To test her theory, she reached back for Alexandra's hand. “Hold onto me.”
“You think you're going to fall?” Alex sounded bemused but clutched her hand and arm with both of her own.
“Just hang onto me.” Holding the candle at arms length to try and slice through the inky atmosphere, she stretched a foot out for the ground.
All she encountered was air. Thinking she just hadn't put her foot down far enough, she bent her other knee to bring her lower.
Still nothing. No solid ground. As if there was no floor at all in the cavern.
“What the hell, Ev?” Alex gripped her arm tighter.
“There's no floor. How can that be?” She pressed up to stand, both feet solidly on the ground again.
“What do you mean there's no floor?”
“Just what I said. All I felt was air when I tried to step down in there.”
Alex gusted an impatient breath. “Let me try.”
Exasperated that her sister didn't believe her, she switched places with her, but held onto Alexandra's shirt in case her overzealous sister just marched on in.
She wouldn't put it past her.
“You're right. I don't feel any floor either. Not stretching either way.” Alex tapped left and right and as far in as she could reach.
Evelyn held tight. Annoyed that the Fallen made it so difficult, she pulled Alex back to solid footing. Pressing her back against the wall, she held the candle up to see her sister's face. The hollows were shadowy, giving Alex a creepy look.
“What should we do? I can feel the Seal about ten feet in,” Evelyn asked.
“Is it down in that hole? Or whatever it is?”
“...no. It doesn't feel like it's down there. It's straight across. I'd say in the middle of the room though it's hard to judge because I can't see.”
“I can jump for it. How far down can that hole really be?”
“You're not jumping!” Evelyn exhaled. Alex wouldn't hesitate to do something daredevil like that.
“Ev, we can't just stand here all day debating it. We shoulda been halfway back by now.” Her tone sounded unusually serious.
“And you're not risking your life jumping into nothingness. No. We can figure it out. Why don't I tear off a piece of the cuff of my pants, we'll light it on fire, and toss it in? It might buy us a few seconds to see.” Evelyn thought it was far better than Alex taking a literal leap of faith.
They'd lost enough sisters recently. Evelyn wasn't willing to outright risk another.
“Ev, that's a damn good idea.” Alexandra grinned, the expression eerie in the flickering light.
Before Evelyn could pass off the candle and crouch to tear a piece of material off, a sharp jolt shook the ground.
Then, a massive earthquake struck.
†
Out in the bailey, Rhett prayed for patience. Not only was the storm getting worse, but Evelyn had left while he was distracted. He knew she wanted to secure the Seal, that she thought it was an easy job considering the rest of all this.
It probably was—except under these circumstances, Rhett didn't like counting on probabilities. Splitting the Templars up was dangerous when his father looked as disoriented as he did, but it could be just as dangerous if the girls ran into trouble.
Khyamaeus stood with Dracht, Christian and Dragar; Minna leaned against one of the outer structure walls, face turned up to the rain, apparently recuperating.
She'd taken a nasty hit, though Rhett knew her body was already at work to heal itself.
No wonder Evelyn had lobbied so hard for them to partake of the fruit before the mission. It would have come in handy.
Even for himself.
His face flamed along the scratches and raw spots, but he didn't reach up to see how much skin was missing. It was tolerable and he had more important things to worry about.
“I can fix that,” Khyamaeus said, interrupting his thoughts.
Rhett glanced up. The man, the Fallen, was unbelievably tall.
“Fix what?” Rhett said, feigning ignorance. He wasn't sure he wanted the Fallen to fix him.
Khyamaeus gave him a dry look, then slid a glance to Dragar. “He should be healed before we venture to the next place.”
Rhett followed the Fallen's gaze. His father, twenty years his senior, blinked rapidly to clear his vision. He'd probably suffered a minor concussion. Going headlong into battle like that set their odds off considerably.
“What do you have to do? Will it affect him otherwise?” Rhett asked. He met Khyamaeus' eyes.
The Fallen reached a broad, long fingered hand out and let it hover over the shoulder of Rhett's armor. Indicating he could show him rather than tell him.
That Khyamaeus had seen war before was obvious in the nicks and scars on his skin. His knuckles were covered with them and another decorated a spot on his jaw, running parallel to the bone.
For some reason, that made Rhett feel better. It eased a little of the tension building along his shoulders. He gave Khyamaeus a curt nod.
Khyamaeus set his hand down.
Through the heavy leather armor, heat built. Slow, unimpeded by material, metal, flesh or bone. It turned into a tingle and spread out across Rhett's skin like a million tiny ants, burrowing deeper until he shuddered. He imagined he could feel those miniscule ants knitting and clicking, using their mandibles to piece him back together.
When the heat swarmed up into his head, white noise obliterated everything; for a single moment, he couldn't see, couldn't smell, couldn't feel the armor on his body. He couldn't even feel the tiny ants putting him back together again. His vision narrowed to a point, the sharper focus bringing Khyamaeus' face into view.
The Fallen stared hard at him in an assessing manner.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“I feel...” Rhett paused. How did he feel? Strangely buoyant, light on his feet, better than he had in a long time. It was more than that the headache and body aches were gone; it was an overall, energetic thrum, like he'd become a high revving engine.
He reached up to smear fingers down his face and was almost surprised to feel scabs. As good as he felt inside, he thought they would be gone.
“Those will go away with more time. By tomorrow night, perhaps,” Khyamaeus said. He removed his hand.
“I feel great. Not just from the wounds--”
“I know.” Khyamaeus inclined his head, then glanced at Dragar and the others in question.
“Ask him if he'll allow it. I don't know that he will,” Rhett said of Dragar. His father could be stubborn, though typically he wouldn't allow his good sense to override what must be done.
Fighting as healthy and whole as he was able could only benefit them all.
Khyamaeus stepped away and approached Dragar.
After a brief discussion, Dragar looked Rhett's way.
Rhett nodded once, still rubbing his cheek with his fingers. The level of clarity in his mind was startling. As tired as he'd been on the plane, he didn't feel an ounce of that now. He felt like he could run marathons and defeat whole armies.
Khyamaeus set his hand on Dragar's shoulder, and then on Dracht and Christian's in turn. Each of them had sustained multiple blows.
Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly, Khyamaeus didn't approach Minna with the offer to heal her.
Just as Rhett started walking toward his father and brothers, the earth erupted with a growl and nearly sent him sprawling face first. It sounded like a giant freight train was bearing down on them, the noise so loud that he saw Minna clap her hands over her ears.
Evelyn. He spun around and raced over the unstable ground toward the castle.
†
Evelyn bumped her head against the wall before she sank down, crouching, one arm splayed out against the tunnel for balance.
“Alex!”
“I'm right here, didn't go fallin' in. I dropped the lighter over the edge though.”
She wasn't surprised that Alex had squatted either. The quake
shook the castle like a toy, or that's what it felt like from the bowels of the building. Pitching and rolling, Evelyn sent up a silent prayer that the earth didn't split open beneath them from the pit—or whatever that dead space was—and swallow them whole. She would have to make sure the candle didn't go out.
Distantly, she heard a clatter of rocks and stone.
“Shit.” Alex spat a curse. “There went part of the tunnel, I bet.”
“Maybe it was just something getting knocked around.” Evelyn didn't want to think of them trapped down here with the inky-oily gloom and no fresh air.
“There was nothin' to get knocked around. No tables or chairs—besides that, it didn't sound wooden, it sounded like rocks.”
Evelyn couldn't argue. It had sounded like a cave in. Once the rumbling and shaking stopped, she used the wall to rise back to her feet. Swinging the candle the direction of the cavern, she tried to see if any of the gloom had cleared. Nothing. No walls, ceiling or Seal in sight.
Alex leaned over and sliced off a five inch part of her hem. The riiip bounced off the walls of the tunnel.
“Here y' go. Light it up.” Alex held the strip in her fingers when she stood up.
Evelyn set the flame to the edge of the torn material then swung the candle out into the cavern to help them see.
Alex pitched the flaming scrap into the air; it gave them several seconds to see the dome shaped cave, the pit below, and a pedestal propped right in the middle with the page and the Seal sitting on top. There didn't seem to be any steps or small bridges—nothing to cross to the pedestal.
Evelyn couldn't even see how far down the pit went, or whether anything sinister lurked there to impede their way.
The lit piece of denim landed on the round surface of the pedestal—right next to the corner of the page.
“Alexandra! What if that catches fire?” Evelyn saw carvings in the top of the pedestal that she couldn't quite make out from here.
“It's not going to catch fire. Even if it did, only the page would burn. Not the Seal itself. It has to be broken anyway to set off the event.”
“How far do you think the pit is across?” Evelyn eyed the circular depression. It was almost like a moat, going around the entire pedestal to protect it.
What kind of people lived here? Did they even know this existed?
“If I had to guess, I'd say...eight feet. From here to the pedestal. Except there's no where to land, Ev. The surface of that thing is barely wide enough to hold the page, much less a body.”
“What if I leap and catch the base?” Evelyn didn't have to look to know Alexandra's expression just turned incredulous. “You don't think I can do it?”
“You're not jumpin' across there. What if you miss the base and you plunge however far it is to the bottom? You can still die of a broken neck,” Alex retorted. And then, “I'll do it.”
“So it's okay for you to risk it, and not me?” Evelyn stared at her sibling.
“I've done a lot more of this kind of thing than you, and you know it. Now hush. The fire over there is going to die and then I won't be able to see anything.” Alex took a position at the edge of the pit.
If the material went out, the pedestal would be plunged into blackness and that would be an impossible maneuver to catch the base in the dark. Evelyn pinched her lips tight to keep a retort at bay. She held the candle up high and pressed snug against the wall to give Alex as much room as she could.
Alexandra bent her knees and launched over the pit, arms extended to catch the base of the pedestal.
Mid-air, Evelyn heard a rough growl echo up from somewhere deep in the pit.
The growl of an animal, not another earthquake.
Chapter Ten
A high chandelier rocked off its cable and crashed into the foyer right in front of Rhett. He vaulted it, landing in a mine field of shattered glass. Sliding, he caught his balance with a pinwheel of one arm.
“Evelyn!” He should have never let her out of his sight. Grinding his teeth, he speared looks through the immense rooms.
Left. Right. Left.
He saw nothing. No one. The continuing gloom, the rain, the booming thunder all worked against him. It was hard to see, impossible to listen, and without the compass, he had to stop to scour every room.
Huge parlors, great rooms with fireplaces as tall as himself, libraries, the kitchen, they were all empty. He heard Dracht shouting somewhere behind him.
“Dracht! Did anyone stay outside?” He jogged down a short hall, cut through a servant's area and back into one of the great rooms.
Dracht swerved away from the busted chandelier toward him. “The rest are staying out there. Where have you checked? I can't hear a damn thing.”
“Me either. If we split up we can cover more ground,” Rhett said. He was on the move with Dracht at his flank.
“We will. Though if there's another quake, and it's stronger, it might bring some of the castle down. Then we'll just be split up with no way to help each other or anyone else.”
“True enough—look, there's a door. Bet it leads to the basement or a cellar.” Rhett closed in on the door and yanked it open. A row of lights exposed stairs leading down.
Rhett didn't hesitate. “Evelyn!”
His voice echoed ahead. He got no immediate answer.
Dracht trotted down the stairs in his wake. “If they aren't down here, we should check the second floor and the towers.”
“We'll do that.” Rhett emerged into the basement. Bare of furniture and storage boxes, it didn't take him long to discern the girls weren't there. Spying the black entrance leading God knew where, Rhett approached it.
“Evelyn!” Stopping there, he listened.
Nothing. Not a drip of water, not a faint cry, nothing. He couldn't see very far into the gloom and glanced behind him for lighting of some kind.
“See anything?” Dracht asked.
“No. Can you find a flashlight or something? We can't leave this unchecked.”
“Have to be upstairs. There's nothing down here.” Dracht jogged back to the steps and up them, disappearing from sight.
Rhett had to wait there for his brother to return. Impatient, he paced before the opening. “Evelyn! Alex!”
They were wasting too much time.
“Found two.” Dracht entered the basement and tossed him a flashlight that Rhett caught against his chest armor.
“Thanks.” Flicking it on, he pierced the dim corridor and started down it. Less than ten feet in, he noticed the shadows seemed especially cloying.
When he came to the first split in the tunnel, he wasn't sure which way to go. The beam on the flashlight showed no other doors in sight, no clue which way the girls had gone.
If they'd come down here at all.
He went right. Stalking strides took him forward, and he bypassed an offshoot tunnel to his left another thirty feet down. Might as well see where this initial corridor ended.
It ended in yet another fork and Rhett clenched his jaw in frustration.
“We can't clear this entire basement. Or whatever it is. Labyrinth. There's no telling how far these tunnels go or where they end up. We could be down here for hours,” Rhett said.
“I agree. Splitting up is also a bad idea. Maybe we should go back up and check the rest of the castle first. If we can't find them, we can gather the others and split off into three groups down here. It'll go a lot faster and then at least we'll have backup if something goes wrong.”
“We're going to have to. If we keep following these, we'll wind up lost.” Rhett didn't like leaving stones unturned. “Let's go.”
“Wait, what was that?” Dracht stopped, pushing against Rhett's armor to force him to pause, too.
Rhett listened. They were too far below ground for the storm's fury to disrupt them down here. At first, he heard nothing. Not a scrape of a rat, no settling of the earth. Crypt quiet.
Then he heard the faintest, most distant whisper of sound.
“What the hell
is that?” he asked Dracht, shining his flashlight toward the right down one of the tunnels.
“I don't know. I'd say it's an echo of thunder, but it's too high pitched, and that would mean these tunnels lead up to the surface where the sound can travel down.”
“A rat?”
“Don't think so.”
“Could they have made it outside and it's them all calling for us to hurry our asses up?”
Dracht rumbled a quiet laugh. “Could be.”
They both speared their flashlights left and right, like they expected someone to come walking out of the gloom.
Again, a faint noise reached them.
“What the hell is that. And which direction is it coming from?” Rhett asked. He stalked toward the right tunnel and walked a few feet in, cocking his head.
Dracht went to the left and did the same.
They waited.
“It's definitely coming from this direction. I can't be sure, but let's just check quick,” Rhett said. He strode down the narrow, dank corridor, Dracht at his heels.
They had to stop twice to listen and pick up the sounds again. This time they were a little louder, a little closer.
And definitely human.
Rhett broke into a jog.
“Evelyn!”
He got no reply.
Around the next turn, he saw exactly why they had so much trouble hearing the noises; half the corridor had caved in, the passage blocked by a pile of rock and rubble. Some were as big as his fist, others the size of basketballs.
A few were bigger than that.
Beyond, somewhere past the cave in, he could hear the trill of a feminine call. A cry? It made his blood run cold to think of Evelyn buried alive on the other side.
“It's them,” Dracht said.
The urgency in his voice matched Rhett's own. “Help me dig through.”
“Watch we don't cause another cave in,” Dracht warned, setting his flashlight on the ground. Pointing it toward the pile, it illuminated their work space.
Rhett followed suit.
One by one, they started moving rocks. Rhett hauled them in and passed them off to Dracht, who threw them back down the corridor. The stones clacked and clattered, landing where they may. Breaking into a sweat, Rhett got into a rhythm and handed them off quicker. Uncovering a small hole, the distant cry turned into a wail and then into a scream.
Daughters of Eve Collection (Books 1, 2 & 3) Page 58
