The Royal Stones of Eden (Royal Secrecies Book 1) (37 page)

“You came back! I knew you would! I have lunch soon! Come back in an hour!” she said with excitement.

I did just that. I returned in an hour and walked with the woman to a sandwich shop, at least that is what I called it. Over lunch, which was soup that was made of some kind of fish, she told me of the latest news of the city. We talked about the St. Louis World’s Fair and the new ice cream cone novelty, and New York’s proud achievement of a train that ran underground. More than that—I got to know the woman on a relationship level. I fell in love with this fine lady. But did I truly know this woman? She seemed familiar, but was she my wife, I wondered.

Our formal relationship all began when she introduced herself, “Please, call me, Aysha!”

I told her of a great earthquake that was coming to the city, in the near future. I told her that I wanted to warn her friend Mary and her children of the disaster as well, but it was Aysha that came up with a much better plan.

I stayed in San Francisco for a week and I fell deeply in love with beautiful Aysha. I forgot about my wife of the future. Aysha was all that mattered.

Chapter 23

The Confession of Jesse

In Her Own Words

My name is Jesse, but I have been called other names. In Egypt, I was known as Iris, a devoted servant of Queen Cleopatra. I was briefly called Aysha, the devoted wife of Hajen Habib, the Egyptian archaeologist, and gemologist. Throughout my history, I had countless names and numerous faces, many loves, and scores of enemies.

I had a lengthy history of betrayal by trusted friends and pretended followers. And in retaliation I had committed many acts of violence, often out of my extreme hatred of men and their broken promises to me. I was even betrayed when I was a queen in ancient Mesopotamia.

Consider my death when I was a queen. I was cast down from a tower by men, and I tumbled to my death. The men threw me down, though they were not men, but eunuchs, emasculated boys at that. Even though I was royalty, I was betrayed by my own subjects. My betrayer was only one of many that sought my throne. My name was Queen Jezebel!

My body fell against a wall on the way down, blood splattered on its jagged sides. Then my body hit the dirt and was trampled on by horse hoofs while I was briefly semiconscious at the same time. My body was beaten continuously until the only distinguishable parts of my body that remained recognizable were my hands, feet, and my skull. All of this was done in the name of the Living Spirit and with his supposed approval. All of this was done by men!

After my eventual death, my spirit rose above my remains. I saw some dogs chew my remnants while others defecated on them. Was it any wonder that intense hatred remained in my soul after that? Events like that caused me to boil inside with revulsion. I determined that one day, at just the right moment, that I would unleash my hellish revenge and fury!

This death, as just described, was preceded by a reign of mine that held the Living Spirit in great contempt for destroying my ancestors after the second creation. My ancestors, who were known as the Anakites, were once boiled alive in vast pools of mercury—they perished in a state of great suffering. Few survived the Great Destruction by the Living Spirit. And many held the great Living Spirit responsible for that despicable act. I was one of them. I hated the Living Spirit for committing such a heinous crime against my people.

Legend told of at least one purebred Anakite that survived that destruction, and his name was Medraut. He was later called Dred. The other pure Anakites were either killed or driven underground to caves deep in the earth. They never were seen again. And no one knew if the legend of Medraut was true or not.

There were also a few that survived who were of mixed descent. These Anakites had human blood in them, for they had married that loathsome lot of people and had produced children. Some of these Anakites survived by hiding in caves, underground, but sealed and protected from the flood of liquid metal that so quickly sought their deaths. It was in these caves that some of the Anakites discovered what was called the hidden stones of Eden, ancient and powerful elements that had properties of great magic.

When the Great Destruction was over, those with Anakite blood in their veins returned to the surface. They attempted to gradually mate and mingle with the sons and daughters of the second creation. They did this because they were different and craved acceptance, but they were often too different to be tolerated by the majority. Although some Anakites were accepted, even genuinely worshipped, most were brutally killed or severely tortured.

Some Anakites were fortunate enough to escape death. A few of them avoided persecution by practicing the ancient art of shapeshifting. It was a developed ability obtained after prolonged exposure to the stones of Eden and certain gases from deep below the earth’s surface. Some developed powers of invisibility or greater strength. There was the tribe of the Nephilim, who grew into great giants that roamed the Earth, but they eventually became extinct because of their inability to produce fertile offspring. Some survived by migration like the deer people who migrated to the Americas from China, but the Ani Nvya people eventually destroyed them.

I was one of those rare breeds that developed the power to shapeshift into another form or person, but it did require something special to make it work properly. I had the power to shapeshift into another being, but only if I had the opportunity to ingest its blood. That was the requirement. The blood had to be of the right sort, the right temperature, and not mixed with any other agent. It had to be pure.

A mixed Anakite mother conceived me, but I had a fully human father—and I had a sister. My father had been dead for about nine months when my sister and I were born. We were twins, but not identical. My sister favored the ways of the humans. My sister objected to shapeshifting and magic, and she attempted to live as much as possible as a human being. She attempted to deny her gifts and heritage. She even worshipped the great Living Spirit. I never knew my brother, but my mother claimed that he existed somewhere. That is all that I was told. My brother was always a source of mystery.

Despite my disagreements with my sister, we once had the opportunity to serve together, side by side. It was soon after my murder when I was a queen. I had managed, by the act of transference to thwart the attempts of my murderers, the ones that threw me over the wall. I was a survivor. I had the magic on my side. I had my royal stones of travel—a stone of blue and a stone of white. I traveled ahead in time and searched for my family, but I found that my mother was dead or unaccounted for.

I then searched for and finally found my sister in the land of Egypt, with the help of a gold stone of prophecy that guided me faithfully. My sister told me that she had reluctantly used the sardius stones to prolong her life. She said that she had fallen victim to a disease soon after my death and was forced to use the stones to take away great pain. No one was ever immune to the desire for immortality, not even my sister. Pain was no one’s friend.

I gave my sister a disingenuous promise of reform, and we agreed to set aside our previous differences. We served for many years with Queen Cleopatra in Cairo. We helped to protect her throne, jewels, and many of her other valuable possessions. It was a good life until the Roman army ended their relationship with the queen and stormed her city.

The end of my life and the life of my sister came by way of a poisonous snake and other poisonous elements in a most vile drink. The queen had chosen poison as her way of escaping the marching army of Rome. As servants, we were expected to follow her suicide, and we did. Both my sister and I committed suicide by the deadly venom, although my sister did so unenthusiastically.

On the day of our suicide, by the command of the queen, my sister and I bid each other farewell, and we died. I vowed to seek her out, by way of ancient magic and the royal stones that the queen had kept with her jewels—for she had magic stones also. Before we perished, we both chanted our prayers and spells because we expected to meet each other in another life or time. We did not share our secrets with the queen. It was not because we were not benevolent. At that time, we truly believed that only the Anakites or their blood had the power of soul transference.

We knew and shared the love for a special cat of ours, named Pili. Pili was a black calico cat and stayed in the confines of the palace. Pili was forced to consume the same poison that we had partaken of. We wanted all of us to be found in the same place after our trip, even our faithful companion Pili.

When I awoke from traveling the river of light, I was in a street that lay in ruin from a great disaster. Fires spread across the great city that I appeared in, and the earth rumbled from below. I appeared still in my servants clothes. I carried a knife in a sheath, tied around my waist. Even though the river of light had carried me to this place, I doubted the ancient magic and its ability to bring me to my sister. I thought the Magic had made a mistake.

In Egypt, before our death, we both wore symbols that would act as signs for each of us, after we passed to the other side, just in case we took on different forms. Transference sometimes brought the body, but sometimes only the spirit. The signs that traveled with us would confirm our legitimacy to each other, we thought.

My sister, reluctant to magic, except by necessity, objected to our trip. Her hypocrisy disgusted me at times. But she agreed to it and wore her sign that traveled with her. It was a large ruby stone around her neck. It was from a set of two necklaces in the palace, but some servant woman stole one of them. My sign was that of a red stone ring, also from the palace treasure rooms. Our plan was to pass through the river of light and then to a new life, the life as a pretended native human.

I planned to shapeshift into a dead human. I planned to kill a human in order to enter the body. My sister agreed to the trip, but only if she could enter a dead body, one that she did not have to kill, because she believed that killing was not acceptable, unless in the defense of life. She had the weakness of believing in human morals.

When I arrived on Market Street, in San Francisco, California, I saw the body of one Aysha Vranich, lying face down and resting in the rubble of a fallen building. I knew that the blood was ripe and ready for my mouth. I would not know her name until later. At first sight, I simply saw a female body. I used my sharpest knife and slit her exposed right wrist. A stream of red delight flowed out. I leaned down and sucked it in. I savored every taste of the blood. The clone had to be perfect if I was to shapeshift into my new life.

I had sought out my sister, but instead, I had seemingly been transported to a place without her. I did not wish to be noticed, despite the great chaos in the city, so I transformed into the clone of the lady that I found in the rubble. In an instant, after I swallowed her blood, I copied her body and then her memories. It was then, after the memories started to whirl in my mind, that I realized the terrible crime that I had just committed.

I turned the body of the woman over and saw no necklace and no red stone around her neck. I looked at my own hand. I was wearing my red stone ring. I had worn the symbol, but my sister had not. My sister lay in the rubble. My memories, obtained from drinking the woman’s blood, held ancient Egypt inside them—memories of a woman who called herself Aysha. She had obviously arrived before me and had assumed the life of this woman. Aysha was Charmion, my sister! I had cloned my sister’s dead body!

As we both had agreed, we took several items on our trip on the river of light, although some called it the river of death. We took a prophetic gold stone and two stones of transference, one blue and one white. Legend told of only four sets of stones of this kind. I looked at my treasure, once I had taken Aysha’s form. I wanted to see what my future held, and what I should do. I always followed the directions of the stones. I trusted in the guidance of their words.

I considered it my greatest misfortune when I realized that my stones of blue and white did not travel with me. I was stranded. All that I had was my golden stone and my ring. Sometimes my ring had the power of mesmerizing people, but the stone of prophecy was the real power. I looked at my golden stone for some guidance out of my dilemma. It would know what to do. I did not know why my stones did not travel with me. The last thing that I remembered, before my death, was that I had added a beautiful black onyx stone to my satchel, just before I collapsed on the floor of the palace. Perhaps I did not know enough about the secrets and powers of the stones, or their limitations.

The Anakites had passed on their methods of transference to their descendants, but our knowledge was incomplete. The stones had secrets that even
we
did not know about. It was said that only a group called the Priests knew everything about them.

Some Anakites traveled by the power of the stones, but some used an inner magic. They were known as natural witches. I used the stones to transfer, but I suspected that my sister used her own natural abilities to travel away from Egypt, abilities that even
she
did not know about. She was what I called a natural witch.

Once I regained my composure, after the clone was completed, I followed the direction of the stone and what it predicted or commanded. I befriended a woman called Mary, later called Mattie. The golden stone told me that day: