Bishop pushed up hard and felt the bone golems clinging to his back fall away. He struck out to his right, sweeping his thick arm in a wide arc. The impact drove the skeletons back, tripping them up. Then a group of them fell away, disappearing into the pit. With his fear confirmed he shouted, “The pit is open again!”

Making no effort to fight the reanimated dead, Bishop chose to simply charge through them. He hunched his shoulder forward and ran to where he’d last seen Queen. Like an NFL linebacker playing against a Pee Wee League team, he barreled through the mass of bodies and dove forward. The effect was immediate. Bodies fell away or fell to pieces under his weight. He stopped above Queen, tossed aside the golem on top of her, and pulled her to her feet.

In a blur of movement Queen lobbed something over his head. He tried to track and identify it, but it disappeared into the sea of golems on the other side of the chamber. Her next words told him exactly what it was.

“Fire in the hole!” she shouted.

A grenade.

Bishop turned away and saw Queen laying on the floor, curled into a ball, her back toward the impending blast. She had her hands over her ears, her eyes clenched shut, and her mouth open, ready for the contained blast. But with all the stone and bones filling the room, shrapnel could tear her apart. He moved to cover her with his body, but was too slow.

A deafening explosion filled the ceremonial chamber before Bishop could take cover. He was thrown into the air and smashed against the stone wall. He growled in pain, but before the dust had even begun to settle, the ringing and pain in his ears faded. The shrapnel in his flesh popped out and the wounds healed. He looked for Queen.

She was on her knees, shaking her head with a stunned look on her face, but she appeared to be unharmed. Still, she could have been shredded to bits.

“You should have let me cover you,” he said.

Queen stood, looking slightly offended. “You might be Superman, Bish, but I sure as shit am not Lois Lane.”

Bishop grinned and said, “Copy that.” Queen might not be able to heal, but she knew her limits, and how to survive. She did not want, or need, a protector.

She coughed from the foul air, removed her bandanna, and tied it around her mouth. “Where’s Knight?”

“Went after Ridley.”

That’s when the chamber ceiling, buried beneath hundreds of feet of jungle and the world’s largest pyramid, shook. Something massive had struck the surface above. Queen and Bishop charged up the stairs and into the tunnel, knowing that Ridley had most likely conjured something much stronger than golem skeletons. And whatever it was, Knight would be facing it alone.

Chapter Fifty-Six

FIFTY-FIVE

Wiltshire, England