Carpathian (42 page)

“Oh, my God,” Charlie said in a barely audible whisper.

The yellow eyes never left Carl or Ellenshaw as it continued to growl deep in its chest. Then it suddenly whimpered and curled into a ball and started licking one of its hind legs. Anya spoke to the beast once more and then she stood and faced the men.

“I have to get him home to my grandmother or we’ll lose him. Right now the break isn’t that bad but infection is soon to set in if my grandmother cannot get to him. Will you help me get my friend back to the pass?”

“Your friend?” Charlie asked as he took in the vision of the curled-up and very dangerous-looking wolf. “That animal has to weigh close to a thousand pounds!” Ellenshaw said just as many of the old werewolf tales came flooding back. That was one legend that Charlie always took with more than a grain of salt because he knew the physical limitation of the human body and those of the standard wolf. Any change from wolf to human form had always been the most severe of impossibilities in his learned opinion.

Everett continued to eye the woman. Then his eyes went to the giant wolf lying at her feet. The boy continued to stroke the animal and talk to it.

“Answer me this first, and then we can talk.”

“We have no time,” she said pleadingly.

“You have time for this because it’s very important to a person that’s very dear to me.”

Anya looked down at Mikla and then nodded her head at Everett.

“That is a Golia?”

“That is Mikla. The Golia know not the old name of their species. He cannot differentiate the difference by names, but by knowing.”

Everett smiled as he thought of how Alice was going to react.

“If you’re done with your questioning, can you help me get Mikla back to Patinas before Ben-Nevin returns?”

“I hope you don’t want us to carry him, I don’t think it would take kindly to the offer,” Charlie said as he continued to stare at the giant Golia as it continued to whine and lick its wound.

“He will follow, I just need cover and you have to be it. It will take a while for Mikla to make the climb.”

“Well,” Everett said as he pulled his walkie-talkie out and tried to reach Niles once again but he received no signal. He knew he would regret not being able to inform Jack of his discovery. “Why not?” he said as he gestured for the woman to start leading the way.

As Carl and Charlie watched, the giant wolf slowly rose to its four paws and with the right rear one off the ground started to limp after Anya and the boy. Carl reached around and unslung the second AK-47 from his shoulder and then handed it to Ellenshaw.

“Don’t shoot anything, just point it and if that doesn’t work throw it and run for your life.”

“Got it,” Ellenshaw said as he hefted the heavy Russian-made weapon. “Eat your heart out, Pete.”

Everett turned and watched as the woman, the boy, and the nightmare-sized wolf disappeared.

“Stay as close to them as you can. I’ll be skirting the side to make sure we don’t have any unwanted company closing in from the rear.”

“Right,” Ellenshaw answered as he smiled at Carl. “Alice was right, they do exist,” he said and then left to follow the woman and her friends.

Right,” Everett said as he watched Ellenshaw leave. “Now all we have to worry about is what else she was right about.”

Everett shook his head and then vanished into the trees.

PATINAS PASS

The old woman used the door frame to steady herself as she gingerly eased her bad ankle out the door. She was careful not to slip on the morning dew that covered everything from the crags in the mountain to the high pastures to which all the men had left for two hours before sunrise.

The Gypsy queen had been dozing in her large chair with her feet propped on a small stool. She remembered hearing Marko snoring soundly on the small bed she had abandoned for the comfort of the chair. Her grandson had come in late and instead of going to sleep in his own house he chose to tend to his grandmother and rest there. He had been in a surly mood and she could tell he had been angered by something or someone. She had the distinct impression that he was troubled by something he hadn’t expected. He had mentioned that they could have visitors tomorrow to at least the lower villages by a group of Americans. And it was this issue that was troubling the man-child and she had picked up the strong vibes and instead of saying anything she had lain awake most of the night in worry about what the boy had done.

She stood in the doorway and looked south down the mountain and the feelings she was receiving became stronger. She winced as she placed too much weight on her healing but still heavily wrapped ankle. Suddenly it hit her like a sledgehammer blow to her brain. It was Anya. Mikla was with her and so was the boy, Georgi, and someone,
no
, she thought,
two someones were with them
. She tilted her head as she tried desperately for more information. Madam Korvesky was still feeling Anya’s fear of being caught but she also knew, or more to the point, felt, that the men following her were not the basis for her fear.

The old woman turned for the door and called out Marko’s name twice, very loudly. After she heard her grandson stir inside she reached up and grabbed the thin rope that was attached to a bell she had Marko install years before in case she needed help. She needed help now. She started ringing the bell with purpose, which should bring several of the local villagers in from a few of the lower pastures. A moment later she saw a few of the men trotting briskly down from the meadows just below the pass. Then she stopped ringing the bell when she felt Marko step up beside her while still tucking his shirt in.

“What is it, a fire?” he asked, his head about to explode from last night’s drinking.

“You smell of the grape, man-child,” she said as she took a tentative step out of the doorway. Marko reached out and took her by the arm to steady her.

“Is that what you woke me and the entire valley up for?” he asked angrily.

“No,” she said but waited till several of the men came bounding into her small fenced yard to explain further.

“What is it, a fire?” one of the men asked as he came sliding to a stop in front of Marko and his grandmother.

“Go quickly to your homes and retrieve your shotguns. Anya is here and she is in trouble. She’s close by, down there,” she said as she pointed down the mountain. “She is with Georgi and Mikla, they also have two men with them, they are not to be harmed. Bring them in. Kill anyone who is trying to harm them.”

Marko allowed his eyes to roam to the men after his grandmother’s rather brutal announcement.

“Kill them?” he asked.

“The evil men she is running from mean her harm. They mean us harm. Kill them all if they are near my granddaughter. Go now and bring her home.”

The village men of Patinas didn’t even look to Marko for guidance as they turned and ran for their own small and humble cottages to get their shotguns off mantels now cold from the morning cook fires. Marko was angry and disappointed that the men of the village still followed the old woman’s orders blindly and without question. He wondered if he would ever get that kind of devotion and respect when she was gone.

“You could have awakened me before you sounded the alarm, Grandmamma. This could have been done quietly and without having to resort to murdering someone who is probably lost from the resort and not chasing dear sister at all.” He turned to her in the doorway and escorted her to her chair. It irked him even more that she was smiling like a schoolgirl. “And why are you so happy? Is it the prospect of murder?”

“No, foolish man-child. I am happy because Anya has come home.”

Marko frowned as he went to the mantel and grabbed his old double-barreled shotgun. He broke it open and saw that the ancient paper-encased shells were still in.

“Then when she arrives we will offer sacrifice as in the old ways,” Marko said bitterly, “and feast as if it were harvest time, for this is the arrival of the prodigal daughter and the whole of the Jeddah should rejoice that she has come home to save us from the horrid and evil brother.” He slammed the double-barreled shotgun closed as he turned and left the cottage.

“Marko, I didn’t mean—”

Her words were cut off as the rickety old door slammed shut. She closed her eyes as she realized she had once again hurt Marko. She thought she could have handled the boy better after his parents died, but he had always been far too headstrong and jealous of the material things owned by those of the outside world.

Madam Korvesky knew in her heart that Marko, through trying to help his people, had allowed evil to enter their world and she no longer thought she could control the situation, and what was worse, control the Golia.

She was beginning to understand why Stanus was acting strange: the alpha male was feeling a change coming and he was preparing.

But what the giant Golia was preparing for exactly, she knew not.

*   *   *

Colonel Ben-Nevin kept his men well away from the main road heading to the pass. It was hard enough skirting the castle as early morning workers left behind continued to prepare for the next night’s grand opening. The colonel shook his head in anger as he realized the girl could be anywhere by now. The two men that had failed him so miserably were now back at their small camp nursing a broken nose and three cracked ribs. Of course he could not be blamed for the loss, not as long as others were so conveniently close by to blame.

“Colonel?” one of his men called out. “Sir, this just came in from Jerusalem.” He handed Ben-Nevin a fax from the machine at the local station.

“You can’t tell me this isn’t a government-run operation, we would be better off having Indians send up smoke signals.” He took the message and read it. “Recall the men, we’ll settle this problem from another direction,” he said as he crumpled up the message from his contact inside the Knesset. He gestured for his second in command to join him. “Gather the men, it seems we may have a friend in the area we didn’t know about.” He smiled. “And frankly, neither does he.”

The small man read the note after it was offered by the colonel.

“Who is Dmitri Zallas?” his man asked as he lowered the note.

“A man with as big an appetite as I when it comes to old things.”

“And where is this savior to our cause?”

“Why, he’s right down there,” Ben-Nevin said as he pointed south.

The man looked down the road that led to the valley and what his eyes saw in the morning sun was the gleaming facade of the largest resort hotel and casino in the Eastern European portion of the globe—the Edge of the World.

“Smile, my friend, sometimes we cannot complain about who our bedfellows are as long as they can help us and our people,” Ben-Nevin said as he gestured again, this time toward the north. “Besides, anyone with an imagination to build
that
will have an equally good time imagining what may lie in the mountains right above his head—after it’s explained to him.”

The man turned and looked to where Ben-Nevin had gestured above them in the mountains. “What in the hell is that?”

High above them stood the formidable presence of the new and improved Dracula’s Castle.

*   *   *

Niles Compton paced in front of the idling Humvee. The twenty men of the 82nd sat around eating their MREs and waiting for word as to when they would move to map the pass. Niles looked at his watch once more and then turned and faced Alice Hamilton.

“If Mendenhall can’t raise Jack or find out if they found our equipment with the satellite radios, this mission could fail before we even get a chance to see the pass.”

Alice folded her arms across her light jacket and then smiled at Niles. “Will’s all right, he has to be careful getting close to the resort and then he has to get Jack the message that Carl and Charlie are missing.”

“Where in the hell are those two?”

Alice reached out and patted Niles on the shoulder. The director wasn’t all that familiar with the vagaries of field operations. Oh, Niles knew the bottom line on what a mission costs and the organizational skills necessary to make a multi-billion-dollar operation run smoothly, but as far as his worry about field personnel was concerned he needed more practice—sometimes Alice wondered if Niles knew just how good every one of his people at Group was. She thought he just worried too much about his personnel.

Will Mendenhall approached Alice and Niles and he had Denise Gilliam along with him. She was eating from an MRE and frowning at the taste.

“Well?” Niles asked.

Mendenhall held up the small radio and tossed it to the director.

“Well, Sarah was right in her hunch, we are definitely having reception problems. I was able to contact the colonel and I managed after an hour to finally get the message understood. Colonel Collins suggested that we continue without the captain and Charlie. He said we should get Alice into the pass. If Everett turns up anywhere he said it would be there—the colonel said that is the one place where Mr. Everett knows we’ll be. He suggested we get to the pass and wait.”

“The colonel doesn’t feel it necessary for his team to drop the surveillance of the resort and join us?”

Mendenhall saw that the director wasn’t happy about Everett being missing or the fact that the colonel felt obligated to stay behind.

“He says that Sarah may have come across something that could be a danger to the entire region. Something about the venting of the hot springs, I couldn’t get it all because of all the iron ore in these mountains.”

Niles handed the small radio back to Will and then took a few steps away to think. He looked up as the twenty men left behind by the Airborne made ready for their foray into the pass. Niles shook his head and made his decision.

“As of right now we have little choice but to do as the colonel suggested.”

Alice released the breath she had been holding because she had been afraid that the mission to the pass would be canceled.

Compton looked at his watch. “We have only today to look things over, Alice, because tomorrow I want all my people secure in one place with the storm heading this way. If we don’t have radio reception now, just think how bad it will be tomorrow. No, we better get there and reconnoiter the pass.”