Drake shrugged. “Do what you want. Sully’s here somewhere. Jada and I are going to find him.”
He glanced at her to make sure he had the right to speak for her, but she already was following. She had put her hair up in a ponytail, magenta on black, and without it veiling her features, her face had a soft vulnerability that was deceiving. But when she met his gaze, he saw the familiar determination in her eyes and knew there was no turning back for either of them.
As if there ever could have been, he thought.
“The man makes sense,” Perkins said.
Henriksen glanced over at the mercenaries, who had spread out, some of them still investigating the cave while others were on alert for any sign of approach.
“The logic is solid, Mr. Henriksen,” Perkins continued. “I can’t say we’re going to be able to determine which path is correct at each turn in the labyrinth, but right now, I advise we take the tunnel on the right.”
Henriksen glanced at Olivia, but her face was an unreadable mask.
“Right it is,” he said. “But everyone be on guard. The protectors know these corridors intimately. And I have no doubt they have doors we’ll never see. Perkins, make sure someone is covering the rear.”
“Yes, sir,” Perkins said, gesturing for two of his people to guard their flank.
But that was the problem in a labyrinth full of hidden chambers and secret passages. It was impossible to know where an attack would be coming from. Anything could be hiding in the shadows.
21
They set off down the sloping tunnel in twos, as before, and the twists of the labyrinth quickly revealed themselves. Several times they were able to find the right path by measuring the wear on the floor, but in other places they were forced to explore wrong turns for long minutes before realizing they had chosen poorly.
This labyrinth differed significantly from the others in that it was a combination of man-made tunnels and natural caves. In another of the caves they passed through they found moss growing and fissures that led up to the surface, and Drake wondered how far underground they had traveled. There were vines as well, but only small blossoms of cave hellebore, nothing in full bloom.
A curving stone staircase had been carved into the side of a large cavern that dropped away precipitously on the right. Drake kept a hand on Jada’s shoulder as they went down the stairs, feeling the presence of the mercenaries behind him. He had been careful to make sure that Corelli preceded them down, not trusting the man to follow. At the bottom of the steps, they found the first writing on the walls and familiar paintings of cave hellebore, as well as the symbol of the four interlaced octagons that stood for the four labyrinths.
At the sight of that symbol, Henriksen could not hide his elation. Olivia did not smile, but Drake thought she looked flushed and heard her exhale as if she were trying to steady her breathing. Corelli’s face gleamed with anticipation. Drake worried that they were allowing themselves to be distracted and were letting their guard down. But as long as Perkins and his goon squad were with them, he figured someone was making sure they weren’t going to get dragged into the shadows and have their throats cut.
He nudged Jada. “You all right?”
“Is that a joke?” she asked, one eyebrow arched.
“I’m not in a joking mood.”
“That’s a first,” she said.
After a few more steps, Jada bumped lightly against him. “I’m just wondering how it all got turned around.”
She didn’t have to explain what she meant. Right about then, he figured she must be wondering what her father would have said if he could have seen her exploring the fourth labyrinth with his traitorous wife and his rival.
“It’s not over yet,” he said. “What matters is how it all turns out.”
Jada nodded, but her knitted brow showed she was still troubled. “That’s not all that matters.”
He knew she was right, but it would give her no comfort for him to agree with her, so he said nothing. At the bottom of the steps, a tunnel opened to the left, and they entered a complex series of alleys, forks, corners, and dead ends that vexed them for nearly half an hour until Jada forced them all to stop and just listen. It wasn’t what they heard that showed them the right path, however, but what they felt. Air moved through the labyrinth-this strange combination of natural caverns and man-made maze-and by following the drafts they found a side passage off what they’d thought was a dead end and were on their way again.
When they reached a sloping tunnel that seemed more crevice than passage, the path downward nothing but jagged edges of stone that would barely function as steps, there was some doubt that they had chosen the right path, but they forged ahead nevertheless. They had to descend as if climbing down a ladder, seeking footholds among the sharp striations of stone. Drake clutched his flashlight in one hand and used the other to steady himself, knowing a fall would mean torn flesh and broken bones. He scraped his left knee and right forearm and nearly shattered his flashlight when he momentarily lost his footing.
“Where the hell are they?” Henriksen asked aloud as they clambered down through the treacherous terrain.
No one asked who “they” were. Henriksen wasn’t the only one who had expected to fall under attack by now, but Drake didn’t let himself surrender to the temptation to think that the Protectors of the Hidden Word had abandoned their duty. Unlike the others, which had the dry stillness of age, this labyrinth felt alive to him. Aware. They were there, he felt sure.
In the narrow confines of that tunnel, clambering on the sharp, jutting stones, he felt almost alone in spite of the string of people ahead of and behind him. Drake had rarely suffered from claustrophobia-being trapped beneath tons of earth in the cave-in of an Aztec tomb seven years earlier had been a rare exception-but his heart began to hammer in his chest, an edge of panic gnawing at him. His body ached for open sky and fresh air the way it did when he went diving and stayed under the water too long, and he didn’t like being jammed into a place so vulnerable to attack with no way to defend himself.
When he heard the commotion ahead and below-the thump of boots and clatter of slides being racked back on assault weapons-his need to get out of that sharp-toothed tunnel only grew. He could hear the soldiers muttering, and when he glanced down, he realized he was almost there. Olivia had been right in front of him, and he saw her carefully extricating herself from the jagged rocks and stepping into an open chamber. Corelli and Henriksen and the mercenaries on point were already out of the tunnel.
“What is it?” Jada asked from behind him.
Below, he heard Olivia suck in a harsh breath, and he glanced down again, watching as she swung her flashlight around.
“Diyu,” she said, almost to herself.
“It’s hell,” Drake replied.
But it wasn’t until he reached the bottom safely and emerged into the chamber-a natural cave with jagged walls and a peaked ceiling like some kind of primeval chapel-that the reality of it struck him. There were stone altars with the carved faces of Chinese demons, and along one pitted wall, massive iron hooks had been driven into the rock face. The wall and floor were stained a horrid copper brown, caked with centuries of spilled blood and viscera. The place breathed with the anguish of tortured souls. If it was not quite an abattoir, it was the nearest to such a place Drake had ever entered.
“Oh, my God,” Jada said as she came in behind him.
Drake flinched at the sound of her voice. The other mercenaries came behind her, some of them voicing their own surprise but most too hardened to the worst cruelties of humanity to react. Drake hoped he never became so callous.
“Look at this,” Corelli said, pointing to a sacrificial altar.
Sluices had been carved around the edges of the table to carry blood away. It ran like a gutter down the side of the altar and across the floor, into a spill-off cut into the far wall, next to the cave’s exit.
Horrified as he was, Drake felt ice fill his veins as he remembered the map on the wall in the Chinese worship chamber on Thera.
