Ancient Origins: Books 4 - 6 (Ancient Origins Boxset Book 2)

by Robert Storey

  The man moved away to access a complex device that produced a curious graphical pattern Sarah recognised as brainwaves.

  Is he really going to kill it? she asked herself. Will you let him? came her internal response. No, was her answer. The question is – she eyed his heavyset frame – do I have the strength to stop him?

  She dragged her eyes back to the beast that was now within hand’s reach. Held down by bands of super strong webbing, still cast in deep shadow, the giant’s naked form glistened with a gel-like substance that covered its body from head to toe; white electrodes had been stuck to its skin at various intervals.

  From what Sarah could see in such low light, the beast was female, and she realised it must be what she’d helped release from the ancient monolith, using the pendant that had once resided in her chest – her memory of the event was still clouded, at best.

  What is it thinking? she wondered, studying its feminine features, partly covered by its head of long, coarse hair. What wonders of the past fill its dreams? Sarah couldn’t help but marvel at the sight before her, a living relic brought to life, resurrected from a past so distant that it preceded mankind itself.

  The ancient creature stirred and Sarah stepped back, suddenly wary of its size, which made a gorilla look small.

  The man approached the giant, knife at the ready.

  Sarah tensed for action, but instead of delivering a killing blow, he cut through a strap which held down its arm and turned over its wrist to expose its veins. Withdrawing another syringe, he punctured the creature’s skin and extracted an ampoule of blood.

  As he stowed his prize, Sarah’s relief turned to alarm as she pointed at the Anakim’s hand. ‘It’s moving.’

  The stranger glanced down at the giant’s fingers, which slowly curled up.

  Sarah realised the breathing had altered its pitch and she ran her eyes back up the massive body to where the Anakim giant stared back at her with great unblinking eyes.

  A surge of horrified awe sent tingles up her back as she held the creature’s gaze. Sarah could sense the fearsome intelligence behind those eyes as it considered the man beside her, before returning its attention to Sarah.

  The man looked down at the water, which had reached ankle height. ‘We need to go.’

  ‘We can’t just leave her here to die.’

  ‘What do you propose; we carry it out?’

  An alarm beeping close by made the Anakim look away from Sarah as it groaned in pain, the sound of its breathing shallow and light. With her own plight momentarily forgotten, Sarah reached out a tentative hand to grasp the giant’s wrist.

  She found a pulse. It was weak and erratic.

  A sudden affinity for this creature, this woman from another age, welled up inside her. Warily, Sarah moved to the straps which held it down.

  She tugged at the catches, struggling to free that which shouldn’t exist, as freezing liquid lanced pain up her legs.

  The man grasped her wrist to halt her action. ‘The water’s rising too fast!’

  ‘Then help me!’

  He hesitated, his expression torn as Sarah continued to wrestle with the straps.

  He swore, and then joined in her efforts.

  A latch released, and then another; they threw the straps aside. A hum of power swept through the room and a row of strip lighting flickered to life, illuminating the scene beneath.

  A thick cloud of mist rolled down from the ducts above, flowing over the slab, half covering the giant and shrouding the waterlogged floor in its white pall.

  The giant grunted as it struggled to rise, but it was unable to muster the energy and slumped back down.

  The train creaked again and the lights above dimmed, casting the room back into a murky gloom.

  When Sarah looked back, the Anakim woman had disappeared beneath the mist. Sarah wafted away the vapour as the giant reached out and brushed its fingers against Sarah’s palm, before moving to touch her chest.

  ‘Misk ... ach,’ it said, its voice deep and guttural. ‘Misk ... ach.’

  Sarah opened her mouth to speak, but words failed her.

  The monstrous woman touched her own chest and, with a fingernail, traced a five-sided pentagon into the gel that coated her skin.

  ‘The pendant,’ Sarah whispered in awe, ‘you mean the pendant?’

  The ancient being struggled for breath, but managed to trace two more shapes into the gel: a circle and a triangle.

  A beeping noise from the wall made Sarah look up. Screens turned red across the board and the giant let out an agonised roar.

  Sarah took a step back, but the Anakim reared up and grasped her head with a massive hand. Its eyes stared into hers, its gaze mesmeric, its grip increasing.

  Sarah cried out in terror and the stranger tried to break the hold, but the giant swatted him away, sending him flying across the darkened room.

  As she struggled to escape, Sarah thought her head would explode from the pressure, and then a shock of electricity forced her down onto one knee.

  The giant peered into Sarah’s eyes, its massive head inches from her own, its huge hand still clamped over her forehead.

  It placed its other hand on Sarah’s chest and spoke again. ‘Misrak arak,’ it said, its eyes filling Sarah’s vision. ‘Misrak arak, Mor ... gan.’

  Sarah’s eyes widened at the sound of her name, before her chest grew warm and a surge of energy flooded her neocortex. Her eyes rolled back into her head as her body arched and her legs went into spasm, the sensation of noise filling her mind.

  Moments later, the giant’s grip loosened and it sank back to the slab in exhaustion.

  Released, Sarah dropped to her hands and knees with a splash, her mind and heart racing.

  The sound of voices penetrated Sarah’s confusion and she staggered upright. The water had risen to two feet and there was no sign of the stranger in the poor light.

  A door at the far end of the laboratory swung inwards.

  ‘Don’t move!’ A grey-clad GMRC soldier stood framed in the doorway, his rifle pointed at her chest.

  Another similarly armoured man stood behind him, his gun trained back the way they’d come. ‘This is G seven eight niner,’ he said, ‘hostiles closing on our position, containment breached. Where are those reinforcements?!’

  A gunshot thundered through the enclosed space and the man fell, causing his companion to turn and unleash his rifle in a deafening barrage.

  Sarah staggered back with her hands over her ears.

  Return fire ricocheted from the soldier’s armour and he dropped to one knee, his rifle clattering to the floor.

  Like wraiths in the night, a group of cloaked men advanced toward him through the dim red lights and gaseous mists. The first to reach him withdrew a shining blade and rammed it through the fallen man’s chest, releasing a spray of blood.

  The GMRC soldier toppled to the floor, dead, and the man that had killed him pulled back the loose-fitting hood of his robe to reveal a bald head and a face covered with strange tattoos.

  He approached Sarah and grasped her chin with a powerful hand, the skin also wreathed in black ink-work. After studying her for a moment, he grabbed the paper gown beneath her lab coat and tore out the front. Sarah gasped and tried to close the coat to protect her dignity, but he forced her arms wide to expose her naked body, along with the wound on her chest.

  He said something in a guttural tongue. ‘They removed it?’ he asked her in English, his accent Russian.

  Sarah pulled the coat closed and didn’t respond.

  The newcomer sneered and pushed her aside, as his hooded comrades moved to surround her.

  Their tattooed leader adjusted the grip on his sword and approached the giant, which moved weakly as wisps of vapour continued to cascade down over its body to the floor.

  The man went to prod the Anakim woman’s shoulder, but the giant grasped his wrist in its frightening grip.

  The robed leader struggled to free himself, before ramming his s
word into the woman’s massive chest.

  The beast roared in agony and Sarah screamed, ‘NO!’

  But it was too late; the man slid the blade free and plunged it twice more into the dying giant’s chest, its lifeblood pumping out of the gaping wounds in a flood.

  The Anakim woman breathed its final shuddering breath before falling still, its arm dropping to hang limp over the edge of its deathbed.

  The giant-killer attached a device with a countdown timer to the monitoring equipment and then barked out orders to his men.

  Shoved forward, Sarah found herself wading through freezing waist-high water, the level quickly dropping as her cloaked guards shepherded her outside.

  The snow continued to fall, the drugs given her by the stranger were wearing off, and the cold night air chilled her to the bone.

  Gunfire and drone activity raged all along the length of the train, as the GMRC soldiers fought off their black-cloaked attackers, who swarmed out of the forest like a plague.

  ‘ALEXANDER KONSTANTIN!’

  The tattooed man swung round, and so did his men.

  The white-clad stranger, who Sarah had feared dead, clambered out of the railway car behind them, a handgun pointed at the tattooed man’s head.

  Konstantin smiled as his men raised their weapons and aimed them at the dark-haired man before them. ‘I was told we might run into you, monk. You’re too late, the abomination is dead and the girl is ours.’

  The stranger jumped down to the ground, his movements traced by Konstantin’s armed men.

  ‘It’s never too late,’ the man said, raising his hands against the overwhelming odds. ‘You should know that.’

  A whisper of movement at the edge of the forest turned the standoff into chaos as ten soldiers rose up from the snow, their arctic camouflage having hidden them from view.

  Gunfire exploded all around and Sarah threw herself to the ground as men fell around her.

  The stranger launched himself into the melee. He despatched one man, then grasped Sarah’s arm and dragged her back towards the stricken train, which continued to sink into the frozen lake.

  Unable to resist his strength, Sarah was hauled back onto the rapidly sinking railway car. The green-eyed stranger grasped her shoulders and glanced at the scene behind them; his men were rapidly being overwhelmed. He looked into her eyes. ‘Do you trust me?’

  Sarah didn’t know what to say.

  ‘It doesn’t matter either way,’ he said, grim-faced, and pushed her over the edge.

  Chapter One Hundred Four

  Sarah fell towards a watery grave and landed with a thud on an invisible barrier. The icy waters of the frozen lake remained out of reach, leaving her suspended a foot above its inky surface.

  The dark-haired man jumped down beside her, landing with a thump onto the deck of a cleverly concealed boat.

  He started up the engine and the cloaking device deactivated, unveiling the small craft for all to see.

  Alexander Konstantin skidded to a halt at the water’s edge, his tattooed face a mask of fury, as the white-clad stranger navigated the hydrofoil away from the shore and through the lake’s shifting channels of ice.

  The railway coach exploded in a ball of flame and Konstantin staggered back, then raised his sword and shouted, ‘Ego sum Rex Gloriae!’ The burning carcass of the railway car disappeared beneath the ice. ‘UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, MONK!!’

  The stranger didn’t reply. He manoeuvred his small craft through the lake and away from the fighting that continued to surround the besieged train. He pressed a button and hot air flooded the bottom of the boat, allowing Sarah to huddle up to the vents to dry and warm herself.

  The monotonous sound of the engine continued to burble away and Sarah curled herself up into a ball near the source of the heat. Her would-be saviour chucked a thick coat at her, which she managed to drape over her tired body.

  As her vision faded and she drifted towards sleep, the man knelt down beside her and began to bind her arms and legs with rope.

  She struggled weakly, but was unable to resist; her sense of fear returned.

  With a couple of sharp tugs, he pulled her bonds tight, the cord cutting into her flesh as she was rendered immobile. ‘This is for your own protection,’ he said, his expression cold, then held up a blindfold.

  As the eye covering masked her sight, Sarah’s last vision was of a silver cross that hung down from around the stranger’s neck, the glinting crucifix doing little to calm her mind as her life once more descended into darkness.

  Chapter One Hundred Five

  Fire burned and a pulsating sound reverberated through her mind. The sound came again, a deep booming tone that pulsed through body and soul, bringing with it the caress of remembrance of a greater whole. Lightning flickered and her skin shrivelled and burned and Sarah screamed and then screamed again.

  ‘Hold her down,’ said a voice, ‘or she’ll hurt herself!’

  Powerful hands grasped Sarah’s shoulders and forced her down, her delirium uncontrolled, the nightmare unrelenting.

  A flash of light and the image of an elderly man broke through the sea of her mind; his red clothes a forbidden rhyme.

  A face loomed over her and Sarah stared into fierce green eyes before slipping back into another seizure.

  Images flickered before her mind’s eye. Flesh peeled back, exposing sinews and bone, blood and veins. Sweat drenched her body and the sound of screaming filled her mind. Sarah’s eyes flared open and bulged with fever’s madness. Dazzling colours and swirling lights made the room spin and whirl around faster and faster, round and round.

  ‘... for we are the proof they seek!’ said a voice from beyond.

  Sarah grasped someone’s arm. ‘And he is found in name!’

  Sarah plunged back into darkness and a cacophony of sounds filled her head. A woman dressed in a nurse’s uniform lent over her and laughed as she stuck a needle in Sarah’s eye. Sarah screamed again and the woman’s cackles increased.

  ‘Sarah,’ said a voice, ‘where is he? Where is he found?’

  Someone shook her. ‘What is the name?!’

  Sarah struggled in their grasp and tried to push them away.

  ‘Tell us, Sarah, what is the name?’

  ‘Tell us,’ said another. ‘The name, give us the name.’

  The voices faded back into a dream and the visions continued, causing her eyelids to flutter and limbs to tremble. The flicker of sights and sounds undulated and fell, their promises sparks of light in the black. Darkness had returned and Sarah groaned and rolled onto her side, her last thoughts of an old man speaking to a person wearing a cowled robe at the end of a bed.

  ♦

  Sarah sighed and drifted deeper into sleep, but the two men in the room remained standing at the foot of her bed, their expressions flushed with uncertainty, their heads almost touching as they conversed in hushed whispers.

  The older of the two, Dolmante, a man in his eightieth year, read the parchment clasped in his arthritic hand and wondered if what he was seeing was real. He read it through again and said, ‘And this happened on the way here, as well?’

  The other man gave a nod of his head, the hood of his brown robe concealing the face beneath. He glanced at Sarah, who continued to murmur in her sleep.

  ‘And you’ve told no one else?’

  ‘No one,’ said the hooded man.

  ‘Cantrell?’

  ‘No, no one.’

  ‘Good,’ Dolmante said, ‘let’s keep it that way.’

  The man with the hood grimaced. ‘Avery Cantrell is a good man, and maybe the only one who has the power and influence to help us.’

  ‘You put too much faith in him.’

  ‘And why shouldn’t I, after all he’s done? He was instrumental in recalling the order and he alone has spoken out against those who deceive us.’

  Dolmante said nothing. He’d said what was needed, he could do no more. He looked down again at the parchment and then held it to his breast.<
br />
  ‘You really think it’s a message?’

  Dolmante didn’t know what to think, but he knew a sign when he saw one. And this was a sign to end all signs. ‘If it is,’ he said, ‘I know someone who can help. Wait for my word.’

  The man with the hood nodded, bowed, and then left the room, leaving Dolmante alone with their visitor. He read the parchment yet again and then rolled it up and tucked it into his robes. He then walked over to the bed and gazed down at the woman who’d been thrust into their lives. He reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his wrinkled hand. ‘Sleep now, child,’ he said, ‘sleep; you’ve a long journey ahead.’

  Chapter One Hundred Six

  Sarah Morgan awoke with a start. She sat up in a bed surrounded by strange furnishings, in a stranger room that resembled something out of the fifteenth century. An old oil painting hung on a wall and a musty smell did little to detract from the bedchamber’s antiquated appearance.

  She lifted up white sheets to find she wore a simple cream-coloured smock that clung to her willowy frame. She frowned as she tried to remember how she’d arrived in this foreign world.

  There was a train, she thought. Images of the giant and ensuing fighting appeared in her mind’s eye and then she remembered the green-eyed stranger in the boat and the rope that had bound her. She rubbed her wrists where red marks remained and remembered the pain induced by his harsh treatment. Bastard, she thought. What had the tattooed man called him? Monk? He was just like the others, after her secrets, or the ancient Anakim pendant everyone was obsessed with. A pendant so cruelly cut from her chest. Either way, wherever she was, she was certain its benign facade would soon melt away to reveal more suffering and pain. And yet, despite this very real possibility, Sarah had grown used to such torments, and worryingly, she felt a strange kind of detachment about her current position. What will be, will be, she thought. For now, there were more pressing matters at hand.