“Oh my God,” Claire exclaimed, faking the excitement, as if it was really meant for Robert Schaeffer and not for Rob, Zabe, the Prime variant. “It’s me, Claire, Jones. We went to school together.”
He looked at her, squinting, and then recognized her. “Oh yeah! The snake girl… archaeology nerd.”
Claire clambered into the cab. “Where are you headed? I really need a lift.” She was surprised at her own emotions. When she saw him, it wasn’t just Bithia’s heart that skipped a beat… it was her own.
He nodded and they pulled out as he shifted into second and turned onto highway. “Man, do I ever remember you,” Robert laughed. “You know, I had the biggest crush on you back in school, but then I got into some trouble and had to leave.” The statement hung in the air as Claire applied it as an accurate assessment of her own life.
“You must be in some kind of trouble?” He didn’t wait for a response before shifting the truck into the highest gear. He’d only ever helped her, ever since she’d known him.
“You might say that.” She looked over her shoulder and into the side view mirror. The filling station had shrunk behind them.
Her nerves balled up in her gut and she suddenly felt tired and heavy as the adrenaline surge began to wear off. She knew she needed to make some kind of small talk with her host: invent a story, or better yet get him talking so that she wouldn’t need to.
Claire turned to him. “It’s been so long… years. What have been you up to all this time?”
“Oh, you know,” he said, raising his voice above the engine noise. He patted the top of the dash. “I’ve just been trucking, making money. But that seemed kind of hollow and pointless after a few years.”
Claire nodded, faking an interest. She fought the impulse to look away from him; his face painfully reminded her of what she had so recently lost.
“All of that changed though. Just recently I found some purpose in my life. You might say that I found religion. Do you have anything you believe in, Claire?” He winked at her.
Claire stared in horror, just now noticing the seven pointed star pinned to his trucker cap. She glanced out the window, but they were moving too fast for her to jump from the truck—that move would only cripple or kill her—she was fine with the later, but the former would spell certain doom!
Robert picked up his CB mic and dialed in a new channel. “This is Robert Schaeffer, US DOT number one eighteen two thirty-five. Lock onto my GPS. I have captured Claire Jones.”
Chapter 21
The air smelled musty in Claire’s cell; it felt almost like it had a gritty texture. Claire assumed that her jailers secreted her somewhere below ground.
She sighed. Several days had passed since they had captured her and locked her away. Luckily we are not alone? Her mind occupied itself. The only visitors had been high ranking members of the Heptobscurantum. Daily, they left her food and literature about the cult as if they might somehow convince her to willingly surrender herself to the Great Awakening.
Today, however, none of them came. The day crawled along; Claire ignored the grumble in her belly.
Eventually, a familiar figure walked into the room: Caivev, Vivian. She strode in with her cocky attitude. “I wonder if I should thank you, Claire.”
Claire barely acknowledged her presence. She only shrugged indifferently.
“You’ve done quite a bit to help me, you know,” Vivian toyed with her. “See, I was really quite torn about the importance of the Heptobscurantum, previously; I only saw them as another of Nitthogr’s puppets. I barely even credited them as true followers of Sh’logath. All I really wanted to do was complete my Dunnischkte: complete the vyrm merging, something similar to what you’ve done with the Princess… become both, and more, than the sum of the originals. It was my service to the agod.
“Deep down I never really thought that the Awakening would come to pass in my lifetime; I would need the Dunnischkte in order to live long enough to see it. After all, every one of Nitthogr’s schemes was eventually foiled by the Guardian Corps, and so, my merging was all that mattered. But now you are here and the Guardian Corps are no more; there are none left to stop us from invoking The Devourer.”
She flashed a grin. “The Awakening is only a few days away. I just thought I would give you my thanks before I leave you with The Seven. The Heptobscurantum are the true believers—the faithful ones.”
Vivian turned to leave. On her way out she nodded to the seven men who entered the dank chamber.
They approached wordlessly. “I’m guessing you’re either a really old Boy Band, or this Seven that traitor told me about?”
Several of them grinned. They wore either cultic garb or sharp business attire, depending on the company each had left just prior to their arrival.
“What? You couldn’t come up with something more clever than The Seven? I’ve got a bunch of choice selections for you.” She calmly rattled off a string of highly obscene expletives.
The big guy in the middle smirked ear to ear. He stood an entire head above his peers. He might have been handsome except for his dopey face and a wild mullet. “I like her,” he laughed. “I can see exactly why Nitthogr wanted to keep her.” He leveled his scary eyes at her. Deadpan, he stated, “But that’s not a consideration for us, Princess Claire.”
Claire gave him her attention.
“We need your blood for the sacrifice: the blood of the Architect King, it runs through your veins.”
Is this true, Bithia?
Of course it’s true. You are the Prime now. Claire’s heart sank. Every girl dreams of being a princess someday. Claire became Princess of all reality, but at the cost of her life.
“In mere days we will take you to this world’s central Tesseract gate, a powerful nexus point of reality. There, during the solar eclipse we will perform the rites and ritual. Your blood must be shed to release the almighty Sh’logath, waking him from his slumber in the nethersphere!”
He sounded so excited for it. He’d raised his eyebrows in expectation; the goofy grin on his face beckoned for a response, as if he expected her to yell, “hot dog! Count me in!”
Claire laughed at the incredulity of it all. “That all sounds so… incredibly stupid!”
Her captor’s face fell.
“Well, at least I’ll get to travel a little. You know, see the world before the end,” she scoffed. “Where is this amazing, powerful, exotic location where you plan to cut me up like a chicken and dance around in my blood, or whatever? The Taj Mahal? The pyramids at Giza? Chichen Itza?”
An awkward silence followed. “Nebraska,” he said flatly. “Mullen Nebraska.”
Claire busted a gut. She sniggered so hard that tears flowed, laughing so long and loud that each of them, one by one, departed. The only one to remain was the tall one. She stopped her derisive laughter after the others had left, leaving only the two of them.
He held two stone tablets, each carved with tiny engravings. They were unlike anything she had ever seen in any museum or excavations previous. “These detail the process, the rites. They were taken here long ago from The Desolation.” He fixed her with his dark eyes. “James had hidden them away, even copied them into his Grimmorium. I just wanted you to know how certain your fate is—it’s set in stone.” He smiled and gave a lighthearted laugh as if her life meant nothing.
“I’ll leave you with that hope: the hope of The Great Awakening.” He turned and signaled the cultists who had waited in the shadows. They came forward and began moving the large, wrought iron cage that confined her. Scooting it across the concrete floor, they moved it to the far side of the basement, revealing more of her prison. It looked like some kind of loading dock.
They pushed the enclosure up the ramp and into the back of a semi-trailer. Crammed into the back and caged like an animal, they slowly shut the doors.
Her captor waved slightly. “Goodbye, Princess Claire. I will see you again in Nebraska.”
&n
bsp; The doors slammed with a heavy clank and the rattling of padlocks. She was sealed within the complete darkness.
Claire spent two days in the cargo box as nothing more than freight. The heat in day scorched her and she froze at night; the shaky trailer rattled her body across several states, occasionally knocking her flat or banging her into the sidewalls of her cell. The only thing worse than the jostling was the long bouts of waiting when the truck sat idling at wayside rests or roadside stops.
No doubt she was quite bruised by now. Bruises would be the least of her worries when the truck finally arrived in Nebraska. Her transit eventually slowed to a crawl, crunching gravel beneath the tires.
The parking brake hissed with a dreadful sense of finality. Moments later, the doors creaked open, letting sunlight pour in. Claire held up her hands to block the blinding rays; it had been too long since she’d last seen it.
Cultists poured into the trailer, watched over by the big guy who warned them not to let her escape—there were too many hiding places in the middle of nowhere and all their hopes were pinned on this ritual. Claire caught her captor’s name from the proles: Sisyphus.
She leaned limply against the cage lying flaccid from fatigue and muscle soreness as much as from her abject defiance. Claire tried to take stock of her surroundings as much as possible. It was a tiny town, perhaps large enough for five hundred souls. The truck parked downtown where they had erected some kind of stage. They’d mounted an immense, stone altar upon it.
Crowds filled the streets: too large of a crowd to be the local population. All the onlookers wore some kind of marking to identifying them as Heptobscurantum. Claire squinted at the roofline. No building climbed taller than two stories and the downtown section only sprawled a few blocks in any given direction; rifle wielding cultists took positions atop the buildings.
Dragging their sacrifice to the altar area, Sisyphus and his adherents presented the badly disheveled girl before the other six men of the Illuminati. They nodded and her captors took her away, hauling her towards a nearby salon.
The windows had been shot out of the storefront. Claire glanced down the streets. Cultists had established a two block perimeter from the altar. They’d parked vehicles perpendicularly to create barriers. Among them was the local sheriff’s car; the driver’s side glass appeared shattered and the door was smeared with blood and bullet holes.
They’ve taken over an entire town!
Inside the beauty parlor, cultists happily made small talk, buzzing with excitement. They cleaned the chosen sacrifice, washing her body and hair, dressing her in white; women applied makeup to hide the swelling of bruises on her face and arms and returned her wild hair color to normal.
Even as they tried to engage her in conversation, Claire remained defiantly silent. A group of soldiers stood watch over her, wielding only stun-guns and retractable batons. They would not make the mistake of giving her access to lethal force, nor risk shedding her blood prematurely.
. . .
Sisyphus left Claire to rest under close watch of the guards for several hours. She tossed and turned on the camp cot, wishing she could sleep away the last moments of her life. Bithia’s voice chanted a series of prayers inside Claire’s head.
Breaking the eerie calm that hung over the town, a beating of drums began in the town’s center. A loud voice shouted in the distance. “Bring out the sacrifice!”
Binding her hands with silk rope, her kidnappers walked her slowly to the dais. All around her stood a mass of cloaked Heptobscurantum; each wore a mask.
With every drum beat, her stomach twisted with ulceric pain. Claire’s guts tied in knots, but her head remained surprisingly cool. The Architect King does not abandon his children Bithia insisted. Have faith! This cannot be the end! There are prophecies yet to be fulfilled!
Claire grimaced in response to Bithia’s encouragement. She shared all of her counterparts experiences, memories, thoughts, and yet she was perhaps the realistic one of the two; her eyes darted in every direction, looking for any source of help or escape.
The sky burned over head and the blazing sun hung in the afternoon sky. Against the burning light, the moon had just begun to close the distance. They were only moments away from the eclipse.
Cloaked in ceremonial robes, with faces hidden behind masks of whitewashed skulls, The Seven yanked Claire up the steps and tied her to the altar. The entire town began to wildly chant some unrecognizable mantra as incited by The Seven. Six of its members sat round the altar on their knees, cushioned by a pillow at each point of the seven-pointed star. The Heptobscurantum’s symbol surrounded the central altar with fresh paint. The chanting kept steady cadence with the drum.
Frenzied and speaking some nonsense dialect of the vyrm tongue, Sisyphus stood and approached the sacrifice. He wielded an oversized, ornate athame: a curved middle-eastern hook-blade.
Claire’s eyes widened, and she suddenly felt her fear rise up. Terror trickled down her spine and electrified every cell in her body. Even the Bithia side of her psyche began to panic.
Sisyphus held the blade high and pointed it downward at Claire’s body. The animalistic chanting reached a crescendo as the moon crested; it just began to cross over the perimeter of the sun when the crowd stopped chanting. The silence seemed to scream by comparison. Sisyphus tensed and sneered maniacally, ready to plunge the nasty weapon into his victim.
“Excuse me!” a loud voice cried out, breaking the tension’s climax. The crowd seemed to collectively gasp as a man in a dirty cap and rumpled clothing ascended the steps.
All members of The Seven stopped and turned to face the interruption. Every eye in the town fixed on him. “It’s the trucker,” one of the men in the inner circle murmured.
Claire bent her neck and caught a glimpse of the man who approached the profane altar. Robert Schaeffer strode confidently towards her and The Seven.
One of the Illuminati stood and demanded an explanation. “We thank you for your service, initiate. But you cannot be here. You were not invited to this ritual! And you are certainly not welcome on the dais; return to the audience and be silent!” He pointed to the crowd.
Robert Schaeffer grinned with a lopsided smile. He pointed to his cap and the Heptobscurantum pin. “Oh this? You think I’m one of you!”
The cult leader pulled off his mask to better look at the intruder.
“You know, Greyson, I never liked you.” The trucker pulled off his hat and released the disguise spell that had concealed him. His form immediately melted into the crimson, scaled cloak that was Nitthogr’s trademark. Hissing, he pointed one palm at Greyson and the other behind him.
A blue shield of energy rippled behind the sorcerer, catching the rifle bullets even as the rooftop snipers began firing upon him. A brilliant flash of energy erupted from his other hand, striking Greyson in the torso; it threw him across the altar, catching Sisyphus across chest and knocking him to the ground.
The wicked athame tumbled downward and caught Claire against her face, slicing her from cheekbone to chin. Blood splattered and dripped down upon the altar.
Splitting the sky behind the altar, a six-foot gash opened from the void, glowing furiously and spitting lightning. It mirrored, in amplified form, the wound on Claire’s face. A rumbling groan resonated through the air: a deep, vibrating growl that emanated from within the portal.
“James!” Claire cried out as her former fiancé rushed to her side.
James drew his own sword and cut through her bonds. He scooped her up and put Claire on her feet. Maintaining the azure shield, he leapt upon the altar and sheathed his weapon. With the whizzing sounds of ricochets, bullets deflected safely away. “I’m sure you never guessed that it would be I who came to your rescue?”
James whirled around, blasting several members of The Seven with energy bursts as they tried to apprehend him. Noises rumbled as the agod shifted in the nether, stirring from his slumber; the sounds threatened to deafen t
hose nearest the crack through reality.
The inter-dimensional fissure remained far too small for Sh’logath to enter through. The Heptobscurantum needed to shed much more of Claire’s blood.
“You know what this place is?” James asked Claire, treating her as cordially as if they were still a couple.
“Nebraska,” she spat disdainfully. Claire stayed relatively close to her surprise rescuer, but her disgust was meant more for the sorcerer than for the Midwestern state.
“Yes,” James said. “But more than that… this town sits upon the most powerful dimensional door on the planet. It can be opened from any other gate, if one knows how to access it, and it leads anywhere! It’s one of the most sensitive points of the Tesseract!”
As if on cue, energy doors opened all around them. Vyrm warriors poured through the dimensional rifts, opening fire upon the cultists. Heptobscurantum warriors dove for cover, returning fire. Bodies fell on both sides and carnage flooded the streets.
The vyrm wore black face paint, ready for an overwhelming assault upon their earth enemies. They hissed and screeched, chasing down wounded cultists, sometimes over-pursuing and finding themselves in the crosshairs of the Heptobscurantum.
More cultists arrived from the outskirts, meeting force with force. They took defensive positions and dug in. Blazing fires erupted around the town amid shrieks and shouts of pandemonium. A propane tank exploded near the staging zone. Deep within the void, Sh’logath roared—most definitely awakened.
James grabbed Claire by the wrist. “Come! We have to get you out of here. You are the key… perhaps the most important person in the universe right now.”
She shook his grasp. “I’m not going anywhere with you!”
He snatched her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Neither my plans nor your plans will ever come to fruition if that portal gets any bigger! That means we have to get you away from here!”
Wolves of the Tesseract Collection Page 22