In the Shadow of Lions Read online

  IN THE SHADOW OF LIONS

  Published by David C Cook

  4050 Lee Vance View

  Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

  David C Cook Distribution Canada

  55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5

  David C Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

  Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

  The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.

  All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination, although some are based on real-life events and people.

  With the exception of Job 42 and Job 31, Scripture quotations are taken from

  Tyndale’s New Testament, translated by William Tyndale, a modern-spelling

  edition of the 1534 translation by David Daniell © 1989, Yale University.

  Job 42 Scripture quotation is taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © Eugene H. Peterson

  1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

  Job 31 Scripture quotation is taken from King James Version of the Bible. (Public domain.)

  LCCN 2008928480

  ISBN 978-0-7814-4887-1

  e-ISBN 978-1-4347-6581-9

  © 2008 Ginger Garrett

  Ginger Garrett is represented by MacGregor Literary.

  Visit Ginger at her Web site: www.GingerGarrett.com

  Author photo © Don Sparks Photography

  The Team: Andrea Christian, Ramona Tucker, Amy Kiechlin, Jaci Schneider, and Karen Athen

  Cover Design: John Hamilton Design

  Cover Photo: © HarperPoint

  Interior Design: The Visual Republic, Alexis Goodman

  First Edition 2008

  For my dad

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chaper Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  AfterWords

  Author’s Notes on the Story

  Personal Note to Readers

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Discussion Questions

  About the Author

  And Job answered God …

  “I admit I once lived by rumors of you;

  now I have it all firsthand …

  I’ll never again live

  on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor.”

  Job 42 MSG

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  For the Scribe: When we meet someday, and you finish your book on my life, please be gentle. I tried to make you quite dashing. If you want to do the same for me, that would be appreciated.

  For my friends at Cook, including Andrea Christian, Terry Behimer, Dan Rich, Don Pape, Jaci Schneider, Ingrid Beck, and Melanie Larson: Thank you for believing in me. Working with you is such an honor and I look forward to many years together. And for John and Nannette Hamilton, who designed the cover, thank you for your incredible artistry!

  Chip MacGregor, my fearless literary agent: Thank you a million times over for your wise advice and reality checks. I’ve seen incredible growth in my career since you began to shape my decisions. I am really thankful God connected us … and I hope Patti likes this one!

  Don Maass, Lisa Rector-Maass, and the team at Free Expressions: Lorin, Jason, and Brenda. I am forever indebted to each of you. Thank you for your passion for words and your willingness to walk authors through lonely passages. If any author is looking for a way to invest in their gifts, I would highly recommend a workshop offered through Free Expressions, as well as any of Don Maass’s books.

  My editor, Ramona Tucker, gently held my hand and helped me see the weaknesses in the manuscript. Working with you, Ramona, was a gift!

  My friends, both in the writing community and in my everyday life: Thanks for always asking about the book, even if you couldn’t remember which one I was working on. (I rarely could either.) For Siri, who makes trade shows memorable and shares my oddball sense of humor, thanks for praying me through another one and sharing your research. For the “Cat Pack” of women in publishing that meets for girls’ night out once a year, and keeps my secrets. For Courtney, Riki, Stephanie, Alecia, Dani, Niki, Kris, Louise, Carolynn, Tina, DeDe, Karetha, Allison, Amy, Shannon, Tinsley, Laura, Sherrill, Jennifer and Judy: One of my life goals is to love my friends well. You make it easy.

  Finally, my husband and family sacrificed more for this book than for any other. Whether I needed to travel to London to walk through the events in the novel or go away for a long week to write, they supported me, keeping the family running smoothly. Mitch, your quiet strength gave me courage. My parents did without sleep to watch the kids and made endless stacks of Saturday-morning pancakes. My in-laws, Andi and Chris, made their house available for ransacking too. My daughters drew me pictures and insisted that I take breaks to snuggle on the couch. They have an uncanny sense of when my writing day should end, which often corresponds to their hunger level. My son, the coolest defensive tackle football has ever known, is always fighting to knock players on their rears. He told me to work hard so I could knock readers on their rears too. I tried, baby.

  Chapter One

  Tomorrow, someone else will die in my bed.

  Someone died in it last month, which is how it came to be called mine.

  The infernal clock moved confidently toward 1 a.m., and I turned my head to look at the window. The window of this room is a miserly gesture from the contractors, producing more fog than visage. I watched the gold orbs—the lamps on the lawn of the hospice sputtering off and on in the darkness—that dotted the fogged glass.

  That was the last moment I lived as an iver, one whose eyes are veiled.

  One orb did not sputter but moved, gliding between the others, moving closer to the window, growing larger and brighter until the light consumed the entire view. I winced from the searing glare and tried to shield my eyes, but the IV line pulled taut. Wrestling with the line to get some slack, I saw the next movement out of the corner of my eye. I bit down hard on my tongue, my body jerking in reflex, and felt the warm blood run back to my throat.

  Outside, a hand wiped the fog away from the glass, and I watched the water beads running down the inside of my window. There was no searing light, only this mammoth hand with deep creases in the palms wiping down the window until we both could see each other. A man’s face was against the glass, but no breath fogged his vision. He was a giant, grim man, with an ring in one ear and dark glasses, and he was staring in at me. Even through the morphine, fear snaked along my arms, biting into my stomach, constricting around my throat. I tried to scream, but I could only gulp air and heave little gasps. His expression did not ch
ange as he lifted his hands, curling them into fists. I flinched at the last moment, thinking him to be Death, expecting to receive the blow and die.

  Then I grew suddenly warm, like the feeling you get stepping from an old, dark city library into the busy street and a warm spring sun.

  Death didn’t even hurt, I rejoiced. I could slip into it like I slipped onto that street, eyes down, my thoughts my own, and simply turn a corner and be gone. I lifted my fingers to beckon him. Yes, I thought. I saw the beautiful Rolex on my birdlike wrist and saw that it had stopped. It is time.

  When I looked back up, he was beside me, staring down, not speaking. I wasn’t dead. His frame was monstrously large, hitting what must be seven feet tall, with a width of muscle strapped across him that was inhuman. As he watched me, his chest didn’t move, and his nostrils didn’t flare, but heat and warm breath radiated from him. When he laid his hands across my eyes, I was too scared to move my head away. His palms covered most of my face, and a sharp buzzing drilled into every pore. He began to move his hands elsewhere, touching and bringing to life every splintered inch of my body. When he got to the cancer, with one swollen lymph node visible even through my stained blue gown, he rested his hands there until the swelling sighed, and he swept it away with his hand.

  “Wait!” I screamed.

  I didn’t want to live. I hadn’t known that was going to be an option. I deserved to be damned. To return to my life was too much to ask of me. I was finished.

  “You’ll still be dead by morning,” he reassured me. His voice was deep and clean, no telltale dialect or inflection. Taking off his glasses, I saw he had enormous gold eyes, with a black pinhole in the center that stayed round and cold. There was no white in them at all, and they were rimmed all the way around the outside with black. I stared at them, trying to remember where I had seen eyes like this. It had been years ago, this much I remembered.

  I had to shake myself back to the present moment. Clearly, morphine was not setting well with me tonight. I wanted to die in peace. That’s what I paid these extravagant sums for. My hand moved to the nurses’ call button. Mariskka was just down the hall, waiting for her moment to steal my watch. I knew she’d come running.

  He grabbed my hand, and the shock seared like a hot iron. Crying out, I shook him off and clutched my hand between my breasts, doing my best to sit up with my atrophied stomach muscles and tangled IV.

  He leaned in. “I have something for you.”

  “What?”

  He leaned in closer. “A second chance.”

  Second chances were not my forte. As the most celebrated editor in New York City, I had made a killing. I loved the words that trembling writers slid across my desk, those little black flecks that could destroy their life’s dream or launch a career. I bled red ink over every page, slashing words, cutting lines. No one understood how beautiful words were to me, why I tormented the best writers, always pushing them to bring me more. The crueler I was to the best of them, the more they loved me, like flagellants worshipping me as the master of their order. Only at the end, lying here facing my own death, did I understand why. They embraced the pain, thinking it birthed something greater than themselves. I saw how pitifully wrong they were. There was only pain. This is why I was ready to die. When you finish the last chapter and close the book, there is nothing but pain. It would have been better never to have written. Words betrayed me. And for that, I betrayed the best writer of them all.

  “Burn any manuscripts that arrive for me,” I had ordered my nurse, Marisska. “Tell them I’m already dead. Tell them anything.”

  “I’ll let you write the truth,” the man whispered. I focused on him again.

  “I’m not a writer,” I replied. My fear tumbled down into the dark place of my secrets.

  “No, you’re not,” he answered. “But you coveted those best sellers, didn’t you? You knew you could do better. This is your second chance.”

  It caught my attention. “How?”

  “I will dictate my story to you,” he said. “Then you’ll die.”

  Taking dictation? My mouth fell open. “I’m in hell, aren’t I?”

  He tilted his head. “Not yet.”

  I pushed away from the pillows and grabbed him. Blisters sprang up on my palms and in between my fingers, but I gritted my teeth and spat out my words. “Who are you?”

  “The first writer, the Scribe. My books lie open before the Throne and someday will be the only witness of your people and their time in this world. The stories are forgotten here, and the Day draws close. I will tell you one of my stories. You will record it.”

  “Why me?”

  “I like your work.”

  I started laughing, the first time I had laughed since I had been brought to this wing of the hospice, where the dying are readied for death, their papers ordered and discreet pamphlets on “end-of-life options” left by quiet-soled salesmen. I laughed until I was winded. He rested his hand on my chest, and I caught my breath as he spoke.

  “Let’s go find Marisska.”

  Chapter Two

  I grabbed the IV pole and stood, careful to conceal that awful opening in the back of my gown. I expected to find my leg muscles as sturdy as pudding, but his life had found its way into them, too.

  He saw my undignified writhing to get the gown’s gaps in order but made no move to assist. “A desk job hasn’t been kind to you, has it?”

  I followed him down the hall, glaring at his back, the size of a billboard, and shaking my wrist. The Rolex still stayed frozen at a few minutes before 1 a.m.

  A nurse pushing a half-awake Crazy Betty wheeled past us. I flattened myself to the wall, bracing for the screams when the two women saw this man.

  The nurse didn’t see us.

  Crazy Betty did. She began yelling at him, shaking her fingers in fury. “Go back where you belong and leave us alone! Always sneaking around, in and out of rooms whenever you like, always scribbling in your little book!”

  I froze.

  The Scribe kept walking, pressing a finger to his lips to urge her to be quiet.

  The nurse rolled her eyes and shushed Betty. “We’ll get you some tea and get you back in bed,” she comforted her.

  Betty was hearing none of it. As she was wheeled away, she turned and screamed at him, “What are you writing, anyway?”

  The Scribe kept walking.

  “What was all that?” I asked.

  He shrugged and kept walking. “Not everyone is happy to see us.”

  “She could see you? She’s not crazy?”

  “She’s crazy. But she can see us.”

  He arrived at the nurses’ station.

  Mariskka was there, her tone sharp as she argued with someone on the phone. “I said no. It’s against our policy here, David. I refuse to give her hope when we both know she’s going to die.”

  Mariskka didn’t miss anything, especially when wealthy patients were nearing death but still lucid enough to update their wills. When she finally whirled around in her chair, she would faint from shock to see me up and walking, never mind with a Jolly Black Giant.

  He leaned down behind Marisska. I covered my mouth with my hands and held my breath.

  Resting his hands on her shoulders, he whispered into her ear, “You need chocolate. Right now. There’s some in the kitchen.”

  “If you show up here, I’ll call the cops,” Mariskka spat as she slammed down the phone. “I think there’s some chocolate calling me.” She kicked back her chair and stomped off, in the direction of the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed at him, watching him remove her Mac and tuck it under his beefy arm. It was barely visibly in between folds of bicep and elbow.

  “Borrowing her laptop. You need it.”

  There were so many reasons this night was all wrong. I could only come up with one to say. “That’s a Mac. I don’t use Macs.”

  “Macs don’t need as many miracles,” he said. “I’m an angel, not a genie.”

&n
bsp; I stood there, my mouth opening and closing again, trying to say something cruel or anything at all. The jolly freakish giant took off, with strides that outreached mine three to one, heading back to my room.

  I should have been out of breath by the time we reached my room, but I was feeling stronger. I was stronger when he was near. When he exhaled it entered my body as a second wind. I edged closer and inhaled as we crossed through the threshold to my room. He turned and smiled, the first smile I had seen. I had almost rather he not do it again. His face was so big that even a smile made me edgy. I’d prefer for a man of this size to have as few emotions as possible.

  He went to work plugging the Mac in, moving my bed to find the closest outlet. When it was plugged in, he set it on the edge of the bed and turned to me. My body went bloodless, like fish diving to the deepest refuge, all of my extremities going pale and limp, abandoned. He walked toward me, and my mouth stayed open, with not even the strength to close it. He reached out and took my arm. His warming touch did not hurt, though if I had tried to resist him he could have snapped my arm like a twig. He ran his finger down my arm, resting it on the IV line. Closing his eyes, he opened his hand and gently wiped my arm. The IV line fell to the floor, my arm whole and without a mark.

  “It will be easier to work without that,” he said.

  Blood began to flow back into my arms and legs, and I made my way to the bed as he propped up a few pillows for me. I climbed in, and he handed me the laptop. I began to type, just to feel the keys under my fingertips. It was like coming home.

  I’m dying in the middle of the wildest dream! I typed.

  He crossed his arms. I could see his jaw shift and set.

  Another voice growled. “You wanted the heir.”

  “She’s difficult,” the Scribe replied. He didn’t turn his head to any direction, and I couldn’t tell where the voice came from. “Writing her story for years was easier than living with her for a few minutes.”

  “She is the heir,” the voice replied.

  “I’m the heir of what?” I asked. There was a sound like wind, but nothing moved in the room. The Scribe shook his head and looked for a place to sit. The steel-armed chair wasn’t large enough. He ran his hands along its frame and it groaned, stretching in all directions until he could comfortably sit. He opened his palms and a book appeared in them, a book bound in black frayed leather, with gold dust along the edges and thick iron locks keeping the pages sealed tight.