However, the more Nick examined Jamison’s eyes, the more he didn’t resemble a stooge. If anything, they belonged to a sinister man whose love of violence stared out at Nick from their lifeless depths. He looked more like the ringleader type. Nick deleted the photo from the screen. Of course, that was impossible. The Superior ran things.
Nick turned off his cell phone and stuffed it into his jeans pocket. Just as he was about to teleport to Riai Island, someone materialized beside him. Nick stepped back and drew his 9mm gun.
He grinned and holstered the weapon as soon as he recognized the visitor’s identity.
Neo Doss.
Nick eyeballed his partner. “What the hell…?
Neo raised his large hands in surrender; he appeared totally embarrassed. “Don’t be pissed off at me, Nick. Gabriella sent me here to partner-up with you. This was totally her idea. I figured I’d better play along or be on her shit list forever.”
Nick puckered his brow. Changing their plan in midstream wasn’t like the Gabriella he knew and loved. The group often went their separate ways during an investigation, so why would she balk this time around? Furthermore, he was surprised his old buddy would willingly undermine his authority. The time to challenge his strategy was over as soon as they stepped foot into the Lamplighter restaurant.
First an uncharacteristic conversation with Rance, and now Neo’s odd behavior. The entire situation stunk to high heaven.
“All right,” Nick said casually in an attempt to hide his suspicion of Neo’s identity. Nick grabbed the big man’s hand. “Let’s hit the road. We’re already late to the party.”
Before they left the island, Nick’s hand and arm grew intensely hot. The flesh reddened, blistered, and split like charbroiled sausage. Nick tried to wrench his hand away, but Neo held firm.
“What in God’s name is going on?” he managed through the excruciating pain.
Neo threw back his head and snort-laughed cruelly. “It’s called death, Bellamy, and yours is long overdue.”
56
Gabriella gnawed her lip. The enigmatic Shabaccoes were on their way to the cavern, and it was difficult to prepare for the aliens when she didn’t really know much about their treacherous mental powers. The cowardly Lothran left her in the dark, so she figured to rely on her own magical skills to protect the prisoners until she convinced the Shabaccoes to release them. Their pet Slayer, E.V.A.N., was another savage monster like the ones in their last case, The Burial Ground. She would play that one by ear.
She glanced at her wristwatch. Where was Nick? He should have arrived fifteen minutes ago; it wasn’t like him to be late to the party. She could really use his help.
Long shadows fell across the rocky threshold, announcing the Shabaccoes’ appearance. A half-dozen seven-feet, midnight purple aliens stepped inside. One of them controlled a horrible beast with a thick chain leash attached to its bulky headgear. Gabriella assumed the monster was the Slayer, E.V.A.N. Because of its enormous girth, the large creature barely squeezed through the cavern entrance. The Slayer evaluated Gabriella with its six red globular eyes, and she nearly laughed out at its rainbow-colored snout. What a ridiculous looking animal.
“So you must be the Shabaccoes,” Gabriella stated bravely, still speculating about Nick’s absence. He normally dealt with murderous monsters and menacing aliens, while she, Neo, and Crow merely stayed out of his way while he worked his supernatural mojo.
The Slayer’s frosty stare was unrelenting. It licked its thick black rubbery lips with an oddly mottled tongue resembling the woven patterns of Mediterranean floor rugs. The Shabaccoes sized her up, too.
One of the reptilian skulled creatures advanced on its spindly legs and reconfigured its face until its mouth had human lips. “You are not bound,” it stated clearly without a trace of an alien accent.
“Boy, aren’t you the observant one,” she lampooned him. “You must be super intelligent to be able to figure that one out.”
Her biting sarcasm escaped his English language comprehension. “Why are you not bound?”
“Because I refused to cooperate with the Lothran that flew me here. Let’s say I allowed him to escape rather than visa-versa and leave it like that.”
The tall creature exchanged brief discussions with its companions in their alien language. Finally, it addressed Gabriella again.
“We came to feed our prisoners to the Slayer. It has a voracious appetite.”
Gabriella folded her arms across her chest. “Over my dead body!” the beautiful witch exclaimed.
“What does that mean?” the Shabacco asked.
“It means you and your friends better leave before I sic the Slayer on you!”
The repugnant Shabaccoes snorted through their lumpy nostrils, which Gabriella presumed was their gross way of laughing at her. She wasn’t in the mood for ridicule, so she waved her arms at the snickering buffoons. The shocked Shabaccoes were instantly imprisoned inside a sturdy cage with the predatory Slayer.
The big creature bellowed at being caged again, and when it tossed its tremendous weight around like an angry hippopotamus, it immediately crushed two of the aliens. The remaining four Shabaccoes cringed against the opposite bars as the Slayer wolfed down their fallen comrades. Brown blood was smeared across the Slayer’s face like barbeque sauce, but it didn’t mind.
The survivors telepathically screamed and pleaded for Gabriella to release them, but she delayed her mercy until the odds were in her favor. In other words, until there was one Shabacco left alive. Then she would deal.
The human prisoners chained to the far wall whimpered at the grisly sight, but Gabriella ignored their complaints. It didn’t take the Slayer long to reduce the number of survivors to one. She magically transported the badly scarred creature outside the cage and left the Slayer inside.
The grateful Shabacco bowed. “Thank you, great sorceress.”
But Gabriella wasn’t interested in gratitude. “Release my friends, or I’ll put you back inside the cage.”
The quivering Shabacco acted puzzled. “I cannot do that. Ask me anything else, and it shall be yours.”
Gabriella shrugged her shoulders. “Is that your final answer?”
“It … it has to be.”
“Then back inside the cage you go,” she remarked indifferently. She raised her hands but stopped when the Shabacco fell to its knees.
“I beg of you, don’t send me back in there! I will do as you ask,” the alien declared fervently.
Gabriella lowered her arms. “Then do it before I change my mind.”
The purple alien approached the captives and touched a round metallic object to the manacles. They sprang open with a loud, metallic pop. Once the Shabacco released the prisoners, it returned to Gabriella.
“I have done as you asked. Please allow me to leave like the Lothran.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Gabriella,” a woman’s voice growled from the outer tunnel. A female outline appeared amid a collection of armed soldiers dressed in army camouflage fatigues. Soldiers? One of them targeted the Shabacco with his assault rifle and unleashed a deafening fusillade that sliced the shrieking Shabacco in half. Both parts tumbled near her feet, splashing her Kundzean armor with its brown blood. She bent to wipe away the splatters, but the shrouded woman stopped her.
“Stand up straight, and place your hands above your head,” the woman commanded.
“And if I don’t?” Gabriella countered.
“Then I will put you inside your cage with the Shabacco Slayer.”
“Our Slayer!” a cloaked man added emphatically behind her.
Gabriella laughed. “Go ahead, just try it.”
The mysterious woman muttered a spell in an ancient language, and suddenly Gabriella found herself inside the cage with the snorting, slobbering Slayer. Was this woman the Superior? If so, she and the others had miserably failed their mission.
The woman laughed maliciously. “Bon appétit, E.V.A.N.!” She turned to a
military man and gestured at the newly released prisoners. “Order your soldiers to mow down those prisoners,” she commanded.
The man’s tone showed surprise. “Are you sure you want me to kill all of them?”
“You heard me. Do it!”
The man nodded. “As you wish. No survivors, no witnesses.”
“Precisely,” she said before facing the cage and seeing Gabriella alive. The unknown woman appeared disappointed the Slayer hadn’t eaten its cagemate yet. They both stood frozen like statues. “What’s going on in there?” the woman demanded.
Gabriella grinned at her impatience. “Why don’t you come over here and find out?”
The woman hesitated while the man barked instructions to six of his men in the front row. He added that after shooting the prisoners, they were to execute head shots on them to guarantee their deaths.
The soldiers advanced before abruptly stopping ten feet from the cage.
The military officer was furious. “Kill the prisoners right this second!”
But the six soldiers stayed motionless.
The officer advanced into the cavern light and shoved the closest of his six defiant men forward, but he fell stiffly onto the rock-strewn floor face first. Blood trickled from small cheek lacerations, two missing front teeth, and a broken nose. Still, the soldier remained stiff as a board.
The officer confronted his female comrade. “What the goddammed hell is going on here?!” he shouted gruffly.
The woman swore at him and changed her blustering companion into a squiggling earthworm that she easily ground into the rocky floor with her shoe.
She addressed the rest of the soldiers. “Do any of you know what’s happened to your comrades?”
But none of them answered—they were frozen in place, too.
The woman squealed her rage and spun toward the cage. This time, she screamed her vexation.
Both the cage and its occupants had vanished.
57
The flesh-eating spell denuding Nick’s hand and arm spread to his shoulder. He wailed in pain while the Neo imposter maintained its vise grip on Nick’s skeleton hand. Somewhere beyond Nick’s physical existence and the insufferable agony of his damaged hand and arm, his alien survival genes stirred to life. Not only did they initiate the healing procedure on Nick’s blistered and ruptured flesh, but they also reversed the lethal flesh-eating energy into the imposter’s hand and arm. They exploded into scarlet flames.
The Neo look-alike hopped back and forth, clutching his destroyed limb, until the shapeshifting Shabacco morphed back into its tall, midnight purple form. By that time, Nick was already changed into his daunting, chrome-eyed alter ego. With a lightning fast twist of the wrist, he launched a sizzling white energy bolt that hit the Shabacco with such force, it shattered into thousands of meaty and bony morsels.
Nick didn’t waste time deliberating his next move or transforming back to his human persona, because a tenacious premonition strongly suggested Gabriella and his friends were in grave danger. He gave the blood shrouded vegetation a fleeting glance before teleporting from Kauai’s tropical forest to the similar topography on the north face of Riai Island’s dormant volcano. He was greeted by stifling ash and rumbling tremors.
His alter ego’s visual acuity outshined his human eyesight, so he effortlessly observed one of the flying creatures that earlier saved Noah through the soupy air. He planned to turn the tables on his aerial assailant, and when the creature was close, Nick hurled another of his new trademark white energy bolts at the flyer’s left wing. The creature stalled in midair, spiraled downward, and crashed with a muffled thud.
Nick raced through the underbrush to the injured creature’s landing spot. Its long body lay stretched out and helpless in the crushed understory, but it was not critically injured.
“Don’t kill me,” it pleaded telepathically while evaluating Nick’s menacing visage. “I sense you do not believe in human mercy. You are something wild. Untamed. Savage. Supernatural. We have not run across one such as you before.”
Nick’s chrome gaze cast its yellow light on the Lothran’s face. The tawny scorpion tails atop his head swayed menacingly. “Is that so?” Nick parried soundlessly with his mind. “So how do you know so much about me?”
“I have read your thoughts.”
“You butt ugly creatures are Lothrans, right?”
“Yes, but I am offended by the term butt ugly. Your appearance isn’t pleasing to my eyes, either,” it snapped indignantly.
Nick leaned closer to the Lothran’s distended lizard-dog muzzle. “So give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right here?”
The intellectual creature recoiled at the proximity of Nick’s scorpion tails. “Because I have knowledge of your human friends’ location.”
Nick shrugged indifferently, as if its information was of no value. “You’re pretty good with the English language. Care to explain?”
“We have been on your planet long before you humans arrived from the next dimension. We have kept our distance so that none of your race ever suspected our existence. During that time, we monitored the origins of every human language since the beginning of your time.
“Unfortunately, one of the beasts the Shabaccoes captured in another galaxy and transported here escaped, and although it died, you humans discovered its preserved corpse and found out it was an alien species. Then your military people became involved and paid for it to be cloned. Properly trained, the military mistakenly believe a Slayer can be a useful weapon in battles, but the truth is, Slayers will attack their soldiers, too.”
“What military?”
“Military leaders from the United States of America crave the Shabaccoes’ technology and exotic intergalactic animals. Their appearance left us little choice but to destroy Terror Island and all its alien life forms,” the Lothran explained. “For centuries we used the island as a breeding ground for the less hostile beasts because it was isolated from humans—at least until someone chose the site for a television show.”
“Did your exotic animals kill the television people there?”
“Some did, but the United States military killed most of them. There were two television show survivors who are now prisoners inside the volcano.”
Nick knew one of them was Noah, but who was the other survivor? He would find out soon enough. “Are there any other alien animal populations around here?”
“No. Most of the living species are too vicious to release elsewhere, so they are kept deep beneath this island.”
“If they’re so dangerous, why keep them at all?” Nick pressed.
“I do not know.”
“How come? I thought you guys were the top dogs around here.”
The Lothran lowered his head. “We are not. An alien race known as the Shabaccoes are the top dogs, as you say. They are the ones holding the animals captive. We are allies with the Shabaccoes, but not quite their equals.”
Nick recalled the purple alien that nearly killed him on Kauai. “So basically you’re their slaves?”
The Lothran snort-sighed. “We take orders and work for no compensation. Is that slavery?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then yes, you are right. We are Shabaccoes’ slaves.”
Nick’s menacing alter ego drew back from the frightened Lothran. “You’re damaged goods. How can you help me find my friends?”
The Lothran stood unsteadily and folded both wings into slots in its umber slick-skinned back. “I can walk and run, so I can guide you to the humans, but be warned. Your friends are about to die. The magic female human has decreed it.”
A witch? Maybe it was the mysterious Superior. Bad luck. Nick was about to begin his climb to the rim when an invisible energy wave engulfed the volcano, bowling over palm trees, uprooting underbrush, and slamming Nick and the Lothran to the uneven ground.
“What the hell was that?” Nick’s alter ego demanded as he lay there waiting for the second wave that never came.
/> The Lothran’s lips retracted as it scanned the volcano, exposing its sharp brown teeth. “The Shabaccoes have sensed your presence. They are using their mighty abilities to defend their home.”
Nick climbed to his feet and painfully brushed the leaves and black grit from his clothes. “I don’t have time for this shit. You said my friends’ lives are at risk, so we’ve got to teleport into the volcano right now!”
The still prone Lothran reached up and grabbed Nick’s wrist. “No!”
Nick easily tugged his wrist from the Lothran’s sturdy grip. “No? Why not?”
“Because the Shabacco force field will scramble our body molecules during teleportation, and we will end up being genetic stews when we materialize.”
Nick snarled fiercely and flexed his rippling muscles, tearing out more of his shirt seams. “Then what do you suggest?” he bristled.
“Hike to the top and drop down inside the volcano?” it suggested.
Nick yanked his companion to its talon-like feet. “Okay. Let’s get a move on, Lothran. I’m looking for a happy ending in there.”
Two surges of well-armed soldiers wearing night vision goggles rushed through the blinding ash toward Nick and the Lothran, springing a typical military trap. But without his ability to teleport to safety, Nick had no idea how to escape their deadly charge.
58
Gabriella looked out the cage bars in awe at a breathtaking view of a vast subterranean chamber. The extraterrestrial metropolis fifty below them bore a resemblance to a quaint New England town clustered in an opulent green valley. She couldn’t believe her eyes. The mountain ledge where she and E.V.A.N. settled after she teleported them out of the cavern was akin to dropping in on a shimmering Star Trek set for a television episode.
Final Scream Page 24