The sick feeling increased as we climbed higher, walking in places and scrambling up craggy slopes in others, and I wondered how dangerous the air was that we were inhaling. What if we were doing permanent damage to our health? The Sinagua hadn’t died overnight, but something had certainly convinced them to leave this area en masse.
The wail of a siren came from the highway. The news crews would be next, if they weren’t already setting up in the parking lot.
“Hang on.” Simon staggered over to a tough shrub growing out of a crack in the rock. He bent over and threw up.
“Guess I’m not the only one feeling sick,” I said. “Maybe—”
Screams and cries of, “Watch out!” and “No, don’t!” erupted above us, at the top of the rock.
We definitely weren’t going to be the first ones up there. I climbed faster, not waiting for Simon. I wanted to know what was going on at the top. Had someone tried to go through the portal? Would those people stop and leave if I told them… something? I had no idea what I would say. That some bad mojo was entering our world?
A long cry sounded, and I gasped and clutched the rocks with both hands. Someone had jumped. Or been pushed. The flashing lights illuminated the flailing figure of a young man sailing outward and down from the top. I tore my eyes away as he plummeted, but that didn’t keep me from hearing the scream… or the way he struck the ground like a watermelon being dropped from the top of a building and smashing against the sidewalk.
Chapter 17
I leaned my face against the cool rock, gulping in air, trying to calm my roiling stomach.
“Did that guy jump?” Simon whispered.
I shook my head, needing a moment before I could answer. I had no idea who that man had been, but this was affecting me in a strange way, as if he had been my best friend. A nearly overwhelming feeling of distress filled me, as if none of this was worth it, as if life didn’t matter, as if…
“It’s those damned snakes,” I realized.
“What?”
“They’re not just making us sick. They’re making us—”
“Crazy depressed?” Simon asked.
“Something like that. All right, we keep going. Just… be aware that your feelings aren’t your own. Or they’re yours, but they’re enhanced in all the wrong ways.”
Simon dragged a sleeve across his mouth. “I’m worried that getting to the top might not be a good idea, after all.”
“I know.” But I went back to climbing. “If the sword is up there and we can get it and chuck it over the edge… like you were saying, it should have to be in proximity of the vortex for the portal to stay open.” I hoped. “Maybe moving it will close that thing and whatever’s coming out.”
“Impressive,” Simon said.
“What is? My reasoning?”
“That you can say that much without puking.” We stopped on a ledge, and he gripped his stomach, sucking in another huge breath. “I feel like I’m going to spew all over another bush.”
“Then stay behind me when we’re climbing, will you?”
Simon snorted.
We passed a few smart people who were heading back down, picking their way with flashlights. Their eyes were so wide, the whites were visible around their irises.
One shaggy-haired teenager stopped and grabbed my arm. “Don’t go up there. People are crazy. One guy tried to stab another guy. And somebody jumped.” He stared in the direction that the man had fallen, though the contours of the rock hid the body.
“I know. Thanks, buddy.” I gently but firmly pried his grip off my arm.
Another thirty or forty feet and we would be at the top. The sounds of a fight came from above. I climbed faster. I had no idea what we could do if the sword wasn’t up there, but someone had to do something.
I reached the plateau first and almost took a foot in the face as soon as I scrambled over the edge.
“No more,” my attacker cried, even as I rolled to the side to avoid the sneaker.
Rock gouged my back and scraped my hands, but I jumped to my feet, reaching for my whip. But the kicker fell backward when he didn’t connect with my face. He landed hard and started crying.
Two people were wrestling nearby, clawing and punching at each other. A woman sat beneath the pulsing blob, her arms wrapped around her knees as she keened loudly. On the far side of the mesa, a single man stood at the edge, contemplating the fall. I was suddenly glad Temi and Alek weren’t up here. In particular, Alek would win any fights he picked, and he could do a lot of damage if the mist made him belligerent.
“This is nuts,” Simon whispered, passing the groaning man on the ground and joining me. “Any second, a sweaty, bare-chested Mr. Sulu is going to run out of the darkness with a fencing foil and challenge us to a duel.”
“Is that the episode where the whole crew went crazy?” At that thought, I decided to move away from the edge before someone else attacked me—or I developed a sudden fascination for the fall.
“Yeah. If we can take the Enterprise back in time three days, we can avoid this.”
“I think we’re going to have to settle for finding the sword.” Unfortunately, I didn’t see evidence of it or any pointy-eared visitors anywhere around.
Though every inch of my being wanted to run the other way, I made myself walk toward the portal. The sword might be tucked in some crevice in the rock.
From here, the portal seemed to tower forty or fifty feet high. The bottom wasn’t touching the rock but floating above the head of the weeping woman. Those black tendrils were larger and thicker than they had appeared from below, and a strange dark fog was coalescing on the top of the mesa. My stomach was roiling again too. The effort required to advance on the portal made it seem as if we were still climbing. Dark thoughts slipped into my mind. What would it be like to jump over the side? What happened when you died? A trip to heaven? Hell? Or did everything end? Utter blackness forever?
Something touched my shoulder, and I flinched, angry. “Don’t touch me, Simon.”
“It wasn’t me.”
My fist clenched, and I whirled, only to find myself face to face with Alek.
“It’s not safe up here,” he said.
“No shit.”
I’d spoken in English, and he arched his eyebrows.
“Never mind,” I said, struggling to get a grip on my emotions. “It wasn’t worth translating.”
“I know where the sword is.” Alek pointed at the rock beneath us. “There’s a cave.”
“A cave? If there was a cave here, everyone would know about it. This place is—” I flung a hand out at all the people, at the packed parking lot at the trailhead far below, at the flashing police and ambulance lights in the street. “Known.”
“The cave was not accessible before,” Alek said. “There is a new hole.”
“Like in Prescott?” Simon asked at the same time as the thought popped into my mind.
“But it’s accessible now?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“That hole wouldn’t be about this wide, would it?” I outlined the dimensions of the ones Jakatra and Eleriss had burned into the rocks in Prescott, about three and a half feet in diameter.
“Yes,” Alek said.
“Lead the way, Mr. Sexypants,” Simon said.
Alek looked down at his jeans. I almost laughed despite the bleak feelings cloaking me.
“I think he’s figuring out what that means, Simon.”
“I’ll find another nickname for him then.”
Alek jogged for the edge, and I followed. I expected him to head for the trail that had led us up here, but he angled toward a different side. He paused at the edge, his hands spreading at his sides, almost as if he were searching for balance. He stared down, a dark frown creeping across his face.
I ran up and clasped his shoulder, in case suicidal thoughts had entered his head too.
My touch seemed to help. He shook his head, looked at me, then past me and toward the portal. “Evil.”
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“Yeah.”
He knelt, faced the ground, and climbed down that way. It was steeper over here, and that made me uneasy, but if there was a cave and the sword was inside, causing the portal to stay open, I didn’t think it could be that far down. Keeping my belly close to the rock, I slipped and skidded down after him.
“Careful, Simon,” I said. “It’s smooth here, not many good handholds.”
“Of course. Who would put a cave entrance somewhere easily accessible?”
“Not an elf.”
My foot slipped a few times, and I had to fight a strange urge to let go and fling myself backward. Shuddering, I made it down to a ledge to join Alek. Fortunately, as we moved farther from the portal, the intensity of the dark emotions faded slightly.
“This way,” Alek said as soon as Simon joined us.
“Hang on.” Simon stumbled over to a bush and retched again. There couldn’t have been anything left in his stomach, but that didn’t seem to matter.
“I hate to break it to you, Simon, but I’m pretty sure you’re the sidekick.”
He wobbled toward me, his arms outstretched for balance. “You might think that, but those who record history are the ones who define it.”
“I’m not sure keeping a monster-hunting blog qualifies as recording history.”
“We’ll see.”
Alek was looking back at us from the edge of the ledge. “I see Artemis.” He pointed downward to a dark figure climbing the side of the rock formation. The slope was nearly vertical there, and I winced, hoping she wouldn’t fall. “She is drawn to the sword. I thought that might be the case.”
“Were you drawn to it too?” I asked.
“No.” Alek angled sideways across the rock face along something I would call a lip rather than a ledge. “I merely scouted around, searching for tracks, and lucked into seeing the hole. It is well hidden in the shadows.”
I inched onto the lip, leaning into the rock wall, aware that only the toes of my shoes were supported. Simon grumbled about dead historians but followed us. We crept under a bulge in the side of the bell, the overhang shadowing us from the lights still flashing above. In the darkness, I could scarcely see a thing.
Alek touched my arm. “Down there.”
The hole he had mentioned came into sight. I had no idea how he had seen it from the ground, but I was glad for his superior night vision. I was also glad he headed straight for it, volunteering to go first.
Before he had done more than swing into the opening, Temi reached us, climbing up from below.
“Nice of you to join us,” I said when the four of us had gathered at the mouth of the hole. Utter darkness lay ahead of us, and I wondered how far into the rock the tunnel went.
“Sorry.” Her face was hard to see in the gloom, but her voice truly sounded chagrined. “I had this weird urge to be alone. And to punch things. I didn’t want to… be around, anyway. I still feel…”
“I know. We all do.” Trying to lighten the mood—or at least keep her from punching me—I pointed below her. “That was a Spiderman-worthy climb. I didn’t know your tennis training included how to scale rock walls.”
For a moment, she didn’t answer, and I figured she wanted to get straight to business, but she finally said, “Sometimes, if you hit the ball over the fence where there’s no gate, it’s easier to climb over to get it.”
“Ah, I see.”
“We should be quiet going forward,” Alek said.
“Sorry, I agree.” Speaking of feeling chagrined…
I pulled out my flashlight again and shined it on the smooth stone floor. Alek had drawn his sword. He went forward in a low crouch, one hand on the ceiling and one holding his weapon. In case that elf was lying in wait up there, I wished I had something more useful to hold than the flashlight, but there was no way I could use the whip in the confined space. It was exactly the same as the holes we had seen Jakatra and Eleriss bore, a smooth circle that pushed into the depths of the rock formation, so smooth that it was as if the iron-rich rock had been waxed and polished.
The tunnel curved upward, and soon the entrance hole disappeared behind us. A faint stink wafted to my nostrils. The scent of the recently incinerated rock, I thought at first, but this was something different, something more pungent.
“Ugh,” Simon whispered. “Is that another one of those bait things?”
I groaned softly. He was right. I had forgotten about the jibtab, concentrating only on the need to close the portal, but if our elf enemy was trying to call it here, there were a lot of people out in the open who would be vulnerable. “At least it shouldn’t be able to get to us.” This hole wasn’t any bigger than the entrance of the cave Temi and I had hidden in, and the creature hadn’t been able to fly in and reach us.
“Hope not.”
Alek paused, one hand held up. I crept up to his shoulder. A faint blue light came from around a bend up ahead. Blue? I had expected silver.
He pointed at my flashlight and made a cutting motion. I thumbed it off. He must think the elf—or some other inimical foe—was waiting up there.
Music blasted from behind me, and I cracked my head on the ceiling.
“Damn it,” Simon whispered and silenced his phone.
We are glared at him. The odds of us sneaking up on an elf hadn’t been good to start with, but we didn’t need to go out of our way to make noise. On that thought, I tugged out my own phone to make sure the ringer was off. Temi did the same thing.
“Sorry,” Simon mumbled, frowning down at the screen. His brother was calling.
Alek continued up the tunnel, but Simon paused to text something.
“Problem?” I whispered, remembering how Marcus hadn’t answered that last message I had sent about staying in Phoenix.
“I hope not.” He had no more than finished sending his own message when an incoming one popped up. His face grew ashen by the light of the phone.
“What?”
Simon held up the display. You and your buddies aren’t gathered around that rock, are you?
“He’s here?” That rock. What else could it mean?
“Apparently.” Simon closed his eyes for a long moment, then texted, Do NOT get out of the car. There’s someone shooting out here.
Then Simon thumbed off the phone and stuck it in his pocket, a determined I’ll-deal-with-him-later set to his jaw visible before the light disappeared, leaving us in darkness.
Temi had passed us, following Alek, and I turned in that direction, as well. Using the faint blue light as a guide, I patted my way up the slope and around the bend. The pungent scent of that bait box grew more noticeable. I couldn’t imagine a monster—or anything—being attracted by that scent.
Our hole opened up into an oval chamber, a natural formation, judging by the rounded walls, so similar to those on the outside. Not that the walls were what caught my eye. The whole chamber was alight with blue, a glow so bright there wasn’t a shadow in sight. Six floating rectangles lined the walls, like mirrors in a fun house, except nothing was visible in the gleaming blue surfaces. Not surfaces… event horizons. Wasn’t that what they were called? I almost poked Simon and asked whether he had decided on dimensional portals or wormholes but remembered that someone had made these portals, someone who might be hiding in the room. I didn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean much. Even if there weren’t stalagmites or any formations one might use for cover, the portals themselves hid the walls behind them.
“Amazing,” Simon breathed.
Temi pointed at one. “These are exactly like what I went through with Jakatra and Eleriss.”
“Do they go to the same place?” I wondered. “Or to other worlds?”
“No way to tell except by going through,” Simon said.
“It’s almost as if we’re being invited to go exploring.”
“Don’t get tempted, Del,” Simon said. “I wouldn’t count on there being a doorway back.”
There was that. It would be foolish to random
ly jump through one. And yet… “What if the sword is on the other side of one?”
Alek took a few steps toward the first one, not to look at it but to look behind it.
“I don’t think so,” Temi said. “I feel—”
The rock shivered beneath our feet. A rumble sounded; it seemed to come from all around us.
“They’re not jumping up and down up there, are they?” Simon asked.
A crack interrupted his last word, like rock splitting.
“Back,” I whispered. “Into the tunnel.”
“How’s that any better than here?” Temi asked.
“I don’t know, but—”
Another crack sounded, this one twice as loud. The sound stung my eardrums, but my ears were even further assaulted by the clash of falling rocks that followed after it.
I glanced up as I stumbled back against a wall, expecting the ceiling to smash down all around us. But nothing was falling in our chamber. It was almost serene in here, the event horizons of those portals as placid as water on a calm lake. The thunder of rocks crashing down was coming from behind us, from back down the tunnel.
A gush of dust flew out from the tunnel we’d just left. The haze filled the chamber, momentarily dimming the blue light.
I flicked on my flashlight and pointed it into the tunnel. This time, the sick feeling in my stomach had nothing to do with the portal on the butte above. All except the last few feet of the tunnel had caved in. We were trapped.
Chapter 18
“Temi?” I croaked, my mouth and throat coated with dust. “I hope you’re right about the sword being here, because we need something powerful enough to dig through a whole lot of rock.” I tried to guess how far we had traveled through that tunnel—how many meters of broken stone would need to be moved. A lot. Twenty or thirty at least. This chamber wasn’t that large, either. With four people breathing the air, we wouldn’t have that long. Unless we went through one of the portals.