by Kunego, Chad
Looking back and forth between the two men, she sniffed the contents of her glass.
“From my partner’s reaction, I’m going to guess this isn’t your everyday swill from the local liquor store?”
The professor smiled back at her, chuckling slightly as her partner replied.
“Not in the slightest. Do you know how rare this stuff is? I remember reading about this stuff on the top ten most expensive scotches ever sold. This one,” he said, taking a small sip with his eyes closed, savoring it before continuing, “went up for auction for ninety-four grand a bottle.”
Cora’s almost dropped her glass before she caught herself.
“Wait a minute, that means…”
“That you hold about eight grand worth of alcohol in your hand,” the professor said as he took a sip, “like I said, it’s quite nice.”
“So you mean to tell me you keep a bottle in your desk that’s worth more than some people’s houses? And you have no problems just giving us a glass of it?”
“Well detective,” he said as he took another sip, “I felt the reward fit the gift.”
Frank glanced at the other man.
“Gift?”
“Why yes, detective Giani. A most wonderful gift. One that I might never have received if you hadn’t been so rude, I might add.”
Cora exchanged confused glances with her partner before looking back at the professor.
“I’m not sure I follow you,” she said.
She watched as he got up from behind his desk and limped over to a colorful wall hanging. Sliding it to the side, she saw that it had hidden a six foot tall safe embedded into the wall. As he spun the dial, he started talking to them over his shoulder.
“Long before either of you were born, I was on an archaeological dig over in Egypt. We had found a partially uncovered pyramid buried centuries earlier. What made this pyramid unusual, other than the fact that the top of it barely stuck out of sand, was that the stones in it were significantly older than what was used in the Cheops pyramid in Giza. The fact that the pyramids in Giza were still pretty much at the surface while this one was almost completely buried suggested that it was built by an unbelievably old, unrecorded culture. If our guess was correct, this pyramid was centuries older than what was currently believed to be the age of the human race. This one find would have proved that humans had been around thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of years earlier than originally believed. If I would have been able to make this knowledge public, it would have changed the course of archeology.”
“Anyway,” he said, finally unlocking the safe and swinging the door open, “our dig lasted for several months before we were able to uncover a doorway to the interior.”
As he said that, he gently lifted what appeared to be a silk-wrapped package from the interior. Holding it reverently, he carried it over to his desk before going back to the safe and carrying over an accordion file brimming with documents. Setting the file down, he glanced up at them.
“Detective Blanchett, could you please lock my office door? I don’t want to be disturbed while I show you this.”
Cora walked back over to the door and locked it. As an afterthought, she closed the blinds on the door as well. Returning, she watched him gently start unwrapping the object.
“So after months of careful excavations, and days of slowly mapping out the interior, we finally made it to the Kings chamber, where we found this…” he said as he finally revealed what he’d had hidden in his wall safe.
Shimmering under the dim lights of the office, Cora glanced down at a near twin of the jewelry Samuel wore on his arm.
Chapter 22
“What! You found that in an ancient pyramid? How old IS that thing, exactly?”
Cora stared at it intently. Granted, it wasn’t exactly the same as the one on Samuel’s arm. For starters, this one was shades of red and gold while his was blue and silver. The head and body of this one appeared to be more powerfully built while Samuel’s would be better described as sleek. She tried to spot more differences as Professor Waide gently laid it down on his desk, on top of the silk wrapping.
“Honestly, we haven’t been able to determine it’s exact age. Every method I’ve tried to identify it with has come up empty. Acids, files, hammers, and more recently, X-rays, ultrasound, and lasers, have had absolutely no effect on it. I haven’t found anything yet that can even scratch it, let alone test it. The best I’ve been able to do is estimate it’s minimal age, based off other things we recovered from the pyramid. Some of the pottery dates the pyramid back to around one hundred and eighty thousand years B.C., based off carbon dating.”
“What! How’s that possible? If all that’s true, then how come we haven’t heard anything about all this.”
Cora noticed the professor’s face sag slightly before he took another sip of his scotch.
“Therein lies the great tragedy. Apparently, that whole structure was designed to protect that thing,” he said, waving at the jewelry on his desk.
“As soon as I picked it up, there was a brilliant flash of light before the entire structure started shaking. I barely remember grabbing it and trying to get to safety before the whole place collapsed and was buried under hundreds of tons of sand and rock. We lost over thirty people that day, some of whom were buried alive in there. Others were sucked to their death in the quicksand that formed as the structure sank.”
“Quite honestly, I’m not even sure how I survived. All I know is that I had somehow made it out while others didn’t. When the survivors of my team found me, I was several hundred feet away from the opening, clutching that to my chest like it was a child.”
“I was delirious for several days before I finally came to my senses. From that disaster, I’ve devoted my life to trying to figure out who could have made something like that, and more importantly, why history makes no mention of them. Sure, I’ve seen crackpot theories, like it was made in Atlantis, or something similar. I’ve even had to fend off some folk who swore it was from aliens. None of it really answers the question of who created it or for what purpose. For that matter, the biggest question is, how were they able to create it? Our currently technology can’t even figure out what it’s made out of, yet it’s nearly two hundred centuries old. The oldest known remains of homo sapiens are around that same age, so how would a race that used rocks as advanced weaponry make something like that?”
Professor sunk back into his chair, lost in thought as he finished off his glass of scotch.
Cora stared at the piece of jewelry laying on the professors desk. After a minute, she looked up at him quickly.
“Wait a minute, if that thing is that old, then how’s our boy sporting a near replica?”
Frank looked at her, surprised by the question. His eyes widened slightly before looking back at the professor.
“That, my dear, it the million dollar question. If you can figure it out, I’ve got another bottle of scotch with your name on it. Out of all my years of searching, that photo on your phone is the only evidence that they still exist. The only other thing I’ve ever been able to determine is that they were worn by a race called Syphons, but nothing to indicate why. Even that I’m not sure of since it was based off of a translation of a translation found in some documents that were traced back to the ancient library in Alexandria. Parts of the document was damaged, so the final translation wasn’t really clear. It implied they were either protectors or destroyers, but the documents were too damaged to be sure. Whoever they were, they appeared to be more technologically advanced than even we are today.”
The professor shook himself slightly. He eyed the bottle of scotch before putting it back in his desk.
Looking up at them, he said gravely, “To answer your original question, I think you’re quite right to be concerned with the coming Halloween. Those pictures from the warehouse are indicative of a significant ritual being performed. I would suspect that there’s going to be four or five more of these rituals being performed
between now and then, with the final one happening on all hallows eve, at midnight, when the curtain between our world and others are thinnest. You don’t have much time to stop whatever is going to happen, but I have to believe that the results would be catastrophic if left unchecked.”
Chapter 23
Samuel got back to the apartment a little later than he expected. The whole way home, he kept having weird sensations when he passed by certain people or areas. He had been vaguely aware of the sensations when he had traveled to the first jewelry store, but now that he was on edge from his near run-in with the strange people dressed in black, each odd sensation fairly screamed at him, like nails on a chalkboard.
Closing the door behind him, he collapsed on the couch, exhausted. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt more tired now than he did after all the sword-fighting and sparring from last night. His nerves felt raw and twitchy. It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn that he’d seen several weird creature-type people on the trip back. Some of them were similar to the one he’d run into at the library.
When he had looked at them, they seemed to develop a double-image effect, similar to what happened at the library. When he focused on them, they looked human while their ghost image took on all sorts of fantastic shapes. It was disconcerting enough that he debated having Blythe take him back to the hospital when she got back. He knew the doctor had said he didn’t have any lasting brain trauma, but with the continuing hallucinations, he wasn’t so sure.
Looking up at the clock, he realized Blythe should be home within a few minutes. After a brief pause, he decided to head back downstairs to meet her, hoping to work off some of the nervous energy he’d built up on the trip back.
Closing the door, he heard arguing in the distance. As he started down, he noticed the argument was somewhere below him. With a start, he realized that one of the voices belonged to Blythe, while the other was male. As he quietly descended, he noticed the volume of the argument slowly escalating.
“It’s none of your business who he is. We’re not together anymore. You can’t tell me what to do!”
As he turned the final corner, he noticed Blythe was cornered by the guy that had caused his weird sensations when he’d left earlier. As he approached, he saw Blythe try to get around the man, but he grabbed her and pushed her back into the corner.
“Let go of me,” she yelled as she dug her nails into his hand.
“You little bitch,” he said as he tried to backhand her. Making it look accidental, she lifted her hands up, deflecting his shot over her head. Samuel noticed the weird shimmering affect surround Blythe expand as she dropped her hands back down, slapping the man on the the chest. The impact nearly knocked him to the ground as he stumbled back a few steps. Regaining his balance, he charged back at her while rearing his right hand back.
“That’s enough.”
The words slid out of Samuel’s mouth like they’d been cast in iron. The razor edge in the tone he used caused the man to involuntarily stumble back a step as he’d spun toward him, giving Blythe an opening to slip past. The guy reached out, trying to grab her again, but Samuel flowed like mercury around Blythe, letting her get further up the stairs while he barred the way. As Samuel came to a stop in front of the man, he reached up and grabbed the other man’s outstretched hand, locking it in a viselike grip.
“I said that’s enough.”
The words hissed out of his mouth like steel sliding across steel.
“Who the hell are you! This is between me and her, so get the hell outta my face.”
“It would appear that she would rather not talk to you, so I’d suggest leaving before something unfortunate happens.”
“Is that a threat? Are you threatening me?” the man growled.
Blythe shouted from the safety of the stairs.
“Get out of here Chris! I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“You couldn’t wait to shack up with someone else, could you, you little sl—”
Samuel increased the pressure on Chris’s wrist, causing him to gasp in sudden pain.
“Let go of me you sonofa,” he said before suddenly throwing a haymaker at Samuel’s head with his other hand.
Without loosening his grip, he pivoted to the left while catching the strike on his forearm. Releasing his grip, he used his elbow to direct the strike over his head as he pivoted back to the right. Chris tried to take another swing at him with his suddenly freed hand, but Samuel blocked it with his left hand while grabbing the front of his clothes with his right hand. Lifting him up one handed, he charged across the landing with Chris before slamming him into the wall, crumpling a metal access panel in the process as the air whooshed out of the other man’s lungs. Chris struggled weakly against Samuels grip as his feet dangled a foot of the ground.
“Are you about finished?”
“Don’t kill him!” Blythe screamed, “he’s not worth it.”
Samuel turned sideways to look at her, shaking Chris slightly as he did.
“Don’t worry, I’m just trying to provide some friendly persuasion to convince this gentleman to not darken your doorstep again.”
Blythe started to smile, but the smile quickly changed to a look of horror. Time slowed down as her hand sluggishly started to extend toward him, her other hand covering her mouth to muffle a scream. The air popped as Samuel spun back to face the man he had pinned. His eyes widened as he was suddenly confronted by the barrel of a pistol aimed at his face.
§§§§§§§§§§§§
His left hand swung up, the displaced air creating an audible pop. Time slowed to a crawl as the hammer started to drop in slow motion. He felt a slight tingling sensation crawl across the palm of his hand as he got it in front of the barrel before time snapped back to normal speed. The boom of the gun discharging echoed around the room before fading away. He distantly heard Blythe screaming behind him, but all of his focus was on the man in front of him. He watched as the anger drained out of the other man’s face, like wax melting under a flame, as he realized Samuel was still staring directly at him, the smoke curling out from between the barrel and Samuel’s hand.
“Ow…” he said quietly, slowly lowering the other man to the ground. As the man’s feet touched the floor, his legs started to buckle. Samuel caught him, propping him up before shaking his head at him before he slowly released him. In a very deliberate manner, he reached over to grab the top of the pistol with his right hand, gently taking it out of the other man’s now limp hand.
Samuel’s muscles swelled slight as he slowly bent the gun in half, the hardened barrel popping with a loud crack as it snapped in two. Sticking the broken gun in the waistline of the other man’s pants, Samuel stared deep into the other man’s eyes. Instinctively, he changed the tone of his voice, causing the other man to wet himself as Samuel talked.
“I think we’re done here… Don’t you?” he said, nodding his head up and down.
“Su..su.. Sure… Wha… whatever you say…”
“And you’re never going to come anywhere near Blythe again, right?” he said, continuing to nod.
“Never, on my mother’s grave. I swear!”
“Good, because as of right now, you’ve slightly… annoyed me. If I ever hear of you even buying your groceries from the same place Blythe does, then I’m going to become pissed off. If that happens, I’m going to come visit you. It won’t be a nice visit. Any questions,” he asked quietly, shaking his head from side to side.
The other man shook as Samuel continued to stare at him.
“Good,” he said as he grabbed Chris’s hand, forcing it open with his right while he placed something in the other man’s hand with his left. As the man glanced down at the contents of his hand, Samuel spoke again quietly.
“Now get out of here before I regret this decision.”
The man’s eyes flared open, glancing between Samuel and his hand several times before he took off running, the object in his hand hitting the floor and rolling to a s
top against the wall as Chris ran out the exit.
“OH! MY! GOD! HE SHOT YOU!” Blythe screamed, rushing over to him.
She grabbed his hand, turning it over as she rapidly talked.
“We need to get this wrapped fast so you don’t go into shock, and we need to call the ambulance, and…”
She trailed off as she stared at his palm.
The gun had left a raggedly shaped star wound on his palm from the discharged gasses being forced under the skin and rupturing it from the underside. As she stared at it, she could see the muscles moving, rapidly knitting themselves back together. The blood flowing from the wound slowed to a trickle, then stopped as it continued to heal. Samuel stared at his hand, shocked to see the skin now starting to pull itself closed. He glanced at Blythe, who looked up at him with a stunned look on her face before they both went back to staring at his hand. By then, it had healed enough to look like an old scar that was rapidly fading. Flexing his fingers, he noticed that there wasn’t any pain.
Blythe dropped his hand and backed away from him a few steps. She looked around dazedly before her eyes locked onto something laying on the floor. Hesitantly walking over, she squatted down, picking up the bullet that he’d dropped in Chris’s hand.
“How…” she started, trailing off into silence.
“I wish I knew… What the hell am I?” he asked, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Everything he’d done was pure instinct. Catching the bullet, changing the tone of his voice, all of it, like he’d done it hundreds of times before.
He noticed a quick flash of fear cross her face. He put his hands up, trying to placate her.
“Don’t worry, I’m leaving. There’s no reason to be afraid of me. I’m sorry for the trouble I caused.”
He slowly turned to the exit, walking away dejectedly.
“Are you nuts? We need to get back up to the apartment before the cops arrive,” she said, roughly grabbed his sleeve as she tugged him toward the staircase.
