Reign of Coins (22 page)

“You’re only slightly surprised to see this, I’m sure.” Said Morrow, gleefully. “But, did it ever occur to any of you that it might possess a few more abilities beyond what a normal stylus can do?”

I believe I was the only one to shake my head, though subtly.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter, since each of you are desperately thinking of a way to escape your dismal fate,” he continued. “Since I rarely get to play with anything that doesn’t follow the usual laws of physics, you’ll have to excuse my fascination with a little secret I’m about to share. Watch this.”

His thugs brought us to a table near the door, and on it lay Cheung’s map. Morrow’s carelessness had damaged the corners of the ancient goatskin. But it hardly mattered. Once he sat the stylus on top of the map, it began to vibrate and twirl on its own. As it did, text that was previously invisible suddenly appeared. Mainly it was numbers in Portuguese and Latin, although elements from languages in this part of the world were also included. I’m ashamed to admit I whispered my hunch the numbers looked like measurements.

“Oh, this is going to be so much fun!” beamed Morrow, pleased by my quiet musing. “Since we’ve already done this once tonight, we have the measurements that tell us specifically where to place our hands on the rock wall hiding the cave entrance. Certainly, Judas, from your extensive travels and knowledge of the ancient world, you are familiar with the relationship between
‘chi’
,
‘bu’
, and
‘li’
. Correct?”

I merely nodded. These units have varied over time, so unless Morrow knew the precise era when the map was created, his calculations could be off.

“1520 was the year the map was created, William,” said Kaslow, drawing a sharp glare from me. The sucker had just read my thoughts, and he grinned at my pained expression. “The numbers should be accurate, as you will see in a few minutes. We should go.”

“Yes, I agree.” Morrow gathered the stylus and map and headed for the exit. “Make sure Judas and the other two stay ahead of us, and the kid stays with you, Viktor.”

He didn’t wait for a reply, and immediately left the salon. To get an idea of where my son’s and Sulyn’s mental states were at, I had been quietly observing them through my peripheral. He hadn’t said a word, but Alistair didn’t hide his amazement about the strange stylus and what it revealed upon the map’s face. Sulyn, on the other hand, seemed shaken by what just happened. She obviously hadn’t grasped that Viktor Kaslow wasn’t human anymore, any more than she realized I also was no longer human in the traditional sense. Even so, she surely knew Kaslow was akin to a demon from hell.

Kaslow seemed to grow more impatient once we stepped out onto the deck, and quickly ushered everyone off the ship. The little girl reached out for her father, who tearfully ignored her, as if he fully understood how quickly either one of them could end up dead. I sent a silent prayer for mercy to him and his child, since neither one would likely return to the pier in Tolo Harbour.

“So…this is it,” marveled Morrow, when we arrived at the wall. Despite the moonlight, much of the rock face was shrouded by shadows from taller formations. “You truly have no idea how this thing works, do you, Judas?”

No, Morrow-asshole… I sure don’t.

I was about to voice an abridged version of my disrespect, but then he pulled out the stylus again. He quietly mouthed an incantation that matched the words Sulyn and I had struggled to decipher last night when we first handled the map. His rendering of the older Cantonese dialect sounded similar to hers, though his pronunciation was marred by his inexperience with the Chinese language.

The sapphire atop the stylus began to glow, and as it did, a luminescent blue haze emanated from the device. It followed Morrow’s fervent push with palms held out in front of him. The haze embraced the wall, and two separate handprints appeared at my chest level, roughly a dozen feet apart from each other.

“Viktor, will you do the honors?”

Morrow pointed to the handprint on the left while he moved up to the one on the right.

“According to my research, finishing the incantation while you and I place our corresponding hands over the marks on the wall will trigger the appearance of the entrance,” he advised. “Here goes.”

Spoken like a true amateur. But after seeing firsthand the creation of an abomination like Kaslow last summer—an event that happened in the holiest place on earth—I unfortunately understood how easy this hodgepodge approach could work. As it turned out, it worked like a charm.

Once Kaslow and Morrow had placed their hands over the smaller ones that had appeared on the rock face, and Morrow completed his horrendous pronunciation of the five-hundred-year-old words, the ground beneath our feet began to shake. As it did, the rock wall moved aside. Not by much, but enough for a person of average build to step through easily. For Kaslow, the thugs, and myself it was a little trickier squeezing our muscular builds through the opening.

Armed with flashlights, Morrow’s latest henchmen led the way. We stood within a fairly large cavern with a ceiling much higher than the one I had seen in my dream. Maybe we had arrived at the wrong place. Yet, I knew beyond all doubt my coin was near, as I could feel the terrible rage it had gathered since the Lord’s blood tarnished it and its brothers. If it were an audible response, surely it would be an ear-piercing scream.

A large round disk sat in the middle of the room, roughly five feet in diameter. An intricately carved dragon graced the top.

“This is where the cave entrance should be,” said Morrow. “Adad…Ishtar. Come lift this out of the way.”

“There’s no need,” said Kaslow, waving them off. He returned his pistol to the holster under his left arm and squatted in front of the large stone disk. With no more effort than lifting a fifty-pound sack of potatoes, he picked up the disk and tossed it out of the way.

That was clue number three for Sulyn, whose eyes grew wide with amazement. For anyone with limited exposure to the supernatural, a magic stylus, blue haze revealed handprints, and superhuman strength would definitely be a reality bender. But, the real fun had yet to come.

Once the disk was removed, I recognized the stepladder leading down into the darkness below. The flashlights’ beams revealed the bottom of the cavern was less than ten feet, or three meters, as Morrow pointed out. The beams also revealed several human skeletons lying haphazardly near the base of the ladder. The bones appeared to have been seared by fire.

Kaslow led the way, showing more caution than I expected. Perhaps he figured the cavern was filled with booby traps. I was ordered down the hole next and noticed the air was stale, but also carried the scent of charred wood and flesh. No one had visited this place since World War II.

“Sheesh! It looks like a small war happened down here,” observed Alistair, once he and everyone else had joined us. Identical to what I saw in my dream, the cave was just under five feet in height and maybe fifty feet in width. It opened to several smaller rooms, or passageways.

To my right were rows of stacked chests, and many more skeletons surrounded us. Most were dressed as the Chinese men I had watched race against time to load chest after chest inside this cramped place. However, the remains of roughly a dozen Japanese soldiers were here, too.

They all died here, and the cave was covered so no one could escape....

Morrow directed those of us in bonds against one wall, while he and Kaslow searched for the chest containing the mythic mantle. The coin’s blue glow emanated from a chest less than ten feet away. Barely open, I tried to ignore it once I recognized it from my dream the other night. Sadly, Viktor saw it, too.

“Marvelous!”

Morrow eagerly joined Kaslow once the Russian announced he had found my coin. My heart sank and I braced myself for one of them to pull it out and taunt me. Instead, they dug deeper in their search for the vest once belonging to Genghis Khan.

“Found it!”

Like a kid at Christmas, Morrow’s smile stretched from ear to ear. He eagerly removed the armored vest and hurried to put it on. I couldn’t believe it was a perfect fit, and it seemed to surprise Kaslow, as well.

“You are a fool for ignoring the legends from long ago!” warned Sulyn, angrily, after finally able to spit out her gag. She sat between Alistair and the girl, who clung to her as if she were her birth mother. One of the thugs punched her in the face, but she hid the pain, raising her chin defiantly while twin crimson streams trickled from her nostrils. “Genghis Khan was the
only
one worthy to wear his mantle!”

“Oh, you think so?” Morrow eyed her contemptuously. “Who in the hell made you the expert around here?!”

“It is widely known that the great leader of the Mongols embraced all worthy philosophies on life, including those of the most powerful shamans,” she explained, drawing a surprised look from Alistair and a raised eyebrow from me. We both understood she hadn’t previously embraced anything dealing with the supernatural. She shot me a look that begged me to roll with her on this. “The mantle is only for those as worthy as Genghis to wear it.”

“In other words, I’m not worthy? Is that what you’re implying, Ms. Cheung?”

That frigging crazy facial expression again.

“What she means is this: If the mantle was created for good, then it will fail if it falls into the wrong hands,” I said, which was pretty much the same damned thing she told him. Yeah, I couldn't resist taking a shot at making him feel more like a dumbass.

And, just like that, crazy maniacal became homicidal…at least in appearance. Maybe it was pretty dumb to egg him on, but my instincts were now in full control. I had committed myself to follow them and see if they somehow led me to one solid opportunity to rescue three innocent human beings. I’d gladly sacrifice my life and coin if it would spare Alistair, Sulyn, and the little girl snuggled up against her.

“Well…fuck you both!” he sneered. “And, William, Judas, stupid asshole—whoever you really are, get this: Since your blood-encrusted coin has been sharing a home with the mantle, all of the wickedness you brought into the world has been marinating a device already incredibly powerful. I’ll bet you know nothing of how this thing originated—do you? Have you ever heard of Fushine the Sorceress?”

“Of course, I have, “ I said, trying to clear my thoughts of something I’d just noticed. A fallen Japanese soldier had drawn his sword just before his death. Surprisingly, Kaslow and the other fiends hadn’t noticed the blade sticking upward, still grasped tightly by the boney-gloved hand holding it. Unfortunately, it was too far away to grip the handle from behind. It left no choice other than impaling my hand with the blade and manipulating the blade out of my palm to cut my bonds. “She started out well enough, but was beheaded after her predictions for her emperor were found to be fraudulent.”

“Bullshit! It appears your knowledge is as faulty as your ability to find your coins!”

He was really getting angry. Excellent. A little lie doesn’t hurt when designed for the greater good.

“For your corrected information, Judas, Fushine was a greatly honored practitioner of magic!” Morrow continued, his
livid voice unsteady. “Not only that, but she was instrumental in creating the mantle for Mr. Khan. How do you suppose a nomadic warlord rose to such heights so quickly? How does a leader of a few thousand men eventually grow that army to half a million soldiers, and effortlessly conquer nations vastly superior to the early horsemen Genghis Khan assembled? Hell, you were there, Judas, so don’t give us some shit about him picking himself up by the bootstraps and deciding one day to be ‘Emperor of the world.’”

I nodded smugly in response while feeling the worried gazes of Alistair and Sulyn. They needed to trust me. They also needed
not
to look behind us, since I had just impaled my left hand on the sword’s dirty blade. Time to reel it in closer without drawing any attention, despite the searing pain making me want to scream.

“Well, we’re going to have to agree to disagree,” I said, releasing a low sigh, as if this conversation meant no more than a hill of beans to me. Meanwhile, I kept working the blade through my hand, until several small streams of blood coursed down my fingers. Oh, and I should mention here that since the metal was continuously piercing me like a shish kabob on a rotisserie, I wasn’t healing as quickly as usual. “I have the experience of actually meeting that wench. The charlatan bitch got everything coming to her.”

In truth, I never met her, and all I ever heard about Fushine was her talent was genuine. But for the moment, I made up an alternate existence for her in my head, just in case Kaslow was peering into my subconscious.

“That’s it. That’s
fucking
it!” railed the madman. “I’ll show you who’s right about this! I’m going to demonstrate what this thing can do, now that it’s been in bed with your nice little coin—which Viktor has agreed to melt down to a tiny silver wedge to be deposited into the South China Sea! It should keep you busy for the next thousand years trying to recover it. For now, we’re done dealing with each other! No more waiting and no more talk!”

No one else fully understood what this ancient armor vest could do. As I mentioned, I had seen the plasma stream rip through the air a few miles beyond the plain of Samarkand, and later the destruction of the city’s walls, twenty feet thick. Perhaps Alistair pictured what I’d described to him upon our arrival in Hong Kong, as terrible dread filled his expression.