempting you to overreach yourself. As the first prophet of the Brotherhood, I received God’s immutable mandate. The Blessed Nephilim were to live in seclusion and never mix with the Fallen. You have led your flock from the path ordained and it will surely go hard with you on Judgment Day.”

  Abraham struggled to breathe.

  Daniel glanced over his shoulder. All the blood had drained from Matthew’s face. Hannah and Erik both gaped open-mouthed. Even Leroy Hunt seemed befuddled. The Arkana team appeared no less shaken than the rest. Maddie had thrown a protective arm around Zach. Griffin stared at the Pythia in dismay. Lars was mumbling an invocation in Swedish.

  The Diviner rallied unexpectedly. He pushed Daniel aside and stood alone. “These are lies, witch! All lies. It is my destiny to possess the Sage Stone. Mine alone!”

  Before anyone could react, Metcalf drew a pistol from his pocket and fired twice.

  The spectators, too shocked to move, watched the Pythia stagger and clutch her chest.

  “No!” Griffin sprang to catch her before she hit the ground.

  She collapsed against his shoulder, the Sage Stone still gripped in one hand. Her eyes were shut and she had stopped breathing.

  “Cassie!” The Scrivener cried in an agonized voice as he lowered her gently to the earth, searching desperately for any sign of life.

  The Diviner raised his gun in the air. “All of you, bear witness! This is the fate that awaits those who would keep me from what is rightfully mine.”

  Abraham stepped forward, intent on wresting the artifact from the Pythia’s hand, when he froze in his tracks.

  Cassie’s eyes flew open. She sat bolt upright, her lungs expanding to draw in a huge breath of air. Turning toward the Scrivener, she registered surprise. “Griffin, I’m alright. I wasn’t hit.”

  He crushed her in an embrace of frantic relief.

  She murmured, “Don’t worry. I really am OK. See, there’s no blood. Just help me up.”

  Mystified but reassured, the Scrivener raised her to her feet. “Are you quite sure you can stand?”

  Cassie nodded and motioned him back, swaying unsteadily until she caught her balance. Then she stared down in wonder at the bullet holes in her jacket. “Huh, will you look at that?” Eyeing the Diviner, she gave an arch smile. “If the Sage Stone really does belong to anybody, preacher, I’m willing to bet it isn’t you.”

  Abraham recoiled. “This is impossible.”

  “You didn’t let me finish Mr. Proctor’s message,” the Pythia said reproachfully. She seemed her usual self as she glared at the old man. “And BTW, rudest way to pull somebody out of a trance ever!”

  “Impossible,” Metcalf said once more, the gun now hanging limply from his fingers.

  “I’m alive because the Sage Stone transferred its power to me. I’m the one who touched it first, just like your prophecy predicted. Just like I was meant to!”

  “The Sage Stone belongs to me!” the Diviner thundered.

  “Does it?” the Pythia challenged. “Nothing in that prophecy names you as the boss of the artifact. Maybe you need a dictionary to look up the word ‘whosoever’. The Arkana retrieved the Bones Of the Mother and brought them to this cave. We assembled them in the right order and opened the lock. We unearthed the Sage Stone and I touched it first. Your prophecy has a clear Finder’s Keepers clause.”

  “Boss, I can take care of this little problem for you right quick.” Leroy aimed his gun at Cassie. “In fact, I’d consider it a courtesy if you let me. No charge. This hit’s on the house.”

  Metcalf seemed to waver on the point of consent.

  “Father, you can’t!” Daniel entreated.

  “If you let him shoot me, you’ll never hear the rest of Proctor’s message,” Cassie warned. “And it would be the biggest mistake of your life not to hear it. Eternity in hell is a long time to mull over shoulda, woulda, coulda.”

  “Stand down, Mr. Hunt!” The Diviner told him sternly. “Let the witch speak.”

  “Gal, I’ll give you this much. You got grit. If I had my druthers, wouldn’t be nothin’ left of you but a bitty pile of grit.” Leroy shook his head in disbelief and lowered his gun. “Go on and speak your piece.”

  The Pythia focused on the Diviner. “Because you cut my connection to the guy in the sky, I’ll have to paraphrase the rest of what he wanted you to know. For starters, prophecies are tricky. They’re a minefield of double meanings. Yours predicted a war against the Fallen but it never guaranteed you a victory. Just the opposite, in fact. On the night you ordered the granite key stolen and got my sister killed, you set your own doom in motion. Those crimes pulled me into the Arkana and pulled the Arkana into your quest. We never would have known about your secret plan otherwise. Ironic, isn’t it? You made us believe the Sage Stone was real and pointed us at the one object that could defeat you. Right here! Right now!”

  Cassie gripped the Sage Stone with both hands and crushed it between her palms. The surface of the baetyl crumbled and trickled through the Pythia’s fingers. Its sparkling green glow dimmed and died out completely. All that remained was the black slab at its core. She held it up.

  “See? Now it’s just an ordinary rock. The Sage Stone was never fated to help you win your war. It was fated to stop you dead in your tracks.”

  Abraham stared stupidly at the mound of sand on the cavern floor. He seemed incapable of comprehending what had just happened.

  “Jedediah Proctor wants you to go home, Diviner. Destroy your weapons,” the Pythia instructed. “Pray for forgiveness before it really is too late. This is your last warning.”

  “None of this is real.” Abraham shook his head in fearful denial. “It can’t be. Annabeth is playing tricks on me again.” His shoulders sagged. “She torments me from the shadows when I am weakest. For all I know, she has assumed the guise of this seer to sow doubt in my mind.” Panic-stricken, he searched the faces around him. “How can I even trust my own senses? Are any of you really here?” In that moment, the overbearing prophet of the Blessed Nephilim dwindled into a muddled old man. He bowed his head in an attitude of defeat and the Arkana team relaxed by a hairsbreadth.

  A split second later, Abraham raised his arm and shouted, “No more, Annabeth! I will silence your lying tongue once and for all!” He fired his gun at the Pythia again.

  Quicker than thought, Cassie raised the stone shard to protect her face. The bullet ricocheted off the iron meteorite and reversed direction.

  No one registered what had happened until they all saw Abraham Metcalf reel backwards and fall. A small red dot directly between his eyes showed where the bullet had entered his brain and ended his life.

  “Father,” Daniel dropped to his knees, checking feverishly for a pulse. In a stunned voice, he announced, “He’s dead. The Diviner is dead.”

  “Aw, hell no!” Leroy Hunt bellowed in outrage. “I am done with y’all!” He raised his pistol and fired across the cavern in a wide arc.

  Daniel watched the scene unfolding around him in numb horror. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion and all of it at once. As bullets whizzed over the Scion’s head, Cassie twisted sidewise—struck twice in the ribs. Griffin lunged to pull her down out of the line of fire, a shot hitting him in the arm as he did so. A barrage of projectiles exploded against the reliquary wall, the sound reverberating in the enclosed space like a jack hammer. Lars charged at Leroy and tackled him. Now released from Hunt’s grasp, Hannah sank down, covering her head. Zach ran to protect her.

  The entire cavern began to shudder. Deep cracks sprouted from the ceiling, shaking down debris on the combatants. Maddie grabbed the Gladstone bag and dashed to the reliquary. She scooped up the original artifacts and threw them inside along with the rest, dodging falling rock as she went.

  Matthew wavered, not knowing whether to assist Hunt or subdue him. Taking advantage of his hesitation, Erik elbow
ed the Argus agent in the face and grabbed his weapon. Matthew escaped through the tunnel, presumably to summon reinforcements.

  Erik rushed to aid Lars who was still wrestling Hunt for control of his gun. The cowboy managed to squeeze the trigger one last time just as Lars forced the barrel upward. A short round of three bullets burst from the chamber, exploding through Leroy’s jaw and shattering his skull.

  “We have to clear out of here,” Maddie commanded as more rocks pelted down from the ceiling. “And I mean now!”

  Zach pulled Hannah to her feet and out the tunnel. Cassie helped Griffin cross the chamber. His sleeve was soaked in blood but the Pythia seemed miraculously unharmed. She handed the Scrivener off to Lars and Erik who hastily dragged him through the exit.

  Cassie crouched beside Daniel. She shook him by the shoulder. “You have to hurry before it’s too late.”

  “In a minute,” he said in a vacant tone. “You go on ahead.”

  “No more than a minute.” She kicked a spare flashlight toward him before darting through the passage to join the others.

  The Scion glanced at Abraham’s face—the eyes staring up at him in dull surprise. Daniel closed them. “Goodbye, father,” he whispered. A large rock fell from the ceiling, missing his shoulder by inches. Daniel shook himself out of his stupor and fled for safety.

  He had no sooner exited the cavern than he heard an enormous crash behind him signaling the collapse of the reliquary chamber. Another loud crack overhead portended that the roof of the tunnel was splitting as well. The Scion kept running and squeezed through the gap in the mountain just as the corridor behind him buckled entirely, blowing particles of dust and rock fragments out into the open air. He doubled over and coughed in an effort to clear his lungs, realizing that his skin and hair were caked with dust. Once he straightened up and rubbed the dirt out of his eyes, he saw Matthew and his guards pointing their weapons at the Arkana group. The two Arkana sentries were aiming their rifles at the Nephilim.

  “What are your orders, Scion?” Matthew asked stonily.

  Daniel assessed the impossible situation. If his men fired on the Arkana, their security team would shoot the Nephilim. He had to pick a side and he had to do it now.

  “Your orders, Scion,” Matthew prompted again.

  Daniel stared incredulously at the security chief. “How can you even ask me that question, Commander Matthew? You witnessed the judgment of God with your very own eyes. The Lord struck my father down for his many crimes. Would you compound his folly by slaughtering even more innocents?”

  “They are Fallen,” the Argus chief protested.

  “They are human beings!” Daniel retorted. “If you persist in living by the sword, you will surely suffer the same fate as Father Abraham. Tell your men to lower their weapons. Immediately!”

  Matthew nodded slowly and gave a signal to his men to stand down.

  “I am no longer your Scion,” Daniel told them. “I am your new Diviner and you will do as I say. Go back to the helicopter and wait for me there.”

  With chastened expressions, they marched down the hill to their aircraft.

  Daniel next focused on the Arkana group who continued to eye him warily. Their own sentries still held guns trained on him but the new Diviner was too drained to feel afraid.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” Cassie offered. “Even if he did try to kill me.”

  Daniel regarded her bleakly. “I feel nothing for the man entombed inside this mountain. I can only mourn the loss of a father I never had.” His gaze slid to the Gladstone bag clutched in Maddie’s hand. “Abraham Metcalf’s one true love was power. He gave his whole heart to that collection of trash you’re holding. I never want to lay eyes on any of it again.” He abruptly turned his back and went to rejoin his subordinates.

  ***

  The Arkana group watched their enemies fly away. Nobody spoke as they filed into their own transport with Maddie and Cassie bringing up the rear.

  As Cassie was about to ascend, Maddie laid a hand on her arm. “You did good, kiddo. The Nephilim fell for it completely.”

  The Pythia paused and faced the Chatelaine. “I don’t mind lying to the bad guys but I hate lying to my friends. At some point, we have to tell Daniel that nothing he saw was real.”

  “Agreed.” Maddie nodded. “At some point but not right now. This day has already been long enough and it’s only noon.”

  Cassie gazed off pensively toward the seide stone. “It’s funny that Metcalf would be the one to insist it was all an illusion.”

  The Chatelaine gave a short laugh. “Not the illusion he had in mind but the Diviner actually divined the truth for once.”

  They exchanged a rueful glance before climbing aboard the helicopter.

  As soon as the two were settled, the aircraft lifted off cleanly and rose above the crest of the mountain. Erik and Lars administered first aid to Griffin’s injury which turned out to be less serious than they’d all feared. Hannah and Zach clung to one another, seeking mute reassurance that their nightmare was really over.

  The pilot came on the intercom, interrupting their torpid silence. “Maddie, a message just came through for you from the Vault. The Memory Guardian is awake. She wants to know where everybody is.”

  Chapter 53—The Last Detail

  An Arkana agent named Darryl leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. He glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was six in the morning. He’d been at his desk for the past twenty hours straight—ever since the first urgent call came through from Tokyo at dawn. Of course, the local time in Chicago had only been mid-afternoon of the previous day. From that moment, the Vault security division had worked feverishly to log in captures and coordinate the activities of its teams in the remaining strike zones.

  “That was the last one.” An agent named Hector announced from the next cubicle. “The final Argus agent was intercepted before he got to the Atlanta airport. We did it! We snagged all one hundred and fifty canisters.”

  Cheers rose from the exhausted office staff.

  Darryl let out a sigh of relief and put his head down on his desk.

  The security director strode into the room. “Good work, folks. Those Argus agents never knew what hit them. Everybody go home and get some rest. As of this moment, you’re all off the clock.”

  “I’m outta here.” Darryl rose to leave.

  “Hang on,” the security director laid a hand on his shoulder. “I have one more assignment for you and Hector.”

  ***

  “This is crazy,” Darryl protested as he descended the steps of the schoolhouse.

  “Orders is orders, man,” Hector reminded him laconically.

  “I don’t know what we’ve got to worry about,” Darryl countered. “All the weaponized plague has been bagged. The world is safe, at least from the Nephilim. So I don’t understand why we have to go out and patrol our own backyard. The Vault was never on their hit list to begin with. I’ll bet the Nephilim didn’t even know about this location.”

  “I don’t care,” Hector asserted. “The Memory Guardian said we should do this.”

  “And that’s another thing. Faye wakes up from her coma and the first thing she says is ‘check the grounds around the schoolhouse’?”

  “Maybe there really is something out there.”

  “And maybe she’s still got a concussion from that fall down the stairs!”

  “Look, she didn’t get to be Memory Guardian because she’s got an overactive imagination.”

  Darryl groaned. “I’m just saying somebody should clear this with Maddie.”

  “We can’t clear this with Maddie,” Hector pointed out. “She’s stranded on a mountain in Sweden with the rest of the A-Team. They’re in a dead zone and nobody’s been able to reach them for hours. So I think we should do like Faye wants and sweep the perimeter.”

  “For what exactly?”

  “Beats me.

  “I still say it’s a concussion.”

 
; Both agents checked their pistol magazines and headed off into the woods.

  ***

  Brothers Shem and Paul crept through the thicket surrounding the schoolhouse. The dawn sky was already too bright to provide much cover. Both men wore camo fatigues to better blend into the woodland setting while they searched for the exact location of their target. They carefully scanned the ground around them.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Shem scratched his head.

  “Yes,” Paul answered confidently. “Leroy Hunt gave the Diviner the exact coordinates. There should be an air intake vent close by.”

  They combed the ground carefully, seeing nothing in the underbrush until Shem tripped over the object they were searching for—a wide metal pipe protruding three feet from the earth with its top curved downward like a faucet. The two men crouched beside it.

  “It has a grille covering the vent,” Shem observed. “We’ll have to take it off.”

  “I don’t think so.” Paul took a few moments to study the design. “The opening is big enough.” He removed his backpack and began sorting through its contents.

  “We’re very lucky the Diviner trusted us with a task as important as this,” Shem said. “After what we almost did.”

  “Thank God, we repented in time,” Paul agreed. “Killing the Diviner, his favorite wife, and the Scion are crimes which the Lord would never forgive. It’s too bad our traitor-brothers died in their sins. Even though everybody says that Enoch and Lemuel were banished, I know better. They were executed just like Brother Joshua, who is surely burning in hell right now.”

  “He should be, for leading us astray. It’s a wonder we weren’t condemned too.”

  “We will be if we fail in this mission,” Paul cautioned. “This is our only chance to make amends.” He went back to pulling objects from his pack.

  Shem watched the operation, periodically turning to scan the woods for any sign of human activity.

  “We’re ready,” Paul announced. He held up a metal canister of pressurized gas and then fitted a long segment of flexible plastic tubing to the nozzle.