“You aren’t really going to torture him, are you?”

“Why not? He is a threat to everything we have fought so long to preserve. He has at least four shards, Remiel. Four! Not since Babylon have so many been gathered together in one place. We have killed men for less. If not for the recent troubles we would have captured Oliver Lucas long before now.”

“You forget what else he possesses,” Remiel said. Her grey eyes narrowed and she stepped closer to her companion. “You must not harm him, Zedekiah.”

“Why, because he stole a holy relic?”

“Because he has been chosen to carry it.”

Zedekiah shook his head and made to turn away, but Remiel placed a hand on his arm and said, “You must give it back to him. We can explain the truth to him and demand that he deliver the shards to us. If he is an honorable man...”

Zedekiah scoffed and pulled away from her grip. He extracted the heartwood from his vest pocket and held it up between them, dangling the leather cord between two fingers. “Do you think he came by this honorably? Please, Remiel, stop speaking before you convince me that you are a fool.”

She made to snatch the cord away from him, but Zedekiah flipped it up out of her reach and held the smooth yellow wood between two fingers to admire it. “For thousands of years this rested undisturbed in the deserts of Egypt, lost to all of mankind, its location forgotten even by our brethren. Now, it has returned to us.” He closed his fist around the wood and slipped it back into his pocket. “I will say this for mister Lucas, he has brought us a fine gift. If he cooperates and delivers the shards into our protection I will show him mercy. He may even leave this place whole, if he does not delay too long in sharing what he knows.”

Remiel scowled at Zedekiah and swallowed a bilious unease that had been growing within her belly for longer than she cared to remember. Zedekiah had been a friend for many years, and a mentor before that, and she had traveled far and worked hard alongside him, but she now felt as though she were seeing him for the first time. She stepped up to him and placed a hand against his chest, looked into his eyes, and said, “Do you even remember what we are fighting for?”

Zedekiah blinked in surprise, and for just a moment she hoped that he would reconsider, then his eyes hardened and he looked down at her and said, “Go to America and find the man’s cousin. We must be prepared to exert greater persuasion if he does not respond to physical pain.”

With that, he turned away from her and ascended the spiral staircase to the pavilion on the surface of the lake. Remiel watched him go with a deepening sense of dread. When she finally heard the door above slam shut, and the echoes of it had died away, she turned back to look down the riveted metal walls and stained black and white tile. Just around a bend in the passage, Oliver Lucas sat tied to a chair, waiting for whatever tortures Zedekiah had in mind.

“What am I going to do with you?” she whispered.

Oliver glared at his distorted reflection in the glass and bit his lip to distract himself from the pain in his wrists. He had spent the last hour straining against the ropes that bound him and his wrists, already aching from the awkward position in which they were tied, were now rubbed raw.

The mahogany door swung open with a creak of rusting hinges and slammed against the metal wall, sending a slight vibration through the entire structure.

“You trying to drown us all?” Oliver shouted, heaving his body towards the door so the chair teetered on two legs, briefly threatening to keel over and slam Oliver to the floor, then spun beneath him. 

He found himself facing the woman with the deep grey eyes.

She stood in the doorway aiming a black handgun at Oliver’s head. Oddly, it was not the gun which captured Oliver’s attention. Instead, he suddenly realized that he was looking past the weapon and into the woman’s steel eyes, which didn’t so much look back at him as swallow his gaze whole. Snap out of it! Oliver told himself. She’s your enemy, so stop falling for her eyes. He tore his eyes from hers and fixed his gaze on the tip of her nose, but that only left him admiring the perfect curve of her olive skin, so he moved his gaze to the gun she held. It looked remarkably like the one which he had stolen from the dead guard at Neuschwanstein, but the Glock model 17 was a common enough weapon that he could not be certain.

He pasted a sarcastic smile onto his face and said, “I wouldn’t shoot that in here, if I were you. If you miss me and hit the glass we’re both dead.”

“I wouldn’t miss, mister Lucas.”

“Oliver, please. I always maintain a first name basis with my captors. I find it keeps the relationship more, equal, you might say.”

“Fine, Oliver. If I shoot at you, I promise that I won’t miss.”

“That’s better. I’d hate for us both to drown when there’s the much simpler alternative of just me dying by a gunshot. Now, I’ve got a couple questions for you, but I fear that I don’t know your name.”

The woman hesitated and for just a moment Oliver was able to look her in the eye and see something different, perhaps it was doubt. She stepped forward into the room and kicked the door shut behind her, then stepped forward and glared down at him. 

“I am Remiel,” she said.

“Well howdy-do, Remiel,” Oliver drawled in an affected Texas accent. “I’m Oliver and I’m sure glad you’re to be my first torturer of the day.” 

She crossed the room at a rapid stride and had the gun pressed beneath Oliver’s jaw before he could even flinch. He felt a cold shiver run through him and was suddenly aware that his bladder was just about full. Those eyes, so beautiful, so captivating, were now inches from his own, boring into his soul, delivering a clear message that she would not hesitate to blow his head off if he did not can the sarcasm.

Oliver swallowed, his brain screaming in terror as his Adam’s apple pressed against the warm plastic of the gun, and whispered, “What do you want from me?”

“A little respect to start.”

“No disrespect, Remiel, but it’s difficult for me to be polite to someone who plans to mail me home in pieces. So, why don’t we cut through the intimidation and you tell me what you want. If I’ve got it, I’ll tell you and probably hand it over. If I don’t, I’ll say that and you can be sure I’m not lying.”

“How can I be sure?”

“Well, for starters I’d probably give you my bank login credentials right now if you’d untie me so I could take a piss.”

“You’re not a fool, Oliver, I’ll give you that.” Remiel pulled the gun away from his throat and stepped behind him. Oliver heard the snick of a knife opening and nearly fell off the chair as his legs were released and turned to rubber beneath him.

“There’s a toilet at the end of the hall. I’ll take you to it now, but you must move quickly and quietly.”

Oliver frowned at that. He wasn’t going to question being taken away from this room, but he couldn’t help wondering why she should be concerned about him making noise. Don’t get your hopes up, he urged himself. This is probably some sort of good cop, bad cop routine. Not that he was going to complain. If this mysteriously captivating woman wanted to play the good cop, he was happy to play along, all the while keeping an eye out for an opportunity to escape.

It took several minutes for Oliver’s legs to stop trembling so that he could walk from the room. With Remiel behind him, still holding the gun, Oliver walked unsteadily through the doorway into a short tunnel. The walls, which bowed out, then in again on either side in a shape vaguely reminiscent of an egg, joined together at a point barely two feet above his head. They appeared to be made of the same thick, riveted metal as the supporting structure of the glass dome. Their footsteps echoed from the metal walls and tiled floor, reverberating with a ghostly echo that made him feel like he was walking inside a tin can. They turned a sharp corner and Oliver saw that the black and white checkerboard pattern of the floor continued to another heavy mahogany door. Half way between Oliver and the door, the space opened up into a wider atrium, at the center of which a metal spiral staircase twisted upwards and out of sight. Sunlight shone down into the space and the long passages leading away from it were illuminated by aging incandescent bulbs set into narrow white cages along the ceiling.

“Here,” Remiel said, indicating a door set into the side of the passage, just a couple steps beyond the turn. “Be quick about it, we need to be on our way.”

Oliver bit back a sarcastic retort, recalling the discomforting warmth of the gun beneath his jaw, and looked back over his shoulder at Remiel. “What about this?” he said, pulling at the ropes that bound his wrists.

“I trust you can manage to get your hands in front of you?”

Oliver scowled at her, bent into a tight crouch, and stepped backwards through his tied wrists. “This would be a lot easier if you’d just untie me.”

“I’m sure you think so, but I need your cooperation. Now, please be quick about it.”

Oliver pushed the door open and fumbled at the wall beside until he found the round button of an antique light switch. The bulb above his head winked on, bathing the tight space in yellowish light. He stepped into the bathroom and kicked the door shut behind him.

Remiel relaxed the tension in her shoulders, but maintained a tight grip on the pistol in her right hand. She tossed the leather satchel against the wall beside the bathroom door and strode to the corner of the atrium, where she paused, leaning against the wall and listening intently for any sound that might indicate Zedekiah returning. This is the right thing to do, she told herself. He must be a good man at heart or he would not have been chosen to carry the heartwood. She licked her lips and glanced back at the door to the bathroom, praying for Oliver to hurry.

Oliver spun the polished brass knob on the sink until water stopped flowing into the porcelain basin, then inspected his reflection in the heavy, silvered glass mirror above the porcelain sink. His face was bruised above the left eye and a streak of blood stained the collar of his shirt but, other than the damage to his wrists, he appeared to be mostly unharmed. He briefly considered shattering the mirror and using a shard of the broken glass to cut himself free, but he knew that would be a waste of time. Doubtless Remiel would kick the door open and shoot him before he could finish cutting the ropes.

“Keep it together,” he told his reflection. “Just look for the opening and...”

A fist pounded on the thick wood of the bathroom door and Oliver heard Remiel hiss, “Oliver, get out here, now.”

He took one last look in the mirror, winked at his reflection with bravado, and pulled the door open to face Remiel.

“So, what first? Are you going to just ask me questions or is it time for your cynical friend to start pulling out my fingernails?”

“We need to get out of here as quickly as possible, then we’ll talk about what I need to know from you.”

Oliver cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows. Before he could say anything, Remiel nodded to the satchel beside the door and said, “Grab that and follow me.” She darted down the corridor without waiting for Oliver to respond, pausing at the foot of the spiral staircase and peering upwards. 

Oliver shook his head and grasped the carry loop on top of the satchel, then followed Remiel to the stairs, the satchel banging awkwardly against his knees as walked. Remiel glanced back and nodded at him when he reached her, then darted up the steps. He followed and they climbed the staircase rapidly, ascending from the eerie echoing space of the submarine atrium into a sunlit gazebo in the center of a placid lake. The interior of the gazebo was paneled in rich cedar wood, a dark yellow streaked with cherry red, below tall windows of rippling leaded glass set in a pattern of alternating diamonds. Through the window Oliver could see across the rippling water to a wide, silvery green lawn, leading up to the rear of a grey stone manor house. A path of crushed stone ran down from the house to the edge of the water, where it gave way to the boards of the dock that ran out across the water to the gazebo.

Oliver took all of this in at a glance before Remiel threw herself backwards and slammed into him, bearing them both to the stained wooden floor as she hissed, “Stay down!”

She had seen them rounding the corner of the manor house just as Oliver reached the landing of the gazebo, Zedekiah and two of his acolytes. One of them carried a large black toolbox. They would all be armed, in one fashion or another, so a direct confrontation on the dock was out of the question. That left only one other option for escape.

“What’s wrong?” Oliver whispered beneath her.

“Zedekiah has returned more quickly than I anticipated.”

“Who’s that?

“The man who wanted to cut you into little pieces. He’s come back with the tools to do it.”

Oliver looked puzzled, then his face shifted as he recognized that she was helping him escape. “Untie me and give me the gun, now.”

Remiel shook her head. “No. We can’t fight them. Quick, back down the steps.”

“No way. I don’t know what you’re playing at, Remiel, but I’m above water now, there’s no way I’m going back down there.”

She turned the gun on him and hissed, “I’m not going to shoot at them unless absolutely necessary. Now get your ass back down those steps and I’ll show you another way. Go!”

Oliver knew when to stop arguing, so he turned and hurried down the steps as fast as he dared. He couldn’t believe that he was trusting this woman who, for some inexplicable reason, was now helping him escape from the dour man who had threatened to dismember him. The whole situation was beginning to remind him of a bad crime movie, with his enemy supposedly helping him just to gain his confidence, but he didn’t see any other options at the moment. He reached the bottom of the steps at a run and skidded across the tiles to hit the curved metal wall opposite the staircase. Remiel leapt down the last three steps and pointed to the tunnel leading left, away from the room in which Oliver had been held captive.

“There, into the billiard room.”

Oliver ran down the hallway and hit the solid mahogany door with his full weight, twisted the ornate cut glass knob, and spilled into another underwater dome. Here, the filtered blue and green light spilled over the rich red velvet and polished mahogany of a billiard table, which stood at the center of a room ringed with upholstered chairs, each accompanied by a silver ash tray on a tall stand, and low tables topped with white and black veined marble. He searched for any sign of another exit then, finding nothing, rounded on Remiel as she followed him through the door into the room.

“Quiet,” she hissed, seeing the rage in Oliver’s face and cutting him off before he could open his mouth. She pushed the door shut and crossed to Oliver in a rapid stride, then grabbed the front of his shirt, pushed her mouth up to his ear, and said, “You know nothing about where you are or who we are so, if you want to live, get under the table and keep your mouth shut.”

Oliver dropped the satchel at her feet and dove under the table, muttering curses. 

Remiel took the satchel and glared at Oliver as he slipped rolled under the table, then slipped the straps over her shoulders, walked to the door, and listened, straining for any sign that Zedekiah had entered the underwater complex. She hoped to wait until he was descending the staircase, so that the clatter of heavy feet reverberating through the metal walled atrium would cover the sound of the secret door beneath the billiard table opening, but she heard nothing from beyond the door. It was only when she heard the faint squeal of hundred year old gears from under her feat that she realized her mistake. She turned to warn Oliver, but even as she turned a warning whispered in her mind and she turned back toward the door, just as it exploded inward in a burst of splinters and flickering blue light.

Under the billiard table, Oliver felt the floor beneath his back shift. He rolled towards the curving glass and steel wall just as the air above the table was ripped apart by thousands of shards of splintered wood and the sound of a lightning bolt. He scrabbled around behind one of the large, rounded legs of the table, then risked a glance over the table edge.

The man who had threatened him, who Remiel had called Zedekiah, stood in the doorway, filling the space with his broad shoulders and bronze face, once again seeming larger than physically possible in the space he occupied. He was glaring at Remiel, who leaned against the billiards table, brushing splinters from her face with one hand while she pointed the gun directly at Zedekiah’s imposing form.

“I should have know you would betray us!” Zedekiah whispered. His voice, though quiet, pulsed through the room and shook Oliver to the bone, knocking the breath out of him and sending him ducking down under the table again. “Hand him over now and you may yet be spared the fires of Gehenna.”

Oliver’s mind was racing, trying to piece together the events of the last few seconds, when he saw the man emerge from the passage that had opened under the billiards table. His gun hand came up first, followed immediately by his head as he climbed whatever hidden ladder or stair was beneath the floor. The back of the man’s head was towards Oliver as he climbed, but Oliver knew it was only a matter of seconds before he swiveled his head around and spotted him. Oliver threw himself away from the table, landed awkwardly on his knees and bound wrists and let out an involuntary cry of pain, then grabbed the base of a tall silver ashtray stand with both hands. He heaved himself around, swinging the stand as he rolled, and sent the long rod of silver plated steel spinning away under the table. The man must have heard Oliver, because he had just begun to turn his face towards him when the twisting stand struck him squarely in the temple, knocking his head into the side of the passage. He cried out and fell back down the hole to land with a heavy thud, followed by the clatter of metal on brickwork as the ashtray followed him down the hole.

Remiel heard Oliver cry out in the same instant that Zedekiah spotted him tumbling towards the ashtray. Zedekiah lunged forward into the room and Remiel reacted without thinking. She pulled the trigger once, twice, then two more times in rapid succession as a scream of dismay ripped out of her lungs. The first shot struck Zedekiah in the chest, arresting his charge and twisting him around with the impact of the shattering hollow point round, the second slashed across the right side of his face, and the final two winged off the metal ceiling above his head with a screech of colliding metal. He dropped to the floor and lay still at the center of a widening pool of blood.

Remiel froze, overwhelmed with the magnitude of what she had just done. It was one thing to defy Zedekiah and help Oliver escape, but this was far more. She slumped against the table and dropped the gun to the tile floor, limp with fear. How can I ever explain this? she thought, eyes fixed on Zedekiah’s shattered body. It didn’t matter whether Zedekiah had strayed from the true purpose of their ancient order, as she had long suspected, or she had fallen irredeemably from the true path. She was now committed to aiding Oliver Lucas and could never go back to the other watchers. She fell to her knees, then dropped the gun and began crawling towards Zedekiah’s body, all thoughts of escape washed away by the horror of her deed.

Oliver saw it first: the vague hint of movement in the body, an unnatural stirring beneath the folds of the fallen man’s clothing, then the flicker of an eye opening to just a slit as Remiel crawled closer. He shouted a warning, but it was too late.

Zedekiah’s body exploded outward from the crumpled form on the floor, like the unfolding lines of a fractal shattering out from a hidden space between the molecules and atoms of his skin, shivering into the visible world in infinitely repeating folds of ivory, crimson, and sky blue. The air seemed to ripple around Zedekiah’s expanding body and Oliver heard again the same whispering, featherlike sound he had heard when tied to the chair in the other dome, then Zedekiah exploded out of the corner in which he had lain and slammed into Remiel with a roar that reminded Oliver of a screeching owl. As he flew upwards, Oliver caught a glimpse of shimmering white and silver lightning trailing behind him, as if the outline of a hawk’s wings had been sketched into the air by living electricity. Then Remiel cried out and both of Oliver’s captors escaped from his view, ripped upwards by the force of Zedekiah’s assault. 

Oliver rolled under the billiards table, barely avoiding the trap door to the secret passage, and scrabbled for the gun that Remiel had dropped. It was hard to get a firm grip with his wrists tied tightly together, but he managed it and rolled face up just in time to see Zedekiah fling Remiel’s limp body down at him. He shouted in surprise and scrabbled back under the table, but it was not necessary because, as she fell, the air around Remiel distorted, then filled with crackling red veins of living flame, which fanned outward like wings to arrest her fall. Zedekiah roared again and struck out at Remiel with a flurry of fierce blows that would have immediately cracked the ribs of any human victim. Remiel blocked the first three blows, then took the fourth directly to the center of her chest and was hurled backwards into the wall of the dome. The steel supporting structure moaned and Oliver heard the distinct crackle of glass spiderwebbing with stress fractures, like the sound of ice cubes being dropped into a glass filled with hot water.

Remiel dropped to the floor and braced herself, apparently preparing to launch a counter assault, then the first triangular panel of glass shattered under the tremendous load of the lake water above. A torrent of water gushed through the hole and fizzled against the burning network of light that extended from her body. Some of it simply vanished, caught up in invisible vortices and pulled away to some impossible place between the filaments of her wings, while the rest burst into billowing cloud of steam. Then the rest of the fractured glass gave way, unleashing a surge of water that hammered down on Remiel and knocked her to the floor. 

Oliver cursed and raised the gun, hoping that his half formed plan would not see him drowned, then pulled the trigger. He pulled it again, and again, and again, each shot slamming a hot slug of lead into Zedekiah’s body. Oliver lost count of how many times he fired. He kept the gun aimed steadily at the center of Zedekiah’s chest and pulled the trigger until the slide of the gun locked open and the trigger no longer clicked. Zedekiah’s chest was a tattered wreck of ripped flesh and fragmented bone, but his eyes still gleamed, seeming to glow from within with a deep ivory radiance as he fixed Oliver with a malevolent glare. Then the wall of glass behind him shattered and a gout of water flooded into the dome, striking Zedekiah in the back and knocking his tattered body to the floor in a wash of water, blood, and shattered bone.

Oliver tottered to his feet and was nearly swept back to the floor by the surging swirl of darkening water, which had risen half way to his knees, just in the last few seconds. He glanced around and saw Remiel pushing herself unsteadily to her feet as water surged around her legs through the rent in the dome behind her. She caught Oliver’s eye and he jerked his head towards the door. They struggled through the rising rush of water towards the doorway, skirting Zedekiah’s mangled body as it twitched and writhed in the foaming water, and reached the hallway just as the dome behind them gave a  tremendous groan and collapsed in a cacophony of twisting metal, shattering glass, and roaring water. 

“Go!” Oliver screamed, digging his toes into the floor and racing for the spiral staircase. He reached the steps and leapt up them two at a time, slamming into the railing and pushing off from it again with each step as he raced the rising flood. Remiel ran after him, pulling herself upwards with hands gripping the railing, each jarring step sending surges of agony through her battered chest. Below them, the water had filled the hallway and was spewing out into the atrium in a foaming stream, which disgorged shattered glass, twisted metal, and broken pieceds of furniture into the open space below.

They reached the top of the staircase and tumbled out into the gazebo. then Remiel took the lead, guiding Oliver across the dock, down the gravel path, and around the corner of the stone manor house. A gunshot cracked the air and Oliver dove sideways, knocking Remiel off of the path and under a thick boxwood beside the trail as bullets cracked through the air over their heads. Oliver pressed his mouth to her ear and hissed, “For the last time, cut me free and I will help us both escape.” 

Remiel pushed him off and crawled forward, peering through the branches to see if she could locate the shooter. She spotted him, crouching low at the corner of the black sedan that she had foolishly neglected to move before returning to rescue Oliver from the dome. That had to have been what tipped Zedekiah to her betrayal. He had ordered her to leave for America a full twenty minutes before he returned, and the presence of her car in the curved drive before the house, while she was absent from the manor house, was a dead giveaway. Another shot cracked out and Remiel ducked as a shower of splintered wood burst from the tree above her head. 

She crawled back to Oliver, pulled a knife from her pocket, and said, “Don’t leave without me, Oliver. You need me more now than ever.”

“Fine, just cut me free.”

Remiel sliced through the rope binding Oliver’s wrists, then put her knife away and turned back to the path. “We’ve got to take him down and get to my car.” She glanced back and saw that Oliver was already crawling along the ground on the far side of the shrubbery, slithering closer to the front of the house.

Oliver crawled along the trimmed shrubbery until he reached the corner of the garden. He crouched, took two quick breaths to calm his nerves, and glanced around the corner of the shrub. A manicured lawn ran down from the side garden to the curved driveway at the front of the house, where the gunman still crouched behind the trunk of the car, about twenty feet away, peering around the rear of the car to look for Remiel and Oliver along the path from the rear of the house. He waited, tense, knowing that if he timed this wrong he would probably get shot, then his chance came. The gunman popped up over the back of the car and fired again. Oliver darted out from behind the shrubs, across the lawn, and leapt towards the car in a low tumble. He hit the gravel and tumbled, plowing into the gunman’s left knee with the full weight of his shoulder. They went down together and Oliver slammed his fist into the wrist of the man’s gun hand, which spasmed and dropped the gun to the gravel, then he rolled away, sprang to his feet, and delivered a brutal kick to the man’s groin. The gunman screamed in pain and curled into a tight ball, hands clutched between his thighs.

Oliver scooped up the gun and called over his shoulder to Remiel as he ejected and checked the magazine, “I got him. Let’s get out of here.” Seven bullets remained in the magazine. Counting one in the chamber that wasn’t a lot of ammunition, especially in Britain, where he lacked the license to buy more, but it was better than nothing.

Remiel appeared from beneath the shrubbery and walked towards Oliver across the gravel drive. He slammed the magazine back into a gun and turned to face her, keeping the gun pointed at Zedekiah’s fallen acolyte, who lay curled on the ground, moaning in obvious pain.

“Should we bring him along?”

“No. He doesn’t know anything that I don’t.”

“Then let’s get the hell out of here,” Oliver grunted. “I don’t trust that your friend in the lake won’t come flying out, shooting lasers from his eyes or something. I’ve seen far too much of people coming back to life this last week to trust that he’ll stay down there.”

“I’ll drive,” Remiel said, shrugging the satchel from her shoulders and pulling her keys out of a side pocket. 

She stepped towards the fallen acolyte, but Oliver blocked her and said, “Let’s go now. You already almost got us killed going soft on one of them back there.”

Remiel’s fist clenched around the key ring as she unconsciously channeled her pent up rage towards Oliver, but she caught it in time and, setting her mind to a meditative calm, turned away and strode to the driver’s door of the sedan. The car recognized the radio key on her chain and emitted a cheerful chirp, then hummed to life as she settled into the driver’s seat. Oliver jumped in the passenger side and she floored the accelerator, peeling out of the curved drive with a spray of gravel and the whine of electric motors adjusting to the shifting surface.

“Where are we going?”

“Far away. You were right about Zedekiah reviving. It will take a long time, maybe as much as two days, more if he sheds this shell and has to incarnate another, but when he wakes up we had both better be as far away as possible.”

Next Chapter: The Watchers