Promise: Caulborn #2 (8 page)

Megan’s expression cooled. “It was a date, Vincent, not an interrogation. I did my homework on Herb. If he was a nut job, I wouldn’t be spending my free time with him.”

I was digging myself into holes left and right here. Find something else to focus on, Corinthos. “So,” I said as I stepped up to the whiteboard. “Let’s get back to our investigation. What do we know so far about this grave robber?”

For the next few hours, Megan and I worked out ideas and theories about the grave robber’s intentions, but my mind kept drifting to the Museum of Science and my business that night. Finally, around four o’clock in the afternoon, I gave up and told Megan I had a previous engagement and that I’d see her in the morning. I was too distracted to even tell if she bought what I was saying, but the next thing I knew, I was stepping off the Green Line at Science Square and walking toward the museum.

I’ve been coming to the Museum of Science since I was a kid. I must’ve made my mom sit through the presentation on lightning fifty times one summer, and the T-Rex statue and triceratops skeleton had me thinking I’d be a paleontologist someday. I used to imagine myself as a dinosaur-bone-hunting Indiana Jones, complete with fedora and whip of course, where I’d travel to exotic lands, uncover never before seen fossils and rescue them from my villainous rivals who wanted to steal the bones for their own nefarious purposes. I really don’t know what manner of nefarious purposes a paleontologist could get up to, but hey, I was eight.

I stepped through the museum’s revolving door and entered into a huge, high-ceilinged lobby and stepped out of the way of the foot traffic to get my bearings. To the right were the ticket counters and a set of turnstiles that led to the other wings of the museum. To the left was a member services desk and the corridor that led to the food court, gift shop, planetarium, and whatever the current special exhibit was. I wove between a few groups of people and finally made it up to the ticket counter. I purchased a ticket to the Norse Viking Treasure exhibit and headed down the corridor. The smell of cheeseburgers and fries wafted over to me as I passed the food court, and my stomach rumbled. I ignored it and continued on. Business first, food later.

I headed to the left at the end of the corridor and made my way up two flights of stairs. Banners depicting a knarr ship sailing against a pink and purple sunset had been hung at intervals along the walls, and a museum employee at the top of the stairs was handing out devices with a pre-recorded audio tour to interested patrons. I accepted one, put the ear buds in and made my way through the doors to the exhibit.

The doors opened on a foyer that held several large murals of Viking life. There were pictograms of sailing, hunting, and what I could only assume was burning, pillaging, and looting, based on the crudity of the stick figures. The Vikings may have been a hell of a seafaring people, but painting was not their thing. I joined a group of other museumgoers that moved from the mural room into another large room, this one lined with eight-foot-tall movie screens. A series of photographs of the Norwegian coastline cycled across the screens, and I pushed the play button on my audio tour device.

I half expected to hear something like, “Hi, this is Troy McClure. You might remember me from such science exhibits as ‘A Deadly Attraction with Magnets’ and ‘Nikola Tesla: Where’s my pigeon?’” Instead, a generic male voice actor that tried to sound dramatic, but only succeeded in sounding like it was taking itself too seriously, came through the headphones. “The Norse Coastline,” he announced, as if reading the sign above the photos. There was a pause. “The Norwegian coastline is dotted with fjords and stretches for 16,000 miles. This beautiful land was once home to some of the fiercest raiders in history—the Vikings.” The narrator’s voice dropped a bit as he tried to put dark emphasis on the words. “In these halls, you will see hallmarks of Viking culture and history. Who were these men who pillaged the British Isles? Where did they come from, and more importantly, what stopped them?”

There was a ding in the audio, indicating I should stop the track and move to the next exhibit. I followed a group of people into an adjacent room, this one housing various Viking artifacts. There were knives, pottery, coins, and weapons. My artificial tour guide told me that the Norse got their clay from the British Isles as there were no clay deposits where they came from. I pressed the Stop button.

There was another room with more Viking paraphernalia, but my patience was wearing thin. As fascinating as the history and details of Viking culture were, I had come here to find a treasure chest. I walked past a bunch of other patrons that were looking at some intricately carved urns and pushed through another set of doors. Two eight-foot-long sarcophaguses stood in the center of this room, propped up so their occupants were nearly standing.

Several people around me who were similarly equipped with the overly dramatic narrator were nodding as they listened to their headphones. I sighed and pressed the Play button, fast-forwarding until he announced. “The Viking Mummies.”

“The Viking funeral pyre is the stuff of legends. Many proud warriors who fell in battle were sent on to Valhalla after their bodies had been placed on funeral pyres. However, the Viking warriors you see before you were discovered in a hidden chamber on a small island off the coast of Iceland. Archeologists estimate they must’ve died in the late tenth century, just as King Olav Tryggvason converted to Christianity and ordered the cessation of Viking raids.

“An added curiosity was the strange treasure chest found within their burial chamber. Scientists initially thought it was made of petrified wood, but now believe the chest is made of some sort of ceramic whose creation process has been lost to time.” My eyes flicked down to the chest. “Note the stylized crucifix engraved on the chest; this reinforces the theory that these Vikings converted to Christianity, and the chest may contain early religious documents. The chest has no apparent lock or hinge and has resisted all forms of attempt to open it. In 1988, scientists tried to drill through the chest to gain a sample of the air inside to no avail. Some of the broken drill bits that were used are on display in a case just in front of the chest.” I took a look at the drill bits; they were as blunt as unsharpened pencils.

The narrator went into drama mode again. “What treasures might this chest contain? Riches? Jewels? Some lost scroll or tome of ancient knowledge? Perhaps an early copy of the Bible? Only the Vikings know.” I clicked off the audio.

The chest and the sarcophaguses were roped off, and a security guard stood nearby, ensuring that no one got too close. I knelt down in front of the ropes to get a closer look at the chest. Despite the dimmed lights of the room, I could clearly make out a stylized cross carved on the chest’s surface.

An impatient part of me wanted to pop the chest open right then and make a break for it. Instead, I did a circuit of the room, pretending to inspect the other parts of the exhibit while I was actually noting where the security cameras were placed. Satisfied, I left the exhibit, went down to the food court, and crushed a bacon cheeseburger and some fries. As I licked ketchup from my fingers, a voice came over the museum’s intercom.

“Attention, visitors,” it said, “the Museum of Science will be closing in thirty minutes. Thanks for joining us today, and please come back soon.” I threw away my trash, found an office that was being used as a storage room, and settled down among a handful of disassembled exhibits on Pluto, which had been removed from the planetarium once it lost its planet status. I figured this was a pretty safe place to wait for a bit.

About half an hour later, I snuck out from my hiding spot and crept back to the exhibit. I didn’t encounter any roaming guards or members of the cleaning crew and grinned when I got back to the main exhibit hall. The place was completely empty. I telekinetically latched onto the cables that powered the security cameras and tugged. The red lights above the lenses winked out. Now I had to be fast. It was only a matter of time before someone came down to investigate. I shot forward and Opened the chest.

A wave of stale air hissed past me, and my nose wrinkled. I reached in and my fingers brushed against a bundle of cloth. I pulled out an oilskin-wrapped bundle that weighed about three pounds. As I moved to unwrap it, a metal manacle on a chain shot out from inside the chest and clamped down on my wrist. Tears of pain came to my eyes as the skin beneath the manacle suddenly burned.

I yelped in surprise as the chain jerked me forward. I slammed into the chest as a row of serrated blades popped up from the chest’s rim with a
shik
. The chest looked like a mouth now, with the manacle serving as some kind of horrible creature’s tongue. The manacle dragged me forward, and time seemed to slow down. I could see very clearly that the lid would chomp down and bite my hand off. I twisted my wrist, and the lid bit down on the manacle with a clang. The manacle started to collapse under the lid’s pressure, so I Opened the chest again and hurled myself back, stretching the chain out about five feet. I had almost regained my footing when the chain pulled me forward again, the chest’s lid chomping up and down in anticipation of eating my arm. Screw that. I Opened the manacle and threw my weight back, performing an awkward and graceless backward somersault. The manacle lashed out at me once, twice, three more times, but I was at the edge of its range and it couldn’t reach me. It snapped back inside the chest and then the lid slammed itself shut. It didn’t move again.

I scrambled to my feet and ran a hand over my face. Then I hastened around the corner and telekinetically pushed the camera’s cables back in. With luck, the museum’s staff would chalk it up as an equipment glitch. Holding the bundle tight against my side, I rushed from the exhibit hall and turned down the hallway with the gift shop. The shop itself was closed up tight, but the exit was just a few hundred feet beyond.

A huge grin of relief split my face as I pushed through the museum’s doors. No guards, no cops, no witnesses. With the exception of the treasure chest trying to eat my hand, this had gone off without a hitch. Things were finally looking up. When I was around the corner from the museum, I went down a set of stairs that put me in a small alcove away from the street and next to the Charles River. Under the streetlamps, I pulled out the oilcloth-wrapped bundle and examined its contents. It was a metal cross about as long as my forearm with flared edges and razor-sharp tips. I rubbed my chin as I regarded it. It’d be good to know a little bit more about this thing before I blindly handed it over to Laras, and there was only one place to do that.

Antiquated Treasures is a posh little antique store owned by an old high school friend of mine. While the store itself is quite successful, Thad makes his real money as a distributor and appraiser of magical artifacts. I opened the shop’s door and found Thad very carefully arranging a jade chess set on a mahogany end table. “Vincent!” He was dressed in an orange shirt, tan slacks, and bright pink converse high tops. He rushed over and swept me up in a hug. “Sweetie, it’s been weeks since I’ve seen you. How’ve you been?”

I untangled myself from his embrace. Thad’s over six feet tall, and a good seven inches taller than I am; I had to take a step back to look up into his face. “Fine, Thad. How’s business?”

Thad let out a long, weary sigh. “Things have been hectic since my back room stock clerk quit.”

Despite the good naturedness of his drama, I felt a twinge of guilt. “You know I had to.”

Thad chucked me on the shoulder. “Oh come on, Vincent. Between saving the city and being a god, I was amazed you stuck around as long as you did. I’ll find someone else to sweep the back.” He looked at me and pointed at the parcel I was carrying. “I’m guessing this isn’t a social call?”

“You’re right. I need you to analyze something for me.”

“All righty,” he said. “Let’s go to the back.” We walked through the door marked Employees Only. The back room was a haphazard jumble of crates, boxes, and shipping tubes. If you’ve ever seen the end of
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the state of things. We wove through the stacks to Thad’s desk. He cleared off some of the debris and gestured for me to take a seat. “Okay, Vincent. What are we looking at?”

I withdrew the cross from the oilskin and passed it to Thad. “Be careful,” I said. “The edges are wicked sharp.” Thad took it gingerly and pursed his lips. The overhead lights reflected dully off the cross’s gray metal as he turned it over in his hands. He hefted it a few times.

“It’s lighter than iron,” he said, “but heavier than steel.” He produced a jeweler’s loop from his breast pocket and fit it over his right eye. The lens glowed a dull blue. He let out a low whistle. “There are a couple of enchantments on this,” he said. “And whoever crafted them was absolutely magnificent. And I mean magnificent. The work is incredibly delicate and detailed.”

“Can you tell what the enchantments do?” I asked.

He tapped the jeweler’s loop and the lens glowed green. He tapped it again and it turned yellow. “I can tell they’re adaptive in nature. Whatever this thing is, it was intended to be versatile.” He tapped the lens again and it turned purple. “There’s some kind of sensor enchantment here, too.”

“Is it dangerous?” I asked.

Thad held the cross in one hand and rubbed his chin with the other. “Not on the surface. These enchantments are utilitarian, but the thing that bothers me is there’s no obvious purpose to them. You usually see scanner enchantments in conjunction with something else. You scan if someone is a werewolf, and an alarm enchantment goes off, or something like that. I don’t see what this is connected to. It’s like the cross’s enchantments are connected back to themselves, but that doesn’t make any sense.” He set the cross down on the desk and frowned at it.

“It could be part of a set.” I said. “ Maybe there are other pieces it’s supposed to connect to? You know, split up a dangerous artifact into its component parts and then scatter them across the globe.”