by Ted Striker
Scion of Two Pantheons
© Ted J. Striker 2017 All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Prologue
The dark man with the carefully oiled and coiled beard sat on a black marble seat before a black marble table in a room supported by black columns. He was writing carefully on a tablet of what appeared to be wax. The neat cuneiform shapes disappeared almost as soon as he wrote them. He paused, waiting, staring with dark eyes at the now unmarked golden wax.
Cuneiform figures began to appear on the translucent surface, tracing left to right: “The honorable man seeks a child. Plan in motion.”
The dark man read and reread the symbols until they disappeared, his excitement growing. He picked up his stylus and pressed it into the now-blank tablet. “Intercept at all costs. Use all assets.”
With any luck, he thought, his problem would all be resolved on the Other Side of the Veil, and he would soon be sole master of the new world to come.
The tablet erased itself one more time, and then a single symbol appeared.
“Understood.”
Chapter 1
Kids are scared of basements, and with good reason, Bryan West thought idly. Basements are the perfect place for evil deeds. They keep company easily with ancient dungeons, tombs, catacombs, all places that tend to be below the surface of the earth, all associated with torture and death. This basement room was small and gray and ready for the evil about to be committed in it. It was lit dimly, but well enough to accommodate the needs of the interrogators. It had a water spigot in one corner and a table with its top angled down toward a large central drain. Bryan was tied to the table with ropes.
Three other men were in the cell with him. One, a man he knew as York, held a towel loosely in his hands; the other, a bucket filled with water. The third man, the one in the wrinkled tan suit, stood close to Bryan’s head. “We can still avoid unpleasantness,” he said conversationally. “Just tell us where Perkins is.”
Bryan answered just as conversationally. “I think that you’re lying through your teeth, Kramer. Whatever I tell you, you and your boys will water-board me anyway, just to check my answers under duress. Then, when you’ve satisfied yourself, you’ll finish me off, because you’ll never feel safe again if you don’t. I’ll make you a deal, though. Untie me now, put me on a plane, and I’ll let you live. You’ll never see or hear from me again.” He made sure that his voice was smooth and level, even though his muscles were bow-string tense.
Kramer licked his suddenly dry lips. This was not mere bravado from a condemned man. He had been a field agent himself, adequate enough if not great. He had known and worked with agents such as West, Perkins or the agent he knew only as “The Ghost,” men who appeared out of nowhere and then disappeared again, leaving only the dead to mark their passage. West had no doubt that he was going to be able to fulfill his threat.
The fact that he was securely tied onto a table and surrounded by three armed men was thin comfort. Nonetheless, Kramer said, “You know where Perkins is, West. All you have to do is tell us.”
“Why would I know where Perkins is?” asked Bryan. “I worked with him exactly twice, Kramer, under your orders both times. And each of those times, the targets you assigned were, as you desk types like to say, ‘neutralized.’ I haven’t seen the man since the last time you put us together. Why don’t you just call him up like you did me?”
Kramer didn’t answer. The truth was, he didn’t really know the reason his superiors had told him that two of his best assets were suspected traitors. He doubted that Bryan knew Perkins’ whereabouts; individual agents were very security conscious. He had contacted Bryan by calling an untraceable number and giving a pre-arranged recall signal.
Perkins hadn’t answered his call or responded to the post on an anonymous message board deep in the dark web.
But he said nothing of this to West. Orders were orders, and his were to wring every scrap pertaining to Perkins out of West, then dispose of what was left after the interrogation.
“I take it you don’t want my deal,” said Bryan. “It’s a good one; unlike my superiors, I keep my word. Well, try this on for size: If you don’t let me go, I’ll kill all of you. That’s a promise, too.”
Kramer suddenly remembered a story about West. The only time he had ever been captured had been due to an intelligence failure on the part of his handler. The agency had given their agent up for lost and counted the mission a bust, but somehow West had escaped the hell-hole of a Tripoli prison they had thrown him into, evaded all attempts the enemy made to recapture him, and taken out his target. A few months later, the handler had gone out to buy a pack of cigarettes in London and had never come back.
Kramer wished that he had not remembered that. He tried to drown his fear in logic: “West, you’re tied down to a table that’s held a lot of men. Most have blustered, a few have threatened, just like you. Do you know what they all have in common? Every one of them has broken. I somehow think that it won’t be different for you.” He turned to the others. “Go ahead. Get everything out of him. Then neutralize him.” He took the steps two at a time up to the door, trying not to look as if he was running away.
As the basement door closed with a solid thunk! The two torturers looked at Bryan. “You heard the man,” said York with an evil chuckle. “Lots of people have been here before you. Not just men, either. Had one girl, wife of a Taliban. . . she was sweet.”
“Shut up, York.” The fellow with the bucket frowned. “You’re disgusting.”
Bryan agreed. “Disgusting is one word for it. You missed that episode?” he asked the bucket holder.
“No, I was here. It was disgusting then, too.”
“But you’ve got this backwards, West. We ask the questions, you get to answer. Since you rejected the Colonel’s offer, I guess we’ll start with a little tune-up. Remember this from SERE school?” York snapped his towel a couple of times.
“No,” said Bryan. “I always escaped before they started. Handcuffs always slipped. Which brings me to my next question: Why did you boys put ropes on me instead of cuffs?”
York said, “Worried you’d slip the cuffs, I guess. You’ve done that a few times, eh?” Jovial now he was going to work. He wet the towel in the offered bucket.
“Well, what’s the difference between rope and handcuffs?” Bryan asked.
York bit. “I dunno, hotshot. What is the difference between rope and cuffs?”
“Rope is stretchier, softer, and somehow more alive than handcuffs. But the important thing about rope is, I can get out of that, too.”
York suddenly screamed as his balls were crushed in Bryan’s steely grip. He dropped the towel to the floor in a wet heap and tried to pry the hand loose. Bryan sat up, pulling on the man’s genitals for leverage. York’s scream rose in pitch until it became a breathy, gurgling whistle, like a boiling teapot filled too full of water. Bryan drove the stiffened fingers of his other hand into York’s windpipe and the whistle turned into a rasping, halting gasp as he tried to breathe through his crushed trachea. As York collapsed, Bryan snatched the knife from its sheath.
The bucket holder dropped the bucket and reached for the Glock holstered at his waist. Bryan was faster. He grabbed the fellow by the shirt, pulling him onto the Ka-Bar before his gun cleared the holster. The blade went in under the man’s breastbone and angled up into his chest, where the beating heart sliced itself to pieces on the razor-sharp edge. With a wistful-sounding sigh, towel man slipped down to rest on
the floor where his blood mixed with the spilled water and ran down into the drain.
Bryan grabbed Bucket Man’s Glock as well as York’s and then ran up the stairs. “Shit!” The door was reinforced steel instead of the usual hollow-core door found in a typical house, and locked tight. Trying to shoot through the lock would be next to useless; but this was the only way out. He shook his head in disgust at the poor choices ahead of him and raised a pistol in a futile attempt when the door opened.
There was Kramer, gun in hand. Bryan let his Glock swing up just a little more and put two shots into Kramer’s head, one on either side of the nose. The double-tap knocked Kramer back into the kitchen, which was empty except for Kramer’s corpse. Bryan heard a fusillade elsewhere in the house, and moved quickly toward the TV room lined with security monitors. Three corpses lay in various positions around the room. They had died trying to get away from something. Bryan had known some of these people. He might have had to kill them himself, but seeing them lying dead now was somehow disturbing. He checked the other monitors. There was no movement on any of the monitors except one. That monitor showed four lumpy gray guys moving clockwise through what must have been the living room, shooting people as they fled. Were they wearing NBC suits? Beyond the living room was the entryway. Bryan watched as the door opened and three people entered. One was a petite redhead whose grim eyes looked dangerous even through the camera. She held a submachine gun, an MP5K. The second was a humongous shaggy fellow with a heavy jaw and a Cro-Magnon brow. He carried a shotgun, a SPAS-15, and had a bandolier of cartridges slung across his shoulder. The third was Perkins. He carried a pistol. Perkins said, just as if he knew Bryan was there, “West, we’ve come to rescue you. Stay where you are and we’ll get you out of here.”
“Screw that,” said Bryan aloud even though they couldn’t hear him. He padded barefoot after the NBC guys, pistols in hand.
More shots sounded in the living room; machine-gun fire, pistol shots, and the heavy boom of the shotgun. One of the gray guys stumbled backward through the door toward Bryan, who noticed three things: One, he wasn’t wearing an NBC suit. He was big and gray and lumpily misshapen all on his own. Two, he was definitely not Human. Three, he was carrying an AK-47 like it was a toy and was bringing it to bear even as he turned. Bryan shot him twice through the head and the redhead put ten rounds from the MP5 into the lumpy back.
“What the hell is going on?” Bryan. “Who are those gray guys? What are they?”
“Shut up,” said the girl. “Let’s go. We have to get out of here before reinforcements come.” She led the way out the front door where they joined up with Perkins and the brooding giant. The redhead jumped up behind the wheel of a waiting Hummer, tossing her gun onto the seat. Perkins let Bryan get in the back and then joined him. Beetle-brow jumped into the open rear, rocking the vehicle, and picked up a .50 – cal machine gun as if it were a super soaker.
Perkins spoke. “Take us to the safe house, Jwilla.” She floored it and peeled out. Beetle-brow didn’t even sway. He scanned the sides and rear, even glancing up into the sky from time to time. Bryan wondered if he was worried about drones.
He said to Perkins, “So, can you tell me what’s happening? Kramer wanted to know about you. He seemed to think that you and I were involved together in something. And what the hell are those gray guys?”
Perkins leaned back and looked Bryan up and down. “You seem well for your ordeal,” he said with a smile. “I take it they hadn’t started questioning you?”
Bryan didn’t miss the fact that Perkins had sidestepped his question. He decided to ignore that for a moment. “We had just gotten to the introductions. Kramer wanted to know where you were. He threatened me, I threatened back, he left and I killed the interrogators. Then I killed Kramer in the kitchen, and that . . . whatever-it-is, in the living room when you showed up. Did you kill the other people in the house?”
“He seemed to think that you and I are important to each other,” Perkins was still deflecting. “Did he say why?”
“No.” said Bryan. He decided to push a little. “Tell me why he wanted you, and why he would think that I knew anything about your whereabouts. Every time we worked together it was under Kramer’s own orders. What would lead him to believe that we had a deeper relationship? And, since you work for the man, too, why would he need me to tell him where you were? He called me in and ambushed me, took me prisoner. Why not bring you in, too?”
Perkins shrugged. “I couldn’t say where he would have gotten the idea about us. And he did call me in, but I am nothing if not suspicious. And I did come, just not when he expected me. A good thing, eh?” He grinned. “Until now. Otherwise you might still be down in that basement, getting wet.”
Bryan nodded and fell silent. He glanced back at Beetle-brow, who was still checking six. He waited patiently for another minute and a half until the redhead – Willa? – slowed to take a left. He opened his door and rolled out. He rolled like a soccer ball until his feet touched the asphalt, and then he ran. He ran as fast as he could, ignoring the screech of tires and shouts behind him and the pain of rough asphalt and rocks tearing at his bare feet. He got onto some cool grass, cleared a backyard fence like a hurdler, then the fence on the other side, then cut up an alley behind the houses until he found another street leading away from Perkins and company. He didn’t slow down until he was sure that he had outdistanced any pursuit.
Chapter 2
Perkins swore blackly, such that even Tamoth, undemonstrative as he was, looked worried when the stream of invective was directed at him. To Jwilla, that look on Tamoth was the same as blind screaming terror in a normal man. Jwilla herself quailed beneath Perkins’ lashing tongue, meekly accepting his verbal abuse, waiting for her Lord’s natural fairness to assert itself. It took a while; Perkins could swear with vitriolic precision in languages long dead on this side of the Veil as well as some never spoken here. He worked his way through eight different tongues before winding down. He snorted, then chuckled, and finally laughed, a deep belly laugh of admiration and amusement. “He is a one, isn’t he? He caught on to our weak cover story much faster than I thought he would, and then took action instantly. No moss growing on that rolling stone!” He laughed again. “Rolling,” he repeated to emphasize the joke. “He is proving to be a fighter most doughty.”
“A fighter we need to retrieve,” said Jwilla. “Lord,” she added quickly at his stern glance.
“We can retrieve him soon enough,” said Perkins. “I see my mistake. I should have thought more carefully about an explanation to satisfy his questions. I thought that rescuing him would be enough to earn his trust, but I forgot – he is no normal man.”
“And now he is in the wind,” rumbled Tamoth. “If your enemies take him again, there could be problems.”
Perkins cocked his head. “I sense that you aren’t saying all that you would like to, Tamoth,” he commented. “Please speak your mind.”
The giant sighed gustily. “Pursue him now. Scry him, find him quickly. When we have him again, simply tell him the truth. Allow him to make his own decision to aid you. Knowing the truth, I have no doubt but that he will decide favorably toward you, my lord.”
“As I have often said, innuendo does not mix with the personality of a Centaur. Your people have always been seekers and speakers of truth to the point of tactlessness.” Tamoth bowed his huge head in acknowledgement of the mild rebuke. To show that he was not completely put out by the criticism,Perkins explained: “Humans on this side of the Veil are generally suspicious and self-serving, and prevaricators to boot. Why should this man be any different?”
“As you yourself said, he is no ordinary human.”
Perkins half closed his eyes, considering Tamoth’s words. Then he shook his head and sat back, his mind made up. “He knows that we weren’t totally honest with him when we rescued him. When we find him again, we will probably have to take him by force. Now, think about the huge personal sacrifice that Bryan will need
to make to fulfill our plan; do you think that he will be kindly disposed toward making that sacrifice? No, we will let him calm down and drop his guard while we scry him. Take us to the safe house,” he commanded Jwilla. “We’ll prepare for Bryan there, and then go fetch him.” Perkins closed the partition window and turned forward.
“This will not end well,” muttered the mighty Tamoth as he went back to his job of watching for danger while Jwilla careened toward the safe house.
Chapter 3
Bryan slowed his run from a headlong rush that signaled “flight” to a fast-moving jog that any health seeker might be seen to use. He took several turns and cut through a large wooded park. He slowed to a walk as he came out the other side and began to plan. He had the pistols and the knife, and all his clothing except for his shoes. His feet were bruised and torn from his escape, and he was leaving traces of blood as he walked. He’d have to take care of that soon. He chose a vacant-looking house and knocked on the door. After a moment, he knocked again. This was looking promising. Now, if the man of the house wore size tens. . .
The door opened. Damn, someone was home. A woman, tall with wheat-gold colored hair cut boyishly short, stood cautiously behind the half-open door and looked him up and down with startling emerald eyes. Her pale eyebrows went up as she saw that he had no shoes. “What happened to you?” she asked in a lilting voice, taking a wary step back, ready to slam the door.
“Mugged,” answered Bryan, coming up with the most logical story possible. “They took everything – wallet, watch, even my shoes. I ran away, they didn’t follow.” Because they were all dead, he didn’t add.
“I can call the police,” she offered.
Bryan nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “Tom Ryan. I’m from Arizona, here for a conference in D.C. I’ll wait here on the steps.” He moved to sit on the frigid steps, leaving a bloody footprint on the porch.
