The farm was located in low hills, some twenty miles southwest of Pittsburgh. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon when their SUVs pulled through a pair of rundown gates and started up an icy, pothole-ridden drive.
Bullets peppered the ground in front of them when they rounded a bend in the land and came in sight of a dilapidated farmhouse sitting atop a low rise.
“Shit!” Serena barked, slamming on the brakes.
Drake swore as their SUV lurched to an abrupt halt, the seatbelt digging sharply into his gut. In the rear seat, Nate removed his gun from inside his jacket.
Otis jumped out of the vehicle ahead of them and dashed toward the farmhouse, arms waving frantically above his head and feet skidding in the slush.
“Dad! It’s me, Otis!” he yelled. A bullet smashed into the ground several inches from his left leg. “For Christ’s sake, old man, will you stop shooting?!”
The firing stopped.
Drake carefully exited the vehicle with Serena and Nate, his senses on high alert. Artemus, Elton, and Callie stepped out of the other SUV, their breath pluming in the cold air. Smokey jumped out of the footwell where he’d been sitting and landed in a puddle. An irritated growl rumbled out of him.
Metal groaned and creaked some twenty feet to the right of the driveway. A trapdoor opened and thudded onto the ground next to a barn, raising a splatter of mud. Someone climbed out of the hole and peered at them.
“Otis?” the apparition mumbled.
Drake stared at the middle-aged man with disheveled hair and clothes holding a sawed-off shotgun in his grimy hands.
Otis gazed from the figure to the farmhouse. “Did you rig guns in the main house?” he asked, shocked.
“Yeah.” His father eyed the rest of them suspiciously. “Who are these people?”
It took a while to figure out why William Boone was living in a bunker under his barn.
Artemus glanced around at the narrow, bare stone passage they were negotiating before studying the two figures ahead of him. Otis bore only a passing resemblance to his father. They were talking agitatedly, the younger Boone berating the older man in low whispers for the state of the farm and his unkempt appearance.
“So, how long have you known him?” Drake muttered.
Artemus caught Smokey’s glance from where the rabbit hopped by their feet.
“Two years,” he replied. “I advertised for an assistant to help me run the shop. He was the only one who applied for the position.”
Serena frowned. “And you didn’t know that he was—?”
She paused and waved a hand vaguely in the air.
Artemus narrowed his eyes. “What, a holder of cryptic knowledge? That question wasn’t part of the interview, no.”
Elton sighed. “I think she means the farmhouse and his father.”
“Oh.” Artemus grimaced. “No. We don’t talk about that stuff.”
His gaze found Otis’s back once more. Although I get the feeling that that’s about to change.
He still couldn’t detect anything out of the ordinary from his assistant. No latent energy that told him the younger man was something other than a normal human. From the way Drake and Callie had been studying Otis with faint frowns, neither could they.
The passage opened into a room that appeared to serve as Boone’s living and sleeping quarters. It was sparsely furnished and bore the mark of someone who did not really care for anything beyond the most basic of human comforts. Boone led them through the chamber and into a narrow corridor on the other side.
A thick, metal door appeared at the end of the passageway. It was secured by a dozen locks. They waited patiently while Boone entered codes into six digital devices before lifting a large, jangling ring of keys from inside his ragged housecoat and working through the mechanical locks. He finally pulled the door open and ushered them across the threshold into the room beyond.
Artemus slowed and stopped.
The chamber they’d entered was over twice the size of the one they had just passed. It was also pristine, with not a speck of dust in sight.
Otis froze, the color draining from his face. He ignored the towering bookcases, the boxes on the floor, and the piles of notebooks heaped upon the immense table in the center of the room, his feet leading him almost half-consciously toward the boards that took up most of the study’s south-facing wall.
Shock reverberated through Artemus as he stared at the charcoal sketches pinned and taped to the wall amidst hundreds of newspaper clippings and dozens of maps. He exchanged dazed looks with Drake and Callie and saw his own incredulity reflected in their eyes.
“Mom’s drawings,” Otis mumbled in a low voice filled with pain.
He raised trembling fingers to the yellow, aged papers that bore figures, objects, and symbols that Artemus partly recognized.
One was a representation of Smokey in full, three-headed beast form. Another was a drawing of the Chimera. The next two were of a pair of winged beings that bore an uncanny resemblance to Artemus and Drake in their angelic manifestations. The scepter was also there, as were the symbols that had appeared on the cane and Artemus’s flaming sword.
“I thought you’d destroyed them.” Otis turned an accusing glare upon his father. “You said they were gone!”
“They were gone,” Boone muttered. “I brought them down here after your mother’s death.”
A muscle jumped in Otis’s cheek and his hands fisted at his sides.
Artemus blinked. He had never seen his assistant so worked up.
“What is this place?” Otis asked in a hard voice. “Why are you living down here, like an animal?”
A tortured expression flashed across Boone’s face at his son’s harsh words.
“Because this is a safe place,” he admitted hesitantly. “They can’t seem to find me down here. I think it’s the iron in the ground.”
Otis scowled. “Who can’t find you? What the hell are you talking about, Dad?”
“I think he means demons,” Drake murmured, his gaze fixed on Otis’s father.
Boone stiffened. He took a step toward Drake, his expression tense. “What do you know of them?”