Callsign: King II- Underworld

He wasn’t sure if that met the definition of irony, but the realization was bitter nonetheless.

The thing howled again, spraying Pierce with bloody spittle. Almost overwhelmed by its pungent odor, the archaeologist crab-walked backward, scrambling to put some distance between himself and the creature, desperate to postpone the inevitable, if only for a few seconds longer. The monster lurched forward, and despite the fact that there was nowhere to go, Pierce turned and ran.

Even though he barely knew her, he had a sudden urge to protect Nina. He angled away from the sink cabinet where she hid and skirted the counter, hoping to draw the creature after him and possibly lure it out of the room. But as he reached the corner, his eyes lit on something, and a light bulb of crazy inspiration flashed on in his head.

As he rounded the corner, still trying to stay ahead of the monster’s extraordinarily long reach, he snatched up the jar from beside the case of bottled water and ripped the lid off. Whispering the quickest prayer he could remember, he thrust his hand in and spun around, holding up the object that he hoped would save him: a United States quarter-dollar coin. He was betting his life against twenty-five cents.

The creature stopped abruptly right in front of him, with both arms spread wide, as if intended to sweep him into a crushing embrace. Pierce kept his hand extended, but closed his eyes in anticipation of the end.

All he could hear was the rasp of the monster’s breathing, and after a few seconds—seconds in which he did not have the life squeezed out of him—he risked a look.

The creature was still there, right in front of him. Its eyes were still blazing with crimson fury. Its teeth were still bared in a grimace of rage. But it hadn’t killed him.

That was a good sign.

The monster slowly lowered its arms, and then reached out to him. Pierce felt its fingers brush his as it plucked the offering from his grasp. The tiny metal disc vanished in its hairy fist, but it drew back its arms with an almost reverent air. With its free hand, the beast plucked the totem string from around its neck and lowered it over Pierce’s head. Then, as if it satisfied with the exchange, it turned and stalked out of the room.

Pierce gasped as he realized he had been holding his breath, and then sagged to his knees. His fingers brushed against the silver obol coin the creature had given him. He’d definitely come out ahead on the trade.





38.


King threw his arms out, scrabbling for something to hang onto even as he felt the ground fall away from under his legs. He’d taken more than his share of shots to the cranium and knew how to deal with the momentary disorientation that followed, but hanging from the edge of a cliff with searing heat and lighting buffeting his back was a lot different than trying to get back up off the mat before the ten-count was finished. One wrong move here, one hand in the wrong place or his weight shifted in the wrong direction, and he’d get a very close, very brief look at the transformer station.

The mist hid everything from him, including the face of his attacker, but he had caught a glimpse in the instant before the attack. Sokoloff. Well, better the Russian hitman than a mob of Mogollon Monsters.

King’s lower torso and legs were hanging out into nothingness, and he felt the hard edge of the pit pressing into his abdomen just below his rib cage. He pressed himself flat against the rough rock and began working his way forward. If he could get just a few more inches of his body back onto solid ground, he’d be home free…relatively speaking. But every inch took a few seconds, and he was all too conscious of the fact that each second he spent trying to pull himself back onto solid ground brought the world that much closer to destruction.

Then Sokoloff did him a favor.

He heard a scratching sound and saw something move in the mist right in front of him, close enough that he could see a military-issue boot probing the ground for solidity.

King grabbed the ankle with both hands and tried to heave himself up and out of the pit. The maneuver was only partly successful. Sokoloff’s weight rested on his back foot and when King pulled, he felt the Russian shift backward in an effort to keep his balance. The attempt failed and Sokoloff’s other foot went out from under him. As King tried to pull himself up, he succeeded only in pulling the Russian closer to the edge, and in the process, he lost what little progress he had made and then some.