Curse of the Druids (6 page)

Chapter Ten

One big problem in continuing our search for the Ambrosius Amulet smacked us in the face the next morning. We no longer had a set of wheels at our disposal. And, in retrospect, leaving the rented Viano at the site was very foolish for a number of reasons—beyond the fact we now had to find some other way to get there.

“That was really stupid to leave the van, Nick,” said Marie, pulling down her sunglasses from the stylish perch atop her head as we stepped outside the B&B’s main entrance. “Not only are we in danger of a few thousand pounds in fees for the partial insurance, but if Ali’s men decided to come back for it yesterday after we left, they will have access to the rental agreement in the glove box. That alone can lead to a lot of headaches for us both since our personal information is in there from our passports.”

Hadn’t thought of that, actually… until now.

“We’ll, I’m betting the damned thing is still there. Likely loaded with enough explosives to light up the sky, and bright enough to be clearly seen from the highway,” I said. “I doubt those assholes went back for it… unless to check on why the bombing deaths of three foreigners didn’t make it to the local late night news broadcasts.”

The taxi I had called for pulled up to the curb. We had considered renting a second vehicle, but it seemed too risky. Besides, if we encountered a similar situation to the day before, we’d have two vehicles out there somewhere, making for a much messier exit from the UK than any of us wanted.

“Can you drop us off at Stonehenge?” I asked the driver, who then told us it would be no problem.

There was room for all three of us in the back, and Marie sat between Ishi and me. We had already planned our attack at breakfast, and would search the area within a quarter of a mile of the mound, in hopes some other hidden landmark would yield the prize we sought. Asinine, yes. But my wager was on Marie coming to her senses about leaving, once she had a chance to see the damned amulet was nowhere to be found. I hoped to be on a plane to the United States by nightfall.

The weather brought us an unusually clear day for this region of the world, without a single cloud in sight. Traffic toward Stonehenge was heavier than it had been the previous two days. When we neared the exit to the frontage road, I told our driver, a nice kid named Freddie, to drop us off halfway down the exit.

“What, are you insane?” he said, perhaps forgetting I had yet to pay him for his trouble. “There’s nothing down there but a few ruins and the River Avon. The police can get you now for trespassing.”

“True,” I said, handing him twice the fee tallied by the meter in the dashboard, in hopes he didn’t alert anyone to our requested drop off point. “We’re meeting some old friends who will pick us up in a while. Just want to have a look around, is all.”

Marie and Ishi rolled with the ruse, and our driver merely shrugged and shook his head watching us exit his car. Then he sped off, as if afraid he might incur some jail time for staying too long in the park’s forbidden zone.

Maybe we should’ve waited until Freddie and his checkered cab disappeared from view. But seeing a handful of people mulling about, just beyond Bluehenge’s eastern border, was enough to get us hurrying to the mound site. Hard to say if any of these folks noticed our presence, or not. Despite Marie’s worry they were associated with Yassir Ali, I felt confident they were merely tourists and would ignore us.

“The van is gone!” Ishi announced, once we reached the hill of dirt that had camouflaged it poorly the day before.

“Shit!”
hissed Marie. “Now what do we do?!”

“Well, we don’t panic,” I said, scanning the area for anything obvious—human or landmark—to help me decide what to do next. Obviously, I was wrong and the ‘Plan B’ that should’ve been discussed earlier was being hatched in my head right then. I scanned the area to buy time. Other than a pair of deer feeding near the tree line by the Bluestone site, I didn’t detect any other living creature in our immediate area. But I didn’t see any other obvious landmarks either. “We should fan out and see if we can find anything that looks remotely like the image on your map, Marie.”

She had handed the map over to me in the taxi, and so far, nothing other than the mound we had previously explored looked like a suitable location to match the map’s target. Even so, all three of us spent the better part of an hour combing much of the area while keeping watchful eyes out for snipers and anyone else potentially hostile. We didn’t stop until we reached the restrictive barbwire marking where archaeologists were still piecing together an immense puzzle nearly as old as Stonehenge itself.

“Maybe we’re not intended to find the amulet,” suggested Ishi, sounding defeated. “Maybe we should come back again some other time.”

“Maybe,” echoed Marie.

My heart damn near skipped a beat, but I knew better than to allow even a hint of joy to manifest in my expression. Especially, since it could be construed as gloating by my gal pal.

“We can come back in a few months,” I assured her. “After things have cooled down in the search for our whereabouts—”

“I want to check the mound one last time!” she interrupted me, turning her gaze longingly to the slight ridge by the riverside.

Are you frigging serious?!

“I don’t want to waste the day down inside there, babe,” I said, as gently as my agitated state of mind would allow.

“Just give me fifteen minutes—tops. That’s all I need… I promise!”

Before I could say anything else, she was already on her way to the mound. Ishi ran after her, and I pursued them both, scanning the area one last time as I ran. The tourists remained where I had last seen them. I prayed that they, and anyone else who might be in the area, truly ignored our presence near the mound.

The rocks I had placed by the hole in the mound’s side were still there, and looked undisturbed. Marie and Ishi pushed them aside, and then she climbed into the crypt first with him right behind her. Her surprised squeal of
“Oh my God!”
almost made me lose my balance as I followed Ishi inside the hole.

Honestly I expected a snake, eel, or maybe a note from Yassir Ali advising we had been duped and he and his men were on the way back to Egypt with the Ambrosius Amulet. But that last part would’ve been impossible. Impossible, because I was staring at the damned thing, glistening under the glow from Ishi’s and Marie’s flashlights.

“What in the holy hell…?” Impossible to believe what my eyes were feeding my brain.

None of it made sense. Not the smooth large sapphire embraced by a golden dragon detailed in the style of the Romans two millennia ago. Nor the small bluestone boulder that now blocked the aisle, and where the amulet and its long golden chain lay draped across the boulder’s surface. Surreal in every sense of the word.

“Who in the hell did this?” Marie wondered aloud, shining her flashlight in both directions down the aisle.

“There’s no one else here,” I said confidently, stepping closer to her and the gleaming amulet.

Our prize was far more spectacular in its magnificence than I previously pictured. Beyond priceless. The fact it had appeared before us, seemingly on its own, spoke to the legends surrounding it. I saw with my own eyes that the rocks I had carefully covered the breach in the side of this elongated tomb were intact before Ishi and Marie pushed them aside. Untouched by Egyptian miscreants, what prankster could bring a blue boulder into the crypt when the damned thing was several times larger than the hole?

“None of this was here yesterday. None of it,” whispered Ishi, whose wide eyes were glued to the amulet, like a child staring at a fire in a hearth for the first time. If only I could join him in that moment of
uncomplicated wonder.

“Someone up above must be smiling on you, darlin’,” I told Marie, pointing toward the ceiling. “Maybe a favor from dear old dad? You should pick it up.”

She regarded me suspiciously, like I had suggested sticking her hands into the mouth of an alligator instead. I laughed

“What’s so funny?” she asked, scowling.

“You,” I said, finding her especially adorable. “You don’t want to try it on for size?”

“Maybe I should try to bless it first. There’s an incantation written on the map.”

“The one you tried to read on the plane?” I asked, taking the map from my coat pocket and bringing it closer to Ishi’s flashlight. “You couldn’t read it then, what makes you think you can read it now?”

“Don’t say an incantation unless you can speak the words correctly and know what they mean,” warned Ishi. “Wrong magic is
bad
magic. It can kill us all!”

“Or, turn you into a toad,” I deadpanned.

A slight thud, followed by three others in quick succession suddenly resounded from outside the crypt.

Car doors? Shit!

“Damn it—cut the lights!” I whispered. “Looks like someone’s about to join the party. If neither of you are gonna pick this sucker up, then I’ll do the honors.”

“No. No, I’ll do it,” said Marie, looking anxiously toward the hole. Footsteps approached and the daylight creeping into the mound was soon blocked, followed by voices speaking in the Masri dialect we heard yesterday. Excited voices—
very
excited voices. “Here we go.”

She picked it up, and though I expected it to have some weight to it, Marie deftly slipped it over her head and around her neck. The moment she did, the sapphire began to glow brightly. A sign of protection? Perhaps… or maybe it was just the opposite, and we were about to be betrayed, obliterated, or both.

That notion gained support when an explosion blew open the crypt’s breach. A pair of legs poked through the opening, but I didn’t wait to see the rest of the guy. Instead, I shoved my glowing girlfriend and little buddy toward the far left end of the mound, praying we’d find a place to hide… and that the gleaming Ambrosius Amulet wouldn’t cost us our lives.

Chapter Eleven

We didn’t get far before a small platoon of armed men dropped down into the hole. Fortunately we had the good sense to stay quiet and duck into an area where a middle shelf had collapsed onto a bottom shelf, creating a space big enough to accommodate us all. It meant sitting on a pair of human skeletons, but it sure as hell beat the alternative of lying on top of one.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians stealthily approached, guns drawn as they sifted through the corpses on top and kicked the ones on the bottom shelves. They would reach us in under a minute. Too dim to see one another, I held onto Marie, stroking her neck soothingly as she shook from fear. My other hand caressed the handle to my cherished knife, though it wouldn’t save us.

Our discovery was certain. Likely, our executions by gunfire were, too.

I worried Ishi would do something foolish, like take the small shovel and pickaxe he held and ambush the closest dude to us, hoping to cut him down and start picking off the rest of this dirty-dozen one by one with his victim’s assault rifle, ala Rambo. But when the guys moved into our area of the crypt, Ishi froze while they prodded the skeletons on the top shelves with their rifle barrels and kicked the remains on all the lower shelves. All the lower shelves, that is, except ours.

Marie managed to cover the glowing amulet inside her coat, dimming the light quite a bit, though not completely. I braced for our discovery, as did Ishi while Marie closed her eyes tightly. If for some crazy reason the visitors didn’t see the glow, surely their boots would alert them to something softer residing here other than the brittle, rotting bones they had stomped through.

Several flashlight beams reached us. The amulet began to glow brighter, and I watched in horror as blue rays extended from our hiding place, bathing the men’s legs. Admittedly, I was terrified of being captured, and a tortuous interrogation would be the least horrible of my expectations. Likely an unkind assault would begin with Ishi due to his size. Bullies are often the same, regardless of race and nationality. Ditto for the rapists in the group who would surely have their way with Marie, once the opportunity of getting away Scott-free presented itself.

As for me? Yassir Ali assuredly associated me with the theft of his gold. My torture might consist of being forced to watch the agonizing deaths of my girl and best friend. Then I’d be taken to Yassir himself, or his chief representative, and face my own torture until these assholes learned the location of the gold. Once my usefulness was over, death would eventually follow….

But nothing happened. At least nothing
bad
happened.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, and neither could Ishi, who gasped in surprise when the men didn’t search our hideout. They ignored it while speaking casually amongst themselves in their indecipherable Arabic tongue. As if the blue light growing stronger by the second was invisible. Same thing for Ishi’s gasp, and the slight squeak that escaped Marie’s lips when she opened her eyes and saw what was taking place.

Perhaps this was the cloaking aspect of the amulet that Marie mentioned? It seemed fanciful at best, as if we had just stepped into a Harry Potter novel. The pragmatic part of me wanted to ignore my previous dealings with things not naturally explainable. I clung to the rational thought that at any moment these assholes would notice the increasingly bright cobalt glow, which at present continued to inexplicably escape their attention.

I adhered my trust to that supposition much longer than necessary—long after they finished stuffing their pockets with a variety of priceless items taken from corpses lining both sides of the aisle. I dare say they lifted most of the jeweled relics we had sifted through the day before. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to a little envy; picturing each one of these jerks living out their days in exquisite prosperity from what could’ve just as easily been our loot to divide. Unlike them, I’d leave something extra for a few choice British museums.

“Frigging greedy mothers,” whispered Ishi.

I expected that slip alone to get us noticed. But the men remained oblivious to our presence. In hindsight, maybe we should’ve vacated our hideout right then and pursued them, behaving like ghosts since they couldn’t see us. After all, they were pilfering a tomb, and it might’ve been a lot of fun to mess with them. Besides, we needed to follow the assholes out of the mound to identity the second vehicle—important info that could later save our lives, knowing what to look for and avoid.

But just because we seemed invisible certainly didn’t make us bulletproof. It was the thought that stopped me, and kept my protective instincts in place long enough to keep Marie and Ishi from scurrying after them.

“You’re letting them get away?” she hissed, as the men began to climb out of the crypt, jovial in their foreign banter.

“With what? You told Ishi and me not to take anything or we’d be cursed,” I replied, grabbing her sleeve to keep her from pursuing them. “Guess we’re chopped liver in the druid gods’ eyes, huh? Or, do their curses apply equally to good guys and bad guys, too? Unless this Ambrosius aura, or whatever the hell it is, operates like a Bat Shield, we’ll be seriously screwed if these assholes can somehow sense our presence and decide to riddle our asses with bullets!”

“You’re a fool for thinking this can’t save us!” said Marie, defiantly and
loudly
, pointing to the amulet around her neck.

Perhaps I should’ve trusted more in the sapphire’s unusual clarity and depth, and the way it shimmered. It gave illusion that the golden dragon clinging to it was alive. Hell, the damned thing seemed to twitch for a moment as if real, and not an intricately carved gold replica. But in the end, logic told me Marie’s ire would get us killed, regardless of what the sapphire might or might not do. Meanwhile, the Egyptians’ merry laughter carried on, until the last one’s boots cleared the exit.

“You should’ve tried to stop them! Now the curse will be unleashed because we didn’t do
anything
in our power to prevent it! We are
all
so screwed!”

Could she be any more dramatic? Sheesh!

But this wasn’t the time to haggle over silly superstitions.

“We need to have a talk when we get back to Cricket House, Marie. You can’t be propagating bullshit about curses and such if you want to be taken seriously in this business,” I gently scolded, preparing to push my way through the opening. “Not everything or every place needs to deal with the supernatural—”

Battle cries from men enraged and the rapid succession of loud pops distracted me. It took a moment to realize the pops came from gunfire not far from the mound.

“What in the hell’s going on out there?!” whispered Marie, shrilly.

“I don’t know…. Stay here, and I’ll find out.” I moved over to the hole and carefully climbed up to peer outside, scanning the area as I did. There was no one in sight.

It wasn’t until I climbed out and peered over the mound, toward the dirt hill where we parked the Viano the day before, that I saw the results of the commotion we heard moments ago. Two vehicles were parked there, with several doors open. A maroon Mercedes and black BMW… but no Audi from the day before.

“Holy shit!” whispered Ishi, who had crept up next to me. “They shot each other…. Good thing we didn’t do what they did!”

“What, bring guns?” I asked, surveying again the bodies lying on the ground, in the nearby field and between the cars.

“No. They were cursed because they stole from what is holy—from the protected dead!”

His brow furrowed and he crossed himself. Ishi really takes this shit seriously. Marie’s solemn look matched his, meaning I had two people in my camp who believed stealing from the dead somehow caused these men to kill each other.

I wasn’t ready to concede to that opinion just yet. But now I needed to figure out how to get us out of this mess without being noticed. Especially daunting after Marie pointed to the area where the tourists had been earlier.

It appeared they heard the gunfire. Several men in the group were running toward us, covering the quarter mile distance quickly.

“Let’s get moving,” I said, pushing them both in front of me so they wouldn’t lag behind. “We need to get the hell out of here, and
fast!”