“Linus, you dumb bastard, you’re going to get us all killed,” he heard, right below his position. He ran into the ceremonial room, avoiding any contact with Leif’s body—and the two black armored Centurions—and made his way down to the first level. He paused, giving a quick glance towards the people frozen behind the temple’s walls, ten in all. The strangeness didn’t completely register. Linus passed his fingers over the smooth ice, but nothing happened.
The figures looked alive, but there was nothing he could do to help them. Linus could feel a strange current running through the air when he pressed his fingers to the wall. The last figure in the row was a young woman, maybe twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with a creamy beige complexion and brilliant blonde hair. Her eyes stared out at Linus like they sensed his every move.
The temple was somehow channeling their energy. Linus gulped. For what?
He hurried out of the temple’s entrance. Carmen already stood outside, struggling with a large chunk of ice shaped in a jagged flame.
“Help me,” she said. “Your friend is trapped behind it.”
Linus peeked over the wreckage of the tall sculpture, where he could just make out Strike’s blonde hair fluttering in the breeze. He took one side of the heavy block of ice and pulled, the tongue crunching as it rolled along the ground.
Linus fell backwards and almost lost his footing.
“Might want to watch your step, kid,” Strike said, sliding between the small crack Carmen and Linus had opened up. She had been pressed up against the outside wall of the temple, beneath the overhang, when the sudden quaking had jarred loose the structure’s namesake dragon. It hadn’t crushed her, but its unfortunate positioning meant that she had been trapped.
Linus looked over his shoulder, where the massive canyon sat only feet away. He scurried forward. No way anyone could survive that. His heart sank, thinking of Keene. Then he turned to the situation developing in front of him, where Carmen had a pistol trained at Strike’s head.
Strike looked poised to throw the gleaming combat knife straight at Carmen’s jugular.
“Whoa, whoa,” Linus said, holding up his hands. “What gives?”
“She tried to steal from us,” Strike said. “In case you forgot.”
“Look, it’s a long story,” Linus said. “But she’s here to help.”
“I don’t trust her.”
“She helped save your ass just now,” Linus said. “Isn’t that good enough?” He took a step forward. Carmen flicked the safety off. “Come on, let’s be friends.”
“She lowers her weapon, I lower mine,” Strike said, her blonde hair fluttering in the slight breeze. “Otherwise we both go down swinging.”
“She works for the government. Secret organization. They don’t want the world to end, either, okay? Well, at least she doesn’t. The rest of them—you know what, long story, we can all all catch up later. We’re here to stop whatever’s going on.” Linus said.
“Sure you’re not just blinded by love?”
“If I trust her, then you should, too,” Linus said. He shivered in the chilly air. “Goddamnit, there’s no time for this.”
Strike shrugged, then sheathed her knife. Carmen followed with the pistol. The two women gave each other wary looks, like they’d shelve the matter until the more pressing issues were addressed.
“So anyone know what’s going on here?” He looked between Strike and Carmen, but neither had any more answers than him.
“The world hasn’t ended,” Carmen said. “But I fear that it might still happen.”
“She’s got a sunny disposition,” Strike said. “Good catch, Linus.” But she said the words without any energy. The weight of Keene’s disappearance also burdened her mind.
“Sooner we get in there, the sooner we can go home,” Linus said.
Before he left the lonesome peak, he gave one last look over his shoulder.
If any man could survive that drop, it was Keene.
The three entered the chamber, and Strike let loose a hushed but powerful, “Jesus Christ.”
“What?” Linus said. He rushed over to the wall of figures behind the clear, impenetrable material. “Oh, that. Yeah, freaky.”
“Protect the girl and save the world,” Strike said. She pressed her palm against the wall slowly. “It looks like someone beat us to it.”
“What are you saying,” Carmen said, stepping forward. “The prophecy is coming true?”
“Prashant must’ve plugged her into the temple,” Strike said. “Alessia was the final piece of the puzzle. The last genetic mutation in the line.”
“What’s she do?” Linus said.
“I think she’s a kind of conduit,” Strike said. “From the way things look.” The air thrummed with a low, subtle energy. “And it sounds like this place is starting to activate.”
“So you’re helping Prashant?” Linus said.
“I’m not sure,” Strike said. “Depends on what all of this is about.” Her head swiveled around the room. “I don’t really like the looks of it, though.”
“His men killed Agent Redbeard without quarter,” Carmen said.
“We don’t trust anyone besides each other,” Strike said. “All right?”
Everyone nodded.
“So what happens next?” Linus said.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.” Strike pointed towards the back of the chamber, where an open door led to a narrow passageway. “Only one way to find out.”
She took one step forward.
A huge explosion erupted from the ceiling, sending giant blocks of ice hurtling towards the ground.
“Run!” Carmen said, yanking Linus’ arm. They rushed towards the passage, not knowing if it was the right way, a dead end, or their grave. A massive rock soared past Linus’ head, almost clipping him. He ducked at the last moment, breaking into an awkward roll.
He and Carmen skidded into the door. A second later, a massive rock slammed down, blocking the path.
“Strike?” Linus tried to wipe the smoke and dust from his eyes. “Strike!”
“No need to yell,” a familiar voice said. “What took you so long?”
Linus breathed easier for a moment, but his lungs seized when he saw their predicament. The entrance to this small passageway—no more than three yards wide, and completely unlit—was blocked completely. The temple continued to shake and rumble, explosive charges going off above at regular intervals.
From the narrow tendrils of moonlight that slipped through the cracks into the passage, Linus saw that the only way forward, near where Strike stood, tapping her foot impatiently, was down a steep set of stairs.
No guard rails.
Just a descent into the heart of oblivion.
27 | Long Way Down
Keene’s shoulder collided with a small platform about twenty feet from the edge of the cliff. He bounced off and almost continued falling, but had the wherewithal to reach out with his hand and grab hold of a tree branch. He hung there, his feet dangling over moonlit nothingness.
The tree gave way slightly, and his feet fell a half an inch.
Keene scrambled upward, so half his belly was on the extremely narrow overhang. It was too small for him to sit on. He hugged the tree and took a few minutes to recover, allowing the pain in his upper body to subside.
What sounded like a chopper whipped past, its blades blowing a stiff wind through his hair. He shut his eyes. Then it was past him, on to wherever it needed to be.
Where did it need to be? A chopper didn’t seem like something Cladius would use.
Huh.
Keene’s attention was drawn back to his own predicament by a large crack. His torso slipped off, and he was hanging again, his forearms pulsing.
The respite appeared to be ending, the thick, deadened wood finally giving up the ghost. Keene tried not to look down, but no matter where his gaze fell, the incredible smallness of his own existence was apparent. The gorgeous valley far below took on a menacing quality. From this he
ight, it was like looking into the jaws of a hungry tiger.
He looked up at the smoking remains of the bridge and wondered how Strike was faring. He had heard her and the kid—and some new woman—head into the temple after the quaking had stopped. He’d tried to call back to them, but the wind rushing through the crevice overpowered any sound he could make.
Maybe they could stop this prophecy on their own.
He had his doubts. Not because they were incapable, but because the truth was uncertain, which side to pick no more than a crapshoot. The information was incomplete, and Keene had little hopes of anyone acquiring the full story before the clock struck twelve.
Waiting to plummet to his death gave Keene a lot of time to think. But he still couldn’t decide who frightened him more. Prashant or Cladius. That scared him more than his own impending death.
Well, not quite. Keene wasn’t so enlightened as to completely ignore imminent threats to his mortality.
More of the tree’s roots came out. A terrible ripping filled the air, sickening in its steady consistency. The crack of the chilly bark, the frozen soil being upturned. This was the awful score that would accompany his death.
Come on Keene, focus.
He still had a braid of rope from Alessia’s cabin. Keene cautiously reached towards his belt, feeling the tree give a little. He held his breath and detached the loop, letting it dangle down between his blistered fingers.
Hopefully it was long enough. But he had nothing to act as a hook.
The final roots still clinging to the ground began to give way, sending Keene flailing over the chasm. His mind raced to find a solution. He settled on the hunting knife. As the small tree continued to sag, Keene tore the knife from its sheath and tied the rope around the hilt.
He shook it, and the knife held steady.
Keene threw the makeshift grappling hook over his shoulder, hoping that the blade wouldn’t tumble down on his head. He heard it glance off the rock and come bouncing down the cliff. It zoomed past, narrowly missing his right arm. When the rope fully extended, Keene felt a slight jerk. He looked down. The knife glinted softly in the moonlight.
He had one final shot.
He yanked the rope up and spun it around like a lasso, trying to visualize a target he couldn’t see. If he got the arc and angle right, he could get the hook to whip back high enough over the edge of the cliff, up on solid ground.
Keene let the knife hook fly as the tree finally gave way.
He free fell, but only for a couple feet. The knife stuck in the snow above and held, even with all of Keene’s weight pulling down. He swung against the cliff face, putting his feet out to avoid a face first collision.
The tree clattered hundreds of feet below into the abyss.
Keene made his way slowly up the cliff, convinced with each movement that the knife would dislodge from the frozen tundra, and he would be swallowed up by the darkness. When he finally reached the top, he flopped on to the solid ground, breathing heavily. His gaze fell on the blade, which was entirely embedded in the thick ice covering the ground.
Not a bad throw.
He rolled over and looked at the Diamond Dragon, still trying to catch his breath and stop his racing heart. No sign of Strike, Linus or the woman. The voice, now that he could focus, was familiar. Carmen? Yes, it had to be Carmen.
But how had she and Linus gotten here? It didn’t matter.
The bridge was a nonstarter. They were on their own. Keene didn’t trust the makeshift grappling hook twice. The first miracle had been a gift.
Besides, the chasm was wider than his rope. Even if he did have a death wish, he couldn’t make the attempt if he wanted to.
That meant that the only way forward was to return to the valley.
Keene rose to his feet and pulled the saving blade from the snow. He returned the tools to his belt and began retracing his former path. Before he got far, an ominous rumble sent him flying to the ground. The entire mountain range shook and trembled, like the gods themselves had awoken beneath.
Keene crawled on the ground, unable to stand. Orange tendrils leapt towards the sky from the direction of the Diamond Dragon. His eyes darted across the landscape, scanning for tumbling rocks or jagged shards of ice. Not that he could do much to avoid them. He would just have enough time to realize that his death was imminent.
He glanced over his shoulder just as another massive fireball erupted in the air from the direction of the ice temple. Keene shielded his eyes as the rumbling intensified. He felt the ground beneath him shift and began to carry him away.
He tried to hunker down in the moving snow, but it was no use.
The series of explosions had destabilized all of the nearby mountains.
And Keene was now hurtling down the steep slopes at over eighty miles an hour, caught in a giant avalanche.
Keene struggled to keep his head above the roaring torrent of snow, but that was like trying to fight his way out of the eye of a hurricane. Attempting to control Mother Nature was impossible. He was just along for the ride, buffeted and thrown on a massive crest of endless white.
Through the snowy haze, Keene saw that he was high in the air, at the top. This was better than being beneath the crushing deluge, but there was one problem.
This wave was a hundred feet above the ground, and the bottom was dropping out.
Keene felt the ground disappear beneath him, and then his legs were churning above an open blue expanse, the wave receding beneath his feet. Boulder sized chunks of ice continued to rush down the slopes.
In the distance, Keene could see another avalanche picking up steam, outpacing him, rushing down the valley. He craned his neck, seeing that the other mountains were also disintegrating, dumping their entire contents into the green valley.
Shambhala was about to experience a deep frost.
Keene plummeted through the air, only to be caught be a second crest which knocked the wind out of his lungs. The snowstorm enveloped him in a sea of infinite white, blocking his view of anything outside his personal space. Maybe it was better that way.
Flying blind, he wouldn’t see the rock he would be impaled on.
But that didn’t happen. The new crest pushed Keene towards the outskirts of the avalanche, where things were comparably placid and serene. This meant he was only being thrown at about twenty miles an hour, which felt like he was standing still after the wild air ride only moments prior.
Keene drifted until the wave petered out. His legs were once again weightless, and the drop was quick and absolute.
Luckily, it was only about ten feet.
Unluckily, the frozen ground still hurt a lot. Snow piled up around Keene, and he struggled to sit up as his lungs burned and feet begged for a rest. But if he laid down, the tail-end of the snow pile would bury him alive, and he would drown in a frozen hell.
Keene staggered forward and made an awkward effort to keep moving. The remnants of the avalanche threw him down each time, but the meager effort allowed Keene to stay breathing and unburied. When the rumbling finally ceased, and the slope stopped shifting, he collapsed and coughed up an almost solid chunk of ice.
He lay on his back, staring at the almost perfect moon. His body wanted to shut down and rest, but the temperature was dropping. From the corners of his eyes, he could see the valley was no more than a half hour walk. In fact, he was already in the valley—the concurrent avalanches had buried portions of the edges in powder.
No—he couldn’t rest here. He would freeze to death and die, which seemed like a horrible waste after cheating death twice in under ten minutes. Keene crawled for a few paces, then managed to unsteadily rise to his feet.
He searched his belt for supplies. Everything that Alessia had given him was gone, swallowed up by a thousand tons of snow. A bitter wind rippled through his clothes. At least he still had those.
An orange glow in the distance below, from one of the partially covered mountains nearby, caught Keene’s attention. He froze for a mom
ent by instinct, overtaken by fear. An arrow soared through the air, the wind pushing it wide of its mark. It hissed in the snow before burning out.
Keene began running.
After all this, the Centurions were still after him? Or was it the resistance? Who had won the battle for the estate, the right to use the precious girl?
No more arrows came, but Keene didn’t stop sprinting until he was in the tall grass of the fields. His mind was focused on only one thing.
Get to Cladius’ villa. Find the portal.
The only way to save the girl right now was to save himself.
He reached the still burning wreckage of the estate within fifteen minutes. The whir of rotors caught his attention—that same sound he’d heard while he was dangling over the abyss, waiting to plunge into oblivion.
Keene dove behind a twisted hunk of wood—the top part of an exquisitely crafted Ionic column— and peered out as the black chopper set down. Its spinning blades flattened the nearby grass. Keene saw a number of archers with lit arrows rise from the shadows.
Their ragged clothing gave them away as resistance. So Prashant had won the battle for Shambhala. How wonderful for him—but Keene had doubts about how wonderful that was for the world. Or Alessia.
Or even this world. The entire place smoldered, thick smoke hanging over the once verdant pastures.
The pilot cut the engine, and the blades stopped. The archers formed a cautious ring around the copter. He came out with his hands raised, and the men snuffed out their burning arrows, nodding that it was okay. Then they disappeared into the tall grass, once again hidden and ready to attack any stray invaders.
The pilot walked towards the estate, whistling.
Keene had a crazy idea. Once upon a time, way back on Apollus, he had been the best captain in the entire galaxy. Without parallel. Those skills had translated to the technologically inferior vehicles gracing the time he now called home.
He could run away, into the mansion, escape back to Earth. Maybe the prophecy was all junk. Maybe everything would be okay if he fixed nothing here. Maybe he could save his own hide without a lick of extra trouble.
The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) Page 15
