Noah’s intuition urged him to draw his knife, and his insight was right on target. The knife barely cleared the sheath before a merman’s panting breath rustled the hairs on the back of his legs.
“Keep going!” he yelled to Reese. When she slowed to ask why he wasn’t coming with her, he shoved her ahead while a pair of clawed fingers gripped his calves. He fell forward into Reese’s backside, which cushioned his falling head.
He twisted around the instant the merman inched his two hundred pound frame up Noah’s legs so it could rip away its prey’s chest. He lay stone still until the repulsive bastard climbed within striking distance, and then he carved a trench in the merman’s scaly throat. Blood spewed from the fatal wound like a fountain and soaked them both. Noah glanced up and saw three of its companions galloping over the slippery rocks toward them.
Noah slithered out from beneath his dead attacker and buried his knife blade in the closest merman’s eye. The thrashing creature shrieked bloody murder, which stopped its two companions dead in their tracks. Noah retreated between the two lofty boulders where he last saw Reese. A soft hand gently grabbed his wrist and startled him. He raised his knife hand to stab his new attacker, but another daylight lightning web illuminated Reese’s concerned mien. He lowered his bloody weapon.
“Why’re you still hanging around here?” he demanded angrily. “I might’ve killed you if it wasn’t for the lightning.”
Reese tugged him forward. “See why for yourself,” she said quietly.
A cold shiver coursed through Reese’s fingertips and up his arm.
“I’m not going to like your surprise, am I?” Noah posed as he glanced quickly over his shoulder at the merman corpse. Thankfully, its companions had vamoosed.
“I certainly hope you don’t like it! If you do, you’re really sick and twisted,” she berated him.
Reese led him through dozens of boulders before suddenly halting. She waited for the next lightning flash to expose her chilling discovery. There was an ungodly interval between lightning flashes just when they needed some damned light! The suspense was killing Noah. What gruesome sight was he about to see?
The storm finally cooperated.
A yellowish white blaze streaked across the horizon and lit up the island. Noah recoiled at the ghastly scene in front of them. His stomach flip-flopped, spurting a geyser of red-hot bile into his throat. Noah utilized every ounce of willpower to force the hot and sour emulsion back down.
“Did you see them?” Reese asked breathlessly.
“Yeah, and I’m sorry I did. Obviously, we won’t have to look for the four Stout Hearts anymore.”
Blood from their broken bodies dyed the nearby rock piles and boulders, but the storm’s cloudburst washed a lot of the splattered guts into the crevices. Noah was thankful for that. But his heart was heavy nonetheless. Stumbling across their corpses dealt a serious blow to their hopes of escaping the island alive.
Reese sobbed softly. “Now what do we do? They’re dead, and we’re next!”
Noah brushed back a tear of his own, but the stench of the rotting corpses produced his tear. “C’mon, be a little more positive. We’re not dead yet, Reese. I think we ought to stick to our original plan and circle the island to the docked boat. We’ll get your antibiotics there.”
“I hate this place!” she bristled. “We’ll never make it to the cove!”
He couldn’t help but agree after all the dangers they witnessed so far. He doubled his sore hand into an angry fist and searched for something to punch, but the only punchable objects were rocks. He lightly kicked a rock instead.
Noah and Reese moved on, avoiding the gruesome remains the best they could, but the corpses fouled a wide swath of beach. This was one time he was glad for the darkness.
The roiling clouds chased the storm out to sea, exposing a wan half-moon that softened the shoreline shadows. But Noah and Reese still cringed when they came upon black puddles that could likely conceal lurking enemies.
“This island’s reality is way too real for me,” Reese muttered as she weakly hooked Noah’s arm.
Wanting to avoid ambushes at all costs, he clutched his knife and searched the darkness in front of them. He suddenly perked up, as if still digesting Reese’s glum comment.
“This place is way too real for me, too,” he remarked quietly. “We’ll just have to make the best of it.”
So far, all they had witnessed was the worst of it.
15
Nick dropped off his cargo in NNC detention room #2 and tramped down the hall through a pair of heavy steel doors. He entered the security code to gain entrance to his company’s operational hub.
Crow Smith stood in the center of the cavernous, plushly appointed central command and control facility conversing with his lovely wife, Jill, when Nick marched in.
“Hey, Custer, welcome back to the reservation,” Crow hailed him with a broad grin. Half-moon craters spread on either side of his typically grim mouth as he gave his closest friend a bear hug.
“It’s nice to be back,” Nick said warmly as he backed out of their embrace.
Jill shot him a sparkling smile and pecked his cheek before excusing herself to check on their two-year-old son upstairs. Uncle Neo was currently performing babysitting duty. “I don’t want to wear Neo out so he’s useless to your investigation,” she joked.
Jill Sandlin Smith was the daughter of the Good Samaritan, Joe Sandlin, who had rescued Nick from Hollis Danforth’s sacrificial altar and driven the boy to California all those years ago. She was in her early thirties, and her short, stylish light brown hair framed her apple face. She had a slender figure, perky breasts and shapely legs. While attending Northwestern University on a tennis scholarship, Jill tore her MCL. That injury ended her college tennis days.
When Jill closed the door behind her, Nick frowned. “I checked out the detention rooms and didn’t find the Oracle assassin Gabriella brought here for Neo to interrogate.”
Crow’s visage darkened. “That’s because the chicken shit bastard committed hara-kiri. After Gabriella left him in detention room #3, he opened a large pill bottle and sicced some nasty looking beetle onto himself. It burrowed into his body and turned the guy’s skin to sticky goo inside five minutes.” Crow hesitated while he mentally chased his queasiness away. “Neo and I stowed what was left of your assassin in a sealed jar, and the beetle in another. Geronimo is performing an autopsy on the guy in the examination room and a DNA probe on the beetle. So far Geronimo hasn’t had much luck identifying the dead beetle. It appears to be a chimera.”
“A what?”
Crow rolled his eyes as if everyone was familiar with a chimera. “It’s a living being biologically created from the DNA of different species. In other words, the bug that killed the assassin isn’t a natural inhabitant of Earth. It’s manmade, so to speak.”
“Genetically engineered,” Nick murmured before slapping a fist into his other palm. “That beetle sounds like the same kind of bug that killed Natalie’s shooter before Gabriella could nab him.” He paused pensively. “If you think your beetle’s the cat’s ass, wait until you see what’s in the cage in detention room #2. It’s Oracle’s president, Maggie Wentworth!”
Crow drifted to his control station, which rivaled NASA’s Mission Control Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, for its complexity, and flicked one of the dozens of purposely unmarked toggle switches. Crow insisted they remain unidentified so no intruder could glance at them and learn how to seize control of Old Mother Hubbard’s and Geronimo. The switch activated the camera in detention room #2. The Indian’s dark forehead wrinkled as his keen black eyes studied the occupant of the metal cage.
“Holy tribal displacement! That lizard mutant is really Margaret Wentworth?!” he exclaimed.
“You bet! Interesting, huh?”
“I’ll say.”
Nick fished the wrapped syringe from his pocket and handed it to his friend for analysis. “Wentworth injected this amber fluid into h
er thigh, and presto, she became the hostile creature in the cage. There’s a residual quantity of that chemical inside the syringe for Geronimo to analyze.”
Nick watched as the short, stocky computer genius mulled over the extraordinary development. Crow’s slight paunch protruded over his Omaha Indian belt buckle, and his long black hair was braided into two plaits. But the computer guru defied the typical nerd stereotype. The thirty-six-year old’s knotted biceps and street fighting prowess were anything but nerdy. His lone eccentricity was he despised his birth name—Running Bear. So when he turned twenty-one, he legally changed it to Crow Smith.
“This Wright investigation is getting weirder and weirder,” Crow mentioned. He placed the syringe and its contents inside a padded metal box, closed and locked the lid, and slid it into a vacuum transport compartment. In the blink of an eye, the box vanished to a loud whoosh and was deposited at one of Geronimo’s testing stations.
“You want weird, I’ve got really weird.” Nick filled him in on the so-called attacking Wicker bullet and its effect on Natalie.
Crow clucked his tongue. “Sounds like we’re up against a bunch of bio-terrorists.”
“Tell me about it,” Nick agreed. “Have you seen Gabriella?”
“Yeah. She’s upstairs in your apartment, taking a long, hot bath. She gave us all strict orders not to disturb her unless you were in mortal danger.”
Nick forced a slight grin. “I feel some mortal danger coming on,” he kidded.
“Whoa! You’ll have to put your mortal danger stunt on hold,” Crow said. “Our old boss is waiting impatiently as usual for the three of us to join him in the conference room. And the worst part? He brought some bureaucrat with him.”
“Rance Osborne is here?”
“In the flesh.”
Nick groaned. “What does the old man want with us now? I’ve got two cousins to locate, and he should know my family takes precedence over his FBI investigations. After all, he preached that ideology for years.”
“Don’t I know it, but I’ll let you remind him. Me and Neo are clamming up,” Crow maintained.
“How nice.” Nick watched the Wentworth creature in detention room #2, but it seemed content to lay still. He swung his gaze back to Crow. “So you don’t have any idea who Rance brought along?”
Crow shrugged. “I’m afraid not.”
Nick slung his arm around the shorter man’s shoulders. “Okay, let’s get this over with.”
Reluctantly, they exited the central command and control facility and slowly made their way to the conference room downstairs. Neither one was eager to meet their nameless visitor.
16
Reese suddenly gasped as she stared at the moonlit horizon. “Look!”
Noah gulped. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like a … a rainbow.”
“It is a rainbow,” she reassured him.
His forearm swept the beaded perspiration from his forehead. “At night? That’s just plain creepy.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but it’s as real as you and me. It’s called a white rainbow. They only occur at night in the South Pacific when it’s really humid like tonight, but they’re very rare.” Her hand found his and squeezed it. “Maybe that white rainbow’s a good omen.”
He searched her face for sincerity and found it. “I certainly hope so. After the night we’ve had, we could use some luck.”
They hiked south for another hour before Reese planted herself on a squat rock and refused to go on without rest. Noah concurred. The fact that Reese needed water, food, and antibiotics was a given. If she was going to survive the trek to the cove, she would need frequent rests, but he doubted she could physically endure the entire trip. At some point, he would have to complete the journey without her.
Noah checked to make sure the mermen hadn’t followed them, and the coast was clear. Literally. Next, he scouted the immediate area and found a shallow cave fifty feet away. He returned and pointed out the cave. She agreed it would be a great place to rest; plus it provided shelter from more tropical rain storms. Noah helped her to the hollow, where she kissed his stubbled cheek before curling into a fetal sleeping position on the soft, mossy mattress. He volunteered to stand guard outside, but his offer fell on deaf ears. Reese was already fast asleep.
Noah slid his knife from its sheath and yawned. It wouldn’t be long until morning, and he hoped they could last that long. His physical condition wasn’t much better than Reese’s—they both were dog-tired, hungry, and thirsty. Their single motivation for not quitting was Oracle’s docked boat. They knew it was well stocked with enough food to feed the television crew and contestants for a week—maybe two. All he and Reese had to do was get there.
The feast was awaiting their arrival.
Noah eventually drifted to sleep, despite his hunger pangs. When dawn’s first dull rays crept over the mountain, he blinked awake and felt foolish for falling asleep on the job. Some guard he turned out to be. Any one of the island’s carnivorous monsters or plants could have easily attacked and killed them, and the blame would squarely rest on his shoulders.
The crashing wave action subsided while he slept. The smaller waves gently lapped the sandy shore. Noah stood, shucked his guilt, and checked on Reese—she was still dead to the world, but her complexion was peaked and drawn. He examined the plant’s tentacle welts and saw they were inflamed and pussy. He stretched his muscles to ease his mounting tension. Reese definitely wouldn’t survive much longer without those antibiotics.
Noah crisscrossed the beach in the emergent daylight and reluctantly admitted the treacherous island was beautiful. Last night’s pale moon hadn’t done it justice. The jungle was a deep emerald green, the dangerous cliff displayed multicolored layers, and the surf was bubbling white and nutmeg. Best of all, there were no monster hunters in sight.
Noah inhaled the crisp, briny air and was amazed how much it revitalized him. The crisp air was a pleasant contrast to the stuffy jungle atmosphere. After absorbing a tranquil thirty minutes of the island’s splendor, Noah decided to backtrack to the boulder forest they traversed last night to search for more beauty. It was a longer walk, but he didn’t care this morning. All was right with the world.
When he reached the tall boulders, his lungs suddenly stopped dead and his heart skipped a few beats.
There, in the wet sand, were perfectly formed human footprints leading toward Reese’s cave. His mouth was so dry, he couldn’t swallow. The prints were big. Huge!
Once the shock wore off, Noah thought of Reese—asleep and vulnerable in that shallow cave. He drew his knife and ran toward the crevice, but his resolve faltered with each cramping stride.
How could he protect Reese from such an enormous opponent with such a paltry weapon?
Two words rocketed into his mind.
He couldn’t.
17
Highly polished mahogany paneling and lavish pastoral oil paintings set in gilded frames gave the NNC library an opulent, but businesslike ambiance. The crisp historic paper and ink fragrance from the valuable items displayed on the long antique mahogany table added a flavor of bygone days. The two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves held classic nonfiction tomes, an extraordinary amalgamation of science fiction volumes, and the latest high-tech research volumes. Heavy claret damask draperies and white sheers decorated the faux windows designed to alleviate any guest’s claustrophobia four levels beneath the forested Bobcat Run.
Rance wore a tan tropical suit, a pristine white shirt, and a brown tie with no cigar stains—yet. He limped to the far end of the conference table and slowly lowered himself into the russet leather chair. In the 1980s, he caught a bullet in his right knee during a Missoula, Montana, night raid, and the old pain still flared up every so often. But it wasn’t the knee making him wince as he struggled to get comfortable. The man who sat beside him was there to basically bully Nick, Neo, and Crow, his friends and former Orion Sector agents, into keeping their noses out of the Final Scream invest
igation. Rance wasn’t partial to the man or his impending notice.
Jill and Liz Doss entered the library and deposited two frosty pitchers of ice water, five glasses, and three bowls jam-packed with various snacks in the center of the table. Liz, Neo’s wife, was a tall, attractive African-American woman in her early thirties who sported white Bermuda shorts and a loose-fitting black top. Her cinnamon eyes cast a questioning glance Nick’s way: What’s going on? Nick merely shrugged. He was in the dark as much as she was.
Crow shuffled into the library ahead of the 6’6” Neo Doss, the third partner in the business. The large, strapping Black man abandoned his career as an All-Pro defensive lineman for the New York Giants and enlisted in the FBI’s Orion Sector several years ago. As a young man, he always dreamed of becoming an FBI agent, and he took advantage of the opportunity when Rance came knocking.
Neo assessed the stranger seated beside Rance with his shrewd obsidian eyes, and then ran his hand over his clean-shaven pate, a familiar signal to his partners that he immediately disliked their visitor. He parked his muscular frame on Rance’s left, while Crow sat beside Neo. Nick eased into the distant chair at the opposite end of the table from Rance and the others.
He sized up the Black Monolith, as he referred to Neo occasionally. The powerful man’s anvil jaw, meticulously trimmed Van Dyke beard, and sprawling shoulders combined to form an intimidating appearance. No one but his intimate friends knew the former Giant had a heart of gold beneath that daunting exterior. The big man’s noticeable flaw was his wicked temper bubbling below the surface whenever he confronted criminals or people he disliked.
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