Jacob groaned. “Which was? Crashed UFOs? A penguin super-city? Zombie dinosaurs?”
“I don’t know for sure, since it was heavily protected by the blue veil,” she said, “but I do know we’re about to find out.”
“If they let us get that far,” Nina said, strapping on her ammo belt and checking the cartridges in her Beretta and loading the MP5.
They were about to touchdown, and as she looked out the window, they heard the pilot call back.
“Brace yourselves, this could be a little slick. But I’ll get us down, and then… looks like there are some Sno-Cats, Humvees and sleds outside the hangar.”
“Hopefully unattended,” said Alexander.
“With the keys still inside,” Aria added.
Nina zipped her vest and took a deep breath, calming herself for the battle ahead. “Either way, be prepared, but let me out first.” She leaned back and touched Jacob, inciting his vision. “Just tell me what to expect.”
The runway was clear, at least by the time Orlando got out of the plane, all bundled up and already feeling the chill cutting through the parka. Thankful for the goggles and mittens and handwarmers they had on hand up in the Andes, he stumbled out the last few steps, behind Aria and Alexander.
At least that couple stayed together. Phoebe had already run ahead, toward the hangar, following the footsteps of Nina, who was nowhere to be seen.
Orlando flinched as what sounded like gunshots carried from that direction. “Phoebe!”
Ripped with adrenaline and fighting the shock of cold, his mind slipped for the briefest of glimpses. Kids on the brain, no doubt, closing in on them and sharing Phoebe’s fear for their lives, it was like the gunshots set off the shift from normal vision to psychic mode:
The blue, shifting wall — but this time, two glowing tiny forms beyond; like actors on a stage going for effect. They radiated a fierce golden aura and were caught, it seemed, in the cruel, sharp branches of some of a massive tree.
Caught — or spiked, Orlando thought with a terrified shudder.
He thought of that other realm and his previous Custodian-sense, when he glimpsed the twins in the midst of that amorphous, branching entity emitting data streams and information almost beyond his infinite comprehension.
But this…
Are we already too late?
The blue swirled and expanded, and his sight was blasted out, back to the white and the grays of this world. To the runway, to the black and yellow tank-like Sno-Cat racing toward them, and the woman leaning out the passenger side — firing at someone chasing behind her.
Jacob’s driving! Was his first thought, and his second — after marveling at the extent of their parent-child bonding — was to scream for Phoebe and Aria to move. They were right in the path of the onrushing vehicle. With the ice and the speed, there was no way it could stop. Jacob was out of control, or maybe he’d been shot, or—
He was neither. Phoebe had turned to Aria, whether to push her away or shield her, Orlando wasn’t sure, but right then, the vehicle banked hard and skidded sideways toward them in a surprisingly elegant maneuver, sliding and slowing, then stopping just before their spot.
The door flew open, Jacob yelled: “Get in!”
Orlando ran toward them, expecting more shots, or engines or helicopters or bazooka blasts. Instead, Alexander ran from the side, grabbed his arm and led him toward the open doors with urgency, but no longer a sense of impending doom.
“Come on, Uncle. Move your ass. Nina cleared the bad guys we saw, but we’re not out of it yet.”
When they got inside, Orlando felt the blessed heat bursting out of the vents.
Jacob turned to them, alarm in his eyes. “We’ve got to help Temple, he’s down!”
Orlando met Phoebe’s look as he slammed the door.
“Maybe he’s on the way to the twins. I still sense them. They’re…”
“Being used,” Orlando said ominously. “And they’re caught in another place, another… dimension.”
Alexander still gripped his arm. “My Dad’s with them. He’ll know what to do.”
Orlando tried to look positive, but he knew this was beyond Caleb. Beyond anyone, maybe.
They had to get inside that damn mountain — pyramid, whatever it was. And fast.
33
Caleb stood up, but it didn’t feel like the normal effort. And, come to think of it, all the pain and fatigue he had just been dealing with had now receded to the point of being unmemorable. Was he even paralyzed?
He looked back…
Oh. There…
Is.
My.
Body.
And another’s.
Raiden.
And more. On the tables, sleeping, resting, dreaming, (dying?). The twins on one together, face down, so… pale. Their auras — dull pink and fading.
Back to his own body and Raiden’s — vibrant red and orange, like heat signatures. Seething and alive, compared to the others around them. He wanted to go back and look closer, but something gripped his shoulder, his…
Glowing body. Like scintillating chain mail armor, golden interlocked elements comprising his form, and that of the other figure behind him.
“Come,” the word reverberated from somewhere, inside and out, and when he shifted his view, the fiery breach opened before him.
Like a giant two-handed sword, something out of a fantasy video game Orlando would have played for days and days, except it roared with crimson energy, expelling waves of it in all directions. Not so much a sword, he realized, as a rift: a sword-shaped tear in reality, beyond which coursed energy and something else. Like anti-matter or furious negative vibrational power.
“Your destiny is here.”
And Caleb, who thought he was moving so slowly, found himself ahead, approaching the flaming, sputtering, gusting portal, as energies ripped and tore at his form to no effect. Imbued with the stuff of astral, cosmic consciousness only, the waves of devastating power that would have annihilated all matter coming toward it, did nothing now but offer the barest twinge, like the soft, enticing touch of a lover’s caressing fingernail.
It enveloped him and enshrouded Raiden, and the two of them moved closer still, into the expanding fold.
He thought of the twins. Thought of Alexander — and had a vision of him standing before the sealed door to the pyramid, studying the tiles and the clues, trying to decode the ancient puzzle, and he felt a swelling pride.
But at the same time, it was only an emotion, just a thing tied to an obsolete material form. Of no consequence any longer. Especially, he thought, after stepping through the rift.
Did Raiden not sense this? Or was he blinded by his mission, by his destiny?
His figure proceeded ahead, blinding and dazzling and lordly, but also imbued with an emerald tinge that faded the more he distanced himself from his body — and the gem around his neck. Half of his form was gone, dissolving into the beyond, into the world between the worlds, stepping in to the realm of Paradise, the world of the Tree.
And the Serpent.
And Alexander forgotten, the twins forgotten, Nina and the others and the entire world and all his guilt forgotten (or just put in its proper, inconsequential place), Caleb stepped ahead, and joined him.
Past the sword.
Into the rift.
34
Racing toward the fight, to the shadow of the great mountain and the trails leading around the side, Jacob slammed on the brakes. Sliding one direction, he cranked the controls to aim the other way. Toward the smoke and the flames on the descent toward the icy shore.