The Raven Mocker (39 page)

Too late. Distressed for her welfare, his thoughts now betrayed him. Only for an instant, but he pictured where it lay hidden, tucked inside a small zippered compartment in his snowsuit. Teutates snickered, the scepter’s ivory tip bearing Evelyn’s blood poised to sever her neck while she sobbed, ostensibly resigned to her death.

“
Adanedi nasgi ayv!”

The shadowed wraiths tore open John’s snowsuit, eager to comply with their master’s command to bring the ruby to him.

“
No—get your hands off me!”
John shouted at them.

Undeterred, they rifled through his pockets until one of them located the jewel. But as one fiend held it up for his partner to admire, John managed a solid nudge. The ruby slipped from his boney fingers, landing on the floor. For a moment, it looked like it might roll in a tight circle and fall over. While the pair sought to recover the jewel, it rolled toward Teutates, who reached down with one hand while he tightened his grip on Evelyn’s hair with the other.

Disquelvdi uyotsuhi!

This time John gave no indication he heard anything. Two Eagles Cry’s latest admonition shouted with confidence, John watched as the ruby suddenly veered toward the blue fire burning nearby. Before Teutates could grab it, the gemstone rolled into the fire, where it settled in front of the burning skull.

The spell’s been broken!

Undeterred, Teutates stuck his long fingers into the flame, intent on retrieving the prized ruby. He drew back his hand quickly, a look of surprise on his face. He tried it again, fingernails unfurled. The flame morphing from cobalt to emerald, the very instant his nails touched the fire, they ignited. The green flames raced up his hand, where the flesh on his long fingers split open.

Howling in pain, he tried to douse the blaze in the pooled blood on the altar’s table. When the blaze traveled up his arm, he released Evelyn, tearing out a few clumps of her hair. A slight tremor began to move through the walls and across the ceiling, steadily building as if rising to seize this vile place, this temple of death.

The ghostly warriors let go of John, backing away from him while casting their hollowed eyes in every direction, worriedly…wary of something unseen and unheard by John and everyone else. A distressed roar from a very unhappy dragon resounded beyond the sacrificial room’s doorway.

“
Evelyn!
...
Hanna!!”
he cried out as he ran over to his granddaughters.

Hanna looked up with frightened eyes after Evelyn removed her bonds, peering through matted locks. He tearfully embraced them both, keeping a watchful eye on the monster whose left arm had become a sizzling torch.

Teutates’ muscles began to whither and disintegrate, amid flames that now burned orange and yellow. Even the fire supported by the pile of bones changed, burning in natural form and color as well. The bones themselves turned black before collapsing into a pile of ashes. The ruby, however, remained pristine. It glowed radiant within the fire’s midst.

David finally freed himself. With the demon preoccupied with its survival, he ran over to Miriam and gathered her into his arms. Barely conscious, she clung tightly to his chest.

“
We’ve got to get out of here!”
urged John, glancing toward David and Miriam before turning his attention to the doorway.

Teutates’ servants remained distracted, their gazes fixed upon the glistening spheres that covered the walls and ceiling. Each one glowed brightly with intense energy.

The surge rumbling through the earth continued to grow louder, and the dirt floor began to shake. The warriors no longer looked to their master for guidance and protection, whose shrieks of agony announced how the fire consumed him wholly, offering no mercy. Meanwhile, the spheres began to vibrate. One by one they detached, floating along the perimeter of the room. Like a small army of crystal bubbles, the croquet-sized orbs drifted in an array of brilliant colors toward the room’s only exit, where the warriors cowered. The spheres attacked them, tearing away the very fabric of their dark essences. With each hit, a human soul briefly materialized. Colonial pioneers to Native Americans and even Appalachian coal miners appeared, and more, male and female.

Joined by similar balls of light crowding outside the doorway, enough of these souls finally overwhelmed the pair. They disintegrated, spiraling to the ground as twin piles of black dust, similar to what was left of the pile of human bones, their choked rasps muffled.

John urged Evelyn to help him carry Hanna who briefly resisted their efforts. But like with Miriam moments earlier, the spell she was under began to lift. Less disoriented, she seemed to fully recognize her grandfather for the first time. She reached for him to take her, squalling like an infant. But then she looked beyond Evelyn and screamed in terror.

Teutates loomed above them, standing on the blood-soaked altar. Poised to pounce, his arms spread wide, and his entire torso now engulfed by fire. His image similar to the massive statue John saw earlier, there would be no escape. He let out a derisive cackle, followed by a string of threats mostly unintelligible, perhaps from dialects long dead.

Prepared for his impending attack, it surprised them all when he suddenly fell backward. From the other altar’s other side, the fire’s sickening pop and sizzle continued to consume him. John heard muffled cries and spasm leg kicks—the death throes of most living creatures. A low sigh followed, dispersed into the air around them, and then silence, including the rumble that threatened to engulf the room. Even the sorrowful moans from the dragon that protected his temple outside subsided. For a demon such as this, John doubted the end would be so clean, where the spirit left a body once it failed to support life. In his mind’s eye, he saw the agony continue…the shrieks of a condemned spirit thrown into impenetrable darkness, forced to feel pain and wretchedness long after the physical form became mere ashes and dust.

“
Sorry, my friend, that our reunion is under such dire circumstances,” he told David, quietly, pausing to shake his hand and careful to not aggravate his wrist wounds. He then peered around the altar.

“
Well, it certainly wasn’t the original plan,” David agreed, chuckling sadly as he joined him, walking gingerly as he peered over the altar’s other edge. “But at least we now have lots to catch up on.”

Teutates, or what was left of his charred and molten body, lay still. Like bacon on a skillet, the skin, eyes, and fatty tissue bubbled and popped, a nauseating sulfuric stench wafting toward them. Small rivers from the melting mass of Teutates’ corpse joined to form a large puddle next to a bludgeoned, headless torso of a black man lying behind the altar. A light gray mist arose from the demon’s disintegrating corpse, drifting down to a small crack in the wall, where it then disappeared.

What?? Is that the anisgina’s sacred essence?
...
His immortal soul…Or, did he even die?? Look—no bones!!

John grimaced as he watched the remaining discernible features dissolve into the puddle, steadily shrinking as it fed the growing mist that appeared to be sucked into the crack, pulled along by a powerful draft or vacuum.

John looked over at David, whose facial expression told him they shared a similar conclusion.

This shit’s far from over!

“
Hurry—follow me!!” John moved toward the doorway as Evelyn and Hanna rejoined him.

David returned to Miriam’s side, guiding her toward the room’s exit. He paused to grab the gilded scepter lying on the floor. It ignited before he touched it, and he quickly withdrew his hand in response.

“
Don’t stop for anything! We’ve got to get out of here before he comes back!!” urged John, just before stepping out of the room.

“
Who, Teutates?” asked Evelyn, worried, her voice hoarse from her personal ordeal with the demon. “I thought he just died….”

She didn’t finish her words, but the expression on her face confirmed her understanding of a different fate.

John watched the images in her mind, including what she picked up from his recent witness of the burning remains of the demon. But unlike his awareness, her spirit followed the anisgina’s flight from the room, disappearing down…down into the darkened depths of a hellish world that flourished far below where they presently stood. Gathering strength and malice, Teutates would return…soon.
Very
soon. And when he did, there would be no moment of carelessness. No toying with his prey. And suffering…. Such terrible suffering he planned to give them all.

We can’t afford to wait…every second counts! I’ll lead the way….

But the memory of the broken bridge slats now returned to John’s awareness. How in the hell would they get to the other side of the bridge? It just wasn’t possible…. Maybe there would be another way, once they made it past the dragon.

Yes, that’s it. Some other way…. Let’s go!

“
Did you hear that?” she asked, craning her neck toward the blackened chasm, where hundreds of orbs still moved, glowing in the distance like colorful fireflies flitting to and fro above the chasm’s depth before them.

Hanna raised her eyes, looking in the same direction as her sister. Even Miriam responded, her head cocked to where she listened intently. Unfortunately, neither male sensed what the females had locked onto…at least not at first.

But then the floor beneath them began to rumble again. Softer this time, like a seismic aftershock. Fearing the room might collapse this time, and ready to force everyone out in a mad dash to the bottom of the staircase, John hesitated after his first step from the room’s present safety. Not because of the serpent menace from earlier. ‘Uktena’ remained quiet for now, though no doubt lurking somewhere in the grand temple…this immense gorge far removed from the modern light of day. Something else gave him pause… something coming.

The multitude of oval lights suddenly veered as a group away from the entrance, speeding into the darkened depths to their left until their glow became barely detectible. While the earth’s rumble continued to grow louder, yet another hostile surge approached, rising from the darkest depths to their right.

“
No frigging way!”
David hissed, frowning.

The sound of an immense swarm of hornets, or wasps, filled the chasm…an incredible horde of anger roaring as it swerved upward, a swelling black mass still discernible in the pitch void before them. It headed for the entrance.

With nowhere to go, the dying fire that in the meantime had melted the demon’s scepter into a puddle of gold laced with floating gems provided the room’s only illumination. The angry swarm had reached the stairs…moving up fast.

Miriam and Hanna murmured in fear, while Evelyn cried out, her voice panicked… David, too. And the goddamned floor began to shake even harder, making it difficult to stand.

Where are you, Grandfather?? Show us a way for escape!! Don’t desert me now!!!

The sound of canine whining arose from a far corner of the room, drawing their collective attention. Nothing visible, until John remembered his flashlight. He pulled it out of his pocket and turned it on, aiming the beam in that direction. Still no sign of the animal, but some of the older remains fell away from the wall across from the altar, near the log pole racks where David and the women had been bound.

Move now, Running Deer! The Great Mother will soon devour this place. Trust and follow me!!

“
Quick! Everyone over here!!” urged John, leading the way to where old bones continued to fall from the wall and onto the floor.

Once he arrived, a cool draft greeted him. Evelyn and David remarked about it.

A hidden passageway beyond the wall??

Aghast looks on David and Miriam’s faces, as well as similar disgust and hesitation from Evelyn. Human remains…corpses from the last millennia, piled here to block the passageway. Some old and decayed to the bone. Others more recent, where the rotting stench announced the presence of putrid flesh long before the flashlight’s glow revealed scurrying beetles and maggots feeding on severed limbs and entrails. But this wasn’t the time to be squeamish.

“
Help me pull the rest of this out of the way!”

John raised his voice above the din, being the first to reach in and pull out the debris. Entangled with a severed arm turned purple from recent decay, a child’s ribcage and shreds of an old fashioned shirt from more than half a century ago pulled free.

More cold air! If we just don’t think about any of what’s here we might make it through before it’s too late….

“
Hurry!! We haven’t got all damned day!”
John glanced warily behind him, directing the flashlight briefly in that direction…the doorway blackened by a deep shadow. The first few specks of whatever made up the swarm now crept into the room, twinkling orange and yellow dots in the light, like sparks from a foundry.

David and the women glimpsed this as well, enough incentive to get moving. Amid gasped breaths and dry wretches, everyone tore frantically at the human wall, until enough of a gap to slide through. As if reminding them to hurry, the wolf barked from within the passageway, two familiar amber eyes provided encouragement to trust and not hesitate.