Leviathan(104)

Connor frowned, his finger tightening on the trigger.

“Steady,” Thor whispered, raising the muzzle of the grenade launcher. “Steady on. Let it come.”

Leviathan lowered its head, studying the steel cable that Connor had strung across the bridge. Clearly it was suspicious. Connor saw the Dragon's eyes narrow. He could almost see the pupils intensifying, glowing brighter.

Its hind legs tensed.

“Look out!” Connor shouted.

Wildly they dove down and away, Thor and Connor leaping to one side with Barley to the other and then Leviathan sent a blast of flame down the bridge. The holocaust of flame swallowed the entire length of Bridgestone, igniting everything.

Connor gained his footing and ducked his head frantically back around to see the steel walkway on fire. Even the cables were burning, and he hoped desperately that the electrified cable could just endure.

Then Leviathan shrieked and whirled, slashing its tail across the first five cables, shattering the concrete columns with a scattered blast into the gorge. With a quick spin it came around again, knowing that the cables could not hurt it and Connor saw the hind legs tense again.

“It's coming!” he yelled, and then the Dragon had leaped into the air, landing with a roar on the steel walkway.

And the seventh cable.

The white eruption blasted steel into the air and knocked Connor back against the broken vault but he somehow glimpsed a howling Leviathan spread titanically against the darkness, hanging in the air, falling. It descended with shattered sections of the walkway and Thor roared, falling to one knee as he fired the M-79 from the hip.

Connor also fired Chesterton's M-203, rising wildly with the recoil of the grenade blast. Both grenades hit simultaneously with a blazing twin-concussion that somersaulted the Dragon in the air and then Barley also opened up, rising and firing continuously as the beast lashed out, claws savagely striking a section of Bridgestone.

Swung by its momentum, Leviathan disappeared beneath the stone expanse for a spellbinding, spectacular moment before swinging back out again, holding on with a single foreleg, its tail trailing in a long, deadly arc through the air.

It shook violently, trying to reorient itself from the electrical shock and the grenades and Connor saw that the beast was recovering far more quickly this time. The air was alive with a reptilian roar, an almost liquid scream that contained immeasurable wrath, ageless rage.

Leviathan's claws sunk in the stone, grinding.

“It's climbing!” Connor shouted, running forward as he shoved another grenade into the chute. But Thor had already seen and was beside him, running onto the bridge. In six giant strides the Norseman was on the burning section where Leviathan clung tenaciously to the edge. The beast saw his approach, and the serpent-like head lashed viciously over the rim to strike a wild blow.

Like lightning, Thor's forearm lashed out to smash the Dragon's head aside, and the Norseman staggered back from the collision, falling. Then Thor snatched up a section of steel plating, twisting it desperately in front of himself like a shield.

Leviathan's fangs snapped shut on the plate, and for a spellbinding moment, it was a fantastic, raging struggle of titanic strength—the Dragon shrieking, Thor roaring. Then Leviathan savagely tore the shield from Thor's hand to hurl it into the darkness.

Bellowing, Thor scrambled back. Connor saw everything in a white, breathless moment, knowing without thinking he couldn't hit the beast in the head or neck without killing Thor. And with the unbelievable mind speed that comes to men in situations of sure and certain death Connor instantly swung the aim of the grenade launcher, centering ...

Clawed foreleg on the stone.

With an angry shout he pulled the trigger.

Blinding explosion!

Connor felt like he'd been hit by a tidal wave, a wall of fire that knocked him to the far side of Bridgestone. He didn't even realize he was standing on steel until he collided with the shattered railing, too confused and shaken to be thankful that the electrical line was dead. Deafened, stunned, he grappled furiously with the superheated steel, scalding his hand, not caring. He held on to the rail, regaining balance.

In smoke and flame Leviathan fell back, claws torn from the stone by the blast. It hovered for a single, haunting moment in midair, as if it had wings, before a long foreleg lashed out at the last possible moment to snare a shattered section of the walkway.

At the impact a far section of the walkway was torn violently from place, ripped from its moorings by the Dragon's great weight. And like a man swinging out on a rope, Leviathan descended toward the opposite side of the gorge where it struck the wall in a thudding impact. Then the section of the walkway was completely hauled from the bridge, dragged from the stone to disappear into the depths of the gorge.