CHAPTER 1

Knock.

Knock, knock, knock,

Knock, tap.

"Jesus!"

Startled almost out of my sleep, I hear footsteps creak on the boards of the porch. A bear? The knocking again.

Who's wrapping the code?

Pulling aside the ringed curtains, patterned with those black bears that seem to be found only on mountain cabin windows, I peer through the moist glass toward the porch and, in the powdery light of a lonely yellow bulb, I see the form of a girl holding a leather pizza warmer. Can't believe they have home delivery in these parts. I open the door to see the thin face of the girl framed by her jacket hood. Inviting her in out of the cold, she touches the lintel of the door as if steadying her slight frame then seems to skate inside.

"Cold night for a job like yours," I say. She doesn't reply but looks around the ordinary cabin as if fascinated by it; she places the pouch on the knotty-pine tabletop.

"Peaceful ... and wonderful, isn't it? The cold night?" she says, apparently happy to be shivering, "The chill allows all the stars to shine brighter." She removes her hood, and I notice her very short-cropped hair, sandy colored, and her nose and eyebrow piercings; she's very white. Taking the pizza box out of the bag, she places it on the table and opens it for me. I look around for my wallet.

"The woman already paid for it," she says.

Cryptic. What woman? I'm alone. I think.

"The tip," I say.

"Even the tip," she replies, "Look, it is ready for you now. Our special dough, which you can only get up here. On the mountain. You should eat of it while it is fresh." She talks funny for a delivery kid, but I'm more taken by the most amazing light in her eyes. And her voice, while young, has a smooth, rich timbre, unlike any I've heard before.

"Thanks, yeah, I will," I say.

"Please understand me, do not wait too long," she adds with more an advisory than an admonishing tone; she breaks out into a grin. "In this place where you are, in the thin cold air, that which is warm can grow cold quickly."

Are we talking about pizza here?

The room lights up and I feel a strong erotic urge out of nowhere. I am now in a palace, like the one Miramee described when she told me of the third temptation of Yeshua in the desert. The girl is still here but I know she's not the same. She looks different but I don't register the change much more than that.

"I am the Angel Nura, remember?" she says with a beautiful, radiant smile, her black hair in a thick braid that cascades down her right shoulder. She wears a classic Greek gown of white with a diaphanous layer of silken blue.

"Sorry. I'm sure we've never met," I say, clearing my throat; she's big breasted, sensual. Suddenly I remember that she is Satan in disguise and I lurch backwards. Her face reddens with anger; I think she could explode.

"Pay no attention to Gavri'el," she says.

"Gavri'el?" I ask, "Seriously?" Was the kid with the pizza really the great Archangel Gavri'el, Eema's angel, the one who asked her to conceive the infant Yeshua?

"Yes, Jack Castro," she replies, "You are so weak and ignorant, so easily deceived. Can you not see that she brings trouble for you? Stay away from the priest or, surely, you shall die and there are many, many others who will die as well. Stay in this land of yours, spend freely from the treasure given you and to which you have a right, and, please, live richly in peace — for your own sake. In the other place, in the other time, you shall do great damage with your unworthy presence!"

She stares me down and I feel her darkness creeping into my heart. She's right; my presence is unworthy but I have no intention of going back to Miramee, although I miss her every day. And Yeshua, I desire to see him but I'm fearful of letting go like that again. So, no plans to head back to his time and place; if you could imagine a presence like his belonging to any time and place. So, I have no idea why she's come to warn me. Fear now grips me as she smiles and then giggles, now laughs at me derisively; a sinister laughter that you hear from villains in the movies — except hers rings in an intensified sense of self-hopelessness, an absence of any redeemable good in me.

Suddenly, her amusement ends when we are both startled by the whole palace beginning to shake violently as if it were a ship slammed by a rogue wave. A pillar crashes nearly missing me and she vanishes but, before she departs, I see the terror in her eyes. What's happening here? The chandelier on a chain swings violently over my head.

Am I dying again? Am I dying here in Satan's palace, amid the lavish lie of Hell?

CHAPTER 2

AD 2010 and the second year of the presidency of Barack Obama, in the air above Rome

BUMP!

Eyes snap open. Turbulence. It was just turbulence. A relieved sigh wheezes out of me; another nightmare. A small thump gives a second love tap to the venerable 747. As if planned, the cabin lights brighten accompanied by the gentle, familiar chime.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we land at Aeropuerto de Fiumicino in thirty minutes, please prepare, grazie." The feminine lilt of the flight attendant's Italian accent awakens us. I yawn now and stretch, realizing I slept most of the eleven-hour flight from San Francisco.

"Ahhhhh!" Another big yawn.

She offers me a small, crisp towel and I wipe the sleep from my face. Returning with a plastic trash bag and I plop in some crumpled tissues. Her dark moist eyes sparkle, seeming to smile as broadly as her full lips, as if I had just given her something to be treasured. The smile reminds me transiently of the not-so-angelic Angel Nura and I shiver reflexively.

"Grazie and good morning, Mr. Castro," she says brightly, but frowns slightly at my reaction. I try to return a "Good Morning" as I compose myself, and then glance to my right and see the eyes of my wife flutter open briefly, and then shut lightly again as she shifts in the first-class lounge chair. Feeling better. What remains of the dream's erotic wave washes over me briefly as I reach over Sharon's curvy, blanketed hip to lift the curtain; the late morning sun streams in, the light crumpling her smooth forehead into a frown. Feeling more relaxed, I smile with a small, private satisfaction; in my dad-mode, I enjoy waking my family up.

"Oh, Jack! I slept this time!" Sharon yawns now and scans the cabin with groggy amazement, "Those pills Mike gave me worked!" She is speaking of Dr. Michael Kohen, her boss and the cardiac surgeon to whom I owe my life. Sharon blissfully closes her eyes once more.

Squinting out at the hazy Italian landscape below, my attention turns back to the flight attendant as she brushes past me again, her Milanese perfume lightly lingering in the musty cabin air. These last seven years seem to have brushed by me as quickly; all that remains is the same brief fragrance of memories. There's a lot of life, a lot of calls, agricultural insurance policies written, speaking engagements, graduations, weddings, and even some funerals but still it seems ... fast.

We lost my dad to cancer last January and Mom sold her house; all of us decided it would be better if she lived with us. She's had a hard time adjusting to a widow's life and it seems to have rekindled her religious faith. A month following Dad's funeral mass, she decided to start...