“You okay?” she asked, ready to pull him down but sensing his pain was genuine.
“Just my back,” Atticus said.
“Roll over, let me take a whack at it.”
Atticus rolled onto his stomach. Just as the bed finished absorbing his pressure points, Andrea had mounted his backside. “Where does it hurt?”
“Pretty much everywhere,” Atticus said with a smile.
Andrea dug into his back, working the muscles up and down, locating knots and easing them out. Atticus felt his tension forced away, in part because of the physical attention, but also from the love he felt pouring into him with every squeeze. After several minutes, Atticus flexed and stretched his back.
Andrea’s noted his movement. “Did I get all the kinks worked out?”
Atticus rolled over beneath Andrea so that she sat just below his waist, which was exactly where he wanted her. He smiled craftily in the dark, and though he doubted she could see him, he knew she heard the intention in his voice. “All but one.”
She leaned down and kissed him, giving his chest the same treatment his back had just received. As she sat up, tugging her shirt up, Atticus caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He immediately tensed and stopped moving. Andrea followed suit.
“What is it?” she whispered.
Three silhouettes suddenly blotted out the light from the bathroom.
“No!” Atticus spat as he spun beneath Andrea’s body, reaching for the. 357 on the nightstand. But a sharp sting in his shoulder and a gasp from Andrea told him he’d never make it. His hand slid away from the nightstand and fell limp to the side of the bed. As consciousness faded away, Atticus heard a single word that would fuel each and every nightmare he’d have while unconscious.
“ Aloha! ”
Atticus woke to a blaring headache and a light so bright he could barely open his eyes. Each pump of his heart brought a throb of blinding pain. He opened his eyes again, but the light assaulted his visual senses and caused him to double over. He fell to the hard floor, eyelids clenched. The pain in his head was coupled with dizziness and nausea. He worked on his breathing first, calming himself, using his other senses to probe the room. He smelled metal and paint. He body felt hot and sticky with sweat.
With his head still bowed to the floor, Atticus opened his eyes again. When he saw the stark white floor below him, he clenched them shut again. The brig. The white-hot, no-way-out brig of the Titan. He cursed himself for letting his guard down. He shouldn’t have trusted Trevor.
Andrea.
Atticus opened his eyes again, fighting against the pain, and scanned the room. He found Andrea slumped atop one of the wooden benches. She looked unharmed and unmolested. He crawled to her and placed two fingers against her wrist. Her blood pulsed strong beneath her skin. Remus could have easily killed them both but didn’t. He couldn’t be sure, but he imagined the man wanted them awake when he finished them off. And after a few more hours of roasting, Atticus wouldn’t have much fight left in him.
43
Kronos
The impenetrable darkness that enveloped Giona consumed her senses. The smell of rancid fish and the reverberation of the giant’s beating heart clouded her mind, keeping her thoughts from solidifying into anything useful.
The realization that she would sooner or later be digested had defeated the best mental defenses she possessed. She sat cross-legged on the undulating floor of the chamber, rocking back and forth like a forgotten child. No one would be coming for her.
Hours earlier she’d experienced the most grueling experience of her life, topping the previous, which had involved being eaten alive. The… thing she would soon provide nourishment for had become a volcano of movement, just minutes after she’d fired off her camera and gotten her first glimpse of her sickening surroundings.
At first she’d thought the camera’s flash had somehow disturbed it, but when thunderous explosions began echoing through the chamber, muffled by the beast’s flesh, yet still ear-shatteringly loud, she had realized the creature was under attack. For a moment she had felt a surge of hope. But after a near miss sent a shock wave of pain through her body, she realized that if the creature died underwater, she’d go down with the ship like an ill- fated captain.
The creature’s movements became so quick and violent that Giona knew a mortal wound had been delivered, causing the creature to thrash in its death throes. As she slammed into the fleshy walls, her hand clung to the camera. If she let go, it could have struck her again, but she also didn’t want to part with her only source of light. As the thrashing intensified, Giona felt sure her neck would be broken, but giant muscles, hidden beneath the vein- filled flesh, contracted and squeezed the chamber. If the walls had moved any quicker, she’d have been folded in half. But she had time to adjust her body so that the walls squeezed in around her. She felt like Luke Skywalker in the Death Star trash compacter, but since R2-D2 wouldn’t be stopping the encroaching walls, she took a deep breath and waited to be crushed.
As soon as her capacity to move was completely eliminated, the inward clutch stopped-locked in place- surrounding her on all sides by tight walls of flesh. Her breathing quickened as her lungs failed to fill to full capacity. Her eyes widened as thoughts of asphyxiation surged through her wearying mind. As her panicked breaths quickened, glowing orbs filled her vision and her fingertips tingled. An agonizing roar slammed through the tight chamber, so loud that her teeth vibrated within her clenched jaw. The beast was hurt. For a moment Giona had felt sad for the creature, but then the tingling in her hands moved to her head.
It seemed only a moment had passed, but the next sensation Giona had was of being free from the crushing grasp. She’d passed out again. Upon waking, she sat on the floor, shivering not with cold, for the innards of the monster were quite warm, but with absolute dread. She’d unwittingly entered an alien world where logic and human senses became useless.
Exhaustion took over Giona’s cross-legged form, and her rocking slowed. She slipped back and leaned against the soft chamber wall. The flesh that met her body gave some and gathered around her back like a cushioned chaise. She closed her eyes-they were no good to her anyway-and tried to think about something happy.
But she became distracted by a sensation on the back of her head. The cushion of flesh behind her head pulsed up and down. The movement wasn’t violent, merely a repeated rising and falling. With each pulse, she felt more energized.
As though waking from a dream, Giona found her thoughts coming more easily. She realized that the palpitating behind her head came from a massive artery, pulsing blood from the creature’s heart to some other organ. Giona’s mind fought to gain some understanding of her new environment. Her fear ebbed slightly as reason began to take over. She’d been smart-scratch that-brilliant, before being consumed by this beast, but had since been reduced to a mindless prey animal. She longed for a return of her old self.
As Giona’s curiosity climbed to the surface of her consciousness, she turned and placed a hand on the artery. It was ten inches from top to bottom and, she imagined, stretched the length of her prison. She pondered the meaning of her mental revival and remembered that some blood vessels, the arteries, weren’t merely the mass transit system for white and red blood cells, they also transported oxygen. She leaned in close to the throbbing vessel, which she could feel pulse with every thud of the beast’s heart, and took a deep breath. The air smelled and tasted of coppery fish, but the surge of energy she received confirmed that oxygen was entering into the chamber by osmosis through the giant artery. Her life-support system. Without it, she would have died long ago.
But how long could she survive? She had no water, no food, and her body suffered for that absence already. Between the constant hammering pain in her skull and the agonizing knot in her gut, death couldn’t be far off. All the oxygen in the world couldn’t keep her from starving.
An odd thought struck Giona. What if the creature wanted her to live? It certainly seemed that way. That the
