Book of the Just

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  Angelo was alive.

  PART THREE

  There is that might-have-been which is the single rock we cling to above the maelstrom of unbearable reality.

  —William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Angelo hurt. Everywhere.

  He punched the snooze button on the hotel clock. Jet lag clung to him like a weighted blanket, but he had something he needed to do. He took a deep breath and filled himself with purpose, driving away the pain and fatigue.

  When he’d left the hospital almost seven months ago, he had refused to take the pain medication his doctors prescribed. He’d already spent months in a drug-induced haze, floating in and out of reality as his body healed. He wanted his mind clear now. The drugs had robbed Angelo of his chance to grieve.

  Those first weeks in the hospital, waking only for a few minutes at a time, awash in the agony ransacking his body, he would call out for Mouse.

  “She’s gone, honey,” a woman would answer. She was there every time he begged for Mouse, and every time she told him Mouse was dead. He learned the woman’s name—Kitty Ayres.

  He’d heard the account from Mrs. Ayres so many times now that it only ever came to him with her words, her cadence, her voice in his head. The images in his mind weren’t his, either—he’d been unconscious when it happened at Lake Disappointment—but he could see it play out all the same, just as Mrs. Ayres told it, like still shots run through a projector, staccato and disjointed: Mouse dragging Angelo away from the demons and bullets. Her father appearing. His long cloak, black like a drop cloth against the flying salt and sand. Her father grabbing her by one arm, then the other, and pulling until she ripped. Her father flinging the shredded arms to the demons like he was chumming water. Her father lifting her up as she screamed for her life. Her father throwing her out among the ravenous baited beasts. Her father laughing as they devoured her. Her father disappearing once she was gone.

  Her father.

  By the time Angelo was finally awake long enough for the truth to take hold, Mouse had been gone for months. He tried to breathe a flicker of faith to life that she might have survived this as she had her death at Megiddo, but reviving pieces of dismembered and devoured flesh was beyond imagining, even for Mouse. His acceptance that she was gone offered no healing, just scars, twisted and thick as the ropes of slick flesh that now ran across his torso and back.

  The doctors had called his recovery a miracle. There were more than a dozen entrance and exit wounds, but no shots to the head. Nicked arteries and damaged organs, but he hadn’t bled out. A severed spinal cord, but he was still breathing and walking. It was impossible, they said. But Angelo knew it wasn’t a miracle—it was Mouse. Somehow, she’d saved him but not herself. She’d broken her promise.

  And Angelo would never forgive her for it.

  The alarm clock cried out again. He didn’t have time to wallow in bitterness—Angelo had something he needed to do.

  Sighing, he reached down and tugged at one leg and then the other, dragging them off the hotel bed and rolling up to a sitting position. He dropped his head in his hands, letting the searing pains in his back ease to a duller throb before reaching over for his crutches. After a month in the hospital and another three in rehab, he was able to walk again. He was stronger, his arms and shoulders and upper back more muscled than they’d ever been, but his legs would forever be weak, the doctors said. He would always need the help of the crutches. He would always be in pain.

  Angelo pulled himself upright and took a couple of stiff steps to the hotel window. He leaned heavily on one crutch, his bicep bulging as it took the weight; he lifted his other hand to yank back the curtains and let in the blinding sun. The uneven rooftops of Amman, Jordan, swept out before him like scattered stones.

  Angelo didn’t remember what had happened at Lake Disappointment. Those memories had been stolen by the drugs and replaced by Mrs. Ayres’s version. But he did remember some of what had happened before. He remembered Jack Gray. He remembered the race across the outback. He remembered who was chasing them. So when the Reverend had come to his hospital room the first time after he was fully awake, Angelo had raged at him—impotently. His voice thin and shaky from weeks of intubation, his body too broken to even free himself from the hospital bed linens, all he could do was send the monitors blaring as his heart raced. The nurses had come running, and then the sedatives had stolen his anger as they had his memory and his grief.

  It was Angelo’s first lesson: he needed to marshal his anger. In his condition, he could not hope to reap justice on everyone who was responsible for Mouse’s death. He needed to pick one.

  Angelo had then remembered the dream he’d had at the outstation the day before Jack showed up. Most of it had been the usual nightmare—Mouse’s father doing terrible things to people, Angelo feeling helpless. But it had been more real, more like a portent of what might be rather than a fuzzy hodgepodge of worries put together by his subconscious. With a sudden jolt, as if he’d been punched, Angelo had remembered a detail from the dream—his legs wouldn’t work. It hadn’t made sense at the time, but he realized now that it must have been a prophecy, a vision sent to prepare him.

  With the clarity he’d been searching for all his life, Angelo had finally understood his purpose. He’d been saved in the car crash that took his family, saved from his own suicide in the Thames, saved in the burning church at Onstad, saved even as Mouse died in the outback. It was too much coincidence. It was providence. Angelo lived so that he could finish what she could not. He would rip the root of evil and suffering up from the dark depths of the world and watch it wither in the sun and die by his own hand.

  On that day, Angelo became a soldier, and his life became solely about the thing he needed to do: take down Mouse’s father. Her father, who had been the source of all her suffering, who had killed her at Megiddo, who had destroyed her with a terrible finality at Lake Disappointment. Angelo would take all that suffering and destruction and return it to her father tenfold.

  And Kitty Ayres was eager to help. Angelo had thought about reaching out to his former mentor, but Bishop Sebastian belonged to a different Angelo, a different life, a life that had Mouse in it. Kitty Ayres belonged in this barren new landscape with the twisted, broken Angelo. She’d sent her husband away for Angelo’s comfort. She let Angelo brood in silence for weeks at the hospital and rehab center. She patiently took the blows of his caustic hate for the Reverend. And she believed in his cause. She fed his faith that he was the result of a God-driven life, that he had been brought to this moment for this singular reason—Angelo was meant to be God’s warrior. And she was meant to help him.

  Like any good soldier, Angelo refused to get tangled in the ethics of his allies. He had something he needed to do and he couldn’t do it alone. He would take Kitty and the Reverend’s money. He would take their time, their resources, their help, their blood, their souls—whatever was necessary for him to accomplish his mission.

  Angelo turned from the view of the city spilled out below him and headed to the shower. The water splashed against his back, firing all the damaged nerves along the scars. He stiffened with the pain. It drove him upright, straight.

  When he’d been released from the private rehab facility in Sydney, Angelo had gone to live in the guesthouse at the Ayreses’ expansive Australian estate. They owned homes all over the world. The Reverend was rarely there; Kitty almost always. She begged Angelo to teach her what he knew about the world of angels and demons. He knew nothing about the first but told her what he could about the second—what kinds of creatures he’d seen, what they could do, the spells he’d learned. But when Kitty slipped in questions about Mouse, asking about her age, her limitations, her weaknesses, her powers, Angelo shut down. Mouse was off limits. Mouse was his.

  Instead, he had redirected Kitty’s energies into looking for anything that might help him when he faced Mouse’s father. Together, they’d scoured online library catalogs
and searched through personal collections, hunted down bread crumbs dropped in blogs and forums about old books, mysterious books, dangerous books, lost books. When they found something they wanted, Kitty called the Reverend. Their only harvest had been an assortment of binding spells, protection spells Mouse had already taught Angelo, and a couple of summoning spells. But these spells were pointless for the battle Angelo meant to wage. Before he summoned her father, he needed something that could kill him, a weapon that could annihilate an immortal, a weapon which Mouse, in all her years, had never found.

  Angelo had begun to think that such a weapon didn’t exist—until a week ago, when the Reverend got a call from an antiquities dealer in Amman who’d heard that he was looking for unusual artifacts. He had something he wanted to sell. He said it was very old. He said it came from Israel. He said it was called the Book of the Just.

  “We need tickets to Amman. Now,” Angelo had said, his spine tingling as Kitty relayed the information.

  “Why? Sounds like some dusty old Jewish law book,” Kitty had answered.

  “If the Book of the Just is what I think it might be, it’s the answer we’ve been searching for.”

  She looked up at him, a new, fiery curiosity in her eyes.

  “There’s a book mentioned in Samuel and in Joshua that some call the Book of Jasher,” Angelo explained. “But most scholars think that name is wrong, a mistranslation, and that the book is really called the Book of the Upright or the Book of the Just Man.” His voice had been singing with hope. “The book has been lost since Old Testament times. There’s a version out there, but most scholars believe it to be a forgery. The real book is just a matter of speculation. Some people think it was a book of military tactics or a catalog of battles. Some think it’s full of victory songs. But the only actual reference we have to it suggests it could be something much more—a book of spells, ones full of unimaginable power.” He’d looked at Kitty, excited. “When the writer in Joshua mentions the Book of the Just, he talks about learning to hold the daylight at bay, keeping it dark so the people could—”

  “‘And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies,’” Kitty had read from her phone. “‘Is not this written in the book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.’” She’d shivered. “A book with that kind of power? What couldn’t we do with that?”

  Angelo’s voice had gone stony. “If this book is real, it’s for one thing, Kitty, and one thing only. For me to do what I have to do.”

  Just a few hours later, Angelo and Kitty had been on the plane to Amman, though Angelo had made it clear he was going by himself to meet with the seller. Kitty understood; Angelo was God’s chosen warrior and so went to battle alone, like David against Goliath.

  Angelo stepped out of the shower now that the hot water had eroded much of his jet lag. He wiped the fog from the mirror as he leaned against the counter. He no longer looked at his body these days. But his face—his face was a mystery to him. He didn’t think he looked like himself anymore. He’d suffered no damage there—Mouse had curled herself around his head, or so Kitty had told him. He just looked wrong somehow. Different. He wondered if it was because he never smiled. He tried now, but it made no difference. It was still a stranger looking back.

  He shoved away from the counter and grabbed the top of the doorframe, digging his fingers over the edge of the wood and pulling himself up again and again, until his muscles welled with blood and heat. He could feel the strength in his arms and across his back and up his neck even as his thin legs dangled weakly below him.

  He was at least half a soldier, and he had something he needed to do.

  The antiques store sat next to an ice cream shop on a typical Amman street. But the inside wasn’t what Angelo expected. The long, low tables held gold dishes and cups crammed up against old radios and tourist trinkets. None of it had the dusty solemnity of authentic antiquities. As he ducked under guitars and lamps hanging from the ceiling, Angelo felt certain he was either in the wrong place or the victim of a scam.

  Navigating the cluttered store with his crutches took time, but finally he made it to the counter in the far back corner. A young boy sat on a stool and stared at him.

  “I’m looking for a Mr. Khalid,” Angelo said. “He’s expecting me.”

  The boy slid off the stool and came to stand in front of Angelo. He looked him in the eye for several moments, saying nothing, and then walked to a large carpet hanging against the back wall. He motioned for Angelo to follow and pulled back the edge of the carpet to reveal another doorway that led to a shallow, dimly lit hall.

  This was more what Angelo had expected—breaking dozens of national and international laws seemed to warrant some level of subterfuge. A thrill of anticipation ran through him.

  The hall opened to another, smaller room crowded with crates and scattered packing materials. An older man stood near the far wall, speaking to a group of four young people. Angelo judged the oldest to be about twenty; the youngest was just a toddler. Based on their clothing, Angelo guessed they were Bedouins. One of the girls saw Angelo first. She pulled at the older boy’s sleeve and lifted her shawl to cover her face. The other girl followed suit, and the toddler whimpered and held his hands out, asking to be picked up.

  The older man approached Angelo. “You are Mr. Angelo D’Amato, yes?” His English was excellent. A thick wave of sweet-smelling incense washed over Angelo as the man came near.

  Angelo nodded.

  “I am Khalid.” He reached his hand out to shake Angelo’s, then saw the crutches and moved with both hands to Angelo’s shoulders, half patting, half hugging. “Come, I have tea and chairs here at the back.”

  Khalid led the way to a small curtained area at the side of the room where there were several seats on a soft rug crowded around a low table set with tea and dates. Angelo sat down as directed. The other four came and took seats as well. Khalid stood.

  “This is our friend who has the artifact your Reverend wishes to procure,” he said to Angelo. “Our friend does not want to give his name, but please understand it is because of the danger this might bring to his family that he wishes to remain unknown.”

  “Please tell him that I have no intention of revealing where or how I obtained the artifact,” Angelo said to Khalid. “He and his family are safe. You have my word.”

  “You may speak to me yourself. I understand English, sir,” the young man said. “As do my sisters. My little brother is learning.” He smiled at the toddler sitting on the lap of the older girl.

  Khalid poured tea and insisted that everyone drink and take a date. “Mr. D’Amato, our friend wanted to meet you because he wishes to know what you plan to do with the artifact.”

  Angelo hadn’t anticipated the question and had no way of answering.

  “What Khalid means,” the young man said, “is that I need to know that it will not go to museum or university for study. I know the law says—”

  “I don’t care about the law,” Angelo interrupted. “And I have no intention of selling it to anyone else. It’s for my use alone.” His forehead creased as he studied the young man. “But may I ask why you don’t want it to end up in a museum?”

  “It was my family’s land, you see. My great-grandfather knew about the pots left behind in the Qumran caves.”

  “You mean the pots that held the Dead Sea scrolls?”

  “Yes. But this was before any others knew they were there. My great-grandfather’s father had told him, like his father before—they all told the same tale and they all agreed. The pots should be left as they are.” He leaned forward, his checkered smagg sliding farther down his shoulders. “They weren’t for us, you see. But my great-uncles had other thoughts. They knew they could sell the pots for money. Times were hard for the Bedouin then.” He looked over at his sisters. “Not as hard as now.”

  “Your family found the Dead Sea scrolls?
” Angelo was surprised at the awe in his voice; he didn’t think he cared about such things anymore.

  The young man nodded. “Against my great-grandfather’s wishes, my great-uncles sold them. All but one.”

  Angelo set his cup of tea back on the table. “Why the one?”

  “It was not in the cave with the others to be sold. It had already been saved.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The story my family tells comes down the years, passed from old mouths to young ears. It is a story of warning, which is why I give it to you. You understand?”

  The toddler babbled, playing with a loose lock of his sister’s hair. Angelo felt like he was in a dream. He ran his hand down the back of his neck to stop the prickling nerves. “I understand.”

  “Many, many years ago, not long after the Essenes left Qumran—you know the Essenes?”

  “They lived in the caves. They were like monks, but Jewish, then later some Christian,” Angelo answered. “They lived by themselves in a kind of commune. They read and copied a lot of books—which is why we have the Dead Sea scrolls. They were also very interested in the apocalypse.”

  The young man nodded again. “The caves where they lived were part of my people’s land. After they left—no one knows why—one of my ancestors, a girl, wandered into a cave to hide from a storm. She found clay pots. She was a curious girl and so looked inside them and pulled out the scrolls, but she could not read. She put them back and moved on to another pot and then another, looking for something of value. She came to a small stone box at the back of the cave behind the stack of clay pots. She started to open the box, but an angel appeared and told her to stop.”

  “An angel?” Angelo asked.