Final Scream (18 page)

Crow stepped out of the customized dune buggy inside NNC’s barn and scowled at the car parked in his reserved spot. Then he slapped his forehead. He forgot his wife, Jill, drove their six-month-old son, Ross, to the pediatrician in his Lincoln Navigator earlier that morning. So he was left with Jill’s car—a seven-year-old, Kelly green Volkswagen Beetle instead of his specially armored vehicle. He fished the key ring out of his pocket, placed his laptop on the threadbare front passenger seat, and started the tinny engine.

When Crow exited the barn, he noticed two things: the first was the clear azure sky peeking through the canopy of maples, oaks, and hickory trees; the second was
Geronimo’s
drone hovering above him. He felt a surge of relief. Since there were at least a dozen of Foster’s NSA agents surrounding Gabriella’s estate, it stood to reason a few of them would follow him and possibly try to take him out before he got there.

The idea of fending off an ambush while inside Jill’s unarmored Volkswagen Beetle worried him. He wasn’t a man of action like his two partners. He was geared more toward cerebral tasks, despite his Omaha Indian heritage. In the really old tribal days, the Omahas preferred warriors rather than thinkers, and since he was a reluctant fighter, he would have been left out in the cold. So the idea of putting his life on the line like Nick and Neo did every day wasn’t appealing.

Later, Crow was grateful his hour trip to Duneden was uneventful. He looked right and left before pressing the call button at the vacant gatehouse in front of Gabriella’s estate. He wanted in as soon as possible. He was vulnerable to attack outside the fence.

Honora responded quickly and opened the electric security gate from a control panel in the kitchen. The Bug’s tailpipe emitted wisps of black exhaust when Crow pressed the accelerator and putt-putted along the winding driveway. He remained alert, checking for invaders who might be hiding behind the lush landscape plants and the massive gnarled oaks. The lifelike gargoyle statues scowled over the estate from each mansion gable and fence post, so he was confident the men hadn’t attacked … yet.

The VW’s brakes screeched as he braked under the sizeable portico. Neo’s Mercedes was parked in front of him, which meant his partners were somewhere near the lake trying to entice Gabriella back to the dock. Honora opened the front door, bowed politely, and ushered Crow inside. He muttered hello and marched straight for the kitchen with his laptop tucked under his arm.

His nerves were frazzled to the max during his drive to Duneden, and now they kicked up again since he faced another possible attack in Gabriella’s estate. His hands trembled as he deposited the laptop on the rectangular kitchen table. Suddenly, his jaw went slack and he had the urge to slap himself again. What an idiot! He neglected to see if any of the NSA agents followed him onto the property through the closing gate. He wiped his brow and convinced himself the oversight was over and done with. There was nothing he could do to correct it after the fact.

Crow’s bungle was a costly one. Dozens of Jonathon Foster’s dangerous, heavily armed agents hustled inside the fence before the security gate closed. The gargoyles watched the men’s stealthy advance toward the mansion with their fiendish raven eyes.

Geronimo’s
drone circled the estate and kept tabs on the invaders, too. The computer deemed it was time to warn his maker about the imminent assault.

************************

Nick and Neo didn’t waste time with pleasantries as the grinning Hefe stepped from the evergreens and greeted them with a wave. Neo quickly parked in front of the porch, while Nick convinced the gardener to let them borrow his golf cart. Hefe agreed, and they raced away toward the Lake Griffin dock before the gardener could retrieve his tools from the back end.

The cart skidded and squealed sideways during the sharp turns along the pavered path to Gabriella’s dock. The thin stand of maples shielded them from the brutal sun as they sped down the meandering trail. It seemed like hours before they burst into the brilliant sunlight, when it actually took them less five minutes. Their speed took them headlong into the gravel in front of the dock, and Nick had to stomp on the flimsy brake to stop the cart before they all went for a swim. They missed the lake shore by inches.

But their close call was quickly forgotten as they scrambled onto the twenty-five foot aluminum dock. The sparkling waves were minimal, which was perfect for cruising and skiing in her baby blue, eighteen foot bow rider ski boat powered by a hundred and fifty horsepower Mercury outboard. Nick growled and stomped his foot.

“What’s the matter now?” Neo asked.

“Do you see her boat out there?”

“Uh, no. Where do you think she could be?”

He pumped his shoulders. “It’s impossible to get lost on a lake this size. Maybe she beached the boat on the other side of the island to catch some rays.”

Neo looked across the water. “Yeah, maybe.” He didn’t sound convincing.

“That must be it,” Nick grumbled.

Suddenly, Neo grabbed his forearm. “Hey, man, look out there. At the island.”

Nick shielded the sun from his eyes. Neo was right. Gabriella’s boat was docked on the unnamed island in the center of Lake Griffin, where once upon a time Nick’s father had conducted terrible military genetic experiments. She was probably getting a tan, but his gut hunch suggested otherwise. Maybe she stopped to warn a trespasser off the island. But that explanation didn’t mollify his hunch. As far as Nick knew, no one visited the island since the otherworldly
Shadow Feeders
kidnapped Gabriella and threatened to eat their way through the planet.

“We’ve got a big problem,” Neo said sarcastically. “We’re here, and she’s
there
, and we don’t have the boat.”

“Then I’ll have to conjure one for us.”

“Sounds good.”

Nick imagined a sleek 1954 Chris-Craft racing runabout that was not only fast, but cut a sleek, classic figure slicing through water. He pictured the beauty moored to Gabriella’s dock. It appeared, and Neo complimented Nick on his classy selection.

Neo jumped behind the wheel and studied the boat’s sleek racing contour from the inside. Nick was about to cast off the mooring lines and join Neo when a flurry of shots rang out, splintering the windshield. Three bullets pummeled Nick’s chest and drove him off the opposite side of the dock.

Neo drew his gun and crawled over the rear inboard-outboard compartment in the direction of the dock, but the intense automatic gunfire drove him back behind the console. A minor fire flamed up near the fuel tank, and Neo smelled the oily smoke before he saw the fire. His stomach tightened. If he couldn’t extinguish the fire soon, the explosion would take him to Crow’s Promised Land. The fusillade of bullets kept him crouched down behind the console as the flames spread.

Nick didn’t float to the surface, so Neo concentrated on saving his own bacon. He was normally a calm man, but his internal danger alarm sounded. He had to jump to safety,
but how?
With bullets flying all around him, his viable options were negated one by one. Neo swallowed hard.

The Chris-Craft was about to blow any second!

Geronimo had a bird’s eye view of the entire one-sided battle by the dock and was aware of Neo’s dire predicament. The supercomputer immediately maneuvered his armed drone to an attack position above the NSA agents preventing Neo from deserting the blazing boat.

Geronimo
spotted a white powerboat beached around the corner, where it couldn’t be seen from the dock area. That observation solved the mystery of how the ambushers arrived there.

The assailants hid in the gloom beneath a copse of trees east of the dock.
Geronimo
lost no time ordering an initial machine gun burst behind the seven gunmen. Their backs arched as the lethal spray raked their bodies and propelled them forward into the sparse understory.

That left two shooters. The men were perched on an ancient oak’s rugged limbs with a keen bead on the Chris-Craft and its sole occupant.
Geronimo
launched a small but deadly ASM missile that blew the oak’s trunk to splinters and sawdust. The magnificent tree toppled eighty feet, crushing the trigger-happy agents.

With Neo free to abandon ship, so to speak,
Geronimo
manipulated the drone to the mansion, where it spied dozens of gunmen closing in on the mansion. His creator was inside and had to be protected from harm.

Crow’s cell phone call notification blasted his favorite rocker throughout the kitchen, Thin Lizzy’s
The Boys are Back in Town
. He read
Geronimo’s
name on the Caller ID and immediately answered.
Geronimo
swiftly described Neo’s rescue and Nick’s mysterious disappearance. Crow didn’t give Nick’s vanishing act a second thought. His supernatural pal could take care of himself. He was clever
and
a powerful magician.

Geronimo
reported the converging NSA agents and suggested Crow tell the house to prepare for battle. Crow hung up and rushed into the mansion’s center hallway.

“House,” he shouted breathlessly, “prepare for an outside attack!” He saw Gabriella do this several times in the past, but he wasn’t sure the house would listen to him. After a long, nerve-racking pause, the mansion started altering itself into a defensive configuration. Crow rushed back to the kitchen and saw the rear entrance was now a solid wall. The same for the two bay windows overlooking the woods. Instead of a claustrophobic sensation, Crow felt completely secure.

All the mansion windows and doors were bricked, and the climbing ivy blanketing the exterior walls became an armored force field. While the house magically readied itself for combat, the hibernating gargoyle statues came to life, stretched their stiff black wings, and quietly fluttered toward the invaders.

Neo had no idea the mansion was under siege. He watched the beautiful Chris-Craft explode from a safe distance and felt the heat on his face and shoulders. He swam to the place Nick went under and searched beneath the surface for his friend, but to no avail.
Where could he have gone?
The lake current was minimal, so it wouldn’t have swept Nick from the dock area. Neo surfaced, spit out some water, and crawled onto dry land. He shivered as he headed for the golf cart. There was only one rational explanation for Nick’s disappearance.

Nick swam away.

But was that possible after being shot multiple times?

Absolutely.
With Nick’s supernatural genes, anything was possible.

Neo turned the cart around and steered it back toward the mansion, unaware he was about to be in the center of an all-out attack.

When he parked by the kitchen, he gawked at the missing door.
What the hell was going on?
He climbed from the cart and was about to draw his gun when a pair of agents clothed in Army jungle fatigues casually stepped out from behind a tree trunk and got the drop on him.

“If it isn’t Neo Doss! Drop the gun, please,” the short, squat man commanded.

The thin agent kicked the weapon away from Neo’s feet. “Prepare to die, Doss.”

Neo glared defiantly at the agent aiming the gun barrel in his face. “Go ahead, sucker. See if I care. We’ll all be dead in a minute anyway.”

The gunman grinned and looked up at him. “Oh, really? And just how is that going to go down, mate?”

Neo’s brows rose in surprise. An Australian.
Was the NSA recruiting foreigners these days?
“Your boss is a bonafide witch, and she’s headed this way to clean up loose ends. And you, me, and your buddies are her loose ends. My two friends are dead, so that just leaves me as the enemy. If I were you guys, and thankfully I’m not, I’d high-tail it out of here the second you shoot me, and maybe, just maybe, she won’t come after you,” Neo stated calmly. He had faced death so many times that he wasn’t about to panic.

A sudden shadow crossed over the men.

“Here she comes,” Neo announced, looking over the gunman’s shoulder toward the lake.

“Take a peek, Gunny,” the Australian ordered.

Laughing Boy spun in the direction of Lake Griffin, but a black winged form soundlessly swooped down and separated his head from his neck. Blood spurted skyward like a fountain before Gunny’s beheaded corpse plunked to the ground.

“Bloody hell!” the gunman shouted as he leaped away from his bleeding partner.

Gunny’s decapitation was Neo’s cue for action. He seized the Australian’s gun hand, twisted, and snapped the wrist like a dead twig. The man released the gun and cried in pain before Neo’s immense fist shot out like a launched SCUD missile and knocked the man into la-la land. The Australian’s eyes rolled white before he staggered back against an oak trunk. His unconscious body slid down the rough bark into a heap.

Neo collected Gunny’s weapon, too, and crept through the evergreen shrubs alongside the mansion to the front corner. He observed another dozen or so agents dressed in identical camouflage fatigues. They frantically searched the mansion for a way inside and were not having any luck. Anger and frustration strained their faces.

He grinned. Gabriella’s house had magically transformed itself into a fortress once again. The supernatural place was amazing. It knew enough to brick in the doors and windows without Gabriella being present to tell it what to do.

The gargoyles were missing from the faraway fence posts and the mansion’s gutters. Neo looked up and caught sight of Gabriella’s winged protectors. They were flying lazily in a circle overhead like vultures, as if plotting their next moves. Suddenly, their wings stiffened and they dive-bombed the invaders. The men scattered and fired their assault rifles at the incoming monsters, but the swift creatures easily evaded the bullets as they clawed the agents’ flesh to scarlet cole slaw before decapitating them.

 Neo stepped out of hiding as the gargoyles toted the corpses toward Lake Griffin. He cringed. The lifeless bodies would become sustenance for the lake’s
Mortal Eclipse
mutant population. He finally moved on. The mutants deserved a good meal now and then, too.

The front door reappeared and a distressed Crow rushed outside, glancing in every direction until it settled on Neo.

“Thank God you’re all right! Where’s Nick?” Crow asked, running up to his partner and giving him an affable whack on the back.

Neo described the deadly ambush and how Nick took a few slugs in the chest before falling backwards off the dock. That was the last Neo saw of him.

Crow stewed over Neo’s narrative. “What do you suppose happened to him? I can’t imagine bullets stopping Nick, considering his remarkable genes and everything.”

“I agree, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s missing.”

Crow stuffed both hands into his jeans pockets. “Should we search for him?”

“What we
should
do is wait. He’ll show up sooner or later, like always.”

“And what about Gabriella? Did you see her on the lake?”

Neo exhaled heavily. “It looks like she’s missing, too. Maybe he went to check on her.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Crow conceded, anxious to do anything to help Nick but wait. He was having a tough time swallowing the big man’s indifference.

Neo walked down the porch steps. “But feel free to hunt for them if you want. I’m not going to waste my time. Like I said, Nick always returns.”

“I’m going to get in touch with
Geronimo
before I decide anything. Since he’s linked to the local satellite and his drone’s video feeds, he might have spotted one or both of them somewhere around here,” Crow submitted.

“Why not?
Geronimo
is a great multitasker
and
eavesdropper,” Neo commented with a hint of sarcasm.

Crow disregarded the snide remark and bolted for the kitchen, where his laptop and
Geronimo
awaited him.