by Thomas Craig
It was early evening now and the sun would set in the next hour or two. There was no direct sunlight left in the day to help heal me. I wasn’t sure if I had an adequate amount of energy left to start the healing process and make the evening tolerable.
The day had already brought me two unexpected events and now I was injured. Arya was stilled injured. The combat was not over. The sun was disappearing, and this pain was starting to break my concentration.
Focus I told myself as I took the final steps that placed me in a large stone basement.
To the right was a series of well-stocked wine racks.
To the left was a huge crack in the stone wall where a noticeable cool draft of air was escaping. It was large enough for a grown man to step into, and it was likely an entrance to a natural cavern of some sort.
In front of me was a table with various glasses and utensils for opening and tasting wines, and beside the table lay a man, a pool of blood surrounding his head.
He was wearing what looked to be the clothes I saw on the man running into the house. This could very well be the same man I was tracking unless the cartel guards were dressing alike. Unlikely. I would have noticed the pattern earlier.
Focus! Why was he already dead?
Then a thick pungent smell entered my nostrils.
I notice Andy’s hackles were up. Even though a man lay dead in the center of the wine cellar, we knew we were not alone. We also knew this smell was not coming from the dead man. The smell was awful and familiar, like that of a rotting corpse. It reminded me of death.
Chapter 20
Times Up
As soon as the smell hit me, I noticed something moving in the shadows. Something exceptionally large. Andy moved in front of me growled at the massive shadow.
A monster of a man, so it seemed, stepped out of the shadows and into the light.
“Your scent has been unusually faint, making you more difficult to track than others. But here we are. Finally,” the beast ground the words through its teeth.
Its face and neck almost formed a pyramid shape on its bulging shoulders. I noticed the teeth were all large and pointy and its mouth was abnormally immense. I was starting to think this was not a man at all. It took three quick steps to the right and blocked the stairway from which we came.
“I have dealt with many like you and it always ends the same. The chase and the taste are different, but it ends the same,” the beast’s voice echoed in the stone basement.
Others? Taste? What the hell is going on here? I had my gun pointed right at its heart now.
“Look, I don’t know who or what you are, but you need to stand down and move aside. Get on your knees and put your hands on your head.” I tried to sound confident, even though I had serious doubts my hand ties would restrain this thing.
“Ha! Look at me. Do you really think you can control me?” It took a step towards me.
“If you keep moving toward me, I will shoot.” My finger was on the trigger.
“Your weapons are useless. I have disposed of older and greater demigods than you and they had real weapons of power. Even though they were hard to kill, they were killed nevertheless,” It said.
Demigods? Shit.
“You are the Asaya that was sent to kill me? You killed my friend Alimon,” I said as I kept aiming at its heart. I didn’t like where this conversation was going. The damn thing wanted to eat me. Well, kill me, then eat me. I think in that order. Focus!
“You are merely a fool never meant for this world, not worthy of your gift. You don’t even know the ways of the Zuni, the spirits, and the gods. I am an Atahsaia sent by Uhepono to dispose of you, as it should be,” it snarled loudly at me.
Andy was standing his ground too, sizing up the beast.
“Well, that is where Uhepono made a mistake sending its pet to do the job. You talk too much and you smell like shit,” I mocked it. The bravado attempting to mask the fact that I was scared for my life. I guess I get a little snarky when I am about to die. There would be no negotiating with this beast.
The beast smiled, showing its jagged teeth, then leaped forward. I emptied my entire clip into the beast’s chest stopping it in its tracks. Unfortunately, it did not fall dead but rather stood puzzled looking at its chest.
“What is this?” It asked as it touched the many holes from the bullets.
Strange, no blood though. No blood from the wounds on its chest.
“Please tell me you can do more than through little metal pellets at me? I do enjoy a good fight,” it said as it moved on me again.
Andy sprang into action and flew at the ogre’s throat. I had momentarily forgotten Andy was with me or I would have told him to stay back. Before I knew what was happening, Andy had sunk his canines into the Atahsaia’s neck.
The beast stopped. Andy hung from its throat, thrashing around to maximize damage. The beast just stood there and stared into my eyes as if trying to explore my soul.
It started to grin again as it slowly brought its hands up to Andy. Before I could react, it squeezed Andy’s throat, forcing Andy to release. It was going to tear Andy apart if I did nothing.
I could hear Andy wincing and gaging as I jumped onto the beast. It threw Andy against the wall with such force he made a horrifying thud. The noise Andy made on impact would haunt me. I wanted to run to Andy but had to take care of this beast first.
I found myself being held off the ground by the beast's in a one-armed bear hug, body to body. Face to face. I managed to jam my thumb into its right eye and repeatedly stabbed the damn thing in its neck and head with my knife.
I saw its left arm coming my way and quickly stuck the knife deep into the beast's left eye. It was now blind.
“SMACK!”
Its colossal fist hit my head with such force it felt like a cinder block fell from the sky and found its mark like in an old cartoon. The room went black for a few seconds as my brain tried to reboot. When my vision came back, I was now in a chokehold with two massive hands strangling me off the ground.
My thoughts were foggy at best, and I felt panic build up in my chest and head. I had a few seconds to think about the lack of air to my lungs, the lack of blood to my head, and the fact that my throat was being crushed. Or, I could focus on building energy in my core to send to my hands to inflict damage on the ogre.
Even though the beast had no eyes to see, it was grinning, enjoying my head turning purple as it was about to snuff out the last bit of life in me.
My hands were holding on to the beast’s wrist to support my weight dangling in its death grip. Each hand quickly grew red hot and the beast stopped grinning. It released me and finally showed signs of being in pain.
When I gouged both of its eyes, it made no sound. Now, the touch of heat from my hands had it taking steps back and grimacing.
“What is this? What has touched me?” it demanded as it rubbed its wrist looking around the room as if trying to sense someone else’s presence.
It then pulled the knife from its eye and threw it in my direction with lethal force. The blade whistled over my head and sunk deep in the wood beam structure supporting the wall of wine behind me.
“What’s the problem?” I coughed out. “You have fought tougher demigods you said.” I reminded it as I went forward to grab it again.
It centered itself on the direction of my voice.
I should learn to keep my trap shut. My wisecrack may have cost me the element of surprise. I continued to move towards the beast, focusing my energy on my hands.
“You are different,” it said swiping at the air in front of me. “You have the power of the Sky, the Sun, and the Earth in you. This is not right. This would mean…”
I had my hands around its thick neck now and the greatest surge of anger mixed with energy was released. My hands were no longer hands but glowing white embers inside the incredible fire they produced which was now consuming the beast’s head.
The beast mustered up another attack as both fists
were flying toward my head again. Just as the enormous hammers were about to crush my skull, they fell limp and so did the beast. I landed on top of it and was still burning its head.
After a few more intense seconds, I removed my hands from the Atahsaia. There was nothing left from the neck up. I had disintegrated its neck and head into ashes in seconds. This was not something I set out to do, but effective, nevertheless.
I quickly limped over to where Andy lay lifeless.
“No! Andy, wake up!” I was about to shake him but noticed my hands were still glowing white-hot. “Stop! Stop Goddammit!” I yelled to myself as I shook my hands.
I wanted to heal Andy, not incinerate him.
After a few seconds of focus, my hands seemed normal enough to put on Andy to try to heal him. He was not moving or breathing. I placed a hand on his chest and head and began to focus my energy on thoughts of love and healing.
I could not lose my faithful friend and colleague. He had been such a great dog to the force, the FBI, and most importantly, me and my friends. He was family. I think everyone would be devastated if I let Andy down in his moment of need.
I continued my focused thoughts and placement of hands-on Andy and could feel a different surge of healing power coming through me.
The room started to glow blue.
The light was not coming from my hands, but rather from behind me. I turned to find the source of this familiar light.
Faster than I thought, a Sky Being had appeared and grabbed my hand from Andy’s head. It lifted my hand above my head high enough that my feet left the ground.
“No! Goddammit, let me go!” I shouted. I had to get back to Andy to heal him. To save him.
I was staring into a Sky Being’s glowing face, and realized it was hurting me. It had my left hand palmed in its grip, burning my hand as it held it above both of us.
I don’t recall making a fist when the god grabbed my hand. It snatched my hand so quickly that its strength just crumpled my fingers and hand into an awkward ball of broken bones and ruined tendons.
I reached for its wrist with my other hand, hoping to burn it to make it stop hurting me. It was a step ahead, and easily caught my other hand. I was hanging there with both hands above me helplessly watching my left-hand burn. Instinctively, I began kicking it in the torso area. It felt like I was kicking a wall and the Sky Being gave no reaction.
The pain in my left hand was now excruciating. I was now losing all control and vomited.
The god quickly looked around, and like a reversed lightning bolt, it shot up right into the ceiling, still holding me. In that split second, I think it was trying to take me to the heavens. The god flew clean through ten feet of a solid stone ceiling as if it were a ghost gliding through a wall.
Unfortunately, I, being corporeal, met the ceiling with extreme force. I bounced off the ceiling, falling hard to the floor. The god was gone without its cargo. With zero energy left to help Andy or myself, I felt overcome with grief for failing Andy. I tried one last time to pick myself up to crawl to Andy but passed out from all the trauma to my head and hand.
Chapter 21
The gunfire had ended around the compound and Arya was growing impatient for Lou’s return. She shook her head because she knew she should be Lou’s backup. Her body reminded her why she wasn’t with Lou as her muscles tensed up as if being electrocuted. She was struggling now from the battering ram effect the bullets had on her back.
There was a sigh of relief when Arya saw Lauren and Holliday coming from the guest house, followed by a commando who was escorting a dozen women in his care.
She waved to them through a living area floor-to-ceiling window, the only thing in the room that somehow survived the bullets and shrapnel in the past 5 to 10 minutes.
Holliday noticed and waved back, then directed Lauren to follow him to where Arya was standing in the main house.
“It sounded like you two had a tough time over there. You okay?” Arya asked as she leaned against what was left of the kitchen counter.
“Well, we were doing fine at first. We cleared the pool house and garage, taking out two guards. But when we moved to the guest to meet up with Salazar, we were ambushed,” Holliday said.
Then Lauren spoke up. Arya was listening but could not help notice how bloody Lauren looked. Her face was dotted with a thousand red spots, chest and shoulder soaked.
“I think Salazar executed the commando that was with him. We found the soldier face down with one bullet to the back of the head just ten feet inside the guest house,” Lauren surmised before continuing.
“One of our commandos, the one with the women out there, swears he heard Salazar yell ‘clear’ to us as we approached the guest house. I came face to face with a cartel member and thankfully I shot first,” Lauren said as she pointed to her bloody shirt, noticing Arya looking her over. “This is his, not mine.”
“We are okay though. You, however, look like that room back there…beat up,” Holliday pointed out.
“Stiff, really stiff. Took two in the back and one in the side. I will be okay, but Lou and Andy chased after a man about 5-7 minutes ago, and has not come back. Can you check it out, please? I’m just not moving like I need to be,” Arya asked, knowing that Holliday and Lauren would quickly respond.
“Will do, Arya,” Holliday said.
Lauren banged her fist on the window to get the commando’s attention and waved him in to stay with Arya. The commando sat the women down and jogged into the house to Arya’s aid.
It only took Holliday and Lauren a minute to find the tied-up woman in the master bedroom. Obviously, Lou had come through this way. After taking note of the doors in the hallway, they cautiously descended the stairs to the wine cellar.
The room was filled with dreadful odors. Mostly something that resembled burnt flesh and hair.
There was a dead man in the center of the room that had his head smashed. Several feet to his right was a large scorched spot on the floor where the beast lay moments ago before being returned to the underworld.
“Andy!” Lauren shouted as she ran over to the Australian Shepard.
Holliday looked over his shoulder to see Lauren kneeling over Andy. When he turned back around, he saw Lou‘s lifeless body in the shadows of the corner near the wall of wine.
“Jesus, what happened here?” Holliday whispered to himself as he crouched to check Lou’s pulse. It was weak, but a pulse, nevertheless.
“Lauren, come here!” Holliday shouted.
Lauren came over and gasped at the sight of Lou. His legs were torn up, blood was in his hair and on the floor next to him and his hand was a charred mess.
“Is he alive?” She pleaded.
“Barely. Come on. Help me get him out of here.”
Chapter 22
Rest and Regroup
Lauren spent two days working and reworking her cryptography access lockout programs. She had built a sophisticated hybrid access algorithm that combined sequences similar to code in “brute force” and “dictionary attack” algorithms, blended with other trial and error approaches.
She had to avoid being locked out after too many failed attempts, as it would seriously cripple her efforts. This was not an uncommon safeguard, and Lauren practiced dissecting account-lock-out programs to know how to counter them. She recognized pretty quickly what the weakness was on his hack, and was able to bypass the account lockout by injecting a Wi-Fi virus. The virus spoiled the encrypted signals and gave life to her code that basically hid or instantly retracted each failed attempt until the correct password was applied.
We had made this mansion our home for a few days. I didn’t remember much of day one, post-Atahsaia encounter.
I remembered day two. We all said a few words over Andy before sealing him in an airtight bag and carefully placed him in a wooden crate for proper transport. We would be sure to get him back to Quantico as soon as possible. At some point, there would be a memorial service and Andy’s name would be added to the
memorial wall dedicated to service dogs killed in the line of duty.
Day two sucked. It was emotional for all and the physical pain I was going through, as excruciating as it was, was nothing compared to the anguish I felt in my heart about losing Andy. I played the “if I had only been faster” game with myself for longer than I’d care to admit.
The remaining commando stayed with us after the Colombian government came in and swept every inch of the estate. Along with removing the bodies of the fallen, they removed 500 pounds of cocaine. They also confiscated a few million in cash, gold, and diamonds, but we knew this was pocket change for the Cartel and the real money was still to be found.
Close to a dozen women were on their way back to homes or programs to get them on their feet again with proper support systems. We felt good about breaking up the human trafficking element on this branch of the tree. There was much more to do though, so celebrations now would be a little premature.
Good news came on day three of camping out in the Lost City mansion.
Holliday came lumbering down the stairs from the house to the pool, wearing only his cowboy boots, cowboy hat, and pink swim trunks.
“Don’t worry, I washed these like 8 times in scolding hold water and bleach. I’ve had a strong proclivity to be water bound in this hot jungle and it would be a shame not to swim in this pool,” he shared with us.
“Those trunks were red before you bleached them, weren’t they?” I had to ask.
He laughed and nodded as he kicked off the boots and walked into the pool.
Lauren came hopping down the steps next and wound-up poolside where I was laying out taking in the sun.
Even though my legs were much better, Arya had just given me another shot of morphine to make the throbbing pain in my hand calm down enough to relax my muscles and breathing. All morning, I could feel dozens of small bones moving around in my hand, fusing to others. It was a strange and painful experience. Hence, the morphine.