The Demon Crown

by James Rollins

  Grimacing, he stared at the trio of slack bodies hanging from cuffs. Blood and foam ran down their legs and dripped from their fingertips. From this distance, it was impossible to tell how much damage had been inflicted by the horde of biting wasps.

  Only one way to find out.

  He climbed inside. His bare feet crunched over the dead or listless carapaces of the wingless wasps. As hard-shelled as they were, it was like walking on marbles—marbles with sharp edges. The bottoms of his feet were sliced by mandibles that could no longer bite but remained razor sharp.

  As he reached Kowalski, a thick-knuckled hand weakly lifted, then dropped, as if waving Gray off. Relief flooded through him. He noted the two cousins’ chests heaved shallowly up and down as they hung.

  Still alive . . . but for how much longer?

  He hurriedly released the clasps on their cuffs and soon all three men were slumped on their sides in the slurry of foam, blood, and dead wasps. Through the window, he spotted Aiko, who still guarded the tunnel leading here. Gray knew he had only moments before reinforcements would arrive. When that happened, Aiko could only hold them off for so long—certainly not long enough for him to move the three paralyzed men to safety by himself.

  Past the window, he spotted his only hope.

  He rushed back outside, skating treacherously over the slick, wasp-pebbled floor. A white metal box hung on the wall outside with a red cross emblazoned on it. He prayed the presence of the emergency first-aid kit at this location was significant.

  Like eye-wash stations positioned near toxic chemicals.

  He yanked open the kit’s door. Inside, half the contents were a row of self-injectors. They looked like EpiPens, and maybe they were. Back on Maui, epinephrine had been used as a counteragent to the sedative effects of the egg-laying wasps’ venom.

  He grabbed a handful of the injectors and raced back into the room.

  He knelt first next to Kowalski, ripped off the syringe’s wrapper with his teeth, then jabbed the needle into the man’s neck. The contents spurted through Kowalski’s skin—the little that was left of it on his body.

  As he repeated the emergency treatment with Makaio and Tua, he finally took notice of the damage wrought. It looked as if the skin had been flayed from their arms and legs, along with large swaths across their backs and lower bellies. Closer inspection, though, showed the skin was relatively intact, pocked by thousands upon thousands of pea-sized bites. Blood pooled and spilled from the countless wounds, but at least nothing showed overt arterial spurting.

  Their chests, necks, and heads had also been mostly spared.

  He remembered Ken’s description of the harvesters avoiding anything vital, keeping their food source alive and fresh as long as possible.

  Still, the men were far from safe. Exsanguination from so many bites remained a significant threat. All three men needed medical treatment, possibly blood transfusions, as soon as possible.

  A guttural groan drew his attention back to Kowalski. The man slowly lifted his head, then sat up, wobbling dazedly. For him to already be moving, those syringes must have held something more potent than simple epinephrine. Likely some antagonist to the harvester’s paralytic poison.

  Moments later, Makaio and Tuo also stirred.

  “My . . . my head’s spinning,” Kowalski complained.

  “How much pain are you in?”

  He stared groggily at the bloody ruin of his splayed legs. “Don’t feel much of anything?”

  If that was true, the injectors must have had some type of analgesics mixed in with their load, possibly opioid pain relievers.

  “Can you stand?” Gray asked.

  “Do I have to?”

  A spatter of gunfire answered him.

  Gray faced the window. Aiko retreated down the tunnel toward the chamber, firing at the far corner. She must have spotted someone and sought to hold them at bay.

  In the room, Kowalski tried to stand, but he looked like a bull trying to roller-skate. Makaio and Tua were only beginning to sit up.

  They were in no state to move yet.

  Aiko fired off another three rounds, then dashed to the open door. “We must go now.”

  Gray glanced over to the slowly reviving men.

  I will not abandon them.

  4:44 A.M.

  Ken stumbled down the last of the stairs to the middle level of the hub. He was dragged by strong pale fingers digging into his forearm. Valya threatened him with a black pistol in her other hand. The retreating party had also gathered a pair of armed security guards in helmets and body armor, who flanked Masahiro protectively.

  And for good reason.

  This section of the hub was in chaos. Evacuating lab techs and maintenance workers had fled the upper and lower levels. They all crowded toward the main tunnel back to the island, resulting in a bottleneck, which only added to the panic as everyone tried to escape the threatened station.

  Valya nudged one of their armed escorts with her pistol. “Clear a path for us. We’re leaving now. Shoot if you must.”

  The guard nodded and began to leave Masahiro’s side.

  “Stop,” Masahiro ordered. He pointed to the open doors to his office. “I’m not taking any chances. Follow me.”

  He led the group through the doors into his teak-paneled office. Ken again noted the fiery phoenix depicted in gold on the wall behind his desk, the logo for Fenikkusu Laboratories. If Ken survived the next hour, he knew that was where he would be taken, where he’d either agree to cooperate or be killed.

  Valya scowled at Masahiro. “Why are you wasting time?”

  “A fail-safe,” he snapped back at her and crossed behind his desk.

  “What fail-safe?”

  “In case of an enemy intrusion.” He reached a palm up to a glass rectangle below the phoenix symbol. It bloomed to life with his touch.

  “Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

  As his palm was scanned, he cast her a withering glare of disdain. “This is my facility. Despite my grandfather’s trust in you, I’m not so gullible as to share everything with a gaijin.”

  Valya’s features hardened.

  Ken imagined the woman’s albinism had always made her a gaijin, an outsider, someone always held as suspect due to a genetic trait beyond her control. Plus, she was not Japanese. He knew how much heritage mattered in such a closed culture. Even his mixed blood—half Japanese, half German—had cast him a shade lower in the eyes of his fellow researchers in Kyoto. He remembered bristling against this age-old prejudice.

  Valya clearly also rankled at her lower status, forever destined to be considered less than by her Japanese superiors. To have Masahiro cast this aspersion now plainly inflamed her.

  The fingers still clutching Ken’s elbow dug deeper into his flesh.

  As the scan of Masahiro’s palm completed, a hidden teak panel swiveled open, exposing a single red button. “We’ll have four minutes,” he warned. “Trust me, we’ll want to be beyond the station’s blast doors by that time.”

  He punched the button with a fist, his aggravation showing.

  Valya frowned as he turned back around. “What’s going to—?”

  Masahiro cut her off and pointed to the door. “Now we can go.”

  The man stalked around the desk and ordered the two guards to clear a path ahead of them. Such an order was no longer necessary. Beyond the doors, the outer hub had mostly emptied as the earlier bottleneck finally broke. The final stragglers fled down the long tunnel.

  But they were not the last.

  A spatter of gunfire echoed down the stairs from the level above. Valya had sent an armed team to deal with Gray and Aiko. Apparently, the firefight was still under way.

  Ken stared up, willing them to hold out.

  But in the end, what good would it truly do?

  He pictured the red button under the fiery phoenix.

  They had less than four minutes.

  Valya looked up also, her expression wary. It was that warin
ess that saved her life. She suddenly swung around, yanking Ken to her chest as a pistol blast rang out behind them. A round whistled past the side of his head, burning through the edge of his left ear. Pain flared, momentarily blinding hm.

  As his vision cleared, he saw Seichan running toward them, her pistol raised, the barrel smoking.

  5:02 A.M.

  How could she be here?

  Upon seeing the witch’s tattooed face, Seichan had reacted hastily. She had fired immediately at the impossible apparition, knowing it was her best chance to eliminate this dread threat. But in her desperation, she must have given herself away—maybe the scuff of her feet on the steel stairs, the strained panting of her breath—or maybe it had simply been the woman’s innate sense of danger.

  The Guild had taught them both to be forever on guard, to draw every detail from their surroundings at all times and be ready to act.

  Cursing the woman’s preternatural senses, Seichan fired at one of the gunmen. The round struck his shoulder and sent him spinning away, the rifle flying from his fingertips.

  The second gunman grabbed a Japanese man dressed in a business suit and rushed him out of the line of fire and into a side tunnel. From the map turning in her head, she knew it was the main passageway leading from the station to the island.

  She ignored the fleeing men and concentrated on Valya Mikhailov.

  The woman continued to use Professor Matsui as a human shield. Seichan fired two more rounds, not intending to hit her target. She couldn’t risk striking Ken. Instead, she used the shots to drive the woman away from the exit tunnel, to keep her from escaping. Simultaneously, she ran for the only cover: the open door of an office.

  Valya fired back at her, but Seichan had been just as well trained to anticipate danger and react. She responded mindfully but instinctively to the woman’s body movements and to her gaze. She slipped through the rounds, the bullets ricocheting off the steel behind her.

  Just keep focusing on me.

  From the corner of her eye, she spotted Palu bolt from the lower stairwell. Cleaver in hand, he fled across an open gap of floor to the steps heading up, where spats of gunfire still rang out.

  Minutes ago, while traversing the station toward the central hub, she had heard those same shots. She paused long enough to strip and clean her waterlogged SIG Sauer, readying it for use again. All the while, the compromised station had creaked and groaned around her, reminding her to hurry.

  As did every gun blast echoing from above.

  There could be only one source of that firefight.

  Gray . . .

  Knowing that, she had finally rushed up the central hub toward the fighting—only to discover Professor Matsui on the middle level being dragged toward the exit by a ghost from Seichan’s past. She had only moments to attempt to rescue Ken, while also sending Palu off to help Gray and the others.

  As she ran for cover now, Valya finally shoved Ken to the floor, frustrated by the man’s thrashing, which confounded the woman’s aim. Unencumbered now, Valya fired two fast shots. One sailed past Seichan’s head, the other grazed her hip.

  Fiery pain bloomed, but she ignored it and kept running.

  Almost there . . .

  Once she was safely shielded in the office and Valya was exposed on the open floor, she could either eliminate the witch or drive her off.

  But before Seichan could reach her goal, both of her legs broke.

  Or at least, that’s what it felt like.

  The burst of exertion had finally roused the horde inside her. Pain racked through her, cramping the muscles of her legs into unpliable stone. Her limbs refused to cooperate and sent her crashing to the floor. Agony narrowed her vision and weakened her control.

  As she hit, the impact knocked the pistol from her palm. It bounced, then skidded into the office. She tried to follow it, struggling to get her legs under her.

  Then a presence loomed over her.

  She glanced up, knowing who was there.

  Valya had collected Ken again. She had a fist knotted in his hair, pulling his head back. Blood ran down his neck from his ear.

  Her pistol pointed at Seichan.

  “I’ve waited a long time for this,” she said. “Tracking you and that bastard halfway around the globe, almost losing you twice.”

  Through eyes watery with pain, Seichan glared back.

  So that’s how the enemy knew we were on Maui.

  Valya shoved her pistol closer.

  Ken moaned. “Don’t . . .”

  His plea fell on deaf ears.

  He tried again. “She’s . . . she’s pregnant.”

  Valya froze for a moment—then laughed, a chilling, hollow sound. “That’s perfect . . . just perfect. Better than I could’ve hoped for.”

  She lifted her pistol high and brought its steel butt crashing down, cracking Seichan across the temple. The world turned bright white—then faded to darkness.

  Final words chased her into oblivion.

  “If you survive long enough, I may keep the child for myself.”

  5:18 A.M.

  Numb with shock, Ken shambled down the tunnel toward the exit. Hot blood trickled from his wounded ear. He was followed by the gunman who had fled with Masahiro during the brief firefight. The man returned after sending his charge to safety.

  Ahead of them, Valya led the way. Two workers behind her dragged Seichan’s unconscious body. They all moved quickly.

  Twenty yards away, the glass tunnel ended at the thick blast doors.

  Masahiro stood there, arms crossed. “Twenty seconds,” he hollered over to them. “And this door closes.”

  Valya moved no faster, defying the man even in this regard.

  Ken suspected Masahiro would’ve already sealed them inside, but he must have spotted Valya’s prize in tow. The man had been humiliated by Seichan back on Maui, and from the vengeful glint to his eyes, he wanted her in hand before they fled this island.

  In his head, Ken counted down the final seconds.

  They neared the threshold as his internal timer reached zero.

  A series of chained detonations blasted behind him. He swung around, noting flashes of fire throughout the station. Closer at hand, smoke and flames burst into the glass tunnel from a side passageway to the right. A bent steel door crashed into view.

  “Get through here!” Masahiro ordered.

  Ken hurried, following the others, while still staring back into the tunnel.

  The true purpose of the timed explosions came into view.

  The smoke darkened as a frenzied swarm burst into the passage, coming from the test chamber he had spotted earlier when they had arrived. He remembered the room had been crawling with soldier drones. Angered by the noise and the flames, the wasps hummed through the smoke, seeking a target.

  “Now or never,” Masahiro warned.

  From the other blasts throughout the station, all of the glass-domed test chambers must have had their doors blown off.

  After years of captivity, the Odokuro were free at last.

  But the wasps were not the only threat.

  The station rumbled and shook. Water flushed into the tunnel from the direction of the test chamber.

  Ken recognized the truth.

  It’s all coming down.

  27

  May 8, 5:28 A.M. SST

  Ikikauō Atoll

  Deafened by the nearby blast, Gray crouched in the hallway outside the foamy ruins of the torture chamber. Smoke choked the room. The hatch that opened into the harvesters’ neighboring pen had blown off its hinges and sailed across the chamber, crashing through the observation window on the far side.

  A few stray harvesters who hadn’t joined the others for the feast wandered out through the smoke, but once they crawled into the foam, their pace slowed, then stopped, poisoned by the insecticide.

  It was by sheer luck that Kowalski and Palu’s cousins had revived enough to crawl or stumble out of the chamber into the hall before the blast happened. Th
e three men were on their feet but still needed the wall to support themselves.

  Blood seeped from their limbs, but the flow was less as their bite wounds clotted.

  On Gray’s other side, Aiko leaned against the wall next to him. She hugged her rifle to her chest. Around the corner, two men lay dead in the next tunnel.

  It was the only way out of this section.

  Still, Aiko had proven herself to be a crack shot. She was the only reason they were all still alive.

  But for how much longer?

  Aiko held up one finger, indicating she was down to her weapon’s last round.

  He prayed it was enough. After the blast, the gunfire from the far side of the tunnel had stopped. He didn’t know if the others fled or if they were waiting to ambush them, hoping the explosion would send their targets scurrying into view.

  When the blast had first occurred, he had considered that option, believing they were doomed if they stayed. And that was certainly still a possibility. Water rained down in the harvester’s pen, pattering against the steel floor. The explosion must have cracked the pen’s glass roof.

  It would not be long before the pressure at this depth imploded the dome and flooded this section.

  Aiko glanced to him, her expression easy to read.

  What do we do?

  A pounding of many feet drew both their attentions back to the tunnel. The enemy was attempting a final full-on assault. Aiko dropped to a knee and peeked around the corner, leading with her weapon.

  One bullet against how many?

  To find the answer, Gray stayed high and leaned over her to gauge the threat. Two figures raced toward them, single-file, about five yards apart. The one in the lead was attempting to free a sidearm from a hip holster.

  It was odd that he didn’t already have his weapon in hand.

  Perhaps recognizing this, Aiko restrained from shooting, reserving her one shot.

  The lead runner finally yanked his pistol free, twisted sideways, and pointed the weapon behind him. Before he could fire, something struck his back leg. He crashed against the wall, turning enough to reveal a wide steel blade impaled in his thigh.