Hours later they stopped, weary to the bone, hungry and thirsty. Bodie perched on an outcropping of rock, simply longing for a soft bed, any bed. Just somewhere to lay his head. Everyone shared his exhausted look, and Jemma mentioned again that they needed equipment and supplies.
The thought of retracing their steps — twice — to get back to this very point spurred them on once more. They did have a small amount of water and shared three chocolate bars among them. Bodie nodded at Zeus’s latest blood trail.
“It’s getting fresher.”
“We aren’t far behind that bastard now.” Gunn alternated between limping and striding, but still gamely hung in alongside Cross. The older man looked like he wanted to speak to Yasmine, but she didn’t look his way.
Eventually Cross forced the confrontation by moving to her side, despite Hakim’s glare. “You’re going to have to talk to me sometime, Yasmine.”
“Not yet, Eli. Danger is… everywhere.”
Cross was no stranger to hidden signals. He waited until he could pull her to the front of the group, away from the rest of the Bratva and close to Bodie. “I thought my world was made up of two people,” he said, “before you left.”
“Truly, I saved your damn hide. The cops knew all about you. They were ready to descend, until I fed them better, more significant prey and diverted their attentions. That’s why I left, Eli. To protect you.”
Cross was speechless for several seconds, then said quietly, “And you couldn’t come back?”
“That was impossible. I’m a cop. I work for Interpol now.” Her voice was so low Cross had to strain to hear it. Bodie moved behind them to make some noise, to help.
“The love of my life…” Cross sounded bereft. “My enemy. Did you pretend to love me… to catch me?” His throat sounded like a mixture of gravel and knives were caught up in it.
“I never stopped loving you, Eli. Not once. My feelings ran so deep, conflicting with everything I did, everything I stood for. If you had found me…”
Cross glanced over at her. “What?”
“I’d have changed everything for you.”
Tears formed at the corner of Cross’s eyes. The thief looked away, but Bodie saw it. He felt deeply for the man, even more so because Cross was his immovable rock, the mainstay he relied on. Now, though, he saw an imperfect, human side to him.
After another twenty minutes of walking, following a gentle descent, they turned a sharp corner, astounded at the size of the chamber that suddenly lay before them.
A wide stream ran through the middle of it, flowing so quickly it lapped up and over the edges and onto the cave floor. The ceiling arched high above, lost in darkness. The far side was over ten meters away and lit only because a madman stood there, holding a flaming torch in each hand.
“Gunpowder,” Zeus shouted. “Who do you think invented it? The Chinese? No, it was invented far, far earlier than that.”
Bodie pulled up short, wondering what the hell was going on. “Thanks are in order,” he called back. “We’d never have found this place without you. Well, not this week, anyway.”
“Is that what you think?” Zeus all but cackled. “That I led you here like a witless oaf?”
The team walked closer, approaching the stream and the chamber’s halfway point. Some of the detail behind Zeus came into sharper focus. The incredible wall was covered in some kind of extensive bas-relief or mural, the depictions of kings or gods — possibly Zeus himself, among the other names that the Evzones had taken for themselves from this very chamber. Five in all.
“I let you come all this way to show you how close you came… but still lost. We are sworn by our birthright to protect this secret at all costs.”
Constellations filled the upraised hands depicted in the mural. A map of the stars. Bodie saw a trail within a trail…
Zeus brandished the flaming torches, sending the representation into blackness and flitting shadow. Heidi nudged Bodie on his right hip.
“Umm, look at his feet.”
What the…
A trail of black powder surrounded Zeus and then led in a sweeping curve to the edge of the stream. Bodie realized he’d been distracted by the leader and hadn’t properly assessed his surroundings.
“Is that… a barrel?”
“Yeah,” Heidi said. “Four, actually. Four barrels of real gunpowder.”
“Fuck.”
The team shone their meager lights on the barrels, gauging size and distance. Zeus read their minds.
“Don’t worry,” he cried out. “There’s enough fire to cleanse the entire chamber and everyone in it.”
“My friend.” Yasmine stepped forward, speaking gently. “You do not have to do this.”
Zeus glowered at her. “Of course not, but I want to. I was born to make this decision for you. My station in life demands it.”
Bodie gritted his teeth, holding back the retort, which was a decidedly lower-class curse. In the end, though, he could see only one real option. Before Zeus blew it all to hell, they had to get a look at that frieze.
“You won,” he said, feeding the man’s ego. “Fair and square. You beat all of us.”
Zeus’s chest expanded and the smug smile flourished as he reveled in his apparent victory.
“But I wonder, since we’re all now at your mercy… what is so mind-blowing that you would give your life to protect it?”
Zeus raised the torches without pause, illuminating the frieze. “The five great kings of Atlantis later became the gods of lower beings like yourselves. The Greeks. The Phoenicians. Their gods were based on real men. Remnants like this — cave paintings, petroglyphs — helped to cement that belief, fashion the faith. The ignorant Greeks thought those who came before worshipped these figures, not that they were familiar to them. Do you see? Atlantis and its secrets were so extraordinary that their lords became our gods. They were years ahead of where we are now, and we can’t allow anyone to gain access to that.”
Jemma, Gunn, and one of the Bratva had taken advantage of Zeus’s distraction with his own prideful revelations to take a few photos of the mural. Bodie thought it was sound and quick thinking, given what may happen. The whole group drifted closer to the fast-flowing stream, though Bodie harbored intense reservations.
Zeus suddenly seemed to realize that something was wrong, turning his attention away from the cave wall and back to them. The fire surely had to be blinding to his eyes, and Bodie assumed the man’s vision was limited. A gunshot would send Zeus flying and ignite the powder. Waiting would only lead to the same outcome, as would an attempted retreat.
“Shall we get on with this?” Cassidy hissed. “I’m super tired of listening to this asshole.”
And there it was — the spark to the touch paper that controlled their situation. Zeus yelled something unintelligible and threw the torches to the ground. Bodie saw a sacrificial inferno leap up around the man as two sparking trails of fire streamed toward the waiting barrels.
Everyone leapt into the stream, immersing their bodies in the rushing waters. Sometimes, privileged men and women were just too arrogant and blind to realize their well-laid plans and opinions might be slightly askew. Bodie turned over in the stream, eyes narrowed against the water, and saw a blazing conflagration pass right over him. In his bones, the depths of his body, and the bedrock all around, he felt the percussive whump as the barrels exploded. Fire rolled across his vision, surging, undulating, taking everything that lay before it. Debris fell on and alongside him, shards of timber and rock. The furnace lasted many seconds. Bodie felt a lifetime pass before his eyes, from those glory days of youth to the friends that surrounded him now — and in those moments he experienced a startling revelation.