“Sadly, no. Just more dildo jokes.”
“I can make you a torch,” Ethan said, ducking into the room and studying us.
“You can?” I turned to him in surprise. “Really?”
Remy pinched his cheeks. “Of course you can, you adorable Boy Scout, you.”
Ethan ignored her cuddling and gave me a dismissive look. “Fire making is quite an easy skill to learn, Jackie Brighton. It is a valuable skill if one intends to—”
I waved a hand at him. “Just skip the lecture and make me a damn torch so we can get going before that door closes.”
Ethan pulled out a Swiss army knife and proceeded to tear strips from his shirt.
Ten minutes later, both Remy and I held torches. The end was wrapped with Ethan’s shirt, and the green wood sticks had been pulled from a nearby tree. He’d searched for the perfect tree and then rubbed resin all over the end before wrapping fabric around it, and then lit it.
As Ethan handed Remy her torch, he leaned in and gave her a fierce kiss. “Good luck.”
“You’re not coming with us?” she asked, glancing back at me in alarm.
“I will stay and guard the door so that your enemies do not pass.”
“Good idea,” I said, then smiled at him. “Thanks, Ethan.”
He nodded, “Return safely,” he said, and brushed his fingers along Remy’s jaw. “Or I will pop a cap in your ass.”
Remy grimaced. “Babe, do you even know what that means?”
“I do not know what any of it means,” he admitted. “I did it wrong?”
“Baby, see, you tell someone you want to pop a cap in their ass when—” she began.
I gestured at the door, interrupting them. “Can we just go already? Please?”
“Hater,” Remy muttered, giving Ethan one last quick kiss, holding her torch aloft, and then stepping next to me. “Let’s go then, cranky pants.”
“I’m not cranky,” I hissed. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re pressed for time here.” I held my torch aloft and stepped into the doorway. The flickering light revealed a narrow hall, carved into the rock, the ceiling no more than two feet over my head. The walls were rough, as if no one had bothered to finish the tunnel, and when I raised my torch, it didn’t seem like that long of a tunnel. “Come on,” I told Remy. “It’s probably just at the end here.”
We crept forward, our torches brushing along the low ceiling, leaving sputtering sparks in our wake. I glanced back and Ethan stood at the entrance, his big body haloed in sparkling light.
“I see something up ahead,” Remy said, pointing past me. “We’re almost there.”
There was a plain wooden door at the end of the tunnel. Thank God. This tunnel was making me claustrophobic. I picked up speed, and when I got to the door, I put my hand on the handle and tugged. It creaked and fell open easily, and we were hit by a musty gust of air that ruffled our hair and made our torches flicker.
The scent of deep, wet cave hit me, and I stared ahead in shock. A staircase had been cut into the rock ahead of us. It curved to the side beyond the door and descended into the darkness. A carved railing framed the edge of the stairs, which were made of stone that was far more delicate than anything I had ever seen.
“We’re going… down?” I said, disbelieving. The room was so vast and open. I held my torch up and stared at the stalactites overhead. There was no place to go
but
down.
“How far does it go?” Remy asked in a nervous voice.
I had no idea. I glanced over at her. “Give me one of your earrings.” She handed it to me and I tiptoed closer to the rail, mindful of the slick steps. Pebbles and rocky debris scattered as I moved to the railing, and I held her jingly earring over the side and dropped it, waiting for the clink that would tell me it had landed.
It never came.
“That
sucks,
” Remy said softly.
“I know,” I said grimly. “Who knows how far down this goes?” We weren’t dealing with mortals—anything was possible.
“Worst of all, that was my favorite earring.”
I held my torch out, eyeing the steps. “Well, they’re not going to climb themselves, as my mother always said.”
“Yeah, but your mother’s kinda crazy.”
“True enough.”
We began to descend the stairs. At first, we picked our way cautiously, as the steps were slick with mist and the drip from the cave walls. After about five flights of stairs, we were just stomping down, heedless of how much noise we made.
After ten flights, Remy started to grumble.
After fifty flights, I started to grumble, too.
“Jesus fucking Christ, how many stairs are there in this place?” Remy complained for the eleventh time that hour. “We’ve been going down these steps for forever.”
I wished I had a phone so I could see the time. “I’m sure we’re almost there.”
“Really?” Remy said sarcastically. “You said that twenty flights ago. And they just keep going down.”
It was true; they did keep descending into darkness. I wondered how deep these stairs were carved into the earth. Would they just keep going down? How much longer?
“I don’t know if you’ve thought about this, Jacks, but what goes down must come up. We’re going to have to climb all this shit to get out of here, dude.”
I grimaced, switching my torch-holding arm again because it was tired. “I thought about that, yeah.”
“Have you thought about what you would wish for if you got the haloes? Because I’m thinking you should wish for an escalator,” Remy said.
“Ha ha.” I thought for a moment, then said, “Noah. He’s covered in the tattoos—the markings. It’s changed him. He’s become hard, cynical.” It hurt me to see. I knew it was my fault that he’d been indentured to the Serim. “I guess I’d wish that Noah would be freed.”
“You could wish for anything, and that’s what you’d want? Really?”
I thought of Zane. I’d offered the wish to him, but he hadn’t been interested—all he’d wanted was to stay with me. “I have everything I need.”
“Girlfriend, I have seen your bank account. You do not have everything you need, and that vampire’s flat-ass broke. Unless you want to get yourself a job, I’d suggest you ask the archangel for money.”
“You have money,” I teased. “I’ll just use yours.”
“My bank account is pretty low, thanks to Moochy McVampire and our little ’round-the-world jaunts. And since I’m not doing porn anymore, I need to replenish my bank account.”
“That’s why you’re writing your memoir,” I said, pausing on the stairs to look over at her. “Right?”
She rolled her eyes in the flickering light and pushed past me, clearly annoyed. “It is going to be the shortest memoir ever. Ethan has been helping me edit it down.”
“Taking out all the dirty stuff?”
“No! That’s the worst part. He’s taking out everything that he thinks might point toward us being immortals, and things that he feels might violate my privacy. He’s being protective, which is cute… but you’re supposed to spill all in a memoir. Who’s going to want to buy a book that doesn’t talk about the juicy shenanigans?”
I muffled my laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Remy complained. “I worked hard to build my empire and now I’m leaving it all behind for a guy. The gossip magazines are totally going to have a field day.”
“No one will care, Remy,” I began, then squinted ahead of us. “Is that a light?”
“Damn, I hope so,” Remy said. “Either that or a bathroom.”
“Yeah, right.” Succubi didn’t have those kinds of needs. My steps slowed and I shushed Remy as we moved forward. There was definitely a faint light below us. It was hard to see beyond the torches, but the glimmer below seemed greenish and faint. “Maybe we’re coming to the bottom.”
“I think I hear water,” Remy commented.
I heard it too, and that worried me. I said nothing as we traveled down another flight of twisting stairs, except this time, when the stairs turned, we landed on a platform. All around us, inky black water lapped around the tiny round platform. Across from the base of the stairs, an ornately carved torch holder stood empty. I moved past it, frowning at the edge of the water. Other than the torch holder and the stairs we’d come down, there was nothing.
It was like we’d been stranded on an island in the middle of an underground lake, the bottom of the stairwell barely big enough for Remy and me to stand close together.
She put her free hand on her hip. “What now, fearless leader?”
I turned, holding my torch high, trying to see around us. The pulse of the halo definitely felt closer, but how much closer? We’d felt like we’d been right on top of it for hours. I peered into the black water and then glanced over at Remy. “How deep do you think this is?”
She clutched her remaining earring protectively, hiding it from me. “Don’t know, don’t care. I didn’t pack a swimsuit.”
I stared at the green smear of light in the distance. We were level with whatever it was now, but no closer. How incredibly frustrating.
I handed Remy my torch and began to roll up my shorts.
“What are you doing?”
I gestured at the water. “Gonna see how deep it is. Maybe we can wade across.”
“Maybe not,” Remy said desperately. “What if there are cave sharks or something in there? Or alligators?”
“We’re in Arizona,” I pointed out.
“We’re in the side of a mountain and we got here because some sparkly shit opened a door to the tomb of an archangel. I don’t know if you noticed that, but I’m not ruling anything out right now.”
She had a point. I slid off my shoe, rolled off my sock, and then dipped my pinky into the water. When nothing bit it off, I shrugged. “It’s either that or go back up the stairs again. Empty-handed.”
She sighed. “Okay, but don’t come crying to me if you lose a leg.”
“I’ll just grow it back, right?” I slid one leg into the water, flexing my toes and feeling for the bottom. It was ice cold.
I also couldn’t feel the bottom. I stuck my leg in further, and then accidentally fell off the slippery rock, dunking in. I clawed for the surface, hissing with cold, my teeth chattering.
“Did you hit the bottom?” Remy asked.
“N-no,” I chattered, dragging my wet body back on the rock. I shivered and pulled the phone out of my pocket. Water dripped from it. Well, hell. I tugged the wet paper out of my bra, grimacing at the smears of pencil. I needed someplace to lay this paper flat, just in case I needed it again.
“So what do we do?” Remy asked me, handing me my torch back.
I frowned at the bitterly cold water surrounding us, my teeth chattering. My nipples felt like rocks in my now-damp bra and my clothing stuck to me. It felt awful, but it wouldn’t kill me. “I don’t know. The translation Sophie gave us didn’t say anything about any of this.”
“Maybe it said something on the paper Phryne has,” Remy said helpfully.
Yeah, but that wouldn’t help us, and I wasn’t waiting around for her to arrive. I eyed the sculpted torch holder in the center of the small island and shoved my torch in to free my hand.
Rock immediately began to scrape, deafeningly loud. Remy grabbed me in alarm as the waters boiled around us. Smooth stepping-stones rose up from the previously calm lake surface. After a long minute, the scraping stopped, the stones locking in place and making a perfect path.
I glanced back at my torch. “Well, that was obvious. I need to return my Indiana Jones card.”
Remy still held her torch aloft, peering over the edge of the water. “Do you suppose they’re trick stones? Isn’t that how it is in the movies?”
God, I hoped not. But I was already wet. “One way to find out, I suppose.” I carefully stepped forward onto the closest one and squeezed my eyes shut, waiting.
Nothing. It felt solid. I could barely make out the outline of the next and stepped forward on it, then looked back to Remy. “You’ll have to step behind me. Give me your torch so I can lead the way.”
She handed it over to me without a word of protest. The darkness was almost overwhelming in the huge cavern. Our voices echoed when we spoke, and it was freezing . I wished we’d brought more lights or warm clothes, but none of this had been planned.
Going one by one on each step took time. Each surface was barely the length of my feet, so stepping carefully meant taking my time because the rocks were slippery and wet. We made our way forward cautiously. We’d check our balance, test the rock ahead before moving on. I was shivering and quaking with cold, my fingers like ice. The torch shook in my hands, and there was nothing I could do to warm up.
“No scenes like this in
Panty Raiders of the Lost Ark,
” Remy muttered as I stepped forward again, on what must have been the hundredth step.
I giggled at the absurdity of the comment, and my foot slipped. My body plunged forward into the water and my chin banged on the rock ahead of me, cracking my jaw. Remy screamed as the cave went dark.
My entire head was awash in sheets of red and black agony. On shaking, weak arms, I dragged myself onto the next rock and sat, shivering. My teeth wanted to chatter, but even the thought sent nightmare waves of pain through my jaw, so I remained still, trembling instead. Everything was pitch-black, that smear of green in the distance not nearly enough to light our way.
Trapped. Underground. In the dark. In the middle of a lake.
I tried not to panic.
Remy’s hand reached for mine, and she felt my arm blindly in the dark. “You okay?”
I tested my jaw. It felt broken, but it’d heal eventually. I patted her arm as an answer.
“What do we do now?” Remy said, and I heard her shift on her rock. “Should we swim for shore?”
I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything. Why did I think a halo would be just up for the taking? How stupid was I? I was a newborn immortal. Why had I ever thought I could do this?
A light flared in the darkness behind us, and Remy and I both turned at the same time. Despite my jaw, I gasped in shock at the face haloed in golden light, standing on the platform behind us.
Noah Gideon, a lantern in hand.
~*~
Well, shit.
As always, the sight of Noah was stunning. He stood a hundred feet away, back on the platform, awash in soft, golden light that cast his stern face into shadows. He was beautiful, the angelic tattoos visible even through the loose white button-up shirt he wore over a white tank top. His blond hair was mussed, and I’m sure mine didn’t look too hot after being in a cave all morning.