The pythia shook her head. “This isn’t about us nabbing the Sage Stone. It’s about keeping that rock out of the hands of the Nephilim. Their diviner has been assembling global death squads ever since this quest started. He’s planning to arm those guys with some kind of biological or chemical weapon and turn them loose on the world. I don’t know why the Sage Stone is important to him, but Faye believed that his whole plan hinges on it. I believe it too. He won’t give the order to attack til he has it. We can stop him cold by snagging the artifact before he does.”
“But what if your theory doesn’t hold up?” Grace Littlefield challenged. “Say you prevent Metcalf from capturing the Sage Stone, what’s to keep him from unleashing his army without it?”
“He won’t,” Griffin remarked quietly. “You must remember that the brotherhood of the Nephilim owes its very existence to nothing more substantial than a mad set of religious beliefs. The god they serve is exacting and prone to wrath which makes cult members anxious to please him. Their diviner has apparently decided that the best way to gratify his lord is by starting a holy war—a war which he is convinced he cannot win without the Sage Stone. If we deprive him of the artifact, he will interpret his loss as a sign of divine disapproval of his military ambitions. Such an ill omen will immobilize him with fear.”
Grace remained unconvinced. “Even if you’re right, it would still be a good idea to hedge our bets. In the past, whenever soldiers started marching, the Arkana went dark and waited til the smoke cleared.”
Several members of the Circle nodded vigorously in agreement. Half a dozen voices chimed in with comments like “Yes, absolutely” and “We need to lay low.”
Cassie raised her hands for silence. “You’re forgetting one major difference. Every time the Arkana used that strategy in the past, we were spectators. We could afford to sit back and watch while the rest of the world slugged it out. Now that Abraham Metcalf has tagged us for extermination, we don’t have seats in the second balcony anymore.”
Her listeners looked stunned as the implication struck them.
The pythia continued. “None of you have been up close and personal with the Nephilim the way Erik and Griffin and I have. The cult has a zero-tolerance policy for anybody who doesn’t drink their flavor of Kool-Aid. You can’t simply stick your heads in the sand and wait for this thing to blow over because it never will. We’re the Nephilim’s Number One Enemy now which means they’ll be coming after us bigtime. You might as well paint a giant red bull’s eye on the roof of the schoolhouse because they won’t quit til they’ve wiped us out.”
“All the more reason to dismantle the Central Catalog,” Stefan Kasprczyk objected vehemently. “Above all else, we have a sacred duty to protect the troves, no? We have guarded them for centuries, and they must remain our chief concern.”
Cassie nodded. “You’re right. The troves are your top priority, but I think you’ve lost sight of what the troves really are.”
Several attendees exchanged puzzled glances.
“The troves aren’t just collections of cracked pottery and broken statues. You’ve preserved them because of what they stand for. They prove there was a time long ago when we knew how to live in peace with each other. We created entire civilizations that weren’t fueled by invasion and slavery and murder. The troves prove that the world was a decent place before overlords slaughtered their way across the globe and almost destroyed it with their endless warmongering.”
She eyed her listeners intently.
“If you hide and don’t lift a finger to stop them, the Nephilim will root out every single trove and burn it to the ground. They won’t simply destroy the Arkana, they’ll destroy the only proof that a better way of life ever existed and the hope that it could ever exist again.”
She paused to let her words sink in before continuing. “And it won’t end with us either. After we’re out of the picture, Metcalf’s death squads will keep killing until civilization as we know it is gone. In its place, the Nephilim will set up a world where women are traded around like herds of cattle. Where families are broken apart and reassembled like Legos at the whim of the guy in charge. Too many good people in the Arkana gave their lives to keep that kind of world from becoming our only option.”
“You just proved my point, kiddo,” Maddie remarked acidly. “We’ve had too many losses already.”
“You want to talk about loss?” Cassie wheeled on her. “I’ve lost everybody I ever cared about because of the Arkana. My parents, my only sister, Faye, Erik.”
She stared at the chatelaine accusingly. “If Erik were standing here right now, what do you think he’d say to your proposal?”
Maddie glowered back, refusing to answer.
“He’d ask you why he died for nothing. He went down fighting, and he expects us to do the same—to keep on fighting til we win or die trying.”
Despite Maddie’s stubborn silence, she forged on relentlessly. “Well? He’s waiting for your answer, and so am I. You say he was the son you never had. If you really loved him as much as you claim, then you couldn’t use his death as an excuse to take the coward’s way out. He would never have stood for that!”
The chatelaine leaped from her chair, overturning it in the process. She towered over the pythia.
Cassie fought the instinctive urge to take a step back. Instead, she stood her ground, wordlessly daring the Amazon to strike her.
Maddie drew herself up. Her eyes were burning with fury and grief. Tears streamed down her face unchecked. In mute rage, she turned and stormed out of the hall. The doors slammed behind her with
