that it can be deciphered where power and influence comes from, or I suppose at least the nature of its source. An unmistakable peace emanates from Helena, and I imagine that she can see the opposite in me.
“Are you?” she replies perceptively.
I look away from her, feeling tender like the pain that comes when someone jabs intrusively into an open wound. But then sound of gunfire returns, and I welcome it, turning sharply toward Brogan, who prompts us forward.
“We can check the other tunnels to see if there’s another way out,” Kat suggests to Brogan as we start to run. “Or find a place to hide until it’s safe.”
Brogan nods at her, but I can tell he’s unconvinced. I doubt Kat believes it either. We will be trapped here, just like the man said, unless we can fight our way out the way we came.
Moments later, we make it back to the open room where the rest of the soldiers await us. Their guns are inactive, the room’s many corridors empty save for a few bodies of the creatures who had already tried to get in. Yet, more gunfire sounds from the entryway above us. Without a word, Kat already seems to know what’s going on.
“They sent another team after us,” she says, her voice hot and bothered.
“Does it surprise you that Lionel would send them?” Brogan replies softly.
Helena, who is standing next to me, steps forward as though she wants to speak, but stumbles to the ground. I kneel to help her back up. She smiles at me, and I smile back, the two of us then turning again toward Brogan.
“Don’t they trust you?” I ask
“It’s about control, not trust,” he explains. “Regardless of how the council members might feel about your sister, they will want our people to believe that they were behind this mission.”
I’m about to ask another question when the gunfire starts getting louder and closer, like those above us are running down the tunnel toward in our direction. I hear men yelling, and seconds later the sound of someone screaming in agony. Then I see the last person I would ever have expected emerging from the entryway above us. Astor.
“What are you doing here?” I yell as I run toward him, other soldiers appearing behind him.
“They’re right behind us,” he gasps. “We need to find another way back to the surface.”
My eyes turn down hopeless, even as gunfire starts to blaze behind us where the creatures emerge in frenzied pursuit.
“There is no other way out,” I mumble under my breath.
As I utter those words, a light rumbling begins to hum all around us, steadily at first and slowly rising. Pieces of rock begin falling from the ceiling above, some of the heavier chunks breaking against the narrower causeways and sending pieces of them into the chasm beneath the room.
“Brace yourselves,” Kat orders. “It’s an earthquake.”
But as I look toward Helena, who is kneeling down, her open palm supporting her on the ground as her lips whisper something quietly, I realize that this quaking isn’t some natural occurrence at all. She is making it happen.
The creatures roar distinctly like they sense her power and are angry, pressing forward with even greater ferocity. The heavy gunfire continues, but they start making progress despite it. This is it, I think. Even Helena can’t stop them.
“There are too many,” one soldier panics.
“Don’t relent!” Kat yells.
“Ammo,” another calls out, prompting someone nearby to toss him a dark case containing more bullets.
Then, to my relief, the tunnel collapses in front of us, and we are suddenly safe. I stare in awe at Helena, who stands up slowly, elegantly, the quaking immediately ceasing. Kat, too, admires her, seeming to recognize why we’re still alive.
“They’re resourceful,” Helena says calmly. “They’ll find another way in.”
Brogan turns and gawks at her, mouth half-open. His eyebrows raise and his head tilts slightly, like a confused dog. Then he says something even more unexpected.
“So can you just zap us out of here?”
There’s a subtle humor to his voice, a little too much like he’s trying to cover up some amount of discomfort. If he didn’t believe in powers beyond understanding, he certainly must now, though I can’t tell quite how he’s taking it.
“It’s not that simple,” Helena explains. “We were fortunate. I was just as likely to bring us crashing down as I was them, but I had no other choice.”
Things become quiet for a long moment after she speaks. But just as I’m about to break the silence, Brogan turns and charges toward one of the soldiers that accompanied Astor, grabbing him and slamming him up against a wall.
“I suppose you were just on patrol,” Brogan says sternly, receiving an amused grin from the soldier.
“And if we were?” he replies playfully, then shoving Brogan back. “After the breach you found was reported, the council wanted us close by just in case—”
“In case we needed to call for help from someone we didn’t know was there,” Kat interrupts.
“You went radio silent,” the soldier refutes. “How would you know we didn’t try to reach out to you?”
“Why did you bring the child?” Brogan asks, calming down a little.
“We didn’t. He followed us. Quite a resourceful youth. We weren’t able to detect him until we were down here. He came running to help us when we got ourselves cornered.”
I smile at Astor, who grins slightly at the compliment.
But this brief reprise soon ends, ushered away by a strange scratching that starts sounding from the collapsed tunnel. Brogan and the soldier continue talking as I stare at the closed passageway. I can’t imagine what the creatures could do to get through such a barrier, but they seem to be trying.
“We don’t have much time,” Helena interrupts. “They will eventually find a way to us. They won’t stop until they do, no matter how long it takes. We have to get out.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Brogan asks skeptically.
She doesn’t answer, instead tilting her head down at the dark chasm beneath us.
“Do you have rope?”
We move carefully toward the walls of the large cavern, which slope down gradually until they edge off at a steep, seemingly endless drop into nothing. There, Kat uses a device from her pack to embed metal anchors into the rock.
“It goes down a couple hundred feet and then slopes into a large tunnel that rises and falls until it reaches the sea,” Helena instructs.
“Why have you never used it to escape?” a soldier asks, the one Brogan had interrogated whose name I now can see reads Dalton on his uniform.
“I was never able to make it there. The dark one who imprisoned me, Samael, was able to numb me so that I couldn’t get past him, though I tried many times.”
“Then how do you know where the pit leads?”
“There are things to see with other than your eyes,” she answers cryptically, then smirking at me.
I’m starting to sense what she perhaps means. I still don’t understand where she got her gifts from, but I am beginning to understand what it feels like to sense things beyond myself. Even now, I can sense the creatures above us and the progress they are making in clearing the debris away. I feel their bloodlust, their anger. It weighs me down, causing me to worry about what the mysterious being, Samael, meant when he said I was to be his replacement. I wish there were an escape from whatever is happening to me, but I feel the inevitable wrapping around me like the Necromancer’s cold fingers. I have walked too far down the path he made.
Despite that, I feel a subtle peace, even in the darkness that hovers around me, as I glance at Helena. Not in myself, but in her. She looks back warmly, though I can feel her studying me, perhaps starting to grasp what I already know. Yet, she smiles anyway. She must still feel hope somehow.
“I’ll trail behind,” Kat says, looking at Dalton.
He eyes her suspiciously as she hands him the rope.
“My team will set up explosives in case they br
eak through,” she continues.
“Very well,” Brogan says, taking the rope from Dalton and latching it to his belt. “My men will take the lead. Yours will follow.”
Dalton nods, and Brogan begins repelling into the dark below. The rest of his men follow quickly after him. Astor, Helena, and I then go next, trailed closely by Dalton and the several others who are with him.
My visor turns back on when we get low enough, the light above a distant spec. I was just getting used it, a welcome change in this otherwise shadowy subterranean maze. Still, it’s nice to be able to see despite the dark, though the images on the visor remain somewhat distorted, making it hard to move unhindered in the uneven terrain as we start walking.
“Light up a flare,” Brogan orders.
One of his soldiers pulls something out of his bag and ignites it. I immediately recognize the pinkish-red flame it produces, the same kind that Yori and Wade used when they trapped the draeg in that marshland oasis. I am entranced by its glow, my mind wandering back to the world I came from and my heart sick at the thought of what is happening to the few people there I truly care about.
It is strange how memory and emotion are able to manipulate each other, as despite all of the doubt and distrust I feel concerning Wade, I genuinely miss him. Then there’s Yori and Julianne, for whom I greatly worry. I even worry what is happening with my sister Mariam, regardless of the horrible acts I know she has taken part in.
I feel like there is so much I could do to help them, things that I must to find a way to do. But I am helpless to act as I drift