The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (39 page)

“Go back to me, my husband! Go quickly, before he arises! I will wait for you!” I said.

At the request of Haj, I played my part well. I found heavy sewing thread that I wrapped around Peter’s hands and feet. I pretended to secure him from harming anyone. Haj then left briefly to make a couple of phone calls.

When he came back into the room, I simply reminded Haj, “San Francisco.”

When Haj left through his cloud of magic, I immediately untied Peter and summoned Robbie with a quick phone call. He had waited at a nearby hotel for instructions. We planned to be ready for Haj when he returned.

Peter awoke and told me everything that had happened, which changed things entirely. Dred was now powerless, I learned. Without the powers that Dred once possessed, we had to change our course of action.

We grabbed the pink stone in the vice, and, at Peter’s insistence, we brought along the sick dog. He thought the dog might be useful for what he called “experiments.” Dred, now Peter, acted differently. He seemed like a scientist. I almost did not believe that it was him.

I looked for Pili, but she was nowhere to be found.

Peter said that the travel stones were not on the table, and the safe was locked tightly. We needed explosives to blow the safe, and we needed transportation. So I suggested that we procure a moving van first.

We left by car to find a moving van or secure a truck. Peter suggested that there might be a lorry rental place nearby. He thought he had spotted a moving van earlier, just across the street.

We called Robbie on his cell phone and told him of the changed plans. We had him meet us at a truck rental company, but without Dred’s powers, it took longer to obtain the illegal dynamite. We were forced to bribe some members of a militant group for the desired explosives. Fortunately, Peter had money at his hotel.

We knew that we wanted to remove the stones from Egypt, but we were not sure where or how we would take them. We even arranged for cargo rentals if a ship was necessary. They were massively over-sized containers, but sufficient to move all of the jewels near the cave’s entrance and in the basement. There were treasures in abundance all over the cave. We wanted them all.

We were gone only for two hours—if that. But when we returned to the basement, the jewels, and the safe and the vials in the cabinets were all gone. Most likely, we concluded, it was the moving van that was seen earlier. This had been planned, but how? What tipped them off?

It was then that I remembered Haj looking at my chest before he embraced me. I remembered the photo that I had seen upstairs in their bedroom, and the answer came to me. Haj had not seen my red stone around my neck, the one he had obviously expected to see. The red stone must have been a signal to them, just as it was for my sister and me. This meant that the real Aysha was probably still alive. It also meant that Haj went back in time to rescue her somehow.

How did she survive the earthquake? I saw her dead body! I even possessed it!

We then believed that it was imperative that we capture Haj and force him to bring Aysha out from hiding. Our plans were starting to fall apart. I questioned the loyalty of my sister and wondered how she could have turned against me. My sister, this other Aysha, had united with a Priest!

We also concluded that waiting for the right moment to capture all of the Guardians was the only thing left to do. Moreover, we found prophetic words on the stone of prophecy that validated this destiny.

When the three of us had arrived in the basement, after we searched for a truck, the middle table was all that remained of the laboratory equipment. After a few minutes of searching for the stones, I placed my golden globe on the table, while Peter and Robbie stood spellbound. It flattened and formed Arabic words on it, in response to a mystical chant of mine. I had to know what to do next. The prophetic stones never lied.

“Sana Hamsa?” Robbie asked as he did not understand the meaning of the Arabic words.

“The stone says our justice will be waiting after five years,” I responded, smiling devilishly. “We will capture Haj, and bide our time.”

I translated the inscription.

You will find your justice in five years time at the place of the Gazelle!

“We will find any last remaining members of the Ani Nvya to reveal to us the exact and the last known location of the deer people. This must be our destiny,” Peter added.

Suddenly, a cloud started to form in the basement room, so I had Robbie and Dred step out quickly. I wanted to lure Haj first with the bait of love. Maybe I could convince him that I was truly Aysha, just for a moment, I thought.

Out of the cloud leaped Haj, but without his bag of jewels that he had left with. He had a beard of considerable growth and was covered with dust. As he spoke, the cloud faded behind him.

“Do what you will!” he proclaimed. “The stones are safe! Take me, but leave my friends alone!”

Peter bolted into the room suddenly and asked, “How did you get here without the stones?” Robbie quickly followed in behind him.

“We Priests have our secrets also!” Haj answered with confidence.

I knew then that something had changed within this Haj. Haj had obtained religion, or perhaps some kind of faith. He was a dangerous person. A man of conviction is always dangerous. He was a believer, perhaps changed by true love, or maybe it was a new and powerful belief in the Living Spirit. He had to be contained.

“Grab him! Now!” I screamed to Robbie.

Dred and Robbie secured Haj. But before he was gagged and bound, Haj muttered something about Mattie and David. I asked Peter to tell a lie to David and Mattie. “Say that he fell and died, somewhere in the cave, and plant some cut ropes for David to find. Make it seem like he got the climbing ropes mixed up. We will make him feel some guilt along with it!” Later, I even waved my ring over the ropes, saying some words of enchantment to encourage some guilt in David, even to excess.

We then obeyed the stone of prophecy, and we waited for five long years. We looked forward to the day when we would kill all of the Guardians and finally use the stones for their noblest purpose. We planned to open the portal to our ancient world. We believed that only then we would have our complete
justice
!
 

Chapter 24

The Words of Ani Nvya

“I am a dying breed. I am the last surviving member that is aware of his heritage. I was a former member of the Prophets, and later the Ani Nvya. I was the last Guardian in the Americas.”—the Ani Nvya spoke to his visitor in his small house located in the woods of Banner Elk, North Carolina. He lived alone and had few visitors, except for the people who delivered meals that were offered on occasion by local churches. He had wrinkled and worn skin, but genuine and keen eyes. He had little facial hair and thin, long black hair.

He was visited by an old man dressed in a poncho. He had long white hair and wore moccasins. The visitor claimed to be a Guardian from the land of England. Trust was won that day as each of them shared their stories and mended distant fences.

The story of the Anakites was revealed, and their origin was debated. The Ani Nvya was clear on several points, and the visitor took many notes concerning their story.

There had been two creations, it was said, but there was more. The Anakites came from the sky and not from the ground. The Anakites came to this planet, many eons ago, in a past long forgotten and unknown.

The Anakites came in a ship that sailed through the stars, above the heavens. They arrived on an earth populated mostly by animals. They believed that they were alone, except for the animals. Their ship had strayed from a group of ships and had gotten lost in the sky. They were separated from their people, and their ship was badly damaged when it crashed into the earth.

To this day, there are many landing strips that remain from those that had once attempted to rescue the members of the lost ship, but the rescuers never found them. The Anakites that had crashed into the earth were assumed to be dead by their own people after many attempts to search for their bodies.

The Anakites were never a people that lived without servants, and they were thrown into a harsh environment that was difficult to survive in. Some Anakites did not survive the crash, and others had various types of diseases that struck their bodies. The first Anakites had narrow and circular double eyelids. They had dark green skin, and they had black mole-like nodules behind their ears. They had triangular nails on their fingers, and their hair grew out in several strands at a time, instead of single strand hairs. In other respects, they looked humanoid.

The Anakites first thrived and lived in the area now known as Iraq, long before humans were ever there. Some of them migrated to what we now call Africa. The Anakites attempted to mate with each other, but they gradually became sterile. Eventually the Anakites, although they had grown into a group of about one thousand, ceased to reproduce.

Their lifespan was significant, able to live for thousands of years, and they ate mostly vegetables and grass. However, they knew that once they stopped producing offspring, it would be the end of them entirely.

Once, they attempted to build a great tower in order to send messages to the sky—messages that passing Anakite ships could see if they were there—but this attempt failed to attract any ships from the sky.

When the Anakites felt the most helpless, it was the second creation that revived some hope. It happened in Mesopotamia when the great one, known as the Living Spirit, walked among his people in a magnificent garden called Gan Eden.

As the first people to live on the earth, the Anakites were jealous of a new people, but they had a plan to use these humans to their advantage to save their own species. They thought they could mate with the humans to keep their kind alive. The plan was to mate with the humans and to enslave them. The humans would be their servants and their lovers, they thought.

The great Living Spirit found out about this plot to mate with humans and appeared to the leader of the Anakites. The Living Spirit made a law. It was forbidden by the Living Spirit for the Anakites to mingle with the humans. The Anakites agreed that they would not touch another human being, except by the free will of the humans. It was decided, by both the Living Spirit and the Anakites, that the choice of the destiny of the humans would be in the hands of the humans alone—but there was an additional problem.

The Anakites brought with them things from their planet that had begun to corrupt the world. They brought with them diseases and plants from their other world that would be deadly if eaten or even touched by a human.

One such plant was taken from the Anakites by the Living Spirit and placed in the garden for the humans to eat—but only if they ate it in direct disobedience. As a test, the Living Spirit agreed to command his created people to not eat of the plant. If they ate of it, then the Anakites could have their way with the humans. They could touch them and even mate with them. That was the deal.

The plant flourished in the garden and grew into a tree. The created humans were told to not touch or eat it, by order of the great Living Spirit. Also, the Anakites were not allowed to enter the garden to entice them to eat of the tree, forbidden under penalty of death. However, the Anakites had an ally.

There was a great and powerful creature. It had the power of shapeshifting. He was called the Light or sometimes the Great Beast. He transformed into a lizard, and he stood up as a man and walked the earth. The Great Beast allied with the Anakites in their efforts to enslave the humans. The Great Beast told the Anakites that he had been created by the Living Spirit and then cast away for no reason at all. He said that the Living Spirit killed many of his people. His people were the people of the spirit—they could not be seen, but only felt. He told the Anakites that he hated the Living Spirit. He told them if they allied with him, then he would live peaceably with the Anakites. It was an enticement that carried a subtle threat.

The Anakites had never seen the Light’s people, so they agreed to let him help them by enticing the humans to eat the fruit of the tree. They did not fear a spirit army, for the Anakites had great powers. They had the power of telekinesis and mind control. Some legends said that the Anakites had special weapons of enormous power. They did not fear a spirit—anything that could not be seen—but the Great Beast did not reveal to the Anakites the real reason that he helped them. The Light wanted the possession and control of a new army to fight the Living Spirit. He needed the Anakites to fight and battle the Living Spirit, but that is another story.

The humans
did
eat the food of the Anakites, and the Living Spirit banished them from the garden. When they left they took stones from the garden that held deep and mystical powers, but no one knew their true origin. The Living Spirit placed a powerful Guardian in front of the garden that stood watch over the entrance with a flaming sword. It was a powerful and special creature. No one would ever enter the garden again.

The humans and the Anakites mated, and the humans became slaves of the Anakites. The Anakites enforced their every will and intention. Then, after years of this pain, the humans cried out to the Living Spirit for help, and the Living Spirit answered their cries with what would be known as the Great Destruction.