Chapter 22

As we plummeted, I instantly knew something was wrong…mainly because we didn't land within a few seconds.

Instead, the world exploded into a burst of sparks. The breath was sucked from my throat, and panic surged through me as my entire body seemed to catch on fire. Stars pinwheeled all around me, giving me the sense of getting sucked into a wormhole of pure, incandescent light, and suddenly I knew—knew where we were heading. All of us.

Not to Hell. Not the In Between.

Something far crazier.

I turned midair and flailed for Simon's hand, roaring at him incoherently. He understood enough that he pulled in Nikki and Nigel, and I caught Emilio, all of us huddling together in a human cannonball as we fell and fell and fell. When we finally crashed to the floor, I expected my heart would explode along with the rest of my body. But we'd made it. All of us. And no one had had to be spiked bodily to me to come along for the ride.

Maybe Armaeus had amped me after all, juicing me into full Uber-alternate-universe rideshare status. Or maybe your first trip to Atlantis was always the hardest.

"Sweet Mother Mary on a tricycle. That hurt," Nikki groaned, rolling over to sprawl spread-eagle on the tile flooring.

I peered down, my mind too scrambled to make sense of what I was seeing smashed up against my cheekbone for a second. Tile?

Oh, yeah. Tile. The richly inlaid tiled floor of a civilization whisked out of existence, suspended in time and space. I rolled to my back as well and peered up at the pinhole light in the ceiling, dread gathering within me. It had been night when we'd fallen through, but the light that now shone down in a narrow beam was decidedly sunlight. How far had we actually fallen? And when all this was over, would I have enough strength to get everyone back home?

"We are dead, we are dead, this is Hell, we are dead," moaned Emilio on the other side of the shaft of light, as he curled himself into a tight ball.

Nigel, at his side, nudged him. "Snap out of it, boyo. If we're in Hell, we're going to need everyone to help get us out."

"But we can't be in Hell," Nikki managed from her sprawled position on the floor. "Sara and Simon are here."

"It's not Hell," I began, but my words were barely a whisper, barely audible to me through the pounding in my brain.

Beside me, Simon sat up and peered around with definite interest. "You really think this is Hell?" he asked. "I would have expected it to be, I don't know, warmer."

He flicked on his device, but nothing happened, and he frowned at it, giving it a good shake. Everything about his demeanor expressed confusion.

"What the…?" he muttered. "This device is certified in three dimensions. Like, it should even work in the In Between." He glanced up at me. "Maybe we are in Hell."

"We're not in Hell," I repeated, louder this time. "We're…you know, first things first. Where is Roland?"

Simon waved his no-longer-blinking box at me. "I would love to be able to help you out with that question, but it seems I've lost my tracking device. So unless the cards have anything else to share with us, I think we're out of luck other than what our own physical senses are willing to share."

I rolled to my side and saw I'd dropped the opal ring in the fall. It now lay in the pool of sunlight, seeming to pulse slightly. I shimmied over to it, scooped it up, and hauled myself to my feet. If this was Atlantis, and I was almost sure it was, we needed to get moving. "It's warm to the touch, but not as hot as it should have been given the fire show we just went through."

"That was pretty radical, I gotta admit," Simon said. He craned his neck to one side, then the other, stretching out the kinks.

"How is it daylight?" Nikki asked, abruptly sitting up and staring at the pinhole in the ceiling. "Ain't nobody gonna tell me we fell through that tiny little hole. Unless it's like a mile up, and I'm not quite getting that sense."

"Agreed," Nigel said, standing and helping Emilio to his feet. The guide immediately started rocking back and forth, his mouth moving in some sort of soundless prayer.

"Okay, okay, let's figure this out," Simon said. "What do we know about Hell—"

"It's. Not. Hell," I said again, this time with enough finality that everyone shut up and looked at me—except for our traumatized guide. I pointed at Emilio. "Do you need to rest?"

"No, no, I am good. Very good," he assured us hurriedly, as if he ran the risk of being left behind if he gave a different answer.

"The shaman told you nothing about this?" I asked him, and he shook his head.

"No. She said if the goddess smiled upon us and granted us entry into her domain, we would see riches untold and images not revealed to the human eye for millennia." He shrugged. "But she was pretty drunk at that point. I didn't think too much of it."

"So where are we, Sara?" Nigel asked, peering into the shadows beyond the pool of light. "Do you know for sure?"

"I…have a suspicion. But I've only been here once." I found myself strangely loath to say the name of the ancient city out loud. It was so laden with mythology, mysticism, and flat-out fantasy that it seemed almost a joke, even in my line of work.

Ever attuned to me, Nikki gasped. "Oh my gawd. It's Atlantis, isn't it?" she demanded, her eyes going saucer-wide as I turned toward her. "Where you came back from stuck full of weapons like a Sara-upholstered pincushion."

"What—" Nigel choked as he turned to me, nearly dropping the newly shocked Emilio, as Simon whirled around, his delighted laughter rolling through the space.

"Seriously, Atlantis? This is so cool! But where's Roland? He was supposed to be, like, right beneath us." As he spoke, Simon pulled his small waist pack around, rummaging through it and pulling out a small rectangular unit. He moved into the light and stared down at the small device in his hand, then breathed out a hushed breath.

"It just spins," he said.

I moved over to him and saw he'd pulled out a small analog compass. Not a bad idea, but he was right. The dial on the compass spun in long lazy circles, never finding its North Star.

"Nifty," I sighed. "What else do you have in that pack? Any matches, lighter, flares?"

As Simon rummaged, Emilio piped up, his voice only sounding slightly strangled. "I have flares, a battery-operated torch, handheld torches that are more like tapers for a limited amount of light—or could be used as fire starters."

I nodded. "Good. See if you can get the battery-operated flashlight to work."

Of course it didn't, but the matches lit, the burst of light undetectable in the stream of sunlight.

Even better, the match remained lit once we took it out of the cone of illumination.

"Okay, it's good to know that we've got some options, but I don't want to use them unless we need it. Blow it out for now. Simon, same thing goes with anything in your kit. Don't try to mess with it. Anything that triggers magic could be tracked."

"Roger that," Simon said.

I gestured us forward. "Let's head out. Straight line, keep close beside each other, whoever hits a wall first, be sure to let the rest of us know."

We moved ahead, hands out, the dim light provided by the hole of sunlight diminishing rapidly until we were cloaked in gloom.

"Nice floor," Nikki observed as we crept forward. "I would have expected it not to be in such great shape, you know, given the last time Atlantis threw a party."

"You don't know," Simon countered. "They could have an entirely new standard for maintenance down here."

It all smacked a little of gallows humor, but in another dozen steps, Nigel humphed. "Well. Here we go, then. Wall."

A second later, we all encountered the same obstruction.

"More inlaid tile," Nikki observed, her fingers moving over the wall. "No discernible pattern, but somebody spent some time on their interior décor. Seems kind of a shame to leave it in the dark like this."

"There's probably a good reason for that, and not one we're going to like," Nigel commented drily.

"I've got a doorway," Simon said. "We go in? Or, I guess…out?"

"We go through," I agreed.

The moment we stepped through the door, however, everything changed. Sconces lit up in a parade line down the long hallway, visibly brightening the corridor, while behind us, the entryway we'd just cleared—disappeared. Nothing but a flat wall of rock remained.

"You know, I generally like to be in charge of my own search and rescue mission," Nikki complained. "Not herded around like ducks."

"No kidding," I muttered. Any further conversation was halted as a low moan rolled down the hallway.

I shot a glance at Nigel. "Did that sound like a Roland Franklin moan to you?"

He shrugged. "It sounds like somebody's not having a very good day, whoever it is."

We moved on, picking up the pace, none of us missing the fact that as we passed each of the sconces, they winked out again. "Well, someone's doing that, even if it isn't Roland," Nikki muttered.

"It's not even that impressive magic when you think about it," Simon countered. "Illusion magic doesn't take a lot of energy, especially with a captive audience."

"Yeah, but we're all seeing the same thing," Nikki said. "That's gotta count for something."

Another moan, closer this time, stopped the argument before it could get truly started.

"That is sounding a little bit more like Roland," Nigel said.

Emilio nodded quickly.

"Very much so. He is an old man. Tough, but old."

The passageway split to either side ahead of us, the lights extending to the right while darkness reached out to the left.

Nigel hesitated, glancing at me, and I nodded.

"We go in together," I said, and the five of us turned sharply left, piercing the veil of darkness.

A bright light flashed, momentarily blinding us. When it cleared, we could see our target easily. A bulky white-haired man, lying on a low pallet in the center of the room, guarded by a dozen honest-to-God…wolves.

"The guardians of the goddess," Emilio gasped, and the only reason he didn't drop to his knees was because Nigel caught him in time.

"Act like you've been here before," Nigel muttered. "Even if you haven't."

Emilio stiffened, his breath coming quickly. "Old magic," he whispered. "Very old. The guardians of the goddess haven't ever been seen by human eyes—only in stories and legend."

"Well, if you're telling me these guys are gonna turn into big strapping men under the light of the full moon, I am totally dead," Nikki put in.

As if he'd finally heard us, Roland's newest groan turned into a rasping cough.

"I knew you bastards couldn't stay away," the older man gasped, struggling to sit up. "You've gone and hung the Moon, haven't you?"