Fallen Masters Read online

  She didn’t know if she was asleep, dreaming this, or fantasizing in some semiconscious state. Okay—she wasn’t asleep, she knew that. Her eyes were open and she was fully aware of the burning log in the fire pit.

  There seemed to be some debate taking place.

  “We need someone with a foot in both worlds,” someone said.

  “There are those whom we can talk to,” another said. “One of them is here, with us now.” All Councillors turned to look at her with paternal hope for the future.

  “Yes, I am aware that Patricia Rose Greenidge is here. I summoned her.”

  “You summoned me here?” She stood in a state of awe, with more than a little annoyance stirred into the mix. She wore a colorful housedress, not having gussied up for this occasion, because she had been summoned without warning. Then, as she looked around and became more accustomed to being there—wherever “there” was—a sense of shock and unreality overwhelmed her.

  “You are aware of us? You see us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where you are?”

  “I am on the patio of my house. At least I thought I was.”

  “Yes, but you are also with the Council of Elders.”

  “Who are you, child? And where are you?”

  “I am the Governor. I preside over the Council of Elders on what you may call the Other Side.” The voice did not speak aloud but simply entered her consciousness with authority, overwhelming in its power.

  “Oh dear Lordy Lord, now I think I’ve flipped for sure.” She was in awe, but she was herself, after all. “I am willing to believe I am not where I thought I was, but do I have to fear where I am?”

  “No, you are right where you need to be.”

  “Why am I here?”

  “It is our hope that you can help us,” the Governor said. “All of humankind is under assault by the Evil Ones. You face a grave danger as never before in history.”

  “The Evil Ones? Danger? You’ll have to speak plain to this simple lady.”

  “Yes, they are the Forces of Darkness. And they are more powerful than you can possibly know.”

  “But aren’t you the Forces of Light? The Good?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lord knows, I’ve had signs of being called to meet you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you have me do? I’m one person. Good Lord and butter, I know that I am but a simple woman, but I have faith and know that if we pray hard enough, the forces of good will always win out over evil. You telling me that I have been wrong my whole life?” She tilted her head with natural curiosity, almost like a child.

  “We want you to—”

  Pop! In Mama G’s patio fire pit, a trapped gas bubble in the log detonated loudly, sending up sparks and a small flare.

  Mama G looked about her, now visibly shaken, having a weird, almost metallic taste in her mouth that she could not explain—a kind of interdimensional bad breath that made her terribly uncomfortable. A dark and sinewy figure moved quickly into the tropical bougainvillea and the darkness, carried away by the scent of the frangipani trees. She shuddered at knowing that she had just experienced both light and darkness in battle.

  She saw nothing else except those things that were so familiar to her: an old black-and-white picture of her parents in an oval frame, a vase that had belonged to her grandmother, a curved glass secretary and bookshelf, her cat curled asleep on the back of the rattan sofa.

  “What would you have me do?” she asked again.

  The place she had just visited, the Council of Elders, the Governor, all were gone.

  Had they ever been here?

  Or, more to the point, had she actually been there?

  She was already interpreting visions, premonitions, troubling feelings that had been plaguing her. But what good were such aphorisms and noble intentions in the face of the catastrophe that Mama G foresaw as a storm on the horizon of time?

  Her faith was shaken, and the power of prayer—a thing that she had always relied on—seemed suddenly like a very small candle with which to fight the darkness.

  CHAPTER

  15

  London

  Asima moved across the street as swiftly as she could. The chaos in Piccadilly Circus on this warm day was overwhelming, with cabs, buses, and tourists bustling about everywhere. Car radios and street speakers were amplifying the latest hit by Charlene St. John, the American pop star. A vibe of compassion could be felt even amid the urban clangor.

  This was not the environment Asima had envisioned for raising her children. She had instead dreamed of a bucolic setting, either here in England or in her native Grenada. But she had followed her husband, Muti, here, and she did not regret that. It was part of the package.

  She hurried herself and her little ones over the crosswalk and made it safely to the other side of the buzzing street.

  Education was important to Asima. Having been raised in the Muslim tradition, she had also grown up in the New World with all its opportunities of that tradition as well. She had graduated at the top of her class, and it was then that her dream of raising her family there, or someplace similar, had first occurred.

  She had been inspired to write about island life, about her own life. She was confident that one day she would take her life story and share it to inspire people all over the world. She would help to educate them about the true beliefs and traditions of Islam in a world distorted and diluted with terroristic ideologies and discolored by violence.

  Though she held a Ph.D. in political science and world philosophies, at one point Asima put her life—and her dreams—on hold. She had gotten married. She had rewritten her first book at least three times, but still she felt it was not ready to put out for publication. Since that time she had written two more books, but was still working on the ending chapters of the third book. She and Muti had several children, the oldest a son named Shakir, age fourteen.

  Most people would never see Asima in the role of erudite professional, writer, teacher, or activist. Not because she wore traditional clothing or lived within a culture that was sometimes antithetical to women’s progress, but because of her beauty. Even as she walked with her children along a bustling urban street, many people, men and women, stopped to stare at her. She carried herself with a melodious, radiant energy, and her dark eyes, eyebrows, and eyelashes were so pronounced that she never needed to wear makeup. Her cheekbones were sculpted in a way that was the envy of any model. Her figure was no different than it had been at nineteen when she had first met and fallen love with Muti Faradoon.

  He was her hero, her heart, her true soul mate.

  Even though Muti was far more traditional in his beliefs than she, she had long ago decided that she would sacrifice her personal and professional desires to be with him. Beneath the cultural stamp, he was still somehow different. He understood who she was. Their courtship had been quick, and their love strong from the very first moment they met. Muti possessed a childlike innocence and humorous demeanor that had been challenged only once: when two of his brothers were killed in a suicide bombing on the border of Syria and Iran ten years ago. To this day, Muti never discussed the bombing. He always just said that they, Rami and Hamir, were victims of “a senseless plan.”

  Of late, however, Muti seemed different. Asima recognized the change in him, and she tried desperately to get him to talk to her, to let her in on what was troubling him. However, he would not share his private thoughts anymore, at least not with her. This lack of conversation was only getting worse, and to Asima, who prided herself on her ability to communicate with anyone, the silence was deafening.

  “We used to speak to each other only with our eyes, and our souls danced together,” she told him. She had bittersweet memories of blissful, romantic, spiritual lovemaking, but now when they were together in bed it seemed purely mechanical on his part. She could not reach him. He was fast becoming an island—but an arid desert island, not a place where she wanted to live.
Not like her beloved island nation. This was more like Atlantis, sinking slowly into the abyss … a place she could not go.

  The loss was compounded by evidence that Muti was dragging their firstborn son, Shakir, under with him.

  The shadows of Muti’s dead brothers, Rami and Hamir, seemed always present in their lives, and in their home. He now spoke of them incessantly to Shakir—and to Asima, when he spoke to her at all. His elder brother, Omar, who had been in London even longer than Muti and had welcomed the family into his home for several months before they found their own place, was an overbearing presence at their flat. He was a successful restaurateur and Muti worked fifty or sixty hours a week for him in one of three locations. They were on the verge of opening a fourth place.

  Shakir idolized his father. The sun rose and set on anything and everything Muti said. Shakir listened for hours as Muti spoke to him about their ancestry, the family’s history in Iran over many generations, and the losses the family had suffered. He painted a picture of the world as a dark place that required a man to adopt a warrior mentality in order to fight his way through to victory against a host of enemies, seen and unseen.

  Asima wanted only what was best for her three children, and for Shakir, she only hoped that one day he would find success in America. She did not see the United States as the land of the infidel or the sleeping giant waiting to pounce on the rest of the world. No, she saw the whole world in the same way: Each country was like a child behaving badly, one that needed a parental figure to step up and lay down the rules and regulations so that one child would not be able to bully any other child for too long a period of time.

  It was clear to most people, and to Asima as well, that the United States’ reputation was not so pristine as it had once appeared, but it was a place and a culture that held such great promise nonetheless. She held on to high hopes for her family, and Shakir was her golden child. He was destined for great things, this son of hers and Muti’s; of this she was certain. He wanted to be an architect.

  But as Muti became increasingly callous and empty, Shakir seemed to be maturing much faster than he ought to—and acting older than he was. Certainly he was behaving in ways Asima did not favor. One day she heard him weeping in his room after Muti had been picked up by his brother Omar for work.

  When she walked into Shakir’s room, he had his iPod blaring in his ears, and he was wiping tears away from his eyes. On his bed were charts and diagrams drawn on beige typing paper and a photo layout of the newest restaurant that Muti and Omar were opening in Piccadilly. She was baffled at what this was all about and deeply disturbed.

  Asima felt in that moment that Shakir was feeling the pressure of being Muti’s son and Omar’s nephew—that their dreams for him were much different from his own or Asima’s. Muti had told Shakir that he was to take his place in the family business. That would mean his desire to be an architect would have to be put aside for now. His urge to design and build would take a backseat to Muti’s will for him.…

  Asima was walking with her little ones to the new restaurant location off Piccadilly Circus to meet Muti and Shakir there for an early dinner. It was a routine gathering, but she felt a strange foreboding this time that was different and disturbing to her soul.

  CHAPTER

  16

  In the cluttered office at the back of the new restaurant, Muti and Omar were huddled, speaking in hushed tones. Because construction workers were making sufficient racket out front, they did not have to whisper, but they were used to talking like this, and they were paranoid about being overheard—by anyone.

  “The sign is close at hand,” Omar said. He held up a copy of a local Farsi-language newspaper, then a copy of an English-language tabloid with blaring headlines: 11TH NEW ZODIAC BODY UNEARTHED IN BELFAST. The men pored over the news story, especially the diagram of the field in which the bodies had been buried in shallow graves.

  Muti said, “So, when do you think the final revelation will come? It has to be very soon. We are ready.” He looked eagerly at Omar.

  The eldest son in the family, Omar had been calling the shots for his younger brothers for years. It was he who had assigned the bombing to Rami and Hamir. It was he who had arranged for Muti and his family to relocate to London, and he who had found a place for Muti in his thriving Persian restaurant business. He was a puppet master who, in turn, took his instructions from a dark, ethereal force that had no name—that is, no name that he shared with Muti.

  “The world will be watching Belfast, just as we are. Then the world will witness attacks on each continent as our strategic action is unleashed.” He smiled and sat back, drumming his fingers on the office desk. “We hold no enmity for Christians, Jews, or any religion, nor any Muslim sect here or anywhere. We are called to act against a weak mankind who are blind to the will of the Almighty. They have been soiled for centuries by false beliefs and false prophets. Now will come the time of the cleansing.”

  “Brother, I have long wanted to avenge our younger brothers, and we have both worked for long years to assimilate ourselves here in London, indeed in the very heart of the city. I must say I am impatient and on edge, waiting for the final signal.”

  “Yes, Muti, you have been most faithful to our cause, even though you cannot fully understand the scope of this war—or its ultimate outcome. But I can tell you that the forces of righteousness—which some call the Dark Side—plan to control the energy of the human spirit. This has been revealed to me. I speak this as the truth. You have put your trust in me and placed your life and the lives of your family in my hands. I could not ask any more of a friend or a brother than that. We are truly one now, and we will be one in the glorious new world.”

  The younger man looked down at the papers strewn over the desk in the restaurant office: bills and letters, advertisements, newspapers, sample menus, maps of the city. His eyes focused on one piece of paper, a drawing his son Shakir had made of the new place’s main dining room. He said, “We must tell Shakir what part he will play in the plan. It has been two years since we agreed that he is the chosen one who will carry out this act of vengeance in our name.”

  “It is a great honor for him and for our family,” Omar said, nodding gravely. He looked at Muti, trying to detect any sign of doubt or wavering in his commitment to the act. He saw none. “Your wife will be here soon. Let us be seen taking care of our business when she comes.”

  * * *

  That night, as she lay in bed alone, Asima suddenly remembered an incident from her university days in Grenada. A brief encounter in the market with an older woman, a native of the island, who had told her something about herself that, over the years, she had nearly forgotten. Now it seemed prophetic and deeply disturbing.

  “Girl,” the woman had said, reaching out to touch Asima with both hands on her cheeks, “my name is Patricia Rose Greenidge, but most folks just call me Mama G. I am what they call a seer. Oh sure, it goes by other names like psychic, soothsayer, oracle … but me, I’m just a God-fearing woman with a gift of knowing. I only claim to be what I am.” The woman smiled, exposing large white teeth and a warm fire in her dark eyes. “You are beautiful, both in your body and your soul. One day you will make a great sacrifice—the greatest sacrifice that could ever be asked of a woman and—” She paused significantly. “—a mother. You will help many in a way that you cannot know. Yet you will know it at the time. You will be a hero and the mother of heroes.”

  Asima thought about that encounter from her past and wondered why of all times this would come to her now and knew that as much as she tried sleep would not come easily that night.

  CHAPTER

  17

  Melbourne, Australia

  Dawson Rask was in a garden of beautifully sculptured shrubbery in Hampton Court Maze. He had started out with other visitors and a guide, but somehow he had become separated, and as he tried to find his way back to them, he just got deeper and deeper into the maze. Then he tried to find his way out, and he could swear
that the path that was open but a moment before was now closed.

  “This is dumb,” he said. “How can I be lost in a three-hundred-year-old garden in the middle of the day with hundreds of people within the sound of my voice?”

  As he stood there, the shrubbery began closing in on him, actually moving toward him so that the place where he was standing became more and more confined.

  “Ah!” he shouted.

  His shout woke him up, and he lay there breathing heavily, thankful that he was not actually lost, though he was wondering, just for a moment or two, where he was.

  He was in Melbourne, Australia, and it was, according to the digital clock on the bedside table, 3 A.M. Okay, it was 3 A.M. here, but back home in New York, it was 5 P.M. That meant that it was also P.M. by Dawson’s body clock.

  Dawson sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Reaching over to the bedside lamp, he turned it on. The light illuminated the hardcover book that lay on the table. Both the title of the book and the author’s name were in gold embossed letters. It was a beautiful book, and it was selling very well both in the United States and in foreign sales. The book was just released in Australia, and Dawson had made the long—very, very long—flight from New York to promote the book.

  He reached down to touch it, feeling a bit of creative pride; then he walked into the bathroom. After turning on the light, he looked at himself in the mirror. Unshaven, he saw gray among the stubble, as well as a few gray hairs waving from the top of his head, like excited fans at a red-carpet premiere. All of this paled in comparison to the “baggage” directly under his eyes. He had passed the forty-year milestone last month.

  “Dawson, don’t get old,” he said aloud. Then he chuckled, because he was repeating something his ninety-year-old grandmother had told him when she would sometimes complain about the aches and pains of aging. She had been dead for eight years now, but she had been such a vivid part of his life that he still remembered her fondly, especially her sense of humor.