Even if he was a lousy lay.
The hands moved over her belly, up to her swollen nipples. They pinched gently, and she felt her nipples grow larger. Shit. Ace had hit her weak points. She moaned, despite her discomfort.
She was on her back, lying on something hard. She recalled Ace’s quick screw by the river, just before they’d hijacked the rafting expedition, how he’d derived pleasure in the slap of her bare flesh against unyielding granite.
She laughed. She’d been hit harder by better. Her new motto.
The hands- Jeez, had he grown an extra pair in the night? — now went along her legs, caressing the insides of her thighs. Gentle, soothing, arousing, the sharp fingernails tracing along her flesh, applying just enough pressure to mark the skin.
As if Ace had found an instructional manual on foreplay.
She moaned again, and Ace’s tongue flicked across her lips. Then at her belly button, then both at the same time.
Two tongues?
If not Ace, then who?
The group of rafters?
No, they were probably all dead by now.
Dead by now…
As full memory and awareness came flooding back, she tried to sit up, but the hands confined her. Besides, she was languid and exhausted. The hands were gentle, soothing.
Not hands… claws.
She remembered glimpse she’d had of their gray, knotty power, as one of them carried her into darkness. She was in their lair.
She cringed, waiting for the hands to squeeze her, the teeth to sink in, the blood to flow.
No.
These creatures weren’t going to kill her, or they would have already done so.
They wanted something.
She fought for control, pushed at the claws that felt along her belly.
They wanted Little Ace.
A liquid flush erupted from deep in the bowels of the lair. The claws hesitated, and unseen wings flicked uneasily. The fluid rumble sounded again, and the stone vibrated beneath Clara’s back. Something heavy fell, followed by a splash.
Splash?
Another rumble, and the claws left her, the air filled with rustling and stirring, leathery tongues licking parched, swollen lips. She could feel the wind of their wings, and the air of the confined space had taken on a damp quality. The flushing sound was rivaled by a rushing hiss far away.
Rain. Outside. Wherever “outside” was.
She let her arm flop over the side of the stone. Her hand dipped into frigid liquid.
The water was rising. The lair, or cave, or hole in the ground, wherever they had taken her, must be connected to the river. The creatures had gone to high ground like rats.
Well, not like rats, because they’re flying.
And when the waters receded, they would return and take her baby.
With all the control she could muster, summoning back all the parts of her soul she had given up over the last few years, she raised her arms and reached for her head.
The helmet. She tugged at the restraint strap with fingers like cold snakes.
Once the helmet was free, she laid it beside her on the stone. The air was alive with rustling wings and the skee, skee, skee of creatures soaring above her. She shifted and wriggled her sodden sandbag flesh until she was at the rim of the stone. She fumbled for the flashlight switch, flicked it on, and rolled off the stone and face-first into the shocking swirl of water.
The chill revived her, shaking the lethargy inflicted by the creatures’ infectious hands and tongues. She drew air and submerged, her skin tightening, her limbs aching to the bone. But a golden warmth emanated from her center, in the place where promise was born.
Ace was right. Unborn life was life after all, and still sacred.
Maybe not worth killing for, but worth living for.
Clara gripped the large stone, letting her feet dangle until they touched bottom. She lifted her head from the water, expecting one of the creatures to yank her out by the hair. The flashlight, its bulb weak, revealed little about the space, and offered only the slightest shifting of shadows above. She didn’t know in which direction to swim.
Okay, Ace Jr., Mom’s going to have to pick a horse and ride it. Eeny-meeny-miney “Clara,” Ace called, causing the creatures to scurry in frantic arcs overhead.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Bowie checked the bullets in the revolver. Four left.
Two for the creatures and, when worse came to worst, one for Clara. And one for himself.
That would be okay. Finishing on a high note, the perfect ending to an American success story.
Going out with a bang, all sins redeemed, all failures washed away in blood.
Ace could fend for himself. Maybe God would reach a soft white hand down from heaven and scoop up the sociopathic killer. Sit the Bama Bomber on the left side of the golden throne, where they could laugh together about good times and share murderous memories until Kingdom Come.
He followed Ace into the cave, hand sweating around the butt of the Python. He had to admit, religious mania had its good points. Ace had a cocksure strut, as if walking into the lion’s den was a stroll in the park. Ace held the backpack to his chest, a sacrament carried into a high temple. Bowie was pretty sure the man didn’t have an extra pistol stashed away. Maybe he’d finally gone off the deep end, thinking he was entering the hall of angels.
The cave was inky black, the air damp and stifling, but Bowie could swear a glow emanated from the depths, like a match head flaring at the bottom of a rank well. Behind him, the sky drummed a million silver bullets into the world.
He ducked low, though he doubted subterfuge would provide any deception against creatures whose senses had been honed in this sightless, cramped environment. Besides, Ace was giving away the game, marching with heavy feet, onward Christian soldier, hallelujah.
Best-case scenario: the dozens of creatures swooping down on Ace and surrounding him like sharks hitting a chum slick, while Bowie danced in like Fred Astaire on steroids, located Clara in the dark, and carried her to safety.
Well, relative safety. Once out of the cave, they’d still be exposed and vulnerable, sirloin on the hoof, walking bags of V-8.
Plan A and Plan B were both a little melodramatic. He wished there were a Plan C, but the stink of the cave disrupted his concentration. He kicked over a clattering stack of something, knelt, and felt the roughened knobs and smooth lengths.
Bones.
Whether they had belonged to people or to animals, he couldn’t tell in the smothering darkness.
Probably not people. They wouldn’t be so lucky.
He shuddered, recalling the wizened, altered form of C.A. McKay floating, flocking, as mindless in its flight as the others. Just another creature. Now other, the beast inside finally revealed.
Maybe they were all monsters inside.
All that had risen from the cosmic spark that spawned this world, from bacteria to bugs to flippered fish determined to taste the mud.
That’s crazy thinking. Leave those sorts of delusions to Ace.
But Bowie wasn’t sure there was any kind of way to think except crazily. He was walking into a vampires’ den with the tactical equivalent of a squirt gun. He didn’t even have any holy water or garlic, much less a stake or silver cross. Hell, he couldn’t even cobble together a decent prayer.
“Clara.” Ace said it with clear conviction, a command, the word echoing in the enclosure.
Bowie flinched, expecting a flurry of fang and wing and claw.
Instead, he heard only a soft rustling deeper in the cave. And a gurgle. Maybe his stomach was churning from fear.
The glow deepened, and he saw it was coming from a point barely twenty feet in front of him. The blackness had distorted his depth perception. The cavern floor appeared to slope downward. Clara’s rafting helmet lay on a flat stone shelf, its attached Maglite dim from low batteries. Her clothes lay like rumpled pelts beside her.