Hickok wasn’t quite upright when the Batuan was on him. It had dropped their guns and other hardware on the floor and resorted to its sword.
Hickok sidestepped a thrust at his gut and dodged a cleave at his neck. He rammed his fists at the thing’s face but it ducked. Narrowly avoiding a slash at his shoulder, he spun, driving his elbow into the creature’s midriff. It was like hitting wood; his blow had no effect.
The Batuan added insult to humiliation by grinning. Poised on the balls of its thin feet, it crooked a long finger, beckoning, taunting him to try again.
Hickok did. Flinging himself at the floor, he cushioned his fall with both hands and whipped his entire body around and in. His shins smashed into the back of the Batuan’s legs, and before the grinning S.O.B. could react, the creature tumbled heels over head.
Rolling in close, Hickok drove his forearm at its throat. He connected, too. But where a human would gurgle and gasp with their throat half-crushed, the Batuan simply snarled and stabbed at his chest.
Hickok heaved out of range.
A few yards away, Yama grappled with a pair of Ganairabs seeking to pin his arms. Blade was locked in a virtual knot of adversaries, fists and legs flying.
Hickok pushed into a crouch. He was taking too long. He must reclaim his Pythons or they were lost.
The Batuan was eager to end their fight, too. Leaping high into the air, it brought its sword flashing down.
By rights, Hickok should bound aside. Instead, he pulled his hands apart and thrust them straight up, catching the sword on his manacles. Steel rang on steel even as he gripped the top of the sword to keep the Batuan from wielding it. Growling deep in its throat, the green demigod tugged and twisted, focused on freeing its sword at all costs.
Which was fine by Hickok. Hiking his leg, he planted his boot in the creature’s stomach. Like his other blows, it didn’t have much effect. But that was all right. He wasn’t trying to hurt it. He only wanted to knock it back a couple of steps and buy him time to do what he did next, namely, dive at the pile of weapons.
Blade’s Commando lay on top of his gunbelt. Shoving it aside, Hickok molded his fingers to his Colt Pythons, one in each hand. A feeling coursed through him, a sensation of pure and utter elation. He spun, thumbing the hammers as he turned. The Batuan was in mid-leap, its sword sweeping high. He shot it in the head, turned, shot a Ganairab coming at him in the head, turned, shot the red demigod who had hold of Yama’s left arm in the head, shot the Ganairab who had seized Yama’s right arm in the head, shifted, and shot three Ganairabs grappling with Blade, again in the head. The Indrian, Therga, was rising and unlimbering its own pistol. Hickok banged two swift shots to the face that crumpled the purple creature where it stood He whirled back around just as the last of the Ganairabs lunged at him, and cored its brain.
In the sudden silence, Hickok surveyed the littered bodies, and chuckled. “Piece of cake,” he said.
CHAPTER 48
To say the bowels of the temple were a maze was an understatement.
Not a minute after Hickok’s final shot ended the fight in the brain-drain room, an alarm sounded. A klaxon blared so loudly and so shrilly that everyone in the temple had to hear it.
Blade fled. He had no choice. Demigods and Gualaons and whatever else guarded the great lady would be after them. To try and reach the throne room would be suicide.
Several long hallways brought them to a stairwell. Once again, Blade didn’t have much of a choice. If they went up, they’d run into the temple guards flocking to find them. And, too, everyone would expect them to try to reach street level to escape.
Blade did what they wouldn’t expect; he went down, deeper into the many-limbed Lord’s lair. He figured—he hoped—they’d encounter less opposition, and another way out.
Yama didn’t say anything but Hickok glanced at him and remarked with a grin, “You always were one to take chances.”
They had descended a dozen levels when Blade tried a door that opened into a dingy corridor with walls made of large blocks of stone. The dank smell of the earth, and other less pleasant odors, drifted out of its depths.
“This must be part of an earlier structure,” Yama said. “They built the temple over it.”
“Or added on.” Blade peered into the gloom but didn’t see a light anywhere. “Flashlights,” he said, and pulled his from a vest pocket. The Family had acquired a box of them from the Free State of California in trade. Pencil thin, the beam was nonetheless bright enough to penetrate a goodly distance. The stone walls seemed to go on forever.
“They took mine when they took my pistols,” Hickok said, patting his Pythons.
“I still have mine,” Yama said, switching it on.
“Nathan, you stay between us,” Blade directed.
Above them, heavy feet pounded.
Blade didn’t waste another second.
“Who knows what’s down here?” Hickok said as they advanced.
Blade couldn’t afford to worry about that. He’d made his decision, and must live with it. Just as he must the other decision he’d made. “This mission hasn’t gone very well.”
“A lack of intel,” Yama stated the crux of the issue.
“Compared to some, this has been a cakewalk,” Hickok said. “I’m havin’ fun.”
“You would,” Yama said.
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“Quiet,” Blade said. A slithering sound drew his beam to the tail of a snake disappearing into a wide crack in a fungus-covered block. “Watch the walls,” he advised. “They could be venomous.”
“And the ceiling,” Yama said.
Blade flicked his flashlight up, and started. A spider the size of his hand hung suspended in a web, staring down at them with its eight eerie eyes. His skin prickling, he passed underneath.
“I hate creepy-crawlies,” Hickok said.
Blade wasn’t fond of them, himself. He saw more
