Merlin must have known that it would be more than a thousand years before general technologies had advanced to the point where some of his machines could be developed. The genetic engineering that produced Caliburn and Excalibur, using modern day CRISPR DNA snipping technology, was more than a thousand years ahead of his lifetime. Like Leonardo da Vinci, who designed the “Flying Screw,” thought to be the first design of a modern helicopter, Merlin had engineering diagrams of interstellar rockets and quadcopter drones.
Jason continued flicking until he was far back in the earlier sections of the SPELL book. He stopped and grinned.
All four of them stared at the page.
It depicted a short sword. Nothing grand like a broadsword. More of an enlarged dagger. By now, that wasn’t much of a surprise. Sam was already in possession of both shards of the ancient sword. He knew how small the weapon was. But even seeing it in Merlin’s diagrams and schematics, the weapon looked small and unassuming.
The blade appeared to glow.
And at its hilt, a single snake, wrapped itself around — and in its eyes were stones that glowed like fire.
Next to the drawing were the words, Serpent’s eyes.
“This is it!” Jason shouted.
Sam said, “That’s great but those are small stones. They could have been lost anywhere.”
“No. After the battle of Camlann, Merlin retrieved the stones, and hid them in here.”
“Where?”
“Like the hilt, he hid them inside the eyes of a serpent.”
Chapter Seventy-Nine
Emilee Gebhart stared at the video image she had been sent from the CCTV.
It captured a man coming up onto the road, off the beach where the shipwreck of the Hoshi Maru had landed on the beach. The man was completely naked, but his body seemed to be a camouflaged blur. At first, she thought it was a problem with the CCTV, but then she realized the rest of the screen seemed to be in perfect focus.
The stranger walked across the road, making the conscious decision to step out of the way of the CCTV cameras along the main strip of the small coastal town of Cannon Beach.
The CCTV had lost him.
But the recording kept playing.
There was a flash as the image skipped to another viewpoint. This one focused on the back of a bank. It was privately owned by the bank, and only ever reviewed if there was a problem, giving an explanation as to why she was only just seeing it now for the first time.
At first, she thought it was just a blank recording, but then she spotted it. The stranger. He appeared to be wearing clothes, but they didn’t quite fit him right. Not just that, they weren’t in the right spots. She paused the image, and stared more closely at it.
Her lips twisted into a wry expression of bizarre confusion.
The man wasn’t wearing clothes. Instead, they were somehow part of him. Like a tattoo imbedded in his skin, only just not quite right.
What is that?
A moment later, another man entered the frame. A soldier, wearing the uniform of an Army Ranger.
The man spoke to him. Everything seemed fine, and then in a split second, the strange man spun around with a straight razor. The weapon struck his opponent’s throat, slicing through it cleanly. The stranger picked up the dead man like it was a carcass and threw him into the trunk of the man’s car.
The murderer picked up the soldier’s duffel bag, removed a uniform from it, and got dressed.
He climbed into the car.
At the last moment, the stranger looked up at the CCTV — his eyes on the camera with defiant arrogance.
Emilee swallowed hard.
It was the same man she had met at the road block in the Tillamook State Forest.
What did he say his name was?
Jason Faulkner.
She picked up her cell phone and called the FBI agent who was leading the investigation. She quickly explained the CCTV video and gave the agent the name of the suspected perpetrator. But the agent told her to forget about it. The whole thing was no longer her problem. Not her case. She was to go home, delete the record of the CCTV, and forget she ever saw it.
Emilee tried to argue her case, but the agent cut her off.
She glanced through her Sheriff’s logbook and searched for the phone number that the other person had given her that night.
In her own handwriting she spotted the name and read her notes.
Sam Reilly.
Piercing deep blue eyes. Intelligent. Good looking. Dangerous. Physically capable of committing murder. Unlikely to have motive. Seems nice.
She picked up her cell phone and called the number he had left her.
The number went to voice mail.
Emilee said, “Mr. Reilly. This is Sheriff Gebhart from Tillamook. I have reason to believe the person who tried to kill you is named Jason Faulkner. He can kill with his hands and a razor blade. Call me as soon as you get this.”
Chapter Eighty
Guinevere said, “Merlin kept a snake pit?”
Jason nodded. “Yep. Serpents. Come with me I’ll show you.”
They all followed Jason across a stone bridge that led off the island into a small carving into the side of the grotto, where more than a thousand snakes slithered at the bottom of a pit.
Guinevere was curious. “What keeps them there?”
“The walls I assume…” Jason said.
“Then you assume wrong,” she said. “Snakes are animals and animals need to eat. Thus, they need to be fed.” She fixed the beam of her flashlight down the bottom of the well. “There, see! Those little holes lead out somewhere, most likely where they can feast on rodents that enjoy the food left here by the ubiquitous tourists.”
Sam said, “I think you’re right. The question is, what makes them come back?”
Guinevere took a deep breath. “Its warmer here. The snakes are attracted to the warmth. There must be some sort of underground spring that runs beneath the well. As it does so, it warms the cobblestones, and warms the snakes, making them happy to keep coming back.”
Sam said, “This is fascinating, but Jason, where’s the snake with the gems from Caliburn’s eyes?”
Jason stared at the throng of slithering snakes. “It will be down there.”
Guinevere was incredulous. “After all this time?”
“Yes. You see, the rare element that Merlin mined here, and in which he imbued powerful SPELLs to his weapons, not only strengthened the user of the sword with great strength, impenetrable skin, and deadly speed — but it also triggered a unique change at a cellular level, preventing disrepair.”
Guinevere said, “Are you telling me, Merlin hid two of these rare elemental gems inside a snake’s gouged eyes, and that the blind snake has been wandering this pit for more than a thousand years?”
Jason shrugged. “Afraid so. But you have to admit, Merlin was nothing, if he was not ingenuous and cool with his tricks. No one would ever imagine the lost serpent eyes from Caliburn would be inside a real snake, trapped in a snake pit for all eternity.”
She said, “That’s horrible. That poor creature!”
Sam said, “The real question now, is how do we entice it to come here?”
Guinevere said, “I can do it.”
“Really?” Sam, Tom, and Jason said together.
“Sure. I practice Reiki. It has to do with energy fields and vibrations. Animals are incredibly susceptible to it. A snake like that must be terribly tired after all these years. It will come to me.”