Instinct: A Chess Team Adventure - By Jeremy Robinson Page 0,98
the male to ask for the father’s permission to marry,” King said quickly. He tried to ignore how screwed up this conversation was. It was almost as though Weston were multiple people. Father. Alpha. Weston. What else was he to these people? God? “If he says yes to you, I still have to ask him. Then he can marry us right away.”
Lucy stalked back into the room. She picked up the stone blade and leaned in close to King’s face. She stared into his eyes, as though looking for some betrayal in his words. King returned her stare with a smile. She grunted and cut his bonds. “Stay with me.”
King rubbed his wrists and stretched his arms. He had no intention of fleeing. Lucy could catch and kill him as easily as she no doubt did Bishop. While he would have liked nothing better than to escape into the jungle, Lucy was taking him to the one place he wanted to go more—to Sara. In the face of death he realized he would regret not getting the chance to get to know her without gunfights, explosions, ape-men, and bioweapons of mass destruction. But that could only be done if he first rescued her and then found some way to complete the mission.
As King walked he felt something solid in his pants pocket. He’d been unconscious when they took his weapons, but something had been missed. He searched his memory for what he kept in the pocket. The problem was, he didn’t normally keep anything in that pocket. He slid his hand inside, feeling hard plastic and two metal points. His hand flinched out of the pocket as his body remembered the shock that normally followed a physical connection with the metal points. He didn’t have to look to know it was Trung’s taser. The Nguoi Rung who had searched him had either not noticed it or thought nothing of it. He wasn’t sure if it would even work on the thick furred body of a Neanderthal hybrid, but it was something.
King stood and walked out of the room with Lucy. As they started down the curved staircase he’d been dragged up, Lucy stopped and turned to him, a gleam of teenage mischief in her eyes. “If he says no, I’m still going to eat you.”
FORTY-SIX
SARA FELL BACK and toppled to the stone floor. Her eyes stared in horror at the knife in Weston’s hand. Then she realized she was leaning back on her hands. Her freed hands. He’d cut her bonds. Weston sheathed the knife on his belt and drew the pistol hanging on the other side. He pointed the weapon at Sara and waved it up and down.
“Go ahead. Stand,” he said, “and feast your eyes on the wonders of Mount Meru.”
Sensing Weston had no intention of killing her, she stood and did as he asked. The truth was, since her first glimpse of the otherworldly spectacle, she wanted nothing more than a chance to drink it all in. As she turned and faced perhaps the oldest and most magnificent wonder of the world, she nearly fell to her knees. The sight was dizzying—more overwhelming than staring into the Grand Canyon. Not only because of its beauty and size, but also because she stood on a precipice several hundred feet above the site.
A city, more beautiful than any she’d seen constructed by modern man, stretched out before her. It was clearly ancient in its arrangement, with smaller dwellings encircling the perimeter and more ominous structures growing in size toward the city’s core. With each rise in structure size, a wall separated one part of the city from the next in true old-world galleried fashion. That the city had been founded on a hill beneath a mountain added to the upward rise of each gallery. The architecture had an Asian feel, but it was clearly the inspiration for the first Asian builders, who must have seen this city with their own eyes before setting to work. Everything was constructed from stone. Some structures appeared to have been seamlessly carved out of the very mountain itself. Others were built from large stone blocks, fit snugly together. The only sign of degradation was that several of the structures’ roofs had rotted and caved in. But just as many appeared to have fresh roofs with newly hewn planks that glowed brightly in the aqua light.
And the light itself was perhaps the most exquisite attribute of the place. It glowed, as though conjured through