The Ancient Breed

by David Brookover

  She pointed ahead. “Here comes another sign.”

  Nick slowed so they could all get a good look. It was a green, rectangular sign announcing, Duneden - 37 miles.

  They all stared at the sign, as Nick pulled the SUV onto the grassy berm.

  “I have an idea,” Nick said. He made a U-turn and headed north. A few minutes later, Lisa’s hands flew to her mouth.

  “Oh my God!” she cried.

  The Cherokee passed the same green sign: Duneden - 37 miles! Their tire marks were also visible on the soft, grassy shoulder in the brilliant glow of the halogen fog lights - the exact spot they parked minutes ago when they first saw the sign.

  Crow slapped his forehead. “We were just here, paleface. What the hell’s happening to us?” he moaned.

  Lisa gazed at Nick. “This is surreal. I never really believed that this magic stuff existed outside books and movies.”

  “You saw the demon guardian in Florida, didn’t you?” Nick shot back. “This is magic, Lisa, plain and simple, and it exists whether you and I want to believe it or not.”

  Crow gently gripped her shoulder. “Believe it.” He poked his head between the seats and eyed Nick suspiciously. “Didn’t you tell me a few days back that you needed to see Glenna Guttentag about that Alick Tobhor stuff?”

  “Yeah. So what’s your point?”

  “This is one helluva way to get your way, white man, and have a foolproof excuse for disobeying Rance’s direct orders, not that you normally follow them that often, anyway. So how did you manage this little teleportation stunt, Nick?”

  “I can’t take the credit. I wish I could,” he responded wearily. “You ought to know that I can’t do anything like this. I’m not like my father or brother.”

  “But I saw you teleport yourself to the front of the line inside Tobhor’s tunnel,” Lisa pointed out. “And I was there beside the fountain of youth when you described your remote viewing episode that took you back to Alick Tobhor’s time. You do have some magical abilities – you can’t deny it, Nick.”

  He just shook his head. “You two can conjecture all you want, but you’ve got to believe me, I’m not responsible for our being here. So let’s forget it and concentrate on who did this to us, and why.”

  “I can’t think about this road magic anymore,” Lisa said nervously.

  “Why?” Crow asked.

  “Because of what you two were arguing about earlier.”

  Nick and Crow exchanged puzzled glances and then looked at Lisa.

  “I’m too worried about Neo going it alone in New York to think of anything else at the moment,” she replied.

  50

  W

  hen Nick, Lisa, and Crow reached the abandoned dairy plant outside Duneden, the thick fog was gone, and they got a clear view of the hulking behemoth beneath the soft moonlight. There were no Highland County sheriff’s deputies in sight.

  To the north of the ghostly ruins, the tract of long-abandoned employee housing was a boneyard of decaying fossils, silent and foreboding beneath the half-moon. The crumbling plant and warehouse were a dismal blight on the beautiful, rural setting with their gray, partially collapsed walls, decrepit silos, and acres of toppled, wire-and-post holding pens.

  Nick guided the Cherokee to what once had been a parking lot between the structures. The warehouse entrances were blocked with yellow crime scene tape.

  “Wait here,” Nick instructed them. “I want to take a look around. At the first sign of trouble . . .”

  Lisa ignored his directive and climbed out of the SUV. Crow just shrugged at Nick, who promptly joined her outside.

  “Don’t say a thing,” she warned Nick, shaking her forefinger at him. “I came along to help, and I refuse to sit inside the car like the family dog. End of discussion.”

  Nick sighed angrily and tramped through the tall tangle of weeds and grass toward the closest warehouse entrance without uttering another word. Crow and Lisa followed at a discreet distance, eager to avoid his ire. He ripped the yellow tape from the doubled-door entrance, pushed the creaking doors inward, and suddenly raised his left hand - a signal for them to halt.

  He directed his flashlight beam inside the 20,000-square-foot warehouse and made out indistinct piles of roof timbers and sheet metal roofing that had collapsed decades ago. He looked up at slashes of night sky where the roof had been and then located the chalk outline indicating Grant McGrath’s fallen corpse.

  Nick stepped back and studied the immediate area outside the doors. The grass and weeds were heavily trampled in both directions along the building, and judging by the shape and size of the footprints, he guessed that they belonged to the sheriff’s deputies. However, he was searching for another type of print, one that belonged to the demon guardian. After a thorough inspection of the building’s perimeter, he came up empty and returned to the entrance where Lisa and Crow waited.

  Nick placed his finger to his lips before either could speak, snapped off the Glock’s safety, and warily stepped inside. A ghostly aura pervaded the interior like that of an ancient, unkempt graveyard, and he shivered.

  Suddenly, he froze.

  Nick’s instincts screamed danger. He was not alone. He felt another presence inside, and that feeling far surpassed his usual FBI hunches. He somehow knew for a fact, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone or something lurked inside the cavernous warehouse! He guessed that this sensory capability was another one of those inherited special gifts Gabriella had warned him about last year.

  He backpedaled to the entrance. “There’s someone else here,” he whispered. “Keep your eyes open, and watch my back.”

  Crow gave him a thumbs-up, and Lisa simply nodded, her eyes the shape of saucers.

  Nick’s flashlight beam again swept the interior, but it was too weak to reach beyond the central area. He crept forward, the floor planks creaking sharply beneath his shoes, and stopped when he reached Donovan’s chalk outline. He swiftly turned away as a powerful malodor assailed his nostrils. He realized that corpses didn’t leave rank residues like that. There had to be another source nearby. He noticed a jagged hole in the floor a few feet away. As he approached it, the smell worsened.

  Crow and Lisa joined him.

  “Don’t you smell it?” he whispered.

  They sniffed the air like bloodhounds.

  “I smell a lot of dampness and rot,” Lisa offered in a low voice.

  “Ditto,” Crow added. So why don’t we smell what you do?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Maybe the stench is connected with . . .”

  “Magic,” Lisa finished.

  “Right.” Stumped, Nick knelt and inspected the hole. “This is a damn big hole!” he gasped as he tried to ignore the terrible odor.

  Crow fell to his hands and knees and stuck his head into the dark space while Lisa scanned the warehouse for the intruder.

  “You’re right. It’s large enough to hold . . .”

  Nick snapped his fingers. “A stolen tank filled with fountain of youth water?”

  Crow raised his head. “Now that you mention it, yeah.”

  Nick illuminated two floor planks resting beside the hole. “And those covered the opening. It appears that Grant McGrath was one of the thieves and stashed one of the tanks down there.”

  Crow glanced at the small opening. “So where’s the tank?”

  Nick bent and pried up the other planks covering the hole. The groaning and screeching echoed in the darkness. Suddenly, he yanked his hand away from the planks and rubbed it briskly against his slacks.

  “What’s wrong?” Lisa asked.

  Crow directed the flashlight beam to Nick’s hand, and it exposed scarlet blistering on his left palm.

  Crow stood quickly and illuminated the flooring. “Looks like you grabbed ahold of something hot, White Bread.”

  “We should get you to a hospital,” Lisa suggested.

  “It’ll be fine,” Nick insisted as he retrieved his flashlight from the floor and examined th
e edges of the plank pile. The stench was intolerable. He wiped his watery eyes. “I knew it!” he burst out. “Take a look at the edges of those boards I just pried up. They’re scorched.” He held up his palm. “And the residue from whatever burnt those boards burnt my hand, too. That’s where the ungodly stench is coming from.”

  “Some kind of unearthly fire, maybe,” Lisa ventured. “A very smelly one.”

  “Holy buffalo stampede! I stuck my head down there with that shit all around.” Crow was visibly shaken. “Question, Burnt Palm. If those boards have never been pried up before, how did the murderer squeeze the tank out of the original opening? It was too damn small.”

  “For that matter, how did McGrath get the tank down there in the first place?” Nick studied the problem.

  “Simple,” Lisa stated. “They both used magic.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Crow agreed.

  “I’m inclined to agree; but whatever magic the murderer used is way beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s almost as if . . .” Nick stiffened. “Get out of here. Now!”

  “But . . . ,” Lisa began, but Nick shoved her and Crow toward the warehouse entrance before she could object.

  They ran awkwardly on the sagging timbers, but when they neared the entrance, the doors slammed shut in their faces. The warehouse started shaking and swaying. An eerie, reddish-orange glow radiated from the hole beside the chalk outline, and a high-pitched, earsplitting drone welled up inside the building. Crow’s flashlight beam flickered and dimmed.

  “Throw it into the hole!” Nick screamed above the swelling din, and pitched his flashlight into the burgeoning radiance. Sparks snapped and sizzled beneath the floor, and the glow faded for a split second.

  Crow and Lisa resembled reeling drunks as they retraced their steps to the hole. Crow slam-dunked his flashlight into the hole, and there were more snaps and sizzles, followed by another temporary fade-out.

  Dust, bird nests, and sections of the tin roof rained down all around them in the darkness. Nick hooked Lisa and Crow’s arms and guided them swiftly through the cataclysm to the doors; for some mysterious reason, he now possessed night vision without the infrared goggles.

  The glow regained its blinding brilliance, rose slowly, and floated like a weightless fireball above the hole. Nick and Crow threw their combined weight and muscle into the warped entrance doors, but they held firm. Both men took a breather to massage their aching shoulders.

  Lisa shrieked and pointed at the fireball. “It’s moving this way!”

  Both Orion Sector agents swung around and forgot about opening the doors. They had a more immediate problem. The fiery mass was drifting their way.

  Nick moved close to Crow. “Can you and Lisa go for a wind-walk?”

  Crow’s eyes never left the fireball. “I’ll . . . try.”

  Shadows flickered on the trembling walls, and the darkness behind the approaching fireball seemed infinitely black as if they had just entered outer space.

  Nick squeezed his friend’s shoulders tightly. “Don’t try, just do it!”

  The thunderous creaks and groans from the quaking monolith made it impossible for them to even hear themselves think. Crow anxiously shut his eyelids, and recited Grandfather’s wind-walker chant or at least what he could call to mind under duress. The fireball and quaking building completely unnerved him, and he wasn’t certain of anything at the moment but his name.

  He bent his knees to maintain enough balance to keep from toppling onto the quivering floor. It was so loud! So dark! The harder he tried to remember the chant, the less he recalled. Panic was in the process of shutting down his brain, and he knew it. They were all about to buy the farm, and it would be his fault.

  “C’mon, Crow, you can do it!” Nick urged. “You can do it. I know you can.”

  But the escalating drone swallowed most of his pep talk, and Crow was only able to catch a few of Nick’s words. Crow closed his eyes again and tried the chant. The fireball’s menacing radiance penetrated his eyelids and burned his eyes; he spun away from the deadly spectacle and gave the chant one more try. When he opened them again, he saw that they were still inside the warehouse, struggling for balance on the bucking warehouse floor and staring at their impending doom.

  Crow realized he had failed Lisa and Nick. Thanks to his incompetence, they would all die here in this ancient hellhole. Anger and guilt swirled in his mind and knotted his stomach; he pulled his 9 mm from its holster and prepared to charge the goddammed thing. He couldn’t let his friends die without at least trying to save their Caucasian hides.

  Nick was one step ahead of his friend and gently restrained him. “Let me do the wet work,” he grinned, his attempt at humor missing its mark. “You just keep working on the damned doors!” he shouted above the insane racket. He pecked Lisa’s smudged cheek, and marched steadily at the fireball.

  Lisa’s protest went unheard.

  Nick didn’t have the foggiest idea of what he was going to do when he reached the fiery object; but he was aware that firing any weapon at it would only increase its power. His strides were steady and determined despite the shaking floor. When he was within twenty feet of the fireball, something so astonishing happened that it threw Nick for a loop.

  The fireball made a sharp flanking move to avoid him and then continued in Crow and Lisa’s direction.

  “I’ll be damned!” He watched Lisa’s gaping mouth emit soundless screams and Crow slam his weary frame into the warehouse doors. Was the thing afraid of him? As ridiculous as that sounded, it was a reasonable assumption, considering its evasive movement.

  It was time to test his hypothesis.

  Nick ran after the fireball, and when he was within reach, it dodged him once again before continuing toward his companions. He considered the hypothesis proven, but he had no idea how to use his new evidence to save Lisa and Crow.

  Then it came to him.

  Crow stepped in front of Lisa to shield her from the advancing fireball. His ruddy expression was stolid in the face of death as he awaited his premature journey to the Happy Hunting Ground. Lisa cringed behind him, driven to the brink of insanity.

  In one fluid motion, Nick felt himself drift through the fireball as he teleported himself toward his stoic friends. Suddenly, the fireball moved erratically through the dusty air, an unearthly wail trailing behind it. Nick appeared beside Lisa and Crow and warily observed its chaotic behavior, hopeful that he had successfully driven it off. Finally, it disappeared through an opening in the far wall, leaving a contrail of reddish-orange luminosity.

  The thunderous quaking ceased immediately. Crow and Lisa exhaled their relief, and began dancing and laughing wildly in a celebration of life. The warehouse doors creaked open, and they were free of their prison. As Crow and Lisa pranced outside into the muggy, early morning air, Nick raised his arms.

  “What’s up, hero?” Crow asked.

  “Glenna Guttentag and Neo are in big trouble. When I passed through that thing, I read its mind.”

  Lisa and Crow regarded him as if he was a few cards short of a full deck.

  “I know, I know, I sound like a refugee from a funny farm, but you’ve got to believe me. I’m going to teleport to Glenna’s house right now. I don’t have much time. That thing’s headed into Duneden to find her and kill her,” Nick told them. “Crow, if you can, wind walk, or if you can’t, charter a flight to New York so you can give Neo a hand with some bad trouble that’s about to come his way. If you don’t reach him in time, he’s going to walk right into an ambush across from Aspirations—an ambush that the fireball has already arranged.”

  “But how? I don’t understand any of this,” Lisa protested. “You’re talking about a living, thinking fireball?”

  Nick confronted her. “Then understand this – Neo will die if you and Crow don’t reach him soon. Real soon.”

  Crow nodded. “Consider it done.”

  “Then, please, get a move on! Neo’s appointment with Aspirations is j
ust a few hours from now.”

  Before Crow could say goodbye, Nick vanished.

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Lisa said. “Are you up for some wind walking, or do I have to contact my travel agent?”

  He sighed. “Only time will tell.”

  He placed his hand around Lisa’s and closed his eyes. Crow pictured Neo’s big mug and easy smile and promised himself that he wouldn’t let the big man down. After all, he managed to wind walk once, so why couldn’t he do it again?

  Crow swallowed hard. That was a very difficult question. He prayed that he had the right answer.

  51

  S

  econds after leaving Crow and Lisa, Nick materialized beside a living room fireplace inside Glenna Guttentag’s two-story, redbrick house that was nestled in the heart of Duneden. An oil-burning hurricane lamp shrouded the room with an eerie, amber glow as the first rays of dawn filtered through the open window blinds. Nick tensed as he spied Glenna Guttentag’s grandsons across the room: Fritz lay still on the gold-and-red-flowered sofa while his brother, Hugo, knelt beside him and stroked his brother’s forehead.

  “Hugo!” Nick whispered, wary of the fireball’s presence.

  Hugo Guttentag was stick-thin, had a long, narrow face that was masked in a perpetual scowl. He glared at Nick through slotted lids.

  “You’re too late, Bellamy,” he snapped. “The thing came for Grandma, and when it didn’t find her, it attacked poor Fritz.”

  Nick hurried to Hugo’s side. “Is he dead?”

  “I don’t know. I feel life in him, even though there’s no pulse or breathing.”

  Nick bent, and pressed on Fritz’s carotid for a pulse; but if any blood coursed through his tree-stump frame, it was undetectable. Curiously, Nick, too, felt an indistinct life force present inside Fritz.

  Nick straightened. “Where’s your Grandma?”

  “Down in the island grotto.”

  Nick doubled his fists; he had to reach the old woman before it was too late. From reading the thing’s murderous thoughts in the warehouse, he realized that it needed to kill the old witch. It seemed that she held knowledge that threatened its existence.