The Fifth Day Read online

  CONTENTS

  The Fifth Day

  Copyright

  Also by

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part One - The Province of the Vanished

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Part Two - A Habitation of Dragons

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  Part Three - The Created Ones

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  About the Author

  Sephirot

  Exclusive Excerpt of Sephirot

  Also from Oghma Creative Media

  Copyright © 2018 by Gordon Bonnet

  All rights reserved. No part of this book or any of the stories herein may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941965

  ISBN: 978-1-63373-400-5

  Cover Design and E-Book Formatting by Casey W. Cowan

  Editing by Gil Miller & Dennis W. Doty

  Solasta Press

  Oghma Creative Media

  Bentonville, Arkansas

  www.oghmacreative.com

  ALSO BY

  KILL SWITCH

  LOCK & KEY

  SEPHIROT

  GEARS

  SIGNAL TO NOISE

  SIGHTS, SIGNS, AND SHADOWS

  SNOWE AGENCY MYSTERIES

  POISON THE WELL

  THE DEAD LETTER OFFICE

  To my uncle, Sidney Joseph Ayo,

  who used to scare the hell out of me and my cousins with tales of the Loup Garou and the Feu Follet and other creatures of the south Louisiana swamps.

  I built the world, but you gave me the monsters that inhabit it.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I AM DEEPLY grateful to Casey Cowan of Oghma Creative Media for his continual support and encouragement, and for overseeing the publication of The Fifth Day. A sincere thank you also goes to my editor, Gil Miller, for his sharp eye and amazing talent, as well as to Dennis Doty and Susan Eschbach for tightening up my writing in the galley stage. I couldn’t have done this without their support, skill, and expertise.

  Thank you also to Cyndy Prasse Miller for her invaluable assistance with marketing and promotion, and Venessa Cerasale for all she does to keep the Oghma crew running on all cylinders.

  I would be remiss in not giving my warmest thanks to my inimitable cheerleading squad, who keep me putting words on the page: Andrew Butters, Carla Dugas, K. D. McCrite, Jennifer Gracen, Cly Boehs, Mary Ellen Salmon, and Dorothy Sherrill. And last, to my lovely wife, Carol Bloomgarden… thank you for always being there, always believing in me, and always having a hug, a smile, or a glass of red wine ready, and sometimes all three.

  AND GOD SAID, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.

  And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind:

  And God saw that it was good.

  And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

  And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

  And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind:and it was so.

  And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind:

  and God saw that it was good.

  Genesis 1:20-25

  PROLOGUE

  THE SUN MADE it squint. Its eyes were built for dank and dim swamps, its splay-toed paws for gaining purchase among the reeds and squelching mud. Here, the daylight beat down on its head unfiltered through the reeking mists it knew best, and it raised a long muzzle to snarl rage at the sky.

  Why was it here? The question slipped past and was gone. It was not of the kind that asks questions, wonders at reasons, ponders possibilities. What was before it was all there was—this moment, this place. The hesitation as it took its first step, feeling the unfamiliar roughness of hot stone beneath its feet, was gone in an instant. There was the present, and that was that. If the present was made from sand and rock and dry brush, a blazing yellow sun, and the salt smell of the ocean, that was how it would be.

  It wasn’t alone. It knew that. There were others like it, created afresh from the nightmares of children and spun from the dark fantasies of adults. They weren’t its kind. It could smell that clearly enough. But they too had opened new eyes, some slit-pupilled like a cat’s, to look around the place and marvel at the strangeness of it all.

  There was also prey nearby.

  It salivated at the thought of sinews to tear, bones to crack, flesh to worry and lick. Not until it had let its chosen prey run for a time, of course. The rules had to be obeyed.

  But the end was always the same. It was a long time since it had fed. Forever, in fact.

  Near at hand was another one of its kind. He could hear it rustling against some underbrush, and it caught a glimpse of a slouching semi-human form moving off toward the shelter of a… cave? It was too regular, too square to be a cave, but the opening in the front showed a shadowed interior and the promise of coolness. The cave was a man-structure, probably. Men liked such things, with straight edges and right angles, to show that they could master nature, bend it to their desires, eliminate the rough and the irregular and the uneven.

  The dark space inside the cave was a place to get away from the burning eye of the sun, and it took a step toward it. But the other one had gotten there first, slipped inside, and now sat waiting and watching. He could see the glitter of golden eyes in the dimness, watching for any approach. If it tried to enter the cave, there would be a fight, and the time had not yet come for fighting. Perhaps, after all the prey was gone and there was nothing left but bleached bones, the created ones would go for each other’s throats. But not now.

  It looked up, sniffed the air, nostrils quivering. It knew which prey it would pursue first, and he was close by. Not close enough to see, but close enough to smell. Soon it would begin its pursuit, following the old rules. Mark your prey. Let him think he has escaped for a time. Show him that he is wrong. Let the fear build up, fear so strong it stinks, until the time comes to go in for the kill.

  Others had other ways. It knew that much. Some killed instantly—no toying with the prey, letting fear tenderize the meat. Others bewitched or tricked or kidnapped the body or stole the soul. They would have their own prey too, to deal with in their own fashion.

  For now, it was time to find a cool, dark place to hide, to sleep, to wait until the time was right. Then the hunt would begin. It would know when to start the pursuit.

  It always knew.

  PART ONE

  The Province of the Vanished

  1

  NEVER FORGET THE moral of all the old stories—that the monsters, whatever they are, can be defeated. All stories, at their ess
ence, come down to that single truth. And now gather around, children, and you will hear a story, a new tale, but only new in its details, for at their essence, they are all the same.

  This story is therefore blood kin to all of the other stories the children of men have told. A child is left in the woods to be eaten by wolves, but a kindly woodcutter takes him in and raises him, not knowing that the child is the Prince Royal. A witch casts a spell of death against a woman of whom she is jealous, and after many travails, the curse backfires and the woman is restored, triumphant, to her place. The evil sorcerer lays waste to the land, and only the one with the magic key can stop him from ruling forever.

  This one is a story of foretelling, and the power of insight, and the terrible price of knowing. If it seems different, it is only the trappings. For all stories come from the dark sea of the human mind, and return to it when the story ends.

  This one begins with a prophecy and ends with a question, but so do all of the old tales, because which of us doesn’t ask at the end if they really did live happily ever after?

  So sit and listen, and you will hear a tale of a time the Earth changed, and of the people who were left to find their way afterward.

  —

  THE FIRST CARD Zolzaya Dubrovna flipped over was Death.

  Her client’s eyes widened. Zolzaya herself winced, and had a couple of thoughts that used language unbecoming of a Wise Woman from Bulgaria, and a vocabulary much more consistent with the kind she’d used up until six months ago, when she had been Caroline Loeffler from Oxnard. With an effort, she forced her face into a passable impression of calm insight. She gave a gentle and knowing smile to the client, a worried-looking forty-something named Bonnie, and patted her hand, making her many bracelets jingle.

  “Don’t worry, my dear. The meaning of Death in the Tarot usually doesn’t mean actual, physical death.”

  “Usually?” Bonnie’s voice was a squeak.

  “I should amend that to ‘almost never.’ It means change. The abandonment of old ways of doing things. Sometimes the card Death isn’t even negative, despite the imagery. It signifies power, your ability to control change. It can mean taking charge, a shift catalyzed by abandoning something that was holding you back.”

  Bonnie’s face relaxed. “Is there a card that does mean death? Like real death? Like dead?”

  Zolzaya gave her a knowing nod. “Yes, there is. In certain configurations, the Nine of Swords can mean death.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  The next card Zolzaya turned over was the Nine of Swords.

  “Shit,” she said, under her breath.

  She hated it when the cards came up bad. It made the clients anxious, and almost certainly guaranteed that she wouldn’t receive a tip. Sometimes it was possible simply to lie about what the cards said—very few of the clients knew anything about the meaning of the Tarot, and even those who did could be bamboozled by some fast talking about what the cards meant in certain circumstances, in certain positions, or in relation to other cards.

  It was hard to see what she could do to redeem this one, though. It was her own fault, opening up her big mouth about the Nine of Swords. And there it sat, large as life, with its terrifying image of a person sitting up in bed with his hands over his face, and behind his figure a jet-black background with a row of nine swords.

  “Does this mean that I’m going to die?” Bonnie’s voice was tremulous.

  “No, no. I said the Nine of Swords can mean death. Together with the Death card, it… it doesn’t mean death.”

  Bonnie’s expression gradually shifted from horrified to doubtful. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You cannot take literally the message of the Tarot. The reading of the Major and Minor Arcana means more than simply reading a list of interpretations from a book. One has to see the big picture, put together the message that the cards are developing via the mystical connection between the client, the reader, and the universe, and then verbalize that.”

  “So you’re saying that the Nine of Swords means death except when you say it doesn’t.”

  “Now, I wouldn’t say it that way, I mean that the cards—”

  “In other words, you’re making it all up.”

  Zolzaya bristled, not because the woman was wrong, but because not to would have looked like acquiescence.

  “Not at all. Different practitioners form different bonds with the cards and the client, and shed light on different facets of their lives. You can’t expect consistency from something that is, at its heart, a spiritual process.”

  “That sounds silly.” Bonnie picked up her purse from the floor and stood. “I think you’re an awful person, setting up these cards so as to scare me. It’s not—not nice.”

  “Your hand cut the deck.” Zolzaya tried unsuccessfully to keep the peevish tone from her voice.

  “You people know all sorts of tricks.” Bonnie shoved the chair in toward the table, jerking the neatly laid-out cards askew. “I’m sure you did some kind of sleight-of-hand, or whatever it is they call it.”

  “My dear,” Zolzaya said, instead of what she would have liked to say, which ended with “…and the horse you rode in on.”

  But Bonnie snapped at her, “I’m not your dear. And I hope you’re not thinking I’m going to pay you anything for this… this foolishness.”

  “You should at least make that decision once you’ve had a complete reading. You shouldn’t make a judgment about me, or anything, on the basis of two cards.”

  “First, you give me the Death card, then you say the Death card isn’t a death card, but another one is, and you give me that one, and then start babbling about how it doesn’t mean what you say it means unless you say it means that. I think you set me up to get your jollies. And I’m not falling for it. Good-bye.”

  Bonnie turned and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind her, and making the bell that was attached to it jangle cheerfully.

  “Fuck.”

  “Yo, Carrie,” a familiar voice drawled from a back room. “Done already?”

  “Client got pissed and walked out. And don’t call me Carrie, Vincent.”

  A tall, gangly blond man with curly hair in need of a haircut came in through the beaded curtain separating the sitting room from the rest of the house. “Well, I’m sure as hell not calling you Ziola.”

  “Zolzaya.”

  “Whatever. It sounds ridiculous. You’re not Romanian.”

  “Bulgarian.”

  “Whatever.”

  “It’s right there on the sign, Vincent. Right there on the sign. Bulgaria.”

  “The sign also says you’re wise. But anyway, I wondered if you wanted some dinner.”

  “What’s for dinner?”

  “Soup. I’ll put in an extra can if you want. Chicken noodle.”

  “Okay. I guess. If I’d gotten one more paying client, we’d have been able to order-in pizza.”

  “Too bad.” He shrugged. “How’d you chase away this one?”

  “She got two cards she didn’t like.” She gestured at the Death and the Nine of Swords, still lying upright on the table.

  “Couldn’t you have told her they were good cards? That they meant she was gonna get written into a will, or something?”

  “Didn’t think fast enough.” She rubbed her eyes, smearing mascara and purple eye-shadow sideways across her temple. “I’m getting sick of doing this. Every day it’s the same thing. People wanting their significant others back, people trying to find a way to get rich, horny guys trying to find out their likelihood of getting a woman. And then you get these neurotic types who freak out and walk when they don’t get the fortune they were counting on.”

  She reached out, and absently turned over the next card. It was The Moon.

  “Good thing she left when she did,” Vincent observed.

  She nodded. The Moon was the card of dark secrets, evil dealings, betrayal, black magic. Better that Bonnie hadn’t seen this one.

  “What
do the others say? Maybe they would have gotten better as you went along.”

  “Couldn’t have gotten worse.”

  One by one, Zolzaya flipped over the cards, and as she did so, she at first frowned, then looked baffled, then horrified.

  Justice. Retribution, revenge, the due penalties of evil.

  The Ten of Swords. Heading toward disaster, a downward cycle in life.

  The Devil. Change, violence, brutality.

  The Three of Swords. Heartbreak, an emotional blow, loss.

  The Hanged Man. Martyrdom, surrender.

  She looked up at her boyfriend. “I’m afraid to turn over the last one.”

  “I didn’t think you believed all of this horseshit.”

  “I don’t. But still.”

  “Oh, come on.” He reached over and flipped the final card, the one that was supposed to tell the reader about the client’s future.

  The final card was the Falling Tower, showing a lightning bolt striking a castle, and two bodies cast headlong from its windows. The card of upheaval and destruction.

  “Wonder if she was some kind of gang member about to go on a shooting spree?” Vincent mused.

  “Her? Yeah, right. She looked like a mouse.”

  “Looks can fool you.”

  “Pfft. Please. Not in this case.” She looked back down at the table again. “I’ve never seen such a bad set of cards. It’s like I picked out all of the worst ones deliberately.”

  “I’ll bet she thought you did. I’ll go put the soup on. You got another half-hour till you close. Maybe someone else will come in, and give Zolia the Wise a chance to redeem herself.”