The Sweetest Burn
Page 54“So, you’re the one who took the staff from the Milwaukee chapel and left the tablet behind as a clue?” Jasmine asked.
Edgar smiled. “Yes. And my predecessor was the one who journeyed with it from France to its two homes in America.”
“Why move it so much?” I asked, glancing around at the mine. “At the bottom of this place seems pretty safe to me.”
“We do as we’re told,” Edgar replied. “And the Messenger is never wrong. Shortly after it was moved from here to France, the mine flooded, so it would have been damaged had it remained. Then the Messenger told us to move it with the chapel from France to America. Less than twenty years later, Nazis overran France, and among their many cruelties, they were obsessed with stealing religious relics. Then the New York chateau burned in the 1960s and the Messenger told us to take the staff along with the chapel to Wisconsin. Ten years ago, when its responsibility fell to me, I obeyed the Messenger’s instructions to bring it back home and leave the tablet as a clue for you.”
“Who’s this Messenger that tells you what to do?” I asked, suspicion growing along with my anger.
Once again, Edgar looked surprised that I didn’t know. “Zacchaeus,” he said, calling Zach by his full name.
Adrian responded with a slew of curses that mirrored my thoughts exactly. Just wait until I saw that Archon again! He’d known all along where the staff was because he’s the one who’d been directing its movements for over two thousand years!
“Do not say such things,” Edgar gasped, staring at Adrian in horror. “Zacchaeus is an officer of the Most High!”
“You don’t know him like we do,” I said grimly. “He let us run around like chickens with our heads off for weeks when he knew where the staff was the whole time. Worse, people got kidnapped and killed from the demons following us. Had Zach just told us where it was, he could have prevented all that.”
“Damn right,” Jasmine muttered. Costa grunted in agreement.
Edgar looked distressed as he glanced back and forth between us. “You cannot mean that,” he finally said.
I let out a short laugh. “Sorry to disappoint you sooner rather than later, but I do.” Then, because he looked on the verge of either giving me a lecture or bursting into tears, I added, “Why don’t you take us down to the Russegger Chamber?”
“This way.”
* * *
THE ELEVATOR IN the Danilowitcz Shaft was the only direct way in or out of the lowest portion of the mine, and it took us over four hundred feet straight down into the darkness. By the time we stopped, my ears had popped several times. I moved my jaw around in an attempt to relieve the pressure, but the worst part was that the pressure was the only new thing I felt.
“How far away from it are we now?” I asked Edgar.
“It is about seventy meters ahead, in the old mining tunnel past the chambers,” he replied.
Since America was the only nation not on the metric system, I had no idea what that meant. “Two hundred feet,” Adrian translated, catching my questioning look.
I tried not to remind myself that I’d felt the staff’s former casings much sooner. Tried, and failed. Why wasn’t I feeling it yet? It had to be at least ten times more powerful than the stuff it had been wrapped in, and yet I felt nothing!
“Are you sure it’s still here?” I muttered under my breath.
Edgar heard that, and gave me a very offended look. “I have guarded it faithfully for the past twenty-five years.”
Half his life, judging from how old he looked. And since he’d come from a long, long, long line of Guardians, he obviously took his job very seriously. That meant slacking on his part wasn’t the problem. It must be me.
I took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly as we entered the chambers. Some of what we passed looked like science exhibits, with different types of salt, their ages and their chemical compositions behind glass walls. Others contained old machines and tools used in mining, and farther in were religious exhibits, like a wooden re-creation of the crucifixion. Through it all, I felt nothing...until we stepped into the mine tunnel.
Boom, boom, boom! went my hallowed sensor. Or maybe it was my heart. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. All I knew was that I was being yanked farther into the tunnel by a force I couldn’t see, but though invisible, that force had a stronger hold over me than anything tangible ever could.
“Let me go,” I heard myself snarl at Adrian, but he didn’t. After several hard shakes, I could finally make out his words.
“Ivy, listen to me! Costa checked the door to the mine. It was warded to mute the staff’s effects. That’s why you couldn’t feel it before, and why it hit you so hard all at once.”
“I had no idea,” I vaguely heard Edgar add. “Those markings have been there for centuries, but no one knew what they meant.”
Some of the fog left my mind, so I processed what they were saying, yet it did nothing to stop my need to go forward. I had to reach the staff. Not doing so made every muscle ache as though I were being beaten from the inside.
“Let go.” It was all I was capable of saying. If I could’ve caused the slingshot to come out, I might have started whipping Adrian with it. That’s how deep the need ran to reach it.
Adrian’s grip tightened on me instead. “I don’t think she can help herself from touching it,” he told Costa. “I’ll have to get her past the muters again, then go in for the staff alone.”
I was so appalled by this, my right hand connected with his jaw in a punch that rocked him backward. Still, he didn’t let go, and when I went for another punch, he grabbed my fist, knocking my legs out from under me at the same time.
“Nice one, dear,” he said through gritted teeth, “but we’re getting you out of here before you go full Ronda Rousey on me.”
“I cannot show the staff’s location to anyone except the Davidian,” Edgar insisted. “I’ve made vows.”
Adrian gave him a glare I only half saw because I was still trying to wrest free. “I made vows, too, and one of them tethered my soul to this woman’s, so you’re going to show me.”
A horrible, metallic screeching sound filled the air, followed by an explosion that rocked the ground beneath us and sent ominous clouds of dust raining from the roof.
“No!” Edgar shouted, running back toward the chambers.
Adrian picked me up and ran after him. I fought as if I were deranged until the moment we crossed the entryway to the mine shaft. Then my need to reach the staff evaporated as quickly as those phantom pains that had overtaken my body.
“I’m okay, put me down,” I urged, but Adrian ignored that, using his superior speed to race past Edgar and reach the first section of the chambers. A thick cloud of dust billowed out to meet us, and beyond that, more sounds of metal breaking followed by frightening tremors in the earth.
Pain shot up my arm and my tattoo suddenly glowed bright gold, lighting up the thick, chalky air around us. Adrian saw it and pivoted, reversing course so fast that it felt like my head might snap off from extreme whiplash. But in the next instant, two large snakes snapped their fangs at empty air instead of me, and as the dust cloud cleared, I saw the same snake-armed demon who’d tried to kill me weeks ago. Piotr was behind him, the old man looking all too smug, and when I saw dozens of eyes flashing through the dark, I knew that the snake-armed demon had brought friends. Lots of them.
“Adrian, Davidian,” Vritra said, satisfaction practically oozing from his tone. “We meet again.”
CHAPTER FORTY
“WHAT DID YOU DO?” Edgar yelled at Piotr.
The old man stared at him defiantly. “Ensured my future, something being a Guardian has never done. Now that I’ve proved my worth, I will be transformed, as I deserve.” ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">