“Demigods who live forever? Not an appetizing prospect.” “Not for you and your friends. But cheer up. I might let you live in a somewhat altered state. A pet, perhaps. It only takes a few days to turn a human being into a snarling beast. Quite a remarkable process. It would be amusing to let you watch the changes in your lady friend and see if you still want to hold her in your arms.”
“I wouldn't count on it,” Austin said. “Your miracle elixir may be in short supply.”
“Impossible. My laboratories will continue to supply as much as I need.”
“Have you been in contact with your island recently?” “There has been no need to be in contact. My people there know what to do.”
“Your people are no more. Your island laboratories have been destroyed. I was there to witness it.”
“I don't believe you.”
Austin smiled, but there was a hard look in his coral-blue eyes. “The mutants escaped and made short work of Colonel Strega and his men. They wrecked your labs, but they would have been useless to you anyway, because the island and your submarine are now in the hands of British marines. Your star scientist MacLean is dead, shot by one of your own men.”
Racine hardly blinked at the news. “No matter. With the resources at my command, I can build other labs on other islands. MacLean would have been disposed of with the others in any case. I have the formula and it can be replicated easily. I have won and you and your friends have lost.”
Austin glanced at his watch. “Too bad you'll never see your Utopia,” he said, with renewed self-confidence.
“You seem fascinated by the passage of time,” Racine said. “Are we keeping you from an appointment?”
Austin stared into Racine's eyes, which now glowed with ruby-red intensity.
“You're the one who has the appointment.” Racine seemed puzzled at Austin's reply. “With whom?” “Not with whom. What. The thing that you fear the most.” Racine's features hardened. “I fear nothing and no one.” She whirled away and strode over to the raised platform.
A white-haired couple had stepped forward from the encircling group. The woman carried a tray that held a number of round-bottomed amber phials similar to the one Racine had drunk from in the armory. The man held a carved wooden box of dark wood inlaid in ivory with a triple eagle.
Skye's grip on Austin's hand tightened. “Those are the people who kidnapped me in Paris,” she whispered. “What should we do?”
“Wait,” he said. He glanced at his watch, even though he had checked it a minute before.
Events were moving too fast. Austin began to formulate a desperate plan. He exchanged glances with Zavala to put him on alert. Joe gave a slight nod, indicating that he understood. The next few minutes would be crucial.
Racine reached into the box and extracted the helmet. There was a soft round of applause as she mounted the stairs to the platform. She raised the helmet high and then she placed it on her head and glanced around, her face wreathed in a triumphant smile.
“You have had a long journey to this holy of holies, and I am glad to see that you all made it across the Bridge of Sighs.” There was muted laughter from the crowd. "Never mind. You will find the strength to leap across the chasm
on the way out. Soon we will all be gods, worshipped by mere mortals unable to fathom our power and wisdom. As you are, I once was. As I am, you soon will be."
Racine's acolytes drank in her beauty with hungry, yearning eyes.
“I took the final phase of the formula only an hour ago. Now, my honored friends, who have done so much in my service, you are next. You are about to drink the true Philosopher's Stone, the elixir of life that so many have sought in vain for centuries.”
The woman with the tray walked around the dais. Eager hands reached for the phials.
Austin was waiting for Marcel and the guards to step forward. There would be a narrow window of opportunity when attention switched from the prisoners to the prospects of the wonderful new age that lay ahead. He was gambling that even Marcel would succumb to the excitement of the moment. Austin had been moving in barely noticeable side steps closer to the nearest guard. The guard was already transfixed by the spectacle on the dais and had lowered his weapon to his side.
The phials were being passed to Marcel and his men.
Austin planned to jump the guard and wrestle him down. Zavala could grab Skye and run for the tunnel. Austin knew it was a sacrifice bunt at best, but he owed it to his friends for getting them into this mess. He signaled Zavala with his eyes again and tensed his body for a leap, only to check his move as a murmur ran through the crowd.
Racine's followers had put the flasks to their lips, but their eyes were directed toward the stage.
Racine had raised her hand to her slender neck, as if something were caught in her throat. There was a puzzled look in her eyes. Then her hand moved up to her cheek. Her fair skin seemed to be withering. Within seconds, it was yellow and wrinkled as if it had been hit with acid.
“What's happening?” Racine said. She touched her hair. It could have been the light, but her long locks seemed to have gone from gold to platinum. She plucked gently at her hair with a clawlike hand. A tuft came out loose in her fingers. She stared at the clump with horror.
The wrinkles on her face were spreading like cracks in a drying mud flat
“Tell me what is happening!” she wailed.
“She's getting old again,” someone said in a whisper that had the impact of a shout.
Racine stared at the speaker. Her eyes were losing their reddish glow and were sinking deeper into their sockets. Her arms were withering to sticks and the helmet weighed on her thin neck. She began to hunch over and curl up like a shrimp, seeming to shrink in on herself. Her beautiful face was a ruin, the marble skin flecked with age spots. She looked like a victim of a rapid-aging disease.
Racine realized what was happening to her. “No,” she said, trying to shout, but her voice came out as a croak. “Nooooo,” she moaned.
Racine's legs lost their ability to hold her up and she sank to her knees and then fell forward. She crawled a foot or so and reached out to Austin with a bony hand.
The horror of the moment was not lost on Austin, but Racine had been responsible for countless deaths and misery. He gazed at her with pitiless eyes. Racine's appointment with death was long overdue.
“Have a nice journey to eternity,” he said. “How did you know?” she said, her voice a harsh cackle. MacLean told me before he died. He programmed the formula so that it would eventually accelerate age rather than reverse it,“ Austin said. ”The trigger was the third shot of elixir. It compressed a century of aging into one hour."
MacLean she said, the word trailing out to a hiss. Then she shuddered once and lay still.
In the stunned silence that followed, Racine's acolytes lowered their drinks as if the contents had turned to molten glass and dropped the containers onto the sand.
A woman screamed, precipitating a mad rush for the exit tunnel. Marcel and the guards were swept aside by the panic-stricken exodus.
Austin lunged for the nearest guard, spun him around and dropped him with a knuckle-crunching right cross. Zavala grabbed Skye by the arm, and with Austin in the lead, they formed a flying wedge through the geriatric melee.
Marcel saw the prisoners bolting for safety. He was like a man possessed. He fired his gun from waist level, spraying the crowd with bullets. The fusillade cut a swath through the white-robed gods-in-waiting like an invisible scythe, but by then Austin and the others had gained the shelter of the tunnel.
While Skye and Zavala dashed for the stairs, Austin shot the bolt, locking the gate, and raced after his friends. Bullets splattered against the iron bars and the racket of metal on metal drowned out the cries of the dying.
Austin paused at the first level and told the others to keep moving. He ran into a passageway that led to the seating sections. As he feared, Marcel and his men had wasted little time trying to knock the gate do
wn and were taking a more direct route. They had scaled the wall that separated the first row of seats from the arena.
Austin backtracked and climbed to the next level. Zavala and Skye were waiting for him. He yelled at them to keep moving, and then dashed through a passageway that took him out to a higher row of seats. Marcel and his men were halfway up the first tier, rapidly climbing higher, knocking aside mummies that exploded into dust. Marcel glanced up, saw Austin and ordered his men to shoot.
Austin ducked back out of sight. The hail of bullets peppered the wall where he'd been standing. Marcel would catch up within minutes. He had to be stopped.
Austin stepped boldly back into view. Before Marcel and his men could bring their weapons to bear, he snatched a blazing torch from its bracket, brought his arm back and threw the torch in a high sputtering arc. The flaming trajectory ended in a shower of sparks when the torch landed in a row of mummies.
Fueled by the resin used to preserve the mummies, the ancient remains ignited instantly. Flames leaped in the air and the grinning corpses exploded like a string of Chinese firecrackers. Marcel's men saw the amphitheater erupting into a circle of fire and they tumbled down the rows of seats in their haste to escape. Marcel stood his ground, his face contorted in rage. He kept firing until he disappeared behind a wall of flame and his gun went silent.
The conflagration enveloped the bowl-shaped stadium in seconds. Every tier was ablaze, sending up billowing black clouds of thick smoke. The inferno created in the confined space was incredible in its intensity. Austin felt as if he had opened the door to a blast furnace. Keeping his head low, he ran for the stairs. The smoke stung his eyes and he was practically blind by the time he reached the top tier of the amphitheater.
Zavala and Skye were waiting anxiously at the opening to the passageway that led back to the catacombs. They all plunged into the smoke-filled tunnel, groping their way along the walls until they emerged at the chasm spanned by the Bridge of Sighs.
Zavala carried a torch, but it was practically useless, its light sapped by the black plumes that poured from the tunnel. Then it went out completely. Austin got down on his hands and knees and groped in the darkness. His fingers felt the hard, smooth surface. He told Skye and Zavala to follow. Using the stone edges as guides, he inched his way forward across the narrow span in total blackness.
The hot wind that howled from the chasm was thick with choking smoke. Glowing cinders whirled around them. Coughing fits triggered by the smoke slowed their progress, but slowly and laboriously, they made their way to the other side.
The trip back through the catacombs was a nightmare. Smoke filled the labyrinth and made navigation confusing and dangerous, but they had picked up a couple more torches on the way and followed the torturous route back to the ossuary. Austin never thought he would be glad to see the Fauchard bone repository. The route to the courtyard would take them outside the chateau, but he wasn't sure he could find it. Instead, he opted to follow the passageway to the armory.
He had hoped that the air in the armory would be fresher than that in the catacombs, but when he stepped through the door behind the altar area, the atmosphere in the huge chamber was gray with a misty pall of smoke. Noxious fumes were pouring into the armory from a dozen heat gratings. Austin remembered what Rapine had said about the ventilation system that served the subterranean amphitheater and surmised that the air flow must be tied into the main system.
The visibility was still relatively clear, and they sprinted the length of the nave and dashed through the double doors into the corridor. They made their way through the chateau in fits and starts, eventually coming to the portrait gallery. A thick layer of roiling smoke obscured the painted ceiling and the temperature in the gallery approached Saharan levels.
Austin didn't like the way the smoke seemed to glow with a scorching heat and he urged the others to move faster. They came to the front door, found that it was unlocked and ran out into the courtyard, where they took fishlike gulps of air into their oxygen-starved lungs.
Fresh air rushed into the chateau through the open door. With a new source of oxygen, the superheated smoke in the portrait gallery
ignited with a loud whump. The flames flowed along the walls, feeding on the fuel provided by oil portraits of generations of Fauchards.
Figures could be seen running across the smoke-filled courtyard. Racine's guards. But they were intent on saving their own skins and no one bothered Austin and his friends as they crossed the drawbridge and the arched stone bridge. They paused near the grotesque fountain and ducked their heads in the cool water to wash the cinders from stinging eyes and soothe throats made raw by irritation.
The fire had grown in intensity in the few short minutes they took to revive themselves. As they continued along the driveway that would take them to the road leading through the forest, they heard a loud grumbling noise, as if tectonic plates were grinding against each other. They looked back and saw that the great house visible above the protective walls was fully enveloped, except for the turrets, which rose defiantly from the glowing gray-black billows.
Then the turrets were hidden behind the smoke. The noise repeated, louder this time, to be followed by a great muffled roar. Flames shot high in the sky. The air cleared for a second above the chateau, and in that instant Austin saw that the turrets had vanished.
The chateau had fallen in on itself. A greasy mushroom-shaped cloud obscured the site. Showering the grounds around the chateau with glowing cinders, the slag-hued cloud writhed and twisted like a living thing as it climbed toward the heavens.
“Dear God!” Skye said. “What's happened?”
“The House of Usher,” Austin said with wonderment.
Skye wiped her eyes on the edge of her blouse. “What did you say?”
“Poe's story. The Usher family and their house were both rotten to the core. Just like the Fauchards, they collapsed under the weight of their deeds.”
Skye gazed at the place where the chateau had been. “I think I like Rousseau better.”
Austin put his arm around her shoulders. With Zavala leading the
way, they started on the long walk that would take them back to civilization. A few minutes after they had emerged from the tree tunnel, they heard the sound of a motor. Moments later, a helicopter came into view. They were too tired to run, and only stared dumbly at the helicopter as it landed in front of them. Paul Trout stepped out of the cockpit and loped over.
“Need a ride?” he said.
Austin nodded. “I wouldn't mind a shower, too.”
“And a shot of tequila,” Zavala said.
“And a long hot bath,” said Skye, getting into the swing of things.
“All in due time,” Trout said, leading them back to the helicopter, where Gamay sat at the controls. She greeted them with a flashing smile.
They belted themselves in, and a moment later the helicopter rose above the trees, circled around the dark smoldering hole where Chateau Fauchard had been and headed for freedom.
No one on the aircraft looked back..
THE LINE OF SHIPS was stretched out from Chesapeake Bay to the Gulf of Maine along the edge of the Continental Shelf off the Atlantic coast of the United States.
Days before, the fleet of NUMA vessels and naval warships had moved into place from all points of the compass and established their original defensive perimeter a hundred miles to the east of the shelf, in the hope of repelling the invasion far from shore. But they had been swept back by the inexorable advance of the silent enemy.
The turquoise NUMA helicopter had been in the air since dawn, following a course that took it over the elongated armada. The helicopter was east of Cape Hatteras when Zavala, who was at the controls, looked out the window and said, “It's like the Sargasso Sea on hormones out there.”
Austin lowered his binoculars and he smiled thinly. “The Sargasso Sea is like a rose garden compared to this mess.”
The ocean had developed a split personality. To
the west of the ships, the water was its normal dark blue, flecked here and there by whitecaps. To the east, beyond the picket line, the dull sea was an un
healthy yellow-green, where interlocking tendrils of Gorgon weed had formed a mat on the surface as far as the eye could see.
Austin and Zavala had watched from the helicopter as various ships tried different techniques in an effort to halt the relentless drift of the weed. The warships had fired broadside salvos with their big guns. Soggy geysers erupted, but the holes the shells punched in the mat closed up within minutes. Planes launched from aircraft carriers attacked the weed with bombs and rockets. They proved as ineffectual as a mosquito biting an elephant. Incendiary devices fizzled on the top of the thick mat, whose main bulk lay below the surface. Fungicide sprayed from planes was washed away as soon as it hit the water.
Austin asked Joe to circle over two ships that were trying to stop the movement of the weed with the use of pipe booms that were strung between the vessels. It was an exercise in futility. The surface barrier worked for about five minutes. Pushed by the enormous pressure from a moving mass that extended backior miles, the weed simply piled up against the booms, surged over the pipes and buried them.
“I've seen enough,” Austin said in disgust. “Let's go back to the ship.”
Racine Fauchard was dead, nothing but shriveled flesh and brittle bones buried under the ruins of her once-proud chateau, but the first part of her plan had exceeded far beyond her dreams. The Atlantic Ocean was becoming the big swamp that she had promised.
Austin took consolation in the fact that Racine and her homicidal son Emil would not be around to take advantage of the chaos they had caused. But that still didn't solve the disaster the Fauchards had set into motion. Austin had encountered other human adversaries who, like the Fauchards, embodied pure evil, and he had managed to deal with them. But this unnatural, mindless phenomenon was beyond his ken.
They flew for another half hour. Austin saw from the wakes of the ships below that they were drawing back to avoid being caught up in the advancing weed.