Pierce took a breath and counted to ten, then kept counting until the urge to pull the trigger finally abated. “Get up.” He turned his head until he could see Gallo and Dourado in his peripheral vision. “We’re getting out of here.”
He felt Gallo’s hand on his arm. “George. Do you know what this place is?”
Kenner raised his head, adding to Gallo’s words with the desperation of a man trying to be useful. “Herakles was here. He took the map from Queen Hippolyte. He learned the location of the entrance to the Underworld from her.”
“Map?” Pierce asked.
“George, the Amazons were the Sea Peoples,” Gallo said. “They lived right here, in this city. And Queen Hippolyte’s belt had a map of the entire world. That was the key to their power.”
Pierce frowned. “Where’s the map, now? Do you have it?”
Kenner hesitated a moment, but then nodded. “In my satchel.”
Gallo hobbled forward and knelt beside Kenner. She rooted in his bag and then held up the object Kenner had taken from the Labyrinth. Pierce glanced at it, noting the images inscribed upon it.
“We used it to find this place,” Gallo said. “Fiona figured it out.”
“We?” Pierce regretted the implicit accusation as soon as he said it. “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”
“Tyndareus wants to find the source,” Kenner insisted. “He’s desperate to find it. If the girl is still alive, he’ll trade that information for her. I know he will.”
“We’ll see about that.” Pierce took a step away from Kenner and turned to Gallo. Only now did he see the line of quills that stitched the back of her leg. “Are you all right? Can you walk?”
“I made it this far.” She managed a smile, but then her expression darkened. “What about the birds? How are we going to get past them?”
Pierce hauled Kenner to his feet and propelled him toward the stairwell. “Don’t worry. I brought friends.”
41
Carter blinked away tears as she plucked the quills from Lazarus’s body with the multi-tool. There were too many of the barbed spines to count, but while they were the least of his wounds, they were also the easiest for her to deal with.
The attack had been ruthless, razor sharp beaks lancing through what was left of his Kevlar armor and into his body, yet he had never faltered. When they had reached the relative safety of one of the ruined buildings, just before collapsing, he had whispered, “I’ll be okay.”
She knew he was right, but seeing him like this, flesh hanging in ragged strips from his bones, felt like a knife through her soul.
After removing the quills, she did what she could to close the larger lacerations, pressing the muscle and skin back into place. Then she used the sharp spines as impromptu sutures to hold everything together. Even with most of the wounds closed, he looked awful. A patchwork man, held together with toothpicks.
As she began snipping the ends of the shafts off with the wire-cutter built into the multi-tool, his eyes opened. He looked at her for a moment, his gaze steady, betraying none of the excruciating pain he was surely feeling. “Pierce?”
She started to reply, but she had to cough to clear away the emotion that had seized her throat. “He went ahead. There’s a temple at the center of the city. He said that’s where they would go.”
“They?”
“Cerberus. Just after…” She faltered. “We heard shooting. The birds went after them, but a few of them made it to the island.”
“He’ll need my help.” Lazarus attempted to rise, but before Carter could even attempt to stop him he sagged back. “Damn. That hurts.”
Carter couldn’t decide whether to laugh or sob. The sound that came out was something in-between. She could tell that he was already beginning to heal. The bleeding had stopped, and some of more superficial cuts had scabbed over. Hopefully, putting everything where it belonged and stitching him together would accelerate the process, but what he really needed was rest. Even a few hours might make all the difference.
Yeah, she thought. Good luck with that.
“Felice. I’ll be okay.”
“You keep saying that, but… You’re not invincible, Erik.”
“Yes, I am.” He grimaced, and then with the determination of a glacier scraping across a continent, he sat up.
A voice came from behind them. “You should listen to your doctor.”
Carter turned to see Pierce, accompanied by two women and a man — the latter clearly a prisoner — entering through the doorway at the back of the building.
Lazarus chuckled softly. “Not bad, Pierce. Jack would be proud.”
“You can tell him all about it when you’re ready.” Pierce moved closer and knelt beside Carter. “How’s he doing?”
“See for yourself.”
“I’ll be okay,” Lazarus said. “You know how this works.”
Pierce nodded. “I do.” He turned to the others. “Felice and Erik, meet Augustina Gallo and Cintia Dourado.” Almost as an afterthought, he pointed to the sullen man standing away from the others. “That’s Kenner. He’s a dick. But he’s going to help us get Fiona back.”
“She’s not here?” Lazarus asked, his forehead creasing in concern.
Pierce shook his head. “She’s at Cerberus HQ.”
Carter frowned. “We barely made it this far. We’ll be cut to ribbons if we try to leave.”
“There’s a canal that goes under the city. We can use it to get outside, and then we swim for the trees. From there, we make our way to the wall and climb out of here.”
“That might work,” Lazarus said, continuing his relentless struggle to get his feet back under him.
Carter hated the plan, but not as much as the idea of staying where they were. If she had learned one thing during her time with the man who now called himself Lazarus, it was to trust him, no matter how dire the situation looked. As she was about to voice her reluctant support, she heard a distant but familiar roar of an engine.
Despite his injuries, Lazarus was the first to reach the outside entrance to the building. As he stared up at the sky, the sound of rotor blades beating the air began echoing from the walls of the sinkhole. “There goes our ride.”
“Rohn,” Pierce said, disgusted. “I should have gone after the bastard. If we can get to the top, we should be able to get a signal out. Call for a pick up.”
“You don’t think he cut the ropes? Or sabotaged them?” Carter shook her head. “We’re in no shape for a climb like that,” she said, then added, “but there might be another way. We just need to find out where the water goes.”
“She’s right,” Gallo said. “The Amazons sure as hell didn’t climb up and down every time they went out. There has to be another way in, and I’d be willing to bet that canal goes right to it. It probably goes all the way to the river.”
“So instead of a climb, we have to swim?”
“Amazons?” Carter glanced from Gallo to Pierce. “You mean…?”
“Like Xena,” Dourado supplied. “Warrior Princess.”
Carter laughed. “Actually, Gabrielle was the—”
Pierce looked up suddenly. “Augustina, you said the Amazons and Sea Peoples were one and the same, right? Well they would have needed something else besides the map to conquer the known world three thousand years ago.” He looked around as if expecting someone to fill in the blanks.
“Boats?” Carter guessed.
“Ships, actually. We were wondering how the cypress trees got here. Now we know. The Amazons planted them. Cypress wood is extremely hydrophobic. The ancients knew that. It’s long been believed that they used cypress wood for their ships. The Bible says that Noah built the ark out of cypress wood. Don’t you see? This place wasn’t just their city. It was where they grew the timber for their ships.”