The Demon Crown

  In the meantime, Palu’s cousins would slowly motor their catamaran farther out, pretending to be leaving in order to ease any suspicion.

  As Gray headed toward the island, he kept an eye on the others, which was hard to do, due to the distractions below. Through the night-vision scopes, the single UV beam ignited the surrounding reefs into an electric kaleidoscope of fluorescent colors. It was as if everything in the sea had instantly evolved its own bioluminescence. Stony coral shone in hues of aquamarine and crimson. Anemones waved incandescent fronds of yellow and lime-green. Runnels of crimson traced the black spines of urchins. A lobster stalked past, shining as brightly as a lamp, while ahead, a manta ray glided at the edge of the glow, leaving behind a shimmering wake before it vanished into the dark.

  Despite the wonder of it all, Gray forged ahead.

  Occasionally other sights appeared, unnatural objects to this landscape: a ship’s anchor half-swallowed by coral growth, a new reef formed by the skeletal remains of an old World War II–era plane, even the barrel of an old bow gun poked out of the sand. They were all ghostly reminders of the fierce Battle of Midway, fought across these islands after Pearl Harbor.

  As Gray continued, these sights fell away, vanishing into the darkness behind him. Even the hillocks of coral disappeared, replaced with sand. Soon the seabed began to rise under him, forcing him upward.

  They had reached the shallows surrounding the island.

  Gray clicked off both his light and the ScubaJet. The world collapsed around him, fading to a monochrome world of dull grays. As he swam onward, he used his compass and GPS to guide him the last of the way to the proper coordinates along the shoreline. He motioned for the others to stay underwater, while he rose and scoped the crumbled wall of rock beyond a thin strand of beach.

  A darker shadow marked a cave, the one Palu had told him about, where the man’s ancestors had once sheltered while fishing and hunting among these remote islands.

  With no alarm raised at his bobbing presence, he waved for the others to follow and headed to shore. They all clambered out of the water, shedding tanks and vests, and carried their gear in a low hustle into the shadows of the cave. They kept their wetsuits on. The drab black covering could help with camouflage.

  “That was amazing,” Ken gasped breathlessly, still staring out to sea.

  “But now comes the hard part,” Gray warned, as he huddled with the group. “The old Coast Guard station lies a mile due west. We have to assume they’ll be watching the neighboring coast and immediate area. Our best approach will be to haul our gear over the neighboring hills to reach the eastern edge of the inland lake.”

  “We call it Make Luawai,” Palu whispered, his back to the group. “Means Deadly Well.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Kowalski mumbled.

  Palu shrugged. “Just means the water is very salty. Bad to drink.”

  The Hawaiian stood at the rear of the cavern. A moment ago, after getting an okay from Gray, Palu had flicked on a lighter, shielding the tiny flame with his palm. The soft glow illuminated a scatter of petroglyphs across the back wall. Stick figures with prominent triangular chests had been carved into the stone. Some sat in crude silhouettes of canoes, while others ran across the rock with fishing spears in hand. Dispersed among them were random concentric circles, along with renditions of fishes and sea turtles.

  Palu’s back was hunched with sorrow.

  Kowalski stood next to the big man’s shoulder and suddenly jabbed a finger at a petroglyph, his voice far too full of pride. “Look, a whale!”

  “Koholā, brah,” Palu said, smiling, clearly snapping out of his melancholy. “That’s our name for ’em. Be respectful. It is my family’s aumakua, our personal god.” He puffed out his chest, thumping a palm there. “Maybe because all us keikikaneare grow so big.”

  Kowalski turned, bumping his head on the cave’s roof. He rubbed his skull. “Maybe I better make Cola my god, too.”

  “Koholā,” Palu corrected.

  “Got it. Cola.”

  “Close enough, brah.”

  Gray waved the two men over and finalized their plan. “Once we reach the lake, we’ll proceed underwater again. Only this time we’ll be swimming entirely dark.”

  He glanced over to Ken and Aiko to make sure they were comfortable.

  Both nodded, though Ken looked scared.

  Can’t blame him.

  Gray rose out of the huddle. “Hopefully we can get close enough to figure out what the hell is going on here.”

  Seichan straightened next to him—then clutched her left side, visibly wincing.

  He caught her elbow. “You okay?”

  “Just a muscle cramp.” She shook her arm free. “That’s all.”

  Worried, Gray glanced to Ken, who looked even more scared now.

  FIRST INSTAR

  The cream-colored larva burrowed blindly through muscle. Its ten segments were barbed with spines, allowing it to corkscrew through sinew and fat. It was in no hurry as it feasted on blood and tissue. Muscular contractions of its pharynx extruded sharp chitonous mouth parts. It bit a chunk and swallowed the meal into its midgut, which was already full.

  Only hours after bursting forth from an egg—one of several larvae packed inside there—it had already grown tenfold in size. It now stretched half a millimeter in length. Sensory nets in its elastic skin responded to the rapid growth. Hormones surged through its body. A new layer of skin had begun to form beneath the old, readying for the molt to come—which would allow it to grow tenfold yet again.

  But first it needed more sustenance: sugar for the energy to drill deeper, protein to expand its length, fat as storage for what was to come.

  Its hunger was insatiable and bottomless.

  As it bored deeper, spines tore open a capillary. Blood bathed its segments. Spiracles along its sides drew oxygen from the hemoglobin, setting fire to its drive. Refueled, it burrowed onward, blind but not senseless.

  In its wake, it exuded droplets, a trail of chemicals.

  Some contained antimicrobials, meant to keep its macerated path from getting infected.

  The meal must live.

  Those same droplets also delivered biochemical messages into the host’s bloodstream. It used the body’s ready-made network of vessels to send information to other larvae who feasted elsewhere, both to coordinate their molts and to stake out territory.

  But most important, such a communication warned of areas that were off-limits.

  The nerves in its soon-to-shed skin responded to sound, to the heavy thudding of a muscle that kept their host alive. The sound, persistent and regular, reverberated through the tissues.

  The four thousand larvae responded to millennia-old instincts to shirk from its source, to not feed from that deep sonorous well.

  The meal must live.

  The larva reacted and drilled away from that thumping beat. As it chewed deeper, a section of its segments brushed against a thin nerve. Electrical contact contracted the muscles on that side. The larva twisted its length away from that charge. All the while, its body also continually responded to a similar stimulation, one far larger.

  Great waves of electrical potential wafted through the host, sweeping down from above.

  Again, the larvae knew to ride that tide away from its source for the simplest of reasons.

  The meal must live.

  With its path laid out, it continued, delving ever deeper.

  Then, as barbed spines ripped another capillary, a new biochemical warning arrived. Other larvae had detected a second muscular fluttering in its host, one different from the deep thudding. The same spot also cast out tiny waves of neurological activity.

  The larva—like all the others—obeyed this new message and drifted away from that region, driven by millennia-old instructions in its genetic code.

  Its goal was simple and ancient, driven by rudimentary imperatives.

  Eat and grow . . .

  Along with . . .

>   The meal must live.

  But that last instruction was only for now.

  20

  May 8, 2:08 P.M. EEST

  Tallinn, Republic of Estonia

  Kat crouched over the body of Director Tamm. Hot blood seeped between her fingers as she did her best to stanch his neck wound. Though unconscious after hitting his head on the stone floor, he still breathed.

  But for how much longer?

  His daughter, Lara, remained stiff-backed with shock.

  Sam stood in front of Elena, shielding her from the bloody sight while he tried to phone for help. A volley of rounds pelted the thick door, pinging off bands of iron on the outside. From the distinct lack of pistol blasts, the attackers’ weapons must be equipped with silencers.

  “Can’t get a signal,” Sam said, holding his phone higher.

  Kat considered this fact. The thick stone walls could be blocking the connection.

  Or else someone’s jamming communication.

  She looked at the door.

  Either way, these were not simple thieves.

  The shooting suddenly stopped, which was more disconcerting than the pinging. She had to imagine the assailants had come prepared to blow their way inside.

  Monk must have had the same concern, his brow furrowing deeply. He still braced the door. He had levered down a latch to secure it, but the mechanism looked more decorative than anything, crafted to match the room’s medieval décor.

  Her husband’s gaze swept the room. “Where’s a secret passageway when a guy needs one?”

  Kat weighed the odds of reinforcing the door by pushing the heavy library table against it and holding the fort until help arrived. She dismissed it, knowing the plan would certainly doom Director Tamm and likely only get more people killed.

  Gotta be another way . . .

  Both Kat and Monk had holstered sidearms—SIG Sauer P226s—under their light jackets, but a firefight across the library could end with the same result.

  She looked across to the room’s lone window. She had glanced out it earlier. It overlooked a sheer seven-story drop to an employee parking lot. The building’s exterior, though, was limestone bricks with mortar set deep enough for decent finger holds. Two stories down, a thin decorative ledge circled the building.

  She calculated the odds.

  Maybe with Monk’s help . . .

  Her husband noted the direction of her attention. When she turned to face him, he easily read her plan.

  “It’s insane,” he said, “but that’s one of the reasons I married you.”

  2:10 p.m.

  Elena huddled with Lara under the library table. Next to them, Sam hunched over Tamm’s slack body. He had taken over for Kat and had a wadded handkerchief pressed against the director’s neck wound. The cloth was already soaked with blood.

  We’re running out of time.

  Kat must have noted the same but for a different reason. The woman straightened from where she had her ear against the latched door. “I can hear them doing something out there.”

  “Probably planting charges to blow the hinges,” Monk warned. He crouched in a corner, struggling to lift an antique suit of armor.

  “Then let’s go,” Kat said. She rushed from the door and retreated along one side of the table.

  Monk finally shouldered his burden and barreled past on the other side. The pair converged on the lone window at the back. As Monk reached the table’s end, he grunted loudly.

  A splintering crash followed.

  Though she couldn’t see much from where she hid, Elena pictured the suit of armor shattering through the window and sailing in a long swan dive down to the parking lot far below.

  “Hurry!” Kat urged as she joined her husband.

  Through the broken window, bright music flowed into the room, rising up from the festival under way in Tallinn’s Old Town. The cheery notes were a sardonic counterpoint to the danger they were all in.

  “Go, go, go . . .” Kat yelled.

  A pair of loud blasts made Elena jump. She twisted around to peer past the chair legs toward the door. Smoke blew toward her as shards of shattered wood pattered the tabletop. A piece of twisted metal shot across the stone floor, bouncing like a skipped stone over water.

  With the hinges blown off—as Monk had anticipated—the massive door fell into the room. It slammed hard and rattled once before settling to a stop. Boots pounded across it. Four men entered and spread out.

  Elena dropped to her belly and glanced back to the window.

  She spotted Monk’s hand clamped to the lower sill. His fingers shifted, doing their best to grasp a firmer hold.

  She wasn’t the only one to spot the desperate movement.

  Shouts erupted, both in Japanese and maybe Arabic.

  Two of the masked men broke from the others. Flanking either side of the table, they rushed the window.

  Elena covered her head, knowing what was coming. She imagined the looks of surprise when the two only discovered a disembodied hand grasped there.

  Even though it was expected, the explosion made her gasp. Monk had warned them of the fail-safe built into his prosthesis, a packet of C4 hidden under the palm. The force of the blast tossed the two men’s bodies across the room. The entire table shifted forward two feet. Chairs tumbled across the floor. Books and papers flew high.

  Without waiting for the dust to settle, Monk and Kat fired from where they hid atop the bookshelves to either side. The pair had counted on the broken window and the earlier splintery crash to draw the attackers’ focus.

  It appeared to have worked.

  Caught in the pair’s crossfire, the remaining two masked men crumpled to heaps by the crashed door.

  Monk and Kat dropped together to the floor, landing at the same time. Like a choreographed dance, they raced through the chaos to the door, moving in perfect step. They paused in unison at the threshold, then rolled into the hallway, guarding both ways and each other.

  As the ballet ended, Kat leaned back into view. “Clear. Let’s go.”

  Elena crawled forward, while Sam reluctantly passed his duty to Tamm’s daughter.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

  Elena touched Lara’s arm. “We’ll get a medical team up here right away.”

  It was all they could do. She hated to abandon the young woman, but Kat had warned them that if any other assailants were in the area—in the lobby or outside—their continuing presence risked more deaths.

  They had to leave.

  But not by the front door.

  Elena clutched Lara’s staff badge by its lanyard. It would allow them to access the library’s book elevator at the other end of the hallway. The plan was to drop down to the basement level and exit through the employee parking lot, where hopefully no one was watching.

  As Elena fled with Sam at her side, she cast one glance back at the smoky ruins of the room. She ignored the pools of blood, the broken bodies. Her eyes fixed on the handful of fiery pages fluttering down.

  It was all that was left of Smithson’s legacy here.

  All gone.

  She turned away and ran after Kat, who took the lead with her husband trailing them all. She clutched the pair of crucifixes hanging from her reading glasses, one for each of her granddaughters. She prayed that the next steps along Smithson’s trail were not so bloody.

  Still, she held out little hope.

  2:44 P.M.

  Back out in the bright afternoon, Kat led her group through the crowded heart of Old Town. Music blared, hawkers shouted from streetside shops, children danced around legs. Laughter abounded, some drunken, others in good cheer.

  The bloodshed and mayhem at the library seemed nothing more than a bad nightmare. No one at the festival seemed to have noted the commotion, likely due to the fact that the explosions and gunfire had erupted at the back of the hulking building. The only signs of the prior chaos were distant sirens closing in on the National Library.

  Kat had alerted authorities as
soon as the group had reached the basement and discovered their phones worked again. She also informed the handful of library staff found there about the director’s condition. She asked them to help Lara with her father. Suspicion shone in their eyes at the sudden arrival of this clutch of strangers into their midst, but the pistol in Kat’s hand had discouraged any probing questions.

  Once outside, she had headed immediately for the bustle of the festival. She knew better than to return to their parked sedan, knowing it might be watched. Plus the crowds and commotion in the narrow streets and alleys should hopefully confound anyone tracking them.

  For now, putting distance between them and the library was the priority. After that, she would make arrangements to rendezvous with their private jet.

  She glanced at her phone’s GPS map to make sure they didn’t get lost in the maze of medieval streets. She pointed to the next left turn. “That way.”

  She turned to make sure the others heard her.

  Sam and Elena nodded, both far paler than normal.

  She had been pushing them hard.

  Beyond them, Monk caught her eye. He must have noted the pair’s condition, too. He silently warned her that the two researchers were reaching their limit.

  She nodded back.

  Time to get out of this labyrinth, find a taxi, and head to the airport.

  Distracted and worried, she ignored the motorcycle cruising through the crowd. It was not an unusual sight. Only bikes, Vespas, and tiny European two-seaters dared the narrow, cobbled streets of Old Town.

  Still, as she swung away, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. She had learned long ago to trust this warning, when her body sensed a threat before her mind registered it. The cycle carried two riders, both helmeted, their faces obscured. But these were no festivalgoers; their entire body language read military.