‘Right,’ he said grimly. ‘Now let’s go.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
As they climbed the steep-sided valley through the forest, Cassie could hear Isabella rasping for breath, but clearly her friend had no intention of being left behind. Despite the lazy weeks with Jake, and the aimless period of grief before then, she was grimly keeping up with three Few and her hyper-conditioned boyfriend.
Dusk was falling swiftly, but Cassie led the way, occasionally pausing impatiently so that Ranjit could check the map. As they waited on a basalt outcrop for Isabella to catch up, she caught sight of Ranjit’s eyes glowing behind her in the gathering darkness. From the odd look she got from Isabella as she pulled her up the steep rock, she guessed her own eyes looked much the same. Their Few power was primed – they weren’t sure exactly what they were about to face.
‘Are we sure this is a good idea? If we go much higher the altitude’s going to be a problem for Isabella,’ Richard muttered to the others in a low voice.
‘Me too,’ admitted Jake, ‘but it’s not much further. According to the map, anyway. If we’re even going to the right place.’
‘Let’s just hope we’re not too late,’ Cassie replied, clenching her jaw. This was all her fault – who knows what Marat and the Svenssons had planned for Sir Alric. They had to get to them as quickly as possible. ‘Come on, we’ve got to keep moving,’ she urged.
Cassie led them on quickly, listening out for the sounds of the forest: scurrying rodents in the undergrowth, the distant roar of a river, the high-pitched night chorus of cicadas. Between the trunks of the dense trees, the sky was turning from crystal blue to a deep amber, and in the occasional glimpses Cassie got of the ragged peak of Mount Kenya, the snow and glaciers were streaked with blue shadow and tinged with gold. It wouldn’t be long before the light died from the peak altogether, and true darkness fell in the forest.
As they hurried onwards, Ranjit hesitated again, checking the map, and Cassie pulled up and turned to watch him. Richard paused too, and Jake and Isabella caught up, Jake reaching out and taking his girlfriend’s hand to make sure she was close.
‘Here,’ Ranjit said in a low voice. ‘Cassie, three steps back. Look.’
The slit in the volcanic rock was almost imperceptible through the dense trees, and she doubted it would have been any more obvious in full daylight; as it was, it could easily have been taken for a stripe of deeper shadow, or a vein of blacker rock. Shoving branches aside, Ranjit crouched and forced his way across a ridge of stone, and Cassie followed, with the others at her heels.
‘We’re not the first to come here tonight,’ Ranjit said grimly.
Sure enough, there were signs of disturbance. Cassie touched broken twigs, then ran the palm of her hand down the rock. A breath of air, cold and dank, whispered from the hole across her skin, and she snatched her hand away. Ranjit caught it, linking his fingers with hers. His gaze met hers, intense and searching.
‘Are you ready, Cassie?’
‘As I’ll ever be.’ She smiled at him, and suddenly the fear was gone. Her blood stirred hot inside her, and it wasn’t only the proximity of Ranjit. There were enemies to crush, she thought; a theft to repay, revenge to be taken. Her fingertips tingled in his hand, and he squeezed them slightly, his mouth crooking at one corner.
Yes, he felt it too.
Like old times! came the voice from inside her. We’re in it together!
Leaning forward recklessly, Cassie kissed Ranjit’s lips. He tightened his grip on her hand, drew her closer, returned her kiss. Blood stirred in her veins, her nerves crackled, and her heart leaped, suddenly too big for her all-too-human ribcage.
Reluctantly pulling away, she turned back to the gap in the rock-face. They were still holding hands as she shouldered her way through the slender opening and was swallowed by blackness.
‘I don’t want to use the torch if we can help it,’ came Jake’s murmur in the black coldness.
‘I don’t think we’ll have to,’ was Ranjit’s whispered reply. ‘Wait a bit. There’s some light up ahead.’
Cassie realised he was right; her Few-sharpened eyes were already registering shapes and edges and the faintest phosphorescent glow. She, Richard and Ranjit were the first to notice it; Jake and Isabella took a little longer to adjust, but at last they were advancing into the tunnels with reasonable confidence, given the uncertainty of what they were heading towards …
Sensing something moving above her, Cassie halted. The roof of the tunnel was not high, but even in the faintest of light she could make out things that were stirring, writhing. At her side Richard followed her stare.
‘It’s like …’ he whispered.
‘… the Arc de Triomphe temple,’ Cassie finished for him, remembering with a shiver her initiation in the bowels of that underground cavern below the busiest roundabout in Paris. If such a secret could exist there, what might they find below the primordial geology of Mount Kenya? Deliberately Cassie averted her gaze from the eerily moving rock above her, and focused ahead.
She couldn’t even guess at how far they’d come beneath the rock; distance and time were impossible to estimate in this enclosed lightless place. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest with tense anticipation. When would this tunnel end? But at last Ranjit put a hand on her shoulder to bring her to a sudden halt.
‘Up ahead,’ he murmured, barely audibly. ‘I feel them.’