Some time after we had intercepted the Phoenicians' package, Priscilla and I stood outside the house marked on the map carelessly left behind by Beaumont. It was an old dwelling, built Cape Cod style, and its faded whitewash gave it a forlorn, neglected look. A breeze ruffled our hair as we stood outside the front door to the seemingly-abandoned house, and as I closed my eyes, I could hear the magic humming below us. There was definitely something beneath the foundation of this place.
"You sense it too, right?" I asked as I glanced at Priscilla next to me, and she nodded as she stepped forward to take a look around the house. Less than a minute later, we were both staring at a pair of old wooden doors blocking the stairway leading to the house's basement. They creaked loudly as we opened them, and as we slipped inside and closed the doors, we found ourselves in what appeared to be a library.
Fortunately for us, the electric lamps scattered all across the room were still lit, though I had no idea where they were getting their power from. Intricate rugs of scarlet and gold material covered the faded wooden planks of the library's floor, and the dusty shelves were lined with ancient tomes, some of which were booby-trapped, judging by the ominous music coming from them that sounded suspiciously like the theme of Jaws.
The whole place gave me the creeps, as if someone or something was watching us from the shadows of the bookshelves. Drawing our guns, we proceeded cautiously into the room, on the lookout for any potential threats or any clues to Beaumont's whereabouts.
We tread cautiously through the length of the library, until we ended up in front of what appeared to be a metal vault door. There was cursive script carved into the steel:
Find Balance,
Face Death,
Burn the Past,
And climb the Pyramid.
There, at the apex, his eyes will be opened.
On the right side of the vault door, there were unusually-shaped depressions in the solid steel frame. One was in the shape of a shallow circle, and two of them were in the shape of deeper half-domes. Another indentation was shaped like a bird, and the last one went deep into the metal in the shape of a triangle. They were obviously important, and as we made eye contact, I knew Priscilla was thinking the same thing. She then voiced both our thoughts aloud. "Let's split up and start looking."
Priscilla and I went our separate ways as we searched the library for the vault's keys, though our paths soon converged as we both ended up in front of the same wooden display case. Several carved skulls of varying materials were separated from our fingertips by glass, though only one — the metal human skull — glowed with magic when viewed with the sixth sense. The display case was locked, of course, but that didn't pose much of a problem, as Priscilla decided to just punch through the glass.
Priscilla picked up the metal skull from amidst the pieces of shattered glass and handed it to me, and I turned the skull in my hands this way and that to look at the intricate carvings engraved into the silvery metal that stood in for the bone. "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio — a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
Priscilla rolled her eyes as she beckoned for me to follow her. "Come on, Hamlet, let's go find the other keys."
A few minutes later, we returned to the vault door, having collected the rest of the metal symbols needed: a ying-and-yang symbol, a figurine of a bird with its wings outstretched, a pyramid, and finally, a sphere carved to look like an eyeball.
As we pushed the keys into place, they locked in tight with magic. Upon inserting the eyeball, the last piece of the puzzle, the handle of the vault door spun on its own, and the vault door swung open silently. Peering cautiously inside with our flashlights, Priscilla and I were just in time to see the ceiling of the narrow stone passageway collapse with a loud rumble like a thunderstorm.
A growling sound then filled the air as a beast formed from the black fog that rose from the shadows of the fallen rocks. It looked like a giant wolf the color of thunderclouds at night, but with the sharp, black bristles of a giant porcupine. Its blue eyes crackled with electricity as it glared at us with unadulterated killing intent. Priscilla then spoke for us both as it readied itself to pounce. "Oh, this is gonna suck…"
We got out of the guardian's way just in time to avoid getting our faces ripped off by sharp, gnashing teeth, and as it landed nimbly on its feet and rounded towards us, Priscilla and I immediately split up to divide the Big Bad Wolf's attention between us. This thing wasn't like any Big Bad Wolf I had ever fought before.
Unlike the Rakshasa in the Crucible, who were chained and nailed to their posts to render them immobile, and the Frankies and the Smurfs, who were strong but slow enough to be riddled with half a dozen pistol rounds before they could even get into striking distance, this four-legged bruiser moved and struck like lightning, and I had no desire to be shocked by the Big Bad Wolf's electrified claws. The good news was the crackling lightning surrounding its paws gave away its position if we listened, but the bad news was that I could hear it coming up from behind…
I yelped in fear as the Big Bad Wolf crashed into a bookshelf and sent its contents falling onto the floor in an avalanche of yellowed paper and curling leather, but it recovered quickly, and I felt a shiver go up my spine as it stared a hole into the small of my back. I mean, almost literally — if I had stayed in place just a little longer, I wouldn't have been surprised to acquired a huge, gaping hole where my intestines used to be.
Adrenaline coursed through me as I rounded the corner of a bookshelf and ran as fast as I could to avoid becoming monster chow, and from behind me, I heard a shotgun blast and a yelp of pain from the Big Bad Wolf. Now that the Big Bad Wolf was focused on Priscilla, I could focus on counterattacking by emptying my Beretta's magazine into its exposed hide.
However, my salvo didn't seem to faze the Big Bad Wolf at all as it knocked Priscilla onto her back, and I heard it growl and gnash its teeth as it struggled against Priscilla's own monstrous strength to try and sink in something sharp and crackling with electricity.
Discarding my Beretta, I then thrust both my hands forward for lightning to leap off my fingertips and into the Big Bad Wolf's rump, not wanting to risk Priscilla's life by throwing a pipe bomb that would send shrapnel flying in all directions indiscriminately. The Big Bad Wolf yowled in pain as it leapt away from Priscilla, who scrambled to her feet and fired her Benelli again.
As we braced ourselves for another assault, a column of flame then rocketed towards the Big Bad Wolf. Surprised eyes met mine as the vault's guardian howled in pain, and we looked to see that it had been charred to a crisp. It dissipated into ashes and inky shadow as a voice sounded from the shadows. "Goddamn…"
As our adrenaline rushes faded to reveal just how exhausted we were, Priscilla and I looked to see a man in a cowboy hat pocket what looked like a silver Zippo lighter. Fangs and claws that I doubted were entirely from your average lion and bear hung from his throat and ears as earrings and a necklace, and deeply-tanned, well-muscled forearms were exposed by the rolled-up sleeves of his shirt. He circled around us like a wolf as he spoke. "Well, you're lucky Boone's been keeping tabs on the two of you, and that I got here when I did."
"You know Boone?" I asked, and I then shook my head. "Wait, scratch that — just who the heck are you?"
"The name's John Wolf. I'm Boone's partner." The man answered as he glanced at the guns in our hands. "Next time, do us all a favor and don't go hunting lions with peashooters — know your prey. And watch where you're throwing — you don't want to accidentally burn down the whole savannah.
We both grimaced at that, though I had to admit he had a point. One missed throw, and both us and the Big Bad Wolf would've been kindling. Priscilla spoke then for the both of us. "Yeah, yeah. So what are you and Boone doing out here in Solomon Island, anyway?"
"We've been waiting for something to happen out here." Wolf answered. "It's been in the earth, in the air… It's why Boone and me came out here even before the fog. There's power on Solomon Island, the kind that spreads… Filth — and it's waking up."
Filth. Does that mean the same stuff infecting Tokyo was here? My mind flashed back to Sarah and the others in the subway. Something like that could not be allowed to happen twice. As these thoughts ran through my mind, Wolf then knelt down next to the guardian's ashes, and as he scooped some of it up, it fell back onto the floor in a fine black dust. "My friend Jack is fond of saying he's seen the worst of what this world has to offer, but he's dead wrong. That was just the beginning. I always knew worse things were headed our way, and now they've arrived."
Wolf then stood back up and regarded us carefully as he began pacing again. "The man you're chasing carries something powerful and potentially dangerous. I'll do what I can to help, though I lack your particular talents."
He chuckled a little as he snapped his fingers for an orange flame to burst into life above his thumb. It looked barely big enough for a match, let alone a fire mage. "Hell, it took me thirty years of looking to learn how to cast a simple spell. Nope — I get too close to that artifact, it's a bad deal all around. I hear the whispers even now, and I don't have the natural defenses of you Bees. I'm afraid of what it might do to me, and what it might make me do to all of you."
It didn't take Albert Einstein's brain to figure out he was talking about the fog over Kingsmouth. "If you don't mind us asking, what do you know about the artifact?"
Wolf sighed before answering. "I've been doing some digging. As far as I can tell, this relic is what brought the fog here, or at least what controls it. Whoever wields it holds the fate of Solomon Island in their hands…"
"We figured as much. Know anything about these tunnels?"
Wolf nodded as he then pointed into the tunnel that had just caved in. "I can't tell you where that tunnel leads, but the Illuminati dug, and dug deep when they ruled this island. It's a network that stretches from Kingsmouth in the east, to the academy in the west."
"Are there any leads you could give us?" Priscilla asked, and Wolf thought a moment before answering.
"I don't know where this tunnel leads, but it's somewhere west of here, near Innsmouth Academy." Wolf then slid a hand back into his pocket. "Here, kid — catch."
My hand shot up to snatch whatever Wolf had tossed me, and I looked to see that it was the silver Zippo lighter from earlier, and that it had a magic circle etched into the chrome. Tapping into my sixth sense, I could tell that it had been enchanted, though I couldn't tell what it did. "Thanks, I guess, but what am I supposed to do with this?"
"It's a magical focus that's been enchanted so that it can use anima stored into it to strengthen any fire spell channeled through it — kind of like an electric guitar's amplifier. If those fireballs you were hurling were any indication, you'll put it to better use than I will."
"Okay, that's pretty cool." I admitted as I looked down at the lighter and remembered how Wolf had incinerated the Big Bad Wolf to death with it. That had been cool. Okay, sure, I was in mortal fear of having my face ripped off to make a nice new doggy bed for the monstrous guardian of the place, but now that I was in the clear, I could see that it was pretty awesome. "What else can it do?"
"You can also wave it around at rock concerts and use it to light cigarettes and pipes, if you ever decide to take up smoking in the future."
"Nice… But I don't feel like getting myself lung cancer anytime soon." Wolf and Priscilla both chuckled at that, and the former turned his back on us to leave. As he got out of sight, I flipped the lighter open, and pouring a bit of my magical energy into it, I flicked my thumb down sharply on the striker wheel to create a roaring plume of blue flame rose about a foot high before going out. "Whoa!"
Pocketing my new weapon, I then turned to Priscilla. "Ready to head west?"
"Of course."