FIONA HAD AIMED for his heart, but King had shifted his body to the side. The knife had come to rest between two ribs to the right of his heart and lungs. It hurt like a bastard, but had missed anything vital.
“You son of a bitch!” King shouted.
Ridley began to reply, but his voice was cut short by an explosion behind him. A cloud of dust and stone burst from a hallway at the side of the chamber.
Disoriented by the explosion, but not down, Mahaleel and Cainan began speaking the mother tongue, their words barely audible to King across the room, but the effect of their words became quickly apparent as the remaining eight statues began moving.
But then a new voice filled the room, loud and booming. It was Bishop, and like Mahaleel and Cainan, he was speaking the ancient language as well. “Fiona Lane. Vish tracidor vim calee. Filash vor der wash. Vilad forsh.”
Ridley shook his head, recovering from the explosion. “Kill him!” he shouted at Fiona.
But the girl didn’t move. King looked down at her and noticed a change in her eyes. She was looking up at him, first at the knife buried in his chest, which she still gripped with one hand, and then to King’s eyes. Her lips quivered. She had returned. But with the return came a weakening. He saw her pale. Dark rings formed around her eyes.
“Kill him, now!”
Fiona looked back at the knife and whispered, “Sorry.”
He was about to tell her it was okay, it wasn’t her fault. But then he saw her hand grip the knife. She wasn’t apologizing for what she’d done. She was apologizing for what she was about to do. And King knew exactly what that would be. While they hadn’t let her fire a weapon at the range, they had shown her how to throw a knife. And she was good.
With the last of her energy, Fiona yanked the blade from King’s chest, whirled around and sent it flying.
The blade buried itself into Ridley’s thigh, sending him to the floor.
Fiona fell as well, her body curling up into a fetal position.
Using the distraction, King took aim to fire at Cainan, but a sudden pressure flexed his ribs where Fiona had stabbed him. The golem holding him tightened its grip. He shouted in pain, fighting against blacking out.
Alexander was being treated similarly, but as he fought the golem’s grasp with his formidable physical strength and invulnerability, he looked more angry than in pain.
A blur of movement shot between the two men and entered the center stage.
Queen.
She ran straight past Fiona and launched herself into the air, diving over Ridley. King wondered why she would do that and got his answer a second later as three giant cats pounced into the room and dove on the nearest moving objects—two at golems and one at Ridley himself.
* * *
AFTER SHOUTING THE strange sentence Fiona had scrawled on her cell wall, reading the words from the small display screen on his camera, Bishop waited until he saw Fiona freed from control. Then he turned and ran back to the cell. Knight struggled to his feet. The impact had pounded his body, but unlike Bishop, he needed time to recover.
Despite the pain, Knight’s mind was still on task. “Did it work?” he asked.
Bishop steadied Knight. “Whatever was done to her has been undone.”
“Good,” Knight said, standing on his own and lifting his weapon. “Let’s get into this fight.”
With his XM25 at the ready, Bishop moved toward the large chamber, now shaking with the sounds of battle, both human and feline. As he stepped into the space, followed by Knight, he was greeted by a giant stone golem with a lion’s face.
Knight turned to backtrack, but a second golem with the face of a jackal, hunched in the hallway, pounded toward them.
“Back in the cell!” Bishop shouted.
Knight saw Bishop drop a live grenade at the lion-headed golem’s feet and dove for the cell.
* * *
AS DARKNESS BEGAN to consume his vision King watched one of the big cats tackle a golem to the floor. A second cat was batted to the side, sliding across the floor and stopping at the far wall where it lay motionless. The third cat’s leap through the air caught Ridley’s attention. He looked up in horror.
But the cat never made it.
King fell to the floor, the pressure on his chest gone. He sucked in a deep breath and watched as the golem that had dropped him snagged the cat in midflight. The cat flailed and scratched with its large claws. Chunks of marble flew from the golem’s body, but it did little good.
As the golem with the cat turned away from Ridley, King had to duck beneath its flailing hind legs. The cat fought for freedom. The sudden motion filled his oxygen-deprived vision with spots, forcing him to catch his breath.
Ridley was on the floor, just twenty feet away. Fiona lay between them.
With his face twisted with anguish and rage, Ridley quickly pulled the knife from his leg and rattled off a string of foreign words.
As his vision and head cleared, King watched Adam’s body slide away and separate from Ridley’s. The body was half a man, his small chest full of disfigured ribs, his torso tapering off to a twist of flesh like a tied-off balloon. King doubted the half-formed Ridley duplicate could have survived the separation even without the bullet hole in his skull.
But Ridley didn’t see it that way.
“King!” Ridley’s voice was a bestial roar.
The two men locked eyes.
“Kill him!” Ridley shouted, now staring beyond King.
The impact came quick, knocking King across the room. Only the padding provided by the giant cat’s thick fur and his instinct to roll as he landed saved his life. He got back to his feet and immediately dove back down as the now-dead cat turned club sailed over him.
* * *
QUEEN ROLLED UPON landing and quickly gained her feet. The lab table next to her exploded into the air, smashed by a hawk-headed golem. As lab equipment rained down around her and the golem raised an arm to strike her, she took aim with the XM25, let the laser sight determine her target’s distance, and pulled the trigger. Explosive rounds burst from the weapon, striking and exploding against the golem’s marble head. Its blue eyes shattered. Its face disintegrated.
But still, it came for her, finishing the swing it began.
Queen ducked the arm that would have removed her head, but lost her weapon as it was struck and destroyed.
With a quick glance, she looked to the hallway where she hoped to see Bishop and Knight, but saw only another golem. Then the ground at its feet exploded, blowing off its leg and sending a cloud of shrapnel in her direction.
* * *
KNIGHT SHOOK HIS head, fighting against the ringing in his ears, and stood up. Dust fell from his head. He waved it away, coughing and turned to Bishop. “Good-bye perfect hearing, hello tinnitus.”
The hallway swirled with dust, reducing visibility to only a few feet. There was no way to know what was out there, but they had no choice. They entered the hall, which was now full of dust. The golem blocking their exit lay in pieces, motionless. The second golem, however, emerged from the dust like a specter, still seeking them out.
The pair ran for the large chamber, having no idea what to expect. What they found was their worst-case scenario made real.
King was pinned against the back wall of the room, a golem charging toward him using one of the large cats as a club. Two more cats lay dead on the floor. Alexander was still clutched tight in the arms of a golem, whose continually crushing arms were now wearing down the ancient man. Queen lay on the floor, not far away, blood covering her face where a large stone fragment tossed by Bishop’s grenade had struck her. She was down, but still conscious.
And the Ridleys, all three of them, stood at the center of the room, speaking the ancient language like conductors, orchestrating the actions of the nine remaining golems.