“Then get out there and shoot back. Just leave me alone so I can save our asses.”

“Okay, okay.”

He headed for the door in a crouch, then crawled out onto the deck.

Taking a deep breath, Semelee pressed the shells over her eyes and went searchin for some chew wasps…

8

“We’re not doing a whole helluva lot of damage with these things,” Dad said after they’d watched the latest grenade sail through the air and explode off the bow of theBull-ship .

Jack had to agree. He would have thought that something that small and weighing almost a pound wouldn’t get tossed around by the wind. But this was no ordinary wind. He’d tried compensating for it by adjusting his throw but the trouble was you couldn’t wing these things like a baseball; you had to lob them, and the wind kept changing direction.

“We’ve caused some hurt, though.”

“Not enough,” Dad said, his expression grim. “After what they did to Anya, they…” He swallowed and shook his head. “They shouldn’t be allowed to live.”

“I don’t think we’ll be able to kill all twenty guys.”

Dad gave him a strange look. “I said they shouldn’t be allowed to live. I didn’t say we should do the killing.”

Oops. “Oh. Guess I misunderstood.”

“You’re scaring me, Jack.”

“Sometimes I scare myself.”

Just then Jack heard something that sounded like a scream. He looked over toward Carl but couldn’t find him in the dark. Then lightning flashed and he saw him rolling on the ground as he fought something that had clamped onto his right shoulder. Jack couldn’t get a good look at it, but whatever it was, it wasn’t alone. More of them were lifting out of the cenote and weaving toward Carl. The one that had him was too close for Carl to shoot at, so he was using the shotgun as a bat. But Jack could see that he wasn’t getting anywhere.

He slapped his father on the back. “Stay here and keep firing at the boats. Keep them pinned down. When you reload, forget the slugs and fill up on shot. I think we’re going to need it.”

“Where are you going?”

“Carl needs a little help.”

Rising to a crouch, Jack pulled the Ruger from under the poncho and ran through the rain. Lightning flashes lit the scene, and as he neared Carl and got a better look at what was attacking him, it almost stopped him in his tracks. The thing clinging to his shoulder had the head and saber-toothed jaws of a viper fish, the shelled body of a lobster on steroids, and two pairs of long, diaphanous wings. Another of its kind was gliding in for its own piece of Carl.

Jack stopped, knelt, took aim with the Ruger and fired. He scored a hit. The big Casull slug tore into the flying thing, leaving only a spray of greenish blood and a pair of still-flapping wings. Then Jack leaped next to Carl, rammed the Ruger’s muzzle against the eye of the thing chewing on him, and pulled the trigger. This time, not even the wings remained.

Carl groaned. “It hurts, Jack!” His left hand was covered with blood where it clutched his shoulder through the shredded poncho. “Oh, God, it hurts!”

Jack took only a quick look, wincing at what looked like exposed bone and a dozen crystalline teeth still buried in the ragged flesh, then turned back to the cenote. Three more of the things were up and coming their way. He grabbed the Benelli and started firing. The semiautomatic action let him get off four shots quickly. They weren’t all direct hits but the shot tore up the wings of the ones it didn’t dismember.

“Where are your shells?” Jack shouted.

Carl jutted his chin toward a box on the ground. His teeth were bared in agony. He seemed in too much pain to speak.

Jack started reloading the Benelli’s magazine. If he’d known he’d be facing these things he would have had Abe send down flechette rounds.

“Think you can walk?”

Carl nodded.

“Okay, then. Get over to where my dad is. I’ll cover you from the rear.”

Spreading out had been a good idea against the clan, but it meant certain death against these things. Time to circle the wagons.

“It’s Semelee,” Carl gritted as he lurched to his feet. “She’s controllin them.” Then he staggered off.

Jack turned back to the cenote and found half a dozen more of the things hovering over the opening in a cluster. He ducked behind a palm trunk and fired once into their center, knocking down two. They fell into the abyss but were replaced by four more.

Jack felt his stomach knot. This wasn’t good. He hadn’t brought enough ammo. But he’d brought his father and Carl. That made him responsible for them.

In the background he heard his father firing methodically, rhythmically, at the boats.

Save some of that ammo, Dad, he thought. We’re gonna need it.

And now another four joined the flock. But they didn’t swarm his way…their movements were sluggish and they didn’t seem to know he was there. They milled about, looking confused. What were they waiting for? Reinforcements?

If more were coming up from the cenote, maybe Jack could ambush them along the way. He unclipped a grenade from his belt—only a couple left—pulled the pin, and lofted it toward the cenote. It passed through the swarm and down into the opening. A few seconds later he saw a flash, heard a boom, but that was it. The ones fluttering over the hole didn’t even react.

If this were a movie likeRio Bravo , he’d stumble onto a crate of dynamite, conveniently left behind by a construction company, and use it to seal the cenote. But this was Jack’s world, not Howard Hawks’s. Things never seemed to work out that way for him.

He heard a scream behind him and recognized the voice this time: Carl again. He looked around and saw him staggering in a circle at the water’s edge. One of those things had its fangs buried in the back of his neck…and it was chewing…

Where’d that one come from?

Jack leaped to his feet and took off on a run. He couldn’t use the shotgun without hitting Carl too, so he pulled the Ruger. But before he could use it, Carl pitched over backward into the water.

That wasn’t all bad. The cenote thing didn’t seem to like water. It loosed it’s grip and buzzed back into the air, banking and gliding toward Jack. He already had the Ruger up. He waited until it was close, then fired at it head on. It dissolved in an explosion of green. As its wings fluttered to the ground, Jack dropped the Benelli and the Ruger and jumped into the water to help Carl, who wasn’t doing too well.

The water was waist deep and cool, its surface churning and bubbling from the wind and rain. The muddy bottom was slippery and sloped off on a steady decline. A bullet whizzed by, then another. Someone on theHorse-ship had spotted them. Jack heard Dad’s Mossberg boom, then a cry from the boat, and the bullets stopped coming.

“Carl!” Jack shouted as he leaned forward and stretched out his arm. “Give me your hand!”

Carl, with his poncho floating around him like a lily pad, thrashed and splashed and kicked his way shoreward. Jack grabbed his outstretched left hand and began hauling him in.

Suddenly Carl was jerked back. He let out a scream of pain and Jack was barely able to hold on to him as something pulled him back toward the center of the lagoon.

“Oh, my leg!” he wailed. “My leg! It’s Dora! She’s got me! Don’t let her have me, Jack!”

“I won’t, Carl.”

He started sobbing. “I don’t wanna die, Jack. Please don’t let her—”

And then his head plunged below the surface. Jack tried to dig in his heels but the bottom was too slippery. Another powerful tug pulled Jack forward so hard he went face first into the water. He was only under for a few seconds, but during that time he lost his grip on Carl’s hand. His feet found the bottom and he stood again, shaking the water from his face and eyes. He was shoulder deep now.

“Carl!”

Nothing. No reply, nothing but empty, wind-and rain-swept water stretching before him. He shouted the name again and thought he saw a hand break the surface and claw the air maybe fifty feet away. But it was there for only a second—if it was there at all—and then it was gone.