Track of the Beast: A Brock Stone Adventure

As they made their way to the office, they passed Ward. He was engaged in a quiet but intense conversation with a bear of a man clad in a dark green boilersuit. His arms and legs were like tree trunks, and he had no visible neck. Auburn hair was thin on his head, but thick on his neck, arms, and chest. He had a broad face, flat nose, and sharp, beady eyes that flashed with cunning. The man made a show of looking Constance up and down, and when Stone took a step toward him, he smirked and cracked his knuckles.

“Enough of that, Klaus,” Ward snapped at the man. “You have work to do.”

“Ja. Is true.” Klaus locked eyes with Stone for a split second before vanishing down a flight of stairs. Ward offered a halfhearted apology and scurried away.

Stone shook his head. He had half a mind to speak to Klaus in private, but reminded himself that they had more pressing matters to attend to. They paused outside the office door.

“Listen,” Stone began. “It won’t take two of us to speak with Junina. You can handle that by yourself.”

Constance frowned. “You aren’t going after that ape of a man, are you? Because I don’t need a white knight.”

Stone grinned. Trinity had said much the same to him more times than he could count. “I’m going to look for the wine cellar she mentioned.”

Constance frowned. “For what reason?”

“Just a hunch. It might be nothing, but if Ward doesn’t want the staff poking around down there, maybe there’s a secret he’s hiding.”

“What might that have to do with Trinity?”

“Probably nothing,” Stone admitted. “But I sense Ward is hiding something, and Trinity has a much sharper nose than I for that sort of thing, and she’s twice as curious and three times as reckless as I am. We can’t discount the possibility that she started nosing around here and ran afoul of someone or something.”

Constance relented and sent him away with a final admonition.

“Don’t be gone long, and please, stay out of trouble.”

Stone laughed. “What makes you think I would get into trouble?”

Interlude 3

May, 1927

Five Years Ago

The handholds on the side of the steep cliff were few and far between. Stone tried to follow Gideon’s path, but the small man scrambled up the sheer face like a spider up a wall.

“Are you a spider or a man?” Stone mumbled. For a moment, he imagined Gideon scurrying up the side of the Washington Monument, his hands and feet clinging to the smooth marble. He chuckled and kept climbing.

He reached the top and let out a groan. Gideon was picking his way across a frozen, deeply crevassed slope.

“An icefall! That is simply wonderful.”

An icefall was a steep, deeply crevassed surface of a glacier, unstable and drawn inexorably downward by the pull of gravity. It was essentially a slow-moving ice waterfall. Stone had climbed one before, but not without gear. Still, he had no choice.

He made his way along the slick, irregular surface, careful not to break an ankle in one of the crevasses. He took a measure of satisfaction in the fact that Gideon was not moving much faster than he.

Stone’s muscles burned. Sweat poured freely down his face and stung the corners of his eyes. The cold seemed to soak through his gloves and boots.

“He had better be leading me to the monastery,” Stone grumbled.

He had made it two-thirds of the way up the slope when something came flying through the air, headed directly for him. He dodged to the left as a chunk of ice the size of a bowling ball smashed into the spot where he’d been moments before. He landed awkwardly, lost his footing, and skidded back down the slope before arresting his fall.

“Where did that come from?” he muttered.

He looked around for Gideon but there was no sight of him. Surely the small man couldn’t have hurled something that size. Stone shielded his eyes against the angry glare of the sun reflected off of ice. Off to the side, he caught a glimpse of something large and dark disappearing into a crevasse.

Determined to find out what the thing was, Stone scrambled after it. With a disregard bordering on recklessness, he hopped and leaped from one shifting ice sheet to another, closing in on the spot where the figure had vanished. He had almost made it when the chunk of ice beneath his foot gave way and he plunged into a deep hole.

He braced himself for impact, but it never came. Instead, he found his descent slowed by the narrowing walls of the crevasse until he came to a halt, his feet dangling in space. He shifted and tried to twist around but he was wedged tight.

“Well, this is just great.” He debated calling out for Gideon to help him. He had lost sight of the man and had no way of knowing if he was even within earshot. The idea of needing rescue twice in such a short span of time didn’t appeal to him, but he might not have a choice. It was a long way up and he couldn’t see any handholds.

He looked down, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness of the crevasse. His eyes fell on the slick floor only a few feet below him. That appeared to be the likelier path.