you.” After flapping a spray of droplets from his wings, he took to the air.
Walter popped open the umbrella and hustled down the service road, following the roar of water and the faint alarm horn. Soon, the main elevator came into view. Two more bodies lay near its door. As he stared at the wet corpses, his knees weakened. He drew Excalibur from its scabbard and strangled the hilt. Somehow he had to stop that murdering fiend, no matter what.
Finding a stairwell, he stepped over a broken door that had been torn from its hinges—obviously the path the Naphil took, since he was likely too big to fit into the elevator.
He closed the umbrella and left it near the door, then hustled down the metal stairs on tiptoes as the path wrapped around the central elevator shaft. The brick corridor walls blocked out the cloud-veiled sunlight, while battery-powered emergency lamps hanging at each landing provided only the barest illumination. The stairwell grew darker and darker as he descended, giving him the same doomed feeling he had while climbing down to Hades with Ashley.
Finally, he reached the bottom level and exited onto a dimly lit concrete floor at the base of the dam. With the alarm still blaring, he padded toward a bright glow in the distance, sidestepping to avoid three more dead bodies along the way. A sign near the top of a mammoth steel door warned of danger ahead in the turbine room, but a gaping hole in the metal proved that Chazaq hadn’t bothered to yield.
As the glow poured through the hole, Walter skulked through, stooping low and shielding his eyes. With light rain drizzling on his head, he quickly scanned his surroundings. The ceiling and roof had been torn away, exposing the workings of the electricity-producing core of the plant. His scan followed the turbine’s massive outer casing up to the generator. Chazaq stood at the very top where the transformer should have been, his arms extended and his fingers spread. Although his two thumbs stayed inactive, his ten fingers poured out white streaks of light in every direction, piercing the clouds above. Twin red lasers shot from his eyes and blended in with the electrical array.
Keeping a watch for Gabriel, Walter tiptoed ahead. With all the racket from the waterfall and the alarm, maybe Chazaq wouldn’t notice him. He spied a ladder leading toward the generator just below the giant’s level. All he had to do was climb it, breach the fence that guarded the top of the turbines, and scale the higher generator access ladder while avoiding all the electrical hazards. Once up there, he could slice through Chazaq’s legs and short circuit that demonic dynamo.
“Piece of cake,” he whispered to himself.
After throwing off his coat, he slid Excalibur back into its scabbard, hoisted his foot to the first rung, and boosted himself up. It only took a few seconds to get to the top of the turbine, then a few seconds more to climb the fence, but when he grabbed the rung of the final ladder, red beams fell across his body. He froze and looked up at the giant. Chazaq glared at him while keeping his hands pointed skyward.
“Where are you going, little boy?” the giant bellowed.
“I’m touring the power plant,” Walter replied, shouting over the din. “I thought I’d come and get a closer look.” He scrambled up the rungs and stood less than ten yards from the giant’s massive feet. The monster had swelled in size, so much so that Walter’s head barely reached past the giant’s thigh. As the electrical field pulsed, Walter’s hair stood on end, and his skin tingled.
The giant’s eyebrows arched. “I see who you are now, the warrior from the lands below. I thought you learned that your sword’s beam was useless against us.”
“But the blade works fine.” Walter pulled Excalibur from its sheath. “Ask your suddenly shorter friend about that.”
“If you dare to attack, you would be electrocuted before you could get in range. You are already endangering your life where you stand.”
Walter squinted at the giant’s brilliant glow. Was he telling the truth? Was it worth risking an attack? What was this power plant takeover all about anyway?
Trying to avoid suspicion, he let his eyes dart quickly to the skies. Gabriel was nowhere in sight. He cleared his throat and yelled up to the giant again. “Tell you what. Let’s say for the moment that I believe you—it’s too dangerous for me to attack.