'Be careful,' Stroud called out to him.
'You, too, Stroud, and good luck. I'm sorry about the ... the...'
'Good luck is sufficient!' shouted Stroud, who sent the rotor blades into whirring battle with the wind. As the chopper lifted off, the image of the monster with snakes feeding out of its eyes filled Stroud's vision ahead. He tilted the chopper into the sky streaked with the wretched sight, slicing through it.
Kendra Cline stared down at Nathan, who was fast disappearing behind them. She felt herself still inwardly trembling at the touch of the gun at her temple, and yet she'd have preferred the quick death of the bullet to what the zombies might have done to her. She, like Nathan, now felt strange toward Stroud, that he was somehow different, because he had been singled out by the evil emanating from the pit, the evil with such power to reach out to take what it wanted from them.
Stroud felt her eyes on him now. He realized that she hadn't seen the apparition of the creature in the night sky, that it was meant only for him. He understood why Nathan might feel threatened by him, but now he was getting the same feeling from Kendra, and this he didn't quite know how to deal with.
'You have no reason to fear me, Kendra,' he told her.
She breathed deeply, filling her lungs, holding on to her inner emotional turmoil. Her voice broke when she said, 'I ... I know that.'
He put a hand on hers, but she pulled it slowly away. 'Keep it uppermost in your mind, no matter what happens, Kendra, that what I do is for us all. I will not bargain with this thing, not for my life, not for yours, not for any individual.'
'I think I understand,' she said, then turned to stare out into the surrounding darkness.
Stroud brought the chopper around, searching for the rooftop of the Museum of Antiquities, which he soon found.
As the helicopter lowered over the mammoth rooftop, Stroud steering by streetlamps and intuition, Kendra played out the events of the past few days in her head, but events and actions and words seemed all as confusing a haze as the night's quickly descending fog over the city. The ominous fog swirled and eddied, and it felt like her thoughts. Was Stroud so very different from other men that this evil being in the pit sought him out to play games with? What kind of man was Stroud, she wondered as she stared at the maw of the blacktopped roof. It appeared from where she sat that Stroud was taking her straight down into Dante's Inferno with him, there to abide somewhere between the sixth and seventh rings, she supposed, and she wondered at the dubious honor he had imposed on her, making her his companion in this occult contest. But she was now so tired and weary of thought that she almost welcomed his telling her when and where to move.
The helicopter's whir set her mind to droning with its even, calming sounds, so different from the horror of its mad gyrations before. Stroud, too, was like the machine: one moment loud and rancorous and the next quiet, gentle and caring. Yet, he was all a mystery; a man who seemed to have more than one past, a man filled with the life of the race itself, like some Greek dancing perpetually in the sand of the ages, or a mad cossack doing daredevil feats on the back of a charging horse.
The museum grounds were littered with refuse and white, tumbling things that looked innocent at first glance but took on a sinister appearance when stared at unblinkingly. McDonald's coffee cups, newspapers lost to the wind, sandwich wrappers had become apparitions that walked a ghostly landscape which by light was mere brush and trees and lawn that surrounded the Museum of Antiquities, where, deep inside, by the light of their gooseneck lamps, Drs. Leonard and Wisnewski were working diligently on answers to questions they did not know how to pose.
Kendra only half heard the snap of the seat belt that held her, felt only the warmth of Stroud's powerful arms go round her as he lifted her from the helicopter. She felt cradled, safe, and her mind begged for sleep, which Stroud now fostered in her. Complicated, confusing man, she thought, but quietly she allowed herself a moment's peace freeing her mind of questions and fears.
-12-
Abe Stroud found the two archeologists obsessively working, surrounded by half-eaten sandwiches and unfinished Cokes. Stroud asked them how well it was going and they looked up, a little startled, not having heard them approach, with no knowledge the helicopter was on the roof.
'I think we're onto something,' Wiz said, 'but it's taking time, Abe. Patience ... patience is rewarded.'
Stroud worked his big hand across his wide shoulder to the nape of his neck, squeezing, headachy. 'Only problem is, Doctors, we have a very impatient audience waiting for us, and worse, an even more impatient demon. Tell me what you've got thus far...' Stroud began looking over their shoulders.
'I'm going to call the hospital,' Kendra called out from Wiz's office.
Stroud grimaced. He'd hoped she might sleep. He wondered how she was doing. But he must turn his attention back to Wiz and Leonard.
Inside Wisnewski's office, Kendra contacted colleagues at the hospital. 'We're going to require as much biochemical weaponry as we can get from you, Karl,' she was saying when Stroud poked his head in.
Stroud said, 'Wiz has found something very interesting in the literature--amazing really. Can you come?'
'Be with you in a minute.'
She joined them soon after. Wisnewski called her to sit beside him. He was saying, 'Just a primitive drawing, not much more than a cave drawing of a behemoth with gnarled fangs and snakes crawling from its eyes, but it was given a name--
'Ubbrroxx,' said Stroud, repeating the strange name several times.
'Careful,' said Kendra, 'careful not to unwittingly invoke it.'
'Yes, well...' began Wiz, sensing some tension between them. 'Abe's told us what happened at Nathan's building. In any event, it would appear that if we do not soon go to it, Stroud, it will come to us. Is that not right?'
'That's my belief.'
'What was this ... this Ubbrroxx to the Etruscans? A deity?' asked Kendra, agitation dappling her pupils with fear.
'A dark deity, a god of the underworld, much as our Satan,' said Leonard, wiping clean his glasses. 'Here is a photo of a cavern wall drawing discovered in Tuscany a few years ago.'
'My God,' said Kendra, 'it's ... it's...'
'What we saw at One Police Plaza, I know,' replied Stroud.
'It is also what I saw,' said Wiz, 'the day I hefted the pick at you, Stroud. It ... it somehow became you in my mind--all a jumble. Seeing it like this again, it all came back to me. It leaped out after you, was on your back when you were blacked out. I went to strike it, but it seemed to be inextricably mixed with your own tissues, and when I hesitated ... well...'
'This thing is so vile,' said Leonard, trembling.
'Stroud's blackout no doubt saved him from the menacing of the creature,' said Kendra, trying to understand it all, but deciding that she would never be able to do so.
'Good,' said Stroud, putting a firm arm around Kendra, 'good!'
'What's good? We've got a crude picture of it is all!' said Wiz.
'We now know its name, and we know what it looks like.'
'Don't think for a moment you know what it looks like, Stroud,' said Leonard. 'This is very crude, and besides, if you look on the real thing you'd be blinded by its sheer ugliness, according to the written word. Most likely, this was drawn by a blind man, giving directions to an artist.'
'Perhaps that wizard you spoke of, Leonard,' Wiz said.
'Wizard?' asked Kendra.
'The author of the parchment. Very astute man.'
'What does he tell you?' asked Stroud.
'The creature can take many forms, control many lesser beings, including men.'
'Creating instant zombies,' said Wiz with a snort.
'He tells us that the true nature of the beast is so vile, so ugly, that it would burn out the human heart and soul to behold it in its natural state.'
'Only what we might expect from an underworld deity,' added Wiz.
