the giant reached for him uncounted minutes jagged switch backs pounding silence never saw what

ding silence never saw what tripped him so

Uncounted minutes—maybe another hour—passed as the natural tunnel proceeded in jagged switchbacks,
trending slowly downward. The tiny rasps of their footsteps sounded like an avalanche in the pounding
silence, and the blackness was a thick, suffocating presence all around them. Eric walked with his eyes shut
to keep them from straining against nothingness. He opened one briefly every several dozen steps to check
for light in the distance, but he never saw any.
He never saw what tripped him either.
One moment he was walking carefully along, mindful of his footing now that the path angled more
sharply downward; the next, his right foot dangled out over nothing as something angular and soft rammed
into his left ankle. All grace and balance vanished as he tumbled over the edge of an even steeper incline
and rolled at least a dozen yards down a rocky slope into a shallow pool of cold water. The fall and the shock
of sudden cold inspired a string of eloquent, echoing expletives.
“You okay?” Sly’s voice asked in the distance behind him. Jerk sounded like was smiling.
he was inhuman

Eric sat up on his hands and knees. “Just fine,” he growled. “Why don’t you—”
Something hissed behind him, and an explosion of white light filled the space. Eric turned and
immediately had to shield his eyes against the brilliance of two magnesium flares. He lurched backward,
splashing in the freezing-cold water, unable to see anything for a few seconds other than blinding white.
Three shapes surrounded and moved past that light, then spread out to close in on him just as the bullies
at Bill Skirnir’s diner had done. The fierce incandescence made his eyes ache, but he could see what was
going on well enough to realize he was in trouble. He’d rolled down a steep, crumbling stone incline into
a deep chamber with only one other way out. That exit was a tall, narrow tunnel from which four husky
taller and broader than any man

thugs in dirty coveralls had just emerged. One of the men held a white-hot flare in each gloved hand, and
the other three each carried heavy sledgehammers. To ward off the glare that was near to blinding Eric, the
four men were all wearing black welder’s masks with thin, tinted lenses to see through.
“It’s him!” the thug with the flares shouted over his shoulder toward the tunnel. “He’s here!”
Eric got to his feet as the armed men closed in and the one with the flares stayed back. He raised his fists
to defend himself, sloshing backward in the water that covered most of the chamber’s floor. The thugs gave
him just enough time to be glad Sly hadn’t stumbled down here himself, to simultaneously wish he had Sly
down here covering his back, and then to wonder how Sly had failed to trip over whatever had sent him
tumbling if Sly had been in the lead. Then the time for thinking was over.
The armed thugs rushed him all at once, two advancing from either side while the third charged him
straight ahead. The first two got to him at the same time and both swung their sledgehammers in overhead
arcs. Eric miraculously managed to grab each one by the haft, stopping them cold. The third guy tried to
capitalize on the fact that Eric’s arms were spread so wide, but Eric saw it coming and reacted in time.
With a mighty pull, he hauled the first two attackers off balance toward each other and stopped the third
guy’s overhand swing on the crossed hafts of the others’ weapons. When the first two attackers reflexively
tried to pull away, their hammers’ heads locked the haft of the other one perpendicular between
them, trapping the thug who’d swung it. Eric kicked that guy in the stomach as hard as he could,
sending him shooting backward across the chamber without his hammer. He slammed into the thug
with the flares, knocking that guy backward as well and making him drop the flares. The two men
crashed into the far wall together and slumped in a tangle of limbs. The blazing sticks splashed into the
water to set it hissing and bubbling furiously, but even being submerged couldn’t extinguish the burning
magnesium. The light from the flares rippled and twisted through the water, making shadows
writhe unnaturally.
With two men down, Eric let go of the other two thugs’ hammer hafts to grab the
head of the trapped hammer in one hand and its haft in the other. With a quick yank,
he twisted both weapons out of the two remaining thugs’ hands and found himself the

jared — the giant enormous shaped like a man