His mind turned suddenly to Irena, abandoned in the past, unable to return to her own timefor fear of forgetting the love of her life. Where was she now? When wasshe?
Had she used the BackTracker prototype to return to its own time,ten years ago? She could have remained where she was, twenty years in the past,when her younger self was only fourteen years old. Or had she gone back furtherand tried to keep Cade from murdering her husband?
No. He would have remembered, if that were the case. He would havebeen there, then. She had not attempted to stop him. Harold Muldoon wasdead. Of that, he was certain.
And yet...
There was that boy in the penthouse above The Pit. Harrywas his name—a coincidence? Close to death, attended by the monk, Kuan. Why hadLennox detained them?
A shriek pierced the silence, designed to paralyze the heart withdread for one's life. Shrill cries responded on all sides, near and far,echoing from high above, yowls of intense delight and ravenous desire. Coldconcrete and steel came alive with the cacophony of wild screams. What soundedlike the skittering of a million oversized spiders scratched against the tunnelwalls and ceiling.
Lennox whirled, rifle at the ready, his head whipping side toside. "Where are they?" he grated out. Not afraid. Notyet.
"They have us surrounded." Cade saw the wafting auras ofthe freaks, even as they kept themselves hidden behind pipes in the ceiling andbroken crates on either side of the subway tracks.
Have these deviants already dispatched thetwo figures pursuing us?
"How close are we to Horton's lab?" Lennox demanded.
Mary turned toward him, her features slack. "Not closeenough."
They were nearly half a kilometer away from the closest entrypoint to Cyrus Horton's Underground laboratory. But they could not go therenow. These citizens of the Underground were sure to follow them straightinside.
Mary faced forward, and her voice rose unexpectedly in both volumeand pitch with a strength that seemed to flex far beyond the confines of herslender, genetically engineered frame:
"The Master is my light and my salvation. Of whom should Ifear?" A short pause as a sudden wave of silence engulfed the darkness."The Master is the strength of my life. Of whom should I be afraid?"
"More holy words?" Lennox said.
"Followers of the Way are known to provide aid forUnderground dwellers," Cade said. "The freaks benefit as much asanyone else down here."
"So they won't attack us?"
"I did not say that. The scriptures can have little effect onhardened killers."
"Complete hokum," Lennox muttered with a curse.
The sounds of skittering feet came again, but they moved nocloser. They were retreating—albeit slightly. As they relinquished those fewmeters they had taken, there arose an uneasy chorus of rasping barks in placeof the frenzied squeals and shrieks from seconds before.
"What are they doing?" Lennox demanded. He fired a fewrounds into the distance, blasting the darkness with futile bravado. Wildlaughter erupted in response. "You like that?" He fired a few moreshots that flared white from the rifle muzzle. He cursed in disgust as thelaughter intensified. "Why don't they come out and face us?"
"They are waiting for you to expend your ammunition,"Cade said. He watched the auras drift, merging into an otherworldly fog bankless than a dozen meters away. "They carry only blades."
Lennox slapped at the pockets of his trench coat. "Hateto disappoint. I've got enough magazines to take them all out." If giventhe chance. "Come on, you freaks! Show yourselves!"
Silence resumed its hold on the moment, one that seemed to standstill for the three figures in the middle of that derelict subway tunnel.Hemmed in on both sides as well as above by Underground natives they could notsee, could only hear as they shuffled forward again now, surging despite theshouts of the girl reciting every passage of the holy scriptures she had everheard in her short life.
The advancing pack—humans from another world, now reduced tohalf-naked, filthy, long-haired berserkers, teeth sharpened into fangs andfingernails like talons, each gripping a machete or other type ofblade—launched themselves onto their prey, heedless of the fiery rounds thattore through their emaciated limbs. Where their brothers and sisters fell, limpand wide-eyed, never to move again, there were two, three more to take theirplace, lashing out with a murderous rage that could not be satiated, a thirstfor vengeance that would never be fully quenched.
This was their territory. Outsiders did not belong here.
Mary cowered on the ground between the iron rails of the subwaytracks, her body curled inward, head between her knees, hands interlaced acrossthe back of her neck. She cried out in the din of the screeching mob, rabidwith bloodlust, rushing straight for her, clawing at her, biting at her arms,piercing and drawing the blood Cyrus Horton had designed to flow through herveins. She curled her hands into fists and beat them away until her knuckleswere black with blood, both theirs and hers, until she was too weak to fightthem off.
Cade was there with amachete he'd wrestled from one of the creatures, slicing to and fro with theblade, ending one adversary after the next as they came close to stabbing Marywhere she lay. Lennox also stood beside her, his automatic rifle spittingrounds into the onslaught, pausing only as he slammed another magazine into thechamber and cursed furiously. They protected her, both of them. Even as theybled from the rips in their own flesh, the fang marks on their own arms, theymoved to fend off these horrible fiends, to keep them from finishing her off first.
They were her knights.She remembered stories Father had told her of ancienttimes, the Knights of the Round Table and their wonderful code of chivalry.Seeing Cade like this, she knew he was her White Knight. And she was his maidenin distress. She loved him so—never more than she did right now as he leapt allabout her, from one side to the other, so light on his feet, so skilled withthe blade, defending her life by striking down every freak that came close. AndLennox? He was
