Matt Archer: Legend (3 page)

I yawned my way across the Carleton University campus,
following Parker at a trot. Despite the fact that I was taller than everyone
except Will, Parker was one dude I just couldn’t keep up with, unless we were
running. He walked faster than any guy I knew. Maybe because he always knew
where he was going, or liked to make good time. Either way, it was annoying.

We’d come to Canada to meet with a couple of scholars who
specialized in anthropology of the occult. There had been some strange deaths
and disappearances in the area, particularly among native peoples, and someone
knew someone who knew someone who knew about our team. They called Colonel
Black to ask Pentagram Strike Force to check it out.

“The anthropology building is on the corner,” Parker called over
his shoulder. “The professors should be waiting for us.”

I turned to Johnson, who was huffing and puffing next to me.
“Think we should just slow down and meet him there in an hour?”

Johnson grinned. “Sounds tempting.”

“I can hear you, you know,” Parker said. “The building is
right there, so quit bellyaching.”

He pointed at a brick building that managed to look both
institutional and modern, with square brick walls and funky shaped windows…still
a good tenth of a mile away.

I cursed under my breath. “Your idea of ‘right there’ and
mine are kind of different, sir.”

“I’m beginning to think Murphy is the lucky one, staying
behind to brief the Mounties about last night,” Johnson said, wiping his
forehead.

“No doubt,” Will answered.

We climbed a set of stairs up to the front doors and Parker
didn’t wait for us before plowing inside, practically leaving a vapor trail in
his wake. We took our time following him. The hallway was dim after being out
in the sunshine, and the building smelled like old books and dust. Will sneezed
as soon as he cleared the threshold.

“Allergies are for wusses, Sneezer,” I said.

Will stopped walking to give me the finger and I laughed.

“Move along, you two,” Johnson said. “We have a schedule to
follow, and the captain looks like he’s ready to throttle someone for being
slow. I’d prefer that not be me.”

We trooped down the hall under Parker’s exasperated glare,
our boots echoing on the hard floor. A few girls gave us strange looks as they
came out of a classroom and Will stood up straighter, smiling that cocky grin
of his. I didn’t have the heart to tell him they were staring because we’d worn
our battle dress uniforms—camo—and were probably wondering why the U.S. Army
was invading a Canadian college. Then both girls smiled back at him and one of
them looked Will up and down like he was a slab of prime steak, lowering her
eyelashes as we passed by.

“How do you manage to pick up girls everywhere we go?” I
muttered.

“I don’t share my super-power secrets.”

“Well, at least I don’t sneeze like a wuss all the time.”

“Asshat.”

“Bastard.”

“Hurry up, you two!” Parker called. He pulled open a heavy
door. “This is it.”

 The professors were meeting us in a conference room, but it
looked more like a rich man’s library than any conference room I’d ever seen. A
long polished wooden table with heavy chairs took up most of the space. Tall
bookcases filled with heavy tomes bordered three of the walls and dark curtains
covered the windows.

“Pity I didn’t bring my smoking jacket,” Will said in a
perfect imitation of one of his parents’ snootier friends. “I didn’t realize we
were meeting at the club.”

Johnson rumbled a quiet laugh, but squelched it when the
eggheads arrived: two men in glasses, khakis and button-down shirts, and a
woman wearing a striped top and an ankle-length skirt. They introduced
themselves as Dr. This, That and The Other. I tried to catch names, but my
attention span went haywire when I got a better look at the hippy-woman. There
was something familiar about her, sending my heart thumping wildly in my chest.

It couldn’t be the same woman, it
couldn’t.
But then
she faced me dead on, focusing a pair of strange, jade-green eyes on mine.

I drew a breath through my teeth. “
You.”

Will looked at the woman, then back at me, wearing a faintly
alarmed expression. “‘You’ what?”

Darkness crowded my vision and I could smell dust and
sulfur. Hissing and the scrabble of hard feet on a stone floor meshed with long
dark hair, white teeth, golden skin and impossibly green eyes.

A goddess in a shimmering dress who turned out to be so much
more.

“The scorpion,” I whispered. “She looks just like…like the
human version of the scorpion I fought in Afghanistan last March.”

The woman blinked slowly, looking me over like she was
measuring me for a coffin, and my hackles went up.

“What?” I snapped, my hand drifting to brush the handle of
my knife, sheathed in my thigh pocket.

Conversation stopped and all the adults stared me down.
Captain Parker gave me a ‘cut the crap’ look. “Mr. Archer, is there some kind
of problem?”

I knew he was trying to rein me in, but my manners had taken
a flying leap. I pointed at the woman. “Who the hell is she?”

“Oh, here we go,” Will muttered, taking sizable step away
from me.

One of the men hurried to answer. “Her name is Dr. Iris
Longtree. She’s part of the anthropology department with us. She’s our expert
on modern witchcraft.”

“Not surprising,” I said. “Is that only an area of study,
Dr. Longtree, or do you practice dark arts on the side?”

“Dude,” Will whispered. “Give it a rest.”

“I don’t know what this is about…” Dr. Longtree gave me a
confused look. “I mean you no harm.”

I shook my head, too sucked in by bad memories to do
anything but tense up. “Oh, yeah? I’ve heard that one before, lady, and I don’t
buy it for a second.”

“
Matt!
” Johnson barked, his dark eyes boring into
mine. His stern expression matched the one he often gave me before tossing me
to the mats during close-combat training. “Enough of…whatever this is. They’re
here by invitation. Don’t you be disrespecting them.”

Dr. Longtree raised a hand, giving the officers and
professors a little smile. “It’s no matter. A lot of people think my area of study
is bizarre.” She took her seat at the table and didn’t spare me another glance.

I gripped the handle of my knife, not sure what I planned to
do with it. The knife-spirit chose that moment to give me a love tap—zinging me
between the eyes with a snap that made my eyes water. That was Tink’s way of
telling me to buckle up the crazy for a while, and she only did it when she
really meant business.

Stand down,
she commanded.
You’re my ears and I
need you to listen to the conversation, not dwell on something in the past
.

Easy for her to say. She didn’t have nightmares about the
men lost during that mission. Still, something was wrong in this room, and
maybe listening would gain more than threatening a woman I’d just met.

Rubbing my forehead, I said, “Sorry, Dr. Longtree. I mistook
you for someone else.”

Dr. Longtree’s tone was frosty when she said, “Must be
someone you don’t like very much.”

Feeling stupid, I said, “It’s a long story. I’ll just…be
over there.”

I took a seat in a cushy wingback chair in the corner,
letting the more rational people congregate around the big table. Will sat in
the chair next to mine.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just…remember when I kind of
lost it at school last winter and blacked out in the hall?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, you were fighting imaginary monsters and
punched a guy by accident.”

I winced. Not my finest hour by any stretch. “It was kind of
like that. I saw Dr. Longtree and flashed back to the cave. I could practically
smell
it.”

The funny thing was, now that I took a good, hard look, the
professor didn’t resemble the woman in the cave nearly as much as my brain had
made me believe. Her skin was darker, and her features were less even, not as
perfect. More embarrassing, her eyes weren’t even green—they were brown. Why
did my mind always do this? Out of nowhere, it perceived some threat and sent
me into freak-mode.

Then again, it was hard not to be on edge when I constantly
worried about what was lurking around the next corner. And those dreams about
Mamie trapped in the dark were enough to make anyone bat-crap crazy. No guy
wanted to hear his sister scream like that; not if he could kill whatever was
hurting her.

By now, the adults had gotten past my outburst and were
animatedly discussing Iroquois religious beliefs, since some of the kidnapping
victims were leaders from their confederacy. Dr. This—whose last name was
really Barnes—was saying something about a peacemaker and a darkness that
wanted to destroy the world.

“It’s said he was a boy, this peacemaker,” Dr. Barnes said,
laying his big hands on the table. “He will unite the people under an elm tree
and they will be humbled before him. Once they have gathered, the boy will
defeat the deceiver serpents and blind them by the light.”

Will cut his eyes my direction. “Did I really just hear
that?”

I massaged my temples. “Yeah.”

“You know what they’re thinking—”

He didn’t have time to finish his thought before every head
turned toward me. Johnson’s eyes had gone wide. I hadn’t even
done
anything
this time, and he was staring at me with his jaw slack, like he already knew I
was the boy, and that one day he’d be humbled before me under some random tree.

Dr. Longtree cleared her throat. “What we’re studying at
present is how many ancient religions or cultures had similar prophecies. About
the end-game, and how a defender of some sort would battle evil. Some of the
more pessimistic religions believe it won’t succeed and the people of the earth
will wander in darkness. Some even long for the dark to be victorious.” When
everyone stared at her instead of me, she quickly added, “Um, well, most
religions believe the opposite—that light defeats dark. Good over evil. All
that…stuff.”

“I didn’t think PhD’s were allowed to use the word ‘stuff’’
for…stuff,” Will whispered, and I tried to cover up a laugh by coughing. Not
too subtle.

Dr. Longtree glared at us. “Perhaps the stories are
symbolic, but the Iroquois we’ve interviewed believe something is happening.
Three tribal leaders have disappeared, and we keep hearing wild tales about
shadows walking the night from various sources. There was no sign of a struggle
in any of the kidnappings. Not one clue. Care to explain why this might be?”

Captain Parker sighed. “We can’t. Not without more evidence.
Do you have any concrete information? Sightings, perhaps?”

Dr. Barnes straightened his glasses and said, “Well, sort
of. One of our people disappeared recently as well.”

Parker and Johnson exchanged looks. Parker leaned forward,
“Who?”

Dr. That, who hadn’t said a word the whole meeting, finally
spoke up. “A physics instructor, Dr. Burton-Hughes. She was here, doing
research for a theoretical physics study on dark energy.”

Dr. Longtree patted the man’s arm. “I still think that’s a
coincidence, Bill.”

Bill pounded a pasty fist on the table. “I know what I saw,
Iris!”

“Whoa, let’s calm down,” Johnson said in that deep, quiet way
of his, like an instant nerve soother. “What makes you think it’s related,
sir?”

Bill swallowed hard. “Because she wouldn’t just leave me like
that, not without saying something.”

“What was your relationship with Dr. Burton-Hughes?” Parker
asked.

“We were…together,” Bill said. “I went to her office to pick
her up for a late dinner a few weeks ago. The door was slightly open, so I
peeked inside. There was this shadow on the wall, moving around, but Caroline,
um, Dr. Burton-Hughes, was gone. There wasn’t anything inside her office that
could make a shadow like that.”

Goose bumps rose on my arms. “Dr.…uh, Bill, what did the
shadow look like?”

“This will sound crazy—”

“Doubtful,” I said, thinking of my nightmares.

“It looked like a smeared man,” he said. “Like something
that had been a man before but was mutated, turned into a…a…monster. A smudgy,
dark blob of a man.”

Dr. Barnes picked at his fingernails, like he was dying to
get out of here before his colleagues infected him with their insanity. Dr.
Longtree was shaking her head. Only Bill looked sincere. And terrified. I
thought he had good reason to be.

“Then what?” Parker asked.

“I contacted the police,” Bill said. “Caroline’s car was
still in the parking lot, and she didn’t appear on any of the security feeds
leaving the building. No one has seen or heard from her since, but nothing was
missing from her office. She just vanished.”

There was this loaded silence. A buzz filled my ears, like
five voices trying to talk at once—a blade-spirit conference call. We must’ve
been on to something. My fingers twitched at my knife’s handle; I didn’t like
how this room felt, not one bit.

 “This Dr. Burton-Hughes—was she descended from a native
people?” Parker was asking.

Bill shook his head. “No. Caroline was here on a grant. From
Australia. The University of Western Australia, in Perth, to be exact.”

My stomach dropped right to the floor. “Um, wasn’t Perth close
to where—”

Johnson shot me a warning glance, and that was enough to
tell me I was right. Perth was the closest major city to the section of the
Outback where the Australian monsters struck two years ago. The native people
there, the Noongar, had helped us understand the terrain of the desert to the
east of Perth. Our plan had been to eliminate the monsters before they made it
across the desert, into the populated areas. We were successful, but we never
figured out who they were targeting. We always suspected they were after one of
the Noongar’s leaders, just like the Gators chasing Jorge across Peru. But what
if we were wrong?