Knight tried his throat microphone. “Queen? You read?”
He heard a burst of static and then Queen’s voice came through. “Thank fuckery. Where the hell are you?”
“Sub Level 1. You still on 3?”
“We’re pinned down in the bathroom. You got out just in time.”
“Blast through the next two walls. You got a storage room, then a lounge. Access up to the next level through a caved-in kitchen.” Knight walked back to the hallway as he talked and Asya was right by his side.
As he stepped out into the hallway, bullets raced past him from the stairs he had used. He ducked back into the Data Lab. “Shit. You’re gonna need to try for the South stairwell when you get on Two, Queen. North is now hostile.”
“Crap,” he heard her say. “Hold on.”
Knight heard a distant booming noise from the bowels of the facility.
“We’re gonna try to circle around to the south side of the loading dock and pin these bastards down,” Knight said into his mic.
Knight looked at Asya and she gave a curt nod, indicating she was ready to rush out into the fray again. She was a lot like her brother.
“‘We?’ Who have you got?”
“Pawn. Give us five. Then make for the south stairs.”
“Got it. Where the fuck is Rook?”
“Haven’t seen him,” he said.
“Rook is on Level 2,” Asya said, intuiting Queen’s line of question. It wasn’t hard. She knew Rook and Queen were an item. Generally inseparable. She would never admit it, but Queen’s concern was personal as much as it was tactical.
Knight relayed the message and turned to Asya. “Ready?”
“Go,” Asya said from behind him.
Knight yanked the door open in one hard pull.
Standing on the other side of the door was a huge man dressed in black and wearing a camouflage Vietnam-era infantry helmet. His AK-47 was raised at Knight’s heart. As the man’s finger began to squeeze, Knight closed his eyes.
FORTY
“What…is that smell?”
“That…would be puppy,” the voice came floating back softly. King could just barely make out the man’s silhouette in the dark tunnel. They were coming up on some kind of light source in the distance, but it was faint.
“You called Cerberus, the three-headed hellhound guardian of Hades, ‘Puppy?’ Really?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to destroy the creature. He was…cute once. When he was small. Also, I have yet to weave the Cerberus story into the ancient religions. It started on its own, really, after puppy got free one night.”
“You’re telling me that the fabled twelfth labor of the mighty Hercules was basically catching your loose dog?”
“Actually, that’s probably the most accurate telling of the story I’ve ever heard,” Alexander whispered. “I found him in a cave. Brought him home.”
As more light filled the tunnel, King could finally make out the stone wall of the natural cave. Alexander’s form was fully visible ahead. The tunnel ended at a huge round arena-like space, all carved from a naturally formed cavern. King could see where stone ledges had been fashioned as seating, but there were also natural stalactites that connected with stalagmites, forming thin columns that supported the roof far overhead. Across the floor of the giant space was a thick iron chain. Each link looked large enough for King to crawl through. One end of the chain was pegged to a rock wall. The other end of the chain was out of view to the right of the tunnel entrance.
Alexander held a hand up, preventing King from entering the arena. “‘Hellhound’ was a bit of an exaggeration, although he is large.”
“How big are we talking here?”
“Ever seen a rhino up close?”
“You’re kidding.”
Alexander’s grim face said he wasn’t. “That’s how big he was when I got him.”
King’s jaw fell slack. “You said he was small when you got him.”
“Comparatively speaking,” Alexander said with a shrug. “And we can’t kill him, either.”
“Why not? And won’t he recognize your scent?”
“I’m afraid he might not. My body chemistry might have changed since the inclusion of the herbs and serums that give me my longevity and strength. But the reason we can’t kill him is more complex.”
King understood immediately. “The time-stream. He saves your life at some point?”
“I told you he was a good pup.”
Alexander strode out into the arena. King followed. Almost immediately they heard another rumbling growl that shook the stone on which they stood.
King looked to his right, down the length of the arena. A few torches burned along the walls of the broad expanse, but the thing he desperately wanted to see at the end of the chain wasn’t there. The end of the chain was a big iron ring and a bolt that went through it. There was no sign of the beast.
“He’s loose. Great. I hate you, you know that, right?”
Alexander turned to look at King, but his face angled up and above the tunnel entrance, far over King’s head.
“He’s behind me, isn’t he? I really hate you.”
King turned as the beast growled again, and this time he had a visual to go with the epic rumbling. He wasn’t disappointed. The creature stood crouched on a ledge above the tunnel entrance. It was probably twenty feet tall if it hadn’t been crouched. King expected a three headed dog to have three necks as well, but it didn’t. All three heads grew out of a single thick neck, and one of the three had grown at an odd angle, as if it were a genetic mutation. King could only count five ears on the creature. Where the other should have been, two heads were fused. Thick black fur covered the creature. Its tail had been docked like a doberman’s, but the overall shape of the beast reminded him of a terrier crossbred with a huge Labrador retriever for the shape of its body and a Saint Bernard for the shape of its heads.
One of the three heads appeared to have been sleeping but was rousing now. The other two were snarling, with lips pulled back and long ropes of slobber as thick as King’s arm drooling down to the ground like the cave’s stalactites.
“Distract him!” Alexander called. Then the man ran off to the side of the arena.
King looked around desperately. “With what!”
The hellhound stepped down to the arena floor with one massive paw, effectively blocking retreat down the entrance tunnel. The paw and foreleg were, by themselves, as tall as an African elephant, but in all other ways besides size, looked just like a dog — with hair the thickness of twine.
King turned and ran for the nearest cave column. The ground shook as the giant animal pounced down from the rock ledge and gave chase.
King got to the column and glanced back. Just in time. The gaping maw of the central head was inches behind him. He threw his body to the side, behind the column. The three-headed beast’s momentum carried it past, but the left side head turned in time to snap at him, spraying a long rope of frothy saliva at him. The moisture smacked into King’s face like a soaking wet towel.
He rolled on the floor and swiped at his face with the sleeve of his robe, hardly penetrating the thick coating of saliva. He ignored it after that. Had to keep moving. He had correctly guessed that the hound wouldn’t damage the delicate columns in the arena, so he planned to use them as shields, at least until the beast lost its patience and decided the cavern could lose a column and not collapse.
He got to his feet and ran for the next column. The slathering creature was right behind him. He heard metal grinding across the stone floor of the cavern. When he looked, he saw Alexander hauling on the giant chain like a sailor pulling in a simple rope. He hoped whatever Alexander had planned, he would do it fast.