Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Two

The Chamber of Myth

Tuesday, August 31, 2:53 A.M.

Time Remaining on the Extinction Clock: 33 hours, 7 minutes E.S.T.

Grace moved away from the corpse of the Berserker and retraced her steps to the path. Ahead of her in the darkness she could hear the whispered conversation of Hecate and her father. It was no longer stationary. Grace crouched and listened, tracking the sound even though she couldn’t make out the words. The sound moved from left to right in front of her. There were no points of reference to guess distance, especially with whispers, but it couldn’t have been more than twenty yards.

What was to the right?

The sound told her. The soft hiss of the waterfall. That’s where Hecate was going. She remembered that metal panel in the back. A door or access panel. Grace was willing to bet a lot on it being a door.

She adjusted her course, feeling ahead for the terrain. She found a line of small rocks and recognized them as stones that lined the path used by the groundskeeping staff. Perfect.

“—give me a second—”

It was a snatch of a comment and Grace froze. Whoever said it couldn’t have been more than a dozen feet in front of her. She drew her pistol and listened.

“—here it is!” whispered Hecate. “There’s a release right under the—”

Grace fired in the direction of the voice. She knew that her first shot would probably miss, but the muzzle flash would show her where to put the second shot.

After the absolute darkness the flash was eye-hurtingly bright, but it froze a picture in her mind. The back of the waterfall. Hecate reaching up under the overhang of moss, her lithe body stretching. Cyrus behind her, his fist clutched around something that hung from a lanyard around his neck. Otto Wirths in the foreground, bent in the direction of the panel.

A flash image. There and gone.

Grace smiled and squeezed off five more shots.

She heard a scream.

And then the wall five feet to her right exploded, showering her with debris. A chunk of rock the size of a fist struck her on the side of her shoulder, and her last shot was high and wide.

Grace fell over and her gun vanished into the darkness.

A moment later Hecate slammed into her, snarling and spitting with insane rage, grabbing her arms with insane strength.

“You fucking bitch!” snarled Hecate as she drove Grace Courtland into the dirt. They rolled over and over again through the darkness, tumbling sideways down the hill away from the waterfall, colliding with rocks and smashing through plants. Hecate snarled continuously and Grace could feel hot spittle on her face and throat. The woman was enormously strong, her fingers like iron bands crushing into Grace’s arms with enough force to crush skin and muscle.

Grace jammed a forearm under Hecate’s chin to keep those sharp white teeth away from her throat. With her other hand she shoved back on the woman’s shoulder, trying to create space. Grace twisted to bring her knee up between them, using the long thighbone as a strut to separate them.

What the hell was she fighting? Had this mad bitch used her own genetic science on herself? Everything about Hecate provoked an image of one of the big fighting cats. Hecate even hissed like a panther.

Hecate suddenly let go of Grace’s arms and grabbed her throat. It was like being crushed by a vise. All at once Grace was unable to breathe.

Grace stopped pushing on Hecate’s shoulder and immediately hit her in the face—once, twice, again, pounding on the side of Hecate’s cheek and eye socket. The pressure eased by a tiny fraction. Grace dragged in a spoonful of air, but then Hecate tightened her grip, overlapping her thumbs to try to crush the windpipe. Grace pressed her chin down on the thumbs, forcing them against her sternum to slow the choke while continuing to hammer at Hecate. She cupped her palm and slapped Hecate over the ear.

Instantly Hecate howled in pain and toppled sideways. Grace pivoted on the floor and kicked out with both feet, catching Hecate on the hip and stomach, driving her farther away. Grace didn’t want to escape; she needed to breathe and reorganize. She spun around and came up into a crouch.

OTTO WIRTHS TORE away the decorative vegetation and ran his hands over the panel. The moss had hidden four wing nuts and Otto grabbed the first one and tried to twist it. It resisted and he growled in fury and frustration—and then it moved. He spun it around and around until it reached the end of the thread and fell away.

“Hurry!” Cyrus urged. “They’re breaking through the wall.”

“I am hurrying, damn it.” Otto attacked the second one, which was stuck just as firmly as the first. “What about Hecate?”

Cyrus was invisible beside him. He said, “She’ll catch up.”

The second wing nut began to turn. “And if she doesn’t?”

“We have a large family, Otto.”

Otto dropped the second wing nut and began turning the third. That one was looser and it yielded immediately. The fourth was harder, but he threw all of his strength at it and the nut turned.

“Otto . . . ,” Cyrus hissed. “I hear something. . . .”

THERE WAS A second and much bigger explosion and debris flew outward into the chamber. A jagged piece of stone whistled through the air and struck Grace on the side of the head and she spun and fell facedown on the grass and did not move.