Attrition of the Gods: Book 1 of the Mystery Thriller series Gods Toys. (43 page)

“Well, ya dunna have ta. Just take it and fling it out da window. It’ll fly across the favelas from up here.”

Ember sighs. “I can’t do that, and to be honest the damage is done. Perhaps I should go back. Get it over and done with?” She looks down at the glass, realising she feels a little strange.

Chamuel comes back into the room. He is unusually quiet. She is grateful for his silence. They nod and share a faint smile before Ember jumps down and returns to the viewing room.

“She is very young, Chamuel,” says Donegal, running her hands through Chamuel’s tight curls. “I don’t know what you have her watching in there but I am guessing you have plans for her. I hope you know what you are doing.”

He holds her around the waist but for once has no cocky retort. “Not exactly.”

“Well, we could be waiting out here a long time so best we keep drinking, as me old daddy would say.”

They do wait a long time. The message runs for over two hours. No more crying is heard though, no more shouting at the screen. The first indication that it is over is when the door opens. Both wait expectantly as Ember reappears. Donegal is pleased to see the young girl looking radiant, with a glow she had not seen in her earlier. She turns to Chamuel, about to comment, but notices that he is staring at Ember as if he has seen a ghost. Donegal follows his stare and is sure he is looking just above Ember’s head.

Chamuel is entranced. He was prepared for a change in Ember after she saw the message but he is amazed at what he can see. Swirling above her head, a thick silver cloud glistens. The cloud takes a shape and Chamuel knows he has seen this aura once before but even so, he cannot explain it. The great white shark swims between Ember’s arms, around her torso, up along her legs then back across her shoulders. Chamuel mouths the words as he is thinking them. “It can’t be.”

Venice

Reuben has calmed down or so it seems. He paces around, staring at the floor. Simeon is grimly expecting a very slow and painful death to balance the distress he has caused his fellow Jinni. Finally Reuben speaks. “Touché, old friend. It seems you have managed to get the human out safe and sound. I should thank you really, it would be no fun to win so easily.”

Reuben walks around the smug Simeon like a hunter circling its prey. “I suppose you want to know my next move. You know, so you can message whichever one of those cunts, who are supposed to WATCH and not interfere, is helping you.”

Simeon is not surprised that Reuben has worked it out. Of course, someone would have to be an Arc Hon for Simeon to be able to link with them. He doubts Reuben will be able to work out that in fact all three remaining Arc Hon have decided to ally themselves with the new challenger. They will still follow certain rules but for the most part they are no longer Watchers; they are players.

“Well, actually, I
am
going to tell you… no, I am going to show you what my next move is and you, dear friend, are going to link with your Arc Hon friend, and then they will show it to Shane Mills himself.”

Simeon is curious and a little concerned about what strategy Reuben is about to play now. A strategy that he is so confident will work that he wishes to willingly inform his adversaries about it.

“I won’t be aiding you in any way,” says Simeon. “If there is something you want Mills to see, then it’ll be my task to make sure he doesn’t. You should know, old friend, there is no pain that you can inflict which will cause me to compromise the challenger.”

When Reuben looks up, he smiles a smile that Simeon recognises as one of confidence. Whatever he has up his sleeve must be good, Simeon concludes. He waits to hear the smarmy retort that he expects to come from Reuben’s mouth but instead he hears another voice, a female voice. Solfrid.

“Oh, I think we can manage to change your mind, my dear Simeon.”

Shit, he thinks, of course the bitch was helping Reuben all this time. She was probably the one who told him how to eliminate the others. In fact, she probably helped him do that.

“Why?” he asks.

“What did you think this game was all about? Do you really think it was all just a distraction for the Djinn collective, something to relieve the boredom?” She laughs at the quizzical look on Simeon’s face. “Oh, you did think that, and of course you swallowed the bullshit too, about us ultimately helping the humans reach enlightenment. God, can you imagine these savages living on the same plain that we occupy? No, this game will establish the Djinn once and for all as the true and rightful overlords, both in our world and this pleasure-filled physical world. We are GODS to these humans! We shouldn’t be skulking around in the shadows. We should be sat upon the thrones ruling them! And I don’t just mean the select few that the all-fucking-mighty Arc Hon allow to take physical form, I mean all of us. The thousands who seethe in envy from our dimension. There has been a shift, Simeon. The Djinn want the life we always should have had. We
will
cross over and we
will
rule!”

Simeon has never trusted Solfrid. She was the first Djinn to take human form and he knows she has been corrupted by the pleasures of the flesh ever since. However, she is ranting about an impossible task here. Even the Arc Hon could not possibly transfer the thousands of Djinn to the state she expects.

She smiles at him. “You wonder what I am talking about, how this could be possible. Let me show you.”

Simeon’s mind merges with hers and he sees the universe outside of the physical barriers.

“In approximately 150 years the Age of Aquarius begins and the Demiurge returns, hoping to find his calculations have proved correct and that a utopia has occurred. The alignment will coincide with the event of the Nibiru cataclysm, which heralds his arrival. These events and a controlled nuclear fusion via our new toy, the Hadron Collider, will cause a power surge that will enable a mass crossover. We will farm human bodies for future possessions, allowing the Djinn to exist as infinite beings in the physical world. When the Demiurge sees what we have done, he will accept this is now our planet and that his plan has failed.”

Simeon scoffs. “Another oracle. How would you even know what his plan is? Even the Arc Hon wonder what the plan is. So you come up with your own interpretation? That is just the same as the humans with their deities, their Quran or Bible.”

The harsh slap from her hand leaves a welt across his face. “Never compare me to these vermin!”

Simeon prepares for another blow but she calms down, as though the next thought that has entered her mind has caused her to become serene. “I will tell you how I know what his plan is, shall I? Better still, I will show you.”

Inside his mind a vision appears, showing the image of Michael, the Arc Hon who has been missing for centuries. He sits in the realm known to Simeon as the corona, the world between worlds. The vision shows Michael speaking with Reuben and Solfrid. Simeon witnesses the whole meeting from a fly-on-the-wall position.

“I am delighted that we are close to completing the plan,” says Michael. “Soon the world will be lost to chaos what with the Muslim Jihadists, the crazy Jews blowing each other up, and of course that nasty virus we will release in Africa. Soon we begin the Solution under your leadership, Reuben. You will become the saviour with grateful followers.”

“Yes, and then we can prepare for the Nibiru to reappear from its Occultation and blaze the path ready to combat the Demiurge’s return!”

Simeon is surprised by Reuben’s unusual tone; one of reverence and subservience. Everything clicks. Of course. Reuben is just another player. And even Solfrid is just an underling. It is Michael who is the mastermind. It has always been him. Centuries, perhaps millennia, of planning at work.

“And what if he is displeased with the results of his experiment?” asks Reuben.

Michael is smug. “Oh, he will be displeased but what does he expect? He cast us down here, his loyal servants, sentenced to watch over these inferior beings, while he left. But now we know the truth. The Fallen One has told us all; that the humans are his chose people and we Arc Hon and you Djinn are just second-class citizens, only here to guide and help these savages. Well, by the time he has returned this will be my… sorry,
our
world, and we will be ready for him. I wait in anticipation to see how he reacts to finding these hominids that he loves so much utilised as mere slaves and body vessels for the use of the rightful rulers, the holy trinity of the Arc Hon, the Fallen One and the Djinn.

Things are now finally clear to Simeon and his questions are being answered, except now he has a new question. Who is the Fallen One?

Somewhere in the British countryside

Located in the north of Buckinghamshire lies an area of rolling agricultural landscape known as Aylesbury Vale. Shane sits up front in the stolen Land Rover that Chamuel drives. He wouldn’t class himself as a nervous passenger normally but he is concerned that Chamuel’s erratic driving will bring attention to the group. He assumes that the media will by now have photos and video images of him and the other two splattered all over the TV. It is nearly three hours since the prison break and perhaps two hours since they released the Governor. Perhaps Chamuel had a point, getting out of this predicament would be a lot easier if the authorities were presuming they had died with the rest of the prisoners. Still, they may be lucky and get to this Simeon’s underground place before the story really breaks.

He feels a pang of guilt towards the Wilkinsons who they left tied up in the farmhouse but he knows if Chamuel had had his way they would be dead, so at least he doesn’t have their death on his conscience. Shane looks into the back seats and notices both Leo and Robert are looking at each other and gripping the seats.

He decides to comment. “You need to slow down. You’re drawing attention to us.”

The speedo reads 110mph. Chamuel tuts but he does slow.

“Yeah, well, we gotta get to the tunnels before you and the twins back there are poster boys for worldwide terrorism,” he retorts. “Anyway, we’re nearly there. In fact, we need to ditch this vehicle.”

Chamuel swerves off the road and drives through a small wooded area, coming to a sudden halt. Leo and Robert are so relieved to get out of the car they don’t question what is next. Shane does.

“So, where are we going now?”

Chamuel smiles. “We are going to gaol.”

“Again?” sighs Leo.

Chamuel smiles. It was clear to Simeon that he was a target after he was eliminated by his other Djinn for his radical views towards the humans and so he prepared a retreat, a secret haven with an entrance hidden in the local gaol. He favoured a place called Aylesbury Vale, where he’d had many followers through a Freemason lodge he’d set up there. He had a house built there in the 1700s, calling it Claydon House and by the mid-1800s, he was building underground tunnels into London. Under the premise of building a modern transport service, he orchestrated the commissioning of not one, but many tunnels. The first one, all the world knew about but the second one, only a soon-to-be deceased MP and eleven thousand black slave-workers. He also had a gaol built, which contained the entrance. Today it is a museum but the entrance is still there for those who know how to find it, hidden in the same cell as always.

Shane and his band of renegades pass into the museum unnoticed as the skeleton staff are busy watching the news on TV.

“Would you just look at that big black chap? He’s got murderous eyes if I ever saw them. Typical Muslim. It was clearly his plan,” says Ivor the curator.

“They don’t know who it was yet. Isn’t the fit Mills bloke Irish? Maybe it were the IRA?” adds Eliza, who has worked on the door here for forty of her fifty-nine years.

“I heard the old guy with glasses is in with the Italian Mafia and it was a revenge hit that went wrong,” says the youngest staff member and the others all mock him for such a ridiculous idea.

If the three staff members could be bothered to look at the monitor that watched over the entrance and hallway of the museum, they may have noticed that the four people entering the prison cell exhibit are in fact the same four people they are scrutinising on their TV screen. Luckily for the staff, they did not notice.

The cell stands as it has these past three hundred years, only now it’s an exhibit, kept as it was to give the visitors a realistic experience of life in gaol back in the day. Chamuel sneaks over the barrier and counts bricks, up then across. Shane gets the Indiana Jones theme in his head.

Under the stone bench attached to the wall a small opening appears.

“Well it still works, sheesh… how nobody ever found this, I don’t know!” Shane hopes it is going to get bigger as he doubts he could squeeze in through it as it is. He looks at Robert and knows he definitely won’t. Chamuel pushes the brick harder and the opening grows a few centimetres more.

“You first, big boy,” Chamuel instructs Robert, who lies down and rolls into the black opening. He sticks for a moment but after a helping foot from Chamuel he disappears into the darkness. Next Leo puts his glasses into his pocket and, kneeling, enters the hole head first. Soon his feet are swallowed up.

“Ok, once I release this brick, we got sixty seconds, so get on your belly, soldier boy and start shuffling. Shane ducks under the bench and pushes his body into the dark, damp hole. Soon he is in a narrow tunnel and he can hear the other two shuffling ahead of him.

“Get a fucking move on!” he hears from Chamuel, whose silhouette fades as the opening closes behind him. Shane wonders how Robert managed to get through as he himself is struggling to move in such a confined space. The incessant griping of Chamuel behind him drives him on and soon he reaches another opening and he can make out Robert’s outstretched arm pulling Leo out and up onto his feet. Shane reaches the end and is relieved to find a lighted, spacious room awaits them.

Chamuel exits last, still moaning. “Man, you need to wash them feet soon as we find some running water.”