“I feel so underdressed,” Stig said.
“You’ll feel it more in a moment.” Leif allowed slack into the chain attached to the dragon’s body harness. It stalked forward, hissing at its rival. “Hé tó forð gestóp dyrnan cræfte dracan héafde néah.”
“Appropriate, if I remember the meaning correctly.” No ifs, because Galan’s tale about the dragon’s stolen treasure had branded itself on Stig’s soul the moment Beowulf’s crew blamed the wrong man. “The master of thiefcraft, if you’ll indulge my poetic license, left a footprint too near the dragon’s head.”
“Too bad the only thing you’ll leave behind is a smear.” Leif smiled. “And your friends.”
“Excellent timing, but you need to project your voice if you want to nail the villain role. You seem tentative, like an understudy.” Stig had to keep Leif and the dragons focused on him, only him. “But then you always have been Unferth’s number two, haven’t you?”
His opponent’s cheeks flushed. “You know what my pets are?”
“Enlighten me. Tails are a tad long for a corgi.” The more Leif talked, the better the others’ chances.”
“Varanus komodoensis, commonly known as Komodo dragons.”
Stig didn’t have to see the other Viking’s chest under the armor to know it puffed with satisfaction. The wanker had always liked his Latin, all the way back to his years as a nasty little embezzling bishop. “Now would you like to tell me exactly how you plan to kill me?”
“You were never as hasty to judge as Ivar and Jurik, so I’ll let my pets have you. It’s kinder than the other choice.”
“Kinder.” The rifle was slippery in Stig’s hands and he could feel his thigh muscles knot from the length of time he’d been poised to lunge.
“It’s not merely their sharklike teeth—”
“Noticed those right off, yes.”
“—or the bacteria in their saliva.” As if on cue, the big dragon swiveled its head toward Stig. Thick mucus hung in multiple strands from its mouth, several reaching the floor.
“Happy I’m not your cleaning crew, old chum.”
Leif laughed, the sound a mockery of fright-house soundtracks, yet effective at scaring Stig. “My researchers identified anticoagulant properties in the venom. The smallest nick doesn’t clot for weeks.”
Draycott had the cord wrapped around the doorknob and hinges.
He’d bought enough time. “What say you we cut to the point?” He lifted his weapon straight at Leif’s chest, armored or not. “Point blank.”
Both dragons swiped their tails on the floor, the boom, boom reverberating on the metal decking. The chained one pulled so hard that it dragged Leif several inches farther into the room.
Leif’s smirk didn’t shift. “You should want me to continue talking. Gives you longer to live.”
“Sometimes living feels more interminable than other times.”
“Now!” Draycott called the play, and everything happened at once: the det cord explosion, Stig’s finger depressing the trigger fifteen feet from Leif’s armored body and the leashed dragon breaking free to lunge at the other. Raised on their hind legs, they grappled with thick-muscled forelegs and claws longer than his hand, fighting like Tokyo movie monsters while their tails thrashed.
Gunfire made no difference to the armored Viking, not because of immortality but because the rounds didn’t penetrate the breastplate. Instead Stig felt a ricochet sting across his cheek and ear.
“Frame’s steel,” Draycott shouted. “I’m out of cord.”
Stig’s magazine was empty.
All things considered, this would be an excellent moment for Wulf to show up.
Weight dropped onto his back, staggering him. A second later he registered the pain of multiple needle-sharp punctures in his shoulders where the vest’s protective plates left a gap. Instinct urged him to drop and roll to dislodge whatever it was, but hitting the ground would make him easier prey for the giant lizards, so he ran straight for the wall and at the last moment spun almost a one-eighty to slam the thing on his back into the metal.
It squealed and loosened its grip, but not enough.
Leif laughed, cool and unmoving on his end of the room. “See why I recommend armor?”
Stig folded at the waist and then whipped himself at the wall again. Less of a squeal, more a gurgle, and the weight shifted, barely hanging on to his clothing. Another slam and it was off, thudding next to his boot.
He kicked the miniature dragon, still the size of a giant poodle, toward the middle of the room. It wasn’t dead, only stunned, because it rolled and then began to crawl toward the cage that had held Christina.
While he’d taken his eyes off the big lizards, their dragon dance had moved toward the center. Now the only thing blocking that exit was Leif himself.
If he could get Leif to move, the others could escape.
Then the locked door burst open, startling all of them into turning to face it.
Damn, as if a flock of dragons and one twisted Viking weren’t enough, Halvdan stood silhouetted by light from the hallway.
“Leif,” the other of Unferth’s followers panted as if he’d dashed across the rig. Immortality had bestowed eternally youthful knees to carry around his extra five stone, but hadn’t gifted Halvdan with a better fitness level. “Message. Unferth.”
“So what?” Leif asked.
Because he and Halvdan had both joined Beowulf’s crew rather than be punished for theft, Stig had once felt kinship with the cook accused of stealing the king’s rare spices. All the crew had appreciated Halvdan’s hand with roasted meat, but the other thief was too easily led by promises of riches and a penchant for the easy path.
“He called.” Halvdan ignored the dragons, sounding more panicked by the return of their former leader than the sight of the battling creatures. “He’s coming.”
“Guess your promotion’s rescinded.” Stig laughed while he waved three fingers low along his thigh, signaling the others toward Halvdan and the open door. “I’ll wait to negotiate with Unferth. He appreciates art more than you do, Leif.”
“Nothing has changed!” Leif’s face turned red above his breastplate. “I’m in charge!”
“He won’t like this.” Halvdan waved his hand at Christina, Luc and Draycott, who froze flat along the wall midway between the doors. “I told you not to bring her here. This was supposed to be secret.”
“That’s the point.” Leif’s mailed fist struck Halvdan in the face, and the shorter Viking hunched his shoulders. He’d always been immovable.
“Were you breaking Daddy Unferth’s rules, Leif?” Stig raised his voice to get Leif’s attention away from the door, back to him and the center of the room. “Inviting girls to spend the night while he was away?”
The two dragons broke apart, the leashed one retreating to the corner with long bloody gouges on its shoulders. The large one whipped its head back and forth between Leif and Stig.
Stig tossed his empty pistol at the cage where the small dragon hunkered against the bars. Drawn by the clatter, the Komodo’s head turned, tongue flicking. Immediately its stubby muscled legs issued a burst of speed that propelled it like a torpedo toward the cage. Its triangular head fit through the door where Christina had exited, but its shoulders were too wide. The power of its thrust shoved the cage and the small animal inside it backward like a ball, and this set of squeals was higher pitched than the roar of the two adults.
Draycott exploited the moment when Leif and Halvdan both glanced at the struggle in the cage to raise his own semi-automatic and fire while he led the others straight at the door.
Blood blossomed on Halvdan’s unarmored chest. “You!” He staggered backward with red running between his fingers. “Why are you here?”
“Quality control,” Draycott said.
The adult lizard backed out of the cage. A tail as long as Stig’s arm and two twitching legs dangled from its jaws. Drool strung from its mouth to the floor. The Komodo lifted its snout toward the ceiling, then the legs disappeared down its gullet to become a dog-sized bulge midway along its throat.
Halvdan thudded to the floor, bloody froth dripping from his mouth.
“Useless.” Leif kicked his partner.
Then pain exploded in Stig’s left thigh, worse than any in his life, so sharp and intense it made each heartbeat an eternity that he begged to end. The Komodo that had eaten its own young had clamped on his leg.
Whether the dragon flipped him to the floor or he collapsed on his own didn’t matter. He was down. His senses closed into a dark blur, but he couldn’t find the relief of unconsciousness because the agony rushed from his leg to tighten his body into a screaming symphony.
The dragon walked backward, dragging him.
Fight. He had to fight. His free foot hit the beast’s snout. Feeble. Useless.
“Stig!” His name penetrated. Draycott in the door. Pistol. He lifted his arms.
The pistol flew toward him. Slow. Like the air was syrup. Very slow. It landed on his chest. Bounced off.
“Get it, man! Use your hands!”
He heard the instructions. But where was the gun? He raised his arms above his head, trying to find something to grasp, and his fingers brushed hardness. Without his command, they curled around it, lifted, great weight, but yes. It was the gun.
Point it. That was what he had to do. Point.
Clanging and shouting. Very far.
He squeezed.
The dragon didn’t stop. Nothing.
“Again, shoot again,” someone called. “Get closer!”
Bugger. Easier to close his eyes and quit.
A rally cry he hadn’t heard since the Battle of Agincourt reverberated through the room.
Knowing that Wulf was here gave him that jolt to go once more unto the breach and crunch his body forward, agony screaming in every muscle and strobing lights in his brain, but he managed to reach for his feet with the hand that held the pistol.
His vision was fluctuating, but he thought the muzzle tip was close to the dragon’s nose, or close enough, and he squeezed.
Boom. The head exploded. The tubular scaled body collapsed, crushing his ankles to the ground. But its mouth opened.
Wulf filled the small circle of Stig’s remaining vision. Old friend. The blue eyes in the camouflaged face were upside down. Then Stig’s body moved, dragged the other direction. The lights on the ceiling grew and grew to the size of suns. He should be hot. So why was he cold?
He looked at the length of his body. Blood flowed from his leg. It always stopped within moments and healed, but this trail expanded in his wake. More blood. He couldn’t look away from the slick spreading across the floor. The structure must tilt, because his blood ran only one direction.
Darkness devoured the sun. A thief in the night. Always in the dark. The last thing he saw was Wulf, grim lips and cold eyes.
The last thing he heard were the words not yet.
* * *
This was a bigger disaster than Draycott had imagined, because in all their permutations of large mercenary crews or failed explosives, none of them had conceived of the presence of giant venomous reptiles. He blamed himself. He’d known about a North Sea operation under one of Black and Swan’s corporate subsidiaries but hadn’t nosed out details during his employment. On the positive side, they’d reached the stairs over the raft, in varying states of more or less dead, and he was one of the less dead. The naked man propped against the wall appeared, like Stig, to be in the category of more dead. However, Draycott expected he was another of these unusual men and the condition would not be permanent.
“You’re in the best shape.” Wulf reached for Draycott’s weapon and indicated the raft below. “You’re point. I’ll take rear.”
Sixty-seven with a bad prostate, and he’d been anointed quarterback.
“Get in the raft. I’ll send the others. Go!”
The wind cut through him and he wished fervently for the coat and gloves he’d left inside the rig, but that was futile. The wet ropes chafed his hands and the ladder twisted, but adrenalin conferred a temporary fountain of youth permitting him to scramble as well as any forty-year-old.
Water sloshed in the bottom of the raft, but it was still right side up and floating. So far so good.
He landed lightly and put his center of gravity low before he pulled out an oar, ready to extend it if someone went in.
Christina came next. She had fight. She’d make it. If she didn’t, none of them would. He hadn’t been able to save Jane, but this he could do.
She tumbled from the end of the ladder into the raft but immediately scrambled to her knees and rested on the wood seat, panting. She’d put on a life jacket before her descent, the self-inflating one Stig had been wearing.
Luc was over the rail, his skinny arms and legs moving like a temple monkey in Jaipur as he descended.
Draycott glanced at his watch. Nine minutes until the charges went.
He lowered the outboard into the sea as soon as the Belgian landed in the raft.
“Move to the other side for balance,” he shouted to Luc and Christina as Wulf came over. The man tied to his back was the naked one wrapped in a blanket, not Stig. Compared to Stig, this man had barely looked alive enough to bother saving.
Wulf heaved the body into the bottom. “He’s Galan. Don’t worry about him.”
“Six minutes left.”
“Fuck.” The soldier already had his hands back on the ladder. “Lost track. Have to get Stig.”
Draycott looked up where the other immortal’s slumped form was visible through the open metalwork of the landing. More dead than alive, but not dead.
“Draycott—” Already a dozen rungs above the raft, Wulf shouted to be heard over the wind. “They’re your first priority. Leave us if you have to. We’ll survive.”
That he believed. In the front of the raft, Christina’s dark hair whipped like Medusa’s and her body curled around the handle of an oar, ready to push off. None of them had coats, and it was at least fifteen minutes of open sea to where the trawler stood off, waiting for their return.
“Got it,” he yelled back. As long as he could operate this boat, Christina, Luc and Galan were getting out of here alive.
* * *
The cold reached Stig, cold and wet after the heat. The air in his lungs was good and invigorating. Something had been foul and evil, but this wasn’t.
He opened his eyes to a dark that wasn’t the same as the dark behind his eyelids because he could see the tracery of a metal grid and feel wind and rain. He faced a door and a single emergency light buzzed overhead. Because he had an automatic weapon propped on his lap, it made sense to point it at the door. But it didn’t make sense when only one arm moved.
Two hands, both in his lap, but only the right one made a fist when he wanted. The left one wouldn’t lift or twitch. Without the grinding agony of regrowth or the crazy itch of the aftermath, he didn’t understand why he couldn’t move.
Then he remembered the dragons and Leif, his leg, Wulf’s face, and blood. Blood everywhere.
He could shift his shoulders and upper torso, so he tilted sideways until gravity finished the work for him, and his cheek pressed the open metal grating. Salt spray stung his eyes, but he could see the raft. Christina, Luc and Draycott were aboard. They were safe.
Wulf climbed the ladder toward him.
Quite unnecessary. The sea was his fate. The whale’s road had always been what the Norns had carved next to his name under the ash tree Yggdrasil. His end could not be changed
, only delayed.
“Leave me.” The wind took his words.
Wulf swung himself over the rail. His old crewmate crisscrossed a web of nylon straps around their bodies and hoisted Stig in the air. “Can you grip at all?”
He snorted, lifted his right hand and let it flop against Wulf’s arm.
As they went over the rail onto the ladder, he tried his best to balance on Wulf’s back. Even the former soldier panted with each rung they descended.
A clang from above jerked Stig’s gaze upward.
Leif stood on the landing, swinging a fire axe. He crashed it wildly at the railing where the rope ladder attached. Whatever Wulf had done to Leif must not have involved becoming dragon chow, because their opponent looked centuries better than Stig felt.
Another clang. One side of the ladder gave, spinning them above the sea.
Boom!
The blast wave swung them wildly out from the rig as the ninety-minute charges detonated, then sucked them back as the force expanded skyward. Leif’s metal-clad body flew through the air above them in the instant before they slammed into the water. Force drove his and Wulf’s conjoined mass, weighted by gear, deep into the total dark of underwater night. Pressure squeezed Stig’s ears until his head felt ready to pop. His arms flung wide, supported by the water as he and Wulf sank.
Wulf struggled to kick, as if he could reverse their trajectory and change their fate.
Stig couldn’t quit, not while he was tied to the other Viking. The Norns shouldn’t rob Wulf of his future when they took Stig. He flapped his working arm, trying to reach the surface while he kicked his functioning leg with the same rhythm as the man linked to him.
Pressure speared his lungs and prodded him to open his mouth. No, he couldn’t, not underwater. He had to struggle alongside Wulf. Up. Together.
They broke the surface. Air knifed into his lungs, his ears popped and he gulped another breath, a mix of air and seawater that gagged him, but it was life.
Wulf yelled for Draycott, and Stig added his voice, struggling to be heard over the sirens and secondary explosions coming from the platform.
The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) Page 28