by D. Laine
As expected, it took some persuasion for the professor to start talking.
An hour after Marcus started, the professor’s blood coated the leather chair and the floor around him. Seeing Marcus’s crimson-stained blade approach for another round, the old man’s mouth suddenly started moving.
“It’s too late,” he gushed. “You couldn’t stop it now if you tried.”
“Stop what?” Jake asked calmly from his seat on the couch behind me.
Thompson’s gaze flicked between Marcus, Jake, and me like he wasn’t sure who had asked the question. All that blood in his ear canal probably wasn’t helping the geezer’s hearing. “If you think what’s happening now is bad, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
“Another event?” Jake guessed.
Thompson’s lips twisted into a creepy looking grin. “Those were merely distractions.”
“Hmm. Sounds terrifying.” I dropped to a knee, putting myself at eye level with the vessel. “Your little buddies below deck whipping up some natural disasters to distract us? Sounds like something they would do, but what’s that have to do with Yellowstone?”
His grin turned even more sinister. “Everything.”
I made a face like I wasn’t impressed, and stood to give Marcus a nod. Seemed to me that the professor needed a little more encouragement.
As Marcus continued to draw his grotesque masterpiece on the professor’s skin, the vessel cackled as if his demon parasite had already taken over his body. He was unaffected, past the point of torture. He had entered a state of madness.
“It’s already been done,” he laughed. “What we have planned will bring the world to its knees. My master, and all the masters, will ascend into the host bodies that lay dormant and ready for them.”
I put some distance between myself and the vessel’s cackling laugh as he took a hard left in Crazy Town. Staring down at him, I shook my head.
“You’re wrong about one thing, Professor,” I informed him. “Your master is going to stay in his cage in hell where he belongs, because you’re going to be dead.”
I turned away to let Marcus finish him off. There was a wildness in his eyes that told me he hadn’t had enough killing for the day. Me? I was good. Calm. In the game.
Despite the professor’s clues meaning absolutely nothing to me.
I plopped into the seat next to Jake with a sigh as the vessel’s screams pitched and waned. “Good thing we’re out in the middle of nowhere.”
Jake obviously wasn’t in the mood to waste any time with small talk. “What was he talking about, Dylan?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
“You’re the geology student here,” he reminded me. “You’ve been watching him for nearly two weeks now. You should have some idea.”
“For starters, I’m not a geology student,” I fired. “Don’t try to guilt trip me, Jake.”
“We need to know, Dylan. We need—”
“I told you—I don’t know what he was dancing around.”
Maria slid into the seat beside me and volunteered, “It’s something big.”
“Obviously,” I muttered.
“Well . . .” Jake settled his firm gaze on me. “How are we going to figure it out now?”
I stared at the river of blood that dripped from the professor’s seat. Now that he was dead, we didn’t have many options left.
Save one.
“I think I know where to start.”
TWELVE HOURS AGO, when I was with Thea in the darkroom, there had not been a doubt in my mind where I would end up tonight. Deep inside a building that smelled of fresh lemon cleaner and knowledge was not it.
I felt like the world’s biggest chump as I waltzed through the geology wing of the science building. Maybe the world’s second biggest chump—second only to Thea’s friend, who she had no idea was in love with her.
I suspected I would find David here tonight. While part of me wished he wasn’t, so I could make good on my plans with Thea, I had to take advantage of the opportunity to pick his geology-focused brain.
Once I assured myself of one little thing.
“Hey, David,” I called out to him as I entered the room labeled LAB.
The gadgets that covered the many tables in the room gave off a series of robotic beeps and whirs, and lit the dim room with a variety of colors from every corner. Gadgets I had no idea how to operate, let alone what they monitored. Gadgets that made me feel highly inadequate for the first time in my life.
While Thea’s friend looked at me like I had grown a third eye on my forehead, I put a hand out to slap him on the back.
“I was hoping I would find you here tonight.”
He looked me over warily. “Oh, yeah?”
I pointed to the machine that housed three large rolls of paper, all with squiggly lines printed on them. “What are you looking at here?”
“This?” He turned to glance at what I had indicated, giving me a clear view of the back of his neck.
No mark. David was not a tag. My hand moved away from the holster inconspicuously strapped to my waist since I had no reason to kill him now.
“I just came in to make some notes on the activity reported earlier today.”
“Anything interesting?” I asked as I leaned forward to take a peek. None of the scribbles, or his notes, made any sense.
“Uh . . . yeah, actually.” He chuckled lightly as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Activity has been increasing around the park for weeks. It’s happened before, but nothing this consistent. I doubt it would have made waves for you down in Utah.”
“Hmm.”
Screw Utah. He’d brought up the park. That was my opening. I just had to try to sound like I knew what I was talking about when I asked him what kind of “activity” was going on here. Were we talking elk migration . . . or something more threatening to human civilization?
“So what’s your theory?”
He turned to me. “My theory?”
“Yeah. Why is activity increasing?”
“Well . . . many seasoned geologists disagree, but I suspect that the magma under the park is shifting its course. The evidence, I believe, is all in the recent swarm of detectible seismic activity. Simple movement of the plates wouldn’t cause this level of consistent—”
“Whoa.” I held up a hand. Screw pretending to know what he was talking about. He already lost me. “Magma under the park? Seismic activity?”
He looked at me like I had an extra eyeball again. “Of course.”
I pinched my brow together. Magma? I knew that was the shit spewed out by a volcano when it erupted. I had seen the news reports on the Hawaiian islands, which had been obliterated a few months ago, but I never knew Yellowstone had a volcano. Sure, an eruption would be devastating locally, but not the global disaster the professor hinted at. There had to be something I was missing.
Luckily for me, David really liked to talk about this stuff.
“Seismic activity is increasing every day. We’ve gone from an average of three-point-one on the scale to steady fours—dozens of times a day. The tremors aren’t strong enough to reach Bozeman, so we haven’t felt any earthquakes here yet. Regardless, considering the size of the magma chamber under the park, the numbers I’m collecting are a little unsettling. The specialists will tell you that a super-eruption is thousands of years away, but I’m not convinced. Not anymore.”
“A super-eruption?” Now that sounded a little more apocalypse-like.
“I’m afraid we might see it erupt in our lifetime. Sooner rather than later if this activity keeps up.” He nodded enthusiastically at the machine in front of us.
“Just how big of an eruption would it be?”
He turned to stare at me incredulously. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shrugged off his reaction. “Well . . . I mean, it is just a volcano. Are we talking a Mount St. Helens kind of eruption or—”
“It’s the second largest volcano in the world,” he stated li
ke I should already know that. But I had no clue, and that was evident from the shake of my head. “You’re a geology major. How do you not know about the Yellowstone Caldera?”
“I guess I’m more interested in . . . rocks and shit, not . . . what did you say it was? Yellowstone Cab-a-what?”
“The Yellowstone Caldera,” David repeated. “The giant super-volcano that has lain dormant under the entire park for the past six hundred thousand years? Ring any bells for you yet?”
I overlooked the condescending tone of his voice, and focused on two words he said. Entire park. “You’re telling me Yellowstone is nothing but a huge ass volcano?”
“Yeah. This is freshman level knowledge. How have you never—”
“David.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “I think it’s safe to say that we both know I’m not a geology major. I don’t know shit about geology, let alone half the crap you’re talking about right now. I don’t have the time to explain it to you, but I need you to be frank with me right now. If this volcano blows, what kind of devastation are we looking at?”
He blinked at me. “You’re not—”
“David.” My grip on his shoulder tightened. “Just answer the question.”
“Uh . . .” He shook his head. “It would be . . . catastrophic. The initial blast would instantly wipe out two hundred square miles surrounding the park. The resulting ash cloud would blanket nearly the entire country, block out the sun, lead to water contamination and crop destruction. Once it reaches the atmosphere, it will spread globally. Thousands will be caught in the initial blast. Millions will die in the following months from dehydration, starvation, toxicity . . . and panic.”
In other words, it was the great event the vessel promised us. The one that would trigger the beginning of the end. The tags would be activated and begin snacking on the survivors. The vessels would be taken by their destined demons.
Hell on Earth would begin.
I turned to stare at the machine in front of me and barked out a bitter laugh. It was all I could do at this point, because I knew that David was right. But how?
How could the vessels cause the volcano to erupt? Sure, they had resources thanks to their cunning buddies below deck, but they had restrictions. There was only so much they could pull off. Blowing a volcano before it was due to erupt seemed a little farfetched, even for them.
But I didn’t understand this stuff like David did.
“You said specialists don’t expect it to erupt for thousands of years yet, right?” I waited for him to nod before I asked my next question. “Is there some way that an outside force could press the issue prematurely and . . .”
“Induce an eruption?”
My eyes narrowed. “Is that possible?”
“I don’t see how,” he answered warily. “The only way to force an eruption would be to disrupt the magma layer somehow, but that’s a mile below the surface of the Earth. Not even an atomic bomb could reach it.”
“Huh. Okay.” Though for some reason, his doubt didn’t make me feel better.
There was a way. Even if it was difficult enough for David to label impossible, I knew what these slimy bastards were capable of. I wouldn’t put it past them to have found a way to disrupt the magma chamber.
I needed to talk to Jake . . . and the agency . . . because I now knew what the vessels were planning.
My suspicions were only confirmed twenty minutes later, when I strolled into the hotel room. On Jake’s desk was the picture Thea had developed. I snatched it up and turned on the light. Across the room, my partner sat up to wipe the evidence of sleep from his eyes.
“What did you find?” he asked.
I studied the photograph without responding. I wanted to see the answer for myself, and when I did, my jaw dropped open. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?”
I handed the picture to Jake when he approached. “It is a bomb. A self-tunneling, magma-chamber-disrupting, motherfucking bomb.”
Jake glanced at the picture before looking at me with bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”
“This!” I tapped my finger over the black object in the professor’s hand. “He put a custom-made bomb, with the ability to tunnel beneath the surface of the Earth, into the ground that day. That’s what this is. It’s going to disrupt the magma chamber below Yellowstone and blow the whole fucking thing up.”
“Yellowstone is a volcano,” Jake muttered when he got it.
“Not just any volcano,” I added. “An extinction-level, start-the-apocalypse-with-a-bang kind of volcano.”
Jake pushed past me to snatch his phone from the nightstand. He had the agency’s number pulled up and the phone to his ear when it hit me.
“It’s too late, Jake,” I told him. “They’ve already planted it.”
There wasn’t a damn thing any of us could do about it now.
16
THEA
Two days.
It had been two days since I wrapped myself up in a tasty platter for Dylan, hot and ready to be devoured. Not once had he called or texted or made any attempt to see me.
Despite the sting of his rejection, I couldn’t get him out of my head. The way he kissed, the way he took control, the way he made me feel more alive than anyone ever had before.
All of that from a kiss. Of course I wanted more. I had been a bundle of frustration for two damn days because I wanted more. I needed more.
My foul mood only worsened when the bell rang above the front door of The Nest, and I glanced up to find Bobby Richter approaching me where I stood at the bar. I looked around for a quick escape from one of Kyle’s loyal frat brothers, but I had nowhere to go.
“Thea,” he called once he was in earshot. “How are you?”
“Okay, Bobby,” I muttered. “To what do I owe the pleasure? Or is this another errand you’re running for your president?”
“No errand,” he assured me as he pulled out a seat at the bar. “Have you seen Kyle recently?”
“Recently? No. Not since . . .” I had to think about it. I hadn’t seen Kyle in days, and that wasn’t like him at all. Apprehension tickled the back of my neck, and I turned to Bobby. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“He’s missing,” Bobby answered swiftly. “It took us a few days to realize it. We didn’t think much of it at first. Not until he missed the mandatory fraternity meeting we were supposed to have last night. We all got to talking, and realized no one had actually seen him since Friday.”
“Have you tried his parents? They—”
“We tried them first,” Bobby explained. “They haven’t heard from him either. Then someone said Professor Thompson didn’t show up for class yesterday or today. We went straight to the police station to file a report. They’re canvasing the park, hoping they went for some research, maybe ran into some weather and got lost.”
That was a best-case scenario, and from his tone, he knew it.
“I’m sorry, Bobby.” I shook my head as the weight of the situation crashed onto my shoulders. This was bad. With a killer on campus, it was potentially very, very bad. “If I can help in any way, let me know.”
Bobby nodded glumly as he pushed to a stand. “Call me if you see him. And tell him we’re all looking for him.”
“I will. Thanks for stopping by.”
“Take care, Thea.” The junior placed a gentle hand on my shoulder before he turned and let himself out the door with a bowed head.
I spent the remainder of my slow shift refilling coffees and watching the news. Following a brief segment on the missing student and professor from Montana State University, the news deviated to more of the same that had occupied television sets all over the world in the past few months. Another earthquake rattled the Middle East. Another out of control wildfire in Africa. Flooding in Mexico. A group of government specialists had arrived in Yellowstone early this morning to investigate the increase in seismic activity reported by local researchers.
That was the point at which I sto
pped watching. Just another eruption scare. Wasn’t the first, and I doubted it would be the last. After growing up in the shadow of the supervolcano my entire life, I didn’t bat an eye when someone said it would erupt. I’d heard it my entire life . . . and it had never happened.
Mostly, I’d heard it from my parents. They were prepared for the blast with a sound bunker stocked to the rim with food and water to survive the fallout. Everyone else within a two-hundred square mile radius would die instantly. Others would perish in the following days, weeks, and months.
I knew the commentary by heart. I knew it would be bad, but I’d heard so many wolf cries over the years that I now doubted it would ever happen in my lifetime.
Others were not as doubtful as I was. Including Collin, the cook I closed with tonight. As we shut off the last of the lights and made our way to the back door, he couldn’t stop talking about this most recent eruption scare with nervous excitement.
“They’ve never called in government scientists before, Thea,” he mused. “Maybe this is the real deal.”
“As if the government scientists know more than our normal guys,” I argued in return. “Scientists that have lived and breathed the park for decades? No way. I’ll believe them before I believe the government.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
I stopped outside the back door as Collin secured the lock, and hugged my thick coat tightly. Night had fallen hours ago and brought with it a cold that I recognized. Fall was in full swing, and it was only going to get colder. Snow would fall soon.
When we turned together toward the parking lot, I spotted a man-shaped shadow lurking beside my car. My heart jumped into my throat and my hand reached for Collin’s before I recognized who it was. Then my heart raced for an entirely different reason.
“Who is that?” Collin questioned when he followed my gaze. I peeked up at him to find his eyes cautiously fixed on Dylan.
For good reason. Dressed from head to toe in dark clothing and an impossible-to-decipher hardness in his gaze, Dylan looked particularly dangerous as he propped uncaringly against the side of my car. My eyes drifted from his rigid jaw and moved over his broad shoulders before coming to a rest on his arms, where they were folded across his chest.