by Alex Archer
No one knew how strong the wind would be when they encountered it, so Grimes ordered the group lashed together with nylon climbing rope, leaving a yard or two between them.
They took a brief rest and when they set out fifteen minutes later they were as ready as they were ever going to be.
Grimes was right; this place was never intended to be occupied in any way, at least not the portions of it they’d seen so far. Corridors ran to dead ends. Rooms had been built one after another for no apparent reason. Staircases took them up a level only to bring them back down again five minutes later, with nothing between but empty corridors. The constant expectation that in the next corridor, in the next room, was the next trap exhausted them.
By the time they hit the Hall of Dust, as Annja later dubbed it, they had been lulled into a period of complacency, which was exactly what the designers intended.
The room was wider than the others they had passed through and at least three times as long, but that didn’t immediately raise any red flags. Mal’akh hadn’t really made any sense up to this point so she didn’t expect it to start being logical now. It was only when she noticed a thick layer of what looked like ultrafine-grade sand beneath their feet that she became alert.
When she’d glanced about the room, it had suddenly seemed larger than before, almost twice the size. Wisps of dust were stirring and, as she watched, one of those gained more energy, becoming a small dust devil whirling above the floor. She turned and was just in time to see another one spin up and gain mass. In seconds she could see half a dozen dust devils churning, sucking dust and dirt from the floor to grow larger by the moment.
Grimes had seen it, too. “Here it comes!” he cried.
The flares were thrown to the floor to burn on their own. Hats and makeshift scarves were pulled down or tucked in tight, sunglasses slipped on and hands shoved into pockets. Annja realized that she’d forgotten to put anything on her earlobes, but it was too late. Hopefully her hair would protect them.
No sooner had preparations been completed than a wind kicked up out of nowhere and within moments the dust on the floor was blowing like a banshee in full wail. It enveloped them while the wind screamed, but their preparations had been well thought out and they soldiered on, for the most part untouched.
In time they reached the other side of the gallery and passed through the entry into the room beyond. As Hamilton, the last in line, crossed through, the wind behind them settled as abruptly as it had begun.
They lit new flares and quickly took stock. They had survived remarkably unscathed, with only a few blisters among them where exposed skin had come in contact with the contaminant in the dust.
A few moments of rest to drink water and tend to their injuries and then they were off again, pushing deeper into the heart of the complex.
The plague of ice and hail was one of the strangest things Annja had ever encountered while underground. But the long stretch of tunnel where the darkness was absolute, where no light at all could penetrate it was perhaps more unusual underground. They came prepared to deal with what Mal’akh threw at them and each time they emerged with nothing more than a few bruises and the odd scratch or two.
It seemed they had managed to outthink those who had designed the place.
Then, almost unexpectedly, they found the room at the center of it all, the vault that held the very item they had come to find.
In the first few seconds of standing in the doorway, they didn’t understand where they were. They had just come through a series of entranceways, four in all, one immediately after the other. After the final one they found themselves in a large, ornate room.
Every other room before this had been empty and it made the beauty of this one all the more stunning as a result.
The first thing they noticed were two large gold braziers on marble stands. Each held about an inch of some kind of gold liquid which, after a quick sniff, Annja recognized as lamp oil.
She had been on digs where they had found perfectly good lamp oil in tombs thousands of years old, so Annja suggested they try to light it.
Hamilton brought the burning flare close to the surface of the oil and it lit with a whoosh. The light from the brazier alone would have allowed them to see much more of the room, but the designers hadn’t been content with lighting a portion of it. An interconnected series of gutters ran from that first brazier to others around the room, spreading the light in a wave to the next and the next and the next.
What the light revealed was truly magnificent.
The room was oval, with a secondary balcony running above the main floor. Columns around the periphery supported the high ceiling—six to a side, twelve in all. Between the columns stood several statues. They were of the same bearded man in flowing robes, which Annja took to be Herod. The floor was highly polished and on its surface was a complex pattern of lighter and darker stones that led across the room to where a dais stood.
On top of the dais was a wide-backed throne covered in gold and precious gems. Oddly, the throne was overshadowed by the object that rested in a waist-high glass case to its left.
The Staff of Judea.
The four-foot staff was made of polished wood and shaped like a shepherd’s crook with a hook at one end. What it lacked in splendor it made up for in majesty. It threw off such an aura of power, it was hard to look away from it.
Beside her, she heard Grimes say, “I promised you we’d find it, did I not?”
“That you did, Martin,” Connolly replied.
“Then it’s time to claim what is yours.”
The import of their conversation didn’t register with Annja until Connolly pushed his way past her.
Snapped out of her daze, she snatched at Connolly’s shirt, but Grimes was suddenly there, the barrel of his pistol pushed into her back and his voice in her ear. “Uh, uh, uh. Let him go.”
“But you’re going to kill him,” Annja hissed.
“I’m not doing anything,” Grimes replied. “He’s the one who forgot we still have one plague to go.”
The final plague.
The death of the firstborn.
Gun in her back or not, Annja couldn’t stand by and watch a man go to his death, not when she could do something about it. Grimes was looking over her shoulder, watching to see what horrible thing would happen to his employer and alleged friend.
She twisted sideways and grabbed Grimes’s wrist with her left hand, pulling it forward to keep him from twisting the gun in her direction. At the same time she brought her right arm up and unleashed a savage elbow strike at Grimes’s face.
She heard his nose break with a distinctive crunch.
Grimes’s head snapped back with the force of the blow and he pulled the trigger instinctively. Thankfully Annja had pushed his gun arm down when she grabbed it and the shot ricocheted off the floor and spun off into the room without hurting anyone.
“Mitchell, wait!” Annja cried.
Connolly had crossed perhaps two-thirds of the distance to the dais when the shot rang out. He spun around, saw the commotion as Annja struggled against Grimes and took a step in their direction as Annja called out a second time.
“Stay there! Don’t move.”
A confused look crossed his face. “What?”
“I said stay…”
It was too late.
As the sound of grinding filled the room, Annja watched Connolly look down in horror. She let her gaze follow his.
She quickly understood his fear.
Chapter 41
The floor was crumbling right out from under Connolly’s feet.
The section of floor he was standing on had been decorated with a mosaic of colored stones. Wide sections of darker stone bisected by interconnecting lines of lighter stone. It was like a giant tic-tac-toe board drawn on t
he floor. The darker sections were two, sometimes three feet wide while the lighter ones were no more than a couple of inches at most.
Now those darker sections were falling away, caving in on themselves and collapsing into the deep pit that was suddenly revealed beneath it all, leaving Connolly precariously balanced on the lattice of lighter stone.
He looked up at the rest of them gathered there in the doorway, his terror plain. His legs were shaking.
Annja held up her hands, trying to calm him down. “Don’t move,” she called to him. “We’ll get you out of there, just don’t move.”
She meant it, too. It didn’t matter what he had done to them so far. If she had the means to save him, she would try. It was the right thing to do.
The fortress, however, didn’t care.
The ground beneath their feet suddenly shook, throwing them all off balance.
Annja and the others braced themselves against the walls and doorway, steadying themselves until the tremor passed.
But the movement of the ground knocked Connolly’s one foot off the little beam he was standing on, making him teeter over empty space for a long, terrifying moment. As he started to fall in that direction, he threw himself forward, hoping his foot would hit the next line in the lattice design and he wouldn’t fall to his death.
It was a good try, too.
His foot came down squarely on the lattice line he’d been aiming for.
Then promptly skidded off the other side.
As the others looked on, Connolly flailed his arms and, screaming, fell into the hole.
For a moment all anyone could do was stare in horrified silence.
Then Connolly’s voice broke the silence.
“Help!” he cried. “Help me!”
Annja didn’t stop to think, she just broke into a run. She raced forward and skidded to a stop at the edge of the giant rectangle.
He wasn’t hard to find. Where there had once been solid stone, now there was nothing but a giant, gaping hole in the earth over which a thin network of lattice lines was stretched. Connolly was hanging by his hands from one of those lattice lines, dangling above a sheer drop.
He wouldn’t be able to hold on long.
Footsteps closed in behind Annja. She spun around and dropped into a fighting crouch, only to find Douglas skidding to a stop, his hands raised in a sign of peace.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Annja didn’t hesitate. “Give me your rope,” she told him as she stripped off her pack and set it on the floor next to her. When he complied, she tied one end of the rope around his waist as an anchor, tied the other end around her own and then handed him the slack.
“I’m going out after him. I’m counting on you to keep us out of the abyss if the lattice breaks beneath our combined weight.”
He looked at her like she was nuts.
“I know,” she told him, holding up a hand to stop whatever it was he was about to say, “but we don’t have a choice. We’re out of time.”
As if to emphasis her point, the ground beneath their feet shook again.
Connolly’s left hand slid off the thin stone he was holding on to, leaving him hanging by one arm.
“Help!” he screamed.
“Hold on!” Annja shouted back. “We’re coming!”
She turned to Douglas. “Ready?”
He nodded.
Annja extended her arms out to either side and stepped out onto the lattice.
Step by step, one foot after the other, she began making her way toward Connolly.
The footing was narrow, but Annja’s feet were small and she had excellent balance. As long as she kept her cool, she should be able to reach Connolly.
Provided the next quake doesn’t shake us both off the edge into oblivion.
At the halfway point she paused for a second. Looking back, she saw Douglas had company; Roux, Ephraim and Hamilton had joined him. They were all armed, including Roux, which pleased Annja to no end.
Guess someone had a change of heart.
A look beyond them showed Grimes leaning against the rear wall, his head lolling to the side. He appeared to be unconscious. Apparently she’d hit him harder than she’d thought.
Or someone else followed up for me.
She carefully crossed the last ten feet separating her from Connolly. As she drew closer, she began talking to him, explaining what she was going to do.
“Mitchell, it’s Annja,” she said, using first names to try to keep him calm. “I’ve got a rope. I’m going to get as close to you as I can and tie the rope around your waist. Then I’m going to pull you up. Understand?”
Connolly didn’t like the idea at all.
“No, no, no!” he cried. “Don’t get any closer! The whole thing will collapse and we’ll both fall!”
She hated to admit it, but he could be right. But Annja didn’t see they had a choice.
She stopped a couple of feet away from Connolly at a point where a vertical lattice line crossed a horizontal one. She slowly lowered herself into a crouch, using the intersecting lines as a handhold, and stretched out across several beams.
The lattice shook for a moment, but held.
With her weight now distributed more evenly, she’d be able to bring more of the strength in her arms to bear.
Connolly’s fingers were white and she could tell he didn’t have much strength left.
“Hold on, Mitchell,” she said. “Just another minute or so…”
Annja untied the rope from around her waist and played out some extra to work with. Holding the end of the rope in her teeth, she then slid herself forward across another gap, until she was directly above Connolly.
The beam they were both holding on to emitted a loud crack and Connolly screamed.
But it held.
“Hurry,” he whispered.
Something rushed by at the edge of her vision, but she ignored it, focusing her concentration on the task before her.
With steady hands she reached out to loop the rope around Connolly’s upper chest.
Chapter 42
When the others rushed to save Connolly, Grimes saw his chance. He got to his feet and headed for the dais on the other side of the room, keeping to the far right edge of the room, to avoid the sort of trap Connolly had fallen.
If they’d left a firearm behind he could have ended things easily. A few quick shots to send everyone into the abyss and it would have been over. At that point all he would have had to do was retrieve the staff. Unfortunately, the chips hadn’t exactly been falling in his favor lately.
Grimes had always thought of himself as the kind of man who made his own luck, however, so he supposed this was just another example of him taking the bull by the horns. If he couldn’t gun them all down, he’d simply blast them with the staff. If it was a bit messier that way, so what? End result was all that mattered, right?
Right.
He drew parallel to where Douglas and the others were acting as an anchor for their colleagues and did his best to remain hidden in the shadows of the oversize statues along the wall as he slipped past. Both Douglas and Hamilton were excellent shots. If they figured out what he was up to, he had no doubt they’d send a hail of lead in his direction.
The ground shook again, eliciting another scream from Connolly, and Grimes knew his best chance was now, while the others were occupied.
He broke into a run, charging up the outer edge of the room. With a cry of triumph, he took hold of the staff and lifted it free.
* * *
ANNJA MANAGED TO GET the rope around Connolly’s upper body without much trouble and had yanked it tight just seconds before the floor went through a new set of violent contortions.
That’s when Annja discovered the flaw
in her plan.
She’d taken the rope from around her waist and tied it around Connolly. So when the ground started shaking again, Annja had nothing supporting her. She was forced to hang on to the lattice grimly, refusing to be knocked loose from her perch and praying that the stone didn’t crumble. It was perhaps the longest thirty seconds of her life.
In front of her, Connolly finally lost his grip and dropped away from the lattice, but the men on the other end realized what had happened from the sudden yank on the rope and stopped him from falling more than a few feet.
When the ground was steady, Annja got out of the prone position she was in and climbed to her feet. Then, using the taut rope as a safety line, she nimbly made her way back to the others. Once she was clear and back on solid ground, she gave the signal for the others to pull Connolly up.
Just then, Annja was struck by a massive energy blast that picked her up and tossed her aside like a discarded piece of trash. She flew through the air and slammed into one of the statues, then crashed to the ground.
She shook her head, and when she opened her eyes, she saw Grimes on top of the dais, the Staff of Judea in one hand. Power churned the air around him—gleaming black waves of energy that matched a black light that pulsed from his eyes.
As she watched, he snarled and thrust the staff toward where the four men were fighting to haul Connolly up.
A pulse of that energy shot out of the staff, crossed the room in the blink of an eye and slammed into the group, sending Roux, Gardner, Hamilton and Ephraim spinning away and knocking Douglas flat on his back.
Without the strength of the others to support him, Connolly’s weight on the other end of the rope proved too much for Douglas. He was yanked forward, the rope tightening around his waist as he was dragged inexorably toward the edge of the drop.