THE CRANE WAR
THE METAFRAME WAR: BOOK 5
Graeme Rodaughan
Published by System Zero Productions Pty Ltd, 2019
Copyright © 2019 Graeme Rodaughan
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organizations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Trade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-9945952-9-4
Cover art by Huw Jones
For Linda, for her unfailing love and support that always leaves me in awe.
I would like to thank a number of people who have assisted with my progress as an author, including Alex, Tim, Lisa, Lena, Marie, Eldon, Michael, Christopher, Perry, Nick, Andrew, Laura, Daniel, Ginger, and Jody, and the regular crew of Beta and ARC readers at the Castle Dracula group and my many friends and followers on Goodreads. You have all contributed more than you know to my craft and your support and encouragement are invaluable for this journey.
Books by Graeme Rodaughan
The Metaframe War Series
A Subtle Agency
A Traitor’s War
The Dragon’s Den
The Day Guard
The Crane War
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Prologue
“The great god Set plotted in secret against the other gods. His plan was uncovered by the wise Thoth, but too late, for the trap was sprung and all were lost from this world.” - Ancient papyrus carbon dated prior to the beginning of the first kingdom of Egypt
“After half a lifetime of research I have still not unlocked the mysteries of the Divine Engine of Thoth, except to say that it is as old as time itself and rests as a lever on the fulcrum of reality. An adept with full mastery of the Engine could push on that lever to reshape the universe to their will.” - Issac Newton’s secret journal
“I learned of the Metaframe in my later years. I was deeply shocked by the initial implications that in some sense the laws of physics were mutable, but further research demonstrated that the fundamental laws were as persistent as time itself. More to the point, the Metaframe is a navigational device between alternate realities. While the laws of physics stand still, reality is a mutable construct subject to anyone who can access the Metaframe in full.” - Deathbed declaration of Albert Einstein
“This is not our original universe.” - Nikola Tesla - Collected Speculations and Notes
- Unpublished documents from within Cornelius Crane’s secret library
* * *
“The secret and true purpose of the Basilica is to provide a hiding place for the Key of Ahknaton. The fate of the Key was entrusted to my ancestor and this will be its place of eternal rest.” - Whispered by Michelangelo.
* * *
Beneath St Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, Sunday Night, January, 1978.
Nineteen workers had already died over the last month. Their bodies carted off in secret by devoutly loyal Swiss guards and disposed of by faithful Mafiosi. Their deaths had been various and unique, but once the men had been caught in one of Michelangelo’s traps, their lives were ended with extreme agony and utter violence.
The most recent had died in a caustic pool. The report had detailed that the man’s lungs had bled in violent freshets through his mouth as he drowned. Cardinal Ottaviano de Borja wondered which was worse, the caustic pit, or the moving wall that flattened a screaming man into oblivion, or his personal favorite - the five giant hooks on black chains that drew and quartered one hapless fellow. His death scream had been frozen on his face by rigor mortis before his separated body parts had been recovered and shipped away for disposal.
The others had been flayed, pressed through a net, drowned in putrefying fluids, disemboweled, gassed with an unknown substance that caused the flesh to boil, skewered, incinerated, vertically and horizontally bisected, or poisoned with a raving, suicidal mania - the last causing the victim to bludgeon himself to death with his own hammer while shouting mad oaths about demonic possession.
The old master had not yet managed to rig a trap that would freeze someone to death, but he believed there was still time to discover such a device. Perhaps devils had whispered in Michelangelo’s ears when he’d been inspired to create the lethal maze beneath the famous basilica. But why create such an enigma? Why fill it with deadly traps? What was the prize that was hidden here? For surely there was something of utmost value sequestered within the heart of Michelangelo’s secret labyrinth.
A secret that Ottaviano had ensured was perfectly kept. Not even his holiness, the Pope, knew what was happening deep beneath Saint Peter’s Basilica.
Ottaviano wrinkled his nose, lifting a perfumed red-silk handkerchief to his face. The workers near him were covered in grime and rivulets of sweat. The cloying odor of their labors filled the air of the subterranean maze. His personal assistant, Umberto Rossi, lifted an electric lantern high above his broad shoulders. Its sharp, white light illuminated the men straining on ropes and pulleys, hauling a giant flagstone up from the floor, revealing another space beneath them.
The workmen secured the ropes, the massive flagstone resting ten feet above the gap in the floor. The cardinal stared into the black depths. Rossi took a step closer, his lamp cutting a swathe through the gloom. The broad flagstone wobbled above the pit, held in place by thick ropes. Ottaviano was filled with avid curiosity; what new deadly trap awaited the next man to descend? He grinned, and pushed Rossi in the middle of the back, hard enough to make him take a step forward, but not hard enough to send him into the shadows below.
Rossi jerked backward from the edge and whirled around, a dark look flitting ever so briefly across his peasant’s face. He quickly regained control and asked quietly, “Your Eminence?”
“Send in the next man,” Ottaviano commanded.
“There are no more volunteers.”
“Then you will have to suffice.”
Rossi’s dark eyes hardened. He nodded once and turned to examine the entrance into the lower tunnel. The laborers backed away, clearing a space around the young priest and the shadowed opening in the floor. More electric lanterns were lifted to aid his examination. He knelt next to the entranceway in the floor, directing the light from his lantern into the space below him.
“What do you see?” the cardinal demanded.
“It’s a room … a small room. There is a single door. Wait … I can see something … written.” Rossi dropped feet first over the side, disappearing from view.
Ottaviano advanced to the edge of the gap in the floor. There was a door of dark wood, bound in iron on the left-side wall. Rossi was examining an inscription on the front of the door.
Ottaviano peered at the gilded letters, but the
y were partially shielded by Rossi’s broad shoulders. He called down to the priest, “What does it say? Quickly now.”
Rossi turned his head back over his shoulder and said firmly, “Cave magnum malum.”
A thrill of excitement ran up Ottaviano’s spine. Beware great evil. Surely, Michelangelo’s prize resided behind this doorway. He snorted, “Beware great evil.” The laborers surrounding the hole all took a step backward, many crossing themselves or making some other sign of superstitious fear.
Ottaviano despised their terror, but of course - that was the difference between lesser men and himself - they needed to be told what to fear. Beware great evil. Well, of course, but define evil? Was death not evil? Had it not been introduced by the original sin of Adam and Eve? Was its opposite, the absence of death, the persistence of youthful immortality not the epitome of good? If immortality was not good, then why were angels immortal? Why was god immortal? Jesus Christ had conquered death. Jesus Christ was immortal. Clearly, the goal of a good Christian life was to imitate the son of God and conquer death by becoming immortal.
Ottaviano had been little more than a boy when these thoughts had come to him while studying the Bible. He had not shared them with the feeble minds of his fellow students or the foolishly pious old priest who taught the class. The idea had possessed him, but its seeming impossibility had defeated him - then he’d discovered within the secret libraries of the Vatican that vampires were real.
Immortality - it was possible. He hungered for it like nothing else in his life. The endless nameless whores, the cocaine, the heroin, the children he’d consumed in frenzies of lust, the raging violence he’d meted out in well-hidden dungeons in Rome, along with the years of repeated attempts to satisfy his many and varied carnal appetites paled before his need to live forever.
What need would he have of redemption from a long-dead god-child when he could live forever.
He would not grow old, hairless, wrinkled, and limp. He’d not risen through the ranks of the church faster than anyone on record for nothing. With great position came great power, but the church could not satisfy a man of his vigorous and overarching ambitions.
It was time to send a message to his patron. The vampire who’d guided him into his position of secular power. With Michelangelo’s prize as his payment, immortality would be his.
“Get a rope,” he ordered the laborers. “Get Father Rossi out of there.”
It was time to send the most important message of his mortal life. Before the night had ended, he’d never witness another dawn.
It was a small price to pay to live forever.
* * *
The Key of Ahknaton was within Arthur Slayne’s reach.
Finally, it had been found. Arthur’s spy inserted into the cardinal’s personal staff had notified him of the discovery of the last vault less than an hour before. ‘Cave magnum malum,’ was the surviving clue from Michelangelo’s secret notebook that signified the resting place of the Key of Ahknaton. He’d rushed to Saint Peter’s Basilica and been guided to the vault by Father Rossi, who now kept watch back in the labyrinth.
There was no time to waste. Rossi’s message was undoubtedly twinned with another to the cardinal’s patron. A still unknown vampire, but Arthur suspected the only vampire who would come for the stone would be Cornelius Crane - the king of the Vampire Dominion. The only real question was how much time did he have left before the vampires arrived? Crane would not come by himself, at the very least he would be attended by a team of his praetorian guard, or possibly his chief enforcer, Chloe Armitage.
Arthur had been forewarned by Father Rossi; he could only assume that Crane had been forewarned too. It was a foregone conclusion Crane would have done exactly as Arthur had, and prepositioned himself and his forces nearby for a swift move once the location of the Key of Ahknaton had been confirmed.
He squatted on his haunches, hesitating, his left hand hovering a foot away from the polished black obsidian stone. The Key rested on a three-foot-tall marble pillar in the middle of a rectangular room twenty feet wide and twice as long. A single bright-white flame floated an inch above it. The stone’s starry surface writhing dreamlike beneath an enchanted white tongue of fire.
Clearly, Arthur mused, Michelangelo had kept the full extent of his sorcerous powers secret from everyone.
Apart from its color and intensity, the flame appeared identical to one found atop a lit votive candle. However, it flickered and danced without any means of support. Each febrile movement casting uncanny shadows as dark as outer space on the polished marble walls arching thirty feet above his head. The eldritch shadows dragged at the edges of Arthur’s vision, inspiring a possessive desire to turn his head and search for what was hiding within their black hearts. Was something lurking there, a hidden intelligence, or was the fell light of the flickering ivory flame simply a doorway to paranoia and madness?
Arthur focused his mind against the lure of the shadows and studied the flame, his eyes narrowing and his lips pressing into a thin line. Was it an illusion? A trick of the mind to fool the unwary? He wished it was, but knew he couldn’t be that lucky. No, the sorcerous flame was all too real, and was without doubt, Michelangelo’s final, most powerful, and subtle ward guarding the Key of Ahknaton. Watching the flame intently, he brought his left hand in from the side. He stilled his mind to silence, preparing to Ramp instantly on the first sign of danger. At a distance of three inches, the flame leaned toward his hand, as if attracted to his open palm by an invisible magnetism.
Arthur froze, the flame leaning avidly toward his naked flesh. He watched it for three long seconds, a cool sensation growing in the palm of his hand until icy tendrils prickled his skin. He drew his hand away and rubbed at the three-day growth of dark beard on his chin.
The flame returned to its former position above the Key and continued to defy the known laws of physics.
He stepped away from the pillar and paced through the still, dry air of the vault. He needed to think this through. Every trap in the maze had been engineered for cold, calculated lethality. This final ward wouldn’t be any different. If he failed here, the next person to enter this final vault would step over his lifeless corpse and pick up the Key of Ahknaton without risk. That would almost certainly be the cardinal and he’d most likely hand it to Crane.
Arthur whispered to himself, “Minimal useful information. No time to find out more. Sometimes you’ve just got to smack the shit out of something.” He strode to the far end of the chamber, drawing his katana from the scabbard strapped to his right shoulder. He flourished the blade, the black pearl in the handle gleaming with life in the enchanted candle light.
He fell into deep silence, the Ramp flowered within, and he blurred forward toward the front of the vault. He swung the Black Dragon through a wide arc, the flat tip of the blade connecting with the stone.
A human figure stepped into the open vault doorway.
The Key of Ahknaton speared toward the open doorway like a bullet. The white flame following the stone like a faithful guardian. Shadows advancing in its wake like a dark shroud from the depths of hell, momentarily overwhelming Arthur’s electric lantern.
The stone struck the cardinal just below the sternum, disappearing through his scarlet cassock in a spray of blood, his face freezing with shock. The cold-white flame reached him a moment later, blossoming with a sibilant hiss into a pillar around his body.
The stricken prince of the church shrieked, his voice rising in pitch and volume as the white flame inhabited every particle of his body. He danced like a demented puppet controlled by a drunken idiot, staggering across the threshold into the vault in a shambling mess of flailing limbs. The cardinal lurched forward, the white flame, as cold as the infinite depths of space, sucking all heat out of the room.
Waves of frigid air rolled off the flame-encased figure, forcing Arthur to retreat. He shivered, the hairs on his skin rising to attention, backing away as the cardinal staggered forward. Shadows pursued by
the engorged flame leaping away to the far corners of the chamber.
The cardinal jerked his way into the vault. The man’s face twisted in an agonized parody of a human being. His eyes bulging. His flesh driven white as snow by the sorcerous cold. Blood dropped in thick congealed blobs from ears, nose and mouth. He shrieked again and again. His wild screams were interspersed with singular gasps, his flesh driven beyond the limits of utter desperation. His eyes swelled to the size of golf balls, bursting like over-ripe grapes, leaving dark crimson holes in his face. His hair sloughed off in waves, shattering as it struck the floor. His tongue, hard, rigid, and frozen, protruded through his gaping mouth. His jaw spasmed and clenched, shattering the tongue, sending shards of red flesh and white tooth enamel flying.
All about the cardinal, a nimbus of white flame rose and swirled above his head, rising higher and higher to lick at the peaked ceiling thirty feet above.
Arthur covered his face with his left arm, the searing cold forcing him back to the rear of the vault as the cardinal shambled on creaking, bone-snapping steps toward the central pillar.
Compelled by the mystic flame, the prince of the Church advanced toward the short, central pillar. Each step truncated his height, flesh turning to dust with each tortured yard. His feet long gone, he lurched forward on stumps. Cardinal Ottaviano de Borja reached the pillar and collapsed around it. His final despairing shriek silenced mid-breath as he dissolved into a pile of gray ash. His final remains settling in a dusty heap surrounding the base of the stout pillar.
The Key of Ahknaton reposed once more upon the flat top of the marble pillar. A single thunderous note peeled throughout the chamber. Whatever magic warded the Key was now over. The Key sat, an ancient, alien thing, its skin writhing with captured starlight. Arthur dropped his arm, his gaze flashing across the chamber.
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