Still holding the other man's sword awkwardly with both hands, he flicked it over his shoulder, where it tumbled twice in the air before it shot like a lance into a soldier near the far edge of the crowd. Payton reached behind himself without looking and retrieved his own sword with both hands. With a new burst of speed and another unholy roar of vengeance escaping from his lips, his feet stepped up onto the disarmed man before him like he was climbing a ladder. The sword still behind his back, he swung it down and then up in a perfect arc. The sword connected with the soldier vertically, and Grant looked away to avoid seeing the man cleaved in half, from tip to toe.
When he looked again, Payton was already on the ground, his sword twisting ninety degrees, and slicing around wide like a tennis racket.
A dozen men were already down, and it had happened in a steady stream of furious moves that lasted no more than ten seconds.
Grant snuck past the fight by hugging the outer wall.
He'd just reached the still-open double doors when a searing pain tore through his shoulder.
He turned; a soldier stood clutching a bloodied sword.
Instinctively, Grant willed a stalactite hanging from the ceiling to come loose in self-defense. He dove through the doorway for cover as the giant rocky tendril bored into the earth at the spot where the soldier stood.
Pleased with his success, Grant returned to his feet and applied pressure to the cut on his shoulder.
That was when he felt the ground begin to rumble.
Another stalactite fell twenty feet away inside the chamber. And another farther away, crashing into some of the soldiers Payton was squaring off with.
The entire cave was coming down....
Grant ran back through the doorway, concentrating on trying to make the shaking stop, willing the cave to steady itself.
"Payton!" he yelled over the quaking.
His view was obscured by falling dirt and rocks, but he heard Payton's voice reply, "Go! Finish it!"
Grant looked up just in time to see a massive fifteen-ton boulder break loose from the ceiling. It was above the area where Payton continued to hack and slash his enemies.
"Look out!" Grant called out. He put out a hand to stop the boulder, but another stalactite broke free right above him, and he was forced to dive through the doorway to escape it.
On his hands and knees, he looked back. The doorway was covered over by the rockslide.
Grant stretched out with his mind; he couldn't get a strong sense of Payton. All he could see was darkness where Payton should be.
He was trying to convince himself that Payton could have gotten clear with his speed when he heard a deep, booming voice coming from the path ahead of him.
"Hello, Grant."
Grant recognized the voice, though today it spoke in a simple American accent. Grant wondered if this could be Devlin's real one.
Grant worked his way to his feet, but as he was getting up, he saw familiar lettering carved into the rock on the ground right beneath him that said:
SUBSTATION OMEGA PRIME
Grant placed one hand on his aching shoulder, wishing Hector were handy. Another narrow corridor of rock extended before him, but a man stood there, blocking it.
The man wore a trim, custom-tailored pin-striped suit. He had white hair and showed obvious signs of age, yet his face was remarkably smooth. His hands clasped in front of him with manicured fingernails, his demeanor was the personification of calm.
"We've been expecting you," the man said. "My apologies for the guards. A necessary evil, deployed to prevent Payton from accompanying you any farther. You alone may venture where we are about to go. Even very few of our people have ever been to your destination."
"I don't know what you think I'm here to do," Grant replied. "But all I want is my sister. Hand her over, and I won't explode your heart inside your chest."
"Yes, of course," Devlin answered. "Julie is quite safe. If you'll allow me, I'll take you to her."
Grant watched the man with unbridled suspicion and made no movement to follow.
"Grant," Devlin prodded, "I have been nothing but truthful with you since our very first conversation, and I've no intention of changing that policy now. So I would like to make you a deal."
"Why would I make a deal with you? If you don't give me my sister, you have to know I'll tear this entire place down until I find her myself."
"Because," Devlin replied, "we both know your sister is not the only reason you're here. You want to know what it's all been about. Since that first day you stepped off the bus in Los Angeles and saw yourself walking to work. Since you met Morgan and your friends, since you met your grandfather and learned of your parents' involvement with the Secretum. Since the world began to crash and burn all around you."
Grant said nothing.
Devlin took a step closer. "You. Must. Know. The truth."
Grant hated this man already, with his polite charm and all too helpful mannerisms.
"What are you proposing?" Grant asked.
"I need to show you something," Devlin replied. "Along the way, we'll stop and retrieve your sister, and you can see for yourself that I've been true to my word. She's perfectly fine, she's well fed, and she's been treated like an honored guest. But once she's at your side again, you must see what I wish to show you."
"In exchange for?"
"As we are walking to our destination, you may ask me any questions you like and I will answer them truthfully. Ask me anythingabout the Secretum, the Rings of Dominion, your family tree, anything you are curious about-and I will tell you all you want to know."
Grant considered tossing Devlin down the corridor like a rag doll and got an internal charge at the mental image. But he stifled the impulse, his sister taking precedence in his mind.
"Agreed," Grant answered and walked toward Devlin.
The elder man turned and began to walk, and Grant followed. Down the corridor, Devlin found a crack in the cave wall that Grant would never have noticed and pushed on it. It was a door that slid inward with a click and then moved to one side. Devlin entered, motioning for Grant to follow.
They walked on in silence through another narrow corridor carved out of the rock, and Grant's mind raced against this insanity. Why was he following this man so willingly into what he knew would be a trap?
Was he so sure of himself and his abilities that he believed nothing could take him down?
The press believed he was "fearless."
If they only knew ...
A bullet nearly ended him just two weeks ago, and the more recent brainwashing made him feel more helpless than he'd felt in a very long time. Just weeks ago, rescuing L.A., he'd felt invincible. Now he felt ... like a marionette on a string.
And this place. It felt familiar somehow. He was positive he'd never been here before, but there was something ... comforting about being inside these walls. Was that the right word for it? Maybe not.
Grant's eyes shifted to Devlin's right hand ...
His finger.
Devlin was wearing a ring made of silver, with a blue gemstone inset.
Grant knew that ring. He'd seen it before.
"He who wields the weapon of purest silver will stand between the Bringer and the day of torment."
That's the ring my grandfather wore when he was the Keeper of the Secretum.
How did Devlin get it... ?
"You haven't asked me any questions yet," Devlin observed, drawing Grant's attention away from the silver ring. "Our walk will take some time, but it won't last forever."
"Fine," Grant replied. "Let's start with, who are you people? I mean, really?"
"We are the embodiment of a question," Devlin replied.
"What question?"
"The only question that truly matters: Is there more to this existence than what we can see or hear or taste or smell or touch? In essence, the question is simply, Why? Why are we here? Why is the average human temperature ninety-eight point six degrees? Why is the unive
rse larger than the human mind's ability to conceive? And why does it all happen the way that it does? Is ... there ... more?"
Grant was reminded of a conversation he'd had with Daniel months ago on a similar topic. "Every scientist in the world," Daniel said, "studies the natural order of the universe. But the one thing they can never explain through reason or logic is why that order exists."
Finally, as the silence dragged on and Devlin waited patiently, Grant was forced to offer the only answer he could. "I don't know."
"No one on this plane of existence does. An answer has never been given in any definitive, infallible way. But here, in this place, you will answer the fundamental question of existence ... once and for all. We are the question. You are the answer.
"This is why you are here, Grant Borrows. This is why you were born, and why you have been drawn to this place from your very first breath. You are here to answer the unanswerable question."
"I don't understand ... I thought you were some kind of secret society, like the Illuminati or the Masons or something."
Devlin let out a chuckle. "The Masons ... The Knights Templar ... The Illuminati ... These are constructs of the imaginations of Externals based around vague historical accounts-products of your unending fascination with the unknown."
They turned a corner and entered another corridor.
"Externals," Grant said. "You used that word before. What's it mean?"
"Externals are what we call your kind, and I don't mean the Ringwearers. We live and work below the surface of this world, therefore everyone above the surface is external to us."
Grant found that the questions were compounding in his mind, coming faster and faster now, and it was difficult not to forget any of them. "So were you born here? Underground?"
"Born and raised. Did you know that the Taurus Mountains contain approximately forty thousand caves? Only eight hundred of which have ever been explored by Externals?"
"Why do you keep talking about those of us who live on the surface like we're a different species than you are?" Grant asked. "You are human, are you not?"
Devlin laughed again. "Yes, of course. But the Secretum is not merely an organization or a `secret society.' We are our own civilization. We have been here, in this place, for millennia, and our society developed and evolved independently from any External influence. We have our own rules, laws, and hierarchies of power. We are wholly self-sufficient and we are not in any way members of your society."
"But my grandfather said you've been manipulating events on the surface for years."
"True enough," Devlin conceded. "And when necessary, our methods have been quite overt: catalyzing civil uprisings, initiating revolts, igniting wars, altering election results.
"But on the whole, our tactics are far more subtle than any of your conspiracy theorists want to believe. A whisper in one man's ear. Making sure a young woman of promise attended this school instead of that one. Providing the spark of an idea that would lead to an invention that would change the way the world does business.
"This is our task. The Secretum has been at work for thousands of years, tailoring this world's fabric by pulling at a mere handful of its millions of threads. Coercing the very path that history takes. It can't be done with sloppy, casual moves; it requires an understated, elegant attention to detail that no External could possibly grasp."
The corridor grew wider, and Grant saw that they were nearing a much larger opening up ahead.
"Is that why you built your file `repositories'-like that room under London with files on people from all over the world?"
"Yes, our work is quite meticulous."
"The librarian in London said there were two more repositories."
"One of them is here. Along with the complete archives-seven thousand years' records of the Secretum's influence on External lives."
Grant stopped walking. "But ..." He scrambled to phrase his next question. "To what end? Why do you do all this?"
Devlin glanced at him. "As long as there has been time, there has been the Secretum of Six. We were there at the beginning, and we will be there at the end. We have orchestrated key events in the history of this world for as long as history has been recorded, for one reason and one reason only. To prepare for the coming of the Bringer, at the appointed time."
"And when is this appointed time?"
"I assumed you knew," Devlin replied, looking at him. "It's today, of course."
They began walking again. The corridor opened into a chasm at least a hundred feet in diameter. They stood at the top of a precipice above a fathomless drop. To their right was a set of very modern metallic stairs, and Grant could see across the well-lit chasm that the stairs spiraled along the wall, down farther into the darkness below that went much deeper than he could see. Doors were inset in the wall every fifty feet or so along the spiral staircase.
"This is where we keep ... guests," Devlin said.
They proceeded down the stairs, and Grant was glad to find a handrail to keep them from stumbling over the inner edge. They descended the stairs faster than Grant had expected. Soon the ceiling was very high above, a blurred vision of bright light beaming down through the expanse.
After passing about twenty doors-Grant had lost count-Devlin stopped and opened one. A guard stood inside a short hallway at attention. Devlin ordered, "Open it," and the guard promptly went to the door at the far end and inserted an iron key.
The door swung open and Julie sat at a table inside a well-lit room with basic furnishings. The tiny room contained simple furniture, including two chairs for the table and a bed, as well as a small sink and a toilet. A single light bulb dangled from a chain affixed to the ceiling.
Grant tore down the hallway-forgetting Devlin, forgetting everything-and scooped his sister up into his arms.
Julie embraced him fiercely and began to cry.
"I'm okay," she whispered. "Really, I am. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry ... I'm sorry I doubted you, back in London. I should have known you'd never-"
"It's okay, it doesn't matter," he comforted her.
Julie shook in Grant's arms as he held her, and for a quick moment he thought she shivered out of terror ... but then a more worrying realization dawned on him. She'd been without her medication since her abduction, many hours before.
Grant turned to look back down the hallway and met Devlin's eyes. "Can you give us a minute?"
Devlin peered at him with a dutiful expression, checking his expensive-looking watch. "Five minutes. Then we must press on. The door to the cell will be left unlocked."
The guard closed the door.
"Morgan, she's-"
"I know," Julie said tearfully. "I saw her body. They showed it to me."
"Then it's really true," Grant said, resigned.
Julie put a finger to his lips. They sat next to each other, using the chairs from the table.
"Honey, listen to me," Julie said with an urgency in her voice. "There's something you and I have never talked about, and we may not get another chance."
Grant already knew what it was. His mind went back to deep beneath the Wagner Building, where he'd flashed into a time outside of time, where his mother and his comatose sister had spoken to him and given him the strength he needed to go on.
"The safe house thing," Grant said it for her. "That dreamscape, where we talked the day I met our grandfather in Los Angeles."
"Yeah."
"What needs to be said?"
"You've never talked about what happened there, not once. You never even told Morgan." Julie paused. "You do believe it was real, don't you?"
He smiled. "You were there even though you were in a coma, and you remember everything that happened as well as I do. Of course it was real."
"But Grant ... Haven't you ever wondered about the implications? I mean, Mom was there. And she's dead. Doesn't that mean something?"
"I guess," Grant agreed but had no idea what else to say.
"There's something else," Juli
e whispered. "Don't bother asking how I know this ... I think maybe it's some kind of leftover intuition from that whole experience."
"What?"
"Mom can't come to you like that again," Julie said softly. "That's why she hasn't been back since the day of the fire storm. The two times she appeared to you were . . ." she struggled for the words. "They were more than either of you had any right to, in a cosmic sense. I don't know how it works, but I know beyond a doubt that she can't do it again. You're on your own now."
"No, I'm not," Grant replied, holding her hand tighter. "I just wish I knew what this was all about. All of this. I don't know if I'm strong enough to withstand whatever they're going to throw at me."
"You will," Julie replied without any trace of condescension. "You're fearless, and everybody knows it."
"Everybody's wrong. I'm afraid all the time. I'm afraid of losing the people I care about most."
Julie looked upon him with eyes of wisdom and love. "I think you have the wrong idea about this fearless thing. Being fearless doesn't mean having an absence of fear. It means you press on in spite of the fear."
"But I'm not sure I know how to do that."
"You do it every day, you just don't realize it. Every time you put one foot in front of the other, it's an act of trust. A belief that the ground will still be there when that foot comes down.
"The day I first met her," Julie went on, "Morgan told me that everything happening to you was happening for a reason. I realized over time that she was saying that if I could trust in that, that everything would unfold as it is meant to. All we have to do is trust that nothing happening in the here and now is an accident, or is without purpose. Believe that, and you will be truly fearless."
He smiled anew, swallowed her words, and stood to his feet. Carefully, he helped her to do the same. "I think our five minutes are up. We should go."
"I'm proud of you, you know," she said. "You know what they say about a life that's wasted. You're living proof that it's never too late."
These words caught Grant off guard. "What did you say about a life that's wasted?"
Fearless (Dominion Trilogy #2) Page 30
