Raf kept talking. “Geez, Harper what the hell? You don’t need to hurt Jeff. He’s agreed to let us check out the library without alerting anyone.”
I lowered the book, but eyed Jeff closely.
“Trust me Harper.”
I eyed Jeff one more time, but decided I didn’t have much choice. “Are you sure?” I asked when I caught up.
“Yeah, Jeff’s dad is the director of the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Agency. Jeff happens to have a substance abuse problem. Only reason I know is because my mom cleared up a few legal snafus for him. It would ruin his dad if that got out.”
“Your mom…whoa, Rafael Aracan.” I snapped my fingers. “Your mom is Supreme Court Justice Aracan? Of the Aracan fortune!”
Raf looked at me, confused. “Yeah, I thought you knew.”
“I had no idea. I mean, I knew your family was clearly rich, but didn’t know who she is.”
“Man, that’s hilarious. I can’t even remember the last time I’ve meet someone who didn’t know who I was.” He looked at me, “You were really going to bean Jeff in the head?”
I shrugged. I guess I had been willing to hurt someone. Even someone innocent. The thought made me feel suddenly sick.
Turns out there were some lines I was willing to cross if it meant finding my mom.
Swallowing bile, I headed down the mysterious hall. “I heard Ransom and Foster talking. There’s definitely a secret door here somewhere. Let’s go find out what it’s hiding.”
***
Flickering florescent yellow light illuminated the end of the hallway. The back wall was flat, boring brick and drywall. Metal shelves full of dusty books lined the left side of the hall. The right side was empty, new drywall running along the base board as though someone had simply torn out a thin line along the entire wall. It was a good idea. Tearing out a strip would have revealed anything hidden behind the walls.
Someone else was looking for the Lunates secret. I thought about the sequence of events. The break in and search of the library happened not too long after I wrote my detailed description of the crying. Was it a Solaris seeking Lunate secrets? Or maybe a Gnomon? Though surely Mr. Silver would have known about that and he seemed genuinely not to know. A Lunate wouldn’t need to seek their own doorway. Was there another faction we didn’t know about?
No matter, the search was on. Raf moved slowly, ear pressed to the wall. Every few inches he paused to knock hard. I opted for a visual inspection. Surely a hidden doorway couldn’t be totally invisible. I turned my attention to the metal book shelves. Maybe one of them swung away from the wall? Or could roll sideways? Down on hands and knees, I looked for scrape marks, evidence of rollers. Nothing.
“Mr. Ransom and Mrs. Foster, hung?” he asked while we searched.
“Yeah, Santa and Barbie were about to open a door I think.”
I looked for lips, bumps, disjointed connections. Nope.
Maybe just pushing and pulling? The shelves wobbled but none of them gave way.
I slid my finger along the base of each shelf. The slightly sticky dust that gathered on my finger tips was gross, but no gaps or recently cleaned areas suggested super-secret doorway.
Raf completed his knocking circuit of the walls and stood up to stretch. “Nothing.”
“Nothing here either.”
“What the hell. Switch?”
Raf nodded and he moved into visual mode while I spent the next thirty minutes knocking on every inch of wall.
“There’s just nothing. You can’t hid a doorway this well. Maybe we’re wrong.”
“Or maybe…” an idea began to form. “Maybe the trigger is here but the actual doorway is somewhere else?”
“Great so we need to search the entire library? That will take all night.” Raf rubbed his forehead in frustration.
“What else can we do? I mean, unless the freaking door is in the ceiling or the damned floor we’ve looked everywhere here.”
We both looked down.
“Duh. The floor!”
Raf peeled back the carpet. It came up easily.
Four feet in from the back corner, there it was. It was perfectly level, looked no different from the rest of the floor. Without the barely visible square and tiny finger hold, the hatch was incredibly well hidden. Even stomping on it, I could barely hear the difference.
Raf looked at me with wonder in his eyes.
“We found it,” I whispered.
“Now what?” Raf asked.
“Now we go in, I guess.”
On silent hinges, the hatch slid open and we stared down in horror.
Into the Earth
I had been expecting a sliding panel leading to a little back room. Or maybe even a few-room compound hidden in the crazy architecture of the school. What I did not expect was a shaft straight down, so dark we couldn’t see the bottom. Just inside along the wall an old brass throw switch glinted in Raf’s phone light. The thing looked right out of a mine from the wild west.
“Here goes nothing,” I said as I tentatively flipped the switch upward.
At first, nothing happened. After a few second pause, a small motor started in the depths of the shaft and a whirring sound made us both step back.
From the inky darkness, a little wooden platform appeared, slowing to a stop just below the hatch itself.
“An elevator underneath the school. Sure, why not?” Raf sounded very unhappy.
Hands wrapped together, we stepped onto the platform, breath held. When it didn’t collapse under our feet Raf nodded at me and I flipped the switch back down.
My stomach rose right into my throat as we free fell. The platform dropped quickly enough to conjure visions of crashing into the ground at leg-snapping speed. Raf and I clung to each other, partially to avoid touching the ragged walls carved straight out of the bedrock, and partially out of fear.
We descended into the belly of the earth.
A sharp click made us jump. Far above us, the hatch slammed shut, plunging us into perfect darkness.
“What the hell?” Raf’s voice was raspy with fear.
“I think we must have triggered something to shut the hatch behind us.”
“I hope so. That, or someone knows we’re here.”
“Yeah.”
Raf clenched my hand so hard my fingers began to throb. “Raf, are you scared of the dark?”
“What?” he had a tinge of mania in his voice.
“Oh crap. You’re scared of the dark.”
“Maybe a little bit,” he gulped.
Suddenly the air around us changed from a warm, enclosed feeling, to cool air whistling past us as though were were falling through open space.
I wasn’t even afraid of the dark and I felt the tingle of panic against my throat. We hit the bottom with enough force that my knees slightly buckled.
Raf’s breath became more and more ragged as we stood together in a black void. I had never seen such darkness. Rather than light, the air was filled with a moist, metallic scent. The coppery air felt stagnant. So still that it tasted as though it had hung in that place since the dawn of mankind until my breath propelled it forward. Tangy metal and something else. Maybe churned earth? Blood and soil? I envisioned a scene of violence surrounding us.
I blinked rapidly, suddenly certain that no place could be so dark and that I had simply gone blind.
Raf let go with one of his hands and lit his phone. At first all I saw were his saucer eyes, whites showing all the way around grey irises.
I stepped off the platform. His phone illuminated a massive cavern. Thankfully we were not surrounded by butchered bodies.
In the faint, bluish light, towering walls shimmered in rainbow hues. Natural columns loomed around us like stone giants. Fast moving water roared far in the distance.
“At least there’s no welcoming party,” Raf managed to get out, his voice still shaky.
“Yeah,” I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the cavern. We could barely see the roof arching above. On thr
ee sides I could make out walls but straight ahead of me there was no end in sight. The chamber disappeared toward the roaring water.
“How’s your battery?” I asked.
He glanced at his phone. “Almost full. We should be fine.”
“Alright, lets move, slowly.”
“Yeah. Maybe turn the light off and listen every once in a while to make sure we don’t stumble on something.”
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
The cavern floor was uneven and slick with wet clay. The undulating rock occasionally rose to little clusters of stalactites and stalagmites, forming a natural obstacle course.
No footprints were obvious in the muck, though it was wet enough that they might have already faded.
Along the walls, fossilized layers of sediment flowed in shades of white and gold. The walls and ceiling narrowed until it felt more like a cave. We walked for at least half an hour before it opened back up. Not quite as large as the first chamber, multiple tunnels branched off into darkness. I counted five channels leaving the central cavern.
A water line along the wall suggested that the room was occasionally under water. Probably dangerous to be down there during heavy rains.
At the far end of the cave a river sprung from a narrow crack about half way up the wall. It crashed to a small pool that formed a crescent of churning water. Clearly the water was being sucked downward into an underground river.
“The Lost River!” Raf seemed excited despite the insanity of where we were.
“The what?”
“The Lost River. There’s an old Native American myth, Algonquin I think, that told of a river that once flowed beside the Potomac River. They claimed it had magical properties. Called it the River of Stars. But then one day it vanished.”
“Well, yay for discovering the River of Stars.”
“Sorry, Harper. Let’s keep going.”
“Agreed, but which tunnel?”
“Let’s check the entrances?”
“Sounds good.”
We instinctively stuck together and moved along the wall of the chamber, shining his phone down each tunnel, checking the floor and walls for evidence of human activity.
“Check it out.” Raf pointed to two shallow ruts in the mud that headed down the third tunnel.
“Those sure look like drag marks. Someone’s heels maybe.” I’d managed to avoid picturing specifics about what mom might be going through, but that flooded my mind with horrible images. Mom, bleeding and broken, being dragged along in the mud. Mom crying, scared, alone. Mom tied to a table, being tortured with flames and blades. I gagged.
Raf wrapped an arm over my shoulder. “Let’s keep moving. Head down this tunnel?”
“Yeah, let’s go. That’s a pretty clear sign someone else went this way.”
The tunnel narrowed around us until we had to walk single file to avoid brushing our shoulders against the damp walls. Eventually, the tunnel became a crevice and we turned sideways to keep moving. I was still able to keep away from the walls but I could hear Raf bumping and scraping along behind me.
“How could Mr. Ransom possible get through this?”
“There’s got to be another way in. Maybe he was just opening the hatch for Mrs. Foster?”
“Yeah maybe. Or we’re going the wrong way.”
“Let’s go another twenty minutes then turn around?”
“Sounds good. Hey Raf?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For coming with me. I don’t think I could be doing this alone.”
He chuckled. “Harper, I haven’t known you long, but I have no doubt that you could do this alone. You’re tough as hell.”
“I don’t feel tough as anything. But thanks. You don’t need to be here and I appreciate it a lot.”
“Like I said, this is my war zone. Let’s go find your mom.”
We slid along the narrow passage for another minute until I saw the faintest glimmer of light.
“Turn your phone off,” I whispered.
Ahead was clearly a light source. Standing stock still, I could just make out the murmuring cadence of a human voice. Someone was whispering ahead.
I gently touched Raf’s shoulder since I couldn’t see him very well with the phone off. I leaned so I was right against him, nose filling with the scent of maple syrup and honeysuckle. I whispered directly into his ear, “I’ll go check, you watch my back?”
He let out a little breathy, “Yeah.”
I got down on hands and knees and crawled forward. The murmurs became more recognizable, a woman’s voice. She sounded frantic. I recognized my mother’s voice. Be careful, be careful, I began the mantra in my head to prevent myself from rushing forward.
“Wake up, Martin. They’re coming back soon. Wake up! No, no, no.” She sounded terrified and heart broken.
I crawled around a turn to a perfectly square dead end. Along the right vertical wall ran four barred doorways. My heart pounded, eyes jumping around for any sign of the enemy. No one was visible. My mom’s voice drifted from the first door.
I moved forward like a cat, each motion carefully considered, placed gently and tested to make sure I didn’t make even the smallest sound.
The barred door was mounted directly on the wall hanging from big bolts drilled directly into the rock. The chamber behind the door was carved from the stone. In the small nook my mom knelt, holding the prone form of Martin Silver.
“Mom!” I said too loudly.
Her body jerked with surprise. She looked at me with such horror I thought for a heart stopping second that someone must have been standing right behind me. I spun around but the hall was still empty. I couldn’t even see Raf back around the bend.
“Harper. On no. What are you doing here?” She lowered Mr. Silver’s head and rushed to the bars.
I met her there and we both wrapped our hands over the cold metal, entwining our fingers.
Tears sprung from nowhere and I was weeping uncontrollably, so relieved to see my mom conscious and whole.
“Harper, how did you get here? You have to run. They can’t find you here?” She could barely get the words out fast enough.
“I came to find you. We’re going to get your out of here!”
“No!” She said sharply. “They are coming right back. You need to run! Now!”
“I won’t leave you mom.” I let go of her hands and began yanking on the bars. Each corner was hooked over a latch then secured with a padlock. I looked around for a loose rock or something to smash against a lock.
“Is Mr. Silver okay?” I asked as I searched desperately.
“No, he’s definitely not okay, Harper. He’s got a serious head injury. He’s drifting in and out of consciousness.”
I ran down to the far end of the hallways, still searching. “What is going on, mom?”
“They finally realized that I replaced the jade disk with a forgery. They are threatening to kill me, or worse, kill you if I don’t replace it with the real one. But I have no idea what your dad did with it! They don’t believe me.”
The despair in her voice made me want to do something terrible to these people.
As mom talked, I tried pulling on the next door, hoping there would be something inside that chamber. A loose metal bar or a rock, maybe.
She took a shuddering breath in. “Listen, Harper.”
“Mom?”
“Listen, I’ve had a wonderful, long life. I’ve experienced true joy, being your mother, and loving your dad. I’m lucky, and I’m ready to go down fighting. Whatever it is they think this relic will do, I can’t let them have it. Even if I could give them the jade disk. These are genuinely evil people, and I have to stop them.”
“No, mom, we’ll figure something else out.” I kept searching, though I could tell it was futile. Maybe back out in the main chamber.
“No, Harper! You get yourself out of here. Run to Belize. Mr. Ek can help you figure out where to hide
from these people.”
Mr. Ek. Stone disk. My dad. Those three things slammed together in my brains and I gasped. My dream!
I shut my eyes. It wasn’t a dream, it was a memory!
***
The carved jade disk on our kitchen table. Mom and dad in the other room discussing something in serious voices.
The disk was beautiful, lustrous green stone, carved with something called glyphs. I held a finger toward it just as my father stepped through the door. He gasped at the same moment I touched the disk.
Brilliant light shone so bright I pulled my hand away.
Dad nodded, as if something had just been confirmed. He knelt across from me, muscled arms bigger around than my waist. His dark features full of pride and love.
He took the disk in his hand and held it out. “Harper Dae, I love you my little wren. This is for you. Remember who you really are.”
I put my hand on his, the disk glowing like the sun.
“Daddy?” I was confused.
“You and mommy are going away. I’ve kept this safe for many years. But now it’s your turn.”
“Okay daddy,” I was proud that he trusted me with something clearly important.
“Your job is to bring this with you. When you get to Belize, I want you to give it to a man named Orlando Ek. He will know how to keep it safe. You are someone special, Harper Luciana Dae. Remember that when the time comes.”
I nodded solemnly and took the disk from his open palm.
***
“I know where it is!” I said.
“What?”
The rest of it flooded back. I rode all the way to Belize with that disk hung from a leather necklace, burning a circle against my chest. When we got there, Mr. Ek welcomed us, and I gave it to him. Eyes wide. He nodded and silently secreted it into his own shirt. I never saw it again.
“Mom, I’ve got to go get it. Maybe they will take it back and let you go!”
“No, Harper, I told you I won’t help them. It’s wrong and I won’t make the same mistake again. You need to remember who you are!”
Who I am. Why in the hell did everyone keep saying that? I was the person willing to hit some innocent kid over the head. The person with a crush on a gay guy. The person whose crazy mother had been kidnapped and was being held in an massive underground cave. I didn’t know who I was or how far I would go but I was sure as hell going to save my mom.
Jade Moon (Celestial War Book 1) Page 11
