The Ancient Breed (27 page)

Without Gabriella to lend a hand, Nick was in desperate need of a miracle; and suddenly, he knew exactly where to find one.

28

H

eavy, labored breaths hissed through the dark tunnel adjoining Aleck Tobhor’s animate fortress. The Zyloux paced back and forth along its narrow confines like a caged animal, waiting impatiently for its strength to be fully restored. Occasional, distressing strains escaped its throat, more terrible than the most savage wolf wail.

The Zyloux’s primal central nervous system crackled and arced from a sensory overload of potential prey. It detected the existence of numerous fortress trespassers and elixir thieves beyond the boundaries of its bleak habitation. Although it was now physically incapable of hunting and avenging these profane violators, its healing would be completed shortly, and those pathetic, two-legged creatures would pay for their sacrilegious acts with their lives.

Two soulless, bloodred eyes appeared in the absolute blackness and floated like volcanic isles in seas of luminous green. It sniffed the tunnel wall at the spot where Nick and the other survivors escaped its wrath. Their scents were still deliciously pungent. A deep growl rumbled menacingly from the Zyloux’s throat, and glutinous saliva trickled from its keen fangs.

Soon, it would be on the hunt and gorging itself on their souls.

Mindy Landers hiked along the filthy back streets of Queens in search of leftovers from the local restaurants. The western horizon was mottled with fading purples, oranges, and grays as the shadows of night deepened along her daily route. She took another swallow from the bottle of cheap whiskey in her large handbag and wrapped her threadbare shawl tighter around her shoulders. The cooling summer breeze chilled her thin bones.

She felt a little light-headed and stopped beneath a dark lamppost. Vandals had broken the lenses and bulbs of the neighborhood streetlights months ago; but the repair crew, as always for that depressed section of Queens, was slow to react. She shifted her weight from one aching foot to another, hoping to alleviate the dull pain. There wasn’t time to sit and rest. She had to cover her route on schedule if she expected any handouts.

Mindy resumed her nightly ritual, struggling to maintain her balance. Her senses weren’t what they used to be when she was a successful executive secretary for several large real estate firms. But as her beauty declined, so did her employment opportunities. Sleeping with the boss was suddenly replaced with sleeping in the park.

First she lost her jobs, displaced by younger, sexier Mindy Landers types. Next, she exhausted her unemployment. Then, she lost her condo and most of her belongings to the banks. Left with no employment opportunities, she did what any other woman in her position would do at forty-six years old - she prostituted herself to earn enough money to eat and find shelter.

Her first and only husband had been a drunk, and she had decided after the divorce to never remarry. There were no children or grandchildren to lend a helping hand and energize her spirit. Her parents were deceased. Her asshole brother didn’t want to have anything to do with her. If Mindy Landers had been suicidal, she’d have ended her life four years ago.

But she wasn’t. Hope warmed her wrinkled cheeks as she trudged down the murky street. Maybe she’d catch a break tonight. If not, maybe tomorrow. Mindy’s spirit was bent, not broken.

Mindy crossed a side street, mumbling. Speaking her dreams. Conversing with the ghosts of her past. Quelling the loneliness in her hazy whiskey world, where her best friend was a young, sassy, and flirty Mindy Landers.

A dark figure darted into an alley ahead of her, but Mindy wasn’t alarmed. She noticed them every night. Drug deals. Beatings. Rapes. All performed by shadowy, faceless people. They left her alone. She was too poor, too old, and too ugly to mess with.

Another dark figure stepped out of the alley and walked toward her. It was a man; she could see that now. He appeared to be well dressed and walked with the confident stride of a successful man. A hunter. A skirt chaser.

They were almost even when the man grabbed her arm and twisted her bony, weak frame around. Before the attack could register in her whiskey-fogged brain, the man held a damp cloth tightly to her face. Panicked, she sucked in the sweetly sickening odor and drifted into the darkest night of her life.

Lurdene Walken was the elder stateswomen of the Twenty-ninth Street prostitutes at forty-seven, but she could still give a man the ride of his life. The younger girls respected Lurdene, but they also had to earn a living. They displayed their youthful, nubile bodies in short-shorts, gauzy tube tops, and six-inch heels as they paraded along their one-block strip. Their territory.

Lurdene stayed to the shadows of the flickering neon bar lights, waiting for her regulars and those men with more than a quickie in mind. She had been doing this for thirty-one years, and it was the only way she knew to make a living. Had she been bright enough to squirrel away some cash in her youth, she might have been retired by now. But no, she had led the high life back then. Booze. Drugs. Fancy restaurants. Extravagant Caribbean spring breaks. Designer clothes.

She’d been a stupid little fool. Just an Alabama girl with stars in her eyes and a hankering for the big city life. New York fit the bill.

But there was no acting or modeling in Lurdene’s future. There were plenty of men who promised her those things for a taste of her sweet thing. But they never delivered after their orgasms. She discovered that she wasn’t alone in that category. There had been a multitude of others like her looking for stardom, but most settled for prostitution. Big bucks. The party life. A young girl’s dream.

A young, foolish, and ignorant girl’s dream
, Lurdene thought.

And there she stood, her looks faded and menopause setting in, waiting to arouse some man. Who was she kidding? The men in her stable were half-blind, ugly as sin, and had peckers so small that they might, just might, tickle a flea. She was a has-been. Has been beautiful. Has been sexy. Has been flush with cash.

A black Cadillac parked next to the curb, and Janet, the boldest of the group, strutted up to the passenger’s side, leaned down to expose as much cleavage as the law would allow, and spouted her usual bullshit spiel. Suddenly, she stiffened and motioned to Lurdene.

Lurdene sucked in her stomach, stood tall and jiggled her sagging the breasts as she approached the potential score.

“I’ve heard some great things about you, Lurdene,” the man said with a wide grin.

He was a good-looker on the south side of middle age, and he wanted her. She was starving for a man like that after a steady diet of rejects.

“Well, darlin’, you heard right. What’s it goin’ to be?” she drawled.

“Ten thousand for the night.”

She appeared skeptical.

“At the Plaza. All expenses paid,” he added.

She frowned. “Yah’re not inta any of that kinky shit, are ya? Because if ya is, sugar, I ain’t yawr piece of ass.”

The man laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. I’m just in the mood for a good old-fashioned night out with a very sexy lady,” he replied.

Lurdene smiled, opened the door, and sank into the plush leather seat. “Ya want to wait, or start now, honey?” she asked in a husky voice.

“Now’s fine,” he said and pointed to his zipper as the Cadillac roared away from the curb.

“Mmmm, sounds delicious,” she purred, and lowered her head to his lap.

Suddenly, the man thrust a cloth over her face with a powerful vise grip; and after a brief struggle, Lurdene Walken sank into a dreamless, black void.

29

T

he rainstorm soaked Jay Walkingman by the time he made it to the Tampa Amtrak station and parked his motorcycle where it could be easily spotted by the police. This was just the beginning of their wild goose chase.

His expensive suit, tie, and shirt were ruined, but he couldn’t care less. His body was sore and bruised from the wind-driven rain thrashing his exposed body during his escape through the city, and he didn’t mind that, either. Jay was on top of the world at the moment, and a thorough drenching and pelting couldn’t extinguish the victory flame that burned hot inside him. His mission was an unmitigated success, and now he would move up in the world. The world of terrorism.

His long, black braids glistened beneath the mercury vapor lights in the parking lot. Though it was early afternoon, the electronic sensor controls had activated the pinkish glows beneath the turbulent, gray skies. Rain sluiced across his face, rushing off his nose and bottom lip like miniature cataracts, as he broke into a tan SUV. After hot-wiring the ignition, he drove slowly across the flooded parking lot to avoid arousing suspicion from the lone security man huddled in the brick guardhouse. It wouldn’t do to get sloppy at this juncture of the operation.

Jay braked at the sliding window, paid the rent-a-cop, and drove south on I-75 toward Sarasota where he planned to abandon the SUV and steal another car. From Sarasota, he would head north on the interstate toward his ultimate destination - New York City. Along his chosen route, he planned to steal a new car every three to four hours, because when one car got too hot, he’d ditch it for another to keep the cops from drawing a bead on his position.

Hopefully, the FBI would find his motorcycle and assume he had escaped by train. When they figured out that he had stolen the SUV instead and ditched it in Sarasota, their obvious conclusion would be that their terrorist suspect was headed south. Those two misdirection ploys, alone, would buy him a day’s head start, and by the time the feds connected all the dots, he’d be safely hidden away in the Big Apple.

His thumbs beat an up-tempo tattoo on the steering wheel in time with a blistering, heavy metal rock tune. However, Jay was blissfully unaware that there was another about to track him, and it wouldn’t need to connect any dots to pin down his location.

It would come straight for him.

Three and half hours later, one of Neo’s operatives assigned to identifying all the possible transportation routes out of Tampa stumbled upon Walkingman’s motorcycle at the train station. It took over a dozen agents two more hours to stop, board, and search the trains that had departed the station that afternoon. By the time Neo learned that the tan SUV had been stolen from the train station, the hour hand on the wall clock inside the situation room at Tampa’s FBI headquarters nudged past midnight.

Things were not running smoothly for Neo. He dug his knuckles into his temples and kneaded the hammering pain. The terrorist had outfoxed him at every turn, just as he did at the VA Medical Center. Nick was particularly concerned after the hospital blood test results indicated that the First Lady and her four companions were infected with an unknown, virus-like organism. They were immediately flown up to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland for observation and treatment.

Leaving Neo in charge, Nick strode petulantly out of the situation room and drove through the heavy rain to Blossom’s private hospital to arrange for her transportation to Duneden. When he arrived at her room, she was gone. The bed was made, and all the medical equipment had been removed. Nick rushed to the nurses’ station. A young, willowy woman glanced up.

“May I help you?”

He flashed his identification. “Where’s Blossom Smith?”

“She checked out a couple hours ago,” the nurse replied.

“Who checked her out?”

“Her grandfather,” she replied uneasily, reacting to his stressed voice.

“How did they leave?”

“I beg your pardon?” she asked.

“Car? Taxi? What?”

“I . . . don’t know. The doctor signed the release forms and told me to start the patient paperwork. By the time I printed out the forms and rounded up a wheelchair to transport her downstairs to the exit, she and her grandfather were gone. I was only away from the desk for a minute to check on another patient and must’ve missed them somehow. Is something wrong?”

“Everything,” he muttered, and flew down the stairs to the lobby. He found a isolated corner and phoned Crow.

“Yeah?” Crow sounded half-asleep.

“This is Nick. Grandfather checked Blossom out of the hospital, and no one seems to know where they went. Do you?” he asked gruffly.

“Can’t a red man get his warrior rest around here?”

“Not on my shift. Give.”

“Okay, okay, I know where Grandfather took her. They’re back in Nebraska at the reservation,” Crow replied in a husky voice, then added, “inside a tunnel.”

“Reservation! Tunnel!” Nick exclaimed, and then quickly lowered his voice to conciliate the angry stares from other visitors seated in the lobby. “How the hell can he protect her from the demon guardian there?”

“Indian magic.”

“C’mon, Crow, get real. Only Duneden has magic that powerful.”

“Never underestimate Grandfather,” Crow retorted.

“So how’s he planning to protect Blossom? Chants? Indian warrior ghosts? What?”

“How do you palefaces protect yourselves from vampires?”

“What?” Nick was in no mood to play games.

“I’m talking about stringing garlic and holding crucifixes,” he answered.

Nick leaned heavily against the wall and rested his forehead on the cool plaster. “That’s all he’s got?”

“Not literally, but . . .”

“I know, I know. He’s got other low-tech, superstitious magical shit.”

“Hey, Custer, it works.”

Nick searched his mind for an epiphany that might convince Crow to take Blossom to Duneden, instead.

“I thought you loved your niece,” he said at last. It was a lame tack, but it was all his weary brain could muster.

“Hey, no fair hitting below the belt,” Crow grumbled.

“Answer the question. Would you want your Grandfather protecting you with his hoodoo, voodoo magic in a one-on-one confrontation with the demon guardian?”

Silence.

Nick waited.

“Damn you, Nick.”

“Well?”

“No. You satisfied?”

“Not until you go out there and get Blossom to Duneden.”

“I’ll have to catch a plane in the morning.”

“What! You mean you don’t know how to . . .”

“Wind walk?”

“Yeah, wind walk. You still can’t do it after all of Grandfather’s training?”

“He gave up on me. He said I’m a hopeless case and a blight on our tribal pride.”

Nick nearly burst out laughing, despite the situation. “Do you know when he might get around to taking another crack at coaching you?”

Crow lowered his voice. “Yeah. After he’s a resident of the Happy Hunting Ground.”

Nick rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Just call me in the morning with your flight number.” He hung up.

Now that Grandfather had taken matters into his own hands and was responsible for Blossom’s protection, Nick was officially off the hook. But, that didn’t stop him from worrying about Crow’s niece. He desperately hoped that his friend would arrive at the reservation and pull them out of there before the demon guardian appeared.

Nick refused to consider the consequences if Crow failed to reach them in time.