Swallowing, Jodi realized that Graven had every advantage.
He had incommensurately superior firepower. He knew the layout of this house far better than she did. He was a world-class hunter and experienced at stalking and killing the most dangerous game. He even had more experience at killing people. And despite his age he seemed to have lost none of the killer instinct or skill that had seen him alive through war and hunting and murder after murder …
Grimacing, Jodi raised the Glock with both hands wrapped around the grip and she pressed the barrel to her forehead; she was horrified that the very drops of sweat falling from her face and hands would give away her position.
Jodi knew in her soul that this paralyzing fear was defeating her, and she was going to die because she was too afraid to do what she had to do, and that’s why she was going to die because she was too afraid …
She closed her eyes as tears fell …
“Come on, Joe,” she silently cried. “Talk to me …”
An old blind man … in her mind …
“… Listen up, kid … If it gets bad – and it will – you go straight into it … Don’t ever run from it … Not ever … If he charges at you, you charge at him … If you’re gonna die, you get it in your head that, by God, he’s gonna die, too … And you stick that in your mind because your mindset is gonna be worth more than all the training in the world …”
Jodi opened her eyes.
With a frown she ejected the half-spent clip from the Glock and slid in a fresh one with seventeen full rounds. She stuck the used magazine in her back pocket. Then she gripped the Glock tight in her right hand and turned to walk straight down the hall. She would have a clear view of the front room in seven steps. She angled to the left side of the corridor so she could fully extend her right arm and the Glock.
She emerged onto the open balcony.
Professor Graven was crouching at a distant doorway holding the double-barreled rifle close and Jodi didn’t give a warning. She began shooting on sight and rapid-fired a full clip from the Glock; the shots were so tight it was like machinegun fire.
Graven howled, twisting and raging at the impacts, before he staggered through the open door and then Jodi reached the front staircase. She vaulted the last of the railing and hit the stairs once before landing on the first floor, instantly changing magazines.
She moved forward holding the Glock high for a fast first shot. If Graven stepped out she would unload a full clip into him before he could even acquire aim.
“Drop it!” the professor screamed.
Jodi spun, instantly falling into a crouch, her aim dead steady on an open door.
The voice had emerged from an unseen room; the professor wasn’t visible. For a flashing split-second Jodi considered firing through the wall beside the frame but something caused her to hesitate and then a rifle barrel began to protrude from the opening.
The barrel was aimed at Joe Mac.
Professor Graven limped from the frame and he was holding an aim solidly on Joe Mac. He didn’t remove his eyes from Joe Mac as he repeated his command, “I said drop the weapon, Detective Strong!”
In the moment, Jodi saw that she had hit him at least five times with the Glock – his arm and both legs were covered in blood – but they weren’t mortal wounds; he would eventually die, yeah, but he wasn’t dying anywhere near fast enough.
“Kill him!” gasped Joe Mac.
Teeth clenched, Jodi didn’t look at Joe Mac; she didn’t have to. She focused on Professor Graven’s right hand and saw that his finger was on the trigger of the elephant rifle. She glanced along the barrel and saw that there was no trembling, no fear, no doubt; he would pull the trigger, and Jodi knew he wouldn’t miss.
Although there was only faint chance that Joe Mac would survive his present injuries, there was still a chance. But if Graven pulled that trigger, it was over. Joe Mac wouldn’t survive even one round from the hunting rifle.
“I won’t tell you again,” said Professor Graven in a shaken voice.
His hold shifted on the rifle.
Jodi tossed the Glock to the floor.
“It’s down!”
Finally, Professor Graven turned his gaze from Joe Mac to focus on her and swung the aim of the rifle toward her chest. His mouth was a bitter line of disappointment. Or perhaps it was frustration.
“Both of you have interfered in something that is quite beyond you,” he stated with bizarre formality. “You haven’t saved the child. The child will still die. Not today, no, but he will die.” A pause. “There is nothing you can do to stop a power that conquered nations before nations were even born.”
He shook his head as he could not believe their arrogance.
“Fools,” he muttered. “Your god only rules sheep that I’ve sacrificed to the Wicker Man my entire life.” A sneer. “If your god loved you, he would protect you. But he doesn’t protect you! Look at you! All of you!” He took a labored breath. “All of you will be led away like sheep to the slaughter.”
Jodi defiantly muttered, “So why are you so afraid of the child?”
“Because he’s not a child! He’s a god! But he’s a defeated god! Rome defeated him last time but we will defeat him this time! You and your friends are testimony to that! Yes! His kingdom was for a day when Rome hung him from that tree! And it will be even less when we do the same!”
Sirens in the distance …
Closing.
“You hear that?” whispered Jodi. “It’s over, professor. They know. That’s why they’re coming. Are you going to kill a cop? Do you know what they’ll do to you? Or do you plan to talk your way out of two dead police officers on your floor?”
Professor Graven’s gaze angled high and to the side as if he could see the approaching patrol cars. They were closing fast and Jodi estimated one minute before they stormed through the door; it wouldn’t matter if the professor still held them captive. After the bloodbath in the cavern, they wouldn’t waste more than a second on negotiations. If Graven didn’t give them the answer they wanted, they were coming in, and Brightbarton would be leading from the front in no mood to take prisoners.
Jodi smiled, “You’re out of time, professor. It doesn’t matter now whether you kill us or not. It’s over. You lose.”
Professor Graven’s lips drew back in a snarl. He raised the stock of the rifle to his shoulder and aimed dead at Joe Mac.
“So do you!”
It was a flicker of black that caught Jodi’s attention and then the sunrise beyond the great picture window at the back vanished behind a wall of black and the glass was blasted into shining white shards sent spinning across the room. The shrieks of a thousand ravens and crows fairly lifted the entire house into the sky as flashing jet-black forms flooded through the broken window filling the entire room.
With a shout Professor Graven lifted the rifle and fired a single impotent round into the lethal slicing sea of lightning-fast predators who were instantly cutting him from head to toe and then he raised both arms over his head howling.
Jodi was frozen in that split-second but she saw Joe Mac rise on his knees, his right arm extended, the .45 in his hand. His teeth came together with a supreme expression of determination as he fired a single round and the professor bellowed as he brought the rifle down also firing a single round.
Both fell to the floor.
“GOD!” cried Jodi and ran forward ignoring the black bolts of fury slashing through the air with immeasurable rage. She reached Joe Mac and dropped to his side, rolling him on his back; it took only a glance to know he was dead.
“Oh, no, no, no, no ….”
She was aware of nothing else.
Then, slowly, she became conscious of the flood of black birds of prey flying toward the broken window. In another moment the room was empty, and she saw Joe Mac’s .45 on the floor slightly beyond his ha
nd.
Numbly she lifted it, and stood.
Uncountable patrol cars skidded to a stop outside the house, surrounding it. One second later Jodi heard Brightbarton shouting through a megaphone.
“Professor Graven! You are ordered to step outside!”
With an enraged groan Graven rose from the floor. He had an arm wrapped around bloody ribs; Joe Mac had hit him but not killed him. Graven would live, and he turned his face to the shattered window. Then he focused steadily on Jodi, and grinned, “I am unarmed, detective. And now I’ll go to court and you can’t prove a thing! It looks like I won’t die today after all!”
Tears fell, and Jodi slowly lifted her gaze to Poe who was staring upon her, unmoving, from the mantle.
Poe didn’t blink.
“Professor?” Jodi whispered.
Graven hesitated. “Yes?”
“Do you know why God sends a raven?”
A long hesitation as more sirens closed.
Graven frowned, “Because a raven means death?”
“Death is just a beginning,” Jodi said quietly. “God sends a raven because he wants you to repent before …”
Silence lasted between them as Graven swayed, and an anger began to visibly build … and build. He bared his teeth, pushed himself away from the wall, and stood glaring with fingers hooked like talons.
“Say it!” he cried. “Before what!”
Jodi raised the .45 and fired.
She watched as Professor Graven’s body fell back, his forehead leaving a bloody trail in the smoking air; he hit the floor hard and didn’t move again as thunder rolled into the crimson dawn. Gazing down, Jodi lowered the gun.
“Judgment.”
Head bent, Jodi turned to Joe Mac lying on his back, so still, and movement caught her eye. She lifted her face as Poe soared without sound from the mantle, wings spread wide as he settled on Joe Mac’s chest.
Poe stretched out his magnificent wings, lowered his head to Joe Mac’s face, and draped both wings over Joe Mac’s head as if to comfort him … and receive him. And he remained like that with his head bowed, wings embracing, for a long time. Then Poe raised his face and with a single move rose into the air to soar silently through the shattered window.
And was gone …
Jodi sighed, then slowly crossed the room walking toward the open front door, and when she emerged into the light she saw Brightbarton standing with the megaphone in his hand and police armed with shotguns and rifles. As she reached the patrol cars Brightbarton stepped out. For a long moment he stared over her face, and then he grimaced.
“Joe?” he asked.
Jodi shook her head and Brightbarton lifted his face toward the mansion. He stood staring, and then he nodded and gazed down into Jodi’s face once more.
“Now you own it, kid,” he said.
Wiping away a tear, Jodi walked past him and down the long road, head bowed, gun hanging in her hand, as a great shadow darkened the whole world behind her, and the shadow descended … and descended … and descended until …
The raven settled softly on her shoulder.
THE END
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HUNTER by JAMES BYRON HUGGINS
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Chapter 1
“Vicious little beasts, aren’t they?”
The words, spoken with ominous disaster, came from a white-haired old man in a white lab coat. Seated patiently, he watched as a host of red army ants, some as large as his thumb, attacked what he had dispassionately dropped into the aquarium. The ants overwhelmed the rat in seconds, killing it almost instantly with venom, then devouring it. In three minutes a haggard skeleton was all that remained.
Dr. Angus Tipler clicked a stopwatch, staring down. “Yes,” he frowned, “utterly vicious.”
He turned to others in the laboratory of the Tipler Institute, the leading crypto-zoological foundation in the world. His face portrayed consternation. “What are we to do with them?” he asked, almost to himself. “They kill with venom long before they dismember their prey.” He looked back. “Yes, and so we must therefore devise some type of ... serum, if for no other reason so that people will stop bothering us all the time. Has anyone concluded the molecular weight of the poison?”
A woman bent over an enormous electron microscope positioned neatly in the center of the room muttered in reply. “Not yet, Doctor. I need another minute.”
Dr. Tipler said nothing as he turned back to the aquarium where the ants were safely—very safely—contained. The rest of the laboratory was filled with virtually every poisonous animal in the world, insect and mammal and reptile. There were black scorpions, Indian cobras, adders and stonefish, brown recluse spiders and the lethal Sydney funnel web, the most dangerous spider in the world. A single unfelt bite from the tiny arachnid would kill a full-grown man within a day. It was Tipler himself who had created the anti-venom.
“It seems this venom is neuromuscular in nature,” he said in a raspy, harsh voice into a recorder. He waved off the video technician who had recorded the grisly episode. “The venom, no matter the location of injection, seems to infiltrate the ligamentum denticulatum, thereby bridging the pons Varolii to decussate the involuntary respiratory abilities of the medulla oblongata. Now, if we can—”
“Dr. Tipler?”
Tipler raised bushy white eyebrows as he turned, seeing a young woman scientist with long black hair. The Asian woman was obviously apprehensive at the intrusion, despite the old man’s well-known patient nature.
“Yes, Gina?” His voice was gentle. “What is it?”
“There are some men to see you, sir.”
Tipler laughed, waving a hand as he turned away. “There are always men to see me, lass. Tell them to wait. The commissary should still be open. They serve an excellent roast chicken. It is my best recommendation.”
“I don’t think these men will wait, sir.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. Her eyes widened slightly. “There are three of them, and they’re wearing uniforms.”
Tipler barked a short laugh. “Uniforms! What sort of uniforms?”
“Army uniforms, sir.”
Tipler laughed again and shook his head as he rose. “All right, Gina. Assist Rebecca in discovering the molecular weight of this venom. And, also, if you would be so kind, extract venom from, oh ... let’s say fifty of these infernal creatures. Just sedate them with chloroform and use the electroshock method—the same procedure we use for the black widows.” He removed his glasses with a sigh and stood up. “And I will deal with these impatient men in uniforms.”
“Yes, sir. They’re waiting in the observation room.”
“Thank you, lass.”
Upon seeing the three, Dr. Tipler stopped short. He had been told often enough that, upon first impression, he was not an imposing figure, so he had no illusions. At seventy-two years of age he was short and thick with a wide brow and snowy hair laid back from the forehead. But he knew that his eyes, blue like Arctic ice, distinguished him from other men both with their startling color and their equally startling intelligence. And equally their quickness to perceive the heart of a mystery. And it was that perceptiveness, a blending of art, science and intuition that had made the world’s eminent paleontologist and crypto-zoologist.
Crypto-zoology was in itself an almost unknown area of biological expertise. Fewer than a dozen distinguished scientists in the world practiced it with any measure of dedication. And, for the most part, few scientists realized that it was practiced at all. But, in ess
ence, it was a systematic and highly rigid system of investigation designed to determine whether species thought to be extinct still inhabited the planet.
Tipler had known significant success in various stages of his career, discovering the last surviving Atacama condors in the Andes Mountains of Chile in 1983, and later discovering a species identified as the blind stone-fish, off the northern coast of Greenland. The deep-water fish had been thought extinct since the Paleolithic Period, but Tipler had pieced together a theory that they still existed in the south-flowing East Greenland Current, which drew directly from the Arctic Sea. He held even further suspicions that the fish existed higher in the Arctic Circle, protected by the vast ice caps of the pole. But a lack of funding had prevented further exploration.
However, his startling discoveries had earned him a modest measure of global recognition, which consequently delivered the attention of several wealthy philanthropists who deemed his unique nonprofit enterprise worthy of endorsement. So, with significant funding and a larger, better-trained staff, he had founded the Tipler Institute. Now, a decade later, he was recognized universally as the world’s leading expert on unknown species, and their extinction or survival. Along the way he had also gained significant exposure to deadly snakes, fish, and spiders and discovered, to his own surprise, that he had a remarkable acumen for pinpointing the molecular characteristics of each type of venom.
Studying venom was, at first, simply a means of aiding those few medical institutions already overwhelmed trying to keep apace with the new strains of poison. But through a working relationship with the Centers for Disease Control, Tipler also joined the crusade, synthesizing over a dozen effective anti-venoms over the past decade. Nor did he find it distracting. Although he was an increasingly sought-after author, lecturer, and researcher, his greatest pleasure remained the simple pursuit of biological science.
DARK VISIONS Page 32