Colt glanced upward at the smooth rounded tube they’d just fallen through and pulled his shirt back up around his shoulders. “There’s no way we can get back up that way.”
A stunned expression made Lilly’s green eyes even wider. The hem of her black silk chemise had ridden up high, nearly to the juncture of her thighs. Colt’s pulse pounded hard and he cleared his throat. “Allow me.” He offered her his uninjured hand.
Lilly glanced at the black grease smeared on her legs from the pile of rags and grumbled in disgust. “This will never do.”
She snapped her fingers and the boots, buckskin britches, white shirt, and short blue jacket reappeared as if they’d never been gone. “Much better.”
Colt suddenly felt exposed. He buttoned up his shirt and quickly located his hat, tugging it firmly back into place. He picked up his pack, which had slid down with them, and put it into place on his back.
“Well, shall we?” Lilly asked, looking at the door.
“From the looks of things, sweetheart, it’s try it or plan on staying here for an extended visit.”
Lilly eyed the thin red line of light coming from beneath the door. “Do you hear that?”
The vibrating thrum of moving gears and shushing steam was louder in the room than it had been their entire trek through the death machine.
Colt touched the door with his fingers. “It’s warm. Maybe we’ve reached the heart of the machine.”
He turned the crystal knob in his hand. The door didn’t budge. “Locked, and we don’t got a key.”
“We may just have to improvise,” Lilly said, pulling the copper wire and a nail from her pocket. She knelt before the door, sliding the tip of the nail into the rounded part of the keyhole and sliding the end of the wire in alongside it.
“Lock picking?”
“Another skill my father insisted I learn.”
She wriggled the wire and listened carefully for the lock to give way. She straightened up and gave Colt a grin as she twisted the knob and opened the door.
A blast of wet, stagnant air hit them. Lilly covered her mouth, gagging at the stench of death and decay and sulfur that permeated the air. It reminded her so much of Rathe that her skin tightened in revulsion.
Skeletons lay scattered about in different poses of their last moments in what seemed to be an engine room. One sat propped up against a wall, dressed in dusty gentlemen’s clothes, grasping an empty bottle whose peeling label read
absinthe
. Another dressed like a roughed-up miner had a bony hand clutched at the dagger handle stuck firmly through his plaid shirt in one of his ribs. A third dressed in a lab coat and goggles lay facedown at the table, his bony fingers uptilted in a last fruitless effort to beg for help.
“Whatever happened here wasn’t pretty,” Colt muttered, taking her hand firmly in his as they walked into the room and he looked from one body to the next.
Behind them the door slammed shut, making a fine powder of rock dust drift down from the exposed ceiling. There was no knob or lock on this side of the door. “We better start looking for an exit, if there is one,” Colt muttered.
Lilly surveyed the room cut into the bedrock. The only metal wall was the one behind them. Along the rough rock wall ahead of them were the men in different stages of decay, wooden crates full of gears and equipment, and a small rickety table with two chairs, one occupied by the skeleton with the goggles. On their right the rock wall curved away. A small pool of water bubbled and boiled, sulfur-laced steam rising in wisps and curls from its surface. Huge black pipes of cast iron with pressure gauges and wheel-controlled valves twisted from the pool and disappeared into the rock. And to the left there was a large bronze door similar to the one behind them.
Colt touched the pipe. “Damn.” He shook his singed fingers. “Hot spring. Must be what provides the steam to power the machine.”
“Do you think they”—she indicated the bones of the men behind them—“were in charge of the machine?” Lilly skimmed her finger along the curve of one of the cracked pressure gauges above the pipes.
“Judging by what they’re wearing, they were treasure hunters who ended up trapped down here, just like us.” Colt pulled the goggles off the skeleton’s shriveled face, and they tangled in the long, stringy hair still clinging to the skull of the corpse. “Whoever they were, they’ve been here a long time.”
The fact that Colt believed them to be treasure hunters, and that the bones had been there a long, long time, wasn’t exactly encouraging to Lilly. She could imagine herself and Colt only too well as one more pair of fools to be caught in this maniacal death trap machine. “Do you think they were looking for the Book?”
Colt kicked a mining headlamp on the floor aside. “Nope. I think they were looking for the Lost Dutchman’s gold and stumbled into more than they bargained for and went mad.”
Lovely. One more thing she’d considered, but didn’t need to hear. “They had to be pretty good to make it this far.”
“Either that, or this is where everyone ends up sooner or later to die.”
“Do you think you could try a little harder to be optimistic?” Lilly rubbed her arms, suddenly cold in the room. “Let’s try to figure out how to get out of here, rather than pulling up a chair and waiting to die of old age.”
Colt pulled off his hat and plowed his fingers through his hair. “How do I know?”
“You’re the Hunter!”
“Yeah, well, Pa’s notes on hunting down supernaturals didn’t exactly cover disabling a dynamic killing machine,” he said, settling his hat back in its customary place.
He glanced to their left at the silver door set into the rock, embossed with the head of a roaring lion. His mane flowed away from his head in silver streamers and his glittering eyes were cut golden topaz. There were no handles, no hinges on the beautiful door. But beside it was a silver plate set into the wall, with three small round openings as large as a quarter and a series of dials and a hand crank.
Lilly had never seen anything like it. She followed Colt as he walked over and began his examination. “It’s beautiful, but how is it going to get us out of here?” she asked.
Colt cracked his knuckles and gave her a grin. “It’s good luck.”
“What?”
“I recognize it. It’s a frequency transponder mechanism. Marley gave me a set of crystals with strict instructions to only use one type of crystal at a time. Each crystal resonates at a different frequency, giving it different levels of power, which technically should do different things. At least I think that’s most of the theory he was blathering on about.” He swung his pack off his back and dug into it.
Colt swore under his breath, then dug deeper. “Where are those damn crystals?”
A chill threaded through Lilly’s veins as her hand slipped into her pocket and closed around the small velvet pouch. “What do they look like?”
“Three sparkly rocks, velvet drawstring bag,” he said, digging farther into his pack. “Marley said only to use them in an emergency.”
“Well, I’d say this qualifies,” Lilly muttered as she gave the small velvet pouch in her front pocket a squeeze.
His eyes narrowed as he glanced at her hand. “You took them.” It wasn’t a question, but an accusation. “Why?” Hurt mingled with suspicion in his eyes. Lilly didn’t like either one.
Lilly’s heart shrank a size smaller at his accusation, and the fury on his face. “Just when I begin to trust you,” he muttered. “Serves me right.”
“I—I didn’t think it’d matter to you,” she stuttered as she pulled the pouch from her pocket and proffered it to him. “I’ve always had the habit of picking up things like the wire and nails, especially when I’m nervous. It makes me feel more secure.”
Colt took the bag from her. “That doesn’t mean you had any right to take them.” He gently pulled the puckered edge of the velvet, opening the pouch, and withdrew a small bit of clear quartz about the width of his thumb.
Heat suffused Lilly’s cheeks. She balled up her hands on her hips. “If that’s the worst thing I’ve done, I hardly think that’s reason for you not to trust me.”
“Oh, really?” He grasped the bag tighter, crushing the velvet.
“You’re just mad that you liked kissing me. That you wanted more, even though you knew you shouldn’t,” she challenged.
Colt cursed under his breath. “You’ve been using your succubus powers on me all along, haven’t you?” His knuckles tightened white as his grip on the crystal increased.
All the starch left Lilly’s spine. All they’d been through and he still didn’t see what was happening to them. She leaned against the rough wood of the stacked crates beside her. “No. I haven’t. If I did, the moment you were satisfied, you’d go numb to everything else around you except the sound of my voice. Has that happened?”
Colt didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. While she sure as hell had set off sparks in him and given him heart palpitations fit to kill a man, she knew he’d never once lost his ability to feel around her. Hell, if anything, all his feelings became so intense they were difficult to bear.
“So what I’m feeling—”
“Is coming straight from you,” she finished for him. “What’s happening between us is as real and honest as it gets.”
“Then I owe you an apology.”
He couldn’t have stunned her more if he’d shot her with his inventor friend’s gadget. Hunters, especially the Chosen, were supposed to be ruthless. Not—apologizing.
“All I want is for us to find the Book so you can get it back together and I can escape Rathe.”
Colt twisted the crystal between his fingers, the light bouncing off it and sending refracted sparkles over the walls of the machine room.
He looked at it, then handed it to Lilly. “How about you do the honors.”
Chapter 21
“Go on, give it a try,” Colt urged.
Lilly gazed at the imposing roaring lion emblazoned on the silver door before her and then gingerly plucked the clear quartz crystal from his thick fingers and shoved it into the first round hole in the silver panel of the transponder. “Now what?”
Colt turned the hand crank several times, then twisted the dial beside the crystal. A high keening noise began. The crystal lit with white light from below and the silver door beside the transponder shuddered, the topaz crystal eyes of the lion’s face on the door beginning to glow.
“Try another one,” Lilly urged, grabbing hold of his arm.
“But Marley said—”
“He doesn’t know everything!” she retorted.
Colt pulled an amber-colored citrine from the bag and plugged it into the transponder above the quartz. Again he cranked, then turned the dial farther. The keening sound grew into a wail. The crystal glowed yellow. Slowly the door lifted and stopped halfway. Enough room to get through if they crawled on their bellies.
“Put in the last one.”
This time Colt didn’t even bother to argue. He took the piece of amethyst from the pouch and plugged it in the last hole on the transponder’s receiver board, gave the hand crank several vigorous spins, and turned the dial. The keening sound turned into a high whine, purplish light shot up through the crystal, and the door lifted completely, revealing a huge two-story chamber unlike anything Colt had ever seen.
Large bronze lions, taller than Colt, sat as silent sentinels on either side of a metallic floor checkerboarded with different colors of metal tiles—silver, greenish copper, gleaming golden brass, and black wrought iron. All along the base of the walls behind them, greenish light pulsated and arced in long cylindrical glass tubes. But his gaze was drawn to a stream of bright pale moonlight streaming in a blue white shaft from high above at the far end of the chamber.
The eerie light illuminated a black marble pedestal atop a raised dais, and atop the pedestal sat a large rectangular box.
“This is it.” Lilly tugged Colt’s hand, prodding him forward when he just stood there staring. “Come on.” She stopped because he wasn’t budging. “What’s the matter?”
“What if—Dammit, Lilly. What if we’ve gone through all this, endured death-defying experience, only to find that we did all that and this isn’t what I’m looking for?”
She tugged harder. She understood wanting something so badly she could taste it. She understood bitter disappointment. “We won’t know unless we go over there and look, will we?”
Colt’s feet unglued from the floor, and he moved forward. Far too slowly for Lilly’s taste. “Get moving, Mr. Jackson.”
“You don’t think that the light beam will act like that other one we encountered, do you?”
Colt wrapped an arm around her and held her tightly to his side. “You mean as a trigger to send out a bolt of electricity that’s designed to kill rather than stun? Yes, that’s exactly what I think.”
“But we’ve gotten through their traps. Surely even that is enough of a test for the best of Hunters.”
“Unless whoever put it here intended for it to never be moved.”
Colt peered at the floor and bent down, examining the array of metal tiles in the floor. Some were greenish copper, others paler brass, some looked silver, and others were nearly black. The silver tiles looked like they were slightly elevated from the others. He stood and grabbed Lilly’s shoulders. “Listen to me carefully. The colored tiles in this floor are pressure plates. You step on one and it will act as a trigger.”
“To what?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out. Just follow close behind me, and step where I step. Stay on the silver tiles.”
Lilly sighed. She’d had just about enough of Hunters and their traps.
They started across the floor, Colt going first. He stepped carefully from one pale silver tile to another, then turned back to assist Lilly. The tiles weren’t large enough for two, so their reach had to stretch from one spot to the next. The problem was, his legs were longer than hers. At one point she had to hop to reach the spot where he’d last been. While one foot landed solidly in the middle of the silver tile, the other landed half on the proper tile and half on the dark iron one beside it.
The dark tile dipped down, making her ankle twist. She shrieked, windmilling her arms backward as she lost her balance. Colt grabbed the waistband of her pants and pulled her forward, flush up against him.
Shush. Thwang!
A rush of air stirred over the back of her neck. Lilly glanced at the wall where the shaft of a small crossbow arrow quivered. Both of them had narrowly missed getting shot where their heads would have been. Looking at where it must have come from, she noticed that each large lion had an opening in its mouth. Clearly the statues were not just pompous decorations.
“Now we know what happens when we step on the iron tiles,” Colt huffed. Lilly’s frantic heartbeat pounded against his chest like a frightened rabbit’s. “How’s your ankle?”
Lilly stepped down on it and winced. “Hurts, but I can walk on it.” She swiveled and gazed at the pedestal still halfway across the room. “There’s no way we’re going to make it. I’ll stay here and you keep going.”
“We can make it together, we just need to go slow and be careful.”
She tried hard to keep up with him. At one point she misjudged his movements and bumped into him, sending him off balance. His toe caught on a copper tile in front of him. He quickly withdrew it. A drop of something liquid hit where his foot had been a second before, and the small spot sizzled and fizzed, turning bright orange. Colt glanced upward. “Acid. Avoid the copper tiles.”
Lilly bit her lip and nodded. The problem was, the closer they got to the pedestal and the elusive box, the farther and farther apart the silver tiles seemed to be spaced. She wasn’t certain she could make the jump from one tile to the next, and Colt was already two moves ahead of her.
Exhaustion was beginning to take its toll. She leapt for a silver tile and missed, her foot landing on the brass one next to it. The hard bite of an electric shock clamped down on her foot, shooting up her leg, burning and causing her leg muscles to twitch involuntarily. Colt yanked her to the silver tile and she collapsed into his arms.
“I can’t go on anymore. You go and get it,” she pleaded.
“Nonsense. A Hunter never leaves his partner behind. We’re in this together, you and I. We started this together and we’re going to finish this together.” He scooped her up into his arms and deftly crossed the last three silver tiles leading to the base of the dais.
Up close, the case on the pedestal looked far larger and more imposing. Colt took the steps two at a time, Lilly still clutched tight to his chest, and set her down only when they reached the top of the raised dais. He kept a firm arm around her waist and kept her tucked in close to his side.
A thick coating of dust made it difficult to see precisely what was inside the box, but upon closer inspection she saw the ledger-sized box was actually a glass case with seams made of metal. Lilly blew on it, coughing a little at the cloud it created.
Inside the glass case on black velvet was what looked like an ancient illuminated manuscript, the pages created from yellow matte vellum, the gilt lettering and hand-colored images glittering in the light of the torch. Lilly gasped. “It’s beautiful.”
“And in the right hands it’s deadly to all Darkin.”
She locked gazes with him. “And in the hands of the Chosen, a key to saving this world.” Excitement tingled in her fingers and toes, sparkling and fizzing up inside her until she felt light-headed, like she’d drunk champagne. They’d done it! They’d actually done it!
Colt pointed at the ragged edge of the dark leather binding on the spine of the Book. “Part of the key anyway.” His voice had a catch to it as if the sight choked him up. It took a moment but Lilly realized how much this stack of vellum pages really meant to Colt. This was more than a tool. This was his family legacy, the legacy of all Hunters.
“This is Cadel’s piece of the Book,” he said quietly. “See there? That’s the back cover. And those loose pages at the back, those are my pa’s notes.”
“So that’s the last third of the Book of Legend.”
He nodded, never taking his eyes off the Book in the case.
“Well, get on with it.”
He turned and gave her a questioning look. “What?”
“We didn’t come through all this to just stand here and look at this relic, did we? Pick it up so we can take it with us.”
“Right.” Colt put his hands on the case. Blue sparks shot out, the current arcing up his arms and making the hair on his arms rise. He let out a yelp and jerked back, shaking his hands. “Damn thing is electrically charged!”
“It must be the gold on the edges acting as a conductor.”
Colt stared hard at her for a moment. “So no case, no conductor.”
“It seems logical to me.”
Colt stripped off his shirt and wrapped it around his right hand several times. The moonlight highlighted with silvery fingers the ridges and ripples of his bare torso. Lilly’s heart sped up in response. She tightened her hands into knots to prevent herself from reaching out and touching him while he was concentrating.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of the case.” He pulled back his hand and hit the glass hard, shattering it.
Lilly squeaked at the impact.
The fabric had done its job, protecting his hand. He unwrapped his hand and gingerly reached between the shards, careful to avoid the gold and the razor-sharp edges of the glass. As his fingers wrapped around the edges of the Book, a warm heat flowed through his hand and up his arm. Whatever else could be said, the Book was a powerful thing. It was also far heavier than it looked.
Colt pulled the manuscript from the ruins of its housing and shook off the glass shards glittering on the surface.
“We’ve got it! We’ve actually got it!” Lilly squealed with sheer delight.
“Finding it is only half the battle. Getting it out of here and to the Gate is the other half,” Colt murmured. He was too awestruck by what he held in his hand. This was legend in physical form. An ancient depository of secrets from the ages meant to enlighten Hunters and protect humanity.
Lilly peered at it, a gleam in her eye. “What shall we do with it?”
Colt pulled an oilcloth out of his pack and gingerly wrapped the Book in the cloth, then tied it shut with a length of twine. “We’re taking it out of here,” he said as he tucked it into his pack and swung the pack over his bare shoulders.
Their plans were short-lived. The walls began to tremble and Colt heard what sounded like thunder.
“Must have been a pressure safety switch,” he muttered. He glanced at the pedestal where the Book had lain and only now noticed the small section of raised velvet. He tried pushing it downward, but the thunder only grew louder. “Damn.”
A deep rumble started in the recesses of the darkness above them. All the hairs on Colt’s body lifted as he glanced upward. “That sounds like water, coming fast.” He glanced back at the maze of colored tiles behind them, knowing now what each colored tile held in store for them. There wasn’t time to walk from silver tile to silver tile. The safe route wasn’t going to save them from whatever was coming.
Beneath their feet the floor trembled. A section of the wall slid open slowly far above them.
He grabbed hold of Lilly’s hand and ran. Crossbow bolts zinged behind them and the drips from the ceiling created an acid rain in their wake as they sped across the booby-trapped floor.
A rush of water came cascading down through the opening, an artificial waterfall that turned the room into a giant lake. The torrent had been designed to drown intruders, then flush away what was worthless, leaving the precious metal room intact.
Colt sputtered and gasped as the water caught them mid-run, extinguishing the torch and plunging them into a cold, wet rush and darkness. He held Lilly with an iron grip, determined not to lose her in the flash flood. His lungs and eyes burned, but in the tumult and dark there was no way to tell which end was up.
He broke through the surface and gasped, pulling Lilly up to join him. She wrapped her arms around him, her breath coming in short, desperate pants. The water twisted and swirled through the labyrinth of smooth metal tunnels, rather like pipes beneath a drain. There was no way to keep his bearings or even see.
Colt tried to keep his boots pointed downstream in case they came too close to smashing into anything, so he could kick away from it as they rocketed through the smooth rock tube inside the mountain, but the water carried them along so fast, he couldn’t find purchase to hold on to anything to slow down their rapid momentum.
They shot out of the rock face of the mountain into open space and the night sky. Lilly shrieked, arms and legs flailing.