Quest For The Queen's Temple: Rick and Rose Sinclair Adventure #1 by Russell James

Author:Russell James [James, Russell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2022-06-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

Rick’s torch crashed to the floor and the impact extinguished it. Then, as if that sound was the signal, the entire colony exploded from the ceiling in a chorused flap of leathery wings.

Rick had always hated bats. Damn things were creepy as hell with pointed faces and demonic ears and wings that looked like dead skin stretched over bones. People always claimed they were harmless. The colony on the ceiling proved them all wrong once and for all.

He ducked down to one knee with his arm wrapped around Rose’s shoulder. This close to the floor, he finally placed the awful stink they’d been inhaling. A thick carpet of bat crap covered the room. He choked back vomit at the thought.

The bats were huge, with wing spans of over six feet. They filled the air like a tornado of beating, black skin. High-pitched chirps filled the room as the bats’ echolocation searched for prey.

One of the handlers without a torch panicked. He ran for the doorway and perceived safety of the long climb out of the pyramid. But before he’d left the circle of light the torches radiated, a bat dove on him and drove him to the ground. He screamed as the bat bit into his neck. Then the creature ripped the man’s head from his body. A blast of blood sprayed the bat and then the corpse went still.

The group retreated into a tight, outward facing circle. Everyone with a torch began to swing it wildly at the swarm of bats. Occasionally flames licked the tip of a wing and sent a bat screeching up to the ceiling to lick its wound.

Finn drew his pistol and fired into the swarm. The blast reverberated inside the room. Instead of scaring off the bats, it sent them into an even greater frenzy.

Rick pressed Finn’s pistol down until it pointed at the ground. “Stop! The flames are too bright for them to see us, but they can hunt by sound.”

The swirl of bats contracted around the group. The men made ever more desperate thrusts and parries with the torches. Some jabs sent a bat screaming away to the ceiling, but other bats took their place and the writhing leather noose around the group kept tightening.

Rick remembered something he’d read that happened in a town in Texas, something that might save them all.

He pulled Arjun and Rose to him. “No time to explain. Get down and sweep the floor clean around the group. Hurry.”

The two dropped to their hands and knees and began to brush all the guano droppings across the floor with their hands. Rick bent and cleared a space around the colonel’s boots as the man swept his torch through the air. The colonel looked down at him in confusion.

“What the devil are you doing down there?” he said.

“Saving our lives.”

The handler beside Rick executed a sloppy swing with his torch at a swooping bat. He missed and the passing bat ripped a chunk of flesh from the man’s arm. He fell to his knees.

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