was some sort of common area of the N’watu.
Jack shone his flashlight around, momentarily stunned by the discovery.
“Look at this place,” he said softly. “My dad always said there was an underground city somewhere out here. This must be part of it.”
Suddenly Javier grabbed Jack’s shoulder as if trying to tell him something, but instead he seemed to be choking. His eyes bulged and blood dripped from between his lips as a serrated spear tip emerged from the middle of his chest and a skeletal face loomed up from behind him.
“No!” Jack shouted.
Javier slumped forward and Jack stood, stunned at the sight. The pale N’watu warrior yanked the bloody spear from Javier’s back and now fixed his white eyes on Jack.
Jack could see the warrior towering over him, but he was frozen with shock. Paralyzed. He tried to will his arms to raise his weapon or his legs to run, but he felt like he was in a dream, unable to even control his limbs.
Then a gunshot rang out, snapping him out of his daze. The warrior lurched backward as a bullet tore into his chest. Jack glimpsed Dwight standing a few yards behind him, his revolver smoking. Jack spun back to see that the N’watu had quickly recovered his balance, his face contorted into a mask of fury. He raised his spear.
But now Jack lifted his shotgun and fired. White-hot pellets hit the N’watu’s chest at close range, tearing through his flesh and ribs. The warrior stumbled back another few steps as Jack felt rage welling up inside him. He pumped the next shell into the chamber and fired again. This time the shot blasted directly into the warrior’s face, lifting him off his feet and flat onto his back.
Before Jack could react or even check on Javier, another spear came whizzing out of the darkness and sliced across his upper arm. Jack ducked, clutching his tricep. He could feel warm blood on his fingers. He snapped another flare and tossed it out in front of him. Immediately the chamber lit up, overwhelming the soft glow of the lanterns. And Jack saw two of the warriors cringing from the light not more than fifty feet away. He strode forward, keeping his eyes fixed on the N’watu, and fired another shot. This time he was aiming high—straight for the head. One of them dropped like a sack of rocks. Jack pumped and fired at the second one, who dove behind a crumbled archway.
Jack snapped another flare and tossed it back in Dwight’s direction. He could see that Dwight had both revolvers drawn and was keeping a couple more warriors at bay. One pale corpse lay at his feet.
Jack knelt next to Javier. He was coughing up blood and was barely coherent.
“Elina,” he said, blood spattering from his lips. “Find… Elina.”
Chapter 42
Elina could hear the tapping sounds echoing in the darkness, almost like someone hitting a pair of baseball bats together. Fast, then slow, changing timbre ever so slightly.
She struggled to free herself. Twisting her neck, she could feel the rope holding the rag in her mouth slide down farther.
Now off in the darkness, along with the tapping, came more noises—a series of thuds like a pickax jamming into rocky soil, and the sound of something heavy scraping along the ground.
From above she heard gunfire echoing across the cavern. Several shots were fired, and they sounded close by. Hope rose again in her, and as she twisted her head sideways, she could feel the rope slipping from her mouth.
She worked it down below her chin until at last she was able to spit out the rag, suck in a lungful of air, and scream….
Jack and Dwight moved back-to-back across the cavern, guns poised to fire. The flares seemed to be keeping the N’watu at bay, and they resorted to flinging their spears blindly from their positions of cover.
“Do you see her anywhere?” Jack said.
“No, I—”
Suddenly a terrified shriek echoed up from somewhere in the darkness. Jack snapped his head around and saw an open pit.
“Elina!” he cried out. “Where are you?”
“Down here!”
Jack rushed across the cavern with Dwight following close behind. Jack ignited another flare and flung it ahead of him. It hit the ground and the orange glow lit up more of the chamber. He could see several carved stone structures all situated around a central pit. A stone table stood off to one side and another structure—some sort of primitive altar—had been built right at the edge of the pit. A thick log had been mounted to the altar and extended out over the hole. Jack could see a rope hanging down from the end.
“There!” He leaned over the edge as Elina’s frantic voice called up from below.
“Pull me up!”
Dwight climbed onto the wooden beam where the rope was fastened. “I’ll pull the rope over.”
Jack could hear the sheer terror in Elina’s voice as she cried out, “Please hurry!”
Dwight scooted forward, stretching his hand out for the rope. The beam extended perhaps eight feet from the edge, and the rope was just out of his reach. He inched out a little farther, but the whole structure shifted under his weight.
Dwight slipped and plunged into the darkness.
“Dwight!” Jack screamed. Just then he saw movement from the corner of his eye. A shadow detached itself from behind one of the carved figures and shot toward him like a missile.
Jack leaped out of the way as the dark shape landed in the spot where he had been standing. In the flickering glow of the flare, he recognized the diminutive figure, the tribe’s matriarch who seemed to be the leader. Dwight had called her Nun’dahbi.
She was cloaked in black veils and holding a long wooden shaft tipped with a jagged spearhead that looked like it had been fashioned from part of a kirac’s foreleg. She shrugged off her outer cloak and crouched before Jack. Jack suppressed a gasp as he got his first good look at her.
Her skin was ghostly pale and her head was completely hairless. Beneath the veils she wore a snug jerkin made from some kind of animal skin, interwoven with beads and animal claws. And Jack could see she was also still wearing the amulet she’d had on earlier. The image from his father’s papers.
Nun’dahbi glared at Jack with yellow eyes reflecting the light of the dying flare. The skin around her eyes was blackened, accenting the glow of her irises and giving her gaunt face a skull-like appearance. Her black lips peeled back and she hissed words Jack could not understand. Though one of them did register.
She spat the word with such contempt that Jack could almost feel her venom.
He swatted the spear away from his face and was reaching for his shotgun when something hard slammed into his ribs. He fell to his knees, gasping for breath. The woman’s bare foot drew back as Jack blinked, wondering how she had struck him with such power for her size.
He rolled to the side as the spear flashed out at him, slicing his shoulder. Jack sucked in painful gasps of air. He hadn’t seen anyone move so fast in his life. The woman crouched low and moved sideways, circling him like a cat preparing to strike. Jack had never taken any formal hand-to-hand combat training, no martial arts, nothing. So reacting purely on instinct, he swept his leg back across the woman’s feet, but she jumped easily out of the way.
Jack struggled to stand, dazed from the blow to his ribs. But before he could even straighten up, he felt another kick to his side and tumbled back to the ground. Nun’dahbi leaped in and out of the ring of light like a panther, striking hard and then jumping back into the darkness.
Jack had managed to stagger to his feet again when she drove a fist hard into his jaw and another one just under his sternum. He crumpled to the ground, gasping for breath. His mind wavered on the brink of consciousness and he reached blindly for his gun. Nun’dahbi leaped to the edge of the pit, raising her spear to finish him off.
