The Hunter
Page 11
“You know as well as I do that nothing down here is what it appears to be.” Lilly sighed, stretching her hands toward the top of the cavern, which rippled with reflected red light from the water. She fixed her gaze on the small, dark opening and started toward it.
Colt fell into step beside her. “Can’t be worse than anything we faced so far,” he offered, but his words were far bolder than he felt. The truth was he had no idea what they were up against. Finding the box empty except for the small scrap of paper hadn’t helped. For the first time in a long time, Colt allowed doubt to creep into the fringes of his certainty.
Would he ever find the pages? And if he did, would he find them in time?
Lilly dropped to her knees, giving him a delectable view of her small, curvy backside as she crawled into the low opening in the rough rock face.
“Stop looking at my behind!”
Colt bit back a smile as he followed her. “Since it’s only twelve inches from my face, hard to miss. Besides, it’s a very pretty behind, Miss Lilly.”
She made a rude noise. “What am I to do with you?”
“I can think of several things,” he said dryly, removing his hat and unshouldering his pack. “Unfortunately, none of them here or now. Can you see anything up ahead?”
“No. Can you give me the coil illuminator?” Her voice echoed inside the passage.
He pulled it from his pack and placed it in her outstretched hand. A blue glow lit up the narrow space.
Colt gritted his teeth. In a tunnel too narrow to turn or stretch in, all they could do was crawl forward. The glow of the coil illuminator she held limned Lilly’s body, its illumination not penetrating behind her. That put him in the uncomfortable position of staring at the very enticing feminine curves of her bottom shifting beneath a clinging swath of blue calico as she crawled just a few inches in front of him. If the view weren’t enough to frustrate a man, being shoved in the space roughly the size of a barrel, unable to do a damn thing about his growing attraction to her, was worse. His hands and knees were scraped raw and starting to bleed, and his shaft was aching in response to watching her move.
“Stop a minute.”
Lilly stopped dead in her tracks and whispered, “What is it?”
Colt gripped the hem of her skirt and ripped it awkwardly in the tightly confined space. “Here.” He handed her the first strip as he went back for another. “Wrap this around your hands to protect them. This rough surface is going to shred your skin.” It probably had already cut up her tender palms, he was sure. But she hadn’t uttered a word of complaint.
“Thanks. Tear some for yourself while you’re back there turning my dress to rags.”
No point protesting that he was too manly to do so. His hands were already burning like fire. He ripped a couple more strips and wrapped his hands. “Okay. Keep going.”
The cushion helped, and they both moved a little faster.
“How far does this thing go?” Colt muttered as he pushed his hat and pack just ahead of him as he moved. The tunnel narrowed, getting even more suffocating, making them crawl along on their bellies an inch at a time.
“Can’t be much farther,” Lilly retorted. The tunnel became a mere seam between the rocks, squeezing them as they pushed through. Panic started to pound fast and furious in his chest, thundering in his ears, as Colt realized he was stuck, unable to move forward and unable to scoot backward.
Sweat beaded his brow and upper lip, and he said, as evenly as his manic heartbeat allowed, “Stop. I can’t move, I’m stuck fast.” This would be a lousy way to die. No glory being buried inside the Dark Rim, his gun still in its holster, his hat in his hand.
Colt forced himself to blow all the air out of his lungs, twisted his head to the side, and pushed forward hard. The rocks scraped his ears and cheeks as he moved. A soft hand grabbed firmly around his wrist and pulled, stretching the tendons in his arm and shoulder. Damn. She was stronger than he realized. But then a lot of things about this woman weren’t at all what he’d expected. She was soft, but tough. Beautiful, but deadly. And Darkin, but not. She was caught in between, same as him. Both of them part of the supernatural that lay in between humanity and the world of the Darkin.
Colt jettisoned forward out of the mouth of the tunnel onto hard, uneven ground. He groaned, rolling over. Rocks dug uncomfortably into his back, and his skin felt dirty and abraded, as though he’d been tied behind a stagecoach and dragged to Bodie and back. “Damn. I’m glad I’m out, but remind me never to do that again.”
Clack. Clack. Clack. The bluish light of the coil illuminator seemed brilliant in the inky darkness. Colt blinked, holding a hand before his eyes as they adjusted to the light Lilly held.
“You might not be so glad once you see where we are.” The black ribbon about Lilly’s throat moved as she swallowed hard. Death and decay lent a sickly odor to the air. She pointed a shaking finger in the direction of the cavern that opened up in front of them.
Colt looked around. “What the ...” The floor and walls looked white and fuzzy. He sat up with a start as he realized that the floor of the cavern was covered in pale bones. Thousands of them. The rocks beneath him weren’t rocks at all, but bits of skeletal remains.
He leapt to his feet, his skin too thin and uncomfortable as it suddenly shrank tight to his body. “Whatever calls this cave home is hungry.” He pushed a coyote skull away with the toe of his boot, then reached out to touch the haphazardly woven sparkling white cloth-like substance covering the walls.
“Don’t touch it,” Lilly hissed, her voice low and insistent. “Can’t you see it’s a web?”
Colt yanked back his hand. Upon closer inspection, the white filaments of the thickly woven web were glistening with clear pearls of liquid. The stuff was probably sticky as hell. As Lilly moved the light about the cavern, grisly husks—animal and human—appeared from the gloom, their flesh decayed and dried like mummies. An upward glance showed more desiccated bodies suspended from the ceiling, shrouded in webbing.
“Well, there’s one good thing about this.” Colt placed his hat firmly on his head, then shrugged into his pack.
Lilly turned and glared at him. “How can it possibly be good? We’ve got either an army of spiders waiting to pounce on us or one enormous spider that’s hunting somewhere else.”
“No. We’ve got to be close to the surface.”
“What makes you think that?”
He jerked his thumb at the floor. “There’s no way it could have found this much food wandering into the mine aimlessly. It has to hunt on the surface and bring its prey here, where it feels relatively safe from other predators.”
Lilly gazed around them and gestured to the remains dangling from the ceiling. “Based on the size of its prey, it’s probably large enough to cover a lot of ground,” she pointed out. “We could still be a good distance from the surface.”
Colt tugged his Stetson down lower on his forehead. “Either way, we need to move.”
They struggled across the uneven piles of bones, slick, shifting, and smooth beneath their feet, toward the large opening of the cavern. Twice Colt grasped Lilly’s arm to keep her from falling among the macabre debris.
“Thank yo—”
Colt held up a hand and silenced her, then pointed to the funnel-like opening of the webbed cavern. The sound of skittering rocks and an unfamiliar rasping click, click, click was echoing in the tunnel beyond.
Colt’s gun hand itched like holy hell. “That don’t sound good.”
They inched out farther into the mine shaft, careful not to catch themselves in the sticky web lining the walls and draped in diaphanous sweeps from the ceiling.
A glint of something shining in the darkness caught Lilly’s eye and she swiveled in its direction, holding out the coil illuminator so they could see it better.
Eight soup bowl–sized eyes came into view over a pair of pointed mandibles, each as long and thick as Colt’s arm and tipped with a deadly black shining fang. Their ra
zor-sharp edges rasped as they clicked with the monster-size spider’s movement. A distinctive red hourglass four feet long marked the undercarriage of its enormous globular black body. The spider suspended itself from the ceiling with long, thin legs as its eyes avariciously took in what must look like two meaty snacks.
Lilly gasped. Her body went rigid beside him, all color draining, turning her skin ashen as sun-bleached wood. Colt tugged on her sleeve. “Lilly.” He said her name low and harsh. “Move!”
She didn’t budge. Didn’t even blink. Damn, the spider seemed to have mesmerized her; either that or she was utterly terrified. His heart sped up, his senses growing sharper in the presence of danger. The spider crept forward. Its bristled, hairy forelegs stretched out toward them, then lunged.
There wasn’t time for words. He unceremoniously yanked Lilly off her feet as he wrapped a thick arm around her waist and pulled her out of range of the spider’s piercing fangs.
He shoved her down the hallway, placing himself between her and the enormous arachnid, then spun back to face the monster. “I ain’t heard any dinner bell yet.”
With practice-honed reflexes he pulled his revolver from its holster, using one hand to fire and the other to recock the gun as fast as he could, firing off three quick shots. From the corner of his eye he could see Lilly jerk with the ricocheting sound of each shot.
The spider bucked backward and screeched, two of its eyes blown apart. Dark liquid splattered the rock wall and dripped from the gauzy web in long, stringy black strands. One leg had been shot clean through and twitched on the ground. Great. Only seven to go.
It lunged forward again, angry, snapping fangs and giant mandibles at him. A scream tore from Lilly’s throat as she huddled on the floor of the tunnel. He pulled six more bullets from his ammunition belt and shoved them in the revolver chambers as fast as he could. Marley’s special bullets weren’t going to stop this monster. It was too damn big. Time to improvise.
Instead of shooting at the advancing creature, he fired the six rounds at the wooden support beam over its head, sending out a shower of splintered wood, debris, and bones. The beam weakened with an audible crack and the rock it had held in place came crashing down on the spider. It screeched, writhing and still alive, but pinned down.
Lilly coughed against the dust. Colt hauled her up from the floor with his free hand. “You hurt?”
Colt knew that glassy-eyed look. Shock. Fear. She swung her head slightly from side to side, still too shaken to speak properly. “Good. That ain’t going to hold it long. Can you run?”
Lilly nodded mutely, but it was all the reassurance he needed. He took her hand firmly in his and pulled her along after him.
Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. He shook the coil illuminator hard and fast, sending a blade of blue light slicing through the darkness ahead of him. Lilly pressed her hand to her side, her breath sawing hard in and out as she struggled to keep up with him. Slowly the screeches and thrashing of the creature faded and the walls of the tunnel became barren rock once more. They took several turns down smaller shafts that veered off the main tunnel.
“I have to stop,” she wheezed. Lilly sagged against the wall, her legs looking wobbly and unstable.
“The sooner we get to the surface, the better,” Colt muttered. From the tightness in his forehead, he could tell the worried crease between his brows was growing deeper.
She swallowed hard, making the ribbon around her throat bob with the motion. “We’re lost, aren’t we?”
The hopeless, lost tone of her voice caught him off guard. He turned his piercing gaze on her. “What happened back there? For a moment I could’ve sworn you’d turn to stone.”
“Rats and spiders. I hate them both. We didn’t stay very often in hospitable places. So my childhood was filled with them skittering over me in the dead of night, but nothing this big, this terrifying.”
Colt rubbed a reassuring, steady hand over her shoulder. She was still shivering. “We’ll find a way out. All we have to do is pay attention and leave a trail so we know if we’ve doubled back.” How they were going to leave a trail he had no idea. He was fresh out of bread crumbs, and leaving a trail of Marley’s bullets would only be worth it if he left them in something. He eyed her skirt speculatively. “Do you think you could spare some more calico?”
Lilly plucked at her torn skirts. “Since I’ll never wear this rag again, I don’t see why not.” She handed him the coil illuminator, her brows bending in concentration as she searched for the seam of her dress in the fading light. Lilly ripped off a two-inch strip from all along the ragged bottom edge of her skirt, which now reached just above her knees, and handed it to him.
He tore a small bit off the fabric and stuffed one end of it in a crack in the rock at eye level. “That should do it.”
Lilly shook her head. “If you think a few scraps of fabric are going to get us out of the Dark Rim, you’re deluding yourself.”
Again the hopelessness he heard hidden there made him wonder what exactly she was thinking. Had it all been more than she’d bargained for? Was she going to leave him here in the depths of the mine and hope he’d never come out again? Maybe that had been Rathe’s plan all along. “I suppose you could always just materialize yourself out of here. One of us might as well get out of this in one piece.” Colt squeezed his hand tight, hating that the caustic edge to his tone revealed his inner doubts.
Lilly leveled her gaze at him. “Why are you always looking for me to shoot you in the back? I haven’t left your side thus far. I’m with you until we find the Book.”
Damn. Double Damn. At some point he had to stop being so suspicious of her and start taking her actions as proof of her loyalties. His jaw worked, chewing over his next words. He caught her gaze, wanting her to know that his words were genuine. “You didn’t deserve that. How about we call it a truce?” He held out his dirty, masculine hand to her. “You protect my back, I’ll protect yours. Deal?”
She gazed at his offered hand, then placed her smaller one in his. Her touch set off a bolt of awareness in him. Her skin was pale against his tanned hide, her fingers long, slim, and feminine. She looked like a fragile thing and yet she had inner depths of strength, and a hard past that had formed her into the kind of woman he didn’t think actually existed—one that could steal his heart if he let her. She lowered her lashes, a faint smile tugging at her bottom lip. “You know I only seal a deal with a kiss.”
His heartbeat kicked up the pace again, but this time from desire rather than a fear-fueled rush. Using his grip around her hand, he pulled her forward into his chest. They stood toe-to-toe, the heat of her seeping through his clothing. A spicy hint of cinnamon and sweet perfume of roses rose from her, tempting him. The press of her thighs against his brought to mind far more pleasant images of what they could have been doing in the darkness. “Have it your way.”
She tipped up her face and gave him a heart-melting smile that curved up at the edges just enough to make her thoroughly kissable. “Not often.”
Colt couldn’t resist. He brushed his mouth against the soft smoothness of her lips before pressing harder, molding her mouth to his, tasting the sweetness of her as he traced the seam of her lips with the tip of his tongue. Lilly responded in kind, opening for him. The soft silken slide of her as she explored him made him hot and hard all over.
Lilly didn’t just arouse him, she brought out something more in him, not just trust, certainly, but a desire to protect her, to help her find her way back to being human and maybe even find her sister. She took his mind away from its constant drive to search for the Book. She made him wonder what it might be like to have never been a Hunter at all, to have a normal life, like his oldest brother.
He abruptly pulled away from her drugging kiss. “Pleasant as that is, it’s not likely to get us out of here. We best get going again.”
Lilly, her cheeks flushed a pretty pink, nodded. Colt didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t pull it out of his grip.
Lilly stopped short, pulling on his arm. He glanced back at her. “What is it?”
“Do you hear that?”
He listened more intently. Then he heard it. The faint clanking sound of tools against rock. They followed it. As the sounds grew louder, the shaft ahead began to glow with faint ruby light.
The rhythmic clanking became augmented by the hiss of steam turbines and the grind of crushing rock as the shaft ended on the edge of a rock pit inside a large cavern in the earth. Through the columns of steam Colt could see the gray, faded forms of men along the rock walls, all at work, just as they had been in life.
Hundreds of miners worked the rock that had been formed into concentric layers up the insides of the cavern with the steam-powered rock crushers working away below. Water, probably siphoned off from the waterfall they’d passed through earlier, sluiced in through iron water ducts, pouring into the boilers and filling the wash boxes where the crushed rock was rinsed to pan out the gold.
“Ghosts,” Lilly murmured, her mouth so close that it tickled his ear.
“Think I figured that out for myself, thanks. They’re probably the men that got trapped and died in the cave-in that closed the mine.” The bad thing about ghosts was when it came to a fight, if they landed a punch it was solid as any live fist, but if you tried to hit back, you were swinging at nothing but air. They could inflict a lot of damage if you got too close. And the odds from where he sat weren’t good if they were noticed. “Why in the hell are they still mining?” Colt muttered. “Ghosts don’t need gold.”
“They aren’t mining it for themselves.”
Colt turned to gaze at Lilly, his eyes asking why.
“It’s for Rathe and the other archdemons. They’re obsessed with the stuff.”
The news that archdemons craved gold wasn’t as shocking as the revelation that there was more than just Rathe skulking about as a demon lord in the Darkin realm.