Matt Archer: Blade's Edge (22 page)

“
Come to me.”

She wasn’t speaking out loud, but I heard her. The knife pulsed in my pocket, and the spirit made angry noises in my head, but the woman’s voice talked over her, blocking the knife-spirit’s demands. Her hold on me was diminished in this place. What I couldn’t do myself, this woman could—she took the knife out of my head. It was my turn to call the shots. I shoved the knife into its sheath and it crackled with electricity. The spirit was furious, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t have to obey her anymore; I could have what
I
wanted this time.

“Come to me, Matt.”

The woman moved closer, until she stood a few feet away, and she held out a hand. Her perfume, some rich spice I couldn’t name, filled my nose. My pulse pounded in my ears and I wanted nothing more than to run my hand along the woman’s arm, to see if her skin was as soft as I imagined it would be.

The knife gave my thigh pocket a sharp snap, and the spirit managed one garbled word:
Stop!

“No.”

I let out a breath when a second snap didn’t come. It felt good to tell the spirit no, here where she couldn’t punish me for it. Triumphant, I reached out for the woman.

She smiled.
“Yes.”

“Archer! Stop!”

I whirled around just as Schmitz dropped to the floor from a crack in the wall. He ran at me full tilt and tackled me around the middle. We slammed to the ground with a crash; the impact jarred my spine, but the pain didn’t matter—this idiot was keeping me from what I wanted. I fought him tooth and nail as the lady’s scent ran through my veins like the sweetest poison.

“She’s mine! Mine!” I aimed a kick at his knees. “Let me go!”

“No, Archer, she’s not real!” he growled.

“Liar!” I shouted and Schmitz grunted as my foot connected with his gut. He tried to pin me under his body but I bent my legs and flung him onto the cave floor.

Out of breath, I sat up, calling, “Wait for me, goddess!”

Goddess? That word sounded weird to my ears. Hadn’t I called someone else—

“
Matt, I’m waiting…”
The woman spread out her arms, beckoning. I crawled to my feet, dying to obey.

Schmitz grabbed my ankle and jerked me down onto the floor. Before I could wrestle free, he rolled me over and punched me in the jaw with all his might. An explosion of stars burst in my eyes as something went counter-clockwise in my head. The world stopped and reversed, rewound.

“Not real,” I grunted, surprised to hear myself talk. “She’s…not real.”

“That’s right, you moron,” Schmitz said. “Now quit fighting me and get up!”

I stumbled to my feet, sporting a killer headache, as the cave’s golden light dissolved into a sickly green. Ugly tendrils of foul steam rose around us, reeking of rotten eggs, of sulfur and damnation. Schmitz and I turned—my goddess was gone.

In her place stood a horror. A giant, jet black scorpion with jade-colored eyes bore down on us with its stinger curled menacingly over our heads. The green light glittered off its hard, dark shell as it lowered its body and hissed.

“What did I tell you, man? Move!” Schmitz gave me a shove and we ran across the cavern.

A horrible scrabbling sound followed us, like too many hard feet trying to gain purchase on the stone floor. The thing lurched with freakish speed as it pulled its fourteen-foot-long body across the cave. Schmitz led me to the crawl space he’d used. Its entrance was a narrow slit in the brown rock, about six feet off the floor. I was about to jump and grab the ledge, when Schmitz shouted, “Look out!”

I barely ducked in time to miss the giant stinger swiping at my head. Schmitz darted forward to give me a boost up to the opening. I heaved myself onto the ledge then turned to pull him in after me.

Schmitz dangled a few yards away from the wall and he met my eyes with a shocked expression.

A bloody stinger protruded from his chest.

Feet pounded stone behind me—Mike and Murphy were racing down the tunnel in our direction.

“Help me!” I shouted over my shoulder as I reached for Schmitz. “We gotta get him back! We have to save him!”

They surged forward, but it was too late.

Schmitz’s body jerked and spasmed. Blood ran down his shirt to drip on the floor. Shaking his head, he mouthed, “Go.”

Then the monster yanked him backward and a terrifying crunch echoed against the rocks.

Schmitz didn’t even scream.

“No!” I tried to climb out after him, but Murphy and Mike held my arms. I thrashed, trying to get away, shouting, “I have to kill her! Let me go! Let me go!”

“No way in hell,” Murphy’s voice was thick with pain, but hard, too. “You’re the most important person in this place. If you go out there, Schmitz died for nothing and we’ll never find Ramirez. We have to move on.”

I pulled my arm free and took a swing at him. “No, I have to kill her for him. It’s my fault Schmitz is dead. Don’t you get it? It’s my fault!”

Mike caught my wrist and wrenched my arm behind my back. “This happens, Matt. If you don’t calm down, hundreds of people will die in worse ways than the master sergeant did. You promised the girl, remember? You promised her.”

Someone else I’d failed. The scorpion hissed outside the opening to the tunnel, but the gap was too narrow for it to enter. If it came after us in human form, there wouldn’t be room to transform in the tunnel. The creature spluttered what sounded like curses then fell silent. Goosebumps covered my arms. This wasn’t the end; it wouldn’t just give up like that.

The only warning we had was the sound of feet clicking against the floor. Before we could run down the tunnel, the scorpion rammed into the wall outside the cave with the force of a tank, cracking the stone. Pebbles rained down on our heads and Mike gave me a shove, shouting for me to go, but it was too late. The scorpion slammed into the wall again and the ceiling crumbled, burying our bodies, leaving nothing but dust and darkness.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“C
areful,” Uncle Mike whispered. “Hurry,
we need to get him out. I can still hear that monster roaming around outside the tunnel.”

I couldn’t breathe, or see, or anything. My head hurt something fierce and my lungs felt crushed. My brother was sitting on me, that was the only explanation. But why was my head covered up?

“Major, I need help,” Murphy said.

Something shifted off my back and I filled my lungs with air, choking on dust. Then I came to a little more, and remembered.

Schmitz.

I cried out, tried to free myself from the remaining chunks of rock. Pain lanced through my knife arm as Murphy and Mike rushed to clear the debris from my body. When I tried to sit up, I couldn’t close my right fist around the knife’s handle.

“Can’t move my arm much,” I said. My throat was raspy. “Think it’s broken.”

Something hissed and spit nearby. Hard feet tapped against the rocks.

“Broken or not,” Uncle Mike said, “we’re leaving.”

He and Murph hauled me to my feet. My forearm throbbed, but I wasn’t dead with a stinger through my chest, so I sucked it up and clutched the knife with my left hand. In the cloudy, dim light of Uncle Mike’s flashlight, I took stock of our situation. Rock had tumbled everywhere, leaving only a narrow crawlspace at the top of the tunnel. Murphy’s face was tattooed with bruises and Uncle Mike looked worse, with scratches covering his cheeks and throat. One of his ears was slick with blood. Behind us, at the edge of the tunnel, the scorpion bumped the blocked opening. Dirt showered down on us.

“Time to go,” Mike grunted, shoving me up into the crawlspace. “The walls aren’t getting any more stable while we hang here.”

I climbed up onto the pile of rock. As I dragged myself along, sucking air through my teeth from the pain, I asked, “What about killing that thing? And what about…Schmitz? We can’t leave him behind.”

“We won’t, not if we can help it,” Uncle Mike said. “But he’s a little hard to reach right now. We don’t have any choice but to meet up with the others and regroup. So, move along, soldier. That’s an order.”

The “Major Tannen bark” woke me up and I crawled faster while my brain relived the scene in the cave. It was my fault Schmitz was dead and all it had taken was a beautiful woman and a little demon magic. The pain in my arm was overtaken by the guilt crushing my soul, as heavy as the rock ceiling looming over my head. My chest constricted; I’d killed Schmitz. Maybe not with my own hands, but it was my fault all the same.

No, I had to deal with that later, push it out of my mind until we finished this job because Mike reminded me that I had something to hang onto. The little girl was lost in the dark somewhere and I’d promised to rescue her. Schmitz deserved no less than for me to pull it together.

The sound of the scorpion faded as we shuffled forward. Before we’d gone twenty feet, my knees and left hand had been rubbed raw by the jagged rock. Every so often we’d have to stop to clear the route. I’d pass chunks of debris to Murphy and he’d pass it on to Mike until the way was open. Our pace was so slow, I wondered if we’d ever see light or breathe clean air again. I coughed dust out of my lungs over and over.

“Matt, you okay up there?” Uncle Mike asked.

“Yeah,” I muttered. He knew as well as I did that I lied, but it wasn’t like we could stop.

“Is that a light up ahead?” Murphy asked. He sounded stuffy, like he’d sucked up a lungful of dust.

Tally: a one-armed knife wielder, a teammate whose sinuses were swelling shut, and a beat up forty-year-old. Things weren’t looking so good, except for one thing—Murph was right.

I saw the light, too.

Instinctively, I unzipped my right breast pocket and touched the St. Christopher medal tucked inside. With my eyes closed, I wished with all my soul the light marked the end of the tunnel instead of a freight train full of monsters.

A faint shout came from the other side of the rock pile. “Major! Archer? Where are you?”

Johnson – I’d know that rumbling voice anywhere.

“In here!” I called, tugging at the rocks in front of us to widen the path. “We’re trapped in the tunnel.”

A flashlight beam cut through the rubble, blinding me, then Johnson shouted, “I found them!”

Patterson called out, telling us to hang on. We dug from our end and they made fast work of the rocks on their side. The hole opened up bit-by-bit. Soon I could wriggle forward and reach my left hand through to Johnson. He passed me a slim canteen and the cool water eased my aching throat. I sent it over my shoulder to Murphy, then starting moving rocks again.

It took several minutes of digging on both sides until the hole was big enough for them to pull me out. I bit my lip as my broken arm dragged against the rocks and couldn’t help grunting when I dropped to the cave floor.

Patterson helped me sit. “Hurt or injured?”

“Injured,” I said. “Arm’s broken.”

“Let me see,” he said, feeling of the bones. A few presses on my forearm later, I let out a bark of pain. He nodded. “Yep, broken. Pretty good fracture, I’d say. I have a temporary vacuum splint that’ll probably hold you until we get out of here.”

It hurt like crazy when Patterson put the splint on my arm and pumped the air out of it, but when he was done my arm felt a little better and I could close my fist again. He also gave me three ibuprofen tablets. I swallowed them, then leaned back to rest for a few minutes while the team dug Murphy and Mike out. It was hard, because all I could see when I closed my eyes was Schmitz’s face when he hung off the floor. My breath came in gasps and it took everything I had not to lose it right here in front of everyone.

After Johnson helped Mike through the hole, he peered inside. “Where’s Schmitz?”

“Didn’t make it,” Uncle Mike said, sounding way too calm in my opinion. I wanted to scream, tear down the walls, shout out it was my fault.

Not yet. We have unfinished business.

The knife-spirit’s voice came through loud and clear…and commanding. Whatever had blocked her in the caves was gone and she was telling me she was in charge. With a resolve I didn’t know I had, I stood and pulled the blade from its sheath with my left hand.

“We have a recovery effort, and a really mean monster to put down,” I managed to say. “But first we have to find our lost man.”

Johnson looked away, his fists clenched. Murphy passed a hand over his eyes.

“You heard him,” Patterson said, looking around at everyone with a stern expression. “Let’s go get Major Ramirez, then blow this joint to Kingdom come.”

Everybody snapped out of the dark mood that threatened to ground us. We packed up our gear while Patterson checked out Uncle Mike and Murphy. Pronouncing them fit to fight, he took point and led us back into the main tunnel.

“Now where to?” he asked.

They all looked at me. I closed my eyes and whispered, “Show me the way.”

Dangerous.

“I know that,” I whispered. “Which way.”

Ahead. He’s guarded, but we can break through…if you focus. This time, let me have control. No more signing off.

She sounded pissed and I winced. “Whatever you say.”

A picture began forming in my mind. Just like the vision at school, I saw Ramirez curled up on a stone floor. His uniform was filthy, in tatters, and he moaned in his sleep. Then the picture zoomed backwards, revealing a tiny cave, enclosed except for a small opening. I backed through the opening into a larger cave and something familiar and ugly hissed in the shadows. Back more, through another cavern, then down a long passageway. Takers hung from the roof, roosting with their clawed feet, wings folded behind them like bats. Dozens of Taken people lined the walls, sitting perfectly still with their eyes wide open. Still further back, into a narrower tunnel, back, back, back…until I saw Patterson, looking at me.

Your map.

“Okay, here’s the deal,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I know where they have Ramirez. It’s gonna get ugly.” I opened my eyes and nodded at Patterson’s ordinance bag. “What are you packing?”

“Enough to make a statement,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Why?”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said.

“Some idea.” Murphy held up his detonator box. “I’ll be shocked if we don’t start a cave in.”

“You can thank me later,” I said.

“But what if Parker’s team is down there?” he asked.

“We’d know if he was down there,” I said. “Those Takers would’ve gone crazy by now if he was.”