Order of the Black Sun Box Set 4 Read online

  Order of the Black Sun: Books 10 - 12

  Preston William Child

  Edited by

  Anna Drago

  Contents

  The Tesla Experiment

  The Seventh Secret

  The Medusa Stone

  © 2016, 2020 Preston W. Child

  Edited by Anna Drago

  The Tesla Experiment

  Prologue

  Celeste felt her stomach churn as she pulled the rope toward her, slowly. They could never detect her movement or she would be done for. Her small hands nervously reeled in the thick roughness of the rope while the group of shouting men passed the inferno from which she had just escaped. Her goat bleated in panic as she tugged on its restraint, but the men did not hear it over the din of the burning barn. What if they saw it? They would certainly follow the fibrous cord and discover her!

  Her blue eyes stretched open in anxious observation as she took note of the detail before her, holding her breath. Their uniforms looked like the dirt of the ash fields and their black rider boots reached up to their knees over the thick fabric. On their collars and arms, in red and black, different symbols bent into words she did not manage to read.

  Oh, Celeste could read just fine, but not these writings. They spoke some language the symbols she knew could not be employed in. There were cloned lightning sigils that could have passed as ‘s’ in her alphabet, but on their arms the men wore a terrible symbol inside a black circle. She had no idea what it said, but she knew very well what it represented – DEATH.

  Every time she saw this symbol there was only fear and death in its trail. Every time it appeared there would be much praying amongst her people and now she knew why. From under the massive horse cart where she was hiding Celeste watched her village burn, the people she knew now dead, their prayers silenced. Above the black smoke ascended to the heavens as if the terrible men who marched through wanted to tarnish heaven with their evil.

  Among them she noticed a tall, slender man. His eyes were light and his hair fair, but he did not engage in any of the cruelty. In fact, he looked as lost as she felt, wearing no uniform even though he was one of them. It struck Celeste as very peculiar that he seemed to find the atrocities unbearable, yet he did nothing to antagonize the uniformed men or help the villagers. Suddenly his eyes caught hers. Celeste gasped.

  It felt as if her little heart was going to burst with fright when he locked onto her, yet he did not move. Her goat bleated and stumbled about for fear of the fire, but she paid him no mind now. The man she was staring at sank his hands into his pockets and pulled from them a notebook and a pencil. Celeste cringed as a pair of shiny boots stopped right above her head, raising up dust into her face.

  She needed to sneeze, but she knew it would be the end of her if she did. Her dirty little hand pinched her nose. Her goat got away from her and rushed out into the gravel road, but Celeste allowed him his escape from her, rather than to be foolish and pursue. The man who stood in front of her obscured her view of the other man she had been looking at and she rolled over to her left to get a better look. But he was gone.

  Celeste tucked her little body back, deeper under the cart and closer to the wall it was standing against to utilize the shadows. From there she studied her surroundings, looking for the fair haired man. The black boots turned just as the cart began to shake. Celeste’s eyes filled with tears as the uniformed man started scuffling with something on the cart she could not see. Terrified, she knew she could not whimper in her weeping, not a sound to escape her lest she ended up another body on the burning pile a few meters off.

  In her nostrils the stench of burning bodies choked her and she fought not to vomit. Horror filled her as she watched them burn, people she had known since she was an infant. Their faces were twisted, their eyes sunken away in their cavities and their lips curled back in death, revealing their teeth aside protruding tongues. Father Bleux’s skin was black, chafing against the blistered breasts of Madame Marie, Celeste’s first grade teacher. The nine year old girl thanked God that her parents were already dead a year before this hideous happening struck their town, because they would never die as horribly as the villagers they knew so well.

  The sun was setting, but it looked like night already. Everywhere over the department of Haute-Vienne an evil loomed and the sun was blacked out by the snaking smoke of iniquitous butchery. Celeste pinched her eyes shut until the furious shaking of the vessel over her ceased. A bubbling death rattle sounded above her head and she saw a strong rain of blood stain the shiny boots of the soldier who had blocked off her escape before. At once, the rest of him fell to the ground, limp and bloody. Celeste started at his glaring blue eyes as they pierced hers, but soon she realized that they saw nothing anymore. He was dead from the gaping wound in his throat and his blood was streaming over the arid ground towards her amidst the screams of women and children still trying to flee the burning church they were locked in. Machine gun fire smothered their cries instantly.

  A little piece of paper feathered down from the top of the horse cart, there where Celeste could not see. It landed just to the inside of the shadow where she hid. Before the rivulet of blood met the paper, she scooped it up and read the scribbling on it.

  ‘Wait for night. Then hide in the pea bushes.

  Help will come’

  The young Celeste was perplexed, but grateful for the help. Although she was not certain if the note could be trusted, she did as it had dictated. It was a strange piece of paper, the true reason for her confusion. It looked like a ledger, perhaps a letter head of a doctor or a business. But it did not look like anything from 1944 at all. Even to her juvenile eyes it was clearly peculiar. Ripped and stained by soot, she discerned only some letters and numbers on what used to be a notebook heading.

  UNIVERSITY OF EDIN…H

  In th..ks f.. contribution…esteem…

  Facul…2015

  “2015?” she frowned.

  Celeste tucked the note inside her dress pocket and elected to believe that the numbers could not possibly belong to a date. Whatever it stood for, her savior was associated with it and she vowed to remember him forever, even if she did not survive World War II.

  1

  Purdue travelled for two days to see his friend from the old days in Birmingham before they parted at age twenty three and twenty six, respectively, to pursue different fields in physics and attended different universities. The billionaire inventor felt like going old school and bought a ticket for the train to take him to Lyon by invitation of Professor Lydia Jenner - old friend, once colleague and now terminal patient, bedridden in her final days of cancer.

  She was three years Purdue’s senior and the thought of her in the throes of terminal illness saddened him deeply. They had been friends for decades and now, in the prime of her life, barely forty seven years in age, she was dying. It felt strange for Dave Purdue to know that someone of his era, his age group, was now reduced to a frail and quivering victim where he felt as if his body still retained the qualities of a seventeen year old.

  On the 22.27pm Eurotrack train from Paris he slept most of the time. He stayed reclusively in his own compartment that he paid double the fee for, just to be assured of no disturbance, save for the delivery of his dinner and breakfast by special staff. Not that he did not enjoy long trips. As a matter of fact, he deliberately elected to take the regional train to enjoy the trip which was about 4 hours longer than the fast train at his leisure. But he was exhausted from his flight from Edinburgh after two sleepless nights of reading and experimenting to create an electromagnetic device strong enough to upset inter-dimensional veils to the point of what Purdue dubbed ripples.
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br />   It was from this very experimentation that he was compelled to contact Lydia to obtain some advice in the field she had long ago conquered so successfully that she had been ridiculed as a madwoman and a reckless academic. In this regard she much reminded him of Dr. Nina Gould, strung up and hung high for being too passionate to control, but it seemed that Purdue was most attracted to women like this above all others. From the call he placed for her advice, he learned of her current condition which subsequently urged him to rather to visit the woman the academic world of Particle Physics and Quantum Sciences called a ‘loose cannon.’ Perhaps that was the case because he was himself a wild card in his academic circles. Only his fortune was his, well, fortune.

  Had he not been independently wealthy he was certain that he would never have been afforded the amount of misdemeanor that he was, and most definitely he would not be called ‘eccentric’ for it. No, had Purdue been a man of average means he may well have been called insane for his ruthless pursuit of questionable theories to such an extent. It aided him well in his discoveries of the rules of the mysterious, but such knowledge as which he had attained also bordered on the freakishly dangerous.

  A dreamless sleep overcame him just a few miles past the boundaries of Paris as the train travelled south toward Lyon, a trip that would last a few lazy hours for passengers to catch a breather from the day before arriving at their destination in the dead of night. Purdue had jokingly pondered upon the nature of people who chose this train as being coy breeds of vampires, maybe secret lovers, assassins or agoraphobic poets looking for an outing. The tracks were smooth under his train car, lulling him into a deeper sleep where the drizzle of the night wept against his tightly shut window.

  In the corridor outside it was silent as most of the passengers were too tired to scuttle, apart from the occasional pee break or visit to the bar for a drink. Such peace was unusual in Dave Purdue’s life. There was almost a feeling of apprehension attached to it, as if he knew in his subconscious that there would be a penalty for the serenity. Perhaps this was a product of his lifestyle of the past few years, the danger associated with his affiliations and the constant recurrence of prophecies locked in antiquities he could not resist investigating.

  On the good side of his mind sat Nina Gould, the woman he had loved since the day he met her, regardless of her dismissal of him from the get-go. He had briefly managed to win her over, had the pleasure of her carnal affection and her company until this all too familiar association with arcane societies forced him to abandon her and his life as he knew it for a while. And when he had returned, found her attentions turned away from him, directed toward the only man who truly challenged him for Nina’s heart – Sam Cleave, Pulitzer prize winning investigative journalist and, as Purdue now reluctantly admitted, friend.

  Though the memories Dave Purdue’s mind wandered, probing at long closed doors of terrible things to sate his masochistic appetite for moral punishment. His nightmares threatened just on the other side of those doors, the red light of hell falling in thin streaks on the floor from under them. In those instances he would hear his twin sister’s voice calling his name, speaking of his despicable betrayal not once, but twice in her life. When she would dissipate he would be lured to other doors where evil men he once treated like brothers would lurk, grinding their teeth and slamming their fists.

  But Purdue would leave them all behind. Now he only looked forward, hastening towards the doors of knowledge and tranquility. He was done with the modern day Nazi’s and their relentless search for occult satisfaction and material gain. Corny as it was to him, he would keep his eye only on Nina, the feisty and petite historian who had unfortunately been at the receiving end of his reckless nature far too many times. This was why he elected to steer clear of her and Sam for a bit. In fact, he did not even care if his absence promoted their love for one another anymore, as long as she did not hate him anymore for endangering her. Purdue’s mind slid through this corridor within seconds and on the other side of the dark end there was a remarkable oblivion. No regrets, no nightmares pushing through and no guilt. He just slept.

  At 2am a reluctant knock rapped at his door.

  “Monsieur Purdue?” a lady’s voice whisper-asked.

  “Oui?” he mumbled from the dusk of his slumber.

  “Your sandwich and tea, as you requested, Monsieur Purdue,” she answered from the other side of the door. He shot a glance at the window. It was still thick night outside and the rain kept the glass wet.

  “Merci,” Purdue said as he took the tray from her trolley. The small, young woman looked mousy and sweet, but her expression was indifferent.

  “Would you like me to alert you before we reach Lyon?” she asked.

  “No. No, thank you, I’ll be awake from now on,” he smiled and closed the door with a click. He listened for her fading footsteps before he sat down to nibble on the Italian bread and cottage cheese she delivered with his Earl Grey. For some reason Purdue felt anxious about the rest of the train trip, but he could not find any reason to substantiate his suspicion.

  He looked forward to see Lydia, but he did not want to imagine what the illness had done to her physically. It was something he would have to face, but he was not a man who knew what to say in such awkward and painful situations. Lydia was always a crazy, mischievous woman who felt that nothing was impossible. Nothing at all. According to her personal point of view, physics and geometry were the keys to just about every secret the world found impossible.

  ‘Remember, David,’ he recalled her words, ‘just because we have not yet discovered the properties of the impossible, does not mean the impossible cannot be conquered. Mankind is a spec of nothing in the eyes of Creation and if science, as we know it, cannot explain something we deem it irrational.’ Purdue smiled, reciting her doctrine in his head as he had always done when he doubted his pursuits. ‘Don’t be fooled, old cock. Other dimensions run on other scientific properties, that’s all. As soon as we acquaint ourselves with the unknown sciences, we will function like those beings we now dismiss as figments of madness. We will become the impossible.’

  “I hope you fight that final threshold until I have spoken to you, Lydia,” he said softly, enjoying his light meal in the solitude he so needed. “Don’t you dare die until I have seen you.”

  He checked his tablet for messages. There was one from Nina, dated the day before.

  Hey Dave

  I am guest lecturing in Lisbon and it is stunning where they put me up. I’ll send some pictures later on. Met some bloke who is a technical genius and he wanted to exchange ideas with you regarding your laser research, so I thought to give you his number.

  Don’t know what you are up to, but I hope you are staying out of trouble, for once. I’ll be home in Oban by month end, if you want to say hello. Let me know if you hear from Sam, alright?

  Cheerio

  Nina

  Purdue smiled. It was good to hear from the beautiful historian again. Normally he had to establish contact first, so he felt flattered that she wrote out of the blue, with an invitation to her house, no less.

  “So, Sam is not with you after all,” Purdue said as he saved the message and took down the number she had included. He did not want to admit that he was relieved, but knowing that she was not with Sam cheered him quite a bit more than he cared to permit. After Dave Purdue answered his other e-mails and texts, he sipped the last of his tea and checked his watch.

  It was June 9th, 2015, 00.35am.

  He yawned, stretched and packed up the loose belongings he had unpacked before he fell asleep – a text book, a pocket watch and his can of deodorant. The train slowed down just as his alarm alerted him that they would reach Lyon in the next few minutes. When he emerged from his compartment he saw the trolley girl at the end of the passage, staring out into the darkness. There were no other passengers in his car as far as he could ascertain. Every partition he passed was neat and vacant, even though the train had barely come to a halt.

>   “Thank you for the lovely meal,” he told the trolley lady.

  He face was pale and void of emotion as she slowly turned to face him. She forced a smile, but all he could perceive was a terrible twist of doom in her.

  “You are very welcome, Monsieur Purdue. Be safe out there. Goodbye,” she replied blandly. Purdue stepped off the train, onto Lyon station’s platform in the small hours of June 9th and looked back at the train that started to move on again.

  From what his tired eyes reported, there was no-one in his car.

  2

  Purdue checked into the Hotel le Royal Lyon just before 3am and found it hard to fall asleep again. More than the strange train car experience, he felt too excited to see Lydia and wished he had one of Nina’s sleeping pills in his bag now. In this purgatory he remained, partaking in a plethora of baby bottles of liqueurs and brandy he discovered were included in his room fee. Delighted for the inebriation and ultimately, some sleep it would bring, Purdue enjoyed the pleasant old age atmosphere of the guest house and it’s remarkably mild temperature, considering the season. It was hardly Scotland or Germany.

  He set the television to National Geographic and finally succumbed to the gentle narration of the documentary, along with the soothing anesthesia of the alcohol.

  In the morning he woke to the loud lock bolt next door. It was not too harsh, but it was far too early for him to rise and he turned to sleep on, unsuccessfully. Purdue sighed. His mouth was extremely dry and his head felt like a bomb testing chamber. The sleep would not come back, so he finally dragged himself out of bed to take a hot shower. Save for the headache, the shower did him a world of good. His skin felt refreshed and warm and he even enjoyed shaving, something he usually dreaded in the morning.