It was ironic he was about to die in the place where he was born.
A furious shriek fractured the uneasy stillness, and he was jolted from his funky daze. Running, clattering footfalls echoed throughout the castle from the blackness behind the columns where Nick’s father, Hollis Danforth, had entertained his weekend military guests decades ago.
“Leave my fiancé alone, you bitch!” It was Gabriella’s voice!
“I’ve been waiting for you to appear,” the witch hissed.
“Up yours!” Gabriella leveled her wand at the stranger. “Your aura didn’t subdue my magic. Now get lost before I turn you into an insect and stomp you flat.”
Nick managed a small grin. Gabriella was feisty, all right. And fearless, too.
But not a credible bluffer. She could never bluff a pair into a big poker pot. If Nick recognized the lie, did the witch?
The sorceress swung her staff in Gabriella’s direction and launched another blue lightning burst that knocked Gabriella ass over applecart into a column and paralyzed her. Dust sprinkled down on her stunned head. There was no witch’s cackle this time. The woman was all business as she strutted toward her injured enemy.
Nick’s teeth clicked together so hard, the noise caught the stranger’s attention. After seeing he was still disabled, she resumed her march toward Gabriella.
A wide underground river sliced a grotto side tunnel in two. On the opposite back sat one of the ancient red meteorites that stranded the Purebloods and Destroyers from Kundze in Earth’s dimension thousands of years ago. The pear-shaped meteorite was the source of the Purebloods’ magical powers, while it also influenced Nick’s genetic configuration and evolution. When Gabriella collided with the column, the meteorite emitted a bright red radiance that permeated the tunnel, and then the grotto.
As soon as the magical glow bathed Nick and the castle courtyard, it triggered an agonizing alteration in his battered body. The light rapidly healed his fractured ribs and head injuries before initiating an extraordinary transformation that reshaped his entire physical being.
Nick’s shoulders and mended chest broadened to weightlifter proportions, his thighs thickened with twisted, ropy muscle, his height increased a few inches, and his hands developed hooked fingernails. His feet remained unchanged.
Nick’s bulkier ribcage and wider shoulders shredded the front and back of his shirt, exposing most of his torso, but there was no orange-red color this time. His scalp spawned a dozen tawny scorpion tails where his ash blond hair had been. Their lengthy venomous stingers swayed menacingly like toxic cornrows, probing for prey.
His eyes sockets deepened to dark hollows, and his ice blue eyes chromed over and released fiery shafts of dazzling yellow light. Green, scaly reptilian armor replaced his vulnerable human flesh while his lips, nose and ears gradually grew leathery.
Instead of being ruled by violent primitive thoughts and instincts, Nick’s mind remained his own—except it was super-charged like never before. Amplified to the nth degree. He was grateful for that. His former alter egos boasted immoral, brutish dispositions that emphasized his survival over protecting others. Killing came easily, but saving lives proved difficult.
The new Nick jumped to his feet and promptly took his new supernatural identity for a test drive … in Gabriella’s direction. What had been twilight between the columns was now high noon in his improved vision. He saw the witch move toward his woozy fiancée, and he immediately wished he was there to protect her. Before he could bat an eyelash, he found himself standing between Gabriella and the murderous witch.
The hooded woman scrutinized the new castle player. Who was he? It? She didn’t dare turn her back to see if Nick’s broken body still lay in the courtyard. She didn’t trust the tall man with the strange, hostile eyes and scorpion tails for hair one bit.
“Leave here!” she commanded boldly, thrusting the crooked staff in front of her.
Nick’s alter ego cocked his head at the strange gesture and intimidating words and … grinned. “You’ve got it all wrong, lady. You take a hike, and I’ll let you live,” he countered, unsure whether he could back up his own threat.
The witch chortled, which further confused him. He was no longer the orange-red guy who launched garnet smoke rings from his fingertips. He had just evolved beyond that identity, but did that evolution weaken or strengthen his magic prowess?
“Fat chance. My magic spell renders you and every other sorcerer incapable of employing magic down here.”
Nick studied his hooked fingertips and wondered…
With a lightning quick thrust, he hurled a fierce wind gust that slammed her into the nearest column and blew her hood off her head. Nick did a double take when he saw her face.
The witch was none other than Scripps Vice President Donna Lake. She wore a black caped dress instead of a white lab coat, and her paunchy stomach was flat as a board, but it was her.
“Donna Lake! I should have guessed. You weren’t exactly pleasant during our meeting with Frank Mesenburg,” Nick spluttered.
“You’re … you’re Nick?”
“One and the same.”
“But how?”
“Weird genes. Now let’s get back to business.”
“Oh, yes. I wasn’t cordial then … and I don’t plan to be now,” she snapped, targeting him with her staff again. She was convinced Nick was defenseless and her next energy blast would kill him. Blue lightning flew from her staff, but Nick’s new alter ego was faster than his earlier slowpoke reaction. He countered with a white magical force as wide as a utility pole. It absorbed her puny blue beam with a lone snap and fizz.
Donna Lake positioned her staff to block the white flash, but the energy split her weapon in half and traveled right through her body, toppling the column behind her. The staff halves rebounded off the stone block floor as her body puckered around the gaping cauterized hole in her middle before she vanished into thin air.
Gabriella’s indigo eyes opened and stared incredulously at the creature that saved her life. Did the witch call it Nick, or was she imagining it? If it was Nick, what happened to his orange-red persona?
The Medusa-looking Nick lowered his bloodcurdling visage to her and waved his long-nailed hands above her petrified body. Suddenly, she could move again. Her temporary paralysis was gone.
She stretched her stiff muscles and stood before the tall figure. “Thanks. Nick, is that you?”
“It’s me,” he replied in a deep voice.
“What happened to the creepy orange-red guy with big black eyes?”
Nick moved closer to her, but she quickly moved aside to avoid the wriggling scorpion tails. “I don’t know. The meteorite in the tunnel illuminated me in its red glow, and this is how I turned out.” He observed her terrified expression and ran his hand through the tails to calm them. “They won’t hurt you, Sweetheart. They only strike my enemies.”
Gabriella didn’t trust the calmed tails, despite Nick’s explanation. “So the meteorite changed you … again.”
“Yeah, it obviously has something to do with my weird genetic makeup.”
Gabriella chuckled nervously. “That sounds logical,” she said noncommittally, “but I wonder when this is going to stop.”
Nick shrugged. “Even my amped up brain can’t answer that.”
“How about changing back into my … handsome fiancé.” This version of Nick didn’t sound as menacing as the other two, but those fiery chrome eyes were a hell of a lot scarier than his big black ones.
He gritted his teeth and willed the transformation, but nothing happened. “Dammit,” he swore.
“What’s the matter?”
“I can’t convert back to my old self,” he muttered angrily.
She looked panicked. “Well, try it again, okay?”
His subsequent efforts met with identical results. “It looks like I’m stuck with this alter ego.”
Now Gabriella was frightened. “For how long?”
“You got me.�
� The scorpion tails became agitated once more.
What had the red meteorite done to him this time?
46
Nick felt like a prisoner in a hideous body. His body! Was he destined to live out his life like this? He couldn’t imagine the red meteorite cursing him, but he was using personification to describe it. It didn’t do this on purpose, because it didn’t have a mind! Did it? Of course not. He needed to relax and come up with the triggering mechanism that returned him to his human appearance. Anger didn’t appear to do the trick any longer, so what did? Another strong emotion?
He pretended to generate several disparate emotions, but none worked. He was still chrome eyes. The thought of staying this way was terrifying and depressing. What about his relationship with Gabriella under those conditions? Any future without her would be bleak. He needed her to play a prominent role in his life.
The plink-plink of a tumbling pebble outside the castle ramparts jerked their focus away from his looks. Gabriella waved her arms, and the castle torches went black. Nick dialed back his fiery gaze to zero, and he and Gabriella hid behind a column in the absolute darkness, barely breathing.
“I wonder who’s out there,” Gabriella whispered, maintaining her distance from the scorpion stingers.
His supernatural hearing didn’t pick up a second noise. “Let’s teleport to the grotto entrance and see if we can identify the trespasser from there.”
“Do it.”
When they arrived, they still couldn’t see anyone moving about the grotto. Nick abruptly recalled his new visual power of making darkness light and promptly spotted the intruder.
A NSA S.W.A.T. team.
Armed to the hilt with assault weapons and grenades.
He informed Gabriella.
“So now what we do?” she asked softly. “I could turn them all into toads.”
He grinned. “Not a bad idea.” He considered that idea for an instant. “You can actually do that?”
She backed down a sliver. “Well, it might take a while. I’d have to transform them one at a time.”
He nodded knowingly. “I don’t think they’ll wait their turn in line. This isn’t an amusement park.”
He saw her white teeth when she smiled. “So what have you come up with, Einstein?”
“I faced a similar challenge during our Shadow Feeders investigation a couple years back, which gives me an idea,” he murmured.
Before Gabriella could ask for details, Nick vanished, only to reappear beside the S.W.A.T. mission leader standing ten feet away.
“Move, and you’re dead,” Nick growled at the African-American agent; Nick’s eye flames escalated a tad.
The S.W.A.T. leader puffed up his chest. He was clearly not intimidated by the peek at Nick’s menacing presence. “Fuck you!” He swung the butt of his Colt CM901 assault rifle at Nick, but it struck nothing but air.
Nick reappeared on the man’s opposite side. “Call off your men. Now!” Nick wanted to add, “Or else they all die!”, but this guy wasn’t about to be bullied.
Nevertheless, the S.W.A.T. leader wasn’t as smug as he was a few seconds ago. “How’d you do that?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“And where’d you get those fire eyes?”
“My grandmother. Now quit stalling, and call off your men.”
“Or what?” the man asked with a cynical tone.
“Or you’ll be the first to die.”
“I work for Uncle Sam, and if you kill me, the whole United States government will be breathing down your neck.”
“So be it.” Nick cold cocked him and eased him soundlessly to the grotto floor.
Nick stripped off the agent’s radio mic from his shirt and spoke to the other members of the S.W.A.T. team. He told them their boss was dead, and unless every one of them retreated from the grotto right away, they would be, too. More than fifteen agents wearing infrared goggles immediately complied and scrabbled back through the tunnel to the beach. There was the usual number of mulish holdouts, so Nick targeted them one by one with his white lightning bursts, which disintegrated them. After seeing their comrades die like that, the remaining holdouts sprinted for the tunnel and quickly ascended the well rungs to the surface. Nick teleported their unconscious leader to the beached amphibian vehicle just before the agents shoved off the island into the choppy lake waters.
With the S.W.A.T. threat ended, Nick and Gabriella were pleasantly surprised that he finally changed back to his human persona. Gabriella wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him hard and often. When she finished, she said, “The only thing I can figure out is that you change back when the danger’s gone.”
“You might be onto something there.”
They were tempted to stay in the grotto and make mad, passionate love inside one of the castle rooms, but Nick’s concern for his friends’ well-being trumped his desire. Did Neo and Crow survive the NSA ambush? He had to know if they were safe before doing anything else. He shared his concern with Gabriella, who reluctantly agreed.
“I’m sure my gargoyles protected them,” she argued, eager to strip off her clothes and do the wild thing with Nick.
But he wasn’t as sure. The last time he saw Neo, the guy was pinned down inside the Chris-Craft. Escape didn’t seem possible. There were too many gunmen.
Gabriella abandoned her sexual longing once she recognized that curious look in Nick’s eyes—his blue eyes—and realized no argument could sway him from finding the answer. “All right, you win, but I don’t have to be happy about it.”
“C’mon, I’ll show you I’m right.” She took his hand and teleported them across Lake Griffin.
47
Neo and Crow burst out of the Wolfe Mansion like the devil was chasing them when Nick and Gabriella materialized on her front porch. Honora and Hefe stood on the sidelines and grinned at the brief reunion of hugs and fist bumps before returning to their domestic duties.
Neo whacked Nick on the back. “How about we grab some grub down at the Lamplighter and trade information?” Now that his two sorcerer friends were back, there was no reason to avoid public places where the sinister criminals could be lurking. The pair could handle anything Jonathon Foster and his team of cutthroats could dish out.
Crow patted his slim laptop computer. “I have a lot of data to share with you concerning Noah and Terror Island, and you won’t like some of it.”
Nick was about to question Crow when Gabriella slipped her arm through his. “We’ll all meet out on the porch in half an hour after we take a shower.”
Nick caught her drift and squeezed her arm. A shower and a quickie before an early dinner. “Yep. Got to get this NSA filth off us before eating.”
Neo rubbed his face. “Tell me about it.”
Crow decided to hang out on the porch while they cleaned up. As soon as the group entered the foyer, Gabriella passed her hand in front of Neo. Before he knew it, he was clean and his clothes were spotless.
He stared at her. “How? Why?”
She hung back to answer Neo’s questions while Nick hurried up the staircase to her master bedroom and peeled off his clothes. “Since you don’t a have a spare outfit here, if you took a shower, what would you have to change into? Nothing, and that’s illegal in Ohio.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Now be a good boy and join Crow outside.”
The big man chuckled. “You bet. If Liz were here now, I know she’d appreciate my clean clothes.” Liz was his wife of ten years who split time between their Washington, D.C., home and Old Mother Hubbard’s. She was driving back to Washington, D.C., at the moment.
Crow eased his aching body into a porch chair and watched the gargoyles dispose of the last NSA corpses over Lake Griffin before resuming their fence post perches. Neo stepped outside a few minutes later, but neither spoke. Instead, they enjoyed the mesmerizing bird calls and the whistling wind in the ancient maple and oaks. They sensed the serenity was the proverbial calm before the sto
rm, and they were soaking it in.
The Lamplighter restaurant was nestled between the IGA grocery and Evelyn’s Wicca Bookstore in downtown Duneden. The exterior was red brick with floor to ceiling front windows. A white sign spanning the restaurant’s width proclaimed Lamplighter for all to see, and the bold red letters were bounded by several black Wiccan symbols. The interior was early American diner with fifteen worn Formica tables, hard watermarked flatware, and thin paper napkins. The dog-eared menus were secured between the pebbled glass salt and pepper shakers.
A row of revolving stainless steel stools upholstered with cracked red Naugahyde fronted the long white counter running along the south wall. The scene reminded Nick of the long ago drugstore soda fountain around the corner from his California home.
As soon as they stepped inside, a middle-aged hostess approached wearing a wrinkled red top, stained white skirt, and a dingy gray name tag and greeted Gabriella like she was royalty, which in a way she was in those parts. Her parents founded Duneden. Gabriella requested a rear corner table for privacy, and they were soon seated and perusing the menus. Clara jotted down their orders and shuffled off to the kitchen.
Neo chuckled. “I feel like I’m dining with the Queen of England.”
“White squaw have big influence in little town,” Crow teased.
Nick leaned over and kissed his fiancé. Full and hard. “For a royal, you kiss pretty good.”
“Pretty good?” She slapped his shoulder. “C’mon, guys, lay off,” she said somberly before liberating a pent-up giggle with a snort chaser.
After the laughter faded, Clara and their waitress, Sarah, returned with their drinks before waiting on the people in the far booth. She and a helper rapidly returned with their drinks, salads, and French bread. Once they were alone again, Gabriella started the ball rolling with a question for Nick.
“It was obvious you knew the witch in the grotto. Mind telling us how?”
Final Scream Page 20
