The reply was incongruously high, as it came from the shimmering shape of a hulking creature vaguely fox-shaped, but with horns down her back, and huge teeth in a mad grin. “Joey Hu? Coming to tie a red string around my ankle?”
“Would you like one?” Joey countered.
“If you’re not,” she warned, “you’d best be moving along.”
“Awwww, now what fun would that be? How about you, Horace?”
A monster named Horace?
Bird couldn’t see Horace past the vast shape of Liza—but when she heard his deep, guttural growl, she didn’t want to. She wondered if she was seeing and hearing them at all because she had mated with another mythic being. Certainly no one in the fishing boat floating a half mile out seemed to notice anything amiss along the shore.
Horace growled again, a liquid
sound like something glutinous and nasty burbling down a cosmic drain.
Joey laughed, then said mockingly, “No, I really think I need to pass this beautiful sight along to the empress.”
“Butt out!” Liza shrieked like tearing metal.
“Catch me if you can.” Joey flashed his tails in what felt very much like the mythic beast version of flipping them off—and the chase was on.
Bird scrambled over a rock, scraping her hands in her haste. She pounded through the sand, staggering as an incoming wave foamed right up to her feet, then over them. Wet sand is easier to run on, she told herself firmly.
There was the cave entrance. She threw herself inside, fighting the instinct to look behind to see where Joey and those two monsters were. She ran past the jumble of small stones, trash, and the tangle of seaweed.
The light faded out fast. She slowed, opening her eyes as wide as she could in hopes they would adjust faster. The farther she walked, the dimmer it got. And then completely dark. She put her hands out, and began walking with her feet reaching forward at each step. It felt like she had been swallowed completely by the darkness.
Something fell on her forehead. She bit down hard on a shriek and brushed off—nothing but sand. Relief was fast followed by worry: trickling sand from overhead was not good. She remembered all those cracks that the lava wyrms had oozed out of.
So hurry, she told herself.
Forward a step, two. Four . . . she began counting them, because otherwise it felt too much like she was going nowhere.
Then she heard voices, off to one side.
A few steps more, and she perceived a faint glow far to the left.
She had managed to almost get herself turned around! She swung back, and, keeping her gaze firmly on the glow, eased forward until the great crevasse slowly emerged out of the darkness. It glowed faintly with unearthly color.
Trembling all over, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled to the bottom of the crevasse, then peeked in past the rubble that had fallen in the quake. Mikhail lay to one side, covered in chains. Farther in, a tall, powerful man wearing a long coat over a black shirt, jeans, and high boots stood with his hands behind his back as he eyed the mural.
Bird began to poke her head up. The man turned his head sharply, and she ducked back, catching only a glimpse of a hard cheekbone and unruly hair falling over his brow and ears.
He addressed Mikhail in what Bird guessed was one of the Chinese languages.
Mikhail said nothing.
The man raised a lazy hand toward the mural in an expansive gesture, and talked on, then faced the mural. Bird ducked up. This time she saw the end of a chain, lying not three feet away, on the other side of the crevasse. Joey was right. It wasn’t locked or knotted.
The man flicked a glance at Mikhail, asked a question, and receiving nothing but stone silence as an answer, uttered a sharp laugh. He then walked to the mural, and with a fingernail began to chip at the ancient, chalky letters. The chains clinked faintly, as if Mikhail’s muscles tightened.
The man laughed, then began chipping away in earnest—destroying something ancient, bit by bit.
Bird gritted her teeth and crawled over a rock, inching her fingers toward the end of the chain . . .
Her fingers closed around it. She gave it a tiny tug, expecting it to hurt, or be super heavy, but it was if anything unusually light, as if it were made out of aluminum. She gave it an experimental pull, and the links came easily. She backed away, smoothing dirt over the links as she went.
The chain pulled . . . and then stopped. It was stuck. She surreptitiously tugged, but the chain went taut.