The young man who emerged from that cell was emaciated and filthy. He looked barely eighteen or nineteen and rail thin. His tattered clothes reeked. He was talking rapidly in Spanish. Jack handed him the keys and motioned for him to open the other cells.
George emerged from his cell as if in a daze. Jack could see he was an older man, maybe in his seventies. He was tall and perhaps at one time rather distinguished-looking, but now his face looked gaunt and gray as if worn out by sorrow. A large purple bruise puffed out on his upper cheek.
“We have to go after them,” Jack said to Dwight and George. He could hear the other cell doors opening, accompanied by yelps and hoots of relief.
Dwight was shaking his head. “You need weapons first. Frank has a gun.”
By now, the other kid had returned, out of breath and followed by six exhausted-looking Hispanic men. They were all speaking Spanish, and Jack couldn’t understand what they were saying.
He turned back to Dwight. “Where are the weapons?”
Dwight pointed up the tunnel. “Frank’s ex-military. He’s got an armory in the basement, right across from my lab.”
Jack looked at the group of Hispanic men. “Which one of you is Javier? Who’s Elina’s cousin?”
One of them stepped forward, the tallest of the group. His long black hair was matted and tangled.
“We have to save Elina,” Jack said.
Javier started to reply in Spanish, but Jack shook his head.
“Wait… uh, no… no habla es—”
Dwight cut him off. “Han llevado a Elina a la cueva. Tenemos que ir por ella.”
Javier nodded excitedly. “Sí, vamos a prisa!”
They rushed through the tunnel and up the stairs into the basement of the lodge. All of them shielded their eyes from the fluorescent lights and moved out into the corridor.
“Here,” Dwight said. He stopped at the door across from his lab and fumbled with the keys. “It’s this one.”
All of the prisoners with the exception of Javier scurried past them toward the stairs.
“Hey, wait! Hold up,” Dwight called after them. “Espera, espera!”
But they ignored him, obviously too relieved to be free.
Dwight looked at Jack and George. “We have to stop them. The others are still upstairs. If they find out what’s going on…”
George’s eyes took on an icy glare. “I’ll take care of them; you guys go after the girl.”
Dwight unlocked the door and opened it into a small room with gun racks on the walls and a shelving unit crammed with boxes of ammunition. They snatched weapons and ammo in a mad flurry. Jack found a rack of shotguns.
He tossed one to George along with a box of shells. “Guard the entrance. Make sure none of them come after us.”
George nodded and headed up the hall, loading the shells as he went.
Dwight was busy loading the other shotguns. He slung one over his shoulder and handed another to Jack. Jack looked it over, familiarizing himself with the weapon. He had fired a gun a few times on a target range, but he’d never used one in any kind of violent action.
“Point and pull.” Dwight tapped the barrel. “Just don’t point it at me.” He gave one to Javier as well and rattled off some instructions in Spanish.
Jack spotted a box of flares on one of the lower shelves. He grabbed a handful and shoved them into a canvas bag.
Meanwhile Dwight had loaded a pair of .45 revolvers; he shoved one in his belt and held the other ready. Inside of three minutes they were loaded and ready for war.
Dwight stopped on his way out the door. “Hold on.”
He grabbed a couple items off one of the shelves and showed them to Jack—small, black metallic spheres with handles on one side.
Jack’s eyebrows went up. “Grenades? He’s got hand grenades too?”
Dwight shrugged. “Like I said, Frank’s ex-military.”
Jack glanced back along the corridor where George had disappeared up the stairs. Then he turned and followed Dwight and Javier through the storage closet and down into the tunnel.
Chapter 38
Elina struggled against the ropes, but they were far too tight. Obviously these guys had done this before and knew the best ways to subdue and transport their prisoners. They had gagged her as well.
They carried her out of the cell and down into the darkness of the tunnel. There was no more lighting and no stairs carved beyond this point, so the two men moved slowly through the rough passage, lugging her between them. Vale stayed in the lead with the flashlight.
They carried her for nearly ten minutes, descending deeper into the cave until they came at last into a larger chamber. They set her down on the ground, a cold mixture of pebbles and mud. Elina watched her two bearers step back while Vale moved forward to a section of the wall where Elina could see what looked like wooden timbers. Another doorway built into the rock.
Vale picked up a large stone and pounded it against the wood. A dull, hollow thump rang out in the cavern. Then he stepped away. The other two men retreated even farther, taking cover behind a large rock.
At first nothing happened. And then came a long, low creak as the door swung open. Vale shut off his flashlight, plunging the entire chamber into blackness.
In the middle of the darkness, Elina saw two lights glowing. She peered more closely, her heart racing now. These weren’t flashlights or torches she saw, but rather they emitted a soft, steady glow. Two orbs of pale-yellow light suspended in the darkness.
And yet Elina saw the lights were moving, floating closer until she could see they were in fact two lanterns of some sort, being carried by a pair of human figures walking toward them. It wasn’t until they were much closer that Elina was able to determine what they looked like.
And then she wished she’d never seen them.
They were tall and gaunt and ghostly pale, their skin reflecting the light of their lanterns with an eerie luminescence. They moved with smooth, sure-footed strides through the dark cavern, naked except for the loincloths tied low around their hips. Their translucent white skin was covered with strange black markings, just as Jack had described. But in fact the N’watu were more terrifying by far than Elina had imagined from Jack’s account.
Now she could see four of them, each one carrying a thick spear topped with a long, serrated tip that looked like it had been carved from some sort of bone or shell. And behind them, Elina spotted a diminutive shadow moving. Black against the darkness beyond.
The N’watu approached Elina and loomed over her with eerie, colorless eyes gazing down. Their skeletal faces were hideous—fierce and misshapen. If Carson hadn’t stuffed the rag in her mouth and tied it there, Elina would have been screaming.
Then the fifth figure drew up behind them. The woman Jack had described, dressed in veils and dwarfed by her accompanying warriors, approached Elina. She bent down as if to inspect her, like a woman examining a cut of meat at a butcher shop. She hissed some muttered incantation over her, then straightened and faced Vale.
Vale bowed low in her presence. “Nun’dahbi.”
“Another outsider,” the woman’s voice hissed. The sound was somewhat unnerving to Elina, at once beautiful and yet filled with venom.
“Yes,” Vale said. “She… she wandered into town—and she knew too much for us to let her go.”
“She will be missed. More will come searching.”
“No, Great Mother, they won’t find anything,” Vale said. Elina could tell he was trying to exude confidence, but he looked nervous. “I’ll make sure of it.”
“There were other intruders. You could not keep them away.”