Book of the Just

by Dana Chamblee Carpenter

  The man nodded. Mouse knelt and tried to unfasten the locks on the front of the trunk, but her swollen, blistered fingers couldn’t close around the latch. The man slid his black-gloved hand under hers, snapped the locks open, and tugged the lid of the trunk up.

  Luc was naked and curled in a ball. The entire surface of the trunk inside was covered with spells, like Mouse’s cell had been, but these were made only of blood. Luc’s blood, fresh, sticky, and glistening in the lamplight.

  “Gospodi,” the man gasped.

  “I don’t think God gives mercy to someone who does this to a child. Do you?”

  Mouse knelt and bent over Luc. He kept his head wrapped in his arms, his eyes closed. He was shaking.

  “I’m here, sweetheart. I’ve got you.” She eased her arms under him, wincing at the pain when her hands scraped against the bottom of the trunk. She pulled his body to her chest, kissing him gently on the cheek, her tears sliding down to mix with his.

  She looked over to thank the man who had helped her, but he was gone.

  When she turned back, she saw the Reverend and his wife being helped down from an upper landing at the far side of the still-quaking house. Kitty saw Mouse, too. She raised her hand, pointing and screaming something.

  But Mouse couldn’t hear because she was singing to Luc as she held him with one arm and tugged her tattered cloak around them both with the other. The song she sang was a lullaby—one her mother had sung to her in their seconds of a life together.

  “You are loved, little one. You are loved.”

  And she folded them into the dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The glare of fire flickered against the back window of the SUV.

  “Will there be trouble?” Kitty asked. Her voice was hoarse from the smoke and from screaming in rage as she watched Mouse and the boy disappear. She bent over, wiping at bloody scrapes on her legs. They’d barely managed to get down from the landing before the whole wing collapsed and erupted in flame.

  The Reverend was only a little dusty. The sweat slicking his face and neck was the only sign that he’d nearly died. He looked up from his phone. “This is Russia, Kitty. People like us don’t have trouble here.”

  “What about when they find what’s left of Jack?”

  “We have the necessary connections. There’ll be no questions asked.”

  “Were there others trapped inside?”

  “I don’t know—it won’t make a difference. Why do you care?”

  “I don’t. I just wanted to be sure there wouldn’t be any lingering consequences, something that might slow us down.”

  “I think your failed stunt managed that all on its own.”

  “My failure?” Kitty sat up sharply. “I did just what I said I would do—I captured both the girl and her brother. Your men let them go—one of them even helped her!”

  “Yeah, and as soon as I find him, he’ll be dealt with. All the cowards who ran will be dealt with.” He looked back down as his phone pinged with a text. “But it doesn’t change the fact that something you did to trap that girl didn’t work. She got out.”

  Kitty laid her head back against the seat. “It was my first time with those kinds of spells. I can do them better next time.”

  “Next time?”

  “Yes, of course. We have to get the boy back.”

  “Why?” He sounded far away, distracted.

  “He’s critical to our plan.” She pulled a compact out of her purse and started patting at smears of dirt on her face.

  “Not really. Now that I’ve got the Novus Rishi network fully integrated with my own, we’ve got people everywhere. There’s no politician we can’t own, no country we can’t manipulate. It’s all ours now, to play with as we wish. The girl—or her brother—would only make it easier. They offer a certain assurance of success. But I’m willing to take the risk without them.”

  “You’re just talking about money and influence. We need the boy to start the Crusade. He can wipe out the vile, disgusting masses and turn the tide so the righteous can rule this world again. We’ll lead the way.”

  She turned to him, but he was still staring at his phone, smirking.

  “What makes you think the boy will do any of that?” he asked. “What makes you think he can? Some old book you read? Something your pet angel told you?”

  “You saw with your own eyes what the girl can do.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “Yes, her I believe in.”

  “If she can do it, why wouldn’t her brother be able to do the same? We get him while he’s young and break him so he obeys without question. So he belongs to us.”

  The Reverend licked his lips, and they shone in the glare of his phone. “I could break the girl if I had the chance.”

  Kitty’s hand lashed out and slapped the phone down onto the floorboard between his feet. “Stop your sick texting with whatever slut you have on the hook right now. You know, just because it’s words—”

  The Reverend grabbed the back of her neck and pressed her head between his legs toward the floorboard. “Pick it up.”

  “Get your hands off me.”

  “Pick it up, Kitty.”

  She wrapped her fingers around the phone, and he let go of her neck. She handed him the phone. “Look at that, I broke a nail.”

  The Reverend chuckled.

  Kitty waited a beat. “I’ll remind you that you need me as much as I need you.”

  “What do I need you for?”

  “You need me not to expose you. What would happen to your horde of acolytes if they learned about your hobbies? You wouldn’t be their ‘Righteous Reverend’ anymore, would you?”

  The Reverend put the phone down and looked at her.

  “And don’t think about getting rid of me like you’ve done with so many others. I’ve planned for that. I’m part of the most powerful tech dynasty in the world, remember?”

  They let the silence drag out, each of them cataloging their vulnerabilities.

  “What do you want?” he finally asked.

  “I want the boy back.”

  “And the girl?”

  “You can have her if you want. She’s too nasty for my tastes. The boy still has some innocence, some malleability. I want the boy.”

  “I think I know how to get them both.”

  Angelo sank onto the bed in the small room at Fossanova Abbey outside Rome. Birhan leaned against the wall beside the door.

  “You look bad, brother,” he said, shaking his head. “You need sleep.”

  Birhan had been overcome with joy when he’d spotted Angelo coming through the courtyard beside the cloister earlier in the day. But worry and exhaustion had sheared away Angelo’s happiness at the reunion—he couldn’t help but think he was bringing more trouble into the boy’s life.

  “I tried on the plane,” Angelo replied. During the four-hour flight from Moscow, all he’d been able to see were faces—Jack Gray’s exploding into crimson confetti and the Bishop’s drained of color. They kept repeating, like some morbid video loop, when he closed his eyes. When his eyes were open, his imagination rolled out scenarios of what might be happening to Mouse’s brother at Kitty’s hand. He’d taken a taxi back out to the castle to see if she’d been able to summon the boy, but the chaos of lights flashing from half a dozen emergency vehicles lining the drive had warned him off. Neither Kitty nor the Reverend would let themselves get caught in that kind of mess; they were surely gone, and, if Kitty had been successful, the boy with them. Despite a growing sense of urgency, Angelo had to wait. He needed to prepare something before he tried to rush to the rescue, and he needed the solace of the night to get it done. Afterward, he hoped the way forward would be clear.

  “What I’d really like is a shower and some food,” he said to Birhan. “And then we have something we need to do.”

  “The rod and the book?”

  Angelo nodded.

  Birhan straightened his back against the wall, his shoulders square. “The bath is do
wn the walkway to your—”

  “I grew up here, Birhan. I know where the bathroom is.” Angelo smiled as he pushed himself up onto his crutches and followed the young man out onto the covered walk. The warm air on his face felt good after the iciness of Moscow, but it didn’t seem like it had been Christmas yesterday. “Can you go get your bag and the book and meet me back here? We can go eat at the restaurant just down the lane.”

  “Back in a flash.” Birhan smiled over his shoulder as he headed down the walk away from Angelo. “I say that right this time, yes?”

  Angelo chuckled. “Yes. Perfect.”

  “I am getting good at this English slang.”

  The water wasn’t hot enough. Angelo felt like he needed to scald away a layer of skin to feel clean again. He didn’t hold Jack’s death on his conscience—Jack Gray got what he deserved. And he didn’t think he was to blame for the Bishop getting shot; his mentor’s obsession with the Novus Rishi had led him into danger, not Angelo. But whatever Kitty meant to do to Mouse’s brother was Angelo’s fault, pure and simple. He’d been the one to help her find the books and the spells. He’d been the one to teach her how they worked. He’d been the one to align himself with her despite her desire to start a modern-day Crusade. He’d played along because it had served his own blind pursuit of justice.

  The shower turned into a cold stream sliding down Angelo’s back. No amount of water, hot, cold, or holy, would make him feel clean. He hoped that saving Mouse’s brother might. If he saved Mouse’s brother. If it wasn’t already too late.

  The sun was almost directly overhead when Angelo and Birhan walked through the ivy-covered archway at the restaurant. Just as they were seated, Angelo’s phone buzzed.

  “Not me,” Birhan said, grinning.

  “No. It’s the Bishop’s phone.” Assuming the text was something meant for the Bishop, Angelo barely glanced at it as he started to swipe it off the screen, but his eye caught a word that electrified him. The text was from the Bishop. He was alive, but that wasn’t the message he’d sent Angelo.

  “Oh, God.” He pushed back from the chair, tripping over his crutches.

  Birhan shot his arm out to catch him as he fell and pulled him back to his feet. “What is wrong?” He put his hand on Angelo’s back, steadying him. “Brother, what has happened?”

  But Angelo shook his head and took off for the door. Birhan followed him across the cobbled lane and into a grove of trees.

  Angelo stretched his head up, held his arms out. “I can’t breathe. God, I feel like I can’t—”

  “Mama always say to lean your head down when you think you might pass out,” Birhan said, shrugging.

  Angelo leaned down against his crutches, letting his head drop low, and handed the phone to Birhan.

  “‘She is alive. She thinks you are dead. She seeks vengeance. She is with her father. Save her,’” Birhan read. “Angelo, who is this ‘she’?”

  “Mouse. Mouse is alive.” He flung his head back and yelled to the heavens. “She’s alive!”

  He started to laugh, but something in the Bishop’s message speared his joy. His mind was just registering Birhan’s words—Angelo hadn’t read the whole message, he hadn’t gotten past the first sentence. “She’s with her father,” he repeated now. “Oh God, what have I done?” Angelo spun past Birhan and took off for the Chapter House.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Same place we were planning on—just several hours early. But we can’t wait any longer.”

  “Why not?”

  “I need the rod. And I need that book to tell me how to use it.” His voice shook as he thought about the stone angel smeared with Mouse’s blood. The angel Kitty now had because of him. “Mouse is in danger.”

  Birhan was having to jog to keep up with him. “And who is this Mouse?”

  “She’s . . .” Angelo didn’t know how to answer. “She’s everything, Birhan.”

  Birhan nodded, his jaw setting tightly. “Then we will save this Mouse.”

  They raced up stone stairs worn down by centuries of faithful feet traipsing up and down for prayers. The Chapter House had been a favorite spot of Angelo’s when he’d lived at the abbey as a boy. Most of the tourists passed it over, so it was often a place of solitude, and there was a magic in the space that he was drawn to but could not explain. The room was simple and bare, with a trio of deep-set windows softening the light as it washed the chamber. The arched ceilings, with their runners and carved columns and capitals that looked like fountains of stone erupting, were the only ornate elements in the room. But they weren’t what gave the space its magic—that came from the ripples in the plaster and chips in the stone blocks around the windows, and the shallow dips in the pavers on the floor, places where knees bent or hands gripped, places worn by human contact.

  Thanks to Mouse, Angelo understood it now. It was magic of a sort, the power that comes from consecrated places, this one steeped in the centuries-old ceremony and worship of first Cistercian and then Franciscan monks. This place was layered with their confessions and their hopes, with moments of loneliness and of brotherhood. Mouse had taught him the power of such places. He hoped it helped him now.

  He dropped to the floor where he always had as a boy, in the dead center of the room under the spot where the arches crossed on the ceiling. He pulled at the hand rest of one of his crutches, then shook out two of the pieces of wood he and Birhan had hunted. Birhan did the same with the other crutch, though it took much shaking to get the wider section of wood free of the hollow aluminum casing.

  “The book?” Angelo’s breathing was fast and shallow, his mouth dry.

  Birhan pulled out the inconspicuous journal he’d carried with him since Cairo and handed it to Angelo with a sigh, as if freeing himself of a heavy burden.

  Angelo said, “I don’t suppose there’s any point asking you to—”

  “No.” He folded himself down beside Angelo. “I’m staying right here.”

  The three pieces of wood lay on the floor in a line in front of them. Angelo held the Book of the Just in his lap. He made the sign of the cross as he readied himself to open it.

  “In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful,” Birhan whispered.

  Angelo pulled the cover back. The internal pages were made of some black, thin, incredibly soft parchment. The face page was covered in writing—a tiny script and, like the words on the cover, written in a language Angelo could not identify. He flipped to the back cover and found letters crafted with the same silver ink as those on the front and the opening page, but they were written in the ancient Hebrew Joachim had used on the gold plates. And the lines were broken into three stanzas, like a poem, like the pieces of Aaron’s rod on the floor in front of him.

  “Here we go,” Angelo said, blowing out a breath and lifting the book closer so he could read:

  The Just are three:

  Driven by compassion

  Shaped by humility

  Fueled by hope.

  The Just are one.

  “Angelo.” Birhan touched his arm, and he looked up.

  The smaller of the sticks was quivering and then began to undulate. The transformation from wood to something living happened so gradually that it was impossible to say when it became a snake. It lifted its head, tongue flickering, looking at Angelo as if it were waiting for something.

  Angelo looked back at the book. He read the next stanza, his voice and hands shaking.

  The Just are three:

  Shaped by humility

  Fueled by hope

  Driven by compassion.

  The Just are one.

  He looked up as soon as he finished the line and watched the second stick slither to life. The smaller snake inched forward, mouth gaping, and sank its fangs into the tail of the other snake.

  Angelo gasped.

  “Will it eat the one?” Birhan asked, reaching out with his hand as if he meant to stop the violence. The second snake turned and hissed. Birhan snatched hi
s hand back.

  Angelo read.

  The Just are three:

  Fueled by hope

  Shaped by humility

  Driven by compassion.

  The Just are one.

  The final piece twisted and shook, rattling against the stone floor until it, too, grew soft with flesh and skin, its scales glistening in the fading light. The second snake pulled itself forward, dragging the littlest snake with it, and bit into the thick tail of the third. All of them went still and straight, then a last tremor quaked along the length of them as they stiffened once more.

  The rod of Aaron rocked with a quiet thunder on the floor in front of Angelo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mouse knocked against the dark wooden door with her foot, her arms wrapped tightly around Luc, holding the cloak against his naked body, trying to keep him warm. She had not known where to go. The chalet in Austria felt vulnerable, contaminated, as did her father’s place. Besides, Mouse did not think seeing him right now would be good for Luc. The only words the boy had spoken so far had been whispered more than once, like he was trying to convince himself of something impossible. “He left me. He just left me.”

  Mouse could find no comfort for him.

  Without thinking, she had come back home again to the abbey at Teplá. Somehow, it seemed right, a woman and a child in trouble going back to where Father Lucas had taken her in so long ago. There was good in the world, good in people. Father Lucas had taught her that. She hoped, for Luc’s sake, that they would find that goodness here once more.

  There was a light snow falling. Except for the occasional gentle slap of the river below, all was silent and dark—until a light shone out from under the door, and Mouse heard mumbling and the shuffling of feet. The door opened, not just a crack but wide, welcoming. It gave Mouse courage.

  “We need help, please. Someplace to stay, just for a few hours.” She heard the old accent commandeer her words as she spoke to the man in Czech. She was running on instinct.

  The man pulled his robe more tightly around himself. He squinted in the dim light. “Am I dreaming?” he asked.