Nocturnal (84 page)

Rex tumbled off the rail and crashed down hard to a trench floor below. The monster was too strong! Rex looked back up to the prow to see his enemy — the old man stood on the rail, naked and blistered, blood and soot covering his skin. Savior looked more like a monster than ever before.

He had a knife in his hand and madness in his eyes.

The old man gripped the handle in both hands, bent his legs, then lunged out into the air.

Rex reached up in time to catch the monster’s wrists. He fell back hard, struggling to keep the knife point from driving into his eye.

Eyes watering, his vision a shimmering blur, Bryan fell to a knee. He couldn’t make it. He heard screaming — Adam’s voice — shouting over the whipping wind, urging him and the others on, telling them to hurry. He looked up to see John Smith holding the black-haired girl tight, his green hood up around a face that dripped with sweat.

“Get up, Clauser,” John said, then carried the girl into the tunnel. The others ran past Bryan, a coughing mass of legs and arms following John in.

How could Amy Zou feel so heavy?

Bryan felt hands on his shoulders, dragging him up by his coat.

“Bri-Bri,” Pookie said, then coughed so hard bits of blood flew out of his mouth. “This is
not
nappy-time.
Move
.”

Bryan stood, adjusted Zou on his shoulder, then followed Pookie to the tunnel entrance. They stumbled over corpses stretched out all over the ledge — John and the others had been busy. Before he entered the tunnel, Bryan looked back out at the cavern one last time.

The flames were already dying down. The ship glowed like living coal, waves of orange light washing through the sagging vessel. The mast burned like a torch; a steady rain of skulls dropped off to tumble into the embers below. As Bryan watched, the mast tilted, then fell, smashing through the deck in a shower of sparks and spinning cinders.

The arena spectators had fled. The place was empty.

Almost
empty — in a trench in front of the ship, Bryan saw Rex on his back, Erickson on top of him trying to drive a knife into the boy’s throat. Rex fought, his torn face screwed up into a horrid mask of rage, his shaking hands holding Erickson’s wrists. Smoke swirled through the trench around them, reminding Bryan of the thick San Francisco fog that rolled down streets in the late-night hours.

The knife pushed closer.

Then a blur of smoldering black hit Erickson and drove him into a trench wall. The Ka-Bar knife spun and dropped to the ground.

Rex slowly rolled to his feet. So much pain. His knight had saved him. Firstborn looked horrible — his fur gone, his blistered skin smoking in places, sheened with oozing wetness in others. Burns from head to toe, yet still he fought for his king.

Rex pushed past the pain. He bent and picked up the knife.

“Bryan, come on!” Pookie’s voice. Bryan carried Amy Zou to the tunnel entrance, never taking his eyes off the scene below. Wind shot out of the tunnel, sucked in from beyond to feed the hungry fire. In the center of the cavern, a large chunk of ceiling gave way, dropping down to smash the trenches like an asteroid hitting a planet. The place was collapsing.

Rex watched.

Rex waited.

The end of one era, the beginning of another.

Firstborn’s back muscles flexed and rippled. He had his hands around Erickson’s neck. Erickson reached up to claw at Firstborn’s face, but the old man was already weakening.

Movement on Rex’s right. He turned to look — his heart surged with joy.

“My king,” Sly said.

Rex tried to talk, tried to say
you’re alive!
but winced at the pain shooting through his mouth.

“Don’t speak,” Sly said. “I am here.” He smiled wide, his needle-toothed grin full of love. He had a few burn marks on his clothes, but looked mostly unharmed.

Sly held his hand out, palm up. “May I kill the monster?”

Rex looked over to Firstborn. The great knight still had his hands locked around the monster’s throat. The monster’s hands moved weakly — he didn’t have long.

Rex nodded, then put the knife handle in his friend’s palm.

Sly’s green-skinned hand closed around the handle. “Thank you, my king,” he said, then thrust the knife deep into Rex’s chest.

Rex stared into Sly’s smiling face. What was happening? Rex looked down. The knife handle stuck out. He couldn’t see any of the blade. It hurt. It burned.

Sly put his arm around Rex and pulled him close. “Thank you for making me your successor,” he said quietly. He gripped the knife handle, pulled it out, turned it, then shoved it home again. Rex felt the hilt thump against his sternum, felt the tip poke out of his back.

It
burned
.

Sly had lied. He was just like all the others. Rex’s only true friend had hurt him, just like everyone else in his life.

Rex fell to his knees.

Sly knelt with him. “I could never have taken over on my own. Firstborn was too strong. Now, I will tell everyone that
Firstborn
killed you. Good-bye, Rex.”

Sly let go. He ran off down a trench, vanishing into the smoke.

Rex closed his eyes and fell to his side.

Bryan saw Firstborn let go of Erickson. The old man didn’t move. The smoldering creature turned.

Firstborn stared at the knife sticking out of Rex’s chest.

It was over.

Bryan walked into the wind rushing out of the tunnel. Everyone stood there, waiting for him — everyone except Alder Jessup. The old man lay on the ground, unmoving, a neat, black hole in his blood-smeared cheek. Bryan looked up at Adam, had to shout to be heard. “I’m so sorry.”

Tears streaked Adam’s face. He shook his head. “It’s what Gramps wanted. We can’t help him. Leave him here.”

Bryan started to object, but Adam was right — they couldn’t get a dead body through the booby-trapped columns.

He heard another chunk of ceiling give way somewhere behind him. The ground trembled beneath his feet, just a little.

The columns
.

“Come on, we have to move!”

He held Chief Zou tight and ran deeper into the tunnel.

Bryan’s flashlight beam danced across a jagged, stacked column. He skidded to a halt before he hit it, sliding feet kicking dirt onto the hodgepodge of masonry.
The people behind him —
he braced his feet just as someone big plowed into his back.

“Everyone,
stop
!”

The sound of panting and coughing filled the air. Almost there …

He set Amy Zou down on her feet, gave her a little shake.

“Chief, snap out of it,” he said. “You have to walk on your own.”

She blinked at him, a glazed look in her eyes. So many blisters, so much scorched flesh; she had been beautiful once, but would never be so again.

“Step where I step, Chief. If you stumble, if you fall, you die and so do your daughters.”

That hit home. Zou straightened, seemed to call upon some inner reserve of strength. She nodded.

Bryan looked at the little girls. Now wasn’t the time to be nice. “No room for mistakes. Step where the person in front of you steps. You screw it up, you die and kill everyone around you. Got it?”

Their eyes were wide, their little faces streaked with sweat and smoke. They nodded just like their mother.

He looked at the rest: Adam, Robertson, Biz-Nass and Pookie nodded as well. Everyone knew the stakes.

Bryan took a deep breath. The air was clearer here, pouring in from the train tunnel beyond. He eyed the narrow spaces between the columns and the wall.

“Hey, Pooks,” he said.

“Yes, my Terminator?”

“You better suck in that gut.”

Pookie did, tried to hold it, but he was exhausted and his air let out in a tummy-puffing huff.

“I guess I’ll go last,” he said.

Bryan nodded, then trained his flashlight beam on the floor and started working his way through.

He made it out, then waited. Zou came next, then Tabz, then Mur, the one who had killed Pierre. Biz-Nass followed, then Adam. As Sean Robertson crawled out of the hole, the ground trembled again.

Bryan leaned in. Pookie was halfway through the columns.