Lauren.
Not only was the bus in mortal danger, but it was also their best chance of escape. Realizing this at the same time, both men hopped the chain-link fence and waved down the bus. It screeched to a halt next to them and the doors opened.
“Get in!” Lauren shouted.
As Alexander leaped up the steps into the bus, King said, “Let me drive.”
Lauren complied immediately, closing the doors as King took the driver’s seat, threw the bus into drive, and gunned the gas. Looking in the rearview he could see the golem nearly upon them and gaining. His only chance of escape was to outmaneuver the behemoth.
Right, King thought, I’m going to outmaneuver this thing in a double-decker bus.
The bus gained speed quickly as they headed downhill, and maintained it at the bottom, but King saw a new problem ahead. The tunnel they had followed from the Durrington Walls to the tomb hidden beneath Stonehenge had collapsed, creating an impassable sinkhole that stretched the distance.
“Hang on!” King shouted, yanking the wheel and sending them into a sharp left turn. The driver’s side tires lifted off the ground for a moment, but King turned the wheel the other way and righted them. The bus crashed through the fence that lined the road.
King saw the large golem pass by behind them, unable to turn as quickly. But it reached out with its long arm and struck the back of the bus. The back half of the upper deck was torn away with a shriek of metal.
Lauren screamed, ducking with her hands over her head. “What the hell is that thing!”
King looked back, his view clear thanks to the missing back half of the bus. They had gained ground on the golem, but it hadn’t given up the chase. “You know the story about Merlin using giants to carry the stones to Stonehenge?”
Lauren looked incredulous. “Yeah?”
“It’s not a story.” He looked back again. The golem was gaining as the bus fought against the slick soil of the field they were speeding through. “Though I suppose no one needed to carry the stones if they could carry themselves.”
Lauren let out a nervous laugh. “Please just drive.”
King steered the bus through a second fence and onto a straight dirt road that was part of a large grid crisscrossing through the fields. With a road beneath them, they began distancing themselves from the golem again, taking the large vehicle up to eighty miles per hour. The copious amount of potholes made the drive rough, but it wouldn’t be catching them any time—
“Incoming!” Alexander shouted.
King whipped around and saw a large rectangular stone hurtling through the air toward them.
“It’s throwing parts of itself!” Lauren shouted.
King watched the stone sail overhead. It crashed into the road, twenty feet ahead. He turned away, plowing into the field. A second stone slammed into the field to their right. King veered back on the road and shouted at the bus as he pushed the gas pedal all the way down. “C’mon you piece of shit! Move!”
A loud crash rang out as the bus shook violently. King looked back and found one of the small Stonehenge stones hanging impaled in the ceiling. Had it been one of the larger stones, they would all be dead.
“Something’s happening,” Lauren shouted.
Looking back, King saw the golem fall to its knees, still reaching out for them but unable to move. Then it fell to pieces, reducing Stonehenge to an unceremonious pile of giant stones. King had no doubt the stones could be returned to their proper place, but the destruction of a national treasure such as this would draw unwanted attention. “We need to get out of the country,” he said to Alexander.
Alexander opened his cell phone and dialed a number. “Ready the plane,” he said, and then hung up.
Lauren looked back and forth at the two men. “Who the bloody hell are you two?”
King drove the bus onto a main road and pulled over. “It’s better if you don’t know who we are,” King said. “And it’s better if you never remember seeing us … for your sake.”
Lauren gave a quick nod. “Just be glad I’m insured or I would have killed you both myself.”
As a car drove up and stopped, King and Alexander both exited the bus. King drew his weapon. “Out of the car!”
The man inside went wide-eyed. He turned the car off and exited, the keys held in a raised shaking hand. King took the man’s keys and said, “I’ll make sure you get the car back.”
The man bobbed his head to acknowledge that King had addressed him and stepped away.
King slid into the driver’s seat as Alexander climbed into the passenger’s side.
Inside the car, King asked, “Where to?”
Alexander held up a chunk of the Stonehenge bluestone that had impaled the bus. “Back to Israel.”
“You think Davidson can figure out how to resurrect a golem?”
“If he can, we might learn how to kill it.”
The plan made sense to King. When it came to the unknown, research and understanding usually won over brute force. Though he doubted Davidson would be happy to see them again. He steered the car around the bus and gave Lauren a subtle nod of thanks as he passed.
The stunned driver of the car approached Lauren and looked over her ruined bus. “Who the hell were they?”
Lauren shrugged. “I have no idea.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
Siberia, Russia
ROOK’S EYES BLINKED open to the sound of a creaking door. Disoriented from the cold, lack of sleep, and loss of blood, Rook almost called out to the visitor, but came to his senses in time. He drew his .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun and inched toward the door. He would defend this refuge if need be, but prayed the visitor wasn’t aggressive. He barely had the energy to pull the trigger, let alone find a new place to hide.
He had run north for days. And the farther north Rook ran, the colder it got. The patrols searching for him had dropped away along with the temperature, but the chill threatened to drain what was left of his strength. After fleeing through woods, across rivers, and over mountains, he had finally evaded the Russian military. Not that the Russians needed to put a bullet into him to kill him. His failing health would do him in on its own. His body shook from cold and fever. His mind spun with each step. If not for the cabin he had found, deep in the pine forest, he would have died from exposure the previous night.
The cabin, which consisted of three rooms—a living room that also served as a kitchen and dining room, a bathroom, and a small bedroom—was quaint and casually decorated with quilts, a few cracking landscape paintings, and a reindeer head mounted on the wall. White lace curtains hung in the windows. Dried wildflowers sat in a small vase atop a table big enough for two. It smelled of pine, mildew, and animal furs, which covered two chairs in the corner next to a small bookcase.
He paused at the bedroom door, leaning one hand against the wall for support. With several shotgun pellets still lodged in his side he had to fight to not grunt in pain. He focused on the sounds coming from the living room. He heard the thumping footfalls of a single person walking over the cabin’s wood floor. Then came a dragging noise.
A body, Rook thought.
He tensed, sensing the person’s approach. He took a step back from the door, raising his weapon. A floorboard creaked beneath his foot.
Holding his breath, Rook waited for some sign that he’d been heard. When it came, it wasn’t what he expected.
“Hello?” said a feminine voice speaking Russian. Given the tone and pitch of the woman’s voice, Rook thought she sounded like his mother, who was sixty-two. Harmless. He quickly tucked his weapon into the back of his pants and speaking Russian, said, “I thought the cabin was abandoned.”
The door opened slowly. A woman with gray hair tied back in a braid stood on the other side. She held a hunting rifle in her hands, aimed at Rook’s chest. A dead reindeer, drained of blood, lay on the floor behind her.
Not so harmless, Rook thought. But not yet a threat.
She looked him up and dow
n, her eyes freezing on his torn-up sweater and the deep, blood-red stains surrounding the wound.
“You’ve been shot?”
“Hunting accident.”
“You did this to yourself?”
Rook wondered what the best story would be. He needed this woman’s cooperation, but she was clearly a self-sufficient old hermit who might not take kindly to visitors, especially visitors stupid enough to shoot themselves. “No,” he said. “I was hiking in the woods. They must have mistaken me for a deer. After they shot me, I was unconscious. I woke in the back of their truck and overheard them talking about killing me.”
Rook paused, searching her eyes for some sign that she was buying his story. He saw that her anger had softened and continued. “I jumped from the truck and fled. I came across your cabin last night and took shelter from the cold.”
She squinted at him and then glanced at the fireplace. “You didn’t make a fire.”
“I thought they might be looking for me.”
She pondered this for a moment and then lowered the rifle. “You still have some buckshot in you?”
Rook nodded, and then lifted up the front of his shirt. His skin was covered in small red wounds that were surrounded by deep purple bruises.
She inspected the wounds, counting ten. “Could have been worse. Had the shooter been closer or a better shot, you might be dead.”
Though he hated to admit it, the woman was right. Not only had the Russian military got the jump on him, killing his entire team, but a simple farmer had as well. For him, it was an unforgivable failure.
As the woman moved to the kitchen area and rummaged through some drawers, she said, “I’m Galya, by the way.”
Rook came out of his thoughts and replied, “Stanislav. You can call me Stan.”
Galya returned with a tray, which held a sharp knife, a pair of tweezers, needle and thread, vodka, and a glass. “Now then, Stan, lets take those pellets out of you before they get infected.”
FIFTY-NINE
Location Unknown
THOUGH HE WAS never truly alone, Alpha longed for contact from the outside world. He had spent so much time underground that he was beginning to feel like a creature of the underworld. More to the point, he still looked like one. And Adam, who was always present, was just as eager to be freed from their subterranean existence. They both awaited the arrival of the others with great anticipation—for their company, but also for the new puzzle pieces they had uncovered.
Cainan was the first to arrive. He walked into the stone chamber, eyes wide and a smile on his face. Though his head was as bald as both Alpha’s and Adam’s, it held a tan the other two envied. He looked with awe at the circle of glowing, golf ball–sized orbs that floated around the room like miniature suns. They revealed the ancient circular space that stretched two hundred feet in diameter around them. Like their other dens, Alpha had filled the center of the chamber with lab equipment, ancient resources he’d collected over the years, and specimens of every sort. But this space also contained all the communication equipment they needed to reach the ears of every man, woman, and child on the planet.
A laptop on the tabletop in the middle of the space, networked to a row of computers hidden on the side of the chamber, would manage the feed, processing the audio and relaying it to every media outlet on earth—from the largest networks to the smallest podcast. Cables snaked out of the room, some descending into the earth where they stretched for miles before connecting with phone and cable landlines. Others rose up into the ceiling, attached to an array of hidden satellite dishes that would only be revealed when the transmission had begun. Once the audio playback was complete they would no longer need to fear discovery. They would emerge from the darkness, reborn into a remade world.
The room was split into a central atrium. The ceiling looked like a hollowed-out step pyramid, rising one hundred feet at its core. This was surrounded by a ring of ten decorative columns where the ceiling was lowest, though to call them columns was a disservice. They were statues, each with hands raised to the ceiling, as though in supplication; a posture that didn’t quite fit their hulking, grim forms. The outer wall beyond the statues was covered in a combination of hieroglyphs and carvings.
Cainan’s attention remained on the bright orbs. He pointed to one. “Are these…?”
“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light,” Alpha said.
“God saw that the light was good,” Adam, whose voice was similar to Alpha’s but distorted, as though gargled, continued, “and He separated the light from the darkness.”
“Soon, Adam,” Alpha said. “Soon.”
Cainan held out a dirty white sheet laden with the weight of a small body. He placed it on the floor before Alpha and Adam. As he let go of one side it fell open revealing the sleeping face of a thirteen-year-old girl.
Alpha knelt down to Fiona and brushed her hair off her face. “She is the last?”
Cainan gave a slight nod. “And probably not cause for concern on her own. In fact, the danger she poses now is in bringing our enemies to us. Perhaps it would have been wise to kill her with the others?”
“I find live bait works best,” Alpha said. “And having one more test subject on hand never hurts.”
“You really want King to find us?”
“I want to take everything away from him. I want him to see it slip away.” Alpha rolled his neck to one side. “I am simply returning the favor he extended me.”
“There is nothing to fear from King,” Adam said. “With her here, he will approach with caution rather than overwhelming brute force.”
“She gives us the advantage,” Alpha finished. “Bring her.”
Alpha led Cainan down a short tunnel, stopping in front of a small, carved-out alcove that had once been used to store building supplies. “Put her in.”
With Fiona placed inside the space, Alpha crouched next to her.
Cainan leaned against the wall. “Even if King can find us, how do you know he’ll get here in time? If he’s out there”—he motioned to the cave ceiling but referred to the world beyond—“when the time comes he’ll change with the rest of them.”
“He’ll make it on time,” Alpha said before tugging something loose from Fiona. “He’s the kind of man who doesn’t miss a deadline, and the clock is ticking.”
Alpha held up Fiona’s insulin pump, stood, and smashed it against the wall. He picked up the ruined device and handed it to Cainan. “Put this someplace King will find it.”
Cainan smiled. “Tick tock.”
Alpha matched the smile. “He’ll waste no time tracking her down.”
After the pair left the cell, Alpha whispered to the walls. The stone shook and stretched out. Soon, all but a small slit merged into solid stone. A noise from the central chamber caught their attention. They hurried back to find Mahaleel studying the inscriptions on the walls.
“This is fascinating,” Mahaleel said as the others entered.
“Do you have it?” Alpha asked, his impatience oozing from every syllable.
Mahaleel was unfazed. He waggled his finger toward one of the research tables. “There.”
Alpha found a padded satchel on the table, opened it, and began unwrapping the object contained within.
“Have you deciphered all of this?” Mahaleel asked.
“Of course,” Adam said, also sounding annoyed, but not being preoccupied with opening the package, he turned and faced Mahaleel, who had been joined by Cainan in his inspection of the walls. “But there was nothing to be learned. It is a warning, carved into the stones after the language fracture.” Adam waved his small arm in the air dramatically quoting: “‘The language of the ancients has been diluted. May each tongue carry its knowledge with wisdom lest the wrath of the Originator’—capital O—‘whose will can protect or destroy all things, return to this world. Do not be corrupted by temptation. For if his words are used for evil again, the guardians shall descend from on high and lay waste to the
tainted.’ It carries on like that all around the room. Fire and brimstone.”
“Who is the Originator?” Mahaleel asked.
“God,” Adam replied.
Cainan turned away from his close inspection of the hieroglyphs. “Have we considered that the Originator spoken of on these walls might not be God?” The others, even Alpha, looked at him. “What if the Originator was a man? After all, what we’re attempting is nothing less.”
Alpha nodded and held out the stone tablet that Mahaleel had brought. It contained an inscription readable only to those whose understanding of the ancient language was comprehensive. And right now, only Alpha and Adam could claim such understanding. The key to unlock the human mind was in their grasp. “Thanks to Merlin, we are one step closer.” He turned his head to Adam’s. “Our time is near.”
FOUND
SIXTY
Haifa, Israel
STANDING NEAR THE top of Mount Carmel, the Crown Plaza Hotel looked like a stark white modern-art waffle. At road level it stood five stories tall, much of it used up by the lobby. Five more floors were hidden in the rear as the building descended the mountain’s slope.
King and Alexander had parked several blocks away and walked to the hotel, winding their way through a confusing maze of streets and alleys surrounding the hotel, just in case they had a tail. As they walked the final block, the hotel clearly in view, King decided to broach yet another topic he’d been wondering about.
He ran a hand through his hair and asked, “You’ve been alive for what, twenty-five hundred years?”
“Give or take a few decades,” Alexander replied with a grin, a lit cigar clenched between his teeth.
“And in that time, you’ve done what? Other than the myths you’re known for, have you been anyone else in history?” A straight answer might not help him figure out exactly what Alexander was up to now, but it might give him some indication about the kind of man he was, or had been.
Threshold Page 25