Chaos. Part 14

"Plenty."

Miranda smiled, drawing the knife across his cheek. Then she nicked him. "Don't flirt with the illusion that you've bought yourself more than a few more hours of life. It's all going to end soon."

She turned her back on him and spoke to Alucard. "I have reason to believe that the other three books may be in the buried monastery."

He grunted softly. "We'll see. Bring me her book."

aradise sat in the valley directly below the helicopter. A sleepy-looking village with only one paved street that she could see.

"Hardly the kind of place you'd expect to be the epicenter of the struggle between good and evil," Silvie said.

"I think that's the point."

Since there was no place to land a jet in Paradise, they'd flown into a town named Grand Junction, then switched to the helicopter Karas had arranged.

"There's something you should know, Silvie," Karas said, staring at the town below them. "I've been debating whether to tell you because I'm afraid that they will stop at nothing to get the information from one of us if they take us. I already made a mistake in telling Johnis."

"What are you talking about?"

Karas looked at her. "My book, the one Miranda took, was a copy. Mine is hidden in Paradise. I'm sorry for not telling you sooner. But Miranda only has three books, not four."

Silvie didn't know what to think about the prospect of her trusting Johnis, but at the moment she didn't feel the need to dwell on it. There were more important matters at hand.

"Fine. It's safe, right? Probably the safest place for it right now."

"Unless Johnisa""

"He wouldn't. And Miranda may have pieced together what we have about the other three. We should test our theory first and return if we find them."

"Or we could hide my book again to protect Johnis."

"We have to see if there's a lair," Silvie snapped.

"Okay. To the canyons."

The helicopter floated over Paradise, then headed into the canyon lands to the south. A wide, white-faced gorge had been cut from the mountain. They flew down into it and pulled up near the box canyon at the end.

"Where?"

"There." Karas pointed to a cliff on her side of the helicopter where a landslide had taken down a hundred yards of the canyon wall. "They used explosives to implode a monastery built into the cliff face. A real shame. Someone went to a lot of trouble to keep this place hidden."

A small cabin had been built among the rubble, but this didn't strike Silvie as the kind of place they would find the books that had caused them so much trouble.

"Take *er down," Karas signaled the pilot.

They landed a hundred feet from the cabin and ducked out from under the spinning blades. "Wait for us."

Karas led Silvie through an unlocked cabin door, into what looked to be a long, deserted room with two doors leading farther in. They quickly checked the two rooms: nothing obvious.

Karas switched on her battery-operated torch and ran it over the floor. "Okay, we're looking for an opening that leads below the cabin."

Silvie tried her own light. She might have been mesmerized by the contraptiona"fire sealed in this battery Karas referred toa"but her mind was preoccupied with Johnis's absence. "How do we know the lair is here, not buried under all the rubble?"

"We don't."

"Surely Alucard would have searched this place."

"Not since all four books have been in this reality, he hasn't."

"How do you know? He could be down there right now, waiting for us."

"Turkey, maybe. Or Romania. I doubt he's here."

"Romania?"

"Never mind. Come on."

They searched the outer room first, covering every square inch on their hands and knees. The whole business was enough to soak Silvie in sweat. All she could think about was Johnis caged in a dungeon a or worse.

"We're wasting time!" Silvie announced, standing. "What was that you said about Romania? This can't be the right place!"

"I'll take one room; you take the other."

The other was a bathroom, and it took Silvie only a few minutes to convince herself that there was nothing remotely resembling Teeleh's lair within a hundred miles of this place.

"Silvie!"

She dove for the door, slammed into its frame, and spun through, ignoring the pain that flashed up her arm.

"What is it?"

She saw what it was before Karas could answer. The wood-frame bed had been pulled to one side, and a trapdoor rose to reveal a dark tunnel beneath.

They'd actually found it?

"There's a ladder." Silvie dove for the hole and was halfway into the floor before Karas could stop her.

"Easy! I have the gun. I should lead."

Silvie hesitated as Karas dropped past her into the earth below. They were in a small tunnel that ran perpendicular to the earth's surface, not deep. It was an escape route freshly dug, not an ancient fortified tunnel like Alucard's lair.

"This isn't it," she breathed, hurrying behind Karas, who scurried forward in a crouch, her gun extended.

No response.

They rounded a bend, following the light from their battery-operated torches. The tunnel ended at another ladder heading up. Light seeped through a square trapdoor about fifty feet above their heads.

"That's it?" Silvie looked back. "We missed something! There has to be another tunnel!"

She spun and headed back, chasing the sound of her breathing now. Miranda was torturing Johnis in a land far away, while they wasted their time here beneath a cabin outside Paradise, Colorado.

"Silvie!"

She plowed on. The quicker they covered this search and left Paradise, the better. Nothing here looked like Teeleh.

"Silvie!"

She spun back. "What?"

"Do you hear that?"

Silvie heard her own wheezing. Her thumping heart. "No."

"There, listen!"

Silvie held her breath and listened. Then she heard it, a very faint, high-pitched squealing sound that sent a streak of terror down her spine.

She studied the dirt ceiling. The walls. It seemed to come at them from every direction from far away. Her eyes met Kara's, round like saucers. The squealing was louder now that they were perfectly still.

"What is that?" Silvie breathed.

"I a I don't know," She shoved her gun into her belt, leaned her ear close to the wall, and listened. "It's a" But she didn't know more.

Silvie drew her light slowly over the rough dirt walls. She walked farther down the tunnel. The sounds faded.

She walked back slowly. "It's louder here. Something's behind the walls. There has to be a"

Silvie suddenly saw the demarcation along the tunnel wall, rockier along a five-foot section between her and Karas. She stepped up and placed her ear between the rocks.

The squealing was now distinct, like the wailing of a million insects or lobsters, protesting their capture.

"You're right," Karas said.

"What is it?"

"I don't know." She headed back down the tunnel. "But we're going to find out."

IT TOOK THEM NEARLY AN HOUR TO DIG THROUGH THE TUNnel wall using shovels from the helicopter. Silvie swung her spade, fighting to hold her frustration in check. It was clear that Johnis wasn't here because the earth had been undisturbed for a long time.

The books probably weren't here either. They couldn't be so fortunate as to find them so quickly after arriving in the Histories. Then again, Karas had been searching for over ten years. She and Johnis had just shown up near the end of the search. Either way, something was here. The more they dug, the louder the squealing sounded.

"We should just use dynamite and be done with this!" Karas mumbled.

"Dynamite?" Silvie pried up on a rock, attempting to pluck it from the earth, but it remained stuck. "What's dynamite?"

The rock suddenly rolled. Not toward her, but away. Into darkness beyond.

The squealing became a faint, but much clearer, high-pitched screaming. Silvie went rigid. The sound of the boulder rolling down a slope was unmistakable. It landed far below with a dull thump.

The squealing stopped.

Karas scrambled for one of the torches. Shone it through the hole. The beam revealed nothing but darkness. And an eerie silence.

"Teeleh's lair?"

For the first time since landing in the canyon, Silvie felt a strong surge of hope. They'd certainly found something, and it could be Teeleh's lair.

Which meant the Books of History could be here. And the Books of History were their only leverage now. Johnis's life depended on what they found in this hole.

She dropped to her seat and kicked at the rocks surrounding the small hole. The wall caved as if the whole thing had been held up by a small toothpick. A small avalanche tumbled away from them.

Dust coiled.

Silvie grabbed her torch and crawled through the opening.

"What is it?" Karas asked from behind.

"A staircase. I a I don't know."

She eased out onto stone steps spiraling into darkness. No walls on either side or ahead that she could see. Silence.

Karas stood up beside her and played her light around. "A cavern below the old monastery. This has to be it, Silvie, Nothing else would explain this."

"Let's go." Silvie stepped gingerly around fallen rock, pus.h.i.+ng stones aside as she descended. Fifty steps. Farther. Now a stench from below. A smell that reminded her of putrid water or a She stopped. "Shataiki!" Her whisper echoed softly. She flashed her light up and saw a stone wall ahead, wet with mucus. And lying across the mucus was a large worm, perhaps a full foot in diameter. Twenty yards long.

Karas put a hand on her shoulder and held tight.

These were the same worms from Alucard's lair. Johnis had wondered if they might be larvae for the larger Shataiki, and looking at this one now, Silvie guessed he was right.

She wanted to spin, run back up the stairs, and drop fire in this hole to kill all that lived below. But Johnis a Silvie clenched her jaw and stepped down, farther in.

The steps ended at the base of the wall. They were in a ma.s.sive cavern, but she could only see this one wall. A single blackened wooden door hung from rusted hinges, gaping an inch or two.

"This is it." Her voice came raspy. "Is it safe?"

A stupid question, one that Karas didn't bother answering. She stepped past Silvie, her gun extended again. Still silence. So then what had done ail the squealing? Karas drew the door wide with the gun's barrel.

A smaller atrium waited inside. And from this atrium several tunnels headed farther in. But the tunnel on their right was the one they should take. It was the only one with worms on the walls, slipping through their own mucus.

They held their torches on the same entrance, transfixed by the sight of two worms so close. And then the squealing came, louder than Silvie thought could have been possible from the small mouth on one of the worms, now open in a scream.

She jumped back. But other than moving its head about, the worm did nothing. No sign of threat other than this cry of protest. The halls fell quiet once more.

"They've been trapped down here," Karas said, "for Elyon knows how long. Waiting to be set free."

"By who?"

"Alucard? Maybe he couldn't do it without all seven books."