by Sophia Sharp
Hunter still hadn’t moved.
The bounty hunter’s silhouette blocked the entrance to the chamber. “They sent out a call, you know. The first in hundreds of years. All of the Vassiz know what you have done, and they have united against you. The packs smell blood on the water. They’re coming for you. But once I’m done, they will be too late.”
The creature took one step forward, and the flames from the torches glinted in his eyes, giving Nora a glimpse of the true evil reflected there.
“So, traitor, tell me, where is your human? Her scent is weak, but I know she is here.”
Hunter growled. “You will not have her.”
Nora’s breath came in sharp, ragged gasps. She struggled desperately to keep them quiet. There had to be something she could do. Her gaze tore frantically through the sanctuary for some means of escape.
Wait. The tombstone! The one Hunter had nearly dropped! It still hung precariously over the edge. She looked down at the Vassiz standing directly beneath it. Could she reach it?
“Oh?” The bounty hunter laughed cruelly. “We have been through this before, have we not?”
“I have spared your life once.” Hunter’s voice had hardened to something barely recognizable to Nora. “This time, I might not be so kind.”
“No. This time, you won’t have the opportunity. Once I defeat you, I will make you watch as I have my way with your human bitch. You will watch her scream, watch her squirm under my touch, and you will be helpless to interfere. Yes, I think I’ll quite enjoy that. I haven’t taken a young girl like her in quite some time. The elders have asked for both of you alive. They made no mention of your…condition.”
Nora pushed up to her hands and knees and held her breath, praying fervently that nothing would tumble down and alert the Vassiz to her presence. She crawled slowly toward the last tombstone. With each movement, the earth shifted underneath her. Please don’t let it fall! Please don’t let it fall! She fought desperately against the urge to hurry.
“So be it,” Hunter said. “If that is your choice, I’m prepared to face you. Although I do not look forward to having the blood of two of my fellow Vassiz on my hands.”
The bounty hunter laughed again. “You are weak, Hunter. Your conscience holds you back from reaching your true potential. A pity, what I will have to do to you…”
Nora’s dress caught on a rock, and she pulled it forward. Her breath caught at the sound of thread ripping. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut.
“…you would have risen high in the ranks of the ancient blood…”
He hadn’t heard her. She released the pent up breath and crept another inch forward. I made it! Okay, take a deep breath in. Hold it. Release it. She couldn’t control the frantic pounding of her heart as she pressed her hands against the cold surface of the tombstone. It stood, balanced by a hair. She breathed in deeply again and pushed.
Nothing happened. It didn’t budge.
“…the elders would have taken you for one of their own…”
“One of their own?” Hunter sounded shocked.
Desperate, knowing she was almost out of time, Nora backed up. She only hesitated for a fraction of a second before throwing her weight against the stone. It shifted ever so slightly under her shoulder. Again, she backed up and thrust herself against the rock.
A loud crack sounded, and the earth gave way. She scrambled back.
“What was—” The terrifying voice cut off with an ear-piercing scream. An enormous crash cut off even that.
The earth below her shifted, rocked. The ledge was caving in, falling down. She’d broken the entire structure!
She flung herself backward as the stone crumpled. Large cracks and fissures jerked their way unevenly toward her. One by one, jagged pieces of stone started to fall, creating a deafening roar as they hit the ground below.
Nora leapt to the side, to the safety of the stairs. She grabbed desperately at the steps and pulled herself up just in time. The ledge behind her gave in with a groan and fully collapsed.
Nora crouched against the stairway wall and covered her head. Once the last stone had fallen, an eerie silence descended on the cave. Hunter! She couldn’t drag enough air into her straining lungs to call out for him.
Her body began to tremble uncontrollably as the adrenaline rush subsided. Unable to gain her footing with her legs feeling like rubber, she sat down, pressed her back against the wall, and closed her eyes.
Movement beside her caught her attention.
“You killed him.” Hunter stood over her. “Nobody has killed one of our kind, certainly no human, since…since the start of our recorded history! There’s never been a human responsible for a Vassiz death!”
“And now I’m just like you.” Nora wiped the tears that still streaked her cheeks. “We’ve both got Vassiz blood on our hands.”
“So we do.” Hunter laughed. He bent down to offer a hand, and she took it, rising up.
“Now what do we do?” Nora brushed dust and rubble from her clothes and looked around.
“After the elders discover this death, they’re going to double their efforts to catch us. Quadruple them. I fear we’ll have all the clans in North America coming after us.”
“We can escape.” Nora’s voice took on a newfound confidence. For the first time since discovering the true identity of her pursuers, she did not feel helpless. In fact, she felt strong. “I know we can.”
“Glad to have your confidence,” Hunter told her. “But it looks like your method of saving us left us with few options about what to do next.”
“What do you mean?”
“The entrance,” Hunter explained. “Everything collapsed right in front of it. Even with my strength, I don’t think I’ll be able to move the rocks.”
“Do you mean…”
“Yes. We have to enter the tunnels.”
Chapter Twenty
~An Ancient Riddle~
The tunnel they traveled was tight, and claustrophobia threatened to suffocate Nora as the two of them walked side-by-side. But she wouldn’t be separated from Hunter if her life depended on it. He was her only chance of survival.
A mixture of satisfaction tinged with doubt flooded her at that thought. Here she was, in the depths of the earth, accompanied by a creature of near god-like power. Not only that, but he was sacrificing all that he was, all that he could become, for her. For some inexplicable, unfathomable, incomprehensible reason, he seemed to care for her. He had forsaken his race, his own kind…for her.
She couldn’t understand what led Hunter to show her the dream world in the first place, especially if he knew the risks it would entail beforehand. And he claimed he did. Knowing he had taken on that risk for her – despite how it all had turned out – gave Nora a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. She stumbled a bit, but caught herself. She wasn’t getting woozy, was she?
No, she wouldn’t let herself be a slave to her emotions again. She had to focus on her current situation. On surviving her current situation.
She carried a lit torch, which broke the darkness for a few yards in front of her. Hunter carried more, as a backup supply, in case hers died before they got out. If they got out, she thought somewhat gloomily.
So far, the tunnel had been cut straight into the rock, with no division or splits. But who knew how long that would last?
Abruptly, a thought occurred to her. “Hey,” she asked Hunter, “what about the dream world?”
“What about it?” Hunter replied.
“I was just thinking…if you take us into the dream world, like you did before, we’ll be right in this tunnel, won’t we?”
“That’s right.”
“So, you said time flows differently there. We can explore the tunnels and find the right way out before coming back to our bodies.” She was critically aware what the danger of getting lost down there, with no source of food or water, would mean for her. “If we catch the dream at the right wave, we can be back in minutes. We’ll know the right pa
th, and there’ll be no danger of us taking a wrong turn and getting lost down here forever.” She was also critically aware of the hunger pains that were starting to attack her stomach.
“No,” Hunter said intently, “we can’t do that. The elders are monitoring our dreams – mine in particular. If we enter the dream world, they’ll know right where we are and how to get here. They’re watching for our entrance to that world.
“And that’s not the worst of it. The elders have great power, great control, over the world of dreams. If we leave the physical realm, they can turn the entire dream into a never ending nightmare. They will torture us, inflicting pain so severe that it cannot be matched in reality. We will be trapped forever, with no hope of ever returning to our bodies. That is a sentence much worse than death.”
“But isn’t it possible to enter the world without arousing their attention? It must be!”
“I thought so when I went there with you.” He shook his head. “No, we can’t do it. It’s too much of a risk.”
“I’m not like you, you know,” Nora suddenly snapped. “I can’t just go without food forever.” Her hunger was getting the better of her.
“I know. I’ll find a way out. I’ll find the Proper path.” His voice was determined, steely. Half to himself, he added with a whisper, “I know I will.”
Nora prayed he was right.
The hours dragged as they trudged through the endless darkness. The slope of the tunnel gradually headed down. The air was becoming damp, stale, and heavy with age. The walls began to angle toward each other, slowly moving closer together until Nora could no longer walk side-by-side with Hunter. She took the lead, and he let her go without protest.
A pang of guilt struck her for the way she snapped at him before. They had walked in near-silence since then, and she debated apologizing, but thought better of it each time. In the dark, damp air of the cave, she wasn’t in the most tolerant of moods.
Suddenly, something caught her arms and legs, preventing her from moving. She tried to jerk them free, but they wouldn’t budge. She was trapped! She cried out and struggled mightily against whatever was holding her. But the more she moved, the more restrained she felt. What the hell?
“Stop moving.” Hunter’s laughter penetrated the haze of fear that had gripped her. “You’re in a giant cobweb.”
“A cobweb?” Nora hated spiders, hated anything to do with them, and the thought of being entrenched deep in their disgusting sticky thread was petrifying. She tried to pull back, to jerk herself free with more force than before, but only ended up more tightly ensnared. The gluey substance clutched at her arms, her face, her hair.
“I said, don’t move.” Hunter’s continued laughter grated on her already raw nerve. “I’ll help you out.”
Something jerked above her, and a tearing noise reached her ears just before she dropped unceremoniously to the ground. She stared daggers at Hunter.
“Why didn’t you tell me it was coming?” She reached out and grabbed the torch she’d dropped during the struggle. “You must have seen it, with your eyesight!”
“You were in front,” Hunter shrugged. “I figured you would have a handle on things.”
“A handle on things?!” Rage consumed her. She ripped the threading from her arms, from the front of her dress, and out of her hair. And she threw it all at Hunter. Deftly, he caught it and tossed it back at her. It landed right in her arms. Emitting a high-pitched screech, she shoved it away and scrambled back. He laughed harder.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!” But suddenly the humor in the situation struck her. Either that, or Hunter’s laugh was so overpowering it had affected her. She started to chuckle too and soon broke out into a full laugh.
“So you’re not mad at me?” Hunter asked, once he’d regained his composure.
“Mad? Why would I be mad?”
“You haven’t said a word for the past hour.”
Nora stared in amazement. Was he really so sensitive as to how she regarded him? Here was a paragon of a man, with superhuman abilities and otherworldly powers, and he was worried if she was mad at him? None of it made any sense.
“No, I’m not mad,” she told him gently.
“Good,” Hunter said. “In that case, you wouldn’t mind if I take the lead? We can avoid any more nasty cobweb incidents like that.”
“I think I’d like that a lot more,” Nora replied kindly.
They kept marching in the darkness. Nora noticed the floor started to curl up a bit, hopefully signaling that they were done with the descent into the earth. The light from her torch had grown weaker, but she didn’t want to replace it until it was fully extinguished.
In the distance, Nora started to make out a widening of the tunnel. As they got closer, she realized there was a fork in the path. The two holes carved into the rock were completely identical – neither gave any indication of where it led.
“Which way now?” Nora asked.
“Hold on.” Hunter walked a few paces into the first split, turned around, and walked the same distance into the other one. After a moment’s pause, he nodded. “This one,” he told her.
“How do you know?”
“The air is fresher here.”
Nora breathed in deeply and coughed. The air was not fresh no matter what he said.
They continued on for a long time, coming across no other divisions in their path, the only sound an occasional growl of protest from Nora’s stomach. Abruptly, the tunnel curved sharply to the left. When they rounded the corner, Nora saw the tunnel split into two again. But thick steel bars barred one way.
Nora walked up to them and shone her torch inside. Shadows swallowed up the light in the distance.
“What do you think is past here?” she asked.
“A prison,” Hunter replied with unexpected conviction.
Nora shivered. “For who?”
“I don’t know.”
Just as Nora was about to turn back, she noticed her light reflect off a small white surface. She looked down – and stumbled back when she realized it was part of a human skull. And scattered on the floor lay broken bones that had been snapped at unnatural angles. A flashback assailed her. Her hand reaching out to touch the smooth white marble of the tower– the screaming faces, the hanging bodies…
Had it been done here?
She was breathing heavily, and her eyes darted from side to side. The lingering shadows around her could hide anything – anything at all. Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure they were alone under the earth.
Hunter caught her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. “Don’t worry,” he told her soothingly, as if reading her thoughts. “The remains you saw are ancient.”
Her nerves calmed a little. The sound of his voice, the feel of his strong hands, made her feel less frightened. More at ease.
She gripped him in an iron hug, and he wrapped his arms around her too. “Hunter, I’m scared,” she mumbled into him. She had been fighting her fear before, fighting against the unease and uncertainty that emerged from being in this unfamiliar, completely foreign situation. But saying the words out loud made her admit it even to herself. “What if we never get out?”
“Nora.” He pulled back so he could look into her eyes. “I promise you, I will get you out. We will survive this, and we’ll emerge stronger. That, I swear.”
She sighed. Hearing the assurance in his voice, it…summoned the courage within her. “I know you will,” she said softly.
This time, she truly believed it.
They ventured farther into the cavern, coming across more divisions in the path. Each time, Hunter would walk a few feet into each entrance, sniff the air carefully, and then decide which way to go.
The ground had tilted down again. Which meant that they were straying deeper and deeper into the earth. Nora sighed with reluctant acceptance and hoped it would slope up soon.
They walked a long way in silence. Nora was alone with her thoughts. For better or for worse, she had to e
mbrace the situation she was in. Everything about it was unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and it all started from that journey into the dream. It seemed to have happened ages ago. And the incident with Brady, in the halls of her school, where Hunter first defended her…that seemed to be an entire lifetime ago.
She missed her family, her friends, her dog. She missed home. But she also recognized the harsh reality of it all. She would never be able to go home, never be able to see anyone she knew again.
Hunter was walking a few steps ahead of her, and Nora watched him. He had been her only constant since leaving only a few days ago. She realized now that she was with him to the bitter end.
He walked on, and she followed. She admired his posture, his gait, and the way his skin was so perfectly smooth and beautifully white. His hair, his manner of being, the way he talked. And his laugh. She hadn’t noticed it before, but she now realized that his laugh was absolutely amazing. She loved the way he laughed. She hoped bitterly that they would live long enough for her to hear it again.
Suddenly the tunnel opened up into a small cavern. The rock above her head became much farther away, making the enclave feel spacious. They walked right into the middle of it, and Nora waved her torch around. To her amazement, she saw two other ancient torches, still intact, bolted against the walls. She lit them, providing enough light to illuminate the whole space.
She turned eagerly toward the sound of dripping water. A small stream, barely the width of her forearm, flowed across the floor. She jumped to it, dropping to her knees to drink the sweet liquid.
“Wait!” Hunter hissed at her, but she swallowed it greedily. She hadn’t had anything to drink since entering these tunnels, and she was parched. Hunter’s hands gripped her shoulders, before she could satisfy her dire thirst, and pulled her away.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“You don’t know if it’s safe to drink,” he said sternly. Nora realized he was right. “Let me try it, first.” She nodded.
He dabbed a finger in the stream and brought it up to his mouth. After a few seconds, he nodded at her. “It’s fine.”
