Ethan released the breath he had been holding. Mixed with the growing admiration he felt for his companion’s tenacity in the face of the odds stacked against them was a sliver of fear.
The older immortal had been a survivor for a lot longer than Ethan. And he was evidently not afraid to kill.
Hooded eyes turned to him. ‘You did well.’
The immortal rose, stepped past the body of the soldier, closed the cell door, and removed the key from the lock.
Ethan climbed shakily to his feet, his heart hammering inside his chest. ‘Now what?’
‘We wait.’ His companion glanced at him. ‘What is your name, boy?’
Ethan hesitated. ‘Ethan. Yours?’
‘Asgard. Asgard Go—’
The sound of footsteps rose from outside. Ethan stiffened. The footsteps grew closer and stopped on the other side of the door.
Asgard brought a finger to his lips, turned off the light, and melted into the shadows. Ethan slipped into a dark corner of the room just as a key turned in the lock. The door opened.
A woman in a white lab coat walked in with a metal tray in hand. She started to reach for the switch on the wall and froze when she spotted the body of the guard in the pale beam of light washing across the ground from outside. A gasp left her lips. She took a step back and reached inside her pocket.
Asgard came up behind her and kicked the door shut with his heel. Darkness fell inside the chamber once more.
‘Hello, Marilyn,’ he hissed as he clamped a hand over the woman’s mouth and locked his arm around her body, trapping her.
The tray fell from her grasp and clattered noisily on the floor. Ethan saw the woman’s eyes shrink into slits. She stamped on her captor’s foot with the heel of her pump and slipped something out of her coat. He made out the shape of a handgun as he moved toward the struggling pair.
A low noise escaped Asgard’s throat when the woman bit down on his hand. The barrel of the gun moved erratically toward Ethan.
‘I don’t think so, lady.’
He raised a hand.
The weapon crumpled in the woman’s grip. Her eyes rounded with horror and fluttered closed a second later when the man holding her captive struck the back of her neck sharply with the edge of his hand. Asgard lowered her limp body to the ground and moved to the dead soldier.
‘We haven’t got much time.’ He started to strip the man of his clothes and boots. ‘They will come looking for her.’
Ethan stared from the syringe that had fallen out of the tray to the woman’s pale features. ‘Who is she?’
Asgard grimaced. ‘She works for Jonah.’ He glanced at Ethan. ‘Take her coat.’
They found the keys to the shackles on the dead guard and chained the unconscious woman in the metal restraints that had previously bound them. Minutes after the soldier had stormed their cell, they were standing outside their prison.
An empty corridor carved out of bare rock stretched out on either side of them. The bulbs dotting the ceiling shed a subdued light on the metal doors lining it.
‘Should we get the other prisoners out?’ Ethan whispered. The woman’s white coat stretched uncomfortably under his arms and across his back.
Asgard finished locking the door. ‘No. The few that remain are too diseased to travel far. They will only be a burden.’
Despite his time in captivity, the older immortal had retained his brawny build; the guard’s clothes barely fitted his broad-shouldered frame. He had tucked his unruly mane under the soldier’s military cap and tugged the shirt collar up to mask his beard.
Ethan frowned. ‘Diseased? How?’
Asgard’s face darkened. ‘The experiments Jonah and his associates have been carrying out on them have taken their toll on their bodies.’
Chapter Three
Ethan inhaled sharply.
‘But they—they are immortals!’ he stammered. ‘As is he!’
‘Jonah doesn’t care about such things,’ came the bitter reply.
Ethan’s hands fisted by his sides. That his kind had suffered and died in this hellhole in such wretched and brutal circumstances, at the hands of one of their own, was a terrible truth to swallow. He suppressed the black thoughts filling his mind about the possible fate of his own family and indicated the corridor with a jerk of his head.
‘Where to?’
‘This way.’
Asgard headed right, his steps swift and confident.
Ethan went after him and glanced uneasily at the cells they passed. He thought he heard someone moan behind one of the doors. A shiver danced down his spine. He quickened his pace.
‘It’s a shame about those guns,’ said his companion up ahead.
The older immortal had taken the guard’s knife and slipped it under the cuff of his right sleeve.
‘Yeah, well, not getting shot was kind of a priority at the time,’ Ethan muttered. ‘Besides, it’s not exactly as if I could have magicked it out of their hands.’
Asgard glanced at him. ‘I don’t know much about Elementals’ abilities, but could you not have made the weapons soar in the air and come to you?’
Ethan stopped dead in his tracks and gaped. ‘Who do you think I am, freakin’ Houdini?’
Asgard stared at him blankly.
Ethan bit back a sigh; he’d forgotten this guy was locked in some kind of time warp. ‘Never mind.’
A junction came into view. They approached it slowly and peered cautiously around the corners. The adjacent passages were deserted.
Ethan eyed them warily. He had been stripped of his watch and wallet after his capture. Although he had no idea of the exact time, the empty corridors indicated that the hour was late.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ Ethan said.
‘Yes. I was always conscious when they removed me from the dungeon to take me to Jonah.’ Asgard turned left. ‘This should lead us away from the labs.’
Ethan quelled the grim images the other man’s words evoked and followed in his steps. They cleared another pair of silent passageways before they came across the first guard.
The soldier stood in front of a steel door set deep in the rock wall halfway down the otherwise vacant corridor.
‘Stay behind me,’ murmured Asgard when they started down the passage.
Ethan kept his eyes focused on his companion’s back as they came abreast of the guard. A low rumble travelled from the other side of the steel door and a faint vibration danced up the soles of his boots when they walked past. He sneaked a peek at the sign above the doorway. It said “Generator Room 4.”
The soldier barely glanced at them.
‘They brought me into the dungeon through there,’ said Asgard when the guard was out of earshot. ‘There is another passage beyond the chamber with the thunder devices. It leads to a cave where they keep the metal carriages with no horses.’ He hesitated. ‘From the little I remember, it was heavily guarded.’
It took a second for Ethan to figure out that the “thunder devices” were the generators powering the underground facility. He made a face. ‘By “metal carriages with no horses,” I take it you mean automobiles?’
‘I know not their names, but I am certain they are the devil’s own work,’ grumbled his companion.
They crossed paths with four more guards as they negotiated a succession of identical, dimly-lit tunnels. At first, Ethan was surprised no one stopped and questioned them. When he registered the way the men ignored the older immortal and avoided looking at him, he realized the white coat was the reason they had not been challenged thus far.
The soldiers looked scared when they saw it. A quiver of apprehension darted through Ethan when this fact sunk in—that this Jonah character and his scientists could instill such fear in these battle-hardened men was unnerving.
The tension that had been building up inside him since they made their daring escape from the dungeon rose to fever pitch as he wondered what would happen if they came across someone who wasn’t a simple foo
t soldier. Though he had smudged the photograph on the female scientist’s badge with some dirt, it would not take long for somebody curious enough to take a closer look to figure out that he was not Dr. Marilyn Davies.
Five minutes later, Ethan was convinced they were lost. Though the occasional discreet plaque on the wall seemed to indicate their location, the cryptic lettering and numbers were of no help to him without a map. He was about to voice his concern to Asgard when the latter came to an abrupt halt. Ethan stopped and looked around, muscles taut and senses on alert.
They had reached yet another intersection. A steel door stood at the end of a short passage to the left. The sign plate on it read “Staff Quarters.” Asgard turned and moved toward it.
‘Hey, what the hell are you doing?’ hissed Ethan.
He hurried after him.
Asgard stopped in front of the door, his lips pressed in a hard line. ‘If this leads to the lodgings of Jonah and his underlings, we may find useful information within as to their goals.’
He reached for the handle, twisted it, and pulled. The door did not budge. Undeterred, he removed the dead guard’s keys from his pocket and tried them one at a time.
None of them worked.
Ethan hesitated. Although he wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of there, he had to concede that the older immortal was right; uncovering their captors’ intentions was crucial if they wanted to evade them in the future.
‘Here, let me try,’ he muttered.
Asgard nodded and moved to the side.
Ethan touched the lock. The internal mechanism appeared in his mind’s eye. He twisted it with the faintest flicker of his fingers.
There was a soft click. Asgard grabbed the handle and opened the door. A gloomy corridor appeared on the other side.
A man in a white coat was striding briskly toward them, his gaze locked on the file in his hands. He looked up and faltered when he saw them. Confusion dawned on his face. He glanced from Ethan to Asgard.
His eyes widened in shocked recognition. ‘You! How—?’
Ethan glimpsed a glimmer of metal to his left.
The knife left Asgard’s hand and whirled through the air. It sank into the scientist’s throat with a soft, fleshy thud.
The man choked. Frothy blood bubbled past his lips as he raised his hands to his neck, his pupils expanding dark circles in his pale face. The folder fell from his grip and spilled its contents across the stone floor. His body landed next to it a second later.
Asgard lowered his arm and straightened from his crouch. He ignored Ethan, closed the door behind them, and walked over to the dead scientist.
Ethan followed slowly. ‘I take it this is another one of Jonah’s goons?’
The nametag on the scientist’s coat said “Albert Spiers.”
‘Yes,’ said his companion between gritted teeth.
From the expression of hatred on the immortal’s face, Ethan concluded that Albert Spiers had not been a kind man.
No cries of alarm or pounding footsteps broke the silence around them. The corridor remained deserted.
Asgard picked up the scattered, blood-stained papers on the ground, looked at them briefly, and shoved the entire bundle inside his shirt. He patted the scientist’s clothes next. Metal jingled under his fingers. He removed a set of keys from one of Spiers’s coat pockets.
They moved the dead man to a nearby janitor’s closet, wiped the traces of blood from the floor, and headed deeper into the lodgings.
‘It sure is quiet down here,’ murmured Ethan after they passed an empty kitchen and a dining room.
‘Jonah has his people working twenty-four hours a day,’ said Asgard. ‘Marilyn and Albert must be on the late shift.’
A minute later, they came to a corridor ending in a cul-de-sac. From the nameplates on the doors on either side, they had found the private accommodation of the scientists. The older immortal moved silently down the passage.
Ethan fell in behind him. Faint strands of classical music drifted from one of the rooms as they walked past it. He joined Asgard in front of the last door. The sign on it said “Jonah Resner.”
A muscle twitched in the older immortal’s cheek.
Ethan raised a hand to the escutcheon plate surrounding the handle, made out the internal locking mechanism, and manipulated the metal gears open.
The room on the other side was cold and clinical. A naked bulb in the ceiling shed a drab light over a range of gray, army-issue furniture crowding the stone floor. The entire space was curiously bereft of pictures and personal touches. Ethan frowned. Jonah Krondike’s quarters barely looked lived-in at all.
Asgard drew a breath in sharply. Ethan followed his gaze to the wall above the narrow army cot on the right.
A beautiful, double-edged, steel arming sword bearing a cruciform hilt and a silver-embellished pommel lay suspended on metal brackets a couple of feet from the headboard, below a leather scabbard with a steel locket and tip. An inscription glimmered faintly on the blade, just beneath the cross-guard.
‘Armistad,’ Asgard breathed in a voice full of heartfelt emotion.
The immortal crossed the floor and reverently took the sword down from the wall. ‘My old friend, it is good to see you.’
He stroked the length of the weapon with gentle fingers before pressing the pommel to his forehead and brushing his lips against the blade.
Ethan averted his eyes from the strangely intimate scene and headed for the desk and filing cabinet opposite the bed. Asgard sheathed the sword and joined him. They started to go through Krondike’s workspace.
Moments later, Ethan’s hands stilled on the bottom drawer of the filing unit. He stared. Something about it looked odd.
He took out the folders he had examined and ran his fingers carefully along the inside edges of the drawer. His lips curved in a small smile when he felt the notch near the back. He hooked his little finger under it and lifted the metal panel.
The hidden recess beneath the drawer came into view. It contained a thick, brown envelope printed with the words “US Military, TOP SECRET” in maroon ink.
‘Bingo.’
Ethan lifted out the package.
Asgard made an approving noise. ‘How did you know there was a secret space in that very location?’
Ethan hesitated. ‘I see this kind of thing a lot in my line of work.’ He rose and tucked the envelope inside his shirt. ‘Are we done here?’
His companion glanced around the room. ‘I believe so.’
‘Good,’ said Ethan. ‘I vote we get the hell out of here.’
As they headed for the door, he spotted a sheet of paper stuck to the back. He grinned and ripped it off on his way out of the room. It was a map showing the fire exits out of the facility.
With the keys they had taken from the dead guard and Albert Spiers, and the floor plan in hand, they soon made it to a crawlspace hidden behind a trap door in a storage room to the west of the complex. Thirty feet in, they came to an angled shaft carved out of the bare rock. Metal rungs screwed into the wall rose vertically in the gloom.
They climbed some five hundred feet to a round metal hatch in the roof of the borehole. The circular handle turned with the faintest creak in the Asgard’s grip. He lifted the panel an inch, studied the exterior surroundings for a moment, and carefully pushed the whole thing open. He slipped soundlessly from the passage.
Ethan blinked at the bright stars studding the inky sky as he scrambled out after him.
The shaft had opened onto the side of a cliff. A cool breeze brought the smell of pine and juniper from the copses scattered along the flank of the mountain above them.
In the distance below, bright spotlights illuminated a large, fenced area blockading a road. A pair of guardhouses manned by armed soldiers framed the steel gates that faced the narrow ribbon of asphalt winding down toward a far-off valley. Though he could not see it from the angle where they squatted, Ethan suspected the men were guarding the entrance of a tunnel lead
ing inside the facility. He was about to voice this thought when his companion clamped a hand over his mouth and motioned to the right.
Ethan’s pulse quickened when he spied the soldier sitting inside a small, timber observation post some forty feet away. He nodded slowly and followed Asgard as he headed in the opposite direction. It was thanks to his associate’s uncanny instincts that they avoided another three guard posts.
The fifth soldier came out of nowhere. The two immortals had just passed what they thought was an empty security station when the man stepped out from behind a tree, a cigarette glowing faintly at his lips as he fastened his pants.
For a frozen moment, guard and prisoners stared at one another.
The cigarette fell from the man’s mouth at the same time that he let go of the zipper and reached for his gun.
Asgard grabbed the soldier’s wrist and forced it upward, the weapon waving wildly at the sky. The guard kneed him in the stomach. The immortal let out a low grunt, tightened his hold on the soldier’s arm, and jammed his forearm in the latter’s throat. The man choked.
Ethan came up behind the soldier and stabbed him in the neck with the syringe Marilyn Davies had intended to use on him. The man went limp. They caught him before he fell, took his gun and knife, and propped him up on a chair inside his guard post.
By the time the first alarms sounded and searchlights stabbed the darkness around the mountain, they were more than three miles from the army base.
They reached the summit of another massif just before dawn broke across the land. The noise of the manhunt had long since faded behind them, thanks in no small part to Asgard’s ingenuity. Much to Ethan’s amazement, the immortal had located some mountain lion dung in the darkness and they had liberally smeared themselves with it to get the search dogs off their scent.
Ethan dropped down on a ledge and leaned forward with his arms on his raised knees. He had discarded the white coat at the bottom of the escape shaft. Despite the cold air whistling around the mountaintop, sweat had soaked through his clothes and ran in rivulets down his face and neck, and his limbs shook from exhaustion. His companion’s pants beside him echoed his own rapid breathing.
Legacy Page 3