Final Scream (16 page)

Nick spotted his Oriental shadow during his flight to Columbus, but he allowed the man to believe he was undetected. Twice, his tail swanned past Nick on the pretense of entering one of the two front restrooms, and each time Nick shrank from the man’s malevolent aura. The stalker was toxic and needed to be stopped—permanently.

But how without being observed by the plane’s passengers?

Every method Nick imagined was too messy, raised too many airline security red flags, or labeled him and the others as prime murder suspects. He finally threw in the towel and psychically channeled someone who was much more adept at subtlety when exterminating dangerous pests.

When the Oriental hit man slid into the restroom for the third time, Nick stood, stretched, and sauntered up front, where he pretended to wait his turn to use the lavatory. A stunningly attractive woman exited the other restroom and jauntily greeted Nick in the narrow kitchen area hidden from the passengers. Although she was casually dressed in jeans and a smock top, her luminous white-blond hair and beguiling body were both head turners.

“Is the pain in the ass in the other lavatory?” Gabriella Wolfe asked simply.

Nick nodded.

She smiled seductively at her fiancé, cast a spell on the hit man, and pecked Nick’s lips before teleporting home from inside the vacant restroom. Nick shuffled back into view, expressed annoyance at the long wait, and stomped back to his seat.

The cocky hit man opened the door and looked like death warmed over. His complexion was wan and his eyes beet red. He staggered up the aisle toward his seat and slammed into dozens of shocked and angry passengers. His abdomen burbled noisily like a sucking drain, and the sweat discoloring his shirt reeked of sourness. The other travelers pinched their nostrils as he stumbled past, but the man was oblivious to their theatrics. Nick smiled. Gabriella’s spell worked like a charm.

An elderly woman screamed as blood dribbled from his ears, eyes, and nose, but the man wasn’t aware of his physical woes. Two flight attendants ceased their trash collection, dropped the bags and dashed to the rear kitchen.

A menacing dragon mirage wafted up in front of the Oriental hit man, and he didn’t care. He stumbled right through the nebulous vision before it vanished. Nick saw the dragon, too, but none of the others did. The reeling Oriental slipped to a knee and vomited a thorny rose. When the rose touched the floor, the
Superior’s
wet work specialist heaved up a second rose. That was when the dragon mirage reappeared and released a steady stream of real fire on the hit man.

Chang’s thin body rapidly went up in flames and was incinerated to ash in no time. The plane’s passenger compartment filled with clouds of acrid smoke and the malodor of burning hair and flesh. Many of the passengers screamed for help in the makeshift crematorium while Nick rushed to the man and stamped out the remaining green flames. He was worried. The magical dragon mirage and the subsequent inferno were
not
part of Gabriella’s rose regurgitation spell. That left him with one answer.

There was another necromancer involved who wanted the hit man dead. A potent master of the black arts. And someone unfamiliar to Nick.

One of the flight attendants tried to subdue the mass hysteria sweeping through the plane. Overwrought passengers abandoned their seats and crowded the aisle like livestock in Chicago slaughterhouses.

A few men began shoving each other for the right to occupy the same space, and their violent behavior soon escalated into fisticuffs. Children shrieked and bawled, and cowering women sobbed or screamed in their seats. Thankfully, half the passengers kept their cool and either prayed for a safe landing or demanded alcohol.

Nick reached out for the lingering dragon mirage, and when his hand made contact, an icy chill frosted his flesh and sowed goosebumps along his arm. Shrill cackling resonated in his ears before the lethal dragon disappeared.

The frosty dread remained with Nick long after the mirage left. He stood trancelike amid the earsplitting chaos. The illusion had dumped a mind-numbing jumble of thoughts in his head, and when the muddle cleared, Nick was able to organize the extraordinary data.

The communication amazed him. From it, Nick learned he was looking at the
Final Scream
mystery from the wrong angle. Natalie Wright’s Wicker transformation and the purloined E.V.A.N. creature were clever investigative distractions.
How did he know this?
For some reason, his mind was able to extract information from the sorcerer responsible for the dragon illusion … . and the hit man’s death. He was both mystified and thrilled with his latest supernatural ability until he realized how unstable his genes were. That translated into more frequent strange transformations, and that reality frightened him.
Where would his genetic evolution stop? When he was totally inhuman?

Genetic transfiguration was impossible to predict, but it made him uneasy just the same, especially when it might threaten Gabriella’s safety.
Would his numerous transformations render his impending bride vulnerable over the course of their marriage?

Nick snapped out of his protracted stupor and elbowed his way through the unruly mob to the closest lavatory at the rear of the plane. He pushed the aggressive man blocking the entrance aside, slipped into the cramped space, and engaged the lock. He readied himself for his magical return to Columbus, where Neo waited to drive him to
Old Mother Hubbard’s
.

But recalling the sorcerer’s message stalled his teleportation. There was one terrifying piece of data that worried him. He and Gabriella were murder targets, too, and since the necromancer’s identity was unknown, Nick didn’t know who to evade.

Basically, they were a couple of sitting ducks.

Their teeth bared, the mermen awkwardly advanced toward Noah over the wet and slippery dock planks. He unleashed a burst from his smoking REC7 assault rifle that chopped them to green sushi, but his actions agitated those approaching from the shore.

Before Noah could fire on those mermen, the furious sea serpent rose from the bottom near the dock and fed on the mermen swimming by the dock. The victims’ shrill wails and howls grated Noah’s nerves as their blood changed the brown water to gory red. He looked away, spun toward the mermen by the shore, and squeezed the trigger, but the rifle only clicked hollowly. His marine enemies were closing so fast, he didn’t have time to reach into his shorts pockets and snap in a fresh magazine.

He flipped the empty rifle and used the weapon as a sophisticated club. He swung for the upper deck in Yankee Stadium and nearly decapitated the first arrival. The lifeless body bounced off the dock and into the water. The sea monster instantly seized the fresh corpse, chewed it twice, and swallowed it. But Noah wasn’t out of the woods. There were still several more mermen to contend with, and more climbing up onto the dock behind him. Noah brushed the burning sweat from his eyes and longed for his quiet Scripps lab days.

He pictured himself as a doomed Davy Crockett holding off Santa Anna at the Alamo, but the sea serpent inadvertently came to his rescue. Its coiled snake-like form erupted from the shallow water like a cruise missile and attacked the three remaining shore-based mermen. The iridescent scales gleamed in the tropical sun’s glare as the fifty-foot long predator compressed the mermen on the dock with a single bite, dowsing Noah with a fountain of blood.

But the sea monster’s good deed had a lethal catch.

Its considerable weight lay across the dock as it devoured its prey and gradually bowed the planks until they snapped with firecracker explosions. Arms flailing, Noah was tossed into the air and splashed on his side into the churning crimson drink. His head narrowly missed the thrashing boat’s hull by inches.

He hit the shallow sandy bottom with a teeth-jarring thud, but he managed to keep his wits. He methodically and blindly groped for the blue medicine bag and the empty REC7 in the opaque water, so he wouldn’t expend too much air. The rifle and bag hadn’t drifted far, and he quickly slipped the weapon’s strap over his shoulder and clutched the blue bag for all he was worth.

As he was falling into the drink, he managed to spy the shore, so he knew which direction to swim to safety. The trick was to make it there without being eaten.

He pushed off the bottom and scissor kicked toward shore. It was difficult to stay on course with only one arm to act as the rudder, because his kicks propelled him helter skelter. The serpent resumed its mermen buffet, and that encouraged Noah to swim faster and get out of that treacherous water. He lamented leaving the food and bottled water behind, but he was desperate to escape the boat. It couldn’t be helped.

Noah’s eyelids were tightly shut against the stinging saltwater as he instinctively proceeded toward what he believed was the shore. If his estimate was on the mark, he should beach himself beyond the sea serpent’s strike zone any second.

A few terrified mermen bumped him as they tried to escape the sea serpent, but it picked them off one by one.
Would Noah be its next entrée?
The giant mouth plunged into the shallows and knocked Noah end over end as it picked off another merman. Noah was forced to surface to refill his burning lungs and confirm the shore’s direction. His head bobbed up through the roiling surface, and so did a frightened merman. It zeroed in on Noah, wailed, and attacked.

Noah ducked beneath the surface just as the serpent’s yawning mouth closed in on the attacking merman. Noah was spared once more,
but how long could his luck hold?
He was afraid to speculate and jinx himself. One thing was clear: if he didn’t reach shore real soon, he was a goner. The serpent was running out of mermen dinners.

His legs started cramping from his uncharacteristic physical workout the past twenty-four hours. The shore seemed miles away. His pulse thumped a conga beat in his ears from the raw horror coursing through his veins. His legs grew sluggish. His lungs were aflame. His cheeks ballooned out like a puffer fish. Noah expelled air from his lungs in intervals to prevent his exhausted body from floating to the surface. Bubble clusters escaped his lips and tickled his nose.

Where was the damned shore?

Without warning, a fast-moving merman rammed his side and whacked the residual air out of his lungs. Pain exploded in his ribcage, as if the damned creature had stabbed him with a knife. The abrasive bottom sandpapered his back.

Sandpapered?

He craned his neck, and his head easily broke the surface. The shore! He made it!

Noah scrambled out of the water like a crazy man as the merman’s clawed hand swiped at his feet but missed. Furious, it flopped ashore and came after him.

But the sea serpent had developed a taste for mermen and was searching for dessert. Its giant viper head struck at Noah’s pursuer, clamped its jaws over the merman’s legs, and dragged its thrashing meal underwater.

Noah didn’t quit running until he was safely away from the cove. Suddenly, the entire dock area was quiet, and the serpent wasn’t in sight. But neither were any mermen.

The drowsy dusk of exhaustion washed over Noah, and he didn’t have any food or fresh water to recharge his physical batteries. He couldn’t waste what precious little time he and Reese had left hunting for edible plants in the jungle. She needed those antibiotics now, and he was determined to deliver them. Gathering every ounce of energy from his nearly depleted reserve, Noah wiped the perspiration from his bloodshot eyes and trekked south again along the shaded rocky boundary separating the beach and the cove. His short-term goal was to locate the freshwater pond again, but by the time he reached Terror Island’s southern tip, his sandals barely cleared the sand—each step was agony. His mind was flagging fast, and his vision grew blurry.
Where was that pond?

The familiar mountain landscape sprouted to his right and provided more relief from the sun’s brutal brilliance, but his exposure on the boat and dock had inflicted enough painful damage. His back was blistered and puckered like a dried animal pelt. It sorely resisted his efforts to flex his back.

Noah’s knees threatened to buckle with each step, and he simultaneously battled debilitating waves of sleep and nausea. Just when he was about to surrender to his fatigue, he abruptly perked up.

The welcome rumble of the fresh water cataract filled his ears with hope. Noah ditched the blue bag and REC7 as he staggered into the cool, revitalizing water. His sunburn complained, but the rest of him welcomed the pool’s wintry greeting. He drank deeply.

Once he recouped enough strength to complete his journey, Noah retrieved the blue bag and his rifle and followed his own footprints to Reese’s cave. Lobster-sized crustaceans scurried away from him and scampered into generous holes in the sand, as before. The hill to his right grew steeper as he approached the southwest corner of the island. When he reached that point, he paused and studied the high cliff where the relentless sniper attempted several times to take them out. As usual, he saw nothing.

He resumed his walk. The sniper was one of many island inhabitants that hunted Reese and him. What a crazy, dangerous island.

Terror Island.
The name certainly said it all.

The sun began to set the horizon aflame with vivid streaks of orange and reds as he reached the cave. But instead of rejoicing, he fell to his knees and cried out to the heavens.

The leafy tangle of brush that camouflaged Reese and the cave was strewn about the scarlet-stained beach among a man’s shredded clothes and body parts. A riotous cluster of three-toed claw prints scarred the smooth sand in front of the cave, but he ignored that for the moment. What really terrified him was the now empty cave.
Where was Reese?
He searched the area and could find no trace of her anywhere, and he interpreted that as a positive sign she was still alive. She was knocking on death’s door when he left for the cove, so he realized she needed the antibiotics to live.

Exasperated, Noah clenched his fists and pounded his chest.

Where in God’s name was she?