“Almost done,” I say, and then I crouch by Future Langdon. He stops reaching for the blade and looks up at me, eyes imploring. “If you pull that out, you’ll die quickly. And as much of an asshole as you are, I’ll be rooting for you.”
I place the AR-15 on the floor and shove it a few feet away.
He’s confused until I turn my attention to Tsul’Kalu. Sheets of charred skin flake away, the flesh underneath slowly moving. A ragged growl builds inside his chest. It’s taken a while, but the monster is regenerating. He wasn’t welcome at the moment of creation, but he wasn’t killed, either.
“No,” the elder Langdon says. “You can’t.”
“How many times did you hear those words in the seven years leading up to this moment?” I ask, standing up.
The question hits home and he starts to cry, but all that regret burns away the moment I step back into the hall and start to close the door.
“I’ll kill you!” he screams. “I’ll destroy your family tree! I’ll make you watch. Don’t you da—”
His voice is cut short when the door closes and the lock engages, sealing both monsters inside together.
56
“Are we home?” Cassie asks, once we’re back outside the building. “Did we make it?”
It’s impossible to tell. The stars look right. The universe is done forming around us. The Synergy facility around us is still from the future, but Future Langdon said he planned for us to return to our time, no doubt to avoid whatever justice awaited him in the future. How many people did he kill to achieve his goal? How many laws did he break, both human and natural?
No man should have that kind of power. I determine to dismantle Synergy piece by piece, or just blow it all up. This tech needs to die with its creator. I glance up at the penthouse dome. The orange glow from within, framed by the night sky, looks hellish. Complete with a devil and a demon.
I’m not sure who’s worse. While the Nephilim was a destructive power of pure rage and hate, Langdon coldly manipulated people toward his own selfish desires, granting himself power over death, making himself—for a moment—godlike. On the surface, Tsul’Kalu seems to be the worse of the two, but he’s really nothing more than his fabled parentage: a demon. While Future Langdon…his power was tempting. I understood him. I empathized with him. And another, slightly weaker me, might have joined him. If that’s not the Devil, I don’t know what is.
“Smells like home,” Levi says, taking a deep breath. He’s right about that. The Appalachians of the past all had distinct, earthy odors, while the air here has a background scent of coal mixed in with the wilderness.
“Stay sharp,” Flores warns, drawing his sidearm.
I appreciate that he’s still frosty and on mission, despite everything we’ve seen and survived, but I’m not sure there’s anyone—human—left alive to fear. Drones in various states of ruin litter the facility floor. If any are still functional, they’ve been abandoned by their operators, who either fled their stations when Tsul’Kalu entered the building, or were killed by the monster.
A chime makes me flinch. My cellphone. I’d all but forgotten about it. It’s been useless since all this began, sitting silently in my pocket, looking for a network that didn’t yet exist.
I draw the phone from my pocket. The battery is almost dead, and I have a text message from UNKNOWN that reads: HELLO?
“We’re back,” I say, “and already getting drunk dialed.” I switch over to the phone app and dial 911. My thumb hovers over the call button, but I don’t push it.
“What’s wrong?” Levi asks. “Get us a ride out of here.”
“I believe that would be a wise course of action,” the younger Langdon says. He’s laid out on his back while Jacqueline applies pressure to his wounds.
“Please,” she says. “Hurry!”
They’re right, of course. We need help. But when that help arrives… I glance at the pre-human, who is silently stalking the area around us, inspecting everything, agitated, but interested. Whatever it is, it has the heart of an explorer, its fascination pushing the creature past its fear.
The phone chimes in my hand. A new text. WHO ARE YOU?
My face scrunches up, and I look around. I can’t help but feel we’re being watched.
A new chime, a new message. WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?
Definitely being watched.
I ignore the messages and hit the call button. Phone to my ear, I wait for the familiar rings…but I hear nothing. The call doesn’t connect. I confirm the presence of two network bars and try again.
A faint, high-pitched sound makes me wince. I draw the phone from my ear, looking at the screen, but then I realize the shrill cry didn’t come from the device. It came from a set of human lungs, muffled by steel and glass.
Tsul’Kalu is awake.
The glass dome, glowing orange, is suddenly speckled by a spray of dark, ruby liquid. I can’t imagine what the giant did to Future Langdon, but it was quick and no doubt permanent. The Devil is dead, killed by the demon he unleashed on the Earth.
Our group takes a collective step back when giant fists pound on the glass. Tsul’Kalu unleashes his fury on the wall, punching and clawing until his purple blood mixes with the elder Langdon’s. The dome resists the attack, and for a moment, I relax. Then the giant steps forward, the orange glow like fire around him. With a new kind of fury in his eyes, he stares down at us and then slowly steps away.
Well, I don’t like that. Tsul’Kalu just transformed from a monster driven by instinct into a killer with cold, calculating eyes.
“Can we leave?” Owen asks, clutching my hand.
“Like now?” Levi asks. “We can get a head start if we—”
“Hiking down Adel in the dark with a wounded man isn’t going to go quickly,” Flores points out.
“We’ll take the tunnels,” Levi says. “There have got to be more carts underground. We can take them down to Black Creek faster than any ambulance can make the round trip.”
“That might be our only option,” Cassie says. She’s trying to make a call on her phone, but not having any more luck than I did. “Calls aren’t getting through.”
“What about those texts?” Flores asks.
I look down at the phone, considering how I might ask the stranger for help. Whoever it is already knows we’re here. But do they know we’re—
The phone chimes. HELP EN ROUTE. DO NOT SHOOT.
“What is it?” Owen asks, when I flinch at the message.
“Whoever this is,” I say, holding up the phone, “they can see and hear us.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Levi says.
“They say help is incoming.”
Levi’s expression softens. “But that’s not bad.”
“They’re watching from above,” Flores says, looking up at the sky. “Listening through the phones. Blocking our calls. Sounds like the government to me. Which could go either way for us, but…” He looks to the pre-human, still distracted by the new world in which it has found itself. “… for it, that’s not going to go well.”
“We need to hide him,” Owen says.
If we want the pre-human to survive, he’s right. But I’m not sure if that’s the right call. The creature is out of its time, and while it sided with us under extreme circumstances, we have no idea what it’s capable of, or what it might do if set free on this world. Like Tsul’Kalu, the pre-human could wreak havoc. But would it?
Only if provoked, I think. It seems reasonable enough, but it did kill those men at the power station…I think. The big question is, how will it handle being the last survivor of its kind, separated from its time by tens of millions of years? That would be enough to break most people. Will this creature be any different, intelligent or not?
“He did right by us,” Owen says, no doubt sensing my doubts. “We owe it to him to do the same. It’s what Dad would do.”
I give him a nod. “We’ll do what we can…but there’s a good chance they already kno
w he’s here.”
The sound of a door creaking open draws my attention back to the building from which we escaped. It could be captives who managed to survive, drone operators, or security forces who don’t know the fight is over. I raise my weapon toward the steel door as it swings open to reveal darkness.
The lights inside have been destroyed since our exit.
A low, rumbling laugh rolls out of the doorway.
Shit.
“How’d he get out?” Levi asks.
The answer sails out of the door and topples over the concrete. The elder Langdon’s torso and head tumble to a stop behind the still living, younger man and his wife. They both shout in fear and attempt to move, but he’s in too much pain.
Tsul’Kalu is smarter than I thought, just like the pre-human, who is…where the hell is he? I do a quick scan and don’t see the thing anywhere. Tsul’Kalu’s laugh provided all the distraction it needed to slip away…which is probably the smartest thing it has done.
“I want you to run.” I tell Owen. And then I turn to Cassie. “And you to go with him.”
“Owen…” she says.
“Get to the tunnels,” I tell her. “Please.” I squeeze Owen’s hand, but then let go. “You keep her safe, too.”
When Tsul’Kalu steps into the well-lit courtyard, I shout at them. “Go!”
She takes Owen’s hand and pulls him away. He fights her for a few steps, but then they’re both running through the open gate and into the dark woods.
“I totally would have taken him, too” Levi says, and then grins in the face of death, pistol in hand. “Just saying, is all.”
“How you want to play this?” Flores asks, stepping between Jacqueline, the wounded Langdon, and the beast.
“Aim for the head,” I say. “When you’re out of ammo…” I glance down at my boss and his wife, knowing that she won’t abandon him, and my next words will seal their fate. “…run. If you can.”
Tsul’Kalu steps into the light, naked save for the saber-toothed cat helmet and cloak. While still towering over us, his body has lost some of its mass. His skin appears thin. Rice paper over muscle. But the gleam in his eye is no less ferocious, and Future Langdon’s torn apart body is a testament to his remaining strength.
“Alatisdi tsisdu,” he says with a grin.
I raise my handgun. “Not this time.”
My first shot grazes the side of his forehead, just below the cat helmet. The next several shots strike his forearms as he raises them up in front of his skull and charges. We unload our weapons into him as a group. I’m hoping one of the hard-hitting rounds will slip through the meat of his arms and strike his forehead, the only part of him he’s bothering to protect.
Damnit.
Why didn’t I put a bullet in this thing’s forehead when I had the chance? I want to blame it on shock and distraction. I had just witnessed the universe unmade and remade, not to mention being befriended by an ancient intelligent dinosaur-thing, but I don’t think that’s it. I wanted it to live long enough for Future Langdon to reap what he’d sown. A bullet was too easy for him, but not nearly enough for Tsul’Kalu.
I was foolish to believe Future Langdon’s dome could contain the beast. Even without his body available to unlock the door, how could I know whether or not the giant would escape?
I couldn’t. I didn’t. And now people might pay the price with their lives.
I put all my anger at Tsul’Kalu, and at Future Langdon, and at myself into each squeeze of the trigger, hoping it will somehow impart each round with more power. But the bullets fail to do the only thing for which they were created.
My gun runs dry first with a click. The giant is just thirty feet out and closing. When Levi and Flores run dry, I shout, “Go! Now!”
The pair bolts in opposite directions. If either had looked back and seen me stationary, they might have hesitated out of loyalty, but there’s nothing they could do to change what’s about to happen.
I drop the gun’s magazine and slap in my only spare, giving me thirteen more tries at the monster’s head. I hold my fire, waiting for him to peek. As powerful as he might be, he doesn’t have X-ray vision.
When I see his eye, I pull the trigger.
A howl of pain that morphs into delight follows. I struck his eye, blinding him on one side, at least for the moment. His sudden lack of depth perception might give me an advantage, I hope, or throw him off course.
It does neither.
He runs straight forward, on a collision course with me, and with Jacqueline. I hold my ground, squeezing off rounds, trying and failing, over and over, to strike his head.
He’s just a few steps away when the gun runs dry again. “Sorry,” I say to Jacqueline, but my apology is cut short by the loud crack of a rifle.
The bullet strikes Tsul’Kalu in the side of his head, exiting the far side in a spray of gore. The giant spills sideways, topples to the ground and rolls to a stop at my feet. The saber-toothed skullcap has been knocked free and lies several feet away.
I jump back, and against the better judgement of paramedics around the world, I take the younger Langdon by the arms and drag him twenty feet away. He grunts in pain, but doesn’t complain.
“Keep the pressure on,” I tell Jacqueline, and then I step closer to the giant, inspecting the fresh wound. The purple hole is already shrinking as the skin around it stretches out and grows thinner.
Not dead.
I turn toward the rifle’s report and find the weapon protruding from the dark doorway of the now-ruined warehouse through which we entered the facility. I can only see the front end of the weapon, but I recognize it immediately.
A Winchester 1895.
My father’s Winchester.
“Inola?” I say, but then I take in a sharp breath when my father steps out of the shadows, looking down the weapon’s barrel.
“Step back, son,” he says. “Looks like it ain’t done yet.”
Inola follows him out of the dark, armed only with a hatchet.
I’m stunned into inaction. My father, like Tsul’Kalu, lives. But while the giant has always been able to regenerate its body, my father’s resurrection from the dead is miraculous. “Dad…” I say, turning toward him, numb to the danger behind me.
“Get down!” he shouts, snapping me out of my emotional cascade.
I duck and turn around to see Tsul’Kalu sit up. My father pulls the trigger again, this time striking and all but destroying his lower jaw. The laugh that comes from the giant this time is gargled through purple blood. But the hunter continues to rise.
“Aim for its forehead!” I shout, backing away until my foot bumps into Jacqueline.
My father takes aim, but holds his fire as several loud thumps sound out above him.
A white blur launches from the warehouse roof.
The pre-human.
It didn’t leave. It was just waiting for the right moment to strike. I’m not sure what it would have done if the right moment hadn’t arrived. It might have let me and the rest of us die and been on its merry way. But it didn’t, and I suppose that says something about its character.
The large, white creature lands in front of the Nephilim, and with what appears to be a fighting technique rather than what you’d expect from a dinosaur, it spins around, striking with its tail. It sweeps the giant off his feet, but Tsul’Kalu rolls backward, regaining his footing. He tries to shout something with his reforming jaw, but only manages to spray blood across the pavement.
The pre-human gives him no time to recover. It moves in, ducking below a punch thrown by the giant, wraps its tail around Tsul’Kalu’s waist and hurls him against the main building’s wall, which is dented by the bone crushing impact.
Tsul’Kalu slouches, but doesn’t fall. The beating has taken the wind and humor out of his sails, but he’s not yet defeated, if he can be. His body starts to stitch back together as the pre-human closes in, but my father slows the healing process by pumping and firing round after round
into the giant’s broad torso. Inola adds to the assault by throwing her hatchet with such skill that Tsul’Kalu has to turn his head at the last moment to avoid taking the blade in his forehead. Instead, it punches into the side of his head, where the bullet wound has just healed. It’s enough to keep the hunter-god on the defensive while the pre-human launches its attack.
Driven into a mindless fury, Tsul’Kalu charges his adversary. He’s already faced a dinosaur and lived, but this specimen has the intellect of a man, if not more, and proves it by ducking Tsul’Kalu’s hooked fingers and driving a fist into his gut, and I mean into it. The giant’s thin skin and recovering body provide little resistance.
While the giant is doubled over, the pre-human grasps the giant with its tail, lifting him off the ground. Then it twists its long neck around while lifting Tsul’Kalu closer.
The giant’s eyes go wide and it attempts to scream—truly scream—for the first time. It knows what is about to happen. The pre-human’s mouth opens to reveal twin rows of deadly-sharp serrated teeth. Its lipless mouth hid the scale of its bite radius, which is easily big enough to envelope the giant’s head…or that of a human being.
The pre-human thrashes while yanking with its tail. It takes some effort, but when the head finally comes free of Tsul’Kalu’s body, the giant goes limp. Both pieces are dropped to the concrete, discarded with the same indifference to which the giant subjected his victims.
The pre-human stumbles away, and for a moment I think it’s injured. Then I realize, as it spits purple blood from its mouth, that it’s just disgusted.
“That, there, is some nasty shit,” my father says, stepping up beside me. He gives me a sidelong grin and asks, “You okay?”
Knowing the danger might not yet be over, I contain the raw emotions swirling in my gut and manage to say, “Am now.”
“Likewise,” he says. “Never better, actually.”
I hold my hand out for the rifle, and he gives it to me. I approach Tsul’Kalu’s head and roll it over with my foot. The face is a mess, but its one good eye looks up at me, still moving, still conscious, still alive. For a moment, I think it’s smiling, but then its forehead turns up in fear when I point the rifle at it.
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