I grinned.
Myleene gave a short laugh. “Yes, well, luckily our enemy miscalculated and sent humans to carry out the raid. Belinda directed the questioning of the thieves and we learned they had come to find and simply destroy a particular document. The Text of Arcadia.”
An air of silence and wonder had fallen over the room that set my heart racing. Lucy, I noticed, was enthralled, not even rubbing the bandages that covered her wounds.
“The Text of Arcadia,” Myleene continued. “Has been translated and reviewed by some of the most learned people on the planet.”
“So what does it say?” Lucy asked.
Myleene took a breath.
“And such a time shall come to pass when dark shadows drive through the very crust of the Earth where it has grown weak,” Myleene spoke in a voice force without inflection or emotion and purely from memory. “Earth and Air, Fire and Water- it will all warp. Disaster shall be visited upon the innocents, and they shall no longer remain innocent. Gorgoroth will send Trickster, Spirit, Malevolence, Eradicator, Warrior, Conjuror and Sorcerer, the six Destroyers- precursors to the coming of his armies, and these six Lieutenants shall wreak havoc upon the world as they seek out and destroy the Eight chosen souls. The Eight are powerful alone, but forged together and standing side-by-side at the site of the Last Battle their powers will save the world. Protect the Eight, for if they do not stand together against the coming of Gorgoroth at the end, at New Babylon, our fair earth will be lost.”
8
MAUI, HAWAII, U.S.A.
About three minutes before Devon Summers died the man called Loki stopped hurting her and stepped back to admire his handiwork. For seven hours his pleasure and her hell had mounted in unison. Now it was all about to come to a frenzied end.
Devon stared up at him through her pain. Her body felt like it had been run over by a steam roller from the neck down. How had things come to this senseless end?
Who was he? This killer? A jilted lover. An unhappy customer? An irate pedestrian? It didn’t take much these days to commit an act of violence. The killer stood over her, eyes locked to hers, reveling in her final moments.
“It was good to kill you, Devon Summers,” she heard him whisper. “You are the first to die. Your power will never be realized, not by Aegis and not by you,” his hateful eyes travelled the length of her body. “You could have saved the world.”
He turned away and passed beyond her sight. After a minute she heard the door click softly. Her killer was gone. At least he left me to die in peace, she thought.
Midnight chimed out on the mantelpiece clock. She could not move. His blows had long since broken all her major bones. To blink and roll her eyes and use her brain was the sum total of her collapsing world. It was ironic in a way, for she had never spent a single day in hospital. Never suffered a single bout of flu. Germs couldn’t touch her, but stark, shitty life could. It could take away everything she had ever experienced.
Devon forced her eyes open, not wanting her last will to slip away. She had wonderful memories. She had dreams and aspirations.
All about to be scattered like autumn leaves in a winter storm.
Oh, God!
Devon ached to live. Tears slid from the corners of her eyes, running down her face to pool on the carpet. She willed herself not to die, willed it with every fiber of her being.
And then she sensed something inside, something rising. Like a wave it flowed from her very core, gathering momentum, rushing from her toes to her scalp. Her eyes flashed bright green, the glow discernible even to her. She groaned. Heat blossomed within her.
She curled her fingers into fists. She moved her right leg.
She gasped, and then held herself immobile. Something was happening here. Something miraculous. The parts of her body she could see were no longer broken, just bruised. And, God were the bruises paling away even as she watched?
Then the front door clicked open again and she stifled a shriek of fear. The killer was back to finish the job. Her panic hit a pinnacle when she saw a stranger walking towards her.
But the concern she saw in his face made her want to weep with joy.
“Devon Summers?” the man was so upset she could see tears glistening in his eyes. “Oh no. Are you Devon Summers?”
She managed a nod, dumbfounded she could even manage that.
“We’re too late,” the man collapsed to his knees at her side, shoulders shaking in misery. “Oh, God, we’re too late.” The man reached for his cell phone.
Then he noticed her rapidly vanishing bruises and the protruding bones that were painlessly knitting themselves back together. He noticed her amazing emerald eyes ablaze with power.
“You are the healer,” he whispered in awe. “They thought they’d killed you, and left you for dead, not realizing you are the healer!”
Devon reveled in the newly awakened power within her.
The man jabbed at his cell phone. After a few seconds he said, “This is Michael. Devon Summers is alive, by a miracle. Get a team here. We have to get her to safety now.”
9
YORK, ENGLAND
I didn’t understand the Text of Arcadia yet but I leapt upon one point. “And you guys think I am one of these…these eight Chosen?”
Myleene shook her head. “Logan, we know you are.” Others nodded. Even Belinda gave me an encouraging smile.
“But how?”
“The planets most powerful coven of witches used the text as a focal point to concoct a location spell. A few days ago it found the Eight, scattered around the world. Aegis has dispatched people to bring them in safely. But-”
I swallowed. “But?”
“The Six Destroyers, though stretched, are already out there, Logan. The spell sought them also, and they are very, very close. We even have their real names. Of course, the Destroyers know more about this crisis than we do. We don’t even know how many of the Eight remain alive.”
“Wait," Lucy spoke in a tiny voice. “It’s…it’s just you keep saying six Destroyers, yet you spoke seven names.”
“Nice,” Belinda grinned in appreciation.
“Yes, you are right. Well done.” Myleene nodded in respect. “Trickster- the seventh Destroyer is a shape-changer, always concealed, almost impossible to find. We think it’s the Text’s way of helping to point that out to us.”
“Listen,” I pinched the bridge of my nose and breathed slowly. “It’s all very well rabbiting on about unknown powers and apocalypse, but in my reality I have to concentrate on stopping my house from being repossessed. Do you think my power might achieve that?”
Giles gave me a tight lipped smile. “Who knows? We believe each power is unique. Individually it will be fantastic, possibly devastating. But first, it needs coaxing out.”
“Through hard training,” Belinda added with a smile.
“Have you found any of the Eight?” Lucy asked. “Apart from dad?”
Myleene nodded towards the oriental guy who sat with his legs dangling over his chair arm. “Say hello to Kisami. Belinda flew him in from Hong Kong yesterday. He was the first we found.”
Kisami said, “I speak small English. No?”
I widened my eyes.
“Look, I think we’re done here,” Giles said. “Go to your contacts. Get this meeting organized for tomorrow night. There has never been a more important meeting in our two thousand year history. We are at kill or be killed.” With this last word he unknotted his damn tie and threw it on the table.
I sat there, scared. “Does this mean…” I swallowed. “Does this mean my daughter and I are in immediate danger?”
Belinda slid out of her chair and came over to me. “I’m with you now, Logan. You’ll be safe,” she winked. “And warm.”
I heard Lucy choke back a laugh. I thought about my house, my business, and my friends.
“Seriously,” Myleene drew my attention. “We do know that one of the Six is here, in York.”
“In York?”
“Uh hu
h. A woman by the name of Ashka."
Fear twisted my gut. Nice bombshell.
I indicated Lucy. “My daughter needs to be safe. Plus she needs to be in school in a few days,” I knew school weren’t expecting her for a while following the hospitalization. “And I have a business, and bills.”
“We’ll work it out, Logan. Your daughter is safer with Belinda than with anyone else in the world right now. And you are safer in York, under our protection, than in any other city. Take some solace in that.”
“So,” Belinda held out a hand. “You gonna sit there all night, Logan? Or do ya wanna meet Bill Compton?”
10
MIAMI, U.S.A.
Pure adrenalin surged through Marian Cleaver as he approached the building where a crazy woman was holding thirty kids hostage.
A stocky guy with a buzz cut was talking into his radio-mike behind a mini-van. Cleaver approached him
The stocky guy held out a hand. “Whoa there partner. Been jogging?”
Cleaver winced, remembering the state of his sweats. “Just left your wife, bud. What’s the activity here?”
“No one’s gone in or out since we got here. And by the way, do I know you, bud?”
“What’s the layout?” Cleaver ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair, trying to look jaded, set for the long haul. None of these guys knew he was the man Gaines had named.
“Thirty to thirty-five hostages, ages eighteen to twenty three. Mixed race. No obvious motives,” buzz-cut pointed to a room. Second floor. Left hand corner. “All in there.”
“And the perp?”
“Sat watching them.”
Cleaver frowned. “So not a single hostage has made a move? Not one? What the hell has this woman done to them?”
“We’re just kicking it here, Sir, waiting for the brass. I’m really going to need to see some kind of ID now.”
Cleaver mulled it over. Gaines had to be holding something horrible over those kids. Out of all the dross his mind picked up on one thing.
“I wonder why they’ve been herded together.”
“Who cares,” buzz cut winked. “They’re only college kids, right?”
Cleaver fought hard to restrain his natural tendencies. “Start getting a team together,” he snarled. “Get a negotiator over here. And move the fucking press back,” he pointed to a circling helicopter. “I don’t want this playing out over national TV.”
The Miami PD guy looked impressed, and then rushed off without questioning Cleaver’s ID again. Cleaver took a moment to check his weapons, donned his trusty brown duster and made sure its heavy bulk was hiding both shotguns and all three automatics. And an array of knives. And a highly illegal cattle prod. A weapon for every occasion.
He slunk into the shadows and hugged the garden wall all the way to the house. A rattle of the front door found it locked. He pulled out a set of custom-made picks and finessed the lock. Seconds later he was inside.
A dark corridor ran to the far side of the house. Cleaver started down it, pausing frequently to listen. What the hell was he doing? Risking his career? And all for an ancient, secretive organization that denied its very existence. He muted his cell phone and sent a text message to England. His life wasn’t as important as other things going on in the world right now. People needed help, whether they knew it or not. He wouldn’t fail them.
Cleaver found a staircase. To his left, dirty windows overlooked a neglected garden and beyond that a Shell station that had been evacuated. Vivid lights bathed the scene in stark relief. He saw a bunch of kids one block over sitting on a wall, sucking down 20oz Dews and shoveling fast food as if they had front row seats at the local Cineplex.
No sound came from the floor above. Thirty-five kids? No sound?
His cell phone lit up. An incoming text message from Aegis. He owed them. They had saved him, honed his boxing skills into fighting expertise, turned him around and given him a purpose- to watch over events here in Miami and report as they unfolded.
And Miami was about to become the most important place on the planet.
He read the message. Do not confront Gaines. Eight still not found. Stand down.
Cleaver bowed his head and leaned against the wall. Bullshit. It wasn’t that simple. Ever since Josh Walkers died all those years ago, Cleaver had never left an innocent in trouble. Never. He couldn’t start now, Aegis directive or not.
He took out his gun and proceeded up the stairs. Staying low, he reached the second floor and located the room that held the hostages. Without a sound he crept towards the door, put his head to the wood, and listened.
Suddenly the door opened, and a young girl stood there. She had shoulder-length jet black hair and a tanned face that would have been attractive if not for her red-rimmed eyes and trembling lower jaw. She wore nothing but a lacy bra and a tiny pair of matching panties. Her face paled at the sight of the gun.
“You have to come inside,” the girl whispered. “She will kill one of us if you don’t.”
Cleaver was at a loss. He motioned with the gun. “Stand aside.”
The girl moved. Through the gap Cleaver saw the hostages in various states of undress, huddled in a corner of the room. They looked lost and helpless, and terrified.
Maybe Clanger was right for once. Maybe this had been some kind of sex party.
Cleaver stepped through the door, ignoring the voice in his head that demanded he let Miami PD handle this by the book. As he entered the room his senses were assaulted by the cloying smell of mixed fear and tension, a smell he knew intimately. It was the smell of the ring. Some fighters came crawling through the ropes, their terror-stink so thick it used to fill Cleaver’s nostrils like thousand dollar cologne. Some fighters masked it well behind a bullish exterior; others basked and wallowed in it like a hippo in his favorite mud bath. But there was no mistaking it.
Cleaver’s nostrils flared.
In contrast, Mena Gaines, lounged in her Lazee-Boy, one white leg dangling over the padded arm. Cleaver locked eyes with her.
“So you are Marian Cleaver,” Gaines rose with languid ease. “And we meet here, at New Babylon, for the first time.”
“New Babylon?”
“Site of the apocalypse. Don’t you know? This is where Gorgoroth will be born. Do you know who I am?”
Cleaver said nothing, but let his mind drink it all in. Gaines was tall, over six feet, and athletic beyond the point you might call obsession. Catwalk models had more fat. She wore an ankle-length black skirt with waist-high slits on both sides and a loose fitting white sweater. Her black hair was straight, and framed a once-pretty face that now looked haunted in the pale light. Cleaver likened her to a chandelier stripped of its glitter, still imposing and bright but missing that quality that made it really live.
He levelled the gun at her.
Gaines flicked a tongue across her lips. “I am Eradicator.”
“Cool name. Put it on a T-shirt. Let the kids go.”
“They are sitting on a cleverly-contrived pressure plate. If their combined weight shifts even a few ounces either way it will trigger an explosion that will destroy this entire building.”
Fuck and damn. “Including you.”
Gaines shrugged.
“I thought you were a fighter.”
Gaines looked delighted. “Well, I have many talents, Marian,” she smiled lasciviously.
“You’re not even human,” Cleaver spat the words at her in disgust.
“Of course I am. I am imbued with the power my Master saw fit to give me, but I am as human as you, Marian.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Then don’t say I’m not human,” Gaines took a step forward. Her feet were bare and white against the oak floor.
“We are the second of our respective powers to meet. It is a shame you are not one of the Chosen, one of the Eight. But then maybe Loki has murdered them all by now, eh? But we can still fight,” her eyes flicked towards the sobbing huddle of kids. “Winner takes all.”
Cleaver saw terrified faces staring back at him. “How do I release them?”
“The disarm button,” Gaines motioned towards the arm of the Lazee-Boy. Cleaver saw a rectangular plastic object like a remote control.
“What guarantee do I have that it won’t just set the bomb off?”
“Ummm,” Gaines put a finger to her lips. “You got me there.”
Cleaver wondered if he should risk just shooting the bitch. But the mocking look on Gaines’ face stopped him.
At that moment a voice blared out, amplified through a bullhorn. “Mena Gaines! This is the police! Is there a way we could talk to you?”
A splash of light, most likely from a helicopter, swept the windows.
Gaines danced forward, moving easily in her slit skirt. She flexed her shoulders and settled into a fighter’s stance before the main window.
“Winner takes all,” she said again. “In New Babylon. Here and now. Just think, Marian, you’re not only trying to save the kids, you’re trying to save the world too. And you get to do it on prime-time television. Isn’t America cool?”
Cleaver stalled for a few more seconds, hoping a sniper might take a pot shot. To take out one of the Six so soon and so easily would give Aegis and the Chosen a massive boost.
Gaines indicated the remote. “Or I could put everyone out of their misery right now.”
Cleaver dropped the gun and leapt at her.
12
SAN FRANCISCO, U.S.A.
The Porsche twitched and the engine screamed as Ken Hamilton slammed his foot down on the accelerator.
“What the fuck’s going on, man?” he shouted. “Who the hell are you and who’s that crazy bitch back there?”
The man in the passenger seat, a short, balding individual who spoke in a clipped British accent said, “I do have a vague idea who that is, Ken. Though I’m not about to make any assumptions. Especially at this speed.
“Tell me, do I look like I enjoy being attacked by a mad woman?” Ken shouted angrily. “Huh? And especially one with a fucking sword?”
Chosen (The Chosen Few Trilogy #1) Page 4
