The Goddess Legacy

Chapter 55

The ruins were pitch black by the time Drake and Allie were herded back to the clearing, the moon now blocked by a layer of high clouds, and only a pair of torches borne by their captors lit the way. The cult killers made no sound as they directed them down the loose gravel path, and neither Drake nor Allie had any hope of communicating with them, much less convincing them to free them.

When they reached the outer section of the ruined temple, two of the cultists led them to the pole. Drake struggled as the third made to secure his wrists to Allie’s using a length of rope, binding them both together to the pole, and earned a vicious blow to the side of the head from the base of a torch for his trouble. Dazed and bleeding, he was supported by one of the men while another finished the tie job, preventing his knees from buckling until the pole did so.

Once Drake and Allie were secured, the men retreated and tossed their torches into a nearby fire pit before vanishing into the darkness. The wood in the pit was slow to ignite, and the torches had almost burned out before the smallest kindling caught and flames licked from the center of the pile.

“Are you all right?” Allie whispered to Drake.

“Yeah. Move your wrists up a little so I can work on the knots with my fingers.”

“Like this?” she asked.

“Little more.”

She frowned from the effort. “That’s as high as I can go.”

“Then that’s perfect.”

Drake tore at the binding with numb fingers, his heart in his throat as he struggled to loosen the rope, knowing as he did that the chances of them getting free in time were slim. The fire popped and cracked as more of the wood caught, loud as firecrackers in the quiet night, and the flames glowed orange in the periphery of their vision.

“Anything?” Allie asked.

“I think one’s starting to loosen,” Drake lied, hating himself for peddling false hope. “Allie, if we don’t get out of this…”

“We will,” she said, her voice strained.

A rhythmic pounding from beyond the fire pit drifted on the breeze, spurring Drake to redouble his efforts. Allie’s gaze swept the clearing frantically and then locked on the first figure approaching from the gloom.

“Drake—”

“I hear it.”

The drumming increased in tempo, and then the chanting reached them, the name of Kali echoing off the long-destroyed temple stones like the baying of demented animals. Drake fumbled with the knots in desperation, cursing the predicament he’d gotten them into, their lives about to be forfeited in the name of a monstrous cause.

The column of dark figures shambled closer, stretching endlessly into the shadows, and then the figure at the head of the procession stood before Allie, whose eyes were riveted on his mangled features and bloodshot eyes. He inspected her curiously, touching her cheek with a grime-crusted finger as she recoiled, and then he slowly circled around to look at Drake, who noted that the cult high priest’s sharpened teeth were discolored to the same gray as the ash that covered his hair and skin.

Drake turned his head away, the stench rising from the man so toxic that bile burned in his throat, and then the cult priest turned from him and held a curved dagger in the air. The cult chanted its perversion faster at the sight of the blade, anticipation palpable in the crescendo of maimed utterings.

Drake’s voice sounded stronger than he’d feared it would when he spoke the words he’d been saving for a time that now would never come. “Allie, I lo—”

The boom of automatic rifle fire from nearby filled the clearing, and the cult priest’s chest exploded with red blossoms. He screamed in pain and lunged for Drake with the dagger, and then more rounds pounded into him and he tumbled sideways. The knife bounced harmlessly off the stones at their feet as the man crumpled in a heap. More shooting deafened them as Spencer stepped from the darkness, wielding his AKM with mechanical precision.

The cult scattered, its members running from the gunfire back into the cover of night, and then they were alone. The dark priest lay dead near the fire pit, face down in a lake of blood.

Allie eyed Spencer as he approached and unfolded a pocketknife. “Took you long enough.”

“I had a nap,” he said, and then glanced at Drake. “You okay? Looks ugly,” he said, studying the bleeding tear in the side of Drake’s head left by the torch.

“It only hurts when I breathe.”

“Hold still, or you won’t have to worry about that for long.”

Spencer worked the small blade through the knots that bound them together on the pole, and after a few judicious cuts, Allie pulled free. Drake shook off the rope and turned so Spencer could sever the bindings that secured his wrists. Spencer freed Drake’s hands and was attending to Allie when the staccato rattle of rifle fire shattered the silence in the clearing, and fountains of rock and dirt geysered around them.

“Take cover,” Spencer cried, pulling Allie down with him behind a small mound of stone blocks. Drake dove in the opposite direction and dragged himself to the crumbled base of an ancient wall as rounds whizzed nearby.

Spencer returned fire and emptied his magazine in a sustained burst as he felt for another in his pocket. He slipped it free, ejected the spent one from his rifle, and slapped the fresh magazine home as more gunfire strafed their location.

“I guess we drew some unwanted company,” he yelled to Allie, their ears ringing from the gunfire.

“You got a spare gun?” Drake called to him.

“Just my pistols,” Spencer screamed. “Useless at this range.”

“Toss one over here. Better than nothing.”

More slugs thudded into the stone blocks as Spencer freed his holstered pistol. He waited until there was a lull in the firing and hurled the gun to Drake. “I’ll lay down some cover,” he called out, seeing the gun fall short. “You try for it when I start shooting.”

“Try?” Drake said, and then more incoming fire chewed up the ground near the pistol. “Maybe I’ll wait.”

“How many more rounds do you have?” Allie asked.

Spencer frowned. “One more magazine, but it’ll go quick at this rate.”

“Shoot slower.”

Spencer loosed another volley. “I can’t see much.”

“I know,” she said, and winced as a stray bullet blasted chunks of stone a few feet from her head.

Rounds pounded their hiding place from off to the right, and Spencer shifted his aim to the new threat, doing his best to conserve ammunition but fighting a losing battle. He emptied his rifle and ejected his second spare magazine before seating the final full one, and then continued fending off the attackers, who were multiplying like mosquitoes with each heartbeat.

Drake rolled and snatched up the pistol and barely made it back behind his remnant of wall before a flurry of shots ground the earth around him to hamburger. He kept his head down and held his fire, recognizing that to waste shots was foolish — the pistol would only do him good when the enemy was within thirty yards.

Spencer emptied the AKM and tossed it aside, and then drew Helms’s Beretta from his waistband. The slavers sensed their opportunity in the sudden halt in the shooting, and Spencer spied movement from the brush as the gunmen closed in. He looked over to Drake with a grim expression. “Make every shot count,” he said.

“How many rounds does it hold?” Drake asked.

“Eighteen-round box mag.”

“That won’t go far.”

Spencer eyed Allie. “Best to save two bullets, Drake.”

Drake swallowed hard — Spencer’s message was clear: better a swift end than whatever horror the death cult had in store for them.

“On your left,” Spencer warned, and Drake twisted in time to see a pair of gunmen nearing, crouched low. He squeezed off six shots as Spencer fired at more slavers closing in from their right, the report of the pistols mere pops after the AK’s blast. One of the two gunmen went down, but the other opened fire, and it took Drake four more shots to silence him. More shooting exploded from the trees, and then another slaver ran toward Drake, strafing his hiding place with his assault rifle. Drake loosed a half dozen rounds and the man pitched forward no more than fifteen yards from his position.

Remembering Spencer’s words, Drake glanced at the pistol and then to Allie, whose eyes were locked on him, her expression terrified… and something else. Time seemed to slow to nothing, and he realized that what he was seeing reflected in her eyes was resignation — the quiet acceptance of the unthinkable.

The moment was shattered when more rounds slammed into the ground by Drake, and then the brush line shielding the slavers shredded to pieces as a deafening roar sounded from the sky. Hundreds of high-velocity rounds chewed the gunmen to confetti, the stream of glowing tracers slicing through everything in their path. Drake blinked in disbelief and rolled onto his back in time to see the hazy outline of a huge helicopter nearing, its heavy machine gun relentlessly raining death on the attackers.

The gunship hovered over the clearing, and two lines unfurled from either side of it and bounced against the ground. A string of black-clad figures rappelled down, weapons blazing. Answering fire greeted them from a grove of trees on Spencer’s right, which immediately invited several hundred rounds from the new arrivals, decisively silencing the slavers and terminating the threat.

Drake watched the commandos mop up the few surviving gunmen, and then the helicopter set down on the ground and a spotlight blinked to life, its high-wattage beam blinding him and framing them in its glare.