carefully perforated whale teeth.
'Well, we begin to know a little more about these people,' said Leonard, taking the beautiful necklace from Wiz and staring through his face mask before Wiz placed it into a pouch and put it away.
Then suddenly all the bones in the place began to rattle and move and rise. They were now being hurled at the party of the living that had dared to enter this death ship. The bones struck with great force, the skulls hurtling at them with such ferocity that they backed from the area, unable to go on. From the portal of the other room, they watched the dance of the bones, which was more like flight of the bones as they hurled round and round the room, creating a dense curtain, a kind of energy field that held Stroud's party in check.
'What do we do now?' asked Kendra.
'Take out a wall,' said Stroud, angry. He hurled himself at a wall and it was like going through cardboard. He was on the other side, drenched in spores and fungi that had exploded into a shower of dust with his effort. 'We need to move up from here,' he told the others, jabbing at the overhead planks. It took only the slightest hit to bring down the roof over them. Cascading debris rained around them, the dust creating a fog that was eerily lit by the skull as Stroud lifted it and held it up, moving it in a circular fashion here. The light penetrated the dust cloud only so far and gave them no warning of the hellish creatures the other side of the dust. Flying at them from nowhere came some thirty enormous moths, the size of cub bears, with huge mandibles, trying desperately to tear away their masks, perforate their clothing and get at the flesh inside. Their wings beat like small claps of thunder, and a screech at a piercing level filled the room as the power of their wings stirred the grainy dust cloud into an even greater pitch of confusion; this cut their sight so badly that they could not see one another.
'Stroud!'
'Kendra! Kendra!'
'Leonard, are you there!'
'Use your weapons! The gas!' shouted Kendra, who fired away.
'Don't let them get your clothing!'
'Son of a bitch!'
The gas sent one and then another and another of the batlike moths crashing to the floor and into the walls, sending up an ever-thicker curtain of mold and flying bacteria and dust particles. Stroud searched the darkness blindly, feeling his way, careful not to let the skull from his grasp. He called out to Kendra, and she to him, until they found one another. Wiz and Leonard joined them.
'Is everyone all right?' asked Kendra.
'One of them tore a rent in my suit,' said Leonard, shaken.
'I've patched it,' said Wiz, 'but I'm not so certain that will help.'
'How do you feel, Dr. Leonard?' asked Kendra.
'Aside from having my brains and my bowels emptied by fear?' he replied. 'All in one piece. So far, I'm all right.'
Kendra examined Leonard's gear, giving a thumbs-up sign, but saying, 'At the first sign of trouble with your breathing, Doctor--'
'I'll let you know, Dr. Cline.'
'Be certain that you do.'
'We've got to get above,' said Stroud.
'How will the timbers hold us?'
'Good question. Maybe we'd best hold up here a moment, take time to gather our bearings,' suggested Wiz.
'Yeah, time for a rest,' said Leonard, flopping down.
Kendra watched Leonard closely, concerned about his condition. It may be more than fatigue, in which case he'd have to come out of his protective wear to take a hypodermic.
'All of you stay put. I'm going ahead with the skull.'
'But, Stroud!' began Wiz.
'No arguments! It's between Esruad and that thing in there now. Remain here. It's likely to concentrate its efforts on me and the skull if you stay back.'
Kendra rushed to him, holding on. 'Come back to us, Abe Stroud.'
Ignoring her plea, he tossed a rope overhead and caught a large wooden beam. It looked as if it would hold as he put his weight against it, pulling himself up and up until he was through the opening. He called down, 'If I'm not back within the hour, you're all to vacate the ship and the tunnels, get back to the surface any way you can.'
'We won't leave you, Stroud!' she cried.
'You do as I say, do you hear! Dr. Wisnewski, Leonard.'
'We will do what we must,' said Wiz, a sadness in his voice.
'Contact Nathan. Bring him up to date,' said Stroud to them. 'Plead for more time.' He looked at his gauges: air was running out along with time.
'Take some extra of the gas,' said Kendra.
But Stroud declined, saying, 'No, you may need it to ward off any further attacks.'
'You're sure you want to play it this way?'
'Absolutely, yes.'
'Alone ... you'll be all alone,' said Kendra.
He hefted the orange-glowing skull of crystal. 'Not entirely'
Stroud had found some side timbers which were almost firm, but he slipped again and again, and the sounds coming from beneath his feet threatened to send him crashing through to the deck below, when suddenly he felt a strange weightlessness and he realized that he was hovering above the boards over which he walked, and that Esruad's crystal skull was at his feet, guiding his steps, creating the magic of walking on air.
He moved along the black wall of the ship, thinking of his ancestry: his grandfather, a great man whose dark secret was that he stalked and killed vampires. Stroud's grandfather had descended from the man who had destroyed Dracula, Van Helsing, whom the world remembered as a fictional character. Stroud's family knew better. Stroud's thoughts of his grandfather brought a quiet calm, and then his grandfather's voice rose from within his mind, saying,
Stroud knew that he could trust his grandfather's voice as he had in the past. All of his own inner fears and doubts about the power inherent in the crystal skull began to fade as he realized that he, Stroud, carried the genes of the Etruscan who had committed himself to the eternity of the skull.
In an excited state now, Stroud recalled the teachings of his grandfather. That which seemed impossible, even incomprehensible to most men--supernatural beings at work in the world--was in fact quite simple, strangely, even 'natural.' How else to explain the transmigration of the souls of men, how that very soul could be stripped from a man, or encased in crystal as had become the fate of Esruad? The battle for the soul was the oldest and most fundamental fought by mankind.
And now it was being fought again...
Christ's own soul had risen from the blood of the man he had become. In man's own veins lies his final destination.
Somehow, via some unnatural, sinister alchemy, dark forces had appeared in the world, beings taunted the soul and chipped away at it; their ultimate aim was not carrion or even the red life's blood. With the stolen flesh and blood, these things stole the souls of men and women ... That is what Ubbrroxx demanded. And with each soul conquered, its dark evil flourished greater and greater. Ubbrroxx, satanic genius, natural- and supernatural-bound and inextricably mixed, like God and Satan. This was the battle being fought here now. Good and Evil, evolution and mutation and all that lay between the two...
Then Stroud was suddenly on a hard surface which was less than solid ground. For the brittle pieces that made up his floor skittered away and rattled across one another as he stepped, threatening to send him over the side. It was a truly enormous boneyard that reached up from the bottommost depths of the evil ship at the juncture where he stood, the remains of 500,000 carcasses. Stroud's booted feet sent bones cascading down the sides of this mountain into what appeared the way to Hell. The bones formed a wobbling mass over which he now climbed on all fours. He had no idea how large this mountain of bones was, or how far it went beyond the beam of his light, and time was running out...
