The Devil’s Peak II, page 16
He whistled as he walked back to his car.
There was a lot to do, and the Master needed to rise soon.
CHAPTER 25
North Atlantic Ocean, the Devil’s Triangle, off the coast of Florida
Isabella, Marco, and Leonidas had rented the large sailing boat, and headed as close to where Mack thought he had surfaced as they could determine. The destination was only approximate, and could be off by several miles. They hoped it wouldn’t make a difference.
Isabella had taken note of the way Drake had mounted a cannon to the deck of his boat, and had done the same this time. They’d throw it overboard when they went back and just pay for the rivet holes in the deck.
She wasn’t sure what to expect, but having a formidable weapon made her feel better about where they were going and what might be there waiting for them.
Twenty miles back they had cut the engines and just relied on the sails, but now the wind had stopped and they just drifted.
“We could be miles away or right over it,” Marco said.
The three Knights were dressed in combat outfits and had a range of weapons already packed, holstered, and sheathed as well as their ancient swords. They also had backpacks with climbing equipment, ropes, and supplies for many days.
The trio had no idea what they were looking for or what might be waiting for them if they went through, but wanted to be ready in the event that whatever they came up against they’d be ready for it.
Isabella had her hands on her hips and walked to the boat’s railing. “I’m not sure what we should be looking for.”
She glanced up at the sky – pristine blue and cloudless from horizon to horizon. The wind had dropped away, and the only sounds came from their footsteps and quiet conversation.
“Nothing above water, so…” Isabella turned, “… drop the aqua phone, and we’ll let the drone camera out as well.”
“Good idea,” Leonidas said.
He brought up the aqua phone which was basically a waterproof microphone that he lowered over the side about fifty feet and turned it on.
They listened intently, searching for something, anything, out of the ordinary. But all that came back was the usual pops, squeaks, and sound of fish feeding on the bottom. After thirty minutes, Isabella straightened.
“Put the drone over. Let’s keep the phone down, just in case.”
Marco brought up the drone, a three foot long torpedo-shaped device with two wings on each side complete with flaps for navigation. It was water jet propelled, and its front was a glass dome housing a powerful light and camera.
There was also five hundred feet of cable to keep feeding it power and it sent its images back to them.
“It’s two hundred and fifty feet deep here,” Marco said. “Want to check the bottom first?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Remember what Mack told us? When he entered the water, it was blue. That means he was well within the sunlight layer. And if he had appeared two hundred and fifty feet down, he might never have made it to the surface.”
“So he appeared mid water, or close to the surface. Got it.” Marco locked the cable to the socket in the drone’s rear.
He lifted the heavy object and walked to the side of the boat and lowered it over. “You’re free, little one. Or free for at least five hundred feet.”
The drone bobbed in the water, until he went back to the command console that was inside a suitcase.
He flipped it open and checked the flaps, camera image, light and jets. When he was sure he had full control, he pushed it forward and then turned it in the water to face them.
The twelve inch screen showed Isabella and Leonidas standing on deck, and just the top of Marco’s head where he was seated.
He turned it around. “I’m going to do growing circles. Then I’ll let it run on auto and set it to trigger an alarm if it sees something interesting.” He checked his wristwatch. “Once we exhaust this top-to-bottom hemisphere, we’ll have to move to get insight into the next five hundred foot hemisphere.”
The trio stood on deck just watching the water, the horizon, and now and then, the sky. The languorous warmth of the sun was comforting, but lulled them into somnolence.
After twenty minutes Marco turned from watching the water. “Did anyone bring any fishing rods?”
Leonidas chuckled. “You wouldn’t know what to do if you caught one.”
Marco grinned. “I’ve seen pictures. And besides, I hear you can kiss them and throw them back.”
“Stay focused.” Isabella lifted the binoculars to her eyes again. “I just feel… we’re close.”
Both men went back to staring at the tiny screen.
“We need to find it, or it needs to find us.” She paced to the stern and after a while slowly shook her head. “But this could take weeks, months. Time we don’t have.” She turned. “Let’s try something. Target practice.” She reached to her belt where there were half a dozen small vials of water, holy water, and extracted three.
“On my count – Marco port side, Leo, starboard, and I’ll take the stern.” She held the three vials ready. “Three two, one…” She tossed the small bottles over each side far and high into the air.
The small things travelled fast, and she pulled her gun. When the bottle had finished its arc, she fired. Marco and Leonidas did the same.
All three bottles were struck and obliterated, and the small amount of holy water dispersed as a fine mist over a few dozen feet as it settled on the water around the boat.
There was nothing at first, but the boat rocked as if a wave had struck it. A breeze lifted gently, but oddly there was no smell of sea salt, but something else.
“Phew, that stinks,” she said. “Like…” she turned.
“Yes, like the underworld,” Marco said. He went to the drone screen. “Nothing down there.”
“Leo, I suggest we suit up,” Isabella said softly
Only Leonidas and Isabella rushed to pull on wetsuits, as Marco was going to stay on the surface. Hopefully to find them when they returned.
The pair scrambled to pull wetsuits over the battle clothing, and also placed flattened rebreathers over their backs. Their boots fit into the fin ends, and they held their masks ready.
The boat rocked again.
Suddenly the drone’s proximity alarms screamed and the cord that was attached to their underwater drone started to reel out at phenomenal speed.
Marco raced to it, but couldn’t grab it in time before it yanked the screen and controller from the deck and it vanished over the side.
“Either we got something’s attention, or I think Moby Dick just ate our drone,” he said as he scanned the sea surface.
The three Knights took up positions on the rear deck, each facing the water with their guns up. Clouds began to gather overhead, and the revolting smell got stronger. Then the boat began to move.
“Looks like we’ve just found the current,” Leonidas said.
“Or we have company,” Isabella replied.
Something rammed the boat hard enough to throw the three of them to the deck. Isabella was first up as something rose from the water at the stern.
At first she thought it was a tentacle, but then the end opened in a mouth and she saw it was like a giant snake or long necked dinosaur.
Her two companions were up beside her, and she shot at the thing piercing the neck. It pulled back below the water.
Silence and stillness followed.
“That was too easy,” Marco said, aiming out at the water.
For several more seconds they stayed in formation, until the boat started to turn.
“You were saying?” Leonidas scoffed.
From the starboard side the head reemerged, and lashed out at Marco who dived out of the way. They fired again, and once more the thing pulled back.
“Notice something?” Isabella asked. “There was no wound on it. Either it healed real quick or…”
From all three sides heads on long necks emerged and Isabella was first to pull her sword, lashing out and slashing at the beast.
More heads on long necks appeared, each at least three feet long and with mouths filled with backward-curving tusk-like teeth.
The boat lifted in the water, and then tilted.
Isabella was slammed into the gunwale and gripped it with both hands. She looked over the side and saw then what they were fighting – it was like a hydra, a huge body of massive proportions, a mottled grey, and from one end a dozen serpentine necks sprouted.
She guessed it was one of the things responsible for a lot of missing ships in the area, and also bet it had risen from the underworld.
“Hold it off!” she yelled and struggled her way to the front deck.
Marco and Leonidas battled the beast, keeping its attention on them while Isabella went for the deck cannon. Beside it was a case and she quickly knelt, flipped it open, and took out the special shells – each had a tungsten head tip, but behind that was a hardened glass casing containing holy water.
She loaded one of the ten inch shells, locked it down, and then swung the barrel around.
Something that big was impossible to miss, and Isabella didn’t hesitate, firing immediately. The shell impacted with the massive body and penetrated deeply into its mottled flesh.
The responding scream from the dozen mouths hurt her ears as a black ichor spilled from the huge wound in its side. With an explosion of water it pulled away from the ship and immediately started to surge away.
“Follow it!” Isabella yelled.
Marco went for the command deck and started up the engines. He brought the boat around, pushed the throttle forward, and took off after the beast.
They kept it in sight for another half hour before its stubby tail lifted in the air and it went down.
They found the spot and circled, looking down over the side.
“Anyone want to guess what’s down there?” Leonidas asked with a half grin.
“Somewhere we don’t want to go, but have to go,” Isabella sighed.
She walked up to Leonidas. “Leo, this is my personal mission. Not something you need to accompany me on.”
He smiled down at her. “Do you believe Drake can help us?”
“Yes, I do,” she replied.
“Then by helping us, he is helping the world.” He crossed himself. “And that is why I will go.”
They clasped hands firmly and she nodded and smiled up at him. “To Hell and back.”
Marco stood before them with a small leather pouch. Isabella and Leonidas knew what it was and opened their wetsuit vests and combat outfits underneath exposing their chests.
Marco said a few soft prayers, dipped his finger into the powdered rib bone of Paul the Apostle and firstly created a cross on Isabella’s chest and then Leonidas. The crosses stayed on their skin for a moment and then it was as if they were absorbed into their bodies.
“Come back safely,” Marco said. “I’ll be waiting.”
The pair walked to the stern railing and stepped through onto the transom. Each affixed the fin ends to their boots, and pulled their masks down.
Isabella turned to bump fists with Leonidas, and then jumped in. Leonidas followed.
The first thing Isabella noticed was the water was moving, and they were picked up in a current and pulled along and slightly downwards. On the way down Isabella hoped that the sea beast had truly gone – fighting it on the boat was hard, fighting it underwater would have been the end of them.
They gathered speed, moving along and down and she suddenly realized they were in a vortex. She checked her wrist depth gauge, and it said fifty feet already. So far she didn’t feel undue pressure, maybe because of the water’s agitation, but she knew they weren’t equipped to go to two hundred feet if that’s where the current was trying to take them.
The current seemed to increase and their movement in the current became faster as something was drawing them in. Soon they would reach the nadir, the lowest point, and just as she was wondering what and when that would be, she saw it.
“Up ahead,” she said into the mask’s microphone.
“I see it,” Leonidas replied.
There was a dark smudge. Even though the light was diminishing at their depths this stood out as a shadow hanging in the water. She could tell it wasn’t solid, but it was there, and just looking at it made her feel miserable and depressed. It had to be what they sought.
“This has got to be it,” Isabella said as they were being drawn towards it.
There was no turning back or avoiding it as the current was too strong. Fifty feet, thirty, twenty – there was still nothing to see inside the smudge, as it seemed as cold and lightless as the dark void of space.
Isabella pulled the inflatable buoy from her vest and tied a rope to it. She turned the valve and the round red buoy inflated, and the buoyancy took it from her hands. She let the rope reel out.
The buoy’s desire to float matched the drag of the vortex’s current and the red balloon-type inflatable hung in the water, stationary, as if it had a perfectly balanced buoyancy.
“Our trail of breadcrumbs. I hope,” she said.
“Here we go,” Leonidas said they were drawn to the smudge.
And then in.
The transition was mind boggling as they went from the thickness of water, to an intermediate stage of a misty mushiness, and then into dark air. And they were falling.
“Grab on,” Leonidas yelled.
Isabella threw her arms wide and the pair of Knights landed on top of a dark peak. It was only the well-toned reflexes of the fit young people that saved them as they grabbed on, and even then Isabella slid twenty feet to the slick rock, and luckily the wetsuits and gloves stopped her being abraded by the dark slimy stone.
Her slide stopped and she looked up. Leonidas was above her watching intently. And over his head was a rope, dangling from what looked like a misty blue window.
“Just like Mack described,” she said and pulled off her face mask.
Leonidas did the same, and the pair clung to the dark pinnacle and looked out over the nothingness. They couldn’t even see how far up the mount was as its base was lost in darkness. But if this sea mount was what Mack told them about, then they were perhaps a thousand feet up.
Leonidas looked up at the shimmering window. “If Drake is anywhere close by, he should see this.” He looked down at her. “What do you want to do?”
“Climb down to the base.” She looked out into the darkness. “Mack said there’s a black sea down there and this is an island. Then we work out how to find him, or he us.”
A sudden gust of wind ruffled her hair.
Leonidas looked up. “He also said there were flying things that attacked him.” He unzipped his wetsuit so he had access to his weapons.
“Yep, I can feel them,” she replied.
She also unzipped her wetsuit and drew out a hand gun. She stared out into the darkness.
“The flying beasts that attacked Mack.” She looked up at Leonidas a few feet above her. “We’re too exposed up here.”
Just as she turned back to the darkness, there was an impact above her, and she turned in time to see something large and leathery flapping away and Leonidas falling. She flung out an arm, and he caught her hand.
He was far too heavy to stop his fall, and all she would have done is drag herself off the peak as well. But the athletic man only needed enough tension, slowing of velocity, and direction so he could swing back to the peak and he let go quickly to once again cling to the rock.
He drew in a couple of deep breaths, and looked up at her. “Thanks.” He nodded. “Yeah, too exposed – we better get lower.”
The spike of dark stone reminded her of a smaller version of the Devil’s Peak that had started all this less than a year back. Maybe these things were created for a reason, or were relics from some past dark age that was swallowed up beneath the Earth before humans walked upright.
It took them nearly an hour to reach the base of the peak and they found themselves on a small decrepit island with little more than a giant up-thrusting of dark rock at its center.
Isabella looked up to see the dot of blue high in the black sky, or roof, or whatever was up there. It looked like a guiding star, and she hoped wherever Drake was he saw it up there and it was drawing him to it.
The pair removed their wetsuits and stood in their fighting outfits. They placed headband lights on and also had wrist flashlights. However, they only had food for a few days and water for a little longer. After that, she had no plans.
Isabella turned slowly looking at their dismal surroundings. The shoreline was a patch of stinking, slimy mud only about fifty feet wide all around the monolithic, dark peak. It made for a small island in the middle of an ink black sea. And she could tell by the way the water swirled and bubbled that there were things below the surface that could probably see her without her seeing them.
As there was no debris on the island there was no chance of making a raft, and not even she was foolish enough to try and swim out into the darkness.
“What now?” Leonidas asked.
“Now?” She placed her hands on her hips and slowly turned. “Now, we try and draw Drake to us.”
She reached into a thigh pouch and pulled out the flare gun. She loaded one of the incendiary plugs into its squat chamber, lifted her arm straight up and fired.
The red flare shot away from them, reached a height of about five hundred feet and bloomed into a large glowing red flower that ever so slowly fell back towards them.
“Good a plan as any.” Leonidas turned to her. “Let’s hope it’s only Drake that is drawn to us.”
“And before we run out of flares,” she replied softly as she stared into the darkness.
CHAPTER 26
“Hey, did you see that?” Drake stopped paddling.
“See what?” Benson lifted his head. “No, what was it?”
“I thought I saw a flash of light. Red,” Drake said, still up on his knees.
The boat drifted to a stop. It had been laborious work, as the seventy foot boat under the power of just two men was barely being propelled forward. From time to time they were set upon by creatures large and small, and Drake knew both his and Benson’s ammunition was rapidly running low and soon they would need to resort to defensive postures using only knives or their oars, not ideal, as some of the things that attacked them were as large and fearsome as sharks, but sharks bulging with tentacles or even hands.
