“Eyes ahead, Orlando,” Phoebe called.
“Easy for you to say.”
“Almost there.”
Another gunshot, another eel popped and splashed spastically behind him. He cringed, floated to the narrow portion at the head of the crypt, then waited.
“There,” said Alexander. “Hit it.”
Using his arms, Orlando pushed up like the start of doing a jumping jack but with his palms open, and sent himself down. He stomped with both feet and felt the stone give way, release and push up. “Got it.”
“Okay, one more. Hurry. Three o’clock position.”
Treading water again, he swam a half-hearted breast stroke, reaching out and helping himself by pulling along the crypt wall.
Another shot, and an eel’s head exploded right in front of him.
“Judas Priest! Do you think you could—Ow!” he screamed, as he jerked his hand out of the water and shook it, trying to dislodge the eel sawing its teeth into his flesh.
“Stop moving!” Nina yelled. “I can’t get a shot!”
Still screaming, Orlando spun around, then slammed his arm sideways, pounding the eel’s body against the crypt’s side. There was a satisfying crunch, and the jaws loosened. In the dazzling white light, those glowing eyes were locked on his, even as the jaws loosened.
“Get off me!” he yelled as his blood rushed down his wrist. Another swing, hard, vertically up and then down and then it snapped free. “Those things are evil.” He rubbed his hand, then washed it under the water, not caring at this point about attracting more critters.
“You’re almost there,” Alexander shouted. “Another few feet.” His flashlight beam pointed the way, and under the water, Orlando could just make out the outline of a centaur. He moved to it and was about to step ahead when something nipped his leg, just above the calf. Then, a pain as great as anything he could imagine as something chomped into his back, just above the tailbone. It felt like it was trying to burrow inside, gnawing and thrashing into tendons.
He barely heard the gunshots over his own screams, and he certainly didn’t notice that he had staggered forward, depressing the centaur stone and then he slipped under water, struggling against a sudden onslaught of eels. A veritable horde, jumping and wriggling like spawning salmon, converging on live prey.
“Orlando!” Phoebe’s shout was the last thing he heard before they dragged him under.
“No way I’m losing him!” Phoebe jumped to the edge, leaned over and yelled back. “Someone grab my hand.”
“Ah shit,” Nina said, putting away her now-empty Beretta, and gripped Phoebe’s wrist with one hand, then hung on to Montross with the other. She lowered Phoebe down, just above the thrashing pile of slithering eels, and then a hand, thrust up in wild desperation.
Phoebe lunged and caught it, gripped it tight. His head emerged, bloody, an eel snapping at his ear. And then Montross yanked backwards, reeling in Nina, who slipped, but caught herself and got her footing just as Phoebe fell halfway in. Nina found some leverage and heaved her catch out of the water.
Four eels were still attached to Orlando. Phoebe hauled him up and together they slid him onto the flat mortuary slab, and as he writhed, screaming, bleeding from a dozen wounds, Nina pulled out a military knife, ten-inch standard-issue, serrated.
“Just like Fridays at the fish market,” she said with enthusiasm, and hacked down on the first eel, lopping its body free from its head. Again with the next one. “Hold his leg still!” she yelled, as she slashed down again. She turned to the last one on his neck. It must have seen the fate of its friends as it let go, hissed at her, and flopped sideways to escape.
But Orlando’s left hand rose up and caught it by the neck. He sat up, still screaming, and turned to the side, whipping its head down hard against the stone. Once, twice, three times until it was a bloody, lifeless mess. He pushed it aside, then looked down at himself. The torn clothes, the blood seeping everywhere.
And he smiled. “Did I do it?”
“Yes, but we’ve got other problems,” Alexander said, and he seemed to be shaking, swaying back and forth. “We’d better hold onto something.”
Phoebe pulled herself up, then reached over to grab Caleb, who was still somehow unconscious through all the screaming, still lost in the depths of an unbreakable vision.
“Hang on tight!” she yelled.
The tower shuddered, rocked, then roared upwards. The gears released. Hidden counterweights offset levers and pulleys and shot the tower back up, pulling free of the debris from the explosion with just a bump in its ascent, grinding upwards. Water spilled from its length, eels and bodies tumbled away with the recoiling waves.
Their lights reached out, illuminating the golden walls of the octagonal chamber until they gave way to the aquamarine siding of the dome, the murals now visible in multiple sections. Quiet images of Burkhan Khaldun, of women and children, of proud soldiers on horseback. And then the ascent slowed. The ceiling was only ten yards away as the minaret, scraping and shaking, finally grinding to a halt.
Phoebe’s flashlight beam sought everyone out. “All here,” she said with relief, still clinging to her unconscious brother. And then she looked below, shining the light all the way down the length of the tower.
“But why are we here?” Alexander asked. “Now we’re even farther from the door, and — oh.” He pointed over Nina’s shoulder. “There’s a window.”
“And there,” said Phoebe proudly, “is the other thing I saw in my vision.” She played her light over something that at first wasn’t even visible: a walkway, disconnected from their position, but level with the crypt, held up by angled supports cut into the walls. Perfectly blue, just as the dome, the walkway blended in, invisible from any other angle.
Montross clapped his hands. “Nice work, Phoebe.” He took off his backpack, so much lighter now without the tablet, and tossed it to her. “First aid in there, maybe even enough bandages for your friend. Make it quick and let’s go.”
She caught it, then gave him a wary eye. “Thanks. I think. But I still don’t trust you.”
“Don’t trust him later,” Orlando snapped, reaching for the bag. “Right now I’m bleeding to death.”
“We can trust him,” came another voice, and for a moment, Phoebe didn’t recognize it, so weak and shaken, like it came from a long distance away.
Caleb was awake.
His face was ashen. His eyes haunted. “I almost wish it wasn’t true, but my visions, my powers… they’re back.”
He stared at Montross. Stared until the other man lowered his eyes, nodding. “So you know.”
“I know,” Caleb said. “And I forgive you.”
18
“Well?” said Orlando, while having the deep bites in his cheek disinfected and bandaged up. “What’d you see? What could possibly justify what he did? Trying to kill us in Antarctica, stealing the Emerald Tablet, killing your wife!”
Caleb looked away from Montross. “Not now, Orlando. We don’t have time. And I need to understand more before I bring you in. It has to do with the tablet, with the keys. With everything.”
“We figured that much,” Phoebe said, tending now to Orlando’s back, lifting up his shirt and wincing. “You really need stitches. A hospital.”
“Or a proper medic,” Montross said. “But our dear brother is right. We don’t have time. Need to move now.”
Phoebe frowned. “But you said—” She flashed her light around. “Wait. Where’s Nina?”
Everyone except Montross looked around, even shining their lights down into the gloom.