Catacombs (The Sekhmet Bounty Series Book 2)

by Liz Schulte

We came to a wide spot, where another tunnel veered off to the left or we had the option to continue straight ahead. I looked from one to the other without a strong feeling. Again I tried connecting, but I still couldn’t. The goddess wasn’t there for me as she had been when I was a child, which was bad for us, really bad. I had no choice but to follow my instincts. “Let’s take the passage.”

  Frost marked the wall before we went inside.

  “I forgot to tell you, we can’t come out the way we came in.”

  “Why not?”

  “Remember your idea about destroying the entrance? The gargoyle did it for you.”

  “Shit,” Frost said under her breath.

  My thoughts exactly.

  This new path once again changed. We came to the top of a staircase that descended further than I could see. “Are you still dizzy?”

  Frost shrugged. “Not that bad.”

  Lie. She had stayed close to the wall, putting out a hand to steady herself about once every twenty seconds or so, since we left. “Stay behind me in case you fall.”

  She shook her head. “If I’m behind you and I fall, my face could touch your skin. It’s better just to let me fall.”

  That was ridiculous. She could plummet to her death if she so much as missed a step, but she also had a point. I pulled my rope out of my backpack and handed her an end. “Tie it around your waist and I’ll do the same. That way if you fall, I can still catch you without touching you.”

  She did it without arguing and we started down the stairs, carefully. After about fifty steps, Frost stopped short. She squatted and pressed her hand on the next step. It gave way and fell into darkness. “It was a different color than the others,” she said as she straightened back up and took a larger step to avoid the hole.

  The staircase twisted and turned, spiraling its way to who knew what. Frost did a decent job spotting traps along the way. The end was finally in sight. At the base there were three doors. My instincts said to take the door on the left immediately. I stared at the old wooden door over the top of Frost’s head trying to understand why, and a terribly loud grinding noise filled the stairwell. I looked around. “What’s that—”

  Frost vanished and the rope around my waist jerked me forward. I grabbed at the walls, trying to stop the forward momentum, but there was nothing to hold on to. My nails scraped futilely as I tumbled into the giant hole where three stairs had been moments earlier.

  Arms flailing, I barely managed to catch the opposite ledge. Frost’s weight pulled me down like an anchor, almost making me lose my grip. “You okay?” I asked between clenched teeth, trying to pull us back up with just the strength of my arms.

  “Yeah.” Her voice sounded small and far away. “I missed that one. It wasn’t discolored like the others.”

  The muscles in my arms strained and protested, but I managed to heave myself up. I swung a leg over the edge. As I lay on my stomach on the cold, firm floor, my biceps trembled and twitched as I caught my breath. A couple seconds later, I braced myself and began to pull the rope holding Frost.

  The grinding sound returned, once again filling the stairwell. I looked down. The damn stairs were starting to close again. Not good. Not good at all.

  Chapter 10

  I scrambled backward, shoving my feet against the stone steps, then pushed hard with my legs so they couldn’t close and cut the rope that held Frost. “It’s closing,” I shouted.

  I yanked on the rope as hard and fast as I could, while the stairs pushed against my legs and the gears got louder and louder, inching me backward. Finally Frost’s gloved hands appeared on the ledge. “Pull yourself up,” I said, letting go of her rope so I could brace myself better against the stairs.

  We only had about eighteen inches of space left as she strained to lift her own weight. “Any day now,” I said, sweat running down my forehead, all the muscles in my body aching and feeling on the verge of snapping.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.”

  Finally she got a leg up and scrambled to the surface.

  I let go of everything and rolled backward; the floor crashed closed. We both lay unmoving on the landing, breathing heavily.

  “Holy shit,” she said. “Good call on the rope.”

  “You need to start lifting weights. Being human is not an excuse for weakness. And that’s three.” I groaned as I sat up and reached into my pack for a handful of bars and a bottle of water. “What was down there?”

  “I only saw darkness.” She pushed herself to sitting, tucking her legs beneath her. Big streaks of dirt ran down her face. She took off her gloves and shook the dirt out of them before putting them back on.

  “Want one?” I offered her a protein bar.

  She shook her head, mouth pinched in a worried expression. “What if that room was the only way out? How will you leave?”

  “You might ask even more questions than me. Um, there has to be another way. Bodies are getting from Shezmu into the catacombs somehow. I know he isn’t taking them, and I doubt my mother or the council are running over here to dispose of his victims. We just have to figure out how it’s happening and follow that path.” I sat up, feeling completely recovered. “Worse comes to worst, we pray for a miracle.”

  Frost’s eyebrows pulled together. “I don’t think that’s a viable plan.”

  “It is when you know an angel.” I offered my hand to help her up.

  She took it and I tugged her to standing, then held my hand out to the three doors and cleared my mind completely. Still nothing. I opened my eyes. The door on the left it was. It was the only one that had caught my eye. The door opened into a pitch-black space. The light from the staircase didn’t penetrate the darkness more than a foot. Scratching sounds from across the room ran down my spine. Scrape, scrape, scrape, like bone against stone. Over and over and over again.

  I pulled out my flashlight and shined it into the room. Living skeletons filled the place, their sharp, claw-like hands scraping the walls. I stepped back from the door. “This is all you.”

  “Undead,” Frost muttered. Her face went stony. “I’ve got this. Get out of my way.”

  She stepped inside, headlamp on. “Stop,” she commanded. Skeletons continued to shuffle toward her, arms outstretched, teeth chomping. Red pinpoints glowed where their eyes would have been.

  Frost just stood there doing nothing.

  “Anytime now,” I breathed. Why wasn’t she saying a spell or doing something witchy? We could have just shut the door and continued on our merry way, but she’d entered…and now she was just standing there. I’d give her a few more seconds, and if nothing happened, I’d save her. I should have brought a sword or something more substantial than a knife. But that led to the question: how did humans make it through this maze and to Shezmu? There was no way. There had to be another route.

  Just as the skeletons reached Frost, she flipped around to face me. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she levitated. She muttered words that seemed familiar, though I couldn’t quite place them. Her hands pointed at the floor, she floated in the center of the room. Whatever this spell was, it was unlike anything I had ever seen before. The skeletons surrounding her stopped, as her head lolled back and her glowing white eyes shot beams of light. One by one, the skeletons fell like dominos, littering the floor with bones. Fuck.

  Frost gradually lowered to the ground. She stood amongst the bones, weaving back and forth, her back to me. I went in, walking around the pile and heading to the front of the room. “Not too shabby,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a necromancer work.”

  Her eyes fluttered open—but were normal for only a moment, before they rolled back in her head again and she collapsed into the bones. As I climbed over to her, she was already starting to come to. “Take it easy. Let your body catch up. We still have a long way to go.”

  She closed her eyes, taking full, deep breaths and blowing them out.

  “You okay?” I asked after a few minutes of sil
ence.

  “Do I look okay?” she said. “I need to rest.”

  I nodded. “That’s a good idea. I’m just going to poke around and see what I can find in here. You rest.” I tried to help her up, but she pushed me away with a grumpy frown.

  Frost made it onto her unsteady feet by herself, one hand on her back as she hobbled toward the door. “Maybe you just chose the wrong door,” she muttered. “And that’s two for me.”

  I shrugged off her bad mood. The human had been expending a lot of energy with very little rest. That would wear a person down fast. If we weren’t more careful, she wouldn’t be able to complete the mission, and I didn’t have a plan for dealing with dead weight. I couldn’t carry her and finish the challenges still to come. But I’d worry about it when it came to that. “That could be,” I said brightly. “But now that you have destroyed the skeletons, we might as well see what they were guarding.”

  Frost sat back down in the doorway, eyes closed, head leaned back against the wall. I pulled out my flashlight, scouring the room until it caught my eye. One stone in the wall that stuck out a little further than the others. I couldn’t press it in, so I tugged and it moved. Bingo.

  I cautiously pulled the stone completely out of the wall—and the whole thing shifted and folded back into itself, creating an archway into another room. Very cool. I peeked inside, looking for traps, then stepped into the small room. It was empty and bare, except for a large pedestal in the center of the floor and a door on the opposite wall. I strode to the pedestal; a tightly rolled scroll lay on its burnished top.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Frost said from the doorway. “You actually found something.”

  “Of course I did.” I went to the door and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge. No lock hole, either. There had to be a trick or a puzzle we could solve to make it through.

  “I don’t think we should touch anything,” Frost said, twisting her hands.

  I went back to the scroll and picked it up. If we didn’t touch things, we’d never make it out. The whole room lifted and turned the moment the paper left the pedestal. The archway began to close. Frost jumped through. Blades lowered from the ceiling, swiping back and forth and side to side, and the floor started to rise.

  Well, that was bloody fantastic.

  “What did you do?” Frost yelled. “Put it back.”

  I had been in too many tombs. It was far too late for that. I unrolled the scroll and quickly scanned it.

  Red as blood

  Dark as a grave

  Save yourself

  Do as I say

  Cant the piling

  Lie flat on the ground

  Find something to hold to

  Take one deep breath and hold it tight

  Or you’ll not live through the night

  There was no fucking way. We had to find another way out.

  “What does it say?”

  The blades were close enough I had to crouch. Frost snatched the scroll from my hand. Before I could stop her, she pressed her back to the column and tilted it to the side. All the noise stopped at once and Frost lay flat on the ground. It was too late to stop it, so I did the same.

  “You asshole. We had time,” I said, digging my fingernails into a chipped spot on the floor. The entire room went weightless and the floor dropped, taking my breath away as we rocketed into the abyss.

  The slab hit the water hard, jarring my grip loose. Waves swirled around me, pulling me up, shoving me down, pushing me sideways until I had no idea where I—or the surface—was. Lungs already burning, I frantically moved my arms, unable to see anything at all in the lightless, watery deathtrap. The blades would have been better than drowning.

  Something brushed against my leg. I kicked at it, desperately trying to find air. My chest was tight and my lungs felt like they were filled with white-hot fire. My body jerked, fighting me to breathe. My backpack caught on something. An instant later I was dragged in the other direction. I tried to fight it, but my arms were getting heavier and harder to move. Any moment now my lungs would explode. Never thought I’d lose a life to water.

  I was barely cognizant of being pulled out of the water until something slapped hard against my face and I took a deep breath. Coughing uncontrollably, I rolled to my side, spitting up water and probably chunks of my lungs along with it, judging by the burn in my chest. I groaned, flattening my face against the cold stone.

  “You fought me,” Frost said, catching her breath. “You idiot. I was helping you. That’s three times I’ve saved you. We’re even again.”

  I waved a hand at her as I pulled another breath into my raw lungs. “I thought you were a fish. A giant fish rising up to get revenge for all of his brethren that I’ve consumed over the years.” My voice was scratchy. “How did you find me?”

  “You held on to the floor. I held on to your backpack and the floor. I didn’t want to get separated. I nearly lost you in the undertow, but I managed to grab your leg and then you kicked me.”

  She knelt over me and got into my pack, pulling out the flashlight. She flipped it on. The cavern was huge, far too big for the reach of the small beam.

  “I lost my helmet in the fall and my pack is still in the other room.”

  Clicking, clacking noises on the wet stone floor rushed toward us. Frost swept the light until we saw the creature responsible for the skin crawling sound. Some cross between a centipede, lobster, and scorpion. Two giant pincers snapped in front of it as it rushed us. Its tail curled up behind its long body with more legs than I could count.

  “Shine the light directly into its eyes,” I said, hoping it would scare the creature. Something that lived in the darkness would have adapted to it, making it shun the light.

  The creature stopped, recoiling slightly, then lifted its hind end and stabbed its spiky tail at us. It missed by a few feet, breaking the stone beneath it. Here we go again.

  The tail lifted again, exposing the beast’s eyes. I took the light from Frost, blinding it. “Use the death touch,” I said.

  She nodded and slipped into the darkness. The tail crashed down again. I rolled out of the way, barely making it. Its aim was getting better, and the attacks came harder and faster. Whatever Frost was doing, it was taking too long or not working. When the monster reared back again, I rushed at it, holding the light in front of me like a lance.

  The pincers clacked, trying to grab me, then the beast suddenly went rigid, and the clicking got slower and slower until it stopped altogether and the monster collapsed to the ground.

  Frost stood on top of it. “The shell was too thick for my touch to work, so I improvised.” She tossed down a big rock that was covered in green, slimy blood, then climbed off. That was impressive. She had the widest smile she had ever given—at least to me. “Now who owes who? That’s four.”

  “It was a team effort. Not sure you saved me. I could have bashed its head in too, and probably faster.”

  “Nobody likes a sore loser.”

  I laughed. “True—but beside the point. Look at this thing. We’re eating well tonight,” I said. She wrinkled her nose—but since I was down to only one pack, we’d take what we could get. Including mutant sea creatures. “What do you think the odds are of building a fire?”

  “You’re serious? You want to stop? Shouldn’t we find a way out and press on?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not like I’m building a home or anything, but yeah, we need a break. You need to rest. Every time you exert yourself, you pass out. What happens if you lose consciousness while we’re fighting something? Not only would you get yourself killed, but you could get me killed too. And besides, we’re going to run out of food. We don’t know how long it will take to find Shezmu, and this thing looks very edible. I barely have enough food left for me. We can’t be choosy.”

  “I don’t think we can eat a scorpion. Aren’t they poisonous?”

  “You can totally eat a scorpion if you cook it first. And this thing’s part lobster. Now back to t
he fire—what do you have? I don’t think wood is available. It’s up to your magic.”

  “I lost my spells with my backpack. I don’t have this stuff memorized.” She rubbed her hands against her wet jeans. “We have to find something for kindling.” She walked around with my flashlight, scanning the floor. “There’s nothing here to burn.”

  “Well, we’re in a cave that’s filled with water. Wood might not be high on the list.”

  “Nothing to burn, no fire,” she said. “No fire, no questionable dining.”

  Chapter 11

  That was unacceptable. Not only did I want to eat, more importantly, I wanted to dry off. I got up and helped her look. It was utterly hopeless, though. Unless… “What about the legs?”

  She came over. “Maybe. We could try it.”

  We sawed the caterpillar-like legs off until there was a good pile. Frost hovered her hands over them. Nothing happened. She rubbed her palms together and tried again. Nothing. Her jaw tightened. “Maybe I’m too tired,” she said, as not so much as a wisp of smoke rose from them.

  “Well, look at it this way. You’re one hundred percent better than I am at creating magical fire. But if we can find some rocks, I might be able to get those to spark.”

  She laughed under her breath and her shoulders relaxed as she reached behind her, grabbed two stones, and handed them to me. It took me a few tries, but the rocks eventually sparked and the pile of legs actually caught on fire. It was a damn miracle.

  After we had tucked into heaps of what looked and smelled like lobster meat around the fire, even I started to get sleepy. Frost picked at hers, eyes heavy, but never managed to get a piece past her lips. Mostly she scooted it around and poked it as she stared off into nothing.

  I had no such qualms, plopping piece after piece into my mouth. “If I had magic like you, I’d use it all the time.”

  Frost shook her head. “Magic has a price. It isn’t free. The more you use it, the more dependent you are on it. It’s better to find your own way before it leads you to a place you never intended to be.”