Jessica Andersen - Dawnkeepers

She was only maybe a yard or two down the tunnel when the jangle she’d thought was tension grew to a rumble, then a roar.

Pressure slammed into her from all sides, forcing the air from her lungs, and she scrambled to keep hold of her pony bottle even as she turned to retreat. But Nate was blocking the way, urging her on, so she kept going, swimming deeper into the cave system as the water began to boil, then shake. Only it wasn’t the water shaking, she realized a heartbeat later. The rocks around them were trembling, and the tunnel itself.

Earthquake!

Panicked, Alexis kicked for all she was worth, but up and down had gotten scrambled in her brain. She couldn’t see, couldn’t tell where anything was, where she should be going as the water swept her along. Then a thick stone column appeared out of nowhere, inches from her face. Screaming bubbles, she backpedaled, but Nate ran into her from behind and the world shifted hard. She slammed into the stalagmite and saw stars.

She heard Nate shout her name through bubbles and water. Then he was there, grabbing her, hanging on to her as the world went mad around them.

Up was down and down up. Something slammed into her upper arm and she gasped with pain, only then realizing that they weren’t underwater anymore, that Nate was dragging her out of the temple pool, onto the narrow stone shelf, which heaved and plunged with the temblor. They were both working by feel; her headlamp and knapsack were gone.

“Hang on!” He pushed her away from the water and she bumped into a wall. Scrabbling with her fingers, she tried to find something to grab on to, some sort of anchor against the mad pitch of the surface beneath her. She found an edge, a handhold, and latched on, only then realizing that it was the stone altar, that they were on the wider platform at the short end of the narrow room. But the platform didn’t seem as wide as it should have; water touched her toes, then her ankles.

“Nate!” she cried. “The water’s rising!”

The earthquake faded, quieting the rumbling roar. Which was worse, in a way, because then there was silence, broken only by the sound of water trickling nearby.

Nate didn’t answer.

She strained toward the pool, screaming, “Nate!”

There was a splash in answer, then his voice. “Here. I’m here.” Coughing, he dragged himself up onto the platform—she tracked his movement by the slap of displaced water and the racking coughs, which echoed in the darkened stone chamber. “Sorry I scared you.” Breathing hard, he joined her on the narrow ledge. “Come on.” He took her hand and tugged. “Water’s rising. We should get higher.”

Together they climbed up onto the carved throne. As Alexis huddled against Nate’s solid bulk, she couldn’t help thinking that the throne had probably doubled as a sacrificial altar. Was that the end that awaited them?

Fear reached up to grab her by the throat, thinning her breath in her lungs. The water noise was increasing by the moment, going from a trickle to a steady stream, warning that they weren’t safe yet.

Far from it.

“The quake must’ve broken through to another waterway higher up than this one,” Nate said, his voice a painful-sounding rasp. He shoved something into her hand. “Take this.”

It was one of the flashlights. Relieved, Alexis fumbled it on. When the cone of yellow-white light sprang to life, she turned it toward Nate. He was sopping wet and bleeding from a cut above one eye.

He’d lost his goggles but somehow kept his headlamp; it sagged down over one of his ears and had a cracked lens, and gods only knew whether it still worked. A huge rip cut across his Kevlar vest, probably where he’d been bashed into the rocks as she had been, and the tear drove home the fact that they’d likely both be dead if they hadn’t been wearing their vests. Which was a hell of a thought.

“Nice job hanging on to your knapsack,” she said, nodding at the sodden lump.

He rummaged through it for a second. “Actually, I think this one’s yours; it banged into me and I grabbed on. Same difference, though. Flashlight, satellite phone that won’t do jack underground, weapons, and . . . water?” He pulled out a bottle of springwater and sent her a disgusted look, then pointedly glanced down below, where the water level was halfway up the carved throne and rising.

“What, you thought we’d run out or something?”

She sniffed. “You want to drink out of a river in a foreign country and get parasites, go ahead. I’d rather bring my own.”

“I don’t know about you, but I think I already swallowed a couple of gallons, thanks.”

She exhaled. “Okay, fine. It was stupid; I get it. Let’s move on.”

“Not stupid.” He touched her cheek, her chin, his fingers warm despite the chill of the water and the soggy air. “Very you.”

She wasn’t sure how to take that, didn’t trust the skirr of warmth that ran up her arm at the contact, or the contemplative look in his eyes. A piece of her said that if he was being nice to her now, when all they’d done was bicker or avoid each other for the past several days, that meant he didn’t think they had a chance. Her voice was low and shaky when she said, “The tunnel collapsed, didn’t it? There’s no way out.”

“I’ll have to go back under and see,” he said. Then, when she just kept looking at him, he nodded.

“Yeah. I think so.”

“The map didn’t show another exit.”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t one.” But his optimism was false and forced, and after a moment he let his hand fall away from her face and drew a deep breath. “I’m going back down. If nothing else, I think I know where I dropped my pony bottle.” Not that there was any guarantee it’d still be where he’d left it, they both knew.

“There could be aftershocks.”

“Probably will be,” he agreed, but didn’t say anything else, because that didn’t change the situation.

Alexis turned her flashlight out over the gallery. The beam showed that the water was most of the way to the top of the throne, with more streaming in every second, coming from a big split in the ceiling about halfway down the wall. It must’ve been a trick of the light that made the carved figures look as if they too were staring up at the cracked spot.

“Take this.” She held the flashlight out to Nate. “You’ll need it to check the tunnel entrances.”

“It’s water-resistant, not waterproof,” he reminded her. “Might not survive.” He didn’t correct her use of the word “entrances,” plural, because they both knew their best chance of making it out was getting into the library that—hypothetically, anyway—led off the dead-end loop, and hoping to hell it had a set of stairs leading out.

“We’ll have to chance it,” she said to both points, though the idea of being without light brought a serious shiver, as did the idea of swimming into the booby-trapped tunnel. “Besides, fireballs aren’t the best light source, but they’re better than nothing.”

Rueful awareness flickered in his eyes. “Fireball. Shit.” They’d both forgotten about the magic during the quake. A barrier spell would’ve gone a long way toward blunting its impact.

“We’ve only been practicing half a year.” She lifted her shoulder in a half shrug. “It’s not always going to come naturally.” Which was an understatement. Even with the goddess’s power, her magic tended to feel awkward and unnatural.

For that matter, where had the goddess been during the earthquake? she wondered. There had been no flash of gold and rainbows, no impulse to protect herself from the danger. Yet when she sent her senses to the back of her skull, she could feel the connection, alive and well. Which meant either the goddess hadn’t thought she was in true danger . . . or she’d wanted the danger.