Instead of responding, the man cocked his head as if listening to the storm. Rain dripped off his upturned face in torrents.
"They…are…near…Very…close now. You must go, John Gideon! Now!"
"Who is coming, mister?" shouted Gideon, his voice now raised in frustrated anger, as well as in an attempt to be heard over the storm.
The man returned his gaze to Gideon.
"Gorghuan!" the man shouted. "Run, you fool! Get back in your…car and drive! Now!"
"Who or what is a gorghuan?" asked Gideon.
The tall man stared at Gideon wildly for a second and then composed himself and said in a low, matter-of-fact voice, "Something you do not want to meet on a lonely road at night."
Gideon realized that the man's English had gotten much better in the past minute or so, but then he heard something over the storm that sent a shiver down his spine.
It sounded like an unnatural baying howl.
He shuddered. This whole thing was seriously beginning to creep him out. The man again cocked his head, listening to the storm.
Did he hear that weird noise too?
As he looked at the wet, darkened road behind Gideon, the man's face slumped in defeat, and he said, "It is too late. They are here."
Gideon turned to look behind him and froze in terror at what he saw rushing toward him.
In the distance, he could make out three large four-legged black shapes running at full speed toward him. The faint huffing, growling sound coming from them was similar to that of a large predatory cat or dog. Their eyes burned with a red light, piercing the rainy darkness like infernal headlights.
"Holy shit!"
He turned back to the man. However, as he did so, he saw a strange light beginning to radiate from him, a pulsing light that streamed with rainbow hues. The man's expression turned from hardened determination to surprise and disbelief.
"No! Emissaries of the ancient enemy! I cannot help you now," he said as the light from his body began to fade. "This spellweave has been interrupted. I will try to retrieve you farther on down the road."
And with that, he was gone.
The monstrous dog-things were now only seconds away from the car bumper. Without thinking, he leaped back into the car, floored the clutch, and threw the stick shift into second. The car lurched forward as he leaned hard on the accelerator. The rear tires spun wildly, smoking and screeching as they tried to latch on to the slick road surface. The car fishtailed left and then right. Something slammed into the back of the car, and there was the sound of metal being ripped free somewhere as the car shot forward. He looked back in the rearview mirror and saw one of the receding creatures grappling with what looked like his rear bumper in its jaws. However, the other two were still in hard pursuit, their massive legs pistoning like a freight train. And they are gaining on me!
"Let's see if you bastards can go sixty!" he shouted into the mirror. He buckled his seat belt, shifted into third, and floored the accelerator.
The night was lit for a second or two by a powerful flash of lightning, and he saw that the creatures were losing ground. The speedometer was reading fifty and rising. He looked back again.
The creatures were falling farther behind, shrinking rapidly.
He glanced at the road before him and then back into the rearview mirror again.
They were now only two ever-decreasing spots on the road.
He turned his attention to the road ahead of him and then shot a nervous glance back into the rearview mirror.
Ahead was what appeared to be a tunnel, and as he rapidly approached it, he thought that the surrounding rain had begun to take on a faint reddish tint. He entered the tunnel and felt an immediate sensation of engulfment within its total darkness. Even his headlights were useless. It felt like floating in space. Flashing, multihued lights appeared at the other end of the tunnel. Streaks of light shot past him, through him, and around him and then disappeared into the void far behind him.
Sensations of weightlessness gripped him as the entire diameter of the tunnel seemed to expand at first and then shrink. The rain around the car took on the same fluctuating colors as the onrushing lights; the entire event took less than a minute.
Then just as he felt he was going to lose both his mind and the contents of his stomach, a light as bright as day stabbed at his eyes, blinding him. As he shot out of the tunnel at sixty-five miles per hour, he realized he was no longer driving on tarmac but had somehow found himself on an eight-foot-wide cobblestone path in broad daylight!
A large fallen tree lay across the path ahead, blocking it.
Eyes widened in terror, for the second time in moments, he instinctively slammed on the brakes and wrenched hard to the right to avoid hitting a fast-approaching obstacle in the road. Unfortunately, this time around, there was a ditch to the right that led down to a small riverbank. The car tilted at a harsh angle and toppled over the bank.
Metal screamed, tires blew, and glass shattered as the car rolled three times before finally coming to rest in a smoking ruin on the lower bank of the river.
When his head cleared, Gideon found himself hanging upside down, held by his safety belt. He realized that it had probably saved his life.
Thanks to the combat medical training he received in the army and the CPR and first-aid courses he had taken a few months back, he realized the seat belt had indeed saved his life, but he was not without injury. He had excruciating pain in his left arm when he tried to move it to open the door. Probably a broken arm, he thought. It also hurts to take deep breaths, a sign of a possible rib injury. Quickly, he checked his legs, chest, and head with his other arm. The wet trickle of blood crept up his temple and into his hairline. His face hurt in several places. Probably glass fragments. He also realized that he had a head wound and was probably in shock.
He unbuckled his seat belt and painfully dropped to the upside-down roof of the car. The pain in his ribs and arm coursed through his throbbing head like a Roman candle. As he moved away from the car, the throbbing gave way to a wave of nausea and light-headedness.
He dismissed this as the effects of shock. He felt heavy, as if the pull of gravity had somewhat increased, and he felt pressure on his ears, reminding him of snorkeling or scuba diving. Slowly, he began to crawl up out of the ditch. His legs wobbled rebelliously beneath him as he walked several paces away, and then he toppled to his knees.
He looked back toward where he came through and saw, not a tunnel, but a slowly shrinking gray-black hole, floating just above the ground. Surrounding this hole were dozens of strange rune like symbols that glowed brightly as they stood, apparently of their own volition, in the air.
Suddenly, a loud whumpf pulled his attention away from the strange sight. The crash had ruptured the gas tank, and the Mustang suddenly went up like a bonfire in a burst of flame and smoke. The force of the concussive blast, coupled with the searing wave of heat, was enough to push him over the edge of consciousness, and everything started to fall away as the blackness rushed over him.
With a short, ragged moan, Gideon's eyes rolled up, and he pitched forward onto his face.
He twitched once, twice.
Then he lay still.
Chapter One
A Stranger in a Strange Land
Gideon woke to the sound of voices drifting through the air. He looked around at his surroundings. It appeared that he was in someone's bedroom, possibly in a cabin, from the looks of the rustic wood and stone construction. He was lying on some sort of water bed made from an odd organic material not dissimilar to an animal's bladder. His eyes moved slowly back and forth, taking in the sight. The voices came to his ears again, softly; as a whisper borne on the winds, it came, and he