He was still marveling at the transformation when he heard the sound of laughter.
Beyond the fantastic glow of the plasma storm, Dr. Leeds stood just inside the entrance to the cavern. The rest of the party had filed in behind him and were now spread out on the walkway to either side of him. They had all made it, though the journey had taken a toll. Elisabeth’s legendary Hollywood beauty was concealed beneath layers of guano and dust. Russell was holding a hand protectively against his right side, just under the armpit — the final spike trap had caught him with a glancing blow. Higgins seemed shell-shocked, gazing across the pool at his daughter and Kismet with a desultory stare. Leeds however, looked triumphant.
Kismet launched into motion. He thrust Annie aside, into the marginal cover of the limestone cairn, and began sprinting toward the ascending stairs and the dais, where he intuitively knew he would find the Seed from the Tree of Life.
He did not see Dr. Leeds nod sharply to one of his men. The only warning he received was Annie's screamed: “No!”
Something punched into his upper back, just below the right shoulder. The force of the blow spun him halfway around. Even as the report reached his ears, he knew that he’d been shot. A bullet — a .308 round from Higgins’ Kimber rifle, though fired by one of Leeds’ thugs — ripped through his torso, splattering the cave wall with a chaotic spray of crimson.
His momentum carried him several steps closer to his goal before the agony of the wound blossomed, paralyzing him with the pain. He stumbled headlong, clutching uselessly at the cascade of his precious lifeblood. The wave of pain crested, and then just as quickly subsided as traumatic shock plunged him into a surreal state of hyper-awareness.
He could feel his heart beating, fierce and rapid with adrenaline, but each contraction of the life-sustaining muscle pumped more blood out of the ragged holes in his torso. Blood was spilling inward too, filling his chest cavity, submerging his lungs, drowning him. The brightness of the plasma storm above the pool vanished into a hazy void, filled with white noise.
Annie was suddenly beside him, embracing him from out of the darkness, whispering tenderly in his ear. He opened his mouth to tell her…what? He couldn’t seem to connect his thoughts.
Then suddenly he was no longer in the world, no longer in his body. The abyss opened up to receive him, and he had no choice but to plunge into it.
Annie reached Kismet with the report of the rifle still echoing in her ears. She lifted him in her arms, and was immediately drenched in his blood. His eyes were open, yet he seemed to unable to see her.
Tears bled from her eyes, tracing rivulets through the mask of dust on her cheeks, as she hugged him to her breast.
“Annie…”
“Nick. Oh, Nick. Hold on.” The words poured from her without conscious thought. “Don’t leave me. I love you.”
“Seed…”
The effort of speaking that one word was too much. Whatever thought he had tried to communicate slipped from his lips in a trickle of blood.
In a flash of insight, she understood what he had been trying to tell her, and what she had to do next.
She eased his lifeless body to the ground and stood and faced the stairway, but before she could take even a single step, a steel grip clamped her upper left arm. She was hauled back, away from the dais — away from the thing Kismet had wanted her to take — and then spun around to face her captor.
Dr. Leeds glowered at her. “Oh, I don’t think so. The Seed is mine.”
She struggled, trying to break his grip, but his hook-hand looped around her wrist, turning it just enough to send a burst of pain stabbing through her. With a snort of derisive laughter he thrust her behind him, into the waiting arms of her father.
Higgins held her tight, but she struggled against his embrace. He had betrayed Kismet, betrayed them all. She struggled to the verge of exhaustion against his loathsome touch, but was unable to break free. Finally, she could do nothing but sag in his arms, weeping uncontrollably.
Dr. John Leeds gazed contemptuously down at Kismet's body, and then began ascending the steps.
The cavern might have been Mother Nature’s handiwork, but the dais was unquestionably the product of human artifice. The steps were too perfectly cut to be the result of geological processes, but the real proof was the intricate carvings on the back wall; an elaborate scaled serpent, surrounded by wedge shaped marks that told a story in the language of ancient Mesopotamia. He recognized some of it, and probably could have translated it given sufficient time, but he already knew the gist of what it said. It was a familiar tale; the story of the serpent that stole the source of immortality, a legend built on the bones of what had really happened thousands of years before. It was a story that would rewrite the history books.
The priests of the Serpent cult had stolen the source — the Seed of the Tree of Life — from the god-emperor of Chaldea, the man known to the Babylonians as Tammuz, but also as Gilgamesh and Nimrod. They had stolen the source of his power and immortality and fled east — just as Cain had been exiled into the land east of Eden — and their journey had eventually brought them here, where they had built this shrine.
The head of the carved serpent protruded from the carving, its mouth agape and hollow inside. Leeds realized that it had been crafted to disgorge a trickle of water directly onto the altar, which would in turn decant its contents into the pool, but the snake’s mouth and the spout that extended over the pool were both bone dry; the water that had once fed the Fountain of Youth had been diverted.
No matter, he thought. That’s not what I came for anyway.
Suddenly, the wall of cuneiform writing exploded in a spray of stone chips. Leeds recoiled, incredulous, and turned to see Major Russell, pistol in hand, adjusting his aim for another shot.
Several reports thundered in the cavern, but none of them from Russell’s gun. The men he had recruited in Charleston had finally done something right for a change, and cut the treacherous army officer down with a concerted volley. Russell was blasted back into the wall, where he fell into a sitting position with his legs splayed out. He was still conscious, staring at his assailants in mute horror, and then his eyes turned pleadingly toward Elisabeth.
Elisabeth?
Had the ruthless bitch tried to organize a mutiny? Leeds had never completely trusted Russell, much less understood how the actress had been able to so easily win him over to their cause, but now he saw a glimmer of what was really going on.
She wanted the prize for herself. Typical. She had seduced the officer with a promise of some fairy tale life together. Perhaps she had intended to make a similar appeal to Kismet, or the brutish Higgins.
Well, let’s just nip that little flower in the bud. He nodded to his loyal hirelings and then pointed at the actress, his meaning perfectly clear.
The two men brought their weapons around and took aim at the now surprisingly defiant Elisabeth…
Suddenly Leeds’ men began twitching in place, their bodies exploding with gouts of blood.
At first, he thought it was some effect of the static storm above the pool. They had all felt its shocks upon entering, but no, this was something else.
The occultist watched in stunned disbelief as several men — all of them wearing dark military fatigues with matching tactical vests, faces concealed behind black balaclavas — swarmed into the cavern through the opening. Each man held a compact machine pistol equipped with a long sound suppressor, and they quickly moved into defensive positions, sweeping their gun barrels in all directions as if looking for targets.