Further Praise for The Emissary
“The Emissary is a uniquely exciting adventure that captures the heart and soul of the reader.”
—Beau Bridges
“I am a giant fan of creativity that takes us out of our daily thinking. Patricia Cori has penned just such a tale. A broad fantasy adventure that speaks to those who want to think differently and challenge the daily onslaught against nature and our own future.”
—Pen Densham, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, producer, author, and artist
“Simply Brilliant!”
—Tanya Roberts, actor and animal activist
“Best-selling author Patricia Cori has found a profound and captivating way to wake us up to the necessity of honoring Nature’s life in the seas. There is a direct correlation between the creatures of the deep and us as human beings. The creatures of the deep are our sacred teachers; they show us that in order to transform where we are we must be willing to go to the depths of ourselves. They not only model this necessity—they are crying for it. Our lives as well as theirs are counting on us to answer. Thank you, Patricia, for reaching out and making the first call with The Emissary.”
—Temple Hayes, spiritual leader, author, and founder of Life Rights
“The whales and dolphins of this planet need our help—and Patricia Cori is their Emissary!”
—Elisabeth Röhm, actor, author, activist, and mother
“Phenomenal! Her extraordinary vision and the way she communicates her truth to her readers will make Patricia Cori a staple in every library.”
—Donald Newsom, president, BBS Radio Network, Inc.
“Patricia Cori has done a great service to us all, and I believe the majestic creatures of the sea as well, by turning her skill, passion, and intelligence toward understanding and protecting them, and simultaneously illuminating a path for human transformation.”
—New Consciousness Review
Electronic Edition: ISBN 978-1-58394-707-4
Copyright © 2014 by Patricia Cori. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.
Published by
North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712
Cover art by Malcolm Horton, malcolmhorton.co.uk
Cover and book design by Brad Greene
The Emissary is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Cori, Patricia.
The emissary / Patricia Cori.
pages cm
Summary: “This powerful and captivating novel will appeal to readers who enjoy fantasy, science fiction, adventure, and the supernatural as well as those who believe in the afterlife, animal communication, and saving the whales and other endangered species from extinction”— Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-58394-706-7
1. Missionaries—Fiction. 2. Psychics—Fiction. 3. Telepathy—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.O736E45 2013
813′.6—dc23
2013013612
v3.1
To Chicca, my beloved four-legged companion
who just crossed over the rainbow bridge,
another bright star in the heavens
Acknowledgments
So many people help an author find the creative space to work in, like an understanding partner who misses a lot of nights out and special dinners, or a friend who provides encouragement and love—even a faithful dog who sits patiently on her pillow, knowing food follows the inspired moments! I am blessed to have some wonderful people and animal companions holding that space for me, and I thank you all for your patience and understanding when I’m typing away into the wee hours of the morning, in the magic of the creative process.
Many editions later, I still celebrate the bond I enjoy with all the people at North Atlantic Books, who have continued to support me with almost blind faith over the years. The team changes a bit as time moves us all forward, but the commitment remains steadfast. Special thanks to Richard Grossinger, who knows how the stars shine; to Doug Reil, for his commitment to the Earth and for the support he has shown me over the years; to Janet Levin, who believed in The Emissary from its beginnings and has stood behind me all the way.
Much gratitude to my crackerjack editor, Emily Boyd, who really knows how to put things together and does so with great eloquence; and to my dedicated copy editor, Adrienne Armstrong, for perfecting the words, never losing the voice. There are many others behind the scenes at North Atlantic Books, so please feel my gratitude for all you do to guide my books out to the world.
I’m excited to be working with my new publicist, Dea Shandera, a true visionary, and with acclaimed film producer Dan Sherkow, who is determined to bring The Emissary to the big screen. Thank you, Vitaly Safarov, for opening those doors with your undying enthusiasm, inspiration, and loyalty through this process. Thanks, too, to Captain Graeme Stoner, for telling me how ships work.
Oh! To the mighty whales and gracious dolphins, you are my inspiration, my hope, and the dream of the Earth.
And last but never least—to my beautiful mother, Sara, who speaks to me from beyond the veil; to Franco, my beloved soul mate; to Bobbo, for his ongoing feedback; to my family of four-legged beings who love and have loved unconditionally; and to the light beings who guide my path, through this lifetime … and no doubt, many others.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1 Earth Under Siege
2 Jamie Hastings
3 USOIL
4 Reeling in the Buddha Baby
5 Oil and Water
6 Political Maneuvers
7 All Aboard
8 The Deepwater
9 The Ides of March
10 The Whale Rebellion
11 A Near-Death Experience
12 Black Ops
13 Truth, Revealed
14 The Race Against Time
15 Rescue
16 Deliverance
17 Tsunami!
18 The Triple Cross
19 Until We Meet Again
Epilogue
About the Author
1
Earth Under Siege
Nathan Beals punched out from work at precisely 6:00 p.m., smack in the middle of Los Angeles rush hour. After the most ballistic holiday shopping mania he had ever seen in his twenty-odd years working security at the mall, he finally had an entire weekend off.
Exhausted, he dragged himself out to the employee parking lot, only to find that his faithful old Chevy sedan, “Miss Jezebel,” had been vandalized. The side mirror was smashed up against the window, and glass covered the asphalt—shattered reflections of what Nathan always referred to as “the broken society.” Examining the few remaining splinters wedged inside the frame, he could see it was no accident, and that someone had whacked the mirror deliberately—another anonymous punk with a baseball bat in his fists and a big, huge chip on his shoulder. He checked the passenger’s side and, sure enough, the attacker had also keyed three feet of the front fender and both doors: through the paint—r
ight down to the steel.
“Aw-w-w man!” he shouted, though no one was there to hear. “Look at this, now!” Nathan ran his fingers over the unforgiving scar on Jezebel’s smooth, clean body, feeling the pain of it just as sharply as if it had been carved into his own flesh. “It never ends,” he said, shaking his head. “Good god almighty, it just never, ever ends.”
A senior guard for so many years at the mall, he thought he’d seen just about everything—shoplifters, gangbangers, lost kids, vandals, stalkers—but never had he experienced anything like what he’d lived through the last year. This was the year of years in bizarre world and he could feel the tension rising, as if the whole planet were in a giant pressure cooker that was just about to blow its lid off, along with the whole human race, right out of Earth’s orbit.
He clutched his phone from his shirt pocket and dialed the first three numbers of the local police station—he certainly knew everybody there—but then, he thought it over for a moment, and hung up. With everything that was going on out there, on the streets of Los Angeles, they weren’t about to investigate petty vandalism—not even as a favor to him. And of course he wasn’t insured for anything like this anyway—so, what was the point?
Nathan grabbed a plastic bag out of the trunk and carefully picked up the shards of glass, piece by piece, so that he could discard them somewhere safer, far away from the mall, before anyone else got the idea to do any more damage with them … and just maybe sparing someone a flat tire. Shaking his head in frustration, he wondered if this malicious little gift might be payback for having intervened in a brawl earlier that day, knowing it was unlikely and that it was probably just him being overly paranoid—but thinking it, just the same. Violence, these days, didn’t need a reason or a cause. As a security guard with authority, though, he was good enough “reason” for any number of vengeful punks and petty criminals that he had to deal with—every single day.
Nathan always started his mornings with coffee at his favorite café in the mall. But that day, he never even got to taste it. Just as the clerk was handing him his latte, he got called to the south end, where trouble was brewing at Electronics Warehouse. The store clerk who called it in reported that there were two men fighting—he thought they were gangbangers—so Nathan was warned to use extreme caution approaching. When he got there, they were one minute away from killing each other, over what each had claimed as his own territory—the one remaining “super sale” stereo in the store. One pulled a switchblade on the other, and he was about to use it, fired up and ready to kill.
Nathan managed to calm the kid and take the knife away, without him or anyone else getting hurt, preventing what very nearly could have resulted in another in a long list of urban L.A. killings. If security hadn’t gotten there in time—if he had stopped to stir a packet of sugar into his coffee—they would for sure have found the boy lying dead in a pool of his own blood … over a fifty-dollar discount on a damned car stereo that probably wasn’t even worth twenty bucks in the first place.
Because the situation involved a concealed weapon, Nathan was duty bound to call the incident in to the police immediately, which resulted in the knife-wielding youth being arrested on the spot and taken down to the station in handcuffs, while the other, not-so-innocent delinquent, just as responsible, was let go.
The thought of that kid pulling a knife on the other, for something as trivial as a stereo, was unconscionable to a simple, peace-loving man like Nathan, who grew up in a time when people still talked to each other … when there was still a dialogue going on. Sure, there had always been violence, he didn’t deny that, but it was the exception when he was growing up, compared to the new “normal” of today: this constant threat, all the time, everywhere … around every corner. The world was seething now, bubbling over in a cauldron of rage. From the looks of things that he saw come down on a daily basis, in that microcosmic corner of a crazy new world, the Mall, reason was all but gone. The human dialogue was over, and what had replaced it was irrational, unyielding disregard for everyone and everything. It had given way to the animal instinct: take what you want; kill or be killed.
That was how Nathan had come to perceive the world in which he was growing old … and he did not like what he saw.
Was a human life really worth nothing more than fifty bucks to the youth of today? He knew that answer. Kids were killing each other out there for far less than that—even just for the fun of it. And where the hell were these kids’ parents, he wondered, dragging them, like a couple of snarling pack dogs, back to the security office, by the scruffs of their necks. Where, for the love of god, were the parents?
Meanwhile, while this drama was unfolding, at the north end, a frantic young mother came running out of Macy’s, screaming hysterically, moments after her little girl disappeared, in seconds, from her sight. The security team of more than one hundred guards—in uniform and plainclothed—executed emergency procedures throughout the mall, controlling all the exits, questioning anybody who looked suspicious and everybody with small children. They scrutinized every inch of the stores and the parking grounds via the network of surveillance equipment, but the girl was gone without a trace. Nothing showed up on the monitors; nobody had seen a child fitting her description; not a soul had noticed anything out of the ordinary.
It was as if she had simply evaporated into thin air.
Shoplifting throughout the mall’s seventy-eight stores was rampant—security arrested thirty-four people in one day alone, and more than two hundred in a week. Each time they had had to call in the police, and these people were booked, handcuffed, and taken away in squad cars. Why had this national pastime become so predominant in the youth culture of the day? Did they have any idea what it meant to spend even one night in a jail cell? Nathan just couldn’t get his mind around what people were thinking anymore; he was admittedly out of step with the times. He didn’t understand what motivated the youth, if anything even could, or where society was headed, and he just generally felt out of place and out of touch with the twenty-first century, altogether.
By the end of his shift, he couldn’t even feel his feet anymore. His back hurt, his head was throbbing, and it was just adrenaline, he knew, that kept him from collapsing. He wondered if he really could wait out another whole year, until the glory days of retirement—the minute he turned sixty-five. Then, at long last, between Social Security and his pension, he would finally be able to live out his old age with dignity: enjoying the grandkids; going fishing like he used to do; leaving the mall and the world at large to work themselves and all the drama out without him.
He opened the door of his wounded Chevy, placing the bag of splintered glass carefully on the floor in the back, and fell into the driver’s seat, so worn out he could barely turn the key. “Take Daddy home, Jezebel,” he said out loud, caressing the steering wheel. “Poppa’s all out of gas.”
Nathan sighed wearily at the thought that on top of his ten-hour workday, he still had to face two hours of stop-and-go traffic before he could finally kick off his shoes and dive onto the sofa, next to an ice-cold beer … with nothing he had to do, and nobody he had to think about for the next forty-eight hours. The only thing on his mind was “chilling out,” like the rest of America, with the NFL playoffs in his face, pizza in one hand, and beer in the other.
After being trapped in Ventura Highway’s infernal freeway gridlock for more than two excruciating hours, he finally reached the exit that led to his neighborhood, where, but for kids playing loudly on the streets and a few barking dogs, life was relatively quiet … and still reasonably sane. He’d lived there twenty years. It was a small, tightly knit community, where everyone knew and watched out for each other, and where trouble rarely found its way in: as safe a hamlet as one could find in suburban L.A., where “normal folk” (as he referred to himself and his neighbors) still lived.
He smacked his lips in anticipation of a frothy cold brew, knowing how close he was to being finally able to escape, away from
people, into the sanctity of his own four walls.
Turning onto his street, he honked and waved at his neighbor, who was outside watering the lawn. “Yo, Willie boy!” he shouted, rolling down the window. “You have got to have the greenest lawn in the country, dude!”
“Mister Beals!” Will called back, approaching the sidewalk. “How about this heat—in January? Wild, huh?”
Nathan slowed the car to a complete stop in the middle of the street. “We just took down the tinsel at work and it’s ninety degrees out here. The world is some kind of upside down, man.”
“It is indeed! Are you finally off duty?”
“I am! Not a minute too soon, neither,” Nathan answered, wiping the sweat from his brow, with the crisply ironed handkerchief he carried in his shirt pocket.
Will took a long slurp from the water hose. “And you’re sure I can’t convince you to come over tomorrow? We’re throwing some mighty fine lookin’ sirloins on the grill!”
“Thanks. You know I’d love to join you guys, but I am too wiped out even for Will’s mean-ass barbeque.” He didn’t have the heart to tell his good friend that the only human activity he wanted to see for the next two days was a bunch of helmets running the ball down the field on his thirty-six-inch screen, and the pizza delivery guy from Guido’s knocking at the door.
“The Jets and the Patriots … gonna be one hell of a game!”
“I hear that,” said Nathan, tempted.
“Thelma and the girls—they’ll be going out to spend the day with her mother, so it’s just us dudes, plenty of brew … barbeque … and some kick-ass football, man.”
“I thank you, I do,” said Nathan, “but I have just got to lay low this weekend. And as tired as this ol’ body is right now? I am just as likely to sleep right through the whole thing anyway.”
The Emissary Page 1
