"Sleeping. Rehydrating. His color is back. He looks good."
"Uh, folks? We're coming up near the pier. You want to return to the immediate issue at hand?"
"Let her get her run out," Shabazz ordered. "When she crashes and burns in the morning, we'll all talk. For now, you have one job. Bring her back here safe - untouched. Put that •wire in your ear and turn on your transmitter so we can stay in communication with you as this goes down."
Before Rider could bring the Jeep to a full stop, Damali was leaping out of the vehicle and had yanked the sword out behind her. She immediately began running, her legs eating up the distance with a lightness and a freedom she'd never experienced. The cement gave way to wood, which gave way to sand, and her locks lifted from her shoulders; breeze and salt air slapped her face as she ran. Every cell in her body felt beyond alive. The sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, there was no such thing as fear. An aura of faint blue light covered her outstretched sword arm. Sand hit her backside as she parted the grains of it with furious boot thuds - running, hunting, whatever was out there, she would chase it back to Hell.
"She's on the move," Rider puffed into the narrow electronic bar that bounced over his mouth as he ran, trying to keep pace.
He pushed his tiny earpiece in deeper to keep it from falling out, then released the safety on his gun.
"Stay with her!" Marlene's voice had gone from panic to a near-shriek.
"Easy for you to say. I'm forty-five. It's sand. She's twenty yards ahead of me, and stroking like Flo Jo, dammit. I can barely keep a visual." Drawing ragged breaths, Rider gave chase, and then stopped short of the edge of the pier as Damali's form disappeared.
"Houston," he murmured through deep huffs into his mouthpiece, "we've got a problem."
"Talk to me," Shabazz said in a whisper. "Where is she?"
"Under the pier, and it's waaaaay too quiet for my liking."
"She's in a den," Big Mike said. "How's your ammo, Rider?"
"Low as shit - to be in a zone."
"Rider, use the lights. Get back to the Jeep and hit the lights," J.L. told him.
"I can't leave her under the pier," Rider said, his breaths steadying as he went in deeper under the pier.
"Get out of there, Rider," Mike pleaded. "She'll be all right, man. You won't be."
Ignoring the team, Rider went still deeper, listening to the waves lap against the shore and the poles, his feet sinking in the wet sand as he walked. A whiff of sulfur made him turn. Slits of glowing red opened before him from behind a pole. Hisses - claws at his ankles began to pull him down. His gun dropped when something strong slammed into him, the weapon summarily eaten by a wave. He struggled as he felt himself grabbed from behind and his head forced down. The cross on his neck strangled him from the hold at his back; something clutched his shirt. He tried to fight against it but his punches connected with air. He managed to yell; he heard a chime and a whooshing noise, then a bloodcurdling screech as the sulfur smell thickened. His boots were in a vacuum seal that felt like cement.
He could hear the team calling to him, Marlene hollering prayers. His head was being forced to the side. Whatever had him from behind would not let go. Then he heard the chime again, followed by a whoosh. Two sets of eyes before him parted and scattered deeper into the darkness. The pull at his feet suddenly released and he dropped to wetness, covering his neck with both hands. The waves licked him. He shut his eyes, waiting for them to descend upon him like sharks and begin feeding. Prayers echoed from his mind and from his mouth. "Dear God, not like this!"
"Get up."
Traumatized, Rider kept his eyes shut to the voice in pitch black. "Fuck you! Just do it and get it done!"
"Rider, get up," a familiar voice said in an amused tone. "We need to get out of here."
Almost afraid to look up, he peered into the blue-black around him, his eyes adjusting slowly to the moonlight that filtered between the pier boards high above.
Chapter Eleven
"Damali?"
"Let's move, dude. Unless you want to wait for them to regroup and come back?"
Rider grabbed her outstretched hand and pulled to right himself, noting how easily she'd helped him up. But he reserved comment until they had jogged back down the beach and locked the Jeep with them in it. He leaned his head on the steering wheel and let the tremors abate when his hands shook as he tried to put the key in the ignition.
"Sonofabitch! Don't do that again, okay? Enough to make a grown man piss himself. Shit!"
"Everybody: status!" Shabazz's voice bellowed through the radio.
"We're coming in," Damali said, her tone blase. "We'll pick up Big Mike, unless he's okay till morning."
"Rider, the slayer's condition; your condition?"