“And while they were a prepared force of twelve, they never saw an attack except on three occasions. The first was in 1869, when a British contractor, an arrogant man of greed who thought the ‘savage tribe’ to be nothing more than inferior simpletons, entered their territory with the intent to mine the village. Looking to harvest precious stones that littered the rich volcanic soil, he and his team set out to round up and displace the ‘tribe,’ relocating the compliant and handling the resisters accordingly. They did not understand the Cotis or the abilities of their holy men and women. The British contractor and the bodies of his men were never found.
“The second attack on their culture came from a man of the cloth, a priest from another sect who sought to convert them all to his god, the true god. After being invited in amongst the Cotis people, sharing their meals and hospitality, he was told that the Cotis faith was strong. The Cotis, being a peace-loving society, voiced that there was more than enough room in the heavens and the hereafter for their gods to coexist. And with that, the foreign priest, unaccustomed to being rebuked, abruptly left. He returned days later with guns in hand to teach them of his greater god’s vengeance. His mission never heard from him again.
“The third intruder was twenty years ago, actually another group of twelve. They were military elite, a mercenary group from various European and African nations who had come to commandeer the village for a secret base of operation, a place to conduct their trade far from the eye of society. The soldiers, dressed in black, were trapped in the labyrinthine confines of the temple and urged to leave empty-handed or face the consequences of their actions. Foolishly thinking themselves superior as a result of their training, intelligence, and weaponry, the soldiers refused and continued with their demands. When they didn’t return, their loved ones were told they had been swallowed by the Asian jungle.
“To the outside world, the Cotis were thought to be a people out of myth, out of legend, filled with magic and an unusual harmony with the land, a culture whose example of peace was far more influential than the hollow words of politicians. Lately, though, there have been fractures in their society, the outside world infecting them with modern ideals-”
“Thanks for the history,” Frank said, cutting him off. “But what does the tattoo on Jack’s arm say? We don’t have time to waste here.”
Killian finally looked up toward Jack, pausing as he gathered his thoughts. “It talks about fate and destiny as if it was part of nature, part of the winds. Some kind of prayer for the dead, some kind of myth, ancient, that I don’t understand.”
“That’s it?” Jack asked.
“No.” Killian paused again, his steely academic facade cracking just a bit with foreboding. “The main topic of this mehndi-like tattoo is… It says you shall die at dawn, on the first day of the seventh month, killed by an enraged man who has lost everything he loves.”
“What kind of bullshit is that?” Frank spat out, angry. “You’re going to die tomorrow?”
“Relax,” Jack said.
“Relax, my ass. What about today? Didn’t you die earlier this morning? Where’s the mention of that? How about the weather? Any mention of the weather on his arm there, Doc?”
Killian’s eyes locked with Jack’s. “I take it the report of your death in the paper this morning has everything to do with this?” Killian paused, academia slipping away to be replaced with genuine concern. “Someone has given you a warning… and as you have already experienced, someone is trying to kill you, Jack.”
Jack rubbed his shoulder, wincing as his hand touched the wound. He turned to Frank.
“Well,” Frank said, looking at the tattoo, “that was a waste of time.”
“If they were after me, why not just kill me, ensure that I was dead on the riverbank? And why would someone take the time to scribble a warning on my arm? Why not just wake me up and tell me?”
Killian looked between the two friends, pointing at Jack’s arm. “I can assure you, with the intricacies, the time it took to write this, the author was sending a very deliberate message.”
Killian finally released Jack’s arm.
“And you don’t remember who did this to you?” Killian continued. “The complexity, the detail, This was not done in haste. He wrote this for a reason. I don’t know if it’s a warning, a reminder, or something to frighten you away…”
The room fell silent as Jack absorbed the man’s words.
“Tell me you’re not buying this shit,” Frank finally said.
“I don’t know what I believe right now,” Jack said. “But after what happened this morning, after what I’ve seen today…”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Look, I don’t believe it, but say… just say it’s true, and I don’t find Mia in time…” Jack let the supposition hang in the air.
“We’re going to find her,” Frank said. “And we’re going to find her well before dawn tomorrow.”
Jack rolled down his sleeve, covering up the words as if to make their prophetic declaration disappear from sight and mind and also to remove any chance of it coming to pass. But as much as he was skeptical, as much as logic told him there was no such thing as fate, fear welled inside him. It wasn’t for himself-he had no fear of death-it was for Mia. If he was to die tomorrow at dawn, he had less than eighteen hours to save her.
CHAPTER 17
As Jack stared at his arm, pondering the fateful words, he couldn’t help shaking his head at the irony. So often in life, we hear predictions about tomorrow’s weather, next week’s championship game, or who will win the Oscar, and more often than not, those predictions, while not coming to pass, do have a shadow of truth. Through either random chance, analytical review, pure statistical odds, or just plain dumb luck, the modern-day soothsayers sometimes hit the mark, not always on target but with a semblance of accuracy.
In ancient Greece, it was the oracle of Delphi, the Middle Ages had Nostradamus, the early twentieth century had Rasputin, and for the last hundred or so years, there were astrologists, tarot card readers, and palmists, who preyed on the weak who were in search of hope and some way to make sense of their lives.
And with the tattoo, the mehndi piece of artwork on his arm, there was a semblance of truth to the prediction. The truth was just as dire; it was just that the timing and the cause of death were wrong.
Jack had had a nagging pain in his hip, something he ascribed to when he got hit by a pitch in a baseball game back in May between the DA’s and the mayor’s offices. While uncomfortable, it was nothing more than an inconvenience that would occasionally send a sharp pain through his body. He was actually proud of the injury, thinking it was like a war wound, as Deputy Mayor Brian McDonald’s pitches were known to reach ninety miles an hour. While the curve ball cut its arc quicker than Jack had anticipated, knocking him to the ground, he was able to walk to first despite the pain and the oohs and ahs of the sympathetic crowd.
But ten days ago, when he finally mentioned it to his doctor and friend Ryan McCourt, he had him come in for an X-ray just to be sure there was no permanent damage.
When Ryan got the X-ray back, with Jack sitting in the embarrassing half-gown on the table, he examined it on the light wall for all of two seconds before ripping it down. As he turned to Jack, a grave shadow fell over his face.
Within ten minutes, Jack was being run through an MRI machine for a full-body scan. Blood was drawn, urine requested. He was poked and prodded as a team of doctors came forth discussing the results.
Ryan sat him down and suggested that he call and ask Mia to come meet them. But Jack would have none of that. He suspected where this was going the moment he saw his friend’s face looking at the first X-ray.