She leaned forward and ran her hands up his arms. Moving closer now, she parted her lips and tried to kiss him.
Hawke pushed her away with the tip of his forefinger and scowled.
“Sorry, but I have a long-standing policy never to date shits who shoot my friends.”
Crestfallen, she flounced back to her chair, but then snatched up a spanner and took a chunky swipe at Hawke. He ducked and the heavy tool struck the air-conditioning controls with a loud clang.
Hawke reacted in a heartbeat and rammed the butt of the pistol into her face, knocking her back into her chair. She righted her balance and wiped the blood from her mouth.
“You should never hit a lady!”
“Thanks. When I see a lady I’ll be sure not to hit her.”
Before she could reply, he turned the pressurization system on and smashed the controls to pieces with his butt of the SIG. With the C4 option unavailable, and no rounds left in the gun he had only one choice. “You shot a very good friend of mine. I don’t let things like that pass.”
“What are you doing?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear as the realization of her fate stretched over her like a dusk shadow.
Hawke picked up the spanner she had tried to kill him with and tested its weight and length in his hand. “At least we get to find out how you react under some real pressure. Goodbye, Victoria.”
He climbed out of the sub and swung the hatch down, jamming it shut with the spanner. Then he jumped into the water and swam back to the shore. Behind him, just as the mini-sub sank beneath the waves he heard an enormously deep explosion as the pressure inside it reached its maximum level and detonated the vessel.
Without looking back, he sprinted back along the tunnel toward Ryan and Scarlet.
Lea ran her eyes over the tiny iPhone screen and muttered a thank you to her father. She was looking at a scanned and uploaded image of a pencil sketch her dad had made decades earlier. It was a flower, with delicate apple-white petals and a thin fern-green stem. Beneath the drawing were the words: Eirflower & the healing ritual.
She had no clue what an Eirflower was, but she knew Eir was the goddess of medicine and she liked the sound of a healing ritual. By the time she got to the small chamber she knew what she was looking for.
Eir’s Hall turned out to be a modest affair but no different from the other chambers and halls they had seen since their arrival in Valhalla. There was a statue of the goddess at the far end, looming peacefully above a generous hoard of belongings and tributes. It was surrounded at its base by a ring of green and white candles, unlit and standing silent sentry in the ecclesiastical reverence of the icy chamber.
Acutely aware that Ryan’s time was rapidly running out, Lea began her search for the magical Eirflower. She had only her father’s rough sketch to go on, and fighting back the urge to ask how he knew of its existence, she moved with speed and diligence through the articles strewn around the chamber.
She lifted a bag of silver coins from its place on the floor beside the statue, sure that she had uncovered the resting place of the ancient flower. She found nothing but dust and continued her search.
Lea grew more anxious with each passing second as she rummaged around the chamber in the gloom. Everything in here was lit a ghostly green color by the glow stick she had placed at the pedestal of Eir’s statue. There was no danger of it burning out — it was brand new and would last for hours — but the idea of Leon Smets creeping up behind her in the dark was a persistent fear she couldn’t shake off.
She checked her watch and knew that time was running out fast. She had seen the gunshot wounds when Scarlet had lifted Ryan’s t-shirt, torn into his stomach in three savage punch-holes. She had watched men bleed to death in the desert in her time in the army and had a pretty good idea that Ryan was on borrowed time.
Then, in the green luminescent glow of the stick, she lifted an enormous golden feast plate to find a low, wooden chest tucked out of sight around the rear of the statue. She lifted the lid and the chest creaked open like an old Brigantine weathering a vicious squall, but inside she found what she was looking for.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“You get anything?”
Scarlet was staring up at Lea with a look of grave concern on her face. She was still holding Ryan’s head in her lap but now he was unconscious and as pale as a ghost.
“I think so, yes.”
Lea dropped to her knees and showed Scarlet the Eirflower. It shimmered in the darkness of the hall.
“What the hell is that?” Scarlet said eyeing the strange flower with contempt.
“The Eirflower. According to Dad’s research, the goddess of healing used it in some kind of ritual to cure the gods when they fell ill.”
“But Ryan isn’t a god.”
Lea looked at her. “It’s all we have, Scarlet.”
Scarlet nodded in response. “And how does it work?”
“According to Dad’s notes, the eirflower ritual involved making it into some kind of wine or tea.”
“Excellent,” Scarlet said with a palpable absence of enthusiasm. “I’ll just put the kettle on while you open the Hobnobs. I thought I saw a packet behind that boulder.”
“No time for your attitude right now, Scarlet. Obviously we can’t make a sodding tea out of it, but the point is it was imbibed by the person requiring the ritual. Dad also says the consumption of the eirflower was accompanied by a sacred promise to take better care of your health and live a healthier life.”
“Seriously?”
“That’s the way Eir did business, apparently.”
“I can accept that. My life moved into the Twilight Zone a long time ago.”
Lea plucked a petal from the glistening flower and swallowed with anticipation as she pushed the flower inside Ryan’s lips. “We promise Ryan will live a healthier life.”
“And stop wanking,” Scarlet said.
Lea shot a sharp glance at her. “Oh for fuck’s sake, Scarlet! Can’t you see he’s dying?”
“You don’t have to tell me, darling. I’ve been the one sitting with him while you were digging the garden for this petunia. It’s just my way of dealing with shitty situations.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How’s he doing?”
They both turned to see Hawke. He was jogging to a stop a few yards behind them and now crouching down beside Ryan.
“We don’t know,” Lea said. “I’ve given him a sacred healing flower. It used to keep the gods alive when they were injured so we’re keeping our fingers crossed.”
“And we had to pray that he would live a healthier life,” Scarlet said sarcastically. “Apparently it helps.”
“What about Her Nibs?” Lea asked.
“She was squeezed for time,” Hawke said. “So she won’t be bothering us again.”
Then they heard the sound of Ryan coughing — gently at first and then more loudly. Some color had begun to bring his face back to life, and his eyes began to blink open.
“Ryan?”
“I… where…?”
“Don’t talk,” Lea said, pushing his hair away from his face. “We gave you a magical healing flower and it looks like it’s working.
Scarlet leaned forward, her voice suddenly serious. “But only on the condition that you stop wan…”
Suddenly a savage explosion ripped through the other end of the cave system, nearly knocking them over. Chunks of rock crumbled away from the roof of the Hall and fell to the floor with a mighty smack.
“Sala’s revenge,” Hawke said. “That little bastard Smets must have hit the timer.”
“We have to get out of here!” Scarlet said. “If that thing blows the rocks down between us and the sub we’re all dead.”