“And there it is,” Smyth panted, nodding again at the treasure cave. “Everything, right there. Job done. We should head back now that we found it. Give the guys the good news and get reinforcements down here. No telling how many of these things are creeping around.”
“And help the team,” Hayden said. “The kids are all fine so let’s go. C’mon.”
They retraced their route, found Yorgi and Fay, and continued on toward the house. It was when Hayden walked into the cave’s living quarters that the explosions began. Smyth stopped beside her and Kinimaka took ragged breaths.
“What the hell is that?”
Above, the entire roof began to break away. It was only when Hayden saw it wrench upwards and rubble began to rain down that she realized it was the bottom foundations of the house.
And they were ripping from their moorings.
As the ceiling canted over, the caves became open to the skies and Hayden was witness to the entire chateau breaking free.
Shocked to the core, shaking uncontrollably, she fell to her knees.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
Drake heard screams as the house no longer paused in its descent, but pulled away from the wall and started to slide down the mountain. Wreckage smashed everywhere, exploding through walls and the floor, collapsing from above. The great table slid straight through the picture window, tumbling end over end into the vast void. The only option was to run, and run they did.
Racing uphill, fighting momentum, they attacked the sloping floor like it was an enemy they sought to conquer. The far right-hand wall of the house began to crumble away. Drake saw cracks spreading everywhere, even underneath his own feet. Brynn and the villagers were already out in the corridor and, as he reached the doorway, he saw why.
Wooden panels had been ripped from the wall, hands were bleeding profusely. In other places the structure had sheered away, exposing the places where the house had been moored to the jagged rock face. These moorings were large and craggy, full of metal, rock and deep niches; torn joints and couplings. Already, several villagers had climbed inside and were pressing hard into the rock to make room for more.
Drake jumped up again and again, gaining a few feet with every leap. Dahl dragged him and the others dragged the Swede. Alicia and Mai made it through the door, then Kenzie. Curtis somehow managed to hold tight at the end of the line, barely able to walk. Then, a deep groan and the entire floor sank a bit, smashing down just a few centimeters but jarring everything that continued to hold it together. Drake lost balance, but swiftly regained it. Dahl fell to his knees, grip broken with those who pulled him up, and suddenly, terrifyingly, it was just Dahl now at the top of the line, holding out a huge hand that gripped nothing.
Nothing at all.
Dahl’s face turned from determined to stunned and destitute in the span of a heartbeat. Those below depended on him. The Swede’s muscles bulged; cords standing out along his arms, neck and forehead. His knees slipped downward in the dust and rubble. He labored even harder. Drake somehow tried to grip those below tighter whilst putting less strain on Dahl, but wasn’t entirely sure it worked. Dahl let out a tortured bellow and heaved. His knees held, his body bent upward — an inch was gained. He yelled again, scrabbled for purchase here and there — anywhere. Just a few centimeters from the wall and he took a deep breath for one enormous effort, lunged, heaved the entire line along with him and grabbed hold of the door frame, four fingers gripping the wood.
A moment’s respite, then pulling again. Drake planted his feet and heaved upward; Anica and then Curtis too. The man at the end of the line faltered, body swaying to and fro more than the others. Dahl made sure his grip was strong and hoisted the line mightily one more time.
The wooden door frame cracked around his fingers, destroyed by his grip and the pressure it was exerting. Dahl was left holding splinters.
“No! No! Bollocks!”
Only sheer, perfect balance kept them from sliding down, but even that would only last a few more seconds. As Dahl wavered and reached desperately for a solid surface that just wasn’t there, the line began to slide down the tilted floor of the house toward the broken windows and the great drop beyond. With one last superhuman effort Dahl stalled the momentum.
And saw Alicia, held by Mai, struggling through the shattered door. Holding hands, the two managed to reach out to Dahl, grab his arm and pull. Mai was joined by Kenzie in the doorway, adding her incredible strength. As Kenzie pulled, her katana fell away unnoticed, clattering down to the floor. Together, the three women pulled Dahl up through the doorway and then took responsibility for Drake, Anica and Curtis.
Drake put his back against the corridor wall that separated it from the great hall and heaved until the two villagers came through, then hugged them close.
The chateau screamed in its final death throes.
“Drake!” Alicia cried. “Run! Jump! For God’s sake, jump!”
The floor was breaking away from the mountain wall, the entire area crumbling square meter by square meter. A groaning, thunderous crash told them the other wall had torn free. Drake and the others were now standing on a ruined floor of just a few feet in width and length, exposed to both sides. The enormity of the valley beckoned below.
“The moorings!” he cried.
They leapt through empty air, hands outstretched. They caught hold of steel stanchions and bent pilings, of torn framework and half-destroyed scaffold that jutted from the mountain. The steel was still sound where it went into the rock; nothing could change that. Drake grabbed hold of a jutting piece of pipe, wrapping his hands around it. To his right Curtis managed to skip into a niche where some of the foundations had once been. The roaring of a dying beast accompanied the final destruction of the chateau. Bricks and mortar, slabs of concrete, incredible metal support skeletons twisted free and fell away. A huge sliding skin of debris slipped part way down the mountain, crashing like a wave, rebounding again and again and smashing upon rock after rock, a great tidal wave of rubble until it swept right off a precipice and became a tumbling waterfall all the way to the valley floor.
Drake watched the slithering ruins. “That’s why it didn’t fall right away,” he said. “The ground underneath wasn’t sheer. It was flat and then just a slope.”
Several grunts and groans of agreement and appreciation were sounded out. As Drake looked beneath his feet, looking for a safe place to jump down where the rock was flat and not littered with debris, he saw a familiar face staring up at him.
“ ’Kinell,” he muttered in broad Yorkshire. “Now that’s a welcome sight if ever I saw one.”
Dahl swung from one jutting bar to another, the drop and the near-miss not fazing him. “What on earth are you… oh, Hayden. Well, yeah, that’s odd.”
“Can you make your way down?” Hayden shouted up.
“Ropes would be better,” Drake shouted back. “Give us a minute to think it through, ’cause I guess one of has to take a risk and jump down, then clear the way for the others to land safely and—”
He stopped, because Dahl had already jumped to the nearest bed of rock and was sweeping the rubble away with his hand.
The Swede looked up. “You thought it all through yet?”
“Oh yeah, mate. I think you’re the biggest dickhead I ever met.”
He let go of the pipe, landed safely on two feet, and pretended not to notice the Swede’s big hands close by, prepared to steady or catch him.
“Over there,” Dahl said.
Drake glanced to the left and saw a ridge of smooth rock leading most of the way to the very pass they had used to climb beyond the chateau earlier. “Our way out,” Drake said.