“No,” she whispered. “Don’t move.”
“But…”
“They haven’t attacked. I don’t know why. Maybe they don’t like how closed in the courtyard is. Just keep moving, slowly.”
She demonstrated, moving with exaggerated slowness, like a living-statue street performer. The birds continued posturing, but none of them took flight.
By the time they reached stairs descending to the next terrace, Gallo was certain that the birds were not going to attack, though she could not fathom what was keeping them at bay. She sped up to a normal walking pace—or as close to it as her wounded leg would allow—though she carefully avoided any sudden moves.
Each successive terrace took them further from the birds and closer to their destination: a bridge that spanned the canal and ended at a passage leading into the central temple mound. The canal was murky, thick with plants and trees, but not completely self-contained. A single channel led away, dividing the terraces before disappearing into the mouth of a large opening in the city’s foundation, a channel connecting the canal to shallow marshlands outside the city on the opposite side of their original approach.
Now that they were in the homestretch, Gallo gave up on stealth, hobbling across the bridge as fast as she could manage. The passage beyond was dark, but she could make out the base of a staircase spiraling up a central passage, and once inside, she could see daylight filtering down from above.
“Augustina!”
The shout sent a fresh wave of panic through her, partly because it might be enough to upset the balance and bring the birds down on them, and partly because of who the voice belonged to. She glanced back and saw that there could be no retreat. Kenner was approaching the bridge, and he was not alone. Rohn was with him, along with two other Cerberus men. They had not come through the attack unscathed. All four men were bloody from head to toe, clothing sliced to unrecognizable tatters, their bodies bristling with quills. Kenner was faltering, but Rohn and the others stalked forward like relentless automatons.
Kenner stretched out a hand. “Augustina. Wait.”
She turned to Dourado. “Go!”
They plunged into the dark stairwell, Dourado running and Gallo shuffling along as best she could. Behind them, Rohn charged, reaching the bridge and sprinting across it. Gallo bounded blindly up the stairs, two at a time. The light beckoned to her, but before she could reach the top, a hand clamped down on her biceps and pulled her off her feet. She didn’t fall. Instead, Rohn dragged her along until, at the topmost step he caught Dourado, too.
He took a few more steps then hurled both women forward. Gallo cried out as the impact with the moss-covered stone drove some of the quills deeper into her leg, but fear of what Rohn would do next compelled her to keep moving. She stumbled and fell to her knees, but kept crawling.
As she beheld the interior of the temple, dimly illuminated by daylight seeping in from beyond the colonnade, the fight nearly went out of her. There was nothing particularly glorious about the sacred building. It was as overgrown and dilapidated as the rest of the city, but Gallo saw past the decay and neglect, imagining the place as it might have been three thousand years earlier.
Directly ahead, occupying the center of the sanctuary, stood a colossal statue of a warrior. Like everything else, the old stone was weathered and overgrown, but the image was unmistakably that of a muscular man wearing battle armor and a helmet. A round shield covered his left arm. In his right, poised for a throw, was a long spear.
It was Ares, the god of war.
A Greek temple to Ares in the Amazon. At least I lived long enough to see this, she thought.
“Stop,” Kenner shouted. “Vigor, what are you doing?”
Gallo looked back and saw Rohn stalking toward her, a long double-edged knife, like a dagger, clenched in one hand.
“Leave her alone,” Kenner said. He sounded weak and ineffectual, begging more than demanding. “You’re not supposed to kill her.”
Rohn wasn’t listening. He advanced, moving faster than Gallo could crawl. There was nowhere to go. She heard his footsteps, felt his hand seize hold of her once more, saw the blade rise…
“Let her go!”
The voice was strained, but so filled with authority and passion that, even if Gallo had not recognized it, she would have known that it was not Kenner.
A lone figure stepped out from behind the statue of Ares. The man was as bloody and bedraggled as the Cerberus men, but Gallo recognized him immediately.
“You made a classic mistake,” George Pierce said, aiming his machine pistol at Rohn. “You brought a knife to a gunfight.”
40
Rohn moved faster than Pierce would have thought possible, but he did not attack. Instead, he ran. The retreat was so unexpected that Pierce didn’t have time to pull the trigger.
He had been prepared to shoot. The MP5K was equipped with an Aimpoint holographic reflex scope. Lazarus had assured him that the rounds would go right where the red dot pointed, so there was little risk of accidentally hitting Gallo or Dourado, but keeping that red dot on a fast moving target wasn’t easy.
Rohn vanished, disappearing into the stairwell.
Kenner seemed as stunned by the big man’s flight as Pierce was, but the other two Cerberus men made a desperate rush at Pierce.
This time, there was no hesitation. Pierce jerked the gun toward the nearest man and pulled the trigger. There was hardly any recoil, and the suppressor muffled the report so effectively that, for a fleeting instant, Pierce thought the gun had malfunctioned. It had not. The first Cerberus man went down, stumbling and skidding across the floor until both his momentum and his life ran out.
Pierce brought the gun around to the second man, who after witnessing his comrade’s fate, was already trying to veer off. Pierce squeezed the trigger, but the bullets sizzled past their intended target, smashing into the stone walls of the temple. The man twisted around and dove to the ground, right behind Dourado.
Pierce yanked his finger out of the trigger guard and raised the muzzle, but he leveled it again as the Cerberus man dragged Dourado to her feet, holding her between himself and Pierce as a human shield.
“Let her go,” Pierce said. He trained the red dot on the man’s head, or rather the fraction of it that was not hidden behind Dourado’s cobalt hair. Lazarus probably would have taken the shot, but Pierce didn’t want to risk Dourado’s life. The man hunched lower, removing even that slim opportunity, and he began backing toward the stairs. Pierce started forward, but the man slid an arm around her neck, none-too-subtly signaling what would happen if he came any closer. Pierce kept the red dot aimed at a spot just over Dourado’s shoulder, determined to pull the trigger if the man revealed even an inch of himself. At the edge of the scope, he could see Dourado staring back at him, her eyes bulging from the pressure at her throat.
Then, all of sudden, she wasn’t there anymore.
The Cerberus man, now fully exposed, gaped in disbelief as his hostage squirmed away. Pierce fired, wiping the shocked look from the man’s face, along with most of his other distinguishing features. The man toppled backward, disappearing into the stairwell, but Pierce just stood where he was, the gun still pointed at the empty spot where the Cerberus man had been, the red dot aimed at nothing but the smoke drifting up from the end of the suppressor.
“George?”
He engaged the gun’s safety and lowered it before turning to meet Gallo’s wide gaze.
“You…” Her eyes dropped to the dead man on the floor. “You killed them?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
She limped toward him and then threw both arms around him, hugging him tight. “Thank you.”
Relief washed away any emotional turmoil. Gallo was safe. Dourado, too. He returned the embrace, savoring the reunion as long as he dared. “Augustina, where’s Fi?”
“Fi?” Gallo drew back, her expression instantly changing to a look of horror. She pointed at Kenner, who still stood dumbfounded, just a fe
w steps away from the stairwell. “He said they killed her.”
Pierce’s joy turned to sand. He rounded on Kenner, bringing his gun up, fully intending to put a bullet between the man’s eyes. Kenner, sensing what was about to happen, let out a wail of protest and dropped to his knees, hands raised in a show of surrender.
“Don’t kill me,” he shrieked. “Please. I didn’t do anything.”
The pathetic display was just enough to dull the edge of Pierce’s resolve, but it did not prevent him from moving closer and aiming the weapon at the back of Kenner’s head. “Where is she? Where’s Fiona?”
“I don’t know. Tyndareus has her.”
“Where?” Pierce jammed the muzzle hard against Kenner’s neck. There was a hiss as the hot suppressor scorched exposed skin, leaving a ring-shaped brand, and Kenner let out a yelp.
“I don’t…” He broke off, as if realizing that professing ignorance was a poor position from which to negotiate for his life. “Don’t kill me. I’ll help you.”
“Is she still alive?”
Kenner swallowed. “Honestly, I don’t know. Tyndareus is a monster, but he might have kept her alive for leverage against Augustina.”
Pierce swept the muzzle of the weapon across the back of Kenner’s head. Kenner pitched forward, squealing in pain. “You don’t get to say her name,” Pierce growled.
“No! Please. I’m sorry.” Kenner was weeping now. “Don’t kill me.”
Pierce took a breath and counted to ten, then kept counting until the urge to pull the trigger finally abated. “Get up.” He turned his head until he could see Gallo and Dourado in his peripheral vision. “We’re getting out of here.”
He felt Gallo’s hand on his arm. “George. Do you know what this place is?”
Kenner raised his head, adding to Gallo’s words with the desperation of a man trying to be useful. “Herakles was here. He took the map from Queen Hippolyte. He learned the location of the entrance to the Underworld from her.”
“Map?” Pierce asked.
“George, the Amazons were the Sea Peoples,” Gallo said. “They lived right here, in this city. And Queen Hippolyte’s belt had a map of the entire world. That was the key to their power.”
Pierce frowned. “Where’s the map, now? Do you have it?”
Kenner hesitated a moment, but then nodded. “In my satchel.”
Gallo hobbled forward and knelt beside Kenner. She rooted in his bag and then held up the object Kenner had taken from the Labyrinth. Pierce glanced at it, noting the images inscribed upon it.
“We used it to find this place,” Gallo said. “Fiona figured it out.”
“We?” Pierce regretted the implicit accusation as soon as he said it. “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”
“Tyndareus wants to find the source,” Kenner insisted. “He’s desperate to find it. If the girl is still alive, he’ll trade that information for her. I know he will.”
“We’ll see about that.” Pierce took a step away from Kenner and turned to Gallo. Only now did he see the line of quills that stitched the back of her leg. “Are you all right? Can you walk?”
“I made it this far.” She managed a smile, but then her expression darkened. “What about the birds? How are we going to get past them?”
Pierce hauled Kenner to his feet and propelled him toward the stairwell. “Don’t worry. I brought friends.”
41
Carter blinked away tears as she plucked the quills from Lazarus’s body with the multi-tool. There were too many of the barbed spines to count, but while they were the least of his wounds, they were also the easiest for her to deal with.
The attack had been ruthless, razor sharp beaks lancing through what was left of his Kevlar armor and into his body, yet he had never faltered. When they had reached the relative safety of one of the ruined buildings, just before collapsing, he had whispered, “I’ll be okay.”
She knew he was right, but seeing him like this, flesh hanging in ragged strips from his bones, felt like a knife through her soul.
After removing the quills, she did what she could to close the larger lacerations, pressing the muscle and skin back into place. Then she used the sharp spines as impromptu sutures to hold everything together. Even with most of the wounds closed, he looked awful. A patchwork man, held together with toothpicks.
As she began snipping the ends of the shafts off with the wire-cutter built into the multi-tool, his eyes opened. He looked at her for a moment, his gaze steady, betraying none of the excruciating pain he was surely feeling. “Pierce?”
She started to reply, but she had to cough to clear away the emotion that had seized her throat. “He went ahead. There’s a temple at the center of the city. He said that’s where they would go.”
“They?”
“Cerberus. Just after…” She faltered. “We heard shooting. The birds went after them, but a few of them made it to the island.”
“He’ll need my help.” Lazarus attempted to rise, but before Carter could even attempt to stop him he sagged back. “Damn. That hurts.”
Carter couldn’t decide whether to laugh or sob. The sound that came out was something in-between. She could tell that he was already beginning to heal. The bleeding had stopped, and some of more superficial cuts had scabbed over. Hopefully, putting everything where it belonged and stitching him together would accelerate the process, but what he really needed was rest. Even a few hours might make all the difference.
Yeah, she thought. Good luck with that.
“Felice. I’ll be okay.”
“You keep saying that, but… You’re not invincible, Erik.”
“Yes, I am.” He grimaced, and then with the determination of a glacier scraping across a continent, he sat up.
A voice came from behind them. “You should listen to your doctor.”
Carter turned to see Pierce, accompanied by two women and a man—the latter clearly a prisoner—entering through the doorway at the back of the building.
Lazarus chuckled softly. “Not bad, Pierce. Jack would be proud.”
“You can tell him all about it when you’re ready.” Pierce moved closer and knelt beside Carter. “How’s he doing?”
“See for yourself.”
“I’ll be okay,” Lazarus said. “You know how this works.”
Pierce nodded. “I do.” He turned to the others. “Felice and Erik, meet Augustina Gallo and Cintia Dourado.” Almost as an afterthought, he pointed to the sullen man standing away from the others. “That’s Kenner. He’s a dick. But he’s going to help us get Fiona back.”
“She’s not here?” Lazarus asked, his forehead creasing in concern.
Pierce shook his head. “She’s at Cerberus HQ.”
Carter frowned. “We barely made it this far. We’ll be cut to ribbons if we try to leave.”
“There’s a canal that goes under the city. We can use it to get outside, and then we swim for the trees. From there, we make our way to the wall and climb out of here.”
“That might work,” Lazarus said, continuing his relentless struggle to get his feet back under him.
Carter hated the plan, but not as much as the idea of staying where they were. If she had learned one thing during her time with the man who now called himself Lazarus, it was to trust him, no matter how dire the situation looked. As she was about to voice her reluctant support, she heard a distant but familiar roar of an engine.
Despite his injuries, Lazarus was the first to reach the outside entrance to the building. As he stared up at the sky, the sound of rotor blades beating the air began echoing from the walls of the sinkhole. “There goes our ride.”
“Rohn,” Pierce said, disgusted. “I should have gone after the bastard. If we can get to the top, we should be able to get a signal out. Call for a pick up.”
“You don’t think he cut the ropes? Or sabotaged them?” Carter shook her head. “We’re in no shape for a climb like that,” she said, then added, “but there might be another way. We j
ust need to find out where the water goes.”
“She’s right,” Gallo said. “The Amazons sure as hell didn’t climb up and down every time they went out. There has to be another way in, and I’d be willing to bet that canal goes right to it. It probably goes all the way to the river.”
“So instead of a climb, we have to swim?”
“Amazons?” Carter glanced from Gallo to Pierce. “You mean…?”
“Like Xena,” Dourado supplied. “Warrior Princess.”
Carter laughed. “Actually, Gabrielle was the—”
Pierce looked up suddenly. “Augustina, you said the Amazons and Sea Peoples were one and the same, right? Well they would have needed something else besides the map to conquer the known world three thousand years ago.” He looked around as if expecting someone to fill in the blanks.
“Boats?” Carter guessed.
“Ships, actually. We were wondering how the cypress trees got here. Now we know. The Amazons planted them. Cypress wood is extremely hydrophobic. The ancients knew that. It’s long been believed that they used cypress wood for their ships. The Bible says that Noah built the ark out of cypress wood. Don’t you see? This place wasn’t just their city. It was where they grew the timber for their ships.”
“And that helps us…how? Are you suggesting we should build an ark?”
“Of course not. That’s ridiculous.” Pierce grinned. “I was thinking more along the lines of a raft.”
42
Pierce had expected to spend hours hacking away at trees in the canal with Lazarus’s Pathfinder knife. The big man was still in no shape for physical labor, and Pierce was definitely not going to put a blade in Kenner’s hands. Despite the man’s assurances that he would cause no trouble, Pierce had tied him up. Since he was too hardwired for chivalry to ask any of the women to take a turn, Pierce had resigned himself to the prospect of doing all the work himself.
Herculean (Cerberus Group Book 1) Page 25