Chapter FOUR

"No matter what I tell you, do not let the team see it on your face.

Then tell me what's wrong. Carlos's gaze was hard with worry as it raked her body, searching for anything that could have made her sick.

Everyone was looking at them, waiting for word that it was safe to move out. Damali stared at Carlos, her eyes imploring him not to tip the team off to the multiple tragedies she'd sensed. She waited till he nodded and then glanced around the desolate hallway inside the Cathedral of the Most Holy.

"It's safe here," she said quietly, glancing around. "Tourists haven't started arriving. Priests are probably in the sanctuary. Go two by two and slide into the pews, spread out like we didn't just jettison in here together. Keep your head low like you're praying until we can figure out how to approach our contact."

"Whaduya mean like we're praying?" Jose said, running his fingers through his hair. "At this point, D, that's all we're doing."

"You ain't said a word," Mike muttered, moving out first with Inez.

Carlos gave the group a nod and he and Damali watched as each couple slowly fanned out, moving into the sanctuary quietly and then hiding their identities behind clasped hands.

"Talk to me," he said in a low, private murmur as soon as they were alone.

Damali closed her eyes and then reached out to hold his face with both hands. "Oh, Carlos . . . Imam, Rabbi . . ." She shook her head and allowed the horrific images to flow from her mind into his.

"Jesus . . ." Carlos tore his gaze from Damali to look at the team that had spread out in the pews.

"Yeah," she said, opening her eyes. "They went after Ayana. Mom Delores almost didn't make it. The Weinsteins are trapped in the safe house tunnel system . . . Rabbi went down with the key to open the other end around his neck ... in the panic he wasn't thinking about all that. There's no time left to get them out. What are we gonna tell Dan?"

Sweating, nauseous, he pulled his wife behind him with one hand and held the heavy flashlight with the other, running. The sound of flesh being torn away from bone was far behind them, but the pants of their breaths and the smell of their humanity in the tight confines made him know it wouldn't be long before the ravenous hordes sought them out.

The door in sight was their only salvation and he kept his blurred vision trained on that. Frank Weinstein turned and caught his wife as she stumbled, grabbing her by her arm and her shirt to urge her forward. He couldn't expend energy on words. They had to move. He could hear the squeaking mass starting to move. Survival depended on staying ahead of the rats.

He reached the panic bar on the door, thrusting his body against it with all his might. But the heavy steel door didn't budge. His wife covered her head with her arms and released a wail of despair as she sank to the damp ground. He tried again, throwing his body against metal and concrete until he heard a rib crack. Then his fists bore out his frustration as he banged and yelled into the nothingness, the flashlight dropping to his feet to reveal what was headed toward them--a crawling river of plague-carrying death.

His wife's screams made him sob. If she had at least made it. If she weren't there. If he weren't impotent to protect her or his son! Why was God punishing his family?

As Frank gathered his wife into his arms, the couple huddled against the locked door. He put his body between her and the onslaught, hoping to buy her a few moments more while also praying that she'd have a heart attack before they ate out her eyes.

"Yo! Yo! Anybody down there?" a strong male voice bellowed into the abyss.

"Help us--the rats are coming!" A collective wail greeted the question as the Weinsteins began banging on the door with open palms.

"Get back from the door--we gotta blow it!"

The couple scampered backward, falling against the rocky surface as they monitored the oncoming, writhing threat.

A sudden blast deafened them as they covered their heads and bright lights and dust stung their eyes.

"Get those people outta there!" a loud voice yelled.

"Yo, Phat G--flamethrowers, man!" another voice hollered.

Strong arms pulled the dazed couple from the tunnel.

"Go, go, go!"

Chaos surrounded the Weinsteins. People in military fatigues and weapons. Flamethrowers. Their ears rang, their vision was blurred. Their bodies were being pulled and shoved to safety. Sewer water sloshed in their shoes and the stench filled their noses and mouths. Gunfire report and the heat from flamethrowers gave them the strength to climb up an iron ladder. A strong soldier flipped open a street manhole and brandished a weapon. They watched as he quickly drew himself out and then turned around to pull them into the fresh air.

Using a machine-gun barrel, the soldier motioned toward a covered military truck. "Get in and get your head down."

There was no time for questions. If they'd been abducted by the government, it was still survival. The couple looked at each other and then complied, running toward the vehicle. Women in fatigues with hard eyes and toting weapons pulled them into the truck and gathered a tarp.

"Listen," a tall African-American woman with braids in her hair said. "We're the New York squad, all right. We got Monk Lin's SOS. We're friends of your son, and gonna get you somewhere safe."

"I'm Carmen, that's Adrienne with the braids, and Roshida-- ex-cop and sure shot--and Chantay--from up south . . . South Carolina, who's gonna get us through the mountains," another shorter woman replied, handing the Weinsteins a bottle of water.

"Glad we got to you in time, was literally a monster getting up here from Harlem," the soldier pointed out, as Roshida said. Carmen nodded. "No lie. But we want you to know that we're not some terrorists kidnapping you--that's why we're giving you names. We don't want you afraid of us, all right? We lost a lotta good men trying to get to you to help you."

The couple looked up from where they sat on the truck floor, uncertain, eyes wide with terror, but nodded in agreement nonetheless.

Adrienne gave the other female Guardians a look. "They're gonna be all right. Just need time." . "Yeah," Carmen said quickly, and then looked at the Weinsteins, trying to get through to them. "Lisa was the little chick on the flamethrower that got the rats. Nyya was on your six keeping back demons in the sewer till we could get topside. Phat G blew the door, and my boys the Professor and Rene will be driving. If you haven't noticed, the world has gone crazy. Me, Phat G, and the rest of the squad got your backs. We've gotta go through a coupla military checkpoints and pass through like we're military--hiding in plain sight. That's why you've gotta go under the tarp. Don't panic, Mr. and Mrs. Weinstein . . . we're not gonna hurt you. We're trying to save your lives, cool?"

As the back flap of the truck opened, and more soldiers piled in, the diesel engine engaged, lurching the truck forward.

"All clear. Move out!" a bulky soldier with dreadlocks shouted.

Carmen pounded on the truck frame and repeated the command. "Yo, Professor--Phat G said to move out!" She looked at the couple on the floor and handed them the tarp. "You all cool? You know what to do?"

The Weinsteins looked around, dazed, and simply nodded, still shaken as they guzzled the offered water and then hid.

Cordell left the safe house in Georgetown, not caring what his fellow Guardians had to say. The darkside had killed his Dougie, his protege ... a young Guardian that was more like a son to him than anything in the world. What else could they do to him? Death would be an honorable conclusion. DC. had gone insane.

Troops in jeeps, Humvees, and armored vehicles crisscrossed the city grid, sweeping the terrain with flamethrowers to exterminate rats, stray rabid dogs, anything that didn't seem normal. Tanks rolled down Sixteenth Street and guarded bridges. Black Hawk helicopters nearly blotted out the sun. The occasional F-16 fighter jets soared in formation overhead.

He knew what the remaining team feared, that the authorities would see him walking down the street, dazed, and assume he was one of the walkers -- and then torch him on sight. Maybe. Maybe not. Or he would take a single shot to the head by a military sniper, just for being considered a threat. Every soldier was on high alert. He was an old, out of shape black man ambling down the street as though the world hadn't changed. His teammates said he was crazy for insisting he go alone. He'd be gunned down, detained, or possibly attacked by the walkers, feral stray animals, or worse.

But that wouldn't stop him. He had work to do. A priest had come to him in a daydream, more like a vision. An older man with a shock of silver-gray hair and a Templar crest had shown him a series of carvings on a wall that moved when pressed hard. The hieroglyphs opened a facade that hid a secret room that had standing knights in armor with medallions on their chests. Each of the four medallions linked together to create a key that fit into a specific east wall brick. Turning the key gave way to what was behind the door-- a long corridor that opened out to a wider room. There was a single bench table at the center of it. The walls were bare, just highly polished stone. Wall torches sputtered.

Then he'd seen the stone floor that had prone statues of dead Templars in the four corners of the room. The one guarding the western cardinal point held a scroll in his hand. This was the map he was to find. He saw the engraved medallion on the stone statue and then looked at the key in his hand, fumbling to separate out the four medallions he held.

Setting the right one from the western armored knight into the carved stone replica of it and turning it made the wide slate floor tiles around the prone statue drop four inches. He looked closer and in the dusty space was a parchment roll.

Cordell looked up, suddenly coming out of his medium's daze to find himself standing in front of the Scottish Rites Temple. How he'd gotten there he wasn't quite sure. That much didn't matter. The fact that he'd made it alive did.

Maybe the reason the soldiers hadn't shot him, even though he was walking down Sixteenth Street, was because they viewed him as just an old man heading in the direction of Columbia Road and Harvard Street, an intersection that held All Souls Church, National Baptist Memorial Church, and the former Church of the Latter-day Saints that was now a Unitarian church. Perhaps there was some mercy in their hearts, no matter what their training dictated, and they'd let old folks that reminded them of their parents and grandparents go into a house of worship to lie down and die. He didn't know. Didn't care. He just scratched his balding head, wondering how the time had escaped him.

Not lingering, Cordell rushed up the steps and entered the abandoned grand hall. Nothing was locked; people had fled, the power was out. He didn't need lights.

The vision guided him, pulling him around corners, taking him down stairwells, making his breaths labor as he wielded his heft at a frantic pace. But as soon as he entered the chamber that held the four armored knights, an immovable force gripped him and held him firm. Terrified, he struggled against the supernatural hold, his heart pounding in his ears. It had been a trap! He wasn't armed; had to be that way in case he got stopped by military street patrols. The younger Guardians had been right. Now the darkside had him!

To his horror, a sword unsheathed from the scabbard of the western standing knight just as the force thrust him onto his knees. The weapon flew at him, but didn't cut, hovered only an inch away from his neck, then gently lowered to his right shoulder and then his left, before clattering to the floor.

When he looked up, the warrior-priest of his vision stood before him with a sad smile. He had on the same medallion with a heart on a cross pierced by a dagger and crowned by a ring of thorns.

"Only a Templar knight can know our secrets," the priest said. "I am Patrick. Memorize the maps. Use them to feed the remaining teams. You may pass. Ex Orient Lux . . . ex Occidente lex. From the East comes Light, from the West comes law. Follow the Light for knowledge as you head west toward the mountains to establish new laws."

Within the span of a blink, the apparition of the priest was gone.

Carlos rubbed the perspiration from his face with his forearm and waited in the shadowed hallway with Damali. The cool sanctuary, while beautiful and still, put him en garde. There were columns and shadows everywhere. Corners he couldn't see around, obstructions of view, and a hundred places something could slither out from. The fact that he was standing on hallowed ground brought little comfort. He'd seen Father Patrick attacked by the Ultimate Darkness with his own eyes while standing in a cathedral. Who knew if this particular church's history or the behavior of the presiding clerics would be enough of a barrier? He didn't have that information. And that was the overall problem--the lack of information.

But he was sure that his side seemed to be losing.

Father Patrick had been attacked by the Devil and sacrificed by the Light.

Imam Asula had been murdered at the hands of ignorant men.

Rabbi ZeitlofF had been assassinated by possessed creatures.

Monk Lin was on the run.

The Covenant was no more.

A three-year-old baby and her grandmother had almost been killed.

A warrior's parents were in flight with the remnants of a Guardian squad.

There was a wanted dead or alive bounty on his team's heads.

And he was stuck just outside the Bermuda Triangle during U.S. martial law with Hellfire bearing down on him, his wife, and his squad. This was bullshit. His heart broke for the elderly clerics. The loss was so visceral that he was beyond pain, simply numb. Those guys went all the way back to his beginning, his first steps toward redemption when Father Pat first found him. Their deaths tore open a fresh wound just remembering that. Now they were gone, their lives lost in the foulest way possible.

Carlos allowed his head to drop back for a moment and he took in a deep breath before opening his eyes. It disturbed him no end that, at a critical time like this, his gut instinct was way off by a long shot. He should have gotten those horrible images, not her. He should have been the one to intercept them and filter the transmission of information to her verbally, not have such gore taking root in his pregnant wife's mind.

But right now, for whatever reason, Damali's second-sight was ridiculously strong, just like it seemed as though the other female seers on the squad had increased in their ability to pick up the subtlest changes in the environment. But he and his boys were missing everything. That was not good. Not at a time when they should have been on point protecting precious cargo.

He looked at his wife, a deep sense of reverence overtaking him as he watched prisms of sunlight 'wash over her beautiful, cinnamon-brown skin. Her eyes were closed, her thick natural lashes dusting her cheeks. She bit her plump bottom lip, an endearing nervous habit that just made her expression prettier in his eyes. Shards of stained-glass color dappled her face and played over her shoulders and throat, splashing against her white tank top.

The delicate cleft in her throat fluttered with each long inhalation and exhalation that she drew in while trying to sense who and where their contact for a charter would be. Her breasts were full and her face was beginning to round ever so slightly, although she wasn't showing yet. Even her aura was different. . . more serene, stronger. He could envision her nude with her broad, white wings out, belly full and slowly moving with life, her graceful hands covering her breasts ... his angel... his reason for existence.

And they'd taken her stage away from her, making her a fugitive so that she couldn't sing for the world. Could never perform live in concert. . . couldn't jam with the team band to the thunderous applause she so rightly deserved. That was a high crime, if ever he witnessed one. It just wasn't right that he and the baby would probably be her only audience from now on. He only hoped that would be enough, and he'd try his best to make up for the darkside's robbery.

Though he did not want to disturb her mild meditation, it took everything within him not to reach out and allow his fingers to trace her butter-soft cheek or to gather her into his arms. Yes, they were both warriors and he respected her as such. But damn he wished he could take any- and everything this cold hard world had to throw at her for her. If he could just spare her some of it, to hell with destiny and fate. She was his wife.

Her thick ropes of velvet-soft brown hair were swept up in a ponytail that he wished he could set loose just to see it cascade to her shoulders. That was what he could never seem to make her understand. To him, she was more important than the Armageddon. What she carried within her was even secondary to her. He loved their child with all his might, all his heart. . . but she owned his soul. There wasn't even a definition for that. Maybe that's why he couldn't ever fully describe for her how he really felt. Women sometimes didn't understand that words were inadequate. There simply were none.

If anything ever happened to her, air would cease to fill his lungs. If anything evil broke her heart and took their child again, his hands would be useless in picking up the shattered pieces of her. But he would try. He would bloody himself to make it right, even knowing that it wouldn't help. What did a man do who had the entire world trying to destroy his heart?

Didn't she understand that after all they'd witnessed, and for all his strength and all his power, he was helpless when it came to her . . . and perhaps more than anything, having that Achilles' heel mirrored and magnified times six Guardian brothers . . . watching them also struggle with their new weaknesses, with their eyes looking to him as a squad leader, made any vulnerability within him all the more intolerable.

People had died on his watch. Clerics had succumbed-- hadn't made it to the end. Men of faith; men of valor. Guardians had been ground to dust. Innocent humans had been collateral damage in Detroit and DC. There were families in mourning, people's lives irrevocably changed by monstrous injuries. Hellish diseases now swept the land. Fear permeated every living thing. And he and his squad had been helpless to avert this catastrophe when the Unnamed One came to call. What would he do when the Unnamed One came for his wife?

Heaven help him; Carlos looked out at the pews where his fellow team brothers waited for word of the next move with their heads bowed. It was no act. He knew each man, no matter what his faith, was deep in prayer--each praying the same thing, God, don't let anything happen to my pregnant wife. God, what do you want from me? God, how can I protect my family and do your will at the same time, be a warrior, when the world is coming to an end?

Carlos lent his own prayers to the collective, adding one more, God, please don't let me have to choose between saving my wife and child and that of another man . . . I am not that strong.

Montrose Sinclair simply stared at the screen in the empty confessional. There would be no tours, most likely no clerics. Everyone was holed up in their homes, hoping the Black Death never reached Bermuda's shores. This was nothing like what he'd planned for his life, nothing like what he'd thought his golden years would be.

He closed his eyes. First cancer had taken Eleanor, his beloved wife of thirty-five years. In hindsight, he would have gladly traded more time with her for the wealth he accumulated working like a fiend, only to have that wealth totally eviscerated on the London Exchange. It all seemed so pointless. All such a wickedly evil game. Then, again, what did it matter? The money was naught. There was no one to leave an inheritance to in order to give his life any semblance of meaning. If he died today, who would bury his remains? Like the old days of London, would the dead wagons come to fling his corpse in a mass rotting grave?

His son had lost his life in Iraq. His beautiful daughter gone at the hands of a panicked driver when the plagues began to hit.

A single tear slid down his weathered, brown face. God help him, grant him peace. Monty folded his hands tightly and bit his lip to hold back a sob. What was his purpose? Just show him a sign that his life had had some meaning.

An ex-patriot of Britain, what did he have left but a small house he'd saved and saved for but never had a chance to enjoy, and a boat that was way too big for a man without a family or surviving friends to enjoy it with. Everyone on the mainland was gone. The things being broadcasted on the news made his blood run cold. If an angel of mercy would just set his direction, he would never question God again.

"Mr. Sinclair," a soft female voice murmured through the screen.

He jerked his attention toward the sound and pressed his hand against the carved wood. He'd thought he'd heard a slight rustling, but had been so absorbed in his own thoughts. "Yes," he said in a garbled voice, embarrassed that it hitched with raw emotion.

"You don't know me, sir ... but I heard your prayer."

He pressed his fist to his mouth and dragged in a deep breath.

"We need your help . . . and your life has meaning. I asked if you were the one who would help us, and if I had the right to approach you like this, and I received word that I could. All is in divine order, sir. I'm not here to mock your pain, just to give you some comfort and possibly a new start. Please hear me out."

"Who are you?" he whispered, shaking.

"I am a Neteru."

Lilith waited at the entrance of her husband's war room, watching him sit on his dark throne in quiet contemplation, staring at the globe. As it turned slowly on its axis before him, a blue marble hovering in midair, he made a tent before his mouth with his fingers. The look on his face was one of calm confidence.

But still she hesitated, never sure of what a summons by her Dark Lord could bring.

"You sent for me," she said as evenly as possible, waiting for him to invite her over the threshold.

"I did," he said quietly, not looking up. "We have made progress. I want your opinion."

Lilith didn't move. He looked up with a smile. "My apologies. I should have said that to you in Dananu." He allowed his seductive gaze to rake her and then chuckled as she gasped from the pleasure jolt he gave her.

"My opinion?" She stepped forward, her eyes never leaving his.

"Yes," he said in Dananu, issuing her a slightly fanged smile. "You have been in touch with the female Neteru's weaknesses from the beginning. . . which led to the creation of our heir. You knew she'd attempt to save the host in Nod and have earned my respect. Therefore, now that we are in the final, delicate stages of the game, I would be remiss to overlook your input." He rubbed his handsome jaw and stood, allowing his raven-black wings to unfold to their full thirteen-foot span as he walked.

"I am at your service, as always," Lilith replied in Dananu with a slight bow, but still on guard for entrapment. To ask her opinion in the language of barter meant that he was unsure of his next move. If she chose wrong, his full wrath would fall on her--but if she chose correctly, her power would increase exponentially.

He chuckled, having read her conflict within her dark eyes. "There are always consequences, darling," he said in a mellow tone. "Care to wager on a strategy?"

"What's your dilemma?" she replied with a sly smile, pressing a forefinger to her lips, waiting.

He let out a long sigh. "After seventeen hundred years, the humans found the Coptic version of the Gospel of Judas. Of course I did everything I could to play a shell game once raiders lifted it from an Egyptian tomb in the seventies ... it went to Switzerland, then the United States in the early eighties--greed is a marvelous thing. It sat in a bank vault until the late eighties, and finally got sold in ninety-nine," he added, walking around the globe as he mused. "But I broke up that sale--checks bounced," he said, chuckling. "The books were broken up, and finally given to a credible source, but I tampered with the translation, completely reversing the meaning."

Lilith cocked her head to the side and frowned. "I fail to see your dilemma then. You were successful in making the humans think there was a possibility that Judas was a hero. And?"

"Those who see through it will know the true name of my most cherished and powerful demon. The Thirteenth. He is the one that the original Coptic text says held sway over Judas Is-cariot. In the bad translation, they call him by his origin, a daimon--but think it means spirit--albeit you and I are the wiser. It means what it means--demon--and he is the one who made Judas trade the one I refuse to name for a few pieces of silver."

"Yes," Lilith said flatly. "I do recall the incident--which is when silver gained power as a weapon to be forever used against us as a result."

Her husband waved his hand to dismiss the loss and kept talking. "This text that came out of Coptic Ethiopia was hidden in the Valley of the Kings and protected by the Kemetians until the grave was robbed. My goal then was to have the graves disturbed by mortal men, knowing we were coming upon the end of days . . . and then have the manuscript with the secret name burned. I had to get it out of the hands of the Neteru

Council--because as you and I well know, if anyone with a soul knows a demon's true name, they can rebuke it. At a time like this I can ill-afford to have the two Neterus come into such knowledge. Their Neteru Council in spirit cannot say the name of the Thirteenth, cannot tell them, as no being of Light can outright call a demon's name. That was the beauty of my plan to have the manuscript stolen."

He let out another hard breath. "I thought I had procured the manuscript, but as you know, human will and human greed is a very fickle thing--a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. Greed led those humans to try to profit from me and then attempt to sell it for three million dollars, rather than listen to my whispering and bring it to me. Damn free will! Although I punished the troublesome fools, that information is still out there in general circulation."

"But it is out there in a mistranslation . . . and with all that is going on, and with almost all of the Covenant clerics gone, who shall interpret obscure texts for the Neterus, hmm?" Lilith soothed.

"When I release laldabaoth upon the earth, his job is singular--to dry up the Euphrates and cause havoc in the region so that I may release my four dark avengers, which he will then lead . . . the ones who have been prepared for an hour, a day, a month, and a year to slay a third part of men. The Thirteenth will ready my troops during the year long drought and then release my four dark angels, those most loyal to me when I fell from grace."

He turned to Lilith, excitement shimmering in his bottomless black eyes. "His horsemen will number two hundred thousand thousand. They will wear brimstone breastplates and fire and brimstone will issue from their mouths ... it will be beautiful."

"It will come to pass ... I do not understand your concern."

Lilith said, walking to stand before the globe. She stared at the Euphrates basin that encompassed Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.

"Look at all the hell that's breaking loose over there as we speak. Why would you doubt that one of the four rivers that flow from the original location of the Garden of Eden would not dry up in the end of days as prophesized? It is in the Old Testament, even in some of the hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad that this will happen . . . that when the riverbed dries, men will fight over the riches they find there, and ninety-nine out of a hundred will die."

Concern knit her brow as she studied her unresponsive husband. "After the sixth seal is broken, the Light gets to do the Rapture--fine, fine, so they get to take all their goody-two-shoes people up to wherever . . . and then the world is ours. We get to break the seventh seal and just become ridiculous ... six great plagues come after that. You know we'll have something particularly dreadful planned by then . . . like a coming-out party for our son. He'll bring order to the chaos, once we're finished having a little fun with the left-behind humans, and he'll seem like the dark prince he is. He'll have them eating out of the palm of his hand, just to have their old creature comforts back-- principles and moral compasses be damned. Humans are so gullible. Don't worry. They're weak. Easy to guide and tempt."

She opened her arms, going to her husband when he still didn't answer her, his eyes fixed on the globe. "You are winning, darling," she murmured, hugging him. "The mark of the beast is only a matter of time--humans are afraid of the virus carried on currency worldwide. Survivors will have to embed a chip in their bodies to buy or sell, to eat, to survive. What brings this unusual bout of melancholy to you at a time like this?"

He wrapped her in his arms and then covered them both with his dark wings. "What concerns me is that Sebastian was right and I didn't catch it early on ... the female Neteru was pregnant. I didn't give him his due because he pissed me off. That little bitch should have stood his ground and made me hear the truth--if he hadn't caved we would have known sooner. Still, I shouldn't have missed that!"

"That's all right, because we know now," she said quietly, laying her head on his shoulder.

"What also concerns me, Lilith, is that as much as I hate to admit it, Nuit and Vlad are right. All this is bullshit, if I can't find my sixth seal and that Neteru child lives."