May 9th

Jordan was nervous. Sunday dinner with the boss. With the cultist and his wife. She could have taken comfort in the fact that Cavanaugh was going with her, except that he too was a member of the cult.

"Don't you usually visit your grandmother on Sundays?" Richard asked.

"I don't want Bellamy to know about her." She said "Security is a joke at her retirement center. All you have to do is fill in the guest book with your name and what apartment you are going to. They don't even ask for identification. I can't go there until Bellamy is behind bars again."

"Fair enough. You know we could arrange for her to have protection."

"I'll think about it. Right now I think she is safer if we just don't draw attention to her."

He nodded. "I suppose you're right. We'll talk about it again depending on how things go. You may change your mind depending on how things go with Bellamy. Next time he turns up in your life maybe you should try not antagonizing him so much,"

She shook her head. "No. I need to keep his attention so he doesn't go and kill someone else while pretending to behave for the benefit of the courts."

"You'd rather he killed you?" Richard asked, and raised an eyebrow.

"No. The plan is to stop him before he succeeds. He might not try if you're here protecting me."

"Oh, I think you spend enough time alone for him to make a move. It doesn't need to happen in your sleep. He probably thinks we're breaking the rules and sleeping together. Besides, I think he sabotaged your car."

"That's a scary thought. And I don't care if he thinks we're breaking the rules. I think some of the guys at work are hoping we'll break the rules. So this dinner… is it Sunday best or comfy and casual."

"You don't need to dress for church but I wouldn't go as far as jeans and a tee shirt."

"Okay, works for me." She said and headed into the bedroom to change into a pair of slacks and a nice shirt. She quickly did her makeup and hair. When she returned to the living room she found that Richard was also in slacks, a nice shirt, and loafers.

"You look nice." He said, knowing that she wasn't trying for beautiful or stunning. Although she was beautiful. He suspected she was aware of it too, in a casual sort of way. "Shall we go?"

Jordan nodded even though she would rather face Bellamy than what her runaway imagination conjured.

Kwai Chang Caine watched as his son continued to meditate. Lo Si had coached him on how to create a place to go in his mind and walked him through entering the meditation. That had been two days previous and Peter had not returned to the waking world. Caine didn't know if he should be impressed or concerned. Peter had always had difficulty with meditation, and now he was, to all appearances, working at an advanced level.

"You worry too much." Lo Si said. "Peter has always been able to achieve this. He has been afraid of losing himself to this. He will be fine. This is good. He will return when he is ready."

"According to Master Hsiao, Peter is almost ready. His training is nearly complete. His time with the serpents has worked to his benefit."

"Ah. This is what worries you."

"Yes." He watched his son's slow and steady breathing.

"You worry that what he has learned there will cast a shadow over his life."

Caine gave a single nod.

"You need not worry. Peter is a strong man, with a good heart. He could never fall to their darkness."

"He has the same concerns."

"That is the one thing he must overcome before he faces the enemy. He must have no doubts. Nag will use those doubts to work his way inside. While he could never willingly fall to their darkness, anyone may be possessed." He said. "I have been in Shamballa researching the Harbingers and their so-called gods."

"So-called?"

"They are avatars." Lo Si said, and Caine frowned.

"Are not avatars sacred beings that inhabit humans in order to stop a great evil?"

"Yes. It may be why Nag was drawn to Peter." Lo Si said. "He is good at his core and that may appeal to the part of Nag that remembers what he is."

"How is it that this being is an avatar and forcing its host to commit evil?"

"I believe that Peter will know more about that than I do. Perhaps more than anyone ever has."

"That thought does not reassure me," Caine said.

Peter did not hear the two men talking. Not really. He could hear that there was talking, and he could identify who the voices belonged to but not what they were saying. He wasn't worried about it. If they needed him he figured they would say or do something to rouse him.

He was walking along the banks of a river. The water was clear and deep. The sound of it rushing by was soothing and the air was filled with a mildly sweet scent, not unlike honeysuckle. There was a vast forest on either side of the river and in the distance, he could see a mountain with five snow-capped peaks. He assumed this was where the river flowed from. He had never felt so at peace in his life. He could imagine that this was what the Christian heaven was like. Or perhaps where souls went in between incarnations.

He heard footsteps and it surprised him. Peter turned to face an elderly Chinese man. He was bald, broadly built, and was wearing the saffron robes of a Shaolin monk or priest. A quick glance at his forearm where the voluminous sleeve slid down as he held his staff told him the aging man was a priest. He returned his gaze to the man's face and his white and unseeing eyes.

"Are you…" Peter felt half mad for thinking it, and had a hard time finishing the question, "Master Po?"

The priest smiled and inclined his head "Yes, young Caine. I am Master Po. Will you walk with me?"

"Yes," He said, in complete awe. He had read his great grandfather's journal, and the original Kwai Chang Caine wrote with great devotion when it came to his teacher.

"You have begun a great journey." Master Po said. "Not merely the one started in your youth."

"The problem is I don't know where the journey leads." Peter said "Or where my path leads."

"No one ever does. We delude ourselves with thinking we have found our way, but the future winds much like this river and no one can see what comes around the next bend until they are there."

"How do I know if I am choosing the right path? Or if I am making a mistake?"

"Ah," He said "Is that what troubles you?"

Peter nodded "I can't talk to my father about it. He sees me with a father's eyes. I don't think he could believe that I'd choose a bad path. Maybe choose poorly but not badly. And he hasn't been around for almost half my life. He doesn't know me as well as he thinks he does."

"He does not need to know your past to know you. The question is not how well your father knows you, the question is how well you know yourself. To know your enemy you must first know yourself."

"I thought I knew myself. Until the temple was destroyed and I was placed in an orphanage. Then I thought I knew myself until I was fostered and chose to become a police officer. I love being a cop. I love stopping the bad guys, you know." Peter said "And then I was taken by the Serpentes." He looked to his feet. "I had accepted what they were going to do to me. I couldn't see any way out, so I gave in. Clearly, I was not the man I had believed myself to be."

Master Po tilted his head, looking at Peter with blind eyes that saw so much more than any sighted person could. "Were you not?"

Peter laughed a little. "My mother, my foster mother I mean, does that. She's blind too and sometimes she looks at me like she can see right into the heart of me."

"What makes you think she does not, young Caine?" Po asked in amusement. "Why do you believe that you became less because of your abduction?"

"It's not the first time someone got the drop on me." He said. "I have been captured before. I always managed to get out of it and arrest the bad guys. This time… it was different. It was like everything I was being ripped apart piece by piece and now I'm running from them, something I have never done before."

"Perhaps the problem isn't what you are doing but how you perceive what you are doing." Master Po said.

"Perhaps. It's what my father keeps saying. That I'm not running, I'm preparing. If I'm honest though, that's not what I was thinking of doing when I left Bayview. I was thinking of staying out of her hands and not giving her reason to hurt anyone else because of me."

Master Po nodded as they walked. "And now that you are here, learning, meditating, are you still running or are you preparing?"

"Both… In a way." Peter said.

"What are you preparing to do, that causes you to resist speaking to your father."

"I'm going to free Nag."

Paul Blaisdell swore and struck the hospital corridor wall. "How the hell did they get to him?" He asked Kermit. "And where is the patrolman who is supposed to be sitting watch?"

"I don't know," Kermit said. "I've got people searching the hospital now. There was a code on the other side of the hospital, the nurses' station was unattended for several minutes."

Paul nodded. "Did the patient that coded survive?"

Kermit shook his head. "No."

"I want an autopsy done on that patient. The timing is too perfect and no assassin is going to sit around waiting for an act of God to make their move. I'll call the judge for a warrant." The family might not be willing to cooperate. Grief was hard enough without the thought their loved one might have been murdered.

"I'll let Nicky know. They took the patient down to the hospital morgue."

A patrolman approached and waited while Blaisdell placed the call to get the warrant in motion. When he finished the call he motioned for him to approach. "What is it?"

"We found Officer Simmons. He was in the stairwell between this floor and the one below. It looks as though his neck was broken."

"Thank you," Paul said and the patrolman turned and walked away. "Three deaths and I am willing to bet good money that all three are homicides. This shouldn't have happened. Larkin should have been safe here."

"Nowhere is safe. Nowhere has ever been safe. You know that as well as I do." He said. "Especially now."

"I know… I know." Paul said in frustration.

"Tomorrow you get to move into the serpents' den."

"I think they still call that city hall," Paul said laughing a little despite himself.

"Give it a day or two, that could change."

Jordan smiled and laughed as Mrs. Ryan brought out dessert and set it on the table. "I don't know that I have room for that."

"There is always room for dessert." Alex said, "Especially when it's my wife's black forest cake."

"He's not wrong," Cavanaugh said.

"I guess I can't argue with all of you," Jordan said and accepted her piece of cake.

Alex Ryan leaned back in the dining room chair and took a long drink of his coffee. "So I know you're an observant woman. You'd be a lousy detective if you weren't. So I am certain you have noticed the … snake motif… around the precinct."

"I noticed. The only time I thought it was weird was at the bar. An Irish-themed cop bar with a snake motif was different"

Cavanaugh chuckled. "Yeah. It wasn't originally an Irish bar. It was a cop bar for like 30 years before the current owner took over. The snakes were already there and he just figured it would be ironic to leave it like it was."

"Or he thought you guys would stop going if he changed it too much." Sheila Ryan said.

"I would not doubt that at all," Ryan said.

"Okay, so I have an idea what the snakes are about but I would rather you explained it to me so I don't sound like an idiot."

Alex laughed then. "You're probably right about us. If we were a sexist crew we'd call it a fraternal order but that is the closest concept." He said. "We're an open secret in the precinct."

"I've seen the rings. Figured it was a club of some sort." She said. "So what do you guys do? I mean there are a lot of fraternal orders out there. All the way from fundraising for children's hospitals to trashing hotel rooms at conventions to just sitting around and drinking at the bar."

That earned another laugh. "Well, we're not a benevolent order, so we're not fundraising for anyone. Unless you count the things we do as cops. Taking care of the widows and orphans of Police officers, toys for tots, that sort of thing. We take care of each other, have each other's backs, we have our little rituals that we do of course, that we can't go into unless you're inducted into the order."

"Is that where this is leading?" She asked.

Alex nodded. "Yes, it is."

"And the snake scene after the barbecue was a test wasn't it."

He nodded again.

Her mouth ran dry. This was it. This was why she'd come to River City. She took a sip of her coffee. "I assume I passed or we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's hard to decide without knowing what I'm getting into. But I get the need for secrecy about private things. People love to claim that secret society is another word for a cult." Don't come off as too eager. They'll be suspicious, she thought. She stared at her plate with the remainder of a slice of black forest cake for long moments before finally speaking. "Alright…" She said. "I'm in…if this was actually an invitation."

"It was," Ryan said. "Welcome aboard. We'll arrange for an initiation soon. In the meantime, I'm going to reassign you to work with Richard, and I'll put someone else with Tammy Li."

"If you're sure." She said with a nod.

"I'm sure."

Peter drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes. He smiled, seeing his father sitting on the floor in front of him. "Hey, Pop." He said quietly.

Caine thought his son looked more relaxed than he had ever seen him. "Was your meditation … good?" He had worried about his son. He'd never been able to achieve deep meditation before. For that matter, he'd never been able to get beyond the first level of meditation before.

Peter nodded "I think so." He said as he unfolded his legs and stretched. "Father… do people come to speak to you in meditation?" He asked.

"They can. Is that why you remained in meditation for more than two days? You were speaking to someone?"

Once again Peter nodded. "It's going to sound completely insane, but I have just been speaking with Master Po… it's not actually insanity is it?"

Caine smiled. "No, it is not insanity. Master Po has always sought to teach our bloodline. From my grandfather onward. Can you speak of what you shared?"

Peter got off the floor. "I think so." He was a little nervous. His plan sounded insane even to himself. "I ahm… I have a plan."

"Perhaps we should ask Lo Si to join us. He has information about Nag and Nagaina."

Peter nodded. "Okay"

Caine excused himself and returned soon with the Ancient and a tray with tea service and a bowl of lentils and rice for Peter.

"Thank you. I'm starving." He said picking up the bowl.

"In time," The ancient said, "Your meditation will not leave you hungry or thirsty."

Peter smiled. "I wasn't either of those things while I was meditating."

"Your father tells me you spoke with Master Po."

Peter nodded "And he tells me you have information about Nag and Nagaina. You first."

"They are avatars. Normally they come to this plane of existence to inhabit humans to right great wrongs or to fight great evil."

"Well, I think they changed teams. At least Nagaina has." Peter said in between bites.

"You do not believe that Nag is as evil as his mate?"

"He wouldn't be the first guy to get in too deep when his lover goes rogue." He said. "I could be wrong. It's happened before. But I think he was, in his way, protecting me. The more I think about it, I think that is why I survived in the darkness for so long. He didn't let me lose my mind. The way he answered my questions the more I think he wants out."

"Out?" Caine asked, seeking clarification.

"I think he's trapped and wants to be freed. I think I know how to go about it but it's not going to be easy."

"Destroying cults never is," Caine said. "Tell us your plan."

"Plan is a strong word," Peter said. "I haven't gotten to the actual how yet. I also need to make sure that box in my head can actually hold him just in case I'm wrong about all of this. Regardless, the first thing I need to know is how to destroy an artifact. I think that's the key to cutting their legs out from under them."