Page 301 of Caelum

“If this is open to tourists, then how the hell are the Ghouls living there without interference?” Eren retorted.

“Only half of it is accessible to the public, and like the Temple of the Feathered Serpent, their dinner comes to them. Why wouldn’t they hang around?” Reed reasoned, his eyes on the ant farm-like layout of the underground city of caves.

“There are dozens of similar cities in the vicinity. This one even links up to another about five miles away via a tunnel.”

“So, this Erlik could be there? Jesus, when you said there were no specifics, you really fucking meant it,” I groused.

Samuel heaved his shoulders. “We can only start where the markings tell us. This is Derinkuyu. There’s one official entrance with five unofficial ones that are closed off now. But when you look at the city, you can see that an approach isn’t as difficult as it would have been back in the day.”

Another picture shot up, and the design of the town was so much like an anthill that I had to wonder what these ancient people had been smoking to come up with this concept. I wasn’t saying they were dumb, far from it, but they had some strange design ethics.

Underground, they’d chiseled out rooms that were interlinked via corridors. There were maybe ten of these chambers to a level, all interlinked by what were essentially ventilation shafts and wells. When you put the picture together, it was like something a doomsdayer would come up with while smoking a joint. Because the mass of chambers was boggling to behold.

And above the ground? The homes looked like upside-down ice cream cones with windows chiseled out.

“Are people still living there?” I questioned, uncertain because there appeared to be modern buildings interspersed among the ancient ruins. A lot of the anthill homes had been destroyed, which was what Samuel meant by the access points having changed over the years.

Not officially, but we’d been trained to seek out points ofinfiltration, and even as I scanned over the Google Maps’ images, a few leaped out at me.

“For sure. Twenty thousand people live aboveground now, and this is a major tourist attraction site for the region,” Samuel explained.

As we all stared at the pictures, Eren asked, “Think she’ll get us there?”

As one, we cut a look at the bedroom where she’d holed up in.

“I think whatever Eve sets her mind to,” Frazer said softly, “she’ll get her way.”

Looking at a Pack that was made up of men who’d once been my enemies and were now my brothers, I couldn’t do anything other than agree with him.

TWENTY-SIX

EVE

The helicopter ride set me on edge.

I didn’t like cars, hated boats, loathed planes, but helicopters? Worst of the bunch.

Unfortunately for me, my preferences weren’t considered, and since the situation was rather dire, it made sense.

Caelum’s jet enabled us to get to Ankara, and from there, one of its helicopters was waiting to take us to Kayseri, a thirty-minute ride from where we needed to be. But helicopters, with their god-awful vibrations that managed to offend everyone in the vicinity, would ruin our cloak-and-dagger approach.

Nicholas had a car waiting for us where the helicopter landed in a dust-strewn field atop crops that, had the farmers been tending, would have been destroyed.

As it stood, like everywhere else, it was a ghost town.

That was to our benefit, but it was creepy, and I was grateful for the backup Nicholas had insisted on as his price for helping us in this final battle against Erlik.

Of course, that wasn’t all he’d asked for, and in his shoes, I would have asked for more too. Didn’t mean I was going to give him what he wanted, even if he accepted us back into Caelum afterward.

Mouth pursing with disgust at his request, I let Reed enfold my hand in his. He tugged me along to the waiting SUVs and hefted me into the middle seat where he soon joined me.

It didn’t sit well with me that we were going to be split up. My Pack was made to be together, forged as one unit, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. These SUVs didn’t seat eight people, simple as that.

We set off down a regular road but swiftly turned off onto a dust-lined track. It was easy to see why the three-vehicle cavalcade had all looked wrecked. For all I knew, there could have been brand new vehicles hiding beneath the red mud spattered on the tires, the fenders, and lower halves of the bodies.

The track grew rocky and even messier as we traveled the thirty minutes from the helicopter’s drop off point to Derinkuyu. The driver was a local, a creature, and he glowered at us with an intense dislike that went above and beyond someone being pissed at being called in for a job on short notice.

“I can’t believe they blamed us for the infiltration when we were the ones who saved their asses,” Samuel grumbled from behind me.

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