Hunter of Legends (Fate of Legends Series Book 1) Read online

  Hunter of Legends

  Books by Clayton Taylor Wood:

  The Runic Series:

  Runic Awakening

  Runic Revelation

  Runic Vengeance

  The Fate of Legends Series

  Hunter of Legends

  Hunter of Legends

  Book I of the Fate of Legends series

  Clayton Taylor Wood

  Copyright ©2017 by Clayton Taylor Wood.

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Clayton T. Wood.

  ISBN: 978-0-9980818-7-8

  Cover designed by James T. Egan, Bookfly Design, LLC

  Printed in the United States of America.

  To my wife, who is legendary in her own right, alive within each character in this book. And to my son Hunter, for whom this book was written.

  Special thanks to my brothers and my father, and of course my wife, for their invaluable advice.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Hunter of Legends

  Prologue

  Taylor watched as his wife Neesha rappelled down the dark, narrow vertical shaft, a natural extension of the cave far above. Plunging over a hundred feet into the earth, the shaft ended in a small cavern below. He was standing at the bottom of it, having gone down first. He made sure to shine his flashlight just below her, so that she could see where she was going.

  “You okay?” he asked as she continued downward. At a faster pace than he had, he noted with dismay. She smirked at him.

  “Better than you were,” she replied. Five foot one, with chocolate-colored skin and big, beautiful eyes, she was a sight to behold. He’d been damn lucky to find her…and even luckier that she’d said “yes” so many years ago.

  “Show-off,” he grumbled. Neesha reached the bottom, disconnecting her harness from the rope. She brushed past him, checking him with her shoulder as she did so. He stumbled to the side, catching her smirking as she strode forward through the small cavern beyond. Lanterns had already been set up in the cavern by her grad student, Marc. Taylor spotted a small tunnel ahead, extending beyond the cavern.

  “Let’s go,” Neesha prompted, striding toward the tunnel. Taylor followed behind, admiring his wife’s well-shaped buttocks as she walked. An amateur powerlifter, her posterior was damn-near perfect…and she knew it.

  “Yes ma’am,” he mumbled.

  “I know you’re staring at my ass,” Neesha said, not even bothering to turn around.

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Not really,” she conceded. “Come on baby, try to focus on your work.”

  “Right now,” he replied, “…I’m focusing on what I’ll be doing after work.”

  “Dirty boy,” she murmured. But the way she said it, he could tell she was smiling.

  They continued down the tunnel, using their flashlights to illuminate the way ahead. After a few minutes, the tunnel opened up into another small cavern. Lanterns lit the cavern as before, and two men were standing by the far wall, talking to each other. They stopped in mid-conversation, turning to face Taylor and Neesha.

  “Oh, hey professors,” one of the men greeted. It was Marc; tall and lanky, he was the best archaeology grad student Neesha had ever had. The shorter, beefier man beside Marc was Corey, a linguistics grad student.

  “What you got?” Neesha asked, stopping before the two men. Marc turned to the wall before them. It was mostly composed of rough granite. But in the far-left side of the wall was a thick black stripe of rock extending from the floor to the ceiling, its surface perfectly smooth save for small symbols carved into its surface. The stripe curved slightly as it went upward, vanishing into the ceiling above.

  “I’m not sure,” Marc admitted. “We’ve been excavating this thing for the last few days.”

  “Do you recognize the symbols?” Taylor asked. Corey shook his head.

  “They’re not like anything I’ve ever seen,” he confessed. “And they didn’t match anything on the databases I searched.”

  “Interesting,” Neesha murmured. She reached out with one gloved hand, touching the black stone. It was obvious that Marc had spent a great deal of effort digging to the right of it, a large dent in the wall present there. “Keep digging.”

  “Yes professor,” Marc replied. He grabbed a pickaxe, and Neesha and Taylor backed away. Marc got to work, swinging the pickaxe at the wall, without much effect. After a few swings, Neesha stopped him.

  “Let me do it,” she stated, grabbing the pickaxe from him. Marc stepped back, and Neesha planted her feet, then swung the pickaxe in one smooth motion, slamming it into the wall. The rock crumbled with the force of the blow, and Neesha swung again, the muscles in her arms rippling, striking the wall a second time. This time a hole appeared in the wall, about the size of a fist. Inky blackness lay beyond.

  “Damn,” Corey breathed, staring at Neesha in admiration. Taylor grinned.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “My wife’s a badass.”

  Neesha lowered the pickaxe, peering through the hole, using her flashlight to illuminate what lay beyond.

  “What do you see?” Taylor asked.

  “There’s another chamber beyond,” she answered. “I can’t get a good look at it yet. We need to widen this hole.” She handed the pickaxe to Marc. “Come on buttercup, put some muscle into it.”

  “What muscle?” Corey quipped. Marc rolled his eyes, but got to work, widening the hole swing by swing. After a few minutes, the hole was large enough to fit a leg through. Taylor took over, taking a few swings himself. No stranger to lifting weights, he was in almost as good shape as his wife. He made quick work of the wall, broadening the hole. When he tired, Neesha took over, making them all look bad, as usual.

  “Not bad for being eleven weeks pregnant, eh?” Taylor quipped, taking Neesha’s phone out of her back pocket and snapping a few pictures. Then he grinned at the guys. Marc and Corey just watched her work, no doubt feeling utterly emasculated.

  When Neesha dropped the pickaxe at last, the hole was large enough for her to squeeze through. Taylor peered into it, seeing nothing but blackness beyond.

  “
I can’t see much,” he said.

  “I’ll squeeze through, Neesha offered. Being the shortest of them, it was the most logical choice. Taylor nodded, and Neesha stepped through the hole, vanishing into the darkness. Moments later, her head poked through. “Marc, get me a couple of lanterns.”

  “Yes professor,” Marc replied, retrieving a few and handing them to her. She vanished from sight again, and a long moment passed.

  “Holy shit,” they heard Neesha blurt out.

  “Hon, you okay?” Taylor asked. A few seconds later, he saw Neesha’s head poke back through the hole. She gestured for them to follow.

  “Come on,” she urged. “You’ve got to see this!”

  Taylor gestured for Marc to go in first, followed by Corey. Then he stepped through the hole, barely squeezing past the narrow opening. He straightened up, then froze, his eyes widening. There, illuminated by the lanterns, was a tunnel running left to right. A huge tunnel. The ceiling was over twenty feet high, the walls curving inward in a perfect upside-down U-shape. To the right, the tunnel ended abruptly in an irregular rock wall. To the left…

  “Holy shit,” he blurted out.

  There, not five feet from where he stood, stood a perfect half-ring of black stone. Extending from the floor to the ceiling, the stone was maybe three feet in width. It curved to form an arch twenty feet tall, matching the curve of the ceiling perfectly. Small symbols were carved into the arch along its entire length, much as they’d seen before. And while the tunnel ended at the arch, it was not with a stone wall. Rather, there was utter blackness.

  “I know, right?” Neesha stated.

  “What the hell is that?” Corey asked. Neesha shook her head.

  “I have no idea,” she admitted. Corey frowned.

  “I thought you were one of the best archaeologists in the country,” he said. Neesha nodded, not even looking at him. She was staring at the massive archway.

  “I am.”

  “So am I,” Taylor reminded them.

  “Do you recognize any of these symbols?” Marc asked Corey. Corey walked up to the ring, peering at the symbols carved into the jet-black stone. Then he shook his head.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Look at the walls,” Neesha said, gesturing at the curved rock walls around them. Marc’s eyebrows furrowed.

  “What about them?”

  “They’re perfectly smooth,” Taylor answered for Neesha, walking up to one of the walls and running a gloved hand across it. The granite was as polished and smooth as a countertop. As was the ceiling…but not the floor.

  “This is so weird,” Marcus murmured, running his own hand over the wall. He turned back to the giant arch, and the utter blackness beyond it. Neesha was staring at that blackness, her flashlight pointed right at it.

  “Guys,” she called out, pointing at the darkness. “Check this out.”

  “What?” Taylor asked, walking up to her side.

  “Shine your flashlight at the floor past the ring,” she ordered. Taylor complied. No light penetrated the blackness…no hint of a rocky floor beyond, no tunnel walls. Only blackness.

  “Weird,” Taylor murmured.

  “It’s not reflecting any light either,” Neesha noted. Marcus frowned, walking up to the inky wall of black and reaching out with one gloved finger. It touched the surface of the blackness, stopping there.

  “It’s hard,” he stated, running his hand down its surface. “It’s a wall.”

  “A wall that doesn’t reflect any light?” Taylor asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He’d heard of materials that could absorb any light that shined on them, but they were incredibly high-tech, made of carbon nanotubes ten thousand times smaller than a human hair. Certainly not something that would be found in a cave.

  “How old do you think this thing is?” Marcus asked Neesha.

  “I have no idea,” she admitted. She looked at the black stone bordering the darkness, peering at the symbols. “The first step is to figure out these symbols.” She grabbed her smartphone from Taylor, taking some pictures.

  “The walls are made of granite,” Marc observed. “But I don’t think the arch itself is.”

  “What makes you say that?” Taylor asked. Marc gave a sheepish smile.

  “I may have hit it by accident a few times when I was trying to make that hole earlier,” he admitted. “Before you guys came.” He shook his head. “The pickaxe bounced right off. Didn’t even make a scratch on it.”

  “Really?” Taylor pressed. “A full swing?” Marc nodded.

  “I hit it pretty damn hard,” he confirmed. “Not a scratch. It rang like metal.”

  “If it’s made of metal,” Neesha stated, continuing to take pictures, “…then building it would’ve involved smelting and molding. South Americans had that capability maybe two and a half thousand years ago.”

  “You mean the Mocha,” Marc deduced. Neesha nodded.

  “But they were in Peru,” she added. “Smelting wasn’t used in North America in pre-Columbian times.”

  “So you’re saying this is at most what, five hundred years old?” Corey asked. Neesha shrugged. “That doesn’t make sense,” Corey protested. “These symbols aren’t like anything I’ve ever seen.”

  “Interesting,” Taylor murmured. He stared at the giant black arch, then glanced at Neesha. She’d finished taking pictures, and was staring at the pure black wall it surrounded. “What are you thinking?”

  “That we have a lot of work to do,” she answered. “We need to excavate this whole thing,” she added. “We’re going to need more people to do that.”

  “We could call in the MCX-CMAC,” Taylor offered. That was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Mandatory Center of Expertise for the Curation and Management of Archaeological Collections. Neesha glared at him.

  “Day one and you’re ready to bring the damn government in,” she grumbled. “No thanks.”

  “Just a thought,” Taylor stated. “They have better toys than we do.”

  “Think of something else,” Neesha shot back.

  Corey grabbed one of the lanterns by the hole they’d created in the granite wall, bringing it up to the inky black wall. Again, no light reflected off of its surface. He put one gloved hand on the wall, sliding it side to side.

  “It’s so smooth,” he murmured. “And cold.”

  “We are in a cave,” Neesha reminded him. “It’s fifty degrees in here.”

  “Yeah, but it’s colder than the arch,” Corey countered.

  “Probably just a better conductor of heat,” Taylor ventured. Corey hesitated, then took off his glove, placing his bare hand on the black wall.

  It passed right through.

  “What the…” he exclaimed. His hand had vanished into the wall, up to his wrist. Beyond his wrist, there was only blackness…as if he’d dipped his hand into a pool of black liquid. But no ripples appeared on the wall’s surface.

  “Woah,” Taylor blurted out. “How in the hell…?”

  “It went right through,” Corey stated in disbelief, staring at his exposed wrist. “Like it wasn’t even there!”

  “But you just put your hand on it earlier,” Marc protested. “It was solid.”

  “Well it isn’t now,” Corey countered. He dipped his arm further in, until it was up to the elbow. “Weird,” he stated. “It feels cold at my elbow, but I can’t feel anything past that.” He concentrated for a moment. “I can’t even feel my hand,” he added. “It’s like it isn’t even there.”

  “Really?” Marc asked.

  “Yeah,” Corey replied. “In fact, I…” He frowned then.

  “What?” Marc pressed. Corey grimaced.

  “My arm’s stuck,” he answered. “I’m trying to pull it out, but it won’t come.”

  “What do you mean it won’t come?” Neesha pressed, taking one more picture, then lowering her phone.

  “I’m pulling on it,” Corey replied. He jerked his whole shoulder back, but still his arm remained elbow-deep in the i
nky blackness. Neesha set her phone down on the ground, then walked up behind him, grabbing his shoulders and pulling backward.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Hold on,” Neesha stated. She grabbed Corey around his flanks, planting her feet wide and pulling backward. Her arm muscles tensed, the veins at her temples bulging with the effort. But still, his elbow remained stuck. She let go, beads of sweat glittering on her forehead.

  “Well shit,” she swore. She glanced at Taylor. “Want to lend me a hand?”

  “Uh guys,” Corey interjected. “My arm…”

  They turned to look at Corey’s arm, and saw that his elbow was no longer visible. He was up to his mid-bicep in the wall now.

  “Damn,” Neesha swore. “Don’t put your arm any further in.” Corey shook his head.

  “I didn’t.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty damn sure,” he insisted. He tugged again at his arm, then stopped, staring at it for a moment. His face paled. “Aw, shit!”

  “What?”

  “It’s being pulled in!” Corey exclaimed. Taylor stared at the student’s arm, realizing that he was right. As Taylor watched, Corey’s arm sank slowly but steadily into the wall.

  “You’re not leaning into it?” Neesha pressed.

  “No, I’m not fucking leaning into it,” Corey retorted, panic rising in his voice. “Pull me out!”

  “Grab his waist on the left,” Neesha ordered, nodding at Taylor. “I’ll get the right. Marc, you pull his shoulders from behind.”

  “Got it,” Taylor stated. He wrapped his arms around Corey’s waist, as did Neesha. He planted his feet, then pulled backward, as did Marc. They strained, but it was no use…Corey didn’t budge. In fact, he’d been pulled in even further; he was up to his shoulder now.

  “Come on guys!” Corey shouted. “Get me out!”

  “Grab his legs,” Neesha ordered. “Pull him by his legs!”

  Taylor grabbed Corey’s left leg, and Neesha tore off her gloves, grabbing his right leg. They lifted Corey’s legs off of the ground, leaning backward and pulling as hard as they could.