Arkana Archaeology Mystery Box Set 2

by N. S. Wikarski

  “Considering the money I’ve paid you over the years for their maintenance, you ought to be able to afford one by now,” the diviner retorted.

  “Touché,” the Fallen doctor replied. He pensively regarded his newest patient. “Her mental state is somewhat more extreme than other Nephilim cases I’ve treated. It may take longer to bring her around if she ever recovers at all.”

  “She is my principal wife and my most devoted follower.” Abraham’s tone was troubled. “Do what you can for her.”

  “I can’t make any promises that she’ll return to what you consider normal,” the doctor demurred.

  “Try just the same,” the diviner insisted.

  The two men parted to allow the attendants to wheel the stretcher through the door.

  Mother Rachel’s eyes rolled in their sockets. She briefly seemed to recognize her husband’s face. In a slurred voice, she murmured, “Abraham, I did this for you. I did this for all of us, but the devil prevailed. Beware, there are demons in our midst! I say, beware!”

  The doctor winced. “Apparently, I didn’t give her a strong enough tranquilizer. Excuse me. I need to ride in the ambulance to monitor her condition.”

  He scurried down the hall after his patient.

  Abraham returned to the chamber and sat down heavily on the bed to think. Demons indeed. Satan had chosen his instrument well. Mother Rachel’s moral rectitude had always been beyond reproach. It was inconceivable that his principal wife had allowed herself to fall victim to the sin of jealousy. Surely, she must realize that at her advanced age she was no longer attractive to her husband. Abraham was obliged to obey the mandate of the Blessed Nephilim to build his kingdom on earth. This required him to seek out ever younger, more fertile wives. That Rachel had attacked a sister-wife was bad enough. That she had chosen Abraham’s afflicted favorite as her target was surely the work of the devil. Thank heaven for the Fallen thief who had shown the presence of mind to summon help.

  The diviner allowed himself to marvel briefly at the hand of providence. Daniel had said God spared Erik for a reason. More than one, in fact. Aside from the thief’s usefulness as an experimental subject and a hostage, he was proving valuable as a watchdog to protect Abraham’s beloved. The diviner would have no need to post a sentry outside Hannah’s room so long as Erik was nearby. The thief obviously realized that preserving Hannah was in his own best interest. The Lord surely moved in mysterious ways. Tomorrow the diviner would have to visit his prisoner, express his thanks, and instruct him to continue his vigilance. But now it was late, and Abraham badly needed his rest. He rose to return to his own chambers. It was time for his medicine.

  ***

  The diviner attempted to sit up. He couldn’t remember where he was. Hadn’t he fallen asleep in his easy chair? Or was he in bed? He struggled to toss a heavy coverlet off his chest, but when he grasped what he thought was a blanket, he felt a hand instead. He recoiled with a gasp. It was a woman’s hand. None of his wives was sharing his bed tonight.

  He blinked and tried to clear his vision. A face loomed above him.

  “Hello, Father.” The tone was mocking.

  The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. It was Annabeth, Daniel’s wife. He could swear he’d felt her touch. How could this be? She was dead.

  “Did we have a difficult day today?” Her pale lips twisted into a malicious smile.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded angrily, in part to mask his rising fear.

  “I’m always here.” She circled his chair and leaned down to whisper in his ear. “But you can’t always see me.”

  Abraham fancied he felt her warm breath in his ear. Ghosts didn’t breathe! What was happening to him? “I must be dreaming,” he insisted, trying to rise.

  She returned to the front of the chair and crossed her arms, regarding him dispassionately. “Dreaming or something worse.”

  “What could be worse than a nightmare?”

  “Nightmares disappear when you wake up. I don’t.”

  He labored to make his limbs obey him. It was as if they were clamped to the chair with iron bands. “What do you want from me?” His tone was petulant.

  “Nothing,” she rejoined innocently. “My form is just an illusion concocted from equal parts poppy juice and self-loathing—summoned to annoy you.”

  “That’s absurd!” he exclaimed. “I never summoned you.”

  “Oh, but you did,” she asserted slyly. “This evening you were busy disposing of another troublesome woman just like me.”

  “Rachel,” he quavered. “You mean Rachel.”

  “What to do, sad but true,” she chanted in a sing-song voice. “Another bride who won’t mind you.”

  “She was possessed by a demon,” he countered.

  “That’s your answer for everything, isn’t it?” she asked airily. “Blame the devil, not yourself. Another bride pitched off the shelf.”

  Abraham tugged vainly against his invisible restraints. “Why won’t you leave me in peace?”

  “Peace?” Her eyebrows arched in surprise. “The best you can hope for these days is a dreamless cat nap, Father.”

  She leaned forward and clutched his shoulder.

  He felt the distinct sensation of fingers digging into his flesh. That, too, was impossible.

  “In days to come, you’ll look back on this moment as the calm before the real storm began.”

  Her face was so close to his that he could see the pupils of her eyes dilate. It couldn’t be.

  “I’ll visit again soon.”

  Abraham’s head spun dizzily. He could feel himself blacking out. One final thought occurred to him before he lost consciousness. Oblivion was the closest thing to peace he was going to feel if Annabeth was telling the truth.

  Chapter 30—Static Cling

  Cassie dropped into a chair in the hotel lobby to wait for the others to come down from their rooms. She thought back to the past four days and ruefully admitted that she should have taken Olga’s advice. Rather than getting some rest while on the Trans-Siberian train, the pythia had spent much of the trip glued to the window of her compartment hoping to pick up a trace of the Minoans. Thousands of miles of evergreen forests, tundra, mountain ranges, and the Amur River passed her by without offering a single clue no matter how intensely she concentrated. The closer the train came to Lake Baikal, the more her anxiety grew.

  At four o’clock that same morning, the Arkana group finally reached Irkutsk—a city thirty miles up the Angara River from the southwest shore of the lake. The short summer night was already giving way to a glimmer of light in the east. As Cassie stepped off the train, she registered surprise at the balmy pre-dawn air. The word “Siberia” always conjured images of frostbite. Instead, the temperature was a pleasant sixty-five degrees with noon highs expected to climb well into the eighties.

  The team wasted no time exploring the city since the journey to Olkhon Island would require the better part of the day to complete. Although there was a boat that traveled directly to their destination, it only ran once a week. The local bus schedule was equally inconvenient for the team’s purposes. They opted instead to hire a car and driver to get them to the ferry landing one hundred and fifty miles to the north. Even covering such a short distance took hours over narrow, winding roads. After arriving at the landing, they had to cool their heels waiting for the next boat. Ironically, the fifteen-minute crossing to the island was the shortest part of their trip that day.

  Disembarking from the ferry didn’t mark the end of their journey, however. They needed an additional source of transportation to carry them across the seventy-mile island. Olga bargained with one of the locals for the use of his car. Once a deal was struck, she took possession of his battered old rust bucket and drove the Arkana operatives to Khuzir. With a population of two thousand, it was the largest town on the island and the only place offering decent accommodations. They found a modern hotel which boasted its own re
staurant and the unparalleled luxury of showers in every room. Immediately after registering, the four scattered to unpack and wash up. They agreed to meet back downstairs an hour later to regroup.

  Cassie had returned to the lobby ahead of the others and was now savoring the sensation of sitting motionless for the first time in days. She glanced up to see Olga crossing the room toward her.

  The scout stood for a moment, gazing out the picture windows to admire the panoramic view of the lake and mountains beyond. “It is very beautiful here, no?” She took a seat beside Cassie.

  “Not just beautiful,” the pythia said. “The energy of this place is really strong. I can sense why Lake Baikal became Shaman Central.”

  A few moments later, Griffin arrived with Daniel in tow.

  The scrivener checked his wristwatch. “It’s only half past three in the afternoon. I realize today has already been exceptionally long, but we may still be able to accomplish something useful before dark.”

  “We have enough time to go to Shaman Rock,” Olga suggested. “It is only a little walk from here. There is a cave that you should see. It may be where your Minoan relic is hidden.”

  “There’s no guarantee that the Sage Stone will still be there,” the scion countered skeptically. “Is the cave easy to access?”

  “Sadly, yes. Shaman Rock was once considered such a holy place that people feared to visit it. Only shamans went there to perform ceremonies. Now, nothing prohibits tourists from climbing the rock and exploring the cave.”

  “I think it’s still worth checking out,” Cassie said. “Even if the Sage Stone isn’t there, at least I might be able to pick up the trail of the Minoans.”

  “Very well then, it’s settled.” The scrivener swept his arm toward the exit. “Shall we?”

  The little party left the hotel and walked down the main road leading toward Khuzir. It was situated on the landward side of the island which tended to be dry and dusty in the summer. Rolling steppe grasslands gave way to hilltops overlooking the beaches of the western shore. The eastern half of the island was quite different. It consisted of pine-covered mountains that rose abruptly from the lake, making it relatively inaccessible to casual visitors.

  As the four approached the center of town, Cassie let out an unexpected laugh. Pointing to her left, she said, “I guess we won’t need to ask directions to Shaman Rock.”

  Two immense stones shaped like jagged shark’s teeth jutted upward at a height of at least a hundred feet. The formation appeared to be surrounded by water except for a narrow dirt causeway that connected it to Olkhon Island like an umbilical cord.

  “That is Shaman Rock,” Olga confirmed. “It is one of the most famous sights of Lake Baikal.”

  The curious landmark had attracted the attention of several tourists who were already clambering over its surface and snapping pictures. One venturesome teenager had climbed to the top, cell phone in hand, recording the view from the summit. Though Shaman Rock wasn’t particularly high, he crowed with as much triumph as if he’d just scaled Mount Everest.

  Cassie’s heart sank on approach. During every previous stage of their quest, she’d always been able to tell if the Minoans had been nearby. Either her psychic powers were misfiring or... She censored the thought, unwilling to consider the alternative.

  Olga led them across the causeway to the base of the rock. “The cave is in the middle, between the two stones. You cannot see it from this side. We will have to climb there.”

  Daniel, Griffin, and Olga all began their ascent with Cassie bringing up the rear.

  As the pythia grabbed hold of an outcropping to hoist herself up, a surge of electricity shot through her arm and sent her flying backwards into the air.

  She was falling through space. The beach around her dissolved into darkness but the darkness was alive with bizarre shapes. Some were recognizable as humans or animals but other forms melted together into outlandish creatures that never existed in nature. Beasts resembling gargoyles flapped their leathery wings. Bears with glowing red eyes lunged at her. Disembodied skulls spoke. Distorted human shadows whirled in a mad dance against cave walls. Her ears swam with a roar of sounds to match the chaotic images rising before her eyes. Birds screeched, wolves howled, horses screamed, people chanted. She thought her head would burst from the pressure of it all. One voice asserted itself above the rest. “Cassie! Cassie! Can you hear me?” It was Griffin. She followed the sound back to consciousness.

  The pythia blinked several times. She found herself sprawled on the sand at the base of the rock. Three faces were peering down at her anxiously.

  “She is awake,” Olga reported to the others.

  “Thank goddess!” Griffin helped her sit upright.

  Cassie clutched her head.

  “Should we go for help?” the scrivener demanded urgently. “Is there anything we can do?”

  “No, just give me a minute,” the pythia replied, rubbing her temples.

  The trio regarded her in tense silence, waiting for an explanation.

  “I should have seen that coming,” she admitted dolefully.

  “Wh... Wh... What was that about?” the scion quavered. “Nothing like this happened to you in Japan.” Daniel stared at her as if she were a ticking time bomb.

  “Every place has its own quirks,” Cassie explained. “Remember when we were in Australia and I didn’t want to touch any of the rock paintings on Injalak Hill?”

  The scion nodded. “Yes, you said something about too many lives in the paintings, too much static. You thought you might become disoriented.”

  The pythia contemplated the stone landmark wryly. “This was more than static. Shaman Rock is one big honking tainted artifact all by itself. The second I touched it, I knew I was in trouble, but it was already too late. Everything came rushing toward me at once. It was like switching on a radio, but instead of getting one station, I got a thousand stations all transmitting on the same frequency. And it wasn’t just the shamans who were flying through the airwaves at me. I got all the weird stuff they conjured during their trances—things from their own imaginations or whatever freaky alternate dimensions they visited. I sensed things that don’t exist in this reality—skin-walkers, demons, animal spirit guides, talking corpses. Not to mention astral projection and blood sacrifices and dancing and chanting and drumming. All of it happening at once.” She groaned and rubbed her eyes. “I’ve never done drugs, but I think a bad acid trip might feel exactly like this.”

  The pythia hesitated before adding apologetically, “Guys, I’m sorry, but I can’t climb Shaman Rock.”

  “But how will we search it without you?” Olga seemed nonplussed.

  “Someone should stay here to make sure you’re alright,” Griffin said.

  “I’m fine,” Cassie insisted. “You all go on ahead and scope out the cave the old fashioned way—with your eyeballs. I’ll wait on the beach.” She rose shakily and retreated across the causeway. Selecting a spot several yards away, she sat down on the gravel-strewn shore and gave her teammates an encouraging thumbs-up.

  The others returned to their climb, disappearing into a crevice between the two rocks. About fifteen minutes later, they reemerged, clambered back down, and walked over to join her.

  “No lily symbol in the cave,” Daniel reported, crouching next to Cassie. “It wasn’t very big, so it didn’t take long to search. Nothing that looked like a niche where an artifact might have been hidden either.”

  “I didn’t think so.” The pythia cupped her chin in her hands.

  Griffin sat down to Cassie’s left and studied her with concern. “Still having trouble shaking off your vision?”

  “That’s not it.” The pythia raised her head and gave him a dispirited glance. “There’s nothing here for us.”

  “Are you sure?” Olga demanded urgently. “This is a place of magic. There must be something.”

  “Oh, there’s magic alright. Enough of it to crack my sk
ull open like an eggshell.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” Daniel frowned.

  “The magic here has nothing to do with us,” she retorted. “Out of all those ten thousand voices screaming in my ears, I couldn’t pick up anything from the Minoans. Not here and not anywhere along the way either. Nothing in Japan. Nothing from the Amur River. Nothing at all!” Cassie sighed. “Guys, we’re at a dead end. I don’t know what to try next.”

  She turned to Daniel apprehensively. “You once told us that your old man isn’t known for being patient. If we don’t come up with a solid lead soon, I hate to think what he might do to Hannah and Erik.”

  The scion swallowed hard. “I wish I could say your fears are groundless. But they’re not.”

  “It would seem we’ve reached an impasse.” Griffin’s tone was bleak.

  The group sat in a huddle, listlessly staring at the waves lapping the shore until Olga broke the silence.

  “Perhaps all is not lost.” She treated them to an unexpected smile. “There may be a way.”

  Chapter 31—Making a Love Connection

  Hannah woke on high alert. She sat upright in bed because she thought she’d heard a sound at her door. Given Mother Rachel’s recent attack, her central nervous system was still hyper-reactive. She checked her alarm clock. It was three in the morning. Maybe she’d been dreaming.

  She whipped her head around at the sound of a gentle tapping. No, she hadn’t been dreaming. Somebody really was outside her room. Scanning her surroundings wildly for a weapon, she focused on the table lamp next to her bed. It had a heavy metal base. Maybe it would do in a pinch. She unplugged it and crept up beside the door.

  “Hannah, let me in!” the voice outside insisted.

  It didn’t sound like Joshua, so she relaxed. “Wait,” she commanded. Setting the lamp down on the floor, she went to fetch the key she’d stolen from the matron.

  After she unlocked the door, she took the precaution of raising the lamp like a baseball bat in the event she needed to quell another adversary.