The effect was mesmerizing, almost hypnotic.
Schofield shot a glance back over at Gant, at his P-90 lying on the floor in front of her. Then, in what he thought was a quick draw, he whipped his two pistols from his thigh holsters.
The guns barely got out of their sheaths. Leary had anticipated the move.
Quick as a rattlesnake, he lunged forward and clamped his fists around Schofield's gun hands, seizing them by the wrists.
And then the bigger man started to squeeze.
Schofield had never felt such intense pain in his life. He dropped to his knees, teeth clenched — his wrists held in Leary's giant paws. Blood flow to his hands ceased. It felt as if his fingers — bulging with redness — were going to burst.
He released his pistols. They clattered to the floor. Leary kicked them away.
Then, with the guns gone, he seized Schofield by the throat, lifted him clear off the ground and hurled him across Kevin's living area.
Schofield went crashing across the stage, sliding through some toys, before he exploded through a still upright section of glass and went tumbling off the far edge of the stage.
Lucifer stalked around the elevated platform after him, his every step crunching on broken glass.
Schofield groaned, tried to stand.
He needn't have bothered.
Within seconds, Leary was there.
The massive killer lifted Schofield off the floor by his combat webbing and punched him hard in the face, sending his head snapping backwards.
Gant could only watch helplessly from her cross — her hands still tightly bound, Schofield's P-90 lying on the floor only inches away from her — as Lucifer pounded Schofield.
The fight was all one-way traffic.
Lucifer hit, Schofield recoiled, collapsed in a heap to the floor.
Lucifer strode forward, Schofield struggled to stand up.
And then Lucifer hurled Schofield through the doorway that divided Level 4, sending him sliding into the decompression area.
Lucifer followed him in.
Another kick and Schofield rolled — bleeding and gasping — up against the rim of the horizontal doorway in the floor, filled as it was with lapping water.
And then from out of nowhere, a giant reptilian head came bursting up out of the water and lunged at Schofield's head.
Schofield rolled quickly, avoiding the fast-moving jaws as they snapped down an inch away from his face.
Jesus!
It was a Komodo dragon. The largest lizard in the world, a known man-eater. The President had said they kept some of them here — along with the Kodiak bears, in cages down on Level 5 — for use on the Sinovirus project.
The electric locks on their cages, it seemed, hadn't survived the power shutdown either.
At the sight of the Komodo dragon in the pool, a thin smile cracked Lucifer's hideous face.
He lifted Schofield off the ground and held him out over the reptile-infested pool.
As he hung above it, legs kicking, hands grappling at Lucifer's enormous fists, Schofield saw the dark alligator like bodies of at least two dragons in the water beneath him.
Then without so much as a pause, Lucifer dropped Schofield into the pool.
Schofield splashed down into the water in an explosion of foam, a moment before Lucifer pressed a button in the floor beside the doorway, causing the hole's sliding garage style door to close quickly over the ripples that marked the spot where Schofield had plunged into it.
Within seconds, the leading edge of the door met the opposite rim.
Ka-chunk.
Sealed.
Shut.
Lucifer grunted a laugh as he heard Schofield's fists banging on the underside of the sliding door, heard the sloshing of water underneath the closed door — the sound of the dragons mauling the foolish Marine.
Lucifer smiled.
Then he headed back toward the other side of Level 4, where the pleasure of carving up the pretty female soldier awaited him.
Libby Gant gasped in horror as lucifer leary returned alone to the observation area of Level 4.
No.
Lucifer couldn't have…
No…
The giant serial killer strode confidently across the wide hall-like room, his head lowered, his eyes locked on Gant's.
He dropped to his knees in front of her, pushed his face close to hers. His breath was foul — it reeked of eaten human flesh.
He stroked her hair.
'Such a shame, such a shame,' he trilled, 'that your knight in shining armor was not the brave warrior he thought himself to be. Which only leaves us, now, to get… better acquainted.'
'Not likely,' said a voice from behind Lucifer.
The giant spun.
And there, in the doorway that led to the decompression area, his whole body dripping with water, stood Shane Schofield.
'You'll have to get rid of me,' he said grimly, 'before you lay a finger on her.'
Lucifer roared, snatched up Schofield's P-90 and let rip with an extended burst.
Schofield just stepped behind the doorway, out of sight, as the dividing wall all around the door was shredded by the hailstorm of gunfire.
Within seconds, however, the gun ran dry and Lucifer discarded it and stormed across the observation area, into the decompression area.
The horizontal door in its floor now lay open, wavelets still lapping against its rims. The large outlines of the Komodo dragons were still visible beneath the pool's rippling surface.
But, somehow, they hadn't killed Schofield.
And then Lucifer saw him, standing over by the decompression chamber, to the right of the pool.
He charged at Schofield, lashed out with a ferocious right.
Schofield ducked, walked under the punch. He was calmer now, collected. Not so caught-by surprise. He had Lucifer's measure.
Lucifer spun, swung again. Another miss. Schofield punished the error with a crisp hit to Lucifer's face.
Crack.
Instantly broken nose.
Lucifer seemed more stunned than injured. He touched the blood that ran down from his nose as if it were an alien substance, as if no one had ever hurt him before.
And then Schofield hit him again, a great powerful blow, and for the first time, the big man staggered slightly.
Again, harder this time, and Lucifer took an unsteady step backwards. Again, another step backwards.
Again — the most violent punch Schofield had ever thrown — and Lucifer's back foot touched the rim of the pool. He turned slightly — just as Schofield nailed him in the nose, causing the big man to lose his footing completely and fall backwards… into the Komodo-infested pool.
There was a great splash as Lucifer entered the water, and as the foam subsided, the Komodos rushed him, swarming all over his body, turning it into a writhing mass of black reptilian skin, claws and tails, and in the middle of it all, Lucifer's kicking feet and agonized screams.
