Apocalyptic Pirates 4, page 28
“I don’t know.” I checked the time on my phone. “Shit, it hasn’t even been ten minutes.”
“It feels like hours.” Shannon’s voice was steady, and I knew she would never admit to being scared.
I felt for her hand in the dark and gave it a squeeze.
“I’m here,” I said in a reassuring voice.
She squeezed my hand back, and we walked forward holding hands against the darkness.
And then I spotted a light up ahead.
“Oh, my god,” I whispered. “I see a way out.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Shannon gasped.
We came out of the shadows into a pale circle of light. A rusted ladder was fixed to the back wall, and it led up to a circle that was so blindingly bright after the darkness of the passageway that it took my eyes a moment to adjust after looking at it.
Then I realized that I was looking up at the sky. We were at the bottom of a well, and the rusting rungs led the way up the inside wall.
This was it, we’d found the way out.
There was just one little problem, and that was the dragon nest full of eggs that lay between us and the ladder.
Chapter 17
“Oh, shit, shit, shit,” I breathed.
“A fucking nest!” Shannon’s voice was way too loud in her panic, and I clapped my hand over her mouth to silence her.
“The mother might be coming back!” I hissed.
Shannon shook my hand off, and we inched away from the nest and back into the tunnel. It was a tight squeeze for both of us to stand side by side in the passage, but it was better than being out in the open. The bottom of the well must have measured about fifteen feet across, and most of it was taken up by the nest.
It must have been a small dragon that managed to crawl down the well and lay their eggs down here, but maybe that was why there was only one nest here and not several.
If only the Cartagenans had made their wells just a little bit smaller, we could have avoided all of this. Damn those ancient Colombian architects.
The sunlight fell in a pale gray tube down the well and shone with a cool, watery glow on the six bronze-colored eggs that lay in the nest. From the marks on the stone floor, it looked like the mother dragon had tried to follow the same behavior of the other dragon parents we’d seen and attempted to claw up the ground in long, deep furrows.
I hoped that meant her claws were fucking blunted down to useless stumps by now.
“Is that nest… wet?” Shannon whispered.
I looked where she was staring. The nest was made out of scrap parts of metal and wood, but there was something glistening in the spaces between the pieces where the rigid materials didn’t quite meet each other. I took a step closer to try and get a better look at it.
Then I saw the dark stains on the ground, and the rusty-looking marks on the wood and metal pieces. And I realized with a sick lurch of my stomach what it was.
“I think it’s regurgitated body parts,” I whispered.
“Oh, my god,” Shannon moaned. “That is so fucking disgusting.”
“It must have vomited up bits of the people that it’s eaten and made a paste to help keep the nest together.” Even though I was horrified, part of my brain was storing this information away to reveal to Sammy at a later date.
A much, much later date, when she was old enough for this fact not to scar her for life.
“I can’t.” Shannon made a retching noise in her throat. “This is too much, I’m done.”
“Let’s go back,” I whispered. “We need to think of a plan.”
“We should nuke the fucking thing,” Shannon hissed.
“I think Letty might be a little upset if we blew up a church,” I pointed out.
“Who the fuck cares?” Shannon squeaked. “I’ll be more than a little upset if a furious mother dragon rips my head off.”
“You’ll be the one convincing Letty, then.” I gave her a gentle push to remind her that we needed to get back.
We hurried back the way we’d come through the dark passageway. Now that we knew where we were going and what waited for us on the other end, it didn’t seem half as long a walk as it had been going the other way, and we quickly came back to the bottom of the staircase.
Letty was waiting for us at the top of the stairs in the little office.
“Did you find a way out?” she demanded. “What was down there?”
“Well, there’s good news and there’s bad news,” I said. “Where are the others?”
“Still out in the church.” Letty jerked her head in the direction of the main aisle.
We went out of the office and found Dia and her family sitting in the front pew of the church. The women seemed to have calmed down a little, and they were talking with their heads together while Fernando listened quietly and occasionally nodded along with their conversation.
Dia looked up as we approached, and she leaped to her feet.
“Did you find anything?” she demanded.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “We found a way out.”
“We found a secret passageway,” Shannon said in excitement. “There’s a hidden door in the back office there, and it leads to a stone staircase that goes down into this passageway that leads to the bottom of a well. There’s a ladder in the wall, so we should be able to climb out and reach the street.”
“Oh, what!” Dia crossed her arms in frustration. “I can’t believe you guys went exploring and found a whole secret passageway without me.”
“That must be left over from the seventeenth century,” Fernando said as he nodded his head. “Cartagena was constantly being attacked by pirates back then, and they dug escape tunnels all over the city so they would be able to escape in case there was ever a siege. If it doesn’t come up outside the Old Town, it’ll still probably be very close to one of the ports.”
“That’s perfect, then!” Dia said. She looked around at us, and her eyes fastened on my face. “What’s the catch?”
“Well.” I paused. “There is a dragon nest at the bottom of the well.”
“Ay, dios mío.” Mrs. Rojas threw up her hands. “That’s it, then.”
“Blasphemy, Mom,” Dia said and rolled her eyes.
“Don’t you play smart with me, chica.” Mrs. Rojas pointed a stern finger at her daughter. “This isn’t a game.”
“I know that, Mom.” Dia huffed out her breath in exasperation. “I’ve literally been telling you about how much time we’ve spent fighting these things. Drew helped Papi blow up a whole nest of them.”
“Hmm.” Mrs. Rojas looked me up and down.
Then something thudded into the church door and made us all jump. There was a roar from outside, and a shadow fell over the windows as the scratch and scrape of claws over ancient brickwork rang in the air. The dragons were getting hungrier, and from the sound of it they were trying to climb up the walls of the church. Or maybe down the walls. These streets were so narrow they might not be able to get to us unless they climbed onto the roof first and tried to work their way down that way.
The windows were too narrow for any of the adults to make their way in, but the demon babies were another matter entirely. I wouldn’t put it past those scaly brats to get in anywhere. We couldn’t afford to underestimate them.
“We need to move quickly before the dragon that laid the eggs down there comes back,” I said. “And before those guys outside lose patience and start breaking down the door.”
“It’s solid wood,” Mrs. Rojas protested. “And there’s an iron bar keeping it shut.”
“These are radioactive, bloodthirsty creatures that crashed to earth in meteorites, ma’am.” I tried to keep my tone as calm and polite as possible. “They won’t let a door hold them back for long.”
“Besides,” Shannon added. “It will only take one of them to break a window, and then we could be overrun with more of those horrible babies.”
Mrs. Rojas chewed on her lower lip in the exact same way that Dia did, and I reminded myself that she must be terrified. She and her brother had barely survived in this city by themselves, and had had to endure hearing their friends and neighbors getting eaten by the creatures outside. And now, even though she’d found her daughter, they still weren’t out of danger yet. It was no wonder that she wanted to believe that the church would keep them safe. And no wonder that she would prefer to scold her daughter and disapprove of me rather than face the reality of what was happening right now.
Just because I’d become so used to life-and-death situations, it didn’t mean that other people had.
“We need to get out of here quickly,” I said in a voice that I hoped came across as gentle but authoritative. “Fernando, you said you have a boat?”
“Yes.” He nodded. “Dia said you came in from the west side of the city, but our boat is moored at one of the docks up north. It’s not too far from here, though.”
“We’re going to Gran Roque in Venezuela,” Mrs. Rojas explained. “That’s where Dia’s father is.”
“What?” Dia’s head whipped around, and she stared at her mom in horror. “What the hell, Mom? You didn’t mention that.”
“Language, Dia,” her mother scolded.
“I think I can say ‘hell’ in a church,” Dia scoffed. “Especially when that man is concerned.”
“Your father’s changed,” her mother insisted. “All this business with the dragons, it’s really calmed him down. I managed to get hold of him on the phone when all this started, and he really has got his act together this time. He’s left that skank with the toe rings, and he’s waiting for us in Gran Roque.”
“And then what?” Dia folded her arms angrily. “You’ll get there, and you’ll wait around for him, and then he’ll decide that actually no, he’s got better things to do than be part of a family. He hasn’t changed, Mom, it’s the same old story.”
“Don’t speak about your father like that,” Mrs. Rojas snapped. “No matter what he’s done, he’s still family.”
“Uh-uh.” Dia shook her head. “Family is about showing up and being there for each other. It’s not about fucking DNA.”
“Dia!” Mrs. Rojas stared at her daughter with her eyes almost popping out of her head. “What have I told you about that kind of language? And that kind of disrespect?”
“I don’t have to respect that man,” Dia retorted. “He’s done nothing worthy to earn my respect.”
“Dia, Dia.” Her mom shook her head and sighed. “When you’re older, you’ll realize what’s truly important in life. Your dad’s changed. And I’m going to Venezuela to be with him.”
“How are you supporting this?” Dia demanded of Fernando. “You know what a piece of shit that man is!”
“Don’t have much choice, do I?” Fernando shrugged. “She’d be going over there with or without me, and this way I figure she’ll have someone there looking out for her.”
“And someone there to pick up the pieces when this all fails.” Dia pressed her hands against her temples. “I can’t believe this. I really can’t believe it. The world is ending, and you’re still believing the same crap as always.”
“Claudia Rojas!” Her mom jabbed her finger into Dia’s face. “I understand you’re upset. But that is no way to speak to me.”
The two women glared at each other. You could cut the hostility between them with a knife, but we didn’t have time for that.
“Dia,” I said.
“What?” she snapped.
I jerked my head sideways, and she followed me with a huge scowl on her face. We walked to the end of the aisle, and I touched her shoulder lightly.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s okay.”
“God,” Dia muttered. “That woman. I told you what a flake she was. I can’t believe she’s going back to him.”
“You don’t have to go with her, you know,” I said.
“What?” Dia looked up quickly.
Her dark eyes stared into mine. I was so close to her that I could have counted every one of her thick black lashes, and mapped the faint, brown-sugar constellation of freckles that starred her rosy cheeks.
I swallowed and hoped it wasn’t obvious how quick my heart was beating.
“You could come with us,” I said. “Come with us on the yacht to Hawaii and figure out the rest of it later. You don’t have to stay there forever. You can find your mom later, or go back to your grandfather… or you could stay. With us. With me.”
Dia drew in her breath sharply. Her eyelashes fluttered as she blinked, and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things or if her eyes were suddenly misty with unshed tears.
“You don’t mean that,” she said.
“Of course I do.” My words stumbled over each other in my rush to get them out. “Dia, you’re such an amazing person. You’re fun to be around, you’re sassy, you’re smart, and you’re brave. You fit right in with the rest of us.”
Dia bit down hard on her lower lip.
“What about the others?” she muttered. “The yacht’s getting pretty crowded.”
“You heard them earlier,” I insisted. “You saw how upset Ally was when she had to say goodbye to you. And Shannon and Letty, too, they’ve both said how much they’re going to miss you. They want you to be in our family.”
“I don’t know.” Dia’s voice wobbled. “I’m such an idiot sometimes.”
“You’re not an idiot.” My voice was low and husky with emotion. “You’re reckless and insane, sometimes, but that’s all a part of it. A part of you.”
Dia was staring into my eyes. Her chest was rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.
“And that’s what I want, Dia,” I murmured. “I want you.”
Dia took a deep breath. Then she stepped close to me, threw her arms around my neck, and pressed her lips against mine.
My body reacted before my brain fully processed what was happening. I wrapped my arms around her and kissed her back hard. Her mouth opened and closed under mine, and I touched the darting heat of her tongue, breathed in the scent of her hair, felt the soft curves of her body pressed against mine.
And then she broke away. She was panting open-mouthed, but there was a smile spreading across her face.
“Claudia!” Her mom squawked. “Qué estás haciendo? Detén eso ahora mismo!”
“Guess what, Mom?” Dia took a deep breath and flashed her mom a wicked grin. “I don’t think I’m going to go with you to Venezuela after all.”
“Qué?” Dia’s mom had a thunderous expression on her face, but thankfully we were saved from having to explain things further by the thump and crash of another dragon trying to break down the door.
“Alright,” I said. “We’ve really got to go now. Hopefully the passageway will take us out of the Old Town and bring us out near the yacht. Mrs. Rojas and Fernando, you can come with us, and we’ll ferry you around the coast so you can get to your boat safely. How does that sound?”
“Thank you.” Fernando nodded.
“Good.” Mrs. Rojas nodded as well, but her gratitude wasn’t enough to stop her from giving me the stink eye.
There was another crash at the church door. Iron bar or not, the door was going to break.
“Dia,” I said. “Have you got a lighter in that bag of yours?”
“Yep.” She nodded.
“Great.” The plan that had been quietly simmering away in my brain was fully formed now. “Shannon, get everyone into the tunnel. I’ll catch up with you.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked with a furrowed brow.
“I’m going to get some booze,” I replied.
At that moment, a dragon smashed its head through one of the stained-glass windows overhead. Shards of red, green, and blue stained glass fell in a deadly rain, and the dragon forced its huge snout through the narrow window and blasted out a roar that made my ears ring.
Mrs. Rojas ducked and covered her head, but Fernando grabbed her hand.
“Go, go, go!” I yelled.
“This way!” Shannon shouted.
We ran for the back of the church. Shannon shoved everyone into the back office, and I dove for the little cupboard we’d seen earlier under the crucifix.
I threw the door open, but some instinct warned me, and I whirled around just in time to dodge the baby dragon lunging at my head.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
I swung the butt of my rifle through the air and managed to connect with the little bastard. It tumbled to the ground with an outraged squeal, and I put a bullet in the back of its head. It was such close range that its skull fucking exploded under the impact, and blood and brains sprayed everywhere.
This was going to make one hell of a mess for the priest to clean up on Sunday.
There was another of the little shitheads wriggling through the broken window. I fired at it, but my bullet embedded itself into the church wall and narrowly missed shattering the next window along.
The baby dragon hissed and launched itself into the air. There was no time to stay and fight.
I grabbed the bottle of Cognac from the little cupboard and made a dash for the office. The baby dragon chittered and whizzed through the air in pursuit. I made it into the office and hauled the door shut behind me, but I wasn’t quite quick enough, and the baby dragon’s stumpy body got caught in the gap between the door and the wall.
It squealed in pain and then lunged for me with its jaws snapping on empty air inches away from my face. I was holding onto the door handle for dear life and still juggling the bottle of alcohol in the other, all while leaning back so this demon beast couldn’t claw my damn face off.
“Fuck off, you fucking little turd bastard,” I growled.
It snapped and snarled at me. Its rank breath was a hot, scorching stink on my face, and strings of smelly, discolored drool swung from its jaws. I couldn’t drop the bottle in case it broke, and I couldn’t let go of the door to use both hands or reach for my gun.
I was stuck.
“Shiiiiiit,” I hissed.
The dragon wriggled and squirmed to try and get its body through the gap. I hauled on the door, and the dragon wheezed a little but showed no sign of giving up.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I did the only thing I could think of.
