The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,21

creatures to animate back to life?

As they neared the pool’s edge, Mac tested a theory. He swept his leg through the oil and cast a black swell toward the closest crab. The wave fell thickly over the creature, and immediately doused its golden flames. It scrabbled a final oily path—then stopped moving.

John looked at him.

It was something, but how could this knowledge help them? The remaining distance was too far to splash a safe passage through them. Maybe they could roll in the oil as a repellant. But did they dare take that risk?

The decision was taken away from them with the deafening blasts of a rifle. Mac ducked low as rounds pelted into the oil and ricocheted off the walls. John gasped as a red burn bloomed across his cheek from a graze. Mac felt a tug on his left arm. Goose down fluttered from a hole blasted through his parka. Nelson’s head cracked hard against the side of Mac’s skull. Mac felt the wash of hot blood, the sting of shattered bone.

With horror, he turned and saw that half his friend’s face was gone.

Still, he cradled the body and dropped flat into the oil.

John did the same.

Mac turned toward the stern as more gunmen flowed inside and spread out. John twisted, trying to raise his shotgun.

“Don’t,” Mac warned.

The rifle blasts had been far louder than Nelson’s earlier scream—and triggered a more profound reaction. All around, pots shook with deadly potency, then one after the other, they shattered, releasing the monsters inside.

The mass scrambled furiously on their jointed legs toward the new arrivals. Green ichor flared into golden flames. Panicked at the sight, the gunmen fired at the bronze horde—which only attracted them more. They raced across every surface, scurrying over one another in their haste to reach their targets.

They’re drawn by noise . . .

Mac realized now that the bronze crabs had no eyes. Blind, they clearly responded to sound. He looked back toward the captain’s cabin. The creatures there had also heard the commotion and set off in fiery golden streams across the walls and rafters, aiming for the gun blasts and screams. One lost its footing above and tumbled into the pool. Its flames snuffed out as it struck the oil.

Mac finally released Nelson’s body with a grimace of guilt and sorrow. He nudged John toward the dark cabin. This was their only chance to reach that refuge. The two men rose from the oil and ran low toward the cabin door.

Mac reached it first and waved John inside and retrieved his flashlight. He looked back across the hold, now lit by a hellish glow, punctuated by spats of gunfire. Those who had entered the ship thrashed and screamed. Their bodies covered in clawing, digging bronze. Their flesh burning, smoking; their blood boiling inside them.

Aghast, Mac retreated into the cold, dark cabin. He pulled the door closed behind him, but not before a huge pot to his left—twice the size of the others—cracked open and something massive shouldered into view. His brain struggled to comprehend those moving plates of bronze, the razored maw full of flames, the piston of its legs.

Then John drew him back and closed the door on the unholy sight. He shifted a bronze bar in place, closing them in, locking the monsters out.

No, not monsters.

John met his eyes and named them. “Tuurngaq.”

Mac nodded, knowing it to be true.

Demons.

11:40 A.M.

Elena huddled on the rubberized bottom of the Zodiac. The pontoon boat had retreated from shore and hovered in the meltwater current. As she stared back, she shivered with far more than the cold.

Across the way, the ancient dhow burned. Smoke choked the view as flames danced deeper in the darkness. Closer at hand, thin ribbons of golden fire flowed from the ruins of the ship and drained into the meltwater stream. There they formed flaming rafts along the banks and spread fiery fingers toward them.

The woman at the bow barked to the helmsman. He nodded and swung the Zodiac away. They dared not risk those flames. Even now the intense heat was melting the ice overhead. Ancient glacial waters showered down, but rather than dousing the flames, the rainfall seemed to stoke the fire below.

By now, Helheim Glacier responded to the acid burning at its heart. Ice cracked and popped all around them. Perhaps knowing the tunnel could implode at any moment, the helmsman sped the Zodiac faster.

Elena stared back toward the dhow as their boat skidded around a bend. Before she lost