by Laura Wylde
“Casinos?” Asked Damian.
“I think so.” Damian flew back into formation; a dreamy look turning his eyes to dark liquid. Crete suddenly sounded good to everyone.
We didn’t go to our suites right away. It was the crack of dawn by the time we flew into Crete, so we drifted with the sea birds until we caught sight of White Mountain poking its snowy head above all the others, then circled down to a brushy spot close by the newly discovered cave. It had already been set up with tents and canopies, the work crew and tools ready for exploration. Nobody noticed as we walked into the mess tent and grabbed some food. “Well,” said Damian between bites. “Where are our scientists?”
Orson pointed. A minibus pulled up and five people got off, all carrying mountain climbing equipment and backpacks. “Here they come.”
The first to climb out was an old guy. With his white mustache that had begun yellowing and a frantic fringe of white hair, he looked like a scientist, but a strong one. He had a muscular chest and the sturdy legs of a hiker. There was a brown-haired woman with him with thick glasses and angular features, two young men dressed the same and equal in size and weight, but with different appearances. One had brown hair, large ears and a wide, smiling mouth. The other was round faced, with a small nose and a pouty mouth. They both carried cameras. The fifth archeologist almost made my legs turn to jelly.
She was drop-dead gorgeous. Straight, blue-back hair tied back with a leather broach. So many curves they seemed to burst out of her stretchy, sports girl top and hip-riding jeans. The jeans had been rolled part way up, revealing wool socks and lace-up climbing boots. Her climbing belt was already fastened around her waist. The more gear she added, the sexier she looked.
She was also pissed. “Well, where are they?” She asked, storming through camp. “They were supposed to be here at six a.m. It’s six a.m. They should be here.”
“We’re here,” said Barnaby, leaving the mess tent with a piece of toast and a cup of coffee still in his hands. We followed him leisurely, finishing our food first and slugging down the coffee. “We came as quickly as we could.”
“You’re the team.” She folded her arms and looked him up and down, from his bright red hair to his old-man corduroy pants and ballpark shoes. “You’re an experienced caver?”
“I’m the team coordinator.”
She rolled her eyes and gave the scientist fellow a sardonic look. He and the other three in the group didn’t seem to have much to say to us at all. They huddled together as though they were a bunch of druggies and we were the cops come to bust them. We don’t play like that in my world but intimidating a bunch of scholars was a bit of fun.
Her gaze swept to Orson, who was delicately brushing away the crumbs from his fashionable silk shirt and light-weight slacks. “Certainly not you,” she said decisively. She sounded a little snooty.
He blushed and tucked back his hair with an elegant hand. “Not me. I hate dry caves, but I love cenotes.”
Damian stuck his hands in his pockets and looked in one direction, then another, pretending he didn’t see her. I finally found my tongue although it felt two inches thicker than normal. “I’m your cave man. I mean, I’m the caver.”
She marched up to me and gave me the same up and down critique she had given Barnaby. For the life of me, I couldn’t tell if she approved or found me an aberration of nature. All I could think was those were the most startling blue eyes I had ever seen.
She came within inches of my face and stared up at me. She wasn’t very tall, maybe five- foot -six, yet there was a feeling of power inside her that made her seem taller. “You’re a little thick for a caver,” she remarked.
“My bones stretch,” I answered, hoping I sounded witty.
“Really now?” She laughed. “I’ll have to see that.” She tossed me my ropes and gear belt. “Caver, what’s your specialty?”
“Prehistoric forensics.”
Those brilliant blue eyes flashed at me and for a moment I thought I saw a glimmer of interest, but then she offered her hand and said, “My name is Irene. Let’s get started, shall we? We’re already losing time.”
She was more conversational in the cave. “I appreciate the Greek authorities concern for caution. They’ve had a lot of problem with pirates in the past and this could easily be one of the greatest discoveries yet. Still, I wish they would allow the rest of my team to come down here with me, especially Dr. Schneider. He spent his whole life looking for this.”
“Then you think you know what it is.”
“I have an idea of what it could be. It could be proof that another sentient race created a civilization before humans learned to stand upright.”
“You could say that. It’s entirely within the realms of possibilities.”
It was easier to talk with her in the cave. Caves give me a lot of confidence. It seemed time to give her some justification for my presence so she and her team wouldn’t feel so signaled out. “Even the most skilled archeologists are sometimes unaware of the contaminants that could come from the smallest amount of tampering with prehistoric sites. A drop of sweat could activate a thousand-year-old pathogen. I have the equipment to detect these things at the molecular level.”
“Why doesn’t anyone else have it?”
“The equipment is very delicate, very expensive and takes years of training to use it. There are only three existing instruments and they all belong to AMP.”
We reached the cavern and anchored our ropes, testing our weight by leaning back.
She took in her breath. “Okay, forensics scientist. Here’s our hole.”
Rappelling down ropes come as naturally to me as breathing. It’s all part of my great passion. Caves; depths; hidden treasure. Not that I needed ropes. In dragon form, I could crawl down a vertical cliff sideways, but I wasn’t sure how much my companion would appreciate it. Revealing this side of me to good-looking chicks hasn’t always been the best policy. Most don’t find it amusing. I was content. Even in human form, rappelling was fun; it was easy. “Hey long bones,” called Irene. “Let’s race.”
She began dropping below me rapidly, that perfect form sliding down the cliff wall like a ninja warrior. I scrambled to catch up, letting out extra line carelessly, my dragon intoxication with beautiful women completely overtaking my senses. My foot slipped and I back peddled frantically, trying to get a new grip on the cliff surface.
In the next minute, I felt myself pinned against the wall and my feet directed to a thin ledge. She whispered in my ear, “you looked like you were going to fall.”
I could feel her breasts under my arm pits and her hip pressed against my thigh. Something very warm and insistent stirred in my groin. “Not now Johnson,” I moaned softly.
“What?” She asked, loosening her hold now that I was secure.
“Not now falling. I’m not falling now.”
“Ah, let’s go then, Johnson.”
She made it to the bottom before I did. What kind of little minx was she? She barely gave me a chance to look around the cave system. “Come on. We’re almost to the good part. Are you ready to wriggle like a snake?”
Bless the Oracles. I would wriggle like a sea serpent for some of that.
Damian
This wasn’t really my favorite line of work. Call me cynical, but I don’t have much of a problem with people waking up the dead. You would think they have the common sense to know better. If they don’t, maybe they deserve what they get. Why continue a suicidal gene pool?
I suppose, if it was only grave robbers and treasure hunters tampering with the doors to the next world, the AMP wouldn’t get so bent out of shape. They’ve always had a soft spot for seekers of knowledge, even if they are the ones who create the most chaos. Historically, these hungry quests have brought some of the most powerful rulers of unearthly realms into direct conflict. So, why have they been protected by us over the eons from ancient sorcerers and alchemists to modern day scientists? Because they are innocents!
&nb
sp; As much as I can logically talk myself out of defending humans, there is always that one undeniable truth. Only a small percent are criminals, just as only a small percent of shape shifters are monsters. Dragons can’t deny their genetics. We are compelled to protect the innocent.
They were an innocent handful of scientists, students and villagers, and they had good food. I didn’t see any reason in waiting around the entrance of a cave for Heath and spider girl to return, so went back to the mess tent to size up the crowd from a discreet location. They really were a bunch of innocents. None of them looked like they had a clue as to what they had found. I did. If it was pre-Minoan, it meant even more than an older civilization. It meant a time era of even older gods. Gods so huge, so powerful, the earth quaked with each step. Strange, outlandish creatures roamed the seas and the forests. A time when everything was ruled by magic. The time of the Titans.
I texted Barnaby. “What’s the score?”
He texted back, “Heath has given the all clear.”
I still loafed around the mess tent, keeping an eye on each person that picked up climbing gear. Not all of them did. Only a few of the students were cavers. The rest would be grooming through trays of dirt and sand. None of the villagers wanted to make the descent. As soon as they saw the cavern buried deep in the mountain, they shook their heads. They weren’t going down.
I would have preferred to scale that wall of stone as a dragon, but appearances must be maintained. It wasn’t hard for any of us. It’s just that Heath was the only one who took any real joy in caving as a human. That’s an earth dragon for you. They’d rather hang out in a cavern with a pile of gold than fly under the light of the moon.
Usually, I’m just amused with Heath’s favorite pastime, but today, I was just a little envious. I call her spider girl, but hot damn! I’d walk into her web any day with full knowledge it was a trap. I didn’t think they had made a model like this since they had quit making exotic princesses that enticed men to their deaths. I needed to keep a good eye on this one. Not that I could do otherwise. She was smoking!
The archeologists began busying themselves documenting the chamber, while a young man who introduced himself as Tim, showed us where he and Irene had found the hole. “We were scraping the bottom away to make it wider when we were given instructions to wait for your team,” he explained. “It’s still a very narrow opening.”
I poked my head inside the hole and checked for damage. “Structural integrity is very fragile in places like this,” I told him. I kept him busy listening to my voice while my hands moved against the stones, cementing them together in a wide arch for the team to squeeze through and sealing them with a fine ribbon of copper drawn from the earth. I went deeper into the hole, repeating my masonry work. “You can all get safely through now,” I called up ahead after reaching the tunnel opening. I secured the last stone in place and slipped through.
I had hoped it would not be so; yet seeing it with my own eyes almost felt worth the danger of its discovery. The cave was immense, with a perfect, domed roof. In the center was a lava pit, crusty at the top but still boiling red hot underneath.
The wall was like nothing I had ever seen. It was made of solid bronze plates running up the entire side of the cave to the dome and circling half-way around the cave walls. The plates were practically seamless, the rivets used to secure them into place, nearly invisible. There were strange symbols etched on the plates; symbols that had no meaning in this world. I passed my hand over one of the symbols without touching it. The symbol shifted slightly. I backed away and called for Heath. “Forensics, take a look at this.”
Heath finally left the archeologist long enough to do what he was supposed to do; gather forensic evidence. He scanned the symbol with a device that would have made the Ghost Busters envious. Not only could he detect ghosts with it, he could verify sorcery, magic and shape shifters – and it was all contained in a small, silver rod with a blue light beam. He read whatever it was he saw in the color-coded graphs and measurements and entered his readings into a data base. “You can take photographs but do not touch any of the symbols,” he instructed the scientists. “They, uh…” He searched for a believable lie. “They emit a rare but deadly radiation.”
The archeologists grumbled but they were guests here only if they obeyed the rules of Greece’s historical preservation society and the rules were to obey our team. They contented themselves with probing the cave for other evidence of the architects, uncovering a few more abstract figures; made from a very dark colored jade with black patterning.
It was Irene who kept turning her attention to the wall. She left the symbols alone and wondered more at the wall’s construction. “You’re a metallurgist, right?” She asked, checking my profile on her cell phone. I nodded. “What kind of technology did they use to do that? It looks like the metal is fused right into the rocks.”
I could have told her it was no technology on a level she would understand. There were only two species that could do that - gods and dragons. Instead I said, “it must have been a highly advanced civilization.”
“I wonder what’s behind that wall?” She murmured. “They were sealing it against something. This work is practically impenetrable.” She started to touch one of the seams.
“Don’t!” I barked, then checked myself. I was supposed to be Mr. Cool, not stick-up-the-butt Barnaby. “Don’t think about that – ever. This is an incredible find. We cannot allow an inch of it to become contaminated or damaged.” I removed her hand from the wall.
She looked up at me with those rebellious blue eyes and I felt a sudden surge of bonding with a kindred spirit. She knew that wild rush of defiance, of throwing caution to the wind. One more second of eye contact and I believe I would have kissed her, but her eyes dropped from mine before that second was over and fastened on my feet.
What she did next was pure lunacy. She dropped to the ground, did a quick roll and landed with her back to me. She had something in her hands.
Worried now that I might be dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic, I edged around to face her. She was addressing her prisoner. “Where did you come from? You seem a long way from home if you ask me.”
She was holding a viper! One hand gripped it just back of the mouth, nearly choking it to death, and the other was holding it close to the middle, so that it writhed but couldn’t coil. “Odd there is only you,” she continued. “Where’s your nest?”
With no explanation, the snake stopped struggling and went limp in her hands. “Hey, I didn’t attach enough pressure to kill it,” she protested, but already the snake began to shrivel.
I watched as it disintegrated down to a dry skin. “Forensics,” I called, but Heath was already there. He scooped up the fragile skin with forceps, dropping it into a test tube. It continued to disintegrate until there was nothing left except a fine powder.
“Is it enough for an analysis?” I asked.
He held up the tube, studying it, then dropped it into his kit. “I think so.”
Irene looked incredulously at what was left of her heroic dive to save me from the jaws of death and asked, “you can analyze that? What the hell disintegrates in fifteen seconds?”
Heath was frowning so hard; his brows were in danger of permanently knitting together. “I don’t like this. I’m going to tell Barnaby to call it off. They can excavate the outer cavern, but this area has to remain off limits; for everyone.”
Little Miss Rebel stomped her foot. “Because of a snake? Because of one lousy snake with bad manners? That’s not fair, Heath. I won’t stand for it.”
She stalked off to find Dr. Schneider while Heath and I convened with Barnaby and Orson. She practically dragged the good doctor back to face us. The poor fellow clasped his hands humbly in front of him and hung his head. “I understand your concern and I respect your beliefs. Maybe our beliefs are the same. We won’t touch the wall. We won’t come near it, just let us stay. Please.” He looked up. In another age, he would have been a sorc
erer. He knew what he was doing. He had achieved a life-long dream. He had found the domain of the gods.
This is how humans always find guardians to protect them while they commit folly. They make a direct appeal to their sympathies. Guardians are like permissive parents, well-meaning but too soft when they should be firm. Barnaby yielded! “Alright, but if you see anything bizarre, don’t touch it. Let our team analyze it.”
This time, Irene also behaved. She threw up her hands to show she held no quarrel and busied herself with examining the stones surrounding the lava pit. She was a bright one. It wouldn’t take her long to notice that underneath an eon’s worth of dust and dirt, there was the same strange masonry of metal and stone. She was already bringing out her brush to poke between the cracks in the mosaic.
I felt a little uneasy. They would miss nothing. The entire team was crawling over the chamber with a fine-tooth comb and comparing notes. At five p.m., Barnaby told them it was time to knock it off for the evening. There were some murmurs of disappointment. Tim, who was like a tail-wagging puppy trying to please everyone, said he could bring in some floodlights so they could see better.
Even the doctor knew this was a bad idea. “No lights! No!” He flashed a glance at me and again I saw the wizard look in his eyes. “There are some unknown substances involved here that could be stimulated by light and cause a chemical reaction. The AMP team is right. We should exercise extreme caution until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“What do you think we’re dealing with?” Irene asked me on our way to the resort. Through no planning of her own, at least as far as I knew, she had been crammed into the space next to me but didn’t seem to mind. Her feet were propped on the back of the seat in front of her, with her knees drawn nearly to her chin. She was a bad girl, after all. “Reverse vampires?”
“Why did the snake disintegrate?”
