Spear of Destiny (The Myth Hunter Book 4)

by Percival Constantine

  She transformed back into her human form. Her head was spinning and she nearly fell, bracing herself with her hand. Asami looked at Jaeger’s dead body. No wound on his head and no trace of any external damage.

  The illusion had driven him to give up his own life. The vril faded from his vacant eyes. And Asami’s own burning eyes had now become like a soft ember.

  “T-took you long enough,” she muttered to the corpse. “Wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep that up…”

  Asami crawled on the ground and pressed her back against one of the columns. She was exhausted and she needed time to regain her strength. Now it was all up to Elisa and the kitsune hoped her partner was up for the task.

  CHAPTER 14

  Elisa held the khopesh tightly in her grip as she descended the steps down to the Gruft. A black gate blocked her progress and through the bars she could see the round, tomb-like room with a flame in the center.

  She was about to try and break open the gate when it opened of its own accord. Elisa took a cautious step into the Gruft and she saw Himmler circling around the center of the room. The flames were reflected in the lens of his glasses and she could see the glow of vril in his eyes.

  In his hand was the Spear of Destiny.

  “Welcome, Elisa Hill,” he said. “You are just in time to witness the beginning of a new age.”

  “You think I’m going to let you win?” she asked, holding up the khopesh.

  “You think you can stop me?” Himmler raised the spear closer to his face, gently caressing its surface with his free hand, almost lovingly. “I hold the power now. You might as well drop that sword, it will do you no good against the spear.”

  “Talk is cheap, Heinrich. Why don’t you show me what you can do?”

  Himmler smiled wickedly. “As you wish.”

  He jumped supernaturally high, soaring across the flame and falling right at her with the spear in hand. Elisa barely had a chance to deflect his strike with the khopesh. Himmler thrust forward to stab her with it and Elisa twisted to the side to avoid, swinging her sword.

  The curved blade cut into Himmler’s flesh and he stepped back. Elisa stared at the wound in his side, the blood spilling over his SS uniform. She was shocked when she saw the blood recede into the cut and the flesh knit back together. Himmler smiled, the spear holding the same unearthly vril glow as his eyes.

  “The spear is mine. So long as I hold it in my possession, I am unstoppable!”

  He charged her and Elisa dove to the side to avoid being impaled with the spear. She rolled on the ground, now the flame separating the two of them. With every move Himmler tried to make towards her, Elisa moved in the opposite direction to maintain the distance.

  They circled the flame, staring at each other through the fire. Elisa struggled to think of a way out of this mess. As long as Himmler held the Spear of Destiny, he would be impossible to defeat. Any wounds she inflicted on him would heal just as quickly as that last cut did.

  She thought back to Horn’s journal and the account of Agharti. Dietrich Eckart held the spear when Horn and her grandfather encountered him. Yet they managed to not only recover the spear but also kill Eckart. If she was going to have any hope of defeating Himmler, she would need to follow their example.

  Himmler dove through the flames, drawing Elisa out of her thoughts. She countered his strikes. He wasn’t using his vril powers on her. The energy required for the ritual must be massive and he didn’t want to expend all the life force he’d absorbed on the battle with her.

  So that meant Elisa needed to force him to expend that energy. Push him to the point where he’d need to use the power to finish her off. And try and stop from dying in the process.

  Elisa stayed on defense, deflecting the spear strikes. “You know, for some all-powerful warlock, you sure seem bad at this killing thing. Shouldn’t you have won the battle by now?”

  Himmler growled and thrust. Elisa ducked, stepping around him and slicing into his back. He moved away from her, the wound healing. More energy expended. If she could continue to inflict damage on his body, the spear would direct his energies to automatically heal him.

  The two charged at each other. Elisa jumped, the spear cutting into her side but she also delivered another slash with the khopesh. She stumbled when she landed, reaching a hand to the tear in her black tank top. Her hands were covered with blood. But when she looked at Himmler, she saw him also hunched over, a hand held to his neck where she cut him.

  Himmler’s facial features contorted in what looked to be extreme pain, the power of the spear working to keep his body together. That plus the energy he was expending just to maintain life in a body that had been dead for seventy years.

  “I wouldn’t be too disappointed in your pathetic display here, Heinrich,” said Elisa. “After all, my grandfather was able to kill Eckart without breaking a sweat. And you, you were nothing more than a coward. Couldn’t even handle interrogation by the Allies, so you bit into a cyanide pill.”

  “I knew my people would bring me back. I knew I would rise again to complete the work I’d begun. Atlantis will rise, Hill. And you and the rest of the vermin who infest this planet shall be cleansed!”

  Himmler came at her again, but this time his ferocity was far greater. He was pushing himself even further to his limits and Elisa had to fight twice as hard just to keep up with him.

  The sound of the weapons clanging echoed in the Gruft. Elisa felt herself tiring but Himmler fought with renewed vigor. Had she been wrong about him? Had he simply been holding back this whole time?

  Himmler’s next strike hit so hard that it knocked the khopesh from Elisa’s hands. He followed with a kick to her chest that struck so hard, she was thrown back into the wall, striking one of the podiums meant for urns containing the ashes of dead SS generals.

  The Thule stepped towards her. He held the spear against his chest in both hands, the tip pointing towards the ceiling. Himmler’s eyes crackled with vril energy and it circled around the spear’s surface as well. He raised the spear up towards the sky, fixing his otherworldly gaze on her.

  “An object that is the symbol of your own faith…” whispered Elisa, thinking back to Wade’s words. It was the only way to protect against the power of vril. What did she possibly have that was a symbol of faith to her?

  Images flooded her mind. Memories. At first she thought it was the obligatory ‘life flashing before your eyes’ that is said to come before death. But she realized it was something else.

  She saw herself as a child, opening the wooden box and seeing the Nepalese daggers for the very first time.

  She heard her mother scolding her for touching them and then her grandfather, Kenneth Hill, saying that it was okay.

  She saw Kenneth taking her tiny hand in his large one and wrapping her fingers around the hilt of the dagger.

  She saw herself a few years older, training with wooden replicas of the daggers. Kenneth showing her how to fight with them.

  She saw her sixteenth birthday when he presented her with a wooden box. She opened it and inside were the kukri.

  “We don’t bother with modern weapons. They’re clumsy and require no skill. Instead, we use the weapons of the past. We can never forget the connection with those who came before us, Elisa. We’re myth hunters, and our faith is in something greater than all the religions put together.”

  “In ourselves…” she muttered.

  Himmler pointed the spear at her and the blue vril energies arced towards her. Elisa reached behind her back and drew the kukri, the very same ones her grandfather had given her. The same ones he himself used.

  She crossed the blades in front of her. The vril struck the kukri and the Gruft was bathed in unearthly blue light. Elisa rose to her feet, the kukri still keeping the vril energy at bay.

  Himmler’s eyes widened. “How are you doing this?”

  “Faith.”

  Elisa stepped closer, closing the distance between them. Himmler tried to increase
the power, but it didn’t slow her down one bit. Her steps continued to come. The energy finally broke from the spear and Elisa leapt at the Nazi.

  She brought both kukri down in a slash and Himmler had to react quickly to deflect them with the spear. Elisa’s attacks were now more ferocious than ever. Himmler had weakened his power in that last attack and now she had the upper hand once again.

  Elisa swept the ground with her leg and Himmler fell on his back. He held the spear up and it clanged against the kukri Elisa was about to bring down on his head. The two were stuck in that position, their weapons braced against each other.

  But Elisa had more than one weapon. She brought the second kukri up against his side, jamming it into his flesh. Himmler cried out and Elisa twisted the knife, his screams growing louder.

  She yanked the kukri out and knocked the spear from his grasp. It flew from them and into the flame. Himmler delivered a backhand that knocked Elisa from his body. He struggled to his feet and moved towards the flame, trying to reach the spear.

  Elisa hurled a kukri as his hand went for the fire and the blade went right into his palm. Himmler screamed and Elisa grabbed the discarded khopesh.

  Himmler pulled the dagger from his hand. He rushed at Elisa, who deflected his strikes with her second kukri and the khopesh sword. She used the khopesh’s curved blade to hook the kukri Himmler wielded and pulled, disarming him. Elisa then drove the second kukri into his throat.

  While the Reichsführer struggled with the knife in his throat, Elisa approached the flame. Using the khopesh, she hooked the spear and flipped it out of the fire. It flew in the air and clattered to the ground. Elisa dropped the khopesh and reached for a pouch on her belt, taking out a pair of durable gloves. She donned them and wrapped her hands around the still-hot spear.

  She could feel the heat from the fire even through her gloves. Elisa tested the spear in her grip. There was definitely power inside this weapon, that she knew. She could understand why so many had coveted the Spear of Destiny over the centuries.

  “No!” shouted Himmler, springing to his feet. “The spear is my birthright!”

  He pulled the dagger from his throat and cried out as he charged at her. Elisa ducked his attempted slash with the kukri, then she thrust upwards. She drove the spear into Himmler’s chest and his eyes bulged.

  Himmler slumped over and Elisa pushed him onto the ground. He fell on his back, the spear’s point inside his chest. Himmler just stared at the object in horror. Elisa stood over him and stared into his eyes, the vril fading from them quickly.

  “Atlantis is gone, Heinrich. And so are you,” she said. “This time, stay dead. Or I’ll be back.”

  Himmler let out a blood-curdling scream as the last of the energies used to keep him alive were expended. His body aged rapidly before Elisa’s eyes, his skin decomposing until there was little left except for a skeleton. But his screams continued long after he was gone.

  The Spear of Destiny fell to the ground, now with nothing to hold it up. Elisa approached the old bones and raised her foot. She brought it crashing down and the brittle bones broke, crumbling into dust beneath her boot.

  When nothing was left of Heinrich Himmler, Elisa picked up the Spear of Destiny. She examined its aged blade, the gold band, and the inscription as well as the nail embedded near the point. She heard footsteps and looked up, seeing Asami and Jason standing at the entrance to the Gruft.

  “Eckart and Jaeger are taken care of,” said Asami. “Everything good down here?”

  Elisa nodded. “It’s over.”

  EPILOGUE

  Elisa kept the spear in her possession at all times until they returned to Mount Rushmore. She wouldn’t allow anyone else to even touch it, something that made Jason very nervous. During the entire journey, if he attempted to ask her about the spear, Elisa would simply tell him to wait until they returned.

  It was only once the three of them were reunited with the Curator in his exhibit hall that Elisa revealed what her intentions for the Spear of Destiny were. She held it up, staring at the blade as she spoke.

  “We have to destroy it.”

  Jason’s jaw practically dropped when he heard those words. “You can’t be serious! This is the Spear of Destiny we’re talking about! It’s one of the most important finds in history. We can’t just throw it away.”

  “That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” said Elisa. “It’s the only way to be sure that it’s never used again.”

  “But the historical significance—”

  “Jason, listen to me,” she said. “People have been after this weapon for centuries. They’ve died for it, killed for it. And those who have had it in their possession were eventually corrupted by its power, becoming the very thing the man who first bled on it died trying to prevent.”

  Jason tried to think of a rebuttal but he had none. He looked to the Curator for some assistance in the matter. But the old man stared blankly, evidently as shocked as the Freemason was.

  “How do you wanna destroy it?” asked Asami.

  “We melt it down,” said Elisa. “It’s the only way to be sure. Horn thought he could contain the spear’s power by hiding it away. This incident has proven that he was wrong. If we just lock the spear away, then someone will find it again.”

  “There’s also the matter of prophecy to consider,” said the Curator. “The spear is supposed to decide the fate of mankind.”

  “Too bad,” said Elisa. “The Order. The Thule Society. I’m done being a pawn in someone else’s game. We know there’s something awful on the horizon, but we can’t stop it if we just play along.”

  “Don’t like the rules, then you change the game,” said Asami with an appreciative smile. “I kinda like the sound of that.”

  Elisa nodded. “Thought you might.”

  “Certainly an interesting proposition,” said the Curator. He looked at Jason. “I believe she has a point.”

  Jason took a deep breath. No one was quite sure of his response, but finally he nodded. “You’re right. It’s time we change it up.”

  “I’ll make the arrangements,” said the Curator. He excused himself and left the room.

  Elisa looked down at the spear, still questioning whether or not this was the right move. But she felt it was better for mankind to try and get by on their own, without the benefit of some vague prophecy that could either make or break them.

  “There’s something else I wanted to talk to the two of you about, now that things have settled down,” said Jason. He leaned leaned against one of the walls and folded his arms. “And that’s joining us. You’re looking for work and I think we’ve proven that we are capable of working together.”

  Asami shrugged and cocked her head in Elisa’s direction. “She makes the decisions. I’m just here to kick ass and look pretty.”

  Elisa thought about it. She did like having the resources of the Freemasons at her disposal. But at the same time, she wasn’t quite sure if she was ready to work for someone else.

  “It’s tempting,” she said. “Not sure if I’m willing to sign up for membership. But maybe you’d be willing to hire a pair of freelancers.”

  Jason gave a nod and a smile. “That works for me. And it also brings me to my next point. Do you know why the Freemasons asked Kenneth Hill to accompany Walter Horn to Agharti?”

  Elisa shook her head. “Honestly no, I haven’t the first clue.”

  Jason reached inside his jacket and pulled out a small, leather-bound book. He held it out to Elisa. She took it from him and inspected the cover. The book was worn, obviously very old. And on the cover was one word: SHAMBALLAH.

  “What’s Shamballah?” she asked.

  “Shamballah?” asked Asami. “That’s some mystic city, right?”

  Jason nodded. “Your grandfather once claimed to have found it. But after he left, he could never find it again. He spent a good portion of his life trying to track it down. It’s how he knew the Himalayas so well and why he was the perfect man t
o partner Horn with. I’m not sure how much help that journal will be, but it might give you some idea of how to find the city. In case you’re ever interested.”

  Elisa examined the cover and gave a nod. “Could be interesting. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Then there’s just one more thing.” Jason held out his hand. “Welcome aboard.”

  Elisa shook his hand and smiled. “As a freelancer.”

  He smiled back. “Of course.”

  ***

  Wade sat in the back of the transport, humming to himself as the truck moved over the bumpy back-roads. He looked around at the armed guards the Freemasons had sent to accompany him. The chains that linked his shackled arms and legs jingled as he rhythmically tapped on his knees. He paused and smiled as he looked at the gathered men.

  “Tell me, are you gentlemen partial to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?”

  The guards offered no response.

  “You know, Stones fans always use the argument, ‘do you want hold her hand or spend the night together,’” said Wade. “But my response to that is that I’d rather do it in the road.”

  One guard snickered, which earned him a glare from his superior. Wade grinned at that and leaned back against the truck’s metal frame. “And speaking of doing it in the road…does anyone have the time?”

  “Shut up already,” said the head guard.

  At that moment, an explosion went off in the road ahead of them. The driver swerved to avoid the flames, careening and tipping over. The truck skidded along the asphalt and in the back, the guards struggled to stand upright. Wade just remained calm.

  “What the hell was that?” asked the lead guard.

  “I don’t know, sir!” said the driver. “Some sort of explosion and I lost control!”

  “Dammit, let’s check it out,” said the leader. He moved ahead of his men, opening the doors and stepping out into the night. The other Freemason guards followed him, readying their rifles.