SYNARCHY

Book 1: The Awakening

A Novel by

DCS

SVT Publishing, LLC

Copyright © 2006 DCS.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published By

SVT Publishing, LLC

828 Royal Street #147

New Orleans, LA 70118

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 978-0-6151-9675-6

Printed in the United States of America

To You:

To Antonia Bianca (Liz), Julian Terenzio (Shawn, a.k.a numbered husband), Carissa Terenzio (Jess, a.k.a Teach): Thank you a million times over for your help during the creation process. This book is made all the better by your tangible contributions to it. This is your story as much as it is mine, and I hope I have done your creations justice.

Liliana Terenzio (Sara): Thank you so, so much for editing the scenes I changed! I can’t wait until you let loose and write your own novel. I remain a huge fan of your writing. I’m really looking forward to working with you on the second book, even though I must be an editor’s nightmare.

To Grey Cross (a.k.a numbered husband): Thank you for creating the Shaddai Universe and for your genius. You continue to be one who inspires.

To Tara, Margaret, Mom, and Daddy JB: Thank you a thousand times over, for your critiques, your compliments, your thoughtful help and relentless book promotion. I love ya’ll. Look ma, I did it!

To Keith: The cover would have looked better if you had of designed it, so maybe I can get you to do the second one. But, thank you for your honest critiques while I was putting this one together. I don’t say it enough but I really appreciate it. Love you!

To SVT’s second wife: Thank you from the bottom of my heart. For reading this book eight times, for your honest criticism, unfailing support and patient tolerance of the insanity that is me (especially when I’m working). Here’s to sharp edges and fuck the fine print.

And to you, yes you, the one reading these words; may this book be a light on your current journey. You know which one.

Namaste.

PROLOGUE
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting. And cometh from afar."

- William Wordsworth

The Fifth Planet…

The Second Time…

The stress of knowing what was to come weighed on him, even in his dreams. At least he was not alone. The change in frequencies had warned them but only a few remembered to listen. Messengers from God, from the true Source had come and were labeled outsiders, some were killed. The planet had become a manifestation of the darkest fears of its men and women.

Menes bolted upright. Sweat highlighted the tension from his temples down across his heavy jaw. His violent heartbeat added a menacing soundtrack to the images of his dream as they invaded his conscious state. Dragging his hands over his damp face, Menes shut his eyes to search out the 2D frequency that would return his energy level to balance and lower the spike in his blood pressure.

When the last bit of tension was exhaled he reopened his eyes, glancing at the sleeping woman next to him. Relieved she hadn't woken, he carefully uncoiled from the silk bedding and padded over soft carpeted floors into the bathroom.

He moved easily without superficial light. The flecks of gold in the walls around him shimmered as if conducted by his steps. He raised his hand to pass over a cerulean crystal embedded in the marble, causing a tranquil glow to fill the room. When he stepped up to the sink, crisp cold water fell as if it anticipated his need. Cupping both hands under the steady flow, he splashed his face several times before meeting his image in the mirror.

Sighing, he dropped his gaze towards the faucet and the water stopped. He hated being unable to convince more of his people. It left him frustrated even though he tried to accept it for what it was. The tick of universal time brought the inevitable truth; his nightmare was a premonition of the future.

Menes carried that thought as he returned to the woman who still slept. When his eyes touched her his aura pulsed with a dim gray light; sadness. She would leave physically, returning to spirit until she chose whether or not to come back. Unfortunately, the scar of this event would be burned into her DNA, becoming a fear she must face in another lifetime should she revisit this dimension.

When he was back beneath the sheets, Menes drew her against him. For just an instant he slipped through his door in her shields like a scared child taking solace in the willing unconscious reassurance she gave him. The steady rhythm of her breath lured him back to sleep.

When next he woke it was to the sound of terrified screams, and the deafening rumble of the earth splintering around him. The end was here.

§

“We have failed again.”

"There is great suffering.”

“Just like the first time.”

“I have lived it.”

“We all have.”

“What shall be done now?”

“I believe we have an idea.”

“Ah yes. That is a very good idea.”

“Thank you.”

“Shall we try it?”

“Yes, let’s. Go and collect volunteers.”

“Think it will work this time?”

“Third time’s the charm.”

"I will die to see my will done, and it will be done."

-Stefano Vasco Terenzio

Forty-eight hours before his death.

Chapter 1

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

- Benjamin Franklin

June 6th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Alcyone Island 11:11 PM

He's dying?"

"It's a wonder he lived this long."

"Stubbornness. Pure stubbornness." The comment brought collective sad smiles, and softer laughter.

"Vasco?" The bedroom door opened, the dim light from within blocked by the shadowed figure of the man in the doorway.

Vasco turned from gazing sightlessly at the grandfather clock in the hallway. "Yes sir?"

"He wants to see you." Steel gray eyes clouded with hidden emotion looked at two others. "All three of you."

§

There was nothing lavish in this room, the furniture as sparse as the walls. What did take up space was all mahogany wood, sturdy, masculine. Neither knickknacks nor small keepsakes touched the dustless surfaces. Nothing decorated the mantle above the burning fireplace.

There wasn't place for those things in the room of a man who didn't exist. The only thing that indicated someone might occupy the room (besides the dying man in the canopy bed) was a framed photograph on the nightstand. It showed a woman captured in a moment of happiness. You could see it in her shyly lowered blue eyes, and the slight curl of her smile. Those allowed in this room had often said she should have smiled wider. She'd always had such a beautiful smile. Her husband had replied, it was just enough.

Marcello S. Terenzio was one hundred years old. He lay there with his eyes closed, twisting the simple gold wedding band around his finger as if he needed to be reminded of its presence. It became more of a habit after his wife died.

Demetrius Terenzio left as the triplets filed silently into the room, giving his children the requested time alone with their grandfather. When the door clicked shut Marcello released an audible heavy breath, well-aged light gray eyes blinking open.

Simone M. Terenzio-Russo smiled gently at her grandfather, the first to move to his side. "You wished to see us."

Marcello stopped fidgeting, covering his granddaughter’s hand in his own. "I must be brief." It was such a rarity to clearly see emotion rolling through those enigmatic eyes. "My Mari is waiting for me." He paused to take another heavy breath. "You have never been to the vault. I have arranged for the plane to take you."

Lucien Terenzio, the youngest by seconds, stood behind his sister and asked curiously, "The vault? What's in the vault?"

"Wrong question, Lucien." Vasco Terenzio said it quietly as he slowly walked to their grandfather’s side. "Why?"

Marcello smiled, unmasking his pleasure with Vasco's question. "When you get there you will know." He dropped his head back against the propped up pillows, raising his eyes to the ceiling. "I almost wish I could live to see it. Well, with these eyes at least."

"See it?" Simone asked.

"The Ascension."

§

June 6th, 2012

Somewhere in the Caribbean

Phoenix Isle 11:26 PM

A full circle in a star-cluttered sky threw an eerie, omniscient glow over the thickness of the greenery below it. To say that the moon’s unblinking stare knew something the organisms on Earth did not was a truth not yet discovered. But it would be.

A wet heat blanketed the acres of jungle, surrounded by the picture-perfect calm of clear blue waters. Exotic wildlife was forced to share their home on this small island, twenty miles away from the main one that had seen activity of a human kind since the mid 1920s. Power grew here. It did not wait silently; it spread its hands out like the tentacles of a tumor and touched everything it had been intended to and more.

A house barely visible past the low hanging branches of the cypress trees was a recent addition. Stilts protected it from the mild swamp that occupied this particular corner of the island and full wall windows displayed the darkness within. It wasn't until the shrill ring of a telephone cut through nature's maternal hum that a small light snapped on. On the fourth shrill, the phone was answered.

"What?"

"He's dying."

"Sudden but nothing I didn't already know." The reply was both groggy and slightly annoyed.

"He's not transferring power to his daughter. He's giving it to the triplets."

This information was unknown, and seconds of silence followed. "How do you know that?"

"S.V.T. Securities put a bug in his room two days ago. They are on their way to you now. He's giving them access to the vault."

Thinly trimmed eyebrows shot upwards. "What?!"

"Mmm hmm."

"Bastard."

"Easy, cousin. We planned for this."

He sighed in frustration, pushing his richly tanned hand back through the thick strands of his graying black hair. "I've never been in the goddamn vault. This will give them an edge."

"True. Even so, I'm sure our grandfather would have agreed…” There was a slight curl to Olivia Terenzio’s lips as she spoke. “…who better to take on a Terenzio, than a Terenzio?"

"The stakes are too high to take this lightly," he snapped back quickly, annoyed at the amusement he caught in her tone.

"I take nothing lightly."

"Fine. Have you heard anything from Kayla?"

"Not yet. We will."

"This needs to happen soon. The more the triplets know, the harder this will be."

"You worry too much."

"You don't worry enough." He frowned as he said it.

"Pull the stick out of your ass and start enjoying your job. We'll win."

"We better."

"We will. Get ready for your guests." A dial tone punctuated the words.

General Amadeo Terenzio glared at the phone, resisting the urge to slam it back into its cradle. Tossing the thin sheet aside he climbed out of bed, glancing over his shoulder at the now open pair of eyes peering back at him curiously.

"Get dressed, get out. Your money is on the table in the living room." Without another word he stalked over to his closet, opening it up to the line of uniforms and expensive suits. A uniform was selected. Time to go to work.

§

June 7th, 2012

Somewhere in the Caribbean

Alcyone Island 12:12 AM

Brothels, while illegal almost anywhere else in the world, were not on this island. That made The God’s Tempest an extremely popular place for tourists and the locals. It also made the working boys’ and girls’ profession a lot safer. The brothel, cleverly shaped in the form of a pirate ship, was rarely empty, both men and women catered to by a wide variety of professionals. Disease free, discrete, and extremely talented, both in and out of the bedroom.

Rich wallpaper that pictured the darkly lit interior of the various cabins on a ship stretched around windows that were purely for aesthetics. Oil lamps hung low on the walls throwing more shadow than light over the corners of the Grand Galley’s red carpeted room. There was little privacy for the customers, but most here enjoyed indulging in their exhibitionist tendencies.

For once Xavier Terenzio - Zhane, Deputy Director of Homeland Security for the United States of America, was not here to gratify his sinful desire. A few women he'd made a night of it with before his engagement stopped to chat with him, only to look briefly disappointed when he declined any offers.

Ignoring the animalistic sounds coming from the lounge chair behind him, he polished off his second straight bourbon and kept glancing down at his watch in impatient intervals until the woman he was expecting appeared.

"Do you have it?" Xavier asked without preamble, dusting narrow bluish gray eyes from her generously exposed cleavage up to her face.

Red painted lips smirked devilishly at him as matching polished fingernails squeezed between her cleavage and emerged with a mini CD. "Every word for the last twenty-four hours."

It was his turn to smile as his eyes zoned in on the tiny little case. If there was one thing almost every Terenzio male had a sweet tooth for, it was the company of a woman. Some just didn't choose theirs carefully enough. From the inside of his suit jacket he removed a thickly packed envelope and handed it to her. "Every penny, bonus included."

She exchanged disc for cash, opening it immediately to count every bill. "Thanks X."

"No Lisa…" Xavier tucked the CD carefully into the same pocket, a silent thrill rushing through him at the thought of the information he carried. She had no idea how important this was, but she would soon enough. "…Thank you." Standing a good ten inches above the woman, he was forced to bend to kiss her painted cheek before walking quickly out to the waiting car and his three-man personal security team. The razor thin cell phone was already against his ear as he climbed into the backseat, silence reigning for exactly thirty seconds until he heard the "click" that meant the other line had been answered. For right now there was only one message he needed to transmit.

"Our girl came through for us. I'm on my way."

Chapter 2

“Science is always discovering odd scraps of magical wisdom and making a tremendous fuss about its cleverness.”

- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, chapter 64

June 6th, 2012

S.V.T. Think Tank

Alexandria, VA 10:10 AM

Dr. Derek Vaughn III pulled off his glasses, pinching the bridge of his nose to fend off an incoming migraine. It was from lack of sleep. He glanced at his watch then flicked his pen back and forth over the tops of his fingers impatiently. They had to have found something by now. He was risking not only their careers but their lives, all because one night a little over a month ago, everyone on his team had interconnected dreams.

He was thirty-eight and a man of science, not some self-proclaimed New Age mystic. Nevertheless he was a little too smart to grant mere coincidence to the fact that all six members of his team shared the same experience. Each of them carried the piece of some puzzle that days later they still remembered in such vivid detail they were able to draw pictures, and repeat conversations verbatim.

Derek tossed his glasses on the spotless surface of his desktop, standing. He turned to the full wall window that provided a breathtaking view of the proudly glowing skyline of the nation's capital. Tucking richly bronzed hands into the pockets of his jeans, he propped a shoulder against the glass, beguiled by the sudden obsession to discover the truth.

He had told himself over and over that they had a lot more important things to do. There were vaccines to create (or acquire), terrorists to arm, weapons to manufacture to sell to the world's only super power, and further advance his employer in any and all areas. Making all that happen was his job, not playing Indiana Jones.

The sudden ring of his cell phone pulled him out of his thoughts. He flipped it open, staring at the tiny screen where the face of Dr. Shirley McDermot appeared. Derek felt his heartbeat begin to race when he caught the expression on her face.

"Derek, you are not going to believe this..."

§

June 6th, 2012

7 miles below Antarctica

Rainbow City 9:11 AM

"We have to stop it, Menes!" Loki shouted, his aura glowing red with his mounting anger and frustration. "Humankind was never meant to know the whole truth!"

Menes looked intently at his young protégé, though Loki was far from young. They were all tens of thousands of years old. "If you recall, the Mayans did very well with the knowledge we shared with them."

Loki snorted, slamming his hands on his mentor’s desk. "They did well, Menes, because we only gave them part of the information. As civilization progressed we were not the ones to share those secrets with any other culture. They are evil and unintelligent! They should remain as slaves to the Anunnaki!"

Menes pressed two fingers against his temple, and said, "Even with the veil wrapped around this planet, the Mayans ascended before the collective was ready. And the Anunnaki visited them frequently." He smiled warmly at Loki. "Calm your soul my friend, all will be well. If the time is not right then the Cave of Creation will not expose itself and the Akashic Records will not be found. But I believe it is time."

Aggravated with the response, Loki began pacing the golden floors of the office. "Menes, of those that came with us only ten remain, and we have lost contact with ourselves above! We are running out of time, if we let this happen there will be nothing left!" From the few hundred that escaped the destruction of Atlantis, fifty came to Earth. The rest had gone to Mars as instructed by spirit. Loki stopped pacing, and pointed his finger at Menes to emphasize the gravity of his point. "It is a trap just like before. The four horsemen have been unleashed. The war is not going well; you and I both know this. They will destroy this planet just like they did Atlantis!" Panic edged his voice and made his aura burn so brightly Menes was forced to squint.

"Loki…” Standing, he walked over to his distraught brother, placing his hands soothingly on Loki’s shoulders. "You can no longer hear yourself because of the fear in your heart. You must regain your trust in Spirit, in the goodness of God. You must remember that we want nothing but the best for you. You must believe this completely. It is time. We keep secrets no longer. The Phoenix Cycle completes December 21st, 2012. This planet will ascend and it will be marvelous."

Loki broke roughly away from Menes’ grip. "You are a fool," he spat angrily. As he waved his hand, a section of the stone wall slid open and he stormed out. Menes sighed disappointedly as Loki left. Once again they were faced with the end of an era and he prayed the disturbing images that had recently plagued his dreams were not solely all the future would become.

§

Menes was wrong. Sound was the universal language and since the dawn of America, the world's great superpower, the first and second dimension frequencies had been screaming in pain. For centuries they had watched humans de-evolve. No, they just weren't ready. He had to help stop it.

Loki stood on the deserted street corner, looking around him. They had worked hard to create Rainbow City. Using the knowledge taught from their destroyed home they had constructed a dome deep beneath the frigid waters, iridescently radiating through the blackness of the ocean. It was a suburb compared to the grandeur of Atlantis, but it proved how advanced technology had been when used in conjunction with the natural energy of a planet, which by its very nature provides for all children who inhabit it.

But out of fifty, there were now ten. Their brothers and sisters had chosen to let go of their hold on physicality, worse, some had been taken by dis-ease, which was what happened to a human body when the energy portals, or charkas became blocked. This made the situation far worse. If there were no Ascended Masters left to teach the humans and they discovered the Cave of Creation it would end in disaster. They were not passive. They would immediately wage war on the Anunnaki for the part they played in the manipulation of their genetic code and the creation of the veil. The Promise would be forgotten and the world would end again. He could not, would not allow that.

His resolve steeled, his destination was the temple. The Pyramid was in the center of their city, standing out as clearly as a diamond glinting in the sand. Its power lay in the sacred geometry of its shape, and the energy channeled by the two giant crystals inside it. By recognizing his connection with everything around him he was able to blend with those energies and fly, much like a passing breeze, into the holy space. Loki descended long enough to drop to his knees in a moment of silent reverence. A wordless prayer was given to the pair of glowing crystals suspended in mid air, touching at their diamond shaped tips. If one was removed the balance of energy would shatter and their city would fall.

"Forgive me for what I must do," Loki whispered. Rising back into the air he closed his hand around one of the golden rods.

§

June 6th, 2012

5 Miles below Antarctica

Shackelton Ice Shelf 9:22 AM

Dr. Abe Donahue had zipped through his college career earning a degree in marine biology, and a PhD in internal medicine. After that he decided to join the Navy, just because he liked boats, and spent the next six years in an attack submarine. It was why he felt confident enough to nap in the tight compartment of the midget submarine. The pulsing lights of the computer system running on auto pilot beeped in rhythmic quiet around him.

It became a cacophony of noise.

Suddenly, every system released a high pitch scream, ripping Abe back into consciousness. He bolted into an upright position just as a wave of white light rolled through the pitch black waters right into the thick titanium. Metal whined as the tiny ship went whizzing backwards, smashing into a piece of rock.

"What the fuck was that, Abe?!" Dr. Shirley McDermott emerged from the only other compartment in the submarine seconds after the explosion. Worry clouded her dark brown eyes.

"I have no idea." Abe’s voice was steady, but his fingers were flying over the keyboard running through system checks to make sure the weight of the ocean wasn't about to come crashing in on them.

Shirley jumped into the chair across from him, poking at the touch screens. "Looks stable. Guess we just banged her up."

"General Kahlo is going to be pissed if that left a mark." He winced and shoved his hands back through his hair. "Now let me see if I can figure out where the hell that came from."

"Abe." Shirley was suddenly digging her nails into his bicep.

"What?" He was busy trying to make sense of the strange readings he was getting, but both the tone of her voice and the sting of her nails made him look up. For a second he thought he was hallucinating.

A man was floating through the water. His hands were gripped around one large golden pole. On top of it a diamond shaped crystal threw out a gentle green light that surrounded his body.

She had a PhD in physics and psychology. She knew what was possible and what was not. What was happening in front of them was not possible. The tons of pressure should have killed him, but there he was floating like a fish.

"Get this thing moving, Abe! Follow him!"

"I'm…I'm on it." He couldn't get his hands to stop their sudden shaking as he pressed a button on the control panel to turn the machine around. The bright spotlights from the vessel illuminated the figure of the man as they trailed slowly behind him.

§

June 7th, 2012

S.V.T. Think Tank

Alexandria, VA 1:11 AM

S.V.T. Think Tank, subsidiary of the Dion Corporation, was only eight years old. It had been created to utilize the vast streams of information that was gathered by S.V.T. Securities, a corporate security watch dog that subsequently spied on the organizations it was safeguarding.

S.V.T Think Tank’s mission was simple; improve weapons, design vehicles, update computer systems, video and audio surveillance equipment, anything that was required or not yet thought of.

Since Derek was the Director of the project it provided them the needed privacy and clearance to pull these little 'missions' off. Two floors connected by a winding staircase were devoted entirely to them, accessible by a limited number of personnel. There were only two cameras on the floor and they were in front of the elevators. That deceptively simple gesture was a sign of trust from his employer that was not to be taken lightly. Antonia Bianca–Vaughn, his grandmother, had been one of the personal bodyguards to the head of the Terenzio family back in the day. The Vaughn’s were looked upon by the Terenzio’s as blood relatives and Derek was very aware that a big part of that trust was because of that bond. Until they could figure out what the hell was going on, he sincerely hoped they would stay under the radar.

He stood on the roof of the building chugging down a Styrofoam cup of coffee as the helicopter landed. The implications of this find were mind blowing. He could not remember the last time he had felt so skeptical, scared and excited all at once.

When the deafening noise stilled he tossed the cup in the trash bin near the door, and went jogging forward to meet them. His steps faltered then picked up again when Shirley climbed out first, her arm around a man who looked as if he had just walked off a movie set. Their stranger’s hair was silvery gray and down to his shoulders. He wore a deep burgundy silk toga that nearly sparkled. When the man lifted his head, his eyes were an elegant feline green. Now, Derek wasn't gay, but this man was beautiful. His appearance alone added a little credibility to the story of how he had been found.

"Let's get him inside Shirley," Derek said eager to get to the bottom of this mystery. "Has he spoken?"

"In a language we can't understand. We can't even place it, Derek," Shirley said with an incredulous expression on her face.

Abe emerged from the cockpit of the helicopter carrying a golden pole with the crystal attached to the top.

Derek gawked at Abe as he approached. The crystal he carried was pulsing with some sort of energy you could just…feel. "What the hell is that?"

"No idea. It was pulling him up to the surface."

Derek paused then shook his head, turning to follow Shirley. "Let's try to make sense of this."

§

Loki had done it, just as Menes had envisioned in his dream. The moment the crystal was removed from its balance in the temple, Rainbow City had collapsed. Menes had run from his office as the buildings of stone began to topple and the dome that surrounded their city began to crack. Baphomet, Thoth, Pyrrha, Laura, Phoroneus, Astrea, Enoch and Solon did nothing to save themselves, only smiled and waited for the inevitable. Astrea had walked up to Menes, kissed him, let her energy surround him in a great wave of love and told him to go. Baphomet brought the final crystal to him while the others began to channel their energy together, recharging the crystal so it would protect him on his way to the surface.

Even though Menes knew it was going to happen, and could accept it readily he still felt pain for the loss. But, he consoled himself with the knowledge that soon he would be able release his hold on the vessel of his body so that he might go with his loved ones to that mysterious ethereal plane and begin on this world, or even others anew.

"Speak to them, Menes. Make them understand you."

The words entered his mind as naturally as the air entered his lungs. His spirit guides. And his higher self. He closed his eyes and sagged against the stranger that led him. Human kind was still so primitive, it was a shame. These scientists, though, he recognized them. He had seen them before in Atlantis, but understood they didn't remember him. That didn't matter; they had been chosen. Through their research and the ability of their employer to manipulate the reality of this world, mankind would stand a chance through the difficult times ahead. A choice was upon them; it was imperative that choice be granted.

§

To get into their department from any entry point you were required to have an access card, and pass a retinal scan. Derek used his to clear them through the door on the rooftop and the group moved quickly but cautiously to the main lab room.

As the soundproof door slid closed behind them Abe gave the rod to Derek, and helped Shirley get the man onto one of the examination tables. He had given their strange guest a brief examination after they pulled him out of the water, now Abe wanted to be more thorough.

Derek found it hard to take his eyes off the crystal as he followed the pair into the room. He walked over to the table across from Abe, and snapped on the glaring overhead light. He pulled his glasses from the front pocket of his shirt, sliding them over his dark brown eyes to investigate the strange artifact under the superficial light as Shirley stepped up beside him.

There was gentle amusement in Menes eyes as he watched Abe pull out the stethoscope. It was like seeing the hammer of a cave man. He began laughing only to wince as a sharp telling pain shot under his ribs. Time was of the essence. Lifting his hand, he pressed it against Abe’s forehead. Abe blinked in surprise at the motion, but did not pull away. Warmth suddenly wrapped around Abe’s body, like nothing he had ever felt. He gaped in awe at Menes trying to understand the overload of loving emotion he felt when he noticed a second sensation. This time it was probing at his mind.

Probing at his mind? For a second Abe truly believed he had gone insane, but no, there it was again. Without control or resistance he began speaking; not for himself but for the strange man touching him.

"I am Menes."

Shirley and Derek looked up simultaneously, eyes widening. Abe was glowing. A gentle green light surrounded him and the man they had "found."

"Derek, is…?" Shirley couldn't form the words, but Derek understood the half spoken question. He felt like he was crazy because the longer he watched the scene in front of him, the more familiar it began to feel. As if he had seen something like this before.

Menes smiled at the other two and began to speak through Abe. It was easier this way; he had not spoken English in several decades. "A great age is upon you. You are closer to the truth than you have ever been." He hesitated, choosing the words carefully. "I warn you that what you uncover will shock you, anger you, and terrify you. It will also soothe your souls, and you will know come to understanding why the knowledge has been withheld from you. You must find the Cave of Creation before the next winter solstice. It is this final step that will bring man into full consciousness. The Ascension must not fail again." He drew in a shaky breath, his energy wavering and he willed it to stay with him a little longer.

“Loki - you must find him. He will alert the Anunnaki and they will try to stop you. Those you work for have means to protect you, to help you lift the veil so all will know, as above in heaven, so below on Earth. Do what you will, love is law." He could say no more. Sighing, he ruffled Abe’s hair affectionately, before he broke the connection and lay back down on the table. He could hear the other dimensions calling him, the voices of those he loved welcoming him back. He closed his eyes and with perfect trust and acceptance he released his hold on his physical body. His heart ceased, his breathing stopped and his soul peacefully ascended to the next plane, eager to decide what to return as.

§

The calm silence after Abe, Menes, whoever stopped speaking brought undeniable knowledge; Menes was dying. Tears sprung to Shirley's eyes as she walked over to Menes’ body, holding his hand through his final breath as if she had known him her entire life, and not just those few short hours.

Even though her heart ached she couldn't shake the feeling that death wasn't the end. She would see him again. The notion was completely illogical to an agnostic but somehow she just knew she was right.

Derek sunk down on the edge of an empty exam table, overwhelmed. Abe looked equally as torn as his back hit the wall, his face pale.

"What…what do we do now?" Abe whispered.

Derek swallowed hard and shook his head. He was at a complete loss. "I don't know."

Shirley turned to both of them. "Call Terenzio. As bizarre as this all is, we've still got work to do. And if Menes is right we're going to need backup."

Chapter 3

“Modern morality and manners suppress all natural instincts, keep people ignorant of the facts of nature and make them fight drunk on bogey tales.”

- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley, chapter 57

June 7th, 2012

Loyalty Airlines Airport

Alcyone Island 12:12 AM

In 1925 the United States Congress passed the Airmail act which allowed private airline companies to place bids on picking up routes for delivery of U.S. mail. At the time it took a huge burden off the U.S. Postal Service and gave a boost to a slowly growing airline industry.

In 1925 Stefano Vasco Terenzio saw not only a way to change the public image of his two-year-old freight airline company, but also a nearly foolproof way to bridge the gaps between the mob groups around the country. Another step in solidifying his control over them. Under the cover of delivering mail, Loyalty Airlines transported stolen items acquired off the black market, laundered cash, drugs, weapons, whatever was required. Backroom deals, boardroom meetings, constant bribes and the occasional roughing up of a few public officials ensured Loyalty Airlines status as a powerhouse in the aviation world.

By 1930 the budding seeds had been planted and S.V.T. turned control of the airline over to his sister, Liliana. At the time her (fourth) husband, formerly of the U.S. Air force, then Colonel of Alcyone Islands AF, had a few friends in the engineering department at Boeing who were willing to share secrets for a hefty price, keeping Loyalty ahead of their competitors as far as technological advancements went.

By the late 1960s the public had become comfortable with flying and Loyalty jumped right into the commercial markets. In 2000 it bought out a major U.S. carrier and two smaller international companies, then expansion stopped with no plans for anything further.

There was only one airline at the Loyalty International Airport on Alcyone Island, and that was theirs. No matter what other carriers tried to get a terminal, no amount of money would change a policy that had been set in place by S.V.T. himself. No one got on the island that Terenzio didn't know about. As tickets were booked the information was transmitted to the Phoenix Island Command Center where background checks, credit checks, personal history, even medical records were run and shared with the MP database. Unknown to the tourists that simply came to the island to have a good time, cab rides, rental cars, hotel rooms, and everything in between were bugged with video and audio surveillance. When you brought someone into your home, you took no chances.

At this late hour a lone Lear jet sat patiently on the black pavement, two armed guards standing at the bottom of the metal staircase attached to it. Both men dressed in white short-sleeved collared shirts and sharply pressed khakis. Wireless earpieces were hardly visible. The men’s gloved hands (weather not conducive) were comfortably wrapped around automatic rifles, a sidearm holstered to each of their hips. The words DION CORP were proudly displayed on the plane, and on the front of their shirts in tiny lettering on the right hand side. Once the sun set, any Military Police assigned to the airport were sent in full force around the Island to keep the peace. Consequently, Alcyone Island had been named one of the safest tourist spots for the last fifty years. Flights that were not meant for the public eye arrived during twilight hours and airport security was tasked to the Alcyone Island Omega Cadre, an elite special operations force, or the Private Security personnel of the Dion Corporation.

No one from the Terenzio bloodline went anywhere without an armed escort, or was given a random pilot for their frequent globetrotting trips. That was the reason Alcyone AF lieutenant General Richard "Richie" Archer was present at such an hour. Archer either flew the Terenzio’s himself or hand picked the pilot to complete the assignment, a real honor. At 6'2, 225 pounds, the dark-skinned man was easily identifiable by the all black uniform. A blood red and ice blue stripe crisscrossed as it ran down the arms of the coat and pant legs. Instead of wings sitting on the shoulders of his uniformed coat, three small emblems of a Phoenix announced his rank.

Seven years ago Archer, like a lot of the personnel on the island, had been a U.S. military man. He'd never asked how he'd been so thoroughly scouted but clearly remembered the day current Governor Isabella Terenzio showed up in his office. It had taken two short weeks to lure him away from duty to country.

Archer arrived two hours before the scheduled departure to go over the flight plan. He was a meticulous man, nearly to the point of obsessive compulsive disorder with a steel demeanor, quick temper and zero tolerance for carelessness from anyone on the flight staff. By the time the limo pulled up he had inspected the plane twice, fired a mechanic and called in two fighter jets to escort them over international airspace. Ten minutes after the arrival of the three heirs the jet was slicing through warm blue Central American skies and headed straight across the Atlantic.

§

Simone curled up into a semi ball on one corner of the leather sofa. A tissue was squeezed to tatters in her hand, her bent knuckles set against her mouth as she struggled to control her emotions. It was a losing battle. The farther they got from their grandfather the more she realized his death was inevitable. A small tear fell from the corner of her eye, unhidden by the long black waves that stretched down to her shoulders.

"How long did you expect him to live, Simone?" Vasco dropped his slightly taller 6'1 form down into one of the executive leather chairs, stretching both legs out in front of him. He pushed his short locks back from his forehead that wrinkled with a displeased expression. Even though he didn't laugh nearly as often as his brother, they both shared laugh lines around the mouth.

"Fuck you, Vasco." Simone said it quietly but sharply without looking at him. Instead she continued to stare at the mp3 player that had been waiting for them when they stepped onto the plane. Richie had told them it was from Grandfather.

"We can't all be as cold as you are, V." Lucien sat next to his sister, loosening the knot in his tie and shifting lighter gray eyes between his siblings. They had looked so much alike as children; it was interesting how time and this business of life wore on facial characteristics. Now you could easily tell them apart, even the brothers. Vasco had taken on more of his grandfather and great-grandfather's traits: a slightly pudgy Italian nose and aristocratic facial features. Lucien and Simone took on the more exotic genes, with a deeper hue to their skin tone and smoother lines around their faces.

A wealth of emotion was hidden behind the darker gray eyes of the eldest as they settled on his sister. Sighing, perhaps in wordless apology, he tipped his head in the direction of the player. "Let's hear it."

Drawing in a deep breath, steeling herself for the voice that would come to haunt them, she pressed the play button.

§

June 7th, 2012

Alcyone Island

Holt Air Force Base 12:15 AM

Four military jeeps sped down a narrow two-lane road. The soft thickness of the jungle surrounded them in whispering shadows, natures’ nocturnal hum carelessly interrupted by the roar of the vehicles and the angry glare of headlights.

Five-emblem General of Alcyone Islands Military, Amadeo Terenzio sat in the front seat, the musty air whipping around the officer’s hat, one hand raised and wrapped around the exposed metal bar above him. He always rode second in the entourage, always traveled with one. It didn't matter they were heading for one of the most secure points on the island, Holt AFB, named after Colonel Jack Holt, war hero of the late nineteen twenties.

Well, not exactly war hero.

Holt allegedly had an affair with Liliana Terenzio, the Lieutenant Governor’s wife. Holt was killed during the volcanic eruption of 1927 but not by lava. A traitor had slipped in and began murdering those that evacuated with Terenzio. Despite Holt's alleged affair, he was given a hero's funeral and no one asked why. Right after, the Lieutenant Governor, then husband to Liliana abandoned his position, his wife and their two children. Liliana was given her husband’s job, and anyone who knew that unspoken history agreed she should have been given the spot from the start. S.V.T. had never put a limit on how far the women in his life could advance despite what society, tradition, even the Cosa Nostra deemed as appropriate female behavior.

But that was then.

Now, five feet before the fog lamps could be seen the base could see you. At three feet the control tower knew how many were in each vehicle and what they were armed with. One foot before the fog lamps became visible fingerprints had been lifted by remote scan off the dashboard, inside door handles and the steering wheel. By the time the vehicles came to a stop at the security gate, the base had a ninety-three percent success rate at identifying who was in the car. Those with no record found in the allotted time had their personal information subjected to a different process that would dig deeper. At that point visitors were held at the gate and security was put on high alert until they were identified and cleared.

When their entourage pulled up, the tower was giving the signal for the fence to slide open. The base Sergeant met Amadeo at the jeep with a sharp salute. Behind him, two mechanical robots were unloading supply crates from a landed plane. "What time are they expected to be here?" Amadeo asked without preamble.

"We have just been informed that they are not coming here, sir."

Amadeo blinked, the surprised expression on his face as unhidden as the sure sudden spark of his temper. "Come again, Sergeant? Where the fuck are they?"

Unconsciously the Sergeant took a step backward as he answered the question. "We were told, sir, that the information is above our security clearance."

Fury darkened the steel of his eyes, a familiar trait. "Get Olivia Terenzio on the phone. Now."

Chapter 4

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the “universe”… he experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few people near us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

-Albert Einstein

June 7th, 2012

Dion Corp Executive Lear Jet

Somewhere across the Atlantic 12:22 AM

For the longest time I wondered how many moves ahead my father really saw. Wondered how many things that I thought I’d done on my own, was really his doing. And then I realized the blatant truth in his infamous statement, “I make you do nothing, the choices are your own.”

My father started the game for ego and control. Typical Stefano. I didn’t change it because I’ve gone soft, though my silence over those motivates has left a lot of mistrust and doubt floating through the family that you now have control over. But taming that rift is not your goal.

I changed the game for checkmate at first for nothing more than vengeance. The why of that, you will learn soon enough. There was nothing noble in my actions, merely a personal score that had to be settled. It was only after that, in the loving arms of a wife who forgave me for a year’s absence that I realized we would never win if it became a matter of tit for tat. It was at this point that I began to research in depth what we, now you, are up against, and what needed to be done to heed the words of a friend who wisely informed me of my soul’s purpose. It was here that I uncovered the truth about this world we thought was ours for the taking, and it solidified my choice to turn this family from one that rides the fence milking both sides for all they are worth and pick one.

That is why I am sending you to the Vault, a place where you will remember who you are. There is also something I wish to impart to you of extreme importance.

You will not win this battle without complete acceptance of a single emotion, and that is love. Through that emotion you will be able to forsake all else and ironically, do what is necessary. Love, yes don’t roll your eyes. Love of yourselves and of the souls in this world you are tasked with helping. It is time for them to make their choice, time for you to decide whether or not you will give it to them. The Ascension will not happen without Terenzio support, sooth your ego’s with that.

Once you’re done at your destination you’ll find the rest is simply a game of chess. And I can say with certainty that while pieces have been lost no Terenzio has ever walked away from a chessboard without uttering the word, checkmate.

Finish it. In light and love, good luck my grandchildren.

§

June 7th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Alcyone Island 4:44 AM

The clock on the nightstand ticked away mockingly. Every snap of the second hand was a cruel reminder for Demetrius that another whom he loved he would lose. As a family they controlled so much, or at least they thought they did. They were powerful creatures; they moved like it, they spoke like it. You could see it glinting like the fine edge of a razor in the back of their eyes. But there were things, so many things, no one could control. He had not been able to save his sister, only carry the scar of a bullet. He could not save his wife, only sob soundlessly as his children were handed to him and the doctors attempted to consol the grieving new father. He could not save his own father, the rock that had kept him from collapsing under the weight of emotion his entire life. He was empathic without a shield; for whatever reason he was never able to form a protective one.

He looked so much older than his years. Older than his father at times. The wrinkled face was weathered by life, not time. He sat in a chair next to the burning fireplace, his elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped together and pressed tightly against his mouth. Broken gray eyes watched his sleeping father with such intensity, as if by his mere will he could keep the dying man in this plane of existence a little longer.

"If we could hold each other here by thought alone this family would have been saved so much grief." Marcello mumbled the words, gradually opening his eyes to focus them on his son’s face.

What did it say about a man that thirty years later it still hurt him to think of the wife he had lost? Agony streaked briefly across his eyes and Demetrius drew in a long breath, shaking his head and replying quietly, "Including Amanda."

Amanda his twin sister. She died at twenty through no fault of her own. Sadness clouded Marcello's eyes and he reached out for his son's hand, waiting until it was accepted before he spoke. "It was not your job to keep her safe, it was mine. I failed, not you." Amanda, who would have been more than a suitable heir, took two bullets. One was meant for her, the other for her brother. Lots of people had a vendetta against Terenzio; it was the nature of the business. But the men who had murdered his daughter hadn't been part of anything 'meaningful.' They were mere thugs, pissed off that a backroom deal hadn't netted them as much money as they wanted. Four lines of coke and too much alcohol later, getting back at Terenzio sounded like a great idea. The thugs had assumed that Amanda and Demetrius were either Liliana’s or Julian’s.

The way life worked was both strange, and cruel. The twins always had bodyguards but this one time, Mari had been in the states on business and Marcello had allowed brother and sister to have a night out without a 'babysitter.' He had thought, perhaps too arrogantly, that they would be safe on their own island.

Guilt was not a color a Terenzio wore, Demetrius the exception, but Marcello had nearly come apart at the seams for good that day. In his darkest moments he wondered if Mari blamed him for it, because he did so himself. She would not have allowed their children to go out that night unguarded and Amanda might still be with them today if her mother’s logical, ironclad sense of duty to her children had won out over a father's tendency to spoil and give in to mundane requests.

Demetrius squeezed his father’s hand tightly, watching the far away look seep into his eyes. "Don't, Dad. Not now."

Marcello snapped back to the present, smiling slightly at his son. "You care too much. That has always been your strength, Demetrius, regardless of what others have said."

Demetrius opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the loud musical ring of his father's cell phone. Demetrius looked surprised; Marcello did not, nodding at his son to indicate that he should answer it. Demetrius pulled the tiny thing to him, flipping it open. "Demetrius Terenzio."

"Demetrius? I’m sorry for calling at such an early hour, but is Marcello there? I’ve got to talk to him." Derek said in a rush.

Demetrius's brows shot up, ready to reprimand Vaughn for his cavalier attitude while his father was dying, but realized that because they hadn't been able to reach him, Derek didn't know. "Derek, now is not a good time. We've got bad news here…"

"I’ll speak to him." Marcello struggled, pushing himself into an upright position, and held his hand out for the phone, cutting off his son's words.

Demetrius’s expression turned curious. "Hang on, Derek, here he is." He handed the phone to his father, looking at him in question as to whether he should stay or go.

Marcello motioned for him to stay. "What did you find, Derek?"

"Sir, I don't know if you would believe me if I told you. Do you have access to your computer? You're going to want to see him."

§

June 7th, 2012

Delgado Apartment

Bronx, NY 12:15 AM

The cold metallic black Cadillac did not fit in with the rotting neighborhood. It was grossly out of place parked in front of the dirty brick, rat-infested apartment building in a block too small for the structures crammed onto it.

The three that rose out of the tinted-window luxury car were as out of place as the vehicle that brought them. Annoyance twisted the only female’s features as the trio entered the building and were forced to take the stairs to the fifth floor because once again the elevators were out.

New York was not Terenzio territory. Only one piece of Terenzio control sat here (aside from Loyalty Airlines having terminals at JFK and LaGuardia) and that was S.V.T. Securities. One of the first subsidiaries of the Dion Corporation, S.V.T. Securities had been the best idea Stefano Terenzio ever had. The corporate security company had bloomed in the lawless years of the twenties under the clever guise of protection. While not nearly the largest one of its kind, it was one of the most successful.

Senior Vice President Olivia Terenzio was in charge of all the S.V.T.S. offices along the eastern coast of the United States. On the side, discreetly, for her own amusement and profit, she ran a tiny loan sharking business on the NY city streets. It was something to do to pass the time, but on occasion it assisted in recruiting new faces into the company. After all, you never knew who you were going to meet, and who you could end up learning how to use.

Collecting money owed was the reason for her visit to this shitty part of town tonight.

When they reached their floor she motioned to one of the men behind her, a broad-shouldered brute with a nasty scar born at the corner of his eye that curved down the side of his face. A knife had barely missed taking his vision from him three years ago, all in a day’s work. He walked up to the apartment door and with a strong kick tore it from its poor excuse of a lock, sending it swinging wildly open.

The three stepped inside just as a woman went sprawling to the floor, sent there by the vicious slap of her husband. Hector Delgado jerked red-rimmed drunken brown eyes from the collapsed form of his wife to the sudden intrusion. His anger was quick to abate to fear when he saw who it was.

It made Olivia smile.

Her eyes flicked over the interior, past a roach crawling up a dirty beige wall to the woman on the floor with a hand against her face struggling not to cry. In the archway fearful, tear-filled eyes peeked around the corner. A child no more than seven watched helplessly as her mother was once again victim to her husband's drunken anger. Innocence corrupted with every cruel blow. Olivia was told the little girl was extremely bright, a math whiz. When she grew up she would be useful. Right now the woman and child were not her concern.

He was.

"Miss Terenzio, I was gonna call you."

She ignored him while he spoke, cruel eyes wandering aimlessly over the apartment. Finally her hand extended to the right, and Scar face placed the butt of the gun in her palm.

The fear became more pronounced at the sight. "Now Miss Terenzio, I swear I was gonna -"

She silenced him when she backhanded him with the hard metal of the gun. Hector twisted violently to the side, grunting out in a high pitched whine of pain. She followed his stumble, hit him again with a bored expression on her face as he crumpled to the floor.

He started begging now. Rather, he tried.

Standing over him, Olivia set the ball of her high-heeled foot against the back of his neck, pushing his throbbing face into the dirty carpet. "Shut it, Delgado." The sharp echo of the gun cocking caused Delgado to start a fit of trembling. She thought it was amusing that his wife never made a sound of protest. The woman probably hoped her husband might be taken off her hands.

"If you're late with my money again…." When she pulled the trigger the bullet ripped into the floor right above his head. Both child and mother jumped but bravely watched on. Hector pissed himself.

Olivia smiled. "You understand now. Go get it."

She stepped back, laughter in her eyes at the obvious stain on the front of his pants. He stumbled into the kitchen, knocking things off the counter as he attempted to bend down and reach underneath the sink. He came back with a thick stack of bills, messily rubber banded together.

She passed the gun back to Scar face. "Every dollar, Delgado."

Delgado was quiet. Sweating, bleeding from the double strike to his face, his hands visibly shook as he watched Olivia slowly count the hundred dollar bills.

A cell phone interrupted the tense silence; the man standing next to Scar face, thinner and not as rough looking, pulled the phone from the inside of his suit jacket. He answered without speaking, listened for a moment then held the phone in Olivia's direction. "Ma'am, General Terenzio on the line."

She made him wait, finished counting then traded money for phone. "On time next week, Delgado." Turning away from the scene, Olivia put the phone against her ear. "What's the crisis now, cousin?"

Chapter 5

“What good fortune for governments that the people do not think.”

-Adolf Hitler

June 7th, 2012

The Vasco Resort Hotel

Alcyone Island 12:22 AM

Xavier was an Indigo child. Part of a generation of highly sensitive, physic children who began entering the world in the 1970s with a shared, voluntary purpose: tearing down every old system and paradigm that no longer served humanity. Their warrior spirits and inability to conform made them quite the headache for their parents growing up. Frowned at for having a rebellious, “arrogant” nature, they were also frequently mislabeled with ADD and ADHD. Regardless, they kicked past the barriers put in front of them, and as adults they were infiltrating the system to rip it apart from the inside out, or working on the outside, brandishing machetes and cutting away the mess.

Xavier had been aware of his soul's voluntary mission on Earth since his birth to the son of Kyle and Liliana Terenzio-Zhane, Christopher. While his father had never really understood him, Christopher had seen the potential in his son and focused on that, not his often times erratic, baffling nature. Xavier was thankful the upbringing he’d received had been exactly what he needed to prepare him for his role as an adult. That, too, was no coincidence; much like the face on 15” flat screen TV hanging from the roof in the back of the car. Picking up the remote, Xavier turned up the volume, brief amusement settling across his face as he listened.

Jim was at it again. A rogue investigative journalist who had gotten his own hour of nightly talk time on one of the Satellite Cable Stations (SCS for short) was exposing secrets that had cleverly been kept away from the general populace for centuries. Five years ago, Jim had been containable; a nuisance, but not a threat. The release of the internet proved that stand wasn't well thought out by the Brotherhood. That outlet and the continued technological advancements literally connecting the world made it impossible to limit his exposure. Three times a week, Jim’s face appeared for millions of viewers to see and his radio show aired nightly.

Day after day, he ratted out the government and police forces around the country when they tried to strip away pieces of the Constitution. Every time Operation Urban Warrior was released for testing purposes on real American towns, Jim reported on it. When RFID was being passed off as the "safe" technology of the future, it gave him something else to passionately rant about, exposing it for the tyrannical tracking device it really was.

RBK, a subsidiary construction company (whose shareholders included the Vice President of the United States), was given a two hundred and fifty million dollar contract to build illegal immigrant detainee stations. A small article was posted in random publications across the country. Two days later, at least fifty popular websites aired the true version of the story, telling everyone that they were concentration camps for terrorists; a.k.a anyone who did not adopt the coming formation of the North American Union, the last step in turning America into a true police state.

It wasn’t just the easy outlet for conspiracy theorists causing problems. Xavier couldn’t help but briefly smile at the slew of “blunders” that had plagued the Powers That Be the last few years. N.E.S.A.R.A. had been miraculously passed in 2005. Smartly, the Supreme Court put a gag order on it and it was lost for a while. Then word leaked out. It was a huge mess. More than usual were removed from the Brotherhood after that and their deaths were never kind.

The fuck ups continued when a sarcophagus that was found underneath an apartment complex in Iraq in 1980 and very skillfully hidden from public view for over twenty years, suddenly came to the nation’s complete attention in 2007. It had caused a quiet fury among the Bloodlines, especially when it was proven to be the final resting place of Jesus' family, which included his wife and son.

That revelation still made Xavier chuckle in private delight. But, it was the future he was the most concerned with, and that was why he was in such a hurry to get back to the Capital. The limousine pulled to a stop in front of the Hotel. Flanked by two stoned faced, black suited men, Xavier moved quickly through the lobby, into the glass elevators, and up to his penthouse suite. Inside, another Agent was scanning the room for hidden listening devices; besides the typical ones that SVT Securities installed in all Terenzio owned holdings. At a small table away from the windows Xavier’s fiancé’, Kelly Palagio, a striking woman with soulful brown eyes sat in front of a laptop computer. An Indigo child herself and an energy worker, she looked up as Xavier walked in, a loving smile spreading over her full lips.

Her energy was almost palpable and could pull him from the foulest moods almost instantaneously. He walked over to her, bending to kiss her as his bodyguards began to get their luggage together.

Kelly touched his jaw as she returned his kiss, and then stood up to let him sit. “Alexandro is waiting on the line.”

“Thanks.” Xavier took the chair, looking at the LCD screen, the face of his mentor in a small box on the other side. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

“Xavier.” Alexandro DeMarco III was the Director of Homeland Security, and a double agent. The DeMarco family had a long history in politics, dating back to 1928 when his great grandfather, Alexandro DeMarco I, beat Huey P. Long for Governorship of Louisiana. It was quite the accomplishment considering that at the time Alexandro’s brother, Antonio, was the Don of the DeMarco crime family. Alexandro and his wife, Mona, were both intimate friends of Stefano Terenzio and his wife, and the DeMarco’s had secretly kept their friendship with the Terenzio family alive over the last century. Alexandro smiled warmly at Xavier. “When are you going to marry that beautiful woman?”

At the question, Xavier glanced over his shoulder, watching as she coordinated their departure with his men. A private smile slid over his mouth as he looked back the computer screen. “If all goes according to plan, January 1st, 2014.”

“A good date.” Alexandro chuckled briefly then grew serious. “They are getting very anxious, as they should. I’ve received word that the Bloodlines are speeding up the formation of the NAU.”

Xavier nodded. He expected as much. Because the last ten years had been one critical leak after the next, They knew they had to ensure that no one thought long enough to work up the intent to do anything about something like the formation of the NAU. The North American Union would erase the borders that separated Canada, Mexico and the United States and form one nation that would have its own judicial and executive branches, which would supersede those of the individual countries. Neither Congress, nor the people had been given a say in its formation. All meetings had been held in secret with the heads of each country, along with the CEO’s of the worlds leading conglomerates and select members of the Council on Foreign Relations. The NAU was a key step in the formation of a World Government which would make Nazi Germany resemble a democracy. “Any plans to slow them down?” Xavier asked.

“I’m working with Antonio on that,” Alexandro said, referring to his brother. “Since the Bloodlines are so proficient at keeping the populace unaware of their sinister intentions, even with the Veil lifting it is difficult to convince the masses to take appropriate action without giving ourselves away.”

Alexandro was right. Most Americans had never heard of the NAU and even if told its purpose, not many believed it. That, along with the dangers of the Patriot Act V, and every right “freemen” had given away to be "safe" were continually kept hidden. The Brotherhood was putting tremendous effort, especially now, in keeping the average citizen from ever believing that the agencies created to protect them were just the opposite. It was imperative for the New World Order that people continued to willingly give their power away by remaining and participating in the thought-controlled systems surrounding them. “Another well placed leak, perhaps? The little bombs we drop bring more people into awareness and once that begins, awakening has no choice but to follow,” Xavier offered.

“Perhaps. The public hearings into 9/11 have been derailed again. They are celebrating that small victory,” Alexandro said.

Xavier frowned. Ten years later, that event was still a thorn in the Bloodlines’ side. Enough of the populace was not willing to let it go, and every year more evidence was exposed to bring it back into the limelight. September 11th had almost turned into the worst fiasco of them all for the Brotherhood. The plan had been so beautifully put together and if the third plane had hit the White House, the general populace wouldn’t be a problem. Martial law would have been declared and they’d be in those concentration camps as intended. But no, it hadn’t gone as planned. The cover up story was badly thought out, (an understatement) and anyone with a high school education knew the government's explanation was a lie. Xavier still found it frustrating that that event alone hadn’t shocked a nation awake. Amazingly, the Brotherhood had gotten away with it. “Not quite enough have awakened then,” Xavier sighed.

“Fear is still a powerful tool, mi amico. Security sells, and religion is the icing on the cake. Don’t worry too much, the world will see it for the illusion it all is soon enough. We’ll see to that,” Alexandro assured him.

Xavier rubbed the back of his neck. The educated, the non educated. The Democrat, the Republican, the Independent. The Advocate. The Conformist and the Activist. The Patriots who proudly condemned those who complained but never voted or served their country.

The Bloodline called them suckers.

Parties were a smokescreen. Elections were not decided by the population, and the Electoral College had the same boss as everyone else. The presidential election of 2000 couldn’t have made that more glaringly apparent, but the irony was that the majority of humans wanted to be manipulated. Centuries of conditioning, lies, and secrecy ensured that human beings didn’t believe in anything past the mundane. It was inconceivable that a government might be as evil as the conspiracy theorists claimed, and anything to prove that the ordinary reality still existed was latched onto like a crack pipe. No matter that the evidence proved otherwise.

“What do you have on my to-do list, sir?” Xavier finally asked.

Alexandro smiled. “First, I have some good news to share. When you return I will be away for several days. All twelve Ascended Masters have taken on physical form and I am to meet with two of them. The Veil has lifted enough that they can exist in the lower density without the forgetfulness. It only further proves it’s time.”

Xavier had to grin at that news. ”Really? That’s wonderful. That will help tremendously.” In the beginning, what was called The Veil had been necessary. Keeping humans in a competitive, hierarchal system based on a string of half truths had been part of the grand plan all the way back to Sumer and before. Xavier knew that very soon, everyone would be clued in on the little secret the Powers That Be tried to keep hidden; it was time to release humanity. However, the problem of fear existed on both ends; They feared the loss of control. The “illuminated” ones were ironically just as ignorant as the population they enslaved, but for different reasons. Even the Brotherhood had nothing to worry about; there was no heaven and hell. No checklist you had to complete to get into Heaven. No eternal suffering after death for the “bad” people. No one was left behind. “That’s a dangerous meeting to take now, though. Be careful.”

“Si, don’t worry. I’ve lined my ducks up enough that my absence won’t cause suspicion, and the Sirians have assured me they will keep the Brotherhood’s Seers blind to my actions.” Regardless of the ironhanded clutch the New World Order had on humanity, the Universe would not be denied. Planets and races throughout the cosmos had formed a coalition and been visiting Earth since the beginning to help.

“All right. We’re leaving here within the hour. I expect to hear from the triplets after they’ve gone through their Awakening, and I’ll share what news I’ve got.” Xavier felt the subtle weight of the CD in his pocket.

“Excellent. And the scientists?”

“Marcello believes they are still on the correct path. I’ll follow up with Roberto when I get home; I know he’s being kept in the loop.”

“Good. Stay safe and watch your back Xavier. A demon screams the loudest as it’s about to die,” Alexandro warned.

“I will.” Xavier cracked a grin. “Nothing we Terenzios can’t handle. Especially my side of the family.”

Alexandro chuckled. “Indeed. Espavo, Xavier, I will see you in a few days.”

“Namaste, Alexandro.” Xavier set his hand on the keyboard, a single key stroke terminating the secure connection. They were in for a wild ride, and his excitement over it all was nearly uncontainable. After all, The Awakening had really begun picking up speed in 1987. It started out small, and the Brotherhood hadn’t worried about it too much. It was a phase that would come and go.

Wrong.

With the help of technology the information spread faster and the numbers grew from a few scattered hundreds to concentrated thousands. Bit by bit small clusters of the populace around the world stopped believing in the thought-controlling systems and the power-stealing organized religions. From all walks of life, humans were healing themselves, which released such a powerful vibration it would lift those around them. And, the slow bridging of Science and mysticism was proving the impossible for those who cared to learn about it.

For the Brotherhood, the Awakening was becoming a big problem. Conditions used to be set so that the process would take lifetime upon lifetimes. Now, the human body was reaching full kundalini activation in as little as six months, and that made it impossible to fuck with. Lightworkers were taking their power back, using their energy for the greatest good of all souls. The mind couldn't be manipulated or fooled into believing the lies anymore. They no longer feared death because they understood the truth of the body. They knew as the Elites had for centuries (hence why They were in control) that all were Gods. Sparks of divinity from the Source. Powerful co-creators of the reality of the third dimension.

Who believed that? Really? It was more than laughable, even if it could be proven. The answer was the Brotherhood’s problem; too many. And with Terenzios’ help, everything the Shadow Government wanted to do, would not go off as planned, and that meant the Ascension would occur, as pre-destined.

It was a hell of a lot better than a New World Order.

Chapter 6

“The seeker should not stop until he finds. When he does find, he will be disturbed. After having been disturbed, he will be astonished. Then he will reign over everything.”
-Gospel of Thomas

June 7th, 2012

Dion Corporation Private Retreat

Madeira Islands 4:44 AM

Why didn't we get invited to this place sooner?" Lucien asked as the limousine pulled to a stop.

"Good question," Vasco agreed, peering out the window. Even at the early hour with morning barely pushing into the darkness the scenery was breathtakingly beautiful. Situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, the Madeira Islands were famous for their wine. Known as the floating garden, Madeira was more than aesthetically pleasing with gentle rolling hills, and bustling valleys. Exotic greenery scattered across the cliffs settled along the coastline, gentle white-capped waves rolled against the rocks and disappeared back into the calm limpid blue ocean. The Villa they pulled up to sat secluded at the top of a hill, partially hidden by the clusters of dragon trees.

“I’m pissed off this is a boy’s retreat. Oh wait, I’m in charge now too. That just changed.” Simone said it with a smile but the look in her eyes gave credence to her statement. She climbed out of the car first, turning her face to the breeze. “The ocean smells different here.”

“Hey hey, Co-President. Get your own retreat,” Lucien protested good-naturedly, getting out of the car after her. He carried his wrinkled suit jacket in one hand.

“Guards are well hidden,” Vasco commented, closing the limo door behind him. Unless you were really staring it was easy to miss the dark camera lenses in the trees, in corner beams along the wraparound porch. One Dion Corp security guard was standing in front of the four-car garage and Vasco was certain he had seen another near the front door as they arrived, though he didn’t know where the man was now. Probably walking the perimeter.

“Your grandfather loved it here,” said Tom Wilkens, head of security. For the last thirty years the bulky, white-haired man had been in charge of the Terenzio Ranch, as the guards posted there had come to call it.

“I can see why. Did he ever bring Grandmother here?” Vasco asked Tom, walking towards the front door.

“Marilyn? Twice. Himself, he spent little over a year here at one point.” Tom shook his head remembering. “That was a bad time for him.”

“Well, you know we’re a moody bunch,” Lucien said with a mock frown. Simone elbowed him as they walked inside.

“If you say so, Mr. President,” Tom replied nonchalantly, smoothing a hand over his full neatly trimmed beard. He turned to them in the open foyer. “Your pass codes to get in and out are your Dion employee numbers. There are two cars in the garage, keys are hanging up if you want to explore. Your helicopter leaves at ten PM sharp. Pack light, I’m told the journey you’re taking is a bit…uncomfortable.”

“Nice.” Lucien rubbed his hands together, looking around. “I need to know where the infinity pool is and where the bitches are.”

Simone rolled her eyes. “Keep it to your own section of the house. I’m going to call my husband.” Of the three of them, Simone was the only one thus far to get married. Her husband, Victor, worked at Dion in the marketing department.

“Phones are everywhere. Pool is out by the gardens. Let us know what type of ‘bitch’ you want and give us an hour,” Tom said casually. He had received stranger requests from the Terenzio men that had visited here over the years.

“Thanks Tom.” Simone smiled and walked up the spiraling staircase.

“Don’t hate,” Lucien called out teasingly after his sister. He grinned at his brother. “If the journey after sucks, my morning I’m going to enjoy. Want to join me, Vasco?”

“No.” Vasco set his hands comfortably into his pants pockets. “Tom, show me where my grandfather went most often when he was here.”

Tom nodded at Vasco. “No problem.”

“What’s on your mind, V?” Lucien canted his head at Vasco curiously.

“Grandfather,” Vasco replied simply. The mp3 player they had heard on the plane was sitting in his pocket; he intended to listen to it again.

Lucien paused then nodded. “Right. You know where I’ll be if you want to talk.” He set a hand on his brother’s shoulder briefly as he walked past him. “Tom, come see me when you are done. I’ll be in the pool with my Christmas list.”

“Sure thing,” Tom said to Lucien before motioning at Vasco to follow him. “Your grandfather spent most of his time in his office, Mr. President, this way.” He led Vasco down a short series of hallways to a pair of closed doors at the end. Tom had a string of keycards on his belt and he flipped through them until he found the one he wanted, waving it past the unseen security strip built into the doorframe on the right side. It beeped quietly and when the latch clicked he pushed it open but didn’t walk in, instead he stepped aside to let Vasco pass. “I’ll have a keycard made for you. I believe the envelope on the desk is for you too.” Tom winked at him then walked away.

Vasco quirked a brow at him and his curiosity was piqued when he stepped into the room and saw that Tom was right. A mid-size manila envelope sat on the spotless desktop surface, his name scrawled in familiar handwriting on the front. He shook his head slowly, a wry smile on his mouth. “You never bore, Grandfather, that’s for certain.”

§

June 7th, 2012

S.V.T. Think Tank

Alexandria, VA 6:22 AM

“No fucking way!”

Derek jerked his head up from the desktop, Abe’s excited shout ripping him out of the brief nap. Two hours ago he had secretly updated Marcello on everything they had been doing. To Shirley and Abe’s knowledge the head of S.V.T. Think Tank was Roberto Terenzio, Isabella Terenzio’s (current Governor of Alcyone Island) son. From their group, only Derek was privy to the knowledge that Roberto was more a figure head than anything else, and that it was the mysterious Marcello who he reported too.

Derek had been more than a little surprised when their enigmatic boss had given them a green light on everything. He was also deeply saddened by the news that Marcello was dying. Even though they hadn’t been close, (Derek had never met Marcello in person) he knew that his brother Leone, did work closely with him and would take this especially hard. Derek had made a mental note to give his brother a call when the hour was decent.

He glanced down at his watch to note the time then called out groggily at Abe, “What happened?”

“Hang on.” Abe was standing at one of the lab tables, his eyes glued to the microscope. Slowly he adjusted a dial on the instrument then moved away to work on the laptop next to him, his fingers pounding the keys. Ten seconds later the computer made a sharp beeping sound causing Abe to shake his head in amazement.

Derek rubbed his hands across his face, slapping his cheeks to wake himself up. Finally he picked up his glasses on the table next to him and stood, walking over to Abe. “What is it?”

“In its most simplistic terms?” Abe scratched at his chin. “Menes was the healthiest man alive. Menes is also the first specimen I’ve seen with three DNA strands, instead of the two that are found in, oh, every human currently on the planet.”

Derek’s jaw went slightly agape. He looked over at Menes’ body as if the dead man could confirm this then back at Abe. “That’s not possible.”

“Course it’s not. It’s also impossible for a man to live five-plus miles down in the ocean, and then suddenly float to the surface carrying a crystal rod.” Abe just shot him a look. “Come see for yourself, the testing is accurate. Menes’ DNA is just…not of this world.”

Abe slid to one side and Derek stepped up to the computer, reading through the test results. It filled him with a childlike wonder, reminding him how much mystery could exist in something so impossibly small. And then he felt like the world had tilted and tossed him into a place he no longer understood when he realized Abe was right. “Holy shit.”

“It gets weirder.” Shirley walked back into the room carrying a few computer printouts

“Menes's DNA has three strands. You can’t beat that.” Abe flopped down into a rolling chair, lacing his fingers behind his head.

Derek couldn’t help but smile a little at the appearance she made. They had all been working around the clock and her cherry red hair was half piled on top of her head, half hanging loose around her face. She looked tired and touchable but he kept his hands to himself. “What have you got?”

“Remember when Menes said that someone named Loki would alert the Anunnaki?” Shirley asked, stopping at the table in front of them.

Derek and Abe nodded.

“In a nutshell, they are referenced primarily in Sumerian culture. According to Sumerian writings, the Anunnaki were gods that came to Earth from the Planet Nibiru, also referred to as Planet X, or the twelfth planet.”

Derek leaned his back against the table’s edge, folding his arms across his chest as he listened. “I’ve heard of Planet X. Orbital calculations have showed there is something pulling at Neptune and Uranus and it’s not Pluto. NASA has been looking for years for the large body that is theorized as probably being way out past it.”

“Exactly. The story about the Anunnaki gets better though. They are described as tall beings with wings and a round disc above their heads,” Shirley continued.

“Sounds like a biblical angel to me,” Abe commented.

Shirley nodded at him. “It does, which means it was probably borrowed into Christianity like a plethora of other religions. As the story goes, the Anunnaki came to set up mining colonies because they needed the gold to repair the atmosphere on their planet. When they saw primate humans here, a.k.a homo erectus they decided to use their superior knowledge of genetics, tinker with us and make themselves a working class to do the mining for them, resulting in the current human.”

Derek began rubbing his temples as if such action would jumpstart his brain into understanding, but he remained silent.

“Fuck, is the Tooth Fairy real too?” Abe tossed his hands into the air.

“Probably, Abe.” Shirley pulled a chair over, sitting down next to them. “Really, it’s not that impossible, guys. Sumer appeared out of nowhere. They show up right after the Stone Age and are incredibly advanced. Their knowledge of astronomy was amazing. They accurately recorded where the planets were in our solar system and what they looked like, right down to the color and the rings around Jupiter. They claim the Anunnaki taught them how to do it. The interesting thing is the Sumerians never called them Gods. They were teachers, geneticists, kingmakers, etc. They weren’t worshiped, they were worked for, the correct translation of the word.”

Derek just stared at her, then over at Abe’s computer. He didn’t know what to think anymore. The world was spinning and suddenly the reality he had existed in his entire life was not what he thought it was. “Okay,” he started slowly, “I’ll agree it’s not that impossible. Statistically speaking, space is so infinitely large that there is probably one if not hundreds of planets that exist somewhere out there, hosting life probably more intelligent than us,” he slowly reasoned. “But, aliens on Earth?”

Abe didn’t comment yet, trading glances with the two.

“Well, why not?” Shirley said, dropping the research papers she printed out on the table top. “Sumerians were a highly intelligent civilization. Why does it make any sense for modern science to simply pass off as myth where they got their knowledge just because they claim it was from beings from another planet? That makes us rather ignorant, don’t you think?”

Derek didn’t respond, a strained thoughtful expression on his face. Then again, Menes had three strands of DNA, a modern marvel. It seemed today, anything was possible in the world.

“Do you know what Menes meant when he said Ascension?” Shirley cocked her head, looking at the two of them.

Abe answered. “I’ve heard of it, you can’t help it nowadays with all the New Age conspiracy theorists running around. Love, light, the higher self and all that.”

Shirley laughed. “Close, but we can do better than that. We’re all familiar with Quantum Mechanics, right?”

Both Derek and Abe nodded. Derek spoke up. “What does that have to do with this Ascension?”

“Everything, if you can connect the dots.” Shirley gave them a tired smile. Later she’d have to call her grandmother and thank her for being that strange New Ager all these years. It was making it easier for her to see the relationship between seemingly unparallel things. “We all know there are some weird things that go on when you study the quantum world. On the sub atomic level it is showing that all things are connected. Basically, we are all one. So far so good?”

Derek mulled over this a moment then nodded. “All right.”

Abe shrugged his shoulders. “Sounds good.”

“That is what the ‘crazy’ New Agers have been trying to tell us all along. Ascension on an individual level is the process of activating the energy portals in the body called Charkas. There are a hundred different ways to do this, however, no matter how you spin the process of getting there all teach that we as humans create our own reality. What is in our heads is then reflected in the world around us. In a very literal sense we are creators of reality.”

“Oh c’mon, give me a break. You’re telling me that thinking happy happy joy thoughts is going to make my world a bunch of roses?” Abe rolled his eyes.

“Well, it’s a start, but there’s a better way to explain it.” Shirley looked amused at the expression on Abe’s face. “Quantum basics show us that electrons can act like both a particle and a wave. But what’s really fascinating is that how they act is all dependant upon whether or not someone is watching.”

Abe dragged his hands over his face, sitting up a little in his chair. “I’ve seen that experiment. When no one is paying attention, electrons don’t have a measurable location, they are everywhere.”

“Probability fields.” Shirley added.

“Right, fine. Probability fields. But that can’t have anything to do with the pot smoking hippies meditating and saying we are all one, spirituality. It just makes sense that on that sub atomic level we are all made up of the same stuff. That doesn’t make it mystical.”

“Yes, but the science and mysticism are linked up Abe,” Shirley argued. “Unobserved and unmeasured electrons are nothing but probabilities, little pockets of energy waiting for something to tell them what to do. As soon as we peek at them, the probabilities all collapse into one. The wave becomes a particle again, acting exactly like we expect it too.”

Derek frowned lightly, letting his mind process what Shirley was telling them. It was hard to come to grips with the notion that science might be proving an idea as radical as humans ascending. “You’re saying that we can affect the very building blocks of reality with what, thought?”

“Yes.” Shirley nodded vigorously. “David Bohm was Einstein’s protégé and his view of Quantum Mechanics also supports the theory that we are all connected. When you look at it from that perspective, things like physic phenomena don’t sound so fantastical either. If we are all connected, then that means our brains are too. Which means a mind reader is simply getting information they should already know because nothing truly separates us. To move through this “physic” space, you have to go inward instead of outward, such as described in medative practices. When you have those moments of “englightment” what you’re really doing is getting a glimpse of the quantum world, which is wholeness and the very fabric of reality.”

Derek and Abe remained silent, obviously trying to wrap their minds around all this.

“Did you know that Nicola Tesla and Rene Descartes claim inspiration for their discoveries through dreams and visions? Or maybe they were just experiencing the quantum realm. Doesn’t sound so off base when you phrase it like that,” Shirley said.

“Looks like we got a glimpse of it ourselves then,” Derek commented referring to the dreams they had all had that started them on this crazy journey.

Shirley smiled. “Have you ever heard of Masaru Emoto?”

Both Derek and Abe shook their heads no.

“Masaru is a Japanese researcher and he did experiments on how words affect water. His findings are incredible.” Shirley grabbed the papers off the table top and began shuffling through them as she spoke. “He put water in jars, attached different phrases to each, froze them, then took pictures of the water crystals with a microscope. In every single experiment, the words put on the jars affected the water. Meaning…” Shirley stopped when she found a picture she was looking for and held it up. “Beautiful, right? He put the words I love you on this one.” She waited a moment then showed them another. “This looks like it was taken out of the dirty Potomac River, right? Wrong. Same water. He just wrote I hate you on this one.”

Derek reached out and took the printout to inspect it closer. “Oh, that’s just weird.”

Abe held out his hand and took a few other printouts from Shirley, slowly flipping through them. “Wow.” He shook his head then looked back up at Shirley. “What does this have to do with the present conversation?”

Shirley grinned at him. “Water comprises more than seventy percent of the human body. So doesn’t it make sense to reason that if words affect water, we can affect our bodies with the same?”

Abe was silent at first, the wheels in his head spinning almost out of control. Finally he said, “Fine. Say I dig all this crap. I can affect my body with the power of my mind, and somehow create my own reality, not just be affected by it. So are all humans going to magically Ascend before the next winter solstice unless the aliens from Planet X stop us?”

Derek almost laughed. This all sounded like the plot of a bad science fiction movie. But the deeper they got into this, the more plain scientifically reasoned facts were standing in the way of them passing it off as nonsense.

“We might. Unless we don’t find the Cave of Creation in time,” Shirley said. “Oh, by the way. Do what thou will, love is law? That was a phrase that is used to sum up the Law of Thelema, revived by famous occultist Aleister Crowley.”

Derek blinked in surprise at that. Then something seemed to jog his memory because he snapped his fingers. “That’s right. He wrote the Book of Law, apparently under guidance from some voice over his shoulder when he was in Egypt.”

Abe eyeballed the two of them, and then sighed. “Why do I suddenly feel like everything I know is wrong?”

The phone at Derek’s hip exploded into musical noise, startling him. Shirley looked over at him when he jumped, her sleepy brown eyes taking on a note of concern. She reached out, briefly and silently touching his arm in small comfort.

Derek cast her a small reassuring smile as he pulled the phone from his belt and looked down at the caller id. “It’s Grams.” Grams was the affectionate nickname they had given to Angela Knoxx. She was a sixty-two-year-old neuroscientist with additional studies in Anthropometry, still went spelunking and sky diving any chance she got and showed no signs of slowing down any time soon. She was also Shirley’s grandmother. Angela and the last two members of their team had gone to Piedras Negras in Guatemala. Derek flipped open the phone and pressed a button to bring her face onto the LCD screen.

“We were getting worried about you guys,” Derek said.

A mud-streaked, wrinkled, but still elegantly beautiful face looked back at him. The pair of spectacles seemed to sharpen the intelligent stare of her green eyes. A wide-brimmed straw hat perched on her head and she was smiling with barely suppressed excitement. “You’ll never believe what we found, lovey.”

Derek had to laugh when he heard her, even Abe and Shirley chuckled. “Try us.”

Chapter 7

"It is not my intention to doubt that the doctrine of the Illuminati and the principles of Jacobinism had not spread in the United States. On the contrary, no one is more satisfied of this fact than I am."

- George Washington

June 7th, 2012

Dion Corporation Private Retreat

Madeira Islands 6:11 AM

So, when you coming home?” Victor Russo’s deep voice echoed out over the phone.

Simone stood out on the balcony adjacent to the room she’d claimed for their brief stay. She smiled at her husband’s question, leaning back against the wrought iron railing. “I wish I knew. I don’t even know where I’m going yet.”

“That sounds like an adventure,” Victor said. “Don’t worry, Cassie has already offered to keep me company while you’re gone.”

Simone laughed musically. “Yeah, tell her I’m still not sharing you so visitors rights only.” Cassie was her personal assistant and close friend.

“Aw, you’re no fun, Si. I still say we should either be swingers or polyamorous. Especially with you being Italian and mafia. You’re supposed to have a Friday night guy, then leave Saturdays for me,” Victor said in a light tone.

Simone rolled her eyes. “What about I’m not sharing didn’t you hear the first time? And I’m grossly disappointed that my husband doesn’t want me all to himself.”

“Now don’t think that. You know I do. Hang on a second, baby…” There was a brief silence that for some reason made Simone edgy. She started pacing the small space on the balcony while she waited for him to come back on the line. He sounded a little out of breath when he did, minutes later. “Sorry about that, had to move something. Listen baby, I’ve got to run. Call me when you get to wherever it is you’re going?”

“Sure,” Simone said quietly. “Talk to you later.” She snapped her cell phone closed, staring down at the tiny screen. Something was off. But then again she’d felt like there was something off in their relationship for the last year. They were both busy people, she a little more than he for obvious reasons. While time apart had made her miss him, she was no longer sure if that feeling was reciprocated.

Frowning, Simone crossed her arms over her chest, walking back into the bedroom. She could no longer put her finger on what had gone missing in her relationship with her husband. But she felt like there should be something more, that there should be a spark that ignited between them no matter how long they had been together. If she was completely honest with herself, she’d had the same feeling the moment she’d said “I do” five years ago, when they were fresh and still terribly in love. She often had the strange sense that she was making a comparison to something else, but there were no other relationships in her past that she could have compared it to.

Simone sighed in frustration. There were other, more important things to think about, like the strange message their dying grandfather had left them. But at the moment she couldn’t shake the feeling that her husband might not be trustworthy. Dropping her cell phone back into her purse, she left her room, heading downstairs to find her brothers.

§

Their grandfather had preferred watching the sunrise. Vasco was instinctively certain of this when he’d accidentally hit the tiny button underneath the desk with his knee, and caused the row of books on the east wall to slowly sink into panels on the floor. It exposed the only full wall window he had seen in the house, just as the horizon was preparing to explode with color. At the hour the unseen sun announced its approach by setting the sky on fire, the vibrant flames reflecting off the face of an endless ocean. Vasco sat behind the desk that was positioned so it faced the hidden window and the awe-inspiring view, contemplating everything that had been dropped in their laps.

Being handed the reins to the empire had been expected, just not so soon. They had been groomed for their positions since birth even though their father had not been the best mentor in regards to Terenzio business; too emotional to handle the level of decision making required. Vasco had always thought of Marcello as more of a father than their biological, Simone and Lucien felt the same way.

Life hadn’t been terribly difficult for the triplets, the family had grown so much that the younger members were shielded from how ugly the job got at times. Hell, no one had been “taken care of” in almost eleven years. Technically speaking neither he nor his siblings had gotten their hands dirty yet. Thrust so intricately into the game now was both exhilarating and frightening.

He rolled his shirt sleeves up to his elbows and went into a slow stretch, dropping his hand to lightly massage his left leg. Strangely, since he was ten, arthritis had set into the limb and it was bothering him today. Rain was probably coming. Deeply thoughtful gray eyes traveled leisurely around the office, noting that like most places his grandfather inhabited, decorations were not a priority.

“So c’mon, tell me something I don’t know. You’ve been in here for over an hour.” Towel around his neck, wearing nothing but a pair of black trunks, Lucien came into the office.

Pulled out of his thoughts, Vasco glanced over at his brother, then down at the open manila envelope on his desk. “No revelations. Just more orders I don’t understand yet.” He was not sure what to think of Grandfather’s cryptic message. The talk of love as if it were an actual tool that would aid them in fighting their unknown adversary was frankly a bit nuts. He chalked it up to a dying man’s sentimental feelings. Additionally, Vasco had no idea what it was they were going to “remember” or how they of all people were going to save the world. None of it made any sense.

“What orders?” Lucien asked, dropping himself comfortably into one of the chairs in front of the desk.

Vasco paused, his brows knit together. He began tapping his fingertips lightly over the envelope. “I’m to deliver a letter from him to Kayla, and I’m to keep Caleb Kincade from revealing himself to Simone. Until I feel the time is right.”

Lucien quirked a brow. “The Security Director? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Vasco shrugged a single shoulder. “I have no idea.” He lapsed into a brief silent introspection before he asked his brother, “What do you think Grandfather meant with that whole little speech he recorded for us?”

Lucien mulled over it before he answered. “To be honest, I don’t have a friggin’ clue. How the hell are we going to save the world? And from whom?”

Vasco nodded slowly. “I can’t find anything in here at least that would lead me to those answers. I think we’re just going to have to wait until we get to the vault.”

“Maybe he was just talking about whether or not we would accept our promotions. And maybe he was referring to the extended plan on the table to start moving into the European Mafioso too. That might be the whole saving the world bit,” Lucien said.

Vasco slid a hand over his mouth to stifle a yawn as he briefly contemplated his brother’s words. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

“You’re mumbling into your hand, I can’t hear you.”

Vasco dropped his hand to repeat himself, but was cut off when Simone burst into the room.

“I think my husband is having an affair,” she announced with a stone cold expression on her face.

Lucien and Vasco looked at her simultaneously. Vasco frowned deeply, and Lucien sat up, concerned and asking, “Are you sure Si? How do you know?”

She shook her head, pressing her fingers against her temple. “I just…I just do.”

“Want to put a tail on him?” Vasco asked quietly.

Lucien nodded in agreement with their brother’s suggestion. Simone folded her arms protectively over her chest and began pacing. “Do it. Not knowing will drive me insane, especially since we don’t have any idea how long we’ll be gone.”

Vasco reached behind him to pull his cell phone out the pocket of his hanging suit jacket. He hesitated before opening it because that sort of knowledge could be a double-edged sword. If Victor was cheating, and was caught red handed he didn’t know how well his sister could handle it. “Are you sure, Simone?”

She stopped pacing to look at him. There was something wounded in her eyes, something unsure and scared despite the fact that her voice was sharp, determined. She was a Terenzio after all. “Do it.”

Lucien pulled her over to the arm of his chair, nudging her gently. “You know I never liked him much, but for what it’s worth, if he is I’m sorry.”

Vasco made the call as Simone took the comfort her younger brother offered, leaning against him.

“I don’t understand. Why not just leave me?” She asked.

“Because you might shoot him,” Lucien said lightly. “Or get your mean brothers to do it.”

Simone offered Lucien a weak smile then caught her lower lip between her teeth, contemplating in silence. Finally she shook her head. “The imagination can be cruel.”

“Don’t do that to yourself, Simone. Wait for confirmation,” Vasco said, putting his cell phone back into his pocket after the call was made.

Simone was going to respond but Tom appeared in the doorway. “Mr. President, Mr. President, Mrs. President, I need you to be prepared to leave in the next ten minutes.”

Lucien blinked in surprise. “Why? What’s the issue?”

“I am under orders not to explain but to move you immediately,” Tom said.

“So much for swimming and bitches,” Lucien sighed dramatically.

“We’ll be ready, Tom, thanks,” Vasco said, standing.

Tom nodded and turned, walking briskly back down the hallway.

Vasco came around the desk and up to his sister, his grandfather’s mysterious orders where she was concerned pushing to the forefront of his mind. Though he was not the affectionate sort he kissed her on the forehead. “I hope you’re wrong about him.” The corner of his mouth kicked up. “At least for his sake.” He winked.

Simone couldn’t help but laugh at the latter comment. Her older brother wasn’t as heartless as he made everyone believe. She smiled slightly at him. “Thanks V.”

“Enough with the moment. I want to know what’s in the vault.” Lucien hopped to his feet. “Let’s get going, kids.”

§

June 7th, 2012

Loyalty Airlines Headquarters

Alcyone Island 6:00 AM

“You can appreciate what a busy time it was for us. Yours wasn’t the only family we forgot to warn. Don’t worry, they didn’t suffer.”

Our bad. Bummer. Sorry you lost your family in the attack we planned. Ten years later, Nicholas Terenzio - Fidelio still burned with a fury that outweighed his hatred for his father. They had tried to pacify him after 9/11 offering him one of their drugged, mind-controlled women to take the place of his wife, and bear him more children. As if it was that easy to replace a twenty year marriage, two teenage sons, and your lover. The Brotherhood didn’t understand the concept of love. With their belief that death wasn’t a big deal, every sacrifice serves a higher purpose, and other mystical shit, they didn’t bat an eye over a few thousand deaths. Whatever was necessary.

A week after his family’s funeral Nicholas decided he could no longer tolerate the monsters that served the Anunnaki. He wasn’t a firm believer in Marcello’s choice, but at least Marcello had honor and compassion something both the Brotherhood, and Nicholas’s father lacked. Marcello had seen him for the value he could bring to the family. Nicholas’s father, Dominic, had seen him as nothing but a faggot.

Nicholas’s grandmother, Carissa Terenzio–Fidelio was S.V.T’s little sister, and personal assistant to corporate affairs. Agostino, her husband, and a close childhood friend of Stefano’s, had served as the first C.E.O. of Dion Corp. When Marcello came to the helm both retained their positions, and Carissa was often a tender ear for Marcello. There were two sons from that union, Dominicio and Joseph. Joseph a.k.a “Joey the Mouth”, had died young but honorably following Marcello’s orders removing the last Don in the United States that opposed Terenzio power. Dominic spent the rest of his life trying to live up to the image his brother had set. So when he found out his only son preferred women and men…

Dominic beat Nicholas to a bloody pulp the day he caught him with another man. Twenty years later, he still refused to acknowledge his son’s existence. Nicholas’s mother was too weak minded to protest. It was easy to let hate grow after that; watching year after year as your own father extend love to everyone else in the family but you.

Grandma Issa (as Nicholas had called her) had been sympathetic, and understanding. His grandfather, Ago, had been polite, but never close. His sister Agata hadn’t cared about her brothers’ orientation, but didn’t share his hatred of their father which left a rift between them.

When Kayla approached him, Nicholas had jumped at the chance to switch sides. It had been the perfect opportunity for him to show the senile old bigot what type of man he really was, what he was capable of. Then his family was murdered and those motivates changed.

Nicholas been playing both sides, flawlessly, like the Terenzio he was for the last seven years. His father remained none the wiser, and that filled Nicholas with a sense of bitter pride. Marcello wasn’t the only one who could manipulate pieces into a desired position.

Nicholas picked up the coffee mug next to him waiting for the encrypted message on his computer screen to finish downloading before he called Olivia. As Senior V.P. of Loyalty Airlines Eastern Hemisphere Sector, he’d arranged for the first flight to take the triplets to Madeira. He’d expected Olivia’s call this morning, and had pacified her by telling her the triplets were at the boys retreat, then called Tom to have them moved to their final location (which Marcello had not shared with him) before she could track them. He’d call her back shortly and give her the bad news; sorry cousin, we lost them again.

His computer beeped when the download was done, and Nicholas flicked his eyes over the screen. The dull blue glow caught on the slight curl of his lips. He picked up his cell phone, and called Olivia.

§

June 7th, 2012

Somewhere in the Caribbean

Phoenix Isle 6:10 AM

Loki had felt the deaths of his brothers, sisters, and finally Menes from miles away. Even though there was sadness in his heart, he felt neither guilt nor shame from his actions; he had done what he must, no more. Since Atlantis Loki had learned that fear was necessary. Fear was the key to survival while in body. Without it, there would be chaos. Menes hadn’t understood that.

He had crash landed on this Island after his energy had drained him to the point of exhaustion. Loki had rested, meditated in the serenity of nature only to find once he felt sufficiently recharged he could no longer fly. He could no longer sense the elementals, the salamanders, the fairies. As he carefully trekked through the jungle, and attempted to connect with the Goddess, Earth, to find out where he was, he was met with silence. Something was blocking him but that was impossible. He had ascended long ago, he couldn’t descend.

Perplexed at this turn of events he almost didn’t hear the sound of the approaching car engine. Quickly he whispered a few words and was pleased when he found he could still make himself invisible to those who were “sleeping.” The black Hummer rumbled through the pathless wildlife, driving right by him, none the wiser to his presence. As the truck passed Loki was able to catch a glimpse of the two faces in the vehicle, and was immediately struck with the feeling that he needed to follow these two. He sat down in the grass, propped his back against a tree and placed the crystal rod by his side. Remote viewing was a simple parlor trick, and extremely useful. Loki followed them.

§

“How is it okay?” Amadeo’s temper hadn’t calmed since he’d found out they didn’t know where the triplets had gone from Madeira. He pulled the Hummer to a stop in front of his house, and looked over at his cousin. “The Brotherhood expects us to control our family.”

Olivia sighed at his question, and climbed out of the car. “And we will. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan.”

Amadeo slammed his car door and glared at her over the hood as he walked toward the front steps. “Olivia, this isn’t as simple as sticking a bomb under our father’s car and pressing a button. What if the triplets find out about us before we’re ready?”

“Do you or do you not have the entire army under your thumb? Yes? Good. So please, please, shut the fuck up and learn to improvise.” Olivia said it calmly but her eyes had darkened, revealing her irritation.

When they reached the porch at the top of the stairs, Amadeo pressed his thumb to the keypad on the front door to unlock it. “Don’t start that shit with me. One of us has to worry about the consequences if we’re not able to contain our family, and prevent them from allowing the Ascension.”

“Energy follows thought, you know. You really ought to control yours,” Olivia said as she stopped in front of the small mirror hanging on the wall in his foyer, checking her appearance in the reflection, fingers adjusting the short mousse-filled strands of her bleached white hair.

He sneered at her words despite the truth of her statement. The front door closed, and he walked over hardwood floors, down two short steps into his living room. He picked up a remote control, pressing a button to open the blinds hiding windows.

“You look so much like Papa Julian,” Olivia said randomly, looking over at him. Papa Julian was the affectionate term they had used for their grandfather, Julian Terenzio, little brother to Stefano Terenzio. Julian, also known as JT to his friends, had been a notorious playboy, and what Stefano had often called his best kept secret. From its conception JT had run the baby of the Dion Corporation, S.V.T. Securities. Since she could remember, she had been attached to her grandfather’s side. Olivia had loved Papa Julian more than her own father.

Amadeo glanced over at her, his temper lowering to a quiet simmer. “Think he would be on our side?”

“You read the letter; S.V.T. would have so Papa Julian would have been there too. You heard the way he used to talk about his brother. The god Stefano.” Olivia said the latter with mock grandeur.

“Don’t knock him. He did start all this.”

“And we’re going to finish it,” Olivia said firmly. Seven years ago Olivia had discovered a letter, written to Julian from Stefano. Then Kayla had approached them. Ever since they had waited for the right moment to take over. Terenzio’s were not Robin Hoods, they never had been. For a century now they had done as they pleased, and more often than not their actions were in no way honorable. The sudden desire to change didn’t make any sense. Why empower the rest of the world when you could control the slaves? Why become equals when you could sit higher up the ladder? And now that they had the opportunity to align themselves with the Powers That Be and reap the real benefits, fuck the rest of the world. Marcello had lost his mind. Her plans along with Amadeo’s would not be compromised, and they were not the only members of the family who thought that way.

“There’s not going to be anything to finish if we don’t get caught up. You heard the Seer the last time we were in Denver; the triplets could pull this off.”

“Stop. They won’t. Period. There will be no Ascension.” Olivia held up her hand to emphasize her words. “Now, I want you to lean on Vic. Find out if Leone has mentioned what his brother is working on. Nicholas tracked the triplets to Madeira but lost them after that. Kayla might know something, I’ll find out. If I don’t hear anything by nightfall I’ll go see Marcello myself.”

Amadeo raised a brow at her. “That’s a serious offense if you’re caught, Olivia.”

She sighed at him. “We are way past that now, don’t you think, cousin?”

He opened his mouth to answer her but was forced into silence by the sudden appearance of a man standing in his doorway. Automatically his hand went for the gun at his side, but his fingers never touched the metal. Seeing the look on his face Olivia whirled around then gasped softly. Their unexpected visitor had long light blonde hair, with random streaks of white. His eyes were a deep indigo that seemed to pulse with a life all their own. Even odder, in his hand he carried a long golden rod with a crystal on top that radiated in quiet power.

Loki smiled at the shocked expression on their faces. Slowly, he spoke in their language. “Do not be afraid. I will help you stop the Ascension.”

Chapter 8

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

-Galileo Galilei

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Undisclosed location time unknown

It was not a commonly known piece of history that Derek Vaughn the first had designed and then participated in building the compound, all without knowing he was doing so. This place had been the first assignment handed from S.V.T. to his son and the greatest task Marcello could complete. It was the ultimate safe house for the family if the game went wrong and checkmate came from the other side. The escape plan had been set up so elaborately that family members would not know the location until that time came.

It was the perfect place for the Vault.

The journey had been conducted as if they were being followed. They had traveled from Madeira by boat to the coast of Morocco. From there they had taken two short helicopter rides to destinations in what appeared to be the middle of nowhere. The end leg of their journey had been with a string of non-English-speaking guides that had driven them through extremely beautiful ancient country. The triplets were a little more than exhausted by the time the dusty black Explorer came to a stop in front of the gates of the stone-walled compound.

No guards were present, no visible intercom, but someone obviously expected them as the gates opened. Their current guide, a bald dark-skinned man who had not given a name, drove the car down the two mile paved driveway. It ended in a spacious circular courtyard, a fountain in the center with a small pyramid inside of it, water cascading smoothly down each side.

“No shit, Castle Terenzio.” Lucien rolled down the backseat window, pushed up his sunglasses and squinted in the hot desert sun up at the massive stone compound before them.

The estate was elevated, sitting in front of a high desert hill of rock. Terraces wrapped around the house and two imposing statues of phoenixes about to take off in flight perched in front of the double door entrance.

Their tour guide wordlessly got out of the vehicle and began unloading their suitcases at the base of the stairs. All three heirs climbed out of the car as the bags were unloaded. Then without looking twice at the three, the man got back into the car and drove away.

Lucien blinked at the turn of the events. “Huh. No tour?”

“No need.” The voice came from behind them. A five-foot tall woman with tangled gray hair and a multitude of colored robes tossed onto her tiny frame came wobbling towards them carrying a bucket of water.

The triplets turned towards the new stranger and Simone smirked, watching the woman. “Don’t tell me this place doesn’t have plumbing?”

“Grandfather wouldn’t do that to us, I don’t think,” Vasco said unconvincingly.

“Do you need some help?” Lucien offered as the woman walked right past them, up the short stone steps to the front doors.

“Help? Me?” The woman paused then started laughing hysterically. “No. You do though. Come now, come on.”

“Guess that means follow.” Lucien half grinned and along with his brother and sister picked up their bags and followed along.

Their strange bucket-carrying host had little to say to them as she pushed open one of the doors, almost slipped on the polished marble floor in the grand foyer, muttered to herself and kept walking.

The rooms were typical for an estate of its size, bright, airy and suited to the environment outside. Soaring beamed ceilings, alabaster and gold light fixtures, artist murals, Greek statues and floor-to-ceiling stone fireplaces decorated the rooms they passed. After navigating through what seemed to be a maze of hallways, the little old woman finally came to an abrupt halt in front of a wooden door. She set her water bucket down and pulled out a key tied around her neck with an old piece of string to unlock it. On the other side, a pair of closed elevator doors with a keypad on the left waited. She muttered something unintelligible under her breath and flipped open the cover on the keypad, pressing the number three, three times. A quiet computerized voice confirmed “code accepted.” Instead of allowing access to the elevator the keypad pushed out from the wall and flipped itself over to reveal a bright blue screen. Opening her right eye unnecessarily wide the little old woman leaned into the light, allowing the retinal scan. Once more a computerized voice confirmed:

“Scan Accepted. Hello Rosa. Please state your last name.”

“Mercia.” Rosa said it proudly. Vasco shrugged at the curious looks Simone and Lucien gave him after they heard the name; he didn’t have any idea who she was.

“Accepted. Welcome back, Rosa.” As the computerized voice spoke the keypad flipped back into the wall and the elevator doors opened. Rosa picked up her bucket and waddled into the car, looking at the triplets impatiently as they followed her in.

“So Rosa, does this elevator go up, down, sideways and zigzag like Willy Wonka’s?” Lucien asked with a grin, noting there were no buttons to press.

Rosa looked up at him oddly. “There’s no reason for elevator to go zigzag,” she mumbled. “Stupid Terenzio.”

Vasco and Simone laughed. Lucien blinked and then chuckled, shaking his head. “Touché, Rosa.”

The elevator lurched then began what felt like a slow descent. Simone asked, “Okay, so how far does it go?”

“Not far, about the middle.” Rosa began alternating her weight between her feet, always fidgeting.

The triplets exchanged curious glances, which ended in unanswered shrugs at the strange answer. The elevator ride lasted three minutes and every second that passed seemed to re-spark the excitement in the three heirs as a grandfather’s cryptic message sat forefront in their minds. Even Vasco was slightly surprised to find himself holding his breath as the elevator dinged and the metal doors slid open.

§

June 7th, 2012

Mayan Ruins

Piedras Negras 6:22 AM

Dr. Angela Knoxx, though a woman of science, had always been a little bit of a New Ager. Traditional religion had never sat well with her, so she’d gone on her own path and studied Hermeticism for years. Its teachings that inner transformation was the key to the outside reality, and that anyone willing to turn their mind to contemplate “the things that are” could master it, made strange sense to her. Recently, Noetic Science had emerged and she’d bought a mound of books on that too. She found it fascinating that science seemed to be merging with mysticism. The Noetic Institute was devoted to studying the effects of consciousness and how it related to the outer world. While she couldn’t call herself a devout follower of any religion or spirituality, after sixty-two years of the bullshit called life, a person had to find something that made sense to believe in or, in her opinion, spend the rest of ones existence a very grouchy, lost individual.

What had happened to them these last few weeks drastically challenged the thought process of the rational scientific thinker. Even so, Angela couldn’t contain her excitement at their recent discovery. Her own dream and those of the two men working with her, Scott Meyers and Dr. Phil Nichols, hadn’t left much doubt in her mind that they absolutely had to come here.

Deep in the heart of the Guatemalan jungle the site was accessible by either a five-hour walk from the Mexican town of Corregiadora Ortíz or a two-day rafting trip down the Usumacinta River. The ruins weren’t a secret; they simply hadn’t been given too much attention by archeologists over the years. They would be getting a lot of attention soon, if she had anything to say about it.

“Try us.” Derek smiled through the screen.

Angela grinned widely down at her phone. “All right. Scott called a friend of his, I can’t tell you who, but long story short we got satellite imaging. Longer story short...” her voice pulsed with excitement, “...there’s a world underneath this mountain.”

Shirley and Abe came to stand on either side of Derek when they heard her. Derek responded, “Send me what you’ve got?”

“Tech Geek Phil, gods’ love him, is sending all that to you now.”

“Where’s the entrance, Grams? Is it where the A.R.E. claimed it was when they visited the site?” Shirley asked in an excited voice.

Abe blinked at her. “Since when do you follow all that stuff?”

“Since some guy floated up from the bottom of the ocean,” Shirley answered quickly.

“Exactly where they said it was, lovey. We’re also sending you our wish list so we can start getting in there. From the imagery it looks to be a rough start but it opens up pretty soon,” Angela said, then added, “Our mysterious, Cave of Creation could be down there. Something definitely is.”

“Send me your list. Terenzio has given us a green light on anything we need. I know that area isn’t the safest so if you want security we can get you that too. We actually might come down there and join you,” Derek said, his mind reeling with the implications of it all if they did find it.

“We hope you do!” Angela smiled. “Before I ask what’s got you all looking as if you just saw Jesus the Christ himself, have you ever heard of the Brotherhood of Light?”

There was a collective pause, Derek, Shirley and Abe exchanging curious glances. Derek answered, “We haven’t. What is it?”

“Thought not. I’ll tell you later. Share your news first.”

§

They looked like mosquitoes. The military called them HI-MENS, beautifully hi-tech unassuming spying devices that had been following Angela’s team since they landed in Guatemala. Caesar Medici had let the bugs go ahead, and stayed behind in Corregiadora Ortíz with running water, and showers.

A white wide-brimmed hat shielded his dark-skinned face. A pair of wide black sunglasses covered his eyes, but they weren’t to block out the sun. Images relayed from the HI-MENS filtered through the lenses, allowing him to both watch, and listen to what was going on at the S.V.T.T. camp. It was just about that time. Caesar knew the Anunnaki, Terenzio’s team wouldn’t be allowed to get any closer. Caesar took off the sunglasses, setting them down on the table and picked up his beer bottle. Rising from his spot on the tiny balcony, he went back inside the hotel room. Sharp brown eyes settled on the gray, leather-like skin of the creature sitting on the bed, its wings tucked in against its back. A remote control was held in its four-fingered hand, its wide black eyes set on the television. This one liked watching Jerry Springer. Go figure. The Brotherhood called them Igigis; humanity thought of them as the mythical gargoyles.

When you wanted to talk to the Brotherhood, a cell phone would do. When you wanted to talk to the Anunnaki you needed an Igigi.

“Go back and let them know Knoxx is close. I’ll need instruction,” Caesar told it.

The Igigi didn’t move immediately. The animal-like eyes remained glued to the TV until a commercial flashed on. Only then was the power button on the remote control pressed. It snapped its eyes to Caesar, and without a noise hopped off the bed, teeter-tottering unevenly on two stubs for legs through the open balcony doors, and jumped off. Its wings extended, shooting the beast out of sight.

Caesar eagerly watched the creature depart. He was hoping this new information would send back an order that would allow him to leave this third world country baby sitting assignment, and make the move against Terenzio. Reincarnation was a beautiful thing, and he had a score to settle.

Two generations ago, a man named Stefano had a mortal enemy. As cliché as it sounded, two men could not have hated each other as much as Stefano Terenzio and Roman Moretti.
In the late 1920’s, the Moretti crime family operated out of Miami, Florida. Because of its close proximity to Central America, Roman also did business with Stefano’s second wife. When Stefano began his quest to solidify control of the American Mafia, Roman not only opposed his efforts but tried in vain to steal Stefano’s wife out from underneath him. Always one to play on the desires of men to get what she wanted, Stefano’s wife encouraged his advances but never let them go anywhere. This only served to increase the tension between the two men, and it boiled over to the point that they could not be in the same room together without coming to blows. They never drew guns and never let their men get involved. It was personal.
Eventually, crunch time came for the Moretti family. Terenzio, with the help of the DeMarco family, who were running New Orleans and Baton Rouge, were poised to remove the Moretti’s from Miami if they did not submit to the new order of things. Roman’s family fled, and Roman went into hiding, which infuriated Stefano. Stefano died before he could track Roman down, and the feud was left unfinished.
That was something Caesar intended to rectify this lifetime. If the Seers were correct, Stefano was back on Earth and in his family in some new body. And when Caesar found him, Kayla wouldn’t be the one pulling the trigger.

That happy thought foremost in his mind, Caesar flopped down on the bed, picked up the remote and turned Jerry back on.

Chapter 9

"It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again. Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead, and endure mock funerals… and there they stand looking out of the window, sound and well, in some strange new disguise."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

The Vault time unknown

The cave they found themselves in was manmade, bits of crystal and limestone causing what could be seen of the walls to glimmer. Bright overhead lights illuminated certain parts of the room, shadows still lurking in others. The area was circular shaped and appeared to take up as much square footage as the house. Steel shelves had been built into the walls, everything sitting on them protected by the locked Plexiglas front. They started a foot off the ground and from best guess stretched up about twenty feet in height.

Every transmission S.V.T. Securities had ever picked up, every document copied, photograph taken, video recorded, the history of the family and each person they had touched, it was all here. There was so much it would take years to physically go through every piece of information. All that, while impressive, was expected. What was not, were the three bizarre structures in the middle of the room.

“It’s called a Holon, or Octahedron,” Rosa explained in a conversational tone. She left them gawking and walked briskly across the stone floor to some point in the shadows.

The triplets didn’t notice when she left them, their full attention focused on the three pyramids suspended in mid air. Each square-based pyramid was a pair and appeared to be made of solid gold, one pointing up towards the ceiling, the other reversed, the pointed tip somehow balanced on the stone floor. A slab of dull frosted crystal existed between the pyramids.

“What the fuck are those?” Lucien finally broke the silence and like his siblings dropped his bags, stepping closer to the strange structures.

“They’re Holons,” Vasco replied in a quiet matter-of-fact tone, walking past his brother to examine the pyramids. “How are they standing like that?”

“What are they for?” Simone wondered aloud in a tiny awe-filled voice.

“Magnets. You Terenzio. You.” Rosa returned without her bucket, answering two of the three questions.

“What are we going to do with them?” Simone asked, looking over at their eccentric host.

Rosa stared inquisitively at the three of them in silence for a full moment. Then the expression dissolved off her face in a fit of childlike giggles. “Balance Terenzio’s. Above. Below. Balance. You go in the center, and Lemurian crystal will help you remember.”

“What’s a Lemurian crystal?” Lucien asked raising a brow.

“Help us remember what exactly?” Vasco shot off after his brother’s question, casting another glance back at the Holons.

Rosa giggled again, walking over to Simone and Lucien. She took their hands and began dragging them over to the pyramids. “Remember who you were, Terenzio’s. Go on, get up. Get in. Go. Go.” Releasing their hands she shoved Simone towards the one on the left and Lucien at the one to the far right.

“What are the chances the magnet thing you’ve got holding these up stops working and I get smooshed?” Lucien’s mouth twisted wryly as he reached out and set his hands on the slab of crystal. As soon as he touched it, an odd tingling sensation shot up his arms and he drew his hands back. He hesitated then shook his head and hoisted himself up, ducking down so he was lying on his back. The sensation continued and he wondered if it was because of the magnets.

“All right, all right, I’m going.” Simone shrugged off the woman’s push and climbed up carefully between the pyramids. “Shut up, Lucien,” she called over her shoulder, hearing him talk about getting smooshed; however, she cast her own apprehensive glance at the solid gold hovering above her.

Rosa backed up as the two climbed onto the Holons, patted Lucien reassuringly on his arm then walked over to Vasco. She looked up at him in silent contemplation for a few seconds, her face twisting in thought then simply took his hand and led him over to the one in the center.

It was rare for Vasco to openly show his reluctance about anything. But as he got closer to the pyramids he couldn’t shake whatever was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Something profound was going to happen and it was literally terrifying him. He could feel his heart beat speeding up in his chest, a cold sweat clutching at his body.

Rosa grinned at the look on his face, pulling him a little harder the rest of the way. “Don’t be scared. Fear will block you. It won’t hurt.”

“Yeah, c’mon, you pussy,” Lucien called out even though his own voice didn’t sound as confident and playful as it normally did.

Vasco shot his brother a dirty look then forced himself to hop up onto the crystal slab. “Now what?”

That “I know something you don’t know” expression was plastered over Rosa's face. She literally scampered away from them into the shadows and returned several minutes later with three diamond shaped sparkling crystals in her hand. “These are yours. Made for you so put them on your foreheads. Go on, put them on now.” She stepped up to each of them, handed over the crystal and waited for them all to place the stones on their foreheads before she walked away.

“This is crazy cult shit right here,” Lucien said.

“You better be extra careful, Lucien, all this magnetism might reduce your penis size.” Simone snickered at him, though the playful jabbing was just a distraction and not a very good one. She didn’t understand what it was they were supposed to remember, and she had this weird knotting sensation in her gut that was heightening her fear of the unknown.

“Ha, ha, ha.” Lucien stuck his tongue out from the side of his mouth, not moving his head so he didn’t drop the crystal and get scolded by their loopy host.

When Vasco took the crystal from Rosa he didn’t place it on his forehead right away, instead examining it curiously. The piece of rock felt incredibly warm in his hand, as if some energy source existed in its center.

“Wrong eyes, arrogant Terenzio. Look here. Here where your memories are. Here.” Nearly every syllable was punctuated with the stab of her index finger into the center of his forehead.

He twitched every time he was poked, finally reaching up and catching her wrist firmly. “Enough. I get your point.”

When he grabbed her she canted her head, looking at him like he was a bug that both amused and frightened her. It ended in her own deep laughter as she stepped away, nodding her head vigorously. “Mmm hmm. Yes, she will see you now.” She moved away from them and over to the wall next to the elevator, pressing a button to plunge the room into darkness. “Close your eyes, Terenzio’s. Deep breaths now. Slow. Back you go, back to where you remember.”

Vasco frowned as the lights cut off, but he made a few passing attempts to relax the tension in his shoulders. Seconds passed, then minutes and it felt like the crystal on his forehead was getting warmer. It brought a steady sense of relaxation that covered him like a blanket. He realized at some point he had begun zoning in and out.

It started with sounds. There was significance in that. The sound of glass hitting a solid surface, shattering from the impact. Voices gradually bled into his mind, strangely familiar to him. He recognized a woman’s voice first. As he strained to hear the words he realized the second raised tone was his own, shouting at the woman. Wait. No, he was wrong. That wasn’t his voice…

“Why?”

“To feel something…other than….”

“What are we doing?”

“I don’t…I don’t know.”

The answer came to him in a moment of hazy awareness. He was listening to an argument between Stefano Vasco Terenzio and his second wife, the one who had really mattered. They were saying things that neither one of them should have said, things that shouldn’t matter to people like them. There had been an indiscretion, first him, then her. Both done to protect the secret of their relationship even though in the end it had been too big to keep.

But what Vasco could not understand was what the memories had to do with him….

Conversations from different moments suddenly became muddled together, and the faint whisper of images swirled around in his head until he could willfully take hold of one and focus in on it. A man was tied to a chair, blood and sweat dripping down his face, staining his shirt. Pitiful whimpers pressed apart his lips, fear glazing the eye that was not swollen shut. Two men stood in front of their captive, one taking his time loading bullets into a revolver, the other rolling up his shirt sleeves.

As if he were viewing it all from a place of the dead his vision rippled across the gloomy scene, showing Vasco the door to the room as it cracked open and a child poked his head through. He teeter-tottered between prudent patience and reeling disbelief as the memory unfolded with undeniable familiarity. Again this was not his lifetime.

Vasco watched as confusion marked the child’s gray eyes when his father reared back his massive fist and struck the man in the chair. Disgust and fear soon spilled across the child’s face as the captive’s head snapped to the side, the sound of a bone cracking drowned out by the hoarse shout of pain.

Swallowing hard, the little boy walked farther into the room and up to his father, tugging on his pant leg. “Daddy?”

His father’s eyes jerked downwards then narrowed cruelly. “What’d I tell you, boy?” The sentence ended with the back of a fist striking the child’s cheek, sending him to the floor and pulling tears out of his eyes. “Get back in bed! Now!”

The brief solidity caved away and left Vasco falling through his own mind as the blanks were magically filled in. He had witnessed the first and last time Stefano Vasco Terenzio had ever gone into his father’s office without permission. But he intimately knew it hadn’t been long before Stefano’s father started inviting him, and by the time he was seventeen those instances were no longer uncommon in Stefano’s life.

Vasco struggled to make sense of it all, locked in his own mind. He thought he would drown in the memories that poured into his head, but his fear was left to hang in the air with no climax. Instead, abandoned corridors were being unlocked and suddenly filled with life, and as he roamed around inside them he felt he was both trespasser and gatekeeper.

The scene faded into another and shadows rose against the darkness, light skittering around the edges, teasing him with something he couldn’t yet see. But he could smell it; the sweat, the hunger. There was suddenly so much of it he could barely breathe. A moan reverberated in his ears, wavering, husky, and he knew it instantly. He knew what it felt like to be the cause of it, to control it, wait for it, tame it, then wring it out of her again and again.

Her. The cut of her nails, the grip of her thighs. He wasn’t the only one who knew her so intimately; but he was. A veil lifted, pushing away the last of the darkness and surrounding him with the illusory effects of this moment. He could see oil lamps on stone walls, could feel the humid air inside the tribute to the dead. A mausoleum. It was either morbid or just the right atmosphere for these creatures. Vasco watched someone else’s big hands on her tiny waist. Then realized with brutal clarity he was watching through Stefano’s eyes. Watching the illuminated depth of her emerald gaze as it urgently begged him, just a moment before another man drove inside of her. There was such beauty in being undermined by the primal need to be used, to be fucked, to give over all the violent lust bred within us all.

Erotic, the small tinges of jealously mixing with pure arousal at the sight of her taking pleasure in someone else’s arms. Watching her love it, openly, guilty, unable to look at him and unable to look away. It was all consuming, feeding his basic instinct to dominate her. To take her used, to reprint his own scent on her skin, the marks from his grip on her hips. To show her again and again, over and over, why a woman like her had chosen a man like him.

The views faded, then shifted back into focus so that he was facing her as if he were there again reliving a moment long past. He felt himself, Stefano, leaning forward, the sensation of his cheek brushing over hers before he smothered her mouth with his own. Her eyes rolled back a brief moment as the suction of her breath quickened. If it could ever be said about her that she was someone’s, she was his. Utterly his whore.

How foul the truth. But there was so much more.

The images came crashing to the surface of Vasco’s consciousness and brought with them the vortex of two powerful emotions. They welled up in his chest, slamming into his gut, his groin, a raging heat spreading through his limbs like a wildfire.

But there was so much more.

Something else controlled it; jealousy, lust. Something else surrounded the light and dark and used them as they were meant to.

They were in the back of a car. This transition of time revealed itself in clarity. Snow fell around them, lightly coating the private runway. Vasco could hear her asking Stefano about his first wife. And then she had said something Vasco knew Stefano had never expected to hear. But even caught off guard, the response had come naturally.

“Would yah want to marry me one day?”

“I already would.”

“Then do it.”

“Marry me.”

It had been the one thing everyone envied, yet never truly understood about these two; how they could possibly love one another so much.

After a moment of lingering in the aftertaste Vasco recoiled. Suddenly and violently he was yanked from that memory and shoved into the next, some unseen force propelling him further into his mind. It grinded to a halt just as a jagged blade sliced open the skin on Stefano’s back. Blood oozed from the wound, staining his dirty sweat-laden flesh. His torturer picked up a bottle cap and shoved it into the open wound, twisting and digging the surprisingly ragged sharp edges into the soft tissue. Vasco realized once more he had slipped into the role of Stefano Terenzio because it felt like it would never stop. He was both participant and viewer as fists clenched and strained against the metal chains that kept him prisoner. Another cut, another shove and it kept going until his entire back was aflame, his nerve endings writhing in agony as he struggled to bear it in silence.

The torture had lasted for days. They tossed Stefano into a burlap bag at the end. The scene almost faded, but came back into focus when an Asian-accented voice spoke. “Can you hear me in there? I hope you can breathe, will make it easer for the bag to fill with water.” His body was feverish, his mind a thin line bordering on insanity and his struggle to stay coherent. There were no smart ass words to say to his torturer. He heard their laughter from inside the bag a moment before he was kicked into the freezing waters of the Hudson River.

Nausea spilled into Vasco’s gut as the memory was yanked from him, replaced by sudden streams of information that shot into his mind. Stefano had not died that day. He had been saved, though not without a price and not without vengeance. The moment had come when Stefano stood face to face with his attacker again. And that day, he bashed the opium drug lord’s head in with the cane he would be forced to use the rest of his life. The disfigured head had been kept in a jar, both memento and warning.

Fuck, it was like he was tied to the back of a roller coaster, the way he was dragged through memories. He crashed into one unprepared, and just as he found something to hold onto the earth dropped out below him and he fell screaming into the next. Darkness faded to light, back to darkness and at times a cacophony of sound drummed between his ears. Everything a person remembered over a lifetime all came exploding back into his mind, exposing itself.

When it finally stopped Vasco’s eyes shot open. He was trembling, sweating profusely and had never been so confused and shaken in his life. He yanked the crystal from his forehead and pushed off the Holon, stumbling, calling out loudly, “Lights!! Lights!!”

A moment later the overheads came back on. As they did Lucien and Simone opened their own eyes with mirrored expressions of disbelief and shock.

What the hell was this? This was a trick, some grand twist on subliminal messaging. He suddenly remembered to breathe. Vasco was not a big believer in past lives; in fact, he hadn’t given such a thing thirty seconds of thought, ever. But now he felt certifiably insane. How was it possible that he could carry the memories of his current life and those of Stefano Vasco Terenzio? S.V.T.? The legend, the one who had started all of it? Vasco bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to fight off the fit of nausea, trying to slow his heart rate. He jerked his eyes over to Rosa when she appeared, twirling a piece of her hair around her fingers. “What the fuck just happened?” He demanded.

Rosa smiled intently at him. “You know.”

“This is some cult shit,” Lucien said quietly then shook his head laughing nervously. “Can someone explain to me how I have Julian Terenzio’s memories in my head? Holy shit. Holy shit.”

“Understatement,” Simone said to Lucien then lapsed into silence. This was off the charts. What had their grandfather gotten them into? She had never given serious thought to the idea of reincarnation but without question the memories from the life of Liliana Terenzio sat in her mind as if she lived them herself. But how? Why?

Glancing over at Vasco she realized in thirty-some-odd years she had never seen him look so, off balance. And then she realized that the expression on his face was one she had seen before, when looking at Stefano. She cleared her throat and said gently to him, “At least now you know why you’ve always had arthritis in your left leg.”

Vasco blinked at her, and then glanced down at the limb. “I’ll be damned.” The drug lord. The bottle caps. The damage done to his spine that had nearly left him crippled. A century ago, S.V.T. had walked with a slight limp. He straightened and pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes as if he could force the memories out of his mind. They stayed and his grip on reality loosened, leaving him lost.

“Hey Rosa, I know we’ve probably got other strange things to do down here but right now, I need a drink.” Lucien smirked. “A really stiff one.”

Chapter 10

"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience."
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

June 7th, 2012

S.V.T. Think Tank

Alexandria, VA 11:11 PM

The purpose of the accumulator is simple, a magnet for orgone energy. It only sounds like a strange word. In reality, orgone energy is the left-brained word for chi, prana or life force energy. Energy that is already around you. It is made up of you and connected to everything else. You don’t need an orgone accumulator to be able to harness this force and draw it into you. It is you. It is your very breath.

But, to speed up this process I have sent you one. The healing effects of this machine are very real, for the obvious reasons explained above. If you need a little assistance and of course you do, use this machine and do your meditations.

That’s right. I’m assuming by this point you’ve done your research. You can scientifically prove the oncoming Ascension. Don’t let another doubt pass through your head. Your next task is simple, and the hardest. Ironic we’ve left the scientists to do this part, isn’t it?

Obviously I have not lost my mind. Neither have you. Give it a try. You’ve nothing to lose and you’ll find a very interesting synchronicity in the way events in your lives start to shape up. You’ve seen glimpses of it already, haven’t you?

See you at the party.

§

“What the hell is suddenly going on in the world and who is MST?” Abe asked in an incredulous tone after reading the letter from Marcello.

“It’s been going on, Abe, we’re just now noticing,” Shirley said quietly, circling around the large rectangular box that had been delivered to them. “But I don’t know who MST is either.” She looked over at Derek.

“It would take too long to explain. He’s a Terenzio though. He ranks above Robert,” Derek said as he mimicked Shirley’s motions, remaining silent, and battling himself in his head. They hadn’t stopped since they found Menes. For the last twenty-four hours they had gone through any and all research available that discussed in any scientific language the supposed oncoming Ascension and the Anunnaki. Not only had the Sumerians made references to help from outer space, but other ancient documents such as the Nag Hammadi Codices also talked of alien intrusion into human affairs.

It was all more than a little mind blowing. While Derek understood mainstream science’s urge to toss this data aside as the fantasy-filled stories of a creative people, he had to agree with Shirley. It made no sense to only take from these ancient cultures things believed to be true and ignore the rest without giving it fair scientific study. Just because it sounded fantastical didn’t mean it was impossible.

Research on the Ascension got stranger. Most of it led them down the mystical path that couldn’t really be proven; unless you started connecting dots like Shirley had shown them. David Bohm’s studies on the holographic universe provided scientific basis for discussion on reality. They had found other studies that showed how the brain did not make any distinction between what it sees as a memory and what is happening in real life. This further snowballed into evidence that the eyes could potentially see more than the brain has the capacity to understand. To Derek this was a scary thought. It meant intelligence levels, preconceived notions, beliefs, could all affect eyesight.

There had been a large study done on whether focused intent could have an effect on reality in 1999. It was predicted that over an eight week period a group meditation practice would reduce violent crime in Washington DC by twenty percent. Data taken after the period showed that violent crime was actually reduced by twenty-three percent.

And now here was the present from Marcello, accompanied by the strange letter that indicated the dying man might know a little something more than they did.

Derek pulled open the door to the machine and stared inside. There was a simple wooden chair, the inner walls made up of some sort of metallic material. It didn’t look like much of anything remarkable. “Tell me more about Wilhelm Reich?” Derek finally asked.

“Reich was a psychoanalyst and a psychiatrist,” Abe explained. “From what little I know, he was well respected for most of his life. They didn’t start calling him a quack until he began promoting the health benefits of his orgone machines.”

“There’s more to the story,” Shirley added. “Reich claimed orgone is the omnipresent energy in everything and is responsible for the weather, gravity, the big bang, etc. He also claims the orgasm is one of many examples of the release of this energy. If you block it from naturally being released it will cause illness. Things like cancer, for example.”

Derek’s brows shot up at that and he looked at Shirley, and then the accumulator. “That sounds like the scientific explanation for the seven chakras and the result of having those energy portals closed.”

“Exactly. The blockage of the charkas is what leads to different types of dis-ease, as they call it,” Shirley said. “So, Reich builds the box and puts his patients inside for its health benefits. Harper and the New Republic run articles on it, and then the FDA goes berserk and gets an injunction to stop him from selling across interstate lines. Reich tells them and the courts they have no authority to judge his work, and does it anyway. They throw him in jail, he gets two years, the FDA burns the books that he wrote about Orgone, and he dies a year later of heart failure a few days before he’s due to apply for parole.”

“Since when does the FDA start burning books? Fucking government,” Abe muttered.

“That’s a happy story.” Derek took a few steps back from the machine, folding his arms across his chest. “What the hell are we going to do with it?”

“Sit inside and meditate like Marcello suggested?” Shirley offered.

“Speaking of, anybody know what the ‘next step’ is?” Abe asked, suppressing a yawn.

Derek shook his head in answer to Abe’s question. “No clue. Maybe he wants us to activate our own chakras.”

“That makes sense. And it fits his talk of irony in regards to scientists striving for a full kundalini awakening,” Shirley said. Taking Derek’s place at the door of the machine she walked inside of it. “How in the world does this attract orgone energy?”

“I don’t think I have the brain capacity left to tackle another mystery.” Abe let his forehead drop onto the table top.

“I’ll pull up what I can find in regards to research papers on it.” Derek glanced down at his watch. They were all beat and it was late. “Why don’t you both go home, catch a few hours of real sleep? Abe please take a shower, you smell, and we’ll meet back up in the AM?”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” Abe lifted his head and clambered to his feet.

Shirley stepped out of the machine, settling tired eyes on Derek. “Are you going to follow your own advice?”

Derek offered a small smile. “I don’t want to leave the area unattended, but I’m definitely going to go into my office and bond with my couch like I never have before.”

“I’ll be back around six, Derek. I might not shower though.” Abe cracked a smile at them, winked at Shirley, then walked through the automatic doors. Sleep was sounding like the best idea the universe had ever come up with.

Shirley waved at Abe as he departed then asked Derek, “This is going to get a lot stranger, isn’t it?”

Derek watched her movements, small sparks of awareness lighting up his sleep-deprived brain. “I don’t know if it can get any stranger at this point. I feel like I’ve heard it all.”

She laughed softly at that. “I keep expecting to wake up. Everything we’ve found out makes so much sense but at the same time….”

“I know. Guess this is what Neo felt like in the Matrix.” Derek grinned.

Shirley smiled warmly up at him and their gazes locked in a comfortable silence, charged with everything that wasn’t said. Finally she reached out, sliding gentle fingertips over his unshaven cheek. “Don’t stay up working. Sleep.”

He was tempted to close his eyes and nuzzle. Tempted more to reach out and pull her to him. He did neither. “I won’t. And I will.”

She dropped her hand, smiled at him again then approached the automatic doors. When they slid open she paused briefly in the entrance and called back, “Hey Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“If we do pull all this off, think you might take me out sometime? Like on, you know, a real grown-up date?”

Her words made him feel like he was suddenly blushing. For a few seconds he couldn’t find anything to say, like a blubbering wide-eyed teenager awestruck by his first crush. When it passed and he could find his voice he got out, “That’s a reality I can’t wait to create.”

She didn’t say anything else, but he caught her soft smile a moment before she left his line of sight. As promised, he went right to his office and sprawled out over the mushy leather. But it sure as hell wasn’t work that occupied his mind in the moments before sleep took him.

§

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

The Vault time unknown

They had drawn into their own thoughts since stepping out of the Holons. The triplets sat in the vault, a few feet behind the pyramids at a long conference table. A decanter full of bourbon was before them. Glasses were emptied, then promptly filled backed up again with the expensive liquor.

It was a lot to swallow all at once; to realize that something you didn’t even believe in might be true. The fact that the memories were in his head so clearly was chewing up at Vasco’s sense of reason. He was positive that if he started searching the shelves he could confirm every event that he’d just felt like he’d lived through a century ago. But did that really prove the existence of past lives? No, not conclusively. This had to be some sort of test, there had to be a better explanation. Something like that wouldn’t be below their grandfather; he was a Terenzio after all.

“You know…” Lucien was sprawled back in his chair, glass pressed against his temple, “…if you thought I had an ego before, I really have one now.”

Simone shook her head amusedly, despite the fact she was still shaken by the events. It was so much to process. Little things kept popping into her brain, all of them about Liliana Terenzio. It was exciting, but admittedly scary too. “I doubt that’s possible, Lucien. Besides, Vasco has an ego bigger than both of ours.”

“Rightly so. How’s it feel to be the legend?” Lucien cocked a grin over at his brother.

Vasco shook the ice in his glass, looking at the amber liquid as if it would make sense of what they had just experienced. “I’m not Stefano Terenzio,” he said finally.

Lucien arched a brow at him. “What do you mean you’re not? You’ve got a better explanation?”

Vasco flicked veiled eyes onto his brother. “There are a million, Lucien. For whatever reason we need to know about the original trio. That Holon, crystal combination must have downloaded it into our brains,” he concluded. It all sounded far fetched, but not as out there as the idea of reincarnation.

“V, I’ve got JT’s memories in my head.” Lucien stabbed a finger at his own temple. “I can feel what he felt, right down to the sweat on his balls. Sorry Simone.”

Simone didn’t offer any response yet, her thoughtful gaze trading glances with her siblings, though her eyes did roll ever so slightly at Lucien’s descriptive image.

Vasco frowned hard at the youngest. “You can’t be that egotistical, Lucien,” he said sharply. “You’d love to be JT, I don’t deny I’d love to claim the life of S.V.T. But we’re not. We just know them intimately now, like a really well written novel. We need to stop with the mystical shit and start focusing on why this is happening.”

Lucien finished off his third drink, mulling over his brother’s words before he gave comment. Finally he shook his head and reached for the bottle. “No, I think you’re wrong, V. I’m not one to believe in UFO’s or ghosts or anything outside my little circle of reality, but that was real.” He lifted his fresh glass to his lips, adding quickly, “And I don’t need to be JT. I’m already the shit, asshole.”

“Down boys,” Simone chided. “Let’s put whether or not we are actually reincarnated versions of Stef, Lil and JT on hold for the moment. Grandfather said we knew our enemy. Does that mean anything different to us now?” She slid her gaze between her brothers.

Lucien thought on the question with another swallow from his glass. Vasco set a bent elbow on the table top, resting his hand against his mouth as he contemplated. It was terribly strange to have these new memories in your mind that you could suddenly explore. Not just one, an entire lifetime’s worth.

“That letter you wrote me, JT, before you died,” Lucien suddenly said, sitting up a little straighter in his chair. “How did you find them?”

“What letter? Who do you mean by ‘them’?” Simone quickly asked. She couldn’t remember, or find anything in Lil’s memories about getting a letter from Stefano.

Vasco brows knit together, searching through the warehouse of information floating around in his mind. It was going to take some getting use too, these new memories, whatever they were. It didn’t take long before what Lucien was talking about came slamming to the forefront in a sudden moment of clarity. “Oh my god…”

Chapter 11

“We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."

- Woodrow Wilson

June 6th, 1925

Château des Amerois

Muno, Belgium 1:11 AM

Marazano brought me here because he needs my help in following Don Ferro’s orders. I don’t need his help to complete those same orders. Let me remove the middle man completely and with my continued willing cooperation you’ll have a much easier time controlling your scapegoat.”

His words were akin to blasphemy, but he wasn’t dealing with the Cosa Nostra anymore. A power existed that sat higher than that. The many names all masks of the same beast. The important facts were, there wasn’t a country in the world not touched by their power and their control extended past the limits of Earths’ stratosphere to a few planets close by. The impossibility of the sight clearly in front of him proved it.

The interior of the den had the décor expected of a castle. The air reeked of furniture polish, expensive cologne and lit cigars. Two United States secret service agents stood in the corner. Since entering the privacy of the room their eyes remained a solid black. At random moments they would widen then slightly narrow into an oval shape.

Stefano Vasco Terenzio sat comfortably in the high-backed chair, a nearly empty glass in one hand, a burning cigar in the other. His harsh and often described as cruel gray eyes rested with nonchalant ease on the “man” in front of him. The impossibility of the situation was further exposed by the fact that the eyes staring back at him were reptilian-like. The white pinkish cheek, usually found on an aristocratic face, kept flickering to a dark scaly green like an uncontrolled twitch. Fifteen minutes earlier, this creature had exposed its entire self. Stefano was certain the image was meant to be intimidating, and for a moment it had been. To watch the Vice President of the United States suddenly transform into a seven-foot tall lizard thing was a little more than startling. Apparently the human form was grossly easy to manipulate. But after that initial wave of expected shock fell off, this thing was now just another new piece on his chessboard.

They were called the Anunnaki. The myths and legends of the Gods were their true tales. It was they who had chosen the thirteen human ruling families from the genetically altered slaves, whose daughters they’d whored and through whom they’d created bloodlines loyal only to them. It wasn’t that hard to believe for Stefano. To him it sounded like a good idea, if you had the capabilities to pull it off. Obviously it had been. Besides, in his opinion, the universe was too big for humans to be alone in it. And it was the height of arrogance for the retarded, easily manipulated suckers called mankind to think they could possibly be the only species that existed within it. And that they were the smartest. Yeah, right.

It was the Anunnaki, who played the ultimate chess game with humanity. The one opponent Stefano realized he couldn’t beat, yet. That meant this was the kind of challenge worth getting a hard on over. And since he’d never been afraid of making a deal with the devil….

“Oh, and one more thing,” Stefano added in a slightly bored tone. “My family, perhaps one other of my choosing, will be the last one standing in the western Cosa Nostra. You let me clean it up as I see fit. Don Ferro can claim control from afar if you wish. After the eradication of the rest of the families, feel free to give the real credit to any law enforcement agency you want. Twisting the story into something acceptable to put in a history book is up to you.”

The Anunnaki, the Vice President, smiled coldly. “Are you really willing to play slave, just to have your way, Stefano?”

“If I’ve got the story right, as a human I’m your slave anyway. I’d prefer to have a say in the method of my servitude.” He ended the words by finishing his drink and lifting the cigar to his lips, spicing up the flavor of the alcohol on his tongue.

Silence stretched. But when the answer finally came, Stefano’s lips curled up into a smile.

§

The cigar was still between his teeth as Stefano came down the stone steps. Nina, his personal bodyguard, waited patiently at the bottom. When their eyes met, he nodded once. Malicious excitement reflected back at him.

He climbed into the car first, Marazano sitting next to him. The Sicilian’s bodyguard sat directly across from him, reading a newspaper. Nina sat next to the reader.

“Well? How did it go?” Marazano asked.

The look in his eyes was mild arrogance. The smirk on Stefano’s mouth was common. “I’m in.”

Marazano smiled warmly, kissing both his cheeks, then slapping one. “Congratulations.”

“Grazie.”

Nina shot the bodyguard first, a quick single bullet to the temple. Marazano took the second as Stefano rolled down his window, gently tapping his cigar to rid the ashes. He helped Nina kick both bodies carelessly out of the car. The Vice President wanted the corpses. Stefano hadn’t asked why, didn’t much care. He nodded to the driver as he stuck the Habana back between his lips, “Let’s go.”

§

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

The Vault time unknown

“They gave him Alcyone Island and the renegade militia that was on it too, to help him,” Vasco said quietly.

“Jesus Christ. You killed Marazano?” Lucien’s jaw was slightly agape.

Vasco frowned at his brother. “I didn’t do shit. But to properly answer your question, neither did Stefano.” He paused and the frown bled off his face. Fuck, this was all too crazy. Not just the memories, though they were enough to make him think he was really losing it, Vasco could recall the calm malicious glee Stefano felt in those moments. Not just recall it, the very feeling felt so familiar to him he realized he was having a hard time not smiling.

“Who shot him then?” Lucien asked.

“Nina did,” Vasco responded quietly, and immediately felt another rush of sensation connected with the memories of Antonia. He still didn’t understand any of it. What was the purpose of providing them with what the original trio was feeling too? For that matter how did whoever put those Holon’s together know? It didn’t make any sense.

Simone leaned back in her chair, arms crossed comfortably over her chest. This story wasn’t just new to her, but to Lil too. She realized that Stefano had never shared with either of his siblings how he had really obtained Alcyone Island, which sounded exactly like something he would do. And she could clearly remember that Nina was loyal, intelligent, deadly and always willing to shoot someone if Stefano asked. Liliana and Nina had shared a love of firearms, and been good friends. Simone couldn’t help but smile at the familiar feelings the memories invoked.

“Nina?” Lucien slowly grinned. The more they got into this conversation the more he was convinced that those Holons had made them remember their past lives. There were too many little details running around in his head that were intimate and personal, that he needn’t know about JT. “I slept with her. Before she married Derek. She was a hot little lay too.”

“Aside from family, was there any female on the island that Julian didn’t fuck?” Simone canted her head at Lucien, amused.

Vasco remained silent, ignoring the reference to Lucien as Julian for the time being. “This is one hell of an enemy.” He pressed two fingers against his temple. His head was pounding and the alcohol wasn’t helping on any fronts. “The Anunnaki are, well…”

“Sci-fi shit right there. And don’t even try to jump on the doubting train, V.” Lucien warned, pointing a finger at him. “Those fuckers killed me. I can still feel their claws, their teeth….” Lucien grimaced, then he looked pissed. “Oh, revenge will be sweet.”

“Before we even begin to get into a discussion on the, how did you say it, Vasco? Anunnaki,” Simone slowly pronounced the word then continued. “Grandfather obviously knows about them. But if you, I mean Julian, didn’t tell him, Lucien, how did that happen?”

Lucien knit his brows together. “Marcello told me that he knew about them and it was time to remove them from the chessboard.” He pressed his liquor glass against his temple again, searching the newly expanded hallways of his memory banks. “I went to them and demanded to know what they’d done and subsequently got eaten.” Lucien shuddered. “It’s so fucking strange to remember dying.”

“Yeah it is,” Simone said quietly. Then she gave a little shake of her head and glanced over at Vasco. “Well, if Julian didn’t tell him, did you leave a note for him?”

Vasco slowly shook his head. “Not that I recall. Did he ever tell Julian what they’d done, Lucien?”

Lucien shook his head. “He refused to say.”

Out of the shadows Rosa suddenly appeared, skipping towards them and carrying a small banker’s box. She dropped it on the table then patted Vasco on the head. Her eyes drifted over the other two in studious silence before she just turned around and went skipping back to where she had come from, calling out in a sing-song voice, “DeMarco.”

Chapter 12

"The virtues we acquire, which develop slowly within us, are the invisible links that bind each one of our existences to the others’ - existences which the spirit alone remembers, for Matter has no memory for spiritual things."

-Honore Balzac

September 11th, 1958

Dion Corp Private Retreat

Madeira Islands 2:11 PM

It was no secret the retreat on Madeira Island was 99% of the time just for the boys. However, when you were Mr. President every now and again you could bring your wife. When you needed a secure private location for a meeting with a member of the politically charged DeMarco family, who had strangely insisted that your wife be present, it was the perfect place.

The hair on his head that wasn’t quite black anymore rippled lightly in the breeze carried off the ocean. He stood out on the terrace, folding up a piece of paper and tucking it into his pocket. Random updates from the Island, they never ceased.

Marilyn stepped to her husband's side, slipping her hand into the crook of his arm. She glanced at the note as he put it away, arching a slender brow. "Everything still in one piece?"

"Uncle Julian started a bar fight. Then he rented out the brothel for the other guy. I love my family, truly." Marcello couldn't help but chuckle. "He's never allowed to baby sit again."

Marilyn rolled her vivid blue eyes. Uncle Julian meant well, but his life's philosophy ground directly against the grain of hers. She was lucky to have gotten to Marcello when she had, before his uncle's seeds of debauchery had fully taken root. But there was affection in her smile, of the patronizing kind. "You know I love him, but I don't really want our children to emulate him."

Quiet laughter left his lips. "Noted. And agreed, Mrs. Terenzio." Marcello tipped his head down, brushing his mouth across her cheek. His voice lowered secretively. "But I am going to enjoy the time alone with you."

Marilyn made a soft sound, deep in her throat and wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning in closer to - one of the Guards pushed open the sliding glass door, clearing his throat to interrupt. Marilyn leaned in anyway, taking her slow, sweet time with a warm, promising kiss. It hadn't taken her very long after they had met to learn to work with, around, and sometimes ignore wholly, the frequent interruptions.

Both arms came around her, Marcello’s hands clasped loosely at her back, holding her there as he returned her kiss. Only after did he acknowledge the guard who informed them their guest had arrived. Marcello nodded and she kissed him again, standing up on the tips of her toes after she broke away to give him a peck on the nose. "Should I change?"

"No. This suits you just fine." Marcello smiled softly down at her.

Matthew DeMarco, Director of the newly formed and Above Top Secret Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, was the near mirror image of his father with one exception; he carried his mother’s wheat-hued eyes. Following in his father’s, U.S. Senator and Don of New Orleans, Alexandro DeMarco’s footsteps, he and his brother had further inserted the DeMarco name into American politics and the dark, dark world that ran it. Matthew was not here to bring good news to the ally of his family, but it needed to be given. Armed guards dressed in plain clothes with the Dion Corp logo on their shirts, escorted him through the open rooms and out onto the terrace. Dressed for Washington and not the islands, he held his suit jacket over his forearm and carried a warm smile regardless of the circumstance of his visit when he saw the pair. "You remind me of my parents."

Marilyn turned in Marcello's arms, smiling at Matthew. "Thanks, Matt, you really know how to make a girl feel young." She fanned her lashes in good humor and stepped up to take his hands and kiss his cheek. "How was your flight?"

"I secretly dislike flying, but your jet has excellent accommodations." Matthew tipped his head and returned her kiss. A Dion Corp guard came out and set down a briefcase. Matthew nodded his head at him in thanks. Then he turned his mother’s eyes to Marcello, extending his hand. "We need to talk."

“I knew you hadn’t come here just to say hello.” Marcello took Matthew’s hand and stepped into the embrace, kissing his cheek and hugging him. “What’s the good news?” he finally asked sarcastically as they broke away.

Matthew put the briefcase up on the wrought iron table, using his thumb on the number pad to unlock it as he spoke. The friendly expression on his face melted away in the sudden seriousness of his tone. "There're two parts to this." The latches clicked open. "One, you won't be able to do anything about. The other..." He opened the case, reaching inside for two file folders. Both had the words ABOVE TOP SECRET stamped in red on the front. "…we'll see about that one." Matthew paused for just a moment, then he picked up the first folder and handed it to Marilyn. "You were pregnant a year ago. You were told the child died at birth. She did not."

Marcello had begun bracing himself for whatever it could possibly be, but there was not a chance in hell he could have been prepared for what Matthew just said. Marilyn paled, the words hitting her like a punch to the stomach; a knife to her pounding heart. She sank back in the chair, the straight line of her back, the proud square of her shoulders, bowing. She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

Marcello spoke for her, his voice sharp. "You're going to have to do a hell of a lot better than this, Matthew." He remembered that day, vividly. How could you not? The crying. The pain. A wound that still stung. She'd taken it especially hard. He flicked the gray eyes to his wife, then dropped that steely gaze to the file folder.

Matthew sighed quietly. He hadn’t gotten to the hard part yet. "Open the folder, Marilyn." Inside was the picture of a smiling one-year-old girl with her mother’s light blonde hair and shining blue eyes.

She shook her head. The second time, it actually showed, "No." Marilyn shook it a third time, but her eyes never left the folder. "No." So many memories flooded her. Someone was trying to get to them, they had to be. "This can't--" The world went quiet. Marilyn drew a breath, much more shallow than she would have liked; it roared in her ears. She pulled the folder across the table and opened it. She looked right into her own eyes and her hand came to her mouth, tears slipping over her knuckles.

When the folder opened, for the first time in a long time Marcello was at a standstill. Their daughter was alive. Someone had taken her, and lied to them. The mixture of emotions was so sudden, so vicious in its intensity it was almost too difficult to contain. He forced himself to lock it down and focus on his wife, his brows pulled together in concern. But as he finally looked down at the picture his world tipped again and just kept toppling, a clammy sweat starting to cling to his skin. He had been in the game too long now. Things were starting to piece together. Matthew was right. For the first time Marcello Terenzio didn’t want to know.

Matthew didn’t say anything more right away. He gave them a moment to let it really digest before he dropped more bombs onto their world. "Tell me when you're ready to hear the answers to those questions."

Their daughter. Their baby girl. The one she had known for nine months that had cruelly been taken from her. Marilyn had held their daughter's tiny, purple body; smoothed back her thin layer of soft, dark hair; kissed the small, stiff fists and touched her round cheeks. Stillborn, they said. Though in the thick fog of dreams she swore she saw the needle and heard the sharp, thin, healthy wail as the doctor pricked her heel. Their daughter. Alive. Marilyn tore her eyes from the photograph and looked at Matthew, fingers pressed to white lips. He had answers. She wanted to hear. She nodded.

Matthew cleared his throat. "Infiltrating the hospital wasn't terribly difficult for them. They did send the best, a few of them, they’re called Darkworkers." He paused, then continued. "Two hundred thousand children disappear every year in the U.S. alone. What happens to them isn't pretty. Your daughter is one of the lucky ones, you could say. She's in a program that will nurture her, educate her, and train her." Matthew looked at Marcello, then at Marilyn. "Your daughter's father is an Illuminati member of high ranking."

Have you ever been so thoroughly knocked from your world you didn't know if you would recover? Been so sucked into a moment that it choked the very breath out of you? It kept coming, one hit after another. His own island hadn't been hard for them to get into. Who were they?!?! Their daughter taken from them. From his wife. The knockout punch? Their daughter’s father was Illuminati. Marcello was not Illuminati. He refused to push the sentence past that because he wasn't ready for what that statement really meant. He couldn't move. He couldn't speak.

Infiltration. Darkworkers. Two hundred thousand children. Matthew's face blurred as Marilyn pulled inside herself; retreating to the dark, quiet place that had been her refuge in the wake of their daughter's death, because nothing else made sense anymore. Then she heard it. Illuminati. Marilyn jerked, eyes focused and snapping at Matthew. "...what?"

"What happened that night went down one of two ways, we can't confirm which," Matthew continued in a calm tone, delivering the information as needed. It wasn't always a fun job. "Either the memory was wiped from your mind or you remember but never told your husband. Regardless, her name is Kayla and she is your daughter, Marilyn. Not Marcello's."

There had been two moments in Stefano Terenzio's life that he had literally snapped. One resulted in the murder of a fifteen-year-old girl. The other had actually been against his second wife. Marcello had snapped once; the day he murdered his own grandmother. He felt like he was on the brink of that darker side again. His head swam. His vision blurred. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe. The chair skittered backwards; he realized, after he'd stood so hard it had hit the railing. Their daughter was not his daughter. His Mari had…and he didn’t even understand why. "No." He whirled around and looked at her like he just might..."Tell me he's a fucking liar. Tell. Me."

The memory slammed into her like a freight train; harder and more vivid than any she had ever had. A late night at the office. A quiet ride home. A dark house, but one filled with the warmth and sensation of family. She had gone straight into the shower and thought the silhouette on the frosted glass door was Marcello. She had been too startled, frightened, to scream. Marilyn held the chair so hard her knuckles went white. She flinched as Marcello's chair flew past her and crashed into the rail. She met his eyes and flinched again. He had looked at her like that once before. The day his family tested him. The day he pulled the trigger. Tell. Me. The second wave of memory crashed into her. The struggle. The threats. The stranger's blood in her mouth and the sharp prick in the side of her neck. She woke the next morning naked, in her husband's bare arms, sore from love she didn't remember making. But the third wave came with gut wrenching nausea. A stranger's lips. Teeth. Hips, and... Marilyn barely made it to the railing before her body revolted against the memory and emptied her stomach.

Her reaction was confirmation. His wife had a daughter that wasn't his. Marcello grabbed the same railing, squeezed it so tightly the blood drained from his hands. He couldn't look at her as she vomited; he clenched his eyes shut, trying to drown it all out and wake himself up from the sudden reality that he had neither intended nor created but was there all the same. "How? Why? What?" The single word questions flew out of his mouth on a harsh whisper.

Matthew straightened from his leaning, walking over to Marcello as Marilyn lost breakfast and lunch. "It's complicated, Marcello. And the implications here are bigger than your wife having an affair." Whatever was necessary was not solely a Terenzio motto. It had become the motto these days.

Marcello whirled on Matthew, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and shook him hard. "Bigger implications? How fucking dare you!" He wanted to hit him. He wanted to strangle him and then he was going to strangle his wife. "Who was he? WHO??"

It was not an unexpected response. Matthew understood. He was happily married, had a son, the whole nine yards. He wasn't sure what he would have done if the positions were reversed. It didn't change the present, though. He spoke quietly, calmly. "I'm going to tell you. I'm sure your wife would like to know who in effect raped her. But you’re not asking the right questions, Marcello. What you really need to know is why. Why you. Why her. Do you even know what the Illuminati are?"

The darkness drew back and Marilyn opened her eyes. The cliff, the waves. She wasn't far from Marcello and Matthew. She heard them arguing, but couldn't make out the words, not yet; just the pained, angry growl of Marcello's voice and the steady undercurrent of Matthew's. Marilyn carefully straightened and when she turned, yelled "Stop!" She ran back to the two men, shoving Marcello from Matthew. "Stop it!"

It seemed like ages ago; the day Marcello had been told she was a traitor by his own family to test his loyalties. The day his uncle told him to kill her, to make sure he could do whatever was necessary. He'd never been violent with her since; until now. Matthews’s words were not lost on him. It just hadn't registered. But she was in his face and when she shoved him he grabbed her by the throat, felt the tender skin under his rough touch and wanted to squeeze until he heard a snap. He pulled her closer to him and demanded between clenched teeth, "Tell me.”

Her husband was a dangerous man. She never doubted it. Never tried to convince herself otherwise. But shock struck Marilyn hard when he closed his hand around her neck and started to squeeze. Her eyes widened and by instinct, she reached up and pried at his fingers. "Marcello..." He had killed her once. Or would have, had the gun been loaded with live bullets and not blanks. He had pulled the trigger just the same, and would do, was doing, it again. She had begged then. She was different now. Marilyn slid her hands to his wrists and held them. She looked into his eyes with steady, pained sincerity. "Marcello. Please."

Matthew winced inwardly, stepped a little closer behind Marilyn, looking at Marcello over her shoulder. "Marc, she didn't know.” Of this he was decently certain. Of course he could be wrong. For her sake, he hoped he wasn't.

A muscle in his jaw twitched. She didn't know. How did you not know? You’re not asking the right questions. What other question was there to ask? His wife had fucked another man. Marcello. Please. His fingers tightened for just an instant, but he finally released her. Anger. Betrayal. Pain. He didn't understand. The man at the top with all the information was fucking clueless. Marcello stepped away from her, set the hard steel of the now veiled eyes on Matthew. "Start talking."

Matthew blew out a breath of relief when Marc released her. "You might want to sit again." He cast Marilyn a sympathetic glance, walking back over to his open briefcase. Marilyn leaned against the railing until the shakes had steadied and her strength returned, then she sat. Marcello remained standing, impatiently waiting for the answers.

"You cannot under any circumstance, see, visit, or otherwise acknowledge Kayla’s existence. Eventually she will contact you both, but her purpose will be to stop you, Marcello,” Matthew explained.

Her little girl. Another man's child. Used. Turned against them; against her husband, the man who should have been her father. Marilyn's eyes snapped to Matthew, a mother's instinct laying hold. She couldn't see her own daughter? Did... did she even want to? Could she take her child into her arms, knowing that her father had... was not... Marilyn's brows drew together as Marcello laughed bitterly.

"Nice." He touched his finger to his nose then continued. "So I am perfectly clear, my wife was fucked by an Illuminati member whose sole purpose was to impregnate her, take the child and use it against me. Have I covered it all? Yes? Why? What the fuck is she stopping me from doing? Who are they?!"

Matthew didn't shy away from Marcello's furious fired off questions. Instead he reached into the briefcase and pulled out the second folder. “Why? Because the Brotherhood’s Seers have told them that you will prepare your family to allow the Ascension.”

Marcello blinked then simply stared at Matthew in rude, impatient misunderstanding. “What?”

Matthew tossed the folder at him. “Marcello, what do you know about how your father obtained Alcyone Island?”

§

Matthew had gone. The friend of their family had just dropped a bomb and left them cold. It was too much to process all at once. And all she could think about right now was….

Her heart pounded even faster. Marilyn's eyes snapped to where Marcello stood. "What did you mean when you told Matthew you would 'take care of her'?"

Marcello’s hand dropped from the railing to his side, head slowly cocked. "What do you think I mean?" That was said calmly, the rest was not. "I was just told that your bastard fucking child has every intention of killing me and you have an issue with what I'm going to do to her?!!"

Marilyn sprang out of the chair and slapped him, open palmed and hard, right across his face. No playful punch. "Don't talk to me like that. She is a year old. Don't be so short sighted."

He had never hit his wife. He wanted to after the sting of the slap. He wanted to as the red imprint stained his skin and sent short little streaks of inconsequential pain through his face. It was so pale in comparison to what was going on inside. "I see. You've drawn your line in the sand quite clearly, haven't you?" He straightened fast from the railing, leveled his eyes on her. "I don't give a fuck if she's six months old. No enemy of mine will have the last say."

"So you want to kill me. Is that it? Because that little girl is me." Her palm burned. She'd hit him hard enough to make the other side of her knuckles hurt. "Think, Marcello. What if this was Amanda? Would you kill her, knowing what she might one day do?" Aquamarine bored into gray. She was grasping at straws. Fighting for the life of her child. "Where is the man I married? Where is my husband? He would rise to this challenge, not take the coward's way out and kill a helpless child."

"The coward’s way? The coward’s way?!" He growled in fury and grabbed her by the shoulders hard enough to leave a mark. "Your child..." The words were like acid on his tongue. Not his. Not his. "…is going to try to kill me. So you better get used to the fact that when that day comes and that pretty little face that doesn't look a fucking thing like mine steps into the arena, I will pull the trigger. And if you stand in my way you can join her." He didn't mean it. Or maybe he did and he was a little more like his father than anyone had given him credit for.

"Don't." He was going to make her choose. No, he would make the choice for her. Marilyn's eyes burned. She winced under his grip, but she didn't back down. She leaned into the crushing vise of his hands. "Don't."

Marcello didn't release her, not yet. "Did you know? Don't fucking lie to me either, did you know?"

Marilyn met his gaze. "I thought he was you. He came into our house, and our bedroom. He threatened me, and forced himself on me, and when I wouldn't lie there and take it, he injected something into my neck." Tears slipped down her cheeks. "He raped me. When I woke up, you were there, and it was just like any other day. I haven't remembered a single thing until now."

He didn't know what answer he was looking for. What did he really want her to tell him? The truth was ugly and so much more than infuriating. He'd never not trusted her, except once and he'd been manipulated then. There was no excuse now. He stared at her in silence and dropped his hands from her shoulders; but he didn’t pull her into his arms. An interruption prevented him from saying, or doing anything else. The guard appeared in the sliding glass door informing him of an urgent phone call. They always were. He looked at his wife in silence a moment longer then called out, “I don’t care, not now. Take a message.” The guard hesitated but orders were orders and he disappeared back into the house.

Her hand fell to her thigh. The ocean breeze rippled her clothing and pulled at her hair; sensations she loved, but didn't feel. Marilyn closed her eyes against the setting sun and bowed her head.

"What would you have me do, Mari?" Marcello asked the question quietly, watching her.

Marilyn opened her eyes and looked at him, wiping the tears from her cheeks. "Don't be rash. Don't do anything without asking me." She drew a breath and was relieved when it didn't shake. "And let me kill him."

His response to her words did not come immediately. "I can't promise the first." Quietly. "But maybe the latter.”

"No." She shook her head "You promise me the first, Marcello. You promise me!"

He dropped his head between his shoulders when she came at him. Christ, he felt like his whole body had been stretched over a barbed wire fence. He didn't move, but he didn't look at her as he raised his head. "I'm a man, not a saint. I love you, more than I think you know. But I cannot promise you I will make the right choice. Not because of you..." His tone hardened. "…because of him." He sighed. "I hope you can understand that."

"You are my husband." The confrontation gave her something else to focus on. Gave her heart a different emotion to feed off. It distracted her. So she pushed. "Don't punish me because of him."

"Do you think I want to do it?" He finally snapped his eyes to her. "Do you think I want to hurt you like that?" Teeth bared. "You have two other children, I am their father. Would you rather me dead?"

She wouldn't give herself the time to allow his words to sink in. She forged right ahead. "You're not giving yourself enough credit. You are a Terenzio. By blood. If there is anyone, any family, that can overcome this, it's you and yours."

He frowned at her words. Silence echoed. Eventually he sighed hard and ran his hands over his face. "All right Marilyn. But if my hand is forced..." She knew. He was a Terenzio. By blood.

Marilyn nodded, her tanned shoulders glowing a rich orange in the sunset. "What do we do now?"

"Try to rest this evening. We'll go back tomorrow. Start the boys working on him." Matthew had been very wrong to assume that they wouldn't find this man. Very wrong.

Rest? Marilyn's lips twitched. She touched the side of her neck. "Bliss is just an injection away."

Marcello’s eyes hardened at her words. That was eating away at him more than anything else. His own house. His wife. His Island. A fuck you in every possible way. "I'm sorry he...that I wasn't there."

"If it hadn't been then and there it would have been another time and place." Marilyn had been a little reckless in the later years of her adolescence, especially when thrust into the world of business and the mafia. Then she met Marcello, and she hadn't wanted, needed, or been with anyone else. Until…. A small shudder ran through her.

He could see it, could imagine it. Her struggles against the strength of another man. The hands all over her. He wanted to scream with the sudden fit of rage he felt. It was a selfish reaction, he knew it. She had taken it, and he hadn't been there. He was going to kill every single one of them, Ascension be damned. But, where did that leave her? He turned his head to look at his wife, really look at her, in stretched out moments of silence.

He was finally able to speak. To pull out of his own rage, if only for a little while. Gray eyes slightly softened; just enough. A pause and then, "They don't get another point. Your daughter will be your call."

Your daughter. Marilyn buckled again and barely caught herself. "Marcello." Many years ago, he had told her that things would be harder before they became any easier. She thought those hard days were behind them. "When will it be easier?"

The conversation came to mind the instant she said it. It seemed like yesterday, how long had it really been? Decades? He slowly shook his head. "I don't know, Mari."

Then there was nothing else to do but bear it. Marilyn breathed a single, long breath and drew herself upright. “Could you do it?" He had pulled the trigger on her. But that was before they were married. Before that night on Phoenix Isle, when he told her he loved her and she said it back. Did that change anything? "Could you kill your own child?"

She still knew how to do that to him; ask questions he hadn't yet asked himself. Real questions. He ground his back teeth together, stared sightlessly out at the beautiful scenery over her shoulder. It offered him no comfort now. He knew his answer wouldn't bring any either when he finally said to her. "I'm not my father."

No, he wasn't. That face was one of the reasons she let herself love him. It was unsettling, though, to find herself thinking like her father-in-law; considering options he would execute without second thought. Perhaps experience, in this lifetime and others, guided her to her decision. "If it comes down to it, I will kill her." Marilyn's hands tightened. Her entire body was taut as a wire. "I wouldn't be able to forgive you. But I can live with never forgiving myself."

Never, never had he expected to hear that from her. Visibly troubled eyes shot to her face, settling there in silence. Gradually he looked away, back to the view before them. "We'll see how this new side game plays out. Twelve years is a long time."

"It won't play out well." In high school, she had read a story about an African woman who cut her children's throats to keep them from a life of slavery. If anyone was going to kill her child, it would be her. Her hands again tightened. Her jaw worked. A single blink spilled the fresh tears that welled in her eyes.

"Maybe." Marcello said after stretched-out moments. "You don't know that yet." He paused again then continued. "Matthew DeMarco didn't tell us twelve years in advance to make us suffer. There is definitely more at play here." He slid his eyes over to her, watched the tears fall. "Show her you love her first. When she does get here, I'll be vastly improved at being the man who doesn't exist."

She wiped her face and turned to him. "We have twelve years." Marilyn came close in that familiar way. Touching without. "Now, make me forget about the last hour."

Marcello recognized it before she spoke. Felt it close in around the darkness and warm him. Her. For the first time it didn’t ease his restlessness. The last hour had become a new piece on the board that must be given time and attention in order to manipulate it. It wasn’t just a game anymore. Still he touched her, with a quick tug that made her gasp gently and the harsh press of his mouth that she willingly accepted because he always had a way of calming her fears when words could not, and she needed that now.

He lifted his hands, framed her face between them and parted her lips with the insistent push of his own. She felt so good. But for the first time it didn’t matter. He broke away from her and whispered, "I can't. Not yet."

Her eyes closed. Her face pinched. Marilyn pulled out of his hands, and walked away.

Chapter 13

“Men should continue to fight, but they should fight for things worthwhile, not for imaginary geographical lines, racial prejudices and private greed draped in the colors of patriotism.”

-Albert Einstein

November 6th, 1959

Dion Corporation Private Retreat

Madeira Islands 10:10 AM

It’s a simple question, DeMarco. Can you do it or not?” Marcello Terenzio asked curtly, but not unkindly. The warm ocean winds caressed his damp hair and brushed across his clean shaven cheeks. Just how raw his gray eyes really were remained hidden behind the black sunglasses. His arm was draped comfortably over the back of the chair. He sat casually, like a man with nothing to lose despite the magnitude of what he was asking. No one knew he was near his breaking point.

Matthew clasped his hands in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees. He was not surprised at the request; he had known it would be asked eventually. The problem was that while the success rate for Terenzio was high, the retaliation rate was even higher. He opened his hands and set his mother’s wheat-hued eyes on Marcello. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’m not going to ask you twice, Matthew,” Marcello replied simply.

Matthew drew his hands over his face and sighed, leaning back in the chair. He dropped his arms dejectedly into his lap. “All right, Marcello. I’ll have the information delivered to your command center.”

“No.” Marcello reached into the front pocket of his loose white shirt, removing a folded piece of paper which he slid across the table. “Send it there.”

Matthew snatched up the paper and read over it twice. When he was finished a lighter was produced from his pants pocket and he set the small thing ablaze, letting the flames die out in the ashtray. “Give me forty-eight hours.”

With the exception of occurrences during time spent with his children, Marcello Terenzio smiled for the first time in three hundred and ninety-four days.

§

November 12th, 1959

Old Town

Alexandria, VA 11:12 PM

For someone like Marcello, it wasn’t terribly difficult to get close to Deucalion. Most just wouldn’t dare go after a high ranking Illuminati.

As promised, forty-eight hours later a sealed black envelope arrived at the smaller command center inside the Villa on Madeira Island. Ninety-six hours later the ’57 Chevy pickup was rumbling through downtown Alexandria, Virginia in a section commonly referred to as Old Town. Quaint antique shops, little boutiques and dusty old book stores ran up and down the red brick sidewalks, finally ending at the Potomac River.

The truck came to a stop across the street from a small Italian café, engine still running. Ciro, personal security for the President of Dion Corp, drove the monster, the low set rim of his fedora throwing a half shadow over his wrinkled but sharp face. Marcello sat in the front seat on the right hand side, silent. He could have brought more men with him but this wasn’t business; they had made it personal.

The Brotherhood called check. It was his move.

At precisely 11:11PM, Deucalion and two other men came out of the café and into the deserted streets drunk and laughing. Inside the truck two strong clicks interrupted the silence. Ciro kept the lights off and began inching the Chevy closer to their targets.

More laughter from the men echoed out and Deucalion stumbled toward the back door on the right side of the black Silver Cloud Rolls.

Ciro slammed his foot on the gas and the pickup obeyed, shooting forward. The three men at the Royce turned startled, two reaching for weapons underneath expensive pinstriped suit jackets. As the Chevy slammed into the back of the car all three men went scattering backwards, tripping over themselves to avoid the impact. Before the truck had rocked to a complete stop, Marcello was standing at the open door, the silencer on the gun barrel barely muffling the sound of the two bullets fired in rapid succession, landing in the chest of the man at the passenger side of the Royce. Just as he dropped Ciro’s arm extended out of the window, his gloved finger pulling the trigger once to put the bullet squarely in the forehead of the man on the driver’s side.

Deucalion was not armed and had risen quickly to his feet as both his bodyguards were killed. He narrowed eyes on Marcello with his hands slightly raised and for a moment, clearly didn’t recognize him. When Marcello came closer it finally sunk in and his laughter resonated through the night.

“You know I almost expected you sooner. I knew you were dumb enough to try a stunt like this.” Deucalion said, amused.

Marcello stopped in front of Deucalion, studying the man who had raped his wife and was now laughing at her husband. With handsome blue eyes and a matching face, he stunk of cologne that was too expensive and the suit was tailor-made. Pathetic.

Marcello didn’t respond with words, he hit him with a gloved fist hard enough to send Deucalion stumbling backwards. He advanced on his target and hit him again with vicious intent, sending the Illuminati to the pavement.

Deucalion grunted in quick pain when he landed on the concrete. He leaned on one elbow, drew his fingertips gingerly over his bleeding lip and looked down at the blood. He shot his eyes cruelly up to Marcello. “It won’t change your reality, Terenzio. Just between us, she liked it after awhile.” He smiled callously at the memory. “I know how soft Marilyn is. I know how she tastes. I know how wet she gets, how much of a whore she really is. I felt her nails digging into my back when I made her cum.” He sat up completely and spat out, “And one day that child that she had just for me is going to kill you. Live with it.”

Every word sparked an image in Marcello’s mind, the same that had nearly driven him to the point of insanity for four hundred days. To explain the depth of his rage was impossible. It was not the child that had pushed him away from his wife; it was this. Because he couldn’t touch her after someone else had done the same. Because he could see the intimate details of it behind his eyes. Deucalion’s hands on her, his mouth on her, his hips bruising and cruel, forcing her body to give in and enjoy the sensation of another man inside of her. It burned in his chest, crushing his heart with its fury. He wanted to tear his fingernails into Deucalion’s flesh and rip him apart. It was enough negative energy to damage his karma for several lifetimes. He didn’t care.

Marcello kicked Deucalion hard in the center of his chest, sending the Illuminati onto his back, and stood over him. “You’re right.” Marcello said, eerily calm. “This won’t change anything.” He leveled the gun at Deucalion and his tone turned to ice. “It just makes me feel better.”

He pulled the trigger. Four times.

When the body stopped twitching Marcello turned around, replacing the gun into the holster underneath his suit jacket. Ciro had gotten out of the Chevy and was leaning casually against the side of it, a cigarette between his lips. He didn’t offer commentary as Marcello reached inside the truck bed and returned with a monstrous blade and small square black case. Instead, Ciro pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the fuse on the end of the three red sticks taped together in his hand. Nonchalantly he strolled around the vehicle, across the parking lot and over to the restaurant. The faces in the windows quickly retreated as they saw him coming. He didn’t open the door; he took an elbow to the glass and after it broke tossed the dynamite inside. His footsteps were a little quicker as he walked back behind the truck.

The building exploded seconds later. Nothing personal, it just ensured there were no witnesses.

When Marcello came back the last time he was breathing so hard it was as if he had run a mile; the blade was splattered with crimson and the case was no longer empty (police would have a helluva time trying to identify the body). He pulled off his gloves, shoving them into his pocket and muttered a curse when he saw the red stain on his sleeve. The machete was tossed carelessly back into the truck bed and he nodded once at Ciro.

In continued silence both men headed down the still empty streets to the end of the corner, not a glance spared at the burning building. Ciro reached inside his pocket and removed the keys to the 59’ Cadillac convertible. Just as the sirens sounded in the distance, the car was speeding away towards the freeways heading south.

Check. Their move.

§

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Undisclosed location time unknown

A thoughtful silence had descended upon the siblings again. Going through the box Rosa left for them had offered a rare unseen glimpse of their grandparents. All three of them could at least agree it was definitely a little more than odd to have two sets of emotion about the same person. After all, Marcello had become their grandfather, a son and a nephew.

Deciding to take a break from the Vault, and feeling a bit more than overloaded with information, they’d come upstairs and were now sprawled in the padded chairs around a table out on the veranda closest to the kitchen. Lucien’s stomach had caught up with him and he’d retired to the kitchen to rustle up a late breakfast. He’d always loved to cook, a trait that was uniquely his. He was relieved by that. Lucien was realizing a lot of tendencies he exhibited in this life he’d also shown as Julian. It left him internally panicked in short bursts, balancing two men inside of him and trying to hold on to the memory of which one he was now.

Lucien had already passed out the coffee and Vasco sat with his hands wrapped around an untouched mug, staring sightlessly out at the scenery. He was the first to break the silence. “Do you really think we reincarnated as those three?” As soon as the question left his mouth, he immediately recalled a previous lifetime comparison. Stefano and Lil had been closer than he was with Simone, but Vasco always found it easy to talk to her in the rare moments he opened up. That felt incredibly familiar and with good reason. Stefano and Lil had been the same way.

“The way things are shaping up…” She had her own cup of coffee and had sucked down the caffeine boost like it was a shot. “…I don’t know, V. Is it really so strange? Especially in comparison to the Anunnaki? It’s obviously true. You’ve got memories of it, and grandfather sparked the war against them.”

Vasco lapsed into another silence after hearing her words. She had a valid point. He could think of no clear reason why, in the case they were not reincarnated, those Holons would have downloaded complete b.s. into their brains. More than that, a strong swell of pride bubbled up inside of him at the thought of Marcello and everything he’d accomplished. A sense of arrogant triumph that the risk he’d taken on his unknown son had been correct followed at its heels. Vasco knew those feelings were Stefano’s but the longer time passed the more that kind of thing was getting harder and harder to differentiate from present reality.

Grandfather or son, with the memories in his head, Vasco was confident the move against Them had been a good one. Though, it must have been torturous for Marcello to know an enemy had struck so close to home. Vasco had never been in love, so he couldn’t quite fathom what that sort of news would do to a man. Relationships over the years had not been his strong suit, though Simone and even Lucien had made out just fine. Hell, Lucien had almost gotten married once. Unfortunately his bride-to-be decided on their wedding day she couldn’t handle becoming a Terenzio.

No, the majority of Vasco’s life girlfriends and in-betweens were sparse and it wasn’t because of his reputation of being “heartless.” Too often he felt as if someone was waiting for him. It sat like a small splinter in his conscious mind and made relationships nearly impossible. It was an irrational thought to hold onto for thirty years. It was also making him even more conflicted about their little experience because the one thing that kept pushing him towards the fantastical idea of reincarnation was her. The second wife. There was more than he needed to know in his brain. Intimate sporadic memories that revealed the softer side of two known killers. But more than the thoughts contending for attention were his growing feelings. At random moments, ever since he’d climbed out of that fucking Holon, Vasco found himself missing her. Desperately. The smell of whiskey on her breath. Her husky whisper in his ear, drawing him into her effortlessly. If it continued, he thought it might drive him crazy.

“This could be bad for my marriage,” Simone said, pulling Vasco out of his thoughts with her own similar ones.

He looked over at her, and his mouth curled upwards slightly. “Going to start killing your husbands again?”

Simone laughed. “No.” Liliana Terenzio had killed her first two husbands. Her third had gotten away safely, then Kyle had come along and ended a black widow’s career. Simone grew serious. “I’m suddenly comparing Victor to Lil’s Kyle. He’s not doing so well.”

Vasco paused, searching his mind like he would a filing cabinet. It only took seconds before he said, “Stefano thought he was a pussy. But good for you.” And again he wondered why he would need to know that, unless…

A wistful smile crossed Simone’s lips. “I know.”

“Food is served.” Lucien reappeared carrying three dishes with all the skill of a waiter. He set one down in front of each of his siblings and then dropped into an empty seat. “What are we talking about?” He asked as he picked up his fork and dug in.

Vasco opened his mouth to respond but the words never left. His head cocked to one side, his ears perked, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling.

“V?” Simone looked over at him curiously.

He didn’t hear her. Without conscious thought Vasco pushed back his chair, rising to his feet and walked into the house. And there he waited.

He didn’t wait long.

She stepped into his line of vision seconds later. Tiny but voluptuous. Dark-skinned and exotic. A voodoo queen from Jamaica that controlled the flow and sale of drugs through Central America and parts of Southern Africa. Subsequently the CIA was one of her biggest clients. But how she was still alive now with barely a sign of aging was an unspoken, and unanswered question. What he knew was that she had been his.

Jesus Christ. He was Stefano Terenzio. He could feel his other personality suddenly consume him, thrusting him back so completely into his self the only difference was the face was the mirror. The sudden swell of emotion came at its heels. It expanded in his chest and for seconds he just couldn’t breathe. The slate of steel shifted, melting back into the gray as he focused with inhuman intensity on his true mate. And he knew. He knew what he had been waiting on his entire life. Her. His wife from a time past. He whispered her name.

She had not met this one before and had no interest in meeting him now. She had lost all interest in the Terenzio spawn the day Stefano died, that is, if she had ever actually had any. She was only here because forty-two hours ago, she had gotten a letter. In his penmanship, seventy-eight years after his death. The request had been postdated, set to arrive when it did. The sentence he’d written was simple, “See you soon.” An address and day had been provided. Curiosity had formed in the place of her more natural apathy which led her to fulfill the request. She expected nothing from it, at most a very foolish and soon to be dead person playing a game with her. What she saw before her however, she was not even capable of expecting.

Emerald eyes fully focused on the one standing in the doorway. She was forced to momentarily brace herself as the heart she had forgotten existed wrenched in her chest.

It was not so much in his physical appearance that a man long dead appeared before her. It was his eyes. The mask of color that could hide nothing from her yet drew her in with its silent mystery. She was unaware of her own actions, but the stilettos were carrying her forward, closer to this apparition that must only exist to torture her further. A sharp whisper came free of her plump mouth, “Stefano.”

§

June 8th, 1925

Murray Hill

New York, NY 11:11 AM

She found little to fear as she slowly circled the den, observing the game under an inhuman scrutiny distinctive to those of her kind. Of course, there were not many of her kind and he knew it. Others found out the hard way. It was an unjust advantage that she never failed to make use of, but she would be just as treacherous stripped down to her primal human self.

“I can sweeten our arrangement. We need a secure holding place between transactions; I’ve just been given a small acquisition that will make that possible.” He broke the silence, assuming she was done with her inspection of his office.

While she did process the remark she didn’t bother to respond just yet, instead watching him prepare a drink. The dim light of the room offered an enticing ambiance as her gaze drew over the strong expanse of his back fighting beneath the starched shirt. His hand wrapped carelessly around the weighty glass as he turned to face her, his eyes questioning. She continued to track the distinctive movements of his form regardless of his knowledge, her chin tipping up just a bit as she swallowed the scent of the air and let loose a reflective moan. There was nothing more primal than the lure of prey.

“It only gets better,” he said simply with that classic smirk.

“We’ll see.” His reputation preceded him all the way into the dark corners where she lurked. She had questioned whether this meeting would turn into a clash of supremacy. Now she was waiting eagerly for it.

However, she finally returned to business, the click of sharp stilettos drumming across the floor as she moved to take a seat in one of the wing chairs, slouching back into the cushion. “Given by whom?” she asked curiously. The details could be handled by someone else; her interest was in the underlying workings.

There was a humidor on the table next to where she sat. It put him beside her, his glass set on the table top as he opened the polished box. The expression on his face was half regretful, half impressed. “Families I can’t kill. It’s more beneficial to me to work with them.” He reached into the box, pulling out a cigar.

“But is it beneficial to me?” Which was really all she was ever concerned with. She reached her sharpened nails down into one of her many hiding places and drew back a sterling Dunhill lighter, offering it up to him between two fingers.

Sharp edges collided as he snipped the end of the Habana. “I wouldn’t be wasting your time if it wasn’t.” The clipper was put into his pocket, harsh eyes catching onto her offered gift. But it was her he was looking at it when he stepped closer to accept it. “Let’s just say I’m going to save you hundreds a month in bribes.”

She laughed outright, the tone of it husky and unconcerned. “What would make you think I give out bribes?” Stretching up slightly from her seat she reached across him to pluck his glass from the surface it was left on, bringing it to her lips for a heavy drink.

Amusement exposed itself in the enigmatic color of his gaze, watching the theft as he struck the flame. “If you don’t, you are better than your reputation gives you credit for.” He stuck the cigar between his lips, bringing the fire to the end and pulled the smoke into his mouth, savoring the flavor on his tongue before it was exhaled in an easy breath. “Do you have a necklace of shrunken heads instead?”

“My reputation was created by fools, most of who have been added to my necklace.” There was laughter at the corners of her plump mouth though her words not completely inaccurate.

A grin slid across his lips. “How much do you charge? I’ve got one or two who need a creative ending.”

“Not even you…” She stood, draining what was left in his glass then heading for a refill as she finished her sentence. “…Stefano Terenzio, could afford me.” She let the glass hit the bar top with a sharp clank, helping herself to her bottle of choice which she steadily poured to a hair or two from the brim.

If there was a remark to be made he kept it hidden. His patience and his arrogance took the same shape in the easy way he leaned his form back against the edge of the table, wisps of smoke concealing the answer in his eyes as she slinked back towards him. Somewhere a set of symbols clashed.

§

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Undisclosed location time unknown

She still couldn’t hide from him, though he was surprised to find it more difficult to penetrate her layers. From somewhere inside he watched her tremble. It was a miniature crack in concrete, barely breaking through seven decades of fury, pain, rage. It had simply hurt for too long and now, she was tired. Nearly numb.

Nearly. She didn’t reach for him. But she didn’t look away either.

The silence stretched and grew thicker, threatening to combust. For the first time, there was regret. And a perfect understanding of his son’s words. His brow creased with the intensity of emotion. Raw. Pure. To speak of it was to cheapen it. He didn’t know how to melt ice, not Stefano Vasco Terenzio. He didn’t right wrongs, he’d never much cared. But to say he hadn’t loved…

When he could stand it no longer he closed the distance between them. He raised a hand slowly, curving his palm around her cheek. Their gazes broke when her eyes snapped closed. He heard the ragged intake of her breath. Thought briefly, for just a moment, that she might stab him. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

And she probably would have, had he not chosen that moment to cover her plump mouth with his own. Her hands jerked up, sharpened nails digging into the fabric of his shirt, which offered little protection against the bite of those claws into his skin. A low growl rumbled in his throat. She pushed and he didn’t budge. He parted her lips instead, swept his tongue inside. She moaned in furious defeat, in painful triumph and bunched his shirt in her grasp, pulling him closer.

They didn’t need words.

His hands spanned her waist, jerked her roughly back against the archway, pinned her there between the wood and the solid surface of his body. He devoured her mouth in those moments as if he could take back every minute that had been lost. He drew his lips away and kissed the silent tears from her cheeks, her closed eyelids, her mouth again until they were both panting.

It was she who finally wrenched her full lips away from him, turning her head to one side. Storm clouds rolled through his eyes, for her the emotion in their depths clear. He brushed his lips across her exposed cheek, trailed back towards her ear and whispered, “I love you.”

Raw, deeply tired emerald eyes snapped sharply up to him. Fingers flexed against his chest, nails digging again, though this time lightly. “Not as much as a son you never knew.” She would not hide the bitterness in her tone. The acid on her tongue.

His face creased at her words, a blow delivered. There had been so much more to it than just that. But he’d never had the moment to tell her. And now he didn’t know if ever would have. “C-“

Her finger suddenly pressed against his lips, eyes once more colliding with the darkened color of his own. Lids hooded slightly as the moment stretched between them. When she dropped her hand, her mouth was quick to smoother his own. He immediately swept her up into his arms and turned, climbing the staircase.

Rarely, were they ever gentle with each other. In their final moment together, which should have been claimed a century ago, it was no different. Nails and teeth left their mark upon soft skin, glistening with sweat. His grip was urgent and bruising; her deep, throaty cries reverberating throughout the room, licking at the flames of his memory and making a new one. He lost himself as he’d done a hundred times before in the slick, wet heat of her, trapped there by the intimate clench of small muscles and the pull of her thighs. It was in those moments, when two became one that Stefano Terenzio truly knew what it felt like to be connected. To be at peace and simply, in love.

When the moment sated them he fell onto his back and pulled her against his chest, remembering how good it felt to have her heated bare skin pressed against his. He tipped his face against her hair, nuzzled in the softness of it and told her again.

She looked up at him, her hair hanging in soft disarray around her face, her mouth swollen from his kisses. She gently traced his cheek with the touch of her fingertips then drew that hand over his eyes. He slept moments later.

She did not, but watched him instead. Woke him once to feel him inside of her again then let him slip back into peaceful unconsciousness. There were tears in the second silence, and her soft whisper to invade his dreams. “I love you, Stefano.”

When he woke, she would be gone.

Chapter 14

”You too shall prevail in the hereafter. The body will turn to dust but it is only a costume for the real you. That which you perceive as you inside your head will remain. It is true. I am proof.”

-Thomas Johnson

June 8th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Alcyone Island 11:11 PM

When it’s all over you’ll learn that beginnings don’t matter. Not even the end does. What matters is what you did in the middle, how you wielded the story you were responsible for telling. What matters is who you want to remember you and if they do. What matters is what those you care about most thought of you, if at all. The rest, my son, is simply life.

His father’s journal had been like a bible in his hand for the majority of his life. Whenever he sought answers to life’s toughest questions, there was always something in the old worn pages that would put him at ease. Even now he found comfort from the words of the man he’d never met but loved regardless.

Well-aged and deeply tired gray eyes slid over to his son who slept fitfully in the chair by his bedside. There was a curve to his mouth; the movement brought the beginnings of his smile. Most men in his position would have been ashamed of a son that wasn’t a fit heir, but Marcello was not most men. Not once had he ever been disappointed in his children, especially Demetrius who had always been emotional, unable to repress or control what he was feeling with any measure of success. It didn’t matter, not to Marcello. Demetrius had contributed to the family in his own way, period.

Marcello closed the journal carefully, running his palm over the scuffed leather. He supposed in the end it was fitting to start thinking about the beginning. Especially when death made you aware it was coming then took its sweet ass time arriving. In his mind, it boiled down to pivotal moments, the ones that were profound enough to push at the veil that hid what a Terenzio was really thinking.

Most of it was his Mari, not the business, but there were moments for that, too. To have pulled off being the man in the shadows was a family history-making feat. To this day, most of their suppliers and everyday associates had no idea what was on the 52nd floor of the Dion Corp building, or who Mr. President really was. He had sat in boardrooms and back alley deals unnoticed as the hand that was pushing it all into place. That still made him grin privately in prideful delight. One move forces another, then another. A step back returned two forward on the next turn. Before it was realized the pieces had been neatly manipulated to where he wanted them in the first place.

Checkmate.

The hunt, the choice of the kill had never failed to excite him. But Mari had excited him too, in so many other ways.

“Just one question.” Asked quietly with a smile that was, just enough. “What do you want for breakfast?”

Oh, Marilyn melted. Really. She had so much liquor inside of her; she felt like one big puddle and was amazed she didn’t drip through the rungs of her barstool. But that sugary, sappy confection of a moment quickly passed. Her eyes darkened. She dipped her chin. And her hands moved, slightly, higher. “You.”

Marcello couldn’t help but smile at the memory. It came gradually over his bearded face and he turned his head to settle his eyes on that single picture on the nightstand. His vision blurred slightly with unshed tears as he reached out and pulled the picture towards him.

Life was full of firsts. The first date, the first kiss. The first time he made love to her, an event that surely sealed their fate even if their first meeting hadn’t. Loving his wife had been the easy part. Attempting to make a relationship work with so many factors stacked up against you was the real challenge. They couldn’t go out to many social gatherings together; he was off the map. Bodyguards were required and that didn’t always afford a lot of privacy. They were sneaking around, but they weren’t. More than once he had told her he would understand if she wanted to walk away from him, if it ever got to be too much to take. He’d always loved her a little more when she looked angry at him for even mentioning it.

“Marilyn, this will get harder before it gets any easier. I may not be the one you want to have a relationship with.”

Marilyn tensed. Her features hardened. But she leaned in and took his face into her hands. “Don’t say that,” she said quietly, but fiercely. “If I didn’t want this, if I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t be here. I would wait three weeks this time, however many it will be next time and I wouldn’t come with you the time after that.”

She made him do it, hold his breath while he waited for her answer. Then it came. Perhaps it was too soon, but it didn’t matter. It was a choice made entirely on his own without any guiding hand or veil to hide him. He drew his arms tighter around her and whispered, “You won’t do it for nothing. I’m in love with you.”

It seemed like yesterday he’d whispered those words to her for the first time. How long had it really been? Nearly sixty years ago? Human time came and went so quickly these days. The decades they were married weren’t long enough. He’d lost a year with her because of his own stupidity, and lost her for good when the Brotherhood decided to remove her. Partly because it appeared a mother’s love was overriding the programming they’d done on Kayla, partly because he’d killed one of their own. His eyes darkened at the memory. But that moment passed and was followed by another.

Kayla.

Her appearance, though predicted, had been a terrible strain on their marriage. Thankfully, only for a short while. Neither of them could forget her true “purpose” of course, but Marcello had been unable to stop himself from loving his wife’s child with the same fierce emotion he extended to his other two children. Even Demetrius had welcomed his new little sister with open arms.

To this day, he did not know if Kayla was ever given the order to kill him. After she arrived, he had told Matthew that he didn’t want to know, for fear of what he would do. No, instead he’d taken a risk much like his own father had done with him. Whether or not Kayla actually thought of herself as a member of the family would be determined, soon.

Marcello laid the picture of his wife against his chest and closed his eyes. He let his thoughts drift to Mari again, the day after he’d murdered Deucalion and finally come home. A rare moment when he’d given into the notion that the strength of their emotion could stop anything. It was with this memory that he intended to release his final breath.

“I can’t tell you that you’ll never have to be afraid of them again. I can’t tell you that everything will be okay with Kayla, that we’ll beat this.” He hated that. It was a demon he couldn’t slay, laughing at him. Even so the next words slipped from his mouth in a different kind of helpless, broken whisper. “But I want you anyway. Selfishly.”

Marilyn tore her eyes from the window, tears welling once more. "Show me," she said, voice soft and trembling. "Look at me like you used to, Marcello. Touch me like you want me. Please. I can't--" Her fingers closed in the cotton of her shirt. "I've missed you so much…."

A year ago he’d told her couldn’t. Let her walk away. And now, after everything, when it was more real than it had ever been she still….

He came forward in two short steps, wrapping his arms around her. She fell into his arms with such dizzying relief and the tears came again, damp into his chest as she whispered, “God, Marcello, you feel so good.”

He trembled and pulled her closer. Set his lips at her ear and whispered back, “I love you.”

She held him so tightly her arms could have broken, but she wouldn't have felt a thing. Not a single thing, save the heady bliss of his touch and the heaven that was his voice in her ear. Marilyn lifted her head and aquamarine met gray. “I love you, too.”

There was nothing Marcello could do when the door to his room was kicked open. A suit sleeve raised before he could snap open his eyes. The trigger was pulled before he could make out the face. A single shot from the muzzle of the silencer landed in Demetrius’s knee.

Feelings of helplessness slammed into Marcello as his son’s furious scream of startled pain echoed out. Demetrius clutched at his leg, bending slightly forward in the chair, his face twisted in agony. Scar face didn’t even glance in Marcello’s direction as he strode over to Demetrius’s side, steadily holding the gun on him.

“That has to hurt,” Olivia said casually, standing in the doorway with a smug look of triumph on her face.

Marcello’s eyes narrowed to slits, quiet fury steaming on the surface of that unique color as he looked at his niece. He was not unaware on which side she played. He knew a lot more than either she or her cousin thought he did. It was an advantage handed over to the next players of the game.

“You are terribly unimpressive, Olivia.” It was one of the hardest things he ever had to do; ignore his son’s sounds of anguish as he spoke. And as the sudden sharp knife-like pain shot through his chest, he realized this would be his final move.

“It was never you I felt the need to impress. Marcello.” Her voice dripped with disdain as she walked over to his bedside. “You don’t look well so we’ll make this quick. Where are the triplets?”

Demetrius shot his head up at the question, shaking slightly from the intense sting that was burning through what felt like every cell in his body. “Fuck you, Olivia.”

Scar face made motion to hit Demetrius, halted only by Olivia’s lifted hand.

Marcello arched a smart brow, and then shook his head. “You’ll have to do a lot better than that.”

Her own family-colored eyes narrowed slightly as she canted her head at him. Sizing up her prey. The smile she returned was void of any humor. She dropped her hand, nodded once in Scar face’s direction. The ugly man dropped his arm, pressing the muzzle of the gun against Demetrius’s opposite knee. The struggle put up wasn’t good enough to stop the trigger from being pulled, the bullet ripping through the bone.

Demetrius’s hoarse scream seemed to reverberate through the room. It bounced off bare walls and struck Marcello’s ears so harshly he could feel his son’s agony. It was a testament to how fully Stefano’s son he could be when needed; the appearance of unconcern for his own son and cold fury at his niece’s insolence never left Marcello’s eyes. She wasn’t good enough to play with him yet. “Tell me something I’ve always wanted to know, Olivia, was it you or Amadeo that pushed the button to kill your fathers?”

Unmovable Terenzio resolve. She could see it quite clearly in her great uncle’s eyes. He was as heartless as his father to not even glance at his son when he was shot. And how the fuck did he know about….

Sharp annoyance slapped Olivia’s features as she stalked over to Demetrius. She ripped the gun away from Scar face and pressed it against Demetrius’s temple herself. “Let’s play chicken, Marcello. One more time, where are the triplets?”

Marcello followed Olivia’s movements and zoned in on the gun when it was pressed against his son’s head. So very slowly he pulled his eyes away and looked directly at Demetrius.

Sweat dripped down his wrinkled face, the sharp jolts of pain that kept running through his body made him tremble irregularly. He was struggling to keep hold of consciousness but there was no mistaking the look in his eyes. From one father to another, what a parent will do to protect their child. Just barely, Demetrius’s lips twitched into a sad smile. He nodded his head, just enough.

The veil almost dropped. For seconds, Marcello’s vision blurred with impending moisture. In glance alone he told his son what he could not express in words; how proud this father was, how much this son was loved. It was a small comfort to see that emotion reflected back to him.

Another stabbing ache shot through Marcello, a telltale sign of death sneaking closer. The gaze of steel hardened over the years, impenetrable, settled on Olivia. The final move was made. “Nowhere you can find them.” Marcello lips curled up into a cruelly omniscient smile. “We will die to see our will done, Olivia. And it will be done.”

Her face twisted with rage. “No parent should live to see their child die twice. Let that be your last thought.”

Demetrius did not shy away from the inventible. His eyes remained on his father until the bullet came, killing him instantly. But one single word had slipped from his lips in a whisper, just before the gun exploded.

“Checkmate.”

Because just before Olivia Terenzio could pull that trigger, Marcello Terenzio died.

Chapter 15

"The real menace of our Republic is the invisible Government which, like a giant octopus, sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states, and nation."

- John F. Hylan - Mayor NYC

June 9th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Undisclosed location time unknown

Vasco was ripped from sleep because he suddenly just knew. His wife. His son. His father. Gone.

A Terenzio wore the veil even alone. In one lifetime he had been the master of it. The example set for all the rest. Maybe it was because it was not that lifetime. Maybe it was because they had all been so deeply loved even if it was rarely expressed. Maybe it didn’t matter why, but he was overcome. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes, as if hiding the truth of his tears and silent shaking.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that. Eventually the tears stopped and he could compose himself enough to face his siblings. He took a quick shower and dressed. Using his cell phone he called Lucien, asking to meet him at the elevators to the Vault.

Five minutes later Lucien greeted him red-eyed but alert. “She leave?” He was smiling as he asked it, but the expression dropped off his face when he got a full glimpse of his brother’s. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. She’s gone. For good,” Vasco replied quietly. He didn’t want to tell his brother about what he had felt concerning Marcello and Demetrius. It would be confirmed soon enough.

Lucien blinked in surprise. “For good?” Realization set in and he said, “Shit. I’m sorry, V.”

“It’s all right. What are you two working on downstairs?” Vasco asked as they got into the elevator.

It wasn’t all right. But Lucien didn’t expect to get much more out of his brother than that. He did grin slightly at the question though. “Updates on our Anunnaki friends and what I’m calling their thirteen bitches.”

“Good.” Vasco nodded. They both exited when the doors opened and Lucien led the way past the Holons and towards a conference table that was sitting behind them. Three laptops had been set up and in the hours that had passed Lucien and Simone had cluttered the table with boxes filled with paper and digitalized information.

Simone had a pen in one hand, a notepad directly in front of her and was furiously scribbling as she read from the thick binder next to her. She looked up when her brothers appeared and smiled at them both. The expression froze on her face for the same reason Lucien’s had before. She tilted her head at them in question, but Lucien shook his head and diverted her away from asking. “Tell him what we found, Simone.”

She hesitated, looking at them both a moment longer then plunged ahead, dropping her pen. “I just want to reiterate that not only was I the shit in previous lifetimes but I am in this one too. Combined with what we remember…” It was still weird as all hell to say that. “…and the information down here, it’s all falling into place.” She paused as they both sat down at the table, and pulled her hair back into a messy bun. “The Anunnaki and the Brotherhood are about the same as you remember them, Vasco, and, no surprise, they are the ones standing in the way of us allowing the Ascension.”

Vasco figured she would say that. Thirteen bloodlines, all fanatically loyal to their “Gods” and for good reason. Thirteen bloodlines he’d known a lifetime ago his own family couldn’t afford to war with. He knocked his back teeth together in thought, unnoticing that it was a common habit he had done when he lived as Stefano. Finally he asked, “How are they divided now?”

Simone picked up her notepad. “All over the place. They are the Trilateral Commission, The Bilderberg Group, The Council of Foreign Relations, The Bohemian Club, The Club of Rome. There are also a few ‘think tanks’ of note, like the Tavistock Institute, and the Rand Corporation. The infamous Illuminati has breakdowns in each American city, starting with thirteen board members at a local level. Most are the politicians we’ve thought we’ve had in our pocket for years.”

“Shit.” Vasco said quietly. How the hell were they going to pull this feat off? He leaned back in the chair, stretching his left leg out as he folded his arms over his chest. He clucked his tongue, then looked back up at his siblings. “What else?”

“They’ve been busy.” Simone dropped her notepad and pulled the binder closer to her. “They have 140 deep underground military bases in the United States alone, also known as DUMBs. There are 1,500 worldwide. They are all connected by an oxygenated magnetoleviton train system that can reach speeds of Mach2+. Above ground there are eight hundred prison camps, the largest in Fairbanks, Alaska. They finished building the last of them a year ago. It’s a very effective way to stop the Ascension and generate negativity energy. Almost as good as a war.”

Vasco arched a brow. “Generate negative energy?”

Lucien grinned, so did Simone. She said, “We’ll come back to that. The plan to actually strip away rights and imprison us all has been on record for sometime. It’s called Rex-84, which stands for Readiness Exercise 1984. It was passed off as something to have just in case of a massive a flood of illegal immigrants. Really its there in preparation for a rebellious uprising, that might occur say, if they get away with forming the NAU. If it were to happen, FEMA arms and controls the camps, and a presidential signature invokes Martial Law and the death of constitution. But Americans have been slowly losing their rights for years now.”

“It’s worse in Britain,” Lucien added.

Simone nodded in agreement. “There are two sub operations under it, Garden Plot, which deals with population control, and Cable Splicer, which is the plan to take over the state and local governments with military personnel during the transition.”

Vasco whistled low under his breath. “That’s actually a decently scary thought.”

“Understatement,” Lucien said, picking up his half empty glass.

“Tell me about the Ascension we’re allowing,” Vasco said.

Simone motioned her head at Lucien who picked up his own notepad, which wasn’t nearly as organized as his sister’s, but he could read from it. “You’ll love this. Humans are Gods and Co-Creators of the universe.” He had to shake his head a little every time he read it. It was nuts, but so was lying between two pyramids and remembering your past lives. “I don’t really understand a lot of the details on this but, all that crazy metaphysical talk about multiple dimensions and the universe as a mind, and all being one, it’s all correct. Atlantis was actually a planet once, now it’s the asteroid belt. That’s what happens when a planet goes boom, a destruction we as humans caused because we didn’t ‘ascend’ correctly. Imagine having godly powers, but being an asshole so all you do with those powers are bad things. Quantum Mechanics, whatever that is, proves that intent creates reality on a scientific level.”

Vasco stared hard at his brother as he listened. It sounded insane, utterly and completely. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Still it was a lot to handle while still trying to deal with the fact that you’ve lived multiple lifetimes and aliens who could shape shift really did live on the same planet. “Understood, sort of. Keep talking.”

“So, because of this failed experiment per say we tried again. Welcome to Earth. According to what’s down here, and I have no idea how the hell we got this information by the way, it’s actually the destruction of Atlantis that knocked the Anunnaki home planet into our solar system. Conditions were set to keep us from accessing our power until the time was right. That is the purpose of the elite and the Anunnaki. So, now the time is right, we’re supposed to be released, and get our knowledge back but the powers that be are acting like a bunch of stingy bitches. Regardless, it’s going to work this time. So says everything I’ve read. Oh, and end date is December 21st, 2012,” Lucien said.

Vasco blinked in surprise. “That’s next year. What exactly is going to happen?”

“Couldn’t tell you, because I’m not completely sure. We humans have to simply activate our seven chakras, connect with our Kundalini energy and voila, welcome to being cooler than the X-men.”

Vasco pressed his fingers to his temple. “And how does one go about activating their seven chakras?”

“Lots of different ways. The path you take is your own choice. You can read up on all that yourself.” Lucien grinned and waved his hand at all the boxes. “There is also a note here that when we’re ready for more on that end we should call Vaughn Junior.”

“Huh.” Vasco lapsed into silence again, retreating into his own thoughts. Once more his back teeth knocked together in succession for several minutes. He finally asked, “Does Alexandro DeMarco III still work in Homeland Security?”

“Oh, good call V. There was a note that when we got to this point we should call DeMarco.” Lucien started rummaging around in front of him, lifting various papers.

“Why don’t we just call Xavier?” Simone suggested, then she paused and a soft smile spread over her face. Liliana Terenzio–Zhane’s great grandson. Jesus, that was weird, to suddenly feel a swell of pride for someone you had always known as just a numbered cousin.

“Didn’t he just get promoted? I think I saw a memo about that at the last board meeting,” Lucien commented.

“You’re right. I think I have his number.” Vasco pulled his cell phone from his pocket and lifted it to his ear. “Name dial Xavier Zhane.” When it began ringing he pressed the speaker phone button and set it down on the table.

It was picked up on the third ring. “About time you called me.” Xavier’s voice rang through the phone.

“I didn’t realize you were expecting to hear from us,” Vasco said, then glanced at his sister and realized she was still smiling, wider now as if she were remembering something. Briefly he wondered again about the note Grandfather had left him concerning her and Mr. Kincade but he let it pass, for now. “We need to get in touch with Alexandro.”

“Yes you do. But first I need to give you all an update. Especially about your family,” Xavier answered.

Lucien cocked his head. “What about our family?”

“Not everyone with the last name Terenzio is on your side. Some people want the New World Order to succeed. Listen up, reincarnated Terenzio’s. Time to play the game as you do best.”

§

June 9th, 2012

Undisclosed location

Alcyone Island 1:11 AM

Caleb Kincade was not unfamiliar with crime scenes. His career in law enforcement had started in Denver’s FBI division as a profiler tracking down Serial Killers. After that he’d been recruited into Homeland Security. A few years later the opportunity to come to Alcyone presented itself and he took it. As the Director of Security for Dion Corporation, a.k.a Mr. President’s personal army, he was the first one to get the phone call that Marcello and Demetrius Terenzio had been found dead. No security guard wanted to be the one to tell the rest of the family, especially when one death had not been expected.

Fifteen minutes after the call, Caleb was standing in the doorway to Marcello’s room. No one else had been permitted entrance; the list of those assigned to guard this particular area was so short it wasn’t that hard to ensure it. Sharp blue eyes flicked to the lifeless form of Marcello first and he sighed.

Caleb carried a lot of memories of this man and not just from his current lifetime. Kyle Zhane had been around when S.V.T. was alive, and he’d also been there when that man’s son took his place. It had been a mind fuck to meet Marcello again in his old age as a completely different person.

“See you next lifetime, Marcello,” Caleb said quietly then looked over at Demetrius’s body. Careful not to touch anything before the crime scene technicians (the island had recruited some of the best) arrived, he examined the bullet holes in both knees and the one in the temple. Caleb wondered darkly if Marcello had been forced to watch his son die before he died himself.

Shaking his head Caleb stepped back out of the room when he heard the voices in the hallway. He unclipped his Nextel from his belt, nodding in greeting at the four-man CST crew he passed. He pressed in the button on the top of the phone to use the walkie talkie feature. “DC#87, I need to send a message to the Don.” The Don was a term they used when referring to the Islands Governor, Isabella Terenzio.

The phone made a chirping sound before the voice came back. “What is the message, DC Alpha One?”

Caleb paused to watch the stretcher wheeled down the hallway and into Marcello’s room. He pressed in the button again and responded. “Tell the Don Phoenix is down. So is Griffin.”

The silence that stretched out was so long Caleb was going to beep the dispatcher again but the voice finally came through. “We are very sorry to hear that, sir. Message will be relayed. Confirmation will be sent to your phone.”

Caleb nodded to himself, replacing the Nextel. Once Isabella got the message the Island would be put on lockdown and that would alert the rest of the family. He knew he needed to call Vasco next, but he hesitated. If the triplets were where he thought they were, they would be hit especially hard by this news. That also meant Simone would remember…

He snapped out of that thought, his jaw setting as he watched Marcello’s body put on the stretcher and a white sheet pulled over him. It was hard to believe that a short five years ago Caleb had walked into Marcello’s office on a recommendation from the Director of Homeland Security, Alexandro DeMarco III. A year before that Caleb had begun the process of Ascension. He’d like to think he was about halfway through the process, but reaching a full kundalini awakening was not his goal this incarnation. Making sure the rest of humanity did was. More specifically he was here to protect Simone Terenzio, and that was the real reason he was hesitating in making that phone call. Not because he didn’t want to do it. He couldn’t wait to do it. Initially Simone probably wouldn’t suspect who he was, but eventually she’d know that two generations ago he’d lived as Kyle Zhane and that was a day he was as eagerly anticipating as the collective Ascension.

A siren rang in the distance and Caleb sighed. It would last for exactly thirty seconds then throw the island back into silence, and uproar. That particular sound only rang when the head of the family fell. It had been silent for a century. A minute later another rang for thirty seconds in a different pitch. Martial Law was next. Even though the killers had most likely left the Island by now, the authorities would shut down air and sea ports for at least forty-eight hours so a full investigation could occur. MPs were trained to be civil to tourists, locals were used to it. A few were jailed for becoming rowdy but were usually released after the initial investigation was complete.

No more stalling now. Caleb pulled the phone from his belt again. “Name dial. S.V.T.”

Chapter 16

‘However many holy words you read, however many you speak, what good will they do you If you do not act upon them?”

-Buddha

June 10th, 2012

Alcyone Island

Residence of the Chief of Police 2:30 AM

Some women in life settled. Some compromised. Others like Victoria Vaughn decided to have their cake and eat it too. It wasn’t that she didn’t have all the material things she wanted. After all, her husband was the Chief of Police and even though he wasn’t a Terenzio by blood, the Vaughn’s had been adopted members of the family since Stefano Terenzio’s bodyguard and later chief of Police herself Antonia Bianca–Vaughn married one. There was money and lots of it. That was why she had married him in the first place, though she was certain he was none the wiser. It wasn’t that Leone was a bad husband. He wasn’t bad looking, wasn’t neglectful, but after seven years of marriage Victoria had gotten bored. Amadeo had been a welcome distraction. Eight months ago he had made his true intentions in regards to what he wanted to do with the family known to her. That was when she had really begun to betray her husband, when she started feeding Amadeo information he wasn’t privy to that Leone was. Life was certainly no longer dull, but really quite exciting.

Since Marcello’s and Demetrius’s death the Island had been on lockdown. She didn’t morn either of them, though Leone had cried like a baby tonight. The MPs had forced everyone into their homes, tourists into their hotels. She didn’t mind the brief house arrest, she was expecting someone anyway.

When the back door to her kitchen opened, a sultry smile appeared on Victoria’s face. A short silk robe was belted around her slender frame, barely touching the top of her thighs as she stood up from the kitchen table. There was nothing underneath it. “You’re late.”

Amadeo set the card key she had given him down on the countertop. Still in uniform, he walked over to her and without answering her question pulled her into his arms, pushing his mouth roughly onto hers. He didn’t stop until she was moaning like a bitch in heat, her arms tightly around his neck, her body arching in clear want against his own.

“You’re forgiven.” She whispered it breathlessly when he finally pulled away. God, he was everything Leone wasn’t, the best of both worlds.

“I don’t recall needing your forgiveness.” Amadeo hadn’t said it coldly, but rather matter of fact. He pulled back from her slightly, dropping his hands to the front of her robe and pulled it open. “Does he have any leads regarding the investigation?”

Victoria shivered in pleasure when she felt the cool air from the house hit her bare skin, contradicted by the brush of his warm rough hands as he pulled the garment down her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. “No, nothing.”

He took off his suit jacket, slinging it over the back of the chair. He unbuckled the front of his uniformed pants. “Good. I want to know the minute he or Caleb finds out anything.”

Her dark green eyes clouded with lust as she watched his movements, her tongue coming out to trace over her lower lip as she nodded mutely to his request.

She was so easy; it would have been boring if she wasn’t such a good fuck. Amadeo grabbed her by the waist, putting her up on the kitchen table. “Has he told his brother yet?”

Victoria wrapped her legs around his waist, urging him closer. She felt his lips suck at the side of her neck and whimpered, trying to focus on the question he had asked. “Y-yes. Derek knows. They’re working on something, something big that M-Marcello approved before he died.”

His motions halted and he lifted his head to look at her. “What are they working on?”

She shook her head, running her hands down the front of his chest and popping open the buttons on his shirt. “I don’t know. Leone didn’t say.”

He took a fistful of her hair and forcefully tilted her head back to look at him. She gasped in soft surprise and went motionless, unable to hide how much it turned her on. He knew it and often used it to his advantage. He pushed his other hand between her legs and began running his fingers featherweight over her. “What fucking good are you to me then? Hmm?”

She swallowed hard, her breath coming in short pants when she felt his fingers on her. She was already so wet, aching, more than ready for him. “I-I know. I’m sorry. I’ll find out.”

“Soon. Real soon.” He moved his hand, let go of her hair. She cried out fully when he grabbed her hips and pushed inside of her.

“Mmm…yes.” She wrapped her arms around him, attempting to capture his mouth under hers. He pulled away, silenced her protests and made her cry out again when he started taking her with short, hard thrusts.

“Has he heard from the triplets?” Amadeo’s voice was slightly strained as he asked, flicking his tongue across the lobe of her ear.

She heard his question, shook her head in a daze of lust. “Amadeo please, god, fuck me.”

His fingers closed around her throat as he stopped, keeping himself fitted snugly inside of her. “I asked you a question.”

Victoria groaned in frustration and wiggled her hips, trying to tempt him into continuing. It rarely worked, but oh when it did. And what he would do to her after. “He…n-no. He hasn’t talked to them. But I think, I think he knows where they are.”

Amadeo went still. The pleasure of her squeezed around him suddenly paled in comparison to what she had said. “How does he know where they are?”

He was driving her crazy. She whimpered in quiet protest, felt him squeeze her neck tighter and another rush of moisture flooded him. “I don’t know, I don’t know. I – I asked him and it was just…I knew he was lying to me.”

If Leone knew where the triplets were that was very, very good news. It was just the edge they needed to get their plans spinning into motion. Olivia would foam at the mouth when he told her. Amadeo smiled, his mouth curling sensually. “Good girl.”

He stopped teasing her.

Chapter 17

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”

-Rumi-Mevlana

June 11th, 2012

Alcyone Island

Dion Corporation Board Room 9:01 AM

I should kill you both.” She whispered it but you could sense the hazy fog of danger behind those words. Gray eyes were hidden by Simone’s down-turned head and the ruthless clench of closed eyelids. Her face was a cracking wall, crumbling tiny piece by piece, threatening to collapse.

They had returned to the Island after Caleb called them. News of their father’s death had hit hard. She had worried terribly about how Daddy would fare after their grandfather died and at first she thought it was suicide. When she learned he was murdered, she was furious and she wasn’t the only one.

She had cried, she had silently and verbally raged the entire trip home. After what Xavier had told them they knew exactly who to question about the murderers, but they couldn’t do anything about it. Not yet at least. When the plane touched down at LA airport on the island she had wanted nothing more than to curl up in her husband’s arms and take five minutes of needed silence. Instead when she stepped off the plane whomever Vasco had sent to watch her husband handed her a thick envelope and confirmed her fears.

She’d left Vasco and Lucien standing on the tarmac and come straight to the boardroom. Her husband and a close friend. She’d sent MPs to pick them both up and left pictures of them together, some more graphic than she would have liked, sitting on the edge of the conference table.

Neither Victor, nor Cassie said a word, not after a statement like that. It was ironically funny that someone could do anything behind a Terenzio’s back, but she had never thought to look here. Not so close to home, where she should have looked to begin with. They were learning that lesson in spades. But she had believed so completely that that trust would not be broken.

The signs were there, she could see them now. Amazing what the mind ignored at the heart’s instruction. It didn’t help. Not those thoughts. To feel as if you were being mocked by those you loved….

“Simone.” There was genuine concern in her husband’s voice. Guilt. Shame. Love. Fear. All of it sitting on his face. “There were circumstances…”

“No.” Her composure seemed to return so quickly it was as if it had never left in the first place. The eyes snapped open and locked with furious painful intensity on her husband’s face. “Don’t you dare make one fucking excuse, not when you didn’t even have the decency to limit it to when I was away.” Fury piqued, raging openly on her face, in the words that tasted like acid on her tongue. She came over to the table, shoved the tape recorder at them. “How many times did you fuck her while I was in the same house?”

Victor didn’t respond, he almost cringed as she came at him. The tape recorder skittered across the table and he caught it before it could fall off. He didn’t want to know what was on it, he could guess. Fuck. What he could say? What could he possibly say to make it better?

“Simone, I’m so sorry,” Cassie said choking back tears. She had it too, written all over her, honest feelings of remorse, guilt, love. To see it so clearly on both their faces almost made it hurt more.

Simone turned her head to the side, briefly shutting her eyes again. Never in her life had she waged such a battle for control over her own self. It was worse now, warring fiercely against the woman she had been a lifetime ago, the one who would not have wasted two minutes on words had she known, and the woman she was now. And the woman she was now didn’t think she could kill her husband.

Oh but a bullet to the temple, a double dose of it sounded so fucking sexy.

“There was a moment, there is almost a moment you can choose to be…” Simone paused struggling for the words. When they were found she turned her face back to look at them while she said. “…a little less human and a little more godly. For me. For the emotion you claim to have, for me.” There was no malice in her voice, only the hardened edge of inner pain. “Leave. Both of you. Just…leave.”

“Don’t do this.” Bravely, or foolishly, he got up from the table and came closer to her. “Don’t write me off forever. Let’s work through this. Please. Please.”

Cassie was silent, a hand covering her face to muffle the sound of her crying. She wasn’t quite as brave as Victor. What she felt could not possibly compare to that storm of emotion so well hidden in what had been her friend and mentor. Simone had been someone Cassie had looked up to, then spit in her face by fucking her husband. She cried harder.

Simone looked at her Victor silently. Her face twisted, the veil lost in those seconds as she lifted her hand and gently ran her fingertips over his cheek. He shared her trait for the hidden, it was one of the reasons she’d been so attracted to him in the first place. Though he might have looked unmoved by the touch it shook him to the core. It couldn’t be over; he’d damn himself forever if he had lost her for something that hadn’t been worth it in the first place. “I love you. Please.”

The fingers trembled against his face, a heavy sigh parting her lips. The words that followed were not so gentle. “When, Victor, when did you love me? Before, during, or after you fucked her? All three? Then you and I see love very, very differently.” She withdrew her touch, taking a step back from him. “We’ve worked it out one time too many. Maybe we never did. It doesn’t matter now. I’ve heard I love you a thousand times but you’ve never proven it.”

His eyes watered. Each word cut through him like the punishing edge of a knife. Victor could feel his heart slamming with painful force in his chest. He choked out the words. “Simone, no. Please.”

“Leave. You won’t be harmed, not by this family. Life for the both of you is punishment enough.”

Cassie finally drew her hand away from her face, tucking both arms protectively over her chest. She nodded mutely, biting harshly on her lower lip. Her tear-stained eyes locked onto Simone in the silence of a pure apology. Then she turned, walking to the closed double doors.

One was opened before Cassie could reach for it. Vasco stood in the doorway, the cruel steel of his eyes locked onto the woman’s departure with obvious distaste. He followed her with his gaze in cold silence until she had disappeared into the elevator. They flicked once over his sister and came to rest with full force on Victor.

“Simone, I can’t. I can’t leave you.” Victor thrust a trembling hand back through his hair looking at her. Hoping. Praying. He’d beg he wasn’t below it.

“You don’t get that choice anymore.” She said it softly on the shaky steps of raw emotion. Turning away from him she walked over to the expanse of window, her back to him. She couldn’t look at him anymore; she no longer recognized the face she saw.

“Simone – “

“Now Victor,” Vasco said it quiet enough to hint at the threat of disobedience.

Victor snapped his eyes over to Vasco. He met the man’s unwavering gaze then looked back at Simone. His brows furrowed with the vicious force of his silent pain. Finally, pressing his lips together he nodded in defeat. Victor walked across the room toward the door Vasco held open for him. He paused in the doorway, turning his head just slightly over his shoulder and said, “Before, during, after, and every day for the rest of my life. It was stupid and cruel. And I don’t…” There was the briefest pause, before he shook his head. “I don’t know why. But I love you. Don’t write me off forever because I’m an idiot. Please.”

Vasco watched him until he was out of sight then came into the conference room and closed the door behind him.

Simone was still standing at the window, the line of her back so rigid it appeared at any moment she might shatter. Silently, Vasco went up to the wet bar against the far wall and poured them both a drink. It was early but circumstances dictated it.

“How did you do it, Vasco?” Simone looked up at him when he came to her side.

“Do what?” He canted his head at her.

Simone wrapped her fingers around the offered glass, holding it against her chin as she regarded him in silence. Then she explained her question, “In your previous life, as Stefano. How did you do it with her? How could you stand to watch anyone else touch her?”

Understanding dawned, though he shouldn’t have been surprised at her question given the circumstances. He mulled over it for a minute or two, inserting small swallows of the amber liquid into his thoughts before he answered her, “Arrogance. Lots and lots of arrogance.”

Simone arched a high brow at his answer. “Arrogance?”

Vasco chuckled at the expression she gave him, dusting his eyes to the window, watching the bustling streets of downtown Alcyone. “Finish your drink, I’ll pour you another. Let’s go upstairs, it’s gorgeous out today.”

She looked at him oddly then shrugged. The glass was raised and knocked back in a single swallow.

“Good girl.” Vasco winked at her, refilled both their glasses and led her out of the conference room. It took his card in the slot provided in the elevator to grant them access to the rooftop, also helicopter pad.

Side-by-side they walked over concrete and to the railing at the edge. Vasco turned to rest his lower back against the metal and tipped his face up into the warm island wind. “You know I never get tired of this weather. Even in my previous lifetime I always found it peaceful.”

Simone stared up at the sky, at the exotic island scenery around them. It was beautiful. Her husband had had an affair. Lied too. Betrayed her. In her own home. Her face pinched. “I find it hard to be at peace with anything right now.”

Vasco turned his head to look over at his little sister. He realized he was not as hard this lifetime as he had been in others. It moved him to see a rock in the family so close to breaking. Sighing he turned around, bending to rest his forearms comfortably over the railing. He was thoughtful, searching for the right way to describe what he had had with his wife. Instinctively he felt his thumb curl inward to brush over his bare ring finger. He could still feel the weight of that gold band. “What is jealousy?”

Simone was thoughtful at his question. It should have been an instant answer with everything that had just happened, but when asked outright she found there wasn’t a simple answer. “The fear of loss.”

He nodded his head in agreement. “I was never afraid of losing her. I didn’t fear her fucking someone else would ever jeopardize that.” He pursed his lips together a moment then added, “Do you remember when I was taken by the Chinese last lifetime? How messed up I was when I got back?”

This required no hesitation. She could recall clearly the helpless rage she had felt. “I remember.”

“That’s when I let Ciro take care of things I couldn’t.” Ciro Anatolli had been Stefano Terenzio’s lifelong friend and bodyguard. Vasco smiled at the memory, a heated spark of life, of love behind his eyes. “The ones she and I were with weren’t many. Trusted partners, people that we actually had an emotional connection to. Alex and Mona DeMarco primarily. A few others here and there. It was nice to be able to freely give into those urges but I never touched a woman without her consent, and vice versa.” Vasco paused and took a small sip from his glass. He stared down into the amber contents and spoke quietly. “Relationships are so unnecessarily fragile. We partner up with another person and then immediately stamp them as claimed, throw a chain around them and block any unapproved affection because of our own insecurities. Maybe that’s why so many relationships can’t stand the test of time.”

He stared up at the sky, remembering. “I loved her, so much at times it scared me. And she was mine, completely, because I did not try to claim her. And if any other man was one of the very, very, rare few lucky enough to catch any sort of emotion from her, bully for them. It never changed what she was to me, or what I was to her.”

It had been so clear how much her brother had loved his wife. Unusual for a man who was the master of the masquerade, it was something S.V.T. had not been able to keep hidden. It wasn’t overt and if you didn’t know him maybe you wouldn’t recognize it; the briefest shift of those impenetrable eyes when she was in the same room. The intense loving flare that sparked then returned to hiding in the same breath. As a woman, Lil had envied her brother’s wife that. What woman wouldn’t want her husband to look at her in the same way? Though, in that same lifetime she hadn’t had to envy anyone for long. When Kyle had come into her life…Simone swallowed hard at the rush of memories from a lifetime ago. “I remember what that feels like. To love someone like that.” And realized sadly that she had never loved Victor the way Lil had loved Kyle.

Vasco looked over at his sister, catching the difference in the expression on her face. “You loved him very differently than I loved her. But we both loved them just the same. The way she and I were, Simone, it’s not for everyone. There’s a level of responsibility, control and more importantly trust that most people can’t ever reach. But if it works for you, then it works for you. If it doesn’t you’ve already proven your way works too.”

Simone slowly nodded, smiling slightly in thought. She held onto it a moment longer then let it pass with the heavy shrug of her shoulders and passing breath. “People are so dumb. It’s time we changed that.”

“Past time, little sister, past time.” His classic smirk curled subtly over his mouth. It made him look more like the man he had been. “Ever think we’d use our powers for good?”
“Never.” Simone laughed outright, shaking her head in amusement. “Is it a fight we can win?”

He answered her question more thoroughly with the expression in his eyes than with his words. “We don’t leave this lifetime until we have checkmate.”

She understood and nodded, a devious smile breaking across her lips. Simone came to her brother’s side, entwining their arms loosely together, and led them back inside the building. “Sounds like fun.”

Chapter 18

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day. But a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers (administrations), too plainly proves a deliberate systematic plan of reducing us to slavery."

-Thomas Jefferson

June 11th, 2012

Alcyone Island

St. Judas Cathedral 11:02 AM

Caleb was pulling double duty today. Normally at an event like this, Leone would coordinate the duties assigned to the Military Police, but because of how close Leone was to Marcello, Caleb had stepped up to handle them. Barricades had been set up ten feet from the Cathedral, forcing press and onlookers to stay behind them. The no nonsense, often times intimidating appearance of the MPs kept the Press behaved. It was understood that anyone caught sneaking into a Terenzio event would be jailed. Release could take months depending upon the level of infraction. Those uniforms also formed a perimeter around the Cathedral, to ensure it remained a private event. Dion Corp Security guards were standing outside near the Cathedral steps, or positioned inside in their sharp black suits with the company logo on their right shoulders and wireless ear pieces hidden in their ears.

Governor Isabella Terenzio (now the oldest living Terenzio) arrived with her own entourage. A small, five man section of the Military Police was charged with her security. Three of them rode in the tinted window SUV that trailed her limousine. Suited instead of uniformed, with MP insignia patches on their shoulders to identify them, they rose out of the car in unison, scanning the immediate area before one touched his ear and confirmed it was clear. The limousine’s passenger door opened first, and a tall, gray haired man emerged. Captain of the Governor’s Security team and in his late fifties, it was rumored that he had a crush on Isabella that may or may not have been reciprocated over the years, despite the fact that she was twenty years his senior. Nodding at Caleb, he opened the limo door. Retired AAF General Christopher “Fangs Out” Terenzio-Zhane, Isabella’s half brother, stepped out first. Isabella rose after him, aged, sharp gray eyes flicking over the fiasco of news crews. Upon seeing the Governor, they immediately started shouting a flurry of questions.

It gave Caleb a sense of fatherly pride to lay his eyes on the two of them. Isabella was born to Liliana from her third marriage, but she and her brother Dom (who died confronting the Anunnaki with JT) had always called Kyle dad. Christopher was Kyle’s blood son by Liliana and had taken to fighter planes just like his father. Christopher also had his mother’s temper and affinity for pulling the trigger. The man’s nickname had been given to him by his men before his retirement because when he was up in a plane he was always ready to attack, or as the air force called it, “he rolled in fangs out.”

Ignoring the questions, Isabella stepped past her security guard and walked over to Caleb.

“Everything is under control Governor. Kayla, Olivia, and Amadeo are inside,” Caleb said.

Nodding, Isabella patted his cheek. She’d always had a fondness for Caleb that she couldn’t explain. Christopher shared his sister’s sentiments and smiled warmly at Caleb. Caleb returned it, resisting the urge to reach out and embrace his children from a life past. Instead, he just watched as Christopher took his sister’s arm and escorted her up the stone steps (though she didn’t need the help), with security trailing close behind them.

Inside the church, two beautiful mahogany coffins sat at the front of the nave. Marcello’s was closed; even in death the man was hidden. Demetrius’s was open and for the first time in a long time, a look of peacefulness was on his pale face.

“I did not authorize this.” Kayla Terenzio stood in front the caskets. The words were spoken to Olivia in a calm whisper, but her manufactured gray eyes reflected her anger. Amadeo stood behind the two women in full uniform with his hands folded behind him. At Kayla’s words sharp eyes darted towards his cousin as if to say, “I told you so.”

Much to her chagrin, Olivia inwardly flinched but explained, “We needed to know where the triplets were go-”

Kayla cut her off with a raised hand, darting her eyes to the entrance as Isabella, and Christopher appeared. She pulled Olivia into an embrace, giving off the appearance that the two women were comforting each other over the loss.

“If you ever make a move without my permission, I will feed your useless carcass to the Anunnaki,” Kayla hissed, and then kissed Olivia’s cheek as she drew away. Her eyes flicked up towards Amadeo quickly, making it clear that he would share Olivia’s fate, before that expression was replaced with barely controlled grief as she turned away from them and walked up the aisle to greet Isabella and Christopher.

A prick of fear made the hairs on the back of Olivia’s neck stand on end. Though the reprimand pissed her off, she didn’t doubt Kayla’s words. Amadeo touched her shoulder, leaning down to whisper, “Maybe you’ll listen to me next time. Now get that expression off your face. Isabella is watching.”

“Fuck you. It needed to be done,” Olivia snapped it under her breath then drew herself up, slipping on the veil like the Terenzio she was.

Roberto Terenzio, Isabella’s son and C.O.O. of SVT Think Tank, arrived with his cousin Xavier. The two of them were in deep, quiet discussion as they climbed out of the limousine. It had been a hectic last few days for Xavier. He had been startled by the news of Demetrius’s murder, because he knew that the order to terminate him hadn’t come from the Brotherhood. Alexandro had assured him of this. Xavier hadn’t been very close to either, most of his time was spent in the States, but there was a level of respect for his family that required his presence. Besides the fact that his father would expect it, the triplets would be here and Xavier needed to talk to them.

Roberto nodded at Caleb as they passed him. Xavier paused to smile knowingly at Caleb, winked, then continued on. The ghost of a smile passed over Caleb’s mouth towards Xavier.

Chief of Military Police, Colonel Leone Vaughn, arrived shortly thereafter, looking exhausted and deeply saddened. He approached Caleb before he went inside the Cathedral.

“Any trouble with the MPs?”

“On their best behavior. Your first Lieutenant is solid.” Caleb offered him a sympathetic expression and clasped him on the shoulder, “Let me worry about security today.”

Leone nodded. “Thanks, Caleb. I just can’t believe…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “We don’t have any leads. Not a fucking one. Who would do this?”

Caleb had a pretty good idea, but he kept that to himself. Now wasn’t the time. “You’ll find them, Leone. And put a world of hurt on them when you do.”

“I’m going to put their heads down in Stefano’s basement myself.” Leone’s hands balled into fists at his sides.

“So, that’s not a myth, huh?” Caleb cracked a small smile. It was rumored that in a cellar underneath the Governor’s Mansion, good ole S.V.T. had kept the heads of various enemies that had pushed him too far. It was also rumored that Marcello had added one or two during his tenure. Caleb knew very well that that cellar existed. Stefano had taken Kyle down there the day he’d found out Kyle was dating Lil. Kyle had thrown up at the sight, and Stefano had called him a pussy ever since.

Leone opened his mouth to answer, but that died off when he saw his father and wife walking up together. Caleb stepped aside to let the family have their moment, as still C.E.O of SVT Construction Derek Vaughn II released Victoria’s hand and spent a long moment hugging his son, understanding his pain. They had both been close to Marcello. Victoria stepped between the two men when they were done and the three of them went into the Cathedral together.

It was a rare, rare instance for one to find Nicholas anywhere near his father. Unfortunately, circumstances dictated it. Today, he’d ridden with his father and his sister Agata. Caleb pulled open the car door for them as it stopped. Agata, the current C.E.O of Dion Corp, thanked Caleb. Then, as was her duty, she walked over to the press and made a short statement. Ignoring his son (as he’d done the entire ride over), Dominic climbed out of the car and stood behind his daughter, proudly yet sadly, and added in a few words when she was finished. Nicholas acknowledged Caleb off handedly, his gray eyes set on the display father and daughter were putting on. Hiding his disgust, Nicholas turned and walked inside of the Cathedral alone.

The triplets were the last to arrive. When their car pulled up, Caleb put on his own veil. Steeling himself for the rush of emotion he knew he would feel when he saw Simone, he walked up to the car door and pulled it open.

Simone was the first one out of the vehicle. The fury over her husband’s betrayal had died down, leaving the quiet anguish she felt over the loss of her father, and Marcello. Vasco had not made any smart remarks when her tears started this time, and they were still coming in slow trickles from the corners of her eyes as she stepped out of the car.

“I’m very sorry, for your loss. They were good men,” Caleb said to her. He wanted to reach out, let her bury her face in the crook of his neck, and console her through her pain. He wanted to kiss the tears from her cheeks and remind her how it felt to be loved. And he was under strict orders that he couldn’t until the time was right. It was going to be his most difficult assignment.

“Thank you,” Simone responded quietly. She had met Caleb before, though briefly on all occasions. She offered him a weak smile as she brought the tissue to her cheeks again. Lucien climbed out after her, and Vasco trailed behind him.

“The rest of your family is inside, Mr. President,” Caleb said to Vasco as he shut their car door.

“Thank you Caleb.” Vasco regarded this man curiously. He did not yet understand Marcello’s orders regarding him, though he wasn’t too concerned over it. He expected that answer would reveal itself in due time. He walked over to his sister, setting a comforting hand on her shoulder. Lucien took her opposite hand and the three heirs to the empire climbed the steps to the Cathedral to say their goodbyes to Marcello and Demetrius.

§

Publicly, Demetrius’s death had been confirmed to local newspapers around the island and to contacts worldwide. But because of Marcello, the funeral had been closed to anyone who was not family.

Kayla sat in the first pew, holding Simone’s hand. Lucien and Vasco sat next to them. Moments before, Vasco had handed her the envelope from Marcello, quietly instructing her to open it after the funeral.

Looking at the family now, Vasco felt as if he were regarding his brethren with a completely new set of eyes. It was startling to realize how many sub-plots lay beneath the surface. The line that split them had the strength to set fire to over a century’s worth of history and that, Vasco simply would not allow. One side was going to call checkmate this final game, and it wasn’t the one that was catering like a bitch to the Anunnaki.

Vasco had volunteered to give the eulogy for his father and grandfather. Shamelessly, Amadeo and Olivia proceeded to leave in the middle of it. Kayla, Isabella, and Christopher gave them disapproving glances. Nicholas briefly considered joining them, if only so he wouldn’t have to sit next to his father any longer.

Vasco paused in the middle of heartfelt words, watching the retreating backs of Olivia, and Amadeo. A quick glance was sent towards his brother and then he simply continued, ignoring the interruption.

Pissed off did not do justice to how Lucien felt since hearing the news of their father and grandfather’s murder. Conversations with Xavier, combined with knowledge from their past lives, pointed a pretty finger at the culprits. Even though it wasn’t time to remove those pieces from the chessboard, it didn’t mean he couldn’t antagonize. Just a little.

“Be right back,” Lucien whispered to Simone, then stood and followed the two outside. “You could at least pretend to be sad, cousins.” He strolled down a few stone steps to where they stood, lighting a cigarette as he moved.

Amadeo paused mid-sentence, flicking the much darker gray eyes over Olivia’s shoulder to land on Lucien. He smirked. “We didn’t adore either of them, Lucien. It was no secret.”

Olivia let her cousin speak for her, barely glancing at Lucien. They would get their hands on Leone soon, and combined with what their unexpected visitor Loki had told them, it was only a matter of time before they took over and shaped this family into what it should be.

The grin that flashed teeth never reached Lucien’s eyes. A line of smoke was exhaled into the air. Ignoring Amadeo’s remark, he spoke to Olivia’s back. “Nice to see you again, too, Olivia. Sorry I stepped up and took your grand plans of running the family away from you.”

“Fuck off, Lucien. You couldn’t run this family if you reincarnated as Stefano Terenzio himself,” Olivia said, with her back still to him.

Dark humor flashed behind Lucien’s eyes this time. “You know, Olivia, one day soon you’ll realize how funny it is you said that.”

“Is there something you wanted, Lucien?” Amadeo could see the rising tide of annoyance settling over Olivia. When she lost her temper, her mouth tended to fly and right now wasn’t the time for that. He walked around her, coming face to face with Lucien himself, effectively shielding her from him.

“From you, Amadeo?” Lucien gave him the once over then started laughing humorlessly. “Just to let you know…” He came down one step, flicked the cigarette away and narrowed his eyes dangerously on his family member. “…you sonofabitch, you won’t get away with it. And neither will that murdering whore over there.”

“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Olivia finally turned around, her own eyes flashing furiously. In two steps she had come up behind Amadeo and was attempting to push him aside to get at Lucien. Amadeo stood his ground, shoving one arm behind him to keep Olivia at bay.

“Watch your mouth, Lucien,” Amadeo snapped. “You don’t get to throw out accusations just because you got lucky that Daddy couldn’t pull his weight.”
If it was difficult to be in this family before, imagine how he felt now. Julian Terenzio’s thoughts swam in his head, feeding his natural anger at the cheap shot taken at his father, because he was a great nephew as well. And it pissed him off even more because Amadeo and Olivia were his great grandchildren. Shit, he had memories in his head of bouncing Olivia on his knee as Julian when she was a child. Now, they were on the wrong side and he had no idea how they got there. “Say another word about my father, Amadeo, and I’ll knock your fucking teeth out. Until you measure up to half the man he was, I don’t even want you speaking his name.”
“Your father was a typical sad story with the usual ending. Weak and now dead,” Olivia spat, words dripping with loathing. She had taken great pleasure in the moment she’d gotten to pull the trigger on Demetrius.

Amadeo was certain his cousin’s comment would spring Lucien into action. He was right, but unprepared for how quickly. Amadeo’s own cruel smirk had barely touched his lips before the force of Lucien’s fist knocked his head to one side. He felt a set of hands shoving him and Amadeo lost his balance, stumbling out of the way. It gave Lucien room to grab the front of Olivia’s blazer and he hauled her right into the sound slap that left its forceful imprint across her face. Normally, he’d never hit a woman; Olivia was the exception.

Never had the guards of the Terenzio family seen something like this. Because of the ranks they were not sure who they should aid or whether or not they should get involved at all. One was smart enough to turn on his heel and go jogging into the Cathedral to alert the rest of the family. When Terenzio tempers went loose, it wasn’t likely to end pretty.

“Say it again. Go ahead, say it again, you fucking bitch,” Lucien growled at her, her sharp whimper of painful surprise at his slap echoing into the air between them. He wanted to smack her again, but Amadeo rushed him from the side, catching him around the waist. They both went toppling down the stairs, nearly taking Olivia with them.

Commotion ensued. Vasco and Simone were the first to come running out of the church. As much as she wanted to stick her foot out and hope for a broken neck, Olivia restrained herself for the time being. She stepped to the side and called out for Amadeo to stop.

Kayla came out of the church afterwards, her darker gray eyes staring down at the scene Lucien and Amadeo were making at the bottom of the stairs. Slow distaste set over her face, which slowly turned to Olivia.

Olivia met the woman’s eyes for just a moment before looking away, saying quietly, “Lucien started it.”

“Jesus Christ. Dion Security, clear the area of the local press. Confiscate cameras and shut up noisemakers. We have a situation,” Caleb barked the orders into his earpiece when he saw the two men at the bottom of the steps, squirming around on the concrete and wildly swinging punches at each other. Caleb came hopping down the stairs two at a time after Vasco and Simone.

Xavier and Robert were next to come out of the church, and as soon as Xavier saw the swinging arms he went jogging down the stairs, Robert following him.

Nicholas stepped out into the sunlight with a smirk set on his mouth as he watched Lucien and Amadeo. Both sides of the family were downright embarrassing at times.

“What the hell was Marcello thinking, putting Lucien in a position of authority?” Dominic came out of the church, frowning. Agata stood next to her father, watching, but reserved comment.

“I think Marcello knew exactly what he was doing,” Derek Senior commented quietly, pushing his hands into pants pockets. He’d been a bit of a brawler himself in his younger years, and he didn’t like Dominic.

Leone and Victoria followed the growing crowd outside, and Leone sighed heavily when he saw the display. “That’s not what anybody needs today.”

Victoria looked briefly concerned, but hid it well when she saw that Amadeo was at the bottom of the pile. She’d take care of him when she saw him later, after Leone went back to work. “Very inappropriate. I’m so glad you don’t act like that.” She smiled convincingly up at her husband.

Vasco reached the two of them first, grabbed Amadeo’s uniformed coat by the shoulders, and hauled him back from Lucien. “Break it up!”

Once Amadeo was pulled away, Simone looked down at Lucien who had stopped swinging when he felt the weight jerked back from him. Simone set her foot onto his chest, the expression on her face a mixture of scolding and light amusement. “This means down, boy.”

Lucien smirked up at her through a split lip. “I already got my shot in. Twice.”

Amadeo, though, didn’t seem to be done. He felt hands grab him, was pulled unsteadily onto his feet and crashed back into his next least favorite person, Vasco. The moment he regained his footing, he tossed his elbow back and sneered in quiet satisfaction when he felt it collide with the bone on Vasco’s face. He did it again and when Vasco lost his grip, Amadeo spun around hell bent on getting another shot in, only to be beaten to the punch, literally. The ending force of Vasco’s fist knocked his teeth together so hard he was fairly certain one might have come loose, and sent him flat on his ass.

Caleb reached the scene just as Amadeo went to the ground again. Quite bravely he put himself between Amadeo and Vasco. Vasco, though, was done. His point was made and he was already straightening his sleeve, ignoring the swelling that had started where his cousin’s elbow had caught him.

“Nice shot,” Xavier said under his breath when he arrived behind Vasco.

Who knows if the brawl would have continued, but the sharp bark from Isabella earned both silence and ceased motions. “Enough!” Anger burned behind her older, gray eyes. With a quiet, regal grace, she pushed herself to the front of the small crowd and began descending the staircase. Christopher followed at her heels, looking as furious as his sister.

“We didn’t start it, Isa–” Olivia spoke up as the older woman passed, only to be cut off by the raise of Isabella’s hand. She flicked her eyes over the mark on Olivia’s cheek but didn’t comment. Instead, she continued to the bottom of the stairs.“I thank God certain family members are deceased so they don’t have to witness this disgrace,” Isabella scolded.

“Just for the record, Aunt Isabella, this sort of behavior is expected from me,” Lucien called out smartly, still on the ground though now with his hands behind his head, his sister’s foot still on his chest.

“It’s not funny, Lucien. This is a public event, and you’re no longer in a position where you can act like a jackass without it affecting this family’s reputation,” Christopher growled at Lucien.

“I apologize, Aunt Isabella. Shouldn’t have happened here,” Amadeo said diplomatically, though he could not have been more insincere. He got to his feet, gingerly touching the blood on his split lip.

“It shouldn’t have happened at all,” Isabella hissed. She stared hard at Amadeo, then looked at Vasco. “This is now your responsibility. You do not encourage these displays.”

“Yes ma’am. I apologize too. Rough day,” Vasco agreed. The duality inside was something he was going to have to get used to. As Stefano, he wanted to add two heads to the shelf in the basement underneath the Governor’s mansion. He was that man, but he wasn’t anymore. Amadeo and Olivia would get theirs, though, and soon.

Lucien opened his mouth to speak again, and Simone dug her heel a little harder into his chest, enough to make him reconsider but she was only paying him half attention. It was still a bit of a mind twist, to look at two people you’d known your entire life and see them in an almost completely different light. Simone’s eyes kept straying towards Isabella, noticing how much like her mother the older woman was. Then they would shift towards Christopher, and that tilted her world a little more because she’d never realized, how much he looked like his father, Kyle. And the thought of him made her heart ache.

Isabella paused over Amadeo, regarding him closely. “You will all return to the Cathedral and pay your respects whether you loved them or not. Am I clear?”

“Crystal.” Amadeo reached into the inside of his uniformed coat and found his hanky, pressing it against his swelling mouth.

“Yes, ma’am. Yes, sir.” Lucien pulled one hand from behind his head and saluted at Christopher, who simply glared back at him. There was affection between them; Christopher had often been the one to lay into Lucien like a concerned father when his behavior stretched the lines.

Isabella watched Amadeo a moment longer then turned back to the three in front of her. “Roberto, get everyone back inside.”

“Yes, Mother.” He shook his head amusedly at the triplets then turned around and began rounding up the lingering family members.

“We need to talk later,” Xavier said quietly to Vasco, and then turned to head back into the Cathedral.

Without another glance at the triplets, Amadeo went back up the staircase, equally ignoring the other family members’ eyes on him. Kayla had already turned on her heel and gone back inside, still disgusted with the both of them. Olivia caught up with him halfway up the stairs, her annoyance carefully hidden. Her calculating eyes re-centered on Leone’s back as they trailed him and Victoria into the church. She’d make herself feel better by paying him a visit soon.

Caleb stood quietly in the background while Isabella gave her orders and reprimanded the group. His smile was carefully hidden, as was the swell of paternal instinct he felt towards her. He moved to go inside when she instructed Roberto, but was paused by Isabella’s sudden hand on his arm.

“Caleb’s focus has narrowed to the protection of the three of you.” Isabella looked at Simone. “Since I do not trust your brothers to do it, you will work with Caleb to see it done. It is neither up for discussion nor calls of rank.” Her eyes briefly flicked between the two brothers before returning to Simone. “The three of you are too important to move around without the proper security. Do I make myself clear?”

Simone had to smile. She couldn’t help it and hoped Isabella didn’t take it as a sign of mockery. It was quiet pride that brought on such an expression. “As ordered, Govna.”

Caleb stiffened. Damn. He didn’t mind the assignment, obviously, but he didn’t expect that he would start working with the triplets so soon. He’d wanted a little more time to prepare. Just the sight of Simone was pulling at his heart. All he wanted to do was tell her so he could touch her again. One more time. With supreme effort, he kept control of himself and nodded at the order, standing at a stiff ease in front of the triplets.

No further argument came, though she had not expected one. Even so, Isabella didn’t immediately head back into the church. Instead, her dark gray eyes continued to watch their near mirror in Simone. And then, unexpectedly, she simply smiled. It lingered around her well-aged face and held some secret knowledge in its easy emotion. Only after that moment did she turn and slowly climb the steps back inside.

“Good luck with those two,” Christopher said to Simone, giving Lucien and Vasco a look before he turned and followed his sister back inside.

“That means us, too, I’m thinking. Lemmie up, Simone.” Lucien poked lightly at his sister’s ankle.

“Huh? Oh. Sorry.” Simone gave a little shake of her head and took her foot off her brother. She had been thrown off balance by the look Isabella had given her. It was almost if she knew, but how could that be? Though it wasn’t out of the realm of the explainable; not in this family. Marcello had obviously known, somehow.

“Thanks.” Lucien gave her a knowing smile as he got to his feet, understanding her dilemma.

Vasco was thoughtfully silent as he began to climb back up the stone steps, occasionally glancing in Caleb’s direction. Mr. Kincade couldn’t reveal himself to Simone. Mr. Kincade kept side glancing at her, when she wasn’t watching, and the expression in his eyes was one Stefano had seen before. Understanding dawned, partly. Those thoughts were interrupted by the abrupt ringing of his cell phone. He glanced down at the caller ID, saw it was blocked but answered it anyway.

“So, Caleb, just an FYI, we don’t like bodyguards.” Lucien half grinned at the other man as they walked.

“Not uncommon knowledge, but I just take orders.” Caleb returned his expression and shared it with Simone. She looked different, but there were so many similarities. He wondered if she would pick up on any of them in him.

“Simone, better work quickly with Caleb to plan a trip,” Vasco said as he tucked the cell phone back into the inside of his suit jacket. “We’re going to Virginia.”

“Why?” Lucien asked.

Caleb didn’t look surprised.

Vasco actually grinned at his siblings. “Kill two birds with one stone.”

Chapter 19

“The great strength of our Order lies in its concealment, let it never appear, in any place in its own name, but always covered by another name, and another occupation. None is fitter than the three lower degrees of Freemasonry; the public is accustomed to it, expects little from it, and therefore takes little notice of it.”

- Dr. Adam Weishaupt

June 11th, 2012

Washington, D.C.

The White House 4:11 PM

Rainbow City has fallen.”

“Why didn’t the Darkworkers see this coming?”

“We don’t know, sir. The Sirians and the Pledians continue to interfere.”

His eyes were not human, though they appeared that way when he wanted them to. Manipulation of the cells in the human body was so ridiculously simple it was laughable that humankind didn’t know how to shape shift. This news angered him and his eyes flipped, exposing the reptilian irises. “What of the Terenzio’s?”

“They continue as expected. Our insiders have found an Atlantian, a survivor of Rainbow City. They wish to bring him to us in exchange for full membership into the Brotherhood.”

A serpent-like tongue flicked out of his mouth, darting across his lips. “I’m sure they do. Bring them to me.”

“Yes sir. What of the other Terenzio’s?”

“Continue as planned. We will still launch Alternative Three ahead of schedule.” His hand extended, switching erratically from dark green scales to smooth white skin as he pressed the button to end the conversation.

It would be close, but the Brotherhood would not fail. They had held control of this planet for too long just to give it away because the Galactic Federation claimed it was time. Let the vibrations rise, he didn’t care how many of the slaves, “awakened.” Let them think the planet would Ascend. They had tried before, they would fail again.

A sharp knock came at his office door. It took a mere thought to return his eyes and the texture of his hand to their hidden state. “Come in.”

The uniformed officer saluted sharply before informing him, “Mr. Vice President, they are ready for you now.”

§

June 12th, 2012

Alcyone Island

St. Judas Memorial Gardens 12:12 AM

A warm rain had started. It came down in thick sheets, thunder lazily grumbling in the distance. The shadowed figure didn’t carry an umbrella, she didn’t mind the rain. Kayla preferred thunderstorms.

For fifty-five years she had lived a lie. Perfectly. She had situated herself into the family better than They had expected of her. As Marcello Terenzio’s youngest daughter she was a board member. She ran the subsidiary, Empire Cruise Lines. Alcyone was an island after all, uniquely positioned between two major countries. They didn’t always smuggle things by air. That meant she was privy to a great deal. Since she was thirteen years old, Kayla had been feeding the Brotherhood everything she knew about the Terenzio’s.

Sixteen hours ago she learned that step-father played the game better than she had. Sixteen hours ago she learned that from the first day she’d appeared on his doorstep – he had known the truth.

The rain washed away the line of tears that fell in silence as she stared down at freshly dug earth next to where her mother was buried.

Marilyn Terenzio had been the first person Kayla had learned to love. It had happened unintentionally. They had tried to train her against it but things endured by a five-year-old were not always completely washed away with mind altering drugs. She remembered the videos. The man with the funny smell that taught her to hide how much she disliked it when people touched her. She frequently suffered from nightmares. It was not until she’d come to this island that she’d understood what it was really like to be embraced by the unconditionally loving, reassuring warmth of a mother. It made the nightmares stop after a while.

Kayla knew that’s why her mother had been killed; so she didn’t forget the plan and whom she belonged to. Who would take care of her after all the Terenzio’s were dead. Caesar had appeared shortly thereafter. She had thought he was as good as the rest of the Brotherhood when she brought him home one weekend from college and Marcello accepted him with open arms. Now she knew that her step-father had been a lot smarter than she had given him credit for.

Maybe she should have realized that years ago. She had been sent here to kill him, taught that from day one. Initially she hadn’t formed a connection to him, not like she had with her mother. It wasn’t hard to keep the distance, he wasn’t around much. She was seventeen when her mother died, and the nightmares came back. She fully expected to wake from the next to nothing but darkness and the cruel lingering visions of the past. Instead, he had been there. Her screams were soothed by his strong quiet voice, and she was amazed at how easy it was to burrow into his chest, hiding from the truth. She let herself believe the lie in those moments, because his arms were warm and strong and she’d never felt protected before. He was around more after that. When she’d finished college he began inviting her more frequently to his office on the infamous 52nd floor. The Brotherhood had loved it. Secretly, so had she. To this day, Marcello had been the only man who could touch her without making her skin crawl. Even her gentle half brother Demetrius had made her inwardly flinch when he put a hand on her.

Kayla didn’t understand Marcello Terenzio. He had known she was not his, that she was an enemy, the bastard child of his raped wife. But he looked at her like he loved her anyway, she knew this for certain. He had looked at Demetrius and pictures of Amanda the same way.

“Why? Why would you ask me…?” Kayla whispered the unanswered question into the rain that crashed down around her. The letter Marcello had written her was crumpled up in her closed fist. A father’s last request of his daughter.

Except she was not his daughter. Never mind that she loved him like the father he wasn’t. She’d never admitted that to him, she didn’t know if she ever would have.

She had never been given the order to kill him and hadn’t questioned why. But yesterday, Caesar had called to tell her that he would be coming back to the Island soon. She knew why. Orders were coming. They were worried about the success of the Ascension. Frankly she was surprised they hadn’t killed the Terenzio’s sooner if they were that concerned. Regardless, someone was going to die and she would be the one pulling the trigger. The cruel beauty of it was that even if she didn’t want to, they could make her. It only took a single phrase. Caesar was usually the one to ‘activate’ her.

Kayla bent down to set the single red rose on top of the freshly dug wet dirt. Her head bowed, her dark blonde hair soaked and coming loose from the pins that held it back in place. She closed her eyes, fighting a losing battle against emotions she didn’t want to feel. She would disappoint her step-father. Choices weren’t given to things that were owned.

“I’m sorry, Dad,” Kayla whispered. Her cell phone rang. She knew it was Caesar. She flipped it open. “Yes?”

“Get ready to rid the world of your family baby. I’m on my way home.”

Kayla was not a Terenzio. She was a child of the Project, loyal only to the Brotherhood. “I understand.” Her face hardened and her fingers opened, Marcello’s crumpled letter fluttering into the mud as she walked away.

DCS lives in New Orleans. Synarchy is her first novel. An active blogger, you can keep up to date with author news at wwwthemindofdcs.com. She is working on the second novel in the Synarchy Series, The Ascension, and several short stories based off the txt based roleplay game, Synarchy 2012. Visit, www.synarchy2012.com to learn more. DCS also hosts a radio show on the Paranormal 101 network. In The Mind of DCS airs Saturday nights on Blogtalkradio.