Plague of Coins (The Judas Chronicles #1) (17 page)

I continued my descent for what I believe was two to three hundred feet, speeding down a stone chute and scared shitless I would slam into one or both of them, possibly crushing either one to death.

Suddenly, the primitive slide veered around a corner and I began to see light...light that was soft and barely discernable. More like a greenish haze. Soon the light grew brighter and wider, forming a line on the horizon before me. At the same time, I heard the sound of trickling water and a louder swishing noise just ahead of me.

Then all at once, I was thrown off this crazy ride into a glowing pool of water. Water that was cold as hell, I might add.

I hate surprises like this one—even worse than being shot at by hostile helicopters. Nothing bothers me more than frying my ass in 100 degree weather one moment and then being dumped into frigid coolness the next. Hell, maybe that’s an ingredient from the one effective recipe to kill me, and my cells know it.

Fortunately, I could see my environment well enough. I was in a fairly large cave, and literally thousands of glowworms covered the bottom of the chilly pool I had been dropped into. A nearby spring that bled into a sheer waterfall was the pool’s source. As I looked around me, there were other glowing critters crawling upon the walls of the cave. A fairly large effervescent purple and amber spotted serpent of some kind crawled back and forth behind the waterfall, as if guarding the area.

I also noticed other reptilian creatures that were smaller than the serpent. Each one was almost transparent except for blue and purple outlines along their bodies, like some kind of subterranean jellyfish that had gone amphibian at some point in time.

“Owww
….” My son moaned from somewhere nearby. To my left? That’s where his voice emanated from. “It looks like m-my...my father h-has g-gr-graciously d-decided to j-j-join us.”

Alistair laughed at his own joke, though weakly. He was shivering terribly. I felt a surge of panic, as his wheezing alone told me that he had sustained some sort of injury from the sudden fall into this place. When I looked in the direction of his voice, I saw the dark outlines of two silhouettes sitting on a ledge near me, eerily illuminated by the myriad organisms surrounding them. I recognized Amy’s full, long locks that had been drenched in the water.

“You need to get out of there, William!” Her voice was cracking, filled with fear. Unlike Alistair, she wasn’t shivering. “There’s something in the water that bites! It nicked me, but latched onto Ali’s abdomen before I could free him!!”

Her dim figure moved toward me, offering a hand to help me out of the pond. I had been treading water, leery of letting my feet land on the host of squirming iridescent worms below me. I swam over to her and scrambled to get out of the water—far more worried about Alistair’s welfare than the fact I sensed something moving rapidly toward me from my right just beneath the pool’s surface. Here we were, a few hundred feet below the planet’s terra firma, and if my son had endured a bite from a poisonous creature there would be little I could do for him. I pushed away the terrible thought that I might watch him die on this trip after all.

Suddenly, something huge exploded out of the water, snapping at my feet with near-invisible jaws before it disappeared in the pool again. I say
near
-invisible, as once my eyes adjusted to the unusual colorful living lights around us, I discerned the outline of a twelve-foot translucent eel with long, sharp teeth in its snapping jaws. It came up again, snapping madly at the air where just moments earlier my legs had dangled while I finished pulling myself out of the water.

“Are you all right?”

I posed the question to Amy, though it was intended for both of them. I kept a watchful eye on the thing lurking in the water until I was confident it wouldn’t try to follow us out of the pool.

“I think so...but Ali’s really hurt!” She moved aside to allow me access to him. “He landed hard in the water and then that thing bit him! I’m really scared for him!!”

“Me, too,” I said weakly.

I felt my mind start to go numb. I could see the bloody wounds seeping through Alistair’s shirt...two deep gashes from the thing’s teeth. I prayed fervently in silence that the creature wasn’t poisonous, and that the wheezing I heard was from a non-immediate, life-threatening wound to the base of his left lung. Regardless, I had to get him out of there.... I had to find some way to get him back to the village. Maybe Zoran or one of his buddies could save my boy. But how to make that happen? After all, the only way back up to the surface I could immediately see was the open shaft that dropped us down into the water...at least fifteen feet above our heads.

“Ali, hold on for me, son!” I was struggling to keep my voice smooth and calm. The last thing he needed was his old man debilitated by stark fear. “I’ll carry you, but you’ve
got
to hang on!

“I’m t-t-trying, Pops...I f-feel so tired...just let me r-rest....”

His words trailed off. I could tell from the eye movements under his closed eyelids that his eyeballs were dancing wildly...like they might roll up into this head while his body gave into a terrible seizure.

I could no longer control my rising panic! He might die anyway, but I had to do whatever I could to save the only offspring I’ve ever bonded with. A huge part of me felt as if it was dying right alongside Alistair.

I desperately scanned the room, praying for an opening that might lead us back to the earth’s surface. But it was almost impossible to determine a promising exit from a dead end. The few tunnels I saw were filled with one form of fluorescent creature or another.

Then I glimpsed a brighter light emanating from behind the waterfall. Could a passageway exist on the waterfall’s other side, and would it lead to some place promising? We had no choice but to find out.

“Help me stand Ali up, so I can carry him over my shoulder!” I urged Amy. “We’ve got to move now!”

“Move
where?”
Her voice was shrill, and such distress could easily become another hindrance to Alistair’s rescue. “There’s nowhere to go!”

“There
is
someplace to go! Just trust me and follow my lead, damn it!!”

Suddenly, the serpent hissed loudly from behind the waterfall, as if it sensed my intent to shoo it out of its lair. It slithered closer to us, and I saw the brighter light again in the bottom right corner of the small cove it guarded.

“We need to reach the passageway behind the waterfall,” I said, assuming Amy could see it. The serpent eyed me intently. Perhaps it sought a weakness to exploit in the same manner as I did. “If you follow my directions precisely, we might still get out of here in time to save Ali!”

I’m not sure that she fully comprehended what I said. Her gaze was locked onto the hissing critter as it opened its mouth filled with needle-like sharp teeth and two prominent fangs. It wasn’t until I nudged her shoulder that she even looked over at me, nervously. Meanwhile, Alistair’s pained groans grew more plaintive. Motivated by that, she lifted his left shoulder while I raised his right side. It was almost impossible to ignore the much smaller worms wiggling across the ledge surface beneath our feet. I prayed she didn’t become squeamish, and lose her grip on him when the little critters exploded into slimy green goo with each labored footstep toward the waterfall.

The serpent prepared for our advance, its tail producing a barbed tip that throbbed like an angry rattle.

“Keep moving, Amy, no matter what happens!”

She simply nodded. Her wide-eyed expression announced she was too damned scared to say anything. The ornery critter slithered back and forth while it awaited our arrival. Its orange eyes were ignited, as if the sucker received a sudden boost from the very fires of Hell.

I often experience some apprehension when encountering a new menace. Despite my unique healing abilities, facing unknown sensations brought on by a novel combination of bite and venom injection is something I dread. If this serpent, which I could tell was more of a hefty snake than a lizard, hit an artery with a powerful injection of neurotoxins, I might black out. I’d lose the race to save my son.

A delicate operation at best, it was made worse by the pile of human remains I had just noticed near one corner of the bastard’s lair. At least the pile was on the opposite side of where I wanted Amy to focus. It looked like a handful of skulls and femurs along with a broken ribcage.

Little shithead likes the way we taste...this keeps getting better and better!

I made a sudden lunge at the waterfall to draw the menace out, loosening my grip on Alistair long enough to throw a misdirection juke at the serpent, snake, or whatever term would correctly describe this glowing monster. As I hoped, it attacked empty air where my right leg had been for an instant. I grabbed its throat with my left hand, just below the fangs and high enough to keep it from jabbing them into my wrist and arm.

“Oh my God—be careful William!!!”
Amy cried out, as she struggled to keep my son from falling to the ground while I sought to subdue the angered reptile.

Another loud splash drew her frightened eyes back to the pool behind us. The eel had leapt onto the ledge, its tail thrashing in the water behind it. Obviously, it intended to come after us. My own distraction from this allowed the slippery critter I battled to slip slightly from my grasp. I fell down on top of it, praying mightily that it couldn’t somehow bite me or pierce my midsection with its barbed tail.

The eel’s eerie screeches were followed by another bigger splash. Along with Amy’s panicked shriek, I knew it had managed to climb onto the ledge and heard its initial movements. I had only a few seconds to resolve my current battle before these two predators created a formidable team.

I relied solely on my instincts. I secured my grip on the ornery bastard beneath me and tossed him at the eel. I didn’t bother to see if I scored a direct hit or not, since all hoped for was a slight head start. No doubt the malicious pair would pursue us together—as ridiculous as that mental image seemed to me.

Adding to our woes, the tunnel’s opening was much smaller than I had assumed
originally. We’d be damned lucky if any
one
of us squeezed through without a hitch—much less all three.

“Come on, Amy!! You need to go first!”

I grabbed her arm to pull her up to the passageway’s entrance. Her initial response was surprise at being jerked so harshly by me. But, the hostile noises behind us got her moving...at least for a moment. Then she noticed a myriad of the
shimmering
critters covering the walls just inside the narrow tunnel.

“I-I can’t go in there!” She anxiously looked back and forth from the passageway to the serpent-snake thing and eel creeping toward us. “I can’t go—”

“Yes you can, and you
must!
Otherwise, we
all
will die here!!”

Out of the corner of my eye, the predatory pair had slithered to within ten feet of us. Still, she didn’t move.

“You’ve got to go first, so I can push Ali through the passageway behind you. Then, I’ll bring up the rear,” I told her, lowering my voice and changing my tone to that of a trusted confidante. “But, if you don’t get your gorgeous ass in gear, little lady, I’m going to drag him through there myself! You can fend for yourself against our latest friends any way you can. So, which do you prefer?”

She didn’t answer, and remained frozen by fear. I couldn’t wait any longer. My son was on the verge of losing consciousness, and I grabbed his shirt by the neck as I prepared to drag him through the tunnel.

“No, wait—
wait!
William, I’ll do it!” She stopped me, scooting as close as she could while the snakelike monster weaved its way toward her...less than three feet away. “I’ll go first. Just get out of the way!”

Like it was my fault that her luscious legs were about to make a meal for one of our two pursuers! Before I could send a snide remark back at her, she grabbed my son’s shirt collar from me and crawled into the tunnel. I moved quickly to lift Alistair’s near-limp body and pushed him into the passageway, praying to God Almighty for forgiveness and protection if this turned out
not
to be such a brilliant idea. I heard Amy gag and wretch just beyond my view, cursing about the stench when the glowworms exploded against her hands, body, and head. But at least she kept moving.