This time, his magic worked!
Nick and the Lothran found themselves inside the prison area, and although the room’s sconce lighting was dim, it was a welcome alternative to the prison dimension’s absolute darkness. They both blinked and rubbed their eyes, and when they were able to focus clearly, they simultaneously spotted an assault team of soldiers with raised automatic rifles blocking the entrance way. Behind them was the shadowy outline of a woman. Nick let his guard down. All but two of the soldiers stood stationary and unblinking. The others lay in pools of blood face down on the floor. What kind of magic was this?
As he directed his attention to the mysterious woman, her hand shot out and launched a purple lightning bolt. His supernatural quickness saved him as it sizzled by his ear, but the Lothran’s reactions weren’t as fast. The lethal energy struck the Lothran’s chest, and it crumpled to the ground. Its four hands clutched the smoldering hole in its ribcage as it glanced up at Nick with its dulled copper eyes and flashed him a fleeting farewell. The light in its orbs winked out.
Nick’s alter ego experienced an unexpected surge of grief, and he glared menacingly at the sinister female form as she hurled another fork of purple energy at him.
Could he avoid the witch’s second attempt on his life?
62
The energy spear’s dazzling purple light obliterated the cavern shadows during its flight toward Nick’s chest.
His enhanced intelligence swiftly deliberated his limited reaction options in a nanosecond. If he executed his Mortal Eclipse maneuver and allowed the bolt to pass through his ethereal form, it might strike one of the prisoners behind him. Even his alter ego’s calloused conscience couldn’t permit that to happen.
There was a sixty percent chance a magical deflection would initiate a wild ricochet off the rocky walls and cause the bolt to strike one of the innocent people. So he chose to take a direct hit and discover how resilient his green reptilian armor was under fire. He closed his scaly eyelids to protect his eyes from the magical explosion.
But the sorceress’ weapon never struck him.
When his eyes were shut, Gabriella materialized beside him, instantly evaluated the danger, and cast a protective shield around her eerie chrome-eyed fiancé. The witch’s purple energy punched the shield and was harmlessly dispersed.
Nick jerked his reptilian head around at Gabriella and nodded its thanks. But they weren’t out of the woods yet. Gabriella noticed the soldiers were still as stiff as statues—but she knew they could awaken and start spraying bullets if the responsible witch broke her spell over them. She also observed the military officer’s absence and speculated he must have ticked off the witch. He wasn’t likely to return—ever.
Gabriella removed her magical shield from Nick, so he was free to move and terminate the witch, but he surprised her by merely standing there and quietly thinking. Gabriella shrugged and cast a second barrier behind them that protected the prisoners from harm. She faced the sorceress.
“You’ve had your fun, lady! Now surrender or die!” Gabriella exclaimed.
Another purple lance shot out from the entrance and illuminated the witch’s face. Gabriella didn’t recognize her, but Nick did. Gabriella slowed the witch’s latest lightning bolt to slow motion.
“Natalie!” he called out. What happened to her Wicker woman persona? He figured she didn’t need it to distract him from the truth. Was the gunman’s attempt on her life planned in advance? He asked her but realized it was a foregone conclusion.
“Hell yes! And you fell hard for it. Donna’s lies even had you suspecting my adopted mother of being the Superior, when all along it was me. You’re so gullible, and you’re definitely not as shrewd as you think you are, cousin!” She backed away, ready to escape.
When the slow moving energy was within arm’s length of Gabriella, she teleported the puissant energy into Terror Island’s volcano. But as she did so, the room began trembling and loosening ceiling rock and choking volcanic dust on the people inside. The prisoners were trapped behind the barrier, so they merely covered their heads with their arms. Gabriella knew she wasn’t responsible for the tremors, and neither was the witch. There was another party to blame for the continuous quakes, and she had a sneaking suspicion the Shabaccoes were responsible. They were undoubtedly defending their territory.
“You’re not the Superior,” Gabriella shouted.
Natalie stopped and turned. “Yes, I am!”
“Really? Then convince me. Why did you freeze those soldiers right after you and the officer instructed them to kill the prisoners?”
Nick’s cousin didn’t have a response for her seemingly contradictory behavior.
“I figured as much,” Gabriella said. “Whoever decommissioned the soldiers is the real Superior!” But why the Superior would do that was a profound mystery.
Nick wasn’t the only one in the cavern who recognized the witch.
The tall, salt-and-pepper haired woman approached the invisible barrier. “Natalie, why are you doing this, and why did you kill all those people at the hospital and on Terror Island?”
Natalie remained silent.
“And most importantly, why do you want to kill us, your own family?”
Noah Wright stretched the kinks out of his six-foot-four inch frame and scowled at his sister. “What exactly are you, sis? A witch?”
“Not a damned witch. I’m a Destroyer and proud of it!” She sneered at her family members. “I’m no more your sister than Nick is your cousin. We’re your step-relatives, idiot! I was adopted, just like you, Erin, and Nick.”
Nick used their inimical conversation as a diversion to inch closer to his wayward step-cousin.
Sue Wright lashed out at Natalie. “Of course, it’s true you were adopted. I told all of you that when you were old enough to understand. So what’s the big deal? What does being adopted have to do with your bitterness?” When Natalie didn’t respond, she muttered, “I guess I should’ve checked your background more carefully.”
“You sure should have, Mother! My real mother was a Destroyer, too, and she hated people, especially the stinking Purebloods like Gabriella and her family,” Natalie snarled. “My real mother died trying to kill off you vermin!” She turned on Nick. “It was my brainstorm to send Noah to Terror Island. Donna Lake and I convinced my dear, naive adoptive mother to send him there, but she was too dumb to figure out Noah was merely bait for my trap to kill my big, brave cousin. Unfortunately, Nick, you took your sweet ass time getting to Terror Island, so I could spring my trap. So I went to plan B and captured your friends to draw you here to Riai Island.”
“Mind telling me why you want me dead?” Nick asked, puzzled by her hateful outburst.
“Because you murdered my real mother!”
Nick’s alter ego considered her claim, but he didn’t recall murdering her mother.
“Her name was Philippa,” Natalie said, attempting to jog his memory.
Then it hit him. “Your mother was Philippa Lazaro, and she was mentally deranged. She had these delusions of grandeur that she was the queen of the planet and it was her job to exterminate all the Purebloods and most of the humans. She planned to enslave what was left of mankind to do her bidding. So you see, you’ve got it all wrong, Natalie. She was the murderer, not me. She killed dozens of innocent people.”
“Liar!” Natalie yelled.
Nick ignored her outburst. “I was ordered to hunt for your mother and arrest her. If she resisted, I had the green light to kill her, but that was only as a last resort. When I caught up with her and she tried to kill me with her magic, I executed her,” Nick explained, defending his actions with no hint of regret.
“You’ll die for killing my mother!” She drew her hand back like a baseball pitcher about to throw a fastball over home plate, but she never completed the forward motion. A massive, four-legged silhouette charged through the tunnel from her left like a runaway bulldozer and rammed her petite frame. The savage collision shattered her b
ones and decapitated her.
“The Slayer,” Gabriella murmured to herself. It came to their defense like a noble beast.
The monster tossed Natalie’s rag doll corpse up against the tunnel ceiling twice before opening its wide maw and crushing the flaccid corpse with a solitary bite.
The room juddered more violently, and the spellbound soldiers collapsed to the floor in a camouflage heap like bowling pins. Neo, Crow and the others braved the fierce tremors and dodged the falling ceiling debris the best they could, but there was too much to sidestep. An avalanche of large and small black rocks pelted Crow’s vulnerable head and knocked him to the floor. Neo promptly scooped his dazed friend into his burly arms and cried out for Gabriella to remove the conjured barrier so they could run for the tunnel before the entire cavern collapsed. She complied and guided the former prisoners into the tunnel.
The entire cavern caved in just as Noah and Reese assisted Sue Wright over the tunnel threshold. The shocks grew more violent, forcing Gabriella and her companions to hold fast to the rough walls as they scrambled away from the cavern entrance. They didn’t go far—the Slayer’s immense girth blocked the tunnel.
It snorted, stamped all four of its clawed feet, and growled at the humans when they endeavored to squeeze by. The massive beast appeared hungry, but what else was new? Gabriella pushed past her friends and approached E.V.A.N. Her former cagemate snorted savagely but grudgingly yielded. Was the Slayer afraid of her? Gabriella wondered. Either way, she didn’t plan to give in. The stubborn creature blocked their only escape route.
Her gentle determination paid dividends. E.V.A.N. cautiously allowed her to scratch his multicolored snout. When she stopped, it lowered its head, looking for more scratches. Gabriella chuckled despite their perilous situation and scratched its snout one more time. She speculated that sharing a cage together on the ledge above the alien city had inadvertently formed a bond between them. Were they fast friends? Perhaps in some offbeat sense of the word. Respectful foes? For sure.
“Look, buddy, we’ve got to haul ass out of here before the volcano buries us, and that includes you, too. Now how about stepping aside so I can get everyone out of here? That means you, too, big fella.”
E.V.A.N. bobbed its head like it comprehended Gabriella’s message, and she imagined her new friend might have understood her on some rudimentary level. The Slayer shifted its mountainous body far enough to the right to make room for the people to slip by in single file. Before joining the others beyond E.V.A.N., she patted its familiar rough-skinned flank. Thanks, buddy.
She conjured a powerful flashlight lantern and pointed its supernatural beam down the tunnel toward the spot where she and the Lothran first entered the volcanic tunnel. The trailing group, including the now alert Crow, lurched violently as they headed along the black passageway. The volcano’s intense quaking didn’t bother the massive E.V.A.N. as it lumbered slowly behind them. But its presence frightened Gabriella’s companions more than the threat of being buried alive in the tunnel, but Gabriella was the only one convinced the Slayer didn’t intend to hurt anyone.
When they were a stone’s throw from their destination, she paused and bathed the group with its brilliant radiance. Her eyes narrowed to suspicious slots. No Nick. No Neo. Missing, just as she thought. Her fiancé was so predictable.
What she didn’t know was what those two were up to.
Gabriella hoped Nick and Neo understood the Terror Island madness wasn’t over just because Natalie was dead and the island destroyed. There had to be other people like the Superior involved who were anxious to see them dead, as well as the Shabaccoes. The reclusive aliens would follow each of her friends to the ends of the Earth to guarantee their privacy. That was their modus operandi for thousands of years, and there was no plausible reason for them to modify their philosophy. No exceptions. No Get Out of Jail Free cards. No change of heart. Only death to trespassers.
Gabriella was one step from taking the lead again when she noticed there was another person MIA in their group. She stopped and tried to think of the young woman’s name. It was Morgan something. No, not Morgan. That wasn’t her first name. She snapped her fingers. Got it! Reese Morgan. Now where had she gone? The tunnel wasn’t that big to hide her, and the Slayer was the absolute straggler. Nobody could slip back behind it. It wasn’t Reese Morgan’s disappearance that worried her, but how the young woman managed to leave the group. Gabriella had a bad feeling about that.
Her father’s sagacious maxim came to mind. Never trust a person with two first names. Did her father’s saying apply to this circumstance? Gabriella wasn’t sure, since she hadn’t actually met the woman. Reese Morgan seemed to buddy up with Nick’s cousin. Maybe their time alone together on Terror Island melded them into a couple. Or maybe not. Should she stop and search for Reese Morgan? The quaking increased, and she regained her balance before falling forward. That settled it. She wasn’t about to jeopardize everyone else’s lives for Reese Morgan.
“C’mon, Gabriella, let’s move it! We need to bust out of this place pronto,” Crow urged her.
The computer whiz was right. Gabriella wished she could teleport them all to safety, but her magic powers still were limited inside the volcano. The one or two she could take away from there would be saved, but the rest would die. That was unacceptable. She waved her arm and shepherded them toward the exit. It wasn’t far now.
Her chaotic thoughts strayed to the missing Superior. The idea of another witch running around loose inside the volcano and murdering people, including her tunnel charges, terrified Gabriella. For that reason, her keen senses were on high alert.
Her ragtag, black faced companions were dog tired, but to their credit they kept pace with her. Her fear of the tunnel collapsing didn’t outweigh her concern for Nick and Neo’s well-being. Where did they go? To visit the Shabaccoes? If that was the case, she hoped they succeeded in negotiating a truce with the purple aliens … or none of them would ever see the United States again.
But if the negotiations proved impossible, she fervently wished Nick and Neo would blast the horned devils out of existence.
63
Gabriella almost walked past their departure point, but her peripheral vision saved the day. She led her group through a sliver of a passageway leading up to the dormant volcano’s inner cone. Even though the outside air was choked with ash and embers, the calmer twilight atmosphere was brighter than the tunnel’s blackness. She motioned up at a tapered trail winding its way to the rim and told them to move as quickly and safely as they could. She planned to meet them on the slope past the rim, and she hoped she could keep that promise.
She avoided telling them about a possible Shabacco ambush at the top. If that happened, there was nothing she could do to prevent it anyway, so why needlessly worry the others? She ducked back into the passage and retraced her steps to E.V.A.N. Her appearance erased the confused expression on its comical face, and the Slayer grunted and bobbed its bony skull in greeting.
The quake intensified so much that she found it impossible to maintain her balance. Sensing the tunnel would tumble down on their heads any minute, Gabriella calmed the beast by patting its side and crossed her fingers that she had enough magic to teleport her and the Slayer out of danger. She waved her hand, and the pair materialized on the rim’s outer slope. The excited E.V.A.N. snorted loudly at the instantaneous change of scenery and nervously paced the steep incline.
Crow was the first to scale the volcano’s cone to the rim, and he wasn’t a bit surprised Gabriella used magic to move her and her huge friend to the upper slope. But the others were astonished she arrived before them. Their questions flowed like wine at a vineyard.
“In case you missed my magic act earlier inside the cavern, I am a bonafide witch, and I would appreciate it if you kept my secret under your hat once we leave Riai Island.” She hesitated. “Speaking of leaving here, I have a bad feeling the Shabaccoes might try to ambush us, so keep your eyes open.”
�
��So what do we do now besides wait for an ambush?” Noah Wright’s question was laced with sarcasm.
“I guess we should continue down the volcano to the beach and hope we can hop aboard somebody’s boat for a ride back to Hawaii.”
“Can I make a suggestion?” Crow asked.
“Shoot.”
“Would you conjure me a computer so I can reestablish contact with Geronimo? Maybe he can guide us in the right direction from his satellite bird’s eye view,” he suggested.
“Not a bad idea. It’s worth a try.”
A computer tablet materialized in his open hands, and he immediately contacted his creation.
Gabriella wiped stinging ash from her eyelids, creating smudges. “Anybody else have an idea to share?”
Sue Wright waved at Gabriella.
Gabriella rolled her eyes. “This isn’t school. You don’t have to raise your hand.”
Her hand snapped back to her side. “Sorry. I just saw the dead soldiers below us, so there might be more on the way. We should watch out for them, too. I’m sure the Pentagon wants E.V.A.N. back.”
The monster stomped its feet and bared its teeth below the rainbow colored snout at the sound of its name.
Noah spoke up again. “Take a look at that burned up giant over there. Ever see one before?”
No one replied.
“I didn’t think so. It’s as alien as E.V.A.N. and the Lothrans. My point is, and Reese here can back me up, there are worse creatures out here than you can even imagine.” He turned to seek Reese’s support for his claim, but she wasn’t in sight. He furrowed his brows, wondering where she could have wandered off to, and finally shrugged it off. She was probably squatting in the ash fog and would be right back. “Believe me, we’ve seen enough horrible monsters to haunt our nightmares for a lifetime.” He wiped his face. “And they all have one thing in common.”
Final Scream Page 26
