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

Aiko finished the tale of her fantastic journey, a confusing mishmash of verisimilitude and fantasy that left her listeners no more enlightened than they had been at the beginning. Listening, Alvaro could not help commenting, “I feel like I have been listening to that Italian explorer.”

“Marco Polo?” Gwen asked, helpfully.

“No,” Alvaro shook his head, “this fellow was Vincenzo something or other. Always spun the most fantastic tales when he was deep in his cups. You could never tell if he was joking or just delusional.”

Borrowing a trick from Cantara, Aiko sent three daggers at his head. “I do not lie.”

Dodging, Alvaro rolled to his feet and caught her up in his arms. “I do not doubt that, however, your imagination sometimes runs away with the truth.”

Her arms pinned behind her back, Aiko hissed and tried to bite him as he kissed her.

“Well,” April sighed, “vampyres may not sleep, but the rest of us do. Off the bed with the lot of you.”

Vincenzo. The name rang in Crystal’s mind like an echo through a canyon. She had not heard that name in several hundred years, and the memories, as many of these lost moments from her life, came back to her with the suddenness of a collision. As she stumbled exhausted into her room, still too sleepy to comprehend much of what had transpired, images of their time together flooded her thoughts. She collapsed on the bed as they crashed over her in a flood.

One-hundred and forty-four years later, she found Caim in a ruined temple on mount Arafat. Caim, one of the four demon lords who had taken her from the love of her life. Her name was Cassandra, and she was here with her lover, the Italian Explorer Vincenzo and his four Sherpa guides. They were here searching for the fabled Noah’s Arc, said to be hidden somewhere in these mountains, when a sudden blizzard had driven them into a cave for shelter. Studying their surroundings while the Sherpas struggled to light a fire, Vincenzo determined that it was not natural, but a man-made tunnel. The explorer in him wanted to follow it to its end, and Cassandra encouraged his ambition, despite the storm, despite the mountain. Only because she loved and admired his spirit of adventure.

First, they needed a hot meal to help warm themselves up. If he was alone, Vincenzo might have set out immediately, but he needed to look out for his lovely Cassandra. He could see she was cold, knew they were all on the verge of hypothermia. So he let her draw him down beside her and placed an arm around her shoulder. The meal was a simple stew made from salted goat meat and dried vegetables. The snow melted quickly in the fire, even at this altitude, and they were soon packing up their gear, making torches from the wood they had lugged up the mountain, preparing to follow the tunnel. Sometimes serendipity played as big a role in exploration as preparation and planning, and when luck came your way, you did not spit in her face.

The Sherpa did not like it. There was something not right about a tunnel carved so high up in the mountain, something evil. Although they had climbed this mountain many times, they had never heard tell of such a place, and hidden places were hidden for a reason. Vincenzo laughed off their concern. He was carrying his good luck charm, a strangely shaped crucifix made from the walnut tree under which Saint Anthony of Padua had died. Ever since the day his sister, a nun in the Benedictine order, had given him this simple gift, it had brought him good luck. As long as he had it and his Cassandra, Vincenzo did not fear anything. What could happen to a man surrounded by such love?

The tunnel was rough-hewn for three-quarters of its length and then lined with sandstone brick that must have been hauled up the side of the mountain. It represented years of hard labour. The workmanship looked Middle Eastern and was misplaced in this time and this region. It was the find of a lifetime. And when it ended in a set of brass doors adorned with pictograms in bas relief of some unknown origin, he knew he had found his Tombs of the King.

“This, my love,” he said, turning towards Cassandra, “is a significant find. It will make a name for me!’

“It is beautiful.” She breathed.

Inside, waiting for them, was a temple of jade and marble to rival any in the world. And one strange old man with glowing eyes, who ripped the head off of the nearest guide.

“He’s a demon!” Cassandra cried, and Vincenzo trusted her, for she knew about such things. She could smell the sulphur on him, the stench from the pits of Hell that was unmistakable to another of his kind. “Use the rosary.”

The demon looked old and frail, an easy kill for men as young and fit as Vincenzo and the guides until he moved with lightning speed. He climbed the walls and disappeared up into the darkness of the ceiling. Quickly forming a circle around Cassandra, the four remaining men raised the pointed shafts of their ice picks up into the darkness. In his one hand, Vincenzo held the rosary with its dagger-shaped crucifix, in the other the last remaining torch. Eyes scanning the inky black above their heads, they waited for the next assault.

The demon fell on one of the Sherpas. That was his last mistake. Even its supernatural quickness could not avoid three descending ice axes and the crucifix. Dodging the three obvious weapons, he placed himself in the path of Vincenzo’s strike. His sudden cry of pain echoed in the darkness. Caim had learned the same lesson as Agares, and he too sacrificed his existence as his reward.

They never made it off the mountain. With the death of the demon, the temple began to collapse. One of the two remaining Sherpas was crushed beneath a falling boulder, Vincenzo’s arm was shattered, and the last of their guides took off in a panicked flight that led him over a hidden ice chasm. Although she was not to know of it until years later, when in another lifetime she read a historical paper on Vincenzo and his lost expedition, and a brief newspaper account after the body of a Sherpa guide was found by a team climbing Mount Arafat. Cassandra was unable to carry her lover any further than the entrance of the tunnel, where they collapsed in an exhausted huddle. Unwilling to leave the man she loved, the two lovers froze to death on the mountain top, wrapped in each other’s arms. It was one of the few times in her many lives that she remembered her death.

At what point that night she had drifted into sleep, she was no longer aware. She was back in the temple in the moments before they had slain the demon, Caim. It was dark and damp and smelled of age and rot. They had come here for a purpose that she had forgotten. Finding Caim here had been a bonus. And finding Caim, one of her four mortal enemies, had washed all else from her mind. That she was here with the man who bore the relic that could slay him was more than fortuitous. Her last encounter with the demon and his cohorts still fresh in her mind, she had chosen her lover and protector with care. For as all demons did, she knew instinctively which other demons would be in the mortal sphere when she passed through the Gates of Hell.

Vincenzo was one of those rare mortals who could sense demons, and aware of the existence, he devoted great depths of energy to protect himself. He collected relics and charms, many of them useless trinkets, but being who she was, she had winnowed these from his person. When he had set out on this expedition, thanks in large part to her efforts, he was equipped to do battle with a host of hell. Whether Caim or Shax or any of the dozen others currently stalking the dark corners of Earth, he could kill or elude them, and thus protect her long enough to exact her revenge.

Now, he held the rosary at the end of his walking stick, waiting for the creature to drop out of the darkness. It was there, somewhere in the shadows of the ceiling. He could sense it, as he had always been able to sense these creatures born of his nightmares. At his side, Crystal hissed at the darkness, her eyes two red suns of rage. One of their Sherpa guides lay dead, his head ripped from his body by a massive claw. The last two crouched nearby, their ice picks held upright.

“Keep together,” Vincenzo snapped. “And keep your torches high.”

The demon glided down from the shadows. The creature was quick. Its claws raked the shoulder of one of the surviving Sherpas before their torches and blades drove it back. The blood pooling beneath their feet made the floor slick. Turning to strike at the demon, Vincenzo’s back foot slipped. The blade his lover had chosen for him missed its killing blow. As its tip scored a bloody scratch down its back, the demon’s cry of rage and pain echoed in the vaulted recesses of its roof.

“See, my love,” Crystal hissed eagerly, “your blade hurts it while ours do not.”

She had been a lot more blood-thirsty in those days after her Sylvester’s death – much more so than either Aiko or Cantara. The death of her first tormentor, Agares, had only whetted her thirst for vengeance. The moment she smelled Caim, the intoxicating perfume of him drove all else from her thoughts. Sulphur and blood. Dark appetites rose in her, and her eyes shone brighter, the hormone storm she released promising sex and death. She was a Succubus in her prime, the strongest of her kind, freshly fed on a den of vampyres not more than two weeks ago, and a heartbeat away from a feeding frenzy the likes of which the world had not seen.

It leapt down, irresistibly drawn towards the succubus and the mortal’s flesh. Focusing on the red-eyed interloper, the threat it assumed had injured it, the demon dove straight towards her head. The one drawback of choosing an animalistic manifestation was that one traded rational thought for brute strength and ferocity. There was always the danger that instinct would overcome its cunning, as it did now. Pain led to anger, and anger drove its demon side further from his mind. Only rage and pain remained. Only rage and the need to strike back at its tormentors.

Vincenzo leapt to his lover’s rescue. His blade pierced the creature’s scaly hide, sinking home with sickening finality. Some apotropaics might ward off, banish or harm a demon. Other, rarer forms were lethal. As the blade pierced his black heart, Caim knew he had made his last mistake.

When the dust from the explosion of flesh and ichor had cleared, they sorted themselves out. One of their party was dead, and another was wounded. Crystal knelt at his side, quietly binding his shoulder. Stunned but curious, Vincenzo kicked at the chunks of dead demon with the toe of his boot. At his side, the last Sherpa jumped nervously as one of the pieces, a clawed hand, seemed to twitch in the flickering torchlight.

“The treasure must be here, my love,” Vincenzo commented.

The treasure. A conscious thought cut through her dreams. Why had she not remembered this before? They had come to find one of the few unknown wonders of the world – Pandora’s Box. There was a second, lesser-known legend attached to the box and Crystal had recently read a version of that legend.

Her dream moved to the moment they had discovered Pandora’s Box. But where? She and Vincenzo and the uninjured Sherpa stood in an alcove of the massive underground temple. Vaguely she remembered the scores of such alcoves and dozens of passages but had no recollection of their travels to get here.

Pandora’s Box would tempt its finder. If you came away with anything other than what you most needed, a host of ills would befall you. In this case, they had come for a relic of St. Stanislav – a cross or chalice, the memories were too vague to recall. Its temptation could be primitive – gold and jewels to lure the greedy – or sophisticated, as the means of resurrecting a lost love or the fountain of youth that would grant immortality. Choose wisely those that dare.

A strange smoky grey gem fell from the chest as they opened it. It lay on top of a mound of gold and gems, glittering with a light all its own. Light danced in the torchlight, luring the eye of any not focused on other more urgent matters, tempting, always tempting. It rolled to the feet of their Sherpa guide, where it lay tantalizingly in the torchlight. There was so much in the chest, more than even the four of them could safely carry off the mountain. How could one little stone hurt? The die was cast.

The cave-in struck as they were leaving the temple. Deserted by their Sherpa guides, who fled in a blind panic, Crystal and an injured Vincenzo only made it as far as the mouth of the cavern. His leg was broken, and he was unable to climb off the mountain. Crystal refused to leave him. They froze to death long before food or water became an issue. Why had she never remembered any of this before? Why such different memories all this time? She hated having to live like this, with fragments of memories, some rearranged and rewritten by her subconscious, others too broken and fragmented to ever truly be remembered. But she remembered now.

Later, in another manifestation, she would learn the Sherpa guide had fallen to their deaths when an ice chasm opened up beneath his feet. She had spent years looking up his fate. Hope and disaster lay within Pandora’s box. His greed would let a plague demon run through the French countryside, bring the black death everywhere it went. Thousands would die before the Brotherhood would find another way to kill it, banishing it for another hundred years.

Crystal woke in the grip of deep sorrow. Wandering out into the living room, she found Aiko and Alvaro still sitting together.

“His name was Vincenzo - .” She announced. “And he was the bravest man I had ever met. We died together in the Himalayan mountains looking for and finding a relic to end the plague demon in France.”