CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Dec 2 2001

The Dominants had their Column in first, but the initiation was not complete .As they watched, men, women, and children, Lambourni gave Lewison the knife and the Mentor took Jarod to the side of the Column, pushing his head into the wall.

"These symbols are not to be shown to anyone, unless the Council permits." He made two marks on either side of the bottom of Jarod's spine and turned him around to face him. As he did so, he pushed Jarod down so the Pretender's back was in the bottom of the Column, straight down from the indent on the top. When Lewison was satisfied, he grabbed Jarod and pulled him up.

Lambourni took out several fine sharp sticks of metal and handed them to Jarod. "The Ceremony of the Chosen will now begin. On the Column is the astronomical time to show when that particular Chosen makes his advent on the society of the Homo Sapiens. I will point out the area on the Column and you will tattoo it on his or her back where I tell you. It will be painful, but the Chosen must endure pain and it will be done dot by dot."

Jarod had not been one of them that long. This was not a Pretend, this was real. He could not do it for an hour, and then leave the Blue Cove area. It was harder becoming someone you were meant to be and to learn a different set of customs, meant for a more highly intelligent and stronger sub race than that of the supposed wise sub race of homo sapiens. "Why me?" he asked.

"It is a task that is honored. Only male consorts and male relatives of those chosen can perform this. I see no male relatives, that is, those above your station here old enough. As soon as you have finished, you will be in charge of all the other bond Dominants, and with authority over them, subject to our approval of course."'

Of course., such a rite would not be given to someone under that age of thirty or perhaps forty, thought Jarod and then figured it was probably closer to eighteen or twenty-one. "I guess that chip in my head cannot be removed. I did ask about it previously."

"Not without killing you. We did try it before. We gave him an injection to deaden the pain, but that was useless. He died in agony."

Six children, unlike the greater number from the Mexican Column, would be the next Chosen. They were all five years of age, and would become Chameleons with the ability to Mask and to rule their respective territories. Until they had proven themselves worthy of that role, they had to kill anyone who was a threat in the homo sapiens, but also any of the Dominants the Council felt necessary to kill.

You did not have to be a threat to the Dominants to receive a death sentence. As was stated before, the Chosen had to kill a close friend as long as it was not his offspring, his future heirs. They would be the crown princes of the Kingdom of Man. Parents, relatives, or friends, however, would die for the Chosen to prove himself, but only one killing was allowed. Six Dominants, or six humans or a combination of the two "species" would go to bed or would be watching the ceremony, not knowing that perhaps ten years or so from now, their best friend would kill them and with the Disposer, no one would know they ever lived.

The Ceremony of the Chosen was not a fixed thing. It started back when the Dominants decided they needed a leader and when the boy Tom of a family from Andalusia was five years old, he along with the girl they chose for his mate became the Supreme Chosen. Later Tom's mate died in a landslide three years later when the Dominants had to flee Mexico. Of course, there were other Chosen. The Council was not stupid. Tom may have been the Supreme of the Chosen, but there were others.

The Dominants rarely performed the Chosen Ceremony, but the discovery of Dominants from an unknown area than Mexico, prompted the Council to revive it. They did it first with Antonio Lambourni and later his son, Geraldo along with five other children

Lambourni, however, was not of the Top Chosen, because one or both of his parents was owned. He could control a small area, not the wide vastness the Top Chosen like his son could. His tattoo, therefore, took a shorter circumference then that of his son. Consequently, it was less painful for it took less time and there was no need for him to kill his closest friend.

There was the reason for this Ceremony besides the usual "When we become rulers of the Kingdom of Man in this part of the United States, we need what they call an aristocracy." These boys and girls were the grandchildren of Pretenders held in the sublevels After giving birth secretly, it was a cinch to switch their child with one of those of the lawyers and business people of The Centre. The parents would take their 'child' home, unaware that they were raising a member of the New Species. Such was hard for those whose pride at a child born was knowing that their kind would survive; and hard during their hidden pregnancies when they saw the other Centre females smile, their bellies showing underneath their drab frocks These were Homo Dominants and the Council later found these children, and had them all Raised. As for the unsuspecting foster parents and the removed babies, it was best not think about them

Jarod did the tattooing in complete silence. The male parent brought his son or daughter up, and watched the needles insert into their child's flesh as he or she knelt down. The pain was intense,
but the Dominants used a form of hypnosis on the youngster to kill the need to scream. After that, one or two of the older Dominants pressed the child's face into the Column, reminding him of the seriousness of his calling.

The child then went to his Mentor who through hypnosis or a drug of some kind, removed any memory of his former childhood.

Lambourni told Jarod that Geraldo remembered everything from his fifth year, but not the actual Ceremony nor anything previous, even his own mother was a stranger to him, for perhaps like Tom Daniels, he would be called to kill her for whatever reason his Mentor demanded or no reason at all.. It was too important to trust childish memories to a young Chosen. When he was old enough, the Mentor or someone else would restore selective memory of former events

"You have to leave now," he told Jarod.

"Are you staying?"

"No." Lambourni looked at his watch and called to the Mentor. "I have to meet with someone."

"It is fortunate that you were here for the Chosen part of the ceremony," said Lewison ."The Advocate is always honored among us." He watched the lawyer head towards the town, but told Jarod to wait until he disappeared.

While doing so, Jarod noted three girls, homo sapiens in a cave cut into a hill overlooking the Column which was in the center of the Centre grounds, a former quarry now heated by underground pipes where someone had planted various plants and bushes.

The Ceremony was not over, however. It still required a more horrific sacrifice, something to do with the three girls in the cave, the same one in which he and Miss Parker had the Merging.

The audacity, he thought, having it here right in the Centre grounds and none of the Centre guards know of this. Of course, they are too busy working their evil inside to bother.

"Here," said Lewison, handing him a gun, "see if anyone gets too close and if you hear anything from this end, just disregard it." He pointed towards the road to the town.

"I mustn't see this part of the Ceremony. Is it something about rank?"

"Yes. We don't want to harm Lady Angela, Miss Parker. Now go! Keep her from here, now!"

One of those girls was going to be a Favorite of one of the Dominants, if she survived. Most times they did not.

Jarod walked to the road, hearing in the background the piercing screams continuing steadily. He checked the gun. It was loaded. He put his senses on alert and found Ted supervising several children. There was also a young woman, quite attractive in the blonde sort of way, definitely not my type, thought The Pretender, who preferred brunettes.

Of course, they would not be in this part of the Ceremony either.

"The gate at the Centre side is open," Jarod told them, which was unnecessary, as they knew already. They just wanted this small taste of pseudo freedom. And then he saw a figure come towards them.

"What's going on, here?" asked Miss Parker.

"We can't go," said a boy, looking at Jarod and Miss Parker. "We're odd." He looked at his clothes, comparing it to Jarod's and Miss Parker's.

"I think you belong to someone," she told the children. "Jarod they can't go where?"

"—to watch the Column Ceremony. The Chosen won't remember, but the adults will. I heard it has to do with a virgin sacrifice, page 242 of the book," he whispered with a smile.

She took the book from her purse and thumped through the description of the Ceremony, seeing what happened to homo sapiens, how the men tortured a girl, the women a boy and their fate if they survived. There was no mention of a virgin sacrifice.

"I guess Lambourni won't like it, now that he's found God! Rather barbaric. So if a non Dominant girl or boy sees the Column, and doesn't pretend to faint or hold his breath, the Dominants beat the hell of him or her and worse?" she asked.

"They shouldn't have been that curious."

"A women in her twenties with a kid of fifteen or younger. Makes me sick."

"Not as bad as what went on at the Centre. Most die. They're lucky"

"And what of their parents?"

"A Chameleon replaces him or her. I heard of one that fooled the parents for years. The second best would be if the kid was a frequent runway, the parents would find his body and attribute it to the latest serial killer."

As the screaming continued, Miss Parker shivered. "How long will they keep it up?"

"I heard until morning. Miss Parker. Where are our children?"

"At Cox's place. He's rather nervous. Oh and Geraldo's there as well."

"We have to get over there, right away. Do you recall that rumor about a sentence on that scroll?"

"But I didn't name any of the children after you or your family and that aunt of my mother's died when she was a child. Do you mean that Daddy may have named that baby after you? Geraldo sounds like Jarod, and if he found out!" She did not think that Geraldo would kill the child, if the latter were Dominant, but if, by some small chance, the child was the son of her uncle and Brigitte, he might.

Jarod put the gun in his pocket. He knew it could not be Miss Parker's little brother.' The child was definitely not Thomas's. Jarod then considered this theory.

When Miss Parker was in the hospital after almost dying, they gave her a pregnancy test but came up negative and the drugs they gave her to combat her ulcer afterwards stopped ovulation among other things. However, since then the drug industry had improved, and Miss Parker did not need to make a choice between pregnancy and curing her ulcer.

The Centre had the medical facilities to harvest Miss Parker's eggs and keep them in storage for years as it had already harvested his sperm. All they needed to do was to wait for the right moment. Only the Centre could be sick enough to create a child born in the late nineteen nineties from the most optimum of Miss Parker's eggs and since the Scrolls had been in The Centre for a time, obviously they had read the prophecy, especially of a boy named Jarod and him saving the Centre, according to the rumor that was buried on the back papers of The
World Magazine, The National Scandal, or other such supermarket tabloid, along with the Fifteenth Commandment, "Thou Shalt Not Dance," and other such fallacies. However, they could not use the original, but create as new Jarod so that The Centre would continue in its evil as always

Since Jarod had no idea whether his oldest child by Miss Parker was a boy or a girl, it could have been a child that Mr. Parker had created, combining his brother's sperm with that of a female Pretender. Certainly, knowing how Raines felt about the Pretenders, he would not do it willingly, but he might if he did not know the female recipient was a 1.6r. It might be Lyle's son and how ironic, but in a way, horrible for the Parker curse still went through that line. The Pretender's eyes darkened when thinking this last possibility and he prayed to the God he did not know, that it would not be so.

"Ted, Miss Parker and I are going over to Cox's place. You tell Lewison and Lambourni Lewison's the tall large blonde man, and Lambourni's the other man with the auburn hair where we will be and be quick about it. Lambourni's going to California with one of his daughters and to prepare the way for the Supreme Chosen."

"I'll hurry."