The Ancient Breed (21 page)

Neo raised his gun to fire, but the old man’s hand pushed the gun down.

“No. We’ll do it the soundless way.” Grandfather pointed an index finger at the closest snake and mumbled a chant. Lightning flew from his fingertip and reduced the snake to ashes. The other snakes turned and disappeared into the shadowy hearth cracks.

“Wow!” Neo exclaimed.

But the old man didn’t stick around for plaudits. He was already slipping into the bedroom.

“Blossom!” Grandfather shouted joyfully at seeing her alive and swiftly cut her bonds and removed the dog collar. He turned his back while his embarrassed granddaughter hurried into the bathroom with her clothes in hand.

“Is she alive?” Crow asked from the living room.

“Your niece is alive but needs medical assistance and clean clothes.”

“I’m on it!” Neo said, grinning from ear to ear. He called for an ambulance and ordered them to stop on the way and pick up some clothing.

“What sizes?” he shouted.

“Size seven—junior,” Blossom yelled from the bathroom, happy that she was able to shout again without triggering an electric shock from the dog collar. “Size eight and a half shoes.”

Neo chuckled as he repeated her sizes to the ambulance dispatcher. If his wife, Elizabeth, could only see him now. In his current frame of mind, he wouldn’t mind the razzing from the other agents. He was just so damned pleased that they found Blossom alive, and that they finally received one lead that wasn’t a dead end.

But Neo’s happiness was short-lived. His next call was from Rance Osborne who informed Neo that Nick and Lisa Anders, among others, were sealed inside the mysterious underground building outside Fort Meyers. He instructed Neo to get down there as soon as possible to see what he could do to free them.

Neo disliked breaking up Blossom’s reunion, but he had to tell Crow about Nick’s plight. The three Native Americans understood and expressed their concern for Nick.

“Can you work your Indian mojo and get Nick out of there?” Neo asked hopefully.

Grandfather shook his head slowly. “The structure contains more powerful protective magic than I can overcome,” he said sadly. “As I am certain Nick is aware by now, he and Professor Anders are inside the lair of the beast. Only Nick can uncover the way out.”

“But, Grandfather, Nick isn’t a magician. We’ve got to help him,” Crow pleaded.

“I am so sorry; but like I said, there is nothing we can do. Our friend, Nick, is their only hope.”

“Couldn’t we use explosives to reach him?” Neo asked.

“The building blocks are protected by a powerful spell, much too strong to be affected by explosives,” the old man replied.

“But what if Nick and Lisa can’t figure a way out? You’re telling us that no one from the outside can free them?” Crow asked fearfully.

“You understand me correctly. If Nick and the fascinating Professor Anders can’t discover an exit, I fear they will be lost to our world forever.”

22

L

isa hugged Nick as they watched the terrifying tornado spin above them. There was no sound or hint of a breeze inside. The mysterious building was tightly sealed and soundproof.

“See what I mean about this place being a live creature? It’s like the molecules are bonded into one living thing,” Nick explained.

“If the south wall is the mouth, then we must be standing in its head.”

Nick considered her statement for a moment. “You know, that might explain why the stones up here suddenly became transparent.”

“So anyone trapped inside – like us - could see out?” she guessed.

“No. So
it
could see outside.”

“You’re scaring me, Nick. How do you know all this?”

“I . . . I don’t know, but somehow I just do.”

“I want to go downstairs,” Lisa insisted.

“Good idea. We have to locate the exit before . . . well, never mind. You know.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” she said sarcastically.

The others were huddled in a tight group downstairs beside the empty fountain pool. Some were praying, some sobbing, and some just cursed their bad luck at being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Lisa and Nick skirted them and proceeded to inspect the walls of the circular space, careful not to touch the stones. But, after a thorough examination, neither discovered anything resembling an exit.

“Dammit, there has to be an opening. We’re just not seeing it,” Nick grumbled, staring into the floor.

Suddenly, all heads turned in the direction of a sharp ping in the center of the grotto. They observed a sparkling water thread trickle from the top of the dome into the vacant pool.

“The demon’s regenerating process has begun,” Nick whispered to Lisa.

“From devouring the nurse and your agent?”

“Looks that way. We’ve got to find a way out fast or we’re doomed.”

Lisa turned and examined the wall beside them; she tapped Nick’s shoulder. “How about that?” she asked hopefully.

Nick pivoted, and his jaw dropped. “That wasn’t there a second ago.”

An arched stone gateway appeared with the restarting of the fountain; but instead of a gate inside the arch, they found that their potential exit was effectively blocked with mortared flagstones. Earth flagstones! The mortaring was sloppy, and the stones were uncut and pieced together unevenly.

“These flagstones aren’t part of the structure, so they should be safe to touch,” Nick declared.

“Not part of the creature, you mean?”

He nodded.

Lisa faced the archway and quickly recited the two words that opened the south wall, but they failed to budge the rocks.

She pointed to the flagstones. “It’s up to you,” she told him. “You’re the one with those
special gifts
, remember?”

He was visibly frustrated. “Sure, I hear you, but how am I supposed to access those powers?”

Lisa took his hands and placed his open palms against the rocks. “Close your eyes and concentrate on nothing. Clear your mind completely. Focus your consciousness on a flawless white backdrop,” Lisa suggested.

“I don’t know about this,” he protested.

She gently kissed his cheek. “Trust me, Nick,” she whispered in a voice that Nick was certain he had heard before.

Suddenly, he understood exactly how to focus. He recalled his erstwhile dreams of Gabriella’s White World, a magical dream world of seamless white brilliance where objects were mere whitish shadows in that absolute light. Nick closed his eyes and summoned his memories of the White World. Gradually, his mind was swept clean of all thoughts, feelings, and consciousness of place and time. He drifted into a world devoid of emotion, feeling, sight, and sound. Unlike being under hypnosis, he was not retreating deeper into his mind’s recesses but was reaching outward beyond his being to another’s thoughts. Another’s feelings and sights.

The serenity of his White World was abruptly shattered and displaced by a hostile environment teeming with anger and hatred. A world where sooty, starless skies were scarred with ominous slashes raining lava and lightning onto a smoldering terrain. Nick was actually witnessing the meteor shower that had exiled the purebloods and destroyers to Earth. He was living in the ancient past!

A tall, long-faced man with wildly frizzed hair and demonic embers for eyes shook his fist skyward. Nick suffered his pain, his maniacal fury. He read the strange man’s mind. His name was . . . Alick Tobhor, an exiled wizard from the Earth’s parallel dimension, Kundze. He was alone in an unknown dimension and badly wounded from his fall to Earth. He realized that he would be unable to return to Kundze, so he wielded his powerful magic to summon what he needed from his home world before the dimensional energy fabric separating the two dimensions sealed forever.

Nick watched as Alick chose a meteor crater for his building site and constructed his small fortress with Sphiryx stones, individual living beings whose power was multiplied by the number of stones in the fortress’s body structure. Although the individual stones in the small fortress appeared to be isolated, Nick observed that there was an instant cybernetic bonding of consciousness, communications, and energy as each stone was added. They all functioned as one being, but Nick learned that the Sphiryx creature needed one more component: intelligence.

He observed Alick raise his arms and chant to the fortress; the south wall dissolved into an entrance. Nick recognized the words. He sensed there was more beyond the confines of the Sphiryx stones; but for some inexplicable reason, the fragments of time between Alick’s beginning and finishing construction of the fortress were lost to him. Nick was like a stone skipping across the pond of time.

Tobhor then directed a floating procession of flagstone rocks into the grotto, where Nick watched him magically mortar the flagstones into a wall that sealed the archway Lisa had discovered.

He listened intently as Alick spoke to the newly erected flagstone wall. The rock and mortar vanished, and the visible opening led into a shadowy tunnel. Nick heard the chanted words, but they sounded like mumbo jumbo to him, and he couldn’t memorize them. Nick tried to scan Tobhor’s thoughts to uncover his rationale for not using Sphiryx stones for that particular wall, but his efforts were curiously jammed.

Nick examined the grotto’s lower level for other familiar landmarks and immediately identified the circular hole in the floor. Upon closer examination, Nick spotted one inconsistency. The pool bottom had yet to be sealed. When Nick bent over the edge and looked into its inky depths, he retreated quickly. At the true bottom of the fountain pool sat a meteor identical to the one resting in a cavern beneath Duneden, Ohio! That meteor was the mysterious source of the Duneden witches’ magical powers.

Nick peered over the edge again and studied the meteor. It was pear-shaped, with the circumference at the widest section measuring about eighty feet. Its mirrored surface glowed an eerie red-orange and released a purplish steam. It was at once captivating and ominous.

Nick stood and looked for Tobhor. The wizard seemed to be staring right through Nick with terrified, swollen eyes. Before Nick could follow his gaze, a bright flash of white obliterated his vision.

Lisa was alarmed as Nick suddenly collapsed to the grotto floor. His skin was pallid, and his pulse was nonexistent. One of the doctors gently brushed her aside and performed CPR on Nick, but after a dozen sequences, Nick remained unconscious.

“Dammit, I wish we had some paddles down here,” the doctor exclaimed. “Without them, I’m afraid that Nick’s a goner.”

“Let me try,” Lisa said.

The doctor stepped aside. “Be my guest.”

She covered his lips with hers and gently inflated his lungs. Before she could execute the chest maneuver, Nick’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared blankly into her anxious hazel eyes. Several minutes elapsed before he was awake enough to speak.

“How do you feel?” Lisa asked, as the others crowded around.

Nick glanced around the grotto. “I was . . . here the entire time?”

“Yes, you were. What’s the matter?” Lisa grew apprehensive.

“I can’t recall everything, but I can tell you this, Lisa: I was not in this fortress the whole time,” he insisted.

Lisa and the others were puzzled when he referred to their prison as a fortress.

“Fortress?” she repeated.

“Alick Tobhor, the builder, referred to this place as his small fortress in an alien world,” Nick answered in a dreamlike state.

“You actually saw Alick Tobhor?” Lisa was stunned.

“I certainly did. I watched him build this place, and I know what these stones are called, and what they really are. I saw what’s really beneath the fountain of youth,” he replied with rapid-fire delivery. He looked at Lisa. “And I was wrong about the demon eating the nurse and agent to recharge its strength.” He pulled Lisa close. “It’s Alick Tobhor. Alick Tobhor is alive within these walls, not the demon,” he whispered into her ear.