Her fingers clasped around the hilt. Boudreau practically tore her trousers off as he heaved one more time, coming to rest right on her back, head and lips suddenly right beside her ear.
“Nice fuckin’ try.” She felt blood dripping from his face onto her cheek. “You’re gonna feel this one. It’s going in nice and slow.”
He spread-eagled his weight over her whole body, driving her farther into the mud. With one hand, he pushed her face into the goo, stopping her breath. Hayden struggled madly, bucking and rolling as best she could. Every time her face came up, covered in sticky filth, she could see Mai in front of her, taking on Boudreau’s two henchmen alone.
One fell in the three seconds Hayden’s face was held under. The other backed away, prolonging the agony. By the time Hayden’s face had come up for air the fourth time Mai had finally cornered him and was about to break his back over a fallen tree.
Hayden’s remaining strength was almost gone.
Boudreau’s knife pricked her skin around the third rib. With an agonizingly slow and measured thrust, the blade began to slide in deeper. Hayden reared and kicked, but couldn’t remove her assailant.
“Nowhere to go.” Boudreau’s wicked whisper invaded her head.
And he was right, Hayden suddenly realized. She should stop fighting and let it happen. Just lie there. Give herself time—
The blade sank deeper, steel grating against bone now. Boudreau’s chuckle was the call of the Grim Reaper, the call of a demon mocking her.
The knife beneath her body came free with a heavy sucking sound. With a single movement, she reversed it in her hand and jabbed it hard behind her into Boudreau’s own ribs.
The psycho reared back, screaming, the knife’s hilt protruding from his ribcage. Even then Hayden couldn’t move. She was jammed too far into the mud, her whole body being sucked down. She couldn’t even move her other arm.
Boudreau wheezed and panted atop her. Then she felt the big knife being removed. This was it then. He would kill her now. One rigid thrust to the back of her neck or to her spine. Boudreau had beaten her.
Hayden opened her eyes wide, determined to see the sunlight one last time. Her thoughts were of Ben and she thought, judge me on how I lived, not how I died.
Again.
Then, looming large and as terrifying as a charging lion, Mai Kitano came storming in. About three feet from Hayden, she launched herself off the ground, pouring every ounce of momentum into a flying kick. One second later, and all that force shattered Boudreau’s upper torso, breaking bones and organs and sending splintered teeth and splatters of blood in a wide arc.
The weight was lifted from Hayden’s back.
Someone lifted her out of the mud with seeming ease. Someone carried her and laid her gently on the grassy bank and stood over her.
That someone was Mai Kitano. “Relax,” she said easily. “He’s dead. We won.”
Hayden couldn’t move nor speak. She simply stared up at the blue sky and the swaying trees and at Mai’s smiling face.
And, after a while, she said, “Remind me never to piss you off. Truly, if you’re not the best there’s ever been I’ll…” Her thoughts were still mainly with Ben, so she finished with something that he might say. “I’ll show my arse in Asda.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Blood King pushed his men to the absolute limit.
The fact their pursuers had almost closed the gap made him furious. It was the overlarge contingent of men slowing him down. It was their dim-witted guide, dawdling over trivialities when they could be making strides. The amount of men who died claiming this prize was irrelevant. The Blood King demanded and expected their sacrifice. He expected them all to lay down and die for him. Their families would be looked after. Or at least, they wouldn’t be tortured.
The prize was everything.
His guide, a man called Thomas, was babbling on about this being the level some other geek called Hawksworth had named envy. It was the fourth chamber, the Blood King fumed. Only the fourth. Standard legend spoke of seven levels of hell. Could there really be three more after this one?
And how did Hawksworth know? The scribe and Cook had turned and fled, balls shrunken to the size of peanuts, when they beheld the trap system after level five. Dmitry Kovalenko, he thought, certainly would not.
“You are waiting for what?” he growled at Thomas. “We will move. Now.”
“I haven’t quite worked out the trap system, sir,” Thomas started to say.
“Fuck the trap system. Send the men in. They will find it faster.” The Blood King curled a lip in amusement whilst studying the chamber.
Unlike the previous three, this chamber sloped down to a central shallow basin that looked like it had been hewn out of the very rock. Several thick metal stanchions protruded from the hard floor, almost like stepping stones. The sides of the chamber narrowed as they proceeded, until after the basin when they started to widen out again.
The basin appeared to be a ‘choke-point.’
Envy? the Blood King thought. How did such a sin translate to real life, to this subterranean world where shadows could as soon kill you as protect you? He watched as Thomas ordered the advance. At first all went well. The Blood King cast a glance back the way they had come, as he heard the distant sounds of gunfire. Damn Drake and his little army. Once he got out of here, he would personally ensure the blood vendetta achieved its cruel aim.
The gunfire galvanized him. “Move!” he cried, just as the lead man stepped on some kind of hidden pressure point. There was a crack like stone falling, a woosh of air, and suddenly the lead man’s head bounced to the stone floor before rolling down the sharp gradient like a football. The headless body collapsed into a bloody heap.
Even the Blood King stared. But he felt no fear. He only wanted to see what had caused such trauma to his lead man. Thomas shrieked beside him. The Blood King pushed him forward, following in his steps, taking great delight in the man’s fear. At last, beside the twitching body, he stopped.
With scared men all around him the Blood King studied the ancient mechanism. A razor thin wire had been strung at head height between two metal poles that must have been held in position by some kind of tension device. When his man stepped on the release lever, the poles had released, and the wire swung around with them, severing his man’s head at the neck.
Ingenious. A wonderful deterrent, he thought, and wondered if he might employ such a device in the servant quarters of his new home.
“What are you waiting for?” he bellowed at the remaining men. “Move!”
Three men leapt forward, another dozen followed close behind. The Blood King saw the prudence of leaving another half dozen behind him just in case Drake caught up fast.
“Quick now,” he said. “If we go faster we get there faster, yes?”
His men ran, deciding they actually had no choice and there was an outside chance their deranged boss was right. Another trap triggered and a second head went bouncing down the incline. The body fell and the man behind it tripped over it, counting himself lucky when another taut wire sliced open the air right above his head.
When the second group started down, the Blood King joined them. More traps were sprung. More heads and scalps rolled. Then, there was a booming clap that echoed through the cavern. On either side of the narrowing pathway mirrors sprung out, positioned so that they reflected the man in front.
At the same time there was the sound of water rushing and the basin at the bottom of the incline began to fill up.
Only this water wasn’t just water. Not judging by the way it was smoking.