House of Acerbi

John Lyman House of Acerbi

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation

Book of Daniel 12:1

The name of the star is wormwood.

Revelation 8:11

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar

FACT

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Bible code researchers went back to their computers and discovered the details of the attack encoded in startling clarity in the Book of Genesis. Using the ancient Hebrew text that has been handed down for the past 3000 years, they found the words Twin Towers encoded next to Airplane in the same place, and running across these two words was a message that sent chills up their spines-It caused to fall, knocked down. The odds against these words appearing together, encoded in the same place, are at least 10,000 to 1. But there was more. In Israel, the mathematician who discovered the code found the words, the sin, the crime of Bin Laden on the same page of Genesis where the original text of the Bible stated, they saw the smoke rising above the land like the smoke of a furnace.

PROLOGUE

The South of France near Carcassonne

Summer -1292

On the day when everything in her world would change forever, little Catherine Acerbi was skipping behind her mother through a field of tall sunflowers. For most of the morning, Catherine and her mother, Marie Acerbi, had been drifting on the slow-moving current of the beautiful Aude River, talking and laughing against the sound of insects buzzing along its banks, until finally the sun’s arc across the sky announced that it was time for them to go.

After walking through the field of flowers, they emerged at the base of a mountain trail and stopped to gaze up at a massive castle perched at the edge of a vertical cliff. The site of their fortress home had always been a source of fascination to the little girl, and in her imagination she had come to believe that a giant hand had somehow lowered the towering structure from the heavens to its lofty position just so she could watch the birds soar among the clouds outside her bedroom window.

Under a brilliant sun that had chased the blueness from the sky and turned it white, the two had just begun their climb up the steep path that led to the castle above when a flock of birds suddenly burst from a nearby tree and screeched into the sky over their heads. Startled, the two stopped just as the ground began to shake, while in the distance, they could hear the sound of thunder as the faint tremor beneath their feet grew into a steady rumble. The movement and noise continued to intensify, until soon it seemed as if the very air around them was vibrating in a tactile assault of both motion and sound that was quickly spreading across the land.

Looking to the north, Marie felt the hair rise on the back of her neck when she saw a cloud of red dust rising above the trees beyond the field, and it was coming closer.

“Qu?est-ce-que, Mere …what is it, mother?”

“Stay close to me, Cherie.”

The shaking in the ground grew stronger.

“Mere!”

Marie held her daughter close and began to pray just as the undulating wall of red dust exploded from the tree line and rolled across the field. It was headed straight for them.

“Run Catherine!”

Marie began to run, but Catherine’s nine-year-old legs could barely keep up as her mother urged her on. “Come, Cherie, you must run. You are too big to carry now.”

Glancing back over their shoulders, the two witnessed a sight that made them freeze in place. Fast-moving black shapes were weaving through the tall sunflowers, trampling them in their path as they moved across the field.

Marie shivered in the heat. It was as if the devil himself was riding across the land.

Catherine squeezed her mother’s hand. “Mere! Qu?est-ce-que?”

“Horses, Cherie! Many horses!”

Against the sound of trumpets calling the castle’s defenders to arms, the two began scrambling up the side of the hill just as an advance group of soldiers came running down the path. Behind them, riding a wild-eyed horse padded for battle, Catherine saw her father holding his sword high, his long dark hair curling down over the shoulders of his armor. With a slight jerk on the reins, Armand Acerbi brought the snorting animal to a stop. Looking up at her husband, a knot of fear grabbed at Marie’s stomach, for she saw that he was smiling the smile of a warrior on his way to battle.

“Go quickly to the castle, my loves. Seal the doors. I will return!”

Marie ran to him, but as she reached out to touch his hand, their eyes met with a look of understanding, for it was evident by the size of the force now charging through the field below that Armand Acerbi would never return.

“May God be with you,” she said.

“And also with you, dear wife.” With that, Acerbi galloped away as Marie brushed the long blonde hair from her face and wiped the tears from her eyes before leading her daughter the rest of the way up the winding path.

At the top of the hill, Marie and Catherine raced under the grated portcullis into the castle’s inner courtyard, while down below, in a field of tall sunflowers, two armies well-versed in the art of medieval combat were now coming together in a violent clash of stabbing, merciless death. Pausing for a moment to gather her thoughts, Marie waited until the heavy iron grating had been lowered inside the main gate before motioning for Catherine to follow her up a narrow stone stairway.

With their swords drawn, two of her husband’s best soldiers ran behind her, for she was the lady of the