Demon Hunt (11 page)

Rhi let go of the dog’s collar. To her amazement, the animal tiptoed onto the porch to stand expectantly next to Bobby Wayne. “She’s ready to go, isn’t she?”

The dog sat on her haunches and thumped the boards of the deck with her tail.

“
I’ve owned hunting dogs for years, Rhi,” Bobby Wayne told her. “I’m between pets right now because I haven’t had the heart to replace old Elwood. This little lady and I get along just fine.”

After a brief discussion, the hunters left, the dog bounding happily through the snow ahead of the trudging form of Bobby Wayne. Rhi managed a weak grin, happy in the knowledge that at least Ellie Mae would have a fun day as she watched the pair make their way into the woods.

“
Don’t haul home anything you guys catch!” she yelled as they faded from sight.

Indoors, she set the teapot to boil and got out her black wool pantsuit to steam for Marie’s funeral the next day. She needed to get back in bed but settled for a restful cup of Earl Grey.

Later in the afternoon, Rhi completed her list of chores for the day, surprised at how easily she buried her mind in mundane cleaning and unpacking chores. Done with her work, the stack of books in the box and the papers on her makeshift desk called. Her addiction to the history of her adopted mountain town would be a welcome diversion.

She sat in the still beauty of the day, reading history and sipping a chocolate soda as a soft Jazz standard played in the background. Rhi examined the second book that had caught her eye in the bookstore. The first book in the pile, the Bible with the skull inside the cover, she had squirreled away earlier by stowing the offending volume in a gallon freezer bag and duct taping the package inside the safest place in her home. The same something that told her the Bible should make her uncomfortable also advised her that the tome should be hidden and forgotten.

Colorado Treasure
, a detailed history of the lost treasures of the state, lay in her lap. The book listed legends about buried treasure in every town and hamlet in the Rocky Mountains. A heading on page 120 noting that the next chapter was titled
The Gates of Hell
made the hair on the back of her neck rise as she studied the pages in fascination. The tale was familiar and had a realistic tone, unlike the rest of the cliché treasure tales that filled the book.

“…
During the 1560’s a group of Spanish soldier explorers wandered the Southern Rockies, searching for the Spanish narcotic, gold, to mine, smelt, and ship home to Spain to finance the country’s exploitation of the New World and various wars in Europe.

In the Pikes Peak region (not confirmed), the group stumbled upon a well-hidden ancient complex of caves. And much to the explorers’ surprise - the labyrinth appeared to be man-made. Against the advice of their Indian guide, who claimed the caves were cursed …

“
Aren’t
all
mysterious treasure caves cursed?” Rhi muttered as she turned the page.

…
They searched the caves, keeping to the foolish belief of all Spaniard explorers that every member of the indigenous peoples of the New World did nothing but dig up and play with gold. The Spaniards wandered in circles for days, in and out of the complex. Finally, they decided the caves held nothing of value.

The group had begun the trip back to the surface when several soldiers managed to shift aside the large stone towards the back of the tunnel. A cavern that contained a massive golden gate was revealed, the gate inlaid with ebony and rubies assembled into a pattern resembling monstrous flames. Human bones and weapons littered the floor of the cave surrounding the gate. The artifacts scattered among the rubble had been a part of a great battle.

The Spaniards became wild with joy at the sight of the discovery. They were busy counting their plunder and discussing how to pry the jewels out of the portal or remove the gates completely to carry off when a stranger approached, rising out of the darkness surrounding their campfires at the front of the cave.

A European, possibly English, the man dressed in the fashion of the Knights of the Crusades - a conflict that had ended two hundred years before. Oddly, the Spaniards didn’t kill him on sight for the sin of being not Spaniard.

Ignoring the advice of their terrified Indian guides, they allowed the man to approach and invited him to break his fast with them. After the meal, he told the group a strange tale, reproduced here in modern form, taken from the journal of one of the priests who accompanied the Spaniards:

“…
As the Indians whispered among themselves about a ‘ghost walker’ who fed on the spirits of men and animals, the stranger transfixed us with his beautiful eyes and told the story of the gates below. We didn’t think to ask how he came by these words, although I did feel my heart become heavy as he spoke.

The knight spoke about a once mighty people, lost in the mists of time, who conquered the world by the might of their warriors and by the knowledge and power of their magicians and men of learning. An age of glory overtook the Earth on the heels of this conquest- the height of civilization. The people of this kingdom knew no illness or poverty and lived great life spans dwarfing the lives of those they conquered.

I believed the man mad or of sinister purpose but I couldn’t speak. My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth as if fastened by nails.

He spoke of the arrogance of this people and how they lusted for power and godhood, searching far and wide for clues to the location of sinews of power that bound the world together. Then one day, some of the great minds of the kingdom discovered a means to control the doors of Hell itself, commanding the demon hordes to labor for them as Solomon did in later years to build his great temple.

I couldn’t help but wonder if the Hebrew king had a similar gate at his disposal. Control of the gates and the demons was accomplished by means of great crystal skulls the people crafted and enchanted over many decades. And the kingdom used the fell beasts of Hell itself to conquer the known world.

But the greed of the people grew. They had wealth, power and longevity but still were subject to the specter of death. The kingdom, swollen with power, sought to use the skulls to cheat death itself. The powers of Heaven, Earth and Hell itself rose up to punish those who would destroy all by destroying the balance of life and death, good and evil. The powers of Heaven shook the earth and ripped the fabric of the sky.

Then the Lord of Hell stretched forth his sword and sent forth his minions to destroy many of the survivors and the knowledge of the great kingdom. Their cities were drowned and destroyed, the many tributary lands destroyed in the cataclysm. The gates were scattered throughout the globe, hidden from the greed of mankind, as were the indestructible crystal skulls that were the keys to each gate.

Among the survivors, a lord of great valor and wisdom decided, along with his loyal servants and warriors, to set a guard upon Hell’s Gates against the day when men would come forth to open the gates again, for their own purposes or for the purposes of the Lord of Hell himself. The lord bound himself and those of his blood to the fate of the gates. The lord’s kin and followers were given the secrets of their people, wielding great power against the darkness. They were also given the dark secrets of longevity.

Down through the endless years, the mighty heroes of the world have been recruited into this Brotherhood to safeguard the gates and battle the evils the presence of the gates engenders in the hearts of men. The Brotherhood of the Gate has stood by for millennia to defend the gates until the Last Days when the gates will fly open and the Final Battle begins.”

The storyteller’s eyes glowed with blue light in the darkness as he told us we stood on the brink of one of the gates of Hell and could not live to tell of the portal. The knight stood and drew forth a mighty sword
to slay the men of my company, who stood, transfixed, except for myself.

Like wheat before the scythe they fell beside their booty gathered from the dust before the gate. He wept as he killed, even as he showed no mercy. I fell to my knees and prayed for our deliverance with my eyes shut against the slaughter of my companions. Sudden silence forced my attention and I opened my eyes to see the knight standing before me with his sword lowered.

“
You, my brother, I will spare,” he told me in his ancient Spanish. “In honor of the service I once gave your church, go forth and tell none where the gate lies.”

I fled the field of death, glancing back once at the stricken figure of the lone knight kneeling among the dead, his sword thrust into the ground to form a cross.

I traveled many months, some of them lost to me in my madness, until I was found by another group of my countrymen. From there, I gathered my strength and made my way to the settlements of our people. And although I told the story of the treasure, the gate, and the slaughter, I never revealed the location of the battlefield, claiming madness.”

Chapter Eleven

“
Lost civilizations, knights – and I thought
I
had lost my mind.” Rhi spoke out loud. She knocked the book in her hand against the chair arm to make a mental image disappear. Blackthorne, arrayed in the robes of a Crusader.

“
A knight! He’d be kind of hot in armor. What a shame I gave up on the knight in shining armor fantasy when I was ten.”

To get her mind off of helping Blackthorne out of his armor, Rhi rested her eyes for a moment and imagined what she would do with untold riches. Buy a nice place here in her new homeland as a base with maybe a few horses and a lot of acreage for Ellie Mae to run in. Travel the world. She sighed. The Pikes Peak region was a big area to search for a mythical treasure. She hadn’t had time to explore the mountains outside her front door. The other few thousand bumps in the skin of the world would have to wait.

She picked up another heavy book, a compilation of the
Cripple Creek Crusher,
one of the first newspapers in the town.

She flipped through the pages, grimacing at a front-page article detailing the death of an unfortunate woman from a crib, one of the cell-like rooms that lined the alleys of Meyers Avenue’s Red Light district. According to the report, the victim was a nineteen-year-old girl and used up by the men of Cripple Creek. The girl had been reduced to selling her body for less than the price of a shot of whiskey.

“
The poor thing probably had no choice,” Rhi mused. When she got to the description of the girl’s death, the color drained from her face.

“…
A lovely lass until drink and circumstance exiled her to the cribs of Meyers. The girl who used to drink and dance and make merry in the brightest dance halls on the avenue, was butchered by an unknown fiend, the same monster who has killed five other unfortunate women of our fair city. A monster that ripped the beating hearts from these young girls as a butcher would filet a steer. A phantom that walks among us as a man by day is hunting our women like a beast by the light of the moon.”

Her heart beat faster than a drum solo from a heavy metal concert. Rhi searched the book in earnest - scribbling frantic notes on a nearby legal pad.

After fifteen minutes, she sat back in amazement. A total of twelve prostitutes had been murdered in the same manner as Marie Collier in 1894, 1895, and 1896. Law enforcement hadn’t taken much notice of the murders, according to the wealth of accompanying articles on the subject. The authorities were busy with an epidemic of rabid animal attacks and freak weather. When the hunt began for the murderer, it sounded incompetent and disastrous. Search party members disappeared. Entire elements of the population of the town were excluded from the list of suspects because of social standing.

In exasperation, the prostitutes’ advocate, a prominent local madam named Pearl DeVere, hired outside investigators to find ‘The Phantom.’ When the investigation went nowhere, DeVere further horrified the townsfolk by bringing in one of the witches of Manitou Springs to consult about the identity of the murderer. With the great fire of 1896, the murders ended and locals assumed that the killer had died in the conflagration.

“
Manitou Springs and witches?” Rhi stared at the golden light of the afternoon streaming through the windows and then at the book in her lap. She began to look forward to meeting with Houston and Pam after work.

“
Work!”

She glanced at the silver watch on her wrist. Almost three o’ clock. Time to don the tuxedo shirt and mentally gird her loins for work.

Rhi dumped the book in the pile by her desk and headed for the bathroom, her legs numb from sitting so long. In route, she stopped at the closet and got a shoebox down from the top shelf after moving several other boxes out of the way. Pam was right. It was time to get out the heavy artillery. Her father’s P89 Ruger and a few clips would be the kind of security blanket she craved.

Although, she reflected upon opening the box, it might be a good idea to make inquiries about getting a license to carry the thing. Handguns made her twitchy – they were made specifically to use on other human beings and that bothered her. Flipping open the gun pouch, she examined the weapon and sighed. If someone in Cripple Creek intended her harm, after the episode in the casino, she doubted a gun would be very useful. But the illusion of safety the thing presented would be some comfort.