Green: The Beginning and the End Read Online Free Page B

own violent history. To Vadal, his son: “Surely, you see the madness in this.”
    “I see the madness in what tempts Samuel and half of the Circle,” he said.
    Samuel slid out of his saddle and landed on the ground with a slap of boots on rock. He slipped his sword from its scabbard, thrust the bronzed tip into the shale, and rested both palms in its handle.
    “What is it, O favored one? Shall we test the truth?” The fool wasn’t taking any of this seriously! Or worse, he was drunk on his own power and took Vadal’s death very seriously.
    “I accept,” Vadal snapped.
    “No!” Marie, Thomas’s eldest child and Vadal’s betrothed, stepped out, ripped a sword from the mount closest to Samuel’s, and twirled it once with a flip of her wrist. “I exercise my right to take the place of any other in a challenge.”
    “Don’t be a fool,” Vadal said. “Step back!”
    “Shut up. If you have the right to throw away your life, so do I. Those are the rules.”
    “That was a long time ago. Get back, I’m telling you!”
    Marie turned to the elder. “Ronin?”
    The spiritual leader nodded. “It is her right.”
    Samuel grinned, whipped his sword through a backhanded swing, and circled to his right, inviting Marie into an imaginary fighting ring.
    “Stop them!” Chelise was glaring at Thomas, whispering harshly. “Do something.”
    He did nothing. He could hardly think straight, much less trust himself to do something he would not later regret. He could not stop them; they all had the same freedom to make their own choices.
    The grin had faded from Samuel’s face. Surely he wouldn’t use his sword on his own sister. This was Marie’s ploy. She knew that Samuel would back down. This was her gamble, and Thomas could see the wisdom in it.
    “So, Sister. It’s you and me, is it?”
    “Looks that way.” She walked closer, dragging her sword casually behind her. Not to fool a soul; they all knew she was a devil with that thing.
    Samuel glanced at the blade, leaning on his own with confidence. “I’m not the young pup you punished the last time we played this game.”
    “This isn’t a game,” Marie said. “You’re playing with the fate of our people.”
    “You’ll get hurt,” he said.
    “Then hurt me, Brother.”

3
    WHILE THOMAS HUNTER stood in the canyon, unraveling, Billy Rediger paced the atrium of Raison Pharmaceutical in Thailand two thousand years earlier, in our own reality—or the histories, depending on how one looked at it.
    Billy took a moment to take in his surroundings: the rich golden marble floor, the huge paintings of a red and yellow flower that looked as though it might be the bug-eating variety, the gilded wallpaper, two heavy crystal chandeliers that could crush a Volkswagen. The drug giant’s exotic facade fueled his haunting impression of Raison Pharmaceutical.
    This is where it had all started roughly thirty-six years ago, in this very building just outside Bangkok. Seven years before Billy had been born and whisked away to the monastery in Colorado, where he’d been raised and turned into a freak.
    This was where Thomas Hunter had stumbled upon the Raison Strain, the deadly virus that turned the world upside down. How many dead was it? Hardly imaginable.
    But worse than what had died was what had survived Hunter’s discovery.
    What would Darcy and Johnny say if they knew of the obsession that had overtaken Billy’s mind this last year? He had a pathological need to understand why his life had been profoundly impacted by these books called the Books of History.
    If his two confidants knew of his quest, they would leave their safe harbor in Colorado, hunt him down, and lock him in a cage. Because they would assume that Billy was after more, wouldn’t they? More than just understanding, more than just connecting with his past, more than chasing down the truth, more than . . .
    “They will see you now, sir.” The receptionist, a man named Williston, had a heavy French