Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1) (35 page)

The cavern floor vibrated with each heavy step that brought the bear-elk closer.

Then silence.

Pierce felt the creature’s hot breath against his back. It was right above them. He squeezed Fiona and Gallo tighter and waited for the end.

56

Fiona’s weak voice reached through the silence. She had been speaking all along, but only now could Pierce hear what she was saying, or rather, chanting.

He did not recognize the words, but he intuitively understood that she was speaking her native language. He had wondered if she might be praying; now he was sure of it.

The sound was oddly soothing, and it was only after listening for several seconds that Pierce began to wonder why they were still alive. He could still feel the creature’s breath, knew that it was very close, but it wasn’t attacking. He raised his head, and in the dim light, he saw the large snout just inches away. Its nostrils flared with each breath, but there was no menace in its eyes. Instead, it seemed curious.

Still chanting, Fiona shifted under him. One of her hands wriggled free and reached up as if to stroke the snout. The bristly folds of skin covering its teeth pulled back slowly as its mouth opened.

“Careful,” Pierce whispered, knowing it was already too late to make a difference. Fiona already had her hand in the creature’s maw.

As she reached in, Pierce saw that she held something. It looked like a strip of wood, about six inches in length, with a rough texture. She deposited it on the animal’s tongue and withdrew her hand. “It’s okay,” she murmured, somehow folding the words into her chant. “It’s just a granola bar.”

Although the morsel was the equivalent of a crumb for the enormous bear-elk, it worked its jaws several times, and then tilted its head forward, nuzzling the trio.

“Sorry, fella,” Fiona said. “That’s all there is.”

After a few more insistent nudges, the creature seemed to lose interest. It turned away and padded back to the corner of the cavern where it had been when Pierce arrived.

“What the hell just happened?”

“She can explain later,” Gallo whispered. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Pierce felt no inclination to argue. Moving slowly to avoid upsetting the delicate peace, he rose to his feet and then lifted Fiona in his arms and glanced into the fissure for one last look at Echidna.

A section of its tentacles had curled in, but through the snake-like tendrils, he could see Kenner’s motionless form, or rather what was left of it. His clothes were dissolving, his skin starting to slough off as the hot acidic water slowly digested him. The tentacles were not just holding his dead body under though, but shifting and rippling in peristaltic waves to draw him further down.

Pierce wondered if this was the beginning of the process that created the hybrids. There was an entire ecosystem underground, with microbes, fungi and lichen, and even plants and animals adapted to life underground, all of which could have served as prey for Echidna. Perhaps she also consumed the carcasses of unlucky animals that fell through cracks in the surface and were washed into the Underworld. Echidna did not merely devour these creatures, she assimilated their genetic material into her own reproductive system, creating weird, and random, new life forms.

Maybe in a few weeks or months, a new hybrid would form—part-Kenner and part-who-knew-what.

Was it everything you hoped it would be, Liam?
Pierce shook his head and turned away.

“He’ll leave us alone,” Fiona mumbled into his shoulder. Her voice sounded distant, as if she was drifting off to sleep. “Bears and elk are important totems for my people. I told him we were friends.”

“Did you?”

“Uncle George, am I in trouble?”

“Trouble? What would make you think that?”

“We’re in Yellowstone. You’re not supposed to feed the bears.”

Pierce laughed, a little louder than was probably wise. “Just this once, I think we can make an exception.”

57

They stepped across the threshold a few minutes later, and Lazarus rushed to meet them. “You made it.”

“Told you I would,” Pierce replied.

“Anyone else in there we should be worried about? Or anything?”

Pierce shook his head. “Not today. But Fi needs medical attention, stat.”

Lazarus nodded and took her from Pierce’s arms. “I’ll start an IV.”

Although the big man was smiling, which was unusual to say the least, there was a haggard look about him. The ordeal he’d survived, and the pain he had suffered was hard to believe. But Pierce had seen it. Had seen the man survive the impossible. In a way, they all had. Pierce noticed Carter sitting on the ground behind Lazarus, evidently awake and alert, but the faraway look in her eyes made Pierce wonder if she was really there at all. Then she blinked, and turned her head toward them, once more looking like her old self.

Lazarus carried Fiona over to where Carter sat and gently set her down. Then, with a delicate precision that seem impossible for someone so large, he inserted an intravenous catheter into Fiona’s arm and started a saline drip. “This should tide her over,” he said.

“Bish?” Fiona’s eyes opened wide, looking up at him in awed disbelief. “Oh, God. I’m dead, aren’t I?”

“No,” Lazarus said with a grin. “You’re alive. And so am I. I’ll tell you all about it when we’re somewhere that isn’t here.”

Pierce gripped her shoulder. “Fi, I hate to do this to you, but the gate to the Underworld is still open. Can you close it?”

Her expression twisted in consternation. “I can try, but honestly I’m not sure how I got it open in the first place.”

“I can take care of that,” Lazarus said. “There are other ways to shut a door. Permanently.”

“Works for me,” Pierce said.

“I especially like the ‘permanently’ part,” Gallo added.

“I’ll plant the charges, but we should wait until we’re clear before detonating. Something tells me that one more explosion might crack open this whole valley.”

Pierce looked back at the steaming ground that had consumed their enemies. “As long as you don’t set off the super-volcano, it’s fine with me.”

As Lazarus stood to leave, a shout of protest echoed across the floor of the ravine. “No! You mustn’t do that!”

Pierce craned his head around and spotted Tyndareus, crawling toward them, dragging his wasted body along with one outstretched hand. The other was clutched against his chest, as if trying to protect an injury.

“You have to let me go in there.”

Pierce raised an eyebrow. “As tempting as that sounds, that would probably involve touching you again.”

Tyndareus’s strange blue eyes bulged, but then appeared to soften. He held out the hand he had been hugging to his chest, and Pierce saw that it contained a bunched up piece of velvet. “Please. It’s not for me.”

“What’s that? Lucky charm?”

“My brother. Castor. I must take him to the Source, so that he can be reborn.”

“Castor. So that would make you Pollux? Twins.” Pierce shook his head. “One of you is too many.”

Lazarus returned a moment later. “It’s done. Cintia can send the detonation command as soon as we’re clear.”

“Good. We’re out of here.”

“You really mean to do this?” Tyndareus said. “To destroy it forever?”

Pierce did not correct the slight misconception. “That’s what we do. Mostly so evil bastards like you won’t be able to screw up the world any worse than it already is.”

Lazarus lifted Fiona in his arms, while Pierce helped Gallo and Carter to their feet. As they started up the steep ravine wall, Tyndareus finally understood that they meant to leave him.

“Take me with you,” he pleaded. “I can pay you. As much as you want. Just name it.”

Pierce looked back. “I guess you haven’t heard. We raided your headquarters and seized all your assets. Everything. Cerberus belongs to the Herculean Society now. As a friend of mine said, we completely powned you.”

Fiona let out a snort. “Good one.”

“Thanks. Did I say it right?” He turned back to Tyndareus. “One of the first things I’m going to do is box up everything in your little shop of horrors and donate it to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. They may be able to find some use for it, but I hope they burn it all.”

Tyndareus didn’t reply to that, and Pierce was too focused on negotiating the loose earth to care. By the time he reached the top he had almost completely forgotten about the old man.

“You can’t just leave me here!” Tyndareus shrieked.

“Actually, I can,” Pierce shouted back. He turned to the others. “Anyone have a problem with that?”

No one did.

Cerberus Headquarters, Rome, Italy

Pierce kept his final promise to Tyndareus. The contents of the gallery enshrining the worst horrors of the Holocaust were boxed up and shipped anonymously to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., although Pierce held back the items in Mengele’s trophy case. Those, he burned.

All that remained was an empty room. A blank slate, waiting for a new story to be written upon it. Five days after returning to Rome, Pierce called the group together to discuss what shape that story would take.

They had returned to the hidden facility below Castel Sant’Angelo for a little well-earned rest and recovery, while the rest of the world briefly went crazy worrying about a possible eruption of the Yellowstone caldera.

Despite assurances from numerous geologists and volcano experts, the cable news channels stirred up a frenzy of fear and speculation about the possibility that the geothermal event being reported in the Norris Basin might be the harbinger of an even greater disaster.

By week’s end, however, the furor had died down and park rangers reopened the roads to the Norris Basin area. For safety reasons, the backcountry areas remained closed to the public, just as they had before the unexpected geyser eruption, which had triggered a discharge of acidified water into a nameless minor valley a few miles from the nearest trail.

The eruption had scoured all traces of Tyndareus and his men from the ravine, and Dourado, with the powerful Cerberus computer network at her disposal, took care of the rest, arranging for the recovery of the vehicles that had borne them into the park, and obliterating any paper trail that might have prompted an investigation.

Another slate wiped clean, but then erasing history was what the Herculean Society did best. And that was something that had been nagging at Pierce since their return.

He looked at the expectant faces, trying to think of how to broach the subject. “I guess I should have had some chairs brought in,” he remarked, hoping it would serve as an icebreaker. The smiles and gentle laughter told him that it had.

“Actually, furniture is one of the things I wanted to talk to you all about.” That got quizzical stares, and he almost faltered. “I…ah, I’m thinking about...well, keeping this place.”

“Well, duh,” Fiona said. “You don’t walk away from real estate like this. Not in Rome.”

Pierce stared at her, wondering if she understood what he was trying to suggest.
Probably. She’s a smart kid… No, make that a smart young woman
.

“You know how I feel about caves,” Carter said. “But this place has more of a basement rec-room vibe. I can deal.”

The comment surprised Pierce on several levels. Carter had hardly spoken to him since their return, though in truth, he was probably as much to blame for that as she. The memory of what had happened to Rohn nagged at the back of his mind. Carter had saved them both, but whether she had tapped into her ability consciously or not was something that Pierce felt he needed to know. If she couldn’t control it, then the next person she turned into a mindless drone might be Lazarus. Or him. Or all of them.

It was a question he would eventually have to ask, but he did not yet know how, and he suspected that Carter probably didn’t know how to answer it.

Even more surprising to him was the implicit acceptance of an offer he had not yet made.

“George, let’s cut to the chase,” Gallo said. “You want this to be our new headquarters. I think I speak for everyone when I say that these accommodations are far more…accommodating than the citadel in Gibraltar.”

Pierce looked around to see if Gallo was in fact expressing the consensus of the group. Carter spoke up again. “I’ll admit, I was a little hesitant about letting someone else call the shots for me, but where else am I going to get unlimited access to state-of-the-art equipment and unlimited funding—”

“I don’t know about ‘unlimited,’” Pierce cut in quickly.

“And research opportunities that are…well, unique.” She glanced up at Lazarus. “But the truth is, you’re doing good work. Important work. I want to be a part of that.”

“You all feel that way? Cintia, would you be willing to leave Brazil and come work here?”

Dourado, her piercings all restored and sporting magenta hair with all the curl ironed out, replied without hesitation. “I can live anywhere. But with the hardware here, I can do magic.”

Pierce turned to Lazarus, who merely nodded.

“Uh… well, I’m glad to hear it,” Pierce said. “But actually that’s only part of it. I’ve been thinking a lot about… I guess you could call it our ‘mission statement.’ The Herculean Society has a very specific agenda—to preserve and protect the legacy of Hercules. Our founder, Alexander Diotrephes, had very good reasons for wanting to do that, reasons that are still valid today. But I think he was so consumed with trying to hide the truth about who he really was, that he forgot the most important thing about the legend.

“Hercules was a hero, and heroes help people.” He saw that Gallo was about to comment, and he quickly added, “I know, some of the stories don’t exactly make him out to be heroic, but even today, three thousand years later, what people remember most about him is the good stuff he did. He used his power to help people.”

“With great power comes great responsibility,” Dourado said.

“Exactly. That’s the legacy of Hercules that we’re supposed to be preserving. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not thinking of quitting the Herculean Society or changing what we do. But we’ve got the resources to do a lot more than just running around hiding the evidence. I mean, look at what we accomplished. We took down a Nazi war criminal who everyone thought was dead, and we dismantled a criminal empire. I think we’re off to a pretty good start.

“But there’s more to it than that. There are threats out there that no one is equipped to deal with. Things that we might know about because Alexander knew, but kept secret. We can use that knowledge to deal with those threats before they reach critical mass.”

Gallo cocked her head to the side. “How exactly would that work?”

Pierce took a deep breath. This was the moment of truth. He reached into his jacket and took an envelope out of his inner pocket. “These are just mock-ups,” he said as he removed the contents and began distributing them. “Subject to change. Nothing is carved in stone.”

Surprisingly, Lazarus was the first to comment. “The Cerberus Group. Director of Operations, Erik Lazarus.” He held up a business card which, in addition to what he had just read, featured the same image that Dourado had found on the anonymous website of Tyndareus’s organization.

“I’m the Chief Scientific Advisor,” Carter said, showing her card.

“Like I said, subject to change. If you don’t like your title, we can come up with something better.”

“Cerberus Group.” Fiona wrinkled her nose. “Sounds like the name of a scary multinational corporation.”

“And we’ll keep all of Cerberus’s current underworld connections,” Pierce said. “If someone is looking for something dangerous, we’ll be able to hear about it. They might even come to us to find it for them.”

“I like it,” Gallo said. “Cerberus was the gatekeeper of the Underworld. I think that’s what George has in mind for us. We’ll be the watchdogs, guarding humanity from scary things in the night.”

“Something like that,” Pierce said with a shrug. “You can sleep on it if you want.”

“No need,” Gallo said. “Count me in.”

Fiona and Dourado voiced their support as well. Carter appeared enthusiastic as well, but instead of casting a vote, she nodded to Lazarus. “I’m with Erik. If he stays, I stay.”

Pierce turned to the big man. “Well?”

Lazarus gazed back, the furrow of his brow the only indication that something might be amiss. He held up the card again. “It says Lazarus.”

Fiona seemed to understand what he was driving at. “Erik, Uncle George explained it to me. I won’t tell my dad or the others. I promise.”

Lazarus frowned. “It’s wrong for me to put you in that position. You shouldn’t have to lie to protect me.”

“Then tell them,” she replied. “They aren’t going to be mad at you, you know.”

Pierce knew it was not quite that simple. Lazarus was caught between two worlds. He had found love and happiness with Carter, but the ties that bound him to his former life were stronger than the bonds of blood or brotherhood. If he revealed himself to Jack Sigler and the rest of his former team, the gravity of his old life would draw him back. It was probably inevitable. Yet, the fact that he was torn by the decision meant that part of him did not want to give up his new life in exchange for the old one.

“You can tell them when you’re ready,” Pierce said. “But you know what? Right now, I think we need to focus on new beginnings. The past isn’t as important as the future.
Tabula rasa
. A clean slate and a fresh start. What do you say?”

Lazarus looked at Carter and then at Pierce, and nodded. “I’m in.”