Page 220 of Empire of Shadows

The cavern had been a death trap a minute before. Now it was quiet save for the soft rush of the falling rain. The water poured down in a thick, wild curtain, accented by the boom of more thunder overhead.

The last remnants of the debris sizzled as Adam and Ellie picked their way along. They had just managed to reach the door when the flames behind them guttered, dropping them once more into darkness.

Ellie put her hand to the wood and felt across the surface.

A streak of lightning from the storm above them cast a distant, purple flash through the cavern.

She set her hand to the slender gap of the keyhole.

“Give me the knife,” she said.

Adam’s fingers brushed her arm, and then followed the length of it down.

“Let me,” he said, and Ellie pulled away.

She heard the scrape of metal, and then the grate of something turning. She took a quick step back as Adam yanked the hatch up in front of her.

“I’ve got it,” Adam said from the darkness beside her. “Feel your way in. I’ll follow.”

Ellie’s fingers danced out before her to find the edges of the opening. She stepped inside—and immediately began to slip.

“Adam!” she yelped—and plummeted down a smooth, slick tunnel.

She heard his rough curse… and then the thud of the door as he plunged after her.

?

Forty-One

The tunnel launchedEllie into a jumbled pile of rubble.

She bit out a curse as she landed and felt new bruises spring to life on her skin. The space around her was unimpeachably black.

Ellie struggled to stand, but the loose mess of the ground beneath her shifted. She barely managed to scramble out of the way before Adam crashed into the place where she’d been lying a moment before.

The rubble clattered in protest at his arrival. It sounded oddly hollow.

Ellie crawled toward the spot where she had heard him land.

“Ow,” Adam grunted. His hands fumbled for her through the darkness. One of them grasped an arm. The other one latched onto a shin. “Ellie?”

“It’s me,” she replied as she tried to figure out which end of him was up.

Her hand found stubble, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

Awkwardly, she regained her feet, and then caught herself against Adam as the ground continued to clatter and roll under her boots.

“What the hell are we standing on?” Adam demanded.

Echoes told her that this space was smaller than the one they had just left. Water trickled through it somewhere.

Ellie reached down, waving her hand around until it brushed against part of the debris. She grasped the piece of rubble and lifted it blindly before her.

The object in her hand was too light and smooth to be stone. It was the size of a small melon.

Ellie ran her fingers over its contours. They were round as a child’s ball… until her fingers dipped into a sudden recess.

That, too, was round, as was a second recess that lay right beside it.

---