Blood Apprentice: An Elemental Legacy Novel

by Elizabeth Hunter

  He didn’t remember all the times his mother had used him to steal, how many wallets he’d stolen, or how often he’d slipped food or money in his pockets. He didn’t remember all the lies she’d told him. He never knew what was real or what was the truth.

  Or maybe he didn’t want to know.

  His mother told him she’d been an artist and an actress. She’d met the king of Lebanon and performed in an international dance company. She could sing; he remembered that. Her voice was the only angelic thing about her.

  She said she’d come to New York because a German count wanted to marry her, but when she arrived, she decided she didn’t want the life of a royal and so she cut the count loose, choosing to write her own story—mostly fictional—in the East Village of New York City.

  She was a grifter, Ben realized with the clarity of hindsight. And he suspected she was pretty good at it until she got drunk. After that, the lies started to fall apart.

  Why am I thinking about them?

  It was funny what the mind recorded. Ben didn’t remember the wounds his mother had given him as clearly, maybe because violence always carried a hint of surprise to him. No matter how many times his father raised his hand, Ben never expected the hit or the punch.

  But he did expect the lies.

  Everyone lied.

  Except his abuela.

  He watched the sky turn colors and the sun sink down into the ocean. He rose to his feet, waiting for the rush of awareness her presence brought.

  Everyone lies.

  Even her.

  Especially her.

  Then again, Ben had a bad habit of getting attached to women who lied.

  Tenzin flew ahead, leaving Ben to drive to the crater where the sinkhole had dropped the floor from under the forest. He’d drive as far as he could, then park the car and send up a flare so Tenzin could find him.

  After that, they’d cart the equipment through the forest and down the sinkhole, making camp where no one would see them. Then the search would begin.

  He drove from asphalt to gravel, gravel to mud. Rocking back and forth on rutted roads, Ben wondered if Tenzin was circling overhead or waiting patiently at the site.

  He was guessing the circling thing. She’d been as excited as a kid at Christmas when he’d tapped on her door at nightfall.

  Gold. That crazy little vampire really was nuts about it.

  “Hey, Cara.”

  His phone came to life from its perch on the dashboard.

  “How may I help you?”

  “Call Chloe.”

  “Calling… Chloe.” The line rang three times before she picked up.

  “Everything get there safe?”

  “Yep,” he said. “You’re the best.”

  “I know. I really am. So what’s the plan now?”

  “Find the stuff. Leave the island.”

  “So… home by the weekend then?”

  Ben smiled. “Yeah, for sure.”

  “Good. Then you’ll be able to see your aunt and uncle while they’re here.”

  Ben blinked. “Gio and B?”

  “Yep. Kind of a long story, but… they’re here for a while and they’re staying at the loft. I didn’t figure you’d mind.”

  “No, of course not.” Well, that was… weird. “Chloe, does this have anything to do with Gavin’s thing you didn’t want to talk about?”

  “Maybe?”

  That was a yes.

  “And you’re sure you can’t tell me what’s going on?”

  She sighed. “Very sure about that.”

  “Okay. Well…” What to say? “I guess just let me know what’s going on when you can.”

  Ben forced himself to remember that Gio and Gavin had been friends far longer than Gavin and Ben had been friends. It was hardly unusual for them to be involved in each other’s problems.

  “Tell me about the VICs,” she said quickly. “Anything weird?”

  “So many things,” he said. “But maybe not that weird for old vampires. They’re old and powerful and they like weird traditions like bowing and polygamy.”

  “You and your crazy shenanigans,” Chloe said. “Polygamist vampire royalty? What will you do to top this?”

  “I don’t know, maybe find some pirate treasure?”

  “Sounds like fun to me.” There was noise in the background. “Listen, I better go. Since your uncle is here, is there anything you need help with researchwise?”

  “I’ll let you know if I can think of anything. Keep in mind, where we’re going is pretty remote and we’ll be working underground. So don’t worry if you don’t hear from us for a while.”

  “Wait, what’s a while? Does your uncle know? Give me an idea of—”

  The phone cut off as Ben reached the top of a hill. He glanced at his phone.

  No connection.

  “And there we go,” he whispered. There wouldn’t be much more than hints of mobile service for miles. Hopefully Chloe wouldn’t worry. After all, he had Tenzin. What other protection did he need?

  The road stopped in a small clearing people clearly used for parking. There must be a trailhead nearby. Ben stopped the car and reached for the flare gun in the side compartment, hoping he’d gotten within a mile or two of the search site.

  Pointing the gun up, he fired.

  A bright arcing red flare shot into the darkness, startling birds from the trees. In a few moments, Tenzin appeared near the edge of the clearing, her hair tied back, wearing slim leggings and a fitted tank top again. He’d brought her coveralls for the cave but had no idea if she’d wear them or not.

  She was vibrating with energy. “Finally.”

  “How close did I get?”

  She walked over and opened the back of the Jeep. “About as close as you can get in this thing. You’re less than a mile from the crater.”

  “Cool.” He slung on the backpack he’d packed with personal items, then took stock of the boxes. “How many of these can you get?”

  Tenzin shrugged. “All of them. They’re not that heavy.”

  “You want me to just start hiking?”

  “Sure. I’ll bring the stuff. You have a note for the car?”

  “Yep.” Ben took out a note wrapped in a plastic bag. Out of gas. Be back soon. He tucked the note under the windshield and walked back. “Just lock it up when you’re done and we should be good.”

  “Okay.” She caught the keys and hoisted the first box with a smile. “See you when you get there. You have the coordinates?”

  Ben lifted his GPS in one hand and a map in the other. “I got it. See you there.”

  “See you.”

  The night was damp and a soft drizzle fell from the sky as Ben began his hike. He cut through the forest, watching for unstable ground. According to the hiking guide he’d found, this area was prone to mudslides and sinkholes.

  There wasn’t much of a trail, but the forest was more open than he’d expected. There was no cutting necessary, and most of the ground was damp but solid. They’d had rain two days before, but the days since had been dry and warm.

  Ben trudged in the darkness, his hand occasionally going to the knife at his waist. There weren’t a lot of large predators in Puerto Rico unless you counted the unusually high number of vampires on the island. He occasionally heard the sound of Tenzin flying overhead.

  Little troublemaker. If she weren’t so damn excited, he’d try to stay mad at her. Ben was still unconvinced that anything was in these caves. He had no way of gauging the accuracy of the map, nor did he have any confidence that no one on the island had discovered this cave in nearly three hundred years.

  And why had the Dominican buried it out here anyway? Was this really the best place to hide the treasure of Miguel Enríquez?

  Too many questions. Not enough answers. He hated going into jobs like this. They never went well.

  He ran into a wall of vegetation going up a small rise. He could see on the GPS that the sinkhole was just past it, so he got out the machete he’
d stored in his backpack and hacked. Fifteen minutes of steady work created a tunnel wide enough for him to squeeze through. He twisted his body through the vines and branches only to feel the ground fall away under his feet.

  “Shit!”

  He slid down a steep slope, his arms flung wide, trying to grab anything to stop the fall. He slid on his side, his backpack throwing him off-balance. His jacket tore and the grit and stones scratched his torso. Mud filled his mouth as he tried to yell for help. He glanced down the slope and saw a small tree rapidly approaching. It was near the edge of what looked like a cliff. Nothing but blackness spread out beyond it.

  Ben rolled toward the small tree. He reached for it, fingers catching and holding on just before he slid over the cliff. His body and backpack jerked to a stop. He gasped for air and tasted dirt and blood.

  He lay on the edge of the sinkhole, his mind and body reconnecting. Now that his momentum had slowed, he could scramble up the side of the slope. He struggled out of his backpack and stuffed it above the tree, then he sat up gingerly and pulled his jacket down over his scraped ribs.

  Ben tried to see what was in front of him, but he only got the vague impression of empty space and darkness. He reached into the front pocket of his backpack and withdrew the headlamp he should have been wearing before he slid down the hill.

  Of course, there was no guarantee he still wouldn’t have fallen, and then he would have lost the headlamp as well as his dignity.

  Flicking it on, he scanned the slope he was perched on. A steep angle, for sure, but not unmanageable if he hadn’t lost his footing. He needed to walk parallel to the edge and hope he could gradually work his way down. There had to be a way into the sinkhole that didn’t require ropes. They had them, but they were all in the boxes Tenzin was carrying.

  “Hey.” Tenzin appeared on the edge of his light, hovering above him. “What happened?”

  “A steep hill happened.” He struggled to his feet. “How do I get down to the bottom? How far is the bottom?”

  “The bottom?” She frowned and floated away from him. Then she put her legs down and stood. “You mean this bottom?”

  Ben walked to the edge where the tree had caught his fall and looked down.

  Four feet down, just past the light, was the dark, rocky bottom of the sinkhole.

  “Yeah.” He reached for his backpack and hopped down. “That bottom.”

  Tenzin walked beside him as he began to cross the uneven ground. “Should I not ever mention this again?”

  “Yeah, that would probably be a good idea,” he muttered. “Where’s the stuff?”

  “Just over here.” She skipped ahead. “I already set up lights in the cave. There’s a wide opening once you get past the first entrance if you want to set up a tent there.”

  “Let me look, because what you said makes no sense to me.”

  He was grumpy and tired and aching. His ribs hurt. He didn’t think he’d broken any, but they were definitely bruised. He just wanted to make camp and get some sleep. He’d explore the sinkhole crater in the morning.

  “Here.” Tenzin walked to the edge of a waterfall and crouched down. “This is the entrance I initially saw.” Then she stood and walked to the left, hopping down a tumble of rocks covered in moss. “But if you go in this side, there’s a natural ramp.”

  She brushed a fall of ferns away, and Ben followed her.

  “Look,” she said. “See what I mean?”

  Beyond the narrow opening covered by ferns was a short tunnel that sloped down to a wide cavern. It had been formed by water and time, a cave behind the falls that had formed where the sinkhole ended. Ben looked up and saw a sliver of stars through the sheer curtain of water. During the day, the sun would shine onto the edge of the cavern. At night, it created a hollow insulated from the wind.

  “Excellent.” He turned in place. The ground was rock, but there were parts of it that were smooth enough for a tent. The waterfall was too big to sleep next to without getting soaked, and he didn’t want to sleep in any of the three tunnels he saw branching off the main cavern. “If I set up here, we’ll be completely hidden from overhead.” Which was a good thing since wind vampires were a thing that existed. “The supplies?”

  Tenzin nodded to the entrance tunnel. “We’ll have to bring them in one box at a time. There’s not much room to fly down here.”

  Ben watched her. “And are you going to be okay with that?”

  Her eyes turned sharp. “Did I panic when we were meeting Los Tres?”

  “That cavern was bigger than this.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Are you ever going to tell me why you hate being underground so much?”

  Tenzin paused, and something about her expression made Ben wish he hadn’t asked.

  “I’m a wind vampire,” she said. “This isn’t my element. Come on. Let’s get the boxes moved in. You need to get some sleep.”

  13

  Ben woke in the dim light of his tent, his back resting on a thick air mattress that cushioned his body from the rock floor of the cavern. They’d set up camp the night before and settled into their respective shelters, Tenzin creating a pallet under a tent farther back in the cave and Ben placing his nearer to the light.

  He’d slept well but woke with aching stiffness in his ribs and back. His legs were bruised, but his knees were fine. He lifted his shirt and checked the blue and green marks on his torso. He had cuts and bruises, but no piercing pain.

  He flipped open the first aid kit and downed four ibuprofen with a gulp of water. It was cool and damp in the cave, but not cold. He wore long sleeves and a loose pair of pants he’d switch out for a thermal base layer and coveralls when they went into the tunnels.

  He unzipped his tent and slipped on the heavy rubber boots he’d packed with their supplies. They were waterproof and had excellent grip. He was expecting cool, damp conditions with possibly a lot of moss.

  Morning light streamed into the cavern, sparkling through the waterfall, its reflections dancing off the cave walls. Ben looked over his shoulder to see Tenzin, not in her tent but sitting cross-legged on a pallet, staring at the dancing reflection of the water on the wall.

  He walked over and sat beside her. “It doesn’t hurt your eyes?”

  Direct sunlight was a no for any vampire, but reflected sunlight wouldn’t hurt them. Too much of it could make them uncomfortable though.

  “No,” she whispered. “It’s beautiful.”

  It was sun reflected off water. He’d hardly even noticed it. But she was right.

  “It is,” he said. “I’m going to get some food. Do you want anything?”

  Her eyes didn’t leave the cave wall as she shook her head.

  “Okay.” He glanced at the three openings. “Any idea which tunnel we should start with?”

  “I need to look at the map again,” she said. “And I need to smell the caves.”

  Smell the caves. Ben shook his head and walked back to the camp kitchen he’d set up the night before. It was nearest to where the sunlight touched the water, and moss and algae covered the rocks behind it. Anywhere the light touched, green bloomed.

  He boiled water for coffee and heated a packet of prepackaged chicken stew. With crackers, it made a decent meal. He walked out of the tunnel and up to the floor of the old sinkhole.

  Everything was green kissed by gold. In the morning light, vines fell from the walls, and the air smelled of earth and moss. It was warmer in the sun. He sat on a rock in a sunbeam and enjoyed the sight he’d missed the night before.

  It wasn’t a particularly deep sinkhole. It was old and most of the walls had tumbled in on themselves, creating steep slopes toward the rocky bottom. Only one side was still sheer. That was where the waterfall cascaded. It dropped down under the earth, creating a mist that kept the bottom of the sinkhole damp even though the days had been sunny.

  Ben walked back into the tunnel and entered the liminal space of the cavern. Though it was midmorning, he fe
lt his nights and days blending together. He could get lost here. They weren’t underground, but they weren’t on the surface. It didn’t feel like daytime, but it definitely wasn’t night, when the cavern had been pitch-black and cold. The bonus to the lack of direct sun was both he and Tenzin would be able to search around the clock. The disadvantage was a loss of any sense of time.

  “Eat when you’re hungry. Sleep when you’re tired.” It had been his uncle’s advice when Ben told him he’d be treasure hunting in a cave.

  There was no sign of any other human in the cavern or in the sinkhole. No trash or marks. No fire scorches or footprints. It was as if the cave was new and ancient at once.

  By the time he finished eating and cleaned up, Tenzin was sitting at the mouth of one tunnel, staring into the blackness with a copy of the map in front of her. Ben sat beside her, his body aching, and glanced at the document in the clear plastic sleeve.

  It was a simple map. Whoever had drawn it was clearly not a cartographer. Though the writing was clear, the sketching was rudimentary, and they had no way of knowing if anything was to scale. It was a map drawn by an amateur, possibly only for his own reference.

  But in its simplicity, it was also blessedly clear. Once Ben and Tenzin had understood the church and town were Arecibo, everything else about it made sense. The only potential problem was that the priest had drawn a branching map that didn’t encompass the whole of the tunnels. Tomás had simply listed the turns. Which meant if they missed one or if Tomás had missed one, they were shit out of luck.

  And there was no mention—none at all—of three different tunnels.

  “We might have to do this three times,” Ben said.

  “I don’t think so.” Tenzin turned her face to the tunnel on the far end of the cavern. “That’s the tunnel that smells like bones. The vampire was there.”

  “That means nothing, Tenzin. A vampire could have been there, used that cave, and not even seen Enríquez’s gold. Or he could have seen it, taken it, and left us nothing.”

  She stared at the tunnel. “I don’t think it’s that one.”

  Ben sighed. “Okay.” She wouldn’t listen to reason. Not if her mind was made up.