statues against it. Its glow brightened, shadows of ancient gods shifting across the wall as she brought it closer to the Atlantean structure. Sophia followed, Stikes gesturing for the mercenaries to bring their prisoners after her. The Englishwoman surveyed the damaged tiers. “To the left,” she ordered, pointing at a particular section. “Put it down with the tip next to the edge of that ledge. We’ll be able to reach the stairs from—”
She broke off, flinching as a lightning bolt flashed from the meteorite to strike the temple several stories above. A statue exploded, shattered fragments showering the people below. “What’s happening?” Stikes demanded.
“I don’t know!” Nina replied, only partly lying. She was still channeling more energy into the stone, but had no control over how it would manifest itself.
Sparks crackled from the floating rock, another, stronger bolt lancing up the volcanic shaft and out into the empty sky above. Eddie felt a static-like charge rising around him, the hairs on the backs of his hands standing on end. Larry gave his son a worried glance. “Hang on,” Eddie muttered to him.
“What was that?” snapped Stikes. He looked between the two Chases, realization growing that some conspiracy was afoot. “Stop!” he shouted at Nina. “Put the thing down!”
“It’s almost in place,” Sophia objected. The meteorite was nearly close enough to the ledge to allow a person to jump across. More flashes bridged the gap, stonework splintering where they landed.
“No, leave it!” He pointed his gun straight at Eddie’s heart. “Dr. Wilde, put it down and step away now, or I’ll kill them both!”
Nina closed her eyes …
And willed the entire power of the earth to flow into the meteorite.
Another flash, brighter than any before—
She was abruptly thrown backward as if shoved by a giant hand, grit and dust peppering her skin as a shock wave of energy erupted from the glowing rock. The statuettes flew from her hands, tumbling weightlessly through the air.
An unimaginably deep rumble shook the ledge—shook the entire volcano. More statues toppled from the temple to smash on the rocky floor. Igneous shards rained down from the wall of the shaft as the tremor pummeled them loose.
The quake had knocked everyone down. Pre-warned, Eddie was first to recover. He spotted Nina near Sophia and was about to shout for her to get the other woman’s gun when the sight of the meteorite froze him in momentary shock.
The massive rock was no longer simply hanging in the air. Glowing so brightly it almost hurt to watch, it was rising with increasing speed up the shaft. It was what had happened in Atlantis thousands of years before, he realized: The sky stone had been overloaded with earth energy, and when it blew it would be thrown skyward …
To land somewhere else. Where the next set of arseholes with ideas for world domination could find it.
Unless—
He jumped up and ran—not toward Nina, but for the remote.
Stikes sat up—and found one of his prisoners gone. He whirled, seeing Eddie running across the ledge, and grabbed the Jericho from the ground beside him. Teeth bared in an expectant snarl, he brought the gun around.
Eddie saw the detonator among the scattered debris. He dived headlong at it as Stikes’s first shot whipped past. Ignoring the pain of the landing, he twisted the dial to the full position.
Stikes rose, adjusting his aim. His prone target had nowhere left to go …
Eddie flicked up the protective cover—and jammed his thumb down on the red button beneath.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened—
Then the meteorite blew apart.
THIRTY-FIVE
The three explosive charges Eddie had placed in the sky stone shattered the great rock’s heart, sending countless pieces flying in all directions. They were still aglow, held in the air by the earth’s invisible lines of force … but the smallest fragments almost immediately lost their charge and fell like hail. Most dropped down the volcanic shaft, heading for immolation in the searing magma chamber below, but some hit the ledge—and the people on it.
Eddie yelped as a stone bounced off his head, and looked up to see where it had come from. “Oh, bollocks,” he gasped.
A swirling cloud of glowing rocks hung above him, ranging in size from golf balls to trucks. More energy bolts spat from them, stabbing at the rocky walls of the shaft. But the unearthly lights were rapidly going out, darkness spreading as increasingly larger chunks of debris exhausted their residual energy—and were reclaimed by gravity.
A piece of meteorite the size of a tennis ball smacked