You should run for it while he's distracted.
The only problem was, she didn't know where to run to. Since there were no obvious windows or stairs, she'd have to search for an exit. That would probably be obvious to Sundown, who'd then stop her.
And that thought died as he turned on the TV and she heard the news.
It wasn't an earthquake.
The ground outside the city was bubbling and opening up, and scorpions were flooding out of the crevices like some bad horror movie as they overran everything. Thousands and thousands of them.
How could there be so many? She'd never seen more than a handful in her entire life. Honestly, it looked like the earth was vomiting arthropods.
She shivered in revulsion.
Sundown let out an audible breath. "Now, there's something you never think about seeing, huh? Zarek definitely wasn't exaggerating about the plagues he mentioned. Why couldn't it be locusts like other people have? No. Leave it to Old Bear to do something different."
She shook her head in denial. "I didn't do this." It wasn't possible. There had to be another explanation as to why this was happening. One that didn't point the finger at her.
Maybe the scorpions were bored?
Or the Scorpion King was ticked off that no one had built a casino for him? At this point, she was willing to grasp any straw that didn't tell her to kill herself to save the world.
"Hon, you're the one who said you killed Old Bear. I tried to deny it, but you corrected me. And if you did cut his head off, you did do this. Accept it." He flipped the channel to another view of the scorpions swarming over a road downtown toward people who were screaming and running to get away from them. "Welcome to the apocalypse. Ain't she pretty?"
Abigail felt sick as more tremors shook the ground under them. She braced herself against the wall to keep from being thrown off her feet again. "He looked like a Dark-Hunter," she insisted. "He didn't correct me when I called him one."
Sundown arched a brow at her. "He had fangs. So what? Plenty of things not a Dark-Hunter have fangs, including Hollywood actors and kids playing vampire. You should have checked his membership card before you attacked. Good grief, what if you'd run across a Masquerade group? Would you have slaughtered a bunch of innocent kids?"
"Of course not. I'm telling you, Jonah did do recon on him. He did recon on all our targets. The man I killed tonight was a Dark-Hunter. Jonah would never have authorized hunting and terminating someone else."
Sundown gestured to the TV with the remote in his hand. "Obviously somebody had bogus information. Or he just plain lied."
She started to respond when all of a sudden, the floor near her buckled. She'd no more righted herself than dozens of scorpions swarmed out, scattering across the floor as they'd done in the desert. And worse, these were the deadliest ones. Bark scorpions. Whereas a sting from a single one might not kill her, to be stung by this many would without fail. The neurotoxins in their stinger were known to be fatal.
And she was allergic to them.
Shrieking, she tried to get away, but the floor shifted even more, pitching her toward them. Frozen in terror, she couldn't move as she watched them wide-eyed.
I'm going to die....
She had no doubt. They were going to overrun her and sting her all at once.
Everything seemed to slow down as they advanced on her with a swiftness that was indescribable. Those little bodies twisted as they moved their legs faster and faster, their tails arched and thrusting for a strike.... She couldn't breathe as the sound of their scuttling feet and snapping pinchers echoed in her ears.
Her entire body cringed in expectation of the pain. They were on her.
Just as they swarmed her feet, she was yanked off the floor and shaken until the scorpions fell away. Once they were clear, she was thrown over a well-muscled shoulder and carried from the room as if she were a rag doll.
Sundown slammed the door shut behind him and set her back on her feet. Unable to speak, she flicked the one remaining scorpion on her boot to the ground and then stomped it until it stopped moving.
Every millimeter of skin on her body crawled in revulsion. It was like they were on her again.
But her relief was very short lived. The scorpions were now tearing through the door.
She gaped in disbelief of their power and persistence. What were they going to do? "How are they doing that?"
"I ain't gonna ask them right now. Don't really rate on my importance scale." Sundown sprinted to a locked cabinet. He entered a code on the electronic lock, then opened the doors. It was a gun case with enough weaponry inside to arm a small nation.
Sundown grabbed a pump-action shotgun and a bunch of shells, which he put into his pockets. She ran toward him as the scorpions began flooding into the bedroom from the space they'd made under the door.