The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (35 page)

"Mark, what's up?" he
cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder as he removed his heavy leather
gloves.

 The connection was bad and Mark
was shouting. "Trouble, Marcus.  We've been tr...."

Marcus raised his voice.
"Mark, I didn't get that. What's happened?"

"... lured us here and F...
was waiting. There was a gun battle and... Kathlyn."

Marcus' heart leapt into his
throat. Lynn had followed him out of the tomb, standing next to him as Tony
joined the crowd. No one liked the look on Marcus' face.

 "Gun battle?" Marcus
repeated. "What in the hell is going on? Mark, you're breaking up. What
happened?"

Oddly, the connection abruptly
cleared. Mark came through loud and unmistakable.

"Did you get any of
that?"

"Hardly. What in the name of
Christ is happening?"

"This invitation to Iraq was
a trap. Fayd was waiting for us when we got here. There was a gun battle and
now he's got Kathlyn."

"I knew it," Marcus
hissed. "Goddammit, I just knew this would happen. Is she okay? Where did
he take her?"

"She wasn't hurt in the
gunfire if that's what you mean," Mark said. "You should have seen
her. She fought with Fayd, kicked his ass, too. If he hadn't had the gun, we
probably would have all gotten out of this. But he let the team go and took
Kathlyn back into that creepy cave. That was about thirty minutes ago."

"Have they come back
out?"

"No."

"Is there anyone else with
Fayd?"

"No, he's alone. We were
forced to kill the bastards he brought with him; it was either them or us,
Marcus. Not a pleasant thing to do."

Marcus was pale and taut. By this
time, Dennis, Gary and Deverona had joined the group. They had been alone down
in the tomb and curiosity drove them out. The five of them stood in a circle,
listening to Marcus' conversation with Mark.

"I understand," Marcus
finally said. "Is everybody else okay?"

"Juliana took a hit to her
hand," Mark said. "She needs a doctor."

Marcus looked at Lynn; the man
was listening intently to the conversation, trying to figure out what was
happening. "Then get her back here," he said. "I'm flying out of
here as soon as I can get a damn plane. Wait for me there. I may need
you."

"All right," Mark
agreed. "Otis and I will stay and watch the cave to see if Fayd and
Kathlyn come out. If they do, we'll follow them and let you know. I'm sending
Juliana, Debra Jo, Larry and Andy back to Egypt."

"The sooner, the
better."

"Agreed. And Marcus?"

"Yeah?"

 "The villagers. I think
they're with Fayd, so watch out. The cave is to the southwest, about a mile
from the village along the fossil river path."

"I'm half way there."

The phone fizzled out again and
the connection was lost. Marcus, tight with emotion, lowered it from his ear.
Everyone was staring at him.

"Well?" Lynn demanded.
"What the hell happened?"

Marcus didn't even know where to
start. "Exactly what I thought would happen. This whole thing was
apparently a trap set by Fayd. He's got Kathlyn now, again. Mark and Otis are
going to stay in Iraq and wait for me, but Juliana, Debra Jo, Larry and Andy
are coming home." He looked at Dennis. "I need you to come with
me."

Lynn piped up. "You're not
going without me."

Marcus turned to Lynn. "I
think you should stay here and wait for Juliana. There was apparently a gun
battle and she took a hit to her hand. You may want to stay with her."

Lynn cursed softly, torn between
wanting to go with Marcus yet wanting to make sure Juliana was all right. Tony
stepped in.

 "I'm going," he said
firmly. "Deverona, are you with us?"

Jace nodded shortly. "Hell,
yes."

"Don't leave me out,"
Gary said. "I'm going and you can't stop me."

He was dead serious and Marcus
would have laughed at him had he not been so troubled. "I'm not sure what
we're getting into," he said. "All I know is that this bastard has my
wife, again, and this time he's going to have to deal with me personally."

"Let me make some
calls," Jace said. "We can probably have a transport waiting for us
in Luxor in less than an hour. You'd be surprised what the United States
government can come up with in a hurry."

"I'd appreciate it,"
Marcus said.

 Strangely, he didn't feel as
desperate as he thought he would. With the FBI and the Marines with him, he
felt rather confident. He really didn't believe that Fayd would hurt Kathlyn,
but it was imperative that he get to her as quickly as he could.

 "Lynn?" he turned to
his friend. "Are you going to wait here for Juliana?"

Lynn's face was taut with
emotion. He looked very regretful when he finally nodded his head. "I need
to," he said. "But once I know she's okay, I'll be on my way to back
you."

Marcus shook his head. "It's
more important you stay with her. I've got a crack squad going with me. But
you'll be missed."

"I know she'll want me to be
with you. Kathlyn's in trouble and that'll be heavy on her mind."

"Just wait and see. Juliana
is more important to you right now."

Lynn held out his hand and Marcus
took it. They shook longer than necessary, silent words of support passing
between them. In something as critical as this, Marcus was going to sorely miss
him, but he understood the man's reasons for staying behind better than most.
For the same reason Marcus was going, Lynn was staying.

"Good luck, man," Lynn
said softly.

Marcus squeezed his hand and let
go. Lynn watched him move off toward the camp with his commandos in tow,
praying fervently that everything would work out all right.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

Kathlyn had been in her share of
tombs throughout her lifetime. Most of them had a certain odor to them, beyond
oldness but not quite rotten. It was like standing in the folds of Time,
observing as an outside interest and smelling all the history around you. In
the flicker of the Maglight, she and Fayd descended deeper into the dusty shaft
and Kathlyn gave a couple of good sneezes, jarring the beam of light. Without
it, the tunnel would have been in total blackness.

 Her nerves were calming after
the battle in the cavern. Although she should have negotiated her release along
with those of her team, a very powerful sense of curiosity had overcome her
common sense and she actually found herself excited about the exploration. If
the mummy in the first cavern was any indication of what lay ahead, she was
prepared to be completely overwhelmed by further discovery.

"How far down have you
been?" she asked Fayd over her shoulder.

"To the second cavern we're
about to enter," he said. "But there are at least three other
passages leading out of it."

"When did you first see all
of this?"

"About a week after you and
I parted company. It was then I knew that you had to see this so you would
understand how important your part in this was. But you were delayed several
times, so we waited.  And waited."

Kathlyn sensed his criticism and
she didn't like it. They walked in silence the last several feet. The tunnel
cut downward the last few steps and keeping their footing was difficult. 
Kathlyn slipped, though remained on her feet as she stumbled into the second
cavern. Fayd was directly behind her. He immediately took the flashlight from
her and began to run it along the walls.

"Look," he said.
"More of them."

Kathlyn sucked in her breath as
the sickly beam of light fell upon mummy after mummy. They were all a rich
brown color, perfectly preserved, with protrusions over each eye and folded
wings that stretched from above their heads to their ankles. And they were all
well over seven feet tall, absolutely enormous. Kathlyn studied their fingers,
completely with sharp nails, their arms, their facial features. She tried to be
very professional about it, maintaining a cool attitude, but in truth she was
growing more uneasy by the moment. It was hard to look at their faces with
sharp barred teeth in the perpetual throes of death and not feel a chill run
down her spine.

She couldn't ignore the
ever-present tingling in her limbs that she had felt the moment she had drawn
close to the cave. It was very strong as she examined the mummies. Since she
would have no video or written record of her examination, she drank in every
detail for later recollection. She and Fayd calculated the height and weight,
trying to keep their relationship on a professional level and ignoring the
violent circumstances that had thrown them together. This was the find of a lifetime
and they both knew it.

"This needs to be properly
excavated," Kathlyn finally stated the obvious. "Just guessing at
things isn't going to get us anywhere. We need answers."

"And we shall have
them," Fayd said softly, "when the child in your belly is born."

Kathlyn looked at him for a
moment. "I still can't believe you did this to me," she said, more
anguish than fury in her voice.  "What on earth made you think I wouldn't
put up a fight?"

Fayd looked at the mummy in front
of them. "You were always so enthusiastic about new discoveries. I truly
thought you would be willing to explore all of the possibilities of this."

"I am," she insisted.
"But not by sacrificing my body by putting something alien in it."

Fayd didn't reply. He ran his
fingers along a folded wing, contemplating. Then he turned away, moving toward
a corner in the cavern that appeared to have several shelves carved out of it.
It was still very dark and Kathlyn struggled to see what he was doing. On the
shelves, she could make out what looked to be a variety of round, pale-colored
stones.

Fayd picked up one of the stones
in a complete breach of archaeological protocol. As he returned to Kathlyn, she
could see that it wasn't a stone at all. It was a very large, very odd shaped
skull.

"Look at this," he
said, holding it in front of her. "What do you think?"

She reached out and took it; it
was heavy, several pounds, and a very strange oblong shape.  It was, literally,
like an egg head. She ran her hand over the bulbous cranium.

"I've seen skulls like this
before," she said. "Tribes in ancient Mexico had been known to bind
the skulls of their infants so they would grow into this strange shape. Some
American Indian tribes have done it, too."

Fayd shook his head. "I
know. I've seen them, too. But the shapes were far more perfectly oblong. This
shape is oval, with very distinct grooves where the occipital and temporal
plates join. This isn't skull binding, at least not by my estimation. This is a
natural development."

Kathlyn turned the skull around so
she it was looking at her. Above the eye sockets were very small protrusions. 
She ran her fingers over them. Then, she looked up at the mummy, noticing how
large and nearly egg shaped the skull was. She'd noticed it before on the first
angel in the fossil river site, but she attributed it to some form of
Gigantism. From one mummy to the next, they all had it to a certain degree.
Shaking her head, she looked back at the skull.

"This one is smaller than
the rest. The protrusions are almost unnoticeable." She handed it back to
him. "What do you think?"

He cocked an eyebrow. "There
are rows and rows of them, skulls just like this. But then, strangely, we have
all of these mummified bodies. They're either trophies of war, or revered
relatives. It's very puzzling and frankly, I'm not sure what to think. But it
reminds me of a passage in Genesis."

"Which one?"

"Genesis six, verse one
through four."

Kathlyn knew them. "'When
men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of
heaven saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their
wives as many of them as they chose. Then the Lord said: 'My spirit shall not
remain in man forever, since he is but flesh. His days shall comprise one
hundred and twenty years.' At that time the Nephilim appeared on earth, after
the sons of heaven had intercourse with the daughters of man, who bore them
sons. They were the heroes of old, the men of renown.'"

Fayd smiled. "It always
amazed me how you could do that so perfectly from memory."

"Call it a gift. But why
does that passage interest you?"

Fayd stroked his chin, looking at
the skull in his hand. "For the sake of argument, let's pretend I'm a
Darwinist. Let's us assume that five thousand years ago, when civilization as
we know it was just starting to awaken, that there was a race of beings on the
earth that was some sort of hybrid both Mesozoic and Hominid. Somewhere back in
the lines of Evolution, the wires got crossed and these things evolved as
freaks of nature. Wings like a pterodactyl and horns like a triceratops, but
the body and features of a man. Naturally, to the early humans, it would have
been a terrifying sight, something they had to explain away by calling this
unknown race of supernatural humanoids ‘demons’. Maybe these creatures, being
freakish in nature, were violent or even cannibalistic. Then you have men like
Abraham and his primitive superstition interpreting this, writing it down, and
calling it the first book of the Bible.
Voilà,
we have the Eden Factor,
the story of a devil with horns against the forces of good. The story of
Creation was born."