Through a Glass Darkly (Harbingers Book 17) Read online

  “Where’s the wood?” I said.

  Bijan chuckled. “Oh my, no. Nothing ever dies here. And nothing is ever allowed to be destroyed.”

  “And the fire?”

  “Comes from a thermal vent. There are several such fires scattered around the garden, here.” He motioned up to the sky . . . which was actually rock, fifty or so feet above our heads. “The entire garden, it is lit by the vent’s reflection, and heated to this perfect temperature.”

  A butterfly drifted close to my face and I waved it away. “So you knew this was here all along?”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . . the voices? You said you and the other prisoners heard—”

  “I am sorry to say that was a lie.” He nodded to Chad. “As were the voices in his head. And the many ugly images you saw as we were diving.”

  He knew what I had seen? I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “Security,” Andi said.

  “They were guards,” he said. “Barriers to stop the curious and persistent.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Nobody can get inside my head without my permission.”

  “Unless you count the force field around the Psychic Institute where we first met,” Andi said.

  Cowboy added, “Or what happened to Andi in Florida.”

  “Or on our little boat trip,’” Chad said.

  “Or the house in that Italian cliff,” Cowboy added. “The one that wasn’t there.”

  “Actually, it was there,” Bijan said. “It simply appeared from another universe.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cowboy said. “You knew about that?”

  “Your adventures, all of them I have watched. We have watched them all.”

  “We?” Cowboy said.

  “Watched?” I repeated.

  He looked at me, unable to hold back a grin.

  “Watched?” I said again. “As in ‘Watchers?’ You’re one of them, one of the Watchers?”

  He chuckled. “A far cry, I am afraid. No, Signora. I am, only, how do you say, a worker bee.”

  “Signora,” Andi said. “That’s Italian.”

  “Si.”

  “But you’re from Iraq,” Cowboy said.

  Bijan turned to the big guy and grinned.

  I frowned, trying to think, but the pounding in my head made it pretty hard. Still, bits and pieces floated together. “We’ve met,” I said. “There was something familiar about you at the airport.”

  “Yes. I not only drive cab for you in Iraq. I drive for you once before. Where fish, they fell from the heavens. Where they rained down upon us like—”

  “Rome!” Cowboy exclaimed. “You were our cab driver in Rome!”

  He nodded. “At your service.”

  “So what are you doing here?” I asked.

  “What are we doing here?” Andi said.

  “Your world is about to become very, very dark, very, very soon.”

  “And you guys need our help,” Chad said.

  “We’ve been helping you for months,” I said.

  He answered. “Yes and no. For months the Watchers have been testing you. Giving you little assignments.”

  “Little?” I scoffed. “They nearly got us killed. More than once.”

  “Yes. Still, they thought it important for your skills to test, your gifts to observe. And equally important, to see how you cooperate with one another.”

  I threw a look to Chad.

  “And now?” Cowboy asked.

  “And now we have little time to waste.”

  “Time to . . .”

  “Unspeakable things are about to occur. You each have a remarkable gift. If you are willing, now is the time to let us help you focus them. To bring them to their fullest potential for the upcoming conflict.”

  No one spoke. There was only the brook, the birds, and flickering fire.

  Finally Cowboy ventured, “By conflict, are you saying, do you mean something like . . . the Apocalypse?”

  Bijan’s voice was soft but steady as he held Cowboy’s gaze. “Yes my friend, that is exactly what I mean.”

  Chapter 9

  Back to the garden, or whatever it was. Definitely impressive. Lush green grass, trimmed trees, manicured bushes . . . and flowers, lots of them. Some I’d never seen before. And the animals. Seriously, I felt like Snow White or whoever that Disney chick was with all the animals hangin’ around her. Near Cowboy was something that must have been a llama. Then there was that family of raccoons. Even a panther, kinda shy, was slinking around us.

  Bijan told us to spread out, go someplace by ourselves and practice.

  “Practice what?” Cowboy asked.

  “Why, your gifts, of course.”

  “How?”

  “And where?” Andi said.

  “Just begin walking. The right place you will find soon enough.”

  I motioned to a tall wall off in the distance. Looked like it went all the way to the ceiling. “What’s that?”

  “In the ancient language, the word paradise, it means walled garden.”

  I glanced around. Saw his point.

  “You didn’t answer the troll,” Chad said. “These gifts, how are we supposed to practice them?”

  “In your world there is much noise. It is difficult to discover your gift, much less nurture it. Here there is nothing but stillness. As you let it settle your soul, your gift, it will surface and grow.”

  “So they’ll get stronger?” Cowboy asked. “So we can fight the darkness?”

  “Yes.”

  “The darkness that’s coming soon,” I said.

  “Yes, yes. But you must hurry. There is little time.”

  We stood a moment looking at each other.

  “Go,” he said, “please go, go. One hour is all I ask. I will wait right here for your return.

  Yeah, we had more than a few unanswered questions. But the guy was obviously sincere and it sure seemed pretty important to him. Besides, the place was peaceful enough. If things worked and we got stronger, great. If not, no biggie. What would it hurt?

  I was the first to leave. With a shrug, I turned and started down one of the paths. “Catch you in an hour,” I said.

  The others agreed.

  After a couple minutes I found a grassy spot beside a still, quiet pool. Talk about peaceful. Well, except for that grizzly. He sort of crept up on me. When I finally spotted him he was a dozen feet away. I froze. I doubted I breathed. But he just kept coming—eight feet, five feet, three, until he was right beside me. He lowered his big head and pressed his muzzle into my shoulder. I waited. He gave a long, loud sniff. My heart pounded in my throat. He sniffed again—then gave a sudden, disgusted snort before turning and sauntering off.

  I took a couple breaths to shake it off. Then a couple more. When my heart finally dropped back down into my chest, I turned back to the pool. Now it was just me, the pool, and a butterfly that occasionally flitted past. It was beautiful, just like the ones I’d sketched on the plane. Complete with a black circle that looked like an eye on each wing.

  Pretty soon, as I kept staring at the pool, I began seeing stuff. Vague at first, but the visions got clearer and clearer.

  First, I saw soldiers. They wore old fashioned clothes and helmets, like from five hundred years ago. And there were priests beside them in long robes. And people with dunce hats.

  That’s when I heard the screaming. From the people. And for a pretty good reason. One was having boiling water poured over his naked body. Another was having his tongue cut out. Another had hot coals they were putting on his eyes.

  As I kept staring, the images rose out of the water. Kinda like a 3-D movie. And the sounds got clearer. Over the screaming I heard the priests shouting orders. Sounded like they were in Spanish.

  Things were getting pretty gruesome so I tried forcing the images to go away. Unlike being in the underwater tunnel, they did. They dissolved to mist and fell back into the pool.

  But others followed. Knights on horseb
ack. With swords and lances they hacked down foot soldiers left and right. Others were on the ground fighting hand to hand. This time they were shouting in English. And there was blood. Everywhere. On their swords, their suits of armor, their shields. Shields, by the way, that had crosses on them. And lions. And dragons. But mostly crosses.

  One knight was raising his sword over a guy on the ground and shouting, “To the glory of King Richard and our Lord Jesus Christ!” I forced the image away, but not before I heard the sound of breaking bone and cartilage, followed by a dull thud of what had to be the guy’s head falling onto the mud.

  Another picture followed. This one at night. A shouting mob circled a young woman who was being burned at the stake. She writhed and screamed—the flames from her clothes already covering her face—as the mob kept shouting, “Confess! Confess! Confess!”

  I’d had enough. I stopped the vision. I turned from the pool and rose to my feet . . . just a little unsteady. I don’t know how long I’d been there, but I’d seen enough.

  “You saw the Inquisition,” Chad said.

  “The what?”

  He turned from me to Andi. “Am I right, sweet cheeks?”

  Less than an hour had passed and we’d all returned and were giving our reports.

  Andi answered. “Priests.” She turned to me. “It sounds like you were seeing priests. And the type of tortures you mentioned, the dunce hats, the style of clothing—”

  “Not to mention they spoke Spanish,” Chad said. “What else could she have seen but the Spanish Inquisition? Lot of people died back then.”

  Andi nodded. “At least thirty thousand.”

  Chad whistled.

  “And them knights?” Cowboy asked. “With their swords and crosses on their shields?”

  “It sounds like the Crusades,” she said. “‘To the glory of King Richard and Jesus Christ.’ That was one of their battle cries.”

  “How many died there?” I asked.

  “There are different estimates, but all totaled and conservatively . . .” She took a deep breath and continued, “One and a half million, total.”

  “And that woman burned at the stake?” I asked. “Was she like a witch?”

  “Most likely.” Andi continued, “Between the years 1450 and 1750 roughly fifty thousand were burned at the stake in Europe and America.”

  Chad scoffed and shook his head. “Religion at its finest.”

  I glanced over to Cowboy. He wasn’t amused. Who could blame him? Not a great track record however you looked at it. I turned back to Andi. “What about you? What did you get out there?”

  “With your thing for patterns,” Chad added.

  She hesitated. Took another breath and said, “You’ve all heard of the Bible Code?”

  “Educate me,” I said.

  She explained. “When you write out the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, in the original Hebrew, and when you align the letters into various columns . . . well, certain patterns appear. Patterns that some scholars believe to be prophetic warnings.”

  “Such as?” I said.

  “Such as spelling out and connecting the word ‘Hitler’ with ‘Nazi.’ Or the Kennedy assassination with ‘Dallas.’” She hesitated, then added, “Or ‘assassination’ with the name of the murdered Israeli Prime Minister, ‘Yitzhak Rabin.’”

  “All that from the holy word of God?” Cowboy asked.

  She nodded.

  “And . . .?” I said, waiting for more.

  “I followed one of the paths to the wall. Carved in the rock were several pages of Hebrew. I recognized they were from the book of Genesis.” She looked down.

  “Go on,” Chad said.

  “The words had been stacked, arranged in patterns that I had never seen before.

  “And . . .”

  “And each time the name for ‘God’ or ‘Lord’ appeared . . . it was directly associated with one of three words.” She took another breath. It was clear she didn’t want to go on, but Chad kept pushing.

  “And they were?”

  She closed her eyes then softly said the words: “Tyrant. Oppressor. Dictator.”

  Chapter 10

  Silence stole over the group. Cowboy was definitely not happy.

  Chad couldn’t care less. “And don’t forget yours truly,” he said.

  We turned to him, waiting for his report.

  He began. “It’s like the stiller I got, the better I got. Without all the distractions my powers really kicked butt.”

  “To read minds?” I said.

  “Yeah, and not just some loser from the mindless masses. I got some real clear stuff from some majorly important dudes.”

  “Like who?” I said.

  He paused then with dramatic flair said, “I, Chad Thorton, got to read the Pope’s mind.”

  “The Pope?” Cowboy said. “As in Rome?”

  “I told you I’m good. And not just the Pope, I also read some of the top preacher guys you see on TV. And, for the grand finale, I slipped back into time and even got into the head of Mother Teresa.”

  “Mother Teresa,” Andi asked. “The great humanitarian?”

  “Yeah, only not so great. The stuff she was thinking? Whew. Ugly. Racist. Intolerant. Lots of hatred inside that chick.”

  “No way,” Cowboy said.

  “Oh yeah, ‘big way.’ And the same thing with the Pope. I’m serious. And don’t even get me started on those TV guys. The bigger they were, the badder they thought.”

  “I don’t . . .” Cowboy scowled. “That can’t be true.”

  Chad shook his head. “No offense, troll man, but your team . . . let’s just say they’re not the good guys they pretend to be. Fact is, it’s just the opposite. From what I saw your heroes are just following in the footsteps of their boss.”

  “What does that mean?” I said.

  “Every one of them is being manipulated by the biggest bad dude of all, the man upstairs.”

  “Hold it,” Andi said, “wait just a minute.”

  “You said it yourself, sweet cheeks. It’s right there in the holy book: Tyrant. Oppressor. Dictator.”

  “You’re certainly not implying—”

  “And you, ghetto girl.” He nodded to me. “When it comes to the big dude’s history, he doesn’t exactly have the cleanest slate, does he?”

  Things got quiet again. Real quiet. We just sat there, trying to wrap our heads around what we’d heard. Yeah, I get that Chad wasn’t known for his understatements or his humility. But if half of what he said was true . . . or what I saw . . . or what Andi read—I mean, if God really was some sort of tyrant and dictator. . .

  I turned back to Cowboy. His face was more than a little red. No surprise. I mean if he and God were such pals and his pal turned out to be a bad guy . . .

  Andi saw his struggle, too. And asked quietly, “What about you, Tank?”

  He stared into the campfire. “What about me?”

  “Your gifts. Did they get any stronger? What did you experience?”

  “I—” he stopped.

  We traded looks.

  “You what?” Chad said.

  “I got . . .” He shook his head and softly admitted, “I got nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  He kept quiet.

  Chad pushed. “Nothing at all?”

  He shook his head.

  Chad sat back and gave another low whistle.

  I turned to him. “What does that mean?”

  “You tell me,” he said. “Here we are in Paradise. All of our gifts are amping up and Bible boy is getting nothing?” He folded his hands behind his head “Maybe Jocko here has been playing for the wrong team. Maybe his boss is the one who’s the monster—the megalomaniac the one who tortures and—”

  Cowboy leaped to his feet and grabbed Chad’s throat. “Take it back!” he roared. “Take it back!”

  “Tank!” Andi shouted.

  Chad kicked and twisted trying to get free. But Cowboy squeezed tighter. “Take it
back!”

  “Cowboy!”

  “Take it back now!”

  “Tank!” I yelled.

  Chad’s eyes bulged. His face turned crimson.

  “Tank!” Andi raced to them, yanked at Cowboy’s arm. “He can’t breathe!”

  But his grip was a vice. Chad squirmed, tried, but could not pry away Cowboy’s hands.

  Andi got right into the big man’s face. “Tank! Tank! You’re killing him!”

  His eyes shifted to hers.

  “Tank!”

  He tried looking away from her, but he couldn’t.

  “Let go of him,” she said. “This is not what God wants. Tank . . .”

  He kept staring at her. She nodded, spoke softly, evenly. “Let him go.”

  He blinked.

  She held his gaze. Nodded again, slower.

  Finally, reluctantly, Tank released Chad.

  Pretty Boy dropped to the ground, coughing and gasping for air.

  And Bijan, who had been quiet until now, finally spoke. “And that, my friends, is why you are here.” We turned to him as he reached out his hands. “Join us. Help us break the chains. Free your planet from the tyrannical hold.”

  “Join . . . who?” I said.

  Andi had already put the pieces together. “You’re not with the Watchers, are you?”

  “I never said I was.”

  “But you let us think . . .” I dropped off.

  “You are—” Andi hesitated, then continued. “You’re with The Gate?”

  He silently nodded. “Yes. And it is our hope that you will join us to help set your people free.”

  Chapter 11

  Absolute silence. No movement. Except for the butterflies. I threw a look to Tank. He was definitely embarrassed, definitely numb. And definitely not looking up. Who could blame him? That had been quite a performance. Still, it was small potatoes compared to Bijan’s statement . . . and his request.

  Finally Andi turned to Bijan. “Do you have any idea what you are asking?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of that I understand. Yet that was the purpose of bringing you here—in this place of peace and stillness—a place where you would experience your gifts more fully . . . and see the truth more clearly.”