He’d reached only the third step when he heard Jada gasp.
“Nate, look at this.”
“Jada, come on,” he urged, looking up to see her shining the flashlight on the top of the altar.
Her eyes were wide with surprise. Reluctantly, he went back to the top of the steps and stood beside her. The moment he saw the symbol engraved on the top of the altar, he understood her reaction. In the Temple of Sobek, they had found a pattern of three octagons within circles, all interlinked.
Here there were four.
Drake looked up at Jada. A sheen of sweat made her face almost luminescent in the glow from the flashlight. It brought home to him how truly hot it had become inside the labyrinth and reminded him of the danger they were in. Volcanic vents, collapsed corridors, caverns where the sea had flooded in, and killers who would not hesitate to cut their throats or drag them off through secret passages to some unknown fate.
But they had found what they had been looking for all along.
“There really is a fourth labyrinth,” Drake said.
Jada’s lower lip quivered a moment, and he could only imagine the emotions flooding through her.
“I knew there had to be,” she said. “My father knew.”
At the mention of her father, Drake felt the ice in him melt in the renewed heat of his anger and his fear for Sully.
“Come on,” he said, leading her to the stairs.
They descended together, Jada guiding their steps with her flashlight. At the bottom, they hustled along the corridor. Drake kept an eye out for open doorways but was certain that the only ones that mattered would be the ones that led into what he now knew would be four worship chambers at the end of the hall.
Their footfalls echoed off the walls. Drake felt his hands clenching into fists. A thousand images of Sully strobed through his mind, memories of the man laughing at one of his own jokes, smoking his cigars, or looking up in triumph from some discovery, face covered in grime but eyes alight with childlike excitement. Sully had been like a kid on Christmas morning every time they found something the rest of the world had told them would never be found or didn’t exist at all. He often behaved as though the money was all he cared for, but Drake knew him better than anyone alive. Sully appreciated all kinds of treasure.
Where are you, old man? Drake thought.
But the only way to answer that question was to figure out who the hooded men were. Who were they working for? They had murdered Luka and Maynard Cheney and many others since to keep the location of the fourth labyrinth secret. That seemed clear. Drake had believed Henriksen’s denials-about those killings, at least. But the hooded men had taken Welch and now Sully. In both instances, the abductions had occurred only when the killers had realized they were about to be defeated. They had retreated to fight another day, apparently, and taken prisoners.
Though it did not slow him, he had the terrible feeling that the chambers ahead of them were empty and that even if they were able to find a way to open those recessed doors at the back of the chambers, the passages beyond also would echo with the stillness of the ages.
They heard the shush of water even before they reached the turn in the corridor. Dread curled tightly in Drake’s gut.
“Nate-” Jada began.
“No!” he said, sprinting the last twenty feet, almost outpacing the flashlight beam.
He rounded the corner, slowing before he would have entered the darkness ahead. He could feel the vastness, the emptiness of the cavern ahead and heard the ripple and wash of water, and then Jada appeared behind him and the scene illuminated by her flashlight surprised him. To the right, the labyrinth had collapsed. All that remained of whatever worship chambers had been there had fallen into a massive rift that had opened in the rock. Only the upper arch of a doorway was still visible to indicate that anything had ever been there.
But to the left, two worship chambers remained.
Drake ran to the nearest door and darted inside, taking care on the three steps to the chamber floor.
“Jada, the light!” he called, though she was right behind him.
She flashed the beam around the room, dispersing ancient shadows, and Drake realized he had been holding his breath. Now he swore. The writing on the walls was in Greek, the engravings of grapes immediately signifying Dionysus to him. He glanced at the massive slab of a door at the back of the chamber, tempted to test it, but instead he spun toward Jada.
“Let’s check the other one.”
The symbol on the altar upstairs had included four octagons inside four circles. That had to mean four labyrinths and one chamber down here dedicated to the primary gods of each. Two of those chambers had caved in and been eroded by seawater for more than half a century. The clues they needed might be lost forever.
Outside the last worship chamber, Drake hesitated a moment. As Jada entered, descending the three entry stairs, the shadows closed around him. He put a hand on the hot stone wall and watched her. For a moment, he thought he heard a rustle of whispers back in the corridor, but it might have been the undulating sea washing against the ruins down in the collapsed cavern.
Then he saw Jada turn toward him, a look of wonder on her face, and the only thoughts in his mind were of Sully. They had found it.
He ran down the three steps and joined Jada. Side by side they examined the walls of the worship chamber. The style of the painting on the walls was entirely different from anything they’d seen thus far, and he recognized the Far East influence instantly. The Minotaurs were there, but the most frequently repeated image was that of the flower that they had seen upon entering the labyrinth this morning. All around the images, on columns in the chamber, and on the octagonal altar at the center of the room were ancient Chinese characters.
“The fourth labyrinth-” Jada began.
“Is in China,” Drake finished.
They looked at each other and swore, sharing a chorus of profanity.
Drake followed Jada’s light as it traveled across the walls, and what he saw disturbed him profoundly. There were images of men being hung from wooden braces and skinned alive, being burned, and having long spikes hammered into their bodies. They were horrifying, all the more so for the paintings of the same flowers and other plants and tree branches decorating the hideous imagery.
“I don’t think I want to know what god they worshipped in the fourth labyrinth,” Jada whispered.
“Swing the light over here,” he said, going to the door at the back of the chamber.
For long minutes they searched for a trigger, but to no avail. The walls were hotter here than anywhere else they had been in this subterranean maze, and he wondered what kinds of vents might wait on the other side. His shirt, damp with sweat, stuck to his back and shoulders.
When Jada paused to take a drink of water from her pack, she looked as if she felt guilty, and when she passed the bottle to Drake, he felt the same way. But it was no use. Even if they found a way to trigger the door open, they weren’t going to find Sully.
A scuffing noise at the entrance to the chamber made them both spin, Drake reaching for his gun. Flashlight beams blinded them momentarily.
“Don’t shoot, Mr. Drake,” a deep, accented voice said.
Henriksen.
As the bright lights moved away from his face, Drake kept his gun aimed at the figure in the doorway while his eyes adjusted. Henriksen’s blood-soaked shirt had been torn open and the knife wound on his shoulder bound to stop the bleeding. The man looked pale, but his eyes were alert and glittering with a zealot’s joy. He descended the three steps into the room, smiling as he gazed around, totally unmindful of the gun in Drake’s hand.