Area 51: The Grail-5 (7 page)

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tale I have seen with my own eyes. And because of the efforts that were made
both to aid me and to hinder me in this path, too much effort was made to stop
me, for there may be some truth in what I have learned, truth that others want
to keep buried.

The story begins before Rome was founded, before the Greeks etched their
letters on stone tablets, even before the pyramids themselves were
built—before the dawn of recorded time.

Turcotte hit the scroll key, but nothing happened. "That's it?" He turned to Quinn.

"That's all of Burton's prologue," Quinn said. "Inserted behind those first pages were several written in a different hand."

Mualama leaned forward. "Do you know of Sir Richard Burton? His life? The controversies surrounding him?"

"Not really," Turcotte replied. He was anxious to be moving, to be planning a second assault on Giza and rescue Duncan. He didn't understand Mualama's fascination with an old manuscript.

"Burton translated the Kama Sutra," Mualama said. "And the Tale of the Thousand and One Nights. He was more than a writer and translator of other's written works. He was a famous explorer. A man who dared to travel where others feared. He searched for the source of the Nile hidden in the heart of Africa. It has been widely believed that his wife, Isabel, burned a manuscript when he died." Mualama pointed at the screen. "It appears she burned the only copy of this manuscript."

"The next few pages tell what happened on the night 53

Burton died," Quinn said, "and why she did what she did. It is most intriguing."

"Put it on the screen," Turcotte ordered. The writing that appeared was written with black ink, a thin spidery lettering:

My love is dead. His body not yet cold.

I write to warn you. If you read these words and have this manuscript in
your possession, you are cursed, as my dearest Richard was.

As Richard had feared for so many years, the evil creature who started him
on his path, his tarigat, came for us last night just as Richard finished the
manuscript. I was making a copy, as I always did, of Richard's work. The opus
was complete and Richard felt he had done all he could with the life he had
been given.

The creature came in the dark. Its face was pale, its twisted body cloaked
in black. The eyes—I will always remember the eyes. If my sins—and they are
many according to those who say they know those things—send me to Hell, I
readily expect to see eyes like that again. But is there a Hell? I wonder
because I no longer believe in Heaven.

I wander. My mind is not in this. Richard lies dead just down the hallway.

But you must know of the creature who knows not death. Because if you are
reading this, then the creature will eventually come for you too.

The creature wanted the manuscript; the information Richard has so
painstakingly translated and gathered over the past four decades.

It came after dark. Richard was in bed, his body weakened by the disease
ravaging him. I was wiping

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the sweat off Richard's brow, when I heard the heavy wood door crash open. I
ran to the top of the stairs and saw it in the foyer. It looked up at me and I
first beheld those eyes.

They transfixed me. I knew Richard's guns were in the study, but I could
not move. The creature came up the stairs, occasionally staggering to the
right, grabbing the railing as if it were drunk.

It wore a long black cloak, the tail almost touching the floor, and
underneath, formal wear, as if it had come from a party. But the cloth was
dirty and spotted. It came close to me and I could smell the stench of death
on its breath. It opened its cloak. A hand came out holding a surgeon's blade.

It pressed the weapon against my throat. I thought it would rupture the skin.

Never had I been so aware of the blood that flowed through my veins, feeling
that cold steel against my flesh.

"Your husband, whore," the creature hissed. "I want your husband."

I wanted to shake my head, but I thought it would finish the work of the
blade. "He is not here."

"You lie, bitch. You are a whore like all the others."

I was startled when Richard's voice came from the doorway to our room. "I
always knew I would see you once more."

How Richard managed to get out of bed, I knew not. I felt, and still feel,
I had let him down. I should have thrown myself into the blade and ended it
there. Perhaps that would have satisfied the blood lust I could feel coming
off the creature. We once met a man named Bram Stoker who spoke of creatures
of the darkness who drew blood from their victims for sustenance. Richard had
been intrigued and talked

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with Stoker deep into the night until I could no longer stay awake with them.

Richard told him of Indian legends of things called vampires and other similar
creatures he had heard of in our travels around the world. If such creatures
existed, I knew this was one of them. But Richard seemed not afraid of this
thing that stood in our house.

"Leave my wife be. She has nothing to do with this. She knows nothing."

The creature pulled the blade away from my neck, and with a movement faster
than I could follow, hid the blade deep inside the recesses of its cloak.

"I don't care what she knows. She is like all women. A whore. Worth
nothing. She deserves what they all deserve. Death. Worse than death."

But he took a step away from me, toward Richard, something stronger than
his hate for my gender drawing him toward my husband.

"Al-Iblis." My husband said the name like it was a curse, and confirmed
what unholy creature I was seeing. Richard had written of it extensively in
the manuscript. I knew then what I had hoped was just a collection of tales
was true. The world as I had known it and been taught by my church, my
parents, my schools, was not the world as it was.

"Sir Richard Francis Burton," the creature hissed. "I had heard the
queen-whore knighted you. You have traveled far since we met in Medina. But
you never came back to me like you promised."

"You lied to me," Burton said.

The creature laughed, like the sound fingernails make on a blackboard,
causing my skin to crawl. "I lied? I told you much truth. Enough for you to go
to Giza, to find Kaji. So I lied about myself. What does that matter? You will
never know the truth."

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"I know more than I did," Richard answered him. "I know many of your names
now."

The creature smiled, revealing yellowing teeth. "You do? Do you know what
they call me now?"

"In the newspapers they call you Jack the Ripper," Richard said, a name
which froze my heart. I had read of the atrocities committed by the shadow the
papers had given that title to. To have it stand here in my hallway; I knew we
were doomed. I had read how his hate for my gender had been displayed, most
likely with the very same blade that he had held against my throat seconds
earlier.

"The Ripper," the creature repeated. "They are fools. I do not rip. I cut
with a precision the best of your surgeons could not even begin to imitate,
but they ignore that and worry only about the death of worthless scum."

"Our surgeons try to save lives," Burton said.

"I try to save a life also." The creature pointed a thin, pale finger with
a long nail at the end, at its own chest. "Mine."

"You have lived for millennia." Richard seemed more intrigued than scared.

I had seen him this way before in dangerous situations, where normal men would
have fled for their lives. His only interest was learning more. But this was
our house, not a jungle. And this creature—there was no doubt it was more
dangerous than any Richard had ever faced on any of the many continents he had
traveled to. "Why are you afraid for your life now?"

"This has lived for millennia!" The creature clawed through his cloak and
suit shirt, pulling out an amulet on a thin metal chain. The metal was formed
in the symbol of two hands lifted up in praise, but there was no body between.

"This—" the crea-

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ture thumped the pale flesh of his chest, "will die soon."

For the first time I picked up something other than hate off the creature
as it turned its head looking down the stairs, toward the open front door. Its
voice dropped low, as if afraid of being overheard. "They track me. They want
me to go with them. To pass on, they call it. But I don't want to. I don't
want to die! "

"Why do you hate women so?" Richard asked. "Why do you kill them and cut
their bodies?"

"I am not of woman," the creature snarled. "I was not born of woman. It is
a woman who tracks me, who wants me to pass on. They are all evil. Evil. I
need blood to keep me going until—/ need parts of their bodies. I cannot—" He
fell into silence, as if confused.

"Tell me your real name." I had seen Richard stand upright against a
charging tiger in India, rifle to his shoulder, waiting until the last
possible second before taking the fatal shot, wanting to see the tiger's eyes,
every little detail. If the gun had jammed then, we would not be here today.

He always pushed—always. It was why I had given my life to spend with him.

What woman could resist such a man?

"My real name?" The creature took a few steps until it was opposite Richard
in the hallway, its back to the banister. I remained frozen at the top of the
landing. I could tell this was desperately tiring to Richard, his right
shoulder leaning against the door-jamb. The disease that was killing him from
within was making great strides in doing just that as he wasted energy. I also
knew that Richard would stand and talk to the devil himself if it would give
him more information regarding his tarigat.

The creature seemed to be regarding Richard's

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query as if it were some sort of riddle. "My real name means I have to know
who exactly I am." The creature held a hand up toward the hall light as if it
could see through the flesh. "I am a Shadow. That's what I was made to be. The
Shadow of someone real. Created to do his bidding. They once called me
Lucifer, long ago."

Those words chilled me. I had always known the things Richard were
uncovering would change the accepted view of history, but Lucifer!

"They said I was cast out. But I wasn 't cast out. I was left behind. Do
you know what that feels like? To be made, to not even be real, and to be left
behind to do his bidding when you are more than he was? More than he ever will
be."

"His name," my husband pressed. "The one you are the shadow of. What is it?

"

"It would mean nothing to you," the creature said. It twitched, looking to
the open door once more. The skin on its face rippled as if worms moved
beneath. "They are coming for me. The lackeys. The women. The whores who serve
The Mission. To pass the Shadow on which means my death." He took a step
toward Richard.

"I need the Grail," the creature's voice went even lower. "I need to know
what you have learned of the Grail! It is the only thing that can save me."

"Tell me the name."

"Aspasia," it spit the word out. "The leader of the firstborn. I am his
Shadow."

"Aspasia," Richard repeated. "I have heard that name. I know who that is."

The creature—Aspasia's Shadow—stepped forward, close to my husband. "The
Grail. Tell me where it is." It paused, searching my husband's face,
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comprehension dawning on its face. "You don't know what it is, do you? You've
searched all these years and you don't even know what it is you 've been
looking for!"

That was the most human the creature had been, the shock punching through
to its core. I turned, the faint sound of horses' hooves on the long driveway
echoing through the door. The creature heard them too.

It drew the blade as it spun toward me. I didn't even have time to raise my
hand. It had the knife at my throat, so swiftly did it move. "I will slice her
open, spill her putrid innards so the world can see the whore she is! Where is
the Grail?" The dementia was back in full force.

Heavy boots sounded on the outside stairs. Three men cloaked in black
entered, followed by a tall woman similarly dressed. She held up her hand,
palm out, as she stepped between the men to the forefront. "Come with us."

The creature whirled, putting me between him and the men. "I do not wish
to pass on. I want my life! "

"It was never your life to have." The leader was advancing, the others
behind her. She reached the bottom of the stairs, slowly coming up. "Your life
was to be a servant and you have done that well. We are all servants. Now it
is time to pass on."

"Never!" He screamed a sound like a beast in pain. "I will bathe this world
in blood like it has never seen. I will tell these humans the truth of their
existence, rip their gods out from their chests, spit on their religions,
destroy their beliefs, their petty sciences."