The Ancient Breed (11 page)

A savage roar split the stillness as the monster hovered above Jamille. Slowly, it raised its left arm.

A weak whimper escaped Jamille’s lips as its arm descended and the razor tips of its three claws tore into his back, puncturing his heart, lungs and liver. Before the boy realized what had happened to him, his life force faded away.

Sirjo abandoned the spotlight and jumped into the van after witnessing Jamille’s horrible death. He had to get the hell away from there! His trembling fingers fumbled the keys as he tried repeatedly to jam the right one into the ignition. Another inhuman roar reverberated through the swamp and shook the van.

The engine finally sputtered to life, and Sirjo threw the transmission into
Drive
and floored the accelerator. The van didn’t budge! It was suddenly listing toward the passenger side. The rear wheels screamed and spun wildly in the air.

The beast’s claws shredded the steel roof like cardboard, missing Sirjo’s head by inches. The monster lifted the rear of the van with one arm while it attacked Sirjo with the other. Even in his panicked state, Sirjo realized that the thing’s next swipe might separate him from his life. He stretched across the front seat, grabbed the remote detonating device and pressed the red button.

The construction site burst into sizzling orange flames. The command trailer and the three mechanical shovels were ripped into metallic debris. The demon shrieked as several fragments impaled its body.

That was Sirjo’s final act. The angry Zyloux’s claws peeled back the van’s roof and raked the trespasser into squirming quarters. Sirjo’s stunned eyes blinked once before he was dimly aware that his head was no longer attached to his twitching, bleeding body parts. A ring of sharp teeth descended swiftly toward his terrified face, and then all went black.

Sirens sounded in the distance, and the wounded horned demon retreated from the searing flames. After it healed, the Zyloux would return to this realm to hunt and destroy the humans who now possessed the stolen elixir.

12

J

ay moved his bedding out of the other bedroom so he could watch Lonny who was sleeping peacefully on the couch. Jay stretched out in the uncomfortable recliner and placed his silencer-equipped gun on his lap beneath the sheet. He chuckled as he imagined the water’s effects on Lonny. The worst-case scenario would be Lonny’s regressing into a pain-in-the-ass, zit-faced teenager who was on the prowl for a lay. He checked on Lonny once more, and then read
The
Tampa Tribune
.

Jay stayed awake until two. An hour earlier, he had phoned his terrorist cell commander from the front porch and reported his discovery in the gold chest. His contact ordered him to do nothing more with the strange water until he received further instructions. By the time Jay returned to the recliner, his eyelids were ten-pound weights, and he finally collapsed. He fell into a shallow sleep, waking every thirty minutes or so to listen to Lonny’s rhythmic snoring.

At four-thirty, a piercing scream shattered Jay’s restless slumber. His eyes snapped open, his muscles tensed, and his fingers closed on his gun. A quick glance to the sofa told him that Lonny was missing. Shit! Here we go.

Another bloodcurdling scream shattered the stillness. Blossom! Jay struggled out of the recliner, rushed to her room, and flicked on the lights. Stunned, he fell back a step. He couldn’t believe his eyes.

That poor guinea pig, Lonny, had been transformed into an ugly, hairless creature less than five feet tall. Its elongated skull was too damned large for its pallid, emaciated body. Pointed ears displaced Lonny’s pierced ones. But it was Lonny’s new black, spiky teeth that unnerved Jay the most. The little bastard turned, curled its lips, and snarled. It glared out of the corners of its green elliptical eyes at Jay as its lethal mouth closed on Blossom’s quivering throat.

“Lonny!” he shouted.

The vicious creature pivoted and snarled, his graveyard pupils completely focused on the intruder. That was the effect Jay hoped for.

Jay raised the gun barrel and fired twice, splattering Lonny’s head with the first muted shot and exploding his hideous chest with the second. Blossom shrieked again as Lonny’s long nails dug into her shoulder as he slid to the floor.

Juan arrived with gun in hand and ready to fire. “Sweet Mother of Mary!” he muttered and crossed himself. He glanced at the bloody remains and then at Jay. “Lonny?”

“’Fraid so.”

“Just from drinking a little bit of wine from that old-fashioned thermos?”

“Not wine, amigo,” he replied, as he unlocked Blossom’s cuffs and held the sobbing woman in his arms.

“Then what?”

“Water from the fountain of youth.”

“You’re shittin’ me.”

He shook his head. “It’s true.”

Blossom gradually regained her composure before going to the bathroom to wash the bloody spray off her face and arms.

“What do we do with . . . him?” Juan asked with a shudder.

“It’s still dark, so I say we throw the body into the back of the car, and you drive him out into the country and dump him,” Jay said.

Juan frowned. “Alone?”

Jay stood and nudged Lonny’s sunken chest with his hand. “Look, he’s dead, amigo. No heart.” He pointed at the blood-drenched wall where grayish bits of Lonny’s brain were still trickling toward the tile floor. “And his brains are wallpaper.”

“I still don’t like it, but what the hell. Like you said, the little shit’s dead.”

“C’mon, let’s get this done.”

They wrapped the corpse in a thin flannel blanket and carried it outside to the Explorer. The countryside surrounding the isolated, ramshackle bungalow was blanketed in fog and eerily quiet except for a cricket chorus and belching tree frogs. After heaving the body into the back, Jay tossed Juan the car keys.

“Be careful. Drive the speed limit. We don’t need any trouble from the cops,” Jay warned him.

Juan jingled the keys. “No shit, man.”

Jay watched the Explorer disappear into the muddy mist and grinned. He called his contact on his cell phone and related the details of Lonny’s transformation. His commander gave him detailed instructions on what he was to do with the liquid inside the bladder. Jay smiled. He liked it. The commander also gave Jay an address where he was to ship the remaining liquid via overnight delivery and hung up.

Jay hated losing Lonny, but his little experiment proved what his mind had only imagined. This new change to Friday’s mission was going to be a gruesome twist. It would certainly grab the government’s attention.

What Jay couldn’t guess was that his discovery would have worldwide implications, too.

Blossom repeatedly scrubbed her face and arms in an attempt to eradicate the sinister sensation pervading her flesh. Damn, what a nightmare! First, she was kidnapped and then attacked by a repulsive creature. It was now apparent why Juan Ponce de Leon never reported his discovery of the fountain of youth and sent that nightmarish bladder to the bottom of the gulf. The liquid was cursed.

When she emerged from the bathroom, her horrible attacker was gone, but its blood dappled the floor and wall. She turned away. There was no way she would spend another minute in that room. The awful malodor of death permeated the small space. Snatching her folded clothes off the end of the bed, she retreated to the unoccupied living room and hastily re-dressed.

Suddenly, it dawned on her that she was alone! Blossom ran to the rear of the bungalow and tried to open the door, then rushed to the rear of the house, but it was boarded shut. Next, she checked the windows in the other bedroom, but they were boarded up as well. She tentatively returned to her bedroom and noticed that the window above the bed wasn’t boarded shut. Throwing back the curtains, she discovered that locked, outdoor shutters prevented her escape. Dammit all to hell!

Thoughts of Clay crept into her mind, and she cried softly. What began as a romantic vacation turned into something just as ugly and horrible as that mutant, Lonny.
What next?
Despair chipped away at her normally fearless facade. She wondered what kind of terrible operation was going down on Friday. What kind of fanatical group was Jay involved with? Only time would tell, and that’s what frightened her the most. She didn’t want to be an accessory to Friday’s big event.

Lisa Anders cranked up the air conditioning in her car as she returned to the Warnke Construction site. It was an uncivilized five fifteen in the morning, yet the muggy air was already stifling. She punched in a number on her cell phone. Perspiration formed along the hairline beneath her bangs as she waited for the call to connect. She was as nervous as a virgin on prom night.

The phone rang at the other end. The sweat droplets plummeted down her forehead and dripped off her brow. Another ring. Another.

Finally, a hoarse, groggy voice answered.

“Bellamy,” it said.

“
Nick
Bellamy?” she asked, although she knew it was.

“The one and the same. Who’s this?”

His question was greeted by silence.

“Look, this better not be a telemarketer, or I’m gonna . . .”

“My name’s Lisa Anders. I’m a professor at Florida State,” she blurted out at last.

“I’m happy for you,” he yawned. “So what do you want, Lisa Anders, at . . . five twenty in the morning?”

“ I . . . need your help.”

“Couldn’t this wait until coffee’s brewed?”

“No!” she replied emphatically. “And besides, I’ve had mine.”

“Good for you.” He yawned. “Now, what’s on your mind?”

“Actually, it’s a matter of life and death, Agent Bellamy.”

“Of course,” he said sarcastically. “By the way, how’d you get my home number?”

Good question, she thought. “Does the name Neo ring a bell?”

“As in
Doss
?”

“Bingo, Agent Bellamy.”

“Call me Nick. After all, since you have my private number, we might as well be on a first-name basis,” he grumbled.

“All right,
Nick
. Now, let me explain, and please don’t interrupt till I’m finished. I might forget an important detail if you do.”

“Is this going to take long? Because if it is, I’m going to shower and make my pot of coffee before you get started.”

“Dammit, Nick, I’m serious!” she shouted.

“I guess so,” he said, his demeanor softening. “Sorry. Fire away when ready.”

“Thank you.” Lisa described Blossom’s discovery on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, Blossom’s kidnapping, and her own theory of the kidnapping motive.”

“You’ve got my attention,” he said solemnly.

Next, Lisa related the Warnke workers’ discovery of a boneyard on their construction site, the mysterious shadow on the company’s thermal scans, and Crow’s grandfather’s ominous warning about the contents of the gold chest.

“You certainly had a busy day. Anything else?” He was peeved that neither Crow nor Neo reported in yesterday. He had to learn the facts from a stranger.

“I know the identity of the chest’s owner and what might have been inside it,” she responded.

“It’s too early for twenty questions, so just tell me who the owner was.”

She heard him yawn again.

“Ponce de Leon.”

“The famous fountain of youth guy, right?”

She sighed. “Yes.”

“So what was inside the box? Water from the fountain of youth?” He laughed despite the seriousness of the situation.

“Oh
my God
!” Lisa slammed her foot on the brake pedal as the construction site came into view.

“What is it?” Nick demanded.

“I . . . arrived at the construction site where they found the bones, and now the construction trailer’s gone.”

“Gone as in towed away?”

“No, can’t you see?”

“No, actually I can’t.”

“Will you stop being a wiseass and listen for once? The trailer’s in a hundred pieces.”

“Bombed?”

“That’d be my guess.
Oh!
”

“Now what?”

“The big mechanical shovels are damaged, too. Their crane arms are all twisted and bent. And the yellow’s all black.”

“Anything else?”

“I see two ambulances, a sheriff’s car, the county medical examiner’s Explorer, Russ’s Jeep. . . I’ll call you right back as soon as I know more.”

Nick listened helplessly to the dial tone, and then headed for the shower. He had a hunch that today was going to be anything but ordinary.

Lisa leaped from her car and sloshed through the muddy debris to where a familiar group of men were huddled.

Russ McKutchen stood and grimly hailed her.

“Bad news here, I’m afraid,” he said.

She looked down and saw a mutilated corpse of what looked to be a black teenager. His body parts and head had been gathered and assembled in a body bag by the EMTs and George Patrick. It lay open on the muddy ground behind one of the ambulances.

Bile rose in her throat, and she looked away. “What happened to him?” she asked Russ, attempting to slow her breathing.

“Damned if we know. It looks like these two blew up the equipment and the trailer, and that’s the extent of our knowledge at the moment.”

Lisa pointed at the boy’s remains. “You think dynamite did that to the boy?”

“C-4 actually,” the sheriff interjected. “Sheriff Berger.” He extended his hand.

She shook it. Weak and flabby. Not the handshake of a sheriff she’d want protecting her from criminals. “Lisa Anders, archeology professor at Florida State. I’m here at the request of Mr. McKutchen’s company to examine the bones they discovered.”

“There’s a few new ones here that I’ll be examining.” George Patrick nodded at the body bag.

“It looks like the boy was literally ripped apart,” she observed.

“No, it was the C-4,” Berger contradicted.

“Then why weren’t the wounds cauterized by the heat of the explosions? Look what it did to those steel monsters out there.”

“She’s right, you know,” George Patrick said as he stood up. “I’ve completed my preliminary investigation, and this body and the other one inside the van were brutally dismembered.”

“Really. I’d better check the area for evidence. Whoever did this had to leave tracks in this damn muck,” Berger said.