THE DAY HAD BEEN EXHAUSTING, but Saul knew sleep would be an unattainable luxury that night. He prepared his pipe with the care of a ritual and sank into the leather armchair before the fireplace. The flames danced in golden reflections across the decanter's glass, and the crackling embers seemed to follow the rhythm of his thoughts.
A horned God... — he mocked inwardly, smiling to himself as he imagined the priest's reaction to such blasphemy. — The priest wouldn't swallow that even under torture...
He picked up the remote control and turned on the stereo. The deep notes of a double bass filled the room, and for a moment Saul wished he could simply listen to jazz and blues and think about Meggie — her daring smile, luminous eyes, husky voice — but the temptation of rest was dangerous. He needed to focus.
He opened his notebook and began flipping through the pages containing the transcriptions of his conversation with Raphaniè. The priest had mentioned that the royal adviser, John Dee, together with his assistant Edward Kelley, had received demonic revelations in a coded language — the Enochian alphabet. According to him, a hidden brotherhood formed during the reign of Elizabeth I still possessed an unpublished portion of the cursed work.
Perhaps that secret, guarded for centuries inside vaults and crypts, was the key to the Dark Apocalypse, a meticulous plan to establish on Earth an empire ruled by the forces of hell. Yet, according to the priest, there was still hope: hell's human lieutenant could still be exposed and stopped — all they needed was to decipher the riddle:
"The truth lies beneath the seal. The crowned lion claims his throne. He comes from the Root of Jesse."
Saul thought it sounded like the perfect plot for a mystery novel.
"You would make a great bestselling character..." — Meggie had teased him before the editorial meeting.
Demonic riddles, exorcisms, satanic cults, and mutilations... He remembered the Concubines of Satan, the name he had given to the five women murdered in the ritualistic crimes that had shocked London. Even if the devil did not exist, his followers were monsters capable of the worst atrocities.
"We are partners in this mission. The enemy knew that before we met. He will lay siege to you, Saul." — Raphaniè had warned him with a grave expression.
Saul had never known what to believe in. God — or the concept of an infinitely benevolent being — seemed unlikely, almost childish. But evil? Evil was everywhere. One only had to open a newspaper, read the headlines, watch the world rot in slow motion.
He was willing to bet that the same satanic sect denounced in his articles was behind this new conspiracy. They were masters of manipulation and intimidation, capable of transforming superstition into power. The priest's suspicions might sound like medieval delusions, but the threat was real — like the human tongue found in his luggage. And there was also the man, the dark and silent observer who had followed them at the Orangery and later at Temple Church. Saul felt a chill run through him.
Pipe in hand, he walked into the office. Sitting before the computer, he typed into Google the phrase that had haunted him since the dream:
Othil lasdi babage od dorpha Gohol.
No results appeared.
Frustrated, he replaced the text with the final part of the demonic riddle:
Root of Jesse.
— Jesus Christ's family tree? — he murmured in surprise as he opened one of the hundreds of pages displayed.
The text quoted Isaiah from the Old Testament:
"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the LORD will rest upon him..."
According to theologians, the prophecy pointed toward the royal lineage of the Messiah and had been fulfilled with the birth of Christ. A medieval illumination depicted a tree sprouting from the back of a reclining man wrapped in royal robes.
That must be Jesse — Saul concluded, leaning closer to the screen.
On the side branches perched figures: the ancestors of Christ. Two of them stood out — Mary and her son.
"The devil imitates God," — Raphaniè had said.
"Satanists are a byproduct of the Church; they worship the aberration created by it," — Meggie had argued.
That enchanting witch was right... and so was the priest. The disciples of the devil needed Christianity to justify their existence. They recycled the same prophecies to prove they had chosen the "better side." They would become the victors if they could direct the end of history — the Apocalypse.
Saul stared once more at the genealogical tree. He could have sworn he saw a devil with a foxlike snout and twisted horns reigning above the ancestors of the biblical patriarch.
I'm being prejudiced... — he laughed quietly to himself. — God once had horns too.
He was exhausted and rubbed his eyes, yet Jesus Christ still remained there, unmoved on the screen.
— This stuff really is good... — he murmured, taking a deep drag from the pipe.
He flipped through the notebook searching for notes about the Book of Enoch. There it was: the angels led by Samyaza descended to Earth and had relations with the "daughters of men."
— These lunatics want to imitate Isaiah's prophecies. — he concluded. — The Dark Apocalypse begins with the birth of the Antichrist... and John Dee must have planned it.
The last puffs of smoke from the pipe filled the air with a dense aroma.
Before shutting down the computer, he sent Raphaniè a list containing the known members of the sect and wrote an email to Clarence Mitchell, president of the College of Arms, requesting that he receive the Italian priest Raphaniè Marin and assist him in heraldic research. He promised to repay the favor with photographs of Mitchell's wife in The Sunny's society column.
THE JOURNALIST LAY DOWN almost at two in the morning. His body begged for rest, but his mind pulsed in labyrinths. He tried to resist by picking up The Tempest from the nightstand, but he did not get past the first page. He had already read the book twice, yet something drew him back to it — perhaps instinct, because in recent days his dreams had become strangely vivid. Samyaza, the fallen angel, always appeared after a reading of Shakespeare's play. There was a pattern.
During the day, he had remembered Prospero's famous line, the deposed duke and magician:
"We are such stuff as dreams are made on."
Like Descartes, La Fontaine, and Voltaire, who had emerged from sleep with ideas that changed the world, Saul realized his sleeping mind was searching for hidden connections — invisible threads between faith, madness, and conspiracy. Perhaps, unconsciously, he had already been attuned to the sect even before the priest's revelations at the Orangery.
What if The Tempest was more than a play about magic and forgiveness?
What if it concealed a code, a prophecy disguised as art?
I'm becoming predictable... — he thought with a tired laugh. — That's a contemporary bestseller cliché. Meggie will have to settle for another kind of hero...
He closed the book and left it on the nightstand.
The warmth of the embers was fading, and the silence weighed like lead. His eyes burned, and when he closed them, it felt as though he were descending — not into sleep — but into a territory between dream and hell, where Samyaza awaited him.