Round 6b

Downstairs, Napoleon and Illya conferred quietly while Winston Rayne tried to get their host to see reason. Cheri's question about Faversham had netted unexpected information. Neither agent was aware of a Senior Faversham to be involved. First thing tomorrow, they would set the San Francisco office on that trail to see where it led.

It was a pity Cheri had not broached the question of Dr. Ayala and his interests. Napoleon thought the reactions might have been as revealing as those about Faversham. He conveyed this to Illya as they perused the titles of the nearby volumes, most of them in old languages and not particularly encouraging in their tone.

"Looks like Cheri's Mr. Lovecraft would have been right at home here," he quipped as he struggled through the interminable faded Latin title of another work.

Illya flicked a look at his partner before reaching for a slender volume beside the tediously titled one. "Very much so. I'm surprised he was not a member."

"You're sure he wasn't?"

That gave him pause. "No," he admitted. "I hadn't thought to find out."

Napoleon frowned at him. "I was kidding. But it's obvious you aren't. You really think .."

He got a characteristic shrug from his partner. "It's worth checking. At least we're supposed to be safe from things that go bump in the night while we're here."

"Things," Napoleon echoed. "Not necessarily people."

"People we can handle."

After a while, Winston gave up his attempts to get Caleb to see reason about the house and said good night. With a nod to his partner, Illya retired with a couple of books leaving Napoleon and Caleb with a very fine old brandy to share between them. In an unexpectedly hospitable move, Caleb lit the fire set in the ancient, granite faced fireplace. The gargoyles carved to either side of the entrance intrigued the agent and he said so, asking about both them and the house as he accepted another snifter of brandy and settled into one of the surprisingly comfortable leather wing chairs set at an angle to the fireplace.

He met the disconcertingly black gaze of his host who relaxed into the other chair, warming the snifter in his hands. The man's gaze transferred to the brandy and then to the fire before he answered.

"Seris House was imported from Europe in the early 1800's, before the craze for purchasing and importing old family homes started. Jordan Dane was no one and nothing before the War of 1812. Afterwards, he was rich beyond most human reckoning of the time. There is no record of how he attained that wealth. There is no record of why he chose this island to settle at a time when there were very few Anglos in the area. The gold rush was decades away, most of the local population was either Native American or Spanish, and Dane picked this island for his home."

"Must have been hard on his wife."

"His wife perished in the Washington fire." Caleb's eyes reflected the red and gold of the flames. There was something deeply disturbing about that look. Then it vanished and he resumed his story. "Dane lived here, solitary, for 40 years. His will left the House, furnishings, his remaining fortune and his full staff to the Legacy." He looked up at Napoleon then, his face unreadable. "Do you know why, Mr. Solo?"

Napoleon felt he was missing something very important here. "There's something inherently evil on the Island?" It was a shot in the dark. He sat on his shock as he saw it was a major hit.

Caleb smiled. "You don't believe in spiritual evil much, do you?" he asked softly.

"Depends on your definition of spiritual. Most of the people I fight are what I would consider evil. They don't need outside help to be that way." Napoleon didn't like the turn this conversation was taking, but he also couldn't stop himself from wondering just where this was going.

"Come with me. I can show you why Faversham, Rayne and the Legacy and Dr. Rudolfo Ayala are interested in acquiring this place." Tossing off the rest of his drink, he smashed the glass in the fire as he got to his feet.

There was no mistaking the challenge here. Napoleon watched his host for a brief moment, weighing the situation as he took another sip of his own drink. Caleb was tense, restless, but the danger he represented was not aimed at the agent. This was the tension of being too long the only one who knew of something that strained the boundaries of sanity. With a regretful sigh, he followed suit in finishing his drink. The brandy warmed him, but it did not dull his honed senses and reactions. Meeting Caleb's eyes, he sent the glass into the fireplace and accepted the challenge offered.

Caleb led the way to one of the doors leading to the basement. "There are several of these, but only this one is warded as well as locked."

He handed Napoleon a flashlight, turned on his own and opened the door. It closed behind them with a peculiar feeling of finality. Caleb crossed the stone-walled room with the casual gait of long familiarity, ignoring the crates and boxes piled here and there. Spiders and beetles scuttled out of the faint electric light as they passed. Reaching a second, massive iron bound oak door, Caleb handed his flashlight over to Napoleon while he took care of opening several locks, then stepped back, intoned something that sounded Latin to the agent's ears and waited.

There was a shimmer in the air between the two men and the door. Force field? Napoleon thought as he handed Caleb's light back to him. The door opened inward revealing rough cut walls. Were they in the bedrock of the island? They traveled about a quarter of a mile through the tunnel, the heat rising instead of falling as they walked. The tunnel opened out into a roughly 8 foot diameter area. To one side was another door, this one iron, cris-crossed with bars the size of small oak trees.

As they approached he could feel heat shimmering off the door. The air was oppressive, dry and hot. His knowledge of underground caverns and passages told him this was wrong. It should be cold, humid or wet and shivering, not sucking the moisture out of him. The man with him was strung as taut as a bowstring.

"All right, what is it?" Napoleon's voice was subdued, but it was apparently enough to disturb whatever lay on the other side of the door. He could feel the visceral reaction within to what lay beyond. He wanted away from that door, from the intelligence beyond and he knew without a doubt that there was an intelligence beyond that door; malevolent, inimical to humankind and terrible in the most ancient meaning of the word. "Hell," he answered his own question.

"Now do you understand?"

With a rising tide of horror, Napoleon knew that he did. His life would never be the same because his understanding of the universe had just made a quantum jump beyond the bounds of reality. Shaken, he nodded. "If the Legacy gets the house, will that hold?" A part of his mind was looking at him very squiggly for even thinking that question. The rest of his more primitive being understood that the door was barred to keep that gate closed.

"Yes. They guard several of these gates. But this one is very old and very strong. They cannot hold it forever."

"Can you?"

Caleb's shoulders sagged as he shook his head. "I did not put the seals in place. I don't know how to reinforce them. Much as I dislike Rayne, the house has to be returned to the Legacy." He took a shaky breath. "Thank you. Sometimes I worry that it's not really here, that I'm far less sane than I think I am."

Napoleon cracked a grin at that. "I'm inclined to question both our sanities. But that door is there. And it's like nothing I've felt before. Nothing. Let's get out of here."

Sleep would not be easy for either man. A burden shared is not always the solace one might like it to be.