The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (2 page)

I followed her away from the rubble of the building that was once a rented room. The room and its occupants were buried somewhere underneath the mounds of dirt and debris. Part of that fallen building had caught fire due to broken gas mains, and there was no water to fight the fire because the water pipes had broken as well. My two children had burned to death while I was going to the market for a loaf of bread.

I wanted to escape the tragedy of that day. I wanted to run far away, but Aysha held onto me. She walked beside me and called for her brother Nikola to help her. She had him walk on my other side. As we walked further away, we tried not to breathe in too much smoke, and I started to cry heavily and shivered from the shock of it all.

I tightened my grip on the stones and placed them back in my pocket. The stones, reportedly, had the magic and the power to take anyone away to another place, or to another time, although I did not believe in any magic of any kind. Instead, I yearned for an achievable and realistic escape from the harrowing pain and sorrow, not the imagined and better tomorrow created and spun from the wells of hope.

The mysterious and dark-skinned man that visited me a week or two before the earthquake told me to keep the stones in my possession. He said that they would protect me in the future if I came to harm. I first saw him about a year before I arrived in San Francisco. He saved me from a man in Sacramento who tried to rob me at gunpoint. So I trusted his unusual request, even though I did not believe in their magic. Those two stones jostled in my pocket as they led me down the street, away from the burning buildings, the debris, and the charred remains of my two children.

Aysha and Nikola eventually escorted me to a camp that had white tents set up in orderly rows. The encampment was on a hill that overlooked the smoke that rose from the city. Cots with the wounded marched out in a steady and morbid stream.

Once at an available spot in the camp, Nikola secured a blanket from a pack that he carried, and he laid it out on the slightly damp ground, between two white tents. He asked me to lie down.

"Calm her down while I search again for mama!" Nikola insisted to his sister as he turned to walk back toward the city. Nikola, for just a brief moment, looked back at Aysha—as if he did not know her—then he dismissed the thought.

"She is not alive, Nikola!"—Aysha angrily stared at her brother. She was upset that Nikola left to look for their mother. Aysha believed her to be dead, under piles of wreckage.

She succumbed to his stubbornness. Her eyes seemed to twirl as if she had made a connection to memories that were locked up in her brain. Something seemed odd to me.

I watched Nikola through still teary eyes as he walked back to the city. We never saw him again. He died later that day from a dynamite explosion, one that the city had used to control and contain the fire. His body was never recovered because it was likely blown apart and scattered throughout a city block.

Aysha attempted to comfort me, and again she told me that all things would be better in time. That was her repetitive motto on that day. She also kept singing a rhyme in her Romanian language. I was sure that she meant to calm me, but I did not understand the words. I asked her to translate it for me and sing it in English. She sang it again, although it was out of rhythm.

All things done have not been done. All things not done have been done already.

There are no other things, so do not worry my child!

As she sang, she moved her arm rhythmically over me, and we both heard a distinct clicking sound. The sound seemed to come from my pocket. Aysha moved her hand over my pocket. She waved it back and forth. She tried to confirm the origin of the sound. Upon each wave, the clicking sound was heard.

I removed the two stones from my pocket. I held them in my open hand and showed them to her. Aysha again waved her hand over them. They moved toward each other, in rhythm to Aysha’s waving hand, clicked together, and then they retreated.

Some called Aysha a gypsy, and others called her a witch because she told fortunes for money, although it was against her brother's wishes. I was mesmerized, and I thought that she must have had some mystic power in her hand. Maybe there is magic in the world after all, I thought.

However, the power was not in her hand. It was in her ring. It was in her red stone on her ring, on her right hand, a red jewel mounted on a solid gold band. I had never seen her wear it before. I assumed it was new. Again, she slowly moved her hand closer to the stones in my hand, and we both heard the magnetic reaction.

"Where did you get these?" she asked intently. She had a new and bewildered look and tone as if she was a different person entirely. That was the second time that she seemed odd to me. I told her that a man that I once knew in Sacramento gave them to me, and then she told me a most frightful thing that I would never forget.

"Be careful using the power in these stones, my dear! For in the day that you do, you will surely die!”
 

Chapter 1

An Old Friend

Over One Hundred Years Later

Salt Lake City, Utah

The compact Chevy Cavalier jolted and sped over the speed bumps faster than it should. David was in a hurry. He was late for the fourth time for one of Mattie’s symphony concerts. David rapidly switched his view from the road to the rear-view mirror, back and forth. His coffee spilled sporadically in his coffee holder, between the two front leather seats.

While David juggled his views, an older Volkswagen Beetle suddenly cut him off, and it stole his planned parking space. David rattled off several expletives. He was skilled. He said those words rapidly and aggressively, at any given stressful moment. It was a habit he got from his father.

David was the result of a managed childhood. He was spoiled. He had it all at an early age. His grandmother, a wealthy widow of a Bay Area business owner, practically raised him. He inherited her entire estate of two older houses, both of them built in 1910, one in Alameda, California, and another house south of San Francisco. Unfortunately, she left him major amounts of debt. It was a debt that accrued, but it served a greater purpose. It financed his education at a private high school and a college education in liberal arts. He also had earned several computer certifications, most of which he did not take advantage of or use.

He rushed through the final parking lot traffic. He was in a hotel parking lot, near the concert venue, Abravenal Hall, in Salt Lake City, Utah. He knew that his close friend, Peter Jenkins, had reserved an extra box seat for him, but he still felt rushed, for Mattie’s sake. David's car slightly bumped into a cement column, and he finally came to a stop.

He opened his car door quickly. He grabbed the lint brush at the edge of the seat and rolled gobs of cat hair off his tuxedo jacket. He slid his dirty comb through his dark brown hair several times and hurried to the lobby. He wondered if Peter would smell the alcohol he was sweating out and exhaling.

Once he was finally in the concert hall and seated, Peter whispered, "About bloody time, old boy!"

"Yeah, I had a meeting," claimed David.

"With the bottle?" Peter chided.

"You know, if you weren't my 'dearest and best' friend," David said sarcastically. David gave him a stare that cut.

"Relax, old bean! I settled it with Mattie during the intermission. You should be glad that you have me as your 'dearest' friend. She was absolutely furious. She didn't study classical violin, move to Utah, and give you free passes to the symphony for you to break her little heart in exchange for some bourbon. Anyway, the concert is just finishing up. So, relax!" Peter Jenkins was sometimes like that to David. He would scold and then quickly cover his scolding with reassurance. It was almost as if he had a split personality.

Peter was a graduate of Oxford. He first met Mattie and David in the summer, five years prior to the concert. At that time, all of them were sure of themselves, very confident of their career paths and dreams. They were in Cairo, Egypt that summer. Peter studied archaeology and medicine. It was, according to David, an odd combination of interests. Mattie was there on David's invitation and traveled with him as a companion and girlfriend. David was working on his master's degree thesis in history, with no truly planned end for his education.

In the eyes of Mattie, David was a professional student who could not hold on to money. At least, this was her first impression of his status. Mattie and David had technically lived together ever since they had met at a school music concert at the University of San Francisco. She studied music in San Francisco, with the help of a grant. Prior to that, Mattie had graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Mattie felt that
she
was the real student and David was just a romantic dreamer, with no real plans at all.

It was also in Cairo that Peter met Hajen Habib, a famous archaeologist, and gemologist, who also worked on the side as a tour guide to the foreigners. It was at the Ptah Royal Hotel that Hajen Habib first met Mattie and David. Hajen, or Haj, his nickname, took them on a local tour and introduced them to Peter at the archaeological site that Haj worked at, very close to a cafe that he owned.

During that summer, all but Mattie studied archaeology and learned Egyptian history, among many other things. Mattie was frequently bored to death of the talk of the history of Egypt and would find many excuses to either stay home or shop at the bazaars. Sometimes she would even attend concerts or sit in an internet cafe as she listened to music or watched online videos. Mattie even befriended an Egyptian, named Nora, who escorted her to local events.

A most dreadful tragedy occurred in Egypt during that summer. It was during a routine archaeological site inspection that Hajen Habib was said to have met his death. Peter broke the news to his friends over dinner one night.

"Tragically, our friend Haj was killed by a horrid accident," he explained.

"Haj was adjusting a ladder on the second level of the scaffolding when it happened. I'm sorry to report that my colleague, and our friend, fell to his death," Peter said.

That was five years ago. Five years after that fatal night, the three of the four summer friends found themselves either listening or playing Beethoven’s 5th, in the city of the Latter-Day Saints in Utah.

During the concert, Mattie spotted Peter and David from the stage below. She smiled at them, between her attention to her sheet music and the director. Mattie and her unwavering faith in her dreamer had survived. She forgave him for being late. She had a thing for dreamers. She always did.

Suddenly, a light started to flash on Peter's belt buckle during the usual encore applause, just after the concert finished.

"You've got to be kidding me," David mocked. He saw Peter's lit up and flashing belt buckle.

"Who are you for real? Super cop, superhero, or an FBI agent?" David asked.

Peter said while he blushed, "Look! You're the technical genius who’s refused to work for me for years. I just
use
the gadgets—I don't create them.” He stood up to leave and said, “David, say hello to Mattie for me. And for God's sake, stay sober tonight! You need to get over yourself and marry that girl, old boy—before I steal her away from you!"—as Peter left, David burped up a taste of bourbon.

"Sure. Business calls then?" David said to Peter’s empty chair, with a somewhat rare suspicion. However, he immediately shirked it off and forgot it.

Peter quickly paced himself through the concert crowds toward the entrance. Peter had a privately accessible elevator to his BMW, due to his company's hefty donations to the symphony organizations.

Peter had left Cairo and used his medical knowledge and experience to start a biotechnology and pharmaceutical company. It was always a mystery to David as to how quickly and successfully Peter did it, but Peter always said, "old money and damn luck, old boy!"

Peter drove the short distance from the concert, in downtown Salt Lake, to his company offices and research laboratory in Holliday, Utah. He skipped an occasional stop light and broke a few other traffic laws along the way, but he made his way quickly through the active Salt Lake City streets.

As Peter Jenkins pulled up to the Jenkins and Hughes Pharmaceutical Company, he gazed at the over-priced neon sign while it obnoxiously displayed the company name. Peter had placed David’s last name on it. It was his hope to partner with him. Peter never changed the name, even after David repeatedly rejected the partnership. David Hughes was his own man.

Inside the company elevator, equipped with a wireless antenna that was originally designed by David, Peter whipped open his cell phone and screamed at his lab assistant, "Sam! I said not to disturb me!" Peter was impatient with his new lab assistant. He was also suspicious of him. Peter mistrusted many of his employees and often placed those he mistrusted the most in highly trusted positions, to monitor them with a heavy hand.

The voice on the other end with some static replied, "Sir, he said he wanted to talk to you—to you only!” Peter was elated that his prisoner wanted to break his silence.

The elevator opened near a security post and an armed guard. Peter passed the guard and held his thumb against an ID Scanner beside a metal door.