The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (15 page)

Open the portal to save the girl
.

Protect the girl to save the world
.

Samantha Strike didn’t do prophecies. Or rhyming couplets. Or anything that resembled either in the faintest way. She had a low tolerance for bullshit. But even if her nature didn’t err on the skeptical side—a necessity born of experience—the series of events within Shambhala wouldn’t have passed muster.

“You ever wonder why no one can find this place,” Strike said. She spoke in a low voice despite the heavy wind. Darkness had fallen as she and Keene had followed the map up the winding mountain path. The pair had marched from the grassy valley into the chilled mountains with barely so much as a breather.

“Didn’t really cross my mind,” Keene said. “But a lot of other things have.”

“Like what?”

“Prashant. The berries. That look in Alessia’s eyes.”

“He’s using her,” Strike said. She pushed herself over a rock and continued walking. “Don’t think it’s the berries, though.”

“You would think, with satellites, they’d have found this valley years ago.”

“Unless,” Strike said, stopping to catch her breath, “it doesn’t exist on Earth.”

“Come again?”

“Paradise must be somewhere else,” Strike said. “Would explain the weird electrical storms in Tillus, that special root. There are different rules of nature here.”

“Who’s right, then?” Keene said. “Prashant and the resistance or Cladius?”

“Well, we haven’t heard Cladius’ side of the story, now have we?” Strike said with a grim whisper.

She rounded an icy corner and found that all cover disappeared. A rickety rope bridge spanned a massive chasm. On the opposite side was the fabled Diamond Dragon, the temple glinting in the pale moonlight. It was as majestic as Strike had imagined—a building carved into the side of the mountain itself, expertly fashioned of little more than ice and rock. A sculpted dragon, breathing a stream of icy fire, stood perched above the entrance.

Keene ran into her back.

“Why’d you stop?”

“Quiet.” Strike backpedaled around the corner. “There’s no place to hide.”

Strike glanced out again. A solid ice door slid up, revealing a torchlit interior. Two Centurions, dressed in black armor that gave Keene a slight shiver, came through the entrance and stomped their spears in the snow. Then they stood up ramrod straight.

“I think it’s the two guys leading the charge from before,” Strike said, squinting to make out any distinguishing marks. Their posture was the same, demonstrating total control and focus. “Some sort of elite guard. Cladius must’ve sent them up here to hold things down alone.”

“How’d they beat us here?” Keene said.

“They’ve lived here for two millennia,” Strike said. “Would be kind of sad if they didn’t.”

The two soldiers scanned the mountaintop, then stepped back inside the temple. The entrance slammed shut with a thud that echoed for miles.

“They’re gone,” Strike said. She looked at Keene, who was fiddling with his knife. “I don’t think you can slash your way through the door, if that’s the plan.”

“It’s not,” Keene said, but didn’t bother to elaborate further. He tucked the blade back underneath his parka. “Where you figure Leif wound up?”

“I look like his keeper or something?”

“He should’ve turned up by now.”

A low rumble came from the valley. The ominous sound echoed off the pristine peaks. A burst of fire flashed in the dark fields below. A faint roar reverberated over the canyon.

“Maybe they actually can pull it off.”

“Who knows if that’s even what we want.”

“We could wait here and see how it plays out,” Keene said.

“I trust us,” Strike said. She considered the defenses. Carved into a mountain peak, the temple couldn’t be infiltrated from the back. Coming in from above was out of the question. Ominously, the only entrance was across the exposed bridge. A guard could easily take them out from the second floor crenellations.

But there was simply no other way, so Strike stepped out and began to run. Her soft leather boots hit the narrow, rotting planks of the rickety bridge, the structure swaying from side-to-side as she sprinted. Her shoulders were hunched, head tucked towards her chest.

If she was gonna come crashing through the front door, no need to be stupid about it. She heard Keene’s boots when she was about a quarter across the bridge. A little slow with the reaction time. He wouldn’t be winning an Olympic sprints—if he even knew what the Olympics were.

Strike’s lungs screamed from the thin air, but she didn’t stop. She glanced at the leering dragon, the plume of frozen fire, and thought
I’m gonna burn you down, you son of a bitch
. A patch of black armor passed through one of the windows. Strike’s heart skipped, but she couldn’t do anything but keep running.

Halfway there.

A red plume appeared in the window, an orange glow flickering against the clear blue ice. A thin gray trail trickled from the flame. Then it launched into the darkness, hissing and spitting, hurtling towards the bridge. Strike’s eyes locked onto the burning arrow, ready to dive.

But the arrow sailed over her shoulder.

Keene
.

The footsteps behind her slammed to a halt, the cracking and creaking of the bridge immediately overtaken by the crackle of flame. Strike had no time to look back. The other second floor opening filled with an orange glow, and another sizzling arrow shot into the night, landing behind her.

But no scream came, no indication that Keene was wounded. The lonely sound of her own footsteps was the sole indication that something was wrong.

“Run, Strike,” she heard him say, and she gave her last bit of energy towards a final burst, pumping her arms so hard she was certain they were going to fly off into the chasm below. Then she felt what the soldiers up top were trying to do, her footing sagging, wobbling worse than before, a horrible groaning filling her ears.

She dove towards solid ground, arms outstretched as she slid across the ice. Behind her, she heard the bridge crumble and disintegrate into nothing.

They’d literally burned the bridges.

The crazy bastards had torched the only way back over the chasm.

Strike fumbled with her knife and brandished it towards the empty air. What she wouldn’t give for a pistol. No men in black armor marched out of the entranceway to detain her. No arrows came raining down from the second floor—although Strike was fairly certain she was safe beneath this overhang.

But she did notice one bothersome thing.

Across the chasm, where the remaining tendrils of rope flapped and burned in the wind, was a man struggling to raise himself onto the snowy ledge. Keene’s feet flailed over the endless space. Strike wanted to scream, rebuild the bridge, but all she could do was watch.

Up above, she caught the faint glow of another arrow.

“Keene, watch out!”

The flaming bolt hissed as it shot through the darkness, hitting Keene in the shoulder. His legs stopped jerking for a moment, and it almost looked like his struggle was over—that he had found some reserve of energy to pull himself up. But then he dropped into the chasm, the burning pitch lighting his descent until Strike could no longer see his body.

The whirring of rotors drew Strike’s attention away from Keene. She huddled back into the corner, between the natural rock and the carved fortress, making herself small. A nimble chopper rose from where the ruined, smoking bridge once stood and powered towards the temple. It soared out of sight, above the building.

A bitter wind whipped across the peak, snuffing out the remaining embers, when two terrible realizations settled on Samantha Strike.

The world would burn in less than three hours. Keene was dead.

And there was nothing she could do to change either one.

“Jump,” Carmen Svetlana shouted, her hands thrusting Wade Linus from the open door of the jet. Linus was hurtling through the thin atmosphere before he could protest. Wind whipped past his tight goggles as he somersaulted through the air. On his first turn he caught sight of the experimental aircraft that had whisked them around the world in under five hours. By the second turn it was gone, leaving behind a trail of orange smoke as it tore off at over two thousand miles per hour.

The UCD had some
really
cool toys at its disposal.

Linus streamlined his shoulders and tried to right his position. It had seemed simple enough when Carmen had explained the procedure from within the safe, pressurized confines of the jet. But all that brief training had evaporated now that Linus realized he was on a direct collision course with an icy mountain.

The Himalayas, while a beautiful shade of frosted white, didn’t look terribly soft.

Linus pawed at his straps, trying to pull the chute. A voice crackled over his earpiece.

“You’ll kill us both.” The words were hard to hear with the howling wind.

Linus, consumed by fear, kept working to find the ripcord. The moonlit mountains looked tiny below, like a toy village in a diorama. It wasn’t too soon to be safe, though. No, at this speed, he
needed
to yank the parachute open right now for even a chance of survival.

Carmen sped past him, her body assuming the shape of a laser guided missile. Linus stopped trying to open his parachute and looked at her. She seemed so calm. How was that even possible?  Even if they hit the ground safely, their deaths were almost assured. Contacting the resistance via the radio frequency had been a huge bust. The distress call just played on repeat.

Linus saw Carmen form an X with her arms as she glided past.

“I get it,” Linus said, screaming to be heard. “Stop.”

“Good,” she said. Her hair fluttered as she nodded. She held her arms out at her sides, slowing her descent. Linus’ heart began to pick up. He was going to collide directly with her. His eyes widened in terror.

At the last moment, she banked to the left. He felt a pull at his shoulder.

“Gotcha,” she said.

A
whoosh
let him know that the parachute had been triggered.

Linus breathed an audible sigh of relief, but his lips were trembling too much to say much. Two minutes later, they landed on a snowy peak. He heard a click, and the parachute disengaged, fluttering away into a crevice.

“Nice view, huh,” Carmen said, standing up and brushing herself off. “Thought you were gonna shit the bed up there.”

Linus got to his knees and took in the landscape. Snow, sky and more snow. Stars. No sign of a hidden valley or a tunnel.

“Are we in the right spot?”

“Speak up,” Carmen said. “You’re trembling like a goddamn leaf.”

Linus cleared his throat, but found it was dry. He fumbled at his thigh and pulled out a canteen. He drank greedily, almost finishing the contents. Then he screwed the cap back on and was about to reattach it to his belt when he felt an arm snatch away the canister.

He watched as Carmen packed it with snow.

“Tuck it under your jacket,” she said. She lifted up the front flap of his burly parka. The wind chill nipped at the layers beneath, and Linus shivered. “Your body heat will melt it and you’ll have something to drink.”

“Thanks,” Linus said. He finally struggled to his feet. “We hit the jump?”

“Perfect,” Carmen said. She pointed out over the identical looking peaks and valleys. “The entrance to the valley should be right over there.”

“Why couldn’t we see it coming in?”

“No idea,” Carmen said. She reached down to pick something up. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Looks Roman,” she said. “Check it out.”

Linus almost tumbled down the slope trying to make the catch, but he managed to corral the artifact without dying. After checking to make sure his feet were steady, he turned the stiff silver coin over in his fingers. The face on the front was worn away by the elements. 

Linus felt along the misshapen edges, thinking. “Guess Prashant was telling the truth in his call.”

“Seems so,” Carmen said. “We got a hike ahead of us.” She nodded over Linus’ shoulder. He glanced backwards, down the slope. It wasn’t a sheer cliff, but it didn’t look like easy going, either. “Get your crampons on.”

Linus did as he was told, and a few minutes later the two were crunching across the snowy peaks. Aside from avoiding the occasional gaping chasm—and the whisper-thin air that barely sated his lungs—it went all right. But the altitude proved to be a problem.

Fifteen minutes in, Linus collapsed into the snow face-first.

“Wade!”

“What? Is dinner ready?” Linus was generally aware of a tingling sensation in his cheeks, but his aching lungs blocked out any other pain. His eyelids batted frost away as he stared into the snowy black. He felt himself being turned over, the darkness replaced by Carmen’s concerned face.

“Breathe.” He became aware of a plastic apparatus attached to his mouth. He sucked in, and it felt like the best drug he’d ever done. Instant relief flooded his entire body, and muscles that had no feeling seconds prior sprung to life.

His face felt bitterly cold. His eyes refocused. The edges of a mask led to a small canister. He took another deep breath, a revitalizing wave washing over him.

“Dramatic altitude changes can be hell,” Carmen said. “First time in an altitude tent, I thought I was gonna die.” She reached down and detached the mask from Linus’ face. Instantly he felt the difference. Living suddenly became a whole lot more difficult.

He gave a plaintive moan of protest and grabbed weakly for the mask. She shook her head, reflective sky goggles projecting a cool kind of sympathy.

“Save some for later.” Carmen bent over and offered Linus a hand. He struggled to his feet and brushed the snow from his gear. After a couple of wobbles, he managed to get moving again, albeit at a slower pace—with breaks.

An almost full moon was visible overhead by the time they reached their destination. Carmen held up her hand in front of a rock face and nodded.

“Yeah, this is it.”

Linus looked around for distinguishing marks but found none. To him, this cluster of rocks was identical to all the others in the Himalayas. Crusted with ice and snow, mineral veins running through the few patches of exposed gray. But Carmen wasn’t going by sight.

She was going by the GPS locator clutched in her gloved palm.

“How do we get in?”

“Let’s look around.”

“You got the time?” Linus said.

“Only a couple hours to go,” Carmen said. “Better move quick and pray for the best.”

Linus looked around the bare plateau before the rock face, but found nothing of interest. Snow drifts and tracks, sure. But nothing hiding in plain sight.  He shrugged and began walking, taking measured steps to avoid collapse. His lungs still begged for him to sit down, but there wasn’t much time left to help Keene and avoid disaster.

Maybe even the UCD’s fancy plane wasn’t enough to save the world at this point.

Then the GPS beeped twice to confirm that the destination had been reached.

“Found it!” Carmen’s voice echoed like it was being run through a reverb-heavy microphone. Linus saw no trace of her. He followed her bootprints to a narrow pathway running alongside the rock face. His hands scraped along the icy walls to steady his feet.

Linus was thankful for the crampons. Without them, he had a feeling that he’d go tumbling off the ridge, thirty or forty feet below. His hand slid along the ice, and suddenly he felt an empty space. Linus gave a sideways glance of caution to make sure he wasn’t about to waltz off the edge.

Instead, he saw shadows flickering off walls. A cave.

He slid into the small opening.

“Not bad, huh?” The voluminous ceiling gave the cave a cathedral like quality. While the entrance was small, the inside quickly widened. Marks on the walls and rusted torch holders indicated that this place was a man-made job.

Carmen swept a light from her phone’s flash around the room, making shadows dance.

“Someone did a hell of a lot of work here, Carm,” Linus said. “This must be it.”

He walked stiffly over to the wall and sat down. Every muscle in his body wanted to shut down. This wasn’t his domain, coming out in the field. He was the guy who sat at his laptop, guided things from afar.
Tech wizard
.

Linus removed the backpack, patting the field-ready computer contained within one of its large pockets. Now he was the field tech wizard. Somehow, he didn’t really like this new job. It was like being a medic. You didn’t get a gun, but the gig still afforded far too many opportunities to get shot at.

Or you got a gun, but had no idea how to use it correctly.

Seemed unfair, in the scheme of things.

Carmen came over to kneel down next to him. “It’s sealed up.”

Linus gnawed on a piece of stiff beef jerky. “The distress call said it was still open.”

“There’s Latin written above the entrance.
Those who pass will perish
.”

“But there is an entrance.”

“Caved in, yeah,” Carmen said. “My money’s on the Romans.” She took a stick of beef jerky and chewed on it. With the goggles on, it was tricky to read her mind. But the way her lips were turned, even Linus could tell this setback was hitting her hard. The lonely wind whistled outside the cave’s narrow opening. The phone’s light cast an ethereal glow over the walls.

Linus played with the jerky and considered their predicament. The distress call wouldn’t lead them directly to an entrance closed thousands of years before. That made little sense. At the same time, there had to be something special about these particular coordinates.

There were only two places on Earth with the correct electromagnetic fields to reach Shambhala. Tillus and this cave. Tillus had two portals. The same had to be true here.

Linus snagged the phone from the ground and tilted the light skyward. The flash reached only about ten feet into the air before being devoured by blackness. But Carmen had checked everywhere at ground level.

The only way left was up.

“Get your climbing gear out,” Linus said.

“You’re in charge now, huh?”

“Clock’s ticking,” Linus said. He watched as Carmen geared up. “I’ll push you.” The ceiling narrowed about eight feet above into a conical shape that rose an unknown distance. It looked like there were some good handholds. Down here, the rock was sanded smooth.

Carmen leapt towards Linus and vaulted off his outstretched palms. She soared through the air and latched on to the ceiling, swinging her legs towards the wall. With one hand still hanging, she shoved a piton into the rock and then hammered it in.

After a minute, she was anchored.

“Nice job,” Linus said. He watched as she made the ascent. She put in a new anchor at the edge of the light, then she disappeared.

Five minutes later, a rope came shooting out of the darkness. “Attach this to your harness and I’ll   pull you up to get started.”

Linus did as he was told and found himself hovering above the ground, swinging towards the first anchor. He caught the wall. The cracks in the rock were surprisingly generous, almost as if someone had created the handholds for climbing.

This made Linus hopeful that his two portal theory was correct. He scrambled upwards and soon found himself at the top, where Carmen was nestled inside a small tunnel a little larger than a vent. A dim penlight shone in her hand.

“You’re better than I expected,” Carmen said.

“Climbing wall birthday parties were the thing during middle school,” Linus said.

“Let’s go.” Without enough room to turn around, Carmen backed up and disappeared into the small tunnel. Linus hoisted himself inside, unhooked the rope, and followed. Moving on his belly was slow, but the tightness didn’t bother him. There was enough room to lift his head about six inches. He pressed forward, following the thin glow of a pen light.

Then he heard the scream.

“Carm!” He scrambled forward, the rough ground tearing at his park. The screaming cut off, like a forty-five being removed from a turntable. Linus tried to go faster, but the narrow space prevented him from doing so.

Then he was screaming, freefalling into nothingness.