In his frantic, self-righteous speech, he did not notice Costa lifting the virgin marble relic to his left eye. Looking through it, the power of the Gorgon started to surge through him. When Heidmann realized, he did what any frightened and hopeless man would do. Five shots rang out from his barrel, but he was too late. The slugs penetrated Costa’s clothing, but his body had the resistance of solid stone, impervious to the onslaught of the lead. Behind Costa’s dark brown eyes an ancient fire grew, not one of flame and color but a fire as old as lightning.
“No! I’ll make you a deal, Megalos! I’ll make you a deal! You can share the riches with me. When I am done with Soula and her husband, I will be a billionaire, and I’ll cut you in on it. We can find the Medusa stone together!” Heidmann pleaded and suggested anything he could think of to appease Costa, but in vain.
A sharp light of purest white formed in Costa’s eyes as the power of the stone directed itself through him. Heidmann realized that he had but moments to evade attack, as the energy in Costa’s stare grew to immeasurable temperatures within seconds. He raced for the exit, but felt his feet, ankles and calves grown ice cold. Heidmann could not move anymore.
Shocked he looked down. Under his knees his legs grew grey and solid in his shoes and socks. He even took a moment to wonder why the deadly heat felt like ice, but soon realized it was the solace of burned nerve endings mercifully sparing him the sensation of the real temperatures.
“Where is Euryale, James?” he heard Costa ask behind him, as he felt his knees refuse movement.
“Oh, Jesus!” he cried as he felt the blood clot and his heart started to palpitate irregularly from the lack of circulation. “Oh, Jesus!”
Aware that looking in Costa’s eyes would turn his head and brain to stone, James kept his eyes on the professor’s torso. “This is not the Bible, Dr. Heidmann,” Costa growled in a deep rattle that lacked all humanity. “Here you cannot call on the Nazarene for mercy. Here is only a selfish king called Zeus and believe me he is no god. The only god present is me.”
“I’ll never tell you where Euryale is, you son of a bitch!” Heidmann spat furiously at Costa, making the inadvertently mistake of addressing him face to face.
He never even had time to realize his error. Soon to be the late Dr. James Heidmann, he screeched in pain as his tissue was instantly calcinated by intense heat. His flesh dehydrated so rapidly that his skin became papery before growing hard and cold.
With the swell of Stheno’s energy, Costa’s eyes shone like lightning streaks, filling his body with such immense magnetic power that his long dark tresses lifted around his head like a halo of snakes.
Moments after his opponent was effectively reduced to six feet of screaming rock, Costa pulled the Stheno stone away from his eye. Gradually, the light faded, and the magnetic force relented, returning him to his usual appearance.
“Ah! Finally you got the Stheno stone, James,” Costa coughed as he fixed himself up and replaced the pendant. “Just not in the way you expected, eh?”
The Stheno stone, named after one of the three mythological monsters, Gorgons from Greek mythology, was a sought after relic in the underworld of secret organizations. Soula had gifted it to her lover 11 years before when she acquired several artifacts from a dig where James Heidmann was leading the excavation. However, he never met the millionaires he worked for while supervising the excavation in the sub-cavernous site at Mount Olympus. Upon learning that he would not receive credit for her discovery, apart from a hefty sum of money, Heidmann had been left deeply outraged.
He had stolen one of the items, the Euryale stone and when he had accidentally killed a workman by looking through the hole at him, Heidmann had realized what it was. Ever since then, he had indirectly accosted Soula and blackmailed her family, threatening to expose the effects of the stones to the world. After stealing the two pieces for his exhibition from Soula’s Ukrainian associate, Oleg Bantra, Heidmann had hoped to sell the pieces for a small fortune,
But he never imagined that the effects of the stones would reveal themselves through a so-called act of God, of all things.
Chapter 25
Claire woke up in a well-furnished bedroom. Dazed, she sat up on the bed where she woke. Looking around, she could see barren walls which were only broken in their monotony by bright dark green drapes, lined with a golden meander motif along the edges. A large potted palm decorated the corner in a gilded pot and on her bedside table stood a jug of water with a tall upturned glass.
“Anyone here?” Claire called into the corridor past her open doorway. “Hello? Where am I?” There was no answer and the place was deathly quiet save for the buzz of a refrigerator in the kitchen a few feet from her door. But Claire was reluctant to explore. After all, she was well aware that she was being held somewhere by the men who had seized her and Professor Barry.
“Oh shit,” she said to herself. “Professor Barry.”
Claire had absolutely no idea what to do. The circumstances were just too strange to derive a conclusion from. How was it that as a captive, her door was left open? Why was she not gagged or restrained? From her clothing and lack of injury, she found that she had not been harmed or handled with any sort of disrespect at all. Her shoes had been removed and her purse were missing, though. Those were the only tell-tale signs that she was held captive at all.
On her tip-toes, she snuck along the lavish house’s corridor to the next room and found Helen Barry lying on the bed of the equally fancy bedroom.
“My God, Helen!” Claire cried and lunged forward onto the bed in her pants suit, her unkempt hair flopping about her slender face. The professor appeared to be sleeping off the effects of the Rohypnol, taking considerably longer than Claire to metabolize the sedative drug. “Professor? Professor Barry? Helen?” Claire persisted, lightly nudging her boss not to cause alarm in the poor disorientated woman.
Helen’s eyes fluttered a little at first, but she fell back into her slumber.
“Helen! You’re going to be late! Get up!” Claire exclaimed next to her, opting for the panic induced wakening technique she so frequently used on drunk roommates in college. It seemed to work. The professor started mumbling incoherently and tried to pry her eyes open.
“There we go!” Claire egged her on. “That’s a good girl! Come on!”
Helen’s eyes opened and she scowled heavily, trying to make sense of what she saw. “Claire?”
“Yes! Yes, Professor,” she smiled.
“What the hell are you doing in my room?” Helen asked with a groan. She did not realize, at first, that she was not home. But as she woke slowly the events at the British Museum came back to her. At the recollection of the abduction and the locker room, the large black car and the jet, her eyes widened suddenly.
“Oh, God! Where are we?” she shouted.
“Shh! We are safe. Just don’t make too much noise until we know what is going on,” her assistant implored.
“Alright. Alright, what is all this? Where are we, Claire?” Helen asked, still very confused. She was incessantly running her hands through her dark blond hair, looking obsessive, until Claire took her hand from her hair and held it between hers.
“Listen, I just woke up now too. But look, our doors are open, we are not bound or hurt,” she informed her boss.
“That is weird,” Helen remarked.
“Yes, but it is good, isn’t it? It’s not like they threw us in a stinking dungeon with rats, tied us to a rack and raped us, Professor,” Claire smiled. “I think we are not being held by a monster.”
Helen looked around, took a moment to listen and her eyes trailed the ceiling and windows. Slowly she nodded. “You know what? Usually they treat women well before selling them to the highest bidder. Remember that,” she said. “When they treat you well it is because you will be serving another, usually more sinister, purpose later.”