Ghosts of Atlantis (Immortal Montero Book 3)

by Greg Mongrain

“You can call Mr. Hamilton after we arrive.”

  Marcus picked me up and we surged into the sky.

  Marcus was clearly not kidding about the possibility of a female killing a human without intending to do so. But if Hamilton suddenly died from an overdose of vampire, and I satisfied myself he was killed out of malice, the responsible party would suffer an excess of sunlight.

  Or perhaps face the plasma beam of the Apollo Ring.

  Chapter 52

  Sunday, February 15, 3:22 a.m.

  Marcus set us down on the sidewalk outside 2756 Twain Avenue. We entered the house. Emilio stood next to three small piles of dust, clothes draped around them. Black streaks marred the wood floor.

  Marcus knelt.

  “Probably Ron, Felipe, and Aidan,” Emilio said.

  “That makes me the last acolyte of the Apollo Ring,” I observed. Only the head priest and I protected it now.

  “Yes it does,” Marcus said.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  “We go to Kristina’s” Emilio answered.

  “No,” Marcus said. “Since we know Morgan has fled to the other side, we should return to Darius’s house and examine his portal more carefully.”

  “I’d like to drive there,” I told him.

  Marcus flew me back to my car.

  “I’ll meet you at Spellman’s,” I told him. He zoomed away.

  On the drive, I phoned Hamilton, told him to meet us at Darius’s house.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “My place, with Rachella.”

  I had to ask, knowing Hamilton hated being in the air, but also knowing Rachella would hug Hamilton tightly before taking off, and that she would instruct him to grab on to her. Would his dislike of flying override his enjoyment of being squashed against the ship’s captain?

  “How do you like flying with Rachella?”

  “It has positive points,” he replied.

  As usual, the hound reigned supreme.

  “Ask her to give you a ride to Spellman’s, okay?”

  “I’d rather stay on the ground and give her a ride.”

  Chapter 53

  Sunday, February 15, 3:51 a.m.

  When I arrived at Spellman’s home, the others were waiting for me in the office. I showed them Darius’s phone. “It was in one of Aliena’s jacket pockets,” I explained. “And the first name in the phonebook is “Atlantis,” accompanied by a long sequence of numbers.”

  “The signal to open the portal?” Emilio guessed.

  “Yes.”

  Marcus slowly turned to me.

  I pulled the USB drive from my pocket. “Darius gave me this yesterday at sunset, just hours before his death. According to the message on it, it contains a virus program designed to shut down the interdimensional highway.”

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Only directions on where to put the device.”

  “Starting from here?”

  “Yes.”

  “We should all look,” Emilio said.

  “Darius reported that the Ghosts of Atlantis were sensitive to the presence of vampires and attacked them immediately.”

  “We’ll risk it,” Marcus said.

  I pulled the Apollo Ring from pocket. Reluctantly, I slid it on my finger, steeling myself for the hellish fire. The metal seared my flesh, driving me to my knees again. I clutched my hand, my teeth gritted as I waited for the burn to pass. Finally, the damned thing cooled.

  “Christ,” Hamilton said. “Are you okay?”

  I climbed to my feet. “Yes.”

  The others watched me with fascinated expressions.

  “Let’s go,” I said, not wanting to expose Hamilton or the vampires to the ring’s radiation for too long. I tapped Darius’s phone, selected the entry headed Atlantis. I glanced at the champagne flute-shaped speaker on the desk.

  “Ready?” I asked them. They nodded.

  Facing the blank wall, I pressed the CALL button. The room lit up as a flash flared from the line where the wall met the ceiling. The silvery gel descended like a theater curtain, and the blue light on the speaker blinked rhythmically.

  Once the doorway reached the floor, I stood close and pushed my hand through. The field felt like soft Jell-O. My hand came back intact, dry and unmarked.

  “This should lead to the place Darius was visiting every day,” I said.

  “Don’t be long,” Hamilton said.

  The vampires stepped into the void and I followed.

  The passage through the gel was not instantaneous. For a moment, I stood at the center of corridors that stretched to infinity in all directions, the walls twinkling as if encrusted with diamonds, dazzling the eye. Then I was through.

  I emerged onto a narrow metal catwalk fifty meters above the floor. The high ledge did not have a guardrail. My momentum would have carried me over the edge if Marcus had not placed a hand on my chest.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking down.

  “Certainly,” Marcus replied. “This doorway is deliberately positioned to send the unwary traveler to his death.”

  “Unless he’s a vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  Rachella and Emilio floated in the center of the cylindrical passage.

  “Did Darius plan it that way, do you think?” I asked.

  “I doubt it,” he said. “It’s clear he knew what was coming and had taken pains to make sure you and I would be the only possible replacements for himself.”

  “Hm. So in other words, he figured if I did fall, I’d be able to repair myself in moments?”

  “It is a probability,” Marcus said.

  The rungs leading to the ground were on my left.

  The floor was white marble, inlaid with a shimmering blue trident surrounded by three concentric circles. The room obviously extended in every direction from this shaft; we could see reflected light and hear the faint hum of machinery on all sides.

  The interdimensional corridor flashed closed behind us. Activation with the phone apparently provided less time than opening it with the computer.

  “Don’t take more than thirty seconds,” Marcus said to Rachella. She and Emilio blurred to the ground, shot silently to our left, passing from view.

  “How are you feeling?” Marcus glanced at the Ring.

  “Interesting,” I said. I removed the Apollo Ring. “No pain,” I told him. I slid it back on. The metal felt cool. “Next time I’ll wait until I’m in this universe to put it on.”

  I ran my hand over the wall behind us, looked back down at the design on the floor.

  Marcus moved next to me. “Call the number again, please,” he said.

  Orange light flickered on the walls. Static electricity lifted the hair at the base of my neck. I punched the CALL button on Darius’s phone. The number finished dialing when Rachella and Emilio popped up next to us.

  “Time to go,” Emilio said, a livid burn on his cheek.

  A pulse of heat filled the chamber. One of the ghosts was near.

  I heard the interdimensional door to our universe open, but I wasn’t looking at it. I realized within this tall tunnel, I had my easiest shot at one of the deadly entities since it had to rise within this narrow passageway.

  “Go!” I shouted to the others. Keeping in mind the speed of the ghosts, I said, “Oculus Autem Apollon,” just as the flux creature appeared in the opening.

  A vibration shook my skeletal system as if my body had been thwanged like a tuning fork. Even as the first beam shot from the Ring, I repeated the Latin incantation, firing a second bolt on the heels of the first, eyes rattling in their sockets as every bone oscillated.

  The vampires stepped through the corridor.

  A blinding flash from below preceded a skin-tightening blast of heat. I stepped backward through the corridor, sightless. Imprinted on my retina was the image of the first ghost when the beam of the Apollo Ring collided with it barely three meters away.

  I emerged into Ron’s living room, blinking. I waited fo
r my eyesight to return. Suddenly, the Apollo Ring flared, white-hot. I shouted, shaking my hand as if trying to throw off an attacking animal. The gold band pulsed twice. The intense glow lit up my field of view again. I fell to my knees, holding my right hand close, moaning in agony as the fiery tempest filled my entire skin. I may have screamed.

  Vision returned like a slow movie fade-in. The three vampires stood on the other side of the room, watching. Hamilton crouched at my side, face filled with worry.

  The ring cooled. I immediately pulled it off and shoved it inside the gold-lined box. Hamilton helped me up. The vampires walked to us.

  “You okay?” Hamilton asked, moving next to Rachella.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  “Did you kill one of the ghosts?” Rachella asked. “Did you see it?”

  “Yes, I got one of them,” I answered. “The beam from the Apollo Ring obliterated it on contact.”

  She had a small burn on her left bicep. When Hamilton touched it, she flinched.

  “One of the ghosts burned you?” he asked.

  “Two of them got us in a crossfire in a hallway,” Emilio said, the red wound on his cheek an angry slash. “They made incredibly fast strafing runs, zig-zagging to fill the space. Rachella twisted a path through them and I followed her.”

  “How can Morgan let them loose like that?”

  “She doesn’t,” Rachella said. She ran a finger over the burn on her arm. “They detected us and the magnetic containers holding them opened. The containers are at the corners of the corridors. I saw the flash when the ghosts were released.”

  “They definitely recognized us as vampires,” Emilio said. “The scent in that corridor proved the mortals used it. They wouldn’t do that if the ghosts posed a threat to them.”

  Rachella’s burn had shrunk, fading to a thin line.

  The design of the cylindrical room into which we had emerged hadn’t been for a house. And the sounds we heard from our perch had been the electronic hum and whir of machinery, not the gabble of people.

  “Do any of you know where we were?” I asked. “Was it a control room as Darius said?”

  “Yes,” Emilio said. “Banks of processors and video monitors.”

  “Controlling what?” Hamilton asked.

  Emilio glanced at Rachella. “You got a better look than I did,” he said.

  “It looked like it controlled the interdimensional network.” She rubbed two fingers along her wound. “It may monitor how the portals open and close, track travel, know which portals are active, and a million other things.”

  “Would you have had time to find a USB port and insert the drive?”

  “No.”

  “Not a chance,” Emilio agreed.

  “I’ll have to do it alone, then.”

  “Yes.” Marcus said.

  “When will you do it?” Emilio asked.

  “When I have Aliena back in our dimension.”

  Chapter 54

  Sunday, February 15, 4:15 a.m.

  We decided to meet at Kristina’s place. On the trip to her house, I thought I had worked out the sequence of events leading to our present situation.

  If Morgan traveled to our dimension regularly, she may have met a vampire and taken her for a lover. Seducing Kristina would have been simple. Stunningly beautiful, Morgan also surged with immortal blood Kristina would have been able to smell. Sometime during the affair, Kristina must have mentioned the Apollo Ring, or the name of Darius Spellman.

  I could imagine Morgan’s stunned delight at this serendipitous discovery. She had probably been hard pressed to contain her enthusiasm as she questioned Kristina about the ring and its protectors. Kristina innocently passed the information on, not knowing she was signing her death warrant, as well as Darius’s, and those of anyone else who stood in Morgan’s path.

  They chose Carmen as the first receptacle for the Ghost. Using the addled woman, they tracked and tortured the first two acolytes of the Apollo Ring. When they could not force the ring’s location from the monks, Kristina “witnessed” Carmen at the second murder scene so the vampires would be forced to bring the Apollo Ring out of hiding to execute her.

  Morgan must have planned to track the ring after that, but failed. With Carmen’s death, they needed another vampire for a host. Morgan impregnated Aliena at Bar Sinister. When she found Darius, she summoned Aliena and used the ghost inside her to burn him to dust while interrogating him about the ring’s location.

  I could not think of a reason for choosing Aliena specifically. Another mystery was why Morgan had decided Kristina was a threat and eliminated her, unless it was accidental. But if that was true, it still left the question of how the woman from Atlantis had known the location of 49 tonight.

  If Darius’s phone opened an interdimensional portal at Cha’s, I would know my theory was correct.

  I pulled to the curb at Kristina’s house, ducked under the yellow crime scene tape, and strode through the front door, joining the others in the living room.

  We all faced the wall at which the speaker pointed.

  “If there is another portal here, where do you think it will take you?” Marcus asked.

  “Someplace safe,” I hypothesized. “If Kristina had a portal in her home, it would probably lead to a bedroom or another place in Morgan’s house.”

  “That’s just a guess,” Hamilton said.

  “An educated guess,” I said.

  “Then what’s our move?” he asked.

  “I journey to Atlantis and bargain for Aliena’s life.”

  “Why go alone?” Marcus asked.

  “To minimize casualties.”

  “Then why you?” Rachella asked.

  “Because Morgan will be expecting me. I’m the one in love with Aliena.”

  The four of them wished me luck. We had agreed they would wait at least thirty minutes before coming after me.

  Pointing Darius’s phone toward the speaker/emitter, I pressed the CALL button for Atlantis. The blue light on top of the speaker winked. With a flash, the silver-blue gel began to sweep down from the ceiling. Soon, a wide panel of the wall twinkled.

  Commending my soul to the Almighty, I stepped into Morgan’s world.

  Chapter 55

  Sunday, February 15, 4:27 a.m.

  Once again, as soon as I breached the gel, I briefly occupied a corridor stretching in all directions, presumably to infinity. Everything glowed like golden diamonds. In a moment, the corridor disappeared and I stepped into a high-ceilinged drawing room.

  I found myself standing in a room that stretched before me, the ceiling shimmering with sunlight reflected from water. I flinched when a ghost brightened in my peripheral vision. Jerking my head around, I saw the entity occupied a clear container. An explosive breath of relief whistled through my lips. The room was large enough that I had to move forward a few steps to see the ghosts were in all four upper corners.

  The space was large and airy. Sunken areas contained low-slung furniture. Colored in butterscotch and light wood tones, the room combined the appearance of a large living chamber with a spacious art gallery. Multi-colored glass objects stood on crystal pedestals. Most lined the walls, but some sat in the middle of spaces as large as a dining room. Made of glass twisted into delicate shapes, the displayed pieces burned with shifting glints of glimmering light.

  I passed under a high arch, staring about. At the end of the room, tall picture windows looked over an island from a great height. I walked to the edge.

  The ocean below contained three concentric harbors, the construction monolithic, with walls rising twenty meters above the water. Each harbor had one opening for passage into Atlantis, a gap that always forced a ship to turn sideways, thereby slowing her down as she came under the guns of the harbor guards.

  The island inside the rings pulsed with life. Wonderfully spired buildings that were perfectly lighted gave the distant skyline a magical feel. Hover cars sped through the air, some of them landing on gigantic clouds. Lookin
g closer, I could see the clouds were small cities that levitated behind the final wall. Based on our height, it was likely the building I occupied sat on a similar city.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  I turned. Morgan sat in one of the recessed sections, watching me.

  “Yes,” I told her. “As fantastic as Atlantis should be.” I looked again to the horizon on my right. I realized what I had taken for distant mountains was a towering machine rising from the ocean. The structure made the harbor walls look like a child’s plastic blocks.

  Morgan unwound herself from the couch and glided across the wooden floor. Her feet were bare, her body encased in a long gown.

  “You knew I would come?” I asked.

  “Yes. You love her very much, don’t you?”

  “That’s how you knew?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why kill Darius for a power source?”

  “He stole the jewel from me in the first place,” she said, eyes savage. “He betrayed me in other ways as well. And when he wouldn’t tell me where the ring was, I lost my temper and burned him.”

  “With the ghost inside Aliena?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get the thing inside her in the first place?”

  “I escorted her upstairs at Bar Sinister,” she answered. “In one of the private rooms, I drugged her glass of blood to make her cooperative, then I guided the ghost out of Kristina and implanted it in Aliena.”

  I remembered her now, a statuesque redhead on Aliena’s arm. Kristina serving as the vessel seemed possible. She had accosted me immediately after I had drunk my shots of Jack Daniels at the bar. With vampiric speed, she had plenty of time.

  I was relieved to know Morgan had successfully removed the ghost from someone she had infected.

  “Why did Kristina have a portal in her house? And why does it lead here?”

  “We were lovers,” she said.

  “You loved her?”

  “Yes. And she loved me.”

  I had barely noticed Morgan at 49, so fixated had I been on Aliena. The woman from Atlantis moved across the room, to my right, her long gown draping to the floor. Every second step, the shimmering dress went transparent, revealing her swaying body. I was reminded of the Emperor’s New Clothes. The revealing became something I anticipated. It was impossible not to. Even if there had been a goggle-eyed, retching monster under that dress, I would not have been able to stop myself from anticipating the flash of its hideous face.