The Eden Factor (Kathlyn Trent/Marcus Burton Romance Adventure Series Book 2) (47 page)

 "Wait," Kathlyn held
up her hands to the creature, capturing his attention. "We mean you no
harm; we never did. You must let my friends go. One of them is hurt very badly
and he won't survive unless we get him to a doctor. Please let them
leave."

The creatures in the shadows were
hissing again, their chorus growing eerie and loud. Dennis and Gary had Jace
nearly to the cavern exit when suddenly, the Curious one swooped forward,
catching Kathlyn by the upper arms with his long, nailed fingers. She shrieked
with surprise and fear. He briefly lifted her off the ground, only to slam her
back, gently, against the wall. But his great ugly face was hissing at her and
she was terrified.

Near the exit, the men came to a
halt. If Kathlyn was going to be attacked, they would defend her to the death.
There was no way they were going to leave her. She saw them from the corner of
her eye and frantically waved at them.

"No, don't stop!" she
commanded. "Go, get out of here!"

"But…" Mark was moving
toward her. "We can't just leave...."

"Dammit, Mark, go!" she
exclaimed softly. "Get the hell out of here, now!"

"Marcus would never forgive
us," Dennis' said, a very pale Jace dangling from his left shoulder.
"We can't leave you!"

"If you don't, then we're
all dead!" she gasped as the Curious one opened his sharp teeth and a
tongue, long and pointed, snaked out at her.  It was enough to shake her to the
bone. "God, you guys, get out of here, please!"

"Here," Dennis had no
intention of leaving. He shifted all of Jace's weight to Gary. "Get him
out of here. I'm staying."

Gary wanted to argue, but Jace
moaned again and he knew he needed to get the man to safety. The others were
bigger, stronger, and more focused on what was happening to Kathlyn. Moreover,
someone needed to tell Marcus what was going on, and he had apparently been
elected to do it. But he hated to abandon them.

"I'll be back," he
promised. "Don't start the party without me."

Dennis snorted softly, standing
back by the exit as Gary and Jace passed through to block any of the creatures
from following them. The hissing in the cavern increased with their departure
and the others felt distinctly uneasy, as if the wrath was about to descend.

 But the Curious one didn't seem
to notice. He had Kathlyn closer than he had ever had her and his interest was
obvious.  His tongue snaked out again and he licked her neck, from the top of
her collarbone to her jaw. She gasped, closing her eyes, terrified of what he intended
to do with her. There was something distinctly sexual about his actions, but
from the way he held her, she couldn't tell if he was physically aroused or
not.  She had visions of him raping her and the mere thought was absolutely
horrifying.  But there was something in his amber eyes, something almost sad
and unsettling. It was a curious expression and she could feel herself
relaxing, meeting his gaze, wondering why he appeared so apologetic. Off-guard,
she was totally unprepared when he suddenly balled up his fist and struck her
in the lower abdomen.

Kathlyn screamed with pain. She
knew without the benefit of words that the Curious one was trying to kill the
child inside of her. A hybrid, with no future in the world, only the chance to
live in caves as his race did. He didn't want the child to suffer as he had
suffered. The same reason he had protected her in the beginning was now the
very reason he was trying to eliminate.

 Shocked, Dennis and the others
surged forward but Fayd shoved them all back, twisting his agile body and
throwing himself, head first, into the Curious one. The creature grunted and
let go of Kathlyn, tumbling with Fayd onto the ground.

"When he opened the Abyss,
smoke rose from it like the smoke from a gigantic furnace. The sun and sky were
darkened by the smoke from the Abyss." Fayd was shouting, the
reverberation echoing off the chamber. The tissue-paper thin wings were his
target and he tore at them, trying to get his blows in before the creature's
superior strength got the upper hand. "It said to the sixth angel who had
the trumpet, 'Release the four angels who are bound at the great river
Euphrates.' And the four angels who had been kept ready for this very hour and
day and month and year were released to kill a third of mankind."

Kathlyn was trying to pick
herself up. Dennis rushed to her, pulling her to her feet. He tried to carry
her toward the exit, but she wouldn't go.

"Fayd!" she gasped.
"Hurry, come with us! Let him go and come with us!"

Fayd tore at the thin skin,
listening to the Curious one howl in pain. "It is my fault you got into
this," he shouted back. "Get out of here before they all swarm on
you!"

"Kathlyn," Dennis
whispered frantically in her ear. "Come on, honey, let's go."

But Kathlyn wasn't hearing him.
She was mesmerized and horrified by the battle taking place and suddenly, a
feeling swept her and she knew that her Intuition had picked a bad moment to
kick in. It wasn't the time nor the place, but she couldn't fight it. As she
watched Fayd wrestle with the Curious one, visions flashed before her eyes and
she saw, clearly, a scene she could barely comprehend.

In Dennis' arms, Kathlyn
stiffened as the vision of a man and a demon appeared before her, rolling about
in fury on the hot rocky sand, pummeling each other viciously. The man was with
dark hair, dressed in a loin cloth; the demon was a great ugly thing with
crispy brown flesh.  In the hazy blue sky above, more creatures appeared,
swooping like eagles on their crispy brown wings.

The visions hit her with a physical
impact. Dennis had no idea what was happening, but Otis and Mark did.

"Christ," Mark hissed.
"The State. It's coming on."

He grabbed hold of her legs while
Otis and Dennis tried to keep a grip on her convulsing body.

 "We've got to get her
out," Otis was struggling toward the cavern exit. "Come on, lets
go!"

Kathlyn was unaware she was being
moved. She could only see violent flashes of a man and creature doing battle,
of flying creatures in the air high above, and now of frightened villagers
throwing slings and arrows at the creatures. The crude arrows pierced them, one
by one, and they tumbled from the sky like fallen birds. On the ground, the man
and creature continued to battle. It was like watching a scene underwater, all
rippling and surreal and filled with emotion.

 Three dead winged creatures lay
on the ground. The man finally gained the upper hand on the brown-skinned being
and lifted a rock high above his head, smashing it down on the creature's head
again and again. With every blow, Kathlyn gasped. She could feel the painful
impact. Finally, the creature lay dead on the ground and when the man looked
up, exhausted, she caught sight of his face. Though his features were shocking;
it was what the man was looking at that shocked her even more. A woman stood,
in the scrub brush, with a terrified look on her face. She was scratched and
her clothes torn, and there was blood on her thighs. The implication was
obvious.

"Fayd!" she suddenly
came alive, grasping at the walls to stop them from taking her out. "No,
it's Fayd! He... he's killed the creature!"

"She's losing it,"
Dennis was verging on panic himself.

  Otis tried to peel her fingers
off the wall. "No, she's not losing it," he assured him calmly.
"We just need to get her out of here. She'll be fine."

But Kathlyn was twisting around
now, half-lucid, half-hallucinating. "He killed the creature," she
hissed. "He's doing it again!"

She thrashed so violently that
Dennis nearly dropped her and they all went tumbling to the ground. Otis had
her head, her shoulders, and he looked into her hugely-dilated green eyes.

"Kathlyn," he said
softly. "We've got to get you out of here...."

"But don't you see?"
she said urgently. "It's Fayd. He killed the creature in the river. The
woman; he had raped the woman… Fayd was protecting her. Now he’s protecting
me."

"What?" Mark had heard
her visions before, many times, but this one was making his hair stand on end.
He looked at Otis. "What in the hell is she talking about?"

Otis held her tightly, trying to
pull her up so they could get moving again. "I don't know," he was
trying to stay calm. "Help me, would you?"

Mark had her torso and Dennis
moved to the legs. She wasn't a heavy woman in the least, but she was twitching
and shaking, which made keeping a grip on her difficult.

 "My God," she said
faintly, her eyes wide and her pupils huge and black.  "Those skeletons we
found... there was no battle for heaven. The villagers killed them. They were
afraid, and they killed them."

"She's delirious!"
Dennis exclaimed.

"The creatures... they were
only trying to perpetuate their species," she whispered. "Human women
were their only choice. There were so few of them left...."

  They were listening, but they
were more concerned with getting her into the shaft. Kathlyn suddenly stopped
quivering and slumped into a semi-conscious state, allowing them to carry her
through the narrow tunnels far more easily. They almost passed a couple of the
marks in their hurry to get out of there, and found themselves backtracking on
one occasion. The hissing seemed to follow them, the roar of the Curious one as
he battled with Fayd, and finally Fayd's howls as the creatures tore at him.
Dennis, Mark and Otis were terrified, but they had to keep moving. They had to
get out.

In a smaller cavern that was
somewhat familiar, they found themselves running into bodies with flashlights.

  "Damn!"

Lynn had a gun in one hand, a
flashlight in the other. He huffed and puffed at Dennis for bashing into him,
but his fury ended when he saw Kathlyn like a limp rag-doll in Dennis' arms.
Juliana was right behind him. Behind her, came Marcus and Tony.

"Christ," Marcus went
straight for his wife. "What the hell happened to her?"

The hissing in the cavern rose up
all around them. Creatures seemed to come from everywhere. Lynn lifted the gun
and began firing like mad. Juliana, gun in her good hand, picked off two. Tony
jumped into the chaos and bullets began flying.

"Get out!" Tony
commanded.

 Marcus cradled Kathlyn against
him, pushing back the way he had come. Juliana moved in front of him to protect
both Marcus and Kathlyn. She only had three bullets left in the gun, but she
was going to make them count. When a creature suddenly appeared, hissing and
spitting, she blasted a bullet into its face.

 Marcus leapt over the creature."
Good thing you're here."

Juliana kicked the body aside.
"You really didn't think we'd leave you guys alone for one minute, did
you?"

"No, I guess not.”

It had been at Juliana’s
insistence that she and Lynn had hired a plane and flew back to the caverns to
help. No matter that the plane was sixty years old and could barely fly; she
couldn't let Kathlyn face life or death without her. And Lynn couldn't leave
Marcus alone in a crisis.

  "We ran into Jace and Gary
on the way out," Juliana said as she ran. "Jace is in bad shape. What
happened to Kathlyn?"

"The State," Mark said.
"It came over her all of a sudden."

They bumped and struggled through
the tunnels. The hissing was everywhere and the sounds of bullets lessened as
Lynn and Tony ran behind the group, covering their escape.  No one wanted to
look back, only forward.  But the creatures were still in pursuit. By the time
they reached the main caverns on the ground level, the hissing was strong again
and coming from all directions. Tony, leaving Lynn at the rear, suddenly made a
mad dash past the group and began shouting at the S.E.A.L.'s in the next
cavern.

"Get ready to blow!"

The remainder of the excursion
force scrambled. The C-4 plastic explosive packs had been strategically placed
by the entrance. As the group ran through the main cavern, Kathlyn became lucid
enough to understand what was happening.

"Marcus," she mumbled.
"The mummies... get one of them before they blow up the cave. We need
it."

As a scientist, Marcus should
have done precisely that. The history in the chamber was invaluable. But as a
husband, he was more concerned with getting his wife to safety. There was no
way he was going to pause to collect relics, or order anyone else to do the
same. The creatures were right behind them and there was no time left.

"No this time,
Kathlyn."

"But…."

"We can't risk it."

The warm Iraqi night greeted
them. With Tony encouraging them to continue running, he shouted at his men to
blow the cave. They could hear the hissing behind them, echoing eerily in the
dark night.  Flaps of crispy brown wings were heard. Tony hollered for everyone
to take cover; Marcus barely had time to duck behind an outcropping of rock
before a tremendous boom rattled the earth. Pieces of debris hurled into the
air and rained down on them like dusty snow.

Everyone was panting and heaving.
Kathlyn, more clear-headed, managed to wriggle her way from Marcus' grip to
view the scene. The cavern entrance was completely obliterated and she stood
there a moment, staring at it, as the others rose from their hiding places. The
hissing was gone and the harsh sound of silence filled the night sky.