A Dubious Curse (A Colton Banyon Mystery Book 8) Read online

  “It’s not that simple,” the spirit replied. “The curse has already been activated but it won’t take effect until the cursed person dies. It will be soon; however, none of us up here can see anything involving the new curse— the history is all blank. I am essentially blind on this one.”

  “Can’t you go back in history to see where the book was located?”

  “The medium that held the book also learned some curses and spells from the others. She eventually disappeared using a spell. She also put a curse on the book so the Nazis couldn’t find it. Only someone who knows the curses can find the book.”

  “But you know the plan exists, right?”

  “The history of the device has been published for some time. The power source has not. It is part of the plan. The power source will change everything. It is both a weapon and a blessing, as the energy is limitless and cheap. It could be used to build a utopia.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “In the hands of the wrong people, yes, it is bad.”

  “That seems like a dubious curse,” Banyon replied.

  “But there may be a bigger problem,” the spirit hinted.

  “Uh, oh,” Banyon uttered. If Wolf said it was a problem, it was a big problem. “What do you mean?”

  “There will be a new person who will be able to talk to a spirit like me. That person is a member of the Effort. The person dying is also a member of the Effort. I’m afraid that there is trouble ahead.”

  “Oh, my God,” Banyon suddenly yelled. The Effort was the modern version of the Third Reich. They had infiltrated America, starting in the 1930s, and intended to turn America into the new Third Reich. Banyon had fought them before.

  “Can you give me his name?” Banyon asked.

  “My ability to see the history around the subject ended as soon as the curse was placed, so no, not until the curse is completed, which occurs when the cursed person dies. You must protect yourself, Colton.”

  “Why?”

  “The new spirit will quickly discover you have had a hand in the demise of several of the Effort plots and people. He will be able to see that you found the working model of the saucer. He will also find out about me and will surely come after you. You are in grave danger, and you must act quickly.”

  “But… where do I start?” Banyon felt the cold chill of fear gripping his heart. His fear also included the safety of his friends.

  “First, you must have the Patel sisters find a way to neutralize the curse. If we can hinder the spirit from communicating, we can stop the plot.”

  “Will the new spirit have the same rules? I mean, will the spirit need questions to respond like you do?” Banyon asked.

  “That is my understanding,” Wolf answered.

  “Do you know anyone who can give me a lead?”

  “There is one person. They are a direct descendant of the medium who drew the original plans for the anti-gravity machine. Her name was Maria Orsic.”

  “What is his name and where do I find him?”

  “He is actually a she, and she is a medium. Her name is Lisa Lange, and she is a professor of history at UNLV in Las Vegas. She is a leading member of the current Vril Society. She is also in great danger, and you must protect her.”

  “Do you think your plan will work? Can we stop their plans?”

  “We have a good chance. We will also attempt to block the new spirit from learning how to research history. This position, up here, does not come with a procedure manual. You have to learn from others up here. My friends and I will surround the new spirit and attempt to block him from learning. They will still be able to see recent history, though, and communicate with their conduit on the ground. I will know more when they get here.”

  Banyon quickly turned to the wide-eyed Loni. “Call the Patel clan. We need to have a meeting right now. Then book us on a flight to Las Vegas, and tell the Patels they need to go with us. Finally, get me everything you can find on the Internet about the Vril Society, especially anything you can find about a woman named Maria Orsic.”

  Loni, who did everything at top speed, fled the room. “I have to pack first. It will be fun to be at our condo.”

  don’t know anything about a book of Vril writings,” Lisa Lange replied with as much indignity as she could muster. She had crossed her arms and leaned back slightly. It was a clear sign to Colton Banyon that she would deny anything he told her. What Lisa didn’t know was that Banyon had planned ahead.

  “I can see you need more convincing,” Colton Banyon said. “Do you believe in mediums?” On the way over to the school, Banyon had told Wolf to respond to the question, but not to him.

  He watched with amusement as a shocked Lisa Lange put her hands over her ears, and he watched as her pretty eyes bulged out of their sockets. Fear registered on her face. She almost lost her balance and had to grab the podium to keep from falling down. Banyon noticed a lot more leg protruding from the slit in her dress.

  “How did you do that?” she demanded after she had recovered. He eyes were now filled with amazement. “Are you a medium?”

  “Hardly, but I do have some connections up above,” Banyon replied evasively. “I trust you will keep this secret, and I will keep your secret, as well,” Banyon replied. “We need to trust each other.”

  “Who are you, Mr. Banyon?”

  Banyon ignored her question. “What did you hear?”

  “A male voice told me I had a tattoo of a disk on my body. It is the same design as the disk that the Vril Society used to wear on their necks. He told me where the tattoo is located. No one has ever seen that tattoo. How could he know?”

  “Care to reveal where?”

  “No,” she said, with defiance in her tone and in her expression. It told Banyon it was in an intimate spot on her torso. Her hand immediately went to cover the spot, inadvertently exposing its exact location to Banyon. It occurred to him that if he were a devious person, he could learn many things about this lovely lady.

  “Do you need more convincing?”

  “My office is near here. Perhaps we should talk there,” Lisa Lange said in resignation. She raised a delicate finger to point the way.

  eanwhile, Loni was getting everyone situated in their condominium in Summerlin, a western suburb of Las Vegas, Nevada. Summerlin is 1,000 feet above the Las Vegas Strip and is one of the newer sections of the sprawling city. Banyon and Loni had bought the condo to winter in a warmer climate than Chicago. It was their getaway house, but they seemed to be spending more and more time there lately.

  The Banyon team had arrived in Las Vegas by private jet in mid-morning. At their meeting the night before, they had voted and decided to spend the money for a private jet. They could bring weapons, stored in the cargo hold, and it was much faster than a commercial jet. It also gave them time to discuss their plans while cruising over the vast Midwest. When they landed, Banyon rented a car and went directly to the UNLV campus to seek out Professor Lange. Loni had taken a limo with the rest of the crew to Summerlin. Banyon had told her they would probably be there for several days.

  Currently, Loni was concerned about the sleeping arrangements. Loni could be a deep thinker, but, when it came to anything domestic, she was at a total loss. The condominium had three good-sized bedrooms, but one had been converted into an office. She and Colt had their bedroom, but where the rest of the people would sleep was still up for debate. Banyon had told her that he would, most likely, be bringing a visitor, Lisa Lange, to stay with them until the crisis blew over. Lisa would stay in the office bedroom by herself. That left the four members of the Patel clan to share one room.

  The head of the clan was Previne Patel. Previne was an extremely beautiful Indian woman in her thirties. She was dangerously smart and amazingly cunning. She was a curator for a museum in New Delhi, India. Her identical twin sister, Pramilla, was the second member of the clan. She was a career diplomat with the Indian government. Pramilla was married to Eric Grey. Eric was the grandson of Banyon’s mentor,
Wolf. Eric had surfer-boy good looks and a Navy SEAL background. The fourth member of the clan was Maya Patel. She was an archeologist. She looked remarkably like her sisters, but was slightly younger and bustier. Most people could not tell the three women apart, with the exception of Maya, who was currently three months pregnant.

  The Patel clan had been part of Colton Banyon’s team since his first mystery several years ago. They also knew about Wolf. They had known him when he had been alive as Walter Pierce. Banyon and all the Patel women knew each other very well. They had all been lovers before Loni came along. They still tempted him, but he loved Loni.

  Loni had always been insanely jealous of the women. Their concept of friendship revolved around having sex and sharing their partners with each other. Loni had considered them sexual predators until recently.

  Loni’s greatest fear was that she would lose Colton Banyon, especially to one of the Patel women. She loved him and felt they were destined for each other, but could not understand why he still loved her. She was insanely jealous, dangerously impulsive, completely disorganized, she couldn’t cook or clean, and she had a mysterious past. She had only revealed a small portion of it to him, despite his constant urging. She was, however, doggedly determined to hang on to him. No matter what it took she would oblige. Banyon seemed oblivious to her shortcomings and seemed to love her unconditionally, so Loni put up with the flirty Patel sisters. But things had changed for Loni.

  A few months ago, Loni had found herself on a sailboat with the three Patel women in the middle of the Black Sea. They had gone on a treasure hunt for Nazi plunder. The boat had only two bunks, and Loni had made the choice to bunk with Previne. On the second night, she had bunked with Pramilla, and, by the time the women returned home, Loni was intimate with both women. She was still determined to not share Colton with anyone, but she now enjoyed the Patel women.

  During the voyage, the Patel women had also maneuvered themselves into an ownership position in the LCH Detective Agency, LLC, and they were now permanent members of the Banyon team. Previne had planned it all, a fact to which Loni was ignorant.

  She was in a dilemma as to who should sleep in their bed. She knew Eric didn’t mind sleeping with more than one Patel sister, but four in one bed was too much, so she decided one of the women would sleep in the same bed with Colton and her.

  “Maya, you will be sleeping in our room,” she said to the group that huddled around the great room.

  “Are you sure?” Maya responded. “You know I will have to get up several times during the night to go to the bathroom, and I don’t want to disturb you and Colt. I think Previne should sleep with you two.”

  “I call the middle of the bed,” Previne cheerfully announced in her precise English, picking up her luggage and bringing it into the master bedroom. It was exactly how Previne had planned it with her sisters.

  nce they were in her small office, Lisa turned the lock on the door and sat down behind her desk with her hands folded on top of it. She was, once again, under control. She pointed to the chair she wanted Banyon to sit in. “So tell me more, Mr. Banyon. Why am I in danger?” she asked sweetly.

  Banyon spent a couple of seconds surveying Professor Lange’s small office. It was incredibly neat and tidy. There was no dust on the bookshelves and no piles of papers stacked anywhere. There were two plants, which appeared to be orchids, on the window ledge. The furniture was very new and modern. This was not a typical university professor’s office.

  “Your office is very clean,” Banyon replied suspiciously.

  “Well, I have little trouble getting students to help me keep it clean,” she replied defiantly, flipping her hair. Banyon quickly understood Lisa was not above using her female attributes to accomplish her goals. “You haven’t answered my question, Mr. Banyon.”

  “Call me Colt,” Banyon replied.

  “Alright, Colt. Why am I in danger?”

  “Because you hold the key to finding the original book of the Vril Society,” he replied. “You have always had the key.”

  “Why don’t you just ask your spirit friend,” she pointed to the ceiling. “If he can see everything, surely, he can tell you where it is?”

  Banyon was not to be put off. “Your great-grandmother, Maria Orsic, put a curse on the book. She learned it from the others. Only you can break the curse.”

  “Really,” Lisa responded in disbelief.

  “The curse prevents anyone from seeing the whereabouts of the book,” he told her. He noticed the concern that registered on her face as he mentioned Maria Orsic. “Apparently, she knew several spells and curses, including how to make herself disappear. She did that in 1945, as I recall.”

  “She just wanted a better life,” Lisa spat back. “Late in the war, she was virtually under house arrest.”

  “Yes, the Nazis were working on the model of the anti-gravity machine called the ‘Bell’. Hitler had funded the project in 1943,” Banyon replied. “It is common knowledge.”

  “They treated her very badly and made her perform tricks for her captures. She had to get away. That was when she came to America,” Lisa said with bitter sadness. “All she wanted was to help people with the Vril, but Hitler wanted a weapon.”

  “I actually held the real, working model of an anti-gravity machine, you know,” Banyon said softly. “We found it in a cave in Death Valley a couple of years ago.”

  “You mean they made Vril work? So, where is it?” she quickly asked, sitting up straight in her chair.

  “I used it to save our lives, but it was destroyed during a bloody gun battle. There is nothing left of the machine, but it proves your goal can be reached.”

  Lisa sat back in her chair, appraising her visitor. “If I can help you find the book, what will prevent you from doing the same thing as Hitler?”

  “We intend to keep it from the government. My team and I have found many unique artifacts in the past. They are all in private storage, so no one can use them as weapons,” Banyon told her. “When we find this book, we will give it to you to keep. I only seek to prevent injustice.”

  “And to protect your secrets, I assume,” Lisa said.

  “That, too,” he admitted sheepishly. Banyon now realized Lisa was both smart and intuitive.

  Lisa now leaned forward and studied Banyon for a few minutes. “Okay, I’ll admit that you know who I am, and you know about my great-grandmother as well. I even believe you have touched a machine containing Vril. I also understand why someone might try to get me to expose the book, but I don’t know anything about a curse. My great-grandmother’s book has been missing since before I was born. How can I help anyone?” Lisa was showing a level of frustration. Her pretty forehead now had deep furrows of worry. Banyon could see she was struggling with her emotions.

  “Tell me what you can about your society. Specifically, what is Vril?”

  She calmed herself before answering, “It is a mixture of energy sources. It contains electricity, gravity, wind, solar, and other energies. They are all held together by a catalyst— that’s the secret. Once the mixture is made, the power is limitless and easily renewable. It can power anything on earth and can even bend time, if there is a machine that can move fast enough. It has always been the goal of the Vril Society to use the Vril to power all the machines on Earth. Some of us have even intended to travel to where the others live.”

  “Where is that?”

  “They currently live on a planet called Aldebaran in a solar system that is over 68 light-years away. But they once lived on Earth.”

  “The ancient Sumerians?” Banyon asked.

  “Yes, but they decided to leave because of racial discrimination.”

  “Explain?” Banyon prompted.

  “The Sumerians were exceptionally intelligent and had modern cities thousands of years ago. That was when they discovered Vril. But Vril has one drawback when used constantly.”

  “What is that?”

  “Their skin turned a shade of blue,” Lisa said
. “Prolonged use of Vril made them all blue in color.”

  “That explains why there are depictions of them in blue statues and art in the ancient ruins of several civilizations.”

  “That’s correct. They were a peaceful race, but they were persecuted because of the color of their skin. Don’t you see, they had to flee Earth?”

  “In the book by Lytton, some of the Sumerians went underground. Do you believe that, also?” Banyon asked.

  “That’s a possibility, but I have not heard from them, at least I don’t know of any messages from them,” Lisa replied.

  Banyon thought for a second. Then, he asked another question. “Why do they send telepathic messages back to Earth?”

  “I believe they want to enlighten the people of Earth. Their civilization is now a utopia— they want to share it. They also don’t want Vril to be used as a weapon. They know the destructive powers it can bring.”

  “Have you actually spoken with them?”

  “No, it doesn’t work that way. I receive messages and write them down. I’m not aware of what I write. I’m in a trance. Many times, they are a repeat of the same message.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Do you want to see some?” Without waiting for Banyon to agree, she reached under her desk and extracted a folder from her large bag. She laid it on the desktop and ceremoniously opened it. Banyon took the first page and read it. It had an English translation below the actual message.

  He read the message out loud. “We live in complete harmony. The Vril will give you the power to come here. Directions will come shortly.” He then read several more of the messages. They all had the same theme: come to see us.

  Banyon became curious about the messenger. “Do you know how many different voices you have heard?”

  “It is only one voice, and it is female. She talks in a monotone.”

  “And how often do you receive these messages?”

  “I must be prepared for them. Sometimes, they happen when my protégées are with me, and sometimes, it happens when I am alone, but I must be prepared to receive them.”