by G S Eli
Rat-a-tat-tat! Riiiiiiinng…was all she could hear.
The masked man fired toward Mila and the two guards struggling with him. Hit and bleeding, one of the guards immediately fell. His cowardice on full display, Strauss ducked behind the last of his TNC guards to protect himself. Mila took the opportunity to seize the barrel of the last guard’s rifle, stopping him from returning fire at the black-suited figure. It took only a second for the guard to wrestle his weapon free and strike Mila on the side of his head with the butt of his rifle. Mila toppled to the ground, but before the guard could finish the deed, the masked vigilante let out a burst of fire. Bullets ran across the guard’s chest with great force, pushing him back toward the wall. Strauss dropped to the ground along with his subordinate, but no one could tell if he’d been hit.
Before Casey could figure out if Strauss was shot or just faking, a masked face loomed over her, screaming, “Are you OK?”
Casey could finally hear words. That voice sounds familiar, she thought. Is that—
“Deborah, get over here now! I’m running out of ammo,” a man shouted from beside the door.
Deborah pulled off her mask and ran toward the doorway. Seeing the face of her bodyguard gave Casey a sense of relief. Unfortunately, it only lasted a second. More TNC men were heading toward them from the hallway. Without enough time to even untie Casey, Deborah joined Jack and Morton outside the entrance. Deborah tossed an ammunition clip over to Morton. He reloaded, and together they opened fire on the approaching guards, holding off their advances and perhaps buying some time to escape.
She desperately looked around, trying to figure out how she could possibly get the hell out of this war zone. She noticed an ornate knife lying on the floor next to the evil twin. “Score,” she said to herself.
She started squirming toward it, but she noticed the evil priest, wounded, crawling across the floor heading toward the knife as well. She began to crawl quicker.
“Take cover!” Deborah yelled. Casey turned her attention toward the shootout in time to see Deborah throw something toward the advancing guards in the hall.
Boom!
Smoke filled the hallway and slowly wafted into the room. Casey turned back to the priest; however, there was no sign of him. He had disappeared from the room. Worse still, the knife was gone as well. Had he simply crawled out of view or escaped somehow? She noticed long trails of blood from where the priest had been slumped on the floor that led up to the stone wall.
“What the hell?” she whispered. “I needed that damn knife.”
But with no time to further assess his disappearance, she began to scan the bodies around her. She saw the TNC men and the scarred thug from the train lying dead and their guns scattered about, but nothing that could cut her free. Desperate, she began to strain against her bindings, trying to pull them loose. Her captors hadn’t done the best job of hog-tying her feet, and she managed to get one foot free by slipping her shoe off.
As she struggled with her other foot, she looked toward Mila. Her fear came back with full intensity at the sight of him, lying pale and motionless. To add to her horror, she noticed a pool of blood on the stone floor beneath his head.
“Mila!” she shouted. She twisted her hands, trying to get them loose. “Mila! Please wake up!” Seeing no response from him, she cried as the ropes burned her wrists.
Someone grabbed her from behind. She frantically turned, expecting another enemy, but instead saw Jack and Wolfy. The dog began licking her face as she tried to speak. Is that a sword? Casey thought.
“Are you—” Jack tried to ask.
“Mila!” she yelled. “Look, Jack!” She motioned her head toward their injured friend. “Help him!”
Jack dropped the sword and rushed over to Mila. Wolfy once again displayed unusual cunning by picking up the sword’s hilt in his jaws and placing it in Casey’s hands. With much difficulty, she managed to angle the blade against the ropes and began to work it back and forth slowly sawing through her bindings. All the while her eyes never left Jack and Mila.
Jack turned Mila over. He leaned in, listening for breathing, and then he looked back to her, his eyes filled with complete despair. Jack’s reaction made her fear the worst. “Do something,” she mouthed.
Jack bit his lip and returned his attention to Mila. He placed his fingers on his neck, checking for a pulse.
“I can’t read a pulse, and he’s not breathing!” Jack shouted.
He hunched over Mila and placed his hands in the center of his chest. He pushed down over and over, compressing Mila’s chest, trying to get air into his lungs. Casey kept her eyes fixed on them as she kept working on cutting the ropes, praying for Jack to get a breath out of Mila.
“Cover me while I reload!” Deborah shouted from the doorway.
Casey turned her head to see what was happening at the door. Deborah ducked back behind the doorframe and pulled out a fresh magazine. Her friend leaned in to shoot, only to be struck in the chest with a shotgun blast, dropping him to the floor.
“Morton!” Deborah yelled as she grabbed him and dragged him out of the line of fire. She put one hand on his gaping wound, and with the other she began to fire down the hallway, fearless and enraged. Her livid state made her enemies back away for a few more precious seconds. Soon after, her weapon’s magazine emptied, and she grabbed Morton’s submachine gun, refusing to stop shooting. At that moment, Casey realized that time was running short.
“Come back, man! Please…” Jack begged.
The sincere pleading brought Casey’s fears to reality. He’s gone, she thought. He’s really gone …
With no hope, and acting on pure desperation, Jack started to administer a few breaths by mouth. It was becoming clearer even to Jack that Mila was gone. Distraught, he resorted to slapping him across the face, trying to force some life back into him. Or maybe he was just angry with him for dying. Tired and saddened, he stopped slapping him.
“You can’t die! You just can’t…I know who you are now!” Jack confessed. He started pounding Mila’s chest with more vigor than humanly possible. “You’re Garade!” he announced.
With that word and the force of Jack’s drive, a slight cough choked up from Mila’s mouth. Casey and Jack both stared at him for a moment in utter disbelief.
“He’s back!” Jack yelled to Casey. Their cumulative fear was lifted with those words.
Bang!
Casey’s moment of jubilation was shattered as Wolfy fell dead in front of her.
“No!” she yelled.
She turned to see where the bullet had come from. Somehow, she knew who it was. To her complete horror she saw the evil old man Strauss standing over her, holding the smoking gun that just killed her loyal friend.
He aimed his gun at her, moving in closer, but then he kneeled to pick up something on the ground. Her gaze followed the man’s arm down to what he was reaching for. It was the nail, lying just a few feet away.
No, she thought. It’s mine.
In a show of sudden and unexplained strength, Casey strained against her bindings and burst the frayed ropes that held her hands. She leapt to her feet and rushing to grab the nail before Strauss’s bony, wrinkly fingers could reach it, forgetting that her foot was still tangled in the line. As she tripped, she reached out for anything to steady her. Her hand seized a painting sitting on an easel, but she only succeeded in pulling it down with her. She glanced up to find the precious relic was now in Strauss’s tight grip. She stared directly at him with fury, as he raised his hand taking aim at her head.
From the corner of her eye she caught a glimpse of the painting’s image. She realized it was the nail that the queen was holding, not a scepter, as everyone believed. A closer glance of the shaft revealed an inscription.
“Tempestatis.”
Once Casey comprehended the inscription, the text slowly scorched away leaving
an ashen blot on the painting. She focused with razor-sharp intensity on Strauss as he held her nail. Her blood began to boil. An eerie howling sound started to build. A cold wind blew in through the shattered window, putting out the remaining torches that somehow refused to blow out before.
Strauss froze at the sight of this. He looked up in fear toward the windows. The room grew dark as storm clouds built outside. Suddenly, the room began to violently shake, setting off two separate cracks from the outer wall. The first fracture spread up toward the domed ceiling and landed in the center of the dome, breaking one of the chains that was attached to the stone cover plate. The disk began to wobble as it dangled from the ceiling. Soon after, the other crack finished its trail up to the top of the entire castle. The castle’s fire alarms went off. Flashing lights shined and alarms wailed throughout the fortress.
The advancing guards forgot their task and looked around at the unnatural change in weather that had had such a dangerous impact on the ancient structure. Deborah took the opportunity to drag Morton further into the room, toward Casey and the others.
Suddenly, all of the windows blew in as hurricane-force winds and thunder ripped through the room, snapping the remaining chains holding the stone plate and sending it crashing down. It landed directly between Casey and Strauss, nearly hitting them both. In panic, Strauss leapt backwards. He fell hard on the stone floor causing him to drop the nail, which the wind swept even further from his grasp.
Some of the guards in the hall outside the chamber room ducked or took cover in whatever room they could find. A few made the mistake of advancing into the room, only to be thrown to the ground by another gust of wind, and alongside Strauss.
Casey instinctively realized this was the nail at work. It was responding to whatever she had read in that text, to her desire for destruction, and she dreaded that the doom was just beginning. But what was worse was that she did not believe that she could control it. The wind howled stronger. Gale-force gusts made it impossible to even stand, let alone hold a weapon. All she could feel was power, power rising within her.
Outside, storm clouds swirled about, turning into funnel shapes. The twisting wind that emerged headed toward the tower. As the swirling winds entered through the cracks and the broken windows, she began to feel herself rise up in midair, with the wind giving her lift, obeying her anger. She hovered upright a few feet off the ground as if gravity had no meaning. Her eyes then focused on the nail. It also began to levitate.
The structure groaned as more cracks expanded all over the hall. The chains that had held the seal before began to whip around dangerously.
Casey looked across the room to Jack and Mila. Jack was covering Mila and looked over at her, frightened. She stared deep into Jack’s eyes. Her rage was too great to even get any words out. He stared back. Intuitively, she desperately tried to tell him, “Hold on, or get out of the way. I can’t control this.”
Jack seemed to get the message, in spite of the fact that she hadn’t said a word. Straining against the wind, he made his way toward the center seal, dragging Mila along with him. He grabbed on to one of the chains and wrapped it around both of them. The force grew stronger as Jack waved to get Deborah’s attention. “Hold on to something!” he shouted over the wind.
“What?” Deborah screamed back.
“Trust me! Grab hold of something now!” Jack yelled back, as if he knew what was about to take place.
The seal began to move, the wind slowly lifting it into the air as if it were a plastic frisbee. Still floating, Casey stepped onto the seal, letting it carry her higher. All the while, Jack clung desperately to Mila, tightening his grip on the chain. Deborah dragged Morton into the hallway and tucked him behind the door frame. She then clutched her fingers into an air vent on the floor, hoping it would be strong enough for whatever was about to come.
Casey looked up at the ceiling, focusing her attention on the swastika. The entire structure shook, and even more cracks expanded through the four sides of the design. The roof was torn clean off, along with half of the tower. Everyone watched in horror as the brick that was once the tower crumbled and lifted into the air, only to come crashing down into the moat. Chunks of stone and debris were tossed about in the storm. The wind whipped The Proclamation into the air and tore it to shreds.
Meanwhile, Casey rose higher into the air. She looked at the torn-up structure that was the east wing of the castle. Then she focused her attention on the remaining guards that were hiding in the hallway, holding on to anything secured. As Casey reflected on this, a tornado wind ripped through the wing, finding each guard and swallowing the men up one by one. This brought a smirk to her face.
She turned back to Strauss, who was tightly gripping one of the wall sconces that held the torches. The immense wind elevated him, and it was clear that the sconce would not hold out for long. He struggled in the forceful wind, raised his pistol, and opened fire. Round after round flew toward Casey, but a tempest swirled around her, deflecting each one.
Frustrated, Strauss tossed his weapon away and tried to run toward the floating nail. Fighting the wind, he snatched the nail and leapt toward Casey. The wind carried him upward and he ended up grasping the edge of the seal, hanging from it for dear life.
Casey reached down and grabbed the man’s wrist. She easily lifted him into the air, as if he weighed nothing at all. She glared into his eyes for a moment with evil glee as they hovered three stories off the ground.
“It’s mine!” Strauss shouted.
“You’re wrong,” she said, not knowing where those words came from.
She squeezed his wrist until she heard a cracking sound. Strauss cried in pain and opened his fist, releasing the nail. It hovered there as Casey held Strauss a moment, watching him squirm. His every pained expression only heightened her pleasure. Then she let go and he plummeted down, landing in the gilded tomb with a sickening crunch! Casey wasn’t sure if his legs or back were broken, and she didn’t much care.
She stared at the nail as it hovered in front of her. Then she quickly glanced downward, showing the nail where to go. The scepter turned until its point faced down, and then it shot toward Strauss, burying itself in his heart.
That was when she heard a voice calling to her over the din. “Casey! No more, please!” someone cried.
She looked down and saw Jack. The wind was so strong he was blown almost horizontal. He began to slide down the length of the chain, his grip on Mila growing ever weaker.
No, Casey thought. I don’t want this. She grabbed her head with both hands.
“Stooooop!” she cried, tightly squeezing her eyes closed.
Everything started to calm. The winds died down. Casey could feel the stone seal slowly lower itself as she stood atop it. It settled over the tomb, sealing it closed.
She fell to the floor, dropping to her knees on the swastika seal. Afraid to open her eyes, she began to tremble as she realized what had just taken place—or worse, what she had done. Then she heard a coughing sound. She opened her eyes and saw Jack kneeling next to Mila. He coughed again and his eyes shot open. He gasped for air, taking a few labored breaths. After a moment, he settled down, breathing normally and fully awake. They’re OK, she thought as she fought back tears.
“Are you OK?” Jack asked.
“What happened?” Mila asked as he looked around at the crumbling, ruined castle.
Casey began to tremble again. Jack threw his arms around her, holding her tight.
“I killed those people. I killed them all,” Casey whispered.
“You saved us, Casey,” Jack said.
“If you did all this…” Mila said, “then you just saved me…and all my family in Romania, too.”
She looked over at Mila, knowing he might be right. Just then, something seemed off. Mila was blurry, out of focus. At first, she thought it was dust or debris, but the air seemed clear.
“Huh?” he replied.
Deborah emerged from behind the door frame, which had survived the disaster thanks to its sturdy construction. She came over and started to examine Casey.
“Deborah, I can’t see,” she said, seemingly relieved by this fact.
“OK, Casey, we’ll get your glasses, but we have to get out of here. This structure is coming down.”
“No, you don’t understand!” Casey shouted. She then looked to the boys. “I need my glasses!” she repeated, beaming.
“The chamber is sealed with the nail inside,” Mila said. “It’s over.”
“You need your glasses,” Jack stated, happy as can be.
“I do,” Casey said, just as joyfully. “Let’s go home.”
XXXI
Child of Mengele
“Professor Hermann, we need to evacuate the castle,” a young secretary said on her way out of the building.
“All in good time,” he replied.
The professor carefully placed the helmet back on the suit of armor that he’d wriggled out from underneath just minutes ago.
“There, all better. We will soon retrieve your sword, my old friend,” he said to the armor as if it were a real person. He then turned to face the secretary. “You go on ahead, and please pull the fire alarm on your way out,” he calmly suggested.
The young woman feared for her own safety, but she paused for a bit to study the professor’s face. She was obviously puzzled as to why he was troubled about an old suit of armor and not the apparent danger at hand. She shrugged and hastened to one of the exits. The chaos that was taking place was very clear to the staff of the museum; the castle had suffered severe damage from some sort of earth tremor or explosion. A few staff members claimed some sort of terrorist attack was taking place in the chamber room.
