Michael Belmont and the Heir of Van Helsing (The Adventures of Michael Belmont) (14 page)

She stared off into the distance for a moment before turning her gaze to Abigail.
 
“You’ve seen some very dreadful things for someone so young,” the old woman told her.
 
“The day may come when you see more still, but you can’t live in fear.
 
And you must find your strength, Abby,” she said while giving her hand a squeeze.
 
“You must be strong.
 
You must find your strength and seize ahold of it.
 
And once you seize it, don’t let go!”

Abigail looked into the old woman’s eyes, and then down to the small, golden cross hanging around her neck.
 
It sparkled as it swung back and forth upon its chain.

She wasn’t sure that she liked this old woman knowing what she was thinking.
 
In a way it was comforting, but it also made her feel vulnerable- even more exposed than she already felt.
 
She
was
scared, and she was very,
very
angry.
 
And she didn’t know how to fix it.

The yellow
Do Not Cross
tape, which stretched across the front of the Belmont’s yard, was easily hopped over, and Michael and Liam did just that as Michael looked around to see if anyone was watching.
 
A few of the neighbors might have seen him, but he didn’t care.
 
Nobody was going to tell him he couldn’t go onto his own property.

“But it isn’t safe,” Liam warned him.
 
“Besides, your mother said that the firemen need to do an investigation.
 
What if we mess something up?”

“Stay out on the sidewalk if you want to,” Michael snapped at him, but he felt bad for it as soon as the words had come out.
 
“Look, I’m sorry.
 
You haven’t been treated very well since you’ve been here, have you.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, Mikey,” he said in a relaxed tone.
 
“You’ve had a hard night.
 
I can’t imagine what this must be like for you- losing everything.”

Michael smiled gratefully.
 
Liam had always been a good friend.
 
He was a joker, but was always there when you needed him.

“I’ll tell you one thing though, that sister of yours is on her way to a smacked bottom if she keeps trying to use me for a punching bag.”

Michael chuckled.
 
That would definitely be something he’d like to see.
 
But Liam didn’t appear to be laughing.

They walked around the blackened structure of the house and through shallow pools of ice and water.
 
A few familiar things could be recognized in the debris, but Michael had never seen such a mess.
 
He looked up to see the garage intact.
 
At least that had been spared.

“MY BOW,” yelled Michael as he tore off through the yard.
 
The garage door was locked, so he fished out his key and opened it up.
 
The bow was hanging, unharmed inside.
 
He took it down and felt a rush of gladness as he ran his fingers across its surface.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’ve been keeping that out here,” Liam smiled.

Suddenly, a dark form stepped out of the shadows behind them.
 
They both jumped away, eager to get some distance from whatever it was.
 
Liam tripped over Abigail’s bike and landed backwards on the concrete floor, knocking the wind out of his lungs.

“Oh, I’m sorry about that,” said a short, fat intruder in a Batman costume.
 
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
 
It was the Cisco Kid.

“Cisco, how did you get in here?” asked Michael, holding his hand over his chest.

“Through the window,” he said, pointing up.

“What?
 
With that cast on?
 
You should be at home resting.”

“The doctor said he wants me to move around on it.”

“Did he tell you to climb through garage windows?”

Cisco just grinned and shrugged.

“Well,” continued Michael, “WHY are you in here?”

“Because,” he told them urgently, “I watched your dads come in here early this morning, and they didn’t come out again.
 
I got worried about them and looked through the window, but they weren’t here, so I came in to check it out.”

“They probably just left again,” Liam told him.
 
“You must have missed them when they left.
 
Maybe you were in the bathroom.”

“No way,” said Cisco, looking offended.
 
“I never took my eyes off this place.
 
Michael asked me to watch things and that’s what I’ve been doing.
 
I even peed in the shrubs in front of my house so I could keep watching.”

Michael believed him, he knew what Cisco was like, and if he said he was watching the house, he really meant he was watching the house.

“Could they have left around back without you seeing?” Liam asked.

“No,” said Michael.
 
“That door and the garage door both face the street, he would have seen them go out.”

Cisco nodded.
 
“They came in and they never went back out again.”
 
He threw his hands up in exasperation.
 
“I don’t know what happened then, but they’re either still in here or they teleported away or something.”

Michael suddenly remembered his mother’s words.
 
“Hey,” he said to Liam, “this morning in the car, my mom said that our dads took that guy they caught ‘
down
’ for questioning.
 
Remember?”

“So you think she meant ‘
down
’ down?” he said, pointing at the floor.

“Could be.
 
If something like Finnegan's base can exist underneath McGinty Castle, why couldn’t my dad have something like that here?”

Liam shrugged.
 
“I guess it’s possible.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Cisco asked.
 
“A hidden passage or something?”

Michael nodded.
 
He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to tell Cisco, but he’d already proved he could be trusted, and he knew how to find things out for himself.
 
It would probably be a good idea to keep him included.
 
He’d prefer to stay on the kid’s good side.

“It’s the only explanation.
 
There must be a passageway in here someplace.
 
All we need to do is find it.”

The three of them looked throughout the garage.
 
They moved boxes, checked the floor and walls, and Liam even went up into the rafters to have a look around, but they couldn’t find anything unusual.
 
Michael got excited when he saw the old switch for the garage door that his father had told him was disconnected, but nothing happened when he pushed it.

A half hour of searching had passed, and then an hour, and they all stood looking at each other in frustration.
 
The Cisco Kid took off his Batman mask and wiped the sweat from his brow.
 
Liam leaned against the frame of an old Buick with tinted windows that Michael’s father had often talked of fixing up.

“Hey, wait a minute…” Michael said, reaching for the car door.
 
He pulled it open and there in the gutted out car was a rectangular trap in the floor.
 
A ladder extended down into the darkness.

“Whew!” huffed Liam as he jumped onto the stone ground at the bottom of the ladder.
 
“How far down are we anyway?”
 
He looked up the shaft to see the small point of light that they’d come through from the garage.

“ I dunno.”
 
Michael stepped down and leaned the Cisco Kid’s crutches, which had been tied together and strung over his right shoulder, against the wall.
 
“Looks like a hundred feet or so.
 
Why?
 
Gotten a bit out of shape, have we?”
 
He smirked at Liam, who just waved him off.

Not far behind them came the plump little Cisco, his cast thudding against each rung of the ladder like the dull tick of a clock.

Liam shook his head in disbelief.
 
“That kid’s crazy, going down that ladder with a cast on his leg.”

“Is this Hawk-Lady’s secret base?” asked Cisco with a scrunched up nose.
 
“I would have thought it would be up high somewhere, not underground.”

Liam smirked as they helped Cisco off the ladder and retrieved his crutches.
 
He looked at Michael.
 
“You ready to find out how mad our das are that we tracked them down here?”

“I guess so.
 
It might be Cisco who needs to carry
us
out of here by the time they get through with us.

The tunnel at the bottom of the ladder looked like an old mine shaft, supported by wood beams and rafters.
 
Electric lights ran along the roof.
 
The tunnel only went on for about fifty feet before opening up into an underground cavern.
 
Michael would have considered the cavern large before his exploration of the Egyptian tombs.

Over to the right, on the side of the cavern wall, was a solid metal door.
 
It was smooth and had no window or handle.

“What are we going to do now?” asked Cisco, hobbling up behind them.

Liam gazed at the door with his arms crossed.
 
He scratched his chin.
 
“I guess we’d better knock,” he said, but made no motion toward the door.

“All right, I’ll do it,” Michael told them.
 
“I guess it’s my responsibility.”
 
He stepped up and raised his fist to knock when a panel slid open just above his head.
 
A robotic arm extended and before he knew what was happening the round head at the end began to scan him from head to foot.

“
Identity verified
,” came a deep male voice.
 
“
Michael Belmont- access granted
.”

A high-pitched whir echoed through the cavern as the door slid open, revealing the chamber inside.

“Well, that was odd,” Michael told them, looking shocked.

They passed through the door and found themselves looking into another cave, but the floor was made of metal grating, and electrical equipment lined the walls.
 
There was also a strange hissing sound that Michael couldn’t quite place.
 
He was astounded.
 
How long had all of this existed right underneath his nose?
 
And he’d never known anything about it.

“YIKES,” shouted Liam, flapping his hands furiously around his head.

It startled Michael, who was already feeling jumpy.
 
“What’s wrong with
you
?” he reprimanded.

“Are you joking?
 
You didn’t see that huge bat that just flew past my head?
 
The thing was a monster!”

Michael looked down at Cisco, dressed in his Batman suit, standing on his crutches with a solemn look on his face- and then he looked back into the secret underground electronics filled cave.
 
It was all too much.
 
“I think you’re letting your imagination play tricks on you,” he told Liam.

“And I think you two need to have your eyes checked,” he sneered back.

They proceeded cautiously into the room to have a better look at things.
 
A large computer-display showed the slowly spinning form of earth, which was formed of fluorescent blue grid marks, and unfamiliar symbols marked various sections of the globe.

“Hey, look at that,” said Cisco, pointing off to the left.
 
A waterfall ran down the wall, making the strange sound that Michael had heard.
 
He started toward it, but stopped when the large monitor blipped.
 
He turned to see that the screen had changed, and a giant image of his father’s head was now peering down at them.

“Well, look who’s here!” Mr. Belmont said with a frown.

“I…I, uh….
 
You see we um….”

“Don’t worry about it.
 
We’ve actually been expecting you- otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten in.”

Michael decided his father wasn’t going to flay him after all.
 
“Dad…why didn’t you ever tell me about this place?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said, grinning.
 
“It’s much more exciting
this
way isn’t it?
 
Anyway, you’d better come down.
 
There’s someone here I want you to meet.”
 
He finally noticed Cisco, whose black costume had been blending in rather nicely with the cavern wall behind him.
 
“You brought Francisco with you?”
 
He raised his eyebrows, and gave Michael a displeased look he’d seen a thousand times before.
 
It seemed even scarier on a face that was dozens of times it’s normal size.

Michael shrugged and was beginning to stutter again when Liam jumped in to save him.

“Mr. Belmont, he’s actually the one who kind of had it figured out.
 
He saw you and my da go into the garage and noticed that you hadn’t come back out.”

“And just
why
were you spying on us, Cisco?” he asked with an exaggerated glare.

The boy looked petrified.

“I asked him to keep an eye on things for me,” Michael told him.
 
“You know, to help protect Hawk-Lady.”

“I see.” He eased his expression and Cisco drew in a deep sigh of relief.
 
All right, you and Liam come down, but Cisco, I’m going to need you to stay put.
 
You can sit there in front of the monitor and keep an eye on security for us, all right?”