The Smoke Hunter

by Jacquelyn Benson

  “Mr. Bates!” he called loudly, his voice ringing off the far corners of the room. “If you do not wish to see me shoot this woman, I suggest you show yourself before I reach the count of three. One,” he began, and clicked back the hammer.

  Her mind worked furiously. The dark fissure in the floor of the cave was several yards away, on the far side of the place where the mirror lay in its crate. Adam was too stupidly chivalrous to resist Jacobs’s challenge. It was only a matter of seconds before he showed himself and promptly got them both shot, which meant it was up to Ellie to figure a way out of this—and quickly.

  “Two,” Jacobs counted, and a pair of guards stepped back as a figure crawled up from the crack in the floor of the tomb.

  Adam had pulled the damp cloth away from his face, and the wound on his hand had reopened and was dripping blood. He looked savage, battered, and—she was forced to admit with a rush of pride and pleasure—utterly magnificent. Too bad the damned man was going to get himself killed.

  He stepped forward but stopped on the far side of the mirror. He held his hands out.

  “I’m unarmed.”

  “Good,” Jacobs said. “This is getting farcical.”

  She felt the barrel of the gun leave her skin and knew precisely where it was being redirected. She waited only a breath, then slipped her leg behind Jacobs’s ankle and twisted into one of her wushu maneuvers.

  It was perfect.

  Ellie felt his balance shatter. He was thrown to the side, tumbling to the ground.

  Adam dived as the shot pinged off the stone behind him. Ellie gave the gun on the ground a swift kick, skidding it out of Jacobs’s reach. It was all she had time to do before he regained his feet and grabbed her.

  “Cover him!” he shouted to two men who stood gaping nearby. He kicked Ellie’s legs out from underneath her, throwing her to the ground. She struggled, but there was no wushu maneuver for getting out of this one.

  Then he grasped her throat and began to squeeze.

  She tugged at his fingers. They were like stone. He was stronger than her, pure and simple. She wrenched with her legs, but they were securely pinned. Her only remaining option wasn’t very sportsmanlike, but with her lungs screaming for air and her vision narrowing, there was little else she could do. Forming her fingers into a claw, she thrust them into Jacobs’s eye. Then pulled.

  Adam pushed for purchase but his hand slid from beneath him. That damned gash on his palm had opened up again, and he had fallen on something slick and smooth.

  He had been biding his time. Waiting until their attention was elsewhere, until a lone guard stood by his hiding place. Then he could have crawled out, disabled him, and taken the gun. The rest of the plan was rather vague, of course, but he figured it was a start. And he’d always had a knack for improvising. But Jacobs had forced his hand—Jacobs, who was currently screaming.

  Adam’s head snapped up. The dark-haired man was standing a few yards away, blood streaming through a hand he held clamped over his eye. He spat an order and two of his men grabbed each of Ellie’s arms, hauling her to her feet. Her face had gone pale, he noted, and angry, red marks were springing to life against the skin of her throat.

  Jacobs’s hand dropped as he turned, and Adam saw only raw emptiness where his eye had been.

  Damn.

  Ellie pulled against the hands that held her, but her efforts were useless. Jacobs’s expression had gone even colder and more vicious, something Adam hadn’t thought possible.

  He was going to kill her, he realized, then wondered even more slowly—Why aren’t I moving?

  He looked numbly down at his hand, resting in a smear of blood on a flat black surface. It sizzled against the stone, hissing like water on a hot skillet.

  The mirror, he realized. I’ve landed on the damned thing.

  There was a jolt, a surge that ran like electricity from his hand to every bone in his body. The world around him went still.

  A few yards away, Jacobs moved toward Ellie purposefully. But it seemed as though he crawled through water, his foot suspended over the stone in a step that took an eternity.

  All of time had slowed, turning the cave into an exceptionally vivid tableau. Something whispered at the back of his mind, insistent and alluring. It murmured, promised, demanded.

  What do you want?

  The answer was simple.

  To save her, Adam thought fiercely, without really understanding what he was answering.

  Then the scene spun out before him like a waltz.

  He saw the two men approaching him from behind, one armed with a shotgun, the other with a revolver. He saw his hands clasp the hammer and the piece of wooden planking that lay discarded at his feet. He watched how all of them came together—hammer, wood, flesh, gun—as elegantly as a ballet. It was a perfect, violent choreography.

  Then, with a snap of awareness, it was finished.

  His instincts screamed, his mind sharply focused.

  Now.

  Time snapped back into play. As the world began to move again, Adam rolled to his right. He flipped over the side of the crate and scooped up the hammer and the plank, one in each hand. He pushed to his feet, turning as he rose. The plank thrust up the barrel of his first attacker’s weapon; then the hammer connected smoothly with his knee. Adam felt the perfect momentum of it, heard the bone snap, and the man crumpled.

  The dance was flawless, executed with impossible control. Adam felt every muscle, sensed every nuance of his surroundings. Intention connected seamlessly to action.

  This was what being a god would feel like, he thought distantly.

  The shotgun fell into his hand. He swung it solidly into the temple of the second guard. The man loosened his hold on the revolver as he fell back. Adam caught it left-handed but felt how it was already balanced perfectly in his grasp.

  He turned, both weapons ready. He pulled first one trigger, then the other, and the men at Ellie’s sides both collapsed to the ground.

  He dropped the shotgun, moving both hands to the revolver. He leaped easily over the body of the man whose knee he had shattered and leveled the weapon at Jacobs’s head.

  The dance ended. The trance he had been held in shattered, leaving him at a loss for the next step. He was in the process of inventing one when Ellie did it for him.

  She had scrambled to where Amilcar Kuyoc lay. Kneeling beside the corpse, she pulled a match tin from her pocket.

  There was a scratch and a hiss, and her voice rang through the chamber, clear and calm.

  “This man has roughly two dozen sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. I’m about to light them. I suggest you vacate the premises.”

  Her hand wanted to tremble. She couldn’t let it. Ellie was many things, but a munitions expert was not one of them. She had no notion of how much time the length of fuse on Kuyoc’s armor would buy her.

  She suspected it wasn’t much.

  But there was no time for hesitation. She knelt by a corpse in a cavern full of men holding guns. She was armed with only a match. There wouldn’t be a second chance.

  She might be killing all of them.

  Across from her, Dawson snapped out of his trance, scrambling to his feet. But she looked past him, her eyes seeking Adam. He looked so solid, so real, though he had just pulled off a series of maneuvers that made him seem like a piece of myth. He was bloody and strong and hers. She didn’t want to lose him. Not yet. Not ever.

  She could feel the mirror, its dark presence in the center of the room like a cancer in the heart of the city. She could sense the ones that lay beneath her, the relics of countless dead, sacrificed in the name of power. She thought of how many more would join them if this thing found its way back to England, the seat of an empire.

  She focused on Adam. She could see the surprise on his face. He didn’t know—couldn’t know—what the mirror was. He couldn’t possibly understand what she was doing. But there was something else in his gaze, something more than shock.

 
; Trust.

  She saw it, felt it. He might not understand what she was doing, but he trusted her. Despite everything. Despite how little she deserved it. He trusted her to do the right thing.

  He nodded. It was barely perceptible, but it was all that she needed.

  The match burned low in her fingers. She touched it to the fuse.

  She knew a moment of triumph, captured in the surprised O of Dawson’s mouth. Then the steady hiss of the quickly burning fuse registered and her heart clenched.

  “Bates!” she shouted. She saw him whip the gun across Jacobs’s face. He fell and Adam raced toward her, grabbing her arm and propelling her toward the door.

  “Move!” he ordered, but she was already racing up the dark and narrow passage.

  The tunnel spilled them through a carved doorway into a room full of wonders, a vast chamber lined with glittering objects and dominated by an enormous pendulum. Ellie had only a moment to absorb what she saw before Adam was pushing her across the room and up an endless, twisting staircase.

  The stairs ended at a blank wall and Ellie knew a moment of panic. Then she noticed the ladder. It led up to a dark opening in the ceiling.

  “Climb,” Adam ordered, pushing her toward the ladder. She hurried up the rungs and climbed through the hole. It opened into a low, narrow tunnel that sloped sharply upward. A short, quick crawl brought her to another opening, a gap in the floor that she half fell through.

  She landed roughly in a small, bare room that she recognized as the sanctuary at the temple’s apex, where she’d saved Adam from Dawson a few hours before.

  It felt like years.

  Adam landed beside her. He pulled her to the exit, and she found herself looking down at the massive stairs that covered the face of the pyramid.

  It was raining. The water pelted down, soaking her instantly. Ellie hesitated for a moment as a burst of lightning illuminated the landscape before her.

  She caught sight of something utterly unexpected and entirely out of place rising above the canopy to their left, something very like the upper curve of a great, pale sphere. Then Adam had her hand and was dragging her down the stairs, so quickly she wondered whether she was running or falling.

  They had nearly reached the bottom when the explosion shook them. The stones seemed to leap under their feet. Ellie tumbled down the remaining steps as the sound of the blast echoed violently off the ruins. She risked a glance behind and saw more men from the tomb spilling out of the top of the temple, clinging to the shaking pillars.

  Ellie thought of the room she had passed through so quickly. It must have taken up the entirety of the pyramid. The whole building was nothing more than a hollow shell—a shell that was about to come down.

  Adam scrambled to his feet and pushed her across the courtyard. She pulled back.

  “This way,” she shouted, and pointed. She saw him frown but didn’t stop to argue, dashing away and leaving him to follow. She was nearly to the edge of the wide, paved plaza when the second explosion rippled through the ground beneath them.

  The world shook. Ellie fell to her knees, Adam beside her.

  “What was that?” she shouted as they pulled each other up. The sound of cracking and crumbling stone drew their attention and they turned to the temple.

  Men were still climbing down its stones even as the crown of the pyramid began to fall. The whole structure was swallowing itself from the inside, crumbling into a void at its core. As they watched, a great section of the courtyard split, a dark, jagged gap opening in its center.

  “The caves,” Adam said grimly. “The explosion must have destabilized them. The whole system is collapsing.”

  As though in confirmation, another boom resounded through the night, deep and hollow. The gaps in the courtyard multiplied and she stared in wonder and horror as a huge section tilted and slid down into a dark abyss.

  “Time to go,” Adam said.

  She didn’t need to be told twice. They turned as one and leaped into the bush, heedless of the thorns and snapping branches. The ground trembled violently beneath her feet, urging her forward still faster until they spilled out into a clearing.

  Astonishment stopped Adam in his tracks. But Ellie had known what their goal was and pulled him toward the fully inflated hot-air balloon.

  Three men stood beside it, gaping at them as if seeing a pair of ghosts. Ellie recognized Flowers but not the other two.

  They wouldn’t be able to overcome the men, not in their current battered state. She would have to convince them—somehow, and quickly.…

  “Bates?” one of them said, squinting at them through the rain. “That you?”

  “I think so, Charlie,” Adam replied.

  “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Who cares?” Lavec growled. “Just get in the basket.”

  Ellie moved forward but Adam held back, protesting.

  “You can’t fly that thing in the storm. It’ll act like a damned lightning rod.”

  “Storm’s passed,” Lavec countered flatly.

  “Then why’s it still raining?”

  “Given the current state of the ground, I think we’d best take our chances with the sky,” Ellie cut in. She grasped his arm and hauled him forward as a series of bangs like a giant’s firecrackers bounced off the surrounding ridge, and another violent quaking shook the stones beneath them.

  Despite all of it, Adam paused at the side of the basket, eyeing it queasily.

  “Are you sure there’s no other—”

  “In. Now.”

  She pushed him to the side, where Charlie and Lavec grasped his arms and hauled him over. Flowers did the same for her, easily lifting her inside.

  “I’m glad you’re not dead,” he said as he set her down.

  “Thanks,” she replied awkwardly.

  Charlie and Lavec sawed at the ropes that tethered them. The balloon quivered, pulling upward as another crack resounded off the trees.

  A dark gap opened at the edge of the clearing. It widened, moving closer.

  “The ground’s disappearing,” she called nervously.

  Adam glanced over her shoulder, then cursed roundly. Beside him, Flowers hefted the machete in his hands and brought it down on the rope with all his might.

  It snapped, and the basket tilted precariously as the free side rose from the ground.

  “The other ropes!” Charlie ordered.

  “They’re too stinking thick,” Lavec growled.

  The ground rumbled again, the crack creeping closer.

  “I’m going to regret this.” Adam sighed. Bracing himself against the basket, he hefted the gun. “Everybody duck.”

  He fired in quick succession, the bullets striking the knots holding the ropes to their anchors.

  With a jolt that threw Ellie to her knees, the balloon leaped up, ascending with a stomach-lurching rapidity. Winds buffeted them, making the basket swing like a child’s toy.

  Lightning cracked across the sky before her. In the flash she could see dark, whirling specks moving away from them, and knew they must be the nightmare residents of the caves below, carried off by the storm.

  The balloon slowed, their ascent going from rocketlike rise to a more gentle drift. Climbing to her feet, Ellie gripped the side of the basket. Looking down, she was able to see the full scale of the destruction she had wrought.

  The ruins were gone. As they rose, the last of the temples gave way in a tumble of stones. In place of the city was a massive depression, its depths concealed by smoke and dust. She thought back to their escape from the herd of boar, the great sinkhole they had swung out over. One very like it seemed to be forming before her eyes, taking with it the last remnants of an entire civilization.

  And the mirror. There was no way it could have survived this. It was shattered, buried beneath impenetrable tons of rubble, as were the books, the murals—all the secrets of a myth made real.

  But not the men, she realized. A line of lights danced along the edge of the c
ollapse, moving quickly toward the safety of the surrounding ridge.

  A pair of field glasses hung beside her. She snatched them up, peering down at the figures.

  She could just make some of them out in the light of their torches. There was Velegas, the foreman, motioning and shouting. She shifted her view, and another form came into focus. It was Dawson, hurrying along, while behind him another figure stopped, turning toward her. She could make out only the lean frame and dark hair, and a stain that streaked down his face to mark the front of his shirt.

  Jacobs had survived.

  He watched their ascent calmly, as though unmoved by the chaos that surrounded him.

  At last he turned and continued up the ridge with the rest.

  Adam was beside her. His knuckles went pale on the side of the basket as a gust of wind shook them, then died away again. She knew without asking that he had seen the trail of men as well.

  “They got out?”

  She nodded.

  She couldn’t wish it otherwise. Enough people had died in this place. But the idea that Dawson and Jacobs were now making their way back to civilization wasn’t a comforting one.

  They were only the tip of an iceberg. A very powerful, very dangerous iceberg. One that would still think of Ellie as a loose end.

  She knew nothing about them. But they knew everything about her. Her name, her address. Her childhood friends. And they would be looking for her.

  She couldn’t go home. Or at least, not as Ellie Mallory. Her old life was lost to her irretrievably. The thought should have grieved her, but instead she felt something entirely unexpected—a sort of relief. And excitement.

  “So much for our big discovery,” Adam said, looking down at the still-crumbling landscape below them. The temples and palaces were gone, even the silvery road dissolving into a widening abyss.

  Ellie’s heart lurched.

  She hadn’t realized it until that moment, utterly consumed with their escape. In destroying the mirror, she had lost the city, and with it the chance that had sent her out on this adventure in the first place.