“I’ll bet you didn’t,” Nick growled.
McGrath pointed to a pair of metallic cylinders. “I have been waiting two hundred of your generations to acquire Alick Tobhor’s elixir so I could revitalize my ancient breed army.” McGrath’s outstretched arm roamed above the heads of his current crop of killers. “After absorbing the elixir, my friends will develop a much stronger protective shield and an unlimited life span. You know, the ancient breed have been used to exterminate planet populations since the beginning of time,” it explained. “They pave the way for alien settlers who don’t even have to sacrifice one of their own race to conquer the worlds they desire.”
“Thanks for the history lesson, but I’ve come for your three prisoners.”
“I’m afraid that I’m not inclined to hand them over to you, Nick. And if you try anything rash, I’ll be forced to remove the energy field protecting your friends and let my hungry pets gorge themselves.” It laughed. “Oh, I know you think you’re fast and could get here before the ancient breed did much damage, but I can assure you that they’ll move quicker.”
“Bellamy, don’t try anything stupid!” President Hanover shouted nervously.
“Nick, save yourself,” Lisa yelled, tears flowing down her cheeks.
“Yeah,” Neo echoed. “If you try to free us, you’ll only get yourself killed. We’re already dead meat.”
Nick appraised the situation as a primordial predator, not an FBI agent or emotional human. He sensed minimal danger from the ancient breed. He could easily slaughter them while they were this small without risk to himself. But if he allowed them to increase their size and strength, they would be formidable enemies. His nostrils sniffed the foul air. They smelled death. Imminent death.
Nick jerked his head toward the Cumalodins worrying the marrow from the meatless bones. “Anybody I know?” he asked, stalling until he could devise a diversion that would allow him to save the captives.
“Just insignificant humans. I doubt whether their identities would interest you.”
“Humor me,” Nick replied, killer urges suffusing his mind.
“A construction foreman by the name of McKutchen, and a worthless medical examiner, George Patrick.” McGrath glanced at the two Cumalodins and pointed. “Just an hour ago, these two were beautiful, exotic women with a rapacious appetite for Agent Doss.” He paused dramatically. “They still have an appetite for Agent Doss, Nick. One snap of my fingers would sound the dinner bell for these two beauties and the death knell for your friend.”
In his current state, Nick wasn’t receptive to verbal threats. They didn’t compute. “And the third?” Nick pressed.
A scowl distorted his face. “A United States Senator, Jim Hollingworth, who had the audacity to claim my property for his own. But enough of this chitchat.” He produced a large syringe filled with a clear liquid. The elixir. “Time to give Neo what he’s always dreamed of, Nick. Power. Right, Agent Doss?”
“Fuck you and the spaceship you rode in on,” Neo barked.
“Stop!” Nick snarled, barely intelligible.
McGrath ignored him and marched toward the force field.
A young Cumalodin ventured too close to Nick, snapping and growling. Nick’s clawed hand flashed out like a striking serpent and sliced the creature’s neck to bloody ribbons. Nick heaved the limp carcass thirty feet into the frenetic horde of Cumalodins ogling the prisoners and watched the cannibalistic bastards devour the flesh of their own species.
McGrath clapped its hands, mindful not to drop the syringe. “Well, done, Nick. Care to take on the entire brood while I tend to Agent Doss?”
Nick challenged the alien. “How about you and me, McGrath, or whatever you are? Care to dance with death?” His voice was hollow. Soulless.
McGrath trembled with rage but maintained its composure. It wasn’t going to fall for Bellamy’s strategic diversion that would allow his companions in the passage to release the prisoners. “Another time, perhaps.”
Nick’s newly acquired senses detected fear beneath its angry veneer. His blood boiled. It was time to take out the alien intruder. But before Nick could attack the shape-shifter, Glenna Guttentag boldly strode into the cavern.
The old witch stopped and parted her open palms where a green and violet inferno appeared. Glenna hurled the magic conflagration at the shape-shifter while it was still contemplating her surprise entrance. The crackling mass expanded as it traveled, and by the time it collided with the shape-shifter’s human form, the explosion razed the young Cumalodins surrounding McGrath. The intense heat reduced the small creatures to blackened, smoking fossils.
Nick watched the energy barrier protecting the prisoners blink and then disappear. The surviving Cumalodins at the center of the cavern saw it, too. Nick bounded toward the captives like a prehistoric predator. He had to save the vulnerable captives before they became a three-course meal.
Nick had nearly reached his friends when the shape-shifter rose like a Phoenix from the ashes, released an earsplitting screech, and rushed toward Glenna. Nick lumbered to a stop, his primitive brain confused by the futility of the situation.
He couldn’t save everyone.
67
I
n the blink of an eye, the attacking life-form shape-shifted from a human into a fireball, then into a black cloud, and finally into a web-footed, black squid-skinned alien over seven feet tall. The head was eyeless and earless, displaying only a solitary nostril and a fanged crease of a mouth. Four menacing tentacles protruded from its barrel chest and violently whipped their thick, machete talons in every direction.
Hugo materialized behind the alien as its talons split Glenna from head to pelvis. Her twitching, bleeding halves tumbled to the floor in opposite directions. Hugo drove the Duneden Dirk deeply into the alien’s back. Again, it reacted to pain with an earsplitting screech. Hugo made a run for Nick and the prisoners while the wounded shape-shifter writhed and twisted in deathly spasms, spewing oily black blood like a Texas gusher.
Nick reached Lisa first and effortlessly yanked her manacles out of the limestone wall. He did the same for Neo and Hanover while Hugo magically created a wall of flame that kept the vicious Cumalodins at bay.
Suddenly, Tobias Simpkins appeared across the cavern. He wore a long, black robe with a short cape.
“Look out!” Nick warned.
The destroyer waved a hand in their direction, dousing Hugo’s flaming wall. Lisa screamed as the Cumalodins charged, their jaws snapping and clicking. Nick and Hugo exchanged unyielding glances.
To Nick’s chagrin, the Cumalodins had grown since their feeding. He examined his sinewy arms and his tawny-scaled hands with three razor talons for fingers. He flexed them. Time to take his new body for a test drive.
Nick howled fiercely, pounced on the first Cumalodin, and twisted its neck until it snapped and went limp in his hands. It fell onto the cavern floor, stone dead. Hugo kicked and punched at the next one while Hanover cowered against the wall.
Neo pushed Lisa behind him. “Come get some whoopass, you murdering little bastards!” he shouted and waded into the fray with both fists flying.
The youngest beasts circled the group and crept in behind Neo. Lisa yelled to warn Neo as she gestured frantically at the advancing creatures.
“Well, well, my little pretties. You want some of me? Then come and get it!” Neo shouted.
The transformed Mindy and Lurdene Cumalodins stood over twelve feet tall after their recent feeding. Their claws clacked on the rocky floor as they rushed forward. The smaller Cumalodins scattered. Nick joined Neo in fending off their aggressive assault. Neo slammed a right cross into Mindy’s snapping jaw when she lowered her head; she retreated several feet. Nick slipped behind her, sprang onto her back, and tore her throat out, a move reminiscent of his late brother, the Creeper. Lurdene wailed and recklessly charged them. Neo saw a gun in McGrath’s abandoned clothes, retrieved it, and leveled the barrel point-blank at Lurdene’s gaping mouth. Three shots
blew her mustard-yellow brains out the back of her skull.
Tobias marched angrily through the remaining Cumalodins, throwing them aside. “You’ll never kill all of them before they get you,” he ranted through the deafening snarls and yelps.
Without warning, the Zyloux appeared beside Tobias and shoved the startled destroyer toward the struggling alien. Hugo stepped back to avoid the Zyloux and collided with Hanover, who pushed him forward.
“Protect me!” Hanover screamed. “I’m the president, for godsake!”
Neo shook his head at Hanover’s cowardice and then fearfully confronted the demon guardian. But he needn’t have worried. The Zyloux assailed the remaining Cumalodins, instead. The immature creatures were no match for the powerful demon. Even when several of them leaped on the demon guardian and smothered it with their clawing and biting, it chucked them off one at a time and dismembered them with its rubicund claws. The shape-shifter’s Cumalodin army was annihilated in matter of minutes.
One of the alien’s tentacles finally managed to tug the Duneden Dirk from its back. An angry Tobias Simpkins watched it struggle to stand and directed a volley of blue lightning bolts at his traitorous partner. The alien toppled backwards, howling.
“You goddammed traitor, McGrath! You killed Grant, and now you’re going to pay!” Tobias shouted at the seemingly defenseless, alien life-form.
“How are we going to get past those two?” Neo asked restively. “They’re blocking the damn passage.”
Hugo punched Neo’s shoulder. “Shut up and just go with the flow.”
Neo eyed Nick’s new shape warily. “What the hell happened to you? You look a lot like . . .”
Nick bared his teeth and growled at his friend, and Neo quickly dropped the questioning.
Lisa hooked Nick’s massive, scaly arm and looked up at his reptilian face. “I love you, Nick. I know all about you and Gabriella, but I just wanted you to know how I feel,” she declared without a hint of fear.
Strangely, her confession failed to penetrate his primitive mind. He cocked his head like a confused animal as he attempted to decipher the meaning of those words. He felt numb and distant, as if he and Lisa had never met. The only reason he had sought her out earlier was that his instincts directed him to save her at all costs. But why? He didn’t know.
Neo elbowed Nick’s hip, and another shallow growl escaped his lips.
“Your buddy just kicked some ass and saved your skin again,” Neo said, referring to the Zyloux. He studied Nick. “You know, you don’t look like your usual self. In fact, you look better. More bulked up. You been working out behind my back?” he quipped.
Nick regarded Neo derisively. Of course he was muscular. He had to be. He was a killer.
Tobias stood ominously over his wriggling partner and then glanced back at the others.
“When I’ve finished with him, you’re all next!” he threatened. “Especially you, Bellamy.”
Fritz silently materialized behind the arrogant destroyer and rammed the second Duneden Dirk into his back. Simpkins dropped to a knee as his flesh rapidly turned a sickly green. His mouth opened as if to speak, but his flesh withered and wrinkled like a raisin and clung to his skull like green plastic wrap. His eyes popped from his skull and bounced once on the cavern floor before liquefying into gelatinous puddles. Finally, the destroyer’s skull and black robe collapsed inward. Tobias Simpkins’s entire body dissolved into green ooze; his threat against the others died with him.
Fritz gave them the all-clear signal and ran to his grandmother’s horribly mutilated body. Hugo ran to Fritz’s side, and they knelt and prayed. The rest of their party walked somberly toward the exit, their thoughts and prayers with the Guttentags. Lisa turned her head to avoid witnessing the abhorrent spectacle as they passed the brothers.
Suddenly, the alien rose up behind Fritz and gored him with one of its machete claws. Lisa gripped Nick’s forearm and stifled a scream. Hugo scooped the Duneden Dirk from Tobias Simpkins’s glutinous remains and leaped on the shape-shifter as it brandished Fritz’s corpse like a limp puppet. He thrust the dagger into the alien’s burnished flesh. A second tentacle slashed Hugo’s chest, and the broad incision immediately spewed blood like an obscene fountain.
Nick roared angrily and started forward, but Neo and Lisa restrained him.
“Not here,” Lisa shouted.
Nick’s primordial mind didn’t understand the concept of retreat and pulled free. The hulking reptilian monster charged the shape-shifter, but it quickly manipulated Fritz’s corpse between itself and its attacker like a shield. As it defended itself from Nick, it continued to hack Hugo’s frame into bloody chum with a second tentacle. Nick tugged Fritz off the tentacle, tossed him aside, and grabbed the freed appendage. He wrestled with the alien while fending off two other thrashing tentacles; the squirming, tentacle claw in Nick’s grasp was within inches of his exposed, scaly throat. But, the shape-shifter’s wounds had sapped its strength, and before Nick ripped the one tentacle from its body, the alien dissolved into its familiar, black cloud form.
“Get out of there!” Lisa screamed at Nick.
The black cloud drifted to the ceiling and filled the cavern with its angry drone. As it readied its counterattack, Nick and the others suddenly vanished. The droning intensified as it spied the Zyloux across the grotto, knee-deep in dead Cumalodins. The last of its ancient breed army – its army - was dead.
The cloud orbited the cavern perimeter as it again prepared for an attack. It plunged toward the demon guardian like a swarm of angry bees, but the Zyloux saw its approach and disappeared before the shape-shifter even made contact.
The shape-shifter shrank to the size of a greasy ball bearing and flew into the passage.
Crow inspected the outdated contraption that filled most of the lead-lined test cell at the Old Mother Hubbard’s computer facility. As far as he could tell, it appeared to be a massive, souped-up particle generator that was based on Cockcroft-Walton generator technology.
“Are you positive this hunk of junk is operational?” Crow asked Geronimo. The computer had a networked presence in every zone inside the refurbished silo.
“The components of this particle generator have aged well. It is really a machine of simplistic design; even the test cell’s instructional integrity shows no sign of deterioration. The most difficult phase of Nick’s plan will be . . . Alert! Intruders!” Geronimo announced.
Crow snatched his gun off the worktable and peered cautiously into the corridor. He quickly holstered his gun and rushed toward the intruders.
Nick, Neo, and President Hanover lay sprawled on the floor outside the command center. He joined Lisa, who was bent over a bleeding Nick.
Crow’s jaw dropped. “This is . . . Nick?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “Now help me get him to a bed.”
“Are you sure this is Nick? It . . . I mean he looks more like the Creeper,” Crow insisted.
“It’s Nick! Ask Neo if you don’t believe me,” she replied impatiently.
Neo nodded grimly.
“Is he all right?” Crow demanded.
Lisa shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Nick eyes blinked open, and Crow fell back, startled. The Orion Sector director’s eyes had been transformed into fiery yellow orbs that were more reptilian than human.
Nick’s three razor talons curled tightly around Crow’s arm and yanked the Indian to him. “It’s coming,” Nick managed. His thick-tongued words were difficult to understand, but Crow got the gist of his message.
“The shape-shifter?” Crow asked nervously.
“Of course. Are you ready?”
“I . . . think so.”
Nick shook Crow roughly and released a savage roar akin to an entire lion pride. “Are you ready?” he repeated viciously.
Crow was visibly shaken. “Yes, yes. Geronimo’s all set to fire it up when your guy arrives.”
He shoved Crow away and glared at Lisa. “Who pulled us out of th
e cavern?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, dodging his eye contact.
Nick glared at Neo and Hanover, but his instincts suggested that neither one of them had the magical ability of teleportation. That left Lisa. He stared into her placid, hazel eyes. She was not afraid of him or the McGrath thing.
He clutched her leg so hard that he nearly broke it. “Why did you try and stop me from killing that alien?” he growled.
Her gaze remained undaunted. “It wasn’t time.”
Nick tightened his grip on her leg, and his talons drew rivulets of blood from her soft skin.
“Answer me - or die!”
Crow reentered the test cell, grabbed a heavy metal pipe, and returned to the corridor. “Sorry about this, boss.” With that, he brought the pipe down hard on the back of Nick’s elongated skull. The yellow eyes flashed twice and then closed.
A series of incredibly violent quakes shook the entire underground facility, sending Neo and Hanover crashing into the far wall like a pair of flailing rag dolls.
Crow looked glumly down at Nick and then at an incensed Lisa. “It’s here.”
“And you’ve just knocked out our only hope of survival!” she cried above the rumbling roar.
68
T
he command center door slid open as Neo and Crow dragged Nick’s unconscious body inside. Hanover pushed past the others to safety, eliciting nasty looks from Neo and Crow. Jill, Blossom, and Clay came running down the corridor from the lunchroom and crowded inside the command center behind Lisa.
The rumbling quake subsided as quickly as it began.
“So what’s the plan?” Hanover snapped. “It had better be a good one. That alien is both clever and powerful.”
Blossom, Jill, and Lisa attended to the swelling on Nick’s head while Clay, fatigued from the brief spurt of exercise, slumped into one of the chairs around the lone conference table. It was littered with the facility’s structural blueprints and particle-generator schematics.
Crow ordered Geronimo to seal all the ventilation ducts, except for the particle-generator zone.
The Ancient Breed Page 39
