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It was as if the central spire of the sanctum was coming to life. A shape that I had previously taken to be a part of the ornate wall carvings broke free. A construct, formed of silver steel, stretched its frame as it leaped at us.
I had no idea what the creature was meant to be, but it had a slender body with six silver wings protruding from its back. The creature’s head, if you could call it that, was covered in eyes that lit up red as they stared off in every direction. The creature had two sets of taloned limbs, like eagle’s claws, that gleamed as the light played off their sharpened edges. The construct’s beak seemed formed of the same strange alien metal as the doors to the sanctum.
The construct pushed itself out from the tower, its wings beating furiously to give it drift. Then the construct pulled its wings in tight to its body and dove straight at Dizzy.
“Dizzy, watch out!” I shouted, pointing behind her.
Dizzy’s head snapped around. Her wings beat twice as she made up her mind and dove toward the floor. Peregrine falcons might be one of the smaller birds of prey, but they are also one of the fastest, with a dive speed of almost two hundred and forty miles an hour. The construct let out a frustrated cry as Dizzy slipped out of its grasp and plunged toward the floor.
The construct went after her, squawking madly.
What was even more unsettling was the sudden chorus of shrill squawks that answered its cry.
“That’s not an echo,” Murdoch said, staring up the spire.
“Nope, we could never be that lucky,” I answered, as a dozen more of the flying bird constructs broke free of the spire above us. Each of them was almost four feet long—all of them deadly killing machines.
And here we were, perched precariously on a four-foot-wide staircase almost five stories above the temple’s floor. The flock of constructs bearing down on us didn’t need to kill us. They only needed to drag us off our perch. The fall would take care of the rest.
The spire’s plateau was still at least two floors above us. We couldn’t possibly make it in time, and trying to move while the creatures bore down on us was a recipe for disaster.
“We need to hold our ground,” I shouted. “Keep our backs to the wall and give them hell!”
Lara raised her MP5 to her shoulder and opened fire. The lead construct seized up as the burst tore its head apart. The construct sank like a rock as Lara moved to the next creature. One of these days, I needed to get her to teach me how to shoot.
Murdoch, ever the skeet enthusiast, shouted, “Pull!” before jamming down the trigger of his automatic shotgun.
He emptied what was left of the drum, blasting away four of the constructs in a hail of fire.
That explained why I had never seen an AA-12 at the Olympics. Everyone else on the skeet circuit would probably consider that cheating. Here in the temple though, Murdoch was doing the Lord’s work.
The remaining constructs tightened ranks, descending on us in a cloud of death.
I fired my pistol into the dense mass of beasts. Once, twice, three times. I hit one of them, but the shot must have glanced off because the beast’s mass of metal just kept coming.
Lara shredded another with her MP5 as my pistol ran dry. In frustration, I hurled the empty weapon at the creatures and drew on my power.
Silver melts at close to one thousand degrees Celsius and so, rather than trying to burn through them, I took another approach.
“Desmontar!“ I unleashed my will in a wave of energy that pulsed out from our position on the staircase. The first two constructs took the brunt of the attack. The others closed ranks, using their fellow constructs to absorb the spell.
The two lead creatures dissolved into a cloud of fine silver pieces that rained down on us. The fact that the spell worked at all confirmed my belief that the creatures were indeed artificial, and not alien. My spell worked to sever the bonds holding the creatures together. Without a will of their own to combat the magic, they simply disintegrated.
The others plowed on unimpeded.
I tried for a second attempt, but the creatures were already on top of us.
The constructs were a surging mass bristling with beaks and claws. I couldn’t track them all, so I focused on the one nearest to me. The construct slammed into me, shoving me back against the wall. The creature grabbed at my vest with its rear talons while the sharpened claws on its top limbs tried to tear out my throat. I grabbed its front legs and pushed them away, the talons missing the flesh of my throat by inches. The creature lunged forward, driving its beak at my eyes. I ducked to the side and the creature face planted into the wall behind me, leaving a gaping scar in the spire’s surface.
The blow, that would have stunned a human, didn’t even slow the construct down. It drew back and lunged again, this time at my chest. Its beak struck the bullet-proof vest with enough force to wind me but fortunately the Kevlar managed to keep it from skewering my heart.
I grabbed the construct with both hands.
“Plomo,“ I whispered, channeling my will into the word. My right arm burned as the magic passed through it, but my power of transmutation only worked by touch.
The power rolled through the creature, turning silver to lead. The construct howled, not in pain but in frustration, thrashing about until its limbs ceased functioning as intended. The lead was solid, non-responsive, and dense. I grabbed its legs and swung the silver–lead hybrid like a baseball bat at the construct that seemed intent on plucking out Murdoch’s eyes.
The two of them collided, sending splintered wings and shattered silver in every direction before the two of them plummeted into the maze below.
The momentum of the swing carried me closer to the edge than I had intended. I waved my arms to catch my balance.
One of the constructs seized hold of my back and flapped madly with all six wings to pull me over the edge. Lara jammed the barrel of her MP5 against the creature and blew it away. The proximity of the weapon to my ears was deafening.
“Thanks,” I shouted as the creature plunged over the edge.
Before she could reply, another construct gouged her outstretched arm, silver talons slicing through her flesh. She let go of the submachine gun and the construct grabbed it. A second bird construct slammed into her from above, knocking her over. Lara cried out as its claws raked her shoulder, tearing through her shirt and biting into her flesh.
She went down, falling forward toward the precipice.
The stairs were thin, too thin to give her room to recover. She hit the uneven steps and rolled down them. Time seemed to slow as her legs slid out over the edge.
She cried out as she grasped at the edge of the stairs, the weight of her own body and her momentum dragging her down.
I darted to her and grabbed her arm with both hands. I planted my feet to stop her weight from pulling me over the edge.
My sneakers slid as I lost ground. Murdoch blasted away another construct, then dropped down beside me, grabbing Lara’s other arm.
“Seth!” Lara cried, her voice cracking as she dangled over the chasm.
Tears rolled down my cheeks as the muscles in my right arm stung like daggers of ice were being pushed through them. My spirit was willing, but my body was weak.
“Lara, we’ve got you,” I wheezed, hoping the rest of me would hear the instruction and believe it.
Murdoch got his arm around her and grabbed at her vest, trying to pull her back onto the stairs. A squawk above us warned us that we were not alone.
I glanced up in time to see two more constructs push off the wall and dive straight for us.
Their shrill cries cut through the air, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and my eardrums want to explode. It was a move calculated to frighten and intimidate us, but all that did was warn us of their approach. I was already terrified.
I was scared out of my mind that I would lose the woman I loved in this strange hell between worlds. I was afraid that the future I’d been fighting for was slipping from my fingers by the moment.
The two constructs spelled certain death for Lara who still dangled over the edge of the stairs.
As the two constructs descended, I made a choice. With my waning strength, I was contributing little to the effort of pulling Lara to safety but I could make a much more serviceable distraction.
“Murdoch, have you got her?” I said, loud enough to be heard over the screeching.
“Seth?” Lara called, her voice high and panicked. “What are you doing?”
“Seth, don’t,” Murdoch said. “Not now, Seth.”
“Have you got her or not?” I shouted.
I pulled Lara’s arm to his bicep to give her something to hold onto.
“Yes,” Murdoch said, his face red with exertion.
I planted a kiss on her forehead, and as the two constructs charged us, I leapt at them. They tried to abort, but I wrapped my left hand around the neck of one and grabbed hold of the wing of the other. The two constructs panicked, wheeling away from the tower.
I hung on for dear life as the constructs carried me clear off the tower and over the five floor drop to the bronze maze below. My stomach flipped as I started to fall.
The two constructs flapped wildly but even the effort of their cumulative twelve wings couldn’t account for my extra weight.
We sank like a rock.
If I was going to die, I was taking them both with me. With all my strength, I brought the two creatures together, smashing them into each other. I forced the talons of the construct on the right into the eye sockets of the creature I had clutched by the throat. The beast shrieked as the red glowing lights faded and went out. Pushing its ruined form aside, I grabbed at the remaining construct. With an effort of will, I sent my power through the construct, transmuting it to sand in a fraction of a second. The construct exploded in a blinding cloud.
Then, I was alone, plummeting to the bronze floor below.
I looked with satisfaction at the ruined corpses of the constructs I had dragged to their death. At least Lara was safe, even if it was only for the time being. I closed my eyes as I hurtled toward the ground.
A guttural roar echoed through the corridor. At first, I thought it was the behemoth, but there was too much raw life in it.
Something snatched me around the waist, bringing me to an abrupt halt.
I felt the whiplash from my head to my feet as my sudden descent became a clambering ascent.
I opened my eyes and stared into a dense mass of shaggy black fur.
On closer inspection, it wasn’t quite black. It was shot through with white and gray, or was that silver?
The creature holding me grunted as it scaled the central spire.
I didn’t speak silverback gorilla, but I was fluent in Dizzy. And I could imagine the furious words hidden behind that bellow.
I tapped her on the shoulder as I panted for breath. “Never doubted you for a minute, Dizzy.”
I felt like Ann Darrow being carried up the Empire State Building as Dizzy scaled the walls of the spire and deposited me on the ledge with Murdoch and Lara.
I bounced off the wall and splayed out across three different stairs as I caught my breath. It was like trying to relax on a stair master but compared to where I had been a few moments ago, the silver felt refreshingly cool against my head.
“Seth!” Lara grabbed me by my vest and pulled me into a deep kiss. Her lips felt like heaven against mine in a sensation I’d never expected to experience again. And in that moment of pure bliss, everything else faded into insignificance.
Then Lara pushed me away and shoved me in the chest.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” she said. “You could have died!”
I couldn’t help grinning like an idiot, while the feel of her lips against mine was still a fresh memory.
“You’re both welcome,” I muttered. “Otherwise, we’d all have gone over the edge, and I’m sure even Dizzy would be hard pressed to catch the three of us. I took one for the team. Don’t worry. I had a plan.”
“Praying Dizzy would spot your crazy ass as you plunged off a tower isn’t a plan—it’s suicide.”
Dizzy shifted back into her human form, and I tapped her boot.
“Every confidence,” I said.
“You almost died,” she replied, shaking her head in disdain. “I narrowly avoided getting my skull beat in by the corpse of one of those things landing on me. What happens to you if I’m out cold?”
There was a considerable chance the falling corpse was my fault, so I didn’t push my luck.
“All’s well that ends well,” I replied, getting to my feet. “We need to keep moving.”
“I’m gonna kill you myself,” Lara growled.
Murdoch smiled and put an arm to hold her at bay. “Later. The Grail first.”
“Nice to know you’ve got my back, Murdoch.”
“Always,” he answered with a grin. “And for all our sakes, Dizzy, take the stairs with the rest of us, please.”
“You think I triggered those bird things?” she asked.
Murdoch shrugged. “We’ll never know, but we are too close to risk it. The Grail is on that summit. We stick together and do our best to avoid triggering any of the temple’s other defenses.”
We climbed the stairs, single file.
I hoped the bird constructs were the last of the sanctum’s defenses, but I had my doubts. I was down my pistol, and Lara’s MP5 had gone over the edge of the stairs. We weren’t in much of a position to put up a fight, but the gnawing unsettled feeling in my gut told me we weren’t making it to the Grail without one.
Our set of stairs followed the spire around a corner and up the next face. The colossal edifice towered over the maze below which was far quieter than it had been for some time.
The silence made me wonder if anyone had managed to survive the Behemoth and the other dangers infesting the maze.
Were we alone here? A thousand questions filled my mind as Murdoch led the way up the spire.
My calves burned from the effort, but step after step we climbed in spite of the fatigue setting in.
I tried counting stairs to keep myself alert but instead almost lulled myself to sleep. I tried not to look down and kept my eyes focused on Murdoch’s back and the stairs before me.
It was hard to believe that at the top of it all was one of the greatest artifacts humankind had ever known: the Holy Grail.
“We’re doing this for Murdoch,” I told myself, spurring myself onward and simultaneously trying to distract myself from the words of Andrew Lynch.
Murdoch was why we were here. It wasn’t about me, or my curse. It was helping him secure the Grail. We had been beat to hell but somehow the four of us were still alive. We’d survived demons, constructs, and the maze. Perhaps Murdoch was right. Perhaps someone was really watching over us.
Ahead of me, the stairs tapered off. We had reached the summit of the spire.
“Wow,” Dizzy breathed.
Turning to my right, I beheld for the first time the inner sanctum of the Holy Grail.