Ancient Shadows Read online

  Michael stumbled backwards, away from the paolou while Hank continued to hold Daji down. He went to Kira and saw that she was still unconscious. Jianjun reached them both.

  Michael opened his hand and stared at the philosopher’s stone. He dropped to his knees, physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted. “Where are the monks you kept here waiting for someone to return? I need them. We need them.” He looked towards the paolou. Hank’s body, not the demon’s lay dead on the ground before it.

  Daji was with the Pheasant and Jade Pipa. They held each other, all weakened from the torments inflicted on them. The demons could suffer but not die.

  Around them, six sailors writhed and burned in the fire, suffering, as was the fitting result of their fate. Six, not seven. Hank wasn’t among them, and Michael could only hope that meant that Hank’s final actions had saved him from eternity among the damned. He turned his head, unable to look at them suffer. They were once good, young men who made a terrible mistake and now would pay forever because of it. Michael was sickened by everything around him, by everything demonic. The fires grew, and he and his friends could hardly breathe. “You brought us here, damn you!” he called to the monks. “Help us!”

  Something in the wall behind them, one of the few areas not in flames, looked different to him. He crawled towards it, and as he did, he saw it was a door. Jianjun was coughing hard, struggling to breathe. Michael went back and picked up Kira, knowing Jianjun would somehow find the strength to follow. Once through the doorway the air was clear. He saw a circular staircase that went downward. He glanced at the demons, the fire, and had no choice. Jianjun stumbled towards him and Kira. Michael nodded at him and then plunged down the stairs. Jianjun followed.

  They descended a long way, ending in a square chamber lit by candles. The walls of the chamber were strange—reddish-brown in color, with glints of a crystalline metal in them. He remembered Stuart’s words about rare earth metals.

  Alchemical symbols drawn in white paint covered those walls. They reminded Michael of the tomb he had opened in Mongolia belonging to an alchemist known as Lady Hsieh—symbols like these appeared on items in her casket. And all at once memories came to him of seeing similar symbols in another place. His father’s study.

  The only object in the room was a tiny metal chest, no more than four inches on all sides, with a hinged lid and a simple hook latch. Michael took a step towards it when he heard Jianjun whisper, “God, no!”

  He turned.

  The three demons walked down the staircase and into the room. They now looked like wraiths, almost translucent, and in shades of white and gray.

  “Father Berosus told me if I look at the pearl, it will look back at me and read my mind,” Michael said. “It will know I’m the one with the power over it.” With that, he held out his hand, the philosopher’s stone cupped in his open palm, and stared at it.

  “You demons,” he continued, “are made powerless by rare earth elements, and the walls here are covered with them. They are making you increasingly weak.” Simply by saying that, he could feel the strength of the demons lessening.

  The fight, now, was for their minds. He allowed his eyes to travel over the wall symbols, and then to the demons. “You are too weak to leave this place. The only way is to go back into the pearl.”

  The three demons held onto each other, as if finding more strength that way.

  Michael felt the pull of their demonic power fighting against him. He felt his hold slipping.

  “Enter the pearl,” he commanded. “And I’ll walk you out of this room.”

  The room quaked. A rainbow of colors shot out from the stone, and with it a loud terrible scream filled not only his mind, but the entire room. Jianjun pressed Kira’s head to his chest, holding his head to hers, trying to cover her ears as well as his own.

  Michael remained where he stood as the stone seemed to grow larger.

  Furious, the demons rushed at him as if to attack, but then swirled around him so that they appeared to be a gray-black churning mist. Their movement caused a low rumble in the room. Michael held his hand higher, even as the mist buffeted his body, and the rumble grew to a loud roar, causing the walls to shudder.

  “Enter the pearl!” His voice was louder this time, and as he stared at the alchemical symbols, they began to make sense to him. As if from some innate part of his soul, some collective unconscious memory, he knew their meaning. Do it! he ordered, no longer saying the words, but speaking from his mind.

  Strange lumps appeared on his hands, arms, and face, as if something was being drawn under his skin and fighting to break free.

  Jianjun held Kira tighter, bending over her to protect her if the demons escaped Michael’s control. Then, as quickly as it began, the noise in the room stopped. Michael’s skin was no longer contorted, and the pearl shrank back to its past size.

  Michael stared at the stone. “Got you.”

  “Michael,” Jianjun whispered. “Kira’s breathing is stronger. Her eyes … she’s opened them.”

  She lifted her hand to his face, then gripped his shoulder as he helped her sit up.

  Michael nodded, grateful she had survived.

  “You now know the full measure of your power,” said a voice behind him. The monk who had brought him food appeared from nowhere. “I suspect you knew much of this before, because you appear to already be an alchemist. But I warn you, the path you are now on will destroy you, as surely as it has me and my brothers, and as it did the sailors. The Nestorians knew the dangers of the philosopher’s stone and its demons and built this room to house the stone. They kept it in that small box, created from the metals the demons most fear.” He pointed to the metal chest.

  Michael picked it up. “This, then, is the demons’ coffin.” He opened the chest and was about to place the stone inside when he stopped. He felt its pull. He knew what it could do, and he had enjoyed having its power.

  He looked up at the monk, and with that, the meaning of the monk’s words struck him. He placed the stone inside the chest and then shut and secured the lid. He took a deep, quavering breath. “It’s done.” He glanced up at the monk. “Now, explain to me who you are, and why you’re here.”

  “I was the bungler, the idiot monk, who showed the philosopher’s stone to Marco Polo.” The monk hung his head a moment. “I am Brother Qinom. I was proud, too proud, of the faith the mother of Kublai Khan put our monastery to hold the red pearl. She asked us to take it far from her son, so we filled ten wagons with soil from the area near Xanadu, and traveled to this hilltop. We dug this room and lined the walls with the rare earth soil, and stored the pearl here, then built the monastery above it.

  “Some years later, three Venetians, a father, his brother and his son, Marco, came to see what it was that had caused so much consternation among the family of Kublai Khan. I brought the box up to the monastery to show them and even showed them how to open the Shang dynasty bronze that held it. They looked at the pearl and laughed about it, saying it wasn’t even a real pearl. They were far more interested in the very old bronze it was kept in. They brought good food and quantities of drink for me and the other monks. They were jolly men, who spoke a surprisingly good mix of Chinese and Mongolian. We had many laughs.

  “In the morning, when we woke up, the men, the bronze, and the pearl were gone. We searched for them, but they had many hours start, and fast horses, while we had none. Because I was the one in charge of the pearl, the one who lost it, I have been condemned to remain here until the pearl was returned. My fellow monks were also condemned since they did not prevent this catastrophe from happening, but they only join me now and then to pray. We have waited centuries for this day, for the pearl’s return.”

  “This area was once remote, but it’s not any longer,” Michael said. “The Chinese government is moving more and more people into the Xinjiang province. I can easily imagine them coming here to bulldoze and clear what’s left of the monastery. Also, the villagers are now curious about t
his place, I’m sure, thanks to our presence. If someone levels the monastery, they could discover this chamber. If that happens, and they find the pearl, they’ll unleash the demons on an unsuspecting world once more.”

  The monk nodded, then said, “Then, I pass the responsibility on to you. My work is done. Consummatum est.” He bowed his head and collapsed into dust.

  “We should get out of here,” Jianjun said, helping Kira to her feet.

  Michael shook his head as if coming out of a trance. “Yes, you’re right.” He looked around the room, at the alchemical symbols on the walls, and finally at the chest in his hand, the pearl safely inside it. “It was all about possession, demonic possession. But the question now is, with the philosopher’s stone, who possesses whom?”

  “Boss,” Jianjun said, “I don’t …”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Michael held up the chest. “They’re trapped. For the moment, at least.”

  Michael, Jianjun and Kira went up the stairs, and when they reached the top, they saw that there was no cellar; there was no fire.

  Before them stretched a crumbling, blackened ruin—much as the villagers had described the building all along. But among the ruins they saw the bodies of Hank, Stuart, the three bodyguards, and then, some distance away, Renata Corbi.

  Chapter 47

  Not only had the rain stopped, but the ground was dry as if it had never rained at all. The three got into the rented van and drove practically non-stop some nine-hundred miles to Ürümqi on the opposite side of the Taklamakan Desert. It had an international airport used by many foreigners. Michael hoped people from the village would be too scared to go up to the monastery before the three of them were safely out of the country. Once the villagers did go up there, he suspected they might bury the bodies and not say anything that would cause the attention of the Chinese government to rain down on them. The deaths would also very likely confirm what they already believed—that yaojing haunted the area.

  At the airport, Jianjun asked, “Are we going try to get to Inner Mongolia, boss?”

  “I don’t want to take the chance of being stopped by government officials. I want the pearl out of China as soon as possible, so I’ll head west, Ürümqi to Moscow to Seattle, and then make my way to Idaho.” He looked from Jianjun to Kira, at how much they had grown to care about each other. “You and Kira will be safe taking a more direct route to Beijing and then to Los Angeles.”

  “No, boss. I’m going with you,” Jianjun said. He faced Kira and took both her hands, his gaze more than sad, and his voice soft. “It’s best that you don’t go with us.”

  Dismay and surprise filled her face, but then, slowly, it changed to understanding. “You’re right. Go with Michael, help him protect the pearl. I could use some time alone, to try to understand all this, and process it in my own way.”

  “It won’t be easy,” Jianjun said, tucking a wayward lock of hair behind her ear. “You once told me about your mother, your regret about the past. Maybe it’s time to look for her.”

  She nodded. “I think I’ve got a lot of searching to do … of many kinds. But I’ll be fine.”

  He studied her a long moment. “I wish …” he began.

  “I know,” she said. “So do I. But sometimes things aren’t meant to be. I’ll be sure to follow your exploits with Michael in the news. I suspect they won’t end here.”

  She put her arms around him, and they kissed then held each other tight before she let him go. Alone, she walked away.

  Michael and Jianjun had no problems as they flew to Seattle, and from there, took a small local flight to Missoula, Montana. Kira had texted Jianjun and Michael that she arrived safely in Los Angeles where, as suspected, all the deaths had been attributed to accidents or suicides, no one was investigating anything any longer, and the entire matter had been neatly swept under the rug. Jianjun texted her back a long message with some of the words held in his heart and ended with a goodbye.

  Once in Missoula, Michael rented a four-wheel-drive jeep and bought the supplies they needed to carry out their plan.

  Michael got in the driver’s side. “I’ve been thinking,” he said.

  “Uh oh,” Jianjun muttered, getting in beside him.

  “Seriously. How often does one come across a philosopher’s stone? Charlotte Reed deserves to see this. She helped us, after all.”

  “And you deserve to keep it, perhaps?” Jianjun asked. “To learn to use it? Maybe to test it out a time, or two?”

  “It’s in the name of science,” Michael said. And there’s Irina, he told himself. What if, to help her, he needed the stone? How could he not keep it?

  “You’ve seen what it can do,” Jianjun said softly. “You know all the people the demons killed just in these few weeks. Leaving it ‘in the world’ so to speak, even if you think you can control it, is simply too dangerous. For you … and your friends.” Jianjun studied him before adding, “Even for Irina Petrescu.”

  Michael put his hands on the steering wheel as he pondered Jianjun’s words. Then, he nodded.

  They drove along Highway 12 in Idaho to a place called Lowell, and from there, headed south east into the mountains, past the point where a fire road became so rugged the four-wheel-drive jeep could scarcely make it, and even past the point where the road vanished altogether.

  Once they could drive no further, they carried their supplies deep into the mountains for another day until they found an area with a number of reddish-brown rocks with embedded metals, similar to the walls of the room deep under the monastery. They didn’t see Hank or Stuart’s homes and didn’t look for them.

  Neither slept well that night and rose early to watch the sunrise. Not long before they had been to an area called the “top of the world” in the T’ian Shan mountains, but the feeling here was every bit as desolate, every bit as lonely. They began to dig. About eight feet down, they stopped.

  “Okay, boss,” Jianjun said as he climbed out. “It’s time.”

  Michael watched his friend. At moments like this, he wondered which of them was the boss. Jianjun was right, but still, as he placed the pearl and its metal box onto the floor of the pit they had dug, every fiber of his body told him he needed to keep the stone with him, to keep it close, to use its power. To become a proper alchemist.

  But his mind said otherwise.

  The Thousand-Year Vixen couldn’t be killed, but deep in earth filled with elements that left her too weak to be harmful, she could no longer destroy anyone ... as long as the rare earth elements worked the way Stuart and Hank thought they did. But he could think of no place safer.

  And he wouldn’t be tempted any longer by the philosopher’s stone. Or so he hoped.

  He climbed out of the pit. He and Jianjun shoveled the soil on top of the pearl, and as he did, he heard Daji’s voice in his head raining vile curses on him and his progeny until the end of time.

  Michael and Jianjun spent another day cleaning up the area to make sure no one would notice anything wrong and inadvertently start digging.

  When they returned to Missoula, Jianjun rented a car to drive home to Vancouver, and Michael turned in the jeep for a passenger car to head down the highway to Salmon City, Idaho. He planned to spend a little time with his old friends, Sheriff Jake Sullivan and Charlotte Reed.

  “I guess I’m all set to leave again.” Jianjun held the rental car keys in hand and eyed Michael with a worried expression that said he wondered what strange situation Michael would get involved in the minute his back was turned.

  “I’ll be fine,” Michael said. “I’m just going to Salmon.”

  “And then back to Italy?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied. “I don’t know what my future holds. But enough of that, are you sure you don’t want to simply take a plane home? It’s a long drive.”

  “I’m sure. I need time to think about all that’s happened.” Jianjun dropped his gaze to the ground, then up to the mountains that framed the city.

  “But you
are going home?” Michael was worried about his friend. This trip had aged Jianjun—or, if not aged, it had matured him. Love, he guessed, could do that to a man.

  “I am, yes. I’ll go back to my wife, my loving, charming wife, who my father insisted I marry because of who her family is, not because of anything to do with me. It’s going to be harder than ever.” He shook his head and met Michael’s gaze. “Sometimes Chinese customs and family honor are a bitch!”

  Michael put his arm around his friend’s shoulders as they walked to Jianjun’s rental car. “I’ll do my best to find a dig site somewhere that interests me, and then I’ll give you a call.”

  “It can be none too soon, boss!” Jianjun said with a wan smile.

  Jianjun got into the car and drove off, leaving Michael alone once more.

  Michael got into his rental car for the drive to Salmon City, but before leaving, he called Magda’s phone number. He wanted to be sure Irina was safe. He received a message telling him that number was no longer in service.

  He was disappointed, but not surprised.

  He would spend some time with his friends, and then he would visit his father. Only by resolving all that lay unfinished between them would he ever find peace in his life. And perhaps, someday, find the woman he once loved. He wasn’t the lovesick boy he had been years ago, and he greatly doubted that seeing the “real” Irina would be anything like the way the demon made him believe he still felt about her. Too many years had passed, and they were two very different people now.

  He recognized that he could never live a conventional life, not after all he had experienced because of his connection to things normal people never saw or experienced. He had no idea where his life would lead, but he couldn’t shake the sense that there was something more for him to do. At the same time, the strong feeling filled him that nothing truly important in life could be left hanging—that when a meaningful event was left unresolved, it ate at you and festered into something far worse than it might have been otherwise. Before he could go forward, he needed to find a resolution to his past, one way or the other.