“What now?” I asked.
“Follow me.” Naomi slid off the scooter. She almost fell as she tried to stand. I moved quickly to her side and held up her weight again.
She stepped forward unsteadily with her arm on my shoulders, leading us toward the two military guys. They were pointing their guns at us.
“Pare,” demanded one of them.
“Omega,” she answered, like it was an order.
They nodded and exchanged a quick glance. One of them rushed to the boat at the end of the dock.
“What is going on?” I asked Naomi.
“We can get away.” She pointed to the boat, as if that explained everything.
“Get away from what? Where are we going?”
She turned to me with a soft, shaken look. Her eyes were darker than I remembered. Her eyelids dropped, and she leaned her forehead against mine and closed her eyes. “I’m tired, Elijah. Just stay with me.”
“Of course,” I said, “but what—”
“Naomi!”
A man was rushing down the dock toward us. He wore a plain brown robe and had a ring of dark hair around his bald head. He looked like a modern Friar Tuck.
I stepped between Naomi and the friar as he approached. He stopped short of us and smiled, holding his hands out innocently.
“It’s okay,” Naomi said, “he’s on our side.”
“What is our side?” I asked.
The man burst into laughter, as if I’d said the funniest thing in the world. “This must be Elijah, eh?”
Naomi nodded. “We made it.”
“ELIJAH, WE’RE THE good guys,” said the man. His accent marked him as Italian. “I am Apollos Donatelli.” He bowed slightly.
“How did you know my name?” I asked.
“Naomi told me about you. Please, now, come quickly. Time is of the essence.” He stepped past me and took Naomi’s hand. The smile fled from his face, replaced by a look of fear.
“What happened?” he asked, as he slid her other arm over his shoulders.
Naomi shook her head, her lips pressed tight together. With her arms draped over Apollos and me, she stepped along the dock, toward the boat.
We walked up the ramp and into the vessel. It was almost as big as my dad’s yacht.
I considered stopping before stepping on board, to demand more information. But what was I going to do? Wait around in this port town without even V to help me? Wherever we were going, I figured it would at least get me away from this disaster zone. I kept my mouth shut and followed Naomi’s lead. I was not going to leave her.
The two men with guns boarded after us and pushed a button by the door to draw the ramp closed. They looked to Apollos, ready to obey.
“Patmos, come previsto,” Apollos said.
They nodded and marched away with their guns slung over their backs.
Friar Apollos led Naomi and me down a tight corridor. We came to a sitting room with a couch, several chairs, and a wide window looking out the back of the boat. Apollos and I helped Naomi lay down on the couch. Her body sank into its white leather.
“Get her some water,” Apollos said to me, pointing to a small bar in the corner.
As I did so, he knelt beside Naomi, put his hand over her forehead, and closed his eyes. He began whispering something in Latin. I noticed a ring on his thumb. He had to be in the order, like Bart and Chris.
The boat’s engines roared to life and we started moving. Water was a good idea. My mouth was bone dry, probably from all the dust I’d inhaled. I filled a glass for Naomi and one for me.
Apollos stayed kneeling over Naomi. I put her water down beside him and sat in one of the plush chairs. I downed my water and waited in quiet. Naomi seemed to be sleeping.
“So,” I eventually said, “we’re going to Patmos, as planned?” Apollos looked up at me. “Why Patmos?” I asked. “What was planned?”
“You speak Italian?”
“A little.” I spoke everything with V. Without her, I could get by with Italian, Spanish, French, and Hebrew.
Apollos moved to sit across from me, leaving Naomi asleep on the couch.
“We are going to pick up someone on the island of Patmos. The man we will meet there, a holy man, he will have questions for you. You will answer honestly, no?”
“Maybe.” I looked to Naomi, wondering what she had dragged me into. Her chest rose and fell smoothly. Her clothes were covered in dirt and some blood, as were mine. “I don’t even know what to say,” I said, turning to Apollos. “Is Naomi going to be okay?”
He nodded. “I think so. She seems to be in some form of shock. There is no major wound. What happened to her?”
I felt a pang of guilt, mixed with relief that he thought it was just shock. “It’s hard to explain. But I guess she’s been weak ever since Don Cristo touched her. He must have done something.” But why had my dreams told me that was supposed to happen?
“Hmmm.” Apollos rubbed his chin. “Yes, I believe she will recover, but this may change things.”
Strange answer, I thought. I’d just told him the UN President had touched Naomi, and he hardly seemed surprised. I asked, “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“Much of it is obvious,” Apollos said. “A massive earthquake struck Rome, causing great destruction. Naomi led you to me, because she knew I could get you to safety. We ride to Patmos, a special place in these trying times. We will be there in no more than a day, thanks to my swift vessel and her strong crew.” He gestured proudly to the boat around us. “After we meet with the wise man on Patmos, and you tell us what you see there, then we travel on to meet others in a safe place. You should rest now, sleep as Naomi does. You arrived in my country just this morning, no?”
“A few hours ago,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “You know this was not just an earthquake. What I saw back there was no mere trembling of the ground. What do you think is going on?”
“Many earthquakes. Signs of the end times.” Apollos shrugged as if that was all there was to say. “Look, I will show you.”
He pressed his wrist and a screen blinked on. I pressed my wrist, hoping V’s connection was fixed, but still there was nothing. “How did you—?”
“Watch now,” he interrupted, holding one hand up to me, and the other hand pointing at the screen.
My breath stopped. It was Don Cristo.
“…why I left my meeting in Geneva,” he was saying.
“Did you declare an emergency then?” asked a woman in a practiced, broadcast voice.
“Yes, of course.” Underneath Don’s face was the text: Don Cristo, President of the United Nations (Live). I’d been right beside him two hours ago, and now he was on a live broadcast. He was wearing the same dark gray suit and red tie, without a trace of dust. “We’ve had seven major earthquakes in a single day,” he explained. “The earth groans, and we’re doing everything in our power to save people, to bring help to those suffering.”
“Let’s start with Rome, your home city.” The interviewer’s face appeared on the screen, in a small window in the corner. It was a pretty face framed by pretty blonde hair, but it looked plain and mortal beside Don’s. “You went there first after you left Geneva?”
“I did, I went to Rome.” There was passion in Don’s polished voice. He sounded compelling and sincere. “The harm there is immense. My heart weeps with my city. We have lost many lives. We have lost many relics. Even the great St. Peter’s Basilica has fallen.”
The woman wore a look of deep adoration. “I am so sorry, Mr. President,” she said. “Where else have you been today? Please, I know it is hard, but tell us, tell the people of the world what you have seen. What can we do?”
“I went to Tokyo, then Jakarta, then…”
“What is he talking about?” Naomi asked. She was leaning up on the couch, resting on her elbow.
Apollos lowered the volume. “Don Cristo is broadcasting a message for the world,” he said. “Billions are watching this. The UN’s satellites ar
e the only stable source of connectivity right now. Earthquakes destroyed seven cities today.”
Naomi nodded. “It is as we feared.”
“As we feared?” I asked with shock. “You sound so sure. You knew this was coming?” I could not believe that. Don’s voice sounded like the only logical one in the room.
“Everything is okay, Elijah,” Naomi said.
“No, it is not.” I rose to my feet. “Everything is not okay. Why isn’t anyone talking about the freaking dragon that just flew out of the ground?”
“What?” Apollos jumped to his feet.
“A dragon?” Naomi asked at the same time, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You were right beside me,” I said. “You saw it!”
She shook her head. “I saw the storm, the earthquake, and Don Cristo approaching. Trust me, if I’d seen a dragon, I would remember that.”
I fell back into the chair and closed my eyes. What was wrong with me?
APOLLOS AND NAOMI were staring at me in wonderment.
“You saw it?” Apollos asked. “The dragon, the ancient serpent. What did it look like?”
I shook my head. If Naomi hadn’t seen it, maybe I hadn’t either. Maybe it was just a fragment of a dream.
“Chris and Bart, they were right.” Apollos put his hand on Naomi’s shoulder. He looked stunned, like the victim of a prank. “They were right, weren’t they? It’s not just symbolic.”
Naomi nodded and turned to me. “Was it like in your dreams? Is that how the dragon looked?” She sounded better, as if healing from whatever had weakened her.
I kept my face blank. “You were right there,” I said. “There’s no way you could have seen Don and missed the dragon. You promise, you swear to God, you didn’t see it?”
She shook her head. “I remember everything before Don reached us—clear as day. But I promise I did not see a dragon or anything like that.”
The problem was, I believed her. Only, she couldn’t be right and I also be sane. I needed fresh air.
I walked to the wall of glass in the back of the room and slid open the door in the center. I stepped out, put my hands on the metal rail, and gazed over the sea. The shore of Italy was in the distance. We were going fast, really fast. The wind blew my hair into my face, so that the hair licked up the confused tears beginning to run down my cheeks.
“You are not crazy.” Naomi came to my side and put her hand on mine. “I believe you. We all do.”
Great, a crazy order believing in my crazy visions. I kept my gaze out over the water. I could not bring myself to look at her.
“You are special, Elijah. I told you that. Your dreams are special. As soon as you told me them, I suspected it. Bart and Chris believe you are a prophet.”
“A prophet?” I laughed despite myself. “That might be more ridiculous than the dragon. I don’t even believe in God.” I turned to Naomi. Her serious face made me stop.
“I don’t believe that,” she said. “Especially not after what you saw today.”
“It can all be explained.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” My mind spun through the possibilities. “You don’t remember Don touching you, right?”
“Right.”
“Well maybe he touched me, too, and maybe I don’t remember it. He could have implanted a nanochip in each of us, somehow hacking into our precepts and our minds. It would be a way to track us and any data exchanged with us. It is no secret he wants to empower the ISA and have it under his complete control. He does not trust the U.S. branch. If he knew we’d been selected as fellows for ISA-7, we would be perfect for his monitoring.” My words blasted into the salty air, and the more I said, the more I believed it. “Don could tap into everything about the ISA that is walled off from the UN. Imagine the power.”
“That doesn’t explain everything,” Naomi countered. “Why would he come to us at the Vatican? Why during an earthquake? And what about your dreams?”
“Maybe the nanochip implanted in me includes the memory of the dreams. Maybe I never even had those dreams.” Or maybe I had a tumor causing my visions, just like my mother. Naomi didn’t need to hear that.
She was shaking her head. “You told me about your dreams. I remember.”
A decent point. “Maybe your chip had that memory, too.” This was starting to seem unlikely.
“You think, if Don really wanted to monitor us, he would put memories of a dragon in your dreams? How would that help?”
She had a point, again. But something about her questions gave me doubt. Had it somehow been Don who controlled Charles and told me not to trust her?
I calmed my voice and studied Naomi as I spoke. “So maybe those dreams were real, and maybe I’m just a little insane. That earthquake set Rome spinning, so maybe I saw things that weren’t real. But Don said himself, in that interview, that he went to Rome. It would be the perfect ruse, the perfect opportunity, for him to insert a tracker in you. Why else would he pick you? Now he can monitor ISA-7.”
“Don definitely did something to me.” Naomi hesitated, glancing down at her body, her fingers pressed against her waist. “It could have been a nanochip. I’m not sure.” She looked up, fear in her eyes. “The order believes the dragon and Don are somehow the devil incarnate, unbound and released to reign on earth for a little while. Based on your dreams and other signs, Bart thought we needed to be in the piazza together.”
“Why us?”
“He thinks you’re chosen to see, and I’m chosen by Don for something. Bart says you have to protect me. He said my mother told him the same thing before she died, about a Jewish boy from the Roeh line.”
“So that’s why you brought me into all this?”
“It may have started that way.” She paused. “You know it’s more than that now.”
I met her eyes evenly. Her words seemed as true as any, despite all the pieces I didn’t understand. Could she be the one thing I’d hold onto in the chaos? “But if what you said about the order and Bart is true, why would they leave us to face the devil on our own?”
“We’re never alone, Elijah. Maybe you doubt it, but we have God on our side. The Alpha and Omega.”
“I didn’t see any god back there in Rome. All I saw was a dragon, the President of the UN, and a destroyed city.”
“You’re not looking in the right places,” she said. “I have faith God will open your eyes. Your sight is distracted by this world, but it is powerful. I didn’t see what you did.”
“Maybe, I don’t know.” I shook my head. It was all too confusing; I couldn’t lie to my own memory.
Naomi yawned. “I’m exhausted. Can we rest now, and talk more later?”
My body shouted agreement. We’d gone straight from a red-eye flight to a disaster scene. I could hardly think straight, but part of me was scared to sleep, scared to dream. Plus, as crazy as these theories sounded, I wanted to learn more.
As I hesitated, Naomi pushed windblown hair out of my eyes. “Please, let’s rest now. I don’t want to be alone.”
“Okay, I’ll stay with you.” I tried to sound confident, while doubts kept flooding my mind.
I led her back inside the yacht, to a small cabin with a bed filling almost the whole room. We each collapsed onto it, fully clothed. She curled her knees up and I laid behind her, pressed close. Her lean limbs and back felt perfect against me. Her breathing began to steady and slow.
It was not long before I fell asleep.
The dragon met me there. It was perched on a mountain, far above me. Its smooth black skin seemed to grow out of the stones under its giant claws. The claws gripped like a vice, cracking the rocks. I felt that if it flew off, it would carry the whole mountain with it. The red eyes were fixed on me, and I stared back.
Then the dragon unfurled its wings. They were like a bat’s wings, large enough to swallow the world. It twisted its long neck over its back. In that moment, while it looked away, I noticed an ocean below me, at the foot of the
mountain. Its calm waters were blood red. The dark mountain, the red water, and the grey sky were like a deep, bruised wound on the earth.
When the dragon’s head turned back to me, something was in its mouth.
I had to see what it was. I stepped forward. I had no choice. I started climbing the mountain. My hands and knees were scraped and bleeding, but I kept moving upward. The dragon waited for me. I knew now it was a he, and he would wait until I came. He wanted me to see.
As I reached the top, the dragon bared his man-sized razor teeth, almost like a smile. Like he was happy. No, he was delighted—delighted about whatever was in his mouth. He was proud of it. I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. His red eyes blinked slowly, and then his jaws parted.
There, in his mouth, was a baby.
The dragon’s serpent tongue was curled around it, wrapped like a swaddling cloth. The tongue began to unwind, setting the baby down between the dragon’s claws. The baby was naked and started to cry.
The dragon coiled its head back, snarled, and then struck at me like a snake.
I woke up shaking.
NAOMI WAS SHAKING me. I rose on the bed. I was covered in sweat again, and I kept shaking even when Naomi moved her hand away.
“What did you see?” she asked.
It took me a moment to remember where I was. On a bed on a boat, racing through the Mediterranean Sea.
“I saw the dragon again.” I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake up. “Do you have any water?”
“What else did you see?”
“Just the dragon.” I met Naomi’s stare. Why did she always have to look so eager? Still, her skin looked like it glowed in the morning light through the porthole. “What time is it?”
“7 am,” she answered. “We are almost to Patmos. Come, Apollos will want to hear about your dream.”
“I’m sure he will.” I followed her out and down a hall to the sitting room where we’d been the day before.
Apollos was there, talking to a well-dressed man. Trays of breakfast were laid on the table in the middle of the sitting area. I was starving, and still thirsty.
“Good morning, Elijah, Naomi.” Apollos gestured to the food. “I hope you had a good rest. Please, sit and eat. We have less than an hour before we reach the island.”
Unbound Page 16
