The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (18 page)

Keene dove through the air, flinging the knife as he soared through the smoke. The arrow roared by him, clipping him in the shoulder. It scalded and burned, but bounced off without embedding. On the opposite end of the chopper, Keene heard the knife plunge deep into the man’s chest.

Keene crashed to the ground, skidding until his head almost bumped into the foot rest on the outside of the chassis. With his last bit of willpower, he clung to the metal and pushed himself up, rolling into the metal bird just as a hail of new arrows came raining down upon his position.

Still clutching the keys, he staggered into the pilot’s seat and fired up the copter.

The blades were spinning up, but not quick enough. Through the windshield, he could see the resistance’s soldiers coming, dozens of them just from the front, bearing axes and spears and swords. Some of them were clad in the blood streaked armor of the Centurions. Others were still wearing the tattered clothes from the tunnels.

A sword bounced off the windshield. Keene checked the gauges. The rotors weren’t at proper speed. Try to lift off now, and the bird would jerk and roll sideways, unable to get enough power to properly gain flight.

“Come on, you son of a bitch,” Keene said, his useless words falling upon the machine’s deaf ears. A smoking arrow sizzled and lodged into the back of his seat. He glanced over his shoulder, looking out the center of the craft. More were coming from the back.

He would be torn limb-from-limb by Prashant’s berry crazed army. Keene banged against the dashboard and pulled against the controls. There was no more time. The craft fishtailed and spun, wobbling through takeoff like a drunk after two. Weapons bounced off the exterior, but none found their way inside the copter’s confines.

Keene peered down into the valley. The men were clearing out, diving to avoid something he couldn’t see. The grass parted, and a tall soldier stood bearing a rocket launcher on his back.

The hell did he get that?

Then again, the same could be said about the chopper. They must have been snuck through the portal, piece by painstaking piece, year after year. Prashant had played the long game indeed.

A missile fired, roaring from the shoulder mounted launcher towards the chopper.

Shit.

Keene pulled hard on the controls, trying to fight the machine’s drift. It roared upwards, blades beating hard, and he battled back, corralling its unbridled power into something useful. The deadly missile burst past, almost grazing the windshield, only inches from sending Keene to a fiery end.

He leveled out the controls with a rapid, kneejerk movement, heart pounding from the near-miss. Two seconds later, despite breaking every rule in the book, Keene breathed a sigh of relief.

The craft was level, and it was rising quickly.

The only question, then, was simple.

Could he reach his friends before they all perished?

He willed the copter upwards as fast as he dared, accompanied only by the lonely moon and the omnipresent threat of the impending end of the world.

“What the hell was that?” Linus said in a hushed, worried tone as the ceiling shook. He looked out into the emptiness, hoping that the ground floor was near. He’d almost lost his balance a half dozen times already, and this endless stairwell into the bowels of the hollowed out mountain peak was beginning to wear on him.

“Just keep moving,” Strike said. Linus watched as she leapt down to the ground. The last couple stairs were missing. He followed after Carmen, ending up in a heap. He moaned slightly, rubbing his shins. Light sprang into the room.

Carmen came back and stood over him bearing a torch.

“Nice one, tech wizard.”

Linus adjusted his pack and glared at her. “I made it, didn’t I?”

“Sure you did. That gets you a couple points, at least.”

The walls shook again.

“C4 set on a delay,” Strike said. She gave a wary glance towards the carved, flat stone walls. Linus followed her gaze nervously. A little dust rained down from the unseen ceiling, but the place didn’t collapse. Still, with how loud it was, there had to be some damage that she couldn’t see. She grimaced and shrugged. “I think they’re trying to bring the place down. Make sure this prophecy is the last one.”

“No time to waste thinking about it,” Carmen said in a sharp tone. She gestured with her torch hand towards a nearby archway covered in stone. It led to a massive room that resembled the valley below—someone had created a giant meadow in the midst of the frozen peaks.

Linus followed his two companions into the thigh high grass, looking about the man-made natural habitat with wonder.

“What the hell?”

“This must be what the people here maintained until the Romans arrived,” Strike said. “It must’ve just…kept going on its own.”

“It’s beautiful,” Linus said.

“Didn’t know you were so sentimental, kid,” Strike said. She hunkered down in the thigh high grass and continued forward.

Lanterns and candles flickered to life as they passed by, triggered by some ancient motion sensing mechanism. The room itself seemed endless and infinite. It was furnished with stone idols and woven tapestries of brightly colored fabrics. But this wasn’t what was most incredible.

The trio arrived at a river that bisected the meadow. The aroma of fresh flowers hit Linus’ nose.

He crouched in the idyllic meadow, complete with daisies and brilliantly green grass, passing his fingers through a trickling stream. A stone sabretooth stood guard over his shoulder, next to a mammoth. Every animal in history, it seemed, was well represented along the walls.

Which made sense, given that the protectors of this shrine had lived for a very long time indeed.

“This must be where the root grows,” Strike said. She held up a gnarled looking white plant in front of Linus.

“But how did they get down here if it was locked for all this time?” Linus said.

“We didn’t,” came a thunderous voice that made Linus’ heart turn cold with fear. He squinted into the darkness ahead, where, a hundred yards past the stream—at the very edge of the light—the room split into two routes.

“There was a stockpile in the village,” the voice continued, “enough to last many, many millennia.”

It was coming from all around, amplified by the natural reverb of the massive, cathedral-like room. Maybe Linus hadn’t been exaggerating the descent. They could be hundreds of feet below the ruined temple by now.

“Prashant,” Strike whispered to Linus and Carmen, “guess we know for sure who was in the chopper. And who won.”

“The name doesn’t sound Roman,” Carmen said. She removed one of the pistols from her holster and handed it to Linus. Then she took a rifle from the carrying slot in her backpack and jabbed it towards Strike, who took it with a smirk.

“It isn’t,” Strike said.

“That’s good, then, right?” Linus said. “The Romans were trying to destroy the world.”

“He was in love with that girl, the one trapped in the temple above,” Strike said. “And he just sentenced her to die, and buried her alive for whatever his cause is.”

“Maybe it’s an important cause,” Carmen said, but without much conviction.

“A man turns like that, and you question all his motives.”

Prashant’s voice came booming out of the shadows. “Do not interfere and you might live in our hallowed paradise forever.”

“I doubt that,” Strike screamed back. The trio advanced towards the fork.

“It is either us or them. Our world and yours are on a collision course within the multi-verse, occupying the same cosmic space. There is no room for both the Shambhala universe and your Earth universe. And the unique energy within our universe, which grants us so many great things—this root, our intense happiness, the beauty—must be expelled from our universe into the multi-verse. Otherwise our world will implode.”

“So the electro-magnetic energy within this universe doesn’t quite balance according to the laws of physics,” Linus said, half to himself, “more energy is created than destroyed. To obtain equilibrium, it must go somewhere. And it looks like Earth is directly in the accidental crosshairs.”

“There’s no other way?” Strike said.

“One universe survives or the other,” Linus said. “I guess this Cladius guy was going to choose Earth. His home. Same as Prashant.”

“Jesus Christ,” Strike said.

“Cladius has taught me a great lesson,” Prashant said, his voice booming out over the massive room, “it is that sometimes terrible things must be done in order to survive. Such is the way of man. I will journey into the mountain, sacrifice myself, and direct this energy so that my people can live free once more.”

“Is that why you sacrificed the girl,” Strike yelled out. “She loved you.”

“Her power was necessary to direct the energy. Just as the prophecy predicted.”

The vestiges of his voice lingered and echoed for a few seconds after, then the room was silent.

“She must act like an energy conduit,” Linus said. “Whatever special atoms are inside of those ten people must be able to focus this energy, rather than have it bounce about this universe and build up.”

“How do we stop it?”

“Unplug the girl, I guess,” Linus said. “Or stop Prashant from focusing the energy.”

“We have to stop him,” Strike said, her own voice grim. “It’s our only play.”

“You know what that means,” Linus said.

“I know,” Strike said. “But as the man said, sometimes you gotta make a terrible choice.”

They arrived at the fork, where the massive room’s ceiling suddenly dropped to a little over head height.

“Which way,” Linus said, staring down each. “We gotta follow them both, right?”

Strike deliberated for half a second, then shook her head. “Some of us will die if we split up. One way’s a dead end.”

“The mountain’s crumbling,” Carmen said with a detached acceptance. “Either some die or we all die.”

“She’s a real ray of sunshine, Linus,” Strike said. “Great for morale.”

“But I’m not wrong,” Carmen said. A radio attached to her backpack crackled, a man’s voice coming over the tinny speaker between bursts of static. She reached for the receiver and answered. “This is Carmen, over.”

“Carmen…double-crossing…bitch…”

“Keene,” Strike said, snatching the radio away from Carmen, “you’re alive.”

“…chopper…coming up…”

“You’re breaking up. Try another frequency.” Strike fiddled with the plastic knobs on the radio’s face. “Do you copy?”

“That’s way better,” Keene said, his voice coming through loud and clear. “I got a chopper. I’m coming for you guys.”

“We’re in the middle of the mountain. Might be kind of hard,” Strike said.

“Yeah, shit. The whole temple’s been completely destroyed. I can see smoke pouring out,” Keene said. “You guys all right?”

“We’re after Prashant. He’s trying to use Alessia to save Shambhala.”

“That doesn’t sound bad.”

“If Shambhala lives, then Earth is destroyed. It’s an, uh, physics thing. I guess. You’ll have to ask Linus when you see him.” Strike gave a cursory nod towards Linus. “How’d you get the chopper?”

“I’m resourceful,” Keene said. “Any other way inside the mountain that you know of?”

“I don’t know.”

“You know where you’re headed?”

Carmen fumbled with her pocket, extracting a compass. “Yeah, we got a compass,” Strike said.

“This bird’s got a couple air-to-air missiles. I can blow a hole in the side of the mountain if you head west. It looks like I can fit the bird in around there and get a clean shot at the cliffs.”

“But Earth’s still gonna burn if we don’t stop Prashant from doing whatever he came down here to do,” Strike said. “So that doesn’t solve our major problem.”

“Shit.”

“Hold on.” Strike removed the radio from her mouth and nodded towards Linus. “You said the people up top are an energy conduit, right Linus?”

“And without them up there, the energy just bounces around and builds up.”

“I guess,” Linus said. “What are you thinking?”

“The same thing we’ve been told all along,” Strike said. She started walking down the left path, following the compass needle through the tunnel. “We’re gonna protect the girl and save the world.” She clicked the radio on. “Keene?”

“Yup, still here.”

“Save the girl. She’s imprisoned up at the temple. And then save our asses.”

“Roger that.”

The call ended, and Linus watched as Strike took the lead with a new sense of purpose, her shoulders higher than before. He hoped she knew what she was doing. Then again, he didn’t really need to hope.

He’d seen her in action before.

A yelp punctuated the small tunnel.

Linus looked back.

“You will do exactly as you are both told,” Prashant said, holding a knife to Carmen’s throat, his eyes wild, “or the girl dies.”

A single beep pierced the darkness from Linus’ digital watch.

Only thirty minutes until the world burned.

But it was yet to be determined which world that would be.