by Alex Archer
The cavern started to rumble. Rocks started to plummet from the ceiling. More men died under the cascade of boulders that shook loose from the walls. Their screams sent Annja struggling to get to the tunnel.
And then she saw Godwin reaching for her from the tunnel itself.
She threw herself forward. “I knew you wouldn’t leave.”
He grinned. “Not yet anyway. But I think now’s as good a time as any to be leaving.”
She stopped him. “Do you see him?”
“Who?”
“Onur. He’s risen.”
Godwin looked behind Annja and for the briefest moment, his eyes widened. But then just as quickly, he dragged on Annja’s hand. “We have to get out of here before the whole place collapses. I don’t want to die here.”
Annja fell into his arms and then paused one final time to look back at the cavern. The entire ceiling was caving in, burying everything. But the black shadow seemed untouched by any of this.
We’ll meet again….
Annja blinked. “Did you hear that?”
“The only thing I hear is my gut telling me to get the hell out of here, Annja. Now let’s go!”
They stumbled along the tunnel and then emerged into the other cavern. Wishman and Nyaktuk were there armed with their rifles. Wishman smiled. “So you got her.”
“She was on her way out,” Godwin said.
Annja looked into Wishman’s eyes but something there told her not to speak. Not now.
Instead, she looked at Godwin. “I think I’m ready to go home.”
Godwin nodded. “We’ve got the way out of this place. Let’s go!”
They rushed down another tunnel that sloped down and led them to a smaller room beside a massive boulder. Nyaktuk reached up and activated the old switch. The boulder swung back, revealing the dim light of dawn just starting to bleed across the horizon.
Annja stumbled out of the mountain and looked up at it from the outside. She could still hear the caverns starting to fall apart. Soon enough, the interior of the mountain would be completely caved in.
But outside, the new dawn promised a new beginning.
Most importantly, it promised life.
39
The journey back to the camp at the burial mound seemed to take a lot less time than when they had traveled to the mountain. Annja rode most of the way in silence, lost in her thoughts about what had happened. She had a great deal of questions, and as usual, the answers only seemed to prompt further questions to which she had no solutions.
“You’re wondering about what transpired at the burial mound,” Wishman said on one of their breaks. He had regained his smile and the twinkle in his eyes had come back, as well. Annja guessed that he had had some sort of revelation back in the mountain. Whatever it was, she was certain he would always treasure it, despite the high cost.
“I was wondering if what Derek said was true,” Annja said.
“About the drug-induced hallucinations?”
“The Breath of Onur,” Annja said. “Yeah.”
Wishman looked out across the forest they were traveling through. The pine trees swayed back and forth in the stiff breezes that still tore across the frozen landscape. “I can’t say. My first impression was of the shimmering haze that we already spoke about. But after that, I’m afraid my memory clouds. It may well be that my body’s reaction to the drug was to fall unconscious.”
“So there was no creature,” Annja said.
Wishman looked at her. “I don’t know, Annja. I simply don’t know. I know what we attempted to imprison there a long time ago. But even that I now question. Were we deluded or was there truly a danger back when we walled it up behind the barrier? I just don’t know.”
“Sure seemed real to me,” Annja said. “But at the same time, I can’t imagine doing what I was able to do.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ve never done something like that before. I’ve never battled a supernatural creature.”
Wishman nodded. “And I’m sure that a newborn baby looks at the giants around it and sees them walking and running and says much the same thing as you’ve just said.”
Annja watched him climb back aboard the sledge and they moved off. Annja glanced behind her at Godwin, who had insisted on driving most of the way back to camp.
“Suppose you tell me about your past now. The real Godwin.”
He grinned. “Anything in particular you want to know about?”
“Only everything,” Annja said. “But suppose we start with the whole half-breed thing. Are you really part Araktak?”
He nodded. “And very proud of it. My father was banished from the tribe for rescuing my mother. What I didn’t tell you was that she was the daughter of the head of Canadian Intelligence. When my father brought her back to civilization, my grandfather was grateful beyond belief. He praised my father and treated him with all the respect in the world and was overjoyed when my father proposed.”
Godwin smiled at the memories. “When I was born, my grandfather said it was the happiest moment of his life. In many ways, I learned from two men growing up. My father taught me everything he expected his Araktak son to know. My grandfather taught me the world of espionage.” He paused as they rounded a bend. “And from my mother, I learned how to never give up hope.”
“Sounds like quite a childhood.”
Godwin nodded. “It was. I went into the military and found my way into special operations. From there, my grandfather encouraged me to enter the intelligence world. It seemed a natural progression. I took to it easily.”
“And the assignment for the mining company?”
Godwin shrugged. “We knew something was going on, but no one knew exactly what. There seemed no rhyme or reason to their pursuits.”
“What did they do that even brought them to your attention in the first place?”
“We tracked a large investment that originated in Saudi Arabia, got washed through Liechtenstein and then wound up in their account.”
“That was unusual?”
“Given that it came from a family with known ties to several radical splinter terror cells, we thought it prudent to see exactly what Derek and company were up to.”
“So you drew the short straw?”
Godwin laughed and then looked at Annja. “I might be inclined to say I got lucky drawing this assignment.”
Annja batted her eyelashes. “I suppose you might.” She turned around and watched the trees flash by as they drove hard back to the burial camp. “So, what happens now?”
“I don’t know,” Godwin said. “I’ve chased things down on this end. Seems likely that someone—possibly even me—will have to go and chase down the start of the money. That would mean a trip to the Middle East.”
Annja sighed. “It’s a lot warmer over there at least.”
“Yeah, but too much sand. It gets in everything and everywhere. It also chafes like a bastard.”
“Maybe I’ll take a vacation,” Annja said. “I could use a change of scenery. I’m kind of tired of all this snow.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
They made their way back to the burial camp that night. Coming back up the wide open plain, Annja felt a twinge of déjà vu.
The camp was a shambles and the twisted corpses of the remainder of Araktak warriors lay strewed about the camp in callous heaps. Judging by their wounds, they had been bled almost dry by Dufresne’s men. That blood had then been used in the summoning ceremony Derek had started.
Wishman and Nyaktuk wept openly at the loss of life. Godwin’s face was hard as he helped them prepare the bodies for burial.
But Wishman shook his head when Godwin suggested they be buried in the mound itself. “This place is no longer for the dead. It has been violated in so many ways that we must use the new location.” He looked at the burial mound. “And we will use this as a new mine. It will be our way forward to the future.”
“What about all your traditi
ons?” Annja asked.
Wishman smiled. “The money we earn from this mine will help us educate our young. We will teach them the old ways while we prepare them for the new. In that way, the Araktak will always be a force for good, rather than a dying whisper in someone’s memory.”
That night, they loaded the dead in one of the trucks. Godwin used the satellite radio to phone in his report and the military showed up the next day to clean things up. By the end of the third day, Annja was on her way home.
SHE’D RIDDEN almost eight hours on airplanes that connected to other airplanes that then sat on tarmacs awaiting takeoff clearances. By the time Annja staggered into her Brooklyn loft, she was as exhausted as she’d been on that frozen mountain in the Northwest Territories.
A hot shower. It was all she wanted. All she needed.
She pressed her voice mail out of habit as she walked to the refrigerator to make sure she had a good bottle of wine already chilled.
“Hi, Annja. I hope you know who this is.”
She smiled from the kitchen. There was no mistaking the deep timbre of Godwin’s voice.
“I’m going to be in New York for a few hours tonight. I know this is last-minute and everything, but I’d love to have dinner before I have to leave. I’m staying at the Hyatt. Room 615. Call me.”
Annja took a healthy swig of wine. Dinner sounded good. But first, she needed to get every last bit of gunk off of her body.
She walked to the bathroom and ran the shower and turned it as hot as she could stand. Steam started filling up the room and seeping out into her bedroom as she stripped off the clothes she’d been wearing for what felt like weeks.
Annja climbed into the shower, closed her eyes and let the hot water soak into her skin. It took her forty minutes before she finally felt clean again. She switched the water off and grabbed the towel hanging nearby.
Stepping out, she rubbed the mirror to wipe the condensation clear. Where would she take Godwin tonight for dinner? The choices in the city were endless, but Annja felt like something spicy. Or maybe that was just how she was feeling in general.
The trip up north had prompted a lot of questions, but tonight, Annja was only in the mood for Godwin.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5038-7
SACRED GROUND
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jon Merz for his contribution to this work.
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