Enoch's Ghost (28 page)

As before, a voice called from offscreen. “Ashley! I see them! I see Walter and Gabriel!”

Once again, Timothy’s heart raced. “Ashley?” Tears formed as his voice crumbled. “Is that my little girl?”

Ashley looked straight into the screen, as if staring right at Timothy. Pale and weak, she nodded. “Thank God!”

Again, a fireball splashed against the screen, setting it ablaze. As it burned away, the cloaked oracle filled the undulating curtain.

“My daughters!” Timothy cried, his entire body quaking. “Are they really alive? Where are those places I saw?”

Her smile seemed to massage away his tremors. “Roxil and Ashley are living, though the lives of both hang by a thread. Ashley will give her life energy to the fallen until she breathes her last breath. Roxil lives on the Earth now only because the tomb of the dead has merged with the land of the living. Unknowingly, she and Ashley do battle against the evil force that has merged the two worlds, and if they succeed, Roxil will once again plunge into that nether land.”

His throat cramped, pitching his voice higher. “So, if my two daughters do what they are called to do, they will perish.”

“Yes, if not for the costliest solution of all.” The oracle tilted her head upward and began to sing, her voice more beautiful than ever.

In desperation’s hope he calls,

“A soul to trade, a soul to sell,”

For better one to suffer flames,

Than daughters loved to burn in Hell.

She looked at him again, her eyes blazing blue. “A sacrificial lamb could provide the soul to trade, but only if it comes willingly. The lamb has no obligation to make this trade, so you cannot use any coercion.” She took a step closer to the crystal curtain, magnifying her lovely face. “Do you understand?”

“I think so,” he said, his voice still cracking. He cleared his throat and lifted his head. “What must I do?”

“Your task is simple in concept, yet tragically difficult to carry out. The lamb has already been prepared, pure and innocent. Once you bring this sacrifice, you will complete your journey and prepare this world for yet another journey to come.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Another journey?”

“The coming of the warrior chief. You see, a tare has been planted among the wheat, a deceiver who will attempt to bring about Eden’s fall. If the corrupter succeeds, then corruption will spread like cancer and destroy this world as well as the one your daughters live in. But that journey is far beyond your horizon.”

“This lamb I’m supposed to find—how is the sacrifice to be made? I can’t bear the thought of killing someone pure and innocent. That seems impossible.”

The oracle pointed at the tunnel’s floor. “Just bring the lamb here, and that is where my counsel ends. You have many decisions to make, and wisdom comes from seeking the light as you take each step in your journey. Otherwise, you would never arrive at your ultimate goal. You will learn, however, that although our heavenly father’s ultimate purpose is more firm than the foundations of the Earth, his plans on how to accomplish them can change according to the actions of those who serve him.” The oracle backed away from the barrier, and the light began to fade. “Go now. When you have completed your task, come back to this place and receive the blessing you seek, the blessing of spiritual deliverance for your daughters.”

As the glow continued to diminish, her voice dwindled to a faint whisper. “Remember, this journey is your choice, not a command.”

The light blinked out, leaving Timothy in darkness. Still on his knees, he groped for the floor, his eyes emblazoned with the radiant images—the oracle, Roxil, Ashley—all flashing in a photo-negative collage.

Crawling back toward the entrance, he found his shoes and socks and picked them up. While rising to his feet, he lurched sideways and had to brace himself against the wall to keep from falling. A hand touched his, then a quiet voice whispered, “I am here, Timothy. Let me lead you.”

Angel looped her arm around his and guided him to the outside. Now in the light, he could see Abraham and the surrounding trees, though they were blurry and superimposed on the image of the white-robed girl.

“Sit,” Angel said, “and I will help you with your shoes.”

A pair of stronger hands guided him to the ground. As he leaned back on the stony cliff, small, delicate fingers massaged his cold feet, then pushed socks over his toes and stretched them up to his calves. “I sense a change in you,” she said, her voice sympathetic and warm. “Even your face glows. The light of the oracle has pierced your soul and enflamed a new passion.”

Timothy blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. “It has, but I am unsure whom I should tell.”

“Tell no one,” Abraham said, “at least for now. Let wisdom guide you, and listen to your companion.”

After slipping on his shoes, Angel fumbled with the strings. “I have not fastened shoes like these before. Shall I just tie a knot?”

Timothy reached for them. “Thank you. I’ll do it.”

With the help of four hands, he got up and brushed off his clothes. He looked around at the tunnel’s threshold, his eyes still adjusting. Bones of shadow people littered the ground in various shades of gray. The newest victim’s remains, still bright white, lay near Timothy’s feet.

He sidestepped the debris and hobbled toward the sound of the river. “Are we finished here, Abraham?”

“We are.”

Abraham was now walking at his side, and he assumed Angel followed as they exited the woods and came in sight of the dragons. “Good. I need to rest and think for a while. It’s been a very long day.”

“Indeed.” Abraham guided him to Albatross. “You may have my bed tonight, and we will talk in the morning.”

Timothy glanced at Angel. She shuffled toward Grackle, her head hanging low. “Abraham,” he said, “will I see Angel again tomorrow?”

Angel turned toward them, a smile brightening her face.

“Is that your wish?” Abraham asked.

“I would like to speak to Candle and Listener, if I may.”

“Ah!” Abraham stroked his short beard. “You wish to learn through the eyes of our young ones.”

“That’s true enough, but it’s also a good excuse to get their wise mother at my side.”

Angel averted her eyes, grinning. She scrambled up Grackle’s neck and let out a series of whistles. “Let us fly!” she called, beaming as she looked back at Timothy. “Dawn will bring us a day of joy!” The purple dragon reared and took off into the moonlit sky.

Chapter 18

The New Tower

Ashley groaned and held on tightly to Karen. Compared to riding Thigocia, flying aboard Roxil was like careening around the hairpin turns on a malfunctioning rollercoaster. The younger dragon’s inexperience promised a meal-losing adventure. With every gust of wind, she corrected her angle without regard for her passengers, giving them hair-raising dips and swings through the misty skies. The three riders could barely speak during their ordeal, choosing instead to pray for calmer winds and settled stomachs.

After a half hour of low swoops to check for Walter’s marks and quick upswings to search on a wider plane, Sapphira pointed at the road far in the distance. “Ashley! I see them! I see Walter and Gabriel!”

Ashley glanced at the two young men. Even though they looked tiny from so far away, the sight brought a surge of joy. “Thank God!”

Karen spoke through two fingers pressed over her lips. “Thank God is right!”

“I’ll let them know we’re coming!” Roxil spewed a blast of fire and zoomed to the ground, pulling up sharply to land between Walter and Gabriel. Not bothering to wait for Roxil to make a neck stairway, Karen slid down the dragon’s side, deftly avoiding her wing. She staggered toward the guardhouse and leaned against the wall, her fingers still pressed against her lips. Suddenly, her eyes bulged, and she jumped back, pointing at the broken window, “Who’s that man? He looks dead!”

“He
is
dead.” Walter reached up to help Sapphira and Ashley as they negotiated Roxil’s sloping neck. “He’s a power company guard, and I’m wearing his coat. I think a Naphil strangled him.”

“Is the Naphil here?” Sapphira asked. “Is it Chazaq?”

Walter took the shoulder bag from Sapphira and pointed past a mangled fence. “The Naphil’s in there. It’s not Chazaq, but you’ll never guess who else we saw.”

Sapphira’s eyes brightened. “Mardon?”

“Well … yeah. I guess it wasn’t so hard to figure out.”

Walter and Gabriel took turns as they told the story of what they saw inside the power plant. Gabriel provided a glowing account of Walter’s bravery as he climbed up to the generator and tried to play the role of lumberjack, but Walter elbowed Gabriel’s ribs and said he was exaggerating. When Walter concluded with a description of Mardon’s power grid and his mention of the tower, Sapphira turned pale.

“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked.

“He’s really doing it.” Sapphira cupped her hands as if molding clay and formed a miniature tower of fire between her palms. “He’s building a tower to Heaven just like his father tried to do.”

“But it didn’t work.” Ashley gazed at Sapphira’s tower. Her eyes followed the fiery spin. “How could anyone believe in building any kind of structure that could reach Heaven? It’s impossible.”

“But since that time,” Sapphira countered, “Mardon has learned about inter-dimensional travel. He knows that an energy vortex can break through the barriers. Maybe he thinks this power grid will create a cross-dimensional tower that can actually reach to Heaven.”

Gabriel twirled his finger. “But doesn’t it have to spin?”

“True,” Sapphira said. “I’m not sure how he’s planning to do that.”

Ashley leaned against Walter and stroked her chin. “Since these giants have already been, in essence, magnetized in an antigravity environment, given enough electromotive force, he could use them as a giant magneto, but he already has all the current he needs, so he could also be making an enormous electromagnet.”

“What good would that do him?” Walter asked.

“I couldn’t explain it unless you’re familiar with quantum mechanics and gravity theory.” Ashley straightened and moved her hands in a wide circle as if she were rubbing a huge ball. “He could be creating a massive gravitational black hole that wouldn’t just break through the dimensional barrier; it would eliminate it and draw the two dimensions into one.” She finished with a clap of her hands.

“That explains a lot,” Sapphira said. “If Roxil, Gabriel, and Mardon all have their bodies back, the same bodies they had while in Hades …”

“More than a lot.” Ashley pointed at Sapphira. “It explains everything! The giants have already combined Hades and our world! The first step was to bring Mardon back, and that worked, so now …” She tilted her head upward. “Heaven’s next.”

Walter pulled out his sword. “So that’s why Excalibur doesn’t work. Billy told me it gave him trouble while he was in Hades. I’d try again with the blade, but after you stick a screwdriver into an electrical outlet and fry your fingers, it’s pretty stupid to stick it right back in.”

“Dragons have knocked the tower down before,” Sapphira said, “maybe they can do it again.”

“I was there.” Roxil shuffled closer. “We did it with a firestorm.”

Sapphira let a brief plume of flames rise from her palm and spun it around. “Could you do it again? Could you make another firestorm?”

“By myself?” Roxil shook her head. “I could torch a giant if he lets me get close enough, but I could never duplicate what we did at Shinar. We had more than a dozen dragons there.”

“But would it work?” Walter asked. “Do we want to risk stirring the pot?”

“Good thinking.” Ashley tapped her finger on her chin. “It might create just the vortex Mardon needs, but I can’t know for sure unless I have data. I need to know the electrical output at every site and the distances between them.”

Walter nodded toward the power plant. “I think the panel displays in the control room show all that.”

“Okay,” she said, looking down the service road, “lead me to it.”

He pulled the handheld computer from the bag and showed it to her. “Would this help?”

“I won’t have time to program it to do the necessary transforms.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I really need Larry, but I’m not sure I can get hold of him, so I might have to do all the calculations in my head.”

“What shall I do?” Roxil asked. “I likely will not be able to follow you.”

Walter put the computer back in the bag. “Give us five minutes, and we’ll be inside. Then fly over the dam and start closing in on the giant. If he sees you and doesn’t do anything about your approach, that might mean he actually wants you to shoot fire and create the vortex.”

“I see,” Roxil said. “Bait the Naphil and hope for a revealing of his purpose.”

Walter opened the front of his coat and tightened his scabbard belt. “If he does fight, I’ll try to give you ground support, maybe distract him somehow.”

“I hope I have not lost my reflexes,” Roxil said as she unfurled her wings. “It has been many centuries since I last went to battle.” She lifted up on her haunches and, beating her leathery canopy against the moist breeze, rose into the air.

Walter and Gabriel led the way to the power plant, while Ashley walked between Sapphira and Karen, still weak and dizzy. She refrained from talking, trying to recall her studies on quantum physics and the set of formulae she used for the electromagnets she built for the transluminators in the underground lab.

She shuffled her feet, kicking pebbles along the way. Could she do it? The calculations were so intensive, she had relied on computers to sort it out, though she did have to write the programs in the first place. Obviously she had the knowledge, but was that all she needed? Could her intelligence be the second widow’s mite, the latter of the two gifts she should blend with faith and offer to God? She pulled the other penny from her pocket and held it tightly in her hand, her uninjured hand. There was only one way to find out.

Walter led them down to the spillway level and through a wide corridor. “If we go in there,” he said, pointing at the hole the giant had ripped in the wall, “we’ll find Mister Ugly in the turbine room perched on top of the generator, but this hall to the right should keep him from seeing us.”

They walked down a dim corridor and entered a large office where flashing monitors greeted their eyes. Walter pointed at a display on one of the head-high rectangular boxes. “That’s the power grid readout.” He turned and touched the shorter desklike control panel that faced the monitors. “I think Mardon used these gizmos to control it.”

Ashley gazed at the panel, then, alternately looking at the controls and the display, began making slight adjustments to the dials. “I can change the categories of data and the scales,” she said, “but I don’t see anything that actually controls the power.”

“Yeah,” Walter said, “that’s what Mardon told us.”

“But the different screens could give me all the data I need to figure out what’s going on.” Ashley nodded at the bag on Walter’s shoulder. “Could you dig out the bricks and the photometer? I want to see what kind of energy they produce. Mardon’s older technology might give me clues about his new stuff.”

“Sure thing.” He placed the seven bricks at Ashley’s feet and set the photometer on the control desk. “Anything else?”

“Sapphira,” Ashley said, “can you set them in a line and turn them on when I need them?”

“Glad to.” Sapphira picked one up and depressed a button on its side. The brick let out a low hum, and a diode on one end emitted a thin blue light.

Ashley read the beam with her photometer. “Hmmm. Visible seems normal, but there are other frequencies to check.” She did the same for the second brick and memorized its photometer readout.

“Want me to find a pencil and paper?” Gabriel asked.

Ashley raised a finger to her lips. “Shhh! I have to do it all in my head.”

Walter leaned close to Gabriel and whispered. “You stay with Ashley. I’m going to peek outside and see if Roxil’s out there yet. It’s been almost five minutes.”

“Sounds cool. Sapphira and I can handle Mardon if he shows up.”

Karen grabbed Walter’s arm. “Can I come with you?”

Walter glanced over his back at Excalibur’s hilt. “Give me a minute to make sure the coast is clear.”

When he left the room, Sapphira picked up the next brick in line and pressed its power switch. “This one’s ready.”

“Thanks.” Ashley managed a weak smile. “Can you hold them up while I analyze the beams? I’m feeling kind of puny right now.”

Ashley read the data, then looked up at the ceiling. “Okay, the gamma readout makes sense, but when I plug it into the formula …” She grabbed a fistful of hair with her wounded hand and pulled it hard. “There’s a constant missing in the formula. What is it?”

Sapphira held the brick with the red diode close to the photometer. “You can’t do this alone, Ashley.”

She released her hair, leaving a bloody smear. “I couldn’t reach Larry. I already tried.”

“I don’t mean Larry.” Sapphira’s eyes once again blazed. “I think you know exactly what I mean.”

Ashley looked up at her and stared. “If you mean have faith, that’s what I’m trying to do.”

“I know you’re trying.” Sapphira laid a hand on Ashley’s cheek. A ripple of fire rode along Sapphira’s forearm and crept into her hand. “You have been trying all your life.”

Ashley closed her eyes. Heavenly warmth radiated into her cheek and flowed throughout her body, loosening her muscles and draining her tension.

“Relax, Ashley, and let Jehovah work through you. Faith asks that you let his power flow, not your anxiety, not your fears, and not your sweat. His power.”

Ashley took a deep breath and opened her eyes. “Thank you. I think I understand.”

“Psst!” Gabriel waved at Sapphira. “We have company!”

Ashley and Sapphira swung around. A man wearing an old tunic walked into the control room, his hands behind him. “Well, well,” he said, smiling, “this is a surprise indeed!” He bowed toward Sapphira. “I never thought I’d see you again, Mara, but I must say, I am truly delighted. Your extremely long life is a grand tribute to our success in genetic technology.” He drew near and extended his hand toward her head. “If I may, I would like to see if”

Sapphira swatted his hand away. “You may not see anything, Mardon.”

Gabriel stepped in front of Sapphira and pushed Mardon away.

Mardon’s sandals slipped on the tiled floor, but he backpedaled quickly and regained his balance. As he bent over to adjust his sandal, he laughed nervously. “The winged boy is chivalrous, Mara, but I only meant to check your scalp for deterioration. Our quest for knowledge is never over.”

Sapphira’s voice sharpened. “I am Sapphira Adi, a daughter of Jehovah. I am not your science experiment anymore.”

Mardon held up his hands. “Very well. I meant no harm. But if you are a daughter of Jehovah, as you call him, you should welcome my pursuits. We will see your father face-to-face very soon.”

“We figured out what you’re up to,” Sapphira said, “and it’s crazy. Do you think Jehovah can’t stop you?”

“Stop me?” Mardon chuckled. “God has long wanted to fellowship with man, but my father and I failed to bring God and man together in Shinar because we insulted him by assuming that a physical tower could reach to his glory. Now that I have identified the dimensional barrier separating us, I am eliminating it. Far from stopping me, this is exactly what he wants.”

Ashley read the photometer as she scanned the final brick. “If God wanted that to happen, he would have broken down the barrier himself.”

“Nonsense,” Mardon replied. “Elohim uses men to carry out his work. He called a man, Jesus, to break down the spiritual barrier, and now he has called another man, me, to break down the final, physical barrier.” He peered at Ashley’s work. “What are you doing with my bricks?”

She scowled at him and shoved the brick to the side. “A science experiment.”

“The bricks are worthless now,” Mardon said, wagging his finger at them. “They have no power over the Nephilim.”

Ashley waved the photometer at him. “They told me what you’re up to. All that radiation and magnetism over the years turned your giants into power generators. They are capable of making a gravity void that can rip the dimensional boundary.”

“Quite right, and due to my genetic engineering, they are immune to the electrical charges as well as weapons like Excalibur. When the grid is fully maximized, Heaven and Earth will be joined in one dimension, and I will ascend my new stairway to God’s kingdom.”

Sapphira stalked toward him. Flames mixed in with her snowy hair, making her look like a walking torch. “And you’ll get struck dead for your arrogance.” She pressed her finger into his chest. “Then God will flick you back to Hades with his fingertip. Everything you’ve done will be destroyed.”