Stikes joined Sophia, his self-satisfied smile oozing wider. “I’m afraid they’re all loyal to me, not to you.”
“But they are still loyal to the Group,” Sophia added. “The new Group, that is.” She took Stikes’s hand.
“Thank you for giving me full access to all the Group’s resources, by the way,” Stikes added. “Don’t worry—we’ll put them to good use.”
In his desperation, Warden looked to the prisoners for assistance. “Do something! Please!”
All Nina could do was shrug helplessly. “What can I say? I told you not to trust them.”
Eddie nodded. “Saw that coming a mile off.”
Sophia brought the gun back down at Warden. “No, please!” he begged. “I—”
A single shot hit him in the forehead, blowing out the back of his skull in a gruesome bloom across the stone. Nauseated, Nina looked away. Larry retched, struggling to hold in a mouthful of vomit.
“Well then,” said Stikes amiably, “now that’s all dealt with, there’s only one thing left to do.” He raised his gun and pointed it at Eddie.
“Just a minute, darling,” said Sophia. “We agreed in Switzerland that I get to kill Eddie, remember? And second, business before pleasure—we still need Nina to move the meteorite so we can get out of here.”
Stikes glowered at Eddie, but reluctantly lowered the Jericho. “All right.” He turned to the mercenaries. “Watch Chase and his father. Dr. Wilde, if you’d be so kind?”
Nina returned to the meteorite. The huge stone began to hum once more as she brought the glowing statues closer, the very air around it tingling. She looked around at her audience: the guards mystified, Sophia and Stikes as avaricious as the late members of the Group had been, Larry still shocked by what he had just witnessed …
And her husband giving her an unspoken signal.
Ready.
An almost imperceptible nod, then she turned back to the hulking stone. Slowly, carefully, she brought all three statues together once more.
The expansion of her consciousness was this time almost familiar, even comforting. She belonged here; the power was a part of her. It always had been, simply waiting for the moment when it would be unlocked. She could feel the flow of the earth’s energy around her, an unimaginable torrent constantly circulating beyond the limits of the five human senses.
But now she could experience it. And channel it.
Control was out of the question: It would take too much time and effort even to begin to direct the power according to her specific wishes. But right now, she didn’t need control. If anything, she was trying to achieve the opposite. She allowed more energy to flood through the meteorite, willing it to take in more power.
And more. And more.
The great stone rocked and groaned again as the shimmering light ran over its surface. It slowly rose, more small fragments breaking loose and lazily spinning through the air until the charge they held faded and they dropped. “Good,” said Sophia, wide-eyed. “Good! Now move it to the temple.”
Nina obeyed, directing ever-more earth energy into the rock as she held the statues against it. Its glow brightened, shadows of ancient gods shifting across the wall as she brought it closer to the Atlantean structure. Sophia followed, Stikes gesturing for the mercenaries to bring their prisoners after her. The Englishwoman surveyed the damaged tiers. “To the left,” she ordered, pointing at a particular section. “Put it down with the tip next to the edge of that ledge. We’ll be able to reach the stairs from—”
She broke off, flinching as a lightning bolt flashed from the meteorite to strike the temple several stories above. A statue exploded, shattered fragments showering the people below. “What’s happening?” Stikes demanded.
“I don’t know!” Nina replied, only partly lying. She was still channeling more energy into the stone, but had no control over how it would manifest itself.
Sparks crackled from the floating rock, another, stronger bolt lancing up the volcanic shaft and out into the empty sky above. Eddie felt a static-like charge rising around him, the hairs on the backs of his hands standing on end. Larry gave his son a worried glance. “Hang on,” Eddie muttered to him.
“What was that?” snapped Stikes. He looked between the two Chases, realization growing that some conspiracy was afoot. “Stop!” he shouted at Nina. “Put the thing down!”
“It’s almost in place,” Sophia objected. The meteorite was nearly close enough to the ledge to allow a person to jump across. More flashes bridged the gap, stonework splintering where they landed.
“No, leave it!” He pointed his gun straight at Eddie’s heart. “Dr. Wilde, put it down and step away now, or I’ll kill them both!”
Nina closed her eyes …
And willed the entire power of the earth to flow into the meteorite.
Another flash, brighter than any before—
She was abruptly thrown backward as if shoved by a giant hand, grit and dust peppering her skin as a shock wave of energy erupted from the glowing rock. The statuettes flew from her hands, tumbling weightlessly through the air.
An unimaginably deep rumble shook the ledge—shook the entire volcano. More statues toppled from the temple to smash on the rocky floor. Igneous shards rained down from the wall of the shaft as the tremor pummeled them loose.
The quake had knocked everyone down. Pre-warned, Eddie was first to recover. He spotted Nina near Sophia and was about to shout for her to get the other woman’s gun when the sight of the meteorite froze him in momentary shock.
The massive rock was no longer simply hanging in the air. Glowing so brightly it almost hurt to watch, it was rising with increasing speed up the shaft. It was what had happened in Atlantis thousands of years before, he realized: The sky stone had been overloaded with earth energy, and when it blew it would be thrown skyward …
To land somewhere else. Where the next set of arseholes with ideas for world domination could find it.
Unless—
He jumped up and ran—not toward Nina, but for the remote.
Stikes sat up—and found one of his prisoners gone. He whirled, seeing Eddie running across the ledge, and grabbed the Jericho from the ground beside him. Teeth bared in an expectant snarl, he brought the gun around.
Eddie saw the detonator among the scattered debris. He dived headlong at it as Stikes’s first shot whipped past. Ignoring the pain of the landing, he twisted the dial to the full position.
Stikes rose, adjusting his aim. His prone target had nowhere left to go …
Eddie flicked up the protective cover—and jammed his thumb down on the red button beneath.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened—
Then the meteorite blew apart.
THIRTY-FIVE
The three explosive charges Eddie had placed in the sky stone shattered the great rock’s heart, sending countless pieces flying in all directions. They were still aglow, held in the air by the earth’s invisible lines of force … but the smallest fragments almost immediately lost their charge and fell like hail. Most dropped down the volcanic shaft, heading for immolation in the searing magma chamber below, but some hit the ledge—and the people on it.
Eddie yelped as a stone bounced off his head, and looked up to see where it had come from. “Oh, bollocks,” he gasped.
A swirling cloud of glowing rocks hung above him, ranging in size from golf balls to trucks. More energy bolts spat from them, stabbing at the rocky walls of the shaft. But the unearthly lights were rapidly going out, darkness spreading as increasingly larger chunks of debris exhausted their residual energy—and were reclaimed by gravity.
A piece of meteorite the size of a tennis ball smacked down beside him. Another, slightly larger, landed nearby a moment later.
A hard rain was going to fall.
There was danger below as well as above. The ground trembled, a low thunder rising from the base of the shaft as something huge slowly stirred from its long slumber.
The lava lake was
boiling with the sudden release of earth energy. The volcano was erupting. Just as Nantalas had triggered a natural disaster in Atlantis, so Nina had here.
“Nina! Dad!” he shouted as he stood. “Get into cover!” He started to run for the temple—
Stikes recovered from his shock, raising his gun.
Eddie dived behind the statue of Poseidon as he fired. “Get up!” Stikes yelled to his men as more rubble fell around them, some pieces as big as footballs.
Nina had heard Eddie’s shout and struggled upright, briefly mesmerized by the sight of the asteroid field hanging overhead. She snapped out of it at a cry of pain from nearby. Larry lay on the ground, one hand to his head where a falling stone had struck him.
Another, much larger lump of rock was directly above him, the shimmering glow across its surface fading …
She raced forward and seized her father-in-law by his arms. “Larry, move!” she screamed, trying to drag him clear.
The strange light vanished. The rock plunged—
Nina pulled harder, soles scrabbling for grip—and the stone slammed down where Larry had been lying, missing him by barely an inch.
Sophia gasped as she realized the danger she was in. No thought of helping any of the mercenaries, or even Stikes, crossed her mind; she ran for the shelter of the temple.
Ever larger debris pounded down onto the ledge. One of the mercenaries started to scream before being abruptly silenced by a half-ton chunk of meteorite that splattered him like an insect on a windshield.
Eddie pressed himself against the statue as another boulder smashed to the ground just feet away, showering him with gritty shrapnel. He felt the shock of the impact through his feet—but the other tremors from far underground were rapidly growing stronger. A second panicked mercenary tried to scramble clear as an Olympian toppled. He failed, the falling figure smiting him as mercilessly as its namesake of myth.
Eddie risked a look around his cover. Stikes was taking what little shelter he could find beneath another statue.
But he was thinking of more than mere survival. The Jericho came up—
Eddie ducked sharply back as another round cracked off Poseidon. Even after the last of the floating stones fell, he would still be cut off from the temple. He glanced toward the towering structure, seeing Nina supporting his father as they reached it.
She hauled Larry into an alcove, barely containing a terrified shriek as a boulder the size of a small car slammed down less than ten feet behind them. The hammer-blow booms of rock against rock grew louder with each strike. But even they couldn’t drown out the rising rumble from beneath the earth—the impending eruption she had caused.
Too late to worry if she had done the right thing. All she could do now was wait for the last pieces of the meteorite to drop, then hope there was a way to escape.
She helped Larry lean against the alcove’s wall, then looked outside. Huge boulders plunged past the ledge toward the molten lake below. Only a few parts of the shattered sky stone now remained aloft.
The largest was above the circle of statues, a thirty-foot-long dagger.
Its glow flickered to nothing …
The giant shard fell.
It stabbed deeply into the heart of the ledge—which broke apart as if split by a hammer and chisel. Over half of it sheared away and plummeted toward the lava, taking one of the surviving mercenaries with it and leaving Eddie, Stikes, and the last of his men on a ragged stump jutting out over the shaft. The remaining Olympians fell, the figure of Poseidon breaking apart and sending the metal trident clanging toward the nearby edge. Sections of the temple’s lower tiers collapsed, their own lesser gods flung to destruction.
With most of the natural bowl now gone, hot, fume-laden air from the magma chamber swept onto what was left of the ledge. Eddie coughed, cupping a hand over his mouth and nose. If he didn’t move quickly, he would be either suffocated or roasted. Eyes stinging, he peered over the broken remnants of the statue. Stikes and the mercenary, the latter closer, were still between him and the temple.
The temple—
The newly fallen tiers had created a ramp of sorts, unstable and treacherous yet high enough to reach the remaining stairs. And that wasn’t all—a rising column of steamy vapor was being pulled toward it, swirling into a vortex that disappeared into the shadows of a higher level.
Air was being drawn from the volcanic shaft through a second lava tube, newly opened by the tremors. There was another way out!
All they had to do was reach it.
He looked back at the two soldiers in his way. Both had been knocked down by the meteorite’s impact—
Eddie hurdled the wreckage of Poseidon and snatched up the metal trident, then ran as hard as he could. The ground shuddered with every step, almost throwing him off balance as he readied the ancient bronze weapon.
The mercenary sat up, astounded simply to be alive as he took in the devastation all around him. He breathed a sigh of relief—
Three metal prongs burst out of his chest.
Eddie slammed a foot against the dying man’s back to tear the trident free with a trio of bloody spurts. “Nina!” he yelled, jabbing a hand at the ramp. “Climb up, over there!” He hefted the trident and charged again. If he killed Stikes, that would only leave Sophia to worry about.
Stikes saw him coming. He twisted and raised the Jericho—
The trident slashed through his sleeve, one of its points gouging a deep rent in the muscle of his forearm. He screamed—but still managed to pull the trigger.
The bullet caught Eddie’s right biceps, tearing out a chunk of flesh the width of a finger. The pain made him recoil reflexively, throwing off his aim as he thrust the weapon down at the other man. The trident skimmed the side of Stikes’s body, ripping clothing but not skin, and hit the stone floor—and the entire three-pointed head broke off.
Stikes fired again, but Eddie jumped sideways and the bullet seared past him. He swung the trident’s shaft, catching Stikes a blow to the hand that fractured one of his fingers and sent the Jericho whirling toward the temple.
Nina had seen the new exit and started to run for the makeshift ramp, Larry behind her, when she heard the gunshots. “Eddie!” she cried, turning—
Larry yanked her back as Sophia emerged from cover and opened fire with Eddie’s gun. Exposed, they seemed doomed—but the quake threw off Sophia’s aim. The aristocrat’s expression grew more furious with each missed shot. She started after her targets as they ducked back toward the alcove … only for the automatic’s slide to lock back as she exhausted its ammo.
The two women glared at each other—then Sophia fled for the ramp, throwing away the empty gun. Nina looked back at her husband as he smashed the metal shaft down like a baseball bat onto the prone Stikes with a clang that was audible even over the volcano’s rumble.
Eddie appeared to have the upper hand; she made a snap decision and ran after Sophia. The Englishwoman was already halfway up the pile of shattered stones; once she reached the top, the second lava tube would be just a short distance away. Nina pounded after her, Larry following.
Eddie swung at Stikes again, the shaft cracking off the other man’s elbow as he tried to shield his head. Stikes screamed. “Yeah, how’s it feel to be the one getting hurt for a change?” Eddie yelled as he delivered another blow. “This is for everyone you killed in Afghanist—”
Another tremor made him lurch—and Stikes took advantage, sweeping his legs around to hook a foot behind Eddie’s knee, making his leg buckle. The Yorkshireman stumbled, the metal spear jolting from his hands. “You talk too much, Chase!” Stikes shouted as he jumped up. “You always did!”
Eddie sprang to his feet as Stikes charged at him. The two men crashed together, clawing and punching and kicking. Stikes slammed a balled fist against his opponent’s bullet wound, making him roar in agony—only to cry out himself as Eddie gouged his thumb deep into the ripped flesh of his forearm. They backed apart, sizing each other up once more.
>
Sophia reached the top of the slope and looked down to see Nina still in pursuit. She snatched up a lump of debris and hurled it at her. Nina yelped and ducked aside, the missile barely missing Larry. Sophia picked up another stone …
Part of the meteorite, a ragged purple chunk from the heart of the disintegrated rock. She stared at it for a moment, expression calculating—then shoved it into a pocket and ran along the tier.
Nina swore. If Sophia escaped with the meteorite fragment, there was a danger that the Group’s plan could be still carried out—with the worst person imaginable now in charge.
She scrambled up to the top of the slope, about to follow her—
Another seismic shock made her reel as the broken stones shifted underfoot—then a section of the tier ahead fell away and crashed down onto the level below, cutting her off from the lava tube. On the far side, Sophia reached its entrance and looked back at her with a mocking smile, then disappeared into the darkness.
The gap was too large to jump across. “Son of a bitch!” Nina snarled.
“Over there,” Larry gasped as he caught up, pointing in the other direction. “There are stairs at the far end—we can go up to the next level, then jump down by the tunnel.”
It appeared that he was right. They would have to scale a tilting pillar to reach the undamaged stairway, but it seemed negotiable. “Okay, you go first.” She turned to look for her husband as Larry began to climb the column—and saw that he was in trouble.
Stikes had backed Eddie perilously close to the edge of their lava-lit arena. The gases rising from below were painfully hot, and parts of the shuddering ledge looked on the verge of plummeting toward their source. Eddie knew he had to make a move, and quickly. The safest maneuver would be to try to break past Stikes for less dangerous ground, getting clear of the edge before resuming the battle.
Instead, Eddie charged straight at him to attack head-on. The best way to end the fight was by doing the unexpected—
Stikes twisted aside.
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