They couldn’t see the whisperers in the dark, but could sense their general direction as they shuffled in the shadows. Zabe scratched his head, wondering exactly how these other intruders had accessed the museum. He and his men had scouted for several hours and seen no sign of any others during their watch.
The whispers grew closer—finally close enough to discern. “There it is, Skrom. Grab it and let’s go.”
An immense figure shambled out of the darkness. Grumbling, a behemoth vyrm walked towards the scepter.
Zabe tensed, poised to spring out and surprise their rivals. The big one paused right in front of the case, less than a pace from where Zabe crouched.
Activating his earpiece Skrom stared at the glass as his communicator connected. “Yeah. It’s team two. Idrakka and I will have it in a second… get ready to grab us.”
Zabe nodded to the soldier behind him and just as Skrom reached for the case Zabe lunged at the huge tarkhūn, spearing him with a tackle like a battering ram. The second guard smashed the case and swiped the scepter. Lights and alarms switched on all across the hall.
Skrom and Idrakka hissed with reptilian ferocity. The smaller of the two ducked below Zabe’s men as they pursued and pulled disruptor pistols. Bursts from the weapon caught one and sent the other two diving for cover.
Zabe wrestled the massive warrior to the ground. The vyrm’s clawed hands and feet snatched his facemask and pulled it free before hitting him with such force that they flung him aside where he crashed through a preserved limestone wall-sized relief.
Skrom snarled and scrambled to his feet. He sidestepped the other warrior from the Prime and taunted as he tried to get an angle to attack the man protecting the scepter. “Was that the son of Zahaben? I expected so much more!”
Zabe snarled and leapt through the busted and toppled displays in his lycan form. The two massive warriors slashed and clawed at each other, each with his own designs upon the nearby scepter.
Idrakka poured more deadly energy into the stone retaining walls his enemies used as cover while he tapped his earpiece. “What? Good! Then get us out of here!”
Two security guards appeared in the large atrium door. They fired at the wily vyrm, cursing with surprise when they saw his green, scaly face—neither Idrakka nor Skrom had bothered with makeup to disguise their forms. Guns cracked loudly with a report distinct from the zap-blat sounds of the vyrm’s disruptors.
The air nearby split open as a triangular shaped wall of energy ripped through existence, pierced by crackling light like unstable laser beams. It grew from a point to a ripple the size of a football before a surge of power opened it wide.
Idrakka turned and snapped five shots off into the archway, killing the officers threatening his flank. “Skrom! Forget the scepter—team one is good, already!”
Skrom chuffed an acknowledgment as he disengaged from the battle.
Idrakka fired a barrage of energy into the men he’d pinned down. His battery pack chirped a low-charge signal and he turned and fled with uncanny speed, leaping through the triangular portal. Skrom jumped through immediately after and the energy gate winked out of existence.
A moment of stark silence reigned in the air as soon as the vyrm escaped—even despite the blaring klaxons. Three of Zabe’s men went over and grabbed their fallen comrade as he took Akroth’s scepter.
“He’s hurt pretty bad, but he’s still alive.”
Zabe nodded as he turned the artifact over in his hands. “Good. We’ve got to get out of here immediately. Local police will be here any minute.”
Funny, he thought as his men grabbed their friend, I thought it would be heavier. He turned it over in his hands again as they hurried towards the exit in the rear. His eyes caught a small marking on the base of the unit.
He paused to get a better look and held it close to his eyes. A tiny word had been stamped into the metal at the bottom, along with a company logo. Replica.
Zabe shouted a string of curses in a language foreign to any of his troops and he frustratedly beat the fake artifact against the floor until it flew apart in pieces, revealing the cheap interior makeup.
Fuming, he headed towards the door. It would take them nearly two days to get back to the Prime based on the lunar alignment. “Let’s get out of here,” he muttered in a rare display of ire.
***
Sam Jones kept glancing at his wristwatch in the dark. “Come on, come on. You should be here by now,” he chided the night air, wondering where Jenner was.
He bit his lip and watched another patrol by the bored security guard who made his rounds on a golf cart which had been outfitted with lights. Holding a bolt-cutter, the illicit archaeologist leaned back onto the grassy berm and blended in with the ground on the outside of the chain link fence.
The guard's floodlight washed over the area and then passed by as he completed another lazy circuit required by his job. Sam sat back up and noticed a car pulling up on a gravel service road nearby. Recognizing the flashy, pink mustache of the Lyft vehicle he chuckled, wondering what his other-worldly friends would think of the transport.
As the confused driver shrugged, Shandra and Jenner exited the vehicle in full warrior garb—Jenner from the Guardian Corps and Shandra in the vestments of the Veritas. Her crimson, hooded cape, the same material Nitthogr had once worn, trailed after her as they walked through the empty field in search of their friend.
The driver sped away even as Sam’s phone buzzed with the alert that Jenner had paid with his credit account as instructed. He popped up and waved his friends over.
They spotted him and moved stealthily through the grassy lot.
“What did you tell him?” Sam laughed.
“Costume party,” Shandra said.
“He didn’t seem to believe it once we got here,” Jenner interjected. “I told him it was a secret costume party.”
Sam shook his head and started clipping a segment of the fence away. The razor wire at the top of the fence reinforced the severity of the Keep Out signs posted every fifty feet. Rows and rows of warehouse-like storage spread out before them.
“It doesn’t look like much,” Sam stated, “but there’s a facility here where the museum holds potentially valuable, fragile, or hazardous items from antiquity. They keep the real items under guard and use replicas at the museum displays.”
“That seems counter-productive,” Shandra said.
Sam shrugged. “Not my call. Many of the wealthy pay for private viewings of authentic pieces. It’s something that started a century ago when people suspected mummies of being cursed or occult powers bottled inside sacred items. Lots of nonsense, really…”
Shandra locked eyes with him. “Is it really?”
Sam blinked and wordlessly worked his jaw for a moment and then shrugged again. “Maybe not, I suppose.” He pointed out the way to the warehouse in question. “We’ve got a few minutes before the next patrol comes by, but we’ve got to go through there and there.” He pointed to a few rows between outbuildings. “They are the only lanes without any video cameras. As soon as we’re inside I need Jenner to cause a distraction.”
Jenner nodded. “I can escape through the front gate, right?”
“You should be able to. Don’t get caught—but if you do, say nothing. I’ll come get you after a few days… they’ll probably go easy as long as you’re not armed.” He nodded to the soldier’s armaments.
Jenner scowled but tossed aside his sword and disruptor pistol.
Sam glanced to Shandra’s side where a short hafted Warhammer hung from her thick belt, mirroring a pistol on the other side.
She scowled but also tossed her weapons into the growing pile.
A few moments later they skulked through the first alleyway. Another golf cart drove by, but the trio remained safely within the shadows between buildings. They sprinted through a fluorescent glow cast by a mounted luminary and then snuck over to the second alley.
T
hey’d just navigated the rest of the way to their target when a hail of gunfire erupted around the corner. Screams from men and women pierced the air. Lights from the golf carts whirled around in the distance as they turned to converge on whatever this threat was.
“Quickly!” Sam snapped the lock off a corrugated access that looked like a security-style garage door. They hopped inside just as the fight spilled into the alleyway where they’d been hiding.
“What are they?” one of the patrollers yelled. “They look like snake men!”
“Aliens!” another yelled just before a disruptor bolt blasted him into a pink mist.
“We should help them fight the vyrm,” Jenner said.
“We don’t have time for that,” Sam yelled, trying to navigate a way through the stacks of boxes blocking their passage deeper into the storage unit. “We’ve got to get Akroth’s scepter before the vyrm do!”
He turned back and spotted a familiar shape through a security window: the glowing triangle invented by Dr. Pietro Walther. It trailed a troupe of vyrm soldiers as they battled the security team.
The glow caught in Jenner’s eyes and captivated him.
“No!” Shandra yelled as Jenner’s wrath overtook him. She ran after him when the youth charged into the fray.
Howling with rage, the young warrior sprinted into the fray—determined to kill whatever was behind this thing that had taken his father from him three years ago. He reached for his weapons and then stumbled behind the cover of a nearby golf cart which lay in flames; he suddenly remembered his weapons were a hundred meters away—outside the fence!
The security team fled before the overwhelming force and Shandra was caught in the middle of it. As the last few men tried to flee, another vyrm with a terrifying beast leashed by chains rounded a corner. It lashed out with its tentacle face and eviscerated the men with reckless ease.
Sam ran for the door. “Shandra!” he yelled, but blaster fire cornered him so that he couldn’t escape the room.
The handler closed in on the cleric of Veritas, but his animal reacted differently—barking and pointing like a drug dog at a customs waypoint.
Pulling a blaster, the vyrm changed the setting and shot Shandra with a stun blast. The azure stun bolt crackled all over the cleric’s body until she fell limp and smoking on the pavement. Laughing, the vyrm turned and fired several blasts at the archaeologist who dove for cover behind a pile of crates.
Another vyrm joined the beast's master. "What's the holdup, Charobv? I already reported to the other team that we've got it—the real hierophanticus is in our possession."
Charobv pointed at Sam’s position and laughed.
Sam poked his head up and saw the lithe vyrm soldier holding the real scepter of Akroth. To his horror, the scepter wielder transformed into Sam’s exact doppelganger.
“Come, Jarkara,” Charobv hissed. “His woman will make the perfect sacrifice for the next brother—the abyssal auraphage has sensed she’s a perfect match for the next darquegate.”
“No!” Sam screamed and charged headlong for the assailants. From the corner of his eye he thought he spotted a familiar face on the other side of the triangular portal. “You!” he accused.
Charobv leveled his blaster and shot Sam Jones square in the chest, dropping him cold.
The vyrm scooped up the unconscious Shandra and then escaped through the portal.
***
Jackie emerged from the underground labyrinth and wiped the soot and dust from her face. It had completely caked her with a fine, ruddy layer.
Gita emerged after her and likewise wiped her eyes clear, too.
With the hot, midday sun beating down on them Wulftone and the Guardian Corps emerged one by one. Harken and his dejected military also spilled out with a speed appropriate for a failed mission.
They crossed the sandy ravines of the short expanse. Despite the blistering heat, Harken and Wulftone jogged to catch up to Jackie.
Two steps back, she turned to give them a stern glare. “Don’t even. I’m so mad at you both right now—just don’t…”
Wulftone and Harken traded confused glances with each other. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong?”
With a set jaw and tight lips she stared at them while the rest of the warriors walked past. For a moment the guys thought she might actually refuse to tell them.
“You want to know? Of course—you’re too dense to figure it out.” She checked her clock and turned to begin walking, mumbling as she went. Her two suitors quickened pace to keep up.
“I’m highly trained, you idiots—you should know: you’re the guys who trained me!”
“I’m not tracking,” Wulftone admitted.
Jackie exploded. “You guys had the thing! You had that Sisyphus guy—probably the head of the Heptobscurantum by now—you had him dead to rights! He played you and preyed on your weakest links. I’m a big girl who can handle whatever comes my way. You’ve got to let me deal with my problems. Instead, you both came running to help me the moment you thought I was in any real trouble and you let the mission suffer because you thought I might be a casualty. You can’t run a military operation like that!”
“I’m sorry,” Harken started. “I just…”
Jackie refused to even look at him. “I said don’t talk to me.” She quickened her pace and checked her watch again. “Now hurry up. Our gate will only be open for less than ten more minutes and there’s no way I want to get stuck here with you two idiots for another week until it opens again.”
***
Caivev stood next to the decaying goatman deep within an ancient tomb lit by battery-powered portable LEDs. The air smelled thick and malodorous with no inflow of fresh oxygen.
A petrified man, bound and gagged, writhed on the altar inside the buried tomb of the pharaohs. Undisturbed mummies lay in gentle repose as they lined the walls of the catacomb-like room.
“Perhaps they were delayed?” Kreephast offered.
A triangle opened moments later and closed after belching a handful of allies through the gate and into the subterranean location. Charobv stepped in with an unconscious woman slung over his shoulder. The abyssal auraphage happily rushed through and hurried to its true master. It gleefully slobbered thick slime all over Akko Soggathoth’s legs. The goatman, wearing his oversized oven mitts, rubbed his pet and wiped away the blood and ichor that coated the creature’s maw.
Caivev whirled to face Jarkara when he entered the chamber disguised as Sam Jones. He held out the scepter and Akko Soggathoth greedily snatched it from his hands.
Jarkara met his lady’s gaze and then quickly reverted to his natural form.
“Where did you learn that face?”
“He was with her,” Jarkara pointed at Shandra. “We took her for the next sacrifice at the creature’s insistence.”
“Excellent,” Caivev’s eyes shone with an intense glimmer of hatred. “That will make killing her so much more rewarding.”
The energy gate opened one more time to let in Skrom and Idrakka. Skrom pulled Caivev aside for a second. “We encountered resistance,” he informed her. “Zabe and his team of fresh Corpsmen. They were after Akroth’s scepter but didn’t know it was a fake. It’s a good bet that the Prime knows what we’re up to. They will resist us at every turn.”
Caivev shrugged. “Let them try.” She turned to where their Darque ally hovered above his squirming captive with a jagged knife.
“Then, what comes next?” Skrom asked.
“Now, we follow the plan,” Akko Soggathoth hissed as he knocked a set of canopic jars off a nearby plinth. He set his opened book upon it—even carrying something with Darquematter gilding seemed to pain the demon, despite the protection of the mittens. “I will release and bind Akko Hormundlyr as I have done before.”
Chapter 9
Sam’s mind awoke before his body did. He felt himself being dragged roughshod across the ground; Sam sensed his heels digging grooves t
hrough the dirt but couldn’t open his eyes. He suddenly shuddered and awoke with a start, flailing until whomever dragged him released his or her hold.
“It’s me!” Jenner yelled with hands held high and defensively.
Sam relaxed his fists which he’d tightly balled, ready for hostility. He wiped the slobber from his chin and massaged his sore muscles where the stun blast had scorched his chest. “How long was I out?”
“About twenty minutes or so.” Jenner’s furrowed brows proved his deep disappointment. “That… thing. The triangle—it’s what took my father.” The young man’s frustration moved him to the verge of tears.
Sam understood completely and nodded with sympathy. “I was taken through that same portal once before—kidnapped like your father. I’m sure that he’s out there somewhere and that you’ll find and rescue him some day,” Sam lied. He’d seen the mechanics of the device—knew how its Heptobscurantum masters bled captives dry in order to power the arcane machine.
Jenner tried to put on an optimistic face and stuffed his rage deep down inside. He would save it all up for later whenever he found the one controlling that evil three-sided portal—if he ever caught them.
The archaeologist retrieved his mobile phone and dialed up a ride before collecting the equipment Shandra left behind. There was no good way to disguise them and so he cradled the futuristic gun and her warhammer in his arms as the same pink-fuzzy-stached Lyft pulled up.
With an awkward shrug their driver stowed the weapons in his trunk. “Where to? Home or another costume party?” He eyed the burn-mark that had scorched a hole all the way through Sam’s shirt.
Sam handed him his credit card. “We have a longer trip planned. One way; I’ll pay extra and you can charge us for both directions if it helps.”
The driver nodded enthusiastically and took the credit card. “I’m all for it—rent’s due tomorrow.”
Without another word, the vehicle sped off into the night.
***
Zabe walked straight from the portal location to the meeting room where his peers had gathered to debrief following the bungled mission to collect the hierophanticus. Sam Jones and Jenner kept pace with him and they’d met up at the portal location. Both headed for the nearest available nexus point after the vyrm invasion.
Wolves of the Tesseract Collection Page 36