Song of the Ovulum

  Matt rubbed a silver engraving on the dashboard—Merlin. Just before they took off, Walter referred to the airplane by that name, saying that they had been through a lot of adventures together, including traveling to another world. Apparently this living-on-the-edge pilot had quite an imagination.

  Walter slid off his headphones and tossed a box of granola bars onto Matt’s lap. “Now that we’re cruising, it’s a good time to get some body fuel while I fill you in on the details. After we land, we’ll be hiking like madmen, so this might be our last chance to talk.”

  “Sure.” Matt pulled a handful of granola bars from the box. As usual, he was famished. A hike through a cold forest meant that his internal furnace would be running on high, so stocking up was a good idea.

  “Still have the journal?”

  Matt slid off his headphones and pulled the journal from his jacket’s inner pocket. “Right here.”

  “Good. I want you to get to know your mother better.” Walter tossed a folded sheet of paper onto Matt’s lap. “Add this to your reading material. Study it and memorize it.”

  Matt unfolded the sheet—a facility layout with labeled buildings, interior rooms, and yard areas, including fences that divided the facility into sections. “Is this the prison?”

  “Yep. And your mother’s in the Healers’ Room. Look for that in the research wing’s first floor.”

  In the light of the dashboard’s glow, Matt ran his finger along the building’s hallway, searching for the label. It probably wouldn’t do any good at this point to protest the reference to Bonnie Bannister as his mother. Walter had made up his mind. After a few seconds, he tapped the page. “Got it right here.”

  Walter peered at the drawing. “If our spy picked up the right schedule, she should be there all night. Like I said, it’s called the Healers’ Room, but that’s like calling a gas chamber a spa.”

  Matt gave him a skeptical stare. “And you want me to use my danger-sensing ability to sneak in there and get her out.”

  “Not just her. Once you find Bonnie, I hope she’ll help you dodge the guards so you can get back to her cell and spring my wife. Ashley has the ability to read minds, at least sometimes, so she’ll be a big help when you’re trying to get out without being noticed.”

  Matt resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “If you say so.”

  “And our spy will be listening in and trying to keep the guards away from you, so stay in contact as you go, so he’ll know what’s going on.”

  “How will I stay in contact?”

  “I’ll show you the transmitting equipment when we get there.” Walter pointed toward the rear of the airplane with his thumb. “I have a radio and some other stuff in my backpack. The wire cutters for the fence are back there, too. We’ll also have a giant who’ll cause a diversion.”

  “A giant?”

  “One of the Nephilim, to be exact. He’s friendly. You’ll like him.”

  Matt stared through the side window at the growing darkness. “This is sounding more like Mission Impossible every minute.”

  “Do you want to back out?”

  Matt swung toward him. “Not a chance! It’s just that we have to count on everything lining up perfectly for it to work, and the script isn’t exactly carved in stone.”

  “More like scrawled in the sand.” Walter grinned. “Don’t you love it?”

  Matt studied Walter’s confident expression. This guy oozed adventure, but he might also be suicidal. “Yeah. I guess I love it.”

  “Good, because there’s more. When you get into the Healers’ Room, there should be a computer there. We’re looking for records for Karen Bannister. If I’m right about you being Charles Bannister, she’s your twin sister. Since the records could be under another name, you might have to do a search for any girl your age, especially a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes.”

  “Won’t it be password-protected?”

  Walter slid a metal band off his wrist and handed it to Matt. “I’m not sure if the embedded passwords are current, so if this doesn’t get you in the research wing’s back door, you’re sunk. Just hustle back, and we’ll bail. But if you get in, the passwords will probably get you the rest of the way, including into the computer files.”

  Matt put the band on and rubbed its smooth surface with a finger. It looked like the ID bracelet he had seen on a visiting General at the academy. “How did you get access to these passwords?”

  “I have connections with someone very dear to me.” Walter gave him a half smile. “And I have some computer power of my own that checked the embedding. If the codes are current, it’ll work.”

  “I’ll take your word for it.” Matt drew a mental picture of a blonde-haired girl his own age. Escaping a deranged foster sister had been hard enough. Now he might have to deal with a flesh-and-blood sister. Who could tell how mentally unstable she might be?

  “Something wrong?” Walter asked.

  “Not really. My only experience with a sister was a disaster named Darcy.”

  “Darcy, huh?” Walter nodded. “I got a slice of sibling harassment for a while. But Shelly’s a dream sister now. Maybe Darcy will—”

  “No,” Matt said, shaking his head. “If you knew her, you’d never say that. If the devil has a daughter, her name is Darcy.”

  Walter focused on the darkness ahead. “If you say so.”

  An awkward silence descended. Matt stared at the items on his lap—headphones, granola bars, Bonnie’s journal, and the map. For some reason the presence of each item drilled a sense of reality into his mind. This wasn’t a training jump. He was really going to a prison where he would risk his life to rescue the author of this journal, supposedly his own mother.

  Shifting in his seat, he mumbled, “I’m going to study the map for a while.”

  “And the journal?”

  Matt opened the front cover. “I suppose so. It feels like an invasion of privacy, though.”

  “I think …” Walter focused straight ahead, his voice breaking. “I think she would be thrilled.”

  Matt settled back in his seat and munched on granola bars as he read. After such an exhausting workout earlier in the day, his muscles ached and his eyelids felt heavy, but the beautiful words entranced him, inviting him to turn page after page. The suffering that Bonnie endured at the hands of her father pulled him in, a betrayal of trust he knew so well. That monster subjected her to more needle jabs and drew more blood than any loving parent would ever have allowed. If only he could have been there, he would have protected her—whisked her away to a loving home, far from the cruelty, far from the hypocrisy of lip-service love that came with stabs in the back.

  Matt imagined Darcy, smiling while holding a dagger behind her. Living with her made such stabs almost a literal reality. His mind drifted to a night six years ago when she was fourteen and he was ten. He lay curled in bed, poking his nose out from under his blanket just enough to breathe. Although he should have outgrown night-lights, he always asked for one, still frightened by every shifting shadow. His danger-sensing hadn’t kicked in yet, though his ability to stay warm had been with him for as long as he could remember.

  In his mind’s eye, the room turned into a movie scene with his younger self playing the part of the sleeping boy. An auburn-haired girl wearing a long nightgown tiptoed through the night-light’s glow. Carrying a coil of rope, she opened a window next to the bed.

  Of course, since he had been asleep during the first part of this event, his memory was little more than a dramatization of what Darcy must have done. Still, no matter how much evil intent he poured into her image, he could never overestimate her malice.

  As the scene played on, Darcy pulled the blanket back carefully, uncovering the younger Matt. She slid the rope under him and tied a loop around his waist, gritting her teeth as she fastened it tightly. With a maniacal expression twisting her face, she tied the other end of the rope to the bed’s frame.

  Taking a
step back, she called, “Matt! It’s snowing! Come to the window and see!”

  Matt sat up, blinking. Darcy took him by the hand and led him toward the window. Barefoot and wearing thin flannel pajamas, he walked in a meandering daze.

  “Look!” she said, pointing outside. “You can build a snowman!”

  When he leaned over the sill, she shoved him through the opening. The rope reeled out until it tightened and dragged the bed halfway to the wall.

  Matt’s mental perspective zoomed to the second-floor bedroom’s window. His younger self dangled a few feet from the ground, his arms and legs flailing as he swayed, bumping against the exterior wall, but he stayed completely quiet.

  Muffling a laugh, Darcy withdrew a steak knife from a nightgown pocket and sawed through the rope, glancing at the door every few seconds. When the final thread snapped, young Matt fell to the snow-covered grass with a thump.

  Darcy leaned out the window and waved, her evil smile spreading from ear to ear. “Enjoy the snow, Matt!” she called in a whisper. “I’ll unlock the door for you … in a few hours. Maybe even you will be cold by then.”

  Laughing, she pulled back and began sliding the bed into place. After she left with the rope, the room stayed silent for a few moments. Soon, the rays of dawn peeked through the window. Young Matt walked in, his pajamas soaked. Rubbing a bump on his head, he stripped off his top, grabbed a terrycloth robe from a hook on his closet door, and put it on. As he closed the window, his thoughts played out loud. They’ll never believe me. They always believe Darcy. And then I’m the one who gets punished for lying about her. One day she’ll kill me with one of her pranks. Then they’ll believe me.

  He crumpled to the floor and wept. Why do I have to have a sister? If it wasn’t for her, this home would be great. But Darcy ruins everything. I can’t even eat without worrying that she put dog hair in my food … or something worse. I wish I could go to a place where there weren’t any sisters. Maybe the army. That would work.

  As young Matt cried on, the room darkened and became completely silent.

  Matt blinked, bringing his mind back to the present. Would the wounds gouged by Darcy’s evil pranks ever go away? And this was just one of many. The worst episodes left him bloodied, sometimes requiring stitches, causing his foster parents to label him as accident-prone in public and a klutz in private. Darcy was a sadist times ten to an infinite power.

  He refocused on the journal. If he concentrated on Bonnie Conner for a while, maybe he could push thoughts of Darcy over a mental cliff where they belonged.

  Soon, his eyelids grew heavier, and the words on the page jumbled. Images of Darcy swirled in his mind as she grinned at him from the bedroom window. Again and again he fell, the rope twanging as it tightened, and Darcy laughed each time, as if she could never see him suffer enough. After a while, a bump shook the scene, making it crumble and fade away.

  Matt opened his eyes. The journal still lay on his lap, and an airplane cockpit surrounded him. He looked at the pilot’s seat. Walter sat with a firm hand on the yoke, his stare riveted straight ahead.

  “Did you get a good snooze?” Walter asked.

  As the bumps continued, Matt straightened in his seat. “I guess so. I must have been more tired than I thought.”

  “Probably good that you caught some winks.” Walter nodded at Matt’s seat. “Better check your belt. The air’s getting choppy, and we’ll be landing in a few minutes.”

  Matt pulled the strap, his hands trembling. Even though that dream had recurred dozens of times, it never failed to shake him up. Darcy was the original twisted sister, the author of a two-year-long nightmare. And now he had to find a new sister. Prospects for brotherly love at first sight seemed dismal.

  Walter pushed the airplane into a steep descent. “We’ll be hopping out in a hurry. Are you ready?”

  “I think so. I just have to grab my gear from the back.”

  “I don’t mean to sound like a mother hen, but is that jacket warm enough? It’s supposed to snow tonight.”

  “It’s fine. I don’t ever get cold.” Matt shivered. The chill from the dream had lingered far too long. “Well, hardly ever.”

  “Really? Ever checked your temperature?”

  “Sure. Lots of times. The doctor said I have a higher base temperature than most people. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Hmmm.” Walter stroked his chin. “Interesting.”

  Matt shrugged. “Guess I’m just hot-blooded.”

  “If you say so.” Walter flipped a few control switches. “Get ready. This landing might be rough, but the rest of the night will probably be a lot rougher.”

  * * *

  Standing close to the bed, Mardon scanned Bonnie’s motionless body. The Healers had left the premises, glad to travel home before the forecasted storm arrived. Normally, they would have taken Bonnie back to her cell, but tonight’s schedule called for a longer stay.

  He watched as her eyes darted beneath their lids. Unattended and unguarded, she lay dreaming about whatever goes through the minds of the naïve. Although courageous to a fault, she knew so little. Of course, she couldn’t know that she was bait, a helpless guinea pig waiting for a heroic rescue, but she would learn soon enough. The draconic heroes would join her behind bars in due time.

  Mardon glanced at the window. Wind buffeted the panes. The storm approached. Although the Colonel had allowed such an odd scheduling twice before, this attempt had the best chance of succeeding. Mother was right to suggest it. With a blizzard on the way, Bonnie’s friends might think this their last chance of rescue for quite a while. Now if the Second Eden snobs would open the portal and send the dragons, restoration would come.

  “Patience,” Mardon whispered. “Mother and I will soon be whole.” After reading a hanging IV bag, he walked to the closed door and passed through it.

  THE SILENT ONE

  Joran, Selah, and Father lay together in their crowded tent. Their huddled bodies and two blankets served to keep them comfortable, though the pebbly ground was nothing like the feather-stuffed mat at home. Selah slept in the middle, warm and protected.

  Joran held the bag close. Although the covering silenced its quiet song, the ovulum’s warmth and shape constantly reminded him of its presence. As he lay there, his ears gathered every sound—the breathing of contented sleep, the songs of the seven ovula lying in an open padded box near Father’s head, a gentle breeze caressing the tent’s canvas, and the whispers of nearby dragons as they conversed in their odd, guttural language about their duties as guardians over Methuselah and the mysterious eggs. No Watcher lurked about. Not a trace of their evil songs rode the breeze. Still, the dragons seemed nervous, and for good reason. Except for Arramos and Shachar, their lives would end tomorrow.

  Joran eased away from Selah, picked up Father’s lyre, and crawled toward the tent flap, the ovulum bag still in his grip. Maybe he could play something that would soothe the dragons and make them forget their troubles. Makaidos’s voice had come through, as had Thigocia’s. They were both kind and talkative sorts. He could play while they told tales. Listening to their droning stories might lull him into a sleepy state, and seeing their powerful forms might provide comfort in spite of the prophesied darkness of the coming day.

  After pushing through to the outside, he rose to his feet. A full moon hovering overhead illuminated their site. A string of smoke rose from the campfire embers, and the tall grass where he and Selah had sat still bowed lower than the surrounding blades.

  Above, two dragons flew in front of the moon, one of them with glowing scales. “Shachar,” Joran whispered. As Selah mentioned earlier, although Shachar appeared to be a normal dragon in daylight, she often glowed in the midst of darkness, sometimes so bright she could be seen from far away. At other times she was like a crescent moon, barely visible at all. No other dragon exhibited this trait, so the combination of her radiance and her ability to locate the purity ovulum made her unique indeed.
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  While Shachar flew away, the other dragon, Arramos, Shachar’s mate and king of all dragons, descended toward him. Before Seraphina died, Arramos was her mount in battles against the Watchers, and his frequent visits made him a family friend. Ever since her death, however, he had remained aloof.

  Seconds later, he landed gracefully in front of Joran, beating his wings in near perfect silence.

  Joran bowed his head and whispered, “Greetings, King Arramos.”

  Arramos briefly lowered his head in return. “I saw you from above. Is all well?”

  “I’m not sure about all, but considering what will happen tomorrow, I suppose I am well. I just couldn’t sleep.”

  “That is to be expected.” Arramos looked from side to side, his ears twitching. “As if you did not have enough worries, I must also inform you that a Watcher I battled today boasted that the Silent One has returned to our region. I assume he will be part of their final attack tomorrow. We hoped that you would be well guarded, but since he emits no song, he might approach without your notice.”

  “I haven’t heard much about the Silent One. How dangerous is he?”

  “Quite dangerous, though not in the way you have come to expect from demons. He has no ability to cast darkness spells, so he relies on cunning to disrupt Elohim’s purposes. With his ability to deceive and blind the discernment of the unsuspecting, he convinces people to do what he asks. Sometimes he will threaten a loved one, which is his most common tactic, using your own love as a weapon against you.”

  Joran’s skin crawled. “Such a beast should burn in Sheol’s deepest pit.”

  “I agree. His tactics are truly evil. In fact, he can be so beguiling and persuasive, some of the patriarchs called him Lucifer’s craftier brother.”

  Joran glanced around. “If I were to see him, what should I do?”