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.
They walked on through the branching tunnels but didn’t come back across the small scraps of blue-sprigged calico Colt was stuffing at regular intervals in crevices and cracks in the rock walls.
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.
“You mean to tell me there are more powerful demons like Rathe?”
Lilly nodded. “One for every archangel.”
Colt swore under his breath. The stakes of keeping the Gates of Nyx closed were far higher than he’d ever imagined.
“If we can skirt around the edge of the pit, we might be able to make it through over there, without them noticing us,” Lilly said as she pointed to a dark shaft opening across the cavern.
At this point Colt was game for just about any plan that got them the hell out of the Dark Rim in one piece. “Fine, we’ll try it your way.”
They wove along the edge of the pit, hiding behind rock outcroppings and mining cars. Lilly’s footsteps made a clinking sound as she stumbled over a pile of rusted iron chain.
Colt put his index finger to her lips, warning her to be quiet.
Lilly silently mouthed back the word “sorry.”
Carefully, and as quietly as possible, Colt gathered up a good length of the chain, wrapping around his fist. There was no telling when it might come in useful with this many ghosts around. Iron and salt were about the only thing useful in dispersing them temporarily, and Marley’s bullets wouldn’t spray the salt when fired like a hand-packed shotgun round would.
“Just stay quiet and stick with me,” he said.
They were within twenty feet of their exit when a long wolf whistle of appreciation pierced the air. Suddenly, everything grew very quiet. Hell’s bells.
Colt’s gaze darted to find every ghost miner starting in their direction. Damn. He should have known. Lilly was a succubus. There was no way something that shouted pure sex wasn’t going to catch the attention of a bunch of miners who’d been working away for God knew how long without feminine company. And that had been before they’d died.
“Going unnoticed was a good idea. But I don’t think it worked,” he ground out.
From the crowd of miners came two ghosts, one thin and angular and the other stout and wide with a pickaxe resting on his thick shoulder. They stepped deliberately toward him and Lilly, blocking the way out.
“Let us pass,” Colt said. He rested the heel of his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver and let the chain around his left hand slip a few links so it rattled ominously.
“You can pass,” the ghost answered, then licked his thick, fleshy gray lips as his pale hungry eyes shifted to Lilly.
“But not the lady,” the thinner ghost said. His gap-toothed grin grew wider as his long hands flexed.
“You’re ghosts! She’s not any good to you.”
The fatter one’s eyes narrowed greedily. “Just ’cause we’re dead don’t mean we forgot how it works.” The telltale bulge in his britches set a firestorm off inside Colt.
They weren’t going to touch Lilly. Period. “Last chance. Move it or I’ll do it for you,” he growled.
The fat ghost came barreling down on him, his pickaxe held high. Colt moved on instinct. He swung the length of iron chain out like a whip, lashing straight through the miner, dissipating him into grayish mist. The axe fell with a clatter to the ground. The thin one beelined it straight for Lilly.
She held out her hands, her delicate brows pinched with concentration, and he bounced back as if he’d hit an invisible wall. The ghostly miners amassed, hundreds of them now shoulder to shoulder, pressing in on him and Lilly.
“Duck!” Colt let a few more links slip and sent the chain spinning in a dizzying circle over his head, like a metal lasso. Every ghost that connected with the chain vanished into a puff of grayish dust. Keeping the momentum going, he reached down and grabbed her and they started inching forward toward their exit, back to back. His shoulder was burning from the weight and effort of keeping the chain moving.
“Watch out!” Lilly yelled. Colt’s arm jerked back hard, nearly pulling his arm from the socket as the chain wrapped around the very real shovel hoisted by a ghost behind him. Colt whipped around, the chain slipping from his damp grip, but he kept the shovel from cleaving Lilly’s skull.
Lilly blasted back four ghosts. Her skin glittered with beads of perspiration and she was breathing hard. The fight was beginning to wear her down. They were outnumbered by hundreds to one.
Colt racked his brain. “You said you can materialize objects.”
“Yes,” Lilly said, then grunted as she sent the ghosts coming at her bowling end over end.
“I need a bag of salt. Now.”
Lilly held out both hands and closed her eyes. A ten-pound burlap bag of salt appeared at Colt’s feet. He dug his fingers into the fabric and ripped the bag open. “Stand behind me,” he ordered, knowing the salt would burn her as a demon, just as it would dispel the ghosts.
He threw the salt in a wide arc, the ghosts screaming as they vaporized. The silence afterward was only punctuated by the hiss of steam from the turbines below and their harsh, rapid breathing.
“We’ve got to get out of here now. Salt will only get rid of them for a little while. They’ll be back, and we don’t have time to find and then burn and salt their remains.”
“I can’t walk over the salt,” Lilly murmured, looking at the white sparkling crystals scattered all over the floor.
Colt didn’t argue. He scooped Lilly up into his arms and marched right over the salt, getting them out of the cavern as quickly as he could before the angry ghosts returned.
Chapter 11
It took them four hours of muddling around in the dark with a coil illuminator that faded in and out and required extra shaking, but they escaped the Dark Rim Mine without incident and rode Tempus back to Bodie.
Colt held fast to Lilly’s hand as he kicked open the door to the Bodie jail. Raw anger throbbed behind his eyes. After all they’d been through, Winn was nothing but a damn coward hiding behind a badge and a desk. For all Colt knew he’d probably destroyed or hidden his pa’s pages elsewhere. Well, now was the time for him to ’fess up.
The deep furrows over Winn’s face smoothed out and his eyes clouded over with confusion as he took in their ragged condition. “What happened?”
“We found the damn door. We got in. We got the wooden box open. There was nothin’ in it! Nothin’ but this scrap of paper.” Colt threw the yellowed bit of paper on his desk. “And we nearly got killed for our troubles.”
Winn grasped it, unfolding the aged brittle parchment with care. His eyes narrowed as he twisted the paper first one direction, then the other, obviously trying to make sense of it, same as Colt had. “It’s in code.”
“No shit, Winn. What’d you do with Pa’s part of the Book?”
Winn’s gaze lifted from the page, boring deep into Colt. “I didn’t do a damn thing with that Book. Pa just said to keep watch over the thing. I haven’t seen it since he hid it down deep in that mine when we were kids.”
Unspoken hostility eddied in the air between the Jackson brothers, making it crackle. “You’re tellin’ me somebody else got to it first?”
Winn’s gaze shifted, landing squarely on Lilly. “Not someone, some
thing
.”
Colt shifted his stance, stepping slightly in front of her. He’d be damned if he’d let Winn harm her now, especially since there was no reason to blame her. “She’s been with me the whole time.”
“This the demon you summoned to help you out?”
Colt gave one quick nod.
Winn huffed out a disgruntled sigh, his eyes coolly assessing Lilly from head to toe in a way that made Colt hot under the collar. He was mad as a wet hornet at Winn, but this was something that stung differently and burned hotter. Just the thought of anyone harming a pretty, burnished hair on her head made him seethe.
“You sure know how to pick ’em, I give you that,” Winn muttered.
“Point is, she don’t know any more about this code or the missing location of the Book than we do.”
Winn picked up the scrap again, turning the page sideways, then upside down. “It’s written in a circular fashion. Starts at the center like a spiral and coils outward.”
“Like a spring.” Lilly’s voice snapped both men to look at her. “It’s like a lock, and you’re holding the key to the spring in the lock.”
“Huh,” Winn said, the one word conveying a host of unspoken I-don’t-give-a-damn-what-you-think messages loud and clear.
“So what do you think it says?” Colt pressed, the impatience giving his voice a raw edge.
“Have no clue. You’re gonna have to have Marley pick this one apart.”
“He’s not a code-breaker.”
“He’s not, but Balmora is.”
Colt released his hold on Lilly and pushed his Stetson up at the brim with his index finger. “Balmora?” He’d never heard Marley mention that name before.
“Some fancy-pants contraption he’s been building for the British government.” That explained it. Marley rarely talked about an experiment still in the development stages, especially when he was working on it for a paying client.
Colt leaned in, planting both fists firm on the scarred expanse of Winn’s desk. “Come with us. If they’ve found Pa’s Book and moved it, there’s no telling how fast this is gonna unravel.”
Winn shook his head, spreading his hands wide on the surface of his desk. “Can’t. Got an important foreign dignitary showing up this evening.”
Colt shoved away from the desk. “Can’t be bothered with the supernatural when you’ve got such important matters to tend to, eh?”
“Don’t start with me, boy. I was hunting before you were walking.”
“Which is exactly why we need you to come along.”
“He’s right. Rathe is planning something,” Lilly said.
Winn glared at her. “And I’m supposed to trust you?”
Colt stiffened, his skin heating. He’d had the exact same feeling toward Lilly at first, but she’d more than proven herself trustworthy down in those caverns. “We’ve got a deal. She’s going to help me get the Book.”
Winn’s glare shifted to his little brother. “Dammit. Didn’t I tell you not to give your soul for that Book?”
“I didn’t. She wants our help.”
Winn rolled his eyes and gave his head a small shake. “They all say that, brother.”
“She wants to get away from Rathe. She wants to return to being human again.”
Winn glanced at Lilly, skepticism etched in every worn line of his face. “Is that true?”
Lilly stepped around Colt. While the brothers looked awfully similar, there were distinct differences. They shared the same thick, nearly black hair and stunning blue eyes, but where Colt’s were the dark, fathomless blue of the ocean, his brother’s were a shade lighter. The effect was chilling.
She swallowed down hard on the lump in her throat. “No one has ever tried it before, but the way I see it, if anyone could find a way to break Rathe’s hold on my soul, it would be the Chosen.”
Colt grunted and scraped his scuffed brown boot over the gritty wooden floor. “Told you before, Lilly. We’re not the Chosen.”
Her momentary shock at him using her given name was overcome by her indignation. She balled up her fists. “You don’t
think
you are. Big difference. Doesn’t mean you’re not.”
“Either way, don’t matter,” Winn said, clasping his hands over the back of his head. “You two need to get to Marley on the double. I’ll see what I can do about tapping into a lead on the second part of the Book for you, but I’m not going on any fool’s errand to fetch it back.”
“You know we’re going to need more than just Pa’s part of the Book, don’t you?”
Winn snorted. “Now she’s really got you addled, boy. They were never meant to be brought together. That’s why the Legion separated them in the first place. It’s too damn dangerous.”
Colt shook his head slowly. “That’s where you’re wrong. If what I think is happening is true, then we need to get those other pieces. Pa told me this might happen.” That got Winn’s attention.
“We don’t even know where the two other thirds of the Book are located.”
“A lead is all we need.”
Winn stared at him long and hard. Colt knew the moment Winn realized there was no changing the course that had already been set. He might not want to hunt, but he could help find the missing pieces of the Book of Legend.
“If I find anything, I’ll send word through Marley,” Winn said simply.
Colt didn’t need more than that. Winn might not be going with them to discover the secrets in the code, but he was still willing to back him up, even if it meant going along in a scheme to bring the pieces of the Book back together.