“Good God!” Purdue gawked. “And how does it do that?”
“I am busy with trials on engineering it so that it would dissolve all iron in the subject’s blood instantly. This will naturally deplete the body of oxygen, in short, leaving the subject oxygen deprived. The rest is common sense,” Meiner explained. He started to look suspicious at all the detail Purdue needed for only research purposes to retrieve the relative literature. But Purdue had a keen sense of behavioral exhibition and picked up that he had just about overstayed his welcome. In fact, he reckoned that had he not been Renatus, he might well have been lying on that very gurney right now.
“Well,” he concluded, typing furiously into his tablet, “now I have all the information to get the Longinus cooking.” The doctor nodded in agreement, but just before he removed his mask, Purdue turned at the door with a perplexed expression, “Dr. Meiner, why did you call it the Longinus?”
The doctor removed the mask and placed it neatly next to the other instruments and smirked like a satisfied cannibal, while his hoarse hiss replied, “Oh, because the Longinus was the spear that killed the King of the Jews. Of course.”
Chapter 26
Nina did not care that her life was in danger while she was left blind in her new nightmare house. The muzzle flashes of the firearm ceased after four shots, and she could hear the casings clink onto the floor where she had been curled up cozy with wine just a few hours before. The shots echoed through the silent street where half the town and all local authorities could hear it. A furor of panic ensued as soon as the gunshots stopped. People scattered out of what they thought was the line of fire, hiding behind vehicles, and racing for the shelter of fences and trees in the surrounding area of the legendary old Nazi house on Dunuaran Road.
“Sam!”Nina screamed in the pitch dark of the lobby.
“I’m all right,” she heard him groan somewhere near the couch.
“Where are you?” she panted, crawling on all fours with one arm extended in the black oblivion. She found his arm and then felt his hair. He was sitting on the floor with his gun in his hand.
“Well, that was a fuckup,” he noted casually. “Now everyone knows we’re in here and they are about to send in the cavalry.”
“Aye, I see three coppers rolling up the pathway now. Come, Sam. The door is wide open for anyone. If we stay here, we are fucked,” she said, laboriously helping Sam to his feet. She could hear that he was injured. Gretchen came flying up the steps of the basement and rushed into the hallway to collect the books.
“Hurry up, for God’s sake!” she shouted to Sam and Nina. “The police have their bloody guns toting!”
“I’m trying to carry a whole man here, Gretchen. Give me a fucking break, will you?” Nina moaned as Sam leaned heavily on her. His knee was blown out and bleeding profusely, so that he kept losing consciousness every few seconds, fighting to keep upright. “Get Richard to help us!”
They staggered into the kitchen just before the cops reached the front door.
“Police! We’re coming in!” they heard in the lobby as Sam and Nina slipped behind the kitchen table. Gretchen was discovered in the powerful beam of the officer’s torch, but she refused to put her hands up,
“I don’t want to drop the books, officer,” she explained. The officers did not see Sam and Nina to Gretchen’s left.
“You will have to, lady. I’d say books are less important than your life, wouldn’t you?” he argued with the black eye of his barrel staring her in the face. Gretchen’s eyes darted briefly to her two friends in the corner. The other officer, more aggressive, approached rapidly and shouted, “To hell with your bloody books, miss! Raise your hands above your head where we can see them. Your books are of no importance here!”
His head exploded in a warm mess of brain matter and blood right in front of her as a bullet tore through his cranium.
“You clearly don’t mean these books, laddie,” a woman said in the darkness.
Not a second later the other two officers suffered the same dead-aimed fate and dropped to the floor with lifeless weight. The rays from their flashlights flickered wildly, spotlighting random things in the kitchen until they rolled along the floor and became still. From her dark vantage, Nina saw McLaughlin towering over her, every hair still in a perfect bun and make-up unscathed. In her left fist she had Gretchen by the hair, gun to her temple. The beam of the last fallen officer came to a stop exactly in front of Nina, where she sat cowering in the corner behind the door. Like a machine, the prim princess locked onto her target to shoot as quickly as she dealt with the police.
Nina’s eyes pinched shut, denying her the pleasure of watching Sam bring an obliterating right hook down on the pretty face of the Grace Kelly killer. Her legs buckled under her as she jolted sideways onto the table top and cupboard doors, slipping downward in a very unflattering pose to sleep it off. Sam stood on one leg, his face showing evidence of excessive agony. Nina rose to her feet. Both of them could not believe that Gretchen had remained standing after her captor had gone down like a bad boxer. The German professor stood dumbstruck at the recent events, books still snugly in her embrace.
“You know, if we had time, I’d find that extremely funny,” Sam mentioned.
Out in front of the house, helicopters were shining their blinding troopers into the house, splitting the darkness, and sending the shadows sliding in under furniture and into corners. Some inaudible ultimatum was made over a public announcement speaker from one of the Jet Rangers, but the three of them did not merit the invitation feasible. After Gretch briskly packed her sports bag with all the odd, old, antique codexes, they scooted for the trapdoor. With immense difficulty maneuvering Sam, they finally shut and locked the door above them.
Stumbling along the wet rock surface under their uneven treads, Sam, Nina, and Gretch made for the rushing well of sea water that sounded once more like it was sucking in air to breathe like a leviathan face. Nina shuddered as she heard it grow louder. Above them they could hear the task force’s heavy boots thunder throughout the span of the house, calling one by one to report to the pack leader.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“Where is Richard?” Gretch asked, using her newly acquired, bloody flashlight to seek him. A distance from them a crumpled bundle of white cotton and brown corduroy came into view. Sam felt a blackout coming and he sank to his knees to give Nina some relief.
“Clear!”
“Gretch, be careful!” Nina called after her, and left Sam to ascertain Richard’s condition.
“Clear! Check the upstairs!”
The two women turned him over, expecting McLaughlin to have gifted him a silver slug too, but he was intact. Lightly tapping him on the cheek, Gretchen tried to rouse him, but he was reluctant to react.
“How would we even know if he has fainted?” Nina asked in her snappy mockery. “His skin is always wan as a snowbank.” Gretch had to smile at her friend’s observation.
“That’s funny ’cause it’s true,” she sniggered very softly. Not only did she not want the task force to hear her, but she did not want Dr. Philips to be offended at her laughing either.
“Move aside,” Nina ordered Gretchen. She held one hand over his mouth and with the other she slapped him hard across the face, jerking him to life. He cried out from the unpleasant sensation, which is why she plugged his mouth. With wide open eyes full of terror his eyeballs rolled rapidly from side to side in their sockets. Nina gestured for him to be quiet and pointed upward so that he could hear the muffled orders of the hit squad.
“This one is still alive! Take her into custody!”
“Sounds like they just arrested that ivory bitch,” Gretchen growled under her breath. “Good. I hope she pulls a gun from one of them and they make her a colander.”
Sam snickered over where he sat, his humor still not failing him. In his fingers, he fumbled with the canvas bag of books while trying not to give in to the excruciating throb in his right knee. He looked over at Richard, who slowly sat up. His eyes were wild and his hands shook uncontrollably while the women tried to snap him out of his apparent fugue state to lead them out the way he claimed he had discovered. But all Dr. Richard Philips could do was to cast his eyes into the maelstrom of the well, as if he knew what was below.
And he did.