“Is it me or is the floor slanting down?” Hickok said.
“It’s the floor.” Blade had already noticed. Who knew where it was taking them? On the plus side, so far there was no sign of pursuit.
“That Dr. Singh made me want to puke,” Hickok said out of the blue. “Him helpin’ the Lords like he did.”
“What choice did he have?” Yama said. “People who don’t obey are eaten.”
“It was more than that. Singh liked workin’ for those things. You heard the buzzard. He took pride in what he did. In makin’ their meat taste better. How can somebody turn against his own kind like that?”
“There have always been monsters among us,” Blade said. Since the dawn of recorded history, men and women had been doing terrible things to one another.
“Traitors like him,” Hickok said, “I could chop into little pieces and feed them to Dhurga.”
They came to a junction. To their left, a narrower tunnel led into the darkness of the abyss.
“Which way?” Hickok prompted.
Blade was debating when, at the limit of his light, something came rushing down the narrow tunnel toward them.
Something hideous.
CHAPTER 49
It was rare for Yama not to stay focused. He was supremely dedicated to his lethal craft; to being the best Warrior he could possibly be. To that end, he practiced continuously. To that end, he exercised rigorously. And to that end, he’d honed his mind on the whetstone of self-preservation to where he was constantly hyper-alert to his surrounding and everything that went on around him.
But since learning that his namesake, or the being pretending to be his namesake, was in far-off Tibet, it was all he could think about. How to get there. The logistics involved. And what did he intend to do when he confronted this other ‘Yama’? Challenge it? Kill it? The Lords of Kismet were a danger to the Home. They must be eliminated. Then why did he mentally balk at the idea of slaying this other Yama.
He was dwelling on that, and not the tunnel around him, when Hickok hollered, “Look out!”
Yama glanced up and was shocked to see that they had come to a junction, and that both Blade and Hickok had leaped to either side, leaving him full in the path of…..a thing…..hurtling toward them. He raised the Wilkinson but before he could trigger a burst, it was on him, exploding out of the other tunnel with the force of a stampeding elephant. Only it wasn’t a pachyderm.
It was an ape. Of huge proportions, it had reddish-orange hair, where it had any hair at all. Tufts dotted it’s otherwise bald, leathery pate. Red veins laced eyes that bulged from their sockets. Its nostrils were broad and flat, its mouth rimmed by slack thin lips and filled with teeth more like tusks. It moved with a bizarre shambling gate, only because it had to. One leg was shorter than the other, and the short one ended in a stump capped by a metal cup.
Uttering a roar of rage, it flung itself at Yama. A huge hand gripped the Wilkinson and literally ripped it loose. Blade sprang to help and was backhanded so hard, he crashed into the wall and fell, dazed. Hickok’s Colts flashed, but he, too, was caught by a swipe of a huge hand and sent staggering.
Yama had no time to wonder where the thing came from. He got his scimitar out just as it turned, and plunged the blade into its chest. Incredibly, the cold steel had no effect other than to cause the creature to roar and spray him with spittle. He wrenched the scimitar out to strike again but the abomination seized him by the wrists, and twisted.
Yama choked off a scream. It felt as if his arms were being torn from their sockets. He couldn’t use the scimitar so he used his body. Gritting his teeth, he whipped his knees at to his chest, then slammed both feet against the nightmare. He thought to knock it back but the ape didn’t let go. Instead, it spread its horrific maw and swooped its tusks at his exposed throat.
Yama felt hot breath on his skin. Wrenching his head aside, he drove his forehead at the creature’s nose. It did nothing.
Snarling and spitting, the ape raised him off the ground and shook him so violently, it hurt down to his marrow. Again it tried to bite his neck. Again he saved himself, this time by ramming his forehead against a bulging eye.
A shriek filled the tunnel. Hurling Yama to the ground, the thing raised its stump to stomp him.
Out of nowhere, Blade was there. A bowie in either hand, he vaulted onto the creature’s broad back and plunged both blades into its neck.
Another ear-shattering shriek shook the very walls. Releasing Yama, it clawed at the giant on its shoulders. Blade yanked a bowie out and stabbed again. Blood sprayed in a ghastly shower. Not red blood, but a green fluid more like the antifreeze used in vehicles before the Big Blast and still used in the SEAL.
The creature gibbered and shook and stumbled.
Pushing clear, Blade confronted the beast head-on. A maniacal gleam came into its red-veined eyes, and spreading its arms wide, it sought to enfold Blade in a deadly embrace. Blade didn’t retreat. He drove both bowies up and in, burying them to their hilts. The ape stiffened, its thin lips spread wide, and with a loud exhale, it pitched forward.
Blade barely got out of the way. He stood over the thing, his dripping bowies at his sides. “You all right?”
Yama nodded, grimacing as he stood. His shoulders were welters of pain. “Caught me by surprise,” he admitted.
“You?” Blade said.
Hickok squatted and poked the creature with a Colt. “What the dickens was this one?”
“An orangutan,” Yama guessed.
“Those big monkeys?” Hickok said. “Were they native to these parts?”
“No,” Yama
