by Alan Baxter
“Are you all right?” Rose asked. She pushed her sister back, looked her up and down, searching for injury.
Lily stopped her, held her chin to meet her sister’s eye. “I think I’m okay. Why... How are you here?” She pointed to Crowley. “Who’s he?”
Rose let out a heavy breath. “It’s a long story but the short of it is we realized you’d gotten into trouble with the Anubis Cult.”
Lily flinched at the mention of that name, looked away, down at the ground. She was visibly shaken, silent. As Rose went to speak again, Lily said, “It’s true.”
“How could you let yourself fall in with a cult like that?” Rose asked. “You’re smarter than that, Lily.”
Her sister scowled, then looked away again. “It’s not that simple.”
“Was it because of grandfather?”
Lily hesitated, then finally lifted her face to meet her sister’s concerned gaze. “Yes. I wanted to bridge the gap between life and death.”
Rose let out a disapproving sigh, but Lily forestalled her.
“I know it seems crazy, but that’s not what matters now. The Anubis Cult is in league with even more dangerous people.” She pressed her lips together, clearly reluctant to say more.
Crowley thought about the trail that had led them this far, the bizarre murals and encounters at the Denver airport. “The Illuminati?” He felt stupid even suggesting such a thing, but Lily nodded.
“You won’t believe what they have planned. We’ve got to stop them!”
“How?” Crowley asked.
Lily pointed to the swirling black cloud filling the doorway not two meters away. “We have to find out what’s in there.”
Chapter 50
Lost Egyptian City, Grand Canyon
Crowley stared for a few seconds at the swirling blackness. His eyes drifted to the strange hieroglyphs carved around the doorway, then back to the darkness ahead. He shook his head and pointed at the cultist lying prone on the floor, whose face was a solid black mask. Crowley crouched, felt for the man’s pulse and found none. He shook his head again at Lily and Rose’s expectant faces. “Whatever that stuff is, it’s deadly. How are we going to get in there?”
To his surprise, Rose smiled. “I’ve got it covered, Action Man.” She pulled a gas mask out of her backpack.
Crowley arched his eyebrows. “What the hell?”
“Well, at least I remembered what Shepherd told us. I suspected some kind of hostile atmosphere. I grabbed it at the army surplus store while you were buying the new climbing gear. Figured it wouldn’t hurt. Turns out I’m a genius.”
Lily rolled her eyes and Crowley couldn’t help but laugh. “Maybe you are.” He was genuinely glad she had bought it, but chilled at the same time. The sight of the mask called to memory the eerie murals at the Denver airport. The Illuminati connection Lily had revealed made it all too real. He took a deep breath and reached for the mask, but Rose jerked it back.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Crowley paused, his hand still halfway out for the mask. “Well, we don’t know what’s in there. Or if this mask will even help. I mean, look at that guy.” He gestured down at the dead cultist. “Let me be the one to go in. Please?”
“Your friend is right,” Lily said, one hand on Rose’s forearm. “Please, let him go. We only just found each other again.” She smiled. “Well, you found me.”
Rose looked from Lily to Crowley to the black doorway, then her shoulders fell. “Okay.” She handed over the mask. “You’ll want these, too.” She handed him thick, rubber gloves. “Hopefully avoid the withered hands?”
Crowley slipped on the gloves and then donned the mask, the task familiar from tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, in training and in combat. He took a couple of deep, calming breaths, and turned to the doorway. He looked at the alien-looking curtain of black, his breath loud inside the mask, and thought that perhaps this was the stupidest thing he’d ever done. And he’d done a lot of stupid stuff in his life.
Before he could change his mind, he stepped through. It was like stepping into a warm swimming pool, only the water was as thick as milk. Or blood. The stygian cloud enveloped him. He had half-expected it to be painful, like a WWI soldier exposed to chemical warfare, but instead it was merely... creepy, like being caressed by a million tiny tentacles.
He stood just inside the door for several seconds, listening to the rasp of his breath, checking his senses, wondering if the blackness was affecting him. But he felt largely normal, uncompromised. His eyes began to adjust to the darkness and he saw swirls and shifts in the cloud, like it was thicker in some places, thinner in others. But overall it was dense and claustrophobic. The sooner he got out of it, the better.
The cultist he had rolled inside lay on his back, his skin jet like his friend outside. He was equally dead. Crowley stepped over him and made a slow circuit of the room, following the wall to his left, his fingertips sliding over the smooth, carved surface. The room was circular and obviously small, maybe only seven or eight meters in diameter. He noticed a band of unfamiliar hieroglyphs running around the wall at waist height, beautifully carved in intricate detail. If he leaned close enough they were quite visible despite the cloud. It was as if the surface of it was thicker, more opaque, than its internal structure. Another mystery of its composition he couldn’t fathom.
When he reached the door again, he took out his phone and made another circuit, moving slowly and carefully in order to record the hieroglyphs on video. When he had finished, he put his phone away and turned to move toward the center of the room. Surely there as more here than a single line of hieroglyphics. After ten short, careful paces and he found himself standing in front of a golden pyramid two meters high. The dark cloud dulled its gleam, but still it was remarkable in its perfection. How much gold was in the thing, he wondered. Or was it merely a thin veneer of gold laid over a more common substance? Native rock perhaps. He wouldn’t be able to find out unless he cut into the gold, and he wasn’t about to damage something so remarkable. So flawless. That task would be best left to more capable and qualified archeologists.
But how could a golden pyramid create this alien black cloud? Did it emanate from here? His eyes drifted upward and he had his answer. The capstone of the golden structure was made of something solid and dark. An obsidian-like substance, impossibly black, and perhaps a quarter of a meter in height. It made a perfect miniature pyramid itself, equilateral on all sides and base, atop the golden host. As he watched, a single drop of water fell from the darkness above and struck the tip of the capstone. Where it hit, a thick, black tentacle of smoke twisted out and merged with the surrounding swirls, vanishing into the cloud. He stared, counting seconds in his head. When he got to twelve, another drop fell, another writhing black swirl joined the cloud. He counted, twelve again and another drop, another writhing tentacle of darkness.
“This is...” Crowley whispered, his voice unnatural in the mask. He didn’t know what is was. “Alien?” he said, needing to hear the word aloud yet still unable to process it.
But what it was didn’t matter at this juncture. What mattered now was what to do about it. The fact that it could so easily produce a poisonous cloud from single drops of water, spaced many seconds apart, made it not only inconceivable, but genuinely dangerous. Lily was correct. If the Anubis Cult, and the Illuminati, though it still felt odd to think of that group as real, knew the capstone was here, they wouldn’t stop until they possessed it. He could not allow that to happen.
He shrugged off his backpack and sat it open on the floor by his feet. He dug around in his pack until he found a plastic bag. He reached up high, stretching to drape the plastic over the capstone. Biting his lip, bracing against the potential weight, he lifted the capstone off the pyramid, careful to touch only plastic. He took a sudden step back, surprised as it came away easily and had almost no weight. He set it down, found another plastic bag and wrapped it carefully. He tucked the two coverings around it as thoroughly
as he could, then managed to get the small pyramid inside his backpack. It sat neatly on its base in the bottom and he shouldered the pack and was glad to leave the small chamber.
The air in the dim passage outside felt thin and cold, but an enormous relief after the cloying denseness of the cloud inside. He could only imagine that it might slowly dissipate now he had removed the capstone. He turned and put a gloved hand to the surface of it, pressing out from the carved stones of the doorway, but not emerging into the passage.
He realized Rose and Lily were both talking, exasperated as he ignored them. He turned, pulled the mask off. He grinned. “We’ve got it.”
Chapter 51
Lost Egyptian City, Grand Canyon
“What have we got?” Lily asked, her eyes alive with curiosity.
Crowley set his pack down and carefully removed the small pyramid to show them. “Don’t touch it,” he warned.
Lily crouched, looked closely. “So that’s the Anubis Key,” she said in a soft voice.
Crowley described what he had seen inside the room, the way the thing reacted so strangely to the dripping water. Rose frowned throughout, concerned and, he thought, only half believing him. Lily’s face was a picture of fascination, a small smile tugging at one side of her mouth.
“That’s astounding,” she said when he’d finished his recounting.
“We thought the Anubis Key was about summoning the dead,” Rose said. “Or maybe some kind of spell to communicate with them. But something like this, out in the world, exposed to water? It seems it’s actually for creating legions of dead! Is that why the Anubis Cult want it?”
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen,” Crowley said, still perturbed by the existence of the strange thing.
“So what now?” Rose asked.
Crowley wrapped the plastic bags carefully around the small black pyramid again. “It should probably be destroyed, but maybe we need to understand it first.”
Lily looked uncomfortably at the backpack as Crowley secured it again, but remained silent.
Rose pursed her lips in thought, then said, “No good to drop it down a crevasse or anything like that. There’s every chance the Anubis Cult might find it again.” Her face brightened. “We could rent a boat and drop it into the ocean.”
Crowley shook his head. “No way! After what I saw a single drop of water do to this thing, no telling what an ocean of water might do.”
“I was thinking we’d wrap it thoroughly first.”
“Too big a risk. Maybe, years from now, the wrapping gets compromised somehow and then… Who knows?”
“Seed it into a rain cloud,” Lily said quietly, then looked abashed. “Sorry, I’m still thinking of what the Anubis Cult, the Illuminati, might want with it. It’s... It’s a terrible thing.”
“The only thing we know for sure,” Crowley said, “is the Anubis Cult should absolutely not get their hands on it and, in the meantime, we absolutely should not get it wet. For now, let’s just get it out of here.”
Rose took off her pack, emptied out unessential things, then shoved Crowley’s pack deep inside her own.
Crowley picked up a few items and put them back in on top. He glanced at Rose’s frown. “Partly to wedge it in securely, to brace it against movement. But also to conceal it from a casual inspection. Imagine some busybody park ranger seeing us emerge from the cave and demand to know what we found in there.” He shrugged, pushed the thought away. No need to create worries that would probably never come to pass.
“Can’t be too careful,” Rose said. Crowley reached for the newly combined pack, but Rose shook her head, slipped it onto her back. “I got it. Hardly weighs anything anyway.”
“Okay,” Crowley said. “Then let’s get out of here.”
They made their way quickly back along the curving passage, the way clear with both their flashlights and Lily’s headlamp. They emerged into the huge, dimly lit cavern with the balance bridge and Lily laughed.
“I never thought of using rope like that. It took those two goons all kinds of effort to support each end and balance their way across.”
“Brawn not brains,” Crowley said.
“And yet you whupped that one guy.” Lily looked him up and down with narrowed eyes. “Just what are you anyway?”
“I’m a friend, that’s all.”
Lily looked from Crowley to Rose and back, a smile playing at her lips. “A friend. Okay. If you say so.”
“I’ll hold this end,” Crowley said, before the moment could get any more uncomfortable. “You two go first.”
Rose quickly hurried over. The bridge shuddered and swayed, made more groans and creaks than it had before. Crowley felt the vibrations through the railing he held. Lily crossed next, carefully but quickly.
“Put some pressure on that end,” Crowley said.
The women each leaned on one railing and Crowley started across. His end dipped sharply and something cracked. A section of wood under his left foot dropped, spiraled away into the darkness below. He braced, hands to the railings either side, and watched his feet as he took one careful step after another. He had to outweigh both women by at least twenty kilos, but surely they were strong enough. Would it be too much? The ancient bridge was not holding up well under all the recent traffic. Crowley chose his steps carefully, tempted to run, but he feared one of his feet might punch right through a weak spot if he did. More creaks and groans sounded, more frightening cracks, quickly increasing in frequency. Then another sound came to him, one that turned his stomach to water. A rapid sawing and snap. Rose cried out in surprise, and the bridge vibrated violently. Crowley staggered and almost went to his knees as he looked up in horror.
“Both of you freeze!” Lily shouted. In one hand she held a knife that she had used to cut the rope Crowley had previously secured. In the other hand was a gun, pointed at Rose. Rose leaned heavily into the railing on her side, one foot on the bridge, the only thing preventing it from tipping Crowley into the abyss.
“What the hell, Lily?” Rose yelled.
The gun. Crowley ground his teeth, remembered disarming the cultist, the weapon skittering away across the stone floor. While he hoped Lily didn’t spot him disposing of the cultist, which she surely had though she might have chosen not to mention it, she had secretly retrieved the pistol. What an idiot he was. He should have noticed that. And then he might have foreseen this. He took a step forward and Lily stared him down.
“Stay where you are or I kill her.”
He stopped stock-still, hands up, mentally calculating how long it would take to cross the bridge. But he knew it would only take a fraction of a second for Lily to pull the trigger. She might miss; most people firing handguns under stressful situations did, but he couldn’t take the chance. Clearly the woman had secrets.
“Walk out onto the bridge,” Lily ordered Rose. “Balance it out for your friend there.”
“Why are you doing this?” Rose said, but she complied.
Crowley felt his end rise and backed up a couple of steps. The bridge shuddered, groaned deeply.
“Give me the backpack,” Lily said, her gun still aimed at Rose’s back.
“Why are you doing this?” Rose asked again, turning to face her sister. “Grandfather...”
Lily laughed harshly. Yes, Grandfather! I’m continuing his work.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lily sighed melodramatically, shook her head. “You really are as stupid as he always said you were. Grandfather was an Illuminatus.”
“What? No!”
Crowley heard the disbelief in Rose’s voice, but he had already reached that conclusion the moment Lily turned a gun on her sister. Rose simply didn’t want to believe it, though she was smart enough to know it couldn’t be any other way.
“He worked all his life to bring about the New World Order,” Lily said. “He was distraught he wouldn’t live long enough to see it come to fruition. But his dying wish was that I would see it to completio
n. And I will! Now, give me the bag or you both die.”
Rose hesitated, looked back to Crowley, then her sister.
Lily smiled, trained the gun on Crowley. “How about I shoot your boyfriend first and let you watch him bleed to death? Don’t think I can’t do it. I’m quite good.”
Trembling, face a mask of fury, Rose complied. She removed the pack slowly as the bridge swayed alarmingly, and tossed it to Lily who dropped the knife and caught the bag easily.
Lily chuckled. “I could tell you had a thing for him. Does this mean you’re finally over Liam?”
“You bitch!” Rose shouted, and Lily fired a shot at her feet. Rose danced back, the bridge trembled and creaked loudly.
Crowley kept one eye on Lily as he frantically looked for a way out. Some angle to use against her. But she had them well trapped on the rickety old wood. He ground his teeth in frustration. “Let her go,” he said, loud enough for Rose to hear but maybe not Lily. “We’ll run her to ground again. We did once, already.”
“I’d love to stay here and catch up,” Lily said, shouldering the pack. “But I’ve got a lot of important work to do.”
She reached into a pouch at her waistband and dug something out. “But here’s a little parting gift. As the American’s say, ‘Don’t say I never gave you anything.’”
She tossed the small, rounded thing out onto the bridge. It bounced twice and Crowley’s mouth fell open in horror. “Grenade!” he yelled.
Rose turned and ran toward him, then everything vanished in noise and fire and smoke.
Chapter 52
Lost Egyptian City, Grand Canyon
Crowley’s ears rang from the noise and concussion, rock dust fouled the air, but he was alive and on something solid. He coughed, rolled over, every part of his body hurting like he’d been hit by a truck. Or launched through the air by a grenade blast. He rolled into a sitting position, rubbed dust from his eyes. The bridge was gone, an open abyss between him and the huge Anubis on the other side, reaching mockingly across the wide gap. But he and Anubis were alone in the huge cavern.