Bone Rider (38 page)

The four of them set out into the tunnels as soon as Riley was up and moving again, which was much sooner than Andrej had expected and later than was probably smart, given the sounds drifting down from above. Andrej went first because he had J.C.’s cheat sheet, Kolya in the middle, and Misha and Riley brought up the rear. Kolya had wanted to go last, but Riley had given him a look and said simply, “I make a better shield,” and Kolya had blinked and nodded and followed Andrej without any more argument.

They walked in silence for a few minutes, trying to get used to the absolute darkness beyond the beams of their flashlights and failing.
This could’ve been an adventure
, Andrej thought mournfully, with J.C. at his side telling stories and Misha tagging along complaining about the cold. It could’ve been
fun
. There was little entertainment value in running for one’s life, though, and he didn’t even know whether J.C. was still alive. If he wasn’t, it’d be Andrej’s fault. He’d brought them here; even though he hadn’t known what kind of hell followed with them, it had been his idea to seek out J.C. His responsibility. He’d probably gotten one of his best friends killed and he didn’t even know for what. It made him break the silence between them, ask the question that had been echoing through his mind.

“So what are you?” His voice sounded strange in the empty tunnel, flat and kind of hollow at the same time. “Some kind of mutant? Military experiment? Time-traveling robot?”

“Picked up a hitchhiker on the road to El Paso.” Riley’s answer was a faded rasp, still rough around the edges from all the screaming he’d done. “Of the extraterrestrial kind.”

The glow of the electric lantern Kolya was holding bounced and spun when he turned around to face Riley, walking backward as if the floor wasn’t uneven and littered with stones.
Freaking ninja
, Andrej thought affectionately.

“Aliens?” Kolya questioned, surprisingly skeptical for somebody who’d watched Riley absorb metal armor back into his skin just minutes before. “Seriously?”

“Strictly speaking, it’s an intelligent armor system,” Misha chipped in. “An alien one.”

Andrej’s fingers tightened around his flashlight. All of a sudden he was freezing, and it had nothing to do with the temperature underground. “You knew.”

“Not until Riley woke up.”

So Misha hadn’t really had a chance to inform Andrej before the shit had hit the fan. Andrej relaxed a little at that. No betrayal after all. No need-to-know bullshit. Hallelujah.

He checked the map again and took a left turn. The tunnel was leading down and looking less and less manmade; maybe that’d give their pursuers pause. According to J.C.’s map, it should be a shortcut that’d connect to the turquoise mine eventually. If they could get there, they could sneak out through one of the emergency exits, grab a car, and make their way back to civilization somehow. They might even get to check if J.C. was still alive. The not knowing was driving Andrej crazy. Like a cactus spine under his skin.

Not the time. Survival came first, so Andrej tried not to think too hard about J.C. or even about Riley’s story. The alien thing sounded crazy, but Andrej had seen what he’d seen and this explanation was as good as any and better than most. If they made it out of this alive—
when
they made it out of this alive—Andrej was going to sit Riley down and have a talk with him. Find out more about this alien armor. See if they could use it, if Riley would
let
them use it, now that he’d crossed the line himself. Now that he’d killed. Andrej also wanted to know if there were more E.T.s around or likely to drop in and he
very much
wanted to know whether they were friendly or hostile. He was already trying to think of a discreet way to ask how it worked, this weird partnership between Riley and his passenger. If it was a partnership at all or something different, something not quite as voluntary. If, maybe, Riley needed some help getting rid of it.

He glanced over his shoulder, but couldn’t make out much more than a single, lumbering shape in the gloom behind Kolya. Misha wasn’t normally the type to fuss, not since they’d been kids, but Riley’s scream and the sight of his injuries must’ve pretty much destroyed whatever walls Misha had built over the years and apparently his inner mother hen had made a successful bid for freedom. He was all but clucking over Riley. The only reason he wasn’t actually carrying the man was that Riley had threatened to head-butt him into oblivion if he tried.

“Is this permanent?” Andrej asked in Riley’s general direction.

“It is now, apparently,” Riley muttered, then tripped over Misha’s feet or his own, stumbled, and nearly went down face first. He swore colorfully. “Graceful killing machine, my ass.”

Kolya turned toward them again, and in the flickering neon light of his lantern Riley looked disgruntled and drained, focused on something neither of them could perceive. He bore an uncanny resemblance to the walking dead, pale and shuffling along like something animated by an outside force. Andrej wondered if he was going into shock. Riley had been holding up under the pressure admirably, but he’d just nearly been killed half a dozen times, and that had been before he’d almost torn himself in half slowing down that elevator. Most people would’ve been a shaking mess. Andrej opened his mouth to ask how Riley was doing, and then he noticed that there was something weird going on with the man’s eyes. They were covered with a thin, silvery membrane. You could still make out the dark shapes of his irises beneath, but only just. It was creepy as fuck.

Kolya didn’t seem too thrilled, either. “What the hell’s that?”

“What?” Riley asked, distracted.

“The eyes,” Kolya clarified with a little grimace of disgust. “What’s wrong with your
eyes
?”

“Light adjustment lenses,” Riley explained, then added, in a completely different tone, “Yes. Yes, this
is
a big deal. You said you wouldn’t.” He scowled. “I’m not having this discussion now. First we have to get out of this mess you got us into.”

“He’s not talking to us, is he?” Kolya asked.

Misha, who didn’t appear bothered by the eye thing, shook his head and got them all walking again with a gentle nudge. “He’s talking to McClane.”

“The alien,” Andrej verified. His wound hurt. His head ached. He would’ve given his right arm for a chance to rewind his life so he could intercept Kolya’s phone call and keep Misha in New Orleans and far away from Riley Cooper and his extraterrestrial stowaway. “He called the alien
McClane
. Like,
Die Hard
Bruce Willis McClane. And he’s talking to it. In his head.”

Misha gave him a look. “You need more proof?”

Andrej shuddered. “No, I’m good, thanks.”

At this rate, he was going to need therapy when this was over. He wondered if they had any good shrinks in Iceland.

W
HATEVER
else the entity was, Young was starting to suspect it was also part cockroach. The warhead they’d shot into the tunnel had taken out the elevator just fine—the pulley was so much scrap metal, the cables torn, the generator dead—but instead of three dead hostiles and a stunned alien, what they found at the bottom of the shaft was a fully intact elevator cab… an empty one at that. The marks on the wall told their own story. Young couldn’t help be impressed. The metal cage sitting neatly down there must’ve weighed more than a ton. But then that alien fucker had already shot down three helicopters with a handgun, so maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised. It was still working within the framework of ability Leandra Butler had drawn up, but it was definitely stretching the assumed limits. There was absolutely no doubt in Young’s mind that it was learning, and learning fast.

To make matters worse, they’d have to follow it and its armed escort down into an underground tunnel system without a map or guide. The captured survivalists had been about as cooperative as was to be expected, which was to say that when they weren’t quoting the Constitution left, right, and center, they were very convincingly playing dumb. Their leader had turned out to be ex-Special Forces, which explained the unusual level of organization, but unfortunately he was every bit as unhelpful as the rest of the lot. They’d also captured a bunch of suit-wearing, second-generation Russian immigrants: the few survivors of a larger group that had managed to bring down a helicopter without the assistance of the entity. They were scarily well trained and clearly much more afraid of their boss-lady’s aging bodyguard than of Young’s men. Young couldn’t blame them. The bastard had eyes like a shark.

Luckily, though Young couldn’t wait to find out how the Russians tied into all this, he didn’t need civilian assistance to root out his quarry. This time he’d come prepared: he’d brought MWDs
{13}
. The original idea had been to use the dogs to sniff out the alien in case it had switched hosts and tried to sneak out wearing a different face, but apparently the entity had decided to stick with its cowboy for the time being. Or maybe jumping from one body to another wasn’t quite as easy as they’d thought. Either way, the dogs would be able to pick up the scent and follow the critter and its supporters through the mines.

They lowered the two German Shepherds down the shaft once they had secured the area underground and they went nuts about halfway down, almost exactly where the claw marks started. Their handlers had a hard time getting them to calm down, which was saying something considering how well these animals were trained. The dogs couldn’t quite decide whether they wanted to run away from or chase after the alien, but with a little prompting, they got over their fear and set off into the darkness.

The soldiers followed.

T
HERE
were dogs after them now, their barking steadily growing louder, the tunnels were getting colder, and Riley was flagging. He still kept up with the fast clip Andrej was setting, but Misha could hear the carefully controlled cadence of his breathing and he kept having to reach out and steady Riley when he stumbled. Neither of them acknowledged the problem out loud. After a while Misha simply wrapped an arm around Riley’s waist and kept it there. Despite his earlier insistence that he could damn well walk on his own, Riley leaned into the support with a near soundless groan of relief. Misha pulled him closer, taking more of his weight, and Riley let him. Misha’s heart did that thing where it felt as though it was about to blow up with emotion like a pound of Semtex, unable to contain the maelstrom of love, pride, and fear Riley tended to inspire in him. This relationship shit was going to kill him one day.

They thought they’d gotten away with it, but the next time Andrej paused to consult J.C.’s cheat sheet, Kolya lifted his lantern to study Riley with narrowed eyes. Riley tried to look fine. Misha tried to look like he wasn’t holding him up.

Kolya fixed Misha with a hard stare. “Think carefully about what you’re going to say next.”

Yeah. No more lying to Kolya, not even by omission. Misha could be stupid sometimes, but he wasn’t a complete asshole. “He’ll need a break soon,” he admitted quietly.

Andrej lowered the map and joined them. He took one look at Riley and cursed. “Jesus, Cooper. You look like crap.”

The glare Riley leveled at him could’ve peeled paint off a wall. “I’m up and moving. What the fuck more do you want?”

He was trembling; fine tremors so subtle Misha wouldn’t have noticed them if he hadn’t been standing so close. Tension and exhaustion, and the cold sure as hell didn’t help, especially given the state of Riley’s shirt. Misha shifted his grip on Riley, fingers sliding over the bared skin on Riley’s back, and startled a bit when he felt something move under his hand. Under Riley’s
skin
. His fingers twitched away reflexively, but he made himself put them back immediately. McClane spared a moment to lick out of Riley’s body and nudge against Misha’s palm. It was a surreal sensation.

“I want to know what’s wrong with you. No bullshit,” Andrej snapped, finger out to poke at Riley’s chest.

Misha caught his wrist before he could make contact. “Back off,” he told his friend, but mildly. Andrej had had a shitty day too. “He stopped a freight elevator from crashing
with his body
. You think dislocated joints were the only damage he took?”

That made both Andrej and Kolya pause.

“Wait,” Kolya rumbled, eyes widening in realization. “How much damage?”

“Enough,” Riley admitted. “McClane’s working on it.”

Misha brushed a finger against Riley’s skin again, gently. “Tell me he took care of the pain.”

He must have, at least some of it, or Riley wouldn’t have been able to walk this far, but Misha needed to hear it. He’d never forget the feeling of Riley’s body snapping taut in his arms as he’d slammed up against the metal crossbeam, the shifting crunch of Riley’s shoulders popping from their sockets despite McClane’s best efforts to keep them in place, or the chilling suspicion that all that was holding Riley together by the time they made it down was the armor. All Misha had been able to do was help brace Riley and pray to God it’d be over soon and that McClane would be able to repair the injuries. Riley’s screams were going to haunt his nightmares for years to come, assuming they managed to survive that long.

They all jumped when the dogs started to bay again. They sounded closer than before, though it was hard to tell with the warped acoustics down here.

Riley glanced over his shoulder and winced. “I wouldn’t say no to drugs at this point, but it could be worse.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “We’re good to move.”

“Cool.” Kolya’s smile was every bit as tight-lipped as Riley’s, but it was real. “Tell us when you need help.”

“And tell us before your chest explodes,” Andrej muttered, “so we can shoot the alien babies when they pop out.”

Riley made a rude gesture. “McClane says, go fuck yourself.”

Kolya chuckled. “Let’s keep him.”

T
HEY
realized they’d taken a wrong turn somewhere when they walked around a corner and the ground suddenly slipped from under them. Andrej went first, disappearing with a yelp. Kolya dove after him with a curse, dropping his lantern to grab Andrej’s flailing hand. The lantern slid down a few yards, then snagged on a pale root just in time to provide Misha and Riley with a view of an open cavern and the sight of Andrej and Kolya tumbling down a steep slope. The slope wasn’t the problem. The problem was the black chasm at the end of it.