by Graham Brown
The ruse had been played, but Christian was still caged.
Unable to break Christian’s grasp, Akash punched at him furiously through the bars. His fists hit like steel hammers. Still Christian held. Next Akash pulled back with all his might and the cage tipped over hitting the ground.
Christian’s grip was broken. He grabbed for the spear. Seeing this, Akash heaved the entire cage off of him with Christian inside. It landed twenty feet away and the frame cracked. The spear was gone, but Christian was able to kick the wooden floor out and run.
As Akash grabbed a dagger, Christian sprinted for the parked vehicles. He was wounded and still not as strong as Akash. He jumped into a pickup truck and punched his fist through the thin plastic that protected the ignition. With a twist of his wrist, he broke the lock and turned the ignition switch. The engine roared to life and he grabbed the gearshift.
Before he could move, Akash smashed in the driver side window. Glass went flying in all directions, and with a quick stabbing motion he speared Christian’s shoulder.
Christian dodged another strike as the dagger impaled the seat. He turned and kicked the driver’s door open, flinging Akash onto the sand. Before Akash could get up, Christian slammed the transmission into drive and floored it.
Akash ran after him and jumped into the bed of the truck. He smashed the back window and started to climb into the cabin. Christian slammed on the brakes and Akash flew forward, off of the truck and out onto the sand. Even before Akash hit the ground, Christian was stomping on the gas again. The tires kicked up long tails of sand as the truck sped forward.
Akash looked up to see the truck barreling straight for him. He moved too late. The truck hit him, center of mass, but instead of getting ground underneath the tires, he held on and began punching his hands through the sheet metal trying to ruin the engine.
Christian spun the wheel to the left and then the right, skidding through the desert, trying to shake Akash off, until he saw what he needed. He turned hard to the right, kept the pedal floored and drove full speed into a rocky outcropping behind the tents.
The airbags in the truck went off along with the sound of crunching metal and breaking bones. Even the stone hard ribs of a demon couldn’t survive that impact.
Christian was knocked out himself and came to amid a fog of white dust from the airbag’s explosives. The pickup was smoldering and belching steam, the smell of gas, oil and other fluids permeated the air.
Christian pushed the deflating airbag off of him and stumbled out and onto the ground. He lay there in the dark, trying to recover from the bone shattering crash. When he finally gained the strength to stand, he found Akash pinned between the rock and the mangled piece of metal that use to be the truck’s V-8 engine.
Incredibly, Akash was still alive and moving. Like a bug half-squashed under someone’s foot, his arms and legs were failing around.
As Christian looked him over, Akash tried to speak, but nothing came out. Christian shook his head. He couldn’t leave Akash like this, not even one as evil as he deserved a death that painful.
He looked for any type of object to put him out of his misery and then ripped a small metal rod out from the suspension. He walked over to the dying vampire, raised the piece of metal in the air, but held off as he listened to Akash began mumbling something to himself, over and over again.
Christian couldn’t make out the words but he guessed what they meant. Akash was praying for mercy or life or forgiveness.
As he listened to the incoherent words, Christian thought back to what James Hecht had said. Hecht was right, Drake was the evil thread that all this misery came from. He’d found a damaged soul in Akash and twisted him further, turning him from a broken child into this murderous thing.
Everyone has to answer for their own choices, Christian reasoned, even one with a history as dreadful as Akash’s, but Drake was the deceiver leading them down the dark path.
As the stream of incoherent words faded, Christian prepared to finish Akash off. Whatever God he was praying to, at the end, Christian hoped He heard him.
With a deep breath Christian thrust the lance forward. It hit home and instantly Akash erupted into flames.
Christian turned and walked away. He was sick of death and dying, but he knew that the war must go on. He was exhausted and battered, but he would continue because he had to. In the end, he was a soldier.
Chapter 42
Christian limped his way back to the camp and spotted movement in the tent. He found Fahad, trying desperately to load a rifle. His face was bloody; one eye was swollen and half closed. He held the rifle weakly in the crook of one arm.
“That won’t do you much good,” Christian said.
Fahad raised the weapon. “These men were my brothers,” he spat, almost sobbing.
“I’m sorry for them,” Christian said. “Trust me, I’ve lost more brothers than you could possibly imagine.”
“I will not let you go,” Fahad said, finally getting the magazine into the slot and pulling back the slide on the rifle.
Christian ignored Fahad and put his hand on the door of another vehicle.
“You will not leave!” Fahad shouted, stumbling forward and raising the rifle almost to Christian’s face.
Christian turned and snatched the rifle from Fahad’s hand before he could fire. He tossed it away.
“It is my task to protect the stone,” Fahad said, falling back. “I must not fail.”
It dawned on Christian that Fahad could become a powerful ally in this last leg of the race. Obviously, he knew the way to the ruins and the location of the Dark Star. But Christian was done taking on allies only to have them killed right in front of him.
He turned from the truck, and sat Fahad down. The man was bleeding from a pair of stab wounds in the side, he was bruised all over and probably suffering from a concussion.
“You’re fortunate,” Christian said. “The blood is bright red. It’s not coming from your stomach or your liver.”
“What are you doing?” Fahad asked.
“Saving your life.”
With no anesthetic, Christian needed a way to numb Fahad’s pain. He looked into his eyes, fought with Fahad for control, and then numbed his senses. In a trance-like state, Christian worked on his former captor. He used boiling water to clean the wound and then stitched up a layer of muscle and closed the skin.
As Fahad sat there, Christian probed his mind. He saw the way to ruins, a place the group called the House of the Sultan, though it was no house. He saw the entrance, discovered the booby traps, the maze and the flood waiting to happen. “Quite a set up,” he mentioned.
When the wound was closed, Christian released Fahad from his trance, stood and washed the blood from his hands. Strangely, it had no effect on him. It was just blood, nothing mystical, nothing different than what he’d seen spilled all over the world his entire life.
“What shall I do now?” Fahad said, still disoriented from the trance.
Christian moved to the nearest SUV and pulled open the door. “Go home,” he said. “And pray that I find this stone of power before the Akash’s friends do, otherwise there’ll be no hope for any of us.”
Chapter 43
Christian pulled the SUV to a stop. He’d come upon fresh tracks in the lakebed - five, maybe six vehicles.
He followed the tracks to the far side of the dry lake. Detouring to hide the SUV, he then went on foot. He was close. He’d seen a canyon in Fahad’s mind, though more than one ravine cut through the foothills.
Instead of walking in the valley, he took the high ground and noticed that the tracks continued forward. He could tell by the look of the stony walls around them that the convoy had gone in the wrong direction. They’d taken the wrong fork.
Good, he thought. Whoever it was they’d be lost for hours.
He was about to turn when he sensed something that surprised him.
Kate. Kate was with them.
* * *
John
Wellington drove the lead vehicle as the lead team from the Righteous Fire came upon a ruined Bedouin camp in the desert.
“What happened here?” one of the men asked.
“Nothing good,” Wellington replied, pulling a radio from the dashboard. “Stop the convoy,” he said. “We need to check this out.”
He pulled up to a shredded tent, parked and stepped out.
“Should we put our armor on?” one of the crew asked.
Panning his flashlight around, Wellington shook his head. “Whatever happened here, it’s over. Fan out.”
He stepped away from the truck, pistol in one hand, long knife resting in a sheath diagonally across his chest. He found one body in the sand, another just outside the tent.
As he poked around one of his men called out.
“What do you make of this?” The man was pointing to a collapsed cage, lying on the desert floor. A second cage just like it sat upright in the back of a truck.
Wellington wasn’t sure. “A cage for animals maybe? Looks like one of them got out.”
He stepped into the tent and found a dozen more bodies, slashed and ripped apart.
“Look at this,” a shout came from outside.
John made his way out of the tent and found his men gathered around a wrecked vehicle a hundred yards away. The front end was crumpled where it’d been driven into a wall of boulders. But it was the pile of gray ash beneath the bumper and the engine block melted into sludge that confirmed what he’d guessed.
John put his hand in the ash, rubbing some of it between his fingers. “Still hot,” he said, flicking the soot away as if it were filth. “Animals alright. One of the Fallen burned here.”
The men looked at him. This was his first command.
“We need to get back on the road,” he said, firmly.
“What about the bodies? Should we bury them?”
“No time,” he said. “Radio Henrick. Give him our position and heading. Tell him the demons are ahead of us and we’re moving forward. We’ll do everything we can to catch them. But he’d better hurry or he’s going to miss all the fun.”
* * *
Upon sensing Kate’s presence, Christian immediately dropped to the ground, hiding himself physically and mentally.
Through meditation and powerful concentration the Fallen could either reach out to other members of their kind—especially those they created or were created by—or they could do the opposite and mask their presence. Of the two it was harder to hide, the way absolute stillness was harder to prolong than continuous movement, but Christian had become a master at it. As had Drake and his clan.
Until they bumped into each other, or until either one of them wanted to be felt, they would be concealed from one another as if shrouded in invisible cloaks. But Kate was another story. She was still in the Half-Life. She barely understood what was happening to her. She was barely far enough along to grasp the powers she’d been given, let alone master them. As such, her presence was radiating like a beacon.
Christian focused in on her; he could tell she was in tremendous pain, physically as well as emotionally. She was dying and, worse, she wanted to die.
Just let me go. Just get it over with.
It seemed as if she was being threatened, but he could sense that the turmoil was in her mind. The demons she was fighting were inside. She’d been beaten severely, coerced and tortured, but what she felt now was fear, fear for her son.
Kate…
He allowed the thought to escape like a whisper.
Kate… I’m here.
Christian remained still. As if connected to her, he could feel her heart begin to race.
I’m here. And I can help you.
He hoped she could sense him clearly enough to reply. He hoped her mind was not too broken to focus.
Christian?
It was a thought. A hope against hope.
I’m here.
Her heart began to pound.
Hurry. They’ve left me here. I’m alone.
Christian was up like a shot and scrambling over the rocks. A minute later he came upon the parked vehicles of Drake’s convoy. Far up ahead he could see movement in the canyon. The path had become too narrow for the vehicles. Drake had taken his force forward on foot.
Christian picked his way down the rock face will all possible speed. Kate was chained up. Palladium. And she wasn’t quite alone. Sitting on the hood of one SUV was Tereza, the one who’d slashed Akash’s face.
Her eyes went wide with surprise as she spotted Christian. She tried to shout a warning, but Christian locked her mind up in a violent mental attack, casting upon her all the anger he’d felt at losing friends over the past few days.
She tried to fend him off, but the attack was too fierce. Clutching her head she fell off the hood. Christian would have killed her, but the fire would have brought the others. Instead, he found a gauntlet, pulled the chains off of Kate and wrapped them around her. As he chained Tereza up, Kate swarmed in and began punching her. She slammed her fist into Tereza’s face twice and kicked her in the stomach before Christian could block her.
“Stop,” Christian shouted, pushing her away.
“You don’t know what they did to me,” Kate shouted, tears filling her eyes. Apparently she was still human enough to cry. “They took everything I believed in, everything I loved. They made me watch my husband die, over and over again.”
As she spoke, Kate lunged forward again and grasped Tereza’s throat as if she would rip it apart.
Christian pulled her hands loose and threw Kate to the ground.
“You want to kill her and bring them all running back here?” he said sharply. “Do you? I don’t know about you, but I don’t have enough left in the tank to fight them right now, so get it together. We don’t have much time.”
Kate calmed a bit, her eyes going from Tereza to Christian and then back again. Her chest was heaving, but she seemed to be regaining some control.
“Ready?” Christian said.
Kate stood slowly and calmly, and then she lunged forward and fired one more punch at Tereza, snapping her head back and knocking her cold.
“Okay,” Kate said. “Now I’m ready.”
Christian lifted Tereza from the ground and tossed her in the back of one of Drake’s vehicles. He gagged her, covered her with a blanket and locked the doors. The palladium chains would sap her strength. The blanket would keep her from seeing which way they went even if she came to, but she’d wake up sooner or later and worm her way out or call for help.
Christian figured they had an hour at the most. Which was all the time until morning anyway. “Come on,” he said. “It’s not far now.”
With Kate by his side, he made his way back to the fork in the canyon and followed the proper direction. As they moved down the canyon, the moon began to rise, painting the sands like snow in the wintertime.
“Are we leaving?” Kate asked.
“No,” Christian said. “We’re cutting to the front of the line. Drake’s gone down the wrong path; no pun intended.”
“He’s evil,” she said, shivering.
“I know.”
“I tried to run,” Kate said, almost apologetically, “but he caught me. A vampire named Artimous grabbed me...”
“It’s not your fault.”
Silence for a second and then, “Is Faust with you?”
“No,” Christian said, sadly. “He’s dead.”
Kate’s surprise suggested she hadn’t seen into his mind yet. “I thought you got away?”
“We escaped the museum and made it to Rome,” he said. “But the Ignis Purgata chased us. They shot him. Shot me actually, but the bullets went right through and killed him.”
She looked at him strangely and then turned her eyes forward. For some reason this news seemed to make her numb. It was too much, he thought. He should have lied.
“Maybe you should have let me die,” she said. “Back there in the bayou.”
Christian underst
ood that feeling. “No,” he said. “I thought that once. But enough people have died. Too many. We’re going to heal you. And we’re going to get you back to your son. But to have any hope of success, we have to get to this weapon before Drake does. And to do that, you’re going to need to stop talking and move faster.”
They hustled on for a while in silence, but she didn’t remain quiet for too long. “I’ve seen things I would never have wanted to see. I know things I never wanted to know. I saw my husband die.”
“It’s all an illusion Kate. Drake doesn’t know how your husband died.”
She looked at him strangely. “How would you know that?”
“Because he doesn’t. He wasn’t there. He just took what you knew and built a story around it, like those false psychics who ask a million questions and then run on with whatever you say to them. It’s a ruse, a trick to break you. Whatever he showed you, don’t trust it.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t there?”
“Positive, Christian said. “Why would he be?”
She gave him another quizzical look, but he didn’t have any more time to explain. They’d come to the ruins. “We’re here,” he said, stopping. “The House of the Sultan.”
Chapter 44
The ancients, Christian thought, had chosen well. The House of the Sultan sat at the end of a box canyon on an oasis connected to an aquifer. A trickle of water flowed through the canyon even now. Just enough that scrub brush and desert grasses grew up in a narrow channel on each side.
The main structure, the Great House of the Sultan itself, sat dark and dilapidated, the wind making a hollow call as it blew through the structure.
Christian stepped inside. The enormous doors had collapsed or been destroyed many years ago.
“Which way?” Kate asked.
“Somewhere in the east wing is the entrance to the tunnels.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know someone who’s been here.”
Navigating off of Fahad’s memories, Christian found the entrance to the stone staircase that led down into the labyrinth. Quickly down the staircase they traveled. There were torches along the walls, but they hadn’t been lit in years. Christian grabbed one and put his lighter to it. The bone dry fibers of the torch lit up and the flames burst to life. He gave that one to Kate and then lit another one for himself.