Empire of Shadows (Raiders of the Arcana #1)

Thirty-Four

A few minutes earlier

Adam gaped at the glowing bone in Dawson’s hand, shocked speechless.

“Yes, well—I think that’s enough of that,” Dawson concluded and popped the thing—an arcanum, he had called it—back into the wooden box. He snapped shut the lid, cutting off the unnatural, blazing light.

It took Adam’s eyes another minute to adjust. The darkness had grown deeper.

Dawson returned the box to his pocket. He seemed to have forgotten the rifle, which hung loosely from his shoulder.

“The only other thing I will say on the subject for now is that our side, Mr. Bates, seeks the arcana for noble purposes,” he concluded.

“You mean, there’s more of them?” Adam burst out.

Dawson straightened self-importantly, though the weight of the gun still dragged him down a bit on one side.

“Of course!” he confirmed. “As an educated man, you must be familiar with the stories of powerful artifacts scattered through the historical and mythological record. We presume that the rest of what those old texts tell us holds at least a shadow of the truth of what passed in ancient times, yet we dismiss the more fantastical elements as fiction—but why should they be any different? It is only because our imaginations cannot expand to acknowledge the truth, even when it is staring us right in the face… and what potential that truth holds! Think of some of the objects you must have read about during your time in Cambridge—the death ray of Archimedes, which burned the ships at Syracuse. The spear of Cú Chulainn, which must strike and kill every target at which it is thrown. These are the powers of gods!”

Adam’s mind was reeling. He would’ve laughed Dawson out of the room… if he hadn’t seen that damned glowing bone for himself.

Dawson’s voice grew both lower and more intense as he plunged onward. “We live in a time when the British Empire has spread its peace and prosperity across the globe, and yet those very imperial holdings are the places where such artifacts are most likely to emerge. Simply imagine what chaos might result if they were to fall into the wrong hands, like some ignorant batch of farmers or… or revolutionaries.”

Dawson made the word sound like a disease.

“My fellows and I would see the arcana used to uphold the principles of law and order,” he continued, “of enlightenment over ignorance. I am sure you must agree that order is preferable to the sheer chaos that must result if such powerful objects are left scattered about the world willy-nilly!”

“Your fellows?” Adam echoed carefully.

“All in good time, Mr. Bates,” Dawson returned. “Should you prove your utility, then perhaps I might gain permission to reveal it all to you. For now, I am afraid you must proceed with me on trust.”

Adam’s temper flared, cutting through the haze of his shock.

Sure. Trust. Why wouldn’t Adam take the word of a bunch of guys who’d coerced him into helping them by threatening to cut up somebody he cared about?

“You there!” Dawson called.

Staines poked his head into the room a moment later, carrying the lantern.

“Summon those other two fellows, if you would. We are going to find our way inside this pyramid!” Dawson declared cheerfully.

“What do you mean—inside?” Adam returned.

Dawson blinked at him with surprise. He handed Staines back the rifle as Pacheco and Lopez returned.

“Into the interior of this structure, of course,” he explained. “That is where the most holy sanctum must be—and that is where we shall find what we are looking for!”

“Nobody’s ever found anything inside these pyramids except rubble,” Adam retorted.

“But why else would the people of Tulan have built them?” Dawson pushed back.

“Maybe they liked the view?” Adam said as his exasperation rose, driven by his already frayed nerves.

Dawson paled a little.

“No,” he concluded as he paced across the floor. “That can’t be right. If not within the pyramid of their greatest temple, then where else could they have possibly concealed the mirror? Why…” he paused and gave a nervous giggle. “Why, it could be absolutely anywhere if it isn’t here! Anywhere in this entire city complex. It could take months to search the whole of it.” His tone shifted to one of obvious panic. “We can’t possibly stay out here that long!”

“You could always go home,” Adam helpfully suggested.

Dawson flashed him a narrow, angry look. Clearly Adam had touched a nerve.

“That is not an option, Mr. Bates,” Dawson shot back thinly. “Which you would do best to remember if you wish to get out of this place alive. Search this room!” he ordered, waving a hand at the other men. “I want to know if you see any hint of a possible opening.”

Pacheco and Lopez exchanged a look before setting themselves to the task, peering carefully into corners and poking at the stones.

Adam stood back and watched.

Dawson studied the black mural, and then stalked back to the front chamber, muttering to himself as he tested every edge and corner. After a minute he came back and shot Adam a glare.

“Need I remind you that your continued value to this expedition depends upon your usefulness, Mr. Bates?” Dawson snapped. “Shall we see what happens when you are no longer of value?”

Adam was supposed to make himself useful by finding an entrance that didn’t exist. There was no secret chamber in this pyramid. As far as Adam had ever seen, Mesoamerican pyramids didn’t conceal chambered tombs like their Egyptian counterparts. Dawson was mixing up his continents.

He ground his teeth against the inanity of it. This was what he was being pushed around and threatened for?

Staines stood at Adam’s back with the rifle. He looked bored.

Could Adam do it? Could he pretend to hunt around the chamber like Pacheco and Lopez, who were currently exchanging low, dry whispers about el gringo loco? Would he play Dawson’s game in order to buy himself and Ellie a little more time?

Adam’s patience felt like the burnt end of a cigar. His mind still reeled with Dawson’s revelation that the magical gizmos of history might be more than just bedtime stories—and what the hell was he supposed to do with that?

He’d been playing this game for days now, and there had only ever been one way it was going to end.

He turned his gaze to the mural. The final panel of it was easier to see, now that Pacheco had brought the lantern. The figures that flanked the serpent king in that last great chamber weren’t the elegant nobles of the bas relief in the pass or the worshipers from the stela.

They were monsters.

Adam picked out the faces of lizards, jaguars, and insects—the rotting visage of a corpse and the stripped bone of a skull.

They were the same monsters he’d seen honored on carvings in Mayan ruins across the colony. Adam didn’t need to have read a bunch of books to recognize them for what they were—the gods of Hell.

The king held something in his arms. Adam knelt down for a closer look.

It was a child—a small, skinny little girl.

The guy had thrust a knife into her heart.

Blood poured from the wound, dripping onto the object that lay at the feet of the gods—a round, black disk.

The scene made for a hell of a contrast with the grace and beauty of the art Adam had seen in the pass.

His gaze dropped to the corpse on the floor. Maybe she had been some kind of priestess. The description felt right. He looked at the knife she still held in her hand.

What here would’ve been worth dying to protect?

A buzz built in the back of Adam’s brain.

The mural was bordered by a row of carved stone blocks inscribed with the characters of Tulan’s language. Adam studied the ones closest to the dead priestess. The symbols there reminded him of parrots, monkeys, ears of corn, and a grinning skull.

One in particular caught his eye. Adam realized that he had seen it before.

It was the damned lollipop.

Well—he knew it wasn’t a lollipop. The familiar swirling pattern was far more likely to represent the wind… or maybe smoke, Adam thought as he looked at it. There was definitely something a little smoke-like about it.

What he did know for certain was that the same symbol adorned the back of Ellie’s medallion.

The glyph sat in the border of the mural, directly below the carved image of the mirror at the feet of the king. Before time had withered her away, the dead woman’s back would have been covering it when she fell.

Adam ran his fingers along the edges of the block.

The stone popped loose, revealing a cavity in the wall.

He peered at it, getting as close to the corpse as he could without disturbing her.

Inside the opening in the wall hung a rope.

Driven by the sheer puzzle, Adam grasped hold of the loop—and pulled.

The paving stone on the floor beside him dropped, sinking three inches into the ground with a thunk that captured the attention of everyone in the room.

It hung there… looking for all the world as though it had been built to slide neatly out of the way.

Dawson whirled toward him. Pacheco and Lopez looked up with surprise as Staines’s eyes went wide.

“Aw hell,” Adam blurted.

Dawson ran over.

“You found it. You found it!” He burst out with a slightly hysterical laugh. “Must be something more than just rubble in there—eh, Mr. Bates? You—boys!—move this out of the way.”

Dawson flapped a hand at Pacheco and Lopez, and then waved dismissively at the crumpled corpse of the priestess as though the body were a mere inconvenience—as though the woman who had died to conceal the secrets of her people was nothing but debris to be swept out of the way.

Adam’s fury snapped to life. The feeling was as clear as the winter air… and it was going to make him do something irreversibly stupid.

Something like stepping between Dawson and the dead woman on the floor.

“I don’t think so,” Adam said flatly even as another, saner part of him groaned in the back of his head.

“Excuse me?” Dawson stammered as his eyes went wide with surprise.

At that moment, a voice rang out from the plaza below, breaking through the silence of the temple.

“This idiot has lost the woman!”

The words were a catalyst.

Adam realized that Ellie was gone… which meant that nobody could hurt her for whatever Adam might take it in mind to do with himself.

And Dawson realized exactly the same thing.

The professor’s eyes locked on Adam, sharpening with a well-justified panic.

“You—you!” Dawson shouted urgently as he waved his hands at Staines. “The gun! Point the gun at him!”

It should have been the end of the line for Adam. And it would have been… had Dawson ever bothered to actually learn the names of the people who worked for him.

It took Staines a crucial extra second to realize that Dawson’s ‘you’ meant ‘Mr. Staines.’ By then, Adam had already launched himself from his crouch on the floor.

His shoulder took Staines in the ribs. The guard’s breath whooshed out at the impact, and the rifle fell from his hands. It skidded across the floor as Staines himself slammed into the wall.

Pacheco and Lopez watched with gaping mouths from over by the shelves of artifacts. Pacheco’s hands loosened on the fragile mask he was holding. Lopez darted down instinctively to catch it before it hit the ground.

Dawson stumbled back into the corner of the room, pressing himself against the stones as though he hoped they would swallow him.

“Get Jacobs!” Dawson shouted. “Go! Now!”

Since Dawson hadn’t bothered to specify, both Pacheco and Lopez happily bolted from the temple.

Adam wondered whether the pair of them would actually fetch Jacobs, or just high-tail it into the bush—and then forced himself to focus on what the hell he was going to do with Staines.

Shock and nerves had dulled the guard’s reaction, but that didn’t last. Staines slammed his clasped hands down onto Adam’s spine, and Adam hissed with pain.

Staines was smaller, which gave Adam an advantage—but what really mattered was who got their hands on the rifle on the floor.

Adam grasped Staines’s arms and pivoted, using the momentum to toss the guard across the chamber.

Dawson squeaked and pressed himself further into the corner. Staines’s impact made the artifacts on the shelves rattle. The mask that Lopez had hurriedly shoved back into place slipped loose, crashed to the ground, and shattered.

Adam winced. Ellie was gonna kill him for that.

Survive first. Get chewed out later.

He yanked his attention from the broken artifact and lunged for the rifle.

Staines was already scrambling upright. He launched himself toward the weapon as well, forcing Adam to settle for kicking the gun out of reach.

The Enfield spun across the floor, hit the wall, and fired.

The round cracked against the obsidian mural, splintering off a chunk of it, and then ricocheted to the ceiling. The sound of the discharge was like a thunderclap.

Staines snapped his gaze to the gun.

Adam threw himself at the guard, neatly shoving both of them through the doorway into the forward chamber, where they rolled across the floor.

The arches that lined the facade of the temple looked out over an increasingly violent twilight of thick purple storm clouds that flickered with lightning.

Adam’s back slammed into one of the columns, breaking him loose from Staines. He scrambled to his feet on the platform at the pinnacle of the temple as the wind tugged at his shirt and hair.

The plaza was illuminated by the orange sparks of a flickering campfire below him… way too far below him.

Adam’s head spun as shouts rose, echoing up to the temple.

Somebody had noticed them up there… which meant that the clock was ticking.

He swallowed a wave of queasiness and forced himself to focus. He had to get rid of Staines. Then he could worry about the rest of his problems—like Dawson, or the possibility of tumbling to a painful death.

Staines stood a few steps away. He looked torn between throwing himself into another attack or simply running away.

To his credit, he chose the former.

Adam twisted to deflect the force of Staines’s impact. As the smaller man hit him, Adam grasped him around the waist. He used the momentum to complete the turn—and then let go.

Staines flew from Adam’s arms and hit the stairs of the pyramid.

The guard rolled, shrieking in high-pitched panic, until he managed to snag his hands on one of the tiers. He hung there, scrabbling his boots against the stone until he managed to kick himself up onto a solid perch.

The guard pressed himself against the stones like a man who knew that he had just nearly been chucked off the top of a three-hundred-foot pyramid.

Still feeling uncomfortably light-headed, Adam whipped around—and then froze as Dawson stepped from the temple with the rifle held unsteadily in his hands.

The professor looked disheveled. His eyes were wide and panicked as he hefted the gun up and pointed it at Adam.

“Not another move, Mr. Bates!” he barked.

The gun barrel wavered a bit.

Adam raised his hands as he skidded to a halt.

He kept his eyes on the Enfield. After all, the barrel of a gun was nicer to look at than the long, terrifying drop that awaited him in every other direction.

“You even know how to use that?” Adam demanded.

“Of course I know how to use it!” Dawson exclaimed a bit wildly.

He shifted his sweaty-handed grip on the weapon as he set the stock to his shoulder.

The professor’s grip was terrible, but he did have his finger on the trigger, and Adam knew that the safety was already off.

Adam had accidentally discharged one round inside the temple. Did Dawson know enough to have chambered another?

If he hadn’t, then Adam could probably jump him before he had a chance to shoot.

If he had, then jumping him would probably earn Adam a bullet in the chest… and there was no way that he could tell the difference just by looking.

Time ticked past as the stalemate froze him. Jacobs had to be on his way, and he’d undoubtedly be bringing more guns and more bullets. As soon as he arrived, Adam would be toast. And if Adam was toast, then there was no way Ellie was getting out of here alive, no matter how brave and resourceful she was.

In the end, that left him with only one option… spinning the wheel of fortune and hoping it didn’t kill him.

Another wave of uneasy vertigo crawled up the back of his brain. Adam fought it as he faced Dawson across the windy gloom… and readied himself to leap.

A familiar voice blazed across the silence.

“Remove your finger from that trigger, Professor Dawson, or I shall drive this excessively large knife through your throat,” it called out boldly.

A figure stepped from the archway at Dawson’s back—holding a beautifully familiar blade to the professor’s neck.

“Ellie?” Adam blurted in surprise.