Curt couldn’t control his swell of anger. “You were the one who told us the man who emerged from the sealed room was a four-century-old French Huguenot. Without that knowledge, we would have never searched the room and found the Fish.”
“I’m well aware of what transpired, Mr. Lohan. Obviously these events were destined to be.”
“Then why didn’t you just come clean about all this when we first met in Bolivia?”
“Frankly, I didn’t trust you. I didn’t know your intentions. I now know you and your friends are just and worthy people.”
Curt paced away furiously and returned, drawing within inches of the old man. “I’m so pissed I could punch you in the face. Does that make me a just man?”
“It makes you an angry man.”
Curt bit his lip, bringing himself under control. Stay rational, he reminded himself as he took a deep breath. “Do you know the contents of the Scroll of Edict?”
Father N shook his head. “Regretfully, no. Only that it contains ten stanzas of text.”
Curt gently patted Fawn’s front pants pocket as she lay across the bow of the boat—first her left pocket, then the right—where he heard the slight crinkle of paper. He slowly eased his hand in her right pocket and withdrew the crumpled, folded sheet. Fawn never stirred.
“We have several stanzas from the scroll. They were acquired from Fawn’s reporter friend, Lindsey McSweet, and from a tattoo on one of the Cult of the End members.” Curt pulled a paper from his pocket and read aloud:
“Mankind’s curiosity will lead to the first God Tool.
Two strong hurricanes will see it placed in the Ocean.
Its voracity is fueled by fresh water.
It will seek the others.
“Nature will free the second God Tool.
Fresh water turning red signifies its release.
The jeweled eyes see all in the sun’s light.
When in balance, the creature is the way.”
“Where are the rest?” Father N asked.
Curt shook his head. “We don’t have them.” He exhaled, studying the words. “It’s eerie how these two match the discovery of the two Tools.”
“Not ‘eerie’: destiny.” Father N paused, staring off in thought. “When in balance, the creature is the way,” Father N repeated the last line.
“What about it?”
“In balance. That suggests being whole. The Serpent wasn’t whole until it had both eyes.”
Curt suddenly understood where he was going. “The creature was only whole right before it…consumed Scott and Cody. Prior to that, it only had one eye.”
Father N offered a troubled expression.
“What does that mean for the others it ate, like my ex-wife, Lila, and those who had their appendixes? You told me they had also passed through to Eden.”
“I was wrong.”
“Wrong? Then where are they? They’re not—”
“Dead? I don’t know.”
Curt exhaled. “If the Cult of the End, or COTE as they call themselves, finds the third God Tool, how will they use it to access Eden?”
“The three Tools were created in Eden at the dawn of mankind. As such, they are eternally linked to Eden. While Tina can lead them to the place of access—the portal—it is said that the three God Tools will open the entrance. How, I don’t know, but I suspect the cult has learned the secret from the Scroll of Edict. Combining the Serpent and the Fish into one creature must have been part of their strategy and, regretfully, I played right into it. To have any hope of saving your friends, you must obtain the third God Tool, and we must learn how to use the Tools to reach Eden.”
“When you say portal…do you mean a doorway?”
“No, I mean a portal. An opening that will take you to Eden. I don’t believe Eden exists in this day and age. Remember when I referred to it as timeless? I believe Eden is locked in the past, which explains why it’s never been found to this day.”
“And if Tina passes through this portal, there’ll be no other way to get inside Eden?”
Father N hesitated briefly before issuing a resolute, “No.”
“Where is this portal?”
“I don’t know. Do your notes say anything else?”
Curt scanned the paper. “At the top, it says the name of the cult and the name of the scroll. Also, it mentions: ‘Goal: destroy Tol.’ ”
“That’s it,” Father N said despondently. “That’s the end game.”
“What? What is Tol?”
“TOL: Tree of Life.”
“It actually exists?”
Father N nodded. “The Tree is why you exist; why I exist. All of humanity is dependent upon the Tree of Life. Destroying the Tree would obliterate mankind. Without the Tree, cells in every human body would not only cease to regenerate, they would deteriorate at a rapid pace. People would age and die within a matter of hours. Anyone suffering from an injury would die almost immediately, and all pregnant women would miscarry and perish in a painful death.”
“Aren’t you just a bastion of good news?” Curt asked sarcastically. He glanced down at Sherri, the woman carrying his child. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing them. He snapped his head up. “Why would God allow such a thing in Eden? God threw Adam and Eve out of Eden when they screwed up. Surely, he’s not going to allow some madmen inside to snuff out humanity.”
“Gone are the days when God handholds mankind. He set the contingency plan in place, but it’s not His task to oversee. He will allow fate to play out.”
Curt spun away, running a hand over the top of his bristled head. This is insane, he thought. He spun back. “This plan you keep referring to, are you positive it’s under way?”
“Yes, that’s why the Serpent pursued Tina and Cody: the creature needed to send them to Eden, although it was temporarily distracted when it sought its missing eye. Now Cody is in place, and as I said, if Tina enters, Eden will be sealed off for a millennium.”
“We’ve got to abort this…this plan.”
“You can’t. I tried. You saw what happened when I raised the river and drew in the fresh water hoping the Fish would kill the Serpent. The two merged into one vile beast. My actions, which I thought were of my own volition based on free will, were merely part of His plan. I understand that now. I had a role to play. It matters not what we do, but what is preordained to occur.”
“How did you raise the river?”
“I used the Staff. You are aware that it was once mine before I passed it to my son Shem, and before he passed it to Abraham, then Isaac, then—”
“Wait, what? The Staff was in the form of the creature, the Serpent. Are you saying you changed it back?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“The same way Moses did after he proved God’s power to Pharaoh when he turned the Staff into the Serpent. I grabbed it by the tail.”
“You’re kidding me. That’s all it took?”
“Yes, human touch will change the Staff into the creature, and a human’s touch grabbing the creature’s tail will turn it back into the Staff.”
Curt thought about Ed Leedskalnin’s story. Ed had come down into the cave where he found the Staff in 1925. He specifically mentioned picking up the Staff. It warmed, but didn’t morph into the Serpent. Based on this, Curt was about to dispute what Father N had just said, but then he recalled a detail of Ed’s story: he was wearing gloves. He never touched the Staff with his bare hand. Last week, when the pilot, Clarence Little, crash landed on the point and found the cave, he must have grabbed the Staff and transformed it into the Serpent. The creature then turned on Little and spewed the man’s remains into the stream in the cave. His organs eventually flowed out at Green Cove Springs Park.
Curt was curious. “Why did you change it back into the Serpent?”
“As I told you, the Serpent was the portal to Eden for the seeds.”
“Do you at least know what the third God Tool is?”
“No, but in my dr
eams, I’ve seen its creature form: a large, predatory bird. It once fulfilled the role of hunter in order to attain food for Adam and Eve in Eden.”
Curt’s head was spinning. “This is absurd,” he scoffed. “Why should I believe any of this?”
Father N stared at Curt. The old man’s eyes hardened. “You’ve seen the power of the Fish, witnessed the Serpent. These Tools were forged by God. The transformation of each of these Tools from their creature form to their tool form, or vice versa, is the greatest power on Earth. Nothing compares. Still you question what’s happening?”
“Okay,” Curt said in resignation, sitting on the bow. “Let’s say this plan really is under way. On one hand, you’re telling me to find the third God Tool before the COTE so they don’t enter Eden. On the other hand, you’re telling me this plan is unstoppable?”
There was grave concern etched in Father N’s brow. “That’s what’s confusing. All I can tell you is that you must find the third God Tool. If the cult gets to it first, it won’t matter what we believe.”
“How am I supposed to find it? We don’t have any more of the text, and I can’t just leave on some wild goose chase.” He glared at the old man, his frustration building again.
Father N made no attempt to respond.
“That’s what I thought,” Curt said dejectedly. He dropped his head, rubbing his forehead with the palm of his hand as he cast his eyes to the ground.
When he looked up, Father N was gone.
CHAPTER 5
In the woods, ten miles west of Green Cove Springs, the Cult of the End camp had been reestablished. Carr Nash sat in his tent scanning the translated text specific to the location of the third God Tool. The stanza was only causing him frustration. He ran a hand over the skin of his smooth head.
To the side, Tina sat quietly on the ground. Her mood was different, sedate. Nash now knew she was the second seed. Witnessing her mother traumatized and seeing Scott Marks and Cody, the other seed, eaten by the Serpent, seemed to have no unsettling effects on the child. He found this odd in a way that Nash couldn’t rationalize, nor did he care to try.
His singular focus was on solving the riddle of the text, but the words were so vague, he didn’t know where to start.
“Sir, I must go,” Tina said calmly.
Nash studied the girl.
She stared up at him with a trance-like gaze.
“You must go, huh?”
“I must get into Eden.”
“And why is that?” Nash decided to play along.
“Cody is waiting for me.”
“Sorry to break the news, but your little friend was consumed by that giant snake.”
“No, he wasn’t. The Serpent provided passage. Cody is waiting for me in Eden.”
“Provided passage?” Confused, Nash grabbed a file and pulled out the pages with the applicable stanza of translated text, the section regarding the Staff:
The jeweled eyes see all in the sun’s light.
When in balance, the creature is the way.
“The creature is the way,” Nash said aloud. The phrase had never been clear but now made perfect sense. “Why did the Serpent send him to Eden?”
“That was God’s plan. By consuming us, the Serpent would be the portal to enter Eden. Afterward, the three creatures would merge and join us in the Garden, and the Deliverer will ensure our safety.”
Nash thought for a moment. He had no idea the Serpent was a vessel to transport the seeds. He now realized how close he had come to screwing everything up at Six Mile Creek last night when he and Jed Rassle had watched the Serpent nearly consume both seeds. According to the text, Eden would have been sealed for one thousand years if he’d let that happen. He had narrowly avoided catastrophe.
“So if the Serpent eats someone, they’ll pass through to Eden?”
“No, not since it has merged with the other creature.”
“What if I separate them?”
“The creatures cannot be separated. Only once they are in Eden can they become individual creatures again.”
Nash paused, contemplating his next question. “Tina, where is Eden?” He softened his tone. She was being cooperative so there was no need to be forceful with her.
“I don’t know. Eden is not in this time. The only way to reach it now is through the portal in that direction.” Tina pointed north. “I must reach it before the creature gets there.”
“And you know where the portal is?”
“Of course.”
She could lead them to the portal. Nash had suspected as much. “Do you know where the third Tool is located?”
Tina shook her head no.
Nash believed her. He stood, contemplating the other information Tina had just mentioned. The Deliverer was another term mentioned in the text. “Tina,” he said, his tone dripping with honey, “did Cody’s father also pass through into Eden? Is he the Deliverer?”
“Yes, he passed through, but he is not the one. The Deliverer still walks the Earth.” She paused and eyed the ground, as if silently accessing some unknown source of information. Tina lifted her eyes to Nash. For the first time today, the little girl showed emotion as a single tear rolled down her cheek. “The Deliverer will die.”
This was music to his ears. This fate confirmed the text, which described the Deliverer as an interloper on behalf of the seeds, and one who must die. Nash had assumed Scott Marks, Cody’s father, was the Deliverer, given his relationship to the male seed. His second choice was CIA Agent Samuel Tolen, given his capabilities. Thus, Nash thought that with Scott Marks consumed by the Serpent and Tolen having been killed by Josette Laval, the Deliverer had been eliminated. Yet, if it wasn’t those two, who was it? Could it be Tina’s mother, Sherri Falco; or Mark’s friend, Dr. Curt Lohan? “Tina, do you know the name of the Deliverer?”
“No.”
“Is it your mother?
“The Deliverer is never related to the seed.”
Nash believed she was telling the truth, but the information was troubling.
Unexpectedly, Tina rose, walked over to Nash, and put her hand on his arm. Her eyes sharpened, her expression became not quite as demure. “You’re not who you say you are.”
The comment caught Nash off-guard.
“What?”
“I know who you are.”
“That’ll be enough out of you,” Nash said angrily.
Tina returned to her seat on the ground, her eyes cast downward.
Nash walked outside. The morning humidity was already building. Rassle sat on a log sharpening his long knife on a bench stone. With each glide of the blade across the rock, there was a metallic swish. Josette Laval stood near the extinguished campfire. Sentries were walking the perimeter of the area.
“We’re getting closer,” Nash said, walking up to Laval. “Tina Falco can get us to a portal that will lead into Eden, but we must find that third God Tool. You’re sure Tolen is dead? He was an unexpected nuisance.”
“He’s dead,” Laval said. “An exceptionally gratifying kill. I’m still having a hard time believing everything you’ve told me about these God Tools and gaining access to Eden, but I don’t see any danger in coming along for the ride. Your visions of the ancient text appear to be coming to fruition, even though I don’t believe in psychic abilities. Be warned, though, if you try and fuck me over, I’ll kill you with the same indifference as I did Monsieur Tolen. Oh, and I’m not afraid of that monster with his knife,” Laval said, glaring at Rassle.
Rassle gave Laval a surly smile.
“You two need to learn to play nice,” Nash remarked. “Little Ms. Falco told me the Deliverer has not been eliminated. Given that it must be someone close to the situation, we can narrow the list to either Curt Lohan, or that other woman, the reporter. They must both be killed to ensure no one fouls up our plan.”
“I’ll do it,” Laval quickly volunteered.
“No, this won’t take a professional,” he said. “Neither you nor Rassle are needed.” He
faced Rassle. “Jed, please send a man to take care of Lohan and another to snuff out that woman. Oh, and don’t send anyone with a tattoo.”
Jed nodded, stood, and walked away.
“Have it your way.” Laval flipped a tussle of dark hair over her ear.
****
Once Nash left, Tina was joined by a stocky man who came in through the back of the tent. He whispered softly, asking her more questions—questions that Nash had not.
Tina responded to each one truthfully; even to the one about the unborn seed.
CHAPTER 6
Curt sat by Sherri’s hospital bed. She had lapsed into a coma from a contusion to her head during the mêlée in Six Mile Creek. Sherri was connected to multiple machines with tubes flowing everywhere. She was breathing on her own, but the doctors had hooked her up to a respirator to ensure she was getting sufficient oxygen. A plethora of mechanical sounds filled the otherwise quiet room. The unavoidable antiseptic smell which accompanied every hospital room saturated the air.
The doctor had already confirmed what Tina had said: Sherri was pregnant. Curt wasn’t surprised. Tina had been so sure and so calm given the situation on the creek.
Now Curt was torn. He wanted to stay by Sherri’s side. On the other hand, every minute Scott was in Eden without his appendix meant he might be poisoning himself by eating the fruit there. The notion that the human appendix was somehow a filter tied to Eden seemed to make twisted sense when he considered the evolution of the now-useless organ.
Curt rose and walked to the window. The slats were parted, and the morning sunlight streamed through onto his face as if spotlighting his defeat. His entire world felt as if it had collapsed. How had it come to all this?
Curt turned toward the still figure in the bed. Sherri was so frail, so fragile. The bruise on her forehead had darkened. Curt said a quick prayer before leaving the room.
He wondered about Fawn, who was also unconscious when the two women arrived at the hospital. She was one floor below. He took the elevator, walked a long hallway, and entered her room. There were two patients in the room separated by a curtain. Surprisingly, Fawn was sitting up in the bed on the left. She glanced at him with a blank stare then broke eye contact. He hardly recognized her. Her hair was disheveled, her body bruised. Her left arm was immobilized in a sling.
End in the Beginning (The God Tools Book 3) Page 3
