Cronin's Key II by N.R. Walker Page B

to the outside world. But tying these clues together—Khan, the Shaanxi province, pyramid, and stone have to mean something.” He typed in a few more words and waited for the internet searches to come up. His face went pale, drained of all color. “Oh fuck.”
    “Alec, what is it?” Cronin asked.
    Alec turned the laptop around to show them all. On the screen was Mount Li. A seemingly inoffensive tree-covered hill in the green fields of Shaanxi province, China.
    “Mount Li,” Alec said. “Mount Li was a pyramid. It looks like a hill now, but two thousand years ago, it was a pyramid. If they’d built it out of stone like the Egyptians did, it’d still be standing today. It’s a fucking pyramid, bigger than anything the Egyptians ever did. It has a tomb and everything.”
    Cronin stared at him. “Of course. And the reference Jorge made to earth coming to life wasn’t about the Earth or volcanoes or earthquakes. He was referring to earth, as in terra.”
    Alec paled. “Terracotta.”
    “The Terracotta Army,” Eiji whispered.
    Alec nodded mechanically as realization sunk in. “The Terracotta Army will come to life.”
     

CHAPTER EIGHT
     
     
     
    “Is there anything else you guys’d like to tell me?” Alec asked. “We’ve been through the famous people in history who were vampires, but what about armies of vampires buried in the ground? Are there any more? The Egyptians, now the Chinese. Anyone else I should know about?”
    “Well, there are Aztecs in the Tenochtitlan pyramids,” Cronin said.
    “And the pyramid of Cholula in Mexico is one of the biggest pyramids in the world for a reason, so….” Jodis added.
    “There is still much human debate over whether the Visoko pyramid in Bosnia is even a pyramid,” Eiji said.
    The three vampires all laughed.
    Alec rubbed his temples and he sighed, long and loud. “You know what? I don’t even want to know.” He stared at the whiteboard for a while and reluctantly wrote Terracotta Army under Genghis Khan. He shook his head at how absurd it all was. “How the hell am I supposed to kill six thousand terracotta soldiers?”
    Cronin was beside him in a second with his hands cupping his face. “With us. We will figure it out, but please know Alec, you are not in this alone.”
    “The Terracotta Army are vampires,” Alec said quietly. “How is that even possible?”
    “A mason,” Jodis said.
    “No shit.” Alec rolled his eyes. “I’d say it took a thousand masons.”
    Jodis smiled at him. “No, I mean a mason, as in a vampire with the talent to turn things to stone.”
    Alec’s mouth fell open and he blinked. And he blinked again. “A what?”
    “There aren’t too many of them these days,” Eiji added. “But the vampire who turned the Terracotta Army to stone lived even before my time.”
    Cronin pulled Alec against him and Alec melted. Overwhelmed by what he’d just learned, Alec allowed himself to be held, to be protected, cradled by arms that made him feel safe and warm. “The Terracotta Army aren’t technically stone,” he mumbled.
    “Maybe the mason could use the earth or clay instead of stone like how I can use water to turn to ice,” Jodis explained. “No talent is an exact science.”
    “What other talents are there?” Alec asked. “I asked this before, but I mean the other ones. There are seers, leapers, and Eiji does his DNA lifespan thing, and Jodis can turn stuff into ice. Keket could regenerate the dead, it seems maybe Genghis Khan can influence the behavior of others. You mentioned mind-reading but they usually go mad. So what other ones haven’t I heard of?”
    “There are pyrokinetics, or fire starters,” Cronin said.
    “Like the guy in London?” Alec asked. “At the bar.”
    Cronin gave a nod. “Yes.”
    “Hydrokinetics can control water,” Jodis said.
    “Like you,” Alec pressed.
    She smiled. “Similar, but not the same. What I can do is called cryokinesis.”
    “There are some who can manipulate the