by David Wood
He decided to make a quick phone call first to let his superiors know that it looked like their mole had given them the wrong information. That ought to be a point in his favor, shouldn’t it? Suddenly, Brown’s information was more valuable than Meikle’s. Smiling, he punched up Fairly’s number.
“I’ve tracked them down to Invergarry, to Loch Loich,” he said. “The Well of the Severed Heads.”
“You mean the Well of the Seven Heads.” Fairly spoke loudly, apparently for the benefit of whoever he was with.
“Damn that Meikle,” a voice said in the background. It sounded like Brigid.
“What are they doing right now?” Fairly asked.
“They looked at the statue for a while, and then they went down a hill toward the lake. I’m about to follow them.”
“There’s no need,” Fairly said. “I’ve been there before. The well lies underground beneath the statue. That’s where they are going. We’re not far from you, and can be there shortly.” He paused. “Brigid wants to speak with you.”
Brown’s stomach lurched as Brigid’s voice filled his ear.
“Brown, I want you to listen carefully. Keep an eye on the entrance to the well. Let us know if Isla and her party come out again. Do not go down into the well yourself. I don’t want you making a botch of this. Understood?”
Brown struggled to keep his anger in check. “Yes,” he said, his voice flat.
“Good.” Brigid ended the call.
Brown stared at his cell phone screen for three angry seconds before cursing and shoving it into his pocket. He was fed up with Brigid. How much longer would he kowtow to the woman? He ought to follow Isla into the well, and if the treasure was there, he’d take it for himself. No, he could take it for Scotland. He hesitated. This was foolish talk. There were four of them and only one of him. And even if he succeeded, he’d be crossing not only Brigid but all of the Tuatha de Dannan. Sighing, he put his phone back into his pocket and waited.
Chapter 27
The Well of the Seven Heads, Invergarry
An arched doorway opened onto the dark tunnel that led to the well beneath the seven heads monument. Beneath his feet, the weathered, chipped stonework showed signs of great age. Patches of weeds grew from the cracks as far back as the sunlight could reach, lending a splash of color to the uniform gray. Moisture oozed down from above, staining the rocks. Maddock ran his hand along the rough, gray stone, cold at his touch. His fingertips brushed over green patches of thin, mossy growth.
“It feels like the entrance to an old dungeon,” Grizzly said.
“Let’s just hope no one locks us in,” Isla replied.
The passage came to a dead end, the scant light revealing only a few of its secrets. Maddock and Bones flicked on their Maglites and shone them all around. Another, lower archway marked the end of the passage, and just beyond it lay the Well of the Seven Heads.
“Not very big,” Bones said.
Maddock shook his head. “Nor very deep.”
He knelt for a closer look. In the crystal clear water, he could see the bottom of the well, several feet beneath the surface. Unlike the rough stone of the tunnel in which they stood, the stonework at the bottom of the well was precise, each stone fitted neatly together.
“The clue does say ‘under’ the well,” Maddock said. “And I’ve got a feeling that bottom was added to hide whatever is down there.”
“Okay, who wants to be the one to test your theory?” Bones said.
“Worried about shrinkage again?” Maddock asked.
Isla covered her mouth to stifle a giggle. Bones rolled his eyes but didn’t reply.
“I’ll do it.” Maddock handed his phone, wallet, pistol, and flashlight to his partner. “Give me some light down there, all right?” Before he could change his mind, he braced himself, took a couple of breaths, and plunged feet first into the well.
The sudden immersion was a shock to his system. His thoughts immediately flashed to a fall into icy water off the coast of Wrangel Island, years ago. Okay, it isn’t that bad, he thought. He forced his eyes open, waited a few seconds to adjust to the stinging, chilly water, and looked around.
Rough stonework lined the sides of the well, except for the row at the bottom. These stones were regular in shape, finely honed. He searched them one by one, and his eyes fell on a familiar symbol—the cauldron. Excited, he turned quickly and found at the compass points the remaining symbols—sword, spear, and stone. It was just like the chamber beneath Dunstaffnage.
He gave each stone a careful inspection, poking and prodding them one by one, pushing and pulling, trying to release a hidden latch. Nothing. Lungs burning, he went up for a breath of air.
“How we doing down there?” Bones asked.
The frigid water of the well seemed to have deprived Maddock of speech, so he shook his head numbly and went back down.
The stones were obviously a dead end. There must be something he was missing. He repositioned himself and examined the floor. After several seconds, he spotted what he had previously overlooked. Faint lines ran across the floor. He moved higher until he could take it in—the face of the Celtic goddess Danu! Her image was rendered in shallow cuts, easy to overlook. Furthermore, if viewed from too close up, it would look like random lines running across the stone. He was certain it meant something, but what?
He stared down at the face, his eyes burning from the cold water. Invisible bands seemed to constrict his chest. He’d need more air soon.
And then he spotted it. Danu’s open mouth was formed from rock a shade darker than the rest. He swam down for a closer look and saw that its edges rose a few millimeters above the surrounding floor. Was it a plug?
He tried to take hold of it, but his numb fingers cold not grip the scant edge. Next, he took out his knife and tried to work the plug out with its sharp point. No joy.
His body now screamed for air. Spots appeared in front of his eyes. He needed to go up again, but stubbornness held him in place.
Damn! There’s got to be a way.
Anger surging through him, he rose, braced himself against the sides of the well, and stamped down hard with the heel of his booted foot.
Nothing.
He stamped again, and this time he thought he heard a dull, crackling sound. Again and again, he hammered his foot against the stone plug until finally, it shattered.
And then, with alarming suddenness, the floor fell away beneath his feet. He had only a moment to wonder what he had done before a loud, sucking sound filled his ears, and he was swept down into darkness.
“He needs to hurry up,” Bones said, shining his light down into the well. He couldn’t tell what exactly Maddock was doing, but it was clearly ineffectual. “I need coffee, and we might have to form a new plan.”
“This has to be it,” Isla said. “There’s only one Well of the Seven Heads. The clue at Dunstaffnage, the carving at Urquhart, everything points here.”
“I get it, but unless he finds something…” He paused. His sharp ears picked up a dull, thumping sound, like someone hammering from a great distance away. And then a crackling sound that grew louder. Instinctively he looked up, fearing that the ceiling were about to come down.
“The water!” Isla shouted. “What’s happening?”
The surface of the well roiled. A vortex formed at the center, spinning into a whirlpool as the water drained away in a rush. Bones turned his light down into the well and found only a deep hole.
Maddock was gone.
“Maddock!” Bones shouted.
“Oh my God! What’s happened to him?” Isla clutched Bones’ arm. “We have to get down there now. What if he’s hurt? What if he’s…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Grizzly said. “We had a nice little fall when I found the trapdoor at Dunstaffnage, and we came out of it all right.”
Isla nodded and scrubbed at her face with the back of her sleeve. “Sorry for my reaction. I�
�m exhausted and have been on edge for days.”
Bones wasn’t sure he bought her explanation, but he let it go.
“Want me to go down and look for him?” Grizzly asked.
“Yeah, headfirst,” Bones said.
Grizzly tilted his head, a slight frown creasing his brow. Then he laughed. “You always trip me up with your sense of humor.”
“I imagine a lot of things trip you up.” Bones still couldn’t quite believe that the cryptid hunter whom he’d so admired had turned out to be such a disappointment. Sure, the guy knew his monsters, but in every other area, he was woefully lacking. With a wry shake of his head, he turned his attention to Isla. “You going to be all right?”
“I think so. But if something happens to Maddock, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
Suspicion flared inside him. Had things between her and Maddock gone farther than he’d thought? Surely not. Maddock had returned from her room after only a few minutes the night before. No time for anything serious to happen.
“Chick, you hardly know him.”
“I just meant because I got you two into this,” she said much too quickly.
“Relax, we’re free agents. When it comes to our work, that is.” He cast a meaningful glance at her, and she lowered her head.
“I think we can get down there,” he said, shining his light down the well. “It only drops a couple of feet below where the floor was, and then it looks like it angles out. Might be like a water slide going down, which could be dangerous. Maybe you two should wait here while I check it out.”
Isla gave a firm shake of her head. “I’m going too.”
“Me, too,” Grizzly added. “The treasure is down there, and maybe the monster. That’s where I need to be.”
“Great,” Bones said. “Just stay behind me and try not to slip. If you come crashing down on top of me, I’ll be highly pissed.”
A dark sense of foreboding creeping over him, Bones lowered himself into the well.
Chapter 28
Beneath the Well of the Seven Heads
Maddock careened down the steep passageway. He grabbed for a handhold, tried to use his feet to slow his fall, but he could find no purchase on the water and grime-slicked stone surface. Worn smooth by the passage of water and time, the channel down which he slid was like a tube. He slid along the slimy rock, oddly unaware of how fast he was moving in the pitch darkness. Bones would think this was a blast, he thought.
And then he hit level ground. It happened so suddenly he scarcely had time to protect his head before he was tumbling across a rough stone floor. His body found every bump in the uneven surface, and then he crashed into a solid wall. Sparks flashed as his head struck rock, and hot pain coursed through him.
“I don’t even have Grizzly to blame for this,” he muttered to no one.
He lay there, flat on his back, arms and legs splayed out, breathing heavily. He concentrated on listening to the messages his body was sending him. Which parts were injured and how badly? He’d wrenched his back, but he thought his spine was uninjured. He checked it by wiggling his fingers and toes. At least, it felt like they wiggled; he couldn’t see an inch in front of his face in the pitch black. Next, he flexed his arms and legs. Everything seemed okay there as well. After a quick head-to-toe assessment, he diagnosed himself with a bump on the head, a few bruised ribs, and a similarly injured kneecap.
Satisfied that he was going to live, he decided it was time for action. His hand found the wall next to him, and he rose to his feet. A wave of dizziness washed over him, but he managed to remain standing. Maybe the blow to the head was worse than he thought. He sucked in a few deep breaths and waited for the dizzy spell to pass.
“Okay,” he said, “no light, and no idea what’s down here. I guess I can find the tunnel and try to crawl back up, or I can wait and see if Bones and the others come down.”
The decision was taken out of his hands when he heard Bones’ voice echo through the chamber.
“Hooooly craaaap!” Bones rumbled. And then, “Everybody make yourselves into a ball!”
“Wish I’d thought of that,” Maddock muttered.
And then he heard a soft thumping sound and his feet flew out from under him as something, rather someone, crashed hard into his legs. He hit the ground hard, the wind forced out of him, as new spears of pain lanced through his side. And then, one after another, two more bodies crashed into him.
“Seriously?” he gasped. “Not one of you managed to avoid hitting me?”
“Maddock? Are you all right?” He felt Isla’s hand on his cheek, her breath damp on his neck. As if of its own volition, one of his hands found hers and gave it a squeeze, but she jerked it away. “Just checking,” she snapped.
Still angry about last night, I suppose.
And then a light blossomed in the darkness.
“That was actually kind of fun,” Bones said. “Except for the part where Maddock kicked me in the head.”
“Kicked you?” Maddock said, still regaining his breath. “You three treated me like a bowling pin.”
“Yeah, but I’m the one who managed to pick up the spare. Can you stand?”
Maddock nodded and allowed his friend to haul him to his feet. Everything hurt. Bones returned Maddock’s belongings to him, and Maddock added his own light to the one Bones held. A moment later, Isla and Grizzly clicked on their flashlights. After the pitch black, the cavern now seemed bright as day.
It was a domed chamber, maybe thirty feet across. Up ahead, a wide opening led into a dark passageway beyond. And all around the entryway lay…
“Skeletons!” Isla gasped.
Human bones lay scattered across the floor. The beam of Maddock’s light fell upon a skull; its open mouth and empty eye sockets appeared to gape at him, as if shocked by this intrusion into its final resting place. Here and there he saw bits of leather and fabric, metal buttons, and rusted weapons.
“Who were they?” Grizzly asked.
“And who killed them?” Isla added.
Maddock moved closer to examine one of the skeletons that remained mostly intact.
“I don’t think it’s a question of who,” he said, “but what. Look at this guy.”
The others moved in around him for a closer look.
“His left foot is gone like it was bitten clean off. Same with his right hand.”
“Why do you say ‘bitten’?” Isla whispered.
“It’s too clean. If either were hacked off with, say, a sword, or blown off by a gunshot, you’d see shattered bone, fragmentation, crushing.”
Grizzly swallowed hard, let out an audible gulp. “Couldn’t a sword slice through cleanly?”
“The right sword, wielded by the right man, striking the right place, maybe. But look how high up on the leg it’s severed. See the thickness of the bone? Something powerful sliced through this man’s leg like it was nothing.”
“Hold on,” Grizzly said. “I can’t believe that Nessie is a killing machine. I just can’t. There’s no record of her attacking anyone.”
“Except the German soldiers on the U-boat,” Bones said.
“Remember the clue?” Isla prompted. “The beastie guards the treasure. Maybe when the monster’s down here it’s more…territorial?”
“It looks like these bodies have been down here a while,” Maddock said. “It looks like this guy was wearing a tunic.” He pointed first to the moldering remains of a loose-fitting, knee-length shirt clinging to the skeleton, and then to the claymore, its blade pitted with rust, lying nearby. “But the well, and the false bottom were built long after these guys died.”
“So the Tuatha chose a cavern where the beastie lives as the place to hide their treasure,” Bones said. “Makes sense.”
“It would definitely present a challenge to the unworthy,” Isla added.
“Maybe there’s no monster. Perhaps they just put these skeletons here to scare us off,” Grizzly said.
“If you don’t want to go on, you don�
�t have to,” Maddock told the cryptid hunter. “But I’m not stopping.”
Grizzly held up his hands. “Nobody said anything about stopping. It’s just, you two have guns, and I don’t want you getting trigger-happy if we encounter an unknown creature. Just,” he looked up, searching for the words, “give her a chance.”
Maddock nodded. “Fair enough. We don’t use deadly force unless it’s in defense of our lives.” He turned and shone his beam down the dark passageway. “Now, let’s see what’s back there.”
Brigid descended the steps, the cool breeze off of Loch Oich ruffling her auburn hair. She looked out at the water and sighed. She wanted to believe this was it—that they were finally on the verge of discovery. But there had been so many disappointments, so many bumps in the road. And then there had been the impediments. They would have to be removed post-haste.
She sighed. Isla could present a problem. She was as dedicated to the search for the treasure as Brigid was, but could Isla be made to see the big picture? If not, steps would have to be taken. The thought pained Brigid, but that was a problem that would sort itself out in time.
At the mouth of the passageway that led to the Well of the Seven Heads, she paused. The footsteps behind her stopped. In addition to Fairly and O’Brien, she’d brought extra muscle along in the form of Donovan, a former cop with a penchant for excess violence, and Donnelly, a big, bald woman whom she’d hired away from a musician’s private security detail.
“What is it?” Fairly whispered.
Brigid held up a hand. Cautiously, she leaned forward and stole a glance down the tunnel. No one was there.
“Just checking.” She looked around. “Where the hell has Brown gotten to?”
“I’m here.” Brown stepped out from behind one of the many trees that ringed the Loch. “They went in right about the time I called you, and they haven’t come out.”
Brigid’s heart raced. “So they must have found something!” Hope rose within her. She sensed that, at long last, they had reached the end of their quest. This time, they would find it. “Let’s go.”
