by Ben Zackheim
“This is mine,” I said to Skyler and Scarlett. I felt guilty about taking a dead man’s bike.
“Knock yourself out,” Skyler said, shrugging. He put his helmet on and hopped on his bike, a Harley VRSCSE2. How the hell he got that into Tibet is beyond me but Skyler always had his ways of making magic happen. Even retail magic.
We weaved our way slowly through the carcasses all over the road.
“Where’s all the traffic?”
“It’s being rerouted up at G318.”
“So someone cleared the roads to take us out?”
“Guess who.”
“But why would he try to stop us now,” I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t tell me even if he knew. “He knows if I die, the sword goes away forever.”
“He’s just testing your skills,” Skyler mused.
“Testing you too.”
“Oh, no. He knows better than to test me by now. He hit you while I was away because you were vulnerable. Not saying you couldn’t handle it yourself but… Wait a second that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
When we reached the end of Dead Chunks Alley we revved the engines, side by side.
“Two hours to go,” I said. “How will we avoid the road block? I don’t want us followed by the police.”
“We don’t have two hours to ride,” Skyler said, smirking.
“What do you mean? You told us the entry was at Namcha Barwa.”
“I lied, can you believe it?” he asked, smiling. “Nah, the entrance is somewhere over there in the base of Sangzhudengcun’s mountain. I just told you it was at Namcha Barwa so no one would know the real location if you were captured.”
“You think I’d tell anyone what we’re doing?”
“Not willingly, but last I checked you didn’t have top-notch psychic armor.” He was right, of course, but I didn’t like hearing it coming from him. That honor was usually all Rebel’s.
Skyler pointed to a hill, silhouetted against the moonlight. “I was waiting on the hill up there for you to pass. I saw the fire wall go up,” he said. “I guess they know where the entrance is because they were protecting the crap out of the whole area. Never seen such a defense for the road that leads to the path that leads to the door that leads to the path that leads to destination.”
“So we have a few more traps to trip,” I said.
“And much more Cannon fodder,” he said, laughing at his own pun.
Chapter 42
It only took fifteen minutes on a back road to get to our final destination. It was more like a walking path, actually. At times, the drop was a hundred feet. But we kept riding until we rolled onto a small field near the base of the mountain. We pulled our bikes into an alcove of boulders.
The mountain came out of the ground like it had been violently pushed up by a cranky god of old. The cliffs immediately above our heads were a hundred feet up and they layered the mountain all the way up to the sky. Low-hanging clouds blanketed the top. I felt like stone eyes studied us, watching to see if we were a threat. For a second, I feared that the mountain was working for Cannon too. It was a crazy idea, but it didn’t seem so far-fetched.
I caught Scarlett looking straight up. The expression on her face told me she was thinking something similar.
“Where to, then?” I asked.
Skyler started walking along the edge of the mountain, his hands running across the stone. His cane click-clacked on the ground. He was quiet for a while. But then, under his breath, I thought I could hear him mumbling. He was either recollecting what he knew, or he was casting a spell.
We followed him for a few hours. He found a path that cut into the mountain, leading upward at a steady, manageable slope. After an hour of being surrounded by rock walls we reached a clearing with a small brook, fed by a crack in the mountain. A waterfall fell pleasantly, the noise taking away the stress a little bit.
“Don’t let your guard down,” I told Scarlett. “When things get pretty on the surface that means something could be ready to kill you from underneath.”
“You must lead a happy life,” she said, smiling.
The old man sat against a boulder and took a swig of water from his leather pouch. Or at least I assumed it was water. Until I smelled the stench of cheap booze wafting downwind.
“Jesus, Skyler. Is that recycled rum?”
“Give me some,” Scarlett said. She took a sip and her eyes watered. Skyler smiled and then winked at me.
“Bullet wound? What bullet wound?” she said with a smile.
“I like her,” Skyler said, all teeth and bright eyes.
“You take care of her then,” I said.
“Be glad to.”
“I can take care of myself,” Scarlett said, rubbing her wounded shoulder. The impressive thing was that she didn’t have any anger in her voice. It made me think that, yeah, maybe she could take care of herself. She’d done well so far. I was the one who got knocked out and injured on the road, so maybe she’d come in handy for more than her healing powers. I hoped so because healers were usually the first ones to bite it on missions like this one. They’re like pitchers in baseball. They can deliver the goods but can’t hit for shit.
“Unless there are snakes,” Scarlett added. “I hate snakes.”
I noticed Skyler just nodded his head, eyes wide. The fact he didn’t have anything half-clever to say meant he wasn’t sure how to deal with her comment. I took a mental note. Snakes were in our immediate future.
After a moment of silence, Skyler sighed deeply and said,” I have no idea where it is.”
“Where what is? The door?” I asked.
“No, the deli. Yes, the door!”
“Why don’t you know where it is? You’re supposed to be the one who knows where it is!”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Will you two keep it down, please?” Scarlett asked. “We need to keep a low profile with, you know, the most powerful man on the planet after us.”
“Bah, he’s not after us. He’s waiting for us.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. The innocence in her voice made Skyler back off his usual snarky response.
“I mean that Cannon knows where we’re delivering the sword. He’s known all along. But he can’t do anything with that knowledge except wait for the sword to show up.”
“Then why kill Rebel? Why chase us through L.A. and China?”
“Like I said. He wants to test you. He probably sees you as a potential soldier. And the…”
He stopped.
“What?”
“What, what?”
“You were going to say something just then,” I said.
“No I wasn’t,” he shot back, shaking his head.
“Yeah, you did,” Scarlett jumped in. “You said, ‘And the’ I think.”
He sighed. “Fine. It’s also likely that Cannon is afraid of the person we’re taking the sword to.”
“And that’s who, exactly?” I asked.
“Santa Claus,” Skyler said.
“Are you planning on sharing things we need to know so that we can survive this fucking expedition, old man?”
“No, not really.” He turned to Scarlett who was watching us talk like we were playing a tennis match. “So, sweety, we don’t need to worry about Cannon. However you’re right. We need to keep it down. Let your boyfriend over here know that he won’t be getting any special healing later if he doesn’t pipe down and let me think.”
I balled up my fists and held my tongue. I didn’t want to get into it with him.
I got some distance between us. I walked up a mossy glen and felt the wall with my fingertips. I was looking for clues on the surface and, as usual, the answer was right underneath me.
My foot hit something metal.
It opened and I fell in.
“Ah-ha! There it is!” I heard the old man scream with delight as I felt around to see if I’d broken a limb.
Chapter 43
The steel door over my head broke off its
hinges and almost landed on my head. It was sheer luck that I dodged a beaning that would have ended the party for me.
“Be careful down there!” Skyler yelled down.
“Thanks, asshole!” The space was tight and barely lit by the rising sun.
I pulled a pen light out of my jacket. I was standing in front of a crack in the wall, about ten feet high. It was a tunnel.
“You okay?” Scarlett asked. “What do you see?”
“Yeah, looks like we’ve got some underground hiking to do.”
I shined the light into the tunnel. I couldn’t see the end of it. It just faded into darkness.
“It’s going to get tight down here. Only bring what you need,” I told them. “One firearm, secondary weapon and something you want with you when you die.”
“Are you always this chipper?” Scarlett yelled down at me.
“Only when I’m about to die. I’m headed in. Keep it down. We don’t want a cave-in.”
I took a deep breath of fresh-ish air and slipped into the crack.
I heard one of the team drop in behind me.
We walked for ten minutes before we had to turn sideways. The tunnel was narrowing. I heard a sound from the darkness ahead. Like a bag of pebbles being shaken.
“What’s that sound?” Scarlett said.
“You said you hated snakes?” Skyler asked.
“Yes!” she yelled.
“Oh, good. Because that’s the sound of bats.”
Scarlett tried to catch her breath, but she lost it again when the black ceiling filled with small dots of reflected light. Our flashlights caught the fluttering wings of hundreds of vampire bats.
They were circling down on us.
And they were huge. Each one was three feet long.
“Get down!” Skyler yelled. Scarlett and I ducked as low as we could go and the old man lit up the cave with flame. It wasn’t magic. His cane’s tip had swung open and flame poured out.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” Skyler screamed. His battle cry wasn’t half bad, actually.
Most of the bats screeched and backed off. A few lit up and bounced off the walls like balls of flame. One beast got through the fire and attached itself to Scarlett. It bit into her shoulder, the one with the bullet wound. Without a sound, she yanked it out of her flesh with a sickening wet sound and twisted its head off with one yank.
“Wow,” Skyler said.
“Let’s walk faster,” I added.
I don’t know how much time passed but at one point I saw a glimmer in the darkness ahead of us. The bats were still looming over us, watching for a sign of weakness. Skyler shot off some flame once in awhile to keep them back.
“What’s waiting for us, old man? You in the mood to tell the truth yet?”
“I don’t know for sure, actually,” he said. “I think we’re going to see something new though. Something or someone we haven’t seen before.”
The ceiling above us grew higher until we emerged into a room.
We were in a massive cavern. Best I could tell the ceiling was 300 feet up. Most of the space was shrouded in darkness but there was a large crack in the cave wall about 500 yards in the distance. The crack had light streaming from it. It was as bright as the sun, but it wasn’t sunlight. It also wasn’t electric, or flame. There was a dazzle to it, a life, that I couldn’t identify.
“That is beautiful,” Skyler said. “Whatever it is.”
“Why is the light moving like that?” Scarlett asked.
“Magic,” I said. Maybe a little bit of attitude.
Skyler walked past me. “You’re the only guy I know who can take the magic out of magic, Kane.”
We worked our way down a shallow slope and headed toward the other end of the cavern. About ten steps in we saw the stalactites.
But they weren’t your typical stalactites.
“There are so many symbols on the stalactites,” Scarlett said, wonder in her voice.
“Yeah, they’re familiar, too,” Skyler said.
I couldn;t believe it. “They should be. It’s Nagas.”
“Holy crap, you’re right. HA!” Skyler said, too loudly, as usual.
The symbols reminded me of the shapes we’d seen in Peru where we’d found the sword. Each one was the size of my fist. Hundreds of them flowed across dozens of the hanging rock formations, bunched together to form into one big image
The image of a long snake.
I looked straight up and shined my light on the ceiling.
The image of a human head loomed over us, its hundreds of small parts forming a face that looked displeased with our presence.
“What’s Nagas?” Scarlett asked, voice shaking, knowing the answer.
“A myth,” I said. I didn’t think it was a great idea to start telling her about snake people.
“What kind of myth?” she asked. She wasn’t going to let it go. I didn’t blame her, but I also didn’t have any intention of going into details. Skyler wasn’t saying anything either.
But then a voice rolled down the cave at us.
It was a familiar voice.
“The myth of the snake people,” Cannon said.
Chapter 44
“Shut up, Cannon!” Skyler yelled. “And show yourself!”
I couldn’t see him yet.
“Snake people? For real?” Scarlett asked. The tremor in her voice made me cringe.
“Don’t worry about it,” Skyler muttered. “They’re supposed to have human heads and bodies.”
“Oh, that’s much better?” she said, slightly hysterical.
“He’s right, Scarlett. We have bigger things to worry about. If it makes you feel better, Cannon will probably kill you before the snake people do.”
“Good,” she said with no hint of sarcasm.
“Come closer! You must be tired,” Cannon said. His low voice rolled down the cave like thunder.
We walked toward the voice. There was nothing else to be done. We were in the exact place we’d fought and died to get to. We had to move forward. I didn’t know what Cannon had up his sleeve but it was the final destination. Somewhere around here was a safe place for Excalibur.
We had to get past him and his trap to finish this once and for all.
As we drew closer, the cave began to light up with a slight purple glow. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from but I didn’t have time to look too closely.
Cannon came into view. He was perched on a cliff about twenty feet above our heads. He looked down on us like all tyrants do, refusing to bow his head.
The purple glow lit him from below. Skyler was looking around nervously. He also wanted to know where the light was coming from.
Scarlett, for her part, had pulled her pistol on Cannon already. Not the way I wanted to start the conversation, but I can’t say I didn’t agree with the sentiment.
“Hello to you, too,” Cannon said, his charm button set to on. “Scarlett, right?”
She didn’t answer. Her hand was as steady as mine. I could tell she knew how to shoot.
Cannon could tell too. “You can put that down, Scarlett,” he said.
She didn’t budge. She didn’t even blink. It was like time had taken a break all around her. If he wanted her to stand down then he’d have to knock her over. But Scarlett’s move set the stage. I knew where Cannon would have to focus first now. He’d have to take her down before he could pay attention to me.
I hoped Scarlett knew that she could pay for the gesture with her life.
I was going to do everything I could to make sure that didn’t happen, though.
“You look like I feel!” Skyler yelled, trying to spread Cannon’s attention even further. “And I just peed my pants back there with the Vampire bats so I am not fresh.”
“Hello, old man,” Cannon said, familiarity in his voice.
“Hey! Only Kandy Kane over here can call me that, fatso!” I closed my eyes for a second, trying to swallow my comeback. I couldn’t help it. I hated it when he called me that
.
“Welcome to the gates of Bhogavati,” Cannon said. “Not as majestic as you’d think, right? I was disappointed when I first saw this cave. They could at least have some lighting in here so our human eyes could enjoy the beauty of their art.”
“Step aside, Cannon,” I said. Men like him can use every word against you so I kept it simple.
“No.”
“You aren’t getting the sword.”
“I already have it.”
For a second I worried that he’d found a way to steal it from my portal. I hadn’t reopened the portal since I put it in there. The fear grew as I stared him down. He could tell I was wondering what he meant.
So, since there was no more need for talk, I pulled the Glock on him.
.025 seconds was my guess. Not bad. Not a record. Overall disappointing. And also not fast enough. I fired, don’t get me wrong. If I pull my gun in a situation where my teammates are in danger then I don’t talk. I shoot. Usually because there’s nothing else to say.
But I missed.
It was the first time I’d missed a shot since my first year of training. That may sound unlikely, but once you learn how to hit your target while Sklyer slaps your hands like I did — well, let’s just say you won’t miss a big, fat target like Cannon.
It took me a second to realize what had happened.
Sometime just before I pulled the trigger the cave had lit up. The rounded walls and ceiling were suddenly covered in a bright purple light. The art on the stalactites was illuminated, showing us work of such great beauty that I did kind of regret that this was probably my last moment on Earth.
I wanted to look at it closer.
I sensed there were answers in the small details.
All of this happened within one second. But when you think you’re going to die, well, time has a way of dancing its own dance.
“Nice shot,” Cannon said.
Scarlett fired. A flash of purple passed in front of Cannon, snatching the bullet out of the sky and placing it gently in Cannon’s outstretched hand.
