Fallen Masters (48 page)

Was there no end to all this symbolism? Coincidence?

If Dawson had all this figured out, C. S. Lewis, who was now dead, wanted Dawson’s help. Help with what?

This was all too ridiculous. Maybe it was nothing but his overactive brain coming up with the next storyline for Matt Matthews. Are writers sometimes forced to live in the very worlds they create?

Who needs his help? A dead writer? Why him? Why now? He wanted to howl, to cry out to the literary gods who had zapped him with some peculiar sort of insanity or inspiration—he wasn’t sure which. He stood erect. He knew on some weird level that he was about to walk through his own wardrobe.

CHAPTER

87

Grenada

Mama G, having consulted her charts all evening, was posting her nightly blog. After noting scores of specifics about alignments, risings and fallings, about the gatherings of stars and shadows and dark matter still closing in, she shared these words:

From each one, many.

As above, so below.

No one sign, no one spirit, no one moves alone.

No one.

All one.

As above, so below.

Mama G had been seeing signs and hearing voices with accelerating intensity, with a greater positive vibration. Sometimes the brilliances of light and energy would wash over her with so much light and power, she would get light-headed, breathless.

But Mama G was feeling her bouts of hopelessness and uselessness and utter sadness beginning to ease. A clearing of sorts. Signs of clearing. Her recent sense of doom now dissipating, even just a bit. More and more, with each post on her blog, she was energized, renewed.

Each answer she gave to a fellow soul who was logged on to her site sustained her feeling of momentum. Like she was going places, every time she pressed
SEND
.

She knew deep in her heart that she had been receiving floods of good energy, showers of light of hope and love and usefulness, all coming to her from the Council of Elders. She saw the Governor’s approving face. All this warm feeling being sustained every time she shared this energy with others.

And they were coming together to do what needed to be done.

She heard,
All. Together. All

Your choice. Your acts.

Below, as above.

One.

Mama G sat typing at her computer but as she did so, the words that she thought she was putting on the screen didn’t appear. Instead she got words like
Hollywood Joe, Hello L.A., Big Warehouse Sale—All Must Be Freed.

And suddenly Mama G had a vision of a young boy in a lightless place.…

Sometimes it was that simple: In this vision she was shown how she could help find the President’s son—in Los Angeles. She laughed as she wrote down the information, and then picked up the phone to call Dave Hampton. Surely he knew how to get this info to the FBI. She knew it wasn’t much, but merely knowing for sure that the boy was in the city would surely help.

She’d also call Dawson Rask, a truly good man who had come to Grenada years ago to do research for one of his novels and along the way become a trusted friend. Someone had to find that boy, and fast. And she had a sense if Hampton didn’t have the resources, then Dawson knew how to reach the FBI even more quickly than she could.

Then she discovered an email from Dawson that she hadn’t seen before.… When had it come in? She checked: Just within the past hour. As she read the email, she thought,
Whoa, Lord, my instincts are right. You are deep in this thing already, man, and I am glad you are on our side.

And suddenly Mama G knew in her bones that this was but the start of her journey. That she was not just a messenger in this upcoming battle but a player. It was time for her to pack a bag and leave her beloved island. She would brave her nemesis—her fear of flying—and go to the City of Angels herself.

*   *   *

News brief from
The New York Times:

Teen’s Confession Thrown Out In Buddhist Temple Massacre

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Arizona ruled that a teenager’s confession to nine killings at a Buddhist temple was involuntary because he was not properly read his rights.

Daniel David Johnssen was 17 at the time of the killings of six priests, a nun and two others during a robbery at the Wat Promkunaram temple west of Phoenix in 2002. He was sentenced to serve 301 years after he was convicted of murder, armed robbery and other charges and has spent more than 10 years in prison, most of that time in solitary confinement.

The Arizona attorney general’s office is considering whether to file a petition asking the Supreme Court to review the case or seek to retry Johnssen, who pled guilty to all charges and later claimed he was “ordered” to perform the killings by the Antichrist.

CHAPTER

88

Angel Emphatic, also known as the One, felt self-satisfied at the turn of events. In human form—passing as a Los Angeles white-collar criminal—he had burrowed into the community for several months to establish roots there in anticipation of the critical moves his masters had tasked him to perform. He was a general in command of a vast army that was scattered across the Earth, warriors who had trained and prepared for the battle that would seal the fate of mankind for all eternity. The general was eager to deploy his forces.

Marcus Jackson, the son of the assassinated president, lay in the secure room next to Domingo’s office in a warehouse district of L.A.

The plan was simple—and critical. Marcus must be contained until after the revelation by Angel Emphatic of the ascendancy of the Dark Forces. If Marcus were to escape, it could ruin all his plans. The young man had the potential to mobilize Light forces all over the Earth and turn the Dark Matter away. He didn’t know his potential, of course, or he would be trying harder to escape.

No, Angel Emphatic was confident of his eventual and total triumph.

The date, time, and place of the announcement of victory was set—and it was now only days away. In that epochal moment, Los Angeles—glamorous Hollywood and all that it stood for—would be at the epicenter of the world. It always brought a smile to his human lips to think of the irony and the absolute rightness of the plan.

Angel Emphatic transported himself across the planes in the blink of an eye to the realm of darkness. There he sought out his lieutenant, known as IRA, to glean the latest intelligence the trickster had gathered from the Council of Elders in the enemy camp.

The two adherents of the Dark Energies met and merged their consciousness in familiar conversation. They had spoken often over many centuries and knew each other’s thoughts intimately.

“Greetings, brother,” Angel Emphatic said warmly.

“My most esteemed brother and friend,” IRA greeted in return.

“So, Clever One, tell me of your progress with the arrogant American leader who is in your capable hands and under your guiding influence.”

“He is everything we expected—including naïve. He is dying to do good. Pardon the pun!” IRA was proud of his facility with languages. His “specialty” was rhetoric—influencing others through his clever words and planting tortuous rhetorical thoughts in the minds of earthly men and women to muddy moral issues and debates among them.

“The Council of Elders seems desperate to enlist him in their dying cause, but I have detected a hesitance within him. He is still very new on the Other Side and not yet comfortable there. He is obsessed by what is going on in the human realm and has not yet let go. I would characterize him as stubborn.”

“That is excellent—for our purposes. If we can manipulate him, we can move him to delay action by the Elders against us. Do you agree?”

“I agree wholeheartedly, my lord. But I would add this note of optimism. I believe I can turn him to our side, enlist him as an ally to the Tribunal.”

“That would be an unparalleled accomplishment, dear friend. The Council might collapse and surrender at word of such a loss. Nonetheless, we hold the winning hand in our game with this so-called President: his son.”

Angel Emphatic leered majestically, proud of himself and his comrade, confident as never before in the likelihood that they would achieve ultimate mastery of the created world. If he had been made of flesh, his blood would be running high and hot.

“The son is secure and isolated by our human allies, who were influenced by a powerful flux of energy to do our bidding, to capture him. Our methods, which may seem crude to those of you skilled in the finer arts of manipulation and influence, worked supremely well. No doubt, the President will try to contact him, unless you can dissuade him from that course, IRA. Can you do this?”

“Indeed, I think I can. He is too eager to compromise, I suppose from his long political training. And he pretends to be concerned for what happens to others—especially his family. I cannot believe he will do anything that he feels might harm his only child.”

“Yes, that is a weakness of so many human beings and one of our great advantages. It is so simple to put them in situations in which they must choose our way or death and destruction. They are afraid of what others think of them and can thus be paralyzed by simple acts of terror.”

“It’s what we do,” IRA concurred with a laugh.

“Our earthly allies have gotten better and better at it over time,” Angel Emphatic reflected with pleasure. “The only downside is there has come to be less need for good old-fashioned mass bloodshed. It would be a beautiful thing in this electronic age of the Earth if there were new massacres and violence to broadcast every day.”

“Wouldn’t that get boring, too?” IRA always played the provocateur.

“You are incorrigible, my friend. In our realm—and soon in all of creation—there is no limit to the benefit to us of mayhem in every aspect of life, across time and every dimension.”

*   *   *

Anak Krakatau, or “Child of Krakatoa,” first appeared in 1930 and had grown consistently at a rate of five inches a week or twenty feet per year since then, with periodic activity throughout that time. NASA and worldwide geological institutes kept the island under constant surveillance over the years. For decades, volcanologists expected the site to erupt at any time, but when it finally did, its violence surpassed even the worst predictions and its suddenness took the world by surprise.

The dome of the island exploded with a ferocity not seen since 1883, when Krakatoa had shaken the world. Almost simultaneously, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the largest volcano in the world, erupted, spewing fiery lava and columns of ash more than a mile into the air.

Within twenty-four hours of these two Pacific Ocean mega-volcano events—the sea level in the world’s largest ocean rose several inches, and a tsunami originating from each volcanic site rolled outward into open waters. Geologists and oceanographers calculated that Australia, the Philippines, and eventually Japan would be the largest population centers to be hardest hit, with many of the smaller islands that lay in the paths of the giant tidal waves being obliterated in their wake.

CHAPTER

89

Bobby Anderson went through the case materials again and again, and he came to the same conclusion each time—that there was a definite connection between the Belfast killings and the abduction of Marcus Jackson. There simply had to be one. And as Anderson kept thinking about it, the key seemed to boil down to the phrase
Viva Domingo
. A series of events was unfolding according to plan, keyed to the science of the stars and planets and the impending Age of Aquarius. But what real evidence did he have to support this theory? It didn’t help that the only clue that they had on the abduction was that Marcus Jr. was in Los Angeles, and that was from a lone source. Anderson was debating whether he should stay in the city … that is, until he was given vital information by Dawson, who had been contacted by noted seer Mama G, giving them a lead, telling him that the boy was
definitely
in Los Angeles. Anderson had always been a little leery of the psychic community, but after what he had experienced in the last few months he was willing to take any help he could, even if it meant relying on magic and on his well-trained gut to lead him forward with the investigation. But he was still hesitant to go forward until he had thought this through a bit more.

He could not clearly prioritize one over the other, Belfast over Marcus Jackson, or vice versa. They both occupied his mind and every waking minute of thought and energy. In fact, there was no “nonwaking” hour for Agent Bobby Anderson, as he had forgotten all about sleep and did not expect to become reacquainted with the concept before both cases were resolved.

Viva Domingo.
If you were to take it literally, that would mean “live Sunday.” What the hell did that mean? What was so special about a live Sunday? Did it mean any Sunday … or this coming Sunday? Anderson knew that events were racing ahead and that they had little time left. He looked up the date in history: March 2. Astrologically, the date fell under the sign of Pisces, the planet Neptune, and the Earth’s moon. No obvious significance there. Geography? In the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa?… Northern hemisphere or southern? Bobby laid out his notes and hypotheses and stared at them until he was blue in the face.

He took a break, turned on the TV to catch the news, fearing he would hear something awful that he didn’t want to hear, as he almost always did these days.… Nonetheless he flipped from channel to channel for several seconds each. He clicked onto a commercial in progress: “This Sunday, the biggest entertainment moment of the year, the Academy Awards, broadcast live from the Hollywood Grand Theatre in Los Angeles.…”

That was it! The Academy Awards.

He immediately got on the phone and tried calling Dawson. The call went straight to voice mail, and he left a message to call him as soon as he could—he wanted him to stay in L.A., and not make his connecting flight. He needed his help. And he knew somehow that the tip from Mama G might just be the thing he had been looking for.