Darkness swept before it – a galactic black shadow through the night.
It saw the heat-tracks of the human but it knew the man could not escape. No, no man could escape because it was stronger than all of them together.
It had even defeated the man with the ax, the man who fought with such strength. But it had defeated him too. Yet as it moved forward it felt the man had taken something from it – something it did not understand. Then it remembered the last, roaring blood-dark image of the man; the man who thundered with his arm raised high, burned by flame but always fighting, always fighting, refusing to be defeated.
As the others had been defeated.
Thunder struck as the battle-ax descended to—
Blackness.
It remembered no more. It sensed only an awakening; a rising, searching for the man that had injured it. But he was gone. He had fled, as the others had fled. And it was alone in the chamber, searching for tracks.
A clawed foot struck a fallen girder and the Dragon sprawled in the corridor, roaring and vengeful. Instantly it reached its feet to glare down, hate-filled eyes glowering, red. With a growl it swiped down to hurl the girder down the hall, rebounding from beams.
NEVER!
It would never allow defeat!
Because it was the end... the end of the earth! And nothing could stand against it! Nothing but the child! But the child would die, it knew. The child would die and then it would feast upon his blood.
As you did before!
Snarling, Leviathan turned burning red eyes to the tracks. It shrieked into the night.
Raging.
Promising.
* * *
Connor!” Frank screamed from his place in the power plant. “GEO just told me that Leviathan is alive!”
Connor fell to the floor, gasping.
“You okay?” Barley called out.
“Yeah,” Connor mumbled numbly, finding the strength to rise. “I'm just worn out. But I'm not shocked.”
Connor swayed, raising his face to the ceiling, feeling the deep cuts inside his palms. He was so exhausted that he needed something to wake himself up. But all he had was pain. So he clenched his hands, feeling the dry blood inside his tired grip. He clenched his fists tighter, breaking the blood-dryness until he felt his soul touching his life in the wounds. Trembling, Connor held the pain for a long moment, finally releasing.
It was enough.
Releasing a long withheld breath, Connor turned to stare at Jordan secured high on a fiberglass walkway suspended by cables far above the power plant floor. It was by far the safest place in the cavern.
The boy was clutching his own hands, staring in a child's true fear. Burned down by exhaustion and fear, Connor barely had the strength to stand, but he smiled, and his heart lifted slightly as Jordan smiled back. Then Connor turned away to study what he had done.
He gazed down the long passageway that entered the power plant. And in the distance, in another tunnel, he knew that there were three additional traps awaiting the creature, traps he had set on his fast run through the complex. With those, he knew, he might kill the thing, because he had gone for maximum power on everything, hammering overkill, figuring he would need it.
“Maybe,” he whispered.
A moment more and Connor shook himself from his daze, staring at Beth. She was working feverishly on a communications relay that she had rigged through a satellite. Violently hitting the keyboard to make the code mirror the NSA code, she was attempting to overlay the encryption system. It looked like she might succeed.
Connor asked, “Haven't you reached Reykjavik yet?”
“No,” she replied, concentrated.
“Well how much longer is it gonna take?”
Unfazed, she reached up to minutely twist a dial. “A few minutes, Connor. But I'm not trying for Reykjavik. I'm trying for Neskaupstadhur. They've got a twenty-four-hour watch on the maritime frequency and they're closer. Plus that, the North Atlantic Sea Patrol has three 130s stationed there. They can be here in less than two hours.”
“All right,” Connor rasped. “But hurry it up, Beth. We're almost out of time. I've got to go out into the cavern.”
Startled, Barley stood from where he was tying a can of gasoline to a truck parked at the entrance of the power plant. It was one of Connor's last-chance defenses.
“You're going out into the cavern?” he asked, staring. “For what, Connor? Why don't we wait for that thing to come to us?”
“Because I've got to wear it out before it gets here,” Connor replied. “I've got to break it down so we can finish it. If that thing makes it through this cavern to reach the lake, it's gone forever. It's going to be loose in the world and we can't live with that.”
Grimacing in fatigue, Barley said nothing for a moment. He seemed embarrassed, as if knowing that he should have known. “Then I'll go out with you,” he said finally. “Maybe we can get it in a crossfire or something. I'm ready for it.”