by Frank Morin
“Oh, Greg. That’s so very chivalrous.” She leaned in to give him a little kiss on the cheek.
At the same time, she pricked his arm with a little pin.
The double-crossing ...
Eirene had been right about her. Again. She’d bring it up over and over for the next half century.
He staggered toward the door and tried to block the effects of the fast-acting drug as it burned through his system. He managed to mumble, “I was trying to warn you.”
“I know.” Meryem took his hands in a firm but gentle grip and easily restrained his attempts to draw a weapon.
He swayed and she leaned close to whisper into his ear. “But it’s far too late for that.”
Gregorios’ legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor. The last thing he saw through gathering darkness was the door swinging open to reveal Mai Luan, followed by Asoka and a pair of enforcers.
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives every life fully is prepared to die at any time.
~Mark Twain
Chapter Thirty-Three
Gregorios awakened, strapped to a chair in the council chamber. Several of the council members were already seated around the long table. Despite the warnings from Eirene and Quentin, the sight of how old and frail they looked shocked him.
He hadn’t seen them in far too long and had underestimated the severity of the situation. If they were so far gone, they’d never listen to him over the one who held the key to their restoration.
Asoka sat closest to him and smiled when Gregorios regained consciousness. “You led us on quite a chase, Gregorios. I never expected it to end right here in our own offices.”
“You always lacked imagination.”
Without losing his smile, Asoka back-handed him across the face. The blow rocked him against the seat, but the throbbing in his cheek paled against the cold certainty that Asoka meant to kill him. Meryem, who sat across from him, looked uncomfortable, but the others just looked on with open distrust.
“You’re weak,” Gregorios said. “And you’ve been hunting the wrong person.”
“You betrayed us,” Asoka snarled.
“I was always true to our overriding mission.”
Asoka cackled and the abrupt change disturbed Gregorios more than his earlier anger. His strange laughter faded almost immediately and he looked around the table, eyes unfocused, as if confused.
Aline, who sat on the other side of the table, pointed toward Gregorios. When Asoka looked in his direction, he stared for ten full seconds before blinking in sudden recognition.
He smiled. “You led us on quite a chase, Gregorios. I never expected it to end right here in our own offices.”
He’d broken the consistency barrier. If the rest of the council was this far gone, they might need to call in the hunters after all.
Before they had branded him traitor, it was Gregorios’ job to euthanize council members pushed beyond the breaking point. Apparently the aged council had made sure no one else had assumed that role.
That was exactly why they had set him up in Berlin. Even back then they had realized the danger and determined to remove him in a preemptive strike. So many years wasted. It sparked a fresh wave of anger. He’d known these people for thousands of years, and for most of that time, he’d considered them the best souls in the world. They had fallen, and the scope of the tragedy was as depressing as the burning of the famous library of Alexandria had been.
Shahrokh sat across the table, looking tired and worn. He spoke for the first time. “Your arrival was fortuitous. We needed a subject for the final test.”
“You’re all going to die,” Gregorios said, driven to make a final plea, despite the truth of their condition. “The machine’s a lie prepared by the Cui Dashi to gain access to your minds and destroy everything you’ve built since Rome.”
“Brilliant lie,” Mai Luan said as she entered the room, followed by Tereza and a male assistant wheeling the machine.
The council members perked up at the sight of the machine. Even Zuri, who was old and fat and barely recognizable as she slouched in a huge chair that must have been brought in special for her.
Mai Luan regarded Gregorios coldly. “With that little lie you could cloud the entire arrangement, sow discord, and delay the critical testing of our breakthrough technology.” She gave him a mock bow of respect. “So at last we meet the famous Gregorios.”
“Mai Luan. I have to admit, now that we meet in person, I’m underwhelmed.”
She punched him in the chest, her hand blurring through the air. The blow tumbled him to the floor, chair and all, and cracked at least one rib. He slid all the way past Asoka to the wall on the far side.
“See? Cui Dashi,” he grunted.
At least Meryem finally looked a little uneasy. From his position he couldn’t see the faces of any of the other council members.
As the male assistant pulled Gregorios back into place, Mai Luan said, “I apologize for my anger. Like your enforcers, I have applied runes of enhancement.”
“Why didn’t you tell us about this?” Meryem demanded.
“Did you share all your secrets with me?”
Meryem was always a shrewd one. More important, she always looked out for herself. “Perhaps Gregorios’ warning was not so foolish a thing.”
Gregorios fought back a groan. Every breath triggered searing fire in his chest. That woman packed a terrible punch. But maybe the pain would be worth it.
Then again, maybe not.
Mai Luan laughed softly. “So quick to doubt.”
She surveyed the other council members. “Very well. We will withdraw until you decide you can trust us again.”
Before she and her assistants could so much as take a single step away, Asoka rushed to block them, moving faster than a man in his condition should be able to.
Shahrokh spoke above the other council members, who all started shouting together for Mai Luan to stop. He called her back and gave Meryem a withering look. “Please ignore Meryem’s foolish words. Her heart has never been right where Gregorios is concerned.”
Incredibly, Meryem didn’t fire off the retort Gregorios expected, but slumped in her chair. She looked torn, but clearly wouldn’t risk her chance at the machine by taking a stand against the others.
The machine might not have stolen their secrets yet, but the council had already surrendered to Mai Luan.
Unbelievable. He had never seen anything like it. Those old men and women were the closest things to living gods on the earth and they were cowed by a single brilliant woman. They had to know she planned to kill them when she finished with them.
And still they did it.
He had never looked forward to dying, but had flirted with it enough that he had resigned himself to the inevitability of it. Apparently the other facetakers had not. They feared the one enemy they couldn’t defeat on their own, but in their scramble to escape their fate they were guaranteeing their fall.
With no further arguments, Mai Luan and her assistants got to work. They secured the helmet to Gregorios and Mai Luan donned the secondary unit. The soulmask they extracted from a nearby coffin looked familiar. It was Curly, who had told them of the runes. Gregorios wondered if Mai Luan had reincorporated Dalal yet.
Tereza smirked down at him before closing the jagged faceplate with a hard snap. He tried to keep his breathing calm. He had felt a Cui Dashi’s power once and knew he could not withstand them. Mai Luan might look slight, but her power far outstripped his own. Magnified by her rounon gift, her nevra core could bring to bear entire magnitudes more soul force than he could, despite centuries of discipline.
That didn’t mean he planned to give up.
He had helped destroy more than one of the monsters, and he vowed to find a way to defeat Mai Luan too. Their strength led to arrogance that could be turned against them. Somehow.
Mai Luan’s voice echoed faintly through the constricting helmet. “This test will confirm fin
al calibrations are correct and verify that Eirene’s tampering did not damage the delicate components. After completion of this test, I expect to begin scheduling sessions with members of the council.”
“Get on with it then,” Asoka said.
The machine hummed to life and Gregorios felt its power pulsing against his face, fueled by the dispossessed soul. Eirene had warned him about what came next, but he still embraced his nevra core and prepared to defend himself.
It didn’t help.
It’s the possibility of not having another one that makes each life interesting.
~Rasputin, rogue facetaker
Chapter Thirty-Four
Eirene and Alter sat at the long dining table in the art gallery, studying printouts of the runes, with Sarah looking on. She found the entire subject very interesting, especially after her experience with the healing rune she cut into Tomas’ side.
She felt driven to learn as much as she could about them. The table around their work area was piled with finger foods, fruits and half a dozen pitchers of juices. A gentle fragrance filled the room, a mixture of warm, baked goods and the clean scent of fresh fruit.
Under Alter’s direction, Eirene had arranged the runes as best she could in the order they had appeared on the machine. “I think that’s it,” she said finally. “As close as my incomplete set of photos allows.”
“It’s a good place to start,” Alter said as he leaned over the runes, his expression intent.
He really did seem to know what he was talking about. His belligerence faded while working on the runes, replaced by honest enthusiasm.
“Why is the order important?” Sarah asked.
Alter glanced up from his study. “Like I said earlier, the runes are built around ancient forms of writing. Because of that, the order’s important. They build upon each other like crude sentences.”
“Fascinating.”
“It really is. For example, I could say, ‘I love to teach you new ways to think.’ But with the same words, I could say, ‘I think to teach you new ways to love.’“
That was a good one. He seemed to realize just how bold he was being because he looked away and actually flushed.
Sarah smiled. “I see what you mean.” If she’d met him first, she might have been tempted to give him a chance. He lacked the depth she found so attractive in Tomas, but made up for it with good looks and enthusiasm.
“Yes,” Eirene laughed, “he made his point very clear.”
Alter pointed to the rune closest to him. “The problem is, they’re using ancient runes that have fallen out of use. It’s like trying to write in Old English. The word use is different, and some may not mean what we think.”
Sarah slid a little closer to see what he was pointing at. He glanced up and his gaze lingered on her face a second longer than necessary. She pretended not to notice. She was already busy trying to figure out one relationship.
Right on cue, Tomas entered. He wore casual clothes and actually walked under his own power. His color had returned, and he looked ten times better than just the night before. Sarah met him with a warm hug, which he returned before she led him to the table and explained what they were doing.
“Good idea,” Tomas said. “What have you learned?”
“Still figuring that out,” Eirene said.
“Does it matter that the ones that look more Chinese are mixed in with the ones that look more Egyptian?” Sarah asked.
“It is a bit unusual,” Alter said.
“But that’s how they were ordered, as best we can tell,” Eirene said.
“Isn’t it harder to build sentences in two languages at once?”
“It is,” Alter said. “The nuances of the characters used as foundations for the runes often allow for multiple focuses, depending on the interpretation. Chinese symbols in particular can be extremely tricky. Mixing them in with Egyptian-based runes really confuses it.”
“Which ones have you seen before?” Tomas asked.
Alter pointed to several of the runes and they were all ones based around Egyptian looking characters. “These are all very old, but the others are unknown to us.” He picked up a picture of one of the Chinese-based runes. “We know so little about runes dating this far back in China. Very little knowledge trickled out of that half of Asia.”
Eirene leaned back in her chair and sipped a red fruit drink. “We never got much out of China either. We know there were heka active there at times, and got hints of facetakers but never managed to make solid connections.”
“I thought the council ruled all the facetakers,” Sarah said.
“Just the ones we know about. Over time we discover more of them and encourage them to join.”
Alter grunted. “Your enforcers are nearly as ruthless in removing the rogues as my clan.”
“You kill them?” Sarah asked. “Why?”
“The council helps maintain a stable world order,” Tomas said.
“Stable for you,” Alter interrupted.
“Rogue facetakers pose a threat just as real as active heka cells,” Tomas explained.
“Are the heka that much of a threat to you?” Sarah asked.
“To us personally, not so much,” Tomas admitted. “We know how to deal with them.”
“If allowed to mature,” Alter interjected. “Kashaph can form cults that pose a threat to the unsuspecting world. We remove every rune we can, but if they’re allowed to learn to master their rounon gift, and if they acquire sufficient runes, they can wreak terrible damage.”
“Worse is when they team up with a rogue facetaker,” Tomas said. “Like the Black Death, the plague that swept the world in the fourteenth century.”
“Heka started that?” Sarah asked.
“They did,” Alter confirmed. “They used a uniquely crafted series of runes. Their leader was extremely clever.”
“She was a rogue facetaker,” Tomas explained. “Gathered a following of well-trained heka disguised as monks in a monastery. With those runes and seven dispossessed souls, they triggered a pandemic that killed over one hundred million people. Slaughtered over half the population of Europe.”
“Why would they do that?” Sarah asked. Everyone had heard of the Black Plague, but she’d never imagined it was triggered intentionally.
“They were targeting my people,” Alter said, “but the disease spread out of control. We destroyed that cell, and we’ve kept the secret of those runes from the world ever since.”
“You still have the runes?” Sarah asked.
“We keep all runes we discover.”
“Why? What if someone tried to use them again?”
“We protect our rune lore as our greatest treasure,” Alter said. “Most of the world doesn’t even know it exists. But if another group of kashaph attempt something similar, we can leverage that gathered rune lore to block and even undo much of the damage.”
“It’s still scary to consider,” Sarah said.
“Be grateful major world powers don’t know about the existence of that book,” Tomas said. “They already tamper with building stronger diseases to use as weapons, and some of them are actively exploring the use of heka strike teams.”
“We destroy all those we can,” Alter said, “but it’s difficult when they’re protected by governments.”
“Rogue facetakers present other problems,” Eirene took up the thread of the conversation. “Most people don’t know we exist and don’t want to know. Over the centuries, we’ve been classified as many things from witches to devils to vampires.”
“As you should be,” Alter grumbled.
“Your family has sparked enough riots through the centuries just to execute facetakers that you shouldn’t play the righteous card,” she said. When he made no other comment she continued. “Given the dangers of exercising our powers openly, we’ve developed a rigorous set of procedures that help ensure the safety of both ourselves and our clients.”
“Rogue facetakers don’t have that discipline,�
� Tomas said. “They make a mess, and we just talked about how bad things get when they fall in with the heka.”
“Merging of bloodlines spawn the Cui Dashi.” Alter said. “One more reason to block those unholy alliances. In this my family’s in agreement with your council.”
“That’s why we do it,” Tomas said. “The downfall of the Tsars was a direct result of the meddling of another rogue facetaker.”
“Really?”
“It’s true,” Eirene said. “Gregorios couldn’t stop Rasputin before that chain of events spiraled out of control.”
“Rasputin was a facetaker?” Sarah asked. “Why haven’t people heard about any of this?”
“One of the council members heads a department dedicated to ensuring we’re written out of history. We’ve been remarkably successful.”
“You change history?” That was more appalling than anything else she had heard.
“A little,” Eirene said. “It gets twisted around enough on its own, but we do nudge it at times to make sure the world remains ignorant of our activities.”
Sarah sat back in her chair, considering what she’d learned, and not happy about it.
“We could discuss these dangers all day,” Eirene said. “But I think Sarah understands enough for now. Let’s not lose track of our task.”
“Thank you for explaining it to me,” Sarah said. She needed to ask Alter more when they found more time. The subject fascinated her as much as the revelation of how runes could be used for evil purposes horrified her. She yearned to know how else they could be used for good.
“We must stop this Mai Luan before she wreaks untold damage with the knowledge she plans to steal from the council, and with her unique runes,” Alter said. “The world order may be less than it should be, but we don’t want to plunge it into chaos.”
“Agreed,” Eirene said. She gave Alter a warm smile and he managed a weak smile back.
He pointed at the runes he had indicated earlier. “These support Eirene’s experience. They’ll assist in focusing the recipient’s mind back in time and magnify the memories, making them more powerful, more ... realistic.”
