Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (51 page)

The peculiarity of my surroundings was making me nervous
.

Oh, fuck it
; it was terrifying me.

“Hello?”  I called out, hoping my friends outside might hea
r me, but no reply came, only an echo that suggested this impossibly dark room was far larger than it seemed.

“Hello?”  I repeated, but again received nothing in reply besides a series of echoes.

“God?”  I called this time, recalling the last I’d thought I was dead.  But again there was nothing.  “Yahweh?  Allah?  Buddha?  Thor, god of thunder!  Zeus? Jove!!  Oh, man, Venus maybe?”

Maybe I really was go
ing crazy…

As I tallie
d off a few more divine names, I found the fear inside me shifting to utter annoyance.  I was less concerned about the fact that this Druid was capable of playing such games with me, finding myself simply upset that he was instead.  I knew I should have continued being scared at what I was experiencing, but I was startlingly calm. 

Was I supposed to be impressed at his super dark hut?

Please…

But t
hen there was a brilliant flash of light in front me, so bright that I threw up a hand to cover my eyes, but despite my precautions, I was blinded by its intensity, causing me to involuntarily take a few steps backward and fall on my ass.  When my vision finally cleared, I saw that the light had formed into a cone, like a spotlight from a ceiling shining directly onto the floor beneath it.  Centered within was a shadowy figure, little more than the silhouette of a bulbous, oddly man-shaped being.  A mist billowed around him ominously and a series of colored lights flashed randomly and repeatedly.

The fear was returning again as I
crawled backward, still unable to find the wall I’d expected three steps ago.  I reached out behind me, blindly grasping for the door in a near state of panic, hoping beyond hope that this was just another one of the orbs dastardly side effects.

“Unfortunately that is not the case, Jacob Hunter,” a booming voice said from no discernible location within the expansive space.  “Your orb has no power
here.”

“Who are you??”  I yelled, maybe
a bit girlishly when my voice rose and cracked at the end, but I couldn’t help it.

There was no answer, but then my eyes caught the shape of the silhouette again, and I saw that it was changing
, not in form, but in detail.  What was once just an amorphous man-blob was now becoming something far more familiar.  Obviously human, he wore what seemed to be a long, puffy robe with only his head and hands visible.  I couldn’t tell what color his clothing was, or what his skin color was, or tell what he looked like in the slightest, but one detail was far more obvious than the rest: atop his head sat an object that was tall and came to a point at the tip, with what looked like a wide, floppy brim that encased it.

Thoughts were starting to form in my mind, coalescing themselves into ideas, but before they
reveal anything to me, the light softened and I could see the man in vibrant detail now.  He stepped forward to reveal an extremely old man with a bushy beard that fell to his navel.  His robes were red, as was his hat, with the shapes of small half-moons woven into it the fabric.

I
sat there dumbfounded, unable to form thoughts let alone words.

All except one.

“Dumbledore?”

The old man smiled not unkindly at me.  It almost seemed warm as he leaned upon a long thick staff that I swore hadn’t been there a second ago.

“A worthy guess,” he said in a gravely but strong voice.  “And a fine comparison if your mind holds the character true.”

“Wh-what?”  I aske
d through jittery teeth.  “Who are the hell are you?”

The man sighed deeply and rested heavily on his staff.  For a moment he seemed almost we
ak and brittle, but something told me he was anything but.

“I have gone by many names
in my lifetime, Jacob Hunter, and will go by more in the years to come,” he said, his voice suggesting he found this fact quite humorous, “but I suppose there is one still yet to come that you may be rather familiar with.”

My eyes went wide as all of Wang and Vincent’s cryptic words and fears
about a lone British island in the middle of nowhere coalesced in my mind, along with an odd reference I now remembered my mom had made about Bardsey Island fifteen years ago.

The man smiled again.  “You go it.”

I gulped.

“Merlin.”

XI

Answers

A Cottage in the Middle of Nowhere, Time/Space

January, 44 A.D.

My first instinct was to dig into my pocket and retrieve the note Vincent had left me.  I straightened it and looked at the single word he’d written
there:

Merlin.

I dropped the page and stared with wide eyes at the man before me.

He
wore a bored expression with lazy eyes, like an old, laid up St. Bernard retired from a life of carrying rum around his neck, and he took a deep, impatient breath as the smoke and light show around him continued, a show that somehow seemed far less intimidating now.

When the man had
first been revealed, the show had added mystique and awe, but now, as I looked at this man who claimed to be – of all people –
Merlin
, the smoke and light show simply looked like just that: a smoke and laser light show, like something out of a Kiss concert or lame haunted house or some damn thing.

As this realization set in, I found myself rising slowly to my feet, straightening
carefully in case I had to react quickly to an attack.  I analyzed the old man’s face as I rose, studying his cold eyes, grizzled features, long beard, and his… reading glasses.  At these I stared the longest, failing to understand where they’d come from.  Last time I’d checked, glasses hadn’t been invented yet.  Not even close.

When I was able to
finally focus on these details, the insanity of the situation became fully realized in my mind.  I closed my eyes and looked again, the full picture before me clear now: Before me stood a man dressed like a wizard, with a low budget smoke machine and laser lights behind him, an appearance that reminded me of a professional wrestler making his entrance, just without his theme music.

With this thought came s
omething else to the production.

Music.

It sounded like…

The Beach Boys?

Don’t Worry Baby
?

I glanced away from the man, and then back at him
, the music playing around us.  We locked eyes, and while mine narrowed in anger, his tightened in self-satisfied amusement.  He cocked his head to the side, his smile lingering, and it was that look that caused me to rethink everything.

“No
…” I muttered, shaking my head and waging a finger at him frantically.  “No no no no, I don’t think so.  No.  Nope, nuh-uh.  Not buying it.  No, sir.”  I pointed a finger over my shoulder.  “I think I’m just going to go now.”

I turned to leave and was surprised to see the
cottage door right where I’d left it.  I’d thought that it would have remained hidden but there it was.  Surrounding it was nothing but a sea of darkness, an endless and invisible ocean of wall that stretched as far as my senses could discern.  But through the cracks in the roughly created door I could see Agrippina and my friends beyond.  They seemed to be waiting patiently, but they wouldn’t have to wait much longer as I reached for the door.

“Are you really so willing to simply abandon all the answers you’ve sought for so long, Jacob?”

My fingers were inches from the door, but as the man finished his statement, my hand was already clenched into a fist.  I looked down from the door to see it shaking on its own accord, but I lifted it to my forehead and squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the hand to calm down.  I couldn’t believe what was happening, but I also knew that if I wasn’t actually hallucinating, that this was my only shot at answers.

M
y hand went still, and I gave those outside the door one last look, but then I turned to face… Merlin.

I looked at him, my expression
betraying nothing and my eyes set determinedly, and noticed that the music had vanished.  For Merlin’s part, he didn’t look the least bit impressed as he continued to lean heavily on his staff.  My first instinct was to snap at him and demand answers immediately, but then the thought was gone, pushed from my mind by the rational logic I’d thought lost to me in recent months.

“You are most lucky that your mind is more durable
that you might think,” the man said.

I didn’t take my eyes off of him.  “Why don’t we tackle that one right away then,” I suggested.  “What
the hell do you mean?”

He shrugged.  “All in good time, young man.”

I really wanted to get mad, but something told me it wouldn’t help.

“You are quite right,” the man said.

“Stop that,” I ordered.

“Stop what?”

I glared.  “That!”

“What?”

“Reading my mind!”  I snapped.  “Or whatever the fuck it is you’re doing.”

The man nodded excitedly
, his smile widening.  “I am most excited for this, I must say, Jacob.  This will be quite refreshing.”

“What
will be?”  I asked, confused.

“In time,” he said as he turned around, “but please,
first come with me.”

“Come with…” I started, taking a step
toward him, “but we’re in a tiny hut.  Where are we go…” but before I was finished, Merlin stepped to the side to reveal another door opposite the one I’d entered.  My feet took me closer on their own, as I couldn’t believe my own eyes.  There was no way the door had been there just seconds ago, but there it was.  I looked behind me at the first door again, just for reassurance, but while it was still there, it seemed very far away.

“The choice is yours, Jacob,” the old wizard said.  “Take what time you need, but I would not
tarry for long.  I suspect you will be most excited for what is to come as well.”

With that, the man stepped through
his door, but I was unable to see anything beyond it before the door was shut, leaving me all alone in the pitch black room.  All that was visible were the two doors.

I glanced between them again.

Like I really had a choice.

***

I approached the second door cautiously.

I felt naked without Penelope, but thoughts of my beloved lost rifl
e wouldn’t help me now.  The memory of how I’d destroyed her had come to me for the first time in a dream last night as I’d slept with Helena in my arms.  It had been more like a nightmare than a dream, and I’d snapped awake with a jolt at the apex of the memory.  Helena had slept through it, of course, and I hadn’t had the heart to wake her to discuss it.

I looked at the orb in my hand
now and frowned, hating it and everything it was capable of.  A part of me still wanted to destroy it here and now, but since it had been the key to my entrance into this hut, I figured I may need it to leave as well.  I placed it in the shoulder bag I had at my back and put it out of my mind.

The last thing I did before giving the second door another thought was to check the pistol at my thigh.  My trusty old Sig P220 had seen me through plenty of tight spots over the years and I was glad to have it now.  Although, there was an odd thought at the back of my mind that manifested itself from Santino’s
earlier prediction that I’d meet Yoda in here; about the wise Jedi master’s warning to Luke that what he would find in that creepy-ass cave was only what he took with him.  I never really understood what that meant as a kid, but as an adult, I’d realized how that one simple, poorly structured line of dialogue had been filled with a vast array of interesting philosophical and transcendent implications that for some reason resonated with me in this moment now.

But
like Luke, I kept my weapons right where they were.

I looked up to inspect the door, noticing that it too was as odd as the man who had just
stepped through it.  Completely out of place in this ancient world, the door, which was actually two large double doors, had giant pane windows that dominated their upper halves, and had large, rectangular shaped door handles on each.  Curious, I leaned even closer, again making note that while the doors looked like wood, they were in fact made out of another material, one that was quite adept at mimicking its appearance, if nothing else.

Plastic.

I snorted out a laugh at the sight.  Not only was it impossible for these doors to exist in this time period, but I also felt like I’d seen them before, only I couldn’t place from where.  I had no idea what resided beyond them, but considering their appearance, I suspected the worst.  Or the best.  I wasn’t sure yet.