The Order Master

By Brian Rush

Michael Cambridge is the hereditary leader of a religious order of assassins. He wants out, but the order will kill him if he leaves.

The Scourge of God was founded in the 14th century to kill the Droon, men and women that the order’s founder believed were devils in human form. Devoutly Christian, intensely conservative and secretive, willing to kill to preserve Christendom, the Scourge is fanatical and deadly. Mike tried once to escape his destiny, but the order forced him to assume his father’s position as its leader – under threat of death if he refused.

But the Droon themselves may hold the key to his freedom. For Mike, interrogating a Droon according to the rules of an old agreement between them and the Scourge of God, discovers that they are not devils after all, but aliens from another world, their spirits incarnate in human form after their home planet was destroyed in a great interstellar war. Cruel, deceitful, and monstrous, the Droon are reborn in a new human body each time one of them dies, with all their memories intact. They have chosen Earth as their refuge, and mean to transform it into a world under their total domination, with the rest of humanity reduced to their slaves and pain-toys.

Yet they are not unopposed. Their enemies, the Andol, are also on Earth in human form. Down the centuries the Andol have been completely invisible to the Scourge of God, but now their presence has been revealed to Mike Cambridge by the Droon. Desperate for a way to be free, Mike sets out to find the Andol, hoping that they can help him against both the Droon and his own hereditary doom. Thus he begins a long, dangerous quest. Mike is pursued by deadly alien killers. He is confused by his passion for Amanda, the beautiful and charismatic Andol leader, uncertain of her motives and her manipulative ways, but vulnerable to the dictates of his heart. The danger grows as well from his own order, which has become increasingly suspicious of Mike’s heretical thoughts and actions.

Can Mike escape from his bondage to the Scourge of God before the order or the Droon bring his life to an end? If he does, will he truly be free, or will he find himself wrapped around Amanda’s pretty finger? Who will control his destiny – and that of the human race?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Rush
• Release date: Nov 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781310860379

Brian Rush

Brian Rush has been writing compulsively in one form or another for many years. He has been a student (one is always a student) of the occult for just as long, and has published articles and taught classes on the subject. He has lived on both coasts of the U.S., never far from the sea, and currently resides in northern California.

Book preview

Refuge

Volume I

The Order Master  

A Novel  

By Brian Rush  

© 2013 by Brian Rush

Smashwords Edition

Cover Art by Igor Zhuravlov    

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons is entirely coincidental.

CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter One

Is it working?

I think so. Give me a minute. The accent was upper-class English tainted with a touch of Northern California.

Damn it, it’s not working. We got a bad copy, Brother Mike. This other voice was pure California.

Calm down. It’s not a perfect copy but — there! The key, after some jostling and fiddling, finally turned in the lock, and the door opened with a click. Relax, Dave.

Sorry, said Dave, but this makes me nervous.

And keep your voice down!

Yes, brother, said Dave in a whisper. Think he’s here?

Of course I think he’s here, why would we be here if I didn’t? Stop a minute. Do your breathing routine. Get hold of yourself.

Dave, a short, stocky blond man in his middle thirties wearing blue jeans and a leather jacket, stood straight, closed his eyes, and breathed rhythmically. As he performed the exercise, his nervousness faded, the calm appeared in his center, and he found himself able to think clearly again. He opened his eyes.

Better?

Yeah. Sorry, Brother Mike.

It happens, said Mike with a shrug. The English transplant was a little taller than Dave, dark and slim, with a long nose and a strong chin. He and Dave slipped into the unlit storage room of the Oakland accounting firm and closed the door behind them. Mike cast about with his telepathic sense and found their quarry, working late as their careful reconnaissance had shown he often did, in one of the offices. All right, you remember what’s different about this one? he said.

Yeah, we’re up close and personal instead of shooting him from a distance.

Besides that.

No killing. We subdue him somehow, question him, and let him live.

Exactly.

Or rather you question him. I leave the room.

Yes. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Brother Dave, but we know the Droon will answer questions only for a Chapter Master, with no one else present. We know that because the Scourge of God has done this several times since the fourteenth century and that’s the way it always works. So I have to question Stevens alone.

Okay. Come on, let’s finish this and get away.

They slipped into the hallway. One office had a light on. A man in his forties sat before a computer screen, doing something related to accounting, Mike supposed. The image could hardly have been less threatening, except for the aura of menace like a cloud of jagged broken glass swirling around the man that identified him to Mike as something more malevolent than even the wickedest human being. In Scourge of God tradition, the Droon were believed to be demons. Mike had his doubts about that, which was one reason they were doing the hit this way: interrogation, not assassination. Harder, more dangerous, but sometimes necessary.

The Droon, John Stevens, continued to tap his keyboard and squint at the screen. Nothing either in his body language or in his aura showed that he knew the Scourge had come. The two men, keeping low and to the shadows, approached the half-open door to his office.

On my signal, Mike whispered. He judged the moment, and whispered again, Go!

Dave leaped, kicked the door wide open, and darted behind Stevens’ chair. Stevens, if he had been a real human being, should have been paralyzed with surprise for a moment. No such luck. He erupted from his seat remarkably fast for a middle-aged man and struck Dave a hard blow across the right temple, then kicked him in the knee, even harder. Dave went down, groaning.

Mike didn’t waste time cursing. He caught Stevens’ left arm and brought it down across his upraised knee. Bones cracked, and Stevens ground his teeth but made no outcry. Mike pulled Stevens’ fractured arm behind him and caught him in what had to be a very painful lock. Stevens tried to reach him with his right hand and his feet, but Mike controlled him with the pressure and pain until he could draw his knife and place it across Stevens’ throat.

We want answers, he said. Give them and you’ll live for a year and a day. By the Pact of War I swear it, in the name of Saint Joan, the truth means you need not fear.

Stevens froze. Scourge of God? he breathed.

Of course, said Mike.

You’re a Chapter Master?

That’s right.

Shit. Okay. You win.

Dave had sat up and was examining his knee.

Broken? Mike asked him. He released Stevens, who sat at his desk and cradled his wounded arm. Mike didn’t put away his knife, though. Droon were honorable about the Pact, all the traditions said so, but they were treacherous in practically every other way. The traditions said that, too.

I don’t think so, said Dave.

Can you walk?

Let me see. Using the wall, Dave levered himself to his feet and limped across the office to the door. Looks like it. Not broken.

Okay, go on out of here. Let me question our demon buddy. Stevens snorted. Dave nodded and slipped out the door, closing it behind him.

Stevens’ eyes were closed and he seemed to be doing some sort of mental discipline or magic spell. When he opened them again, they were clear and calm and apparently free of pain. What do you want to know, Chapter Master? he said.

The latest information we have about you, about who you are, comes from a hundred years ago, said Mike. The story is that you’re demons from Hell, taking human form to tempt humanity away from God’s will. I want an update on that.

What’s wrong with the old story?

I don’t believe in Hell, said Mike. I don’t believe in the Christian God, either.

Your unbelief doesn’t make the story false.

Are you a demon from Hell? Mike asked directly.

Stevens grimaced. No, he said. Mike nodded. The traditions regarding the Pact of War claimed that the Droon had to answer any direct question truthfully.

What are you? he asked.

Stevens sighed and sat back in his chair. At this stage of the game, what I am is a human being.

What were you before you were a human being?

I guess you’d call me an alien.

You mean like from another planet?

Yes. Maybe a parallel universe. We’re still trying to figure that out.

So. An alien mind or spirit or something, and you take over human bodies?

No, said Stevens. I was born in this body, the standard way, just like you. All of us are. We’re born, we grow up, we go to school, we get jobs, we live human lives, and we die.

Sounds boringly normal, said Mike. Stevens shrugged. So why do you say you started as an alien?

That was the first body I was born into.

On the alien world or maybe in the parallel universe.

That’s right.

What happened to that body?

It was killed, Stevens said. It was killed when our entire home planet was wiped out by the Andol.

And who are the Andol?

Another race of aliens. A bunch of communists.

Communists? Are you telling me that Marx and Lenin exported their ideology to another universe?

Marx got his ideas from the Andol, probably. They genetically engineered themselves to all be equal and obedient cogs in the wheel, and they created a lockstep communistic utopia and wanted to impose it on everyone else. We didn’t want to go along. We resisted them for several thousand years. Then one day they hit us with —

Nukes?

Close enough. Weapons of mass destruction. Anyway, they wiped us out. He sighed. We came here for a refuge, to rebuild, but they followed us.

So these Andol things are here, too?

That’s right.

How did you get here after your world was destroyed?

You know how. You study magic, the mysteries, whatever you call it.

I don’t know how to do something like that.

Yeah, well I guess we have a few tricks you don’t, then, but it’s still basically the same stuff.

Why didn’t any of you tell Chapter Masters this before?

Because none of you asked the right questions, Stevens said. You couldn’t seem to think of us any way except as demons, so we went along. He shook his head. It’s not like we wanted to volunteer information and be helpful. You assholes are a serious nuisance.

Only a nuisance?

Yeah, that’s about it.

Our records say we’ve killed more than two thousand of you over the centuries.

I can believe that, said Stevens. You killed me three times.

Mike nodded. So when you die –

We reincarnate, of course, said Stevens. I’ve lived twelve human lifetimes, and only one as what I started. That’s why I say at this stage of the game I’m a human being. I have a lot more memories as a human being than as anything else.

So we’re not doing a very good job of getting rid of you.

You have never ‘gotten rid of’ a single one of us.

Have we slowed you down at least?

Stevens glared. Yes, he admitted.

You say these Andol are on Earth, too?

That’s right, said Stevens.

What do they want here?

Maybe to finish the job on us that they started. Maybe to add your planet to their communistic utopia. Maybe to domesticate you and raise you to be food animals. Maybe you should ask them.

All right, said Mike, maybe I should. Where can I find one of them?

There’s a cell of theirs, or an ashram or whatever you want to call it, in San Francisco.

Do you have an address for it?

No, said Stevens.

Damn it, said Mike.

Think about it, these are the genocidists who wiped out our whole world. They have to know we’re not feeling real grateful to them. Think they’re going to put us on their mailing list and ask us over for tea?

I guess not, Mike said. San Francisco, you said.

That’s right. I don’t know where in the city, and I don’t know how many of them there are. I don’t have photographs or names or anything like that.

What do you want here? Mike asked.

To survive, said Stevens. This is our refuge, like I said.

This is our home.

Look, you medieval meddler. What do you think this planet would have amounted to if we hadn’t come here? Have you ever considered that?

What?

You have to know we had a pretty advanced science and technology on the old world, and we’ve been working on this one for centuries. Right after we popped in, boom! Instant scientific revolution. You think that was an accident? You talking chimpanzees would be living in thatched huts and sleeping with the pigs and sheep still if it weren’t for us. Shit, you’d think you’d be just a little appreciative.

I think we might have managed on our own, said Mike.

Maybe. Eventually. Not as fast, though, that’s for sure.

So what do you want, to recreate your old home world here?

As closely as we can given the different species, sure. A free society of individualists, with advanced technology. That’s what we were, and that’s what we’re trying to make you into. Not doing that badly, either, although we still have a ways to go. He shook his head. You shitheads have been going after the wrong guys all this time. And the Andol have been doing a lot better job of hiding from you. You never even knew they existed until tonight.

Mike nodded. Okay, he said, I guess that will do. He opened the door to Stevens’ office. For a year and a day, the truth has made you safe from us. He pulled a business card from his pocket and dropped it on Stevens’ desk. The card showed a red circle-cross on white and the words in Latin, Diabolus In Iferno Est — the Devil is in Hell.

He closed the door behind him when he left.

۞

That night, Mike dreamed of his father. In parts of the dream he was a little boy again, and his father was training him in the skills he would need later in his life. In others Mike had his current thirty-four years, but a conversation ran through it, a coherent stream of talk connecting splintered and shifting images. Parts of the conversation were real talks Mike and his father had held while Dad was still alive, but other parts had never happened in real life.

"Dad, you mean you kill people?"

They’re not really people, Mike. The Droon are devils in human form.

But how do you know?

By their demonic halo, their aura. Also by their actions. You’ll see soon.

But what kind of actions?

Mike, every Droon keeps a household staffed by slaves, people held in bondage by one trick or another. Some are illegal immigrants who serve under threat of being turned in to the authorities. Some are on the run from the law or from criminals they’ve crossed. Some are held in fascination by the magic power all the Droon have. But whatever the reasons, no one leaves a Droon household alive, as long as the Droon himself lives. And the things the Droon do with their slaves, the tortures, the sadistic fantasies! They’re up to all kinds of other shady activity, too. They run sweatshops, they corrupt politicians, they kill people for pleasure. Take all the wickedness the human heart indulges in, bind it all together in a single individual and add a huge helping of magic, and that would describe a Droon. But not every evil person is a Droon, although every Droon is evil. The real test is the aura, as I said. You’ll see very soon. I’ll take you to visit one of them that we’ve been watching, and you can see the aura for yourself. Evil in real human beings is God’s problem; we don’t concern ourselves with that. The Scourge of God exists only to battle the Droon.

But just the same, Dad, said the suddenly grownup Mike, the whole thing is an exercise in futility. Kill the Droon, and they just come back.

Dad nodded. I know, son, he said. It’s a bit like mowing the lawn. It will never be finished once and for all, but it still needs to be done.

The next morning, Mike started the day with his usual workout in his home gym. After that he brewed some coffee, then booted up his computer and opened the Scourge of God folder where he recorded his encounter with Stevens and the information received. That folder contained text files with the records of the Order’s activities for the past few years. Bound books on the shelves in the basement of Mike’s home in the Berkeley hills held older records. The relatively recent volumes, those going back to the early twentieth century, were typewritten. Earlier than that were handwritten volumes, and of those the ones dating as early as the sixteenth century were written in English, although the oldest of them contained many Shakespeare-like archaisms. Before that, they were inscribed in Latin, which of course Mike had learned to read as part of his training for his current position. Latin, unarmed combat, armed combat both melee and firearms, stealth and concealment, breaking and entering, computer science and hacking, explosives and demolitions, investigation and detective work, meditation and breath control, magical ritual and the use of magical powers, philosophy and theology, and the history and traditions of the Scourge of God going back to the order’s founding in the Fourteenth Century at the time when the Droon first made their appearance among humans, in the midst of Europe’s turmoil. The Droon appeared in the wake of the Black Death. It was natural for the founder of the Scourge to think of them as demons.

Mike had lied to Stevens about one thing. He was not merely a Chapter Master of the Scourge of God. He was the Order Master, looked up to as leader by every Scourge of God member on the planet. That was not the kind of information he felt comfortable giving the enemy. But he, Michael Cambridge, descended from Osgood of Cambridge, the Order’s founder, had been selected from birth to become the new Order Master on his thirtieth birthday. Mike had never been offered a choice in the matter. His one attempt to make his own future had failed.

He pulled up a Google search screen and stared at it while drumming his fingers on his desk.

Could he trust the information he had gotten from Stevens?

Yes and no. He could trust every word of it to be true. So said the Pact of War between the Droon and the Scourge. What he couldn’t trust was his own interpretation of those words. They genetically engineered themselves to all be equal and obedient cogs in the wheel, and they created a lockstep communistic utopia and wanted to impose it on everyone else. That was how Stevens saw the Andol and their society. But it didn’t automatically follow that Mike would judge them the same way.

We resisted them for several thousand years. Then one day they hit us with weapons of mass destruction and wiped us out. That was true, too. Mike was sure. But who started the war? What happened to the society of the Andol? Was the attack that wiped out the Droon home world a first strike or was it retaliatory? These were important questions, and Stevens hadn’t answered them, because Mike hadn’t thought to ask.

Much remained up in the air, but three things he could be sure about. The Andol were a race of interlopers similar in some respects to the Droon. They were enemies of the Droon. And they were here.

How to find them? San Francisco was a pretty big town.

Flashing on a word that Stevens had used, Mike typed ashrams in San Francisco and hit the enter key.

One had to start somewhere.

Chapter Two

Mike slipped his illegal-to-carry Smith & Wesson M&P Shield nine millimeter pistol into his jacket pocket as he headed for the front door. It was illegal because he didn’t have a concealed-carry permit in either Alameda County or San Francisco County; they were almost impossible to get in either place. The firearm itself was legal for him to possess and he’d had it with him the night of the raid on John Stevens’ place of business, but had not drawn it. He didn’t like to if he didn’t need to.

Not that he had a lot of respect for the law as such. He was a murderer five times over. Still, there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. That was both why he carried the gun and why he would avoid using or even drawing it unless it was really necessary.

Locking the door behind him, Mike walked the half mile to the BART station. He could have driven over the Bay Bridge, but parking in San Francisco was a real pain. This was the thirtieth consecutive day that he’d ridden the train into the city. His initial web search had generated over ten thousand hits. After eliminating duplicates and candidates that were unlikely on the face of it, Mike was left with 462 institutions that called themselves an ashram and taught or explored some aspect of Eastern or New Age spirituality. On a pure guess that the Andol would lean towards the latter rather than the former, he placed at the top of his list any ashram without other Sanskrit words in the titles, especially avoiding those named after a guru. He had already investigated twenty-nine of those without finding anything that suggested a Droon-like otherworldly presence. Today he would check out the thirtieth, the Luminous Mountain Ashram on Castro Street just off 24th.

۞

How long do you think you’ll go on doing this, Father? Killing the Droon, I mean. Mike had been eighteen when he asked that question.

Until I’m fifty years old, son. That’s retirement age.

After that you won’t be Order Master anymore?

Mike’s father sat down beside him on Mike’s bed. I’ll still be Order Master for two more years after that, until you turn thirty. But I won’t be going on any more strikes, son. I’ll direct the order and serve as a watcher for sign of the Droon, but leave the killing to younger men. It’s the way we’ve always done things, and it’s wise. The Droon are dangerous, too dangerous for an old man to confront.

Mike sighed. And when I turn thirty, then I’ll be Order Master instead.

Yes. That, too, is wise, Mike. I know you feel as if you know everything –

I do not!

James Cambridge smiled. Of course you do. Everyone does at eighteen. God knows I did. But trust me, son. Being Order Master isn’t an easy job, and you will need the next twelve years of maturity and experience to do that job.

Maybe. But that’s not what I meant, Father. I wasn’t saying I would like to be Order Master now. I’m not sure I want to be Order Master at all, or part of the Scourge of God for that matter.

Mike’s father looked very sad. I’m sorry if you feel that way, Mike. I’m afraid you don’t have a choice about it.

Mike swallowed. What will happen if I leave the order?

"If you try to leave the Scourge of God, knowing what you know, I will have to order your death.