Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys. (22 page)

Still, he feels no resentment to the old guy; he just feels a little stupid. Shane also had to question if the Black Muslim guy was guilty of anything other than being part of Leo’s illusions, and maybe he did only break up a fight between Leo and gay Gray after all. Whatever it was, it is over now and Shane wonders if there is a way he could be reconsidered for the Swedish hotty’s project.

Robert is not sure of his next move. He had been sent here to protect the old Jew and was told that he must make sure nothing happens to this Shane Mills as well. He is certain that Shane is not his biggest fan and some of the other prisoners had told him to be careful as they had heard Shane was looking to take him out. This was going to make things difficult as Chamuel had insisted that under no circumstances was he to kill this white boy. Anyway, until he hears from Chamuel there is nothing he can do, so best not to over think it. If the soldier starts a fight he will just have to defend himself without causing too much damage. Although, from what he’s heard this guy is a pretty formidable fighter. Robert hopes that Chamuel will contact him before the two clash.

Leo had been sorry to mislead Regina but the sudden epiphany he’d had in the yard has left him believing something is about to happen and he needs to stay within these walls and stay alive, at least until he fulfils his mission. Convincing the head-shrink he was mad had been easy; he just told her the truth about the Djinn. But now it is important that he gets a message to Shane. He is sure that he has read the signs right and that Reuben is about to attack. He tries to remember what Simeon had told him once when they were sitting outside yet another café bar in the Morano district, a beautiful group of islands connected by a series of bridges just outside Venice’s centre.

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“There are many logistical problems in contacting someone when you have little idea where they are, or even who they are,” said Simeon. “So when we Djinn wish to make alliances with each other we have used different methods. A favourite of mine was hiding symbols in cultural art and by using semiotics I’d communicate with other Djinn without alerting mankind to our existence. Many historical books, writings, plays, musical compositions and paintings carry messages that the Arc Hon or Djinn can interpret. Lately a few of the human intelligentsia have begun to decipher the meaning behind some of the symbols. Then you have the conspiracy theorists, seeing signs where there are none mostly but actually uncovering many of our messages.”

Simeon saw from the blank expression on Leo’s face that he had no idea what he was talking about so he pulled out a tablet from his bag and brought up some images.

“Rembrandt,” said Leo, pleased with himself.

Simeon nodded. “Isaac and I had many an alliance during the previous four hundred years. We used paintings by mostly Dutch artists, this way we knew the messages were for us and we had our own code.

“If you see this one, titled
Belshazzar’s Feast…
” Simeon enlarged the image of a very detailed oil painting depicting a group of people at a feast looking on in horror as an unconnected hand writes on the wall behind them. “This was my communication to Isaac that Reuben had persuaded Ferdinand, the current emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, to attack the French on 18
^th
September 1635.”

Leo looked at it, waiting for the explanation.

“You see, the writing on the wall is the date. Translated it means
nine plus nine of the nine
. The man wearing the robes is Belshazzar but it’s actually a portrait of me or how I appeared in my first incarnation. The spilt wine is a symbol for bloodshed.” Leo had no time for this bullshit. Simeon and he had been talking like this for eighteen months. Time, for the long-living Djinn, may feel different but to Leo it felt like he was quickly running out of it.

“You keep telling me that I will need to mentor a champion to win this game for the human race. I need to know more useful stuff. What of the opponents? Who are they?”

Simeon nodded. “You are right. I am prone to nostalgia. To my reckoning there are only four, perhaps five, Djinn left, out of the original thirteen. There is Levi who is pulling the strings in America, Judd is prevalent in the Orient and then Asher controls the Politburo and the Middle East. I will tell you all about each of them but there is one in particular you must be aware of.”

Leo was well aware of the one he was talking about.

“You mean Reuben.”

Simeon nodded. “However, all of them must be eliminated. When the thirteen Djinn first arrived we stayed for thirty years in what you now know as Israel. We needed to acclimatise and get used to having a physical presence. We spent the time planning our journeys. Each of us took a name from one of the tribes that lived in the lands. When the time was right we left the hospitality of the then king, Solomon, who we rewarded for helping us. Each of us had nothing but a small guard and a harem and some gold.

“Benjamin stayed in the Levant, Reuben headed for what we now call Italy, Levi went to Egypt, I went to Greece, Zeb to China, Judd to Persia, Daniel went to Ethiopia, Naphtali crossed to South America, Isaac went to Iberia, Asher headed for northern Europe, and Gad, he headed to the North of Africa. Oh and Ephraim went to the Indian subcontinent and Manasseh crossed to North America. On the day we left we all took oaths and each of us was assigned one of the four Watchers.”

Leo had brought out his pen and some paper. “Who got which Watcher?”

“Okay, let’s see, Amitiel was assigned Isaac, Gad, and Ephraim; Chamuel would be mine, Naphtali’s and Judd’s; Raphael looked after Ben, Daniel and Levi; the others, Reuben, Manasseh, Zeb and Asher, were Michael’s.”

Leo felt like a reporter getting the scoop on the greatest revelation ever, still writing as he talked. “So am I right in assuming you all then built your empires from these original locations?”

“Well, the first part was to send us out into the world, so to speak, so we could settle in before the game really got going. Remember, all we had was the small guard, the harem of women and some gold. We were on our own in a dangerously savage world with only our wits to guide us. The rules stated that we pitch our tents in the chosen destinations. The first part of the competition required us to stay there and build our tribe over the next couple of hundred years. We could not contact a Watcher or each other for this period. Then after two hundred years the game began. Those first years were both terrifying and exciting at the same time.”

Leo could hear from Simeon’s voice that these were memories of a time he had enjoyed.

“I was fortunate to have picked a comparatively civilised part of the world and I set myself up as a scholar. In fact my first student was the epic poet Homer. My next move was to create one of the strongest tools known to man.”

Leo knew he was meant to ask. “Which was?”

“The written word! Using symbols I developed what you know as the Phoenician Alphabet. I didn’t invent it but let’s just say I helped make sense of it. This simple process propelled my chosen tribe towards being the world’s leaders in all aspects of communication and academics.”

“Then once the first two hundred years were over, we could go wherever we wanted, but obviously for most of us we used these original hubs as our strongholds. For instance, if you follow Reuben’s trail he discovered Rome then built its empire slowly but surely over centuries. It was a steep learning curve for him. He was the first of us to realise that to win this game you would need more than a large army, as he witnessed barbarian rabbles overrunning his highly trained armies and knew that chaos could easily prevail.

“Reuben was inspired by the Jewish religion from Israel that Isaac had adopted and devised a plan to create a worldwide religion that everyone would buy into. So he found a young ideologist he met in Judea, chucked in a virgin birth, a faked death and there you had it: Christianity. So while his first great empire crashed around him, he rose another. Later Isaac, Levi and I all infiltrated this religion in various attempts to divide it and reduce its power from within. Reuben was very nearly defeated but unfortunately off the back of the Frankish empire he continued his domain under the name of the Holy Roman Empire.

“This was the first Reich. Eventually this sham of an empire was also torn down, defeated by Napoleon’s forces under the mentorship of Levi, who had moved north from Egypt and had concentrated his efforts on Europe, although he still had a soft spot for his original country.

“Reuben didn’t accept defeat, of course, instead he slowly developed his Aryan plan. He had a brief revival in Germany under Bismarck, his second Reich. He brought the empires of Germany and Austria together and started the First World War, a war he always intended to lose, by the way. This was the master stroke – by losing he created a powerful mix of injustice and outrage that allowed him to create the largest military force known to man: the Nazis and the inception of his Third Reich.”

Leo shook his head thinking how ironic it would sound to people to know that both Christ and the antichrist evolved from the same source.

“Isaac, Levi and Asher joined forces to defeat Reuben, of course,” said Simeon. “It was touch and go for a while but they did it in the end. The defeat should have been the end of Reuben but he wasn’t ready to give up, not by a long shot. By bending the rules and killing Isaac he adopted, or more accurately stole, the tactic of financial dominance. Now he has risen once again to be the leading Jinni in the quest to be the Host and soon he will attempt to create the fourth Reich. His New World Order.”

“I get that the prize is to be the Host but what does that actually mean?” asked Leo.

“Whoever is dominating the challenge as judged by the Watchers is termed the Host. It’s a temporary title but will become permanent once all the others have been defeated.”

“When you say defeated, do you mean killed? None can remain?” The reply he received was not straightforward.

“In some cases a Jinni is disqualified, like I was. You can also be disqualified if your tribe yields the least influence and their pursuit has become untenable. Manasseh was the first to go; he was unsuccessful in bringing the North American indigenous people to any real power, unlike Naphtali in the South American continent, who successfully mentored the Mesoamerican dynasties such as the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs. Once Manasseh was removed then all the others could compete for his territory and so the United States was born. After a Jinni is disqualified the Watchers remove the individual from the game and send them back to our space in this world, Gheisthelm.”

“When you say your space, is that like, a different dimension or a different planet…?”

Simeon sighed. “Not really, you see a dimension describes height, width, depth. We Djinn occupy the same space, just on a different frequency.”

Leo was none the wiser but nodded as if he understood. Simeon carried on.

“Over the last four hundred years, six of the Djinn have disappeared and not returned to our home. The only explanation for this is that one of us is killing other Djinn and removing their amulets so they cannot return to Corona and give evidence against their murderer.”

Leo still found it difficult to sympathise with the death of a handful of Djinn who themselves were culpable in uncountable atrocities.

“We never envisaged Djinn killing other Djinn so we had no contingency plan for this event. The conclusion I have come to is that Reuben will set up his Aryan-Christian kingdom on earth and remain as a god-like deity, to be worshipped and served by an enslaved human race.”

“That’s it? That’s his grand plan – to sit on a throne and lord over a bunch of what he considers animals?” Leo said, confused. “What is the point?”

“There is more,” said Simeon. “The coming Nibiru that we suspect will carry the Demiurge…”

“I cannot cope with more,” said Leo. “Not right now.”

“You must listen it was never the intention of the game – to rule over humans,” said Simeon. “The Host is supposed to bring the same enlightenment to humans that the Arc Hon brought to us, you see…”

Those were the last words Simeon said to Leo before the shooting.

Leo had noticed the two young men on the scooter pull up opposite the café that he and Simeon were sitting outside. As Leo listened to Simeon tell him about the Rapture that was to befall the human race he was aware of the passenger on the scooter pulling out what looked like a sub-machine gun. Even after all that had happened Leo didn’t fully realise the situation. It wasn’t until the man pointed the gun directly at the table where they were that the reality hit: this was an assassination attempt and he was at best in the way, at worst the target.

Simeon noticed the panic on Leo’s face, and spun round just as the shooter opened fire. Simeon was no stranger to danger and always picked tables that were tucked out of the way by a wall or behind a pillar, and with plenty of alternative escape routes. Leo instinctively dived under the table as glass and wood splintered with the impact of the bullets that sprayed around him. Screams of customers caught in the crossfire were drowned out by the noise of the guns and Leo looked on in horror as the shooter confidently came closer still, reeling off bullets. The fact their eyes met clearly confirmed to Leo that he was one of the targets.

Simeon had jumped behind a concrete flower cradle. He sat upright, his back to the shooter, looking at Leo as the fire stopped for a second. Leo was sure he saw him smile before he jumped to his feet and ran full pelt at his attacker. He remembered his surprise at the agility and speed that Simeon showed as he leaped over a table, rolled and then sprang to his feet, still careering towards the shooter. At least two bullets hit Simeon, slowing him down but not halting his momentum as he dived into the midriff of the gunman. To his shame Leo took advantage of this distraction and crawled to the open door of the café. When he felt he was covered by enough onlookers he got to his feet and ran through the diner and out of a back door. Leo kept running and running until he reached the town centre, where he flagged down a taxi and made his escape back to his apartment. Once there he had packed his bags and headed to the airport. He was getting out. Simeon was most likely dead and he had no idea what he was supposed to do next. He was an accountant, for the love of God! He wasn’t equipped for this type of thing!