Remiel guided the sedan along the local roads in silence for about fifteen minutes, driving as quickly as she dared on the narrow, winding strip of pavement. She knew that she ought to take a few moments to heal herself and pray for guidance, but with Zedekiah laying at the bottom of a lake and Oliver beside her, she was finding it difficult to focus on anything other than the enormity of her decision. Oliver was, thankfully, quiet. When the A3 motorway came into sight she pulled onto the onramp and engaged the autodrive. A soft tone sounded and the car accelerated smoothly to slot into place among the midday traffic. She released the wheel and, for the first time since spotting Zedekiah and his acolytes approaching the dock, felt herself breathe easy.

“I don’t know if I like this,” Oliver muttered, glancing at the autodrive indicator on the dash. “Is there any way they can track the car through the navigation network?”

“Of course they can, but nobody at the safe house has the authority to access the national surveillance system.”

“What about Zedekiah? He seemed to know a lot about me.”

“Except him, yes. But it will be a long time before he is fit to use a phone.”

Oliver shifted in his seat to look more directly at Remiel. Her blond hair was plastered to the side of her face, mostly covering a dark bruise that had begun to form above her left cheek. A dark line of blood ran from the bridge of her nose nearly to her mouth, streaked in places where she had wiped her face while driving. Altogether, Oliver thought, she looked remarkable healthy for a woman who had recently been thrown against a glass and steel wall.

“About that, are you going to tell me exactly what the hell is going on here?”

“We’re escaping.”

“I get that, and I get that I was betrayed by that bastard Gower, but what I don’t understand is what exactly you want from me, or who you are. I’ll tell you, I’ve had an insane week and I don’t know how much more I can take of veiled swordsmen, magic robes, disappearing women, and mythological gods. I’ve spent the better part of my adult life dealing with things that most people don’t believe are real, or if they believe them, they think that they only happen in old bible stories, but this is getting ridiculous. Next you’re going to tell me that you and Zedekiah are some sort of angels or something and, you know what, I’ll probably go right ahead and believe you.” Oliver lifted the gun, cocked the hammer with a trembling thumb, and rested it on his knee, pointed directly at Remiel’s belly. “Now, I’m not going to shoot you unless you attack me, but I do think it’s about damn time that I got a few answers.”

Remiel looked from Oliver’s eyes, which glinted back at her between the slits of his scowling brow, to the gun, a 1911 style pistol which was clearly loaded and ready to fire, though Oliver’s finger was resting along the barrel, rather than on the trigger. This man was clearly dangerous, and perhaps beginning to crack under the strain of recent events, but he was also under control of his actions.

“Angel is a poor choice of word, but it will do for now.”

Oliver blinked, surprised more at the act of her confession than the substance. He said nothing and waited.

“I’m not sure that I can explain exactly what you are up against, or who we are, in a way that you can understand, Oliver.”

“Try me. Why don’t you start with who you and your friend back under the lake are?”

Remiel hesitated for a moment, the words catching in her throat as she recalled what she had done. It had all seemed so simple, at first: take Oliver away so Zedekiah wouldn’t torture him, convince him to join her cause, then return to the other Watchers with both the missing shards that Oliver had recovered and, potentially, a new acolyte for their order. But now, now that she had taken direct action against her brother, had stood by as Oliver damaged, potentially even destroyed, his incarnation, now it was likely that she would never be accepted back into the communion of her brothers and sisters. She watched the countryside slide by out the window as the car continued to speed north along the highway and was grateful that Oliver didn’t press her any further. After several minutes she heard a soft clicking and, looking away from the window towards Oliver, saw that he had uncocked the gun and engaged the safety, but was still glaring at her. 

“You have to understand the magnitude of what I have done in helping you escape.”

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

“No. No, you don’t. You probably never can. You’re mortal, Oliver. You can’t know the weight of guilt that piles up on someone over the course of centuries, of millennia.”

“Spare it, Remiel. You’re not the first immortal to moan to me about the weight of your gift, you’re not even the first this week, so get on with it.”

“I’m a watcher, Oliver.”

“That’s not especially descriptive, especially here in Britain. Practically the whole country is under surveillance.”

Remiel sighed in exasperation and said, “That’s not what I mean. You said that you wouldn’t be surprised if we are angels, and I’m telling you that you are partly right. Angel is just too general a term. It is used in many religions and refers to everything from beings who carry messages for the gods, to celestial choirs, to supernatural warriors, to literal incarnations of god on earth. So, I need you to understand that I, and Zedekiah, and all the other leaders of our order are watchers.”

“Fine, I can believe you. But you still haven’t explained what any of this has to do with me.”

Remiel took a deep breath and gripped the steering wheel. She closed her eyes and muttered a silent prayer, afraid to speak the truth to an outsider, even though she had already bound her fate to him. Finally she looked down at her lap and said, barely above a whisper, “We watch over the path of human progress and, occasionally, give it a nudge in one direction or another. We also...” she hesitated again, almost trembling at the thought of reveling one of her most closely guarded secrets. She bit her lip, looked at Oliver in silence for a long moment, then said, “We also watch over the shards of an ancient device, which the founder of our order destroyed at the dawn of human civilization.”

Oliver gasped and felt as if his heart might burst within his chest. He clutched the gun, focusing on the hard physicality of it. Hold yourself together, he thought. You’ve suspected it for years. You knew it was ancient. Just keep breathing and... He let out an earsplitting whoop and pounded his left fist on the door of the car. After so many years, after being run out of academia, after scratching together a career on the edge of ethics and legality to support his continued search, to hear someone else confirm what he had suspected all along filled Oliver with an elation he had never before experienced. Then the doubt struck. What if she’s lying? There was enough detail in my initial paper that she could be trying to entrap me in... but no, I saw what happened back there. Oliver looked back to Remiel, who was looking at him with an expression half way between amusement and exhaustion, and grinned. This had to be the real thing, at last.

“You’re a part of the Creed, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, sorry, that’s a name I’ve been using to describe your organization for the last seven years or so, ever since I started to suspect your existence. I got it from an old Latin manuscript that I found in my travels through eastern Europe. The monk who wrote it was the only survivor from a monastery that was supposedly sacked by the Mongol horde as part of their conquest, but when he made his way to Minsk to report to his bishop the monk claimed that the monastery had actually been attacked because they gave shelter to a man who had stolen a relic from the khan. He claimed that the monastery was attacked in the night by a band of robed travelers. They tortured the thief until he revealed where the relic had been hidden, then killed everyone else who heard the confession, including the abbot. I started calling the group the Creed because of what the abbot supposedly said before he died, that only those driven by an unshakable creed could commit such deeds for such a little thing.”

Oliver paused, his enthusiasm waining at the sight of Remiel’s face, which had grown suddenly dark.

She looked away from him, not willing to meet his eye, but said, “I had hoped that no account of that event still existed.”

“You know what I’m talking about?” Oliver exclaimed.

She nodded. “The monastery at Orsha.”

“Exactly! So you were involved in the attack?”

“Please, Oliver, I do not wish to speak of the events at Orsha. It was long ago and there is nothing that can be done to change the past.”

“Fine, I’ll give you that. I imagine that after several thousand years anyone would have a few memories they would rather not revisit. Anyway, that’s where I got the name Creed from. But you said that you are actually called Watchers?”

Remiel shook her head. “No. That’s what I am, not the name of my group. If you want to go on calling us the Creed, that’s fine with me. It’s as good a name as anything. We don’t exactly have a formal name, at least not in any language you know. We are a brotherhood, a sacred order of beings tasked with protecting humanity from destroying itself.”

Oliver grinned at that and shook his head in wonderment. “You know, the more you tell me the more you confirm that I was right all along. You can’t imagine how justified I feel after so many years of being labeled a radical. That said, I still don’t understand why you got me out of there. How do I know this isn’t some elaborate plot?”

“You saw what happened under the lake.”

“I saw you put one bullet into an immortal angel then collapse into a sobbing pile of guilt. Maybe you were just putting on an act.”

“If you won’t take it on faith, then I can’t make you believe me, Oliver. All I can tell you is that I trust you are a good man, and that somehow you are destined to be involved in all of this.”

“How do you figure that?”

“The piece of wood you wore around you neck. You said that it came from the staff Moses carried during the exodus?”

“That’s right. I tracked it down about a year back and retrieved it from a temple lost in the deserts of south-western Egypt. That was quite the adventure, and had its share of weirdness, but I have to say it made a lot more sense than everything that has happened to me in the last few weeks.”

“And the piece of wood?”

Oliver shifted uncomfortably in his seat, unsure if he wanted to share the memory of what had happened in that temple with Remiel. The fire. The bones. The clouds of blood, dried to a fine powder by centuries of exposure to heat and magic, bursting out from the animated corpses and hellhounds. The terrifying intimacy of that supreme consciousness, what he supposed to have been the mind of God, invading his consciousness and shining hot white light into the darkest corners of his being. He shivered at the memory, turned back to Remiel, and simply said, “Something I can’t explain told me I should break the staff, to prevent its power from being used for evil, and when I did that piece of wood fell out, already perfectly polished. I kept it.”

Remiel nodded and lapsed into quiet contemplation for several minutes. She had suspected as much, and Oliver’s story confirmed in her mind that she had made the right decision to help him escape, but she wasn’t sure where to go from here. Clearly, she had to help Oliver, but she still didn’t know the truth of why he had come to Britain carrying a document that had been lost for the better part of a century. 

“What is so special about the heartwood, Remiel?” Oliver said, after waiting what he deemed an inordinate time for Remiel to react to his story. 

“Hmm?”

“The piece of wood from the staff. Tell me what is so special about it.”

“It’s the reason I helped you.”

“Oh, thanks for that, I guess I’ll start carrying around bits of olive wood in my pocket wherever I go, just on the off chance I’ll meet a woman who will save my life in exchange for a piece. Can you stop being so cryptic and just tell me how this all fits together?”

She sighed, wiped a hand down her bloodied face, and looked at Oliver with the same intense gaze that had captured his attention when he was tied to the chair in the underwater dome. “Oliver, that piece of wood is so much more than you can imagine. You’re a relic hunter by trade, so you know that there are, how can I put this, objects here on Earth that transcend the normal boundaries of space, time, the mortal realm.”

Oliver nodded.

“That piece of wood is one such object. Bound within it is a small part of the mind of an entity that is so far beyond your understanding that merely looking upon him would likely kill you with awe, though the sheer brightness of his form would possibly blind you before that could happen”

“You’re talking about God.”

Remiel hesitated for the briefest of moments, then nodded.

Oliver leaned back in his seat, puffed his cheeks, and blew slowly out through pursed lips, turning over that thought in his mind. It wasn’t especially hard for him to believe, he had believed in God since childhood, when his mother had taken both him and his cousin to church services every week, and most of his adult life had been spent tracking down artifacts that were created by devotees of one religion or another. Much of what many people took on faith Oliver had personally witnessed as he explored ancient temples.

“Tell me Remiel,” he said, turning his face towards her, “is this truly God, as in capital ‘G’, the actual singular creator of the universe, or are we talking about the sort of magic that I deal with when I’m tracking down relics? The sort that seems to power the shards of that mechanism that I’ve been collecting.”

Remiel’s face grew dark and she tilted her head in puzzlement. She knew that mortals were singularly gifted at missing the point, but Oliver had carried the divinely infused knot of wood around his neck for months. Something of its knowledge had to have seeped into him in that time, she expected. “You don’t know?”

“No, Remiel, I don’t. I’m not an immortal angel with thousands of years of knowledge and a direct link to the almighty to help me figure out the truth. I’m just a man who’s been mucking around in the remnants of a hundred dead cultures, sorting out which bits of their mythology are true, which are based on misunderstandings of science, and which are outright lies told by charlatans. I have faith, sure, but all I know for certain is that when I first touched that piece of wood I heard a voice in my head, and when I touched it and a shard at the same time it just about set me on fire.”

“You have touched a shard while carrying the heartwood?” Remiel said, leaning forward and studying Oliver’s face intently.

“Of course I have. I’ve been carrying that bit of wood ever since Egypt, it felt like a bit of a good luck charm. Just last month I managed to track down another of the shards on the Cook Islands, but you already know about that, don’t you.”

Remiel nodded, still studying Oliver’s face.

Oliver was growing uncomfortable and his frustration at the woman’s obtuse answers was rising. If it weren’t for the growing certainty that he was stuck at the center of a large web of intrigue, on which at least two different and equally venomous spiders eyed him from opposite sides, he would have given in to the urge to give up on the whole affair and catch the next plane back to the United States. See what Odin does then, what the Watchers, Creed, whatever they call themselves do if I just back out of it all, he thought. But Oliver knew that backing out wasn’t an option. Whatever Samuel Gower had seen in the Wagner folio had been sufficient to trigger a rapid, and effective, kidnapping plot, and now he was apparently being rescued by one of those kidnappers solely on the virtue of wearing a piece of olive wood as a necklace.

Oliver shook his head and threw his hands up, then slammed them down on his knees. “What’s the deal here, Remiel?” 

She shook her head and blinked, as if dismissing the sight of a particularly gruesome roadkill, and said, “I’m just surprised you don’t understand what you’re protecting, what you’re seeking.”

“That’s the point: I don’t know. The shards are a mystery. They’re more ancient than any nation, any society, any race, but virtually nobody even suspects that they exist.”

“They’re dangerous, Oliver, that’s why we guard them.”

“Clearly. And your whole group is doing such a great job guarding them that I’ve successfully acquired five before you even tried to stop me.”

Remiel ignored the jab and carried on. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.”

“And you obviously don’t know me.” Oliver leaned closer, bracing against the dashboard above the center console and boring into Remiel’s eyes with his own, “I am not going to give up hunting down those shards until I know the truth about what they actually are. Are you going to tell me?” He paused, steeling his nerve to not be pulled into the depths of Remiel’s eyes. 

Remiel, for her part, said nothing. Oliver’s sudden aggressive posture startled her, but she did not draw back from him. She held his gaze, matching him blink for blink, breath for breath.

Oliver shook his head and said, “I didn’t think so.” He sat back and leaned into the seat, then twisted his head to watch her as he said, “I’m not going to give up my search, Remiel. If you’re willing to help me, we can talk, but if not then I’ll thank you for saving my skin back there and ask you to drop me off in the next town.”

“What about your cousin?”

Oliver squinted and felt a tension ripple down his neck, shoulders, and through his arms into his fists. “What about her?” he growled.

“Zedekiah isn’t going to stop, Oliver. If you disappear, he’ll go after what’s precious to you.”

“Stop talking, now.”

“I’m telling the truth. Before he went to get his acolytes Zedekiah told me to go to America and...”

The gun was in Remiel’s face before she could blink, the hammer fully cocked, the safety down, Oliver’s finger hovering beside the trigger. Looking past the harsh steel of the barrel with a cool born of ten thousand years, Remiel glared back at Oliver. Only when their eyes met did Remiel feel a chill run through her. Though she did not fear for her soul, the cold hatred in Oliver’s eyes delivered an involuntary burst of adrenaline to her incarnate body, washing her with a fear she had not anticipated.

“You’re not going to let that happen,” Oliver whispered.

She said nothing. Did not move.

“I said, you’re not going to let that happen.”

She nodded.

“Is my cell phone in that bag?” Oliver said, inclining his head towards the leather satchel in the back seat.

“Yes.”

“What else?”

“Your wallet, the folio, and a couple books that might help us interpret it.”

“I’m going to get Amber to safety while you get us to London, without talking. When we get to London, you’re going to take me to that bastard Samuel Gower, and he’s going to tell me exactly what made him tip you off. Got it?”

She nodded.

“One last thing. Remiel, when this is all over, we are going to fix it so your bosses never touch Amber, or anyone else I care about.”

“How do you expect to do that?”

“I’ve got a few ideas. Now, get the bag and set it in my lap, then face forward and leave me the hell alone for a while.”

She did as he asked. Once Oliver had retrieved his phone from the satchel and verified that it had sufficient charge and was in working order, he safed the gun and set it on the floor at his feet, then unlocked his phone with a swipe across the fingerprint sensitive edge. He pulled up his e-mail, Twitter, and chat apps in rapid succession, using each to blast off a brief distress signal to Amber. It read, simply, “Danger! Call ASAP!”

Oliver balanced his phone on his thigh and faced forward, watching the landscape race towards them around the rear of a large van, which the highway navigation system maintained at a consistent three feet ahead of their bumper. It had been a mistake coming to Britain, he decided. If he had remained in Germany and accepted Odin’s assistance in translating the folio, none of this would have happened. As soon as the decision took form in his mind, however, Oliver realized that it was a childish simplification of the situation. The Creed had clearly been watching him for a long while, just waiting until he crossed some crucial threshold or passed into their grasp. Perhaps they hadn’t known his true identity until Gower tipped them off, they hadn’t known about his recent adventure in Egypt or moved against Amber until he told them where the heartwood came from, but Zedekiah’s knowledge of his actions in the Cook islands and rapid action against Oliver’s family made it clear that, one way or another, they would have come for him eventually. Maybe this way is better, Oliver thought. At least now I have some idea what I’m up against and there is some chance that I can outwit them.

The phone vibrated and he snatched it to his ear.

“Oliver? What’s wrong?” Amber said on the other end of the connection.

“You need to get to safety.”

“How do I know this is real?”

Good girl, Oliver thought. After their first adventure together, when Amber had elected to remain home in Virginia and act as an emergency contact and research aid, rather than returning to the perils of field work, they had established several emergency codes. Amber had laughed at Oliver’s instance that their codewords include an indication that she was in danger, all the way back in the United States, but she had relented at last. The agreed upon code for, “Get out of town, you’re in danger” was determined to be the one food that Amber had been allergic to since childhood.

“Avocado. Serious guacamole, Amber.” 

“Oh, shit.”

“Precisely.”

“Are you sure?”

“Amber, they were about to go after you when one of them turned and helped me escape. I can’t even be sure that she is genuinely helping me.” Oliver shot a glance at Remiel, who remained stony faced, seemingly unaffected by his lack of confidence in her. “Please, Amber. You just told me you’re pregnant a few days ago. You can’t take risks for me. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to you.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll survive this, trust me, and I’m working on a plan to keep us all safe in the long term. Go now, you and Tom both. You can still do your work, but don’t tell anyone where you’re going and shut down location services on your phones and laptops.”

“Stay safe Oliver. And keep in touch like usual.”

“You too. Love.”

“Love.” 

Oliver dropped the phone to his lap and pressed his fingertips to his forehead, willing himself to remain calm. He had been careful to keep a wall between his work and his family, tried to protect those he loved from his illegal relic hunts and obsession with the shards, but that wall was clearly beginning to crumble.

“Avocado?” Remiel asked.

Oliver blinked away the stress and turned to her, his jaw set hard. “I thought I asked you to keep quiet until we reached London.”

“I’m not yours to command, Oliver. We’re in this together now.”

Oliver didn’t reply. He turned to watch the landscape of farms and small towns race by out the side window. Meanwhile, inside his head, the details of the situation shuffled, came together, and separated again like a jigsaw puzzle composed of living, shifting pieces.

Next Chapter: Acolyte