Except that they weren’t.
And I immediately understood why this was real. How it could be real.
Just like H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth writing about Elder Gods, the Great Old Ones and other cosmic horrors, HG Wells had not created the Martians in his novel, War of the Worlds, from whole cloth, but had seen these horrors in dreams or visions. He had glimpsed the terrors of another world and knew, on some conscious or subconscious level, that these creatures coveted our blue world and had, in literal point of fact, drawn their plans against us.
Here was proof.
Right here, in this pit. Monsters from that world had already slipped through. These spiders. And in a flash of terrible insight, I realized that perhaps the spider goddess Atlach-Nacha was very real. Maybe she was one of those monsters who had come through a similar crack thousands of years ago and had become trapped here. She, and the mad priests who worshipped her, had labored all these millennia to help her open the door, so that her masters could come through with their armies and their fighting machines to make war on humanity. To conquer and own this world and leave their own dying world.
I had no proof of that, but I believed it. I knew it.
And I had to stop it.
Somehow.
Jesus Christ.
Somehow.
13
LIZZIE CORBETT HAD seen some very strange things in her life. Most of them over the last few years, since discovering a vast portion of the lost treasure of the Knights Templar and then being recruited into the Library of the Ten Gurus. That group, run by Sikhs, fought a bizarre war on two fronts. The public face of their group worked with the United Nations and UNESCO to preserve artifacts, religious items, and books that were targeted for destruction by extremist groups like ISIL.
The other arm, which was smaller and much less passive in important ways, worked to reclaim books like the Unlearnable Truths. To take them away from whomever had them and make sure they were protected and properly locked away. She had not shared this part of her life with Joe, Top and Bunny. Only Mr. Church knew about it, and he had provided funding and material support for the Library’s work.
It had been Church who brought her into this matter, and who had warned her that the Book of Uttu might not be what it seemed. She did not know how Church acquired this information, but her Sikh friends knew of him and said that he could be trusted. Church had told her she could trust Joe Ledger and his team, and she did.
Church had warned her that this matter could be dangerous, but even he did not seem to know how dangerous. How could he? That awful book had held its secrets for so long. The priests and imams who had protected it had kept the world safe from its potential.
And now it was all falling apart.
The Sikhs were too far away. Church was too far away. Joe and his men were at the bottom of an impossible pit. Maybe not even truly on this Earth, or in this dimension. She couldn’t even start to understand it all. How could she? How could anyone?
All Lizzie had to work with was her knowledge of books like this — and with what was written on the two pages she had photographed with the drone. There was so much there, written in a dozen different hands, in half a dozen languages. And the text itself was conflicted, confusing. It was a mathematical formula written as a conjuring spell. It must have been meaningless to the priests who recorded it. Though maybe not. The Sumerians were known for an exceptional mathematical brilliance, for having developed high math skills with no recognizable backtrail of development. As if the knowledge sprang suddenly into being within a generation or two. Scholars and historians had puzzled over it for years, but now Lizzie thought she understood. It was Atlach-Nacha. Somehow that creature was no mere spider, not even a monstrous alien spider. She — it — was sentient and intelligent and somehow able to communicate to those ancient Sumerians. She had taught them advanced math, and engineering and other skills. But then something happened to break that process. Atlach-Nacha had become lost, trapped in the earth. Possibly some natural disaster, or the actions of another culture. Perhaps sanity prevailed within the group of priests and there was a rebellion in order to save their world. Lizzie did not know how that happened, or why. Probably no one would ever know because there was no record of it at all. The Sumerians went into decline and the planned invasion was forestalled. The knowledge had been recorded in a book, and that book hidden away and guarded fiercely for thousands of years.
Until now. Until ISIL and Ohan and Mercer.
Until an act of murder cracked open the world and the invading army mustered, ready to complete an invasion eight thousand years in the making.
The gunfire and explosions from below were continuous. There was no sign of the battle slacking, but Lizzie knew there was only one way for it to end. Joe, Top and Bunny would run out of ammunition, and then they would be overwhelmed. Then Mercer and the priests would finish their ritual to open this world to the horrors of another.
Lizzie read over the page again and again looking for some clue, some hint. Some hope.
Then, suddenly, she turned to Sergeant Brock.
“How much rope do you have?”
“What?”
“Rope. How much? Can you reach them?”
He looked at the three lines that went down into the nothing below.
“They’re too short.”
Lizzie shook her head. “Pull them up.”
Brock gaped. “What?”
“Pull them up, Sergeant. Do it now.”
14
I GOT CAUGHT in a deadly pinch when I reached for another magazine and found that there were none left. Three priests rushed at me, two swinging pick-axes and one with a sledgehammer.
There was no time to draw the Sig Sauer. None.
I faded left, ducking in and under one pick-axe, and chopped upward with my forearm. Even insane ancient Sumerian priests have balls, and I hit his real damn hard. He let loose with a whistling shriek that hit the ultrasonic. I straightened fast and took the pick-axe from his hands, shouldered him into the sledgehammer guy and swung the axe at the third priest. The spike of the big tool punched a big wet hole in his solar plexus. I let go as he fell, taking his pick-axe away, following it with a ballet pirouette and slammed the spike into the crotch of the sledgehammer priest. He sat down and fell back, screaming something in a language I didn’t know. Maybe calling on his god. Maybe calling for his mother. I didn’t give much of a fuck.
I moved to the priest I’d clubbed in the nuts and he looked up as I came at him. He had no time at all to block the kick to his throat.
I drew my pistol and fired at two more of them, killing one with a single shot through the face and knocking another down with a sucking chest wound.
In my ear, Lizzie was yelling at me. “Get the book, Joe. We need it.”
“Get it and do fucking what with it?”
The answer hit me across the shoulders and I slapped it away, thinking it was a snake. It wasn’t. It was one of the rappelling lines. I looked up and saw that far above me it was knotted to a second line. And, I presume, the third far above that. Smart lady, that Lizzie Corbett.
A moment later something thumped down hard behind me and I spun. It was a big canvas equipment bag. My equipment bag. I fired six shots at some spiders and then rushed to it, tore it open and nearly wept.
Fifteen magazines for the MP7s. Grenades. More magazines for sidearms.
I don’t know if that was Lizzie’s idea or Brock’s, but one of those two was going to get a big wet kiss.
“Echo Team,” I bellowed. “Ammunition. On me.”