Now that we knew there weren’t rushing rapids or anything else dangerous below the hole, I climbed down the sticky duct tape rope without help. It was darker than expected at the bottom—Simon had moved farther down the river with his light. I hissed when my feet hit the cold water, the damp chill penetrating my shoes immediately, and I almost yanked them out again. I knew the river flowed out of that lake and wasn’t glacier water, but it was a degree of cold I could only appreciate when the outside temperatures read in the 100s.
Simon was moving farther away, clearly drawn by something, so I gritted my teeth and dropped the rest of the way into the water. I managed to keep from cursing, but only because I remembered those two riders were around there somewhere. And also because Simon was doing this in his socks and sandals.
I pulled out my flashlight and let go of the rope. Smooth continuous stone lay beneath my feet rather than small, shifting rocks and pebbles. I slipped within the first two steps. Copious amounts of flailing kept my head from going under—barely—but I had to bite back curses again. I groped my way to the nearest wall to brace myself. Damp cool rock met my fingers. The lack of vegetation growing out of the cracks made me wonder if the passage flooded regularly. Hopefully not while intrepid explorers were visiting.
With one hand on the wall and one gripping a flashlight, I waded after Simon. He’d disappeared around a bend, though his light reflected off the slick walls, guiding me forward. The darkness soon grew oppressive, with the water particularly black as it flowed around me. I couldn’t see a thing under it and had to hold back a squeal as something brushed past my leg. When I jerked away, I slipped again. Only my hand on the wall kept me from pitching over backward.
“Just a fish,” I whispered.
I glanced back at the hole in the ceiling, at the beam of daylight flowing down from it, and was reassured by the presence of the rope dangling there. We could slosh back and climb out of the river anytime we needed to.
As I continued on, the ceiling rose, and I ran my flashlight along it. A few bats hung from roots that had found their way through the rock, the tips dangling a few inches down from above.
Simon hadn’t gone around a bend, I saw as I walked farther, but into a cave. Not a cave, I realized with a start. A cavate, a manmade cave dwelling. A row of them lined the wall, the openings about three feet wide, four feet tall, and a meter above the water level. The walls around the entrances appeared to be sandstone, with layers of granite above and below.
The discovery floored me, and I forgot about the icy water and other dangers. Arizona possessed cavates aplenty, with a whole mess of them over in the Verde Valley, but they were high up on cliffs, not underground.
I scrambled for the largest entrance, pausing only to touch a few old blocks, part of a masonry wall that would have once made the entrance more of a frame than a doorway. Once inside, I found myself in an oblong space about fifteen feet long with openings to other chambers on each side. The entry room was tall enough to stand in, though Temi would have had to duck. There weren’t any furnishings remaining or, at first glance, evidence of habitation. My first thought was that looters had been through, but it might be simpler than that: any time the river flooded, it would clean out the interior. What would have prompted people to scrape out dwellings down here? Hostile neighbors, I supposed.
“Amazing,” I whispered, turning a full circle. “I wonder if any archaeologists are aware of this spot.”
If the other rooms were as bare as this one, there might not be many clues left, but the simple existence and unique placement would raise a lot of questions. The answers might be somewhere within the complex.
I walked across a flat floor made of a rock and plaster aggregate to poke my flashlight into one of the side chambers. A bedroom most likely, though it was as devoid of remains as the main room. It was interesting though that the original floors were visible, that they hadn’t been coated with silt from floods. If these cavates were as old as the Verde Valley ones, they’d date back to the 1300s or 1400s. Without artifacts to offer more solid clues, I’d only be guessing. People might have come along much more recently and emulated the style.
After exploring a few more rooms, I was heading back to the entrance when Simon jumped inside, almost startling the pee out of me.
“You gotta see this,” he whispered, then scrambled back out again without waiting for me to ask questions.
If I hadn’t hurried, I would have missed seeing him duck into another cavate, three holes down. There was enough of a ledge that I could make my way to it without stepping back into the water. I shivered though, with my sodden jeans clinging to my skin. The air temperature was cool down here, far chillier than the sun-warmed forest above.
“Simon?” I asked.
He wasn’t in the main room, but three doorways opened in the walls.
A hand thrust out of the one in the back. “This way,” he whispered.
That whisper was telling. He must have found sign of the riders we were following rather than some interesting relic he wanted to share.
Keeping my flashlight beam toward the floor, so its glow wouldn’t travel far, I crept after him. He stood in a small room with a depression in the floor that would have been used as a fire pit; a hole in the ceiling must have served as a smoke vent. The decor wasn’t what held Simon’s attention though. In the far back corner, a hole dropped away, a steaming hole.
“All right,” I murmured. “That’s not normal.”
Simon knelt and prodded the edge, turning wide eyes toward me. “It’s hot.”
“As in from hot springs?” I scratched my head. Arizona had some hot springs, but I wasn’t aware of any near Prescott. Of course, I hadn’t been aware of any cave dwellings either.
Simon shook his head. “No, hot, like burning. Come feel.”
I knelt beside him and touched the rim of the hole—it was about four feet wide and curved out of sight under the wall. The stone wasn’t hot enough that my hand would burn, but it was unpleasantly warm.
“Weird. Heat from friction?”
“I think they just made this hole,” Simon whispered. “Burned it right into the stone. Like the Horta in that episode of Star Trek where miners were getting killed by that wicked acid.”
“You’re seeing aliens in every corner of the woods this week, aren’t you?”
“I didn’t say it was a Horta, just that they’d done something like the Horta.”
“Uh huh.”
As we knelt there talking, the smoke lessened, making me realize how recently the hole had been created. I wondered how they’d done it. There wasn’t any rubble or other debris. Could they truly have incinerated the stone? Even then, wouldn’t there be ashes or some sort of residue?
I crouched and shone my flashlight into the hole, but the curve a few feet down made it impossible to see far without crawling in.
“Should we...?” Simon waved to the hole.
I envisioned smacking into the two riders while they were on their way out. Somehow I doubted they’d built hiding spots into their little tunnel.
“We could wait for them to come out,” I suggested.
“What if they come out somewhere else? We’d be waiting a long time. Temi would get bored and hungry up there. She’d eat all of your little boxes of cereal, and you’d have to replenish your hiking supplies.”
“I don’t think pro athletes eat Fruity Hoops. The packets of almond butter might be in danger though.”
“There you go: a reason we should follow them.” Simon touched the walls again and must have decided his sandals were unlikely to melt off, for he stepped inside. If he was willing to lead, I supposed I could go after him...
He scooted forward in something between a crouch and a crawl. I stepped in after him, using my hands to keep from plopping onto my butt. The slick chute reminded me of one of those tubular playground slides. I imagined us both slipping, then caroming down the tunnel to dump onto the floor of a subterranean chamber, right at El
eriss’s feet.
A few feet ahead of me, Simon halted and turned off his flashlight. I turned off mine as well, though I kept my thumb on the switch. Stygian blackness surrounded us. I knew we were only a few meters below the surface, but the utter darkness made it feel like we were miles down with millions of tons of rocks overhead waiting to crush us, and that we had no hope of seeing daylight again.
Way to be melodramatic, Del, I told myself. I inhaled deeply, seeking a calm state, or at least a state that wasn’t tinged with claustrophobic panic. The damp mustiness of the caves filled my nostrils, along with whatever they’d used to burn through the rock—the scent reminded me of the chemical smells of the short-lived meth lab that had cropped up down the street from the dorms at school.
Before I could ask what Simon had seen or heard, the sound of voices floated up the passage. They were familiar voices speaking in that unfamiliar language.
“Back,” Simon whispered.
I was already scooting out of the hole. I moved slowly enough that I didn’t trip, but the darkness was as absolute at the top, and it disoriented me so I couldn’t remember the direction of the door. Simon brushed past me. He turned on his flashlight again, this time with a red lens over the bulb. It provided enough light to find the way to the doorway and the cavate entrance beyond, but it didn’t carry far. With luck, the men behind us wouldn’t catch up and see it.
We started to head back upriver, but hadn’t gone past more than two of the cavate openings when the voices grew clear and distinct behind us. Simon pulled me through one of the entrances and extinguished his light again. We patted our way to either side of the door, and I pressed my back against the wall.
The voices continued on, calm and unhurried. I hoped that meant they hadn’t heard us.
I kept waiting for a lamp or flashlight to brighten the air outside of the cave. It didn’t. They couldn’t possibly be navigating the narrow ledge in the dark... could they? No, they must have night-vision goggles. Although didn’t those need some ambient light to work?
Two splashes sounded right outside our cavate. I shouldn’t have peeked my head out—what exactly did I think I would see in the dark?—but some instinctual curiosity as to whether or not they’d fallen in prompted me to do so before my brain thought better of it. I saw one thing before jerking my head back, actually four things. Two violet eyes and two blue eyes. Glowing in the freaking dark. What the hell?
A pancake couldn’t have been pressed flatter to the wall than my back was. My heart pounded against my ribs, the image of those glowing eyes burned into my own retinas. They’d been out in the center of the river, the violet pair turned toward the blue pair as the men continued their conversation. Men. Was that the right word? I didn’t know why, but for some reason, glowing eyes disturbed me more than the idea of a monster.
The voices faded until only the sound of running water remained.
“So Simon,” I said, the pitch of my voice uneven, “what episode of Star Trek has aliens with eyes that glow in the dark?”
At that point, I wasn’t sure if I was joking or not. I’d never once entertained the idea of aliens or extraterrestrial influence for the weirdness of the monster—like I’d said, scientists were doing all sorts of funky things with gene manipulation these days—but this was different. Nobody was supposed to be making mutant people. Even if somewhere, some unscrupulous Dr. Frankenstein was, those guys appeared to be in their twenties. I sincerely doubted the technology had been that advanced more than two decades earlier. I tried to remember when the first sheep had been cloned. Back in the 90s sometime. But those riders weren’t clones. They were... what? I didn’t know. Genetically enhanced human beings? If they had see-in-the-dark eyes, who knew what else they might have?
“Gary Mitchell’s eyes glowed silver in Where No Man Has Gone Before,” Simon said.
“What?” My mind had been zipping from thought to thought so quickly that I’d forgotten what I’d asked and it took me a moment to remember.
“It was the second Star Trek pilot. Remember the one where the cast hadn’t yet been solidified? And they were down on that planet with the two officers who developed psionic powers? Their eyes glowed silver. I don’t remember if they were shown glowing in the dark ever, but uhm... why do you ask?”
“No particular reason.” My short laugh had a hysterical edge to it. I clasped my hand over my mouth to muffle the noise, afraid it would travel. Those two might not have noticed me sticking my head out, but they’d spot our duct tape rope when they got to the hole. I stiffened. Temi would still be up there, and they might not look kindly upon her after the fire extinguisher incident. “We better follow them.”
CHAPTER 14
The duct tape rope was gone.
“Not good,” Simon whispered.
Daylight still entered through the hole in the ceiling, but less of it than before. The sun must be dropping behind the trees up there. Even though I had no idea what those two... people had done down here, besides burning a hole into the rock, I was more than ready to get out of the forest. That would, however, prove difficult if we couldn’t escape the passage.
“Any idea how far the river flows before it pops above ground again?” Simon asked.
“Not until Wickenburg. And just in case you’re thinking of taking a swim, the odds of the ceiling remaining high with a breathable supply of air the whole way are not good.”
“No wonder this isn’t on that site for Arizona’s best tubing spots.”
I closed my eyes, trying to listen for voices up above. Several moments had passed since we’d last heard the words of Eleriss and Jakatra. After our brief encounters, it was strange to think of them by first name, but I couldn’t consider them normal human beings now, so calling them “men” seemed even odder.
“Temi?” I risked calling up.
Somewhere high above a peregrine falcon screeched. I tried to decide if that was a bad omen or not. At least it wasn’t a vulture.
“Temi?” I called again, louder this time.
Simon sprang up, trying to touch the walls at the bottom of the hole. He didn’t come close, managing only to get both of us wetter.
“You jump like a geeky white guy,” I said.
“Yeah, there weren’t a lot of NBA teams scouting my high school.”
“Is this the high school you’ve mentioned before that had a hundred and fifty students?”
“That’s the one,” Simon said.
“Did it have a basketball team?”
“Of course. Football too. If we hadn’t had jocks, who do you think would have tormented me between classes?”
“The girls you tried to woo by quoting Star Trek episodes?”
“No, I would have been happy for such attention from them.”
When my calls didn’t produce a rope-dropping savior, I reluctantly uncoiled my whip. It was already wet from my trek through the river, and I didn’t have any confidence in my ability to crack it through a hole, much less get the popper to wrap around something up there, but I might as well try. It’d distract me from how cold my lower body was—not to mention the slimy something that had just brushed past my hip.
I prodded around with a foot, searching for a rock to stand on, something that would get more of my body out of the water. “Can you give me a boost?” I finally asked.
Simon eyed the whip dubiously. “Do you promise not to hit me?”
“I’ll try.”
“That wasn’t a yes, was it?”
“Sorry, this is going to be awkward. I might hit myself.”
“That doesn’t make me feel as good about being whipped as you’d think,” Simon said.
“I’m not even sure the hole is wide enough for what I plan. Boost, please.”
Simon grumbled under his breath but clasped his hands together to make a step for me. He sank down, hissing at the coldness of the water, so I could clamber from there to his shoulders. When he stood, I could reach the bottom of the hole. Too bad the stone wa
s too slick to climb. At least I could brace myself with one hand.
I’d never tried to snap the whip directly over my head, and it took me a minute to find a position where I could send the thong through the hole. It took several more minutes to figure out a technique that would get the popper and the fall out of the hole up above. At last, the whip made a muted crack. Now if I could find something for it to latch onto... Unfortunately, our friends had cleared away all the foliage around the hole. But there’d been a stump a couple of feet up the bank. Maybe...
“Not to complain,” Simon said, “but every time you snap that thing, your clod-stompers grind into my shoulder.”
“While I appreciate your uncomplaining support in holding me up, I feel compelled to—” I snapped the whip again, knowing it’d be luck and repetition rather than skill that wrapped it around the stump, if I managed the feat at all. “Compelled to point out that they’re running shoes. The heel isn’t hard.”
“It is when it’s under a hundred and—”
“Careful,” I said, as the whip, failing to grasp anything, tumbled back down to be coiled again. “I might forget our deal not to hit you.”
“Right.”
I snapped the whip again. This time, to my surprise, it didn’t flop limply back into our hole. It’d caught on something. I was about to give it a tug to see if it would support our weight, when someone up there finally spoke.
“That would be my ankle,” Temi said.
“Oops,” Simon said.
“Temi, is it safe up there?” I asked. “Can you lower our rope?”
“Your rope was... incinerated. I’ll see if I can tie the whip to this stump.”
“Incinerated?” Simon asked.
I thought of the glowing eyes. What else could Eleriss and Jakatra do? I let go of the handle to give Temi some slack.
“Can you reach it?” she asked a moment later.
“I can, though we’re going to have to think of something else to pull up Simon. He won’t be able to reach it. It seems he wasn’t on his high school basketball team.”