The Glooming (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 1) (43 page)

Commissioner Donovan turned and looked at Joe. He was a big man with a shaved head and he wore all the citations above the police badge on his uniform. “You sure this is gonna work, Joe? The department is at the breaking point.”

“It’s our best lead,” Joe said. “And our only lead. The fact that DOD is here means they feel the same way. I have a good feeling about this.”

As he looked at the others in the tent, Joe noticed that Dr. Paul Dane was deep in thought. Something was clearly troubling him.

Paul quickly looked back at Joe. “Did Edwin give you pictures of the writings on that petrified tree bark?”

“Yes, they’re right in that brown folder,” Joe pointed at a nearby desk. “Is something wrong?”

Paul walked over to the folding table at the side of the tent and began to sort through the pictures. When he found two photographs that contained the close-ups of the suspected Powhatan writings, he began to examine them closely.

Joe walked over and stood beside him. “Professor Dane, what is it?”

Paul kept on looking. He had sensed something familiar about the ancient script. There was a dream he had only days ago and in it he was in some strange netherworld where he stood before a gigantic tree and its bark was similar to the trunk in the photographs. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Something just doesn’t make any sense. I’m beginning to doubt that Xipe Totec is behind this.”

Joe frowned. “What makes you say that? What about the flayed skins on the victims and those demons in the park? Aren’t they consistent with that Aztec god?”

“I know,” Paul said. “But there’s something we’re missing. I’m sure of it.”

The Otherworld

They both finally made it into the giant forest. Tara was amazed at the size of the trees, they looked like foliage from earth, but they were hundreds of feet tall as their branches blotted out the dark sky. Their green leaves and the grass underneath glowed faintly and so she could see quite clearly without any need for additional light. There were no trails so they just moved on the flat, grassy ground around the massive trunks. Coyote had led the way since Tara had asked to see if the Trickster could use his nose to find the boy’s scent. Sure enough, after a few minutes, Coyote led her to the edge of a small glade where they spotted a tow-headed boy wearing a winter jacket crouched down while he picked at the grass.

Tara had a feeling that time was running out so she decided on the direct route. She just walked out into the center of the glade and raised her hand at him. “Hello.”

The boy looked up and immediately stood as soon as he saw her. He looked a few years younger than she was. “Who are you?”

Tara walked up to him with an outstretched hand. “Hi, I’m Tara. Nice to meet you, but I am in a bit of a hurry since I already saw you in my dreams, so I figured I would just come up to you for a quick intro.”

The boy looked at her suspiciously, but then he remembered his own dreams as well so he shook her hand. “I am Ilya, from Russia.”

Tara smiled. “Nice to meet you, Ilya from Russia. You speak pretty good English. I didn’t know they taught that language over there.”

Ilya Volkhov frowned. “You hear English? I do not speak English.”

Tara’s eyes widened as Coyote ran up and sat on its hind legs beside her. “Wow, this world is something else.”

“In the Spirit World, all languages are one … even those of the animals,” Coyote said.

Ilya pointed at Coyote. “Is that your talking dog?”

Tara laughed. “Not exactly, he’s actually a Trickster God called Coyote so he’s not a dog.”

“A coyote is a type of dog,” Ilya said.

Tara rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Okay, now that we’ve been introduced I was wondering what you’re doing here?”

Ilya looked at her closely. He was still somewhat suspicious. “I should ask you that.”

“Well, I asked you first,” Tara said fitfully. “So you have to answer first.”

“Very well,” Ilya said. “I am looking for raskovnik.”

Tara looked confused. “Rasa-what? What’s that?”

“It is a magical plant,” Ilya said. “I need it to find my mother.”

Tara scratched the back of her head. “Okay, what does it do?”

“When the babushka in the orphanage where I lived told me stories, she told me about the raskovnik. The plant is like a key that can unlock anything, and it can uncover hidden things if one eats it,” Ilya said as he started looking down at the ground again.

Tara looked around. “Okay, what makes you think it’s here?”

“A goddess told me to find a quiet spot in the forest and I think I have been here for many hours searching, but so far I can’t find it,” Ilya said as he crouched down and began to closely examine the grass around him.

Coyote began scratching his ear with its hind leg. “That’s because only special animals can find that plant.”

Ilya looked up in astonishment. “What?”

“You need to find a tortoise because they know what it looks like on sight,” Coyote said. “Or an animal god, like me.”

Ilya ran up to the Trickster God. “Then you must find it for me, please!”

Tara crossed her arms. “Ilya, we’ll help you find it, but you must help us as well. There’s a god that is about to destroy a big city in my country and I need your help to stop him.”

Ilya looked at her intently. He wasn’t expecting to meet this girl and her strange dog. He had planned to be the one hero who would save the world and make his mother so proud of him that she would take him back and they would live happily together again. But then he remembered his friend Andrei and how lonely he was. He quickly recalled that the goddess had told him that he would need friends and allies, for he would not be able to do it alone. And he liked to help others as well so this was his best chance to do both.

The boy smirked. “Very well, I shall help you,” he said to Tara before turning back to face Coyote. “Now, help me find the raskovnik.”

Coyote moved its right front paw by an inch and underneath it was a small cluster of glowing yellowish clovers. “It’s right here.”

Ilya threw his hands up in triumph. “Yes! Thank you,” he said to them as he quickly ran over and scooped up the plants and put it in the side pocket of his coat. He had a sense that he was being played, but his joy at being able to get the plant that he needed chased all his suspicions away.

“Okay,” Tara said. “Now that you got what you need, can you help us?”

Ilya walked up to her and smiled. “A bargain is a bargain. So what do you need for me to do?”

Tara rubbed her chin. “Well, I had this dream about an evil god called the Hidden One and he lives in some sort of very old, very huge oak tree. We need to stop him somehow.”

Ilya winked at her before turning around and walking off. “A great big tree? Why didn’t you say so? I passed by a very big oak tree in another clearing not too long ago, follow me!”

Tara’s eyes widened as she ran to keep up with the boy. “Wait up!”

Manhattan

“Looks like it’s all clear,” Valerie said as the team of ESU troopers had walked down into the lower basement level with her. The basement of the museum was subdivided into multiple partitions. There was a massive industrial elevator at the end of the great hall for loading large crates of antiquities and other artifacts from the parking garage. The crates would then be examined carefully by the museum staff before it would be put on display upstairs for the public. They were able to get the emergency generator working, but only a fraction of the lights was active, so quite a lot of areas in the entire building were still in shadow. The ESU teams fanned out as they tried to cover as much ground as possible while making sure the area was secure. One team went over to the elevators, while four other troopers began to go through the smaller storerooms along the adjoining corridors one by one.

Dr. Worlich started walking down a dimly lit corridor as he headed for the American Indian storage rooms. “Everything’s intact, so far so good,” he said while taking out a security key from his pocket as he stood in front of a pair of double doors. “It should be just about here.”

Walking a slight distance behind him, Captain Niven kept her M4 assault rifle at the ready while Valerie headed up the rear. Dr. Worlich twisted the key and unlocked the door, then quickly walked in.

It was a large hall, almost as big as the one they came into and also dimly lit, as only a few ceiling lights were active. There were a number of large wooden crates along the side of the room that were as large as shipping containers.

“That’s it,” Dr. Worlich said as he got to the front of a tall crate and unlocked the padlock before pushing back the wooden panel. The petrified trunk was of a deep brown color and as thick as a small car. The trunk stood upright at close to ten feet high as it sat on a wheeled platform. Dr. Worlich grabbed the handle on the side of the platform, then began wheeling it out until it was just beneath one of the active lights in the hall so he could get it properly illuminated.

As Dr. Worlich set up a tripod in front of the trunk and placed a camera on it, Captain Niven tried to use her walkie-talkie. As she pressed the receiver she got a lot of static. “Must be the interference because we’re underground,” she said to no one in particular.

Valerie saw that everything looked okay so she started walking back towards the main stairs. “I’m going to check up on the other teams, I’ll be back.”

Dr. Worlich didn’t even notice Valerie’s departure as he concentrated heavily on setting up the remote video camera before turning it on. Then he went to a nearby table that had wheels on it and rolled it out until it was right next to the trunk. He then took out a penlight from one of the tools on the table and moved over to the trunk. Dr. Worlich began to minutely examine the writings on it while placing the headset over his ears and activating the video microphone. Captain Niven wandered off into one of the corridors, as she checked up on the security teams in the level.

Brooklyn

“We have video feed, coming in now,” one of the military radio operators said as one of the formerly blank monitor screens in front of them went live. They could see the close-up of the tree trunk as Dr. Worlich began a cursory examination of it.

Paul stood with the others as he held up the pictures that were taken before with the live video feed of the tree trunk to compare them.

“It’s clearly not fossilized,” Dr. Worlich spoke through the video feed. “Because permineralization would take millions of years for it to happen, but the fact that this tree bark is rock hard even though it’s supposed to be only a few hundred years old, so this is a baffling phenomena.”

Paul noticed that General Benteen had his own walkie-talkie and he sensed that the general had some sort of private communications with his soldiers that were in the museum. He quietly observed as the general kept talking into his radio receiver. It was something about “failsafe” and “code zeta,” but he couldn’t articulate the rest.

Dr. Worlich kept talking through the live feed. “As you can also see, the writings that we suspect are Powhatan were thought to have been carved into the trunk, but now that I am examining it closely, it seems to have been branded onto the tree bark by as of yet unknown means. If you look at this particular symbol here,” Dr. Worlich said as he used a remote control on the camera to go to a close-up of a strange glyph on the trunk. “It seems to resemble an eye with a hand over it … what that means, I do not know at this time.”

As he heard those words, Paul held up the pictures he was carrying once more. That was when he realized that they had all been wrong. Wrong about everything. Paul gasped as he realized the awful truth. They had all been deceived by the Hidden God.

Joe heard Paul’s cry and looked at him. “Professor Dane?”

“Oh my god,” Paul said. “It’s not Xipe Totec! We’ve got to warn the team down there! The enemy is Okeus! The Hidden One! It’s Okeus!”

Everybody turned and looked at him, confusion and terror in their eyes.

General Benteen looked at Paul incredulously. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

Then the video feed went dead.

Manhattan

Valerie had made it up to the first floor of the museum when she noticed something peculiar. While she had noticed that most of the other soldiers had set up defensive positions to guard the entrances and exits, she saw that one particular group had brought up a forklift from the parking garage. The lift was carrying some sort of man-sized plastic container which they then transported over to one of the side galleries, close to the center of the building. Her suspicions aroused, Valerie instantly hid in the shadows as she crouched down and began to silently follow them.

As they moved the plastic crate into a massive hall that housed the mammal exhibit, she noticed that the man leading the squad was Lieutenant Blake Rockatansky, he had introduced himself earlier to her that night and he was the designated field commander of the special forces contingent, that meant that he was in full contact with his military superiors in the DOD. While the ESU police troopers mostly carried assault rifles and shotguns, the special ops soldiers were carrying an eclectic mix of weapons, among the six of them she noticed two were equipped with those new civilian X15 flamethrowers that were hastily ordered, while another two were carrying some sort of multiple grenade launchers. Clearly these people had no concern for collateral damage as napalm and high explosives would cause severe destruction to the museum if they were ever used.

Sensing that they still hadn’t noticed her, Valerie made a quick dash from behind as she ran over to the side of a free-standing glass display that enclosed an upright, snarling polar bear before peering out and trying to get a closer look as to what was inside of the box. As she squinted her eyes, she noticed that the crate actually contained some sort of white cylinder as she crept up to get a better view. That was when she felt a heavy push on her back and she fell face down on the floor. The force of the blow made her drop her Glock pistol and it clattered away. As she tried to get up, she felt severe pressure on her back to keep her down and smelled a combination of sweat and tobacco just above her.