Their voices traveled down the outside tunnel, echoing until I couldn’t hear them anymore. They were carrying the argument elsewhere, far enough away that I couldn’t eavesdrop. Too bad for me.
I stared after them for a long time, and at the door at the end of the tunnel. My sleepy, angry, anxious brain felt slow, and had to churn through the realization before it clicked. When it did, my heart pounded so hard I went dizzy for a moment.
They’d left the door at the end of the tunnel unlocked.
Chapter 13
THEY SHUT the door, but I didn’t hear the bolt slide into place. Oh, please …
Oh so quietly, I pulled on the slab of wood—and it opened. Wincing, I froze. Waited, listened. But no one was coming, they hadn’t heard it. I had to hope that Enkidu and Sakhmet were arguing with Zora so loudly they wouldn’t hear the door scraping on the stone. Inch by inch, I eased the door open, just enough for me to be able to slip through the opening without scraping any skin on the silver-tainted mine wall.
And just like that I was outside.
More of the battery powered camp lanterns sat on the floor of the tunnel at intervals, spaced far apart. They gave off tiny auras of muted white light, so the space was still dim, the far walls and ceiling lost in darkness. But I could make my way well enough. The tunnel beyond the door was exactly like the ones I’d seen so far, nothing holding up the mountain over us but arcing granite, parallel rusted steel tracks curving along the floor, leading away. A historical curiosity. Any ore carts, spikes and hammers, drills, whatever other tools would have been used to dig out the mine and carry out ore had been cleared out long ago. A coating of white and red minerals splotched the walls in places. The place felt like a tomb.
I stood there far too long, studying the hallway, gaining my bearings. I had no idea how far unde
rground I was, or which way to turn. I’d made that mistake before. Sakhmet and the others would be back soon, so whatever I did I had to hurry.
Closing my eyes, settling my racing heart, I tipped up my nose and took a long breath, learning as much as I could from simple air. Then another, to confirm what I thought—hoped—the air was telling me.
A draft, very faint, stirred down the tunnel. I smelled fresh air, coming from my left.
I ran.
The tunnel branched once. I hesitated at the fork, knowing my window was short, which meant I didn’t have time to make a mistake. But the trail of fresh air continued, and I kept going, until the floor sloped up in a gentle grade. I stopped encountering lanterns—but light remained. The spot of sunlight ahead looked like treasure, brilliant and longed-for. Tears filled my eyes, and I rubbed my face.
The mine entrance was small, a curved passage opening out of the hillside like a mouth. A field of bare gravel sloped away from it, and beyond that granite outcroppings and forest. I paused there, my eyes shut, my arm up to shield my face from too-bright sunlight. Gasping for breath, I coughed as my lungs filled with the clean scent of pine trees, snow, and mountain air, so startling after the close smell of the mine. Even better, the air smelled like Colorado. The Rockies, lodgepole pines and Douglas fir and all the rest. Colorado dirt and sky. Home wasn’t that far away.
I was out, I was free. I couldn’t believe it. I huddled by the entrance, shivering. I was barefoot, and my toes nestled into gritty dirt and snow. My eyes took a long time getting used to the light before I could open them fully and figure out where I was. And what to do next.
By the way the sun slanted, it must have been afternoon. Golden light stabbed through the trees of the forest that dotted the mountainside. A recent snow had fallen; clean white blanketed the ground. The slope of the old tailings pile—waste rock from the mine—was visible, a triangle cutting down the hill and bare of trees. I could start walking, but to where? I could be hundreds of miles from anything resembling help, a gas station pay phone or road with any traffic, a town of any size. My werewolf self could walk that far, even barefoot in the snow, no problem. I might be a wreck at the end of it, but I’d recover.
The air must have been cold, but I didn’t feel it. I just felt … confused. If I really did have a chance to stop Roman—if Kumarbis and the others really could stop him, and needed my help—I couldn’t walk away from that. Could I? Antony hadn’t turned away from the chance. Avenge your friend, Sakhmet’s voice whispered to me. I’d never been one for revenge—much. But the idea of stopping Roman, of keeping him from ever hurting anyone again—that was attractive. It seemed a fine way to honor what Antony had given up. Antony must have thought the chance to stop Roman was worth risking his life. Could I do less?
Ben would disagree with me. He would say that trusting strangers and uncertain magic wasn’t any better a plan of retaliation than waiting for better information. We already had allies, I didn’t need to charge into an iffy situation with these guys, guns blazing. But Kumarbis made Roman; if anyone could stop him, he ought to be the one.
Then why hasn’t he before now?
God, I wanted to talk to Ben so badly.
If I could stop Roman, I had to try. If I failed—not just that, but if I died trying, vanished utterly, and Ben never found me and never learned what happened to me—would he ever forgive me? It wasn’t just my life I was offering to sacrifice, I realized.
I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. The thought of giving up Ben was more difficult than the thought of giving up my own life.
I might never get another chance like this.
Maybe I could find where they’d hidden my phone.
I sat on that tailings pile for what must have been a long time, torn between the world outside and the one in the mine. My skin itched, like someone was watching me. The others would find me any second now.
Sunshine made the snow look like scattered crystals. The air was still, not so much as a tree branch creaking. A bird, a crow or a jay or something, was calling in the distance, and the rough sound echoed. I had never smelled air so clean. This must have been what snow-covered mountains at the start of time smelled like. What a beautiful afternoon. At the mouth of the mine, with the world spread out around me, forest and distant mountain peaks and wide open sky, I could believe I was the only living soul in the world.
I should have looked for my phone before racing out of there. Assuming I could get a signal way out here, I could have at least texted Ben: wait for me, forgive me.
Assuming Kumarbis and crew weren’t all actually crazy after all. Go through the first ritual, see if they really knew what they were doing, and if it looked like they were full of it—I’d gotten out here once, I could do it again.
In the end, I couldn’t give up the chance. Not just to stop Roman, but to learn everything I could about him and his plans. I couldn’t walk away from the stories.