AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The mood plummeted. Jude shot a look at Kat across my shoulder. She walked past me to stand closer to him, speaking in a low, coaxing tone. “It’s a sign. Don’t you see?”
She placed a hand gently on his crossed forearms. Jude’s eyes remained on me, though the usual intensity faded.
“Jude,” Kat said his name as if imploring him to do something.
“Could someone please tell me what’s going on? A sign ofwhat?”
Kat turned away from the brooding demon hunter as if his silence was what she sought in order to continue. Sympathy was back in her eyes. “The prophecy, the one I told you about.”
I nodded.
“I only have part of it, but the portion I know speaks of signs leading to the end.”
“You mean the beginning,” interrupted Jude.
He’d walked away from both of us, angling his body more toward the wall of practice swords. He seemed to be gazing at something far from this room, perhaps into the future or the past.
“The beginning?” I asked.
Kat sighed, coming to me and clasping my hands as if to comfort me. The heavy dread permeating the air pressed on my chest. “There are two high demons after you. One wants you for his Vessel; the other wants you dead. We know your would-be killer is another high demon, one of the seven princes of the underworld.”
I nodded, though I hadn’t figured out yet how she knew this to be true. Jude remained with his back to us. She went on. “This fits the prophecy. Here, read this.”
She shot a nervous glance at Jude, then pulled her cell phone from the hip of her workout pants, strapped somewhere between the fabric and her skin. She flipped through her photos, then tapped on one. “Read it.”
It took a second for me to realize what I was looking at. The torn parchment of a yellowed scroll bore curving calligraphy with swirling curls and flourishes. Not only was the penmanship difficult to read, but the writing was in Latin. I understood a great deal, but these words were beyond me.
“Kat, I can’t understand this. Where did you get this photo?”
“I shot it myself,” she said, taking back the phone and enlarging the screen with her thumb and index finger.
“From where? Who has the original?”
“The Vatican.”
“The Vatican! As intheVatican?”
“Is there more than one?” She smirked.
I couldn’t help but laugh a little as she continued.
“Well, as the keeper of ancient texts, they still only had this one piece,” she continued. “The original was written down by a medieval monk, whose most probable name was James of Glastonbury.”
“Most probable name?”
“Monks didn’t sign their works, whether it was an illumination or whatever, part of the monastic denial of self and all that. I’ve done a bit of investigating and questioning of Flamma over the years, and there seems to be some debate about the exact time period and the name of the scribe.”
“Does that really matter?” I asked, wondering why the long explanation.
Kat was patient. “Yes, of course, it does. Because, you see, the prophet must have been a Vessel with the Sight to have given this specific prophecy. And the monk would have trust in the Vessel in order to scribe the prophecy into their holy books, protected for centuries at Glastonbury. Until, of course, Henry VIII—the big, fat polygamist—had so many of the English cathedrals burned or destroyed. Glastonbury being one of them.”
“I still don’t quite understand how the name of the monk matters.”
Kat focused, apparently realizing she’d been rambling, not making any logical sense. “There are three names attached to this prophecy as the monks who scribed the original text. The names were given to me by different Flamma who’ve been around much, much longer than I have.”
“Was George one of them?” interrupted Jude, which earned him a slit-eyed glare from Kat.
She went on. “Simeon of Glastonbury in approximately 83 AD, John of Glastonbury around 197 AD, and James of Glastonbury in 399 AD. Itmustbe James in order to validate the truth of the prophecy. The first very Vessel awakened on this earth in 273 AD. Do you see? Only a Vessel with Sight could’ve passed the vision on to James, because no Vessel had been in our world during Simeon’s and John’s time.”
