Destiny of Coins (16 page)

That sounded like something the demons we had been discussing would leave behind, as apparently ‘Bochicha’s Emissaries’ like to devour men whole, and are known to only leave torn, bloody clothing and not much else in their wake.

“It’s what I thought, too, Judas,” said Roderick, drawing confused looks from everyone but Rafael, who continued to weep as Francisco rushed over to his side. It’s truly difficult for most observers to keep up with Roderick’s commentary on my silent musings. “But then we saw Kaslow moving toward us. He seems bigger, faster, and obviously a helluva lot meaner.”

“And, he’s carrying an arsenal of weapons in a sack strapped to his back,” Tampara added.

Just like a mercenary Santa. Well, so maybe it didn’t sound like a demon attack. I hadn’t yet ruled it out the possibility that our nemesis had somehow struck a deal with the menace most feared by our Essene hosts.

“So, are y’all planning to do battle with this asshole once he invades your home, or do you have a place in mind where we can hide out until we can come up with a plan to counterattack or escape?”

Cedric’s question brought to mind the collective folly in thinking an outdated Tesla device would protect us to any significant degree. No one—not even I—had devised a ‘Plan B’ in case the damned thing failed. Granted, I would lay most of the blame for that at the feet of our hosts, since it’s their home. But then again, being innkeepers for the Almighty’s most powerful protectors could easily make someone feel invulnerable.

“We have several options,” said Francisco, gently helping Rafael to his feet. “There is a hidden hall upstairs, behind the library where we just came from. Or, there is another haven inside the mountain adjacent to us—”

“What in the hell’s that?” Amy asked, shrilly, interrupting Francisco when a loud thud reverberated outside the main entrance.

She reached for Alistair, who brought her close to him. He whispered something to her, but it did little to ease her panic. Especially when the door and the beautiful stained-glass windows on either side of the main entrance began to disintegrate into thin air.

“Holy shit!”
whispered my boy in amazement, though he and Amy had seen this sort of thing before, inside a certain sacred Alborz Mountain in Iran. 

“Francisco, I believe we’re out of time to consider your options,” I said, instinctively backing up and ready to run. “One will do—just pick one.
Now!!”

* * *

Viktor Kaslow would be entering the castle at any moment. The anticipation of that event only heightened the terror of how he planned to carry out his invasion. Francisco glanced upstairs longingly, perhaps thinking the protected hideout there would be more desirable than what we would encounter within the mountain caverns. But when I pressed him again more urgently to choose an option, he motioned all of us to follow him down a hallway, next to the fireplace in the reception area.

“It will be safest in the cavern bunker!” he said, picking up his pace until everyone sprinted to another immense door at the end of the hall. “Rafael, we will need at least two lamps.”

“I have them already!”

Rafael lifted a pair of miner helmets with halogen lamps attached to the front. He hurriedly put one on, while handing the other to Francisco.

“You should go first, Rafael, since you know the path better than anyone here,” said Francisco. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

An explosion suddenly rocked the front of the castle, and several enormous pieces of granite crashed down from the foyer. I could clearly see the dreary haze from outside behind us. We were seconds away from Kaslow’s entrance into the castle, and unfortunately, the door leading to the caverns wasn’t open and was in direct line with the main entrance that had just dissolved into nothingness.

Tampara seemed to have the same thought as me, that we would be discovered and soon after trapped in the hallway. Up until then, I had only seen a few of his unusual traits that marked his preternatural status. He moved to the front of the line as a blur, picking up the pole device needed for the door on his way to overtaking Rafael. Before any of us understood what was happening, he had unlocked and pushed the door open, sending a cool gust of earthen mustiness upon us. Roderick and Cedric seemed just as impressed as me. Perhaps Alistair would’ve been even more so, but Amy had pulled his attention back toward the front of the castle.

“Oh, my God…someone’s coming!”

She had the presence of mind to keep her panicked voice low as she pointed at a hulking figure moving toward us. The figure began to run.

“There’s no time to waste—get inside now so we can shut the door!”

I wasn’t able to prevent the slight whine obliterating my intent to remain calm—or, at least sound composed as I urged everyone to get their asses moving. Everyone knew by then it was Kaslow. Hell, we’d been expecting him for hours. But, I daresay those of us familiar with this soulless fiend were ill prepared for the physical changes I glimpsed just before sprinting into the adjacent tunnel with Francisco.

Kaslow had already made it back to the prime of youth by virtue of the Tree of Life crystal piece lodged in his chest—Alistair and I had witnessed that fact in Hong Kong. However, his chiseled features somehow seemed sharper now, and his cold steel blue eyes were aglow as he grimaced.... If it had been any other time, perhaps, he would’ve seemed cartoonish. Sort of like a DC comic book character. He wasn’t near enormous or green-skinned like the Hulk…but Kaslow was substantially bigger since our last face-to-face confrontation. Bigger, as in taller and wider.

“It almost doesn’t look like him,” said Alistair, in awe, dropping back to run beside me after Tampara closed the door behind us. Since the lock was on the other side, we would only have a brief reprieve before Viktor pursued us into the tunnel. “He’s almost as tall as Tampara. What in the hell is making him change like that?”

“I don’t know, yet,” I said, thinking my boy might be exaggerating Kaslow’s new height to a degree…although the Russian was surely closer to seven feet from his previous six- foot-four stature in Hong Kong, slightly taller than the former KGB assassin had stood in his mortal state. “Just promise me that you’ll keep running until you and Amy are safe. And whatever I end up having to do to keep the two of you among the living, roll with me on it. You got that, son?”

He didn’t answer me, but my hardened stare as we followed Rafael sprinting down another tunnel was enough to get him to nod. My boy would keep his word.

We reached an intersection of several converging tunnels, and by then Francisco had moved to the front with Rafael. Meanwhile, a loud explosion behind us announced the ancient door separating the caverns from the castle had just been destroyed. Our Essene hosts motioned for us to quietly follow them into one of the tunnels to our left—one far narrower than the previous two tunnels, which had brought to mind images of angels in full flight racing through chasms hewn to accommodate their wingspans.

This tunnel led to a steep stairway. After carefully descending single file to the bottom, Francisco entered a code into a small keypad on the right side of the wall. A steel door appeared in front of us that gleamed from soft green ambient lights imbedded in the stone wall surrounding it. The door slid open.

We stepped into darkness that immediately gave way to several overhead recessed lights in a room much larger than I expected for a bunker. It housed several couches, a small modern kitchen and eating area, as well as what looked like a state-of-the-art entertainment/theater system. A small restroom was also present, in the room’s far right corner.

The door closed behind us, while another booming thud resounded in the tunnels behind us. I prayed Kaslow was unaware of where we were at the moment. Knowing his penchant for reading my thoughts, I consciously sought to forget about the lighted door and anything else that might tip him off to our present location.

“We should pray Kaslow doesn’t find this place,” Francisco advised, nearly mirroring my private musing. “In the meantime, please feel free to make yourselves at home.”

“Shouldn’t we be keeping our voices down?” worried Alistair, when Francisco’s powerful voice reverberated throughout the room.

“This haven is soundproof, similar to the big recording studios in the western world,” Francisco advised, moving over to a desktop computer near the theatre console. He turned it on and immediately a large plasma screen on the widest wall came to life. A menu of security options appeared and after selecting one of these, two rows of boxed camera images filled the screen. “We will be able to monitor any activity going on in the tunnels closest to us, as well as a few remotes that are deeper in the cave system. Also, for those of you worrying about what recourse we’ll have if Kaslow finds us, there is another tunnel we can access through a hidden door inside the restroom. That tunnel leads to the main highway through this region of the Andes, about seven kilometers to the east of the castle.”

“How long do you think we’ll be in here?” asked Amy.

She seemed much calmer now, affectionately rubbing Alistair’s shoulder. He, on the other hand, was still just as tense as he’d been moving through the tunnels. He shot a grateful, loving smile to her that she reciprocated in kind.

Amy’s question was directed to Roderick, of all people. Perhaps she figured the guy who spearheaded this coin-searching expedition should know the answer to that million-dollar question.

“Until Kaslow finds us,” I said, drawing everyone’s attention.

It wasn’t my intent to squash the lovebirds’ hopes or anyone else’s optimism. And, no one seemed to share my pessimism. Although, I damned well guarantee at least one other person in that room believed this was a possible outcome. Alistair and I had seen enough of Kaslow’s determination—including the fact he had miraculously beaten certain death twice in our presence—to realize he had the means to outlast us if we planned to head back the way we came.

I decided to throw in a somewhat realistic ray of hope. “Or, at some point we’ll utilize the additional escape route Francisco gave us.”

“What about your coin, Pops?” said Alistair, eying me worriedly, as if my latest glib response deserved a rebuke. “I would think he might double back to the castle and look for it while we’re in here. If he finds it before you do, Kaslow wins.”

Great point, and one I had briefly considered. However, during the past two hours the coin’s call had become much more subtle, and then undetectable altogether, roughly forty-five minutes ago. Maybe the damned thing could cloak itself from evil, and this was a trait of the coin that hadn’t been elaborated upon.

“Your father doesn’t know the location where it has been hidden for almost three hundred years,” Francisco advised. “I have yet to reveal that information to him. The coin has had several homes inside the castle, and the last time it was moved was when Giuseppe de la Serna tried to steal it from us.”

“I take it this location change took place before my visits with Yael?” said Roderick, moving over to one of the couches and sitting down. Cedric took the opportunity to check the refrigerator for what I assumed was something alcoholic to sip on.

“It was indeed long before my ancestor’s murder,” said Francisco. “It was during the reign of Yael’s great uncle, Zalik ben Shaphan, who was our Superior from 1562 until 1614.”

He paused to enlarge one of the camera images on the display screen. The image showed Kaslow trotting through a tunnel away from us. Strapped to his back were a number of automatic rifles, grenade launchers, and something that looked an awful lot like a miniature version of the
fusion generator/reconfiguration beam devices, or FGRs, that Petr Stanislavsky had used to uncover the Garden of Eden in Iran.

“There is a legend almost as old as the coin itself—and perhaps you have heard this, as well, Judas,” continued Francisco. “When it was first brought to this continent, it was wrapped in cerecloth, and the cerecloth was said to have come from the leftover burial materials used to prepare Joses’ body when he crossed over into the afterlife. The ‘Singing Coin’ was said to be sleeping when wrapped inside this particular cerecloth. And, for the first century of our stay here in the Andes, the coin was always wrapped in its protective cover, and no one could hear its call. However, when the shroud material began to decay—despite having been dipped in the very wax that bathed the rest of Joses’ burial shroud—the two were separated, in order to preserve the cerecloth. It is the only thing we have handed down to us from this brother of Jesus.”

“Something tells me there’s a point to this latest story of yours,” said Cedric, obviously disappointed the refrigerator contained only bottled water as a beverage. “I’m thinking William might be right about Kaslow, so I hope you’ve got enough time to tell us how it all ends.”

He pointed toward the middle screen, where Kaslow had slowed his pace moving through the tunnels. The Russian was walking now, and would occasionally close his luminous eyes and sniff the air.

No storyteller likes to be shut down—even if for fairly valid reasons. But, Francisco did move to finish making his point.

“As Roderick and Judas have correctly stated, the coin without its wrapping can still only be heard by the most righteous and unholy of individuals,” he said, his tone less enthusiastic after Cedric’s barb. Like the rest of us, his eyes were trained on the video screen, and as he zoomed in to the image Cedric had pointed to, all of us moved closer to the screen to get a better view. “Giuseppe was not a good man, and he tried to steal the coin after finding its location. Like so many before him, he was mesmerized by the coin’s uniqueness, and believed the Holy See should be the owner of this ‘holy relic’ of Christendom. According to Zalik’s diary, this Franciscan envisioned himself as some sort of hero if he could bring the coin back to Europe.”