Over Joshua’s shoulder, she saw a small movement. The door was opening a crack. Then the crack widened. Someone was slipping into her room.
She needed to focus all of the spymaster’s attention on herself now. In the loudest voice she could summon, she cried, “Help! He’s trying to kill me!”
Joshua released his hold and stepped back from her, chuckling with satisfaction. “Shout as loud as you like. Nobody will come running to your rescue.”
From out of nowhere, a hand gripped the spymaster by the side of the head and slammed his skull against the wall. Then a second time and a third until Joshua crumpled to the floor unconscious.
Erik grinned at Hannah. “Guess he was wrong about that.”
She ran to him, sobbing.
“It’s OK, kid. You’re safe now.” Erik patted her on the back until she calmed down. “Besides, I should be the one thanking you. I’ve been dying to take a swing at that joker ever since his goons shot me.”
Hannah laughed in spite of herself. “It’s a good thing he left the door unlocked.”
The paladin shook his head in bafflement. “How many people in this place want to kill you? Seriously, you’d stand less chance of getting attacked if you ran through airport security wearing a sign that says, ‘I’m a suicide bomber. Catch me if you can.’”
“As long as you’re next door, I guess I’m safe enough.”
Erik stepped away and studied the girl’s throat. “Those red marks on your neck are beauties. They should bruise up nicely.”
“What’s nice about that?” She rubbed the marks tentatively.
Erik turned to regard Joshua. “He could weasel out of this by saying he never laid a hand on you. Those bruises are proof that he did.”
“But now he has proof that I can speak too.” Hannah pointed dolefully to the recorder sitting on the dresser.
“Really?” Erik went over and examined the device. Then he threw it on the floor and crushed it under his heel. Turning innocently to the girl, he said, “I don’t see any recorder. Do you?”
She gave a relieved smile.
Erik picked up the pieces of plastic and slipped them into his pocket. “I’ll go back to my room and sound the alarm but first...” He paused to survey the situation. “We have to set the scene.”
Hannah tilted her head quizzically.
“For starters, I want you to rake your nails across his cheek as hard as you can. Make sure you dig deep enough to draw blood.”
“That’s horrible!” The girl’s confusion intensified. “Why on earth should I do that?”
“Your bruises prove you were attacked. The scratches will prove he was the attacker.”
“Isn’t being found unconscious in my room proof enough?”
“Consider it a few extra nails in the coffin-lid.” He grinned. “Pun intended.”
“Pun?” Hannah’s eyes widened in alarm. “There was a pun in that sentence?”
“Oh, right, I forgot. Zach told me you were humor-impaired.”
“That’s a terrible thing to say!” the girl flared with irritation. “He knows I’ve worked really, really hard on my humor skills.”
“Um, I don’t think humor is something a person is supposed to ‘work at.’” Erik made air quotes around the last two words.
Hannah barely heard him. “And now I have to master puns too?”
“It’s not like there’s gonna be a pop quiz,” the paladin countered. “Besides, right now we’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“I know that one,” she responded anxiously. “That’s a metaphor, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” the paladin replied cautiously, eyeing Joshua. “The metaphor knocked out cold on the floor waiting to have his face clawed.”
“I’ll do it, but this is awful.” Hannah knelt down beside the spymaster. She winced and then dragged her nails across his cheek. He emitted a reflexive grunt of pain.
Erik strode over to the nightstand and slid out the top drawer, shaking its contents on the floor. He handed it to the girl. “If he wakes up before help arrives, clock him with this.”
Hannah stood up and hefted the empty drawer by its metal handle. “That won’t be a problem. I’ve had some practice.”
“Wait a second.” Erik studied Joshua’s posture. “I slammed him on the left side of the head. We need to drag him away from the wall, or the angle of your swing won’t be convincing.”
Together they pulled the spymaster toward the center of the room and posed him in a slumped seated position. He was still unconscious.
Erik then took Hannah by the shoulders and positioned her over the body and slightly to the right. “There, that should do it. Just stay like that until help arrives. Oh, and, try to look like a damsel in distress.”
“I won’t have to try,” the girl retorted.
Erik slipped out of the room. Once he got back inside his own quarters, Hannah could hear his distraught voice on the phone summoning help.
***
Five minutes later, three people burst into Hannah’s room. This time Sister Ruth was accompanied by two sentries.
Joshua was just coming out of his stupor. “Wha...” His head lolled from side to side.
“God help us,” one of the sentries uttered. “It’s Brother Joshua.” The two men hauled him to his feet.
Hannah attempted to summon up a few tears. It wasn’t hard considering how shaken she felt. Dropping the nightstand drawer, she pulled down her collar and pointed toward her neck.
Sister Ruth easily interpreted what happened. “He tried to choke you!” she exclaimed in disbelief. “You poor lamb!” She scurried over to wrap a protective arm around Hannah.
The girl nodded solemnly and then made a scratching motion with her fingers.
“And you defended yourself the best way you could.” Sister Ruth eyed the gashes on Joshua’s cheek and then noted the blood under Hannah’s fingernails.
The sentries did likewise and tightened their grip on the diviner’s son.
Hannah pantomimed picking up the drawer and swinging it against Joshua’s head.
Her audience nodded with comprehension.
Joshua’s eyes began to regain their focus. “What happened here?” he asked in a thick voice.
“You attacked the diviner’s wife, that’s what happened here,” Sister Ruth informed him. “It’s a disgrace. You know very well that a consecrated bride may only be beaten by her own husband. Jedediah Proctor said so himself.”
“What?” Joshua shook his head from side-to-side, apparently hoping to clear it.
The sentries pulled him toward the door.
“I am your leader,” Joshua protested indignantly. “You take your orders from me!”
The guards traded guilty looks but didn’t release their hold.
One of them replied. “Father Abraham is a higher authority where the welfare of his wife is concerned, sir. You can explain things to him.”
The spymaster obviously realized he was under arrest. His hand flew to his cheek. He noted the blood coating his fingers. Then he glanced down at the drawer, inferring that Hannah had knocked him out. His eyes traveled wildly to the dresser where his recorder had been only moments before. “How did you do this?” he shouted at the girl.
She responded by burying her face against Sister Ruth’s shoulder.
“There, there. Don’t listen to him,” the woman stroked her hair. “The diviner will sort everything out.”
“This is the devil’s work! Mother Rachel was right. You are a demon in human form!” Joshua screamed and struggled against his captors. “A demon!”
The sentries turned a deaf ear to his accusations as they dragged him from the room.
Chapter 41—Nailed
Joshua ran a washcloth under the tap in his bathroom sink. He soaked it in cold water, wrung it out, and gingerly dabbed the blood off his cheek. He needed an icepack for the throbbing bump on the side of his head, but there was
no way to get one now. He was a prisoner in his own room. The spymaster returned to the sitting area and threw himself disgustedly into a chair. His hand-picked guards had dragged him here and then gone off to report to the diviner. When he’d tried to follow them down the corridor, he found two other sentries posted at the door who shoved him unceremoniously back inside. The indignity of it all!
He transferred the cold washcloth from his cheek to the bump on his head. The dizziness he felt was only partly due to his injury. He still didn’t know how Hannah had done it. One minute, he stood facing her, the next he was slumped unconscious on the floor. He tried to remember the sequence of events leading up to that moment. He heard her cry out for help which seemed pointless given her isolated location. Nobody else was quartered in that wing of the compound. And yet, he could have sworn he felt a man’s hand grip his head and drive it into the wall. Only two men besides himself ever visited Hannah. One was the diviner, and he wouldn’t have had the physical strength to knock Joshua out. The other man was Daniel, and he was overseas at the moment.
Mother Rachel, during her ramblings, had insisted she heard a disembodied male voice answering Hannah’s call for assistance. She’d also insisted that the girl was in league with the devil—that she’d cast a spell over Father Abraham and planned to bring down the entire brotherhood. Joshua attributed the old woman’s dire predictions to overmedication, but now he was starting to think she might be right. Nothing short of supernatural intervention could have saved Hannah. One moment, he had her exactly where he wanted her and then the next... he didn’t.
The door to his chamber swung open. Joshua winced as he turned his head sharply to see his father looming above him.
“Leave us,” the diviner instructed the guards.
They stepped back outside, shutting the door behind them.
The spymaster attempted to rise.
His father pushed him back down in his seat, exhibiting a surprising amount of force for one so frail.
“What were you doing in my wife’s quarters?” the diviner demanded.
“I... uh... sometimes visit her,” Joshua hedged. “Daniel does too,” he added defensively.
“Daniel has never tried to choke her!”
“I was trying to get her to speak.”
The diviner stamped the floor with his cane. “By cutting off her air supply?”
“She can talk. I heard her. She screamed for help. Mother Rachel heard her too.” Joshua knew he sounded desperate, but he had to let his father know the facts.
The diviner glowered furiously at his son. “How dare you use my principal wife’s mental vagaries to excuse your own conduct? Mother Rachel is temporarily unbalanced. Nothing she says can be trusted.”
“I had proof. I took a voice recorder with me. Now it’s missing. Hannah must have destroyed it.” Joshua despised his own rising sense of panic. The argument sounded flimsy even to him.
“Of course, it’s easy to shift the blame to a helpless girl who can’t speak.”
“But she can speak!” Joshua sprang from his chair. “I went to her chamber to prove that!”
The diviner grabbed his son by the collar. “I’ll tell you the real reason you went to Hannah’s chamber. Her beauty is a dangerous enticement to any man, and you were tempted by it. Perhaps you thought you could seduce her—persuade her that a man in his twenties would make a better lover than an aged husband long past his prime.”
“What?” The spymaster gawked stupidly at his father.
“It was a perfect opportunity to prey on an innocent afflicted child. Who could she tell if you were to shame her?”
“What?” Joshua repeated again, appalled by his father’s fevered accusations.
Abraham forged ahead. “Oh, but she resisted mightily as a true wife should. The scratches on your cheek are proof of that. And you were well-served for your vile behavior. If she hadn’t struck you with that drawer, you would have had your way with her.”
“I would have done no such thing! Hannah has bewitched you and clouded your judgment.”
Without warning the diviner slapped his son hard across the face, causing the gashes on his cheek to ooze blood.
“Don’t lie to me! If anyone is in league with the devil, it’s you! Only a man possessed by demons would attempt to rape his own father’s wife!”
Abraham turned aside and shouted, “Guards!”
The two sentries instantly returned.
Focusing his attention on his son, the diviner said, “Gather your personal possessions. These men will escort you to the Fallen city where they will leave you to find your way in the world as best you can.”
“I’m being excommunicated?” Joshua asked in shock. He’d been instrumental in banishing many others from the brotherhood. It was inconceivable that the same fate now awaited him.
“You are dead to us from this day forward,” Abraham pronounced.
Joshua tried one final plea. “But Father, you need me to carry out your plans.”
The objection failed to move the old man. “I’m sure Lieutenant Matthew will make an able replacement.” He turned on his heel.
Joshua rushed after him, but the guards blocked his path.
Abraham paused in the doorway. “You have fifteen minutes to pack. Your wives and children will be reassigned immediately.” He hesitated and added in a tired voice, “I had such high hopes for you.”
Then he hobbled out the door, leaving Joshua to pick up the scattered fragments of his ambition.
Chapter 42—Changing of the Guard
Joshua contemplated his predicament from the back seat of an old Ford Bronco. The two guards who had escorted him from the compound were in the front. He had personally trained both of them as Argus agents. It was an insult that his own subordinates were now holding him in custody. Enoch, a brawny man in his thirties, was behind the wheel. Lemuel, a freckled youngster of nineteen, was in the front passenger seat. They had already driven some forty miles in silence. Enoch was now turning the Bronco onto the highway entrance ramp for Chicago.
“Where are you taking me?” the spymaster demanded.
Glancing in the rearview mirror, Enoch replied, “To the usual place.”
His driver meant the mission just south of Chicago’s loop. The shelter took in all manner of derelicts from among the Fallen and asked no questions. Joshua himself had dropped many a lost boy on the mission’s doorstep. They were the inevitable by-product of the Nephilim’s polygamous mandate. While girls were assured of marriage to a senior member of the hierarchy, there were always surplus males in each generation. Teenage boys who committed minor infractions were excommunicated to make room for their elders. These, in turn, would be free to court younger brides and thus expand their own celestial kingdoms.
Joshua had never wondered what became of these boys once they left the Nephilim. He assumed they were swallowed up by the corrupting influence of the Fallen World: some turning to prostitution, others to drug addiction or crime. In any case, they were not his concern once they’d been ejected from the brotherhood. Tonight, however, he found himself speculating about their fate. Whatever it was, he had no intention of sharing it.
Judging from the Bronco’s current location, the spymaster knew it would take an hour to reach their destination. Perhaps he could turn the tide in his favor before he was unceremoniously dumped at the curb in front of the shelter. Sitting forward, he leaned his elbows on the headrests of the two front seats. “So, this is the way you show your gratitude.”
Lemuel swiveled his head around to gaze at Joshua. “What do you mean?”
“Both of you were hand-picked by me to join an elite intelligence corps answerable directly to the diviner. As part of the Order of Argus, you occupied an important position in the brotherhood. Your futures were assured.”
“They still are,” Enoch rejoined laconically.
Joshua forged ahead, ignoring the comment. “I took the time to train each
of you so that you could distinguish yourselves in my father’s eyes.”
Lemuel flinched at his words. “It’s not that we’re ungrateful.” He paused, searching the captive’s eyes for an explanation. “But why did you attack Sister Hannah?”
Joshua felt an inward flood of relief. Questions were good. They implied uncertainty. He might still have time to twist conviction into misgiving. Assuming a solemn expression, he said, “Because the devil walks among us, my brothers.”
“What are you talking about?” Enoch sounded irritated.
Another question. Instead of answering it directly, Joshua took a side route. “Surely, you’ve noticed the changes in my father’s health lately.”
Lemuel nodded. “Yes, he appears haggard and weak much of the time.”
“Indeed, and do either of you recall when he started to decline?”
The spymaster’s query was met by perplexed silence. “I can tell you exactly when. It was right after Sister Hannah abandoned him.”
With one hand on the steering wheel, Enoch began to count on the fingers of his other hand. “I remember the month she left because it caused such a stir among the women.” He paused. “Right after that, the diviner began to wander the halls at night. Supposedly he couldn’t sleep well anymore. That’s when everybody first noticed the dark circles under his eyes.”
“It was the beginning of the end,” the spymaster intoned ominously. “To look at him today, you wouldn’t know it was the same man. And all because of her.”
“Surely it isn’t Sister Hannah’s fault if Father Abraham longs for her,” Lemuel demurred.
“The reason is far darker than that.”
Lemuel rotated completely around in his seat to face his former leader.
“We are the Blessed Nephilim. God’s chosen ones,” Joshua reminded them. “And Satan will do everything in his power to destroy our allegiance to the Lord. Remember, the Nephilim of old belonged to the devil until Christ’s sacrifice.” He paused for dramatic effect. “And the devil wants us back, my brothers. He wants us back in the worst way.”
Arkana Archaeology Mystery Box Set 2 Page 82
