Cronin's Key III (27 page)

Alec shook his head again.
“So he goes to Paris and Moscow where there are portal pits
under churches, then comes back and builds a circular building with
stone pillars with the help of Benjamin Franklin?”

“
Benjamin Franklin was a Grand Master in the Freemason’s.
Maybe he knew something,” Kennard said.

“
Remind me to pay Dan Brown a visit when all this is over,”
Alec mumbled. “Is there anything specific or peculiar about the
location of the penitentiary?”

“
It was once land owned by the Lenape people, relatively
peaceful Native American people who had a kinship with the wolf,”
Asya said, reading notes off the notepad. “They also told stories
to their children of the
Mishipeshu
. A
creature that was a mix of wolf and dragon that would eat them if
they weren’t well behaved.”

“
A
lycan.” Alec stared
at Jodis. “The prison was built on the sacred grounds of an Indian
tribe that feared the
lycan
?”

No one
spoke, just looked around at each other as realization sank
in.

“
Well,” Eiji said, breaking the silence. He pulled a bigger
cross off the wall. “Then the Eastern State Penitentiary it
is.”

* * * *

After leaping to the penitentiary, t
he first thing Cronin noticed was the color of
the sky out the window. It was breaking pinks and yellows on the
horizon, faint, but dawn was coming. And he doubted Alec had the
power left in him to stop time.

Alec. His love, his heart.

His duty as the
key
was wearing him down, weakening him. And Cronin swore to himself
right then and there, after this—if they survived it—he would take
Alec away to where there was nothing but peace and
quiet.

Alec pulled
Jorge tighter against him. “We’re almost done, kiddo,” he said
softly.

Jodis stood in front of Alec with her
arms out. “Give him to me. I’ll protect him while you
go.”

Alec
hesitated at first, but reluctantly handed the lifeless boy to
Jodis. When she had him cradled in her arms, Alec put his hand to
Jorge’s face, and what he said directly into Jorge’s mind, Cronin
could only guess. But Jorge’s eyes closed and a tear escaped the
boy’s eye, sliding solitarily down to his temple before Alec
stepped back and took a shaky breath.

“
You’re feeling better?”
Cronin asked him.

He ran his hands through his hair and scrubbed his
face.
“I am. Jorge’s pain is
still there, but I have a better handle on it now. And the
replicates are gone, so I’m not so drained.”

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. “
Okay,” Eiji said, holding the cross like a
weapon. “We need to do this now.”

“
How?” Kennard asked. He looked around the old abandoned
room they were in. “
If this
portal needs to close, we’re going to need power, or something. In
the Callanish Stones we had all the elements, we had the sun and
the moon, and we had you, Alec.” He looked around again and
shrugged. “Here we have nothing.”

“
No,” Alec said. “We have Benjamin Franklin.”

“
We have what?” Eiji
asked.

“
Benjamin Franklin,” Alec repeated. “And what did he use to
bring lightning to the ground?”

Eiji answered.
“A
kite.”

Alec
said with a
smile. “A kite with what tied to it?”

Jodis answered.
“A
key.”

Alec grinned and pointed to his own
chest. “A key.”

Cronin couldn’t stop the
low growl that rumbled in his chest. “You wish to use
yourself as a conductor of lightning?”

“
I did it before,” Alec answered. “When I was changed from a
human to a vampire, light from the circle went through me, yes? I
have mercury in my veins.”

Cronin
ignored his question. “No, no, no. It cannot be safe.”

“
I don’t see an
alternative,” he replied. “It has to be the way.”

“
Alec, wait!” Cronin said.
“Please.”

* * * *

Alec ran
down the first corridor toward the center guard tower. “Come on,
we’re running out of time.”

The
y followed him
down a stone hallway lined with prison cells on either side. Paint
peeled from the walls of the two-story space and it smelled of
mold, rust, and abandonment. When they got to the center watch
tower, Alec skidded to a stop. Everyone filed in behind him,
oblivious to the storm brewing outside.

Waiting for them
were
the five cloaked Zoan leaders who had haunted Alec from the
beginning and the two huge stone gargoyle guard dogs. The gargoyles
growled and gnashed their teeth, but the Zoan leader laughed. His
cloak slid back from his face, revealing his razor teeth, wolf
muzzle, and scaly head. They hadn’t bothered with their human
skins.

Eiji drew two crosses from his thigh
holsters. “You’ll meet the same fate as your pack did in
Russia.”

The leader didn’t seem
fazed. “It was a ploy for distraction.”

“
He wanted me here,” Alec said as lightning flashed across
the sky.

“
The key’s blood will serve us well,” the leader said. His
long tongue lashed at his teeth. His small beady eyes slid with
vertical eyelids. “You think you’re here to close the gate?” It
laughed. “No, it will open all the portals over the
planet.”

“
You’re wrong,” Alec
said.

“
When we met last time,” the leader said, “I called you my
enemy. A weak, insignificant adversary. But then I scratched you
and smelled your blood. You have mercury in your veins.”

“
So what?”

“
Then you are not my
enemy,” the Zoan replied. “You will help us.”

“
Never,” Alec replied and thunder boomed outside. He drew
two crosses like swords and the gargoyle watchdogs growled. “I’ll
die before I help you.”

“
Your blood, hot or cold, will help me,” the leader sneered.
“
You can die all you
like.”

“
When I die,” Alec replied coldly
, “I will turn to dust.” Alec turned the cross around
and put the point of the long end to his heart. “Maybe I should end
it all for you now.”

The leader snarled and the two gargoyle guard dogs lunged
at him. Stas wrestled with one, throwing it against the far wall.
Cronin leapt to the other one, cross extended
out
, and pierced its chest
when he appeared underneath it, rendering it to dust. The first
gargoyle roared a deafening sound. The other cloaked Zoan flew into
defense mode.

They lunged and swiped, gnashing teeth
, and the leader’s chest glowed orange, a sign
it was about to blow fire.

“
Look out!” Kennard said and pulled Stas out of the way. The
burst of flame caught him instead, and he turned for one moment to
look at Stas before the Zoan buried its paw in Kennard’s chest,
sending a wisp of dust that was once Kennard, swirling to the
floor.

Stas bellowed, louder than the
gargoyle had, and flew into a rage. He smashed one Zoan, missing
the leader, but collected another Zoan and ripped its head off with
his bare hands.

The
remaining gargoyle lurched at him and Eiji dove at it, rolling
gracefully through the air and slicing the gargoyles chest cavity
open. It half howled before it fell to dust and rubble.

The leader of the Zoan lashed its
claws out, each talon as long as a knife blade, and it caught Alec
on the arm. Cronin pulled Alec away, but it was too
late.

The Zoan leader sniffed the air. Then
it took a deeper breath. It gnashed its ghastly
teeth. “No!”

“
No mercury,” Alec said.
Then he laughed, just as thunder and lightning cracked through the
sky.

The Zoan
leader roared and breathed an unholy fire upon the vampires. Flames
filled the room, turning each of them, Alec, Cronin, Eiji, and Stas
to ash and dust.

Then the
Zoan leader looked up toward the sky.

* * * *

The center tower was decrepit, quickly losing
i
ts battle with age and
weather, and Alec climbed atop the apex of the roof.

“
Hurry Alec,” Cronin said
, standing back. He looked down at the center room below
them, to where the Zoan leader was looking up at him. “They know
those vampires were replicas of us.”

Thunder crashed above their heads
. The very storm was on top of them and static charged
the air. Cronin knew it was coming. He could feel it.

The Zoan below scampered to climb the walls but couldn’t
find purchase on the degraded
plaster. “Get him!” the leader called.

“
I don’t think so,” Eiji’s voice called out from one of the
corridors on the ground floor. “Stay down here and fight the real
me. You’re nothing but a time-jumping maggot.”

Cronin probably would have laughed at
Eiji’s art of distraction if he wasn’t worried they were all about
to die.

Lightning ripped the sky open and a gale tore through
the
guardhouse, almost
blowing Alec off the watchtower. Cronin hung onto the guardrail as
the storm whipped around them. Alec righted himself, extended his
arms out wide, and waited for Benjamin Franklin’s theory to
work.

The three remaining Zoan stopped. One turned to face
Eiji,
while the leader and
another started to climb the walls.

“
Alec!” Cronin yelled
above the storm.

Alec screamed at the sky. “You want to hold a key to
the lightning? Then come get
me!”

And the lightning did.

Sparking
through the sky, a bolt of pure light ripped from the clouds, down
to the closest metal it could find.

Alec.

His back
arched, and if he was screaming or it was the roar of the storm,
Cronin couldn’t tell.

But the lightning went through him like it did when he was
changed in
the middle of the
Callanish Stones in Scotland. The light beamed down to the ground
floor and flashed down the nine spokes of the building, where it
joined at the ends, creating a circle of light.

The light spun and turned
, creating a spinning wheel of energy, and the Zoan fought
to hang on. They clung to the handrails, ripped claw marks in the
walls as the power of the light tore them from the room. The three
remaining Zoan were flung into the air, wrenched up and into the
sky and disappeared into the clouds.

The beam of
light was sucked back in like a vacuum, taking sound with it as it
retracted back in and up the center of the circle. It held Alec for
a second before releasing him and vanishing into the sky
above.

Alec fell
through the roof toward the ground two stories below. Cronin leapt,
scarcely catching Alec before he hit the ground. His eyes were
closed, he wasn’t moving. He was barely breathing.

“
Alec?” Cronin
whispered.

Eiji stepped into the circular room.
“Is he…?”

Kennard and Stas followed Eiji in,
both with worry on their faces. Benito and Asya soon followed.
“Alec?” Kennard whispered.

Cronin put
him gently on the floor. “Alec? Can you hear me?” An eternity
passed. One second seemed a thousand years. Cronin fought tears and
his voice wouldn’t work at first. “Alec? Come back to me,
m’cridhe.”

Alec slowly opened his eyes, and after a faint heartbeat,
he spoke.
“Did we
win?”

Cronin pulled Alec against him. “Oh,
my heart. You scared me.”

Eiji knelt
down beside him. “You did good, Alec. But I think I’m done with
excitement for a while, yeah?”

Alec sat up a little. “Me
too.”

But then Jodis walked in, holding a lifeless Jorge in her
arms like a ragdoll.
His
black eyes, once shining with excitement, were now dull. Jodis had
been crying, or perhaps, crying still. “Alec,” she said softly. “I
think he’s dying.”

Jorge’s head
lolled to the side. Jodis gently placed him in Alec’s arms. Then
Alec said, “We’re about to have a visitor,” just as Heather
appeared. The ghostly apparition of Alec’s mother smiled sadly at
her son, then at the boy he cradled in his arms.

“
Mom,” Alec said. “Did the
portal close?”

She nodded. “
Yes, you
did it.”

Alec sighed
in relief. “Oh, thank God.”

Heather shook her head and smiled
kindly. “No. Thank you, Alec. Thank all of you.”

Jorge let
out a sob, and Alec brushed the hair back from the little boy’s
forehead. Alec looked up at his mother. “He can’t survive this, can
he?”

Heather
smiled sadly, then she knelt down in front of him and put her hand
to Alec’s face, then to Jorge’s. “Jorge,” she cooed, “there is
someone here to see you.”