Dark Resurrection Read Online Free

one-eyed warrior could make out individual pinpoints of light from the upper story windows of the tallest buildings. At the edge of the city, a long pier jutted into the water; it was overlooked by a lighthouse.
    When the tug came within four hundred yards of the pier, Ryan saw it was packed end to end; thousands of people had assembled and were waiting for them to arrive. Another hundred yards closer and he could see that the overloaded dock was just the tip of the crowd, which stretched unbroken, back into the brightly lit city streets. There was no telling how far back it went. The throng was like a single entity, a vast amoeba-thing in constant, chaotic motion, only kept from spilling out in all directions by the building walls on either side. Between celebratory blasts of the ships’ horns, Ryan heard yelling and blaring fragments of music. The din got even louder as the tug pulled alongside the pier. The music—caterwaul singing backed by frenzied fiddle, drums and guitar—boomed down from loudspeakers mounted on the lamp posts.
    A sea of sweaty, brown faces greeted them.
    The wildly excited citizens of Veracruz waved Day-Glo-colored plastic pennants emblazoned with unintelligible symbols. They held ten times larger-than-life-size papier-mâché heads on long poles, which they jigged up and down. Some of the paper sculptures had flat noses, ornate headdresses and leering mouths lined with cruel fangs. The colors were bizarre instead of lifelike—glistening green or pink skins, pointed black tongues, insane red and purple eyes withyellow pupils. Ryan strained to read the words written across their neckplates: Atapul the First; Atapul the Second; and so on, up to Atapul the Tenth.
    They were names, he figured.
    Ryan had no clue what the stylized images represented, whether they were gods or barons, but the meaning of some of the other sculpted faces was all too apparent. Bobbing in front of him on pikes were gigantic human heads with a ghastly bluish pallor, bleeding from nose, eyes and mouths. Cheeks and foreheads were speckled with red dots. Their expressions were fixed in rictus agony and terror.
    Plague masks.
    Plague like the one that had struck Padre Island.
    Mildred squeezed his arm hard to get his attention, then raised her manacled hands to point toward the landward, lighthouse end of the pier.
    There, not thirty yards away, on the end of a wooden pole, ten times life size, was Ryan’s own face, or a close approximation thereof. It was crudely rendered and painted, but all the pertinent details were there: the black eye patch, the scar that split his brow, the dark curly hair, the single surviving eye, the bearded cheeks, the square chin. The only difference was, the patch and scar had been reversed on the sculpture, as if he was staring into a mirror.
    There were more of the giant, eye-patch faces spaced here and there among the seething throng.
    “What the fuck?” Ryan said.

Chapter Two
    Harmonica Tom stood at the helm of Tempest, feathering the engine’s throttle to maintain a constant safe distance from the row of ship lights in front of him. He ran the forty-foot vessel blacked-out, as he had done every night for the last three weeks, every night since he’d escaped from Padre Island. Finding the pirate convoy after dark was a piece of cake for the seasoned skipper. The six target boats were always lit up, mast, bow and stern; this to help keep them from crashing into one another.
    During the day, Tom had to lay back in his pursuit for fear a crow’s-nest lookout would glimpse his mast tops astern. The last thing he wanted was for part of the fleet to peel off and double back to check out who was following its wake. The seagoing trader was sure they’d have no trouble recognizing Tempest: he’d already used it to kick their asses once. Unfortunately, he’d only managed to sink a single ship, while damaging two others. The fallback in pursuit meant he had to do some zigging and zagging to find