Two down.
I slid back into the thicket. My gut told me that Smiling Goon had all the brains in this operation, and he wasn’t going to let me catch him as he was checking out the bodies. I began to circle around the thicket again, keeping the clearing where the goons had been standing on my left.
After another fifty yards of creeping through the thicket, I finally spotted him. The moon was down, and Smiling Goon was a dark shape against the sky.
I kept crawling. From behind me came Mike’s voice, asking Smiling Goon if he had given any thought to the consequences of his actions…
I rather hoped he hadn’t. That way his ass-kicking would be a surprise.
I was almost within grabbing distance when his face lit up in a sudden bright green halo; for a brain fart of a moment, I thought he was OACET, but then I realized he was checking a digital device.
There was a flash of white teeth, and Smiling Goon brought his gun up to point directly at me.
“Hello, Ms. Blackwell,” he began. “Did you think—”
And then he wasn’t saying anything, because Darling Petrakis was crushing his skull with a rock.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“What are you doing here?” I hissed, as I grabbed Darling and pulled her into the thicket. “Get down! There might be more of them!”
“I don’t think so,” she said, as she slithered down the rabbit trail behind me. “We came up behind them, and I saw no more men.”
“We?”
“Atlas is here,” she said. “I made him go back down the mountain until I found you.”
“Do I want to know?” I asked. “Actually, yeah. I do. Why are you here?”
“Because you let her tag you like an endangered manatee,” Speedy said as he came into view. He was bigger than the average rabbit, but he could walk comfortably in the tunnel. “Did you get all three of them?”
“Yeah. How do you know there aren’t more?”
“Mike’s been keeping them busy while I scouted for you,” he said. “I hear two unconscious men, and the one who was conscious isn’t making any sounds at all.”
“Right,” I said, and stood up. The thicket ripped at my hair, but that fantastic jacket kept my skin intact. Speedy started to climb up my legs, but I swung down to grab him before he reached my thorn-torn thighs. He settled on my shoulders, chuffing slightly from the excitement.
Darling stood and turned towards the base of the mountain. It was enough of an opportunity for me to swing her into a chokehold and press my knife against her throat.
“Tell me what he meant,” I said. The edge of the knife wasn’t quite cutting her, but it was a near thing. “Tell me what he meant when he said you tagged me.”
“You idiot—”
“Shut up, Speedy,” I snapped. “I want to hear it from her.”
“Your jacket,” she gasped. “The GPS…”
I glanced at the GPS embedded in the jacket’s sleeve. “I didn’t program it.”
“You id-eee-ot,” Speedy said again, this time drawing out the word. “She programmed it before she gave you the jacket. She could use it to track you anywhere.”
I craned my neck to look at him. “You knew about this?”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
He did that rolling motion that passed for a koala’s shrug. “Figured we’d need her.”
“You knew she’d show up in time to save my life?”
“Sure,” he said. “Why not.”
I released Darling and shoved her away from me, hard. She tripped and went sprawling into the thorn bushes.
“Get Atlas up here,” I snapped. “We’re gonna have a talk about boundaries before I send you back home.”
I yanked Speedy off of my shoulders and carried him like a football until we were a safe distance away. “You knew she tagged me, and you let them follow us here?” I whispered.
“We’ll need them,” he whispered back. “Don’t get rid of them.”
Behind us, Darling put her fingers to her lips to give a short blast of a whistle.
Speedy directed me to the cave, where Mike gathered me into a bear hug.
“I’m covered in bunny shit,” I gasped.
“Don’t care. What’s going on?”
I gave him the rundown of my last fifteen minutes, ending with Darling’s arrival and Smiling Goon’s murder. “I don’t think I saw him die, but he’s definitely dead by now. Skulls can’t do what his did.”
“What about the other two?”
“Out cold and tied up. I broke their thumbs so they can’t untie themselves.”
“Good,” he said, then peered out of the cave’s entrance to watch the Petrakis cousins carve their way through the brambles. “Speedy?”
“We need them,” Speedy insisted. “We probably won’t get out of this alive without them.”
Mike raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”
Speedy squirmed until I let him go, and then sprinted a few feet away. “Lemme go get them,” he said. “Then I’ll tell you.”
The koala darted into the thicket and was gone.
“Not good,” Mike said.
“Nope.”
“What’s that joke about escaping the hungry lion? You only have to be faster than the other guy?”
“Yup,” I said. “Darling’s pretty quick, though.”
“Her cousin isn’t.”
“Nope,” I sighed. “Want to beat ’em up and leave ’em here?”
“Tempting, but that’s a shitload of bad karma. They’re adults—let them make their own choices.”
“Right,” I said, and went down into the brambles to get my gear. My flashlight was blinking away, a little beacon sitting next to my pack, and I had retrieved them and returned to the cave before Speedy managed to bring Atlas and Darling up the path.
Darling looked no worse for wear. Her cousin, however, had lost his polished edges on the hike up the mountain. His hair was tousled, his shirt untucked… I swear, he was all the more sexy for it. Some women love diamonds; I love stones.
“Go home,” I said to them. “Whatever the koala’s told you is a lie. He wants to use you as cannon fodder if we get in a tight spot.”
Speedy slapped one forepaw against his face and grumbled under his breath.
“Ms. Blackwell,” Atlas said, his jaw set in a hard line I hadn’t seen on him before. “I do not think you can order me around any longer. You made it clear I am no longer your employee.”
I winced. I had avoided all contact with Atlas since our encounter in Archimedes’ lost library; it still hurt to think about that moment when my self-control had nearly snapped and blown my underwear into ribbons. After he had found (a-hah-hah) the scroll, I had sent a courier with a glowing letter of recommendation to Atlas’ hotel room, along with a bank deposit slip for the fairly obscene sum of money I owed him. He had tried calling, and then sent a note, and then sent flowers with a note, and had then come upstairs to bang on my door. Mike had gone out to tell him thanks, but no thanks.
What? I hadn’t expected to see him again. Definitely not in a cave on the side of a missing mountain.
(Which begged the question—how had they found us? The GPS, obviously, but did that mean that you could track a person to the mountain because you knew that the person existed? Or did Helen just not have a firm enough understanding of modern technology to know that she needed to blank out the GPS’s signal? Too many questions, too fast.)
“I also am no longer your employee,” Darling said, as she settled herself on the floor of the cave. She was carrying her own gear now, a small and badly-beaten backpack with all manner of doohickeys hanging from various straps and clamps. She began to tug on these to test them with the absentminded precision of an experienced explorer. “As we are here now? Tell us how we can help.”
“You can leave,” I replied.
“You have no authority over us,” Atlas said. “We have settled all debts, and now we are free to tour the
country. I told you I wanted to be part of your next discovery, and I will be. Put me to work.”
Darling gave me a wry shrug. “We are not going to leave,” she said. “You might as well tell us why you have come here, to this out-of-the-way place, and how we can help.”
I opened my mouth. I had no idea what was going to come out—hell, I might have even started talking about ghosts!—but Mike saved me.
“Satellites,” he said. “OACET has access to satellites with ground-penetrating technology. They located the hidden library under the Acropolis at Rhodes Town this way. They’ve got a line on a second hidden room, but reaching it is…dangerous.”
“It’s lethal!” I jumped in. “There was an earthquake, and cave-ins, and…and booby traps…and…”
“They’re lying,” Speedy said. “They just want the treasure for themselves.”
I glared at the koala; he glared back.
“They’re coming,” he said.
“You’re going to get them killed,” I snarled.
“Better them than us,” he said.
“Excuse me!”
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped at Atlas. “There’s no treasure. There’s just a manipulative furry prick.”
“If it helps,” Speedy said to Atlas, “you’ll probably be the one who lives.”
I threw my hands in the air. “Fuck it! Fuck it all!” I pointed at the cousins. “You promise to stay between us? To turn and run if things get rough?”
They nodded.
“Fuck it all,” I growled again, and hoisted my pack.
Then I led us down into the beast’s lair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The cave wasn’t a cave.
Oh, it had started out as one, I’m sure, but we hadn’t gone more than twenty feet into the dark before it turned into something utterly different. The walls lost those caveish nooks and crannies and became smooth. The floor had a gentle slope downwards, and at times there were a couple of stairs to ease the descent.
I had expected to feel the press of the mountain around us, but there were no tight places. None. Walking was easy, with breezes coming from hidden holes carrying the night air to us. We kicked up a bit of dust as we went, but all of us marveled at how clean the place seemed to be. No bats. No rodents. No snarling beasts (ghostly or otherwise).
I stayed at the front of our small party; Mike and Speedy brought up the rear. The two of us kept our flashlights moving as we searched for hidden whatevers. Up, down, ceiling, floor… Nothing stood out as a trap. This cave was nothing more than a long rectangle carved into rock.
There were twists and turns, of course. More than once, our flashlights showed that the tunnel seemed to dead-end in a flat wall, only to continue after a sharp turn.
We didn’t talk much, but it wasn’t too long before Speedy started saying, “Right” or “Left” whenever we reached an intersection. I’d use a black Sharpie to mark the direction we turned on the walls and the floor, just in case, and ignored Atlas as he kibitzed about ruining priceless archaeological sites.
After about fifteen minutes of this, I finally realized where we were. “Holy crap,” I said. “It’s a maze!”
“Labyrinth,” Speedy corrected me.
“Who built this place?”
“I do not know,” Atlas said. “It is larger than any underground dwelling made by the ancient Greeks or Romans.”
“Are we below sea level now?” I asked, as I laid a hand on one of the smooth walls.
“Almost,” Speedy said. “Another hour, then yes.”
“That’s unsettling,” I said, as I scrubbed my hands together to get rid of the chill from the rock. “Definitely unsettling.”
Mike and I switched positions every so often; the one riding point needs to stay fresh. During one of these swaps, we all stopped for a break, and Mike took me aside.
“I had thought we’d have met Theseus by now,” he whispered.
“I know,” I replied, and took a quick sip from my water bottle. “What do you think he’s waiting for?”
Mike shook his head. “Can you feel anything?”
I closed my eyes and leaned against the wall, trusting Mike to keep watch. The mountain felt…hollow. “No,” I whispered back. “It feels like…nothing.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“Hell if I know,” I said, as I hoisted my pack and took the lead again.
It was two hours after we entered the Labyrinth that I started balking at Speedy’s orders. Well, not me—Helen. I wasn’t consciously aware I was doing anything until we reached yet another intersection, and Speedy told us to take a left.
I turned right.
“Hey, dumbass,” Speedy snapped. “Your other left.”
“Um…” I began, as I shone my flashlight down the right-hand tunnel. It looked like every other featureless section of the Labyrinth. “I think we have to go this way.”
“You realize I’ve already got this place worked out?”
“Yup,” I said. The psychic section of my brain was starting to twitch. “But—”
“Let her lead for a while,” Mike said to Speedy.
The Petrakis cousins weren’t too happy about that. They exchanged a nervous glance.
“Ah, Ms. Blackwell—” Atlas began.
“Hope’s gonna lead for a while,” Speedy said.
“Got my back, Mike?” I asked.
There were muffled grunting noises as Mike transferred Speedy from his shoulders over to Atlas’. “Always.”
I shut my eyes and began to walk.
(Not tight, mind you. I’m not a complete idiot. I kept them at about half-mast and watched my feet so I wouldn’t accidentally slam into a wall or shuffle off a ledge into empty space. There’s letting instinct guide you, and then there’s being a higher-level organism who doesn’t rely on instinct alone, because sometimes instinct can be a myopic dick.)
I moved through the corridors, my entire world condensed to nothing but my feet and the ground around them. I turned right…right…left…
We kept descending.
I gradually became aware of a light pressure on my shoulders. I could barely feel it; it blended into the straps on my backpack. I shuffled out of my pack and dropped it, nearly oblivious to the discussion over who should carry it for me.
With the pack gone, I realized that the barely-there pressure felt like a woman’s hands. She kept moving me forward; at intersections, she pushed and pulled me into position.
Not instinct, then.
After a time, I couldn’t feel Helen’s hands anymore.
Step, step, step, one foot in front of another.
“Oh my God!” I heard Atlas say.
The concern in his voice snapped me out of my trance. I clung to a nearby wall, shaking my head to clear it. “What?” I asked.
“Look,” Darling said, as she shone her flashlight forward.
The beam dropped away into the black.
“Holy shit,” I said, as I peered over the edge. “This is straight out of the Mines of Moria.”
The chasm was massive; it seemed to split the mountain in two. The remnants of a stone bridge jutted out where the tunnel stopped.
End of the road.
“We can’t cross this,” Mike said. “It’s not humanly possible, not without better equipment.”
I didn’t reply. I thought it might be humanly possible, if the human in question was Helen with her telekinetic rock-smashing abilities, and wondered how on earth we could explain something like that to the Petrakis cousins.
The pressure on my shoulders returned. I found my feet moving towards the sheer drop.
“Hope? Hope, perhaps you should stop. Now.” The concern in Atlas’ voice grew the closer I came to the edge of the chasm.
“There’s a path,” I said, as I spotted the shadowed edge of a very shallow niche cut along the chasm wall.
There were stairs down to the path, if you knew where to look for them, and somehow I did. I heard Darling’s gasp a
s it seemed as though I was stepping into thin air, right before my foot landing safely on the first rock riser.
“Hold on,” Mike said, as he set Speedy on the ground before fishing through his pack for a spare flashlight. He hung this from a rocky outcropping by its lanyard, a signpost to guide us back to the top of the stairs.
This makeshift lantern swayed on its cord, and we all stared as the shadows below us moved slowly back and forth.
“That,” Atlas said, “is a long way to fall.”
Then it was just a matter of clinging to the rock face as we made our way down into the dark.
It took forever.
Atlas had the worst of it. Speedy, Darling, and I had much less overall mass, and we were able to tuck ourselves tight against the wall. Mike is Mike: the man might have had an extra fifty pounds of muscle on Atlas, but he’s as sure-footed as a mountain goat. I think Atlas held his breath every step of the way; just I was starting to worry that he’d pass out and fall into space, the ledge spilled open into a wide, comfortable path.
“This looks promising,” Darling said, inspecting the walls. Unlike the Labyrinth’s smooth walls, the region around the chasm was rough and natural. Darling’s light showed that the rough edges of the cave became smooth again further down the path. “I think this is part of another manmade section.”
“What tipped you off?” Speedy said, as he climbed up to his usual spot on Mike’s shoulders. “The fucking stairs?”
Atlas collapsed on the Labyrinth’s floor, and stared down into the chasm. “We should be able to see the bottom by now,” he said.
“Why?” I asked, and pointed up.
Atlas followed my gesture, and saw that Mike’s lantern was hanging barely twenty feet above us. The angle of the cliff meant that the path we now stood on was hidden; the lantern was close, but all we could see of it was its light.
“That climb felt longer,” Atlas muttered.
Mike clapped Atlas on the back. “Fear is the mind killer,” he said. “You must face your fear—”
“C’mon, Muad'Dib,” I said, as I yanked Mike away from the still-trembling Atlas. “Let’s see where this new road takes us.”
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