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by Unknown

  I stood looking at the image of the messenger for a long while before I realized he had stopped talking. It seemed that, my question answered, he had nothing more to say.

  "What?" I finally asked. "Is that it? There's nothing more?"

  The image of the messenger smiled slightly and nodded his head.

  "Those are the answers you sought," the image replied, "when first you touched the disk. Control of the Sefer Raziel is a difficult matter, but you have done well. I hope you do as well in times to come." He paused, and then added, "For your sake."

  Then the image wavered in the air like a mirage, and I braced myself. This was where I came in. The man before me was replaced by a man-sized swirl of light and color, a spiral which grew and grew until it engulfed me entirely.

  And…

  The first thing I noticed was the cramp in my leg, then the pain in my back, then the man in the gray suit pointing the gun in my face. I was back on the bench in the Alamo Plaza in the same position I'd been in when I reached in the bag to touch the disk. The Sears bag was still in my lap. I hadn't gone anywhere, it seemed; everything I'd seen and done taking place only someplace behind my eyes and between my ears, but I had no idea how long it had been.

  "You were late meeting us, Mr. Finch," the guy with the gun said, and I recognized his voice from the phone the day before. The one who had left the note by Tan's bedside and threatened my friends.

  I knew who he was, now, looking at him face to face. I'd seen him once before, with the other two gray suits at the auction in Arizona. He hadn't been pleased when I walked out with the book, but he seemed happier now.

  "I hope you are well," he finally added, when it looked I had fallen mute.

  "Peachy," I managed, my eyes on the barrel of his gun.

  "Delightful," he answered. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Rahab, and my companions," he gestured to the man and woman behind him, the same pair from the auction, "are Mr. Sunday and Ms. Veil."

  "Charmed," I muttered.

  I did my best to stay composed, but I was started to get really worried. God only knew how long I'd been lost in the Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, but Amador should have shown up long before. There should be FBI agents and cops all over the place, ready to pounce on whomever showed up to meet me. Instead, there was just this charming guy with his charming gun and companions, ready to introduce me to a bullet.

  "I trust you have the item with you?" Rahab said, but I wasn't really listening. I was thinking back over what I'd seen in the disk and the things I'd been reading the past few days.

  "Wait," I said, pointing at Rahab, "I know who you are. I should have remembered the name. You guys," I indicated him and his companions, "you're the Children of Dawn, right? Jesus, that's nuts. You guys really exist."

  Rahab sneered.

  "Flatterer," he deadpanned. "Guilty, as charged. Now please tell us where the item is, Mr. Finch. My companions and I have some traveling to do, and we'd like to get started as soon as possible."

  No longer leveled out by the calming effects of the disk, this was getting to be too much to take.

  "Wow," I said, sounding like a high school cheerleader. "You guys are trying to get back to that other planet, or dimension, or whatever, right? The one the two angels made. Am I right?"

  Rahab took a step forward, leveling the gun.

  "Our quest to reclaim our ancestral homeland is none of your concern, mayfly." He snarled, and jabbed the pistol barrel at my face. "Give me the book now, or I will simply peel it from your cold, dead hands."

  "Wait a minute," I scolded. "Play the good Bond villain and answer my questions before you kill me. You tried to steal it from J. Nathan Pierce, but me you just kill outright? What, do I not rate?"

  "No," came a voice to one side, "I'm afraid that was us, Mr. Finch."

  Both Rahab and I turned, and I'm not sure which of us was the more surprised. My first thought was one of relief, but that didn't last long.

  "Thank God," I said, seeing Amador standing just a few yards away, but my gratitude slipped pretty fast when I saw who was standing with him. The Supreme Court justices, the member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the other bigwigs from the auction. All armed with matching pistols, all smiling like the cat that just ate the canary and had the goldfish for dessert.

  I knew at once what had happened. Amador was in their pocket. They'd bought him off at some point, either after the auction, or before, or even years ago for all I knew. Whoever they were, he was their man, and I was screwed.

  "I'm sorry," Amador said sheepishly, looking from me to the collection of bigwigs and back again. "But I told you I wouldn't be able to help you. Why didn't you listen?"

  That helped place his betrayal before the auction and my call for help, at least. Small consolation.

  "Don't apologize," said one of the Supreme Court justices. "Everyone has their price. Even Finch has to agree with that."

  "Sure," I said wearily. "Whatever."

  I was just trying to figure out who was going to get to kill me, whiling the time watching the trio of demigods in gray point their guns at the high rollers and big wheels pointing their guns right back at them.

  "So let me get this straight," I said, doing my best Columbo, trying to enjoy my last moments. "You guys," I pointed to the Supreme Court justice and friends, "hired Marconi to cop the book from Pierce, right? So why didn't you just buy it off of Pierce, if you were willing to pay?"

  "We did," snarled one of the captains of industry.

  "We beat them to it," answered Rahab in a lyrical voice. "After seeing the book of secrets revealed after so many long centuries on that infantile television program, my associates and I contacted him immediately to make an offer. We negotiated what all involved felt was a fair price and arranged a meeting. By the time we arrived to retrieve the item it had already been stolen, its whereabouts unknown."

  "Which was you guys," I said, pointing to the bigwigs. One of them, absurdly, nodded proudly like it was all a grade school show and tell.

  "So who are you guys, anyway?" I asked. "Since I'm probably about to get killed and all."

  The bigwigs remained silent, Amador averting his eyes in shame.

  "What?" I shouted. "Don't any of you guys go to the movies? You're supposed to explain all of this stuff before you kill the hero!"

  A man in a blue pinstripe suit stepped forward from the back of the group, one of the ones who'd been at the auction. He was the one I recognized from the business pages, and now I remembered who he was. Billionaire entrepreneur and industrialist, second only to Gates and Jobs as one of the most influential figures in the world of computers. What was the name of the company he ran, again?

  "We are the secret lords of the earth," he started, in the voice I remembered from the television spots. The company name started with an L. "We are the keepers of the hidden ways, who rule the rest of mankind from the shadows. We are the trunk from which branched the Freemasons, the Golden Dawn, the masters of Thule who became the Nazis, and every other society of secret mankind has known. We are the bearers of the torch, and the followers of the Lightbringer, the sacred cult of…"

  "Lucetech!" I said out loud, snapping my fingers, the name finally coming to me.

  The guy in the blue pinstripe suit stumbled for a moment, losing his place in his speech.

  "Um, yes," he finally answered. "I was about to say the Cult of Lucetius, but Lucetech is one of our legitimate faces of business."

  "Not so legitimate that it doesn't stoop to paying three-time losers like Marconi in cash and then killing him when he loses the goods, though, eh?" I jibed.

  "This is pointless," Rahab shouted, gesturing with his pistol. "The secrets of the silver disk are ours by birthright, and no one but us will have them."

  "The book itself is the lost history of our order," shouted back the blue pinstripe suit, "and the Sefer Raziel our key to absolute power. We have searched for it too many centuries to give it up now!"

  Tensio
ns were rising, and there was a symphony of hammers being pulled back and clips being slammed into place. This was not turning out quite as I'd hoped.

  "No, I think not," said a familiar voice behind me, and everyone froze like a statue. I turned in my seat, and saw a tall man in a trench coat, with a wide black hat shading his face. I followed him with my gaze as he walked around the bench and in the midst of the firing range, and realized that no one else had budged an inch. They were literally frozen in place.

  "You are all disappointments to me, to be honest," the man said, turning from the bigwigs of Lucetius to the jihad-happy Children of Dawn. "None of you are what I had hoped. To think of the potential wasted, the good you might have done."

  The man raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and the pistols and guns disappeared in a flash. He snapped them again, and the two groups, now disarmed, were again free to move. None of them, though, seemed able to speak.

  He turned to me, taking his hat from his head, and smiled.

  "You'll forgive me these little dramatic flourishes, Mr. Finch," he said, "but I find that I have become rather melodramatic in my old age."

  I knew him at once. I'd just spent countless centuries with him in the vision of the disk and talked to his image for some time after that. He was the original, the Messenger of Secrets. He was Raziel.

  The Children of Dawn were getting nervous, but acting outraged to hide it. The Lucetius folks on the other side were just baffled, but doing a pretty good impression of furious all on their own. Me, I was just bewildered.

  "The usefulness of the key to secrets has passed, I'm afraid," he said, addressing me. "In the dawn of man's history it served its purpose, but at this stage of development man cannot help but find ways to pervert any tool that comes into his hands, turning it to selfish ends. Men no longer need crutches, I would think, their free will inborn now as a result of the good works of those well meaning past generations. We could put it to a test, though. Yes, a test would suit perfectly."

  He been talking so casually, calmly pacing back and forth, that I had almost forgotten the serious mess I'd very nearly found myself buried under. The silently mouthed protests of the groups to the left and right told me they weren't too happy with the way things were shaping up, but their inability to do anything about it meant I wasn't too worried.

  It had been quiet for sometime when I realized that Raziel, the angel in the trench coat, was standing patiently in front of me, as though waiting for me to speak.

  "Um, okay?" I said weakly.

  "Excellent," the angel answered, gripping his hat with both hands. "Then the test is this: To whom, Spencer Finch, will you give the book? Or will you keep it for yourself?"

  I looked at him blankly for a long while, then looked first to the group of businessmen and politicians to my left, then to the group of near immortal beings to my right, and finally to the Sears bag sitting heavily on my lap.

  I thought about it for a long while and couldn't come up with an answer.

  "You know," I finally said, my hands resting on the shopping bag, "this thing seemed to be more trouble than its worth. These jokers…" I waved an arm at the two groups, "are just looking out for themselves, and there's every chance that whoever doesn't get it is going to come gunning for me. Hell, whoever gets it is probably going to come gunning for me, just for the sake of form. And if I keep it… well, I've taken that E-ticket ride once, thank you very much, and that was enough for me. Any other secrets or mysteries in my life can stay mysterious for all I care."

  I stood up, the shopping bag gripped tight.

  "If it's all the same to you, Mr. Raziel Angel Guy, I'd rather give it back to you. It is kinda yours after all, isn't it?"

  The Lucetius folks and the Children of Dawn were none too pleased to hear that. A couple of them, tired of playing the silent majority, decided to make their point physically, and rushed towards me, bloody murder in their eyes. The angel just snapped his fingers again, shrugging at me apologetically for the excess, and everyone was frozen again in their spots.

  "You would give it to me?" Raziel asked, looking at me and ignoring the silent screams of the groups to either side. "And sacrifice the possibility for untold knowledge, or for undreamt power or wealth? I'm sure if you were to keep it, there are many who would pay well to touch that disk just once, just for an instant."

  "Yeah," I said, "but I guess that's a risk I'll have to take. Hell, it's only money."

  Raziel nodded slowly, and walking forward carefully took the shopping bag from my hands. He opened it up and, reaching in, pulled out the book for everyone to see.

  "This," he said, "is mine." He waved a hand over the silver disk, which popped out of the leather cover and into his hand without ever crossing through the intervening space. The cover was left smooth and unmarred, as though it had always looked that way.

  Like a stage magician, Raziel waved the hand holding the silver disk once, and when the hand came to rest the disk was gone. Sent back, I guessed, to the Otherworld, or to the Void, or wherever.

  "This," Raziel continued, holding up the book itself, "is yours, I should think." He handed it back to me.

  "What?" I said. "Why?"

  "Because only your family has continued the work begun by the sons of the first man, generations ago. Only your family, your forebears and their forebears before them have continued to struggle against oppression in all its forms, and to work towards the free and untainted existence of their fellow man."

  "The Black Hand," I whispered.

  "Yes," Raziel answered, nodding. "Unlike these sad dregs," he waved a hand at those to either side, "your family, with no hope of personal gain, not even knowing the true heritage of their calling, has struggled century after century for their brothers. Even you, in your way, continued the struggle."

  "Um, wow," I said, back in high school cheerleader mode, unable to form a complete sentence.

  "Keep the book," Raziel continued, "and these will not harm you." He waved his arm, and the two groups disappeared, like their pistols had just a few moments ago. "They are back in their appointed places and will not trouble you again. Keep the book, and honor the memory of your forebears."

  I nodded mutely, taking the book from him and clutching it to my chest.

  Raziel put the hat back on his head and turned to walk away.

  "Someday," he said, as an afterthought, "you will have to come and see my home, come and see the Otherworld. I've brought others of your kind there over the generations, children in distress, lost souls with nowhere else to turn. Most choose eventually to return here, to your world, but some have stayed on and made their homes there. In your search for a better world, I think you would be strengthened to see that one does exist, at least somewhere."

  "Um, okay," I answered, giving a foolish little wave. I felt as though I'd just been invited over for dinner by Elvis Presley, or maybe Gandhi, and wasn't quite sure how to respond.

  "I'll leave you now," Raziel finished, "as I can see you're much in need of rest. But as I told you last week, I am most sorry to hear of your loss. My condolences."

  With that he turned, took three steps away, and disappeared.

  I was left standing in the Alamo Plaza, the sun beginning to set, the secret history of humanity clutched to my chest and an idiotic expression on my face.

  Dazed as I was, I managed to make it back to the rental car, something so mundane that after the events of the past few hours it seemed extraordinarily normal in comparison. I carefully placed the book into the cardboard box of my grandfather's things and drove away.

  On my way out of town, I stopped by the house on Crescent Row to see Maria. She was happy to see me, and I was just glad to see someone familiar and sane. We shared a small meal together in the kitchen, talking nonstop about the past, about me and my brother, about the years we spent in the house, and about my grandfather. We talked quite a bit about my grandfather, what the last few years had been like for him, how they had changed him in
quiet little ways, and how he had finally gone to his rest. He had died quietly, Maria told me, fully dressed in suit and tie and sitting in his chair in the study, as though he was ready to go out for the night. He had faced death ready and willing, she said, all of his affairs in order, all of his things packed and organized.

  She asked me about the two things I'd received from him, the box and the case. She'd had no idea what was in them, just that they were treasured by the old man, and that his final wish was that I have them. I think Maria was more than a little disappointed that I hadn't made the funeral, but she didn't mention it, and when I finally apologized, awkwardly and sincere, her eyes brimmed with tears and she hugged me until I almost passed out from lack of breath.

  I told her a little about the cardboard box and its content, leaving out the more confusing details, and all of the craziness of the past few days. Maria had always been a strong woman, and still was, but the chances that she'd believe anything I had to tell her about what I'd learned were nil, and I didn't want her thinking the old man had gone crazy, or that I had lost my mind on drugs.

  The wooden case, I told her, I had been unable to open, as I had received it locked and without the key. Maria jumped from her chair immediately and, waving me to follow, raced through the house to the study. I trailed along behind, taking in the smells of the old house, pausing only at the door to the study.