by Eva Chase
“And you can’t take this off?”
“Not unless I want to go in an even more painful fashion.”
I had to ask. “Are you going to be okay to see this whole operation through?”
“I’ll have to be,” she said matter-of-factly, giving me a smile like I’d never seen from her before, sharp and a shade wild. When I raised my hand, she straightened up. “I should be fine for long enough to crash the commune. After that, I won’t need the cuff anymore. No problem.”
Jemma Moriarty wasn’t just the boldly confident woman who never ran out of sly remarks. This was her too—stoic and determined and maybe just a little scared.
“I wish there was something I could do in the meantime,” I said. “It might help if you put some material between the gold and your skin… I don’t know how the effect functions.”
“I don’t think that would cut it. But thank you.” She pulled her pantleg down. “I know this is probably too much to ask, but if you can bring yourself to keep a secret for a little while, I’d rather you didn’t mention this to Sherlock.”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. The request automatically made me balk. “Why not?”
Jemma looked at me, her expression both fond and weary. “You know him a lot better than I do, and even I can see he’d sooner eat his own hand than admit to anything supernatural existing. It was convenient when the thing was trying to mess with us in London, but now, not so much. He wouldn’t be helping if he thought this was about some ‘superstitious nonsense’.”
She was quoting a comment I’d recorded in one of my published accounts of the cases Sherlock and I had worked on. And her evaluation of him wasn’t wrong, exactly.
“He puts proof above everything else,” I said. “If you just show him, he’ll have to accept it.”
“Show him what? Do you really think this is enough to convince him that paranormal beings exist?” She motioned to her thigh.
“No,” I had to admit.
“I can’t make one of those attacks come on at will to provide a demonstration. The only concrete proof I could give him would be to remove the cuff in front of him and let him watch one of the fiends devour me bit by bit, but unfortunately that would defeat the purpose of proving it.”
I didn’t know what else to say. I didn’t know what to think about the crazier parts of her story. Maybe she was partly insane—maybe there was some other explanation… but with all my medical training, I couldn’t think of one.
Did it matter? She’d given me the answers I’d asked for without any obvious guile, simply and straightforwardly. She didn’t expect even me to believe them. I could tell that from the set of her jaw. If this was one more deception, I had to think she’d have chosen one easier to swallow.
I wouldn’t have thought of Jemma as a woman in need of defending, but a protective urge rose up in me as she waited for me to lay out my judgment. Whatever she’d been through, regardless of what she’d done before or after, it’d been terrible. I could at least believe that right now she was struggling simply to survive.
I could offer her this one small thing. I didn’t know what I’d tell Sherlock anyway. Did it make any difference why she wanted access to the commune? He and I were doing this to take down people who’d been involved in the murder of a child, animal mutilations, and who knew what else. That hadn’t changed.
“In that case, I think I can manage to keep it to myself for the time being,” I said.
Her gaze snapped to me with blatant surprise. “Thank you,” she said. Then a hint of her usual slyness came back. “I knew there was some reason I liked you.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “Is that the only one?”
“Of course not.”
She raised her hand to trail her fingers down the side of my face, and my heart jumped. I caught her hand, thinking I was going to ease it away, but somehow instead my body leaned in as she moved to meet me.
The soft press of her lips was just as sweet as I remembered, even if she wasn’t the woman I’d thought she was the last time I’d experienced it. She kissed me again, a little harder, but then her body tensed.
She pulled back with a squeeze of my hand. “Let’s leave it there. I think I’ve made things complicated enough already.”
Even if she was right, I found myself thinking as I started the truck’s ignition that I wouldn’t have minded another complication or two if they came in the form of Jemma Moriarty.
Chapter Eighteen
Jemma
The growl of my car’s engine faded out into the whistling of the breeze at the base of the mountain. Bash parked his van next to me. We got out at the same time, him coming around to meet me at the back of the van.
“I could come with you, just to the caves,” he said as he pulled open the doors to the storage area.
I shook my head. “The less activity on the ground around here, the better.” The gold cuff might be wearing away at my body, but it also meant any shrouded folk keeping watch over the commune wouldn’t see I was skulking around. Bash didn’t have the same advantage.
They were keeping a close eye on this little village—I was sure of it. From what John had told me, they were using their illusory abilities to discourage people from coming too close, giving them the sense that they were going the wrong way. If a shrouded one could make me see, feel, and smell a room drenched in blood like Bog had in London, the occasional nudge of a stray hiker wouldn’t be hard at all.
And if that hiker proved as persistent as Sherlock had, the nudge became a heave.
The way the infrared display had fogged confirmed it for me. Maybe the shrouded folk protected all of the cult’s communities that way. There could be another out there by that sacrifice spot we’d found in the interior mountains. For all I knew, there could be a dozen settlements just here in Croatia. I’d never needed to think about details like that while I was living in the commune I’d grown up in.
“You’re the boss, Majesty,” Bash said. He pulled out the climbing gear he’d assembled. “Oversuit so you don’t scratch yourself up. Knee and elbow pads. Rubber-soled boots. Helmet with headlamp. Rope. Waist belt with a bottle of water and a spare headlamp in case they mess with your first one.” He elbowed me lightly. “I don’t want you getting lost in the dark.”
“I think I’ll manage to find my way.” How much equipment had Zena’s patient had when she’d made her desperate scramble away from the commune? Probably none.
Having all this stuff almost felt like cheating. But against these fiends and the people who worshiped them, we needed all the advantage we could get.
I pulled on the oversuit, the thick fabric making my skin heat up within seconds, and attached the various accessories. The rope had a hook to attach it to the side of the belt. As I fixed the helmet on my head, its strap bit into the fading bruise on my throat. Bash frowned, looking at it.
“Are you sure Dr. Watson’s technician friend gave you the right directions? The Londoners and their people haven’t always been all that concerned about accuracy or your safety.”
“I was there. I went over all the radar images with them.” I touched Bash’s arm. “You don’t have to worry. This is just a scouting mission. I’m not planning on getting into anything dangerous.”
“Only you would say that right before you race off into unmapped caves on a mountain that seems determined to kick people off it,” he said dryly, but he couldn’t mask the concern in his eyes. He turned to the van and handed me a couple of metal tools about the size of my hand, shaped like blunt knives. “Pitons, in case you have to clamber up any steep parts. Wedge the narrow end into a crack and use them to lever yourself up.”
“Excellent.” Going up was almost certainly going to be harder than coming down. I stuffed those into the hip pockets of my oversuit.
Bash reached a little farther into the back of the van. “Here, there’s something else I picked up for you. I don’t know if you’ll end up needing it, but it might come in handy.”<
br />
He drew out a black metal rod about an inch thick and slightly shorter than my forearm. With a flick of his wrist, two extra segments snapped out, nearly tripling its length. Bash made a few quick jabs with it and tossed it to me.
“Collapsible baton,” he said. “The most lightweight one I could find that’s still high quality. The steel in that will stand up to just about anything. You could say the good doctor inspired me with his walking stick antics.”
I twirled the rod in my hand with amusement. “Did you think I was planning on fighting the caves?”
He chuckled. “No, but it’ll give you some maneuverability if you do have to fend off an attacker while you’re in there, regardless of the range. And it might be useful for climbing too if you can wedge it across a passage you want to scramble up. You can clip it inside your sleeve so you can whip it out in an instant. I know how fast those hands are.”
He gave me a teasing wink as he motioned to my arm, but a little ache formed in my chest. I ducked my head as I attached the clip to my sleeve as he’d suggested. With a quick snatch, I could slip it off and extend it in less than a second. I tried the maneuver a few times before I looked at him again.
“Thank you,” I said. The weight on my arm was a testament to how determined he was to protect me, even when I insisted on running off into harm’s way alone.
How much longer would I have that?
I knew how human emotion worked even if I hadn’t experienced a full range all that deeply myself. I’d watched enough people interacting during my business dealings. Even after Bash and I left the London trio behind, the night we’d shared and the fact that I’d refused any further intimacy would be hanging there between us. It had already been gnawing at him, and it’d keep gnawing at him until the downsides of working with me outweighed whatever he liked about the job.
He could say he accepted my decision, but I didn’t know if he could really promise he’d always feel that way. I didn’t know if I’d have wanted him to promise something like that. If he had to back off, I’d let him go, and then I’d make my own way again like I had before. It was fine. I’d manage.
It was only the thought of getting to that point that sent a brief jab through my gut.
I went back to my car and retrieved my phone and my written coordinates from my purse. “All right. Off I go.”
Bash saluted me and got in behind the wheel of the van. He had other business to look into while I was exploring, but I knew he wouldn’t leave until he’d made sure I at least got into the forest without incident. With his eyes on my back, I set off into the brush.
Every few minutes, I checked the GPS display on my phone to make sure I was on track. The forest became denser, fallen sticks cracking under my feet. I wasn’t too worried about being noticed this far down. Sherlock and the others had made it a lot higher before the shrouded folk had intervened, and they couldn’t detect me. I planned on getting as close to the actual human habitation as I could.
When I came for the dagger properly, I’d want to make my approach at night. There’d be less energy for the shrouded folk without immediate sunlight, and more chance that most of the cultists would be sleeping. I’d like to be totally familiar with my route before I navigated it by starlight.
I’d walked for about twenty minutes before I came on the first point where the radar had shown underground passages near the surface. Other than a crack I could barely fit my fingers through in the rocky shell of the ground, it didn’t offer any access. I headed on up to the second location, about five minutes farther.
The commune clearly knew about the cave system beneath them. I found a crevice just wide enough for me to slip through—and a bear trap fixed to the rock right in front of it. They might not venture down this far very often themselves, but they didn’t want anyone wandering up and finding them either.
I studied the trap. I might have been able to safely spring it with a branch, but then they’d suspect someone had come through if they checked the trap before I returned. There had to be another option.
I eased up over the loose dirt that covered the ground beside the crevice. The opening wasn’t very wide, but it was pretty tall. And there was this handy tree looming right over the top…
With a swing of my arm, I tossed my rope over the lowest branch, tied it firmly near the base, and dangled the rest into the crevice, letting the end fall just beyond the trap. Then I gripped it and jumped through the opening.
The momentum carried me past the trap. I loosened my hold and landed on the uneven turf inside, catching the rope before it could smack into the trap. I was going to need it to get back out again.
I wedged part of the rope into a crack in the edge of the crevice, switched on the lamp on my helmet, and set off into the cave.
The bear trap meant there might be other traps—of that sort or other kinds—along the way. I trod carefully over the dry rock, the cool still air grazing my face as I moved. A faint mineral flavor laced my tongue, like a muted version of the ocean’s salt. The white glow of the lamp lit up bulges and dips of rock that wound deeper into the mountain’s face and then veered upward with the slope.
Despite the cool dry atmosphere, sweat started to bead on my skin from the climb. I ducked under a low chunk of ceiling and at the last second spotted a patch of floor that didn’t look quite right. A thin slab of rock sat in the middle of the passage. I nudged the edge with my toe, and a few pebbles crumbled off it.
A pit trap, I’d bet. I backed up a couple steps and dove over it through the cramped space. A jolt of pain ran through my shoulder as I rolled my landing on the uneven rock on the other side, but the trap stayed undisturbed.
A short climb farther, a streak of natural light coursed down from above. A gap in the ceiling emitted the faint shine, wavering with the movement of distant leaves. I eyeballed the space with an idea unfurling in my head. The gap was big enough that there were quite a few things I could shoot through it. I did still need a distraction as part of my plan.
I made a note of the spot in the rough map I’d been sketching on my phone and continued on. When a side passage twisted away from the main cave, I peered down it and decided to skip it—it looked like it fell away deeper into the mountain rather than offering access upward.
The cave I was moving through widened and tightened again. It wound back and forth through the rough stone and then shot up in a passage that was almost totally vertical. I grasped the pitons and drove them into the cracks, bracing myself with my feet and back between each shuffle upward. This part was definitely going to be easier on the way down.
The ponytail I’d pulled my hair into stuck damp to the back of my neck as I emerged. I paused there for a moment to catch my breath and crept on up the steep incline of the cave.
I squeezed through a particularly narrow section and edged across a patch of more level floor. A shuffling sound overhead made me freeze.
It came again. I held my breath, listening as carefully as I could.
I’d swear that was someone dragging something heavy—the rasp of the friction and the thump as they lowered it between heaves. Another sound wavered down with the texture of a voice speaking, even if I couldn’t make out a single word. Another warbled in return.
My heart thumped faster. I’d made it to the commune. Or nearly made it. Knowing I was right beneath the settlement didn’t do me much good if I couldn’t figure out how to get aboveground.
I slunk along the passage, searching the ceiling and the walls for any sort of opening. Around a curve in the cave, my headlamp picked up a jaggedly circular outline where the ceiling dipped to a little lower than my height. It looked as though a huge rock had been set there to cover the entrance.
The boulder would be heavy, but the people up there must still be able to move it if they needed to. If I dragged the right tools up here, I could heave it out of the way.
I eased closer, meaning to test it gently with my hands. My gaze snagged on a thin cable that stretched
across the floor just an inch off the ground. I jerked backward, propelling myself away from whatever trap the trip wire activated—and the ground under my heel crumbled.
My heart lurched into my throat as I reeled backward. One clear impression sprang into my mind: the snicker of Bash’s baton snapping to full length. I wrenched the tool from my sleeve and whipped it out just as my body dropped through the chasm that had opened in the floor.
The steel bar jarred against both sides of the chasm. I swung my other hand up to grasp it. My feet dangled beneath me for several aching moments, flailing for purchase and finding none, before I managed to yank them up and plant them on one side of the narrow space.
Ignoring the strain in my shoulders, I glanced down. Only darkness met the stream of my headlamp. My breath snagged in my throat.
I’d almost fallen into nothingness.
I would have, if it wasn’t for Bash. He’d managed to have my back even all the way up here, even though I’d pushed him away and denied him my full trust twice now.
The breath in my throat solidified into a lump. I swallowed hard. Flexing my arms, I managed to walk my feet up the side of the chasm and pull my torso higher at the same time. I swung one leg and then the other over the edge onto the cave floor and wrenched the rest of me up to follow them. Then I lay on my back, one hand still clutched around the baton, my pulse thudding with the memory of that fathomless drop.
The next time I came up here, I’d better stick to the right side of the cave. Good to know. I eyed the stone surface that had crumbled so easily, but I couldn’t see any way to cover up the hole I’d broken in it. I’d just have to hope that if anyone checked in the next few days, they’d assume it’d given way on its own.
Shoving myself upright, I checked the floor for any marks I might have left that would reveal my presence. I scuffed away the edge of a footprint. After I’d marked the apparent entrance on my digital map, I headed back the way I’d come.