The men were blowing smoke. Did they really think she and Jonah were that gullible? The implication was too sci-fi and implausible to be real. The mosaic nanobots weren’t what they were protecting. As far as she knew, the engineering discipline of designing and building nanorobots was still in its infancy stage.
Drugs made more sense. Maybe a drug smuggling operation? The hidden cavern wouldn’t be detectable underwater … Actually, at this point, she didn’t really give a shit what they wanted and why they were doing what they were doing. All she wanted was for her and Jonah to be back on board Stormchaser, where she could lie down in a cool, dark room.
She suspected Jonah had pretty much the same desire. He was naturally curious, but she bet he’d rather be on board his ship right now than here listening to the old men’s technobabble. He was giving her time to gather her strength so they could make a run for it. Which she appreciated.
“The technology was not placed under the water, Kyrie Cutter.” This time she recognized Trakas’s clipped tones. “The Sacred City was built around the individual pieces. Was built specifically to house and protect her nanorobotics.”
“The Sacred City, and that technology, is what Guardians are privileged to protect, our entire lives. At all cost.”
Jonah’s stroking thumb stilled. “You’re claiming this technology came from three thousand years ago?”
Trakas made an affirming clearing of his throat. “It’s imperative the three missing components—the mosaics—be returned to their correct GPS location immediately.”
“It’s a big ocean,” Jonah said drily.
Putting something back meant they were being taken to a boat, and back to Stormchaser. Although no one had requested that they return anything to the ocean floor. Just that it had to be returned.
Callie put a hand on Jonah’s wrist, loving the feel of his cool skin, and the tensile strength there. “Everything is documented. I know exactly where they came from.” Now ask us to return the mosaics for you and let us go, so we can do it.
“There’s no need. They will be deposited back to the sea. They will transmigrate to where they were originally placed.”
Callie lifted her head, ignoring the blizzard of black snow. She could just see Trakas around Jonah’s supporting arm. “Could you be more specific on the how of their return?”
She looked up to meet Jonah’s eyes. They were pissed off and had just added another layer of anger. They both knew precisely what the men really meant.
Kill them, and scuttle the ship.
Jonah mouthed Fuck then said so low, Callie barely heard him, “Ready?”
No. She wasn’t. She nodded. Counted through the pain until it was bearable. A few more minutes would help. If not, then yes, she was ready.
Jonah’s fingers tightened in her hair as he turned his head and demanded, “Dr. West needs water.”
Yes! That would help.
A moment later he held a glass to her mouth. Looked like water. She sniffed. Was she being paranoid? She didn’t think so. She took a tentative sip. No odd taste. Lukewarm, tasteless water. With Jonah’s help she drank the entire glass. It was as if every parched cell in her body was flooded with life-giving moisture.
“Hell,” Jonah said, keeping his attention on her. The problem was—Well, shit, there were myriad freaking problems here. But she knew that to leave they’d have to dispatch the three old men. To leave they’d have to run. And right this second running wasn’t in her cards.
“If what you say is true, this knowledge could advance science and medicine by decades.”
“It is too soon for mankind to have this knowledge and technology,” Eliades intoned, his voice reflecting his hangdog expression and demeanor. “We are merely the Guardians.”
“Do these nanotechnology mosaics have something to do with the interference to our electronics underwater?” Jonah asked, leaning away just enough, while still supporting her shoulders, to pull up the zipper on the front of her wet suit. That done, he tugged up his own. Shoes? he mouthed.
She shook her head. One wasn’t going to do it.
“Jamming your radio frequency, producing the fog, the quakes, and the sand trap—all deterrents. You refused to go.”
Jonah twisted his head to look at Trakas. “That sand trap broke my friend’s leg in three places.”
“Your man was meant to die that day.” Eliades refilled the glass, handing it to Jonah. “That section is the entrance to the Sacred City. Not even Guardians are permitted to enter, unless under the most dire of circumstances.” He sounded appalled and horrified that anyone had the temerity to even attempt entering.
“The city is that important?”
“It is more important than any one being.”
“Were you aware that the Spanoses were in the control room when you instigated the earthquake? Of course you were. Is that what they were doing? Going into the Sacred City uninvited, so you killed them?”
Medium’s dark eyes narrowed, his face flushed with anger “Entering the Sacred City uninvited?” he whispered, his voice filled with fury and horror. “Worse, much worse. They raped and pillaged sacred material to use in frivolous pursuits. Kallistrate was warned, but that was our error. He was only an initiate into the order, not yet a full Guardian. He had not yet earned the right to go into the city. The brother was not the one in charge. It was his sister who was the mastermind behind their nefarious doings.
“They ignored repeated warnings to cease and desist—and requests to leave the island. Instead they came more frequently, and brought professional divers to assist them, and men with guns to protect them. They had to be stopped.”
Jonah held the glass, but Callie took it from him and drank again. “What did they have to do with any of this?”
“Kallistrate was born here. Raised to be a Guardian. A high honor. But he went away to England to get an education. Then he became too sophisticated, to Westernized to want to come home where he belonged, to follow our ways.”
“Then what were he and his sister doing here?”
“They used to come once a year for our Sacred City’s orichalcum. For the past three years they have come twice in a twelve-month period. But this was their third time this year.”
Callie swung her feet between Jonah’s legs. The pain was manageable.”Orichalcum is a myth.”
Demetriou pinned her with a glare of disdain. “No. It is very real, Doktōr West. It was mined here on the island for thousands of years. It was a main component in the nanotechnology used in the mosaics. An integral part of the Sacred City. The vein was depleted a century before the Big Eruption. The only place this precious metal can now be found is in the vaults of the temple inside the walls of the city.”
She eased her butt forward. Knowing Jonah would catch her if she fell. “What do they want it for? Is it of great monetary value?”
“In today’s market?” Trakas asked. “With its rare properties? Yes, multimillions of American dollars. Kallistrate procured it from inside the walls, taking a few bars at a time. They only required a minuscule amount for processing. The dust is added to the creams and lotions he sells worldwide.”
“Orichalcum?” Jonah slid his hand to her upper arm, then closed his fingers around it to support her as she slid her feet down to the floor. She wobbled, but his hand remained steady.
“A metal Plato described as unique to Atlantis,” Callie murmured.
His eyes never left her face as he addressed the men behind him. “Why put an obscure metal into lotions and potions? What’s its claim to fame? Nanobots again?”
“Its application in medicine, or for topical use, is that it works at a cellular level—it is the main ingredient in their Fountain of Youth products. Dramatically reducing all signs of aging.”
Women would pay anything to get their hands on a product like that. “If it’s been deep underwater for thousands of years,” Callie asked, “how did they even know about it?”
Trakas hesitated. “Kallistrate was trained in the ways of the Guardians from the day he was born, until he fled. Orichalcum has been an integral part of the Guardians’ diets since the beginning of time.”
“Eating orichalcum makes you look younger?” Jonah sounded a little left of incredulous.
“Not just look younger, Kyrie.”
Callie leaned her hip against the table, wondering what the hell she’d just ingested in those two glasses of water.
* * *
“Just how old a—”
Jonah tightened his hold on her upper arms as Callie listed to the left. Her sudden lack of balance had nothing to do with her knees being too weak to stand from blood loss. It was another goddamn earthquake.
The floor beneath his bare feet buckled, walls rippled and shuddered, sending a cabinet sliding halfway into the small room. Instruments chattered across the surface of the nearby metal tray, then clattered to the floor.
Wood and metal screeched and groaned as the building torqued violently. Bracing himself with one hand on the shuddering wall, he held Callie against his chest as the high narrow window shattered, spraying glass into the room.
Trakas yelled at the other two men in rapid-fire, incomprehensible Greek.
“Big surprise, guys?” Jonah yelled over the din. Oh, yeah. This was going to be as bad as what they’d just come from. Outside would be safer than in. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.
Trakas and the others stood in the open doorway, swaying and bucking with the quake as if they were standing on a surfboard riding the waves. Deciding to run for it, or stay there so he and Callie were trapped?
“You’ll be safe here.” Trakas’s voice vibrated as he lied straight-faced.
Yeah, right. “Does that mean you’re going to turn the damn thing off?” Jonah demanded. “I’m all for it.”
“There is no switch for this, Kyrie,” Trakas said grimly as Demetriou and Eliades slipped behind him. The old man blocked the doorway, holding on to the jamb with both gnarled hands as the floor continued to rise and fall in uneven waves.
“Then we’re going with you.”
The Guardian’s face turned a deep plum color as he burst into a spate of Greek too frantic for Jonah to follow.
He put up his hand to stop the outpouring of fear. “Whatever the hell you’re saying, we’re not staying in this room. So get us out of here, or get the hell out of our way.”
Dios. He didn’t want to kill a defenseless old man, but if it came to a choice between the Greek, or himself and Callie, there was no contest. Even though he’d never shot a man, this was life or death. There was a first time for everything.
His stomach churned as he accepted that today would be the day that changed him. He’d have to figure out how to live with it … later.
The room filled with shadows. A quick glance at the high, narrow window through the broken shards of glass showed the sky darken from brilliant blue to dark, ominous gray in seconds.
Sliding his palm under his bunched-up shorts on the table behind Callie, he palmed the gun, adjusting his grip, then brought the weapon out in the open, pointing the muzzle at Trakas’s forehead.
“Give her your shoes,” he instructed Eliades, figuring the smaller man had the smallest feet of the three. “Move it! You—” He motioned to Trakas with the barrel of the gun inches from his chest. “Hand ’em over.”
“It’s too late, Kyrie,” Trakas muttered, but something in Jonah’s expression convinced him to get the lead out, and he crouched to unbuckle his sandals. Demetriou helped Eliades, who was having a hard time reaching his feet.
“It’s not too fucking late.” Jonah handed the gun to Callie, kept her an arm span away from Trakas, and hastily slid his feet into the sandals. “We’ll die here together if you don’t hurry.” Crouching, he did them up. Too small; his toes hung over the front edge. Better than barefoot. Rising, he took the gun back from Callie.
Once the fat guy managed to get down, he and Demetriou fought with the buckles, sweat running down their red faces.
Once the sandals had been handed over, Jonah shoved them at Callie. “Hurry.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” She retained her dry sense of humor—a woman used to keeping cool during tense situations. He couldn’t think about the fact she’d been shot. She had guts. Heart. And a deceitful tongue. Couldn’t think about that, either.
“Out of the way,” he told the three men, voice grim. “Last warning.”
They parted, and he and Callie pushed past them, clustered just outside the door. “You’re fools. Run!”
He didn’t wait to see if they were smart enough to leave. He and Callie raced out into the corridor and turned left, running flat-out. Opposite from where they’d been brought in. He knew what was in that direction, and it didn’t lead out. He hoped to hell left was freedom. At this point they had nothing to lose. Yet another gray cement corridor, and up ahead, dusk-like daylight.
Moments later, like a giant beast waking from a centuries-long nap, another quake rippled beneath their feet. Jonah held Callie tightly against him as they slammed into the wall. His shoulder and side throbbed with the impact. He shot a concerned look at her. Stoic as ever, jaw clenched, gaze focused. Lines of pain bracketed her mouth.
“Don’t stop for anything!” he yelled, scooping her under his arm as the floor continued to undulate.
“Does that feel like an aftersho—” An incredibly loud percussion cut her off. Whether this one was human-made, or nature was simply pissed at the previous interference, this quake put the ones before it to shame. A series of thunderous pops and bangs sounded like a combination of heavy artillery and industrial-grade fireworks.
Bursting through the narrow door, they jettisoned into the great outdoors, onto a dirt road, and into the jaws of hell.
The long-dormant volcano, reactivated by the human-made earthquakes, shook and spewed. Turning day to night, filling the air with dust and flaming projectiles. The fragments, semi-molten when airborne, landed still smoking hot around them.
The stink of sulfureted hydrogen saturated the heavy air. The sulfur instantly made his eyes water. The shrill screams of terrified men, running like ants at a picnic, joined the cacophony of falling projectiles and the horrendous creaking of the earth splintering. The sun should be shining. Instead, a dense black cloud cover hung suffocatingly low over the small village.
Jonah recognized the path leaving the village. “Windward.” Confused, frightened Guardians ran up the mountainside, arms protecting their heads, black robes billowing around them while shit flew in the air around them. “Damn fools! They should be running down toward the sea to escape.”
“Watch out for fumaroles,” Callie cautioned, indicating a smoking hole opening up six feet in front of them as they ran. She pulled him sideways, so they narrowly missed being hit by molten volcanic bombs.
“Come with us!” Callie tried to grab a man’s arm as he ran passed them in the wrong direction. He shook her off, yelling invectives.
“It isn’t the stink of sulfur that’s going to kill them, it’s the CO2—” They crested a hill, the ocean spread out below them. At least two miles away. But it wasn’t the distance or the view that captured her attention. She’d turned to look back at the Guardians’ progress up the mountainside. It was a gentle slope to the top of the—“Oh, my God—look at that!”
An eruption column.
The top of the volcano spewed a three-thousand-foot black mushroom cloud of smoke with a fiery base. Projectiles peppered the way as they skidded and slipped, hauled each other upright, and kept running. “Is that it?” Jonah shouted as there was a momentary lull in flying projectiles.
“That’s just the warm-up! This could go on for days.” A powerful explosion lit up the underside of the smoke cover.
“Then we better be long gone by the time that happens.”
They held each other as the earth shuddered beneath their feet, and as soon as it settled enough for them to run, they did so.
“There’s laundry on the line,” Callie shouted, tugging him off their path to investigate. “We should cover our faces as best we can. Water would be great … The goat trough will do. Grab that robe.”
Jonah pulled it off the rope line. It was still damp. Taking it to where Callie bent over the trough trying to catch her breath, he started tearing it into pieces.
“Those stupid bastards set off all those damn tremors, and now those human-made quakes are setting off natural quakes, and their tame little molehill has morphed into a mountain about to erupt!” Callie yelled over the sound of animals squawking, bleating, and crying, and the percussion of rocks falling.
A rough tremor shook the ground as they soaked the strips in the water. “That smoke cloud must be at least two hundred feet, and she’s shooting stone bombs now, but in minutes the magma is going to start bubbling up through all these cracks and we’re all in deep shit!”
Squawking chickens ran across their path, and a dog barked frantically nearby. “Don’t see any sign of magma. Not yet anyway.” He scanned the area as he wrung some of the water out of the cloth.
“A red glow up that way.” Callie pointed while covering her nose and mouth with her free hand. “Could be the dome waiting to crest and blow. Magma’s not far behind.”
Taking a handful of wet strips from him, she wrapped her head and face then bent to cover her feet as best she could. Jonah did the same. Callie’s eyes lit up with humor. “We look like the Mummy.”
“Hands, too.” He wrapped his own.
A blizzard from hell, gray ash swirled around them, dense enough to fucking chew. The stench of sulfur permeated the air. The terrified, agonized screams of the black-garbed men running up the street, some with robes in flames, was just part of the nightmare of fleeing humans and animals.
“Hurry, neoprene doesn’t degrade until after two hundred degrees. Right now the worst we have to deal with are boulders and ashfall and the smaller falling debris.” Anything else, and they, and all the islanders, would be toast.
“Great. About a hundred times less than the temperature we’re going to run in if there’s a magma flow!”
“One thing at a time, all right?”
She didn’t need to explain to him the inherent dangers of being this close to an active volcano. Lava tubes networked beneath the island. Fissures would open up, dome fountains—this was bad, and hell was going to rain down on their heads, and open under their feet, at any moment.
“One stray spark…” The wet suits weren’t going to protect them from falling rocks or molten lava, but they’d protect their skin from some of the fallout. It had to be enough.
“What’s our risk?” he yelled, heading over a small rise.
“Right now? We’re in the medium-risk zone … But in the next fifteen minutes? I’d say high-risk. Or kiss our butts goodbye. The lava, when it comes, will most likely follow the ancient flows to the sea.”
“When we get to the windward side, we’ll stay as close to shore as possible. First boat we see, we get the hell outta Dodge and head out to the Stormchaser.”
If the insane fucking Guardians hadn’t sunk his ship while he’d been busy.
He tangled his fingers with hers, both wrapped, so it wasn’t skin-to-skin. But he needed the contact. “Then haul ass.”
* * *
“Keep going, I’ve got you,” Jonah yelled. Sweaty, dizzy, and numb, Callie kept pace alongside him.
She ran without seeing where they were, or what she was stepping on, or through. She ran because Jonah refused to let go of her hand. He flew down hills, up hills, and down a steep incline without breaking stride. Smoldering, burning shrubs and grass were no deterrent, Jonah plowed through anything in their path.
Yelling stop wasn’t an option.
She smelled the heat creeping behind them. The stink of sulfur filled her world. Overpowering, her fear even more so.
Her steps faltered. Jonah pulled her upright, kept her going. She was vaguely surprised her shoulder wasn’t dislocated. It was the same arm Jonah had yanked, tugged, pulled, and grabbed all day.
The stitch in her side took over her entire body. Or that could be the bullet wound in her side. Was she bleeding to death with every step she ran? Gritting her teeth, determined to keep going, to keep up, she suddenly felt her knees buckle and she dropped, a painful skid along the rocky ground.
The abrupt cessation of movement jerked her hand free from Jonah’s, radiating pain up her arm. Chest heaving, she sat back on her haunches, struggling to suck in a breath. God, it was hot, so hot the air was hard to breathe, searing her nose and throat on the way to burning through her lungs. The earth was on fire. The air was on fire. She was on fire.
“Get up.”
Callie tried, but her body refused to move. Depleted. Done. She blinked streaming eyes, to see Jonah standing about six feet away, magical and mystical shrouded in swirling dust and smoke. “Minute.” It took everything in her to push out that one word.
Darkness, not from the swirling ash and billowing smoke alone, crowded out the clarity of her field of vision. She’d lost too much blood and she knew it. This was it. Endgame. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
“Stand the fuck up. Now, Calista.”
She’d never heard him use that tone. She lifted her head.
Stabbing a finger at the ground between them, he raised his voice, sounding furious and terrified at the same time. “See that?”
A fissure had formed between them, a glowing lightning-bolt-shaped glint of dark bubbling red that opened so quickly, they both had to jump back and retreat. The snake-like crack split the ground in a long jagged line from the volcano behind them, and made a crazy zigzag path to the sea in the distance.
In the crevasse, bubbling magma pulsed like the living heartbeat of a demon beast struggling to escape.
The heat scalded her skin, made the moisture in her eyes dry out, made her lungs burn. The frantic pounding of her heartbeat almost blocked out the crackle of the grass burning and the loud thumps of smoking projectiles plummeting to the ground nearby.
The rift went from a foot to two feet wide.
“Jump,” Jonah shouted, voice cold and lethal.
Callie staggered, sweat stinging her eyes, side on fire. God. His feet were inches from the edge. She put up both hands. “Go back! Please, Jonah—” Sandals, already dry rags, no protection between him and the magma.
His gaze held hers. Like hers, his eyes were bloodshot, streaming. But the blue was still vivid and compelling as he held out his hand. “You have to be on this side.” He walked backward as the gap widened, four feet wide, jagged and fiery between them. “Do you understand, Callie? You have to jump over, and come to me. Now!”
Even as she looked, the fissure grew at an alarming rate. Five feet. The earth rumbled, the rolling vibration like an ultrasonic cleaner beneath her feet. “I can go around,” she shouted desperately.
She was in no shape to jump that distance. Even fighting fit and well rested she wasn’t sure she could jump—
Oh, God. Six feet.
They were right in the epicenter. If they got out of this alive it would be a miracle.
“No,” he told her grimly. “You fucking well can’t. Look where it is. Jump before it gets too wide. You can do it, take a running jump and you’ll be in my arms. I’ll catch you. For fucksake, now.”
She needed a minute. An hour. A month. She took several steps back as the fracture crept toward her toes. The heat was intense; it burned her skin and snaked a scorching path down into her lungs.
“Dios. This is no fucking time to be indecisive. I’m making the call for you! Jump, goddamn it.” There wasn’t an iota of gentleness in his voice. He watched her from cold, hard sapphire eyes. “Time’s run out. I’m not leaving you there. Jump, or I’ll come over to you and we’ll both be trapped.”
She knew better. She was the only one trapped. He could walk away now and live. If he waited they both would die: Her for trusting him. And him for being a damn fool idiot trying to save her ass. “Give me one good reason to trust you.” She trusted Jonah. It was herself she didn’t trust. Afraid, deathly afraid, she knew she was making excuses, trying to buy time so she could think it through.
Jump to my death.
“I can only think of one.”
Be with Jonah.
She had to move back. So did he. The distance between them widened. A nearby bush burst into flame, the grasses around it sparking in the breeze she couldn’t see or feel.
Run like hell to see if there was another way around the problem …
She smelled her burnt hair. “We’ll be burned to a crisp?”
“Okay. Two reasons. That and I love you. Everything else can be worked out.”
The longer she waited, the more intense the heat became, the wider the gap. The more in danger they both were. “It’s about damn time you told me, Jonah Cutter.” Crazy talk. Oh, God, she had to jump, she knew she did. If she kept debating the pros—being safe in Jonah’s arms—with the cons—falling into the molten magma …
“I’ve been a little busy, Calista. Now damn it, run and jump to me before that gets too wide for you to cross.”
She looked up and down the length of the wide fissure, at the lava oozing up around it. “I suppose you’re expecting me to say the same?” She paced. Could she jump that distance? If she jumped short … if she didn’t jump at all …
“That you love me? Hell yes, you do. Fuck it, Doctor! We can discuss that later when we’re the hell off this misbegotten island. Right now I’d rather you moved your ass so we can both do that.”
Callie turned and used every ounce of energy she didn’t have running back up the hill. When she figured she was a reasonable distance away, she turned and raced back as fast as her legs and momentum would carry her.
She leapt across the hot river of bubbling lava.