The Arkana Mysteries Boxed Set

by N. S. Wikarski

  “Mr. Hunt, nothin’!” Leroy bellowed. “Do like I told you and train that flashlight over here.”

  Cassie could hear the sound of feet scuffling through the dirt some distance behind her. A light flicked on obediently to reveal her two companions with their hands raised over their heads. Erik looked tight-mouthed and tense while Griffin was still gaping in shock. For once in his life, he seemed to be at a loss for words.

  “I believe we got some loose ends need tyin’ up,” Hunt said pleasantly. “How about you two boys walk on down that ramp and go inside that tomb you was just lookin’ at.”

  “Why should they?” Cassie demanded. “You’re just going to kill us all anyway!”

  “Cass!” Erik warned again.

  “Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t. There’s a lot of maybes could happen in the next five minutes or so.” He paused and regarded the two men who remained motionless.

  “Daniel, you keep that light steady on them boys.” The beam traveled to the men’s faces, causing them to blink. “You fellers go on and do like I told you.”

  Erik and Griffin, arms still overhead and flashlights still in hand, exchanged looks and complied. Hunt followed with Cassie in lockstep slightly ahead of him. She could feel the gun scraping against her temple as they walked. Daniel followed, his flashlight pointed dutifully ahead of the strange procession.

  The men paused in front of the stomion.

  “Go on now,” Hunt urged once more. “Inside.”

  They had to crawl through the top half of the doorway since the bottom half was filled with fallen rock and gravel.

  Once they were inside, Leroy threaded his way carefully down the rock-strewn ramp, still gripping Cassie by the neck.

  He stopped right in front of the doorway. “Alright, missy, it’s your turn. In the hole. And don’t try runnin’. No way you can get past me anyhow without takin’ a bullet. Might as well join your friends inside.”

  Cassie had no intention of trying to make a break for it. The dromos was only three feet wide, and most of it was clogged with debris. She wouldn’t be able to move in any direction without being caught. Hunt released his grip on her neck so she could breathe freely again. She knew the gun was still pointed at her as she crawled through the stomion into the tomb. Her companions trained their flashlights on her to make sure she was alright. She gave them a tremulous smile and walked to the center of the chamber. Erik pulled her behind him in a futile gesture of protection. Griffin closed ranks next to him.

  “Daniel, come on down here and hand me that light,” Hunt instructed, his voice calm and matter-of-fact—as if he were asking someone to pass the peas at the dinner table.

  “Please, Mr. Hunt!” the voice whined from the darkness once more. “I’m sure Father never intended for something like this to happen.”

  “The hell he didn’t,” Leroy said over his shoulder. “Why’d you think he pulled me into this mess? To babysit you? You better do like I say, or he’s gonna know what a gutless wonder his boy is. You want that? You want me goin’ back and tellin’ your daddy how you let him down?”

  “No,” the voice quavered.

  “Good, that’s settled then,” Hunt said emphatically. “Now hand me that goddam light!”

  Daniel wordlessly complied.

  The cowboy leaned across the pile of rock that filled the lower half of the stomion, a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other.

  Cassie looked around the circular burial chamber—stone and mortar, no windows, not even a dark corner to hide in. They were trapped.

  “Well, ain’t this handy. More folks ought to get snuffed right inside a tomb. Saves on funeral costs.” Leroy took aim and murmured, “Easy as shootin’ fish in a barrel.”

  Cassie instinctively shut her eyes and put her hands over her ears. She didn’t want to know what was coming next.

  What came next was something nobody expected. Without warning, a low rumble emanated from beneath their feet. The earth began to shiver. Cassie lost her balance. It seemed as if rock was raining down from the sky. The dromos walls were collapsing.

  Leroy quickly retracted his head from the stomion.

  Cassie could hear him calling to his companion. “Looks like Mother Nature is gonna finish the job for us. Come on, Daniel. We best get outta here while we still can!” The sound of footsteps sliding over gravel echoed in the tomb as the men scampered over the rock pile. The noise of their hasty retreat had barely faded before rock came crashing through the doorway, filling up the stomion completely, and burying the Arkana team inside.

  When the rumbling of the earth finally subsided, the silence that followed possessed the stillness of death.

  Chapter 39 – Exit Strategy

  Stunned and trembling, Cassie struggled to sit up. Her flashlight had rolled to the side of the chamber, the beam pointing toward the wall. She crawled on all fours to retrieve it. Swinging the light around in a wide arc, she asked, “Erik? Griffin? Are you guys all right?”

  Erik sat up, coughing from the dust blown into the chamber by fallen rock. “I’m OK,” he confirmed succinctly. “Griffin?”

  From another part of the tomb, the scrivener answered. “Miraculously, we all still seem to be alive.” He wiped a thick coating of dust from his face, retrieved his flashlight, and stood up. Shining his beam toward the stomion, he revealed that it was now completely filled with rock. “Alive for the moment anyway. It would appear we’re sealed in.”

  Erik walked over to the doorway and tried pushing against the newly fallen boulders at the top. They rolled inward as a pile on the other side of the door rushed to take their place.

  Cassie fumbled in her jacket pocket for her phone, thinking she might be able to reach Xenia. “No good,” she said. “There’s no signal down here.” She looked around the stone chamber nervously. “How long before we run out of air?”

  Griffin’s eyes traveled around their enclosure, judging its size and calculating air volume. “Several hours, I’d say.”

  “OK, everybody stop breathing.” The pythia laughed weakly. “Let’s try to conserve oxygen.”

  “If you stopped chattering, that would be a good start,” Erik snapped. He wandered around the center of the chamber, training his flashlight on the domed ceiling of the vault as he studied it closely.

  Stung by the rebuke, Cassie rounded on him. “By the way, weren’t you supposed to provide security for this field mission? Great job of letting the crazy cowboy sneak up on us. Really fine work!”

  Even in the dim light, she could see Erik’s face redden. Apparently, the pythia had struck a nerve. “I might have heard him coming if you two weren’t yakking all the time!”

  “So, it’s all our fault?” She leaped to her feet, ready to go toe-to-toe, but Griffin interposed himself between the combatants.

  “This isn’t helping the situation,” he objected. “We need to cooperate if we’re going to get out of this dilemma.”

  “Aren’t you the optimist,” Cassie muttered angrily as she retreated to the opposite wall of the chamber.

  Griffin sat down beside her. “We just need to calm ourselves and assess the problem rationally.”

  The two watched Erik as he stuffed his lit flashlight into his jacket pocket and raised his arms above his head. Then he began walking around the perimeter of the room, waving his hands gently from side to side.

  “How very extraordinary,” Griffin remarked.

  “Do you think he’s finally lost it?” the pythia whispered doubtfully. “Or maybe he just wants us to join him in a chorus of Kumbaya.”

  “I can hear you,” Erik stated flatly. “You’re both using up my air.” He stopped pacing and stood before a section of wall. Standing on his toes, he reached his arms higher and waved them side to side. “Yup, that’s it,” he commented half to himself.

  “What are you doing?” Griffin asked.

  “Checking for air flow. You think you could give me a hand here, s
tretch?”

  Griffin was several inches taller than Erik. He hastened to the other side of the room and mimicked the security coordinator’s movements. He waved his arms overhead and then stopped at a particular spot on the wall. “Yes, I believe you’re right. I feel it.”

  Cassie stood up impatiently and walked over to join the other two. “What is it?” she demanded.

  Griffin smiled at her. “A draft.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  ‘It means a way out,” Erik explained laconically.

  “How do you figure?” The pythia wasn’t convinced that a slight breeze was anything to cheer about.

  Griffin explained. “This dromos is approximately twenty feet in diameter and about twenty feet high at the apex of the dome. Judging from what we observed on the outside, the top half of the dome has been exposed to the elements for quite some time. For centuries, possibly a millennium, moisture has worked its way into the mortar. The action of repeated freezing and melting has separated the clay from the surrounding stones.”

  “Plus, we just had that nice little earthquake,” Erik added. “Look at these cracks.” He trained his flashlight at a spot above his head. Cassie could see a thin fracture running up toward the ceiling.

  “Precisely,” Griffin confirmed. “The dome is weakened. No doubt the mortar between the stones has eroded completely at the spot where we felt that draft. We should be able to remove enough of the rock for us to squeeze out.”

  “Without bringing the whole roof down on top of us?” Cassie shuddered at the thought.

  “It’s fairly unlikely since this is a corbelled vault,” the scrivener commented. “The stones overlap one another to add structural stability.”

  Erik shrugged nonchalantly. “Even if they all fell, at least it would be a quicker death than suffocating.”

  “You can’t be serious!” she exclaimed.

  He smiled sardonically. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No,” she admitted weakly.

  “Then why don’t you stop complaining and make yourself useful? Over there.” He pointed at the small boulders blocking the stomion entrance. “We need to pile up enough of those against the wall so we can climb to the ceiling and loosen some rocks where it’s weakest.”

  “Yes,” Griffin joined in. “The part of the dome that protrudes from the surface is at least ten feet above the floor. It would be no help to loosen stones at eye level. We’d still remain buried.”

  “We’ll have to work fast,” Erik advised. “I don’t know how long the batteries in these flashlights will hold out.”

  The thought of being trapped underground in complete darkness motivated Cassie. She sped to the task.

  After countless trips to the stomion rock pile, the trio managed to build a sturdy enough platform to reach the spot on the wall where a draft seemed to be flowing into the chamber.

  “You’d think with all of the rocks we just pulled out of the doorway, we might have opened a way out,” Cassie observed ruefully.

  “I expect the entire dromos has been completely filled in,” Griffin said glumly. “No hope of escaping that way. But cheer up,” he added optimistically. “At least we won’t have to worry about running out of air.”

  Erik was rummaging around in his backpack again. He withdrew an army knife. Looking up at his companions, he asked, “Either of you have something sharp we can use to scrape away the loose mortar?”

  Cassie reached into a pocket and produced a metal nail file. “Will this work?”

  The security coordinator nodded approvingly. “It can’t hurt. How about you, Griffin?”

  After thoroughly checking his pockets, Griffin reluctantly held forth a gold ball point pen. “This is all I have with me.”

  “Good enough,” Erik said.

  “It’s my favorite pen,” Griffin commented sadly.

  Since the rock pile was only wide enough to support one person, they took turns climbing up to gouge and dig at the mortar. After what seemed like hours, they loosened one of the stones enough to dislodge it.

  “Stand back,” Erik cautioned. “The earthquake could have destabilized the entire dome. I don’t know how many others will fall.”

  His companions moved to the opposite wall of the chamber. They nervously shone their flashlights on the fracture in the ceiling as he carefully worked the rock free.

  The second he pulled it from the curve of the dome, three other stones surrounding it fell out of place and dropped to the rock pile at his feet. He waited tensely to see if any more would tumble loose. “So far, so good,” he murmured.

  With the delicacy of a brain surgeon, Erik freed two more corbelled stones without disturbing the rest of the dome. Eventually, he had opened up a space wide enough to allow one of them to squeeze through.

  “You did it!” Cassie exclaimed in surprise.

  “We did it!” Griffin corrected in an elated tone.

  Erik gave a half smile. “You guys ready to go topside?”

  “Yes, please,” the scrivener requested politely.

  Cassie nodded in a flood of mute relief. They weren’t going to die after all. At least not today. With a shock, she noticed a grayish light coming from the gap in the ceiling.

  “Is that…” she paused.

  “Daybreak,” Erik completed the sentence.

  “How long were we down here?” she asked in wonder.

  “Too long,” he replied concisely. “Better let me go first.”

  “What a gentleman.” Cassie’s voice dripped with sarcasm.

  Erik gave her an exasperated look. “In case our friends are still hanging around outside.”

  He reached into his backpack for the thousandth time and pulled out a hand gun.

  “What the…” Cassie trailed off in shock. “You had a gun all this time, and you didn’t try to use it?”

  “In case you forgot, the cowboy had you in a stranglehold with a pistol to your head. If I’d made a move, he would have splattered your brains all over the countryside.”

  “Lovely image,” interjected Griffin.

  “Besides, we had our hands in the air. If I’d dived into my backpack to reach for a weapon, same result. Your brains splattered all over the countryside.”

  “But why weren’t you carrying it someplace more useful?” Cassie challenged. “Like a holster or something.”

  “Too obvious,” Erik countered.

  “It’s comforting to know that if you actually need a gun, it’s going to be conveniently out of reach.”

  Erik climbed down off the rock pile and glowered at Cassie. “You can make this about me all you want, but you’re just covering up for the fact that you’re the weak link in this operation!”

  “What?” Cassie gasped.

  “That’s right,” Erik persisted. “You’ve got no business being part of this world. You’ve never been trained for it. And because you don’t know what you’re doing, I end up risking my neck to keep you safe!”

  Cassie was speechless. How could he blame her for this mess? It was clearly his fault for being caught off guard.

  “You know what?” she challenged. “I am fed up with your attitude. You need to get over the inexperience of me because it’s seriously messing up your job performance. This whole trip you’ve been pouting that you had to babysit the greenhorns. You were so busy feeling sorry for yourself that you got sloppy and let your guard down.”

  Erik sent Cassie a murderous look.

  Before he could follow it with a killing retort, Griffin rushed to smooth things over. “Really, I think we should continue this lively and interesting discussion once we’re well away from this place. Our principal concern at the moment ought to be escape.”

  Erik and Cassie glared ferociously at one another for several more seconds before the security coordinator broke eye contact. “I’ll go first,” he repeated. “Hand me my pack once I’m outside.”

  Chapter 40 – Site Un
seen

  Erik climbed to the top of the rock pile. Holding his pistol, he poked his head through the gap in the dome. Apparently feeling that it was safe, he squeezed himself past the narrow opening and disappeared.

  “All clear,” he called down. “Send Cassie up next with my pack.”

  The pythia didn’t argue. She wanted to get out of the tomb without further delay. She reached for Erik’s pack but sank under the weight of it. It was unexpectedly heavy. She wondered to herself if he might have packed a rocket launcher that he forgot to tell them about. Griffin helped her to hoist it up ahead of her.

  She had no trouble squeezing herself through the gap since she was the smallest of the three. When the cool dawn air hit her face, she almost sobbed with relief. Realizing that Erik was standing nearby, she blinked back the tears. This wasn’t something she wanted him to see. Especially not after what he had just said. She wasn’t going to give him any more reason to believe that she was the weak link.

  Griffin followed a few minutes later. “That was a bracing experience, wasn’t it?” he joked.

  Neither of his companions laughed.

  Cassie noticed the sky turning a lighter shade of grey. Twilight and dawn looked oddly the same. At least they could see everything in their immediate vicinity, and nobody else was around.

  “I don’t suppose we need these anymore.” Griffin switched off his flashlight.

  Cassie realized her own was still on. She flicked it off absently.

  “We’ll have to cover this up,” Erik observed.

  “What?” Cassie didn’t think she’d heard him right. “We just spent hours carving out a hole in this dome, and now you want to cover it up?”

  “We don’t know if our buddy the cowboy is going to circle back here,” the security coordinator cautioned. “If he thinks we got out, he’s going to try to track us down.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Cassie that Leroy might come back to make sure the job was finished.

  “Let him think we’re still inside.”

  “That makes sense.” Griffin looked around for something to camouflage the hole in the dome. “Luckily, the gap is just at ground level, so it shouldn’t be too hard to disguise.”