Stroud raced toward the gelatinous fire before them, watching snakes, huge lizards, spiders and rats raining down on him as he did so, bouncing off him as they hit the shield that was blazing red now from the heat. Stroud's form stopped before the demon, and the shield around him glowed, ablaze with the energy war going on between Esruad and Ubbrroxx, turning to a white-hot glare. Inside, Stroud felt his own flesh burning when the cube protecting him began to spin and spin and spin, so fast now that it resembled an enormous diamond in the darkness, a small crystal closet.
"Swallow me whole, mighty Ubbrroxx! Swallow me up now!" Esruad's voice wafted over the creature.
Now the demon moved toward Stroud, but it was confused at the sight before it. Stroud himself could hardly see through the spinning veil before him when suddenly he felt himself being wrenched apart, turning into two separate, distinct but identical beings. Stroud saw himself separating, dividing like a duplicating cell, and there were two spinning brilliant lights in the darkness, he and Esruad.
Ubbrroxx watched, hesitant, confused.
So far, so good, Stroud thought. "Come for me now!" he shouted.
At the same instant Esruad shouted from his vantage point the same words. Stroud could not believe the mirror image they had become of one another there in the pit of darkness before the fiery demon, still breathing its hot breath against their shields.
Ubbrroxx swung its entire bulk at them, sweeping them down, a pair of broken bowling pins as the shields came crashing down around them. Stroud felt now at his most vulnerable and he tried desperately to do what was required, as Ubbrroxx, taunting now, raised a spurting jet of itself directed at Kendra and set her aflame!
On cue, Stroud screamed and raced madly at Ubbrroxx, cursing it for having burned the screaming woman alive, just as Esruad had promised he would. The other Stroud drew forth an enormous sword, a knight prepared to slay the dragon, but the sword took shape away from Esruad and grew larger and larger, forming an enormous steel mirror, and for the first time ever Ubbrroxx gazed on itself, sending a river of fire at the steel mirror created by the ancient magician.
Stroud saw the river of fire coalesce into a river of light, and it shone back at Ubbrroxx, blinding him, reflecting back a burning light that began eating away at it, parts of its fiery exterior falling away, raining down over Stroud like screaming bombs.
Stroud reached for the crystal skull and held it firmly up to the creature and he felt the jolt of light reflected off the crystal now, and in the struggle the three points of light and energy formed a kind of supernatural transponder network. It was Esruad's plan to reverse the field of energy from which the demon drew its evil magic, to transpose and interchange his own power for the demon's, and to ultimately neutralize it. His calculations and his faith in the triangulation of their three energy fields were an incredible risk, but it was the only risk worth taking anymore. It must work.
Stroud was now completely blind. The light, heat and energy charging down at him from the mountain of fire that was Ubbrroxx, pounding into the crystal skull, by all reckoning ought to have exploded the crystal. Stroud found himself beaten back by the sheer force directed at him as it beamed off the steel mirror to Ubbrroxx's essence and back to him. The energy surge had sent him to his knees, and he was being doubled over, his hands burning as if frozen in ice where he held firm to the skull. The skull turned into the hideous head of an ogre, but he held firm.
He heard no more laughter, no more screams, all the sounds that gave the demon comfort. He heard no more rending of flesh, no more flesh popping with heat, for all the power was now directed as with a laser at and into the eyes of the silvery, crystal skull. It was being drained away and stored like a battery in the skull and Ubbrroxx sensed this and for the first time began a whining, sniveling screechy noise like a keening bird that was going hungry.
Stroud felt now the heat polyps on his own face and hands bubbling, and for the first time he realized how badly he had been charred, but he was relieved to once again be feeling something, anything. For a time he had gone completely numb, blocking out everything, and his sight remained lost. He could only see now through the ethereal "eyes" of Esruad, who had regained the form of a lich once more and had come to Stroud, taking the skull that was burned into his flesh out of his hands and placing it into his own.
"I, too, must go now," said Esruad, holding on to the skull.
Stroud stared through Esruad's eyes at the spongy, moldering residue of mossy material left behind where Ubbrroxx had been. There were no smoldering skeletons hanging from the wall, no sign of Kendra or Wisnewski ever having been here; not so much as a shackle. There was only the wavy, fading apparition of Esruad, the skull he held in his hands and the fire inside the skull--electrical impulses, miniature shooting stars.
"Any further battles with the demon god," said Esruad in a reassuring voice, "will be fought inside the skull."
"Wait!" said the blind Stroud, stumbling toward Esruad but in the wrong direction as Esruad's spirit flew into the skull and the skull fell to the planks of the ship and rolled to Stroud's feet.
Esruad, too, was gone ... possibly forever.
Stroud gathered up the skull which had saved them all--all but Leonard, Wisnewski and dear Kendra, he feared. He had been willing to sacrifice himself for them all, but that apparently was never the demon's wish. Ubbrroxx had wanted them all, and especially Esruad. The demon had wanted to swallow the skull and make its energy source part of its own.
Watch what you wish for, Stroud silently told Ubbrroxx, wherever the damnable bastard now was. "And watch yourself, Esruad..."
Stroud stumbled about trying to find his way, unable to see, as blind now as a man could be, banging against dangerous tiers in his way, belowdecks of a ship sunken beneath earth. He was blind inside a black hull.
Then he remembered the radio. He couched the skull in the crook of one arm and tried to raise James Nathan, and it seemed that all static had been created by the demon. He got directly through to Nathan. An agitated female voice came over before Nathan got to the radio.
"Abe! Abe, you're alive! You're okay!" It was Kendra.
"And you? You're topside?"
"Yes, Wisnewski and I made it back when--"
"I thought you died. In fact I thought I saw you die, both of you. Illusions, deception ... all along."
"Thank God you're okay."
Nathan must have snatched the receiver away, for he was suddenly on. "Stroud, it's like a miracle. Everyone here, the zombies--"
"All free, I know ... I know."
"Thanks to you."
"I need help down here. Can you send help?"
"We're on our way."
Kendra got back on. "You must be awfully lonely down there by yourself. How ... how did you do it, Abe?"
"Kendra, I ... I've lost my eyesight."
"Your eyes?"
"Burned badly ... can't see ... stumbling."
"Stay where you're at. I'm coming back with the team. We're on our way."
He wanted to shout that he didn't want her to set foot in the pit or the ship again, but she was gone, replaced by Wisnewski, who said, "Now, Abe, just sit tight. Stay right there. Stumbling around inside that debris field could get you killed, and after all you've gone through--"
"I know, a terrible irony now to have a beam fall on my head, or to suffocate below a mountain of bones."
"What about the ... your ... ah--"
"Have the skull with me, and thank God and Mamdoud in Egypt that we had it with us."
"I keep thinking of poor Leonard."
"Yeah ... yeah ... me, too."
Stroud soon heard them coming and thanked Wisnewski for staying on the radio with him. "Not afraid of the dark, are you?" asked Wiz.
"Now I am ... afraid of blindness."
"What do you think of our doing something archeologically sound with the ship now, Stroud? Now that the cursed demon has vanished?"
"I say let sleeping demons lie."
"Ahhhh ...
thought you'd say that."
The others finally reached him, Kendra throwing her arms around him, Nathan helping guide him along. It took some time maneuvering out of the ship and through the tunnels. When Stroud took in the first breath of fresh air he'd had in hours, it was a great relief, moving him near to tears. He'd thought on several occasions that he would be buried forever in the tomb.
Kendra tightened her grip on him, and he held firm to the crystal skull, asking her to see that it be kept in an absolutely safe and unassailable place as they put him into the waiting ambulance. She climbed in with him, telling him he wasn't getting rid of her so easily. In the absence of his eyes, unable to see the destruction to his torso, limbs and arms, Stroud sensed her apprehension on seeing him in the light of the outdoors. The medics were calling in with the report to the hospital, second- and third-degree burns over two thirds of his body. Most of his clothing had been torn away. Stroud wondered if Kendra thought he was going to die when he went off into a drifty little boat that carried him into unconsciousness.
Three months later
Abraham H. Stroud's bandages had come off his eyes the week before, and after some initial distress, he was able to see through darkly shaded sunglasses, and by now he knew he would regain full use of his eyesight. This week some sections of the burn bandages were being peeled away and the skin given treatments. His body was a mangle of scars from various other encounters with beasts of the night and cave dwellers, not to mention the war. He felt like a man who had gone in for full-body tattoos, except that he hadn't gone in voluntarily.
Still, all his limbs were intact and in working order, and he hadn't gone out of his mind, although some people would question that--especially the nurses on the floor.
Kendra had suffered through the worst of the agonies with him, to the point of exhausting herself, and was for days tearful and easily agitated. She continued to come to see him and sit with him every single day, letting her career go and angering him for doing so. She'd put everything on hold for him, unable to return to the CDC until she was sure that he would be all right. For a time, he flirted with the idea of making her his wife, but the near mention of the idea backfired, and now she was rushing off for Georgia to get back into life there and the career she had almost abandoned for him. Kendra could not see herself waiting up nights wondering what new banshee or beast he was combating next. Like most of the people who knew or read about the circumstances surrounding the bizarre New York legion of zombies that had fed live people to a gaping hole in the earth, Kendra didn't know quite what to make of Abraham H. Stroud, or his strange crystal skull; even now the fact that he had survived engendered more awe and fright than respect or love.
He couldn't completely blame her. Why should she wish to spend a lifetime with a man who was called by the tabloids a modern "vampire hunter"?
Wisnewski visited with chocolates and flowers like a man going on a first date. He discussed in detail with Wiz the events leading up to the final demise of the demon, a story that Kendra did not want to hear. Stroud was glad to tell it, but it had left Wisnewski a little estranged, too, as if Stroud had some kind of communicable disease. In time, Wiz would come around again, he told himself, but the old doctor got busy again in his Museum of Antiquities and never returned.
A surprise visit by Commissioner Nathan proved testy at first, Stroud assuming the man wanted nothing more than a hasty whitewash done, a rationalization that would make the truth go away, a rationalization of the events that would be more farfetched than the actual horror that had occurred in the city. But Nathan surprised Stroud again as they went through every detail of the events that had occurred below Manhattan.
"I don't expect you'll be sorry to see me go," Stroud finished. "Seems everyone would like that."
"On the contrary, Stroud. If you need anything, want anything at all, I'm at your disposal. You gave this city a second chance at life, and I'll never forget that, ever."
Stroud had heard that song and dance before, from the commissioner of police in Chicago for one. Nathan would likely deny any connection with Stroud after today, he had thought.
But the following day, on public television, Nathan defended Stroud, who was being crucified in the tabloids as a modern-day Rasputin who charmed city officials into allowing an elaborate seance as extravagant as a David Copperfield magic stunt to go on for days in the city. Nathan warned others across the nation that men like Abraham Stroud were scarce, men who were willing to sacrifice life and limb for total strangers. People ridiculed him afterward.
An official inquiry into what was being termed the "Zombie Disease" incident was in full swing, and it appeared the questions would go on endlessly. Stroud was subpoenaed to appear before a board of inquiry that had been set up primarily by political hacks who were interested in getting their faces on the tube and their names in the columns.
Stroud, in a wheelchair, still in great physical pain, wearing a pair of black Oakley dark glasses, playing the blind man part to the hilt, since it afforded some protection from both press and public, answered politely the questions put to him. He did so knowing that few of the people here wanted to know the truth. That no one wanted to hear about human accomplices involved in human sacrifices to an unheard-of demon. He simply repeated again and again such tired phrases as, "There is more between Heaven and Hell, dear Horatio, than we know" and "Suffice it to say that we were dealing with supernatural elements beyond our control and human understanding."
He was debunked in most circles, held up as a hero by fringe elements in the community, invited to speak at any number of functions that involved psychics and Wicca people. He wound up hiding in the sanctuary of the hospital feeling a lot like Quasimodo without a bell to swing. The papers and most of the editorials regarded him as a freak of some sort. It was the same sort of publicity he had run ahead of in the past, the reason he had forsaken American continental archeological pursuits for foreign digs such as the one in Egypt.
Strangely, he had gotten more well-wishing letters from foreign ports than home. He had even gotten a telegram from Mamdoud who seemed to understand best what he was going through. Most well-wishers here had a hand out, a thousand requests to visit some haunted place in the heartland of America to vanquish some evil spirit that was causing harm and destruction to a community or a single family.
Haunted America, he had thought, no end of work for a Peter Hurkos or other ghost hunters, but he was not a goddamned ghost hunter, or a vampire stalker. He was an honest archeologist with the credentials to prove that he had worked hard to become who he was. But the press twisted who he was and what he was beyond recognition, to the point where sometimes now he was wondering himself.
He had to seek safer ground. He must go home to Andover, Illinois, sort out his feelings there amid his grandfather's presence in the old manse, a positively haunted place indeed. He wondered if his best friends after all were not among the dead ... his grandfather, his parents, Esruad...
They would not question him, deride him. They alone understood. Stroud reached for the crystal skull and gazed into its smoothly fashioned indented eyes, watching the fire refracted by light slicing through the opened blinds there in the hospital. The inquiry hadn't gotten to the root of the evil, hadn't placed it where it rightly belonged, as Esruad and Stroud knew.
In all this time none of Stroud's champions or detractors had any idea of the shameful causes of the body count racked up by Ubbrroxx and the terrible human accomplices of the demon. It seemed only Nathan, Kendra, Wiz and a handful of others appreciated the true horror of the day, the guile and the fear residing in the species called man. There was no undoing what people had done to one another here, given the catalyst of the ancient god of the Etruscans.
Mankind's only hope, it seemed, was to keep the genie in the bottle, or in this case, to keep Ubbrroxx in the skull ... In the wrong hands, the skull could be a true Pandora's box, unleashing untold powers.
Some days later Stroud was on a 747
jet, bandages still encircling half his body, the arrangements made between his doctors in New York and doctors in Chicago. James Nathan had taken more time from his busy schedule to see him to the airport in the limousine that had driven him that first day to the Gordon Construction site. He'd told Stroud that despite Gordon's death, the tower was going up, getting back on schedule. Gordon had many associates who were anxious to take over his tower and they'd formed a pool to do so.
Stroud was simply glad to be on his way home, anxious to see his Andover prairie and home again, Stroud Manse. It had become a haven for him, a place to hide away from the publicity-seeking that not even the hospital had been able to completely stay. It had also been a long time since he had sat by the pool, and a long time since he had opened his mail. No doubt stacked to the chandelier by now.
He thought of his people at the manse, his housekeeper, gardener, his butler and stable man, his helicopter pilot ... all people he had, at one time or another, saved from some black form of demonic evil. The only people who didn't fear him.
Even the stewardess who had approached him some weeks before on his flight from Egypt to New York, flirting with him then, pretended now to not know him at all.
Stroud wondered what effect it would have on her if he asked her for a date; wondered what effect he'd have on the pilot if he dropped in on the cockpit and announced himself.
"People," Nathan had said in exasperation, "damned people. Most fear themselves, their own shadows, Stroud. Can you really blame them if they fear you? Can you? A man like you? A man who has grappled with the supernatural and won?"
"No," he said quietly to himself now. "Can't blame people..."
As for Kendra, she promised to keep in touch, and she had promised to visit him in Andover soon. He knew that she wasn't like most people. He knew that she would make good her promise and that soon, very soon, they would be in one another's arms again. For now, couched in his arms was the carry-on luggage he had hugged to himself the entire way, and inside it, the crystal skull, a "supernatural" gift which had made him feel immortal for a time down there in the boiler room of the demon's own hell. Esruad's power had coursed through his veins and part of that power still lingered like salt spray in the pores after a walk on the deck of a ship. Stroud had also come away with a new knowledge of his ancestry, and he was a better man for knowing the noble Esruad.
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