“Where does the road go?” I asked.
James nodded at a silhouette of rocky formations rising ahead of us. “Rattlesnake Hills. The old mining country.”
“Sounds lovely.”
When the Jeep began to climb, the pulse pulled us off onto a faint dirt road. The tires crunched through brush and over rocks, and rabbits scattered in the jouncing high beams. Before long, we arrived on a stone shelf. A pair of steep walls narrowed the way forward.
James slowed. “You sure about this, Prof?”
“If anything, the pulse is getting stronger. Hey, aim your lights over there.”
James turned the wheel in the direction of my pointed finger and stopped as the wink of a red reflector became the rear of a compact car. “Holy shit,” James said. He rolled forward some more. Additional cars shone into view. They were lined up beneath a large rock overhang, as though the space were a small parking garage. Aerial searches wouldn’t have spotted them.
“I’m guessing these belong to the women?” James said.
“Either that or someone’s trying to hide his car collection from his wife.”
I heard James counting them quietly. Eight vehicles, eight victims. That’s why the sheriff’s department had found no evidence of foul play at the victims’ homes. Under the control of the bracelets, the women had all gotten into their cars and essentially abducted themselves.
“Is this when we call Marge?” he asked.
“Not quite yet. Let’s turn the Jeep around and park it.”
Using what probably would have been Allison’s space, James performed a three-point turn and then killed the lights and engine. I gripped my cane and got out of the Jeep. James joined me around back, wand drawn.
“The pulse leads up there,” I said, pointing up one of the rock faces.
“Illuminare,” James commanded. A silver ball of light appeared from the tip of his wand. With a snap of his wrist, James sent it in the direction I’d indicated. The glowing ball illuminated a series of steps cut into the rock face. Twenty feet higher, the steps terminated at a hole.
“An old prospecting tunnel,” James said.
“And it’s exactly where the bracelet’s telling us to go,” I muttered above my tightening chest.
“Oh, right. Your phobia thing.”
I hated that word, but yeah, my phobia of being underground was already speeding my heart rate and thinning my breaths.
“Is this when we call Marge?” he asked.
“I don’t want her going in there,” I said. “Not until we’ve checked it out first.”
“And if this goddess Hel shows up?”
“Hopefully we find and destroy the idol before that happens. If not, I brought one of the potions I had you cook.” I removed the small bottle from my pocket and gave it a little shake. “It’s a sleeping potion, which should work on a god of her caliber. Give us time to clear out.”
James opened the Jeep’s rear door and unlocked his metal gun compartment as the ball of light returned to hover overhead. I watched him swap out the ammo in his Peacemakers for salt cartridges, then do the same with his shotgun, pumping the action to load the first shell.
“For insurance,” he explained, slinging the shotgun strap over a shoulder and closing the doors.
I nodded. It couldn’t hurt. We ascended the narrow stone steps and then stopped on either side of the prospecting tunnel. James sent the orb into the opening, and we peered inside. The tunnel was about four feet wide and tall enough for both of us to stand in.
“One-way trip, I guess,” James whispered, pointing. Near the entrance, several sets of shoeprints tracked through the sand, but none came back out.
“Watch your step,” I said as I entered, keeping my stance wide so as not to disturb the prints.
I followed the orb as it illuminated the rough-hewn walls stretching ahead. After thirty feet, the tunnel ended. A hole with a timber ladder plunged into the darkness. James dropped the illumination orb inside. A draft of cold, foul air blew past us as we looked down.
James recoiled, the back of a hand to his nose. “Jesus. That can’t be good.”
I steeled myself against the rotten-meat odor as my eyes tracked the descending orb. A sequence of horizontal tunnels glowed in and out of view. Only after the orb had gone the equivalent of several stories did the bracelet pulse hard beneath my fingers. I pocketed the bracelet and slid my cane through my belt, then took several deep breaths to force my chest open.
“You ready?” I asked.
The rungs of the ladder were old and slick with moisture as we descended. Rusted cables ran along one side. Somewhere beneath us, air moaned through a flue of tunnels, pushing up more of the foul stench. We got off at the side tunnel indicated by the bracelet. I shivered in the orb’s silver light, but the deepening cold felt more psychic than physical.
The smell was much stronger down here, too.
“Hey,” James whispered as the orb wandered ahead, “what did you think of Allison?”
“I think she’s really lucky we reached her in time.”
“That’s not what I meant. What do you think of her as, you know, a woman?”
“Huh?”
“Back in the diner, I felt like we were really starting to connect.”
I shook my head and began following a set of metal cart tracks, the bracelet tugging me forward.
“I mean, she’s pretty,” James said, hustling to catch up, “but she’s also super nice. I haven’t dated a lot of nice girls. She volunteers her Saturday mornings at a soup kitchen. A soup kitchen, man.”
“What happened to the librarian?” I asked thinly.
“What happened? You happened.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, come off it, bro. I saw the way you and Myrtle were looking at each other.”
“One, we weren’t looking at each other in any way. And, two, you need to focus.”
“You should totally go for it. I would. Oh, hey, watch your head.”
I turned back in time to run face-first into an ore chute. In the clanging echo, I swore and rubbed my forehead. Rock debris spilled from the chute over my shoes, creating more noise. “Look,” I hissed, “we’re here to stop a god, not swap relationship advice. Now drop it!”
“Last question. Would it be inappropriate to ask Allison on a second date?”
I ignored him and continued walking, past side tunnels, piles of timber, and old mining equipment. In an alcove, I glanced over a work bench littered with large bolts. A wooden box from the Atlas Powder Company sat to one side. While James inspected the box, I opened a browning edition of the Grimstone Star. It was dated June 1904, evidently when the mining tunnel was last active.
“There’s some old dynamite in here,” James said, tipping the box toward him with a boot.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be doing that.”
He shrugged and withdrew his foot. I threw up a shield as the box landed hard against the ground. When no explosion followed, I dispelled the shield and glared at James. He didn’t seem to notice.
“You think the women really came this far down?” he asked.
I swallowed back my irritation. At least he was talking about the case again. “If the bracelet was compelling them, yes.” I turned the band of gold around in my fingers. “The pull is really strong now.”
“Hold on,” James said, peering past me. “I think there’s a light down there.” With a Word, he killed the illumination orb. The tunnel fell into total darkness—save for a soft glow that highlighted an opening farther down.
“Keep the orb off and follow me,” I whispered.
With James holding the back of my coat, we made our way toward the light. We arrived at the opening, which led onto a cavernous room where a large vertical shaft had been drilled into the ceiling. A column of pale moonlight fell from overhead, illuminating what looked like a shrine on the far side of the room. The bracelet tugged me toward it, the smell of decomposition overpower
ing now. I withdrew the stoppered bottle with the sleeping potion.
“Cover me,” I whispered.
James nodded and drew his Peacemakers. As I made my way across the floor, my eyes began to adjust. I glanced around the walls of the room before refocusing on the shrine. Urns had been arranged on either side of a cross, its horizontal section comprised of two sticks that formed an X.
At the cross’s crux hung a second gold band—the bracelet’s twin and the source of the beacon. I could feel the two bracelets working on me, pulling me toward the shrine. A discordant hum picked up between them, and they began to rattle.
“Careful, Prof,” James whispered.
When I looked down, I was already in the column of moonlight, the floor around my shoes marred with blood and gobbets of rotting tissue. I raised my eyes. In the dark recesses behind the shrine, body parts were scattered. Some looked fresher, others drawn and leathery. A set of dusty bones, probably going back to the women Sten had disappeared, lay in a pile.
Off to the left, a pair of stove-in eyes stared out at me in desperation. I recognized the head as belonging to the very latest victim.
The bracelet gave a final hard pulse, and I bit back a shout. A signal?
The air in the room dropped several degrees, chilling my sweat-soaked shirt, and a low moan sounded. I wheeled around to find a monstrous figure shambling toward me. Dropping the bracelet, I fumbled to unstopper the potion. Shots flashed from James’s revolvers, their explosions reverberating through the killing chamber as the figure seized me.
12
Cold fingers closed around my throat and lifted me from my feet. I gagged and seized the being’s wrist with one hand, potion clenched in the other. I’d been unable to open it, and James had stopped shooting, probably for fear of hitting me. It didn’t seem the salt rounds had been effective anyway.
This could be bad, I thought.
A horrible stink of death broke against my face as the being drew me in close. Large eyes glowed pale in the moonlight, their pupils covered in a milk-white caul. The right one was brown with old blood where the witch had wounded it. This was the goddess Hel— had to be.
I kicked feebly at the giantess’s stomach as I struggled to breathe. Fingers caressed my hair, then stopped suddenly.
“Who are you?” she moaned in a rattling bass voice.
That fact that I was neither blond-haired nor a woman seemed to arouse confusion, then anger. The grip around my throat tightened, mashing bone and cartilage. I threw the bottle at the goddess, needing it to break against her and release the sleeping potion, but it only bounced from her forehead and fell to the ground.
I seized Hel’s wrist in both hands, straining for the thinnest slip of air. Dark clouds drifted over my vision.
“Where’s my tribute?” she groaned.
A silver cord streaked through the growing dimness and lassoed the being’s throat.
“Allison sends her apologies, but she couldn’t make it.” James grunted as he tugged his light invocation. Hel staggered backward, her grip around my neck faltering. “Hope you don’t mind a pair of dudes instead.”
The goddess’s face turned toward James—and was met by a rock-salt blast from his Winchester. She bellowed and released me. I crashed to the shrine, urns toppling beneath me. Blond hair and vital organs spilled from them. I seized the potion and backpedaled, my ears ringing from the gunshot.
Hel groped toward James, smoke rising from her face. My partner unloaded another blast, this one into her chest, and pumped the gun again. The goddess recoiled—more in shock than pain, it seemed. She wasn’t used to her victims fighting back. That advantage wouldn’t last, though.
“We need to get out of here,” I called hoarsely.
In the commotion, James didn’t hear me. With his next blast, Hel barely flinched. She grabbed his shotgun by the barrel, wrenched it from James’s grip, and flung it aside. He switched to his Peacemakers, the cavern erupting as he fired them alternately. I unstoppered the potion with my teeth, drew my cane, and ran at the goddess as she reached down for him.
James re-holstered his spent revolvers and drew his wand. “Protezione!” he called.
A crackling shield grew around him but dissolved into sparks as Hel punched a hand through. James shouted another Word. Silver energy spun from his wand, pinning Hel’s arms to her sides. The invocation’s bright light illuminated her entire form for the first time.
I stopped, my potion arm cocked.
We weren’t dealing with a goddess. The being staring down at us from beneath tangled hanks of black hair was a dude. Death had turned his skin a pale blue and swelled his fish-belly lips. When he strained against the web, his tattered robes trembled, sending off horrid waves of death stink.
“Everson,” James said, backing away. “What the hell is that?”
Not Hel, that was clear. Everything about the being’s appearance screamed zombie, and yet I could feel god-like power emanating from him.
With a grunt, the being broke from James’s manifestation and lashed a hand out, snagging a corner of his jacket. I rushed forward and splashed the being with the potion. Pink fumes plumed up around him, giving James the opportunity to wriggle from the arms of his jacket to freedom. But though the being staggered through the mist, he didn’t appear on the verge of dropping off to sleep.
I aimed my cane and called, “Vigore!” The force scattered against the being as though he were a brick wall, barely shaking him.
This is pointless, I thought. We need to locate the power source and destroy it. And I’m not feeling it down here.
“Let’s go!” I shouted to James.
He nodded as I ran past him. He’d retrieved his shotgun and was backpedaling to get off another blast. I heard the click-clack of the pump, then the violent explosion. “Shit,” he panted, hustling to catch up. “That didn’t do anything.”
“No amount of salt will.” I called light to my cane as we hit the tunnel. “We need to find the idol.”
“I’m not going back in there.”
“Don’t think it’s there,” I said. “It’s with whoever’s summoning that thing.”
The tunnel walls shook as the being gave chase. I peered over a shoulder to find his milky eyes glowing from the darkness, growing larger. He was moving too fast. We’d never outrace him.
Silver light flashed as James cast back a missile-like force invocation. Rock debris exploded around the being, but he barely broke stride. The images of the rotting body parts at the shrine jagged through my mind. We’d be joining the collection if we couldn’t slow him down. Up ahead, the alcove with the work bench glowed into view. Underneath was our answer.
“Dynamite,” I panted. “Can you…?”
“Hell yes,” James said. “Just be ready for some serious heat.”
As we sprinted past the alcove, James aimed his wand at the box of dynamite and release a thundering “Forza dura!”
The box burst into splinters. My shield took shape around us an instant before the ear-numbing explosion that followed. A violent plume of fire and dust swallowed the being and knocked the spherical shield that encased us forward like a hamster ball. At our backs, the tunnel shook and collapsed.
Our bouncing motion inside the ball became so violent that I couldn’t hold the manifestation. The shield burst apart, and James and I tumbled to a stop. I lay still for a moment, listening to the clacks of rocks from the collapse behind us. My head reeled when I sat up.
“You all right?” I asked, coughing.
“Sure, let’s do that again,” he mumbled. His wand glowed silver, revealing his dusty rock-cut face and pile of mussed hair. He retrieved one of his revolvers from the ground and tossed me my cane.
“So, did that finish him?” he asked.
“Slowed him,” I replied, staggering to my feet. “And something tells me it won’t be for long.”
As if on cue, the tunnel rumbled and we both looked back. Large rocks shifted and spilled from the collapse.
The being was trying to unbury himself.
James and I limp-ran toward the ladder and scrambled up the incline shaft. We reached the entrance tunnel and made our way down the stone steps and past the victims’ cars, not slowing until we’d arrived at the Jeep.
“His power may not extend beyond the mine,” I said of the being as we climbed in.
“May not?” James shook his head, fired the engine, and stomped the gas. I kept my eyes fixed on the side mirror as the Jeep roared and jumped down the track we’d arrived by. But nothing was pursuing us.
Minutes later, James slewed out onto the asphalt road and accelerated to eighty.
“Can I assume that wasn’t Hel?” he said.
Even while we’d been fleeing, my analytical mind had been cycling through the Norse myths, trying to figure out just who or what the being had been. I now had a working theory.
“Remember how I mentioned that if a god remains dead for too long, they lose a lot of their faculties, become zombie-like?”
“Yeah…?” James said.
“That’s because when gods die in mythology, they don’t really die. They go to an underworld where they sort of … hang out. Through powerful rituals, humans can still communicate with them, and some can even call them up. But they’re not the same. It explains the deathly appearance and odor of what we just confronted, as well as why the potion couldn’t put him to sleep.”
“So which god are we talking about?”
“That particular cross at the shrine means we’re still dealing with the Norse pantheon. And the only god who would be in the underworld, at least according to some of the cult myths, is Gorr, the god of wealth. He’s actually the god I mentioned earlier, the one Hel refused to release.”
“Wealth,” James said reflectively. “Hey, didn’t Myrtle say that guy from the early 1900s was in deep debt?”
I snapped my fingers and pointed at him. “That’s right. He or his parents may have been active in a Norse cult back in Denmark, some of which lasted into the previous century. Probably how he obtained the idol. Followers would have been warned against attempting to summon Gorr, especially since human sacrifice had fallen out of favor long before then, but if Sten was desperate enough, he just might have seen it as his only chance.”
Grimstone: A Croft and Wesson Adventure Page 9
