“Money? You think I want money?”
“What, then?”
George raised the shotgun and aimed it directly into Vale’s face. “I want my wife back.”
Vale’s breathing grew more labored. “It wasn’t… my fault. It was her… choice.”
“Well, in that case, I’ll settle for watching you die.”
Vale glared at him. “What did you do… with it?”
George shrugged. “It’s gone. Every last drop. I flushed it all down your own toilet.”
George watched Vale’s incredulity turn to hate. “You… have no idea what I was… offering you.” He was sucking in air hard now. “The chance to be… young again.”
George leaned back in the chair. Vale was no longer fearsome—now frail and thin, wrapping his arms around himself in an attempt to keep from trembling.
“When did you become so arrogant,” George said, “to think you had the right to live off the deaths of innocent people like this? As if there would never come a reckoning.”
“Off your… high horse, George,” Vale said. “You know what you’re capable of. We’re… not so different… you and I.”
“Tell me something, Mr. Vale,” George said. “What are you afraid of? After all these years of cheating death, it’s finally catching up with you. How does that feel?”
Vale opened his mouth, trying to respond, but his voice was already gone. He could no longer stop the tremors. Nor hide the symptoms of his impending fate. Both hands quivered violently. His arms began to tremble and then his legs.
He turned in a feeble attempt to leave. George imagined it was to find a place to hide. To keep George from witnessing the convulsions and so to rob him of that last bit of satisfaction. But his motor skills were negated now by the onslaught of his death.
George watched it spring upon him like some kind of predator as Vale crumpled to the floor—a trembling, contorted mass in its grip. His spine arched as his muscles contracted with violent spasms. His legs and arms stiffened at odd angles. Tremors racked his body and his head flung backward too, as far as his neck could bend. His jaw clenched tight as white foam frothed between his teeth. And George could see one of Vale’s yellow eyes through the black snarls of hair, wide open in terror. His body flopped and jittered on the wooden floor, almost like a fish in the bottom of a boat or like some grotesque windup doll.
George drew long, slow breaths, fighting the urge to look away. It was a more gruesome spectacle than he had expected, and at length he could no longer stand to watch. His eyes moved to the clock on the wall.
Thirty seconds…
Forty-five seconds…
A full sixty seconds before the tremors finally abated and Thomas Vale lay still in a twisted heap.
But for the gagging rattle deep in his throat, it had been a silent, protracted death.
Chapter 44
Elina peered at the spherical objects in the light of the flare and could now see they weren’t rocks at all. “What are they?”
“Egg sacs.” Jack’s voice grew shaky. “Like the one I saw before.”
Dwight kicked the smaller shell fragments. “Then… I’m guessing these are bodies of the males. Maybe the ones who get eaten after mating or something.”
Elina shuddered. “Mating?”
Then the flare went out and darkness fell around them. Elina reached out for Jack, but the only sound was their breathing, echoing through the chamber.
Complete, smothering darkness hung on them like a death shroud. Then out of the inky black void, Elina heard the tapping sound she’d heard in the other chamber, and it sent a shiver through her body.
Jack lit another flare, and the brightness of its orange light filled the nesting chamber… with the exception of a large shadow that emerged from a tunnel on the far side. An enormous black shape hauled itself into the room.
The beast paused just outside the circle of light, clicking its fangs together as if trying to get its bearings. Or trying to locate its prey.
Elina fought to keep still, remembering what Vale had said about the creature’s being able to smell fear—sensing it somehow in its prey. She sucked a long, slow breath into her lungs and held it.
But at that moment the beast lurched toward them. Its armored legs pounded across the stones in great, jerky strides and its jaws opened in a deafening shriek.
Jack yelled, “Get back in the tunnel!”
They spun around and dashed the way they had come with the creature lumbering after them. Elina’s foot twisted on the shell fragments littering the floor and she tumbled to the ground. She felt a hand on her arm and saw Jack leaning over her, holding the flare.
“Come on!”
He tugged at her arm, trying to help her up, but it was as if time had slowed down as a huge, twisted shadow appeared behind them.
Suddenly Dwight leaped into the kirac’s path, holding another flare in one hand and a pistol in the other. He fired off several shots directly into the creature’s mouth, but the bullets only served to enrage it further.
The beast lifted one of its forelegs to strike.
Jack pulled Elina to her feet just as the giant queen impaled Dwight through his chest and pinned him to the ground. It reared up and hissed. Dwight’s limbs quivered as blood poured from his mouth. One arm reached frantically for his gun but instead found the canvas bag Jack had dropped in the scramble toward the tunnel. He clutched it as the beast wrenched him sideways with an angry growl.
“Jack!” Elina grabbed Jack’s arm and pointed to Dwight.
“Get out,” Dwight gasped, choking on his own blood. “Go!”
He lifted his hand and Elina spotted a round, metallic object in his grasp. She blinked. It looked for all the world like a…
Hand grenade.
She saw him pluck out the pin as the giant spider growled and pulled him into its embrace, sinking its fangs into his chest.
Jack darted forward to grab the bag, then took hold of Elina’s wrist and yanked her back into the tunnel as the explosion shook the entire cavern.
The roar was deafening and followed by a loud, steady rumble. She could feel the ground vibrating beneath her. Her mind gave way to terror as she realized she had escaped this horrible beast only to be buried alive under tons of rock. The roar of the quake seemed to go on forever. Dust filled the passage, choking her and stinging her eyes. She squeezed them shut and prayed as a strange peace began to fill her mind. Her heart calmed; her breathing slowed. If this was the end, then she knew her life—her soul—was in God’s hands.
Elina lay in complete darkness for what felt like several minutes, wondering if she was dead. She was cold and wet and every muscle ached from her ordeal, yet she knew they weren’t safe yet. The explosion had collapsed the cavern behind them, sealing them inside the tunnel. Her ears still rang from the blast, and she lay in the cold mud. The vision of the enormous armored spider had been etched into her brain. That and her experience with the N’watu would certainly rob her of sleep for many weeks to come.
As her hearing returned, she could make out Jack’s steady, rapid breathing next to her, and she knew at least they were alive.
“Jack,” she whispered, “are you okay?”
She felt him stir beside her. “I… I think so. How about you?”
“I’m okay. Nothing broken.”
She could hear Jack feeling around the passage.
“Well, I still have my shotgun,” he said after a moment. “And the bag of flares. But I only have a few left and they won’t last long.”
“How… how did you even manage to find me?”
“It was Dwight,” Jack said. “He came down after Vale took you away and let the rest of us out. Apparently something gave him a change of heart.”