“X!” shouted a voice, followed by a familiar bark.
His eyes darted to a cage a few yards left of the throne.
“Get back!” X shouted again, firing a bullet into the sky. Then he pointed the gun at the king of the Cazadores.
“El Pulpo, I came for your other eye—and your head! But I’ll make you a deal. Free my friend and my dog, and I won’t kill anyone else. Refuse, and you’re all going to die.”
A robed man translated the message aloud. El Pulpo finally got off his bone seat, laughing so loudly the noise echoed off the metal walls.
The only other sound was the eerie clacking of jaws all around X. He swept the gun back and forth over the warriors.
Another voice shouted from across the platform. This one came from a cage to the right of the throne.
“Do what they say, Mr. Xavier!”
X squinted at a half-naked man standing inside the cage. The bearded figure yelled again.
“Don’t fight King Pulpo. You can’t beat him!”
The crackling voice sounded a lot like…
“Rodger?”
The boy in his arms had come to and was squirming in his grip. A Cazador soldier jabbed the air with his spear, advancing closer and closer.
Their king walked down the steps from his throne and used a key to open the cage where Miles and Magnolia were being held.
“Let me go!” she shouted, punching and kicking with little effect. Miles bit at his armored leg, but el Pulpo shook the dog off with ease.
“Don’t touch them!” X yelled, leveling the gun at the king. El Pulpo’s fighters shouted and stabbed the air with their spears, the tips coming within inches of X.
This was a battle he couldn’t win. He knew it, but he was willing to die if it meant giving Magnolia and Miles a chance. A chance he didn’t see…
The man in the brown robe walked through the gardens and stopped near the edge of the sparkling pool.
“My name is Imulah,” he said in perfect English, “and I am a servant to el Pulpo. My king remembers you and deeply respects your fighting skills. Normally, he wouldn’t offer such a thing, but he has a proposal for you.”
“Fuck him and his proposal,” X spat. “I have a policy of not making deals with cannibals.”
“I urge you to hear him out. Look around you. You don’t have any options.”
There’s always an option, X thought.
The Cazador king pulled Magnolia out of the cage and held a blade to her throat. Miles had a chain around his neck now, and el Pulpo snubbed a loop of it around one of the cage bars and planted his boot on the slack so the dog couldn’t move.
Okay, so maybe there weren’t any good options.
A dozen Cazador soldiers had him surrounded, and a glance over his shoulder revealed four more at the doorway behind him.
Some of the men were half naked, their bodies tattooed and pierced. Pointed yellow teeth gnashed and clicked together, and hungry eyes stared at his flesh as they waved axes and knives. Others wore the ceremonial armor and held long spears.
Memories surfaced of other battles that had seemed impossible: in Hades when he faced dozens of Sirens, or in the Florida swamps when a snake pulled him down into black water.
But back then, he had only his own life and Miles’ to worry about. Now he had Magnolia, Miles, and, apparently, Rodger, if his eyes and ears hadn’t deceived him.
For the first time in his life, X saw no possible way out of this—not one that ended in saving his friends, even if he should sacrifice himself.
“What’s the one-eyed freak proposing?” X asked Imulah.
“You will join the Cazadores. He needs men like you for expeditions to the dark world—men who can bring back treasures and able-bodied survivors and who know how to fight the deformed ones.”
Deformed ones? That must mean Sirens. So far, the idea of being a slave and fighting mutant beasts—and perhaps being obliged to eat them—sounded grim.
“And if I say yes?”
“Your friends can live and join the Cazadores, too.”
The boy squirmed, and X gripped him tighter until he whined and quit struggling.
“I joined them,” Imulah said. “They spared me, and in return I serve them. It’s not a bad offer.”
Serve…
X had been serving as a Hell Diver almost his entire life. But that service had always been his decision. It was not slavery.
El Pulpo smiled. X pictured blowing the top of his skull off with a squeeze of the trigger, but the fleeting satisfaction of taking his revenge wasn’t worth his friends’ lives.
“Lower your gun,” Imulah said. “Join us. You don’t have to die. I’ve met others like you, on expeditions where we plucked survivors out of hell holes. El Pulpo wasn’t always the commander and king of these people. They rescued him many years ago, from Ascension, an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, when he was just a child. His ancestors were English.”
Had X heard correctly? El Pulpo wasn’t born here and was the descendant of people that lived on an airship?
Not that it mattered now. Not really.
X looked at the other Hell Divers and his dog with sadness. Joining the Cazadores meant enslavement. It meant losing their humanity.
But it also meant life.
Just as he was about to lower the gun, one of the guards thrust his spear into the boy’s chest, impaling him and plucking him away, leaving X exposed.
“No!” el Pulpo yelled, his gravelly voice barely audible over X’s gunshots.
Three neat holes appeared in the warrior’s armor, leaking blood like a punctured water bag. The man crashed to the dirt, choking and gurgling next to the dying boy.
A moment of uncertainty passed, the warriors looking at one another or at X, not knowing what to do. Even their king, who had walked several steps, stood still as if waiting to see what might happen next.
X made the choice simple by raking the submachine gun back and forth across the ranks of Cazador soldiers.
The close phalanx of armored bodies made it easy to cut them down, and difficult for the armed warriors surrounding el Pulpo to take a shot without killing their comrades. They all aimed their weapons, but none fired.
“Leave him alone!” Magnolia shouted.
A man hurled his spear, but X moved just in time, the blade cutting the air where his neck had been. He shot down two more soldiers behind him, and a spearman who lunged from the side.
The tip cut into his shoulder, and another nicked the skin over his ribs. Without his Hell Divers armor, he was vulnerable to their archaic weapons.
X smashed another soldier in the face with the butt of the submachine gun and grabbed the dropped spear in midair. Swinging it in a wide arc, he hamstrung one man and disemboweled another, forcing the others back.
Bringing up his submachine gun, he finished the magazine and drew the blaster from its thigh holster. The first shotgun round blew through the front of a soldier’s helmet. The second opened a gaping hole in a female warrior’s thigh. He squeezed the trigger again, firing a flare into the tattooed chest of another man, who let out a long howl of agony before his lungs melted.
X ran the next soldier’s neck through with the spear, leaving it there when he couldn’t pull it free. He fired his second shotgun shell into the belly of an axman, who dropped the weapon, severing part of his foot.
A boot to the back knocked X out of the path of a spear thrust that would have impaled him like the dead boy on the ground. Using the momentum to his advantage, he made for the gardens while a half-dozen screaming soldiers gave chase.