“King will know.” He stepped away, and then paused. “I hope he appreciates me breaking my promise.”
With fading vision, Aleman watched the man retreat with Fiona in his arms. His last thought was of King and how the man would react to finding out his foster daughter had been kidnapped.
FOURTEEN
Mount Meru, Vietnam
A CHILDHOOD FEAR of drowning in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pool returned to Rook as he fought to free himself from a pile of ancient, green-glowing bones. The slippery bones rolled beneath him, making it almost impossible to move. When he felt the stone floor beneath his feet, he changed tactics—from moving forward, to moving up. He pushed up hard, shedding a shower of disassembled skeletons. He was free only for a moment when a second impact sent him soaring again.
He landed ten feet away in the middle of the street, rolling to a stop on a bed of femurs. Despite his groaning body begging him to stop moving, he climbed onto his feet and spun, looking for the … thing that had attacked him.
What it was he couldn’t say. He’d only seen a blur of motion as it attacked. But even that revealed nothing. Whatever it was seemed to be hidden within a mass of bones, using them as cover.
Bones rattled.
Rook turned, only now realizing he’d dropped his M4.
The city was quiet. Calm. As though the thing had never been there.
Rook scanned the roofs of the buildings still standing. They weren’t much taller than he was, so he should’ve been able to see the hulk. But there was nothing.
The building next to him shifted.
But it was thin. He could see through it and saw nothing but bones. No body. Nothing living.
He drew one of his prized .50 caliber Desert Eagles, which he referred to as “the girls.” “C’mon out,” he said. “Just give me a target.”
A portion of the building shifted and fell. Rook franticly looked for a target within the movement, but saw nothing but bones.
Moving bones.
Some of which were moving … up.
Rook took a step back as he realized the truth. The building was moving. Whatever had attacked him wasn’t hiding behind the bones or inside the bones. It was
Rook opened fire, unleashing seven quick rounds, filling the chamber with the sound of thunder. But the moving mass showed no reaction as it rose up, shedding a layer of ancient body fragments. As the bones fell away, a ten-foot tall stone figure remained, nearly featureless except for the head, which was made from the head of a Neanderthal statue. It lunged for him.
With no time to reload, Rook did the only thing he could.
Ran.
While the Desert Eagle packed a punch big enough to put down any man or beast with a single shot, his assault rifle had a 40mm grenade launcher that could put down a whale. Maybe even a stone giant.
Bones shattered as a strike just missed him, sending an explosion of bone fragments into the chamber. The shrapnel struck Rook’s back, embedding in his flak jacket and pushing him forward. He stumbled through the sea of ancient limbs, struggling back to the spot where he hoped he’d dropped his weapon. His eyes widened as he saw the barrel of his rifle protruding from the debris. He ran for it, but his foot rolled on a femur, toppling him forward.
The accidental movement saved his life as an enormous appendage swung over his prone body. While the creature recovered from its missed swing, Rook dove forward on his hands and knees. Reaching the M4, he took it up, wrapped his index finger around its second trigger—
—and held his fire.
Being only ten feet away, if he had pulled the trigger, he would have killed himself along with the monster. Crawling once again, he moved as far as he could before noticing the creature making progress. He rolled himself behind the remains of a bone wall and took aim.
The grenade launcher’s cough was followed by a massive explosion. Bones and rock fragments rained down for several seconds and the air filled with the smell of explosives and the dust of the dead.
Rook leaned up and found only a bone-filled crater where the monster had stood. Before he had a chance to savor his victory he noticed his body was shaking. Were his nerves really that fragile after not being in the field for a year? But it wasn’t he who was shaking. It was the chamber.
As he reloaded the grenade launcher he remembered the pulsating vibrations he’d felt before. Whatever was causing the shaking wasn’t getting closer, it was—
The cavern wall exploded as a twelve-foot giant barreled through it. Rook ducked as stone shrapnel shot through the cavern fast enough to shatter bones, toppling some of the still standing structures. Rook stood and fought to see what was happening through the dust-filled air. A large shape, its form shrouded in the foul air, surged toward him. He couldn’t see the details of its body, but unlike the first, this one wasn’t made from stone. It was crystal. The same kind of crystal that hung above the city of Meru. The same kind of crystal that hung around Bishop’s neck. The healing stones had become a killing machine.
Rook took aim and fired. The grenade covered the hundred feet to the crystalline goliath and exploded. The force of the explosion pushed the monster to the side, but did no other damage. The crystals were strong.
Very strong.
As he turned to run, Rook once again tripped on the bony carpet and fell to his hands and knees. The ground shook with vibrations as the crystal creature pounded toward him, crushing bones beneath its tree trunk–like limbs. It had no trouble moving about the bone city.
Rook rolled over and emptied his clip at the beast. But the bullets simply ricocheted off. A cloud of dust billowed out in front of the creature as it charged through a sea of bones. With only seconds left before it trampled him, Rook prayed for Queen to show up.
But it wasn’t Queen who came to his rescue.
A blur leapt from the roof of a nearby bone building. The dark shape disappeared into the cloud of dust and struck the beast. The giant stumbled from the impact, but remained upright. Dust swirled as snarling howls filled the cavern. Then the howl turned to an ear piercing yelp. The smaller creature roared with pain before it was flung against the wall, where it lay still, a crystal impaled in its chest.
Though he still couldn’t see more than a vague shape, Rook felt the monster turn its attention back to him. He slowly reached for a grenade, ready to lob it by hand. But there was no need. A sound like breaking glass rang out as the crystal giant fell, breaking into a mass of inanimate shards.
Rook regarded the pile of crystals for only a moment before running, as best he could, to the prone form of his rescuer. He recognized her immediately, and despite his nightmare experience with her kind, treated her as kindred in the wake of the unreal giants. “Red!”
He knelt beside Red’s body. He was glad to see her chest still rising and falling, but immediately knew there would be no saving her. The short, but thick female Neanderthal already had a pool of blood around her, oozing from the large chest wound.
“Red,” he whispered.
Her red-rimmed yellow eyes opened and what appeared to be a smile, made ghastly by her blood-covered two-inch canines, spread on her lips. “Rook. Father came back.”
He nodded. “I came back.”
“Red save you?”
“You did.”
She grunted and coughed up blood.
“What did they want?” he asked. “Why did they come here?”
