Ancient Echoes (46 page)

The Hammer smiled as he found Michael in his cross-hairs.

Out of nowhere a bullet struck Hammill squarely in the
heart, knocking him backwards. He looked down with shock and horror as his
life’s blood spread over his chest. He lifted his eyes to the shooter and saw
his
totem,
his lucky charm…the one he believed would
free him from this place. In a sense she had. His last words were her name. “Charlotte
Reed.”

Charlotte dropped behind a boulder. Her heart pounded and
her stomach threatened to empty. The man had killed her friends, had tried to
kill her. Her revenge should have been sweet, except that she’d seen too much
killing, too much death. Even for revenge, it was more than she could bear.

“No!” Fish cried out in anguish seeing his leader fall. He
spun and fired nonstop in Charlotte’s direction, his bullets bouncing
harmlessly off the boulder protecting her, before shots from Michael, Jake, and
Devlin’s rifles silenced him forever.

As suddenly as it began, the shooting stopped.

“If we're lucky, that’s the end of it,” Michael said. “If
we're able to destroy what's keeping this world going, we'll be free of it.”

“That’s kind of a big if,” Devlin murmured.

“But we can concentrate now,” Charlotte said. “Finally our
enemies, all of them, are gone.”

MICHAEL’S GAZE DRIFTED over the
survivors, his heart heavy. While Jake smeared some of the poultice Charlotte
carried on his wound, the others sat and waited. They all needed to rest a
moment, to somehow find the strength to regroup and overcome the emotional
maelstrom of being stunned, sickened and horrified by all that had happened.
The villagers had seemed ready to help them fight a common enemy, but then
revealed themselves as monsters. The day had been a vision of the power of
evil.

At least no one had been lost when the mercs attacked.
Still, he couldn't imagine what the students must be feeling and thinking with
four members of their group gone. Too much death lurked here.
Too much horror.

“I’m ready to keep going,” Jake soon told them. The poultice
already dulled some of the pain.

"Why bother? It's hopeless," Devlin said.
"I’ve traveled; I’ve tried to find help; nothing worked. No one is out
there. We're stuck here just like those village men...until they all
died."

"It's not hopeless. I've been told there is a
way," Michael said, "and that I'd recognize it. It's got to be
near."

Charlotte's gaze narrowed. "Who would say such a
thing?"

Michael looked ready to give a flippant answer, but then his
shoulders sagged. He gazed at her, then at Jake, wondering how much they
remembered of his tale of Mongolia. "Lady Hsieh. And I wasn't
hallucinating. She’s real…except that she'd been dead for two thousand
years."

"Oh, boy," Jake muttered. "Now it's Chinese
ghosts. The more the merrier."

“Ghosts?”
Quade asked.

“An immortal being, created by her own alchemy,” Michael
said. "She lived for over two thousand years stuck between heaven and
earth in the world her alchemy had created. When I opened her coffin, I somehow
freed her to break the alchemical spell she was under. I don’t pretend to
understand it. All I can say is she thanked me for that, for freeing her to go
to the land of souls." He paused a long moment, letting all sink in, and
then he added. "She warned me that this place is evil. But she said I'd
know how to leave—and that I must."

"Do you think that's possible?" Charlotte asked.

He gave a half-smile. "If you'd have asked me two
months ago I'd have said everything we've experienced was completely
impossible. Now, to me, it is the only explanation."

Jake added, "If it gets us out of here, I'll buy the
story, too."

“It’s got to be the pillars,” Charlotte murmured. “Those
damn pillars that attract danger like a magnet each time we go near them.”

o0o

“I see it!” Lionel cried. “I see the array! It’s much, much
clearer than ever before. I’m not sure what happened. I’ll be damned, it’s
actually beautiful!”

How could Lionel be surprised by its beauty? Michael
wondered. It had always been so. “Yes, I see it, too.”

“I thought you did,” Lionel said. Then, all but dismissing
Michael, he turned to Charlotte. “Give me the book. I need it.”

“You haven’t understood a word in it up to this time,” she
said. “Why should you now? It’s more than reading. It takes an intuitive feel.
If anyone here has it, it’s Michael.” She held out the backpack. “You take it,
Michael. Open the gateway for us.”

Michael’s instincts told him to fight the temptation. He
sensed that if he opened the gateway, he would cross a bridge from which no
return existed, at least for him.

Quade’s gaze jumped from one brother to the other.

“I agree with Charlotte,” Jake said. His voice already
sounded stronger as the poultice worked its magic.

Michael shook his head. “I've never studied anything like
that book, and Lionel said he could do it.” He faced his brother. “We’ve never
been close because of the way we were raised. But we can change that.”

Lionel stared longingly at the backpack. “You’re right. We
can change.”

Reluctantly, Charlotte took out the book and gave it to
Lionel.

He climbed to the top of the mound, opened the book to the
section that showed an array, and stepped on the lights on the ground as he walked
between the pillars. Nothing happened. He placed the book on the lights and
walked through again.
Still nothing.

Dismayed, Michael watched with growing impatience.

“I told you he can’t do it!” Charlotte angrily removed the
red pendants she wore and grudgingly thrust them at Michael. “Take these.”

His gaze locked on the stones in his hand. “They’re
beautiful.” He reached into his pocket. “The color is the same as this small
one from Lady Hsieh’s tomb.” When he opened his hand to show her the small red
stone, all of them began to glow. Bright beams of red light shot from each one
skyward, meeting and intertwining. Rolling thunder boomed, and bolts of
lightning arched above the pillars.

“My God,” Charlotte whispered. “We’ve never had thunder and
lightning on this side; only in the real world. You’ve bridged something. Made
a connection! This just might work!”

Jake stood and moved closer to her. “You’re right. Michael,
go ahead.”

Lionel clutched the book to his chest. “What’s going on?
What are you doing?”

“Wear them, Michael.” Charlotte’s voice filled with wonder
and awe as she lifted the cords holding the pendants over his head.

With the philosopher’s stones hanging from his neck, his own
small stone still in his hand, a surging power coursed through his body. It
felt new, yet familiar, as if he had waited his whole life for this moment, as
if he’d found his purpose.

Without knowing why, he climbed up the mound and stood
beside Lionel. The pillars began to sway as if they might tumble.

“What’s happening?” Lionel cried.

Before he managed to answer, Kohler and the other villagers
walked out of the forest.

Michael’s flesh turned cold as ice.

The village men no longer wore camouflage clothing, but a
much older style, homespun, from the time of Lewis and Clark and the secret
expedition. They carried primitive weapons, hatchets, bows and arrows.

The gunshot wounds they had suffered were visible—some
gaping open, others puckered, a few had scabbed over. And yet, no blood flowed.

“It can’t be,” Lionel whispered as he gawked at them.

“How can they be here?” Brandi’s high-pitched hysteria
carried over the valley. Devlin slipped his arm around
Rachel
who stood petrified, her hands over her mouth. “They’re all shot up! We saw
them dead!”

Michael’s pulse thudded. Seeing the villagers that way
confirmed the suspicion that had grown in him, but one too terrible to
contemplate, one he had pushed aside as lunacy. He didn’t want to believe it,
even now.

“What the hell?” Jake strode toward them, his rifle pointed
at Kohler.

Kohler raised his chin high as he spoke. “My true name is
Ezra Crouch, captain and leader of our ill-fated expedition. And the young man
that you know as Will Durham is in truth Francis Masterson, the scribe who
penned the words that taught you so much about us. We have waited over two
hundred years for someone with the ability to open the gateway, and now we have
found him.” He glanced up at the pillars at the two brothers.
“Or them.”

“Impossible!” Jake shouted. “You expect me to believe you’re
some kind of zombie? You’re crazy!”

“He's not,” Michael said. “It’s the only explanation that
makes sense.”

“Where are the others, then?
The men who
came here thirteen years ago?”
Jake demanded.

“Dead,” Kohler said, devoid of any emotion. He and the
others moved closer as he spoke. “They were useful for a time. We learned quite
a bit from them with their modern armaments and current knowledge. But then, as
all newcomers do, they became exceedingly troublesome and irritating, and we
were forced to kill them. We used their identities since they were easier to
explain away than our own. They tried to fight us, but they had no chance. No
one can kill us. On occasion, our anger boils over and we kill each other. Or
those annoying beasts kill us, and we them. But we come back, always. To live
and kill another day.” He smiled.
“Today, for instance.”

“So you do know alchemy,” Charlotte said.

“If only that were the case,” Kohler admitted, “our lives
would be far easier. Try as we might, we have been unable to learn it. We do
not know what gives us immortality, but immortal we are. Soon, we will be in
the decaying world, your world. And we will become part of it until we reveal
ourselves in power. All men will revere us and want to be like us. They will
worship us. We will be more than gods to them, for gods are unseen and live in
the heavens, while we will walk among them forever.” His gaze lifted to Michael
and Lionel. “Now, if you want no harm to befall your friends, you will open the
gateway.”

Michael realized that if he opened the pillars and the
villagers went through it, there was no telling what evil they might do. He
envisioned them biding their time, learning the ways of the modern world, and
then slowly amassing wealth and power. After all, they had all eternity to achieve
their goals. With vast libraries of knowledge and people willing to do almost
anything if paid enough money, they would seek to master the alchemy that had
transformed them into immortal monsters.

Once that happened, if they promised immortality to the public,
they would own the world. How much would man give up to live forever?
His freedom?
His wealth?
His soul?
Some would see the folly and object, but who knew
how many would die before someone stopped the village men forever, if that were
even possible?

“I will not help you,” he said.

“You have no choice!” Kohler shouted. “I saw what you could
do. You must continue. Do you not want to become immortal? You people can be
our first conversions. You will go back to your own time, your friends and family,
and you will live forever. If not, you will all be killed.”

How many people had they already murdered, starting with
Abbé Gerard? Michael wondered. They had taken Vince’s life without a second
thought. Surely, other poor souls had stepped between those pillars in the
two-hundred-plus years they had stood, and they, too, must have been killed.
These villagers, these explorers from the Secret Expedition, might be immortal,
but they weren’t men any longer. They had become monsters. He could not reason with
monsters.

“Don’t listen to him,” said
Will
Durham, who was Francis Masterson. “I know him. Once he’s through the opening,
he’ll kill all of you and take
The Book
and the stones.” He glanced at
Rachel once, sadly, longingly, and then faced Kohler. “I will not countenance
any more death, Captain!”

“Back away, Francis!” Kohler ordered.

In that moment of distraction, Michael aimed his rifle and
fired. Kohler fell, hit in the chest. Michael dropped flat on the ground and
continued to shoot at the villagers.

When Kohler dropped, Quade hurried Brandi and Rachel away
while Jake, Charlotte and Devlin took cover and fired their weapons. The
villagers might be immortal, but they still felt pain, still felt a bullet tear
through their flesh and shatter bone. And that should stop them, at least for a
little while.

But Kohler didn’t stop. He rose again to his feet even as
shots to the head and legs rocked his body. He tried to move forward, but the
firepower’s strength forced him and the others to retreat into the forest,
their flesh torn even worse than before.

Michael and the others knew it was only a matter of time
before they regrouped and returned. Lady Hsieh had told him he knew the way to
free himself and others, not that he would find it, but that he
knew
it,
inherently, within himself.

She was right. It suddenly all made sense.

The ability he and the others in his family possessed
consisted of no more than that of a conduit between one world and another, no
more than a connection through which energy, knowledge, and being could pass.

He firmed his resolve. He didn’t want this, but he had no
choice.

He put down his rifle and stepped between the pillars. He
placed one foot on one peak of light that only he and Lionel could see, and the
other foot on another ray of light. Then he raised his arms, palms pressed
together, fingers pointing toward the sky so that his body formed a triangle,
the key alchemical symbol. Energy from the array ran through him and absorbed
his life force to enrich its own before it massed into a burst of energy that
streamed from his fingertips high into the heavens.