Destiny of Coins (20 page)

“Moroni told me where I could find you, and after I did, I pulled us both into this dimension,” he said, glancing back at me. “The others waited for our return to the castle, and we are now on our way to Paititi. The rest is as you’ve been told.”

Actually, given the bigger picture of what he described, I had been told very little. As we sped toward Tampara’s home in his native dimension, I soon found many more questions to be addressed. For now they would have to wait to be answered. I looked over at Roderick, and noticed that unlike everyone else, he was frowning.

“You seem troubled, my brother,” I said to him. I watched him cast a nervous glance toward the clear sky behind us. “What’s up?”

“There is a disturbance presently going on within the thin veil that separates the earth’s various dimensions from one another,” he advised. “We might have unwittingly set a karmic quake in motion by coming and going from our native reality to this one twice in two days. Normally, travelers hop between dimensions infrequently, and usually the visits come to our dimension from the ancient societies that thrive here—not the other way around. It’s almost unheard of for anyone from our familiar earth plane to venture to this one. Either such unfortunates fall prey to the primitive predatory creatures in abundance here, or these individuals are never permitted to leave the spherical metropolises, such as Paititi.”

I had heard the older dimensional societies were like this. Roderick’s narrow escape from the ancient kingdom responsible for the original Stonehenge came to mind.

“Man, I’m not trying to be a royal pain in the ass to any of you. I just wanted to get one last view of Tampara’s fabulous pad before we head back to La Paz,” said Cedric, defensively, and revealing who was behind our altered course. “There’s something about the place that has been on my mind since yesterday. I really feel like I need to see it one more time, as I’ll likely never get to see it again.”

I could understand that…sort of. Hell, if it hadn’t been for a certain hellion bent on confiscating my coin for his wicked intentions upon humanity, I wouldn’t mind a second pass by the fabled golden city either. But, the coin—which someone had rewrapped in its shroud piece and placed back inside my closed fist—was glowing brightly through the cloth and my fingers. It was enough to draw my son’s and Amy’s repeated instinctive glances, as well as a worried look from Francisco.

What in the hell did it mean? I hadn’t a clue, and I doubted anyone else knew either. I found myself following Roderick’s increasingly anxious gaze into the cloudless sky above, where I had seen what looked like faint swirls of lightning before they dissipated.

“I share your uneasiness, Roderick,” I said, and then turned my attention to the captain of our vessel. “Tampara, perhaps we should get back to La Paz and our own dimension.”

“Perhaps we should,” agreed Tampara, after glancing toward the sky around him. The lightning-like swirls were increasing in number. “If our paths cross again someday, Cedric, I will invite you personally for a rare visit to my home.”

“Well, that sucks,” said Cedric disappointedly. “Your offer is kind, but I’ll probably be dead long before another opportunity like this one comes my way again, man. Are you sure we can’t just swing by the front of the sphere quickly, like you did yesterday? Shit, it’d only take a few minutes, and then we’d be on our way to La Paz in no time….”

His voice trailed off, and he squinted his eyes while looking toward the sky behind me. It only took a moment for the rest of us to see the same thing. A chorus of fresh
‘Oh shit!’
murmurs swept through the hovercraft, as we watched a small torpedo-shaped object appear from inside one of the lightning swirls and then speed toward us.

“Everyone, strap yourselves in!”
shouted Tampara.
“Do it quickly!”

“My God…this can
not
be frigging happening! He’s figured out how to use the wormholes—just like Roderick warned us all last night!” lamented Alistair, as he and Amy quickly grabbed their leather straps and wrapped them tightly around their wrists and forearms.

The object soon became more defined, as a figure with its arms pointed forward—like superman without a cape.

Kaslow?! No frigging way!

But it was Kaslow. And as he bore down on us, using his freefall to point his body toward the hovercraft, the hatred in his face was far worse than ever before. He would be landing on our vessel at any moment. Provided he didn’t crash into us first.

Chapter 16

Before my enemy landed in the back end of the hovercraft, I thought for certain Tampara’s efforts to elude him might work. The ship took off with far more speed than we’d experienced up until that moment. But, whatever Kaslow’s keen intelligence had picked up about wormhole use, it proved to be enough for him to catch us. If not for the terrible danger we were in, I might’ve broached my curiosity with a few coy questions. Then again, should we survive this latest attack, I could pose my questions to Roderick instead, whose insights into the heart and mind of this fiend had proven accurate thus far.

When Kaslow landed inside the hovercraft, he immediately somersaulted toward me. I was his primary target…or, so it seemed at first. He stood up, and pulled out a dagger with his left hand and his favored Steyr with his right. He was all business this time, and I figured he intended to dispatch me first before moving on to the other immortals on the ship—the opposite approach from when he invaded the castle cavern’s bunker. He had plenty of firepower with him to easily eradicate us all, despite trimming down his arsenal. The barrel from a lone assault rifle peered above his left shoulder.

However, instead of an attack upon my person, he leaped back to the corner where Amy and Alistair were huddled together. My son moved to block him.

“Viktor, this is between only you and me!” I said, fearful of the knife and my son’s dangerous proximity to it. “Take me, if you must, and I’ll give you the coin, freely. Leave everyone else out of it!”

“Why? Are you afraid of what I might do to pay you back for how you’ve almost ruined my day?” he said, menacingly. “Surely you know by now I can claim your fucking coin anytime I want. So, tell your goddamned driver to slow down now or I’ll gut them both like pigs for slaughter!”

I felt shamed by how easily we were disadvantaged as a group. Kaslow was bigger and stronger than all of us, except Tampara. But he was also armed, where none of us were. Not even Tampara, who apparently had little need for such things as weapons in the world of the Yitari.

Tampara glanced over his shoulder, and then looked over at Roderick before lowering his arms. The ship slowed down, dramatically. He turned around to face Kaslow with a disgusted scowl on his face. Cedric and Roderick wore similar frowns, although more worried, and I detected nothing from either one to give any hope a plan was forthcoming.

My heart pounded heavily as I watched Alistair ball his fists, as if he planned to jump on the back of this behemoth who was facing the front of the hovercraft with his gun pointed at Tampara. Kaslow sensed my son’s hatred and wrath, as well. Before Alistair could react, Kaslow deftly sliced through the leather strap securing my boy’s wrist, and then used the same hand to grab him by his shirt. He threw Alistair toward me. The force of my boy’s airborne body slamming into me sent us both tumbling to the ship’s floor.

Before we could stand up again, Kaslow had moved over to Amy. He wrapped his right arm around her neck to keep her from collapsing to the ground while she kicked and fought in vain to get away. All the while, the Steyr’s barrel remained trained upon Tampara’s chest. Kaslow was in complete control of whatever happened next.

“Let her go, Kaslow—you vile asshole!” shouted Alistair, who eyed me hatefully when I prevented him from going after the monster. “Damn it, Pops—Let me
go!”

“What?! And watch him kill you before my eyes?”

Kaslow chuckled meanly.

“Let him go, William—let him go so I can filet him while I test-drive his bride to be.” He lowered the gun’s butt to where it rested upon the top of Amy’s right breast, and pressed it against her while moving it in a circular motion. “By the time your driver brings us all back to the castle, she should be good and ready for me. Just like she was when I put my knife’s mark on her in the Alborz. You, Alistair, were an old man back then, with no hope of satisfying such a fine piece of ass as I could do then…and can do even better now!”

When Kaslow assaulted Amy and Alistair in the Alborz, it was in large part my fault. I should’ve prevented it, somehow—even though they had purposely eluded my company when they set out to rescue Amy’s brother, Jeremy Golden Eagle. That event was now more than two years in the past, but the guilt on my part had never subsided. It never does for me.

I couldn’t let something like that happen again. But, there wasn’t time to come up with a well-conceived plan to rescue her from the rape about to ensue. My only recourse was to rely on my most base instincts and whatever combat lessons I had learned during the past twenty centuries.

Before my son could get himself butchered to death, I managed to wrap his wrist with my leather strap and secure it with a tight knot. Kaslow had failed to notice I had removed it from my wrist, even before the hovercraft slowed down. Using my ensuing struggle with Alistair as a decoy for my true intent, I flung myself toward Kaslow’s left side, where he held the dagger, hoping for a non-fatal plunge of the long serrated steel blade. Though my survival was unlikely, my hope was to carry enough momentum to knock him out of the ship—even if it meant me tumbling to the earth below with him.

Of course, there was the risk of Amy coming with us. But the look of hatred and rage in her eyes while Kaslow fondled her gave me hope her survival instincts would inspire her to slip away from him. This had to work…and yet even other things had to fall in place. I yelled with my mind for Roderick to hear me, and in turn for him to urge Tampara to somehow get the hovercraft moving again.

As I feared, my enemy plunged the blade into my stomach. In the next few seconds, I expected for him to begin twisting it and moving laterally to ensure enough of my vital organs were severed to the point my death would follow in under a minute. He was too strong to budge…. But if nothing else, I at least didn’t sit back and idly watch Amy be brutally assaulted and dispatched—along with my son being murdered, too—without trying to do something about it.

I would’ve died willingly, with no concern for my own welfare. However, I had no illusions of stopping Kaslow permanently. He had become the devil incarnate to me.

While I waited for the excruciating pain from being eviscerated to commence, something unexpected happened. It was premature to assume we were all unarmed. I thought of only handguns. I had failed to consider that Cedric carried a combat knife strapped to his ankle. Thankfully, his aim had improved over the years, as the Gerber flew just past my head and landed squarely in Kaslow’s throat.

Until then, none of us had any idea what could kill our enemy. My favored theory was it would take some sort of robotic device to pin him down long enough to dig out the crystal shard from his chest. But as Kaslow’s physical stature and abilities were in constant evolution, I had begun to think there was little hope of ever killing the bastard.

What happened next was mostly a blur. Although in retrospect, I can see the individual frames play out much more clearly. Amy did slip away, barely. Kaslow fired at Tampara, whose image suddenly distorted to the point he wasn’t solid. To our amazement, the bullets ricocheted off of him. I glimpsed this after pushing myself away from the dagger, which Kaslow promptly dropped while reaching for the smaller knife in his throat. He pulled it out, fighting what appeared to be a losing battle to stave off the gush of blood erupting from his throat. He gagged while trying to scream something—threats that came out as mere wheezes. Meanwhile, the wound in my abdomen closed up.

I felt an incredible sense of joy and thanksgiving that I might live after all! Better yet, Viktor Kaslow was about to die. That belief was spreading. I saw the hopeful expressions on Amy’s and my son’s faces, as well as on Cedric’s. Yet, shots were still coming. Apparently, a few bullets remained in Kaslow’s weapon.

Cedric suddenly howled in pain behind me. A loud roar from someone else soon followed. It came from Tampara, whose body had solidified. He roared again and threw his head back, similar to what Roderick had done beneath the ancient archway we encountered the previous afternoon.

“Judas, push him over the side!” Roderick shouted. “He is not going to die from the wound ...I can see the tissues inside are mending. Push him now!”

Kaslow chuckled as I turned toward him, barely eluding his downward thrust of Cedric’s knife. The last shot from his gun had resounded just seconds earlier, and I heard the click of a vacant chamber. Still, anything in this behemoth’s hands could be considered a weapon. He could use it to club the entire lot of us to death.

The hovercraft suddenly picked up speed. Keeping my feet would be an increasingly difficult challenge. Certainly, Kaslow’s body mass gave him an advantage in that regard. I didn’t believe I could successfully budge him if we were standing on solid ground—much less in our present circumstance. But I had to try, despite the likely plunge into my torso of another deadly blade.