The Swords of Babylon

CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

Hayden ran like the wind, noticing the chasm ahead, gauging its width and leaping across without hesitation. A tall man, who looked to be in his early fifties, stood above her, laughing as he paced around the black granite throne of Odin, finally spotting her and bellowing out a command.

“Kill her. She is too late anyway. The Shadow Elite will soon once again control fate itself!”

A man stepped into view beneath the throne, aiming a pistol. Hayden flinched, totally exposed, but then a Glock cracked behind her head and the man’s pistol flew out of his hand, struck dead-on by a bullet. Kinimaka had fired first, seemingly his last shot as the next one clicked on an empty chamber. Hayden ran at their attacker as a knife appeared in his other hand. She body-swerved as he lashed out and dug her stiffened fingers into his larynx.

He choked, but didn’t go down. He thrashed at her again. She caught the wrist and broke it, but the man was tough and he was trained. He too stepped in and delivered a blow to her abdomen that doubled her over. She went down to one knee. She sensed an elbow being raised above her in preparation for the final blow that would break her neck.

“Hey! Look up!”

The scream made her look sideways in time to see the spinning blade of the sword arcing toward her. The man above hesitated, half-backing off, and that was his downfall. Hayden caught the sword’s hilt and spun in a single calculated move, feeling the blade slice through the gristle of his neck.

Kinimaka made for the ladder that led to Odin’s throne.

Hayden started to follow, but at that moment she felt the onset of something huge beginning to build all around her. The sudden crackle of unseen energy made the air smell of static electricity, like ozone created by thunderclouds. When she looked up she saw a bolt of lightning strike the rock near Odin’s chair.

Crap, what had Akerman said about the doomsday device being a weapon that could harness the elements?

It was already too late.

Dahl saw the greater threat immediately and shouldered his weapon. The suited individual was at the center of all this and his capture would surely end it. He grabbed the ladder, hands and feet to each side and, within seconds, had slid down its full length. Reaching the bottom, he exploded into a fast run, seeing one of the mercs turn his way and rolling to upset the man’s aim. The bullet whizzed by. Bengtsson put an end to the threat with a head shot. It had been the last of the merc resistance.

The man in the suit had seen Dahl’s intent, but didn’t bat an eyelid, just continued to glare up at the roof of the volcano toward the starlit skies beyond. In his right hand he held what looked to be a long, thick bone. Could it be one of the gods’?

“We are joined,” Dahl heard him say, and then gawped.

A squall began to gust inside the mountain, whipping through the man’s jacket. The very air crackled. The bedrock began to tremble and shake. Lightning bolts struck before his eyes, fizzling and flickering, charging the air with electricity, swarming around the man’s body and shooting off up into the air and, beyond that, into the skies.

The storm to end all storms was coming.

Alicia ran straight at Russell Cayman, but then a storm of elements erupted around him and a discharge of energy flung her back. Was this earth energy? The vortex was erupting, the failsafes and conditions of the gods met at last.

“Are you crazy?” she screamed at Cayman. “You’ve switched on the fucking doomsday device.”

Cayman’s face was bathed in sweat and glory, and starkly lit by lightning. He clasped a giant skull in one hand, undoubtedly the head of Kali. Alicia saw bright energy bolts shooting through the eye and mouth sockets.

Cayman’s terrible visage turned upon her. “Now,” he said. “Now I have come home.”

The flickering tree of lightning climbed higher and higher, gusts of wind scoured the chamber. Alicia scrambled on her knees, for once helpless to do anything about it. The niches above trembled and quivered before her eyes, starting to shake in the throes of an impending earthquake.

At every tomb, a towering column of light shot up from the bowels of the Earth. The three vortexes erupted together, unleashing their potent earth energy in one almighty blast. Energized by the tombs, charged and activated by the bones of the gods, crackling bolts of incandescent energy blew the tops off every tomb and fired up into the clouds and skies. The core sizzled around the three men; Block, Cayman and Denney, enveloping them in a cocoon of white fire.

Hayden lost her grip on the ladder, fell backwards, and hit the rock plateau hard. Kinimaka made a tough choice, and jumped down to help her, cradling her head.

“Oh, Mano,” she whispered. “You keep saving my life.”

He bowed his head until their noses touched. “Without you there is no life worth living.”

Dahl struggled toward the bright glow, raging through the lightning, cursing when his gun was wrenched out of his fingers as he neared the suited man. His thumb brushed the man’s wrist a second before he was thrust backwards on his knees, pushed by the force of the gale, his slide only arrested by Bengtsson and the other two SGG soldiers.

Heads bent, they struggled to stand upright in the screaming vortex…

All three tombs started to collapse. First the cliff faces around them gave way, blocks of rock and stone shearing off and sliding down to crash and burst against the floor below. Then the niches themselves started to crumble, a cascade of smaller stones dropping like a devastating waterfall. Extensive cracks ran from niche to niche. Bigger blocks began to shift and rumble, the ominous shattering of enduring rock striking terror into the heart of everyone who heard.

Hayden’s eyes bored into Kinimaka’s. “We have to get the hell out of here.”

“Not yet.”

Kinimaka left her and started to climb the ladder, sword slung over his back. Hayden took a breath and followed, reaching the seat of Odin’s throne a second after he did. Kinimaka strode ahead and literally barged through the power that coursed around Zak Block, shoving forward until he stood face to face with the Shadow Elite maniac.

“Stop it,” he yelled. “Shut it off!”

The fanatics eyes flew wide as if just realizing he had forgotten to do that very thing. “It works,” Kinimaka heard him say. “I have the power.”

“Then prove it. Turn it off!”

The leader of the Shadow Elite dropped the finger bone he was holding, and at first appeared to try and concentrate and clear his mind. Then he closed his eyes and walked away. Finally, he slapped himself.

“I can’t.”

The earth energy, unleashed and unfettered at last, twisted like an electrically charged whirlwind high into the sky.

Unstoppable.