Innocent Blood(111)

A cool wind brushed through his hair but failed to hide the stink with the sea’s salt and algae.

I don’t want to go in there.

An emerald-winged moth landed on one of the boulders, winking its wings at him. Elizabeth stood at his shoulder, her eyes on other moths that flitted about in the gusts, their delicate flights disguising their danger.

One of Iscariot’s henchman bent his bulk past Tommy, entered the tunnel, and clicked on a flashlight. Black volcanic walls, streaked with yellow, stretched beyond the reach of the beam.

The flat of a hand pushed into the center of his back, allowing no other recourse.

“Follow Henrik,” Iscariot ordered.

Elizabeth took his hand firmly in hers. “We’ll go together.”

Tommy took a steadying breath, nodded, and took one step forward, then another. It was how you got through hard times: you had to keep going.

Behind him, Iscariot spoke to the strigoi who piloted the helicopter. “Ready your brethren. Have them haunt the tunnels behind us. We must not be disturbed.”

With that final order, Iscariot followed, trailed by his second bodyguard. Tommy realized he had never learned this other’s name, not that it would likely matter. He sensed he would never be seeing the sky again.

Once a fair distance into the narrow tunnel, Elizabeth shed her veil and gloves and pushed back the hood of her cloak. One of the moths fluttered into her hair, tangling its tiny legs for a moment, then flew away again.

She did not seem to care.

Tommy did, recognizing the unspoken threat from their captor.

To calm and distract himself, he counted the moths, observing subtle differences in them. A few were smaller, one had a long tail, another had flakes of gold mixed with the emerald.

. . . nine, ten, . . . eleven . . .

There were probably a dozen, but he couldn’t find the last one to make it that even number.

Elizabeth ran her fingertips along the wall, her eyes studying the side passages that crisscrossed their path and the blind caves that opened up every now and again. It was a maze down here. Tommy had read the myth of Theseus in school, of his struggle against the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete.

What monsters are down here?

Elizabeth must have been thinking of another story. She glanced back to Iscariot. “In Virgil’s The Aeneid, the hero Aeneas comes to Cumae, speaks to the sibyl there, and she guides him to the land of the dead. The path we take now is very much how it’s described in that book.”

Iscariot waved his arm around as if to encompass the entire volcanic hill. “He also states there are a hundred paths to that pit, which considering this pocked mountain and its wormed-out holes, is likely true.”

She shrugged, changing her tone as if she were quoting a poem. “ ‘Easy is the descent to hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven—there is the task, there is the burden.’ ”

Iscariot clapped his hands once. “Truly you are the Woman of Learning.”

Despite his praise, worry clouded her silver eyes. A bright green-gray moth landed in her black hair again, and Tommy reached up to take it off.

“No,” she warned. “Leave it be.”

He drew his hand back.

As they continued, going ever deeper, the branching of the tunnels slowed until they reached a long steep passageway so foul with sulfur, Tommy had to cover his mouth and breathe through his sleeve. The temperature also grew warmer, the walls damp. Tommy heard the echoing rush of water.

Finally the passage bottomed out, reaching a wide underground river. It bubbled and steamed, a geothermal hot spring. Tommy’s eyes stung from the sulfur; his cheeks burned from the heat.

“Looks as if we’ve reached the river Acheron . . . or perhaps Styx . . . or its many countless names in the histories of man,” Elizabeth commented. “But apparently no ferryman is needed here.”

“Indeed,” Iscariot said.

An arch of rock spanned the river leading to a dark cavern beyond.

Tommy looked to Elizabeth, suddenly terrified to cross. The hairs on his arms shivered, his heart pounded in his ears.

Henrik roughly grabbed his arm at the foot of the bridge, ready to drag him across if necessary.

Elizabeth slammed the big man back as if he were a gnat. “I will not have the boy mishandled.”

Henrik’s eyes flashed with fury, but he stayed back, getting a confirming nod from Iscariot to obey her.

Another moth landed on Elizabeth, this time on her shoulder, its wings brushing under her ear. She refused to acknowledge it, but Tommy understood the message here.

I cross, or he’ll kill Elizabeth.

Swallowing back his terror, Tommy headed over the bridge, flanked on one side by Henrik, on the other by Elizabeth. He moved slowly across the steam-slick rock bridge, coughing against the sulfur, squinting from the heat. Black water, looking like oil, bubbled and popped, roiled and churned.