The Drowned Vault (25 page)

For a moment, the group was silent, listening to the wind rasp through needled trees. But with it, there came a distant drone.

Every head turned. A plane.

“The Boones are here,” Rupert said.

Cyrus looked at Diana. She raised her eyebrows and exhaled. He smiled at her.

Rupert rose to his feet. “Cyrus, it’s time to dive. Arachne, if you wouldn’t mind starting on Antigone?”

Arachne nodded, stood, and whistled into the brush.

“What?” Antigone asked. “Start what?”

Cyrus laughed, following Rupert into the trees. “Whatever you do, Tigs, don’t scream like a girl.”

Walking through the trees, stride for stride with Rupert, Cyrus glanced at his Keeper. Nolan was trailing behind them.

“So,” said Cyrus. “You didn’t really answer the question back there.” He ducked under a long branch straggling with bearded moss. “If we can’t wait until the dust settles”—he hopped a rock—“and you don’t want Phoenix and the
Ordo
to become allies”—he switched to Rupert’s other side—“then what are we going to do?”

Rupert arched an eyebrow and scratched his jaw while he walked. They broke free of the trees and stood at the top of the gray sea-stained cliff. Rupert began descending on a narrow, winding goat path.

“Besides diving in freezing-cold water off an island somewhere near Nova Scotia!” Cyrus yelled after him. “That’s the obvious first step.”

“Sun Tzu!” Rupert yelled back over his shoulder. “
The Art of War!
I told you to read it a year ago.”

“Well, yeah,” Cyrus said, following. “And I even started, but the first couple pages weren’t that interesting.” He began feeling his way down the path, carefully dragging one hand on the cliff face.

Rupert laughed, and his voice echoed off the cliff walls around them. The boat was just visible below, sheltered in a little harbor of black water. “If you had read and understood the book, you might have some suggestions
for me right now. As it is”—he glanced back up the path with a grin—“you’re just baggage.”

“Don’t feel bad,” Nolan said behind Cyrus. “Sun Tzu is a friend of Gil’s. Extreme dirtbag.”

Rupert slid to a stop on a tiny gravel beach beside the boat. Cyrus staggered out beside him.

“So I’m baggage,” Cyrus said. “Fine. Now can you just answer the question?”

Rupert kicked off his boots and tugged off his shirt before wading into the frigid water in his trousers. With water lapping around his thighs, he grabbed the boat’s edge and leaned in, pulling two squid buckets toward the side.

“We are smaller,” said Rupert, and he nodded for Cyrus to follow him. “We are mobile, but not to a degree that provides any advantage. We must establish communication, supply lines, and concentration of attack—which is the great difficulty, given that we face two stronger forces on two separate fronts, and in the O of B and its new Brendan we have a point of soft treachery, or at least vulnerability, in our rear.”

Cyrus’s spider socks weren’t going anywhere, but he dropped his leather jacket by Rupert’s boots and pulled off his shirt. His skin immediately tightened in the cold. Rupert was waiting. Cyrus exhaled, bit his lip, and then felt his way into the water. His muscles knotted into rocks. His feet became lifeless dough. The water’s bite
was so sharp, Cyrus couldn’t even feel the wetness of it. He felt only needles and knives.

With his shirt still on, Nolan waded after Cyrus, unaffected by the cold. Cyrus staggered slowly forward, chattering, and Rupert extended a squid bucket toward him.

“Our best hope is surprise,” Rupert said. “And that is why we are here. This place and this moment are what Arachne prepared you for, and why I made you risk the water cube—though all too briefly. We are here to do what our enemies will fear but also least expect.”

“What’sssstt?” Cyrus managed. The water was up to his hips. He dipped his hand in the bucket and felt a squid latch on.

Rupert smiled. Cyrus raised the squid to his face.

“Red means dead,” said Rupert. Cyrus glanced at the beak he was already raising to his mouth. Three red speckles the size of pinpricks dotted the tip of the writhing squid’s black beak. “You can’t breathe hydrogen.”

Cyrus puffed breath onto the dark creature and dropped it back in the bucket. “Jeeps,” he said. “That was close. Why would you even bring those?”

“They switch genders. In any group, half are male and half female at any time. Always check the beak, even if you’ve taken off an animal and are putting the same one back on.” Rupert pulled out a squid for himself and offered one to Nolan. Nolan shook his head. “Now tell
me this, Cyrus Smith,” Rupert said, sorting through the tentacles. “What is the one thing the transmortals would not expect the Avengel of Ashtown to do?”

Cyrus pulled out another squid and squinted at it. He wasn’t sure.

“Open the Burials,” said Nolan.

Rupert nodded. “The Burials. And what is the only Burial they themselves would fear to open? The Burial of the man who beheaded their fearful dragons.”

“John Smith?” Cyrus said. “Seriously? The actual John Smith?” For a moment, he’d forgotten the cold.

Nolan shivered.

Rupert’s face split into a wide grin. “The Captain. Do you have your Solomon Keys?”

Cyrus’s free hand shot up to his neck. Two keys—one silver, one gold—safely invisible on his tiny snake. “Yeah,” he said. “The Burial is right here?”

Rupert plucked three pairs of old goggles out of the boat, tossing one to Nolan and one to Cyrus. “I hope it’s right here. I’ve already searched all but two other coves on this island.” Rupert fit the squid onto his face, pulled on his goggles, grabbed a spotlight out of the boat, and began to wade into deeper water.

“Go on,” Nolan said to Cyrus. His transmortal skin was as pale as ice. “I don’t need one of those creatures. Don’t need to breathe when it comes right down to it, and I prefer lung burn to squid face.”

Cyrus checked the squid’s beak for red dots, and then slid the thing over his face. The beak clicked inside his mouth, trying to nip his tongue, but he’d arranged it right. The tentacles latched tight around the back of his head. He tugged on his goggles, careful not to pinch any of the tentacles, and then slid out into the frigid water.

His ribs froze on contact. Inside them, his lungs tried to shrink. He was going to die of cold, he was sure.

Rupert dove all the way under the surface. The squid bubbled into Cyrus’s mouth, but he couldn’t make himself inhale. He could maybe last thirty seconds underwater at this temperature. A minute? He tucked and dove.

The squid spat more bubbles, and this time he caught them. Nolan, a pale ghost, came alongside him.

And then the bottom dropped away over a jagged stone shelf, and Cyrus dove straight down, and down, and down. Far below him, the bottom was glowing orange. Rupert’s crisp silhouette swam in front of it.

The water was growing warmer.

Dan bumped up the driveway and killed his headlights. For a moment, he stared at the windows of the old house. It had been a couple of weeks since he’d been there, and he couldn’t remember how he’d left the curtains. Or whether the screen door had been latched. It was swinging in the wind right now.

Why was he so nervous? The man on the phone had
said someone would come. And he’d known about Dan’s heart. How? Rupert hadn’t known. The nurses at Ashtown hadn’t known. They’d tested it and everything else. Of course, they hadn’t known about his “eyes,” either.

Because he hadn’t told them …

The moon was high and bright. If someone was inside, they would be able to see out, but Dan wasn’t going to be able to see in. And there was stuff in there he wanted.

Daniel reached under his seat and pulled out a short baseball bat. Then he opened his door as quietly as he could and left it open behind him as he crept toward the house.

A light flicked on in the kitchen and Daniel froze, clenching and reclenching the handle of the bat. He waited a moment, and then he raced forward bent at the waist and ducked beneath the kitchen window. Even over the crash of the distant ocean, he could hear voices. Glass shattered.

Daniel slid up against the kitchen door. He had a decision to make. Run, hide, maybe never come back … or go inside and face whatever was waiting for him.

He’d abandoned this house before. He wasn’t going to do it again. He slid his key into the lock, held his breath, and said a prayer. With a crash, he exploded inside with his bat raised.

John Horace Lawney VII choked on his toast. Someone tall and freckled looked up from where he was
crouching on the floor. He had a short, thick rifle on his back, a large revolver on his hip, and a dustpan in his hand. He had been sweeping up the ruins of a coffee cup.

Horace thumped his chest and hacked up a lump of bread.

“Finally,” he said, dabbing at the corners of his watering eyes. “Your dormitory was being watched, so we came here.” He swallowed and smacked his lips. “Mr. Rupert Greeves requests your presence immediately.”

Daniel lowered his bat. “I was just at my dorm. No one was there. What’s going on?”

Horace and the kid with the dustpan exchanged a look. The kid jumped up, flicked off the kitchen lights, and hurried to the window, unslinging his rifle as he went. He peeked through the curtains.

“There’s a van,” he said. “Out on the cliff. No headlights.” He turned to Dan. “You were followed.”

Horace picked up an open jar of jam and a small hunk of bread and tucked them under his arm. He glanced at his pocket watch and sighed, then looked at Daniel over his half-moon glasses.

He nodded at the kitchen door. “Off we go, then.”

thirteen
RIP

C
YRUS SWAM DEEPER
, trying to stay on Rupert’s heels. The water wasn’t just warm anymore; it was hot. He felt like he was scuba diving in a Jacuzzi. On one side, black cliffs descended out of sight; on the other, he could see nothing but blue. Beneath him, on what must have been the bottom, lava flickered orange and heat ripples warped the water. In places where the cold water of the open ocean collided with the heat, swirls appeared like straws, belching up heat and sucking down cold. Rupert had already pulled him away from two.

The squid belched air, but not much. Cyrus was worried for it. It might actually cook right on his face. Of course, he might cook, too.

Rupert paused, drifting on rising heat, and looked back at Cyrus. Tentacles glistened across his jaw and ears, and the black squid on his face wobbled like the short trunk snout of a California elephant seal. That, plus the goggles, made him look more than a little alien. Rupert pointed into a large dark cave in the cliff, and
Cyrus swam forward. As he entered, his body jerked with a sudden shock—the water in the cave was cold. Rupert and Nolan slid in after him. Rupert pointed at his own squid, and then floated back against the wall. A rest stop? Apparently Rupert didn’t want his squid cooked, either.

After a moment, Cyrus’s mouth almost exploded with a blast of cold, bubbling air. He let most of it stream out of his nose, and then he filled his lungs. Rupert was doing the same. Nolan grimaced, still holding his breath. He looked like he was in pain.

Rupert held up one finger. Cyrus braced himself, and the stiff beak clicked against his tongue. Two fingers. Three. Rupert kicked out of the hole and Cyrus followed. Heat flashed around him. Nolan passed him quickly, his skin peeling and trailing as he went.

Down and down into the rippling heat, Rupert dove beside the black cliff. Cyrus wanted to scream, to close his eyes and float away. To cook and be done. And then Rupert turned into a narrow side tunnel. Nolan and Cyrus followed.

Darkness. And cold. The light faded as the temperature dropped. And then Rupert’s spotlight flashed on and flickered back over Nolan’s body and into Cyrus’s face. They were in a cavern the size of a large living room, and it was lined with mussels.

Rupert floated in the center, running his spotlight around the cavern. There was one smooth stone on the otherwise
jagged mussel wall. Cyrus swam toward it, blinking.

It was shaped like a headstone and skimmed with olive sea silt, though not one barnacle or mussel had adhered to its face. The squid on Cyrus’s face bubbled as he ran his hand up and down the stone. Scum swirled into the water, leaving behind a long inscription. With Rupert spotting the light over his shoulder, Cyrus traced the words with his fingertips. At the top, he immediately recognized the Tri-Dracul crest of the Smiths.