Emerald Death (8 page)

                                    *****

           
Paris
, France   1925

            Among the elite of Paris, he was known as Dr. Alfred Rodgers, an expatriate scholar, combing the archives of the Sorbonne for esoteric knowledge.  Only his acolytes knew his true identity.  But somehow, a stranger had found him.

Ragnarok spun towards the door of the laboratory as it crashed open.  A man stood there, a brown leather pilot’s jacket hanging open over a black turtleneck shirt, dark brown jodhpurs tucked into knee-high jackboots.  His dark brown hair was cropped close to his skull giving it almost the appearance of a dark skullcap.  “Ragnarok!” the man said, and it sounded like an accusation.

            “Who are you?” Ragnarok asked, shocked at the man’s impudence. 

            “I’m the guy they sent to stop you!” the man snapped, stepping into room.

            “Come no closer,” Ragnarok said, picking up a beaker and drawing back as if to throw it.

The man whipped something from off his belt and hurled it in less than an eye blink.  Pain erupted from the hand holding the beaker, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass and the splash of liquid raining down on the floor.  Ragnarok looked at his hand, his eyes growing wide.  Three of his fingers were missing and the flesh of his hand was bubbling and melting away.  He could hear someone screaming, and almost laughed at their misery before he realized it was him.  Then a fist slammed into his face, throwing him backwards. 

            It was only after he had hit the ground that he saw the nametag emblazoned across the left breast of the pilot’s jacket.  Hawkins.  Focusing his energy, Ragnarok channeled it through his ruined hand, healing the wounds as a burst of magical energy blasted towards the intruder.  The red bolt of energy struck the intruder in the chest and rocked him backward.

            But the strange attacker wasn't out of the fight by any means.  He grabbed a steel chair and sent it flying with unfailing accuracy, to slam Ragnarok backward against the wall.  It was only then he saw the hatchet embedded just above where he lay, still dripping red gore.  That was what the intruder had thrown at him that had cut off his fingers and ruined his hand. 

Anger boiled up in him.  He would have his revenge!

            Power blasted out from his good hand, knocking Hawkins across the room.  Two other men entered, one a giant, the other shorter and whipcord thin.  The giant roared and charged across the room.  Ragnarok fed on his anger, using it to draw power from the air around him.  He focused it into something hot and hateful, and then blasted it out at the charging giant.  The man crashed into and through the wall, sending up a cloud of plaster dust and splinters.  But the clumsy attack had been merely a diversion, distracting his attention from the third member of the group.

The smaller thin man moved forward chanting something.  Ragnarok fired a second blast, but instead of vaporizing the man, it harmlessly dissipated against a mystical shield that had sprung up between them. 

That caught Ragnarok completely by surprise.  “How?”

            “My secret,” the thin man replied grimly.  Suddenly something slammed into Ragnarok from behind, arms like steel bands encircled his chest, squeezing with almost superhuman strength, driving the very air from his lungs.  Ragnarok struggled, but being unable to breathe, his struggles were weakening.

The thin man was chanting again.  Ragnarok could feel the power building around him, but it wasn't enough... not nearly enough.

How did they do this to me?  Who are these men?

He focused his thoughts, sending out a blast of power that sent his captor flying back across the room and knocking the thin man to the floor. But the counterattack had done little more than stun the men.  He was too weak to keep fighting for the moment.  He had to escape!  He had to flee!

                       *****

            Ragnarok pushed the memories away.  He clenched his fist; it had taken several years for him to regenerate the missing fingers.  Human flesh was a prison that held him bound until death - and he was very hard to kill - but without corporeal form he was utterly powerless.  He had worn many coats of flesh throughout the ages, taking human form or putting it aside at a whim, but this body had been cursed with particularly bad luck.  His soul and this weakly flesh had been fused together by the disruption of his own power when Hawkins and his men attacked. He wondered if Captain Hawkins had emerged from his self-imposed exile to plague him once more. If so, this time the outcome would be far different!

                                    *****

            Mike Hannigan watched from beneath the tree canopy as the zeppelin floated past overhead, driven by the propellers of four enormous engines mounted around its prodigious girth.  They didn't dare attempt another flight.  Hopefully, the Nazis believed they were dead or stranded with mechanical difficulties.  He didn't think he'd be quite so lucky if they encountered more fighter planes.

After it passed, Hannigan went to join Shotsky, who stood over Degiorno as he redrew the map to the lost city from memory.  He wondered what they would find there. 

Hannigan was surprised by his interest.  He had never cared that much about such things - moldy old ruins and such - when he had been in school.  History had never been his strongest subject.

But a lost city...?

Mysteries hidden beneath the mists of time?  The prospect of possibly finding some long lost treasure was strangely exciting, like something out of a dime novel, and him the hero of the hunt.  It was stirring his blood in a strange way that wasn’t at all unpleasant.

Hannigan glanced over a shoulder to where the copper-haired pilot was still tending to her plane. …Maybe it wasn't the treasure hunt that was stirring his blood after all.

Chapter Nine

Niles McKenzie looked up as a shadow passed over the water.  The big silver cigar shape of the zeppelin floated past overhead, its altitude low enough that he could easily distinguish the red, white and black Nazi emblem on its tail fins.  McKenzie had a bad feeling about the airship.  It was a symbol of the new Germany - a nation built by a fiendish demagogue who had masterfully played on the fears and prejudices of Germans still hurting from economic collapse that had followed their defeat in the Great War.  There had been others like this Hitler - criminals and false messiahs, who had tried to seize power in the early days after the War, and some of them doubtless would have succeeded in their schemes if not for the bravery of Captain Hawkins and his men.  Now Hawkins was gone and there was no one left to battle this insidious enemy.  McKenzie felt almost as if the silvery airship was a ghost from his past, reaching out to draw him once more into the struggle.

            He could feel his heart beating faster at the thought.  A part of him was excited by the thought, but part of him was appalled.  Did he truly miss the danger; the excitement; the rush of adrenaline?  McKenzie hated to think so.  He wanted the peaceful life of a missionary and teacher. 

            Or did he? 

McKenzie didn’t often think about the old days; those memories summoned the ghosts.  And yet, the ghosts had only come after the fighting was done.  When he and Hawkins and the others had fought their war around the globe, as tragic as some of the battles had been, he had been able to endure and drive on.  It was only when the Fighting Hawks had been disbanded and scattered to the Four Winds that the dreams had begun.  Perhaps that was what the ghosts were trying to tell him: never stop fighting.  Maybe the best way to honor their memory was to keep the war alive, even if it meant more sacrifices.

            Of course, there was Bridget’s welfare to consider.  She needed to be moved back to civilization, to a place where she didn’t have to live in fear of wild animals and wilder men, or of terrible diseases that could strike without warning and disfigure, paralyze or kill their victims.  More than that, she needed a real family, real friends - something he could never give her.

It might be better if he went back to what he had once been, a warrior cleric like the Templars of old.  Better for himself, better for Bridget, better maybe for the world.  Yet, he hesitated.  He had worked so long to become the person he now was - a good person, the person he wanted to be - could he give that up?  Could he be that person, and still be the warrior priest? It was an absurd notion; change without change.

            He gazed up again at the retreating zeppelin.  Perhaps the decision would be made for him.

                       *****

Bridget Ellen O’Malley watched Mike Hannigan from a distance as he and the Russian made plans, and just now, that was where she wanted to keep things: at a distance.

She was puzzled by her feelings for Hannigan.  Just a glance from him sent warm sensations flowing to parts of her body that embarrassed her.  She had never been with a man, but nonetheless recognized the stirrings of desire - “lust,” her adopted father would call it.  She was aware of her naiveté; not only was she inexperienced in matters of the heart (or was this simply a matter of the flesh?) but she had never gotten so close to any man the way she had with Hannigan in the past few hours. She tried to hide her feelings behind sarcasm, but wondered whom she was really trying to hide from.

I’ve fallen in love with Mike Hannigan.

The realization came like a rap of knuckles on the head of a wayward child.

A rational voice inside tried to protest, but her heart won out; I’m in love, she thought.  And I love this feeling.

She had to know whether this was a mutual attraction, or just unrequited infatuation, but how to find out?  She knew it wouldn’t do to just blurt out a proclamation of undying love; that would most likely scare him off.  No, she had to figure out a way to make sure that Hannigan felt the same for her, that he wanted her as badly as she did him.

She shook her head.  She certainly couldn’t discuss the subject with her adopted father.  But there was one of the village women, Nekoosa, who might have some advice.  Nekoosa had been her nanny since her parents had died - not quite a mother figure to McKenzie’s fatherly role, but the closest thing to it - and she had taught Bridget what to expect as her body had ripened from that of a young girl into that of a young woman.  Yes, Nekoosa would be able to advise her on how to act upon her feelings once they had reached the Mission.

An unconscious smile cracked her determined expression as she continued pretending to tinker with the engine. Yet beneath the flutter of her heart, there was another voice spinning dire alternatives. Hannigan might not even reciprocate her feelings; she might be nothing more to him than a conquest and a night of distraction.  He was an adventurer, looking for excitement and buried treasure, not a lover or wife.  Indeed, she wasn’t competing with another woman for his affections; her rival was the Emerald of Eternity.

                                    *****

            “So do you still think Degiorno can be trusted?” Hannigan asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

            “That is a very good question, my friend.”  Gregor shrugged.  “Once, I trusted him implicitly.  Now… well, I do not know.  I am tempted to say ‘not at all.’  He wants the treasure, so he will be as honest as he needs to be to get it.”

            “I had a feeling you were gonna say that.”

            Gregor spread his hands.  “You asked.  I gave you the truth.”

            “That doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.”

            “There is a proverb, my friend.  'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.'”

Hannigan scratched his light brown mane.  “Which is Degiorno?”

            “Exactly.  We will keep him very close; close enough that he will not be able to stab us in the back.”

            “I'm still more worried about those Nazis.  After all, they have the original map.”

            “Good news, boys,” Bridget Ellen O’Malley said as she walked up to them.  “I’ve checked the plane over good.  Except for some scratches along the top edge of one wing, she’s unharmed.”

            “That’s good to know.” Hannigan replied earnestly, not taking his eyes off of her.  He seemed on the verge of saying something more, but instead his speechless stare grew into an uncomfortably long silence.

Bridget blushed beneath her freckles, unable to match her green eyes to his blue. For his part, Hannigan felt his pulse start racing; he hadn't felt this nervous since just before the big high school dance.

            Shotsky rolled his eyes.  “How long before we can take off?”

            “We can take off any time we want, but the moment we do, we'll be waving a red flag.  That zeppelin will spot us for sure, and if they pick us up, it's a good bet they'll send more fighters after us. If that happens, I don’t think we can afford to count on Mike to shoot them down this time.  Surprise and dumb luck can only carry you so far.” Bridget's tone stopped just short of disparaging Hannigan's earlier heroics.

            “Mike there has done okay.” Shotsky grinned, recognizing the (probably subconscious) motive for her diatribe.

            “Mike is lucky he isn’t dead!”  Bridget replied, her cheeks flushing and her voice rising.  “Lord knows he should be.  What happened up there was about the only good luck I have seen him have.”

            “Actually, I've one other piece of good luck,” Hannigan intoned.

            “Really?” she asked, arching one eyebrow at him.  “What was that?”

            He took her shoulder and gently turned her until they were face to face.  Then he slid his arms around her and drew her body against him, feeling her curves molding to his body as his lips found hers in a long passionate kiss.  When he broke the kiss, they were both left gasping for breath.