Immortal Devices (13 page)

            The deck shifted again beneath Scarlett’s feet, and this time she could not hold on. She grabbed for the nearest railing, but it gave way in her hand.

            “Scarlett!” Tavian yelled, but it made no difference.

            Scarlett hit the water in a breathless rush, plunging beneath it before she could do anything to stop it. The water closed around her, and it was all she could do to keep her grip on the dagger. As she plunged down, Scarlett saw that the water here was not deep. The cave provided a natural floor, so that the bottom of it was only fifteen feet below her.

            Scarlett came up, gasping for air, and saw that the others were in as much danger as she was. Cruces was still on the serpent’s back, but Tavian was in the water too now, clinging to a piece of the broken boat, while Caesar was doing much the same. They called over for Scarlett to join them, but before she could do so, the serpent swung its head towards her and plunged forward.

            Scarlett took a breath and dove without thinking about it, and the serpent went past her at a tremendous rate. Cruces was still on it, his spear sticking out of the thing’s back near its skull. The vampire hauled on it like he was using it for a rudder, and perhaps it worked, because at least the creature missed Scarlett. Scarlett turned in the water, not gracefully, thanks to her skirts, and made for the surface again. As she did so, however, something on the floor of the cave caught her eye, a flash of white against the basalt floor.

            It was only as she surfaced again that Scarlett realized what it had to be. The statue from above the cave. In a flash of inspiration, not even knowing if it would work, she knew what she had to do. Ignoring the shouts of the others to join them, Scarlett filled her lungs with air and dove down.

            It was hard getting deep enough. The water seemed to fight her every movement, and her clothing was definitely not made with diving in mind. Yet she knew that she had to be the one to do this. Perhaps the sea serpent sensed that too, because it came at her again. Once again though, Cruces was able to pull on the spear he had embedded in it and force the creature away from Scarlett.

            Scarlett forced herself further down, until she made it to the floor of the cavern. The statue was there, gleaming white in the empty water while Scarlett’s lungs fought for air. No, not gleaming, glowing. It was the statue that resembled the sea serpent. That was all Scarlett needed. She lifted the knife she held, and with as much force as she could muster through the resistance of the water, she thrust it into the statue.

            The sea serpent gave a shriek that Scarlett could hear even under the water. It twisted, turning towards her, its great mouth open. Then a moment later, it was gone, vanished as though it had never been there. The statue under Scarlett’s blade, meanwhile, started to crumble into nothing.

            Scarlett had more pressing problems. Her lungs burned from the lack of oxygen, and she started to make for the surface, but the weight of her dress made progress even slower going up than it had been reaching the bottom. Scarlett simply did not know if she was going to be able to make it to the brightness of the surface before her lungs overrode her senses and she drowned.

            A strong hand clamped onto her forearm, hauling her up out of the water and over the remains of the boat’s mast. Scarlett clung to it for dear life while she took in what air she could and gave Tavian a grateful smile.

            “Well done,” Cruces said, surfacing beside them.

            “Well done?” Caesar, also clinging to the mast, looked aghast. “That was my cousin’s boat.”

            “Yes, well, at least you’re here to complain about it,” the vampire said. “Now I strongly suggest we paddle. There has to be a drier section to this cave somewhere.”

T
he swim to the shore took them several minutes, clinging to the mast all the while and hoping that there were no more sea creatures there that might wish to eat them. Eventually though, they reached a sloping section of rock that led up out of the water the way a beach would on another island. Scarlett finally felt firm ground beneath her feet as she staggered out of the water. She took a moment to replace her dagger in its thigh sheath, then she, Cruces, Tavian and Caesar sat there for another minute or two trying to dry out, though in the depths of the cave, away from the sun, it wasn’t easy to do.

            “My cousin isn’t going to be happy about his boat,” Caesar said.

            “I’ll buy him a new one,” Cruces replied.

            That didn’t seem to be enough for the stallholder. “Well then, how are we going to get back?”

            “We will go back through my world,” Scarlett replied, “then jump back to Athens. We would have come here that way if we had known enough about this place to make the trip.”

            Caesar considered that. “I wish you
had
known. That way, I wouldn’t have ended up fighting sea monsters and nearly being drowned by sirens. I’m sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen to my cousin.”

            “Will you shut up about your cousin?” Cruces demanded. “I’ve already said I’ll pay for his boat. Right now, we need to get on with finding Rothschild.”

            Rothschild. For a moment, in her happiness at surviving the sea serpent, Scarlett had forgotten why they had come there at all. Now, her heart sang with the thought of being so close to the vampire. She had to go to him. She stood quickly, heading for the gap in the rocks. There was a torch there, along with a tinder box that was obviously far too modern for a place like this.

            “Wait for the rest of us, Scarlett,” Tavian warned. “Don’t get too far ahead.”

            Scarlett nodded as she worked to light the torch, lifting it as it flickered into life. Then, as soon as she was certain that it was not about to go out, she ran deeper into the cave. Rothschild was here somewhere, and Scarlett had no doubt that the others intended him harm, regardless of what they had said about only wanting to help her. As though being in love was some kind of curse to be overcome.

            At the same time, they were her friends, and Scarlett did not want them hurt. For all that she loved him, Scarlett knew that Rothschild was not likely to be gentle with either Cruces or Tavian. No, it was far better to leave them all behind now. They would be able to get home once they realized that they would not be able to find Scarlett, Scarlett would be able to warn Rothschild that they were coming, and the two of them would be able to be together in the way that they should be. It was all so simple.

            At least, it would be if she could find the vampire. The tunnels through the basalt branched and then branched again, forming something akin to a maze. By touching the mark on her neck, Scarlett thought that she could feel the presence of Rothschild somewhere away over to her right, but that was just a general direction. It told her nothing about how to get through the tunnels that lay between the two of them.

            Still, Scarlett did her best, using the light of her torch to guide her way and working from a mixture of guesswork and that nagging sense of where Rothschild was every time she came to a turning. She hurried, knowing that the vampire could not be far away now and wanting to be near him as soon as she could be.

            Scarlett stopped sharply, as much on instinct as anything. She did it just in time, as the floor gave way in front of her, falling away to leave a pit so deep that Scarlett could not see the bottom of it even with the torch. Carefully, wary of the slickness of the stone, Scarlett edged her way around to the other side of the pit. She was sure that this was the right way. After all, there would not be traps on dead end routes, would there? Or if there were, they would not be so simply avoided.

            Despite the dangers, Scarlett continued on. She was not going to let the threat posed by such things stop her from getting to Rothschild, while even if the vampire had guards protecting him, Scarlett was confident that she could either sneak past them without being detected or convince them that, since she bore Rothschild’s mark, they should take her to him. Scarlett would do whatever she needed to in order to see him.

            She paused as ahead she spotted a pair of statues facing one another. No, not statues, carvings, cut into the rock of the tunnels. They appeared to be giant stone faces, staring out at one another with open mouths that made them look like they were bellowing in the middle of an argument. That at least proved that the tunnels were not entirely natural. Someone, or something, had cut them into the rock of this island. Had Rothschild played some part in it, or had he simply taken advantage of a place constructed by others?

            Scarlett approached the statues carefully. Their appearance after so many tunnels of blank rock was too much of a coincidence to ignore. She edged closer, examining them. This close, there was a faint feeling of heat that came from them. On impulse, Scarlett took off one of her still damp shoes and tossed it into the space between the two carved heads.

            Flames roared out, waist high, from the mouths of the carvings, shooting out to incinerate her shoe. Another experiment, and the other shoe, confirmed that the flames formed a narrow bar of fire as they shot out. They would have struck Scarlett in the torso had she stepped between the heads, probably killing her instantly.

            It took Scarlett a second or two to steel herself for what she knew she had to do next. If she was wrong, then she could well end up killed. Yet the ache that came with the thought of not going to Rothschild was worse than that fear, and Scarlett knew that she would do it, regardless of the danger. She got down on her stomach and crawled, hoping that she was correct.

            Scarlett inched between the statutes, and again, fire shot out. Scarlett pressed herself flat to the rock floor, dragging herself forward with her arms. It was slow, terrifyingly so with the fire continuing to pour forth above her. Yet inch by inch, Scarlett made it past the barrier presented by the raging inferno, standing up again only once she was sure that she was clear.

            She hurried forward again, keeping a careful eye out for more potential dangers. She quickly found herself in a star shaped room with at least a dozen tunnels branching off it. Which way this time? Scarlett pressed her hand to the mark on her neck, hoping for a clear sense of which way to go. She could feel that Rothschild was ahead somewhere, but that only served to narrow down her options a little. There were still three or four tunnels that could have been the correct one. And, given the dangers in the rest of the cavern complex, Scarlett did not want to risk going the wrong way.

Scarlett looked around the tunnels, trying to pick out some kind of difference between them that would help her to make up her mind. She found it only when she brought the torch close to the floor. She had been hoping for dust or dirt on the floor of the tunnels that might show footprints where others had gone that way. There were no footprints, but there was something almost as good. Most of the tunnels had dust and dirt, exactly as Scarlett expected, but one of them had been swept clean, obviously to obliterate earlier footprints. It was as good as a trail.

Scarlett hurried along it. Behind her, she could hear the sounds of an argument, and even with the echoes of the caves, she could recognize the voices. Cruces and Tavian were following her. Caesar too, from the sounds of it. The sounds of the voices were distorted and channeled by the tunnels, so that Scarlett could not tell exactly how close they were, but it was likely that they could not be far behind.

Briefly, Scarlett thought of going back for them and claiming that her flight was all a mistake. After all, she did not wish her friends to become lost in the caves when to do so might mean so much danger for them. Yet at the same time, Scarlett was only too aware that Cruces and Tavian would probably think she was not acting rationally. They might even insist that they abandon their attempt to get to Rothschild in some misguided attempt to keep her safe.

Being away from Rothschild was not safety. It was an agony of separation that Scarlett simply was not going to allow. She had to get to the vampire before the others caught up with her. In desperation, Scarlett put her hand to the mark she bore, hoping that this time she might be able to get a response.

“Rothschild, please. I am in the caves, coming to you, but I will not be able to find my way quickly enough. The others are not with me now, but they will find me if I do not hurry.”

For a second or two there was no response, and Scarlett stood there in despair. Surely Rothschild must be able to hear her so close? He had heard her when she had been close to his home in London, after all. He had to answer. He
had
to.

And then he did.

“Scarlett? You are in the caves? Where?”

Scarlett tried to explain, retracing her route mentally in the hopes that Rothschild would be able to see it. “Cruces and Tavian are behind me, but I think I have managed to get away from them for now.”

“That is good,” Rothschild whispered into her thoughts, “now come to me, dear Scarlett. Come to me.”

In that moment, Scarlett knew how to get through the remainder of the tunnels. There was not far to go, and there were no more traps on the way, meaning that even with no shoes, she could run to meet her beloved. Scarlett did not hesitate.