Spear of Destiny (The Myth Hunter Book 4)

by Percival Constantine

  “Y’know, I went decades without being stabbed. Since I met you, that’s gone out the window.”

  Elisa scoffed and smiled. “You knew what you were signing up for.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Asami slid off the edge of the gurney, putting an arm around Elisa’s shoulders for support. She moved slowly but after a moment was able to get by without any assistance. “Any word?”

  Elisa shook her head. “Jason’s locked himself up in the library ever since we got here. I guess he’s trying to find some alternative to the Habsburg Spear, some other way we can figure out where Horn stashed the real thing.”

  When they entered the library, they saw Jason standing at a table, staring down at an open book. A few other stacks were on the table. He looked like he was frozen in that position, didn’t even react when they called out his name.

  Elisa and Asami approached the table. Elisa snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Hey, are you there?”

  Jason seemed to come out of his trance and acknowledged Elisa. He rubbed his eyes but still said nothing. Asami slid the book from him and turned it so she could see what spooked him. The book was open to a page with a photograph of a man Asami had seen before.

  “Hey, isn’t that the guy from the portrait we saw?”

  “Heinrich Himmler.” Jason took a deep breath and looked at Elisa. “Remember the guy who looked like Davalos? Tried to trick you?”

  “Yeah,” said Elisa. “You said it wasn’t Eckart.”

  “No, it was him.” Jason pointed to Himmler’s image.

  Asami narrowed her eyes and traced the text that accompanied the photo. She shook her head. “That can’t be. This says he died in 1945.”

  “I saw him, I’m sure of it,” said Jason.

  “How do you know the trick used to make me see Lucas wasn’t done to make you see Himmler?” asked Elisa. “And for that matter, how did you know it wasn’t Lucas?”

  Jason shrugged. “Maybe it was just meant for you, a kind of glamour directed at your mind, designed to throw you off-guard.”

  “Then she’s got a point, how do we know it wasn’t used on you, too?”

  “Because when Elisa saw Davalos, I saw Himmler. But when he dropped the glamour for her, I still saw him normally.” Jason tapped the photo and looked at Elisa. “Tell me this wasn’t the man we both saw.”

  Elisa hesitated. She didn’t want to believe a man as wicked as Heinrich Himmler still walked the earth, or even worse that he now had the means to obtain one of the most powerful artifacts in history. But at the same time, she couldn’t deny the uncanny similarity the man at the Hofburg Palace had to the Nazi official.

  She sighed. “Okay, so let’s say it’s him. How did he cheat death? How is he still the same age?”

  “Maybe he didn’t,” said Jason, taking another book from one of the stacks. “This is the grimoire we took from Station 211. I thought it might come in handy, so I brought it with when we left Rushmore. Like I said before, it’s not easy to translate, but it does seem to be a book of Atlantean magic. Not only does it talk about vril, but it also details a spell.”

  “What kind of spell?”

  His face became tense. “Resurrection.”

  Jason flipped through the pages until he found the section he searched for near the back of the book. “Here. It says that if the proper ritual is observed on a prominent member of the coven, that member can be returned to life.”

  Jason looked at his companions. “That’s what we’re looking at. Himmler must have taken part in this ritual before he was captured and committed suicide. From there, all the coven needs is the body and a significant amount of power. But it can only be performed once.”

  “And they waited this long because they didn’t want to risk bringing Himmler back before the time was right to complete the ritual using the spear,” said Elisa. “They didn’t know when Lemuria would be discovered or how long Himmler could survive. And they need him to complete the ritual he began.”

  “So now we’ve got an undead Nazi and a mystic secret society plotting to destroy the world with a missing weapon,” said Asami.

  “Right, and now that they have the Habsburg Spear, they also have the means of finding the real deal,” said Elisa. She pulled out a chair and sat down. “There has to be something we can do. We can’t let Himmler and Eckart beat us like this.”

  “I’ve put out feelers with just about every contact I have,” said Jason. “If the Thules strike somewhere, we’ll be the first to hear about it. But unfortunately until then, it seems like we just have to wait.”

  Elisa shook her head. “No, I don’t accept that. Asami, Jason’s got his sources but I’m betting you’ve got yours as well. Get in touch with them and figure out if they know or have heard anything.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a smartphone. “I’ll call Max, Laki, Stubby, King—anyone who might be able to provide us with some intel.”

  “On it,” said Asami, going off to do her part. Jason watched Elisa as she sent messages and left voicemails for her different contacts.

  “I know this is tough, but you can’t let the Thules rattle you,” he said.

  “I’m not rattled, okay?” Her tone was sharper than she intended.

  Jason held up his hands in defense. “Hey, take it easy. We’re both on the same side here, remember?”

  Elisa sighed, staring at the phone. “I caused this, Jason. None of this would be happening if not for me.”

  “Comes with the territory, kid,” said Jason. “Pandora’s Box, remember?”

  She smirked. “One of my favorite stories as a kid. My grandfather used to tell it to me.”

  Jason’s lips tightened. “You’ll do him proud. I promise you.”

  “Let’s just do our jobs,” she said. “The clock’s ticking.”

  ***

  Once leaving the scene of the battle, the helicopter took both Himmler and Jaeger to the Vienna Alps. They had a small base set up there, where Eckart stood on the mountain, watching the helicopter approach through binoculars. The Thule Society patriarch—if he could even be called that any more since Himmler’s resurrection—stepped back from the landing area.

  The chopper’s skids touched down and settled into the snow-covered, rocky terrain. The door opened and Jaeger was the first off, landing with a slight tremor. Himmler followed, the Habsburg Spear in his hand.

  “You got it,” said Eckart, his grin spreading across his face. “Excellent. Now we may begin.”

  “Indeed, my boy.” Himmler carried the spear into the large tent that had been set up on the mountaintop. Inside was a table with chairs around it. Himmler sat in one of them and examined the centuries-old artifact. “A marvelous forgery, is it not? Looks identical to the true spear.”

  “How do we use it to find the real spear?” asked Jaeger.

  “‘A beautiful lie wrapped in gold…’” muttered Himmler, repeating the memorized passage from Horn’s journal. “‘Yet if we look carefully beneath the lie, truth can be discovered.’”

  “Huh?” asked Jaeger.

  Himmler carefully pulled at the gold plating around the spear. His eyes glowed with vril energies and the plate came free. The Nazi occultist examined the inside of the plating, but saw nothing. No indentation or anything.

  “All this for nothing?” asked Eckart.

  “Quiet!” barked Himmler. “I must concentrate.”

  He held the plate in his open palm, his right hand hovering over it, fingers spread and tensed. Himmler’s eyes burned with the vril energies he commanded and his fingers vibrated above the plate. The air around the plate distorted and something glowed on its surface. An inscription came to life, humming with the same glow as Himmler’s eyes.

  He relaxed, the blue fading from his corneas. Himmler set the plate down on the table and his underlings gathered around, staring at it with him. There were several sets of numbers written on the plate:

  250-14-1-2

  97-35-10-4

  4-43-4-5
<
br />   106-12-8-3

  “What do they mean?” asked Eckart.

  “It’s a type of cipher. Each number relates to a corresponding text.” Himmler pointed to each number as he explained what they were. “Page. Line. Word. Letter.”

  Realization flashed over Eckart’s face and he smiled as he went to one of the bags on the ground. He took out the old, leather-bound journal of Walter Horn and handed it to Himmler, who accepted it anxiously.

  Himmler flipped through the pages, finding the letters that corresponded to the numerical code. After he discovered the fourth and final letter, he sat back in his chair and smiled.

  “Oh Walter…that is clever,” he said. “‘A beautiful lie wrapped in gold’ indeed.”

  “Where is it?” asked Jaeger.

  “The Haunebu. Is that the only one we have or are there more?” asked Himmler.

  “We have a few of them,” said Eckart.

  “Good. Prepare them and all the men you have,” said Himmler. “Tomorrow, we set out for the United States. Horn left the Spear of Destiny in one of the most heavily fortified places imaginable.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The fortified vault’s official name is the United States Bullion Depository. But for many, they simply refer to it by the name of the army post it’s located inside—Fort Knox. Layers of security surrounded the facility, with rings of electrified fences and barbed wire around the Depository, mine fields, video and audio surveillance, and of course, the protection of the thirty thousand soldiers in the vicinity and their own weaponry, including tanks and attack helicopters.

  But none of that posed much of a concern for Heinrich Himmler as he stood on the deck of the lead Haunebu. He placed his hands on the railing, staring out through the two-way glass at the approaching base. In the decades since World War II, the Thule Society had largely remained underground, but not inactive.

  The United States recruited Nazis who possessed strategic value for Operation: Paperclip, many of whom were still loyal to the Thule Society. Those loyalists still provided information on the technology the Americans were developing to their occult masters. And the Thule Society used every piece of intelligence they received to continue to build bigger and better weapons.

  Through the use of the vril magicks, a regular attack plane could be powered by a single man. For something like the Haunebu, there were several working in concert to provide the energy necessary to keep it in the air and also fuel its weapons.

  A fleet of a dozen Haunebus suddenly appeared in the Kentucky morning sky. They emerged from the clouds above Fort Knox, the mystic cloaking field that kept them hidden quickly vanishing.

  On the ground, the soldiers immediately noticed what approached. Several just stared in a mixture of curiosity and fear. The saucer-like shape of the Haunebus was unlike anything they had seen before, at least not in real life. For many, it brought to mind images of science fiction films from the 1950s.

  But the soldiers quickly recovered from the initial shock and raised up weapons. Alarms on the base sounded. And the Haunebus responded in time, turrets appearing from panels on the craft. These guns did not fire standard ammunition, but instead blasts of pure, concentrated vril.

  Soldiers who were struck by the rays were instantly reduced to ash. Tanks and armored personnel carriers raced towards the gates surrounding the Depository, responding as quickly as possible to the strange, new threat. The tanks raised their main guns and opened fire on the Haunebus.

  At the point of impact, a flash of blue appeared around the Haunebu. They were all shielded by forcefields constructed from vril, invisible to the naked eye unless struck. The Haunebus fired back, decimating the tanks and the APCs with a few well-placed blasts.

  Apache helicopter gunships arrived not long after, unleashing a volley of bullets, rockets, and missiles on the Nazi invaders. The Haunebus broke their major formation, splitting into smaller groups. Those groups split again, each one flanking the Apaches that came at them. When being struck on all sides by the power of vril, the Apaches had little hope and were quickly blown out of the sky.

  Soldiers scattered for cover, trying to avoid the power of these incredible monstrosities. They still attempted to fight back, using automatic rifles, grenades and artillery. But those that fought were quickly targeted and destroyed. Many others quickly retreated, forced to do nothing more than watch.

  The other Haunebus remained in the air, forming a perimeter around the base to attack any who would dare attempt to challenge them. The lead Haunebu made short work of the fences surrounding the Depository and unleashed several more blasts designed to trigger the mines.

  It landed on the grounds in front of the Depository and a ramp emerged from below. Himmler, Eckart, Jaeger, and an armed troop of Thule warriors dressed in a modernized version of the SS uniform disembarked and approached the front entrance of the Depository.

  The front door weighed over twenty tons, making it nearly impossible for even Jaeger’s vril-enhanced strength to burst it open. Himmler, Eckart, and Jaeger all stepped up to the door and placed their hands on the metal surface. Their eyes hummed with power and the door slowly began to open inwards, giving them access. They stepped back and the soldiers went in first, spreading out to search the area and eliminate any other resistance they might find before they could pose a problem.

  Himmler walked inside the halls of the Depository, hands linked behind his back with Jaeger and Eckart flanking him. They took the elevator down to the vault below. When the elevator arrived, two treasury guards waited for them with weapons drawn.

  Jaeger stepped forward, taking the brunt of their firepower. Once their guns clicked impotently on empty chambers, he lunged at them, wrapping a strong hand around each of their necks and twisted until he heard the satisfying cracks that gave him pleasure.

  Himmler calmly stepped over the bodies, hands still behind his back. Eckart followed behind him and Jaeger at the rear. They marched through the corridors, reaching one of the vault doors.

  No one person could enter the vault alone. It required several members of the Depository staff entering separate combinations that were changed daily. The three men placed their hands on the door, using their vril magicks to manipulate the locking mechanisms, feeling out and testing the different spots to try and find the correct combination.

  The door to the main vault opened and what they found was much different from what many had been led to believe this vault contained. The walls were lined with small metal doors, no doubt each containing a different artifact or treasure inside. Himmler held out his hands and closed his eyes.

  “I can feel its power…it is definitely in here…”

  He slowly walked around the room, moving sightlessly. He came to one of the boxes and used his power to open it. Reaching inside, he removed a long, metal box and passed it to Jaeger. As the brute held the box for him, Himmler opened it. A maniacal gleam came to his eyes with a smile to match spreading across his face. He reached inside the box and removed the object inside.

  “Yes…” he said, his eyes glowing with the power of his vril magicks. “I can feel it…the ancient power coursing through my body…”

  He turned from the box and moved towards the vault door. Alarms blared and they heard the sound of rushing water. Stepping into the corridor, they saw it was quickly being flooded. Eckart went straight to the elevator, but it wouldn’t respond to the controls.

  “Fools, they think they’re capable of stopping me,” said Himmler. He grasped the spear in both hands and held it close to his body. The water formed a path around them, unable to touch any place within the space Himmler had allocated for his party.

  They moved through the corridor, Himmler seemingly having an intimate knowledge of the facility’s paths and turns. They found the escape tunnel built to allow exit by someone accidentally trapped inside, only operable through biometric security. But Himmler was able to open the door simply by jamming the spear into the panel. The escape hatch opened, the wate
r pushing the three through the tunnel.

  The tunnel ended in a large, rectangular bunker with a grated floor to allow the water to drain. The men fell down as soon as they hit the bunker and quickly rose to their feet, dripping wet. There was an escape hatch on the roof that could only be opened from the inside.

  Himmler’s eyes brightened and he channeled the vril through the spear, blowing a hole through the roof. While still clasping the weapon, he rose in the air above, extending his power to Eckart and Jaeger and lifting them out of the escape bunker as well.

  They felt the taste of fresh air, a few miles away from the Depository. And they found themselves facing down against an army battalion, with all their weapons trained on the three members of the Thule Society.

  “By order of the United States government, we hereby place you under arrest,” said a military commander through a megaphone.

  Himmler chuckled at first, a chuckle that rapidly grew into a mad cackle. The sound sent chills down the spines of all the soldiers who could hear it. Even Eckart and Jaeger felt a disturbance by the madman’s voice.

  “You fools!” spat the Nazi. “Do you truly believe you can stand up to the force of a god?”

  He raised the spear, holding it in both hands, and rammed the pointed end into the ground. As he did, he channeled waves of power through the ground, a shockwave of sorts that spread out and caused the soldiers surrounding him to convulse and spasm. Their bodies glowed, light emerging from their pores, burning them from the inside-out. The energy flowed back from them and into Himmler’s body.

  He laughed even more, rising into the air and holding the spear above his head. Heinrich Himmler was not only alive, but now more powerful than ever. The Spear of Destiny was in his possession. And there was nothing that could possibly stand in his way.