Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1)

by Jeremy Robinson

  “Of course not,” Gallo answered, but then she heard a small voice from behind her.

  “Yes.”

  Gallo’s heart broke. “Oh, Fi….”

  “Yes, there is,” Fiona said, a little louder. “And I know what it says. I might be the only person alive who knows what it says.”

  Tyndareus leaned closer, the suit poised like a lion getting ready to pounce. “You can read it? What does it say? Is there a secret door? Can you open it?”

  Gallo turned her head, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper. “Fi, don’t help him.”

  “Is Uncle George really here?” Fiona asked.

  “With friends.”

  “Good.” As exhausted and broken as she appeared, there was something indomitable in her smile. “You need to trust me, Aunt Gus. Everything is going to be okay.” She stepped out from behind Gallo. “Yes. I can. But first, you have to let my aunt go.”

  Almost before she finished the sentence, one of Tyndareus’s metal gauntlets shot out and wrapped around Gallo’s throat. Both her hands shot up, but the mechanically assisted grip was unbreakable. She felt the pressure increase and heard her vertebrae popping as he lifted her off the ground. She managed to wrap both hands around his wrist so that her neck was not bearing the entire weight of her body, but she knew it was a losing battle. In a moment, she would pass out, and then her neck would snap.

  “If you do not open it,” Tyndareus countered, “she will die.”

  There was a rushing sound in Gallo’s head, and bright spots began to swim in front of her eyes. But through the haze, she heard Fiona’s response, loud and clear. “Screw you. Let her go, or you’ll never get in there.”

  The pressure at Gallo’s throat disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and she dropped like a sack of potatoes. She coughed and gasped, but any sense of relief she might have felt was dampened by the knowledge that Fiona had just made a deal with the devil to save her life.

  “Open it!” Tyndareus roared.

  “Don’t do it, Fi,” Gallo croaked.

  “Get out of here, Aunt Gus. You don’t want to be anywhere near here when this opens.”

  Still struggling to draw breath, Gallo pushed herself up on all fours. “I appreciate the offer,” she coughed, “but I’m not going anywhere without you.”

  Fiona gave her a sad but strangely satisfied nod. Then she turned to the wall and began to speak.

  50

  “Something’s wrong.”

  Lazarus shot out a hand to restrain Pierce. “Wait.”

  On the playing-card-sized screen of Pierce’s phone, which was displaying the video feed from the drone camera hovering overhead, Tyndareus, in his TALOS suit, lifted Gallo off the ground by the neck.

  Pierce felt his reaction to that was appropriate. “He’s killing her. We have to do something.”

  Lazarus just repeated the single word. “Wait.”

  A moment later, Tyndareus released Gallo. She was still alive and conscious, but it was impossible to tell how badly she had been injured.

  “I’ll kill him,” Pierce growled.

  “Yes. But wait.”

  They were less than a hundred yards from the edge of the ravine, and maybe another fifty to the far end, where the drama was unfolding. Pierce knew he could cover that distance in thirty seconds. And then what? Kill more than a dozen armed men, including one who’s a walking tank, all without hitting Gallo or Fiona? Lazarus was right.

  On the screen, Gallo sat up and began crawling closer to Fiona. “That bastard, Kenner. I knew we couldn’t trust him.”

  “How do we know he’s not just playing?” Carter asked. Her dubious tone suggested she was only bringing up the possibility just to cover their bases.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Pierce said. “Plan B is a go.” He turned to Lazarus. “Ready?”

  Lazarus nodded and turned to Carter. “You?”

  She nodded.

  He continued to stare at her. “Felice, you know what might—”

  “I know,” she said. “I can handle it.”

  Pierce focused his attention on the video feed. Fiona had turned her back to the rest of the group and had her hands placed against the wall as if she was trying to push the slab or rock away, or perhaps…

  “Shit,” Pierce said. “She’s trying to open it.”

  Lazarus and Carter looked over Pierce’s shoulder at the screen.

  “Open?” Carter asked. “How?”

  “She’s using the Mother Tongue. I thought there would be a cave entrance or something like that. This explains that inscription on the map. It’s the same as the one we found in the Labyrinth.” In response to Carter’s blank look, he added, “It’s like ‘Open Sesame.’ Makes it possible to walk through walls. The rest is a long story.” He jerked a thumb at Lazarus. “He can tell you all about it.”

  “What happens when she succeeds?”

  “It’s a doorway to Hell. Short answer, nothing good.” Pierce shoved the phone in his pocket and gripped his MP5K with both hands. “We’ve got to do this. Now.”

  “Can she do it?” Lazarus asked. “It’s been years since she learned, and forgot, those few phrases of the Mother Tongue.”

  “She’s a fast learner,” Pierce said, followed by, “Cintia, start the countdown. Let’s move.”

  Pierce heard Dourado’s voice in his Bluetooth earpiece. “Countdown started. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

  Lazarus led the way, staying low but running at a near-sprint. The ravine hid them from Tyndareus’s men, but if any scouts ventured out of the depression, they would be exposed and the element of surprise lost. But with the clock ticking, the most important thing was to be in position when the fireworks started. Pierce tried to count down the passing seconds, but when Dourado spoke again, informing them that they had twenty seconds, he realized he was counting too fast.

  Of course, none of that would matter if Fiona succeeded in opening the door before they got there.

  They ran parallel to the ravine, following a circuitous route toward Fiona and Gallo. That meant cutting across the blighted landscape and dodging fumaroles. With each step, the ground might give way beneath their feet, dropping them into hidden, superheated pools of water to be boiled like Maine lobsters. It also meant that, if they survived the approach, they would have to fight their way past all of Tyndareus’s men before escaping the ravine.

  One thing at a time.

  “Ten seconds,” Dourado said. “Hard left, now!”

  Lazarus adjusted course, pouring on the speed. Their objective, the far end of the ravine, lay straight ahead, hidden by the terrain. If all went according to plan, they would arrive directly above where Fiona now stood, attempting to unlock a portal to the Underworld.

  “Five…four…three…two…one…”

  There was a flash on the western horizon. A pillar of dust and smoke arose to mark the spot, and an instant later, Pierce both heard and felt the shock wave of the improvised explosive device Lazarus had placed two hundred yards away from the entrance to the ravine.

  “That got their attention,” Dourado said.

  Lazarus stopped short and motioned for Pierce and Carter to get down, then began belly-crawling across the hot ground toward the edge of the drop. Pierce hit the dirt, getting a face-full of sulfur dust in the process. Blinking the stinging substance away, he crawled alongside Lazarus and got his first look at the mayhem unfolding fifty feet below.

  Some of Tyndareus’s men had taken the bait, though not enough for Pierce’s liking. Eight of them were moving away, toward the site of the explosion, their assault rifles shouldered. The others had pulled back to form a defensive perimeter around Tyndareus. Pierce picked out Rohn in the latter group, shouting orders and waving to his men. Tyndareus, safely inside his armored suit, paid little heed to the disturbance, keeping his attention fixed on Fiona.

  “Cintia,” Lazarus said, his voice taut but strangely calm given the circumstances. “Now.”

  “They aren’t in ran
ge—”

  “Do it.”

  There was another flash, closer this time. The noise of the explosion was incredibly loud as it was funneled down the ravine. Lazarus had placed the second IED as close to the mouth of the depression as he dared get. The advancing front of Tyndareus’s men fell down like bowling pins, but none were within the explosion’s kill radius.

  Then something extraordinary happened. The ground all around the explosion split apart like thin ice on a lake. Jagged cracks, spewing steam, radiated out from beneath the debris cloud. Three of the stunned gunmen vanished, as the earth upon which they lay collapsed and transformed into liquid. The others scrambled to their feet, retreating from the roiling wave of steam and destruction. Not all of them made it.

  Although he had been primed to charge into battle only a moment before, Pierce was frozen in place by the spectacle. “Did you know that would happen?”

  “No,” Lazarus admitted, sounding a little awed. “Sometimes, you just get lucky. Let’s go.”

  The big man sprang to his feet and hurtled over the edge, bounding down the side of the ravine toward Tyndareus and the remainder of his forces. Pierce followed with Carter.

  Instead of trying to run down the steep incline, he fell against the slope and slid on his backside, dragging his feet in front of him to slow his descent, even as he tried to acquire a target in the mayhem below. He managed to squeeze off a few shots, though it was impossible to tell whether he was hitting anything. He was still sliding when the earth beside him erupted from the impact of high-velocity rounds, and he heard the harsh reports from enemy rifles.

  Shit!

  Remembering Lazarus’s common sense advice—‘don’t make it easy for them to shoot you’—Pierce rolled to the right, heaving himself out of the path of another fusillade, then launched himself the rest of the way down the slope.

  In the instant before he landed, he saw Gallo, huddled into a protective ball less than thirty feet away. Just past her, Fiona stood, her back turned to the chaos, her hands still pressed against the wall.

  “Fiona! Don’t—”

  She recoiled as if from an electric shock, and for a fleeting instant, Pierce dared to believe that his shout had reached her through the din. Then he saw the look of elation on her face, and he knew that his warning had come too late.

  The door was already open.

  Something was coming through.

  51

  The explosions were the signal to run. Pierce and Lazarus had told her to be ready, warned her that their diversion would be unmistakable. But when the moment came, when the first explosion drew half of Tyndareus’s men away, and then a second, much closer blast, triggered a localized geothermal event, Gallo did not flee. She was not going to leave without Fiona.

  Even as she heard the young woman speaking the strange words, chanting a language that sounded like it might be a Native American dialect, she knew that she should grab Fiona by the arm and drag her away, but she did not.

  Part of it was curiosity. Even though she had been an unwilling participant in Kenner’s quest, she had traveled so far, followed the clues, done so much… She just had to know. Even though she knew there was a very good reason for it, she hated the fact that the Herculean Society demanded such discoveries be kept secret from everyone.

  But that was not why she remained where she was. She was not curious about whether Fiona could master the Mother Tongue and transform the rock slab in front of them into some kind of magical portal to the Underworld. In truth, she did not doubt it for a second.

  What kept her from fleeing, from physically pulling the young woman along with her, was Fiona’s confident smile.

  You need to trust me, she had said. Everything is going to be okay.

  Though she did not know why, Gallo believed her.

  But the second explosion was so close that she almost panicked. The ground heaved beneath her, not just the shock wave but the beginning of an earth tremor. A blast of heat rushed down the length of the ravine, followed by a vapor cloud that smelled like rotten eggs, which stung her eyes. Then the shooting started.

  She caught a glimpse of Lazarus bounding down the hill, a colossal figure, like Hercules reborn. After him came the considerably less imposing forms of Carter and Pierce, sliding down the slope, charging into the fray.

  Still, she did not run.

  Fiona stopped chanting and leaped back from the slab. She shouted something, a taunt probably meant for Kenner’s ears, or possibly for Tyndareus, though it was unlikely that either man could have heard her amidst the unfolding fury of battle. Gallo heard the words, but did not grasp their significance until she heard another noise, a rhythmic thumping that reminded her inexplicably of hoofbeats.

  Even stranger than the sound was the fact that it was emanating from inside the rock slab. And it was getting louder.

  Something was coming through.

  Now Gallo understood why Fiona was smiling and why she had shouted the words: “It says, ‘Beware of dog!’”

  In their eagerness to unlock the gates of the Underworld, and to find the Well of Monsters, Kenner and Tyndareus had forgotten a critical element of the myth.

  Hell had a watchdog.

  “Cerberus.”

  Gallo’s mind raced. It couldn’t be Cerberus. Hercules had captured the hellhound. Gallo knew this to be true. Pierce had once told her the truth behind the legend, how Alexander had jokingly referred to the beast as ‘puppy,’ downplaying the facts behind the legend. And that had all happened three thousand years in the past.

  Three thousand years was a long time for a portal to the Underworld to go unguarded. Something had taken the hellhound’s place.

  What emerged from the wall, which was still visible, but somehow immaterial, was not Cerberus, not a gigantic dog with three heads, but it was no less monstrous. Gallo’s first impression was of a bear, but one that was easily three times the size of the biggest Kodiak grizzly she had ever heard of. The creature’s head was broad and bear-like but wrapped around it like a crown of thorns was a rack of sharp-tipped antlers, as thick as tree limbs.

  The beast lumbered into view, passing through the wall as if the stone were no more substantial than mist. Gallo scrambled back, so close that she could feel the creature’s hot breath on her face and see the primal fury in its dark eyes. One heavy paw, tipped with curving claws each as long as Gallo’s leg, slammed down on the place where she had been standing a moment before, eclipsing her view of Fiona. The beast however, barely seemed to notice her. Its eyes were on the pandemonium unfolding further up the ravine.

  With a roar that shook Gallo’s bones, it reared up on its hind legs and threw its forepaws wide, as if to gather all of Tyndareus’s men in a crushing embrace. The crest of its horned head rose as high as the top of the ravine, its reach almost spanning from one side to the other.

  It was a bear, but like the other chthonic monsters, it had incorporated characteristics of other animals. Its limbs were longer, the musculature rippling beneath a pelt of fine reddish-brown hair that reminded Gallo of deerskin.

  Despite the fact that they were still repelling Pierce’s assault, Tyndareus’s men seemed to grasp that this new arrival was a much greater threat. They brought their rifles around and began firing into the beast’s exposed underbelly.

  Fat drops of blood began raining down on Gallo as the bullets found their mark. The creature snorted and began pawing at its torso, as if trying to swat away a swarm of bees. But it appeared otherwise untroubled by the attack. The noise of the shooting seemed to irritate it even more than the sting of the bullets, and after another thunderous bellow, it dropped back onto all fours and started forward.

  Gallo craned her head around to watch. Behind her and just a few feet away from a stunned Kenner, a stern-looking woman—the only female she had seen in Tyndareus’s employ—drew a pistol and started firing, shouting curses in a language that Gallo did not recognize. The shooting and the swearing were silenced by the swipe of a pa
w. Gallo saw a puff of red, as pieces of the woman flew in different directions. Kenner dove aside at the last instant, narrowly avoiding the same fate.

  As the creature thundered past, smashing gunmen aside with its paws and spearing them on its antlers, Kenner raised his head and looked back at Gallo.

  No, not at me, she realized. Behind me. What he wants is on the other side of that wall.

  He stooped, picked something from the ground—a gun?—and then he was running toward her. She started to backpedal out of his way, but then realized, almost too late, that she had misread his intention. There was something else behind her…someone else.

  “Fi! Get away!” She tried to put herself between Kenner and Fiona, but he anticipated the move, stiff-arming her out of the way. She stumbled back, flailing in vain for something to arrest her fall, and she landed painfully on her backside.

  Kenner seized Fiona by the wrist and dragged her toward the wall.

  Into the wall.

  They vanished without even a ripple.

  Gallo leapt to her feet, and without a moment’s hesitation, she followed.

  52

  As the monstrous bear-elk hybrid bulldozed a swath of devastation through the midst of Tyndareus’s forces, Lazarus pulled Pierce and Carter out of the way.

  At first, it appeared the creature was going to win the battle for them. Its thick hide might not have been bulletproof, but the rounds failed to penetrate deep enough to do any real damage. It was like trying to bring down an elephant with a BB gun. And while the animal might not have understood the connection between the projectiles impacting against its body and the loud flashing things in the hands of the men scattered across the ravine, the noise was driving it into a frenzy.

  The battle was so one-sided that Pierce found himself hoping that one of the gunmen might get off a lucky shot and strike some vital organ or at the very least, wound a leg to slow it down. He didn’t feel any sympathy for the men, but he knew that to reach Gallo and Fiona, they would have to get past the battle’s victor.