Thank God.
Still, they forced her backward. The tunnel opened out. Behind her came the sounds of a flowing stream. It crossed their path and continued underground. More attackers thrust forward. Hayden smashed one on the temple and then another. She fell atop them, forcing them under the water and kneeling on their heads. She fended a third off, catching punches and blows on her wrists and biceps, gaining bruises and not losing any ground.
Fay knelt beside her, crying.
“If you want to live,” Hayden panted between punches, “fight!”
A guard slipped in the stream, smashed his head against jutting rock. His weapon had been a baseball bat, so Hayden scooped it up and used it on the next. Yet another she smashed around the knees, three blows, until finally she felt the fight give in those she had drowned, and rose up.
Backing further away.
She took Fay by the jacket, pulled her back. The tunnel angled downward now, its walls moving further and further away. Hayden ignored her soaked feet, her soaked legs, and jabbed at another oncoming opponent. Beyond him now she saw the huge bulk that had to be Kinimaka, the shape of Smyth who grumbled even as he fought. The latter engaged a spider creature, pummeling it until it dropped, but failed to stop two guards sneaking around his back.
Kinimaka ended them with two shots.
Smyth jumped away. Hayden saw recruits coming now, the ones she’d arrived with and a dozen more, filing past Smyth and chasing after her; their eyes wild and petrified, their faces bruised and bloody.
“Nobody signed us up for this,” one yelled.
“I don’t remember signing up for anything!” another replied.
“Is it all part of the initiation?” Still another.
“Listen up!” Hayden cried out. “You’re now running for your goddamn lives. So believe that. And fucking fight!”
Fay stared up and down, left and right, eyes wide with horror. Hayden saw more than just fear of battle in that stare. “What’s wrong?” she asked, then gently patted the girl’s face. “What’s wrong? Fay!”
“Stories I heard earlier,” she whispered. “About flesh eaters that never leave the caves. Fed old meat through a hole. They’re just left down here to roam and… and…”
“And what?”
“To watch out for strays,” she murmured. “True monsters.”
Hayden looked down the darker tunnel that stretched ahead, knowing it led toward the long lost Inca treasure. “We must go deeper. We’re under attack. We have no choice.”
Smyth came up. “Get a fucking move on!”
“There’s more,” Fay breathed. “A story of two brothers gone mad and wild who live down here together, worse than the flesh eaters and far hungrier.”
“Sounds like shit to me,” Smyth said. “Move your ass.”
Hayden used another bullet on a spider creature and Kinimaka fired two into guards. With the bulk of the people out of the way now they could puck off their assailants with ease, forcing most of them back up the tunnel and toward the house. Hayden stared into the dark passageway once more.
“Stick together,” she said. “We go down.”
“Not me,” Fay challenged. “I’m staying right here.”
“Where you’re just as vulnerable,” Hayden protested. “From above and below.”
“I am not moving. You see, I’m starting to stand up for myself.”
At the perfectly wrong moment, Hayden thought. Like so many kids. “All right, then I can’t help you. Any of you who stay. I want to…” She faltered. “Come with us. Please.”
Fay refused; others sat beside her. In the end all of the recruits chose to stay, especially when all sounds of footsteps along the tunnel back to the chateau died away.
Hayden eyed her team. “Looks like it’s just us, guys.”
Yorgi inclined his head. “I will stay with them. I have a full weapon and I can protect these boys and girls.”
Hayden saw vulnerability in his eyes then, and guessed he saw much of his old self in the gathering of lost souls. He wanted to go with the team, but needed to protect the kids.
“Good luck,” she said. “We’ll see you soon.”
Smyth and Kinimaka followed her into blackness, trying not to hear the whisperings and slitherings that suddenly started up around them.
CHAPTER FORTY THREE
Drake stopped before Dantanion, expecting the usual barrage of bodyguards to launch a last-ditch assault. After ten seconds he began to feel exposed, after twenty a little silly. Finally, after more than half a minute Alicia tapped him on the shoulder.
“Hey, you gonna say something. Drakey? You scared of the mighty cannibal king?”
“No, I’m not bloody scared,” Drake spluttered. “I was waiting for something to happen.”
“Seriously? Because you looked scared.” Dahl peered at him.
“The only thing that scares me, mate, is when the sausage is done before the bacon. ’Cause that way you’re not gonna get your fatty edges nice and crispy.”
“Then I guess this dude and you might sometimes have the same problem,” Kenzie said, placing the point of her sword against Dantanion’s throat. “Do you have any bodyguards lying in wait? A ninja or two?”
The inscrutable leader sniffed but made no movement. “It took ten years of hard toil to build this movement. The shattered bones of many men. It takes ritual devotion and sacrifice to provide and care for this family, something you would never understand. You have come here, invaded us, and destroyed it all in ten minutes.”
“Fifteen.” Alicia tapped her watch. “Maybe even twenty. But then we are dragging weight.” She winked over at Kenzie who flashed a wicked grin.
“We made the world a safer place,” Drake said. “Or this part of Peru at least.”
“The warmongers will never assuage their greed. The hungry politicians will always believe they can kill, maim and take whatever they want by force. And the worst part is — they think they have the right to do it. That they were born to rule and lead and make war, regardless of the innocent people they displace and murder.”
Drake shrugged. “Crazy as you are, pal, you just made sense.”
“Can whacko go full circle?” Alicia asked. “I mean, y’know, all the way around and back to sane?”
“Of course there will always be war,” Dahl said. “But knowing that our current and potential world leaders might be power-hungry dictators, and that others want to live in a post-apocalyptic world doesn’t exactly earn you a medal these days. Turn around, asshole, and put your hands behind your back.”
Drake still waited, still expected an attack. But it never came. For once this maniac, this Dantanion, was all he appeared to be — a calm, intelligent maniac with a long-term plan and the wealth to back it up.
“Maybe he’s a ninja,” Alicia said, turning once more from a quiet surveillance of the room. “Watch him, Torsty.”
“It’s all about the spectacle,” Dantanion said with utter coolness and then threw his hands in the air.
They erupted from behind black banners that ran floor to ceiling — half a dozen spider creatures with blades attached to their elbows and their knees, all capering in mad, haphazard fashion and striking out straight for the soldiers.
With the spiders came a man dressed like a skeleton, bones on the outside, a spear clasped in one hand. Alongside him strode two more seven-foot-tall giants, both with skulls tattooed over their real faces. They were naked and they were eunuchs and they carried maces. Drake was in shock, mouth hanging. Dahl cleared his throat and even Alicia remained speechless.