by Jeff Gunhus
“You first,” he shouted back. I didn’t move and neither did he. “No time to argue. It makes sense. I’m a better fighter.” He turned serious. “And we need you alive.”
I could tell I couldn’t change his mind. I ducked as another volley of arrows passed overhead. “We need you alive, too. Don’t take too long.”
“Trust me, I’ll be right behind you,” Daniel said.
I scrambled into the small tunnel and crawled forward on my hands and knees. It was now pitch black. The others were still in front of me, blocking any light from Xavier’s flashlight, and I blocked the light coming from the djinn behind me. I groped in the dark, alone with my heavy breathing from the exertion and from my rising anxiety. I heard Daniel climb in behind me and sped up so he wouldn’t run into me.
If you’ve never been in absolute darkness before, it’s a strange and disorienting feeling. You can wave your hand inches from your face and have no idea it’s there. If you close your eyes, even in a darkened room, and do the same thing, you’ll still have a sense of movement. But in the true absence of light found in the underground places of the world, there is no sense that your body exists at all.
This was the kind of darkness that surrounded us as we scurried through, unclear how long the tunnel was or how close the djinn were behind us.
After what seemed an eternity but what was likely only thirty seconds or so, I saw a flash of light only ten feet ahead of me and then a friendly voice.
“C’mon. Hurry,” Eva urged.
“Almost there,” I called behind me. I twisted in place to see how far back Daniel was now that Xavier’s flashlight lit up the small tunnel. He was less than ten feet behind me.
“About time,” he said. “I thought one of the Creach would grab me for sure.”
As he said the words, I saw a face loom up over his shoulder. It was upside down because the djinn was climbing on the roof of the tunnel. It didn’t have its headdress on, so its grotesque face and shining yellow eyes were shocking in the bright beam of the flashlight.
“Look out!” I cried. But it was too late. The djinn fell on top of Daniel, hissing and spitting. I saw Daniel’s dagger flash and heard a scream from the Creach. I tried to turn around to help him, but there wasn’t enough space. I did the only thing I could think of and crawled as fast as I could to the end of the tunnel, leaving Daniel behind.
I reached the end and fell out into the small chamber where the others stood. They bombarded me with questions, but there wasn’t time. The second I crawled out of the tunnel, I snatched the flashlight out of Xavier’s hands, pulled my sword, and dove back in, this time head first.
I held the small flashlight in my mouth as I crawled toward the struggling shapes in front of me. Even with the flashlight, it was hard to separate Daniel and the djinn. I raised my sword and watched the two figures fighting, not wanting to stab Daniel by accident. Finally, the djinn reared back, teeth out, ready to sink into Daniel’s neck. With a cry, I stabbed forward, catching the djinn through the neck. I held on tight as it shook and spasmed like a speared fish.
Something grabbed my leg behind me. For a horrified second I thought the djinn had somehow circled behind us and already cut through Eva and the others and now were coming at Daniel and I from both directions. But when I kicked, I heard Eva’s voice.
“It’s me,” she shouted. “Grab Daniel.”
I glanced behind me. Eva was there, with Will right behind her forming a human chain. Immediately, I understood what she intended to do. I reached out and grabbed one of Daniel’s arms.
“Got him,” I cried.
Eva jerked on my leg and Daniel and I slid toward the exit. With my flashlight jerking wildly about, I caught flashes of the tunnel. Crawling with djinn. Slithering over one another to get at us. My view of the djinn disappeared as we reached the end of the tunnel. Daniel and I fell unceremoniously to the floor. Good thing it was covered with a thick layer of leaves that broke our fall.
The tunnel amplified hissing sounds of the approaching djinn. It sounded like an entire army was coming after us. I knew from my fight with them across the rooftops that there was no way we were going to outrun them.
“Xavier,” I shouted. “Options.”
Xavier opened his backpack. “I just have two weapons for Eva’s hand. A retractable dagger and a small torch. I have a bottle of glow paint.” He dug around in his bag desperately, the noise from the djinn growing deafening.
I’d used Xavier’s glow paint in the Cave of the Trials. When sprayed into the air the small particles light up a space. It gave me a hope. “Is the glow paint flammable?”
Xavier stopping digging in his bag and looked up at me. I could tell he knew what I was thinking. He shook his head. “No, it’s not.” My hope was crushed until Xavier pulled his hand out of his bag and held up the smoke grenade he’d been working on at the hotel before we left for the souk. “But this is. Big time.”
He tossed me the smoke bomb, and I caught it carefully like an egg. I didn’t want it to explode in my hands.
“Jack!” Will cried out.
One of the djinn had reached the end and was clawing the air inches from my head. Steel flashed and the arm fell to the floor. A scream erupted in the tunnel. I looked up and saw T-Rex holding my sword, looking even more surprised than I was at what he’d done. There was no time for words. I reared back and threw the smoke bomb into the tunnel. I heard it go off, and a small puff of the smoke blew back toward us. Xavier clicked the igniter on his torch weapon he’d made for Eva. A blue flame flickered and spit before narrowing into a steady stream like a welder’s tool.
Xavier tossed it to me and dropped to the floor. Everyone followed his lead as I threw the flame down the tunnel. For a half-second after I threw it, I thought maybe it hadn’t worked. Then a blast of heat and light blew out of the tunnel, picked me off the ground, and threw me against the opposite side of the chamber.
Inside the tunnel, an inferno raged. The djinn screamed and hissed, retreating from the flames. I sat up against the wall, waiting to see if they would somehow break through the fire to get at us, but nothing came. It appeared we were safe. At least for a while.
The others helped me up. Every inch of my body hurt, but nothing appeared to be broken. I stood by Xavier who watched the fire in amazement.
“And you were carrying that around in your pocket?” I asked.
Xavier swallowed hard. “Yeah, I think I miscalculated the volatility of the chemical mix. Or perhaps there was a gas in the air already?”
Daniel slapped him on the back. “I don’t really care how you did it. All I know is that it saved our backsides. Good job.”
We all thanked Xavier, patting him on the back and high-fiving him. Even in the glow of the fire from the tunnel, I saw Xavier flush at the compliment.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” I shined the flashlight around the small chamber, then back at the tunnel we’d just come from. I tried to fight down the rising sense of panic I felt, but I must not have done a very good job because the others stopped talking and watched me carefully.
“Something wrong?” Eva said.
I looked around the chamber one more time, reciting Gregor’s instructions in my head. Go right, right, pass three turns, left and then right. Don’t deviate. Don’t get lost.
If I’d been right in counting the three turns we had to pass, then we ought to have been at the last step in the directions. We had turned left into the tunnel where the djinn were now burning to a crisp. So all that was left to do was to turn right and we were on our way out of here. The only problem was that there was no right turn here. There wasn’t even a left turn. We were trapped in an underground chamber with the only way out on fire and stuffed with burning djinn corpses. I’d chosen wrong and done exactly what Gregor had warned me not to do.
I had deviated from the directions.
And now we were lost.
Chapter Nine
“What do you mean
, we’re lost?” Daniel said.
“Part of the directions weren’t clear,” I replied. “I had to make a decision. Turns out it was the wrong one. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Daniel said. “That’s not very helpful, now is it?”
“Relax a little. He did just save your life,” Eva said.
“Because I was busy saving his,” Daniel replied, raising his voice. “Maybe your new friend Gregor led us down the wrong path on purpose, you ever think of that?”
Will jumped in. “Why would he do that? He saved our lives more than once today. If he wanted us dead, it would have been easy enough for him to do.”
Daniel fumed. “Why are we trusting him? He’s a traitor. Everyone knows that.” He pointed a finger at me. “You should know that most of all.”
This was more than just frustration coming from Daniel. It was anger finally boiling over. I didn’t know where it was coming from, but I knew we didn’t have time to dive into this conversation right now.
“Do you think that fire really stopped the djinn?” I asked. “There are a lot more of them where those came from. I’m sure they’re looking for another way to get to us right now. Or they can just wait until that fire goes down a bit. I don’t know what your problem is with Gregor, but if you haven’t noticed, we’re trapped in this room. We’ve got to work together to figure out some way to get out of here.”
Daniel took a step toward me, and he and I squared off. “The difference between you and me, Templar, is that I wouldn’t ever sit down and have tea with the man who betrayed my own father.”
“Daniel, this isn’t the time,” Eva hissed.
I rocked back, looking at both of them. “What are you talking about?”
“Gregor left the Black Watch the same time your dad went missing,” Eva said, glaring at Daniel. “The rest is gossip. Innuendo.”
“You both knew? Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
“I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen. My father knew Gregor as a traitor, and that’s good enough for me,” Daniel said. “Did he tell you why he left the Black Watch? Did you even ask?”
I shook my head. I replayed the entire conversation in my mind. He had apologized, right at the end. Just as my mother had begged for forgiveness when she had appeared to me during my near-death experience. But why?
I felt a hand on my arm and another on my shoulder. It was Will and T-Rex. Always my support when I needed it most. “You all right?” Will asked.
“Sure,” I said, not meaning it. I faced Daniel. “I should have listened to you. I’m sorry.”
The apology caught Daniel off-guard. He was geared up for a confrontation and my admission that I’d messed up threw him off. He stepped back, then mumbled, “Yeah, you should have.”
“It won’t happen again, I promise. But right now I need your help figuring out how to get out of here,” I said. “I need everyone’s help.”
Xavier, who had been going over every inch of the chamber with his flashlight, likely completely oblivious to the disagreement Daniel and I just had, spoke up. “Uh guys, I think I might have found something important.”
We all knew Xavier well enough not to take a statement like that from him lightly. We gave him our full attention. He walked us over to the nearest wall of the chamber.
“I was trying to figure out what purpose this room served because I figured that might give us a hint how to get out. Then I saw these.” Xavier reached out, his fingers tracing smooth horizontal lines etched into the rock wall. He looked at us expectantly but frowned when he realized none of us had a clue what the lines meant. “Really? No-one gets it?”
“It’s been kind of a rough day, Xavier. Can you just spell it out for us?” I asked.
Xavier looked disappointed but continued. “These markings go all the way around the edge of the room. They are smooth and so were created over a great deal of time.” He shone the flashlight toward the corner of the room where the walls met the ceiling. All along the edge were round holes the size of basketballs. I slowly realized what Xavier had figured out.
“We’re standing in a drain,” I said. “Xavier, you’re a genius.”
Xavier grinned. “Yeah, I am.”
“Uhh…I know I’m the slow one here,” Will said. “Why is it good news that we’re standing in a drain?”
I dropped to my knees and dug into the layer of leaves on the floor. With a little bit of work, I uncovered an old metal grate covering a large hole in the ground. “Because Xavier just found our way out. Come on, let’s clear it off and get it open.”
Everyone got down and dug frantically at the grate.
“But what did the lines on the wall tell you?” Will asked.
“It shows that when it rains above ground, this room fills up with water. Then it swirls around as it goes down the drain.”
“Just like in a bathtub,” T-Rex offered.
“Exactly,” Xavier said. “Centuries of that whirlpool effect caused the lines in the wall and gave me the clue.”
T-Rex stopped digging and looked up the wall behind Xavier. “So what you’re saying is, that if it rained outside, we’d be in trouble.”
“Probably,” Xavier replied. “But at least it’s not the rainy season. A big rain this time of year would be rare.”
T-Rex pointed to the ceiling. “Then we must just be really lucky.”
We all stopped and looked where T-Rex was pointing. Xavier turned the flashlight on one of the holes near the ceiling. A small trickle of water had appeared, just enough to clear the lip of the drain and fall through the air like a tiny waterfall. We watched it for a few seconds and it stayed the same size. Xavier shone the flashlight at the other holes. They were dry.
Will let out a nervous laugh, and we all breathed a sigh of relief.
“That got me nervous for a second,” I said. “I thought that—”
Suddenly every hole in the room erupted with a torrent of water. It was like twenty fire hoses had been turned on us at the same time. The force of it knocked us all off our feet and piled us up in one side of the room. By the time we regained our footing, the room was already knee-deep with water flowing in from all directions.
We clung onto each other desperately to keep from falling. The geysers of water were deafening. I pulled everyone toward the tunnel were we had entered the chamber. Better to face the djinn than be drowned. But the water had already reached the tunnel and filled it. The djinn bodies blocked it so there was no hope to swim through it either.
The water was waist deep and swirling counter-clockwise around the room. The hardest thing was being constantly pelted by the incoming water. I couldn’t see. Every breath I took felt like it was half air and half water.
“What do we do?” Eva yelled.
The water was chest high now.
“Tread water,” I yelled. “It won’t fill to the top.”
Nobody had to be told to swim because the water was now over our heads. Without touching the floor, we were whipped around the room in the circular motion of the drain. The space between the water and the ceiling was closing fast.
“It’s filling up!” T-Rex cried.
“Jack! What are we going to do?” Eva yelled.
“Hold on!” I yelled. I sucked in as deep a breath as I could and dove straight down. As I got closer to the drain, the suction grew intense. I lost control and spun around in circles like I was in some crazy washing machine. I banged into the metal grate covering the drain and stuck to it. The force of the water tried to force me through. For a second I thought it might succeed, and I would go through it like sliced cheese. But a whole section of the grate was still blocked with debris and I struggled to move to this area. The suction let go of me enough that I could get on my knees and pull my sword out in front of me. I held onto it tightly. If the water snatched it from my hands, it would get caught up in the whirlpool and cut us all to ribbons.
I jammed my sword through one of the holes in the grate and used
all my strength to lever it up. I felt it move. I lifted harder, straining against the enormous weight of the water. My lungs burned as my oxygen ran out. In my mind, I called for the Templar Ring to help me. But nothing happened. I called for it again. Nothing. I started to panic.
I figured that the chamber was completely filled with water by now, so there was no reason to go up for a breath. I had to make this work, or we were all going to die.
Summoning every bit of energy I had, crying out in desperation for the strength of the Templar Ring and the ancient blood in my veins, I heaved as hard as I could. Suddenly, I felt warmth travel up my arms and into my shoulders. I opened my eyes under the water and, even through the mud and silt, saw my sword glowing brilliantly. With a final effort, I cried out and expelled the last bit of air in my lungs.
I felt the grate finally give way. It slid out of position, leaving a gaping hole in the floor large enough for a car to drive through. The water poured into it and I tumbled end-over-end into the hole. Then everything turned to darkness.
***
I woke up with a sputter of water, hacking up the foulest tasting coughs I’d ever experienced. Eva crouched near me, her voice sounding like she was trapped in heavy layers of gauze. “Are you all right?” she said. “Can you hear me?”
In a daze, I looked around. We were on a riverbank. Sharp rocks poked into my back where I lay. No stars showed through the black clouds above us as rain pelted down. Around me, coughing and sputtering, were Daniel, Xavier, Will and T-Rex. They’d all made it. We were safe.
I closed my eyes, thankful but still aware of how close we had come to death because of my mistake. I was supposed to be the leader of this group, but I felt uneasy in the role. We’d barely begun our quest. We hadn’t even found the first of the five Creach lords, let alone recaptured a single Jerusalem Stone. Yet I had almost lost Eva and T-Rex when the djinn abducted them, and then we’d almost all died underground. I wondered if I was up for the task ahead or whether we were just fooling ourselves that we stood any chance at all of success. I felt a nudge in my side.
