Carpathian by David Lynn Golemon Read Free Book Online Page A

realized what it was she had been directed to look at. She didn’t see the girl beside her smile as Alice leaned closer to look at the strange object embedded in the stone.
    The granite block was eight feet high and as many feet thick. It had been rough-hewed and quarried thousands of years before. The tool marks were still clearly visible on the block’s leading edges, a surefire way of determining the provenance of the piece, as the tools themselves were linked to a specific region of the Middle East.
    However, it was the relief carving in the dead center of the stone that froze the heart of the American girl from the farmlands of Virginia. The raised outline of the animal was clearly visible. The stone block looked as if the relief was carved around the depiction of something out of a nightmare. The muzzle of the beast could clearly be seen and even the claws of its hands were in stark contrast to the surrounding stone.
    Alice suddenly realized she wasn’t looking at a carving of a deity of some kind from long-ago Jericho, she was looking at an animal that had been crushed between two massive stones. She could even see scorch marks from a long-ago fire. Her eyes went to the sand-colored and now petrified beast. The animal was massive and as Alice examined the piece others were drawn to the stone block. Many were crying hoax and some were angry at an obvious attempt at humor by their host, Lord Harrington.
    The young European girl smiled and then without another word and with her eyes on the man that Hamilton had been speaking with a moment ago, the strange and exotic woman left the gathering crowd of skeptical bidders.
    Alice never noticed that the woman had left her side, as she couldn’t take her eyes from the block and the animal mysteriously encased there. Recognition sprang immediately to her memory.
    “Vault 22871,” she whispered to herself. Most of the gathered guests had already voiced their opinion on the stone block and its obvious defacement, or outright attempt at a hoax, and then moved on, leaving a stunned and shocked Alice, who knew she had to bring Garrison over to the stone block. The assistant to the director of Department 5656 knew she had stumbled onto something that even the great General Lee could not ignore. As she turned, Alice came face-to-face with a small and ancient-looking woman.
    “You will have to excuse my granddaughter, things related to our distant past do not impress her the way that they should.”
    Alice heard what the old woman was saying but nothing was registering in her head. A well-dressed and appointed lady in a light but elegant white gown with pink highlights. Alice placed her age at somewhere in the eighties. Her cane looked like an old twisted wooden walking stick complete with what on closer inspection looked like the Egyptian Eye of Ra embossed in gold on the handle. Not an ordinary walking stick. Her clothes were beautiful. The dress satiny and fine and her gold jewelry sparkled in the salon spotlights. Alice looked closer and saw a tattoo that began at the woman’s neck and disappeared into her dress. The top of the tattoo was that of a pentagram, the five-pointed star, but Alice couldn’t see what the rest of the tattoo held below the neckline.
    “I am Madam Korvesky.” She turned to look at the stone block and the animal that had been crushed to death by it more than three thousand years before. “We have come a great distance to denounce this … this abomination.” The old woman smiled and then looked at Alice with her aged eyes. “But I can tell that you have seen this sort of trickery before my dear, am I correct?” The old woman stepped closer to the young American. “Yes, I see the recognition in your eyes, young one.”
    Alice didn’t say anything at first; she just raised her white-gloved hand and slowly reached out and touched the petrified image of the beast.
    “Don’t do that.” The old woman reached out and lightly took Alice’s hand and