The Ancient Breed (42 page)

Crow swallowed hard. That was a very difficult question. He prayed that he had the right answer.

51

S

econds after leaving Crow and Lisa, Nick materialized beside a living room fireplace inside Glenna Guttentag’s two-story, redbrick house that was nestled in the heart of Duneden. An oil-burning hurricane lamp shrouded the room with an eerie, amber glow as the first rays of dawn filtered through the open window blinds. Nick tensed as he spied Glenna Guttentag’s grandsons across the room: Fritz lay still on the gold-and-red-flowered sofa while his brother, Hugo, knelt beside him and stroked his brother’s forehead.

“Hugo!” Nick whispered, wary of the fireball’s presence.

Hugo Guttentag was stick-thin, had a long, narrow face that was masked in a perpetual scowl. He glared at Nick through slotted lids.

“You’re too late, Bellamy,” he snapped. “The
thing
came for Grandma, and when it didn’t find her, it attacked poor Fritz.”

Nick hurried to Hugo’s side. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t know. I feel life in him, even though there’s no pulse or breathing.”

Nick bent, and pressed on Fritz’s carotid for a pulse; but if any blood coursed through his tree-stump frame, it was undetectable. Curiously, Nick, too, felt an indistinct life force present inside Fritz.

Nick straightened. “Where’s your Grandma?”

“Down in the island grotto.”

Nick doubled his fists; he had to reach the old woman before it was too late. From reading the thing’s murderous thoughts in the warehouse, he realized that it needed to kill the old witch. It seemed that she held knowledge that threatened its existence.

Nick closed his eyes and pictured the island grotto beneath Lake Griffin. He felt Death’s icy breath. Both his sons had tragically died down there last year.

Hugo tapped Nick’s shoulder. “Nick.”

Nick’s eyelids popped open.

Angry tears trickled down Hugo’s cheeks. “Bring her back alive, Nick.”

Lisa hooked Crow’s arm during his third attempt at the wind-walking chant. This time there were no distractions to disturb his mental focus. An early morning breeze kicked up and bathed them with the sweet scent of clover and baled hay. His lips silently formed the ancient tribal words. Again, he failed.

“I just can’t seem to get it right,” he sputtered, kicking the spiny weed tops.

Lisa smiled calmly, took his hand, and squeezed it gently.

“Let’s try it one more time. For Neo’s sake,” she said softly.

Crow gathered what little poise remained and tried again. This time, they were whisked into a black, soundless void where time and space were nonexistent and where Grandfather’s presence was mysteriously absent.

Nick materialized in the island’s bowels. The gruesome, deadly
Mortal Eclipse
experiments had taken place down there and had spawned hideous, killer mutants. Only one, the
Creeper
, had managed to escape into the outside world where it had preyed on innocent men, women, children, and not-so-innocent world leaders and drug dealers.

He scanned the vast, dark cavern with his night vision for any sign of Glenna or the mysterious fireball, but all he saw was a faint, flickering blue glow rising from the distant castle moat. No Glenna. No fireball. The only other place they could be was in the underground tunnel that ran deep below the castle and led to the underground river.

The eerie bastion, built into the grotto wall, loomed like a Gothic apparition. The castle had belonged to Nick’s inhuman ancestors. The ancient nightmare had been casting a sinister pall for centuries. Its lofty battlements, arched windows, massive stonework, moat, and drawbridge were enough to frighten anyone away.

Before proceeding to the tunnel entrance inside the moat, Nick paused to inspect the massive stone and mortar construction and to marvel at how every inch of the castle’s surface was devoid of mildew or mold despite the dank atmosphere.
Magic.
He still hated the word and everything it stood for.

Nick descended the well-hidden steps that led to the bottom of the moat. He wondered how he had managed to subsist through his childhood, college days, and all the unique FBI and
Orion Sector
training and experiences without suspecting that he possessed magical gifts. He yearned for that naive life again. But magic was in his DNA, and there was nothing he could do about it. Although it had tormented him by revealing his true parents last year, had nearly gotten his friends killed, and had been responsible for his sons’ deaths, it had one upside: He had met and fallen in love with Gabriella Wolfe.

But like his life before magic, she was water over the dam, too. Exiled to the pureblood’s original dimension last year for saving his life. And, even though she promised to return to him soon, he was growing impatient. He wasn’t getting any younger, and there was a major complication by the name of . . .

Lisa Anders
.

Nick snapped out of his reverie and entered the tunnel. It was a long hike to the underground river. One of the meteors that had ripped the time-space fabric separating the dimensions of Earth and Kundze lay on the far bank, and was the sole source of the Duneden witches’ magical energy.

He marched along the narrow tunnel, keeping his eyes on the pulsating, blue brilliance ahead. Nick sensed that the source of the blue light was extremely powerful. He just hoped that he would get there in time to rescue Glenna.

Nick stopped. This was taking too long. He closed his eyes, pictured the underground river, and suddenly he was there. Glenna’s spine-chilling scream split the heavy air as he arrived, and he froze at the incredible sight before him. A winking, blue energy net covered the enormous space like an electric spider web.

Across the river, Glenna Guttentag was spread-eagled against the mysterious meteor while a black, writhing cloud circled her. The pear-shaped meteor emitted a dazzling, reddish-orange blaze, and Nick rapidly realized that the ominous black mass couldn’t penetrate its enormous power to kill Glenna.

He backed away. It didn’t appear that she needed rescuing, and besides, what the hell could he do against such a powerful enemy? Nothing. But, then again, he thought,
the fireball had turned tail and run from me inside the warehouse, so why wouldn’t it react the same way in this black, cloud form?

Still, Nick remained silent. He didn’t want to attract its attention until he had a damn good plan. He thought about Hollis Danforth again. Would his father have allowed such a creature to work its will in his family’s domain? Nick was certain that Danforth would’ve shown the hostile thing the front door and sent it packing with a robust kick in the ass.

Nick forced a grin or at least imagined he did. Defenseless and devoid of a plan, he decided to test his repulsive qualities with the black mass. He strode boldly to the riverbank.

The blue energy net crackled, sizzled, and hissed as Nick passed under it. Sensing Nick’s approach, the black cloud gathered into a perfect black globe and transformed itself into the familiar fireball. The overhead energy net flickered and then disappeared into the growing fireball.

Nick raised his arms. “Leave!”

Instead of retreating as it did in the warehouse, the fireball rushed Nick and rendered a knockout punch that sent him flying. He landed fifteen feet from the bank.

Nick shook his head. The fireball was now a bit fuzzy in his glazed eyes. He licked the salty liquid painting his lips as the fireball hovered above the underground river. He sensed that it was waiting to reach its maximum energy level before it closed in for the kill. He grunted as his bruised leg muscles pushed him to a standing position.

His knees wobbled, but he remained upright. Nick angrily wiped the blood from his eyes and glared at the fireball. No one, especially a goddammed fireball, was going to take control of his family’s legacy. He clenched his fists and managed a crooked smile.

“C’mon, you bastard,” he taunted the cloud. “Come and get a heaping helping of whoopass.”

The words had barely passed through his swollen lips when the fireball sped toward him. Nick suddenly sensed that, this time, the murderous creature was going for the kill.

52

A

lethal, reddish-orange dagger rocketed from the meteor and sliced through the heart of the fireball just before it reached Nick. The fireball abruptly rolled into itself until it was reduced to a miniscule spec hovering in the cavern shadows. The distressed mass released another high-pitched, earsplitting whine that shook the castle’s foundation far above. Rivulets of dust and stone rained down on Nick, and he dropped to his knees and buried his head beneath his arms as the abhorrent sound echoed inside his head.

Grisly images flickered to life in his mind like a silent movie showing on a local Regal Cinema screen. He observed an unrelenting battle between two powerful mages that rattled the earth and agitated the air into fierce, tornadic storms. The two black-robed sorcerers hurled blazing lightning forks at each other
; the errant tosses sliced the turbulent, ebony skies into jagged pieces of black.

A multitude of small, crooked beasts surrounded the mage who controlled the blue lightning forks, and they leaped and bobbed frantically like heated popcorn kernels each time their enemy cast a white lightning bolt their way. Nick strained his mind to get a closer look at their features, but they remained distant shapes. By their outlines, however, Nick guessed them to be a race identical to that of the transformed Jay Walkingman creature’s. The mages’ identities also remained a mystery because their features were cloaked in a turbulent sea of darkness. Only the mottled, black-white shadows that pursued the lightning forks jeopardized their anonymity.

The scene suddenly shifted to a placid night landscape of silhouetted tropical foliage, a lake of champagne diamonds glittering beneath a pale moon, and four far-off figures walking the shoreline. It ended as quickly as it had appeared. Although the revelation was brief, it was deeply etched into Nick’s memory. He easily recalled that two of the figures were women; one, a man of medium height; and the fourth, a tall, broad-shouldered man. But why was the seemingly innocent vision so lucid? Was it important? Where was that lake? And, who were those four people, and why were they important? His mind was spinning with questions without an answer in sight.

The mass’s whining ceased, and it vanished from the grotto. After the hailstorm of dust and stones ceased, Nick painfully stood again and gingerly dusted himself off. His battered body was incredibly sore and stiff.

Suddenly, the lakeshore vision flashed back into his mind. The tall man’s silhouette had looked extremely familiar, and now he knew why.

It was Neo!

“Nick!”

The small voice scattered the images, and Nick glanced across the river.

“Glenna!” he shouted back.

“You all right, son?”

“I’m pretty beat up,” he replied.

Aside from blood-crusted cheeks from a deep forehead gash, swollen lips, a body that felt like a worn punching bag, he was doing okay. Considering the fireball’s immense power, Nick realized that he was damned lucky just to be alive.

Suddenly, panic rolled through his system and cleaved more frayed nerves. Who were those people at the lake with Neo? And why was he hiking along a lakeshore when he was supposed to be in New York investigating Aspirations?

Nick reconstructed the circumstances surrounding his vision. The fireball’s shrinking to the size of a black marble. The thing’s deafening wail. Then he understood! He was mentally connected with the wounded fireball as he was earlier in the warehouse. So, he figured, that seemed to indicate that Neo’s lakeside stroll might not have happened yet. Maybe it was another of the fireball’s future plans. If that was the case, Nick had to warn his friend. As soon as he returned to the surface, he’d contact Neo.

“You gonna stand there all day and daydream, or are you gonna help this old woman home?”

His mind was jarred back to the present. The meteor still glowed brightly behind Glenna.

“You okay?” he asked.

“I’ll need some assistance, Nick. The ornery thing busted my wheelchair.”

In his dazed state, Nick didn’t think to question her explanation. If his brain had been functioning on all eight cylinders, he would’ve realized that the powerful Wiccan could have easily transported herself to St. Louis, sans wheelchair, with a snap of her fingers whenever she felt the urge.