The forty silvery reflective buildings were all seven stories high and looked like they were constructed of polished silver. A Saturn-like ring hovered above the buildings and was supported by six copper-colored pillars. The myriad of tinted windows staring back at her like hundreds of glowering ebony eyes gave her the willies. A narrow web of gleaming black walkways divided the odd structures and was curiously devoid of trees and streetlights … and walkers.
An enormous glass dome one hundred feet in diameter was the center piece of the strange village. Did the dome shield their City Hall? The entire municipality was no larger than a typical, sprawling suburban condominium development with a central clubhouse. She did a double take.
There was a fastidiously maintained park on the outskirts of town.
In the center of the five acre tract of tropical shrubbery and colorful flowers were thirty immense concrete-like edifices with built-in metallic grids and barred doors at least twenty feet high. She was too distant from the structure to see if there were life forms in those mammoth cages, but from their familiar architecture, Gabriella theorized the series of buildings might well be an alien zoo.
Gabriella scanned the verdant park again and wondered what the three large outbuildings across from the barred structures contained. If she were a zookeeper, those edifices would accommodate interior displays of reptiles, aquatic creatures, and birds. The notion that a zoo existed in the South Pacific seemed farfetched, but yet there it was bigger than life. What kind of animals would the aliens have on display? The possibilities intrigued her.
Gabriella blinked against the chamber’s brilliance. Where was the intense light coming from? A quick glance at the ceiling revealed a massive flame burning inside a protective glass cupola. A myriad of questions about its fuel source, controllability, and many others assailed her curiosity, but she blew them off. She had enough unknowns on her plate without adding more.
She couldn’t help but marvel at how similar this alien village was to the late twentieth century Hollywood vision of an alien civilization. Did one of the writers or directors get a peek at this alien village and faithfully applied those images to the movie and television settings? She would never find any answers by staying in the cage. She had to escape.
But escaping was a tall order since she didn’t know what kind of spell the sorceress used to place her inside the cage. Once she determined that, she and the Slayer would be freed. Depression settled over her thoughts in a heavy malaise. How could she ever find the single spell she needed out of the thousands of possibilities? If her family’s magic was as formidable as her father claimed long ago, then perhaps she could free herself. Her malaise thinned but remained. That was one big if.
Gabriella circumvented the Slayer’s rear end and sought a portion of the cage that wasn’t so cramped. She attempted pacing in the small area the size of a doormat but found it more distracting then motivating. It wasn’t every day that she shared a prison with a ridiculous looking animal with its six red globular eyes, outlandish rainbow snout, massive maw, and floppy bloodhound ears. Although the Slayer didn’t intimidate her, she still felt like the vulnerable mouse to its indomitable cat. She nearly laughed at its appearance again, but she didn’t want to disturb it.
The otherworldly brute behavior was so docile now that it hardly moved except to breathe or twitch an ear. What tempered its aggressive behavior? Would it transform back to its savage self and devour her if she made a wrong move? That prospect raised a few goosebumps on her arms.
Gabriella switched gears and threw her full concentration into locating a counter spell so they could break out. Frustration crept into the task, but she did her best to disregard it. Negativity would shatter her focus if she let it seize control of her mind.
Suddenly, her eyes widened and her lips parted in a mid-scream—a mime scream. She found the spell!
At least she fervently hoped it was the right one.
The Slayer shuffled its four feet and repositioned its tremendous weight, reducing her doormat space by half. She hugged the metal bars and focused on the counter spell, not her impending death if her odd looking cagemate shifted its weight in her direction one more time.
She had to hurry.
Haste makes waste. Gabriella recalled her father preaching that ominous phrase to her as a young girl. That was her father’s reaction whenever she rushed her spellcasting lessons so she could play with her Duneden friends. And to her dismay, he proved prophetic. Her hurried spells failed, forcing her to sacrifice more play time to correctly execute them.
She gulped. E.V.A.N. appeared restless again, but she couldn’t see a reason. Gabriella knew there wouldn’t be time for a second whack at the spell. Either she succeeded the first time or died. No gray areas. No do-overs.
The zoo sidetracked her concentration, and her muscles tensed. She did a double take. Was she seeing clearly, or was her imagination playing tricks on her? The door to one of the barred enclosures sure appeared open. Could that be the reason the sidewalks were vacant? There was a vicious animal on the loose? Or was that space simply reserved for E.V.A.N.?
If that was the case, the Slayer might kill her whether she was inside or outside the cage.
The Slayer slid its massive flank toward her again, erasing more of her space. Her corner was now reduced to the size of a table mat.
Gabriella rallied her concentration on the counter spell. Would it work?
The Slayer twitched its ear, shook its gigantic head, grunted, and groggily eclipsed the rest of her space.
59
A hulking giant climbed over the volcano’s rim like a small child stepping over a row of alphabet blocks. It lumbered down the treacherous slope with plangent, quaking footfalls. Immersed in the black fog, neither the soldiers nor Nick and his Lothran companion were able to determine the cause of the thunderous tremors. The military urged his men forward, claiming the tremors came from Terror Island. That was a fatal miscalculation.
Nick and the Lothran raced through the muddled platoons of soldiers, unaware they were climbing directly into the towering monster’s path. The higher up the volcano they ran, the more Earth-shattering the tremors. Nick’s sixth sense forced him and the Lothran to halt mere yards from the descending giant’s next step.
“We’re screwed,” the Lothran lamented as he saw another platoon of soldiers approaching from the right.
“Not on my watch!” Nick exclaimed. He focused his chromed eyes on the path ahead, and suddenly a torrent of green-blue supernatural flame unlike any fire known to man surged forward, cutting a swath through the soldiers and giant alike. Nick and the Lothran sprinted for all they were worth up the fiery pathway, through a squad of jitterbugging, burning soldiers, and between the extraterrestrial colossus’ gigantic feet. All eight of them.
Nick stole a fleeting look at another inimical freak of the universe. It was King Kong big but traveled on eight two-toed bulldozer-sized feet that indented the volcano’s glassy, lava rock surface. The legs were as thick as Californian Sequoia trees and ponderously propelled the seventy foot long hairy body down the slope. The head resembled the Boeing 747’s conical nose with one exception: it was flanked by a pair of the largest ivory tusks Nick had ever seen. They would put an elephant to shame. The leviathan’s lighthouse orbs, alligator snout, and wicked white teeth the size of modest office buildings put a scare into Nick’s daunting alter ego.
Nick had to hand it to the big brute—its flaming eight feet could dance with the best of them. While Nick and the Lothran were zigzagging their way past the monster, its name spontaneously entered his mind. Quirinus. For some reason, the name rang a bell. Quirinus. Then the name’s description struck his supercharged mind like lightning. Quirinus was ancient Sabine for wielder of the spear. The only trouble was, he didn’t see a spear anywhere on the brute’s body. And with those inflexible tree trunks for legs, how could the monster even hurl one? The name was obviously a misnomer.
A small grin creased the alter ego
’s stiff leathery lips. The creature’s Sabine name suggested that early man was familiar with some of the alien monsters, which put a crimp in modern man’s opinion that the ancients imagined their mythological monster. That was a scary thought.
The Lothran grabbed Nick’s forearm and yelled, “Hurry before the Quirinus gets a fix on us and impales us with one of its giant spears!”
“I don’t see a…” Nick began but was rudely interrupted when the Lothran tugged him sharply left. They both executed awkward tightrope balancing acts to keep from falling sideways into the path of a ground-piercing spear that exploded inches from their struggling forms. Bits of volcanic glass and rock pummeled them and should have opened numerous bloody lacerations on Nick’s body, but his scaly reptilian armor protected him. Unfortunately, the Lothran wasn’t as fortunate. It was peppered with small cuts.
Nick stepped back from the huge white spear and saw that it was one of the Quirinus’ tusks. Up close, the ivory spear was as long as a utility pole with a sharp, tapered end. Nick pivoted toward the beast and saw that it still had one tusk left. The colossus slowly rotated its unwieldy body and trained those huge headlight eyes on them. It lined up its other tusk with its targets. If at first you don’t succeed . . .
Nick’s amplified intelligence reacted swiftly and initiated a fiery countermeasure. With supreme concentration, the alter ego instructed his chrome eyes to hurl a blistering green-blue firestorm at the Quirinus’ enormous skull and tusk. The firestorm engulfed it, and the monster wailed loudly as it rammed its burning skull against the volcanic rock in an effort to quell the horrific fire. Nick had seen enough. He pulled the Lothran off the ground while the Quirinus was distracted, and together they made a mad dash up the short distance to the rim. The prospect of rescuing his friends quickened Nick’s pace to a supernatural blur.
Once they reached the top, Nick looked down at the smoldering corpses. The Quirinus lay on its side, a charred skeleton, and the soldiers and their leader were crispy critters. He shoved the Lothran ahead. It was time to find his friends, but as they descended, Nick’s daylight sight saw there was nothing to see but black rock.
Then without warning, the pair was teleported to a silent realm of absolute darkness and devoid of matter. No rock. No volcano. No solid objects of any kind.
Nick growled at this bewildering turn of events.
Who sent them there? And where the hell was there?
Alien Hell?
60
The Slayer’s steel-clad body pressed its full weight against Gabriella’s petite frame, and the unyielding pressure bowed her ribs and drove the air from her lungs. She gasped for air, but it never penetrated deeper than her throat. Shooting pains like knife wounds traveled her tightly compressed torso and exploded like merciless fireworks.
Gabriella had seconds to live. Where had her spell gone wrong? And where was Nick? She loved him with all her heart, which was about to be greatly reduced in size. But it all centered on her wayward spell. What went wrong?! According to her calculations, it should have worked like a charm.
Suddenly, she grasped the problem—she skipped the final word that launched the spell! Stupid! A rookie mistake! Haste did make waste. Using the residual breath inside her throat and mouth, she barely chirped out the final word. Was it her imagination, or did she actually hear the word? She closed her eyes against the unbearable torture. She was still in the cage. She failed again. One final time.
Her life was over.
There wasn’t an ounce of breath left in her mouth and throat to repeat the spell’s launch word. Gabriella squeezed her eyelids shut as darkness shrouded her mind. Her thoughts. Her will to live. She quietly accepted her fate.
The hellacious pressure on her body abruptly ceased. Gabriella’s lungs stuttered twice before kick starting and sucking in lifesaving air. Her spine ached, but the pain was manageable. Pride welled within her.
She did it!
She was out!
And so was the Slayer. It sniffed its former prison, clumsily trotted into a tunnel at the end of the ledge, and disappeared into the blackness.
After composing herself, she glanced down at the alien village and fought the urge to explore the place. Meet the folks. Maybe pick up a postcard or two to send home to her Duneden friends.
Friends. Gabriella’s celebratory mood flipped. She first had to rescue her captive companions, but how? Was she already too late? Her magic power was sharply curtailed since she entered the volcano, but she couldn’t put a finger on one particular reason. Was it the sorceress or the Shabaccoes’ doing?
Gabriella’s temperament brightened. As she vividly recalled, her magic worked inside the prison cavern, so perhaps there was hope for saving her friends after all. She quickly cast a backtrack spell showing her the way back to the cavern, enabling her to accurately teleport there. With a curt twist of her wrist, a stream of glittering silver dust appeared and softly plinked. The thin strand traveled away from the tunnel and upward into a murky ceiling fissure she hadn’t noticed before. The sparkling radiance continued to the cavern prison area.
Gabriella hesitated. Once there, liberating her friends could be a major problem for her, but she reluctantly brushed it aside. She would worry about that snag when the time came.
After a series of deep inhales and exhales, Gabriella gathered her strength and teleported off the ledge, leaving the empty cage alone. The charmed, shimmering pathway paled and then vanished behind her.
61
Nick and the Lothran locked arms to avoid separation in the chilling darkness. There was no gravity in the crypt-like void, so they didn’t know if they were floating upside down, sideways, or right side up. Even the yellow glow from Nick’s alter ego’s eyes couldn’t penetrate the dense atmosphere canceling their ability to see.
Suddenly out of the blackness, a cacophony of human voices shouted, cursed, and threatened the two newcomers. Hostile chants of “death to the newbies” and “let ‘em rot in here like the rest of us” seemly flew at them from every direction. Nick and the Lothran became even more perplexed. Who did the voices belong to? What was this place? A prison?
Nick rapid fired these unknowns to the Lothran, and it paused several moments before answering. “This has to be the Shabaccoes’ legendary prison dimension we’ve all heard about. I always considered it a tall tale, but my ancestors claimed whenever ocean ships passed too close to this island, the Shabaccoes would transfer the passengers and crew to this isolated place. That way, none of them could ever report what they saw and bring other humans here.”
“Well, I’ve had enough of this place.”
“But … but we just got here. Eternity will seem even longer.”
Countless glassy fisheyes resembling murderous star clusters on a clear night appeared all around them.
“I wonder why we can’t see each other’s eyes, but we can see theirs?” Nick posed.
One of the male prisoners spoke up before the Lothran could answer. “We’ve absorbed enough energy in this Godforsaken place to glow like a stadium lights.”
“What year is it back on Earth?” another demanded.
When the Lothran told him, grumbling displaced the shouts.
“Christ, mates, some of us have been here for over two thousand years!”
“Five hundred years!”
“Fifty-five years”, a female voice yelled with dismay.
And the shouts continued unabated, which annoyed Nick. “Lothran, we’ve got to escape before these guys drive me nuts.”
It squeezed Nick’s arm. “I would love to, but how? Magic?”
“Maybe. Let me chew on it a bit.”
The uproar finally faded, and the fish-eyed mob tightened their circle around Nick and the Lothran. Nick’s alter ego’s mind intuitively absorbed their not-so-subtle threats. The stir crazy prisoners weren’t seeking genial comradery; they planned to kill the newcomers for food. Nick’s supercharged brain understood it had far less time to hatch an escape plan than i
t originally thought. Death was not an option for breaking out of this abysmal dimension.
Nick’s number one defense was fire, but when he attempted to muster another kickass blast, the effort fizzled. Instead of the failure irritating or frightening him, it inspired a deep-seated fury. His vicious growl caused the other prisoners to back off.
So, he was left with a few scorpion tails to defend the Lothran and himself, which basically left them unprotected. He had to come up with a much more effective plan. Even though his two rock ‘em, sock ‘em fists would knock several prisoners to the sidelines for good, he innately understood fisticuffs wouldn’t get them out of this dreadful dimension.
After his anger cooled, logic seized control of his thinking once more. He remembered that his red-orange alter ego had the power to make images reality, like conjuring the Chris-Craft beside Gabriella’s dock. Would that power work in this dimension? He felt a sense of urgency to make it work, because his friends needed his help to elude death.
“Hey Lothran, paint a mental picture of that volcanic cavern where my friends are being held prisoner and telepathically send it me.”
“I … I can, sure, but I don’t see how that will…”
“Just do it, alligator beak!” Nick snapped.
The circle of eyes closed in on their private space again, but this time he actually felt a few of their bodies brush against his.
“Hurry up!” Nick barked.
The Lothran colorfully conveyed the cavern, and Nick’s mind quickly seized it and wished they were there.
Nothing happened.
The first punch was thrown and connected with the Lothran’s sinewy chest, but the burly creature barely felt it through his armor-plated skin. Nick knew the next punch would have his name on it, so he relaxed the best he could, envisaged the scene again, and demanded to be transported there.
Final Scream Page 25