by Dyrk Ashton
“There,” Fi points out.
The main lights are off, the room now lit only by spotlights in the rafters, but Zeke can see the familiar tri-part yellow and black shelter symbol marking massive metal doors at the far end of the room, beyond the length of the pool. He wonders if they’ll be safe in there, if the doors will hold, at least long enough for help to arrive.
Peter jerks so hard in his wheelchair that Fi stops short--then she and Zeke see why.
There’s something up in the corner near the shelter doors, climbing down a heavy drain pipe. It reaches the floor and steps into a patch of light. Spiky black hair, long black fur coat, the spitting image of the two fur-coated men they saw on the monitors upstairs--only this one is even bigger. He removes his sunglasses and glares at them with searing red eyes. A low growl crosses the expanse between them, rumbling like distant thunder.
Peter shakes violently, his chair clattering in his grip.
The man starts toward them. Fi backs up fast, pulling Peter with her. Zeke frantically hits buttons in the elevator.
“Stop!” the man roars in a voice that shakes the room.
The elevator begins to close.
The man rounds the corner of the pool. To Fi and Zeke’s amazement he drops to all fours and bounds forward. Now he’s coming very fast.
“STOP!!!” he roars again. Pool water ripples at the sound.
The elevator shuts. Like everything else in this refurbished building, it’s of the latest design and begins to rise immediately. And, luckily, these new elevators are fast. It just clears the floor when--BAM!!! The elevator shakes, followed by sounds of rending metal and vicious snarls from below. Fi grips the handles of the wheelchair to keep from falling and Zeke catches himself against the wall. They look at each other in astonishment.
* * *
The big red-eyed man glowers up at the receding elevator. He backs out of the shaft and looks to a point high on the wall. A security camera dangles there, mangled and broken. He gazes back up the elevator shaft, and begins to climb.
* * *
Kleron re-enters the waiting room from the hall to the offices, irritated and perplexed.
“Did you rape it?” Surma asks.
“You brutes and your raping,” Kleron replies with scorn. “When will you realize, an effective seduction is the true measure of prowess.”
“Trueface, then?” Wepwawet queries.
Kleron nods contemplatively. “Usually works. They’ll tell me anything.” The brothers shift position to look into the hall. Tod, who has survived the brawl with Billy, leans around them to see as well.
Dr. Williams sits on the floor against the wall, stiff and motionless, hands to her frozen face, fingers crooked, mouth agape, eyes wide. She’s been literally scared to death.
Kleron shakes his head. “Not this time.” He stalks to the counter. From below come the sounds of Henri and Didier’s grisly feeding on Sarah. “Anything?” he asks Derek.
“No!” Derek snarks. He catches himself, eyes darting to Kleron. “I mean... not yet, Master.”
Kleron offers a smile that quickly fades, then speaks to Surma and Wepwawet. “Search the building. Question all until he is found. Kill anyone you like.”
* * *
Fi and Zeke burst out of the elevator with Peter into the fifth floor hallway. They halt, looking both ways, then catch each other’s gaze.
At the same time, Zeke asks, “Where do we go?” and Fi says, “What do we do?”
Fi thinks for a moment. “We’ve got to get to an exit. The stairs, maybe?”
“I can carry him,” Zeke offers.
“We can carry him.”
* * *
“There!” Derek taps a section of the monitor. It expands, showing Fi, Peter and Zeke. “Fifth floor hallway. An old guy in a wheelchair, some dude, and a girl.”
“What color is her hair?” Kleron asks.
“She’s a redhead, looks like.”
“That’s them,” he confirms to Surma and Wepwawet.
Surma barks. Not ‘barks an order,’ but barks, loud and commanding. Henri and Didier bound back over the counter, covered in fresh blood. Derek vaults after them. Surma waves to the door where Billy entered and they and the remaining pale and bearded men rush through.
* * *
Fi pushes Peter toward the end of the hall but the wheelchair comes to a jarring halt, causing her to bang into it from behind. “What the...?”
“What’s wrong?” Zeke asks.
Fi sees what the problem is. Peter has hold of the wheels. She hurries to the front. His whole body is shaking, brow furrowed, eyes blinking in fits.
Fi crouches, putting her hands on his. “Peter! We have to go!” He snatches her hands. She tries to pull away, but he’s too strong. “Peter, please!”
Zeke tries to help. “Peter, come on guy, we have to go, right now!”
There’s a BANG from the elevator shaft and the sounds of shredding steel.
As Zeke tugs on Peter’s wrist to break his hold on Fi, Peter releases one of Fi’s hands, then, fast as a striking snake, snatches Zeke’s.
“Jesus!” Zeke shouts. Peter’s grip is like iron.
Peter rocks back and forth, gasping for breath, mouth contorting.
“Peter, they’re coming!” Fi pleads. “We have to go!”
The racket from the elevator is getting louder.
Fi and Zeke attempt to pry Peter’s fingers away. It’s no use.
Then Peter speaks.
“H-a-a...” His voice is barely a whisper but the sound hits Fi like the report of a gunshot. “...h-a-a-ve... to g-o-o-o...”
“My God...” Fi exclaims. “Yes!” She sobs, a tear streaming down her cheek. “We have to go!”
There’s a great shearing of metal from inside the elevator. The doors BOOM and shudder.
Peter says, “G-o-o... with m-e-e?”
“Yes!” Fi cries. She snuffs hard, tears coming faster, touches the wetness on her cheek with her free hand. How can this be?! She doesn’t remember the last time she cried. She didn’t even cry at her mother’s funeral. But she’s crying now, and after everything that’s happened, it feels good. Really good. “Yes, Peter! We have to go, with you!”
Peter squeezes his eyes shut, expressing his own welling tears. He’s fighting, fighting hard, striking at the brambles in his mind, heaving on the barbed wire, flailing at the clinging fog.
BANG! The elevator doors shake harder.
Peter’s lips twitch and he manages to emit an audible “S-s-s-s...” Unseen by Fi or Zeke, his right foot inches forward on the foot-rest of the wheelchair. He presses his lips tight, then opens them again, the “S-s-s-s-s” coming stronger.
“Peter,” Fi reassures, wiping tears from her eyes with her free hand then placing her palm gently to the side of his face. “Don’t be sorry!”
More clearly now, “S-s-s-s...”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about!”
Another louder BANG and Zeke sees the elevator doors bow from within. “Fi, we’re just going to have to carry him!”
“S-s-s-s...”
The elevator doors buckle.
Fi pleads, “Peter...”
Peter looks into Fi’s eyes. His foot rises laboriously, creeping forward.
“S-s-s-slip.”
His foot hits the floor.
* * *
The red-eyed man rips open the crumpled elevator doors and shoves himself through.
At the other end of the hall, the door shatters inward. Max comes bounding through but halts suddenly, causing Hedwig and Curt to almost tumble over him from behind. Kleron pushes past them and glares toward the red-eyed man.
There’s nothing in the hallway between them but Peter’s empty wheelchair. It creeps backward, squeaking softly, and comes to rest against the wall.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Order of the Bull 6
The Lair of the Bull is a shambles. All is silent except for the rush of gas from broken lamps on the
walls. Flames still burn in remaining lamps and lick at the fireplace hearth.
On the terrace outside, the head and body of Arges lie motionless beneath softly falling snow and moonlight. Far below, torch bearing monks scurry about the ruined monastery like frantic swarming fireflies.
Suddenly the hall belches a fireball of tremendous proportion, a concussive CRACK! and BOOM! that shakes the mountain to its core. The entire cavern collapses and the mountainside crashes down in an avalanche of dust and stone.
* * *
Hunched next to his duffel bag on the landing of the tunnel stairs, head in his hands, Tanuki swears he can still hear the horrible laugh of Xeco, the Terror Bird. How long he’s been sobbing here in grief he doesn’t know.
Arges is dead. The fabled cyclops, metalsmith and armorer to the ancients. The original Hephaestus, so badly maligned by the petit gods of Hellas.
Asterion, gone. Mighty Apis, whom the ancient Egyptians knew as the Herald of Ptah, a living manifestation of Amun, the first being, who according to their myths was self-created, without mother or father. Whatever the stories say, Tanuki knows that for many thousands of years The Bull was never far from Ptah’s side. In India it was the same. Long before the Vedic Period, when The Bull was called Nandi, he was the right hand of Shiva. As Vohu Mazda, the Zoroastrians believed him to be a divine spark of Ahura Mazda, an aspect of creation itself.
The tunnel shakes abruptly, accompanied by a deep rumble. Tanuki grabs the wall and holds on until the tremors cease. Dust loosed from cracks hangs silently in the air. The Lair of the Bull is gone, Tanuki presumes. But what does it matter? My brothers are dead! He sobs harder. What am I going to do?!
The words of Arges come ringing back, “Find him, if you can! Tell him what has happened here!”
Tanuki takes a deep uneven breath, rubs the tear-soaked fur of his face, and braces himself.
However it turns out, whatever the consequences, Tanuki will find him, and tell him everything. He grabs up his duffle, throws the straps over his shoulders to carry it like a backpack, clutches his staff, and bounds down the stairs.
He will find Ptah, Amun, Shiva, Ahura Mazda, or whatever he might be calling himself these days. For Arges, for Asterion, he will find Father.
PART TWO
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Il Capro
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the initiation of a new order of things.”
(Il Capro, as told to his pupil,
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli)
Things have not turned out quite as expected.
It’s a good thing he didn’t have a plan. Plans are inflexible. They can go wrong. That’s why he tries not to make them.
But at this very moment, Baphomet simply can’t move. He doesn’t feel the bindings of rope or chain. Then again, he doesn’t feel anything. He’s not even sure he’s breathing. No sense of smell, taste or touch. He thinks he can hear a distant droning, a soft thrum in his inner ear--and is that a sniffle, from far away? A whimper?
Oh dear, I hope I’m not making that sound. If it is a sound...
His eyes perceive nothing. They may be closed, he just can’t tell. He tries to rationalize his blindness. He’s either in complete absence of light, hooded, under a spell, or dead...
Is this it? The hereafter? Or is he waiting in some limbo of sensory deprivation for the afterlife to begin? Perhaps it will be a new life...
I’m losing my mind...
Cogito ergo sum! (I think, therefore I am!). The parvuli may credit Descartes for that, but he didn’t come up with it. Hell, I, The Goat, heard it when I was a kid. He chuckles in his head. “Goat,” “herd,” “kid.” I think I laugh, therefore I am--amused...
Insanity. Maybe he is losing himself, his personality being erased as his life essence prepares for rebirth--as a fungus, an amoeba or slug most likely, if karma holds true, given the manner in which he’s lived this life. Perhaps he will be a kinder, gentler slug...
His brilliant mind, slipping away, what truly makes him The Goat, even more than his magnificent horns (which he does love dearly). An individual. Distinct. One of a kind. I think, therefore I am--Baphomet!
How did it come to this? Whatever this is?
Think! Reason! Rational thought! Logic!
And The Goat knows logic. Oh yes. His grasp of it far exceeds the meager accomplishments of the parvuli. But logical examination, though a marvelous exercise, will only get one so far. A warm up to the real game. Strategy. And that is where Baphomet truly shines. Anyone can plan, but a good strategist thrives under conditions of uncertainty, views setbacks not as failures but fresh opportunities to reexamine probabilities, reevaluate possibilities, adapt to emergent contingencies and exploit them to his advantage. Remain flexible in all things. Keep the bigger picture in mind. And expect the unexpected.
The drawback of most parvulus approaches to strategic theory is that rationality and logic are taken as givens. Far more fascinating is the irrational, and superior to logic, the illogical. It may not be scientific, but it’s infinitely more compelling. Mathematical probability goes out the window. Intuition takes over. In a way, one must have faith. Faith in oneself. A shrewd gut, phenomenal instincts, transcendent inspiration, authentic natal impulse, as well as cunning, cynicism and duplicity. These are the tackle of the true schemer.
When it comes to strategy, The Goat has few equals. Father is, well, Father, and Myrddin Wyllt was a force to be reckoned with. Asterion isn’t bad. Calculating, decisive, but insipidly predictable. More of a tactician, really. Ganesh would be a worthy opponent if he took an interest in such things. But they are all hampered by their beliefs, hobbled by the two greatest impediments to conceiving and implementing truly effective plots. Ethics and morality.
Ethics can be dispensed with entirely as far as Baphomet is concerned, and the master strategist’s morals must be both pragmatic and pliable.
And Master Kleron? Moral issues don’t concern him, obviously. He’s one of the greatest strategists of all time, as was his master before him. But he suffers from another tragic hindrance to the design of genuinely exceptional stratagem, a most deadly Achilles heel (that boy did have bad feet). Kleron has a cause. So did his master. Undeniably brilliant, both of them. They each mounted the most ambitious campaigns this world has ever seen in the forms of the First and Second Holocausts. But they lost.
The Goat played no small part in both those debacles. Yet here he is, on the same side again...
Baphomet blinks--and he feels it--cogitation is doing the trick! He still can’t move freely or see, and he has no idea where he is, but his wits are returning. And he remembers. He’s not dead, in no ethereal limbo.
He’s a prisoner.
He recalls clearly now, the mission with Ao Guang and Dimmi. The cave of purple obsidian, and his own final words before he blacked out--Mother Witch.
Now that his brain’s synapses are firing at full capacity there are many things to consider. But most critically--how am I going to worm my way out of this one? What nefarious scheme, what devious plot, can he possibly devise against her?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Flowers & Figs 7
Fi and Zeke have stepped on glare ice, both of them feeling that jolt of adrenaline that comes at the instant when all traction is lost, when you realize you’re going down hard and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. And they can’t see anything. Nothing but gray.
Then the gray is gone, an ethereal curtain ripped aside. They regain their footing, hearts pounding, and they almost do fall.
Peter is still between them clasping their hands, but his wheelchair is gone. They struggle to keep their balance, pulling him up and clutching him between them in a hug. They look at each other in amazement, their faces only inches apart over his shoulder.
“What was that?!” Zeke exclaims.
Fi shakes her head frantically
. “I have no idea!”
They take in their surroundings. They’re still in the hall on the fifth floor of the hospital. Sort of.
The paint on the walls is peeling, the tile on the floor cracked, half of it missing. No lights are on, what illumination there is comes from a broken window at the end of the hall. The few doors that remain on the patient’s rooms hang loosely on broken hinges. Mildew stains the walls, water drips through moldy cracks in the ceiling. They jump at the whistling wing-flap of a pigeon flying in the window. It spies them and wheels around, retreating back the way it came.
Fi searches the face of the frail old man between them but it offers no answers. His eyes are vacant and cloudy as ever. “Peter?”
He grips their hands harder. “S-s-slip.”
Gray fog, frantic scrabbling to gain purchase on the nothing beneath their feet, then the mist disappears once more. Pounding rain under a dark stormy sky--and now they are falling.
They flail in the air, screaming as they plummet.
Plunging into dark water, bumping the bottom, pushing upward, dragging Peter with them, reaching the surface.
Zeke gasps, “Fi!”
She sputters, “I’m right here!” and points to the edge, thirty feet away. “Swim!”
Paddling and kicking, towing Peter between them, keeping his head above water the best they can. Reaching land and crawling up the slick muddy slope, rain pelting. They drag Peter to shore and lift him from the ground, their bodies buzzing from shock and exertion.
They appear to be standing in an excavation site, but there is no equipment and there are no people. Then bursts of lightning reveal the buildings around them--tumbled, charred, twisted--and the water-hole looks more like a bomb crater.
“S-slip.”
Gray fog, no traction, sliding, slipping.
* * *
They jerk as their shoes catch on solid ground. This time the grayness gradually dissipates. Wind gusts and recedes. Wisping lacy fog veils and unveils their surroundings. The sky is a milky white ceiling that illuminates everything in a flat even glow. Powdery white sand swirls in eddies at their feet. Silvery windswept dunes extend as far as the eye can see, then fade into a pale haze.