Threshold

“The bulbs mimic sunlight and reduce the effect of not getting outside. It’s no replacement, but it’s better than regular bulbs.”

“Then why are we here?”

Elma shrugged. “We do not know. But it is clear our captors mean us no harm.”

“Yet…” Fiona added.

Elma grimaced and then nodded. “Yes. Yet. We are supplied with games, water, reading material, and medical supplies should the need arise.”

With her emotions reined in by the conversation and her body returning to normal, Fiona stepped away and stood on her own. “Who brings the supplies? The food?”

“We do not see who brings the food,” said a tall, skinny black man. “They come when it is dark. At night. When they shut off the lights. We cannot see them. But we hear them.”

“Buru,” Elma scolded. “Don’t frighten the girl.”

“She will be less frightened if she knows what to expect.” He turned to Fiona. “Who do you think deposited you here during the night? None of us saw you arrive. We woke, and there you were.”

Elma muttered some exasperated Italian and said, “She has only just arrived!”

When Elma threw her arms up, a black symbol could be seen on the back of her hand. It was small, about the size of a quarter, but Fiona recognized it instantly. She stepped away from Elma.

Elma’s hands stopped in midair. She’d noticed Fiona’s fear and followed the girl’s eyes to the symbol on her hand—a circle with two vertical lines through it. “What is it, child?”

Fiona just stared, her mind putting together pieces faster than she knew how to react.

“It’s a brand of a sort,” Elma said, lowering her hand and holding it out.

Buru showed her his hand. Though less visible on his dark skin, the symbol was there. “All of us have one.” He pointed to her right hand. “Even you.”

Fiona looked at her hand, the dark symbol fresh and shining like a cancer. She tried rubbing it off, but it did not smudge or dull. Tattoos, she thought, and then realized their purpose. She had helped her grandmother tag goats on the reservation once. Hated every second. But the experience was etched into her mind, impossible to forget. The tags showed ownership. And she was the only one here who knew the name of their shepherd.

Alexander Diotrephes.

And the knowledge gave her strength.

Rubbing the tattoo with her thumb, she turned to Buru. “They only enter in the dark?”

He nodded, perplexed that the little girl would return to the topic. “There is a dim light from the hallway beyond the door, but that is all.”

“Have you seen one?”

Buru looked at Elma, who threw her hands up, and walked away while shaking her head and muttering in Italian.

“Only shadows,” Buru said. “But others have seen them.”

“Dark cloaks and gray skin?”

Elma stopped and turned around slowly. Her eyes wide.

Buru was likewise stunned. “You know of these things?”

Fiona sifted through a year’s worth of Chess Team education she got on top of her regular school studies. “My father called them wraiths but that’s a misnomer because ‘wraith’ is a Scottish word for ghosts … and these are not Scottish. And they’re not ghosts.”

“What are they?” Buru asked.

She shrugged. “I dunno, but I can tell you two things for sure. First, we won’t be escaping without help. Second, help is on the way.”

Buru looked incredulous, like he’d just remembered he was speaking to a young girl. “How do you know this?”

She looked at Elma, trying her best to sound confident, to believe that King, her father, would scour the earth for her, and said, “I never did tell you who my father is.”

NINETEEN

Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina

KING RESTED HIS elbows on the table and tried the word on for size. “Golem.” He didn’t like it. “As in the legendary Jewish variety?”

“You know it?” Aleman asked.

“Just the basics,” King said. “That they’re figures, most often created from clay and brought to life when a rabbi places a piece of paper in its mouth with the word ‘Emet,’ truth, written on it. Sometimes the word is inscribed on the golem’s body instead. To destroy the golem the ‘E’ is erased, leaving the word ‘Met,’ death.” King looked up at Aleman, who was typing away on his laptop as he listened. “You know how stupid this sounds?”

“You’ve seen Hydra reborn and Neanderthal women wanting to mate with Rook. This kind of thing should no longer be strange. What else do we know?”

King sat back and focused. They had covered the golem briefly during their year of study, along with a slew of other myths representing the world’s cultures and religions. Visualizing what he knew of the golem, images began to fill in the missing gaps.

“The most popular golem story involved a rabbi in Prague. In the 1500s. He used a golem to defend his ghetto against anti-Semitic attacks. The golem grew violent. Killed slews of people. Non-Jews. And the persecution was stopped.”

“Are they intelligent?” Aleman asked.

“No,” King said. “They can’t act without instructions from the rabbi who gives them life. They can’t talk. I suppose they have a limited intelligence in that they can understand commands and carry them out, but maybe that’s just the creator’s thoughts and feelings being imprinted on the golem?”

Aleman looked up slowly.

“What?” King asked.

“Just impressed is all. I don’t think you would have said that a year ago.”

“That’s nice, but none of it tells me who to shoot. Any idea?”

Aleman shrugged. “Beats me. But if inanimate objects really are being brought to life, maybe someone figured out how to tap into some kind of ancient creative power. God. Aliens. Intelligent capybara from another dimension. I’m leaving all the cards on the table.”

King opened his hands. “Okay, fine. We’ll call them golems for now, but that doesn’t get us any closer to finding Fiona, which is why I’m still here. Tell me what happened again. How she was taken.”

Aleman pursed his lips, looking down at the empty table. “The thing … the golem … was charging us. A man in black special ops gear, who I thought was you until he latched onto its head and drove what had to be a ton of stone into the pavement. As my vision faded I saw two things, black shapes attack the downed golem. I couldn’t see the man’s face, but he had a deep voice and said you would know who he was.”

“And we do. But he could be anywhere in the world.” King shook his head in frustration. “He didn’t say anything else?”

“Something … maybe … something about a promise.” Aleman looked up as the memory returned. “Breaking a promise. He said, ‘I hope he appreciates me breaking my promise.’”

“Breaking his promise?”

“Did he promise you anything?”

King’s head moved slowly from side to side. “Nothing.”

Aleman quickly scoured everything he could find about Hercules, searching for the keyword “promise.” He found nothing. “There’s no mention about a promise anywhere in literature or online. If he was dropping a hint, it’s not something publicly known.”

“Then it would have to be personal,” King said. “But I never met the man.”