Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series

The hounds left him outside a dolma in a small village in what could only be Oman. He was done in from his ordeal with the Inquisition and would sell his soul for a stiff whiskey or two. It was a dry country, however, and prohibition was part of sharia law that left him facing a choice of tea or coffee. Gabriel sighed miserably. At least the food would be edible, even if he could not wash it down with a beer, and right at the moment, he could eat a camel- hooves and all. And rest. He needed a good night’s sleep, maybe ten. A month in hibernation and, he thought, as he gave himself a good sniff, a hot bath. But first, he needed to borrow something to put over his rags, or no-one was going to serve him anywhere, not even from a dumpster.

Inside, Gabriel found a table near the back of the dolma. A collection of gentlemen in traditional Bedouin dishdasha and modern fashions were scattered about a dozen tables. He joined a goat herder and his two sons, having asked permission to occupy the last chair at their table and the only empty one in the entire café. From the dress of the men, he knew he must be in the more remote Musandam Peninsula near the Strait of Hormuz – a region of mostly agricultural communities. His Arabic was rusty, and Gabriel had to ask several times before they understood his accent. It was his luck that he would wind up in a village where the official language, English, was spoken by only a few individuals. It made conversation difficult, which suited Gabriel fine, not being in the mood to talk so soon after his encounter with the Mind Flayer. Demons could do that to you.

Gabriel ordered a dish of lamb served on a bed of rice, with a carafe of honeyed tea and a plate of pita bread and figs. It was enough food to make up two meals, and yet he was feeling almost hollow at the moment. Food probably would not fill the emptiness inside – it was all he had. Time and distance would do the rest – time that had not yet past and miles that were still in his future.

After the meal, especially with the amount of food he had eaten, he was too lethargic to move. He wanted to find someplace to rest, but the village was too small to have an inn or motel. His tablemates were able to arrange a ride into the nearest town for him with a friendly merchant who sold tobacco, tea and coffee in the local villages. His vehicle was circa nineteen sixties, maybe nineteen seventies – either Italian or French, and quite cramped with two grown adults and all the merchant’s wares. It was an oddity in a country with such close ties with Britain, and where so many of its vehicles came from that country or from Germany. As was the merchant, who spoke better French than he did English or Arabic.

The interior of the car smelled of tea and tobacco. Gabriel did not even think tobacco was legal under Islamic law, which was probably why they were pulled over at the roadblock to have their vehicle searched. Another oddity for this country, absolute monarchy or no. The Arabic was flying too fast and furious for him to follow what was going on – strange in a country whose official language was English. Before he could unravel the tangled meaning of all the oddities, someone hit him on the back of the head with the butt of a rifle. Once again, his world went black.

Groggy, the back of his head sore and stiff with blood, Gabriel woke up in some empty warehouse. It smelled of mould and grain dust and was obviously a storehouse for agriculture products. And obviously abandoned for some time. He could not even hear any noises from outside that would indicate the presence of other humans, not even the bark of a dog or a car backfiring. Where in Oman could he be? Still the Musandam Peninsula, he thought. It was dry enough for it, so somewhere away from the ocean. Maybe in one of the desert regions, or closer to the Al Hajar mountains? Somewhere remote though, so probably nowhere near the mountains, where most of the country’s population lived.

At least this time, no-one was standing over him, shredding his mind with pain and pleasure that was both unendurable. In fact, he was all alone in the large, empty room. Only him, and maybe a few spiders. Gwen would love it here. Gabriel could hear her complaining about the spiders conspiring against her, and it made him laugh until pain shot across his head. This wasn’t his trip. And that told him that he was living in a much more dangerous world than he had been living in only a year ago. He needed the advice of an archivist like Jean-Claude, but he suspected they were moving well down the path of the Prophesies of Hsatan, and that Armageddon was around the corner. Maybe even closer.

Demons in the East and in the South. That fit one of Nostradamus’ unpublished prophecies, and in turn, fell in step with the much older prophesies uncovered by Pope Sylvester. It was said that the missing fifty-eight quatrains of the seventh “Century” existed only in the Brotherhood archives and that they were written while Nostradamus was possessed by a demon. It was a belief held by most Brotherhood scholars, generally accepted by every school, and one that they had no way of proving. Most of Nostradamus’ sources, whether historical or mystical, could be traced to writers known to his time in all but the fifty-eight quatrains. These had no connection to any writings known to mankind – and it was at this point that Gabriel’s knowledge failed him. He read or knew nothing of the languages spoken by the various types of demons, and had neither the time nor the inclination to learn.

No matter. Gabriel found his feet and made the rounds of his makeshift prison. It’s windows, if you could call them that, were eight by six-inch rectangles about two stories above his head. Its single door was locked from the outside – maybe chained. He would not be getting out that way or through the windows, and its walls were formed of eight-inch adobe brick. If he had the time and the tools, he might be able to dig his way through one of the walls. The mortar looked to be some kind of mud, not cement-based. Looking around, he found that he did not even have fingernails to dig with. An inventory of his many pockets, even his secret ones, came up empty. Someone had done a thorough job of searching him, someone who knew what he was doing, or at least the tricks used by the Brotherhood. And that got him to thinking.

Whoever had kidnapped him had to know a lot about the Brotherhood, and about the standard and non-standard equipment an agent carried. And that would have to make them someone connected with the Brotherhood or the Vatican. Most likely, the Brotherhood.

Gabriel made another circuit of his make-shift prison. His first inspection had revealed nothing he could use as a weapon or break out of the cell, but sometimes a closer inspection uncovered the less obvious. Nothing. Merely dust and cobwebs. This place had been swept clean. No burlap bags, no rope or twine to tie them together, not a single tool – nothing you would expect to find in a warehouse or a silo. The floor was cement, old and crumbling and still too hard for him to dig through with his bare fingers. The walls were a clay brick popular a century ago, dried hard and solid as any wall constructed of modern material. It was hopeless.

Dressed in a tan sleeveless tunic and loose-fitting trousers, a lone man lay on the crest of a small dune, studying the abandoned village and its three buildings. Nothing but heatwaves and dust filled his vision, but he knew they were there. Twelve men armed with swords and rifles. He turned, pulling a mirror from his robe and flashing a signal to those who waited in the hills beyond. Only twelve men, and no sign of Imam Abdul-Alim Qureshi or any of his bodyguard. Demons every one of them, The smallest stood six feet eight inches, all muscle and steel, and a face that could give babies heart attacks and curdle milk in a herd of goats. It was the smell of sulphur that gave them away, a scent that lingered even hours after they left.

A mirror signalled back. He was to wait while the others moved into position. A mixed group of Dervishes and Hashshashins slipped silently through the dunes and flat rocky hills, circling the collection of three buildings. The scout saw neither the enemy waiting down below nor his own comrades as they continued to close the noose. As he waited, he checked his weapons – sword, pistol and silencer, garrotte, a dozen throwing knives and daggers, and his Shafrah. It’s slightly curved blade was crafted from pure iron and tempered from the waters at the source of the Nile river, forged in the traditional fashion by weaponsmiths who had passed down the secret for generations.

Down below, the Grand Master was being held captive, and in a few short hours, he would be sacrificed to open a portal to release a hundred Dark Djinn, creatures that had been held captive in a series of rock pillars for more than a thousand years. It had taken a generation of the Dervish and Hashshashin’s best warriors to capture and imprison these same djinns, a generation of blood and sacrifice that was on the brink of being erased by one foolish man. And to stop him, they needed the help of the man now being held in the building below. The only way to defeat these demons was with a more powerful apotropaic like the one made from the True Cross, their own more powerful weapons now lost to them with their academy. All they had at hand were those less powerful artifacts they had carried into the field, and they were not enough.

No whistle. No bird calls. Merely a quick flash of sunlight on a mirror. Oh, there was wildlife in the high desert, but the cry of a bird in the heat would alert those waiting below. The scout crept forward, knowing that while he saw no-one, he was not alone. The tan and greys of their robes blended in with the surrounding rock, stone and sand – only motion would attract the eye. And they moved at such irregular intervals when the wind blew a screen of sand across the dunes, or a tumbleweed rolled through another stretch of desert to distract the eye.

Closer now, he could pick out the sentries, a dozen men dressed in similar garb with a black and crimson sash across their chests. Too bright, and not colours found in nature. Eventually, the eye would be drawn to the location of all twelve of the sentries by this plumage. Pride goes before the fall.

Once all twelve were located and identified as human, a mirror flash signalled the attack. With no non-humans in the bunch, snipers slowly drew out their rifles. There was nothing antique about these weapons – modern, high-powered rifles and scopes, handcrafted by some of the best gunsmiths from a dozen countries. Each had something different they looked for in a rifle –the trigger action, the muzzle velocity or the sight and scope. Twelve shots rang out, and eleven bodies fell. The twelfth took a wound to the back and was stuck between two buildings. He could wait until someone moved close enough to finish him off with a knife.

They needed to move swiftly now before another squad showed up to relieve the fallen guards. Especially the Imam and his demon bodyguards. No point worrying about being seen now. A score of brown cloaked figures leapt up from the desert floor, the beards of the Dervishes visible even from this distance. Normally bare-chested, for this mission, they had borrowed the cloak and pants favoured by the Hashshashins. Stealth was needed for this mission.

Two Dervishes climbed to the roof as the scout, and another broke through the door into the grain warehouse. The Grand Master faced them with a piece of board he had pried up from the wall, a sliver really, and the scout couldn’t help laughing.

“Dhakir?” Gabriel squinted against the sudden light. “Is that you, you old desert coon? I thought some camel would have eaten you by now.”

“I see the goats have been at your carcass,” Dhakir shot back. He spoke to his companions in ancient Farsi, and they laughed.

“So,” Gabriel grumped, “we gonna sit around and have a picnic, or is someone going to fill me in on what’s going on around here?”

“Soon,” Dhakir replied. “We must take you to somewhere safe first.”

Out in the desert, twenty camels were waiting. Camels! Dhakir knew how Gabriel felt about camels, and how camels felt about him, and the Grand Master knew the idea had been the desert coon’s from the get-go. Damn rats of the desert. If they were not biting him, it was their fleas, and every one of them spat – mainly at him. Plus, you didn’t mount a camel the same way you did a horse – the damn things knelt down to make it easier to throw you over their heads. And its gait was like a drunken, epileptic donkey, its back all spine and burrs. If you were unlucky enough to stay on it for the entire ride, you would be walking sideways for a month. And God forgive the thing decided to run, like now. After ten minutes, Gabriel was feeling decidedly seasick.

The waterhole they brought him to was a brackish stand of water, no more than a puddle set back in a long box canyon. At some time in its past, it was the favourite way station of smugglers and outlaws. The place had come down in the world since then. Now, no self-respecting cactus would grow here – and the few scrub bushes that had were wilted and listless, leaving Gabriel as the only source of fodder for the camels. Had there been a stand of succulent wheat, he did not doubt these demon beasts would still prefer to chew on him, and they spent some time following him around the canyon to prove his point.

“I am embarrassed to see a cowboy like you unable to ride a camel,” Dhakir teased.

“In Texas, we know how to tell a horse from a cow,” Gabriel shot back. “So, does anyone want to tell me what is going on around here?”

“About six months ago, the Imam started to act strangely,” the oldest of the Hashshashins began. “He took on a new advisor, began to closet himself off from the rest of the Academy. Before we knew it, the Dervish and the Hashshashins were declared infidels. We fled and set up an academy in exile.”

“And that is not all, my friend,” Dhakir filled in. “Two weeks ago, we learned he plans to release the Black Djinn imprisoned in the pillars of Hatra. His bodyguards are demons, and we suspect he is possessed.”

“We had none of our more powerful artifacts with us when we fled the academy,” the elder concluded.

“Never mind,” Gabriel replied absently. “Can you get your hands on some hawthorn and or gopher wood stake. Oh, and some explosives.”

The others looked at him questioningly, as if his sanity had slipped.

“Something new and very effective cooked up by some of our young ones,” Gabriel explained. “We need to get us and it to the pillars of Hatra before the Imam is ready to make his move.”

“And no more camels,” he threw in as an afterthought. “We need wheeled transportation, maybe even a plane.”

From the hidden oasis, they travelled all afternoon and into the evening to reach the exiled Academy deep in the mountains. Here, in an ancient Hashshashin stronghold, three-quarters of the staff and students from the original Academy struggled to carry on the Brotherhood’s mission. Everywhere Gabriel went, the Brotherhood was on its heels, and if this ploy – this desperate gamble to return the struggle to a two-sided war – did not pay off, the battle and the war would be lost. The Brotherhood could not survive its failure. And if the Brotherhood fell, would Humanity be far behind?

“You will need to move all your people into Iraq,” Gabriel was leaning over a table littered with maps as he spoke. “I will take one hundred of your best warriors to confront the Imam. Once he has been dealt with, we must be ready to move into Turkey.”

“And the other twelve Academies?” One of the elders questions.

“Should already be in position,” Gabriel assured him. “I will be arranging an airlift in-country. We still have air superiority.”

“We will be an hour behind you,” the elder nodded.

And with that, Gabriel and his hundred were on their way to meet an airplane at a makeshift airfield out in the desert. It would be a quick in and out operation, coming in low under the radar and hoping not to get caught by the multinational force. There would be no avoiding being mistaken for Al-Qaeda terrorists, not with their dress, nationality or cargo. They were carrying enough explosives to set off hundreds of IEDs. It was an entanglement they needed to avoid, and hopefully, making a fake emergency landing would buy them enough time and the cover story they needed to pull it off. Their luck couldn’t run for shit forever. Fate had to smile on them, at least once during this war.

Gabriel figured it would take thirty to forty-five minutes for a patrol to reach the ‘crash site.’ Those Brits could be annoyingly efficient. They would have to make it work, disappearing into the Iraqi desert in less time. Of course, if there was an American satellite overhead at the time of their landing, things could get very hot in a hurry. And that could only aid the Imam and his dark cause.

The flight was short and tense. The pilot, having filed a flight plan that should take him into the Beirut airport, radioed in a distress message. Coming in fast to mimic a crash landing, he treated his passengers to a nightmarish ride and almost vertical descent. The final minutes of the flight were a traumatic experience that had many praying their ruse would not become reality. White knuckled, they held on as the plane skidded sideways across the sand on touchdown. The Arab cowboy at the controls brought her down hot, kicking up sand and stone in a curtain that threatened to bury the nose.

And then it was over. A full thirty seconds passed before anyone moved. And then it was an orchestrated panic of frenetic movement as the hundred caught up their backpacks, assembling in teams on the fly. In five minutes, all one hundred men were over the initial dunes and disappearing into the fading sunlight. Near the head of one column, Gabriel dropped into an awkward trot. Running on sand took a skill he had seemed to have forgotten, but as he struggled to keep up, it quickly came back to him. After all, the Grand Master of the Brotherhood could not look like a wimp in front of the raw recruits – not that they had brought any. The damn sun-hardened bastards.

As the sun began its slow descent into the western horizon, still bleaching the desert with its heat, the four columns struggled across the sand and stone beneath the shadows of a dozen oil rigs. Hatra, their goal, still lay miles away, and they needed to be there well before nightfall when the Imam and his demons would arrive. And they needed time at that end to put together the explosives and plant them in strategic positions. And time was pressing for another reason. By now, the first British patrol had reached the ‘downed’ aircraft, and an investigation team would be on route. In the desert, it was impossible to avoid leaving tracks, and these would soon reveal that a hundred or so people had fled the scene of the accident. And refugees did not flee to a war zone.

The ancient Parthian City shimmered on the horizon like a mirage. A couple of hours to nightfall. Gabriel wondered who would arrive first – the Imam and his demons, the British Expeditionary Force, or a stray Iraqi patrol who occasionally policed these World Heritage sites. A quarter of a mile now. The other teams became visible as the entire unit came together at their destination. Behind them, Gabriel swept the horizon and found it blessedly empty. If the British were on their trail, they were not close, and it was not likely the Imam would come early given the composition of his escort. Although there was always the possibility, they were already here. He hadn’t thought of that until this moment.

The last possibility slowed their approach. Hashshashins scouts raced ahead to reconnoitre the ruins while the others spread out to encircle the city. Nothing. A waste of forty minutes they could ill afford, but a necessary one. If they stumbled upon the demons now, it would be a short, bitter and bloody fight that ended with their deaths. A flash from a mirror sent Gabriel and the others racing into the ruined city, each toting a pack of explosives and a bundle of hawthorn or gopher wood stakes.

Inside the city, two teams scouted out the ruins while the rest set to work rigging the explosives. The pillars were part of the most extent building in Hatra and were one of the most photographed sections of the ancient city. Gabriel wondered if the evil imprisoned inside were not what drew so many eyes to this place. As he worked, he could not shake the feeling that he was being watched, and while the scouts could not find any sign of the Imam and his demons, something or someone was there. Perhaps it was only the ghosts of the Black Djinns’ victims, lingering at the scene of their suffering and death in silent accusation of those who failed to protect them. And perhaps it was the Black Djinn themselves, choosing new victims from amongst him and his companions.

The hawthorn was probably not as efficacious against demons as it was against vampyres, but Gabriel suspected that some of those with the Imam would find it painful. The vampyres were moving too openly not to be involved in most of the world’s troubles. And the rarer Gopher wood did nasty things to demons. He could wish they had more of this latter, and could only hope the added punch of the explosives would make up for this lack.

It was almost nightfall when they finally finished their work and slipped into position. On the near horizon, dark shapes appeared. There was only twenty in the party, the best news Gabriel had had in a long time. The figures slowly drew closer, but the growing darkness hid their features. They still could not be sure if these were the ones they sought. They would have to wait until they wandered into the trap, and even then, it would be a dicey thing. God forbid it was an innocent British patrol because once sprung, with that much explosives involved, there was no preventing the mayhem that would follow.

As the party drew up to the columns, prayer rugs were unfurled. Part of their dark ritual saw the Imam and the demons praying with their backs turned to Mecca. Sacrilege! Infidel dogs! The non-Muslims amongst the lurking Brotherhood warriors had a difficult time holding their Muslim brothers from leaping in with swords and bare hands. The insult to God was unforgivable, it cried out for blood and atonement. And still, they must wait until all the demons were within the blast radius. It was all or death, and that was worse than nothing.

The scouts wandered in from the perimeter to add their voices to the rising prayers. Explosions rent the desert night. One hundred Brotherhood warriors leapt in with a cloud of shrapnel still filling the air. Even wounded and dazed, the twenty demons were a formidable opponent. Gabriel sprinted into the chaos of blood and death. A Dervish, impaled on the claw of a demon, drove his own sword through its eye as he died. In battle, the demons converted to their true form. Winged-creatures, with huge shoulders and muscular arms that ended in wicked claws, even tattered and torn, they flitted from the ranks of their attackers to attack from all sides. Bloody and battered, the Brotherhood kept their formation, turning as a whole to face each new threat.

British Marines were tough. Disciplined and skilled, they had fought throughout the world, hundreds of different enemies but never demons. Arriving on scene shortly after the explosion, they sped towards the scene of a battle shrouded in darkness and smoke. A massive figure intercepted the lead APC, flipping it over like a child’s toy. The two following opened fire with their 50 calibre machine guns, stitching the figure with hot lead. Three bare-chested Arabs leapt out of the dust, taking the creature out with swords and stakes where their own bullets did nothing more than bounce off its black flesh. They kept rolling forward until they bracketed the upended vehicle, medics and infantrymen exiting both APCs to come to the aid of their stricken comrades. Rifles and machine guns held with white knuckles, they waited for something to come out of the smoke, praying their weapons would be able to stop it.

Gabriel met the Imam in the midst of the smoke and fire. It was a hell of a time to remember the Imam was a kickass swordsman. Two blades whirling in his hands, he approached the Texan. Of course, you should never bring a sword to a gunfight, Gabriel thought as he drew an ancient colt from his waistband. His shot took the man in the middle of his forehead, staring back at his murderer like a third eye as the body of a demon knocked Gabriel from his feet….