“My family has served the Way of the Axe for centuries, but that arrangement will soon end.”
“You’re handing in your resignation?”
“In a manner of speaking. I’m throwing off the yoke that has bound the Salazars for centuries. There are matters far more important than these fools realize with their costumes and their thirst for blood. I’m talking about power and influence on a global scale. Soon to be mine alone. Lily and her minions are the past. Auroch is the future. Tell your friend to return from the helicopter.”
Calvin had started the chopper’s engines. As the rotors spun in preparation for take-off, he glanced out the cockpit window and saw Salazar holding a gun on Hawkins and Chad. There was no alternative. He got out of the helicopter and walked back to join the party.
Salazar watched Calvin approach, hands held high.
“Your friend shows good judgment,” he said. “You wouldn’t have made it very far. The castle’s defenses are automated. The pilot has to activate a signal to disable the drone. We have unfinished business to take care of, Leonidas. You disobeyed my orders.”
“You fired Leonidas, Mr. Salazar. My name is Chad.”
“I don’t care what you call yourself now. You never pushed the button on the remote.”
“You mean this remote?”
He unwrapped his fingers from around the ear-piece, which he had palmed before raising his hands. He had given the button two punches. He pressed the button one more time. He wasn’t sure what it would accomplish, but he hoped it would distract Salazar long enough for him to make a grab for his gun before Bruno and the goons arrived.
The priestess sanctuary had up-to-date ventilation and temperature control systems to prevent the mummies from further deterioration and the gas was quickly sucked out of the chamber. The security guards who’d been searching the Maze for Kalliste had heard the commotion in the sanctuary and came running back to the chamber. They saw the dead bodies of the Prior and gathered protectively around Lily, who stood in front of the altar, staring up at the mummy of the High Priestess.
The drugs had worn off and she saw the priestess not as a beautiful hallucination, but as she was, a horror of dehydrated flesh. But she still heard the voices calling from the dark caves of Sumer that had spawned the perverted religion and the secret society that came to call itself the Way of the Axe.
The voices in her head chanted over and over again.
She must die. She must die.
“Potnia.”
She turned at the new chorus of voices that had called her name. The priestesses had returned to the sanctuary. Their gowns were soiled and their make-up smeared all over their faces, but their eyes still burned with fanaticism.
She smiled. “Welcome back, sisters.”
She must die.
Lily understood why she had brought down the displeasure of the Mother Goddess. The offering had been insufficient. She wanted more blood than Kalliste could provide.
Lily would purge Auroch of those who opposed her, reward the ones who came to her side and launch a campaign like none before to slake the goddess’ thirst. The Inquisition would be child’s play by comparison.
She picked up the bull’s head rhyton and held it to her breast.
She must die.
A second later Chad triggered the remote. The explosion vaporized Lily and pieces of the bull’s head ripped into the priestesses and the security guards clustered closely around her.
The shock wave knocked over the flaming braziers setting the altar boughs on fire, swept aside the pillars holding the double-edged axes and slammed into the colonnade. A shower of red-hot clay fragments rained down on the rows of mummies. Within seconds, the Old Ones had burst into flames.
CHAPTER EIGHTY
Those in the courtyard heard the explosion as a muffled whump coming from below the Tripartite Shrine. The ground shook. A couple of sacral horn decorations fell off the roof. A metal support holding the camouflage canopy buckled. The covering over the shrine listed at an odd angle.
Salazar realized what had happened. He raised his rifle to shoot Chad, but stopped with his finger on the trigger. From the corner of his eye he had seen two gray blurs racing toward him across the courtyard. He reached instinctively for the double-axe medallion that normally hung around his neck, and realized he had given it to Chad to wear. He swiveled and let off a burst of gunfire. The fusillade missed the speeding Daemons by yards.
Salazar threw his weapon at the creatures in a failed attempt to divert them and began to run for the helicopter. He had only gone a dozen feet when the first Daemon bowled him over like a ten-pin and brought its massive jaws down on his throat. The second monster dove in, fighting to be in on the feast.
The monsters were half-mad from the stinging gas when they saw the group standing near the shrine. They had been trained to focus on those not wearing a medallion, carrying a weapon or on the run, and Salazar qualified as a target.
Hawkins looked away from the disgusting sight and loped for the helicopter with Calvin by his side. Chad, who had retrieved his weapon, again took up the rear. They made it to the helicopter. Calvin got in and leaned out to pull Kalliste through the door.
“Climb in and we’ll be on our way,” he said.
“We can’t go yet.” Hawkins told Calvin what Salazar had said about the automatic launch of the drone.
“No problem,” Calvin said. “I brought some bug spray.”
He slipped the gear bag off his shoulder and extracted the Spike missile and its launcher which he aimed at the metal insect sitting on its staging. There was a whoosh as the missile flew from the launcher and the drone exploded in a ball of yellow and red flames. He threw the launcher away and climbed into the helicopter.
Startled by the explosion, the Demons turned away from their feast and ran back into the shrine.
“I thought that was gator repellent,” Hawkins said.
“Pest’s a pest.”
His hands went to the controls. Within seconds, they were airborne. Calvin flew the chopper straight up, and when he had gained a few hundred feet of altitude, he hovered over the canopy.
Another support had buckled, and the camouflage cover had split apart, producing an odd optical illusion. Where only the courtyard had been visible before, there were now glimpses of the shrine’s towers. Smoke bellowed from the entrance.
“That slimy bastard,” Chad fumed. “The damned thing was a bomb.”
“What are you talking about?” Hawkins said.
“It was a jug shaped like the head of a bull. Salazar called it a rhyton but it was full of explosives. He ordered me to carry it into the sanctuary. Gave me a remote that I was supposed to press when the ceremony began. He said it would send a signal to break up the ceremony, but what he really wanted was to blow me and everybody else up.”
Hawkins went to reply, but he stopped to stare at the Tripartite Shrine. The towers had collapsed and were disappearing into the earth. He remembered the foundation cracks he had seen throughout the Maze. The columns supporting the roof must have crumbled from the force of the explosion. The weight of the shrine was too much for the ceiling to bear. The remnants of the shrine would plunge to the deepest depths of the Labyrinth.
“Like I told Salazar,” he said, “I’ve seen all I want to see. Let’s go home.”
Calvin nodded and put the helicopter on a course away from the castle.
Abby was sitting in the cockpit waiting for Matt to call in on the radio when she saw the helicopter approaching. She had disobeyed his orders to leave if he and Calvin didn’t call in. The deadline was an hour past, and the radio had been silent. Something had happened. That could only mean one thing. Matt was dead.