Tim fired off a round of shots, emptying the gun into the base of Trell’s neck. Each shot stunned it for a moment or two.
Jay used the time to plant his feet on the pillar and propel himself over Trell. He landed a few yards in front of it, sprang to his feet, and raced for the gateway with everything he had.
He made it little more than halfway before the gateway flared a brilliant blue, the flash so bright it momentarily blinded him. When his vision returned, he saw that a ring of stone had appeared on the inner edge of the gateway. It was moving toward the center like the shutter of a camera, a waning circle that grew smaller by the second.
He could hear Trell behind him, growling as it shook off the latest round of gunfire.
Tim ejected the spent clip and slapped in another. “Duck!”
Jay dropped his head and continued running. Tim squeezed off one shot after another, the reports muted by the vastness of this place. In a moment, he was by Tim’s side, and the gateway was more than halfway shut.
The gunshots slowed Trell. The bullets ripped into its jaws and shattered teeth. Tim had found the weakness in its armor, and the laser sight ensured that each shot hit home.
Jay grabbed the plastic bag and saw the other grenade sitting atop the bagels. Breakfast of champions, he thought, and dropped his own grenade inside the bag. Then he elbowed Tim in the ribs and pointed to the gateway. “Go!”
Once Tim was through the opening, Jay reached into the bag and pulled out the pins. Then he twisted the bag shut and threw it into the air. It soared over Trell and landed at the base of the pillars. The flat weight of the bagels kept the whole package from rolling over the side of the catwalk.
Jay dove through the gateway and kicked furiously through the water. A second or two later, the gateway slammed shut behind him with a reverberating bang. An explosion rocked the pool, and Jay and Tim spun through the water, carried by the shock wave that ripped through the underwater lair.
Jay glanced over his shoulder and saw that no light shone behind them, no ring of phosphorescent blue.
We did it! We destroyed the gateway!
He and Tim swam side by side through the pitch-dark waters. The pain in his stomach began to fade, and he could actually feel the wound closing.
But how? Hadn’t they destroyed the gateway and cut off the source of the pool’s healing power? Was this just a lingering effect?
His eyes detected a distant blur of light up ahead. They swam toward it, kicking hard, and then he and Tim broke through the surface, gasping for breath.
Crystal and Sarah staggered back from the pool. A wave of disbelief seemed to wash over them. “You’re alive!” Crystal cried. “But you were gone so long.”
Tim hoisted himself out of the water and rolled onto his back. “We did it,” he said. “We destroyed the gateway.”
Jay swam toward the edge of the pool.
“I think something’s wrong,” Crystal said.
“What do you mean?” Jay asked.
“Don’t you hear it?”
Jay cocked his head to one side and could hear the grunting of Trell’s assassins, their feet shuffling as they lumbered through a nearby passageway. He gave one last kick and reached for the edge of the pool.
How can they still be under its control?
A vice of teeth clamped down around his leg and ripped into his flesh like daggers. Crystal reached for him, but he was dragged away from the edge, thrashing and flailing, trying to keep his head above water. Then he felt himself rising into the air as Trell emerged from the pool, his leg buried to the knee in its jaws.
His mind could barely accept what was happening.
Looks like you’re a goner, his dad’s voice said with a chuckle. And I thought I died badly!
He glanced toward the passageway and saw Samuel enter the cavern, followed by a hundred or more of Trell’s assassins.
“The amulet!” Sarah yelled. “Get the amulet!” She was jumping up and down and pointing to her neck.
Jay hung upside down from Trell’s jaws. His leg had gone numb, and he felt that he might lose consciousness at any moment. Sarah’s words had trouble penetrating the fog that swirled through his mind. An amulet? What amulet?
But then he saw it—a gleaming black obelisk dangling from Trell’s neck. It reflected the light of Crystal’s lantern and was obscured by the shadows of its head, partially covered by the folds of its skin.
An image of Frank’s bloody sketch flashed through his mind—a picture of an obelisk with a key at its center. But what did it mean, and what was it a key to?
An explosion of gunfire startled him out of his thoughts. He grabbed the amulet and yanked the chain off Trell’s neck.
A second gunshot shattered one of Trell’s fangs. The beast reared backward and roared.
Jay’s leg slipped free as it opened its jaws. He fell onto solid ground and rolled onto his side. The amulet tumbled from his hand.
Trell turned toward it, but Jay snatched it up before the beast could reach it.
“The Life Force, Jay! Set it free!”
And in that moment he knew exactly what Sarah meant. He held up the amulet and focused all of his energy on the polished black obelisk. Then he stared into its mirrored depths.
Set them free!
The amulet flared a brilliant blue. A shock of energy flung Jay backward and sent him sprawling.
Trell roared.
The water churned.
Blue light pulsed in the center of the pool and swirled into a spiral. Waves of water crested and broke, the blue light whirling into a frenzy. Then the light separated from the water and hovered above it.
The voices of the dead whispered praises of salvation, but then their tone changed and the light transformed into a glowing ball of rage, a mass of pure energy that bristled with power.
Jay was so focused on the light that he didn’t see Trell until it was too late. The creature launched itself into the air, the muscles of its forepaws rippling. Jay tried to roll away, but he had nowhere to go. All he could do was cross his arms over his face as the creature’s shadow fell upon him.
The Life Force came between them at the last moment, making a sound like the wind screaming through a canyon. It intercepted Trell and hurled the demon into the wall with enough force to bring down a stalactite. The pillar of stone crashed to the floor just a few feet from where Margaret lay in a semiconscious daze.
The Life Force coursed into Trell and ravaged the ancient creature. The mass of crackling light ripped through its body and tore through its eyes, nose, and mouth. Trell jerked and jittered as if electrocuted, its flesh searing beneath the writhing light. Its wailing screams echoed throughout the cavern.
And then the light spread out and broke apart. A swirling web of blue touched down on Margaret, entering her womb and coursing through her body. Another cluster zipped through the air and entered the wounds of Jay’s leg, filling the bloody punctures with pools of phosphorescent blue.
A moment later, the light converged into a bright blue nexus and rose into the air above their heads. It emitted a dry crackle and split apart into thousands of bright spheres, which spread themselves throughout the cavern. For a moment, they hovered there, pulsing a brilliant blue, and then they shot up toward the ceiling and disappeared through the rock.
***
A hushed silence fell over them after the Life Force faded from view and the cavern dissolved into shadows. Jay knelt on the floor, still holding the amulet. It dangled from the chain and oscillated back and forth, reflecting the dim light of the lanterns. Somewhere behind them, water dripped from stalactites in a steady rhythm of muted plops.
Jay stared at the smoldering carcass of the creature that had once lived among these walls, the creature come from the Land of Demons. It lay still now, tendrils of smoke rising up from it in rippling waves. The afterglow of the Life Force was burned into his eyes, stamped across his field of vision like a photo negative.
Sarah was the first to
break the silence. “Mommy?” She slipped out of Crystal’s embrace. “Mom?” She ran to where her mother lay sprawled on the floor and dropped into a crouch beside her.
Margaret rubbed her forehead and glanced about the cavern. “Is it dead?” When Sarah nodded, Margaret flung her arms around Sarah and hugged her tight. “You did it, sweetie. You told them!”
Jay stood slowly, shifting his weight from his good leg to his bad. It felt a little stiff, but otherwise okay.
Crystal reached for Jay’s hand and laced her fingers through his. “How did she know? How—”
Margaret spoke up. “It was the amulet that imprisoned the souls in the pool, the amulet that chained the Life Force to the water.”
Samuel moved between them, his eyes dark and solemn. The aura of blue that had once pulsed so brightly around him was now barely visible.
“You didn’t tell us about the amulet,” Crystal said. “Why?”
Jay gazed at Samuel. “You didn’t know, did you? It was one of Trell’s secrets, one you said was yet to be revealed.”
Samuel nodded.
“Then how did you escape?” Tim asked. “How did you break free if the others couldn’t?”
But Samuel only shrugged.
Margaret struggled to her feet. “He escaped because the amulet fell off. The chain that had secured it was old, weakened over the years by the water.” She shuffled toward them, her face bruised and swollen, blood caked between her teeth. “It was the Brakowski boy. He’s the one who set Samuel free.”
“But how?”
“He kicked off the amulet, broke the chain with his foot while Frank held him over the pool. But before it hit the water, before it sank, it touched Ryan ... and for an instant the two were joined. But that’s all it took. Ryan’s thoughts of freedom opened the gate for the split second there was contact, time enough for Samuel to escape into the world of the living.”
She shook her head. “It was part of Trell’s best kept secret—the dual nature of the pool. The overlap of worlds gave these waters a healing power. But the amulet added to that power. It trapped the Life Force of Trell’s victims in the pool and allowed Trell to channel the strength into its body.”
Jay turned around and saw that the former slaves of Trell had gathered around to listen. They looked shell-shocked, soiled, and withered. Like the survivors of a Nazi death camp.
A murmur went through the crowd. It began in the back and worked its way forward. The bodies parted one by one, stepping aside to open up a path.
Agent Calhoun staggered through the tunnel. His once slicked-back hair now hung in his eyes. He was limping a little, favoring his left leg. His eyes locked on Jay. “Gallagher! What the hell is going on here?”
Jay folded his arms and returned the agent’s gaze. “You thought I was hiding something before. You thought there was something I wasn’t telling you. Well,” he said, and stepped aside, “there it is.”
EPILOGUE
Sunlight filtered through the whitewashed slats of the gazebo, dappling the floor in a checkerboard of gold. From his vantage point, Jay could see a swatch of blue sky through the slats, as well as thin wisps of clouds drifting over Washaka Woods.
A warm breeze blew out of the east and ruffled his hair. In the crowd behind him, he could hear the murmur of guests, the giggling of children. Most of the town had turned out for the affair, the survivors of what the papers had called the most devastating encounter of man versus beast since the dinosaur age.
The FBI had covered up what they could—that Trell was a demon from another world, that it possessed the power to control people like puppets. As far as everyone knew, Glenwood had fallen victim to a previously unknown species of creature, a man-eating monster that scientists speculated was a fluke holdover from the Jurassic period. Even the former slaves of Trell didn’t know the whole truth. Most of them remembered nothing of what occurred while under Trell’s power, and that was probably for the best.
Tim had said just a few days ago that if the world wanted to know the real story, they’d have to read the tabloids. It was just a joke—and what did Tim ever say that wasn’t—but it was true. One of the headlines had read: Aliens turned my son into a killer zombie. It turned out to be the most accurate account of what’d really happened.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the media swarmed into Glenwood in a ratings frenzy and interviewed anyone even remotely connected to the story. Teary-eyed accounts were broadcasted all over the world. Exclusive footage was shown of men in orange hazmat suits hauling Trell’s body out of the cave. They loaded it into the back of a military truck and drove away in an armed caravan.
Soon after the story broke, the charges against Jay were dropped. An FBI spokesman announced at a national press conference that Jay was involved in no wrongdoing and had, in fact, assisted in killing the beast. But even with the investigation now officially closed, questions still lingered about the man who had attacked Tim at the library and Jay at his house. The FBI took the position that these incidents were unrelated to what the papers referred to as the Berkshire Beast, although there were already a number of conspiracy theories circulating.
Calhoun told Jay later that the autopsy results confirmed that Trell’s DNA was utterly alien, a fact that would never be released to the public. In the end, close to four thousand people died. Twenty five percent of the town’s population—wiped out in a span of three weeks. A year had passed, and the town was just beginning to heal.
Crystal squeezed his hand and smiled, bringing his thoughts back to the present. She looked every bit as beautiful as he imagined she would.
“You sure you want to do this?” he asked. “I may not be as much fun now that I’m sober.” He glanced over his shoulder and winked at Tim.
Tim gave him a thumbs-up sign and slipped his arm around Maria’s waist.
Jay smiled as he recalled their reunion outside of the cave. Tim had spotted her wandering in a daze among the former slaves of Trell. He had stopped short at the sight of her. None of them had even considered that Trell had lied about her death to make Tim angry, to goad him into making a fatal mistake.
The minister glanced at Jay and Crystal. “The ring, please.”
Sarah stepped away from the crowd upon hearing her cue. She waved to her mom and dad and mounted the stairs to the gazebo.
Jay smiled at Margaret. Her bruises had long since healed, her face radiant as she stood arm in arm with her husband, just a few yards away from Tim’s parents.
He wished Steve could be here, Steve and Gloria both. But they were gone now, as was Crystal’s sister. He closed his eyes and pictured the place of Limbo, the stone pillars rising from the catwalk, silhouetted against a violet sky flecked with twinkling stars. They were through one of those gateways now, somewhere behind a pulsing ring of phosphorescent blue.
He opened his eyes, returned once again to the world of the living, to a life blessed by a new beginning. Sarah stood between them, dressed in a flowered gown, her hair tied back with a white bow. He marveled again at how much she had grown in a year, both physically and emotionally. She seemed more confident now, more outgoing.
“Congratulations,” she said, lifting the ring to the minister.
Jay smiled at her. So what if it wasn’t traditional?
He glanced into Washaka Woods and thought about Samuel, the little boy who had first brought them to this place.
You opened my eyes, Samuel. You set me free, made me alive again.
He stared through the trees where the lair of Trell was no more, a fortress of rock reduced to rubble by dynamite.
Rest easy now, Samuel. You’ve earned it.
The minister closed the Bible and adjusted his glasses. “You may now kiss the bride.”
Jay lifted Crystal’s veil.
And I’ve earned this, he thought.
And then they kissed.
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