Relic: Blade (A Kane Arkwright Supernatural Thriller)

by Ben Zackheim

  That means we lucked out getting there when we did. Just a little bit more luck could get us out.

  Rebel stood up, took a deep breath and clapped her hands together.

  “So what do we do now?”

  “Let’s see that symbol again.”

  She handed me the scrap of paper she’d taken from the first dead woman’s hand.

  A circle. A line slashing right through the center of it. But I noticed another detail. It was a small one. It gave me an idea.

  “Walk to the other side of the cave,” I told her. “Please,” I added before it became a thing.

  She walked one way. I walked the other.

  “I’m there. I’m facing the center,” she yelled.

  “Okay, I’m on the opposite end,” I yelled back. “Touch the wall and walk to your right. Don’t lose contact with the stone. On my mark. Go.”

  I started walking right as well. Rebel’s fingernails made a racket on the wall, as usual, and I’m sure she enjoyed every minute of it.

  “Walk slowly. To a beat. Like this.” I hit the ground with my shoes hard so she could hear my pace. We had to stay in sync. I heard her steps fall in line. My guess was that it would take a few minutes to walk around the entire room like that.

  As it turns out we only needed to walk for a few seconds.

  She bumped into a corpse at the same time I bumped into another one.

  “I have a dead one over here!” she called out.

  “Me too! Move the body but don’t lose its spot.”

  “Hard to lose it when he bled out.”

  After a minute of grunting and scraping I said, “I’m back in place.”

  “Hold on! Getting…”

  But she didn’t get to finish her sentence.

  The cave lit up like the sun.

  Chapter 7

  “What the fuck!” she screamed.

  “Use your palms to cover your eyes!”

  I fell to my knees. The brightness was so painful I couldn’t think straight. I tore off my shirt and pressed it hard to my face. I curled up in a fetal position so my face was buried between my knees. At that moment, I wished I’d stuck with yoga.

  “What is it?” Rebel asked. I could hear the pain in her voice.

  “I think you were right. It’s the sword. Do a spell!”

  “Do a spell?”

  “Yeah! Do a spell! Block our vision or something.”

  “Or something!”

  “Why are you repeating everything I say?”

  “Because everything you say sounds like it’s coming from a moron!”

  The argument bought us a few seconds of distraction but I knew we were looking at some serious injury in a few seconds.

  And then the light started to fade.

  The slow dimming made me feel like a kid who’s been chewed out by a teacher. A teacher who was now calming down. As it waned so did the pain.

  But it was still too bright to open our eyes when Rebel asked, “How did you know we needed to stand on opposite ends of the room?”

  “I didn’t,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I just guessed. The symbol on the paper shows a slight bulge of ink where the line meets the circle. It could have just been a result of the ink spreading but I knew it could also mean that something, or someone, needed to be at those two points. Straight across from each other.”

  “A guide for where to stand.”

  “Yeah. Two dots,” I said. “Two people on opposite ends of the circle will trigger the spell.”

  “And reveal the sword.”

  “I hope so.” My eyes were clamped shut. I cherished every moment of the fading pain but I couldn’t bring myself to look around yet.

  “It’s a simple trick to trigger a light spell,” Rebel said in her teacher voice. “But it would take some serious magic to hide something in plain sight.”

  I didn’t argue. I didn’t know magic and I wanted to keep it that way. “Can you open your eyes yet?” I asked.

  “No. So who were these new dead guys?”

  “Same guys as outside. They probably triggered the sword to blind the women. Get the advantage. Looks like she took them down before biting it herself.”

  “I think the women work for Vamps,” Rebel said.

  “I don’t know. Since when do Vamps hire humans?”

  “Who else then?”

  “They could be independent. Or they could be Cannon’s people.”

  “Don’t go there,” Rebel said. “No way.”

  “He has a track record with us, Rebel.”

  Cannon was an elusive son of a bitch. Dangerous. We’d lost our last couple of Vampire treasures to his hired thugs. We’d never met the man himself but, then again, not many people had.

  “I guess it’s a good thing that I’m right much more than you are, Kane,” she shot back.

  “Can you just lay off until we have the discovery of the century in our hands?”

  A silence fell on the cavern. We’d made it all the way here. We were exhausted. We were in pain from bullets in the butt, fried eyes and whatever else I’d forgotten about. I’m sure my body would tell me all about it in the morning.

  Which reminded me there might not be a morning. We still had no idea how we were going to get out of there.

  We’d find a way. We didn’t have a good track record with finding treasure, but we were batting 1000 in the escape-by-the-skin-of-our-teeth front.

  “I’m opening my eyes now,” I said.

  “Me too,” she said.

  I looked across the room and saw Rebel first. She was looking back at me. She’d ripped her top off to cover her eyes too. Our eyes met and then we glanced down at the sword at the same time.

  Excalibur lay on the dirt floor like someone just dropped it there. There was no ornate pedestal. No immortal knight holding it. It was a weapon. That’s it. And it looked lonely. It called out to me for company.

  It wasn’t what I expected. It was a Japanese sword, one that would look right in the hand of a samurai, not a knight or king.

  “That’s Excalibur?” she said. Though she knew the answer. We both did.

  It was Excalibur. I could feel its power.

  “It must have been reforged,” I said. “Maybe to hide it.”

  “Skyler will know.” Her faith in our teacher was infinite.

  “I’ll grab it. There may be more traps.”

  “So why should you be the one to…”

  “Shut up,” I said I wasn’t having any of it.

  “Fine.” She knew this was my job. No one else, mortal or otherwise, was a better choice to take that sword and get it the hell out of there.

  I took some timid steps toward Excalibur, as if it were an injured animal. It very well could have been. Again, the world of magic made me question every move I made. Nothing was ever what you assumed. Kind of like life in general but with more purple light and less laws of physics.

  I stood over it. The sword that etched its story in myth was about to be a sword that dropped into history and shook everything up.

  “What are you waiting for?” Rebel asked. She was on all fours now. Was she ready to lunge? I found myself not trusting her in that moment. Did she want it for herself? Did she have secret plans for Excalibur?

  I shook the paranoia off as best I could. For all of her faults, Rebel had been loyal for years. It was the sword. It was getting into my head. It was messing with my thoughts. I had to remind myself who I was. Why I was there.

  I bent down and grabbed the sword’s hilt.

  I half-expected it to defy my grasp. This was the same sword that stuck in that damn stone, stubborn as a tick, until the right person came along to wield it.

  Would it fight me the same way it fought those men who tried to pull it from the stone?

  But Excalibur was the weight of a light barbell. That was my first impression. It wasn’t light but it also wasn’t heavy. Maybe 8 pounds. And its balance was off. Maybe from laying in the sand for a thousand years. Or
maybe Excalibur wasn’t all it was cut out to be.

  When I brought the blade to my face and stared into the steel’s beauty I thought otherwise.

  Chapter 8

  I had a vision. Or something. I saw something.

  The room went dark and I saw fire. It started small and bloomed bigger and bigger. The sound was terrifying, loud, end-of-world stuff. A fireball formed and filled my vision.

  I snapped out of it and tried to catch my breath. I’d been holding it.

  I looked at the blade’s edge. It could split an atom. It was the sharpest I’d ever seen.

  I wiped the dust away with my shirt. The steel gleamed where I touched. Not quite as brightly as the light show it had given us a minute before. But close. It made me wince when I touched it again, this time to wipe off the handle.

  I must have lost myself in the process because the next thing I knew, Rebel was shaking my shoulder.

  “Kane!”

  “What!”

  “What is it? You were in some kind of trance.”

  “Look at the edge,” I said.

  “Yeah, it’s sharp. Not bad for an old thing.”

  “It’s not that…” I didn’t know how to say it.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. It’s talking, no, beckoning to me.” And it was. The sword was beautiful. It was special. And it wanted me as much as I wanted it. I didn’t say any of this out loud or there would have been a scene. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to control myself if she laughed at me. Because laughing at me meant laughing at the sword.

  No one was allowed to do that. Not while I was around.

  “Kane!”

  I turned to her. I must have had one hell of a face on.

  “Jesus, what the fuck, man?” she said, backing up a step.

  I caught myself and managed to pull back from a rage I’d never felt before. It was beyond me. Almost like it wasn’t even my own.

  “You did it again. Totally zoned out. You were looking at it like… Maybe you should put that thing down.”

  “And let you have it?” I said with a voice that didn’t sound like my own.

  “Okay, hand it over, creepy man. This thing is pulling some heavy magic on you.” Rebel took a step forward. I took a step back. “Kane. Give me the sword.”

  “No.”

  “Give it to me now or we’re having this out right here and now.”

  I lifted Excalibur up, the tip pointing right at my partner. I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t want to do it. It was like I was caged in a rage that guided my hand. If Excalibur was going to get me in a fight with Rebel, it had better know how to turn me into a swordsman. I would die with a Glock in my hand. Sharp things were always Rebel’s thing.

  She lifted her hand and tapped her fingertips together. They sounded like ten marbles bouncing off each other. But even in my possessed state I knew that those things wouldn’t feel like marbles when they hit my skin.

  She attacked first. Typical. I sidestepped her just in time. The sound of her hands slashing the air was probably what Death sounds like when she whistles.

  “No music for me, Rebel?” Don’t you think we should have a death march? Heavy on the drums would be good.”

  “No one’s going to die, Kane. I’m just going to remove something from you. Something you won’t need later.”

  The hot rage wasn’t enough to damp out the fear I felt at that moment. I wanted to kill her but I wasn’t prepared to find out what part of my body Rebel thought I could lose. She has a dark sense of humor.

  I stepped forward and swung the blade, keeping her far enough away so that I could move away from the cave wall. She’d done a good job of pushing me up against the spot where the Guardian’s body lay. She probably planned to have me trip on the corpse. She always thought ahead like that. Me, I usually point and shoot. I was out of my element and I knew it. I just wish the sword knew it too.

  “Rebel…” I said. I’d managed to push the anger down enough to use my own voice. She must have heard the pleading tone because she let her guard down.

  I stabbed her in the shoulder.

  Her screech echoed through the cavern. It was so loud that whatever spell I was under broke. Even the sword was scared by the fury in the sound. We were messing with a force of nature here, and it wasn’t Excalibur.

  When Rebel glared up at me her eyes were orange. Like fire. But in the seconds that she kept me in that gaze the orange turned to yellow and then white.

  I was going to lose something. Maybe something I did need.

  Her lunge had the power of the wind behind it. I’m not sure if she called up a spell or if she just stirred the still air with her pounce. Either way her nails were in my stomach. I could feel them inching around, as if they were looking for the off button.

  I dropped the sword. The pain made everything go away. It made everything dark.

  I thought the thing that she’d taken from me was my life.

  I guess I wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

  Chapter 9

  In the darkness, I dreamed. Or something.

  My bedroom ceiling. The one from my childhood room.

  The procession of people I didn’t know down the hill to my parents’ tomb.

  The sliver of sunlight hitting the white paper sticking up from under the attic’s floor boards.

  The images swam in my head and then they settled on one in particular.

  My ten year old hands.

  The short breaths that I took into my lungs were like a kid’s breathing, not a man’s.

  The part of me that knew I was an adult in Peru was afraid. It was telling me that I was really there, in the attic, with the box.

  “Hello?” I said to no one. But I’d been there before. I knew no one would answer me. No one was there. This was the day I’d escaped the halfway house. I’d fled to my old, abandoned home just so I could lay on my bedroom floor one last time and stare at the familiar constellations of glowing star stickers on the ceiling. I’d stuck them to the ceiling with my mom.

  I yearned for my parents. They could tell me everything.

  Who I was.

  What I was.

  I took a step and felt the floor under my small feet. It was solid. I heard the sound of my sneakers as they squeaked.

  Then the walls burst into flame.

  The flame reached for me. Its heat made me squint and back away.

  “Kane,” a low voice said.

  “Who is that?” I asked.

  “Kane,” it said again. It sounded like a woman. I could make a form out in the red fire. The flame parted like a blooming flower and she walked from it, her eyes wide. She opened her mouth and it was darkness. Solid black. The dark grew and grew, flowing from her face and reaching for me.

  I’ll never get that sound out of my head. She screamed. My mother screamed.

  I woke up with Rebel staring down at me.

  “Is this Hell?” I managed to mutter.

  “Funny, asshole,” she said in her raspy voice. It had a scratch in it right near the end of most words. I guess you could call it smoker’s voice but she didn’t smoke. “I gave you the last of the elixir. You’ll make it,” she said.

  I tried to remember the dream I’d had. It had opened a whole bunch of old wounds. They hurt more than my stomach.

  “The sword,” I muttered, trying to sit up.

  I wanted Excalibur back in my hands.

  It felt so good in my hands. The things I could do with it if I could just find it again.

  Rebel slapped me.

  “What the hell was that for?” I yelled.

  “You were getting that look on your face again. This is not good, Kane. I can’t be trapped down here with you if you can’t fight it. You won’t be able to resist its call and I’ll be dead ten minutes after I fall asleep.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m fine.”

  “Excalibur has a spell on it. A possession spell. Way too advanced for me. Only a Master cou
ld pull one off with this much power.”

  I spotted a bundle of cloth on the ground. “You put it in there?”

  She saw me staring at the bundle. “I wrapped it up so you can’t see it, touch it, smell it. Or use it on me.”

  I felt its power over me fading. It was still there but I had my wits about me enough to say, “Sorry about that.” I guiltily glanced at her bandaged shoulder.

  “You couldn’t have known,” she said. “Now we have a bigger issue to deal with.”

  “Yeah. Getting out of here.” I passed my eyes over the dark space, squinting to see a hole, a crack, any sign of a lifeline between the tomb and the outer world. Nothing.

  Rebel doused her light casting us in 100% bona fide darkness. Dark’s dark. The dark you imagine takes you in death.

  “Hold your breath,” she said quietly.

  “Why?”

  She sighed, frustrated. “I want to listen. On three. One, two…”

  We took in some of the precious stale oxygen. The sound that followed was as pure a silence as the dark space was black.

  Still, in the silence I did hear a light clinking sound.

  Rebel exhaled. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yeah. Is that your fingernails?”

  “No, it’s coming from behind the cave walls. Let’s walk the perimeter and see if we can find it.”

  After a few seconds of tip-toeing near the wall, Rebel sighed and said, “Can you breathe any louder?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Is the essential function of my lungs upsetting you? Maybe if you hadn’t poked them with your fingernails I wouldn’t sound like my great uncle Bernie sleeping on the porch after a bender.”

  “You had a great uncle Bernie?” I could hear the glee in her voice. Something else for her to file away in her index of torture material.

  “What was that? I heard it again,” I said.

  “Yeah it’s coming from over where you are.”

  “I think you’re right.” I was near the collapsed tunnel so whatever was making the sound was probably coming from there. Then again it was tough to tell where any sound was coming from in the massive circular cave.

  The tapping became louder. Harder.

  “Shit. I think they’re coming back for us,” she said.