Fatal Tide (The East Salem Trilogy) - Hardcover

Wiehl, Lis; Nelson, Pete

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1595549463 ISBN 13: 9781595549464

Publisher: Thomas Nelson, 2013

Synopsis

In East Salem, the elite St. Adrian’s Academy is at the nexus of a satanic apocalypse—and the fatal tide is rising.

When Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights is reunited with the pagans who commissioned it, a dark prophecy begins to unfold in East Salem, beginning with a savage double-murder by hellish creatures straight out of the painting itself. The lone survivor of the attack, a seventeen-year-old Brit, finds sanctuary at Tommy Gunderson’s home—and the place is soon surrounded by demons who seem to be biding their time . . . but for how long?

Tommy’s pond has been contaminated with Provivilan—an insidious drug that could transform New York City’s children into an army of violence addicted murderers. But for an occult cabal in the upper echelons of Linz Pharmaceuticals, contaminating the water supply is just part of an ancient conspiracy against all of humankind.

As the clouds gather, Tommy and Dani realize they must infiltrate Linz and St. Adrian’s to stop the dissemination of Provivilan. Even then, it could take a tangible eruption of the battle between angels and demons to save humanity from the supernatural evils that have been summoned to East Salem.

About this title

About the Author

New York Times bestselling author Lis Wiehl is the former legal analyst for Fox News and the O’Reilly Factor and has appeared regularly on Your World with Neil Cavuto, Lou Dobbs Tonight, and the Imus morning shows. The former cohost of WOR radio's WOR Tonight with Joe Concha and Lis Wiehl, she has served as legal analyst and reporter for NBC News and NPR's All Things Considered, as a federal prosecutor in the United States Attorney's office, and as a tenured professor of law at the University of Washington. She appears frequently on CNN as a legal analyst.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

FATAL TIDE

THE EAST SALEM TRILOGY BOOK THREE

By LIS WIEHL, PETE NELSON

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2013 Lis Wiehl
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-59554-946-4

CHAPTER 1

December 20

8:45 p.m. EST

"Where are we going?" the boy asked. A feeling, a premonition perhaps,told him something wasn't right, but he didn't know what it was. He wonderedif he was being kidnapped.

"Airport," the driver, George Gardener, said.

The boy realized he'd made a mistake, telling them he'd rememberedto grab his passport. He should have pretended he'd lost it. Then theycouldn't fly him out of the country.

"Don't you think we'd be safer at Mr. Gunderson's house?"

Tommy Gunderson lived in a large stone house on twenty-two acressurrounded by a stone wall topped by a deer fence. He had security cameras,including hi-def, night vision, and infrared, triggered by motiondetectors, and he had a small arsenal of weapons. The boy had shown upat Tommy's gate with a Bible in his hand, betting they'd let him in. He'dcome to get information.

"I'm afraid that's the first place the people who are trying to kill youwill look," the man in the backseat said. His name was Julian Villanegre,and he was even older than the driver, probably over eighty, the boyguessed. He was an art historian and, like the boy, he was British. "You'llbe safer if we can get you to a place where they won't think to look. And sofar, we don't think they know you're with us."

"That makes sense," the boy said. He had to think of a way to get themto turn the car around. They were still in East Salem, New York, fifty milesnorth of Manhattan and their destination, the international terminal atJFK, where the men hoped to catch a late-night flight to London.

The car wound through a snowy winter landscape along a narrow two-laneroller coaster of a road. He'd asked to sit in the front seat, where theywouldn't be able to use the child locks to keep him in the car. He wonderedwhat would happen if he jumped out while it was still moving. He lookedat the speedometer. Thirty-two miles an hour. He guessed he'd probablysurvive. Once they got on the freeway it would be too late. He kept his handon the door handle.

"Are you sure your house is safer?"

"One of the advantages of living in a castle," Villanegre said, smilingfrom the backseat. "It costs a small fortune to heat, but when withstandinga siege is desired, it suits one to a tittle. My ancestors survived three. Ithink it will do."

"They said you'd fill me in on the way," the boy said. His name wasReese Stratton-Mallins. He was seventeen.

"It's a very long story, I'm afraid," Villanegre said. "One of the oldest too."

"And St. Adrian's Academy is part of it?"

"Very much at the center of it, it seems," the old man told him. "Thepeople who run your school are very bad people who will stop at nothing.You're quite correct to be wary of them. Some of them aren't even people."

George looked over his shoulder at Villanegre, as if to say, I hope youknow what you're doing.

"What does that mean?" Reese asked.

"Do you know what demons are?" Villanegre replied.

"Demons?" the boy said. He was feigning innocence, but he'd learneda long time ago that he had the kind of face, a look others found sweet andunaffected, that made feigning innocence easy.

"The written record is often traced to the Septuagint translation of theHebrew Bible," Villanegre said. "When Satan decided to defy God, he wascast out of heaven. Scholars and theologians disagree on the precise numbers,but the consensus suggests perhaps as many as a third of the angelswent with him. And the conflict remains. An unseen war. In which weare the foot soldiers, and sometimes the battlefield. The fallen angels canappear to us in demonic form, or they can take human form."

"Are you saying some of the people at my school are demons?" theboy said.

The old man in the backseat only nodded. The car paused at a stopsign. A light snow fell, requiring the intermittent use of windshield wipers.

"Do you know who?" The boy had a hunch.

Villanegre shook his head.

"Do you know since when?"

"That's a very good question," Villanegre replied. "When the Druidswere driven out of England, roughly a thousand years ago, some of themmanaged to hire a Viking ship to bring them to America. For a while theywent into hiding. But we believe they established your school more thantwo hundred years ago at its present location."

"We?"

"Our ... group," Villanegre said. "Generations of us. Though TommyGunderson and Dani—Dr. Harris—are quite new to the organization.They've taken over for George's mother, who recently passed."

"Like the Knights Templar, then?" Reese asked.

George shook his head, not so much in response to his question, Reesegathered, as to say things were bad and unlikely to get better.

"The comparison is apt," Villanegre replied. "The Curatoriat, as we callourselves, are very much soldiers for Christ, but we have no affiliation withany particular denomination or church. We're special ops, you might say."

With every passing minute, the station wagon Tommy had loanedthem was getting farther and farther from Tommy's house where, Reesebelieved, he could get the answers he needed. He decided to give it onemore try, and then he would take his chances bailing from the car.

"Is something going on now?" he asked, though he knew the answer.

"There was a prophecy," Villanegre said. "That painting in the schoolart museum—"

"The Garden of Earthly Delights?"

"Yes," Villanegre said, nodding. "The prophecy said when it and thepagans who commissioned it were reunited ..."

"What? What would happen?"

"Do you know the phrase 'hell breaks loose'?" Villanegre asked. "Someof us believe the things in the painting's depiction of hell are going to, well,come true. Here. That hell and earth will be one. That's what we're tryingto stop."

This was more like it, Reese thought. Now he was finding out somethingthat might be useful.

"When you sent Dr. Harris a sample of the drug and the list ofnames, what did you think you were sending her?" Villanegre asked him."I gather you could have found yourself in a great amount of trouble ifthey'd caught you."

"I thought they were testing a drug that would enhance learning," theboy said. "Like Adderall."

"It's quite a bit worse than that," Villanegre said.

"Why?" Reese asked. "What does it do?"

"Dr. McKellen or Dr. Harris would be better people to ask." TheEnglishman used the side of his hand to wipe the fog from the window andgazed out at the night.

Reese followed his gaze. The leaves were off the trees, and a shallow layerof snow blanketed the ground, pocked by the tracks of deer and raccoons andfoxes and coyotes forming trails that led between the hills and the reservoirs.

"It doesn't make anyone better. It makes anyone who takes it sick.Mentally and emotionally. And I dare say spiritually."

"Is that what Amos Kasden was on when he killed that girl?"

"We think so."

Reese had only pretended to take the pills his school gave him, but hecouldn't be sure that they weren't putting something in his food. He wasclosing in on the answer he sought.

"Did you figure out how it works?" he asked.

"It's quite complex," Villanegre said. "We think it is introduced environmentallyin vitro, but there may be other delivery mechanisms. Whenit kicks in at puberty, it overwhelms the user with hormones and feelings ofuncontrolled rage. Accompanied by a release of adrenaline. You can imaginethe rest. We're still trying to find out how it works and what they intendto do with it."

Reese had a feeling he knew what they were going to do, and a strongerfeeling as to when they were going to do it. The question now was—werethe people driving in the car with him people he could trust? He wouldhurt them if he had to ... but if they were kidnapping him, why would theysend two old men whom he could easily overpower?

It was not his own life or soul he was worried about. But his soul hadtwo parts, in a sense—and it was the other half he feared for.

"Were a lot of your classmates given performance-enhancing drugs?"Villanegre asked.

"All of us were," Reese said, glancing at his cell phone to check thetime. "It depended on what—" He was interrupted by something fallingonto the roof of the car. "What was that?"

"Probably just a branch," George said, turning on his high beams topenetrate the darkness ahead. "All these storms and hurricanes we've hadlately been knockin' the beans out of these old trees. Whenever we get somuch as a little breeze, everything falls on the power lines, and it takes fouror five days before the electric company can—"

Before George could finish his sentence, a massive black arm puncheda hole in the windshield and a large black hand closed around his throat.

The car veered suddenly to the left. Instinctively, Reese grabbed thewheel and pulled it hard clockwise to keep the vehicle on the road.

George screamed as he stiffened and slammed on the brakes.

The car screeched.

Reese felt a spray of blood on his face. Some kind of beast was attackingthe car, a black shape that scrambled for purchase against the sheet metalof the hood. As the vehicle lurched to a stop, the creature's claws closedaround the driver's windpipe, piercing the skin and puncturing an artery.Blood spurted onto the dashboard in a gush.

As Reese turned his head, a second creature tore the back door from itshinges, its head and arms hanging down into the opening as it reached forthe passenger in the rear seat.

Two! he thought, looking around. More than two?

Reese felt something grab him by the wrist.

It was George, struggling to keep from being pulled from the carthrough the windshield. His fingernails scratched Reese's arm as he flewfrom the car, yelling for help. His scream ended with a loud thud.

Reese ducked as the creature in the backseat swung at him. With hishead below the steering wheel, he knew the accelerator was close, so hepushed on it with his hand, all the way to the floor, steering as best hecould without being able to see.

Just as suddenly, he took his hand off the gas pedal and slammed onthe brake, hard. Something growled in pain.

He pulled himself up into the driver's seat and saw that the creature inthe backseat was half out the door. He couldn't tell where the first one hadgone. Villanegre was dead, his body, what was left of it, torn and broken,the old man's skull crushed by the animal's jaws.

Reese saw, beyond the gruesome scene, a large tree illuminated in thered glow of the brake lights. He shifted the car into reverse and flooredit, steering with his right hand while looking over his left shoulder. Thecreature behind him slipped farther from the car, lunging for the roof rack.

Reese couldn't tell how fast he was going when the beast hit the tree.The car kept going another twenty feet before Reese could apply the brakesand stop.

In the glow of his headlights, the creature, stunned and blinded,stumbled toward the roadway.

The boy shifted into drive and floored the accelerator again, steeringdirectly at whatever it was, making impact with his left front bumper. Evenin the full glare of his headlights, the beast was difficult to see clearly; itwas black and shaggy, with large white canine fangs and eyes that flashedwith reflected light. Reese heard an audible crunching sound and felt thestation wagon thump twice as he drove over whatever was left of the thing.

But there were two of them.

Where was the other one?

He hoped he wouldn't have to find out and sped away, only to seesomething fly through the air and land on the front passenger side fender,grabbing the vehicle by the A-pillar and the windshield wiper.

He steered hard right, braked sharply, sped up again, steered hard left,braked, then accelerated, trying to throw the thing off. He swerved again,left, right, left, steadily accelerating, slamming on the brakes again, to noavail.

Ahead he saw a rocky outcropping close to the road. The beast, centeredbetween the headlights on the hood of the car, was trying to pull itselfforward. There wasn't time to come up with a better plan. There wasn'ttime to fasten his seat belt either, but Reese hoped and prayed that thedriver's side air bag would deploy.

He steered for the rock and hit it head on.

The next few moments were lost to him—a loud sound, a jolt, a whiteflash—and then he awoke to a ringing in his ears, his brain buzzing andjarred.

As full consciousness returned—how long had he been knockedout?—he smelled smoke and felt heat. Something was burning. He pulledon the door handle. The door was wedged shut from the collision. Hepushed against it with his shoulder. The door wouldn't open, but the glassin the window had shattered. He pulled himself through the opening androlled on the ground in case his clothing had caught fire. He got to his feetand ran from the car just as the gasoline from the tank ignited.

The explosion knocked him off his feet, and the fireball lit the woodswith an orange glow. He rolled once and then sat up, turning to see the carburning.

He sat a moment to catch his breath.

On his feet again, he turned full circle to survey the road and thewoods. He was alone, at least for now. It took a moment for him to get hisbearings, his head still throbbing from the noise and the confusion. Thebody of the creature he'd killed crashing into the rock was no doubt lost inthe fire, so he walked back up the road in the direction from which they'dcome. He found George Gardener's body crumpled in a heap on the shoulder,his neck bent at an unnatural angle. Farther up the road he found thebody of Dr. Julian Villanegre, an arm and part of one leg missing, his facemangled and barely recognizable.

Reese felt his stomach rising up against him and took a moment tosteel his resolve, drawing a deep breath and then another, his eyes closed.It was more than he wanted to bear, but he reminded himself that he hadno choice. He had to figure this out, and he had to get back to Tommy'shouse. He searched his pockets for his cell phone but couldn't find it, andhe realized it was still in the car, which was on fire.

He searched the body and found the Englishman's cell phone, thenused the light from the phone to search the woods for the body of the beasthe'd killed against the tree. There was no sign of it, either on the road orin the underbrush. With every passing moment, his mind grew clearer. Hewas quite certain he'd hit it, twice, and almost as certain he'd killed it.

He searched the phone's contact list for a number for TommyGunderson or Dani Harris but didn't find anything. A scan of the calllog was equally fruitless. He walked back up the road to search the bodyof George Gardener, but if the man owned a phone, it wasn't on him. Hedialed 411 but was told neither Tommy nor Dani had published numbers.

Reese took a deep breath and tried to think. He estimated he was fouror five miles from Tommy's house. He didn't think the car had made anyleft or right turns off the main road. He could walk back, but there was achance that there were more of whatever had attacked them waiting in thedarkness. He needed a ride, preferably from someone armed.

He dialed 911.

"There's been a car accident," he began.

As he waited for the police and the ambulance to arrive, he examinedthe scene of the "accident" more calmly now, using the cell phone's flashlightapp to light the screen. Near where the body of the art historian lay, hebent down to get a closer look at what he'd thought at first was an oil slick.He touched the slimy substance with his fingers and rubbed them togetherto gauge the viscosity, and finally he smelled it. It was indeed oily, but it wasmore like oil paint than motor oil, a greasy substance that stained his fingers.From the oil, he extracted and eyed a single long black hair, holding itup next to the light from the phone, but then it dissolved in front of him.

He heard a distant siren approaching and paused to practice the storyhe would tell.

"I was asleep. We must have hit something ..."

CHAPTER 2

December 20

11:51 p.m. EST

"Polar bears?" Quinn McKellen said.

Tommy Gunderson shook his head. "I seriously doubt we have polarbears. But they're big, whatever they are."

The two of them were in Tommy's kitchen, speaking in low tones infront of Tommy's computer monitor so as not to wake the others. Thatincluded Dani Harris, a childhood friend of Tommy's and high school crushwhose work as a consulting psychiatrist for the district attorney's officebrought her back into Tommy's life. It included his Aunt Ruth, the townlibrarian who'd come under attack for her unwitting association with theCuratoriat, and Cassandra Morton, an actress to whom Tommy, in an earlierlife, had been engaged. Quinn, a neurochemist and Dani's ex, had arrived,as had Cassandra, to test Tommy and Dani's relationship, but now they wereall holed up, along with Arlo, Dani's cat, and Otto, Quinn's bloodhound,behind the walls of Tommy's house to fight an unknowable enemy who wasstronger than they were, but not stronger than their combined faith.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from FATAL TIDE by LIS WIEHL, PETE NELSON. Copyright © 2013 Lis Wiehl. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1595549463
• ISBN 13: 9781595549464
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336