"Ivy, hurry," Zach ordered me. "They're right behind you."
Who? I turned, and then gasped. At least a dozen more demons were crashing through the water in the chamber just beyond this one. From the shouts that echoed behind them, more were on the way. Piotr had blown the elevator to bits, ensuring we couldn't escape, but a four-hundred-foot drop was probably a fun free-fall for demons that had been waiting centuries or more to claim this staff for themselves. Or kill me, depending on their preference.
"Go!" Zach urged me. "I will hold them off." Then his teeth flashed in a smile that was nearly dazzling. "It seems I don't have more important things to do than act as your doorman."
I would have been stunned by the joke, let alone the smile, but there wasn't time. I pushed Adrian past Zach through the mine entryway, watching the Archon snatch him up with one hand while slicing a minion in two with that great, shining sword. He didn't seem hindered at all by holding Adrian above the water while fighting, so, taking a deep breath, I plunged through the mine entryway myself.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
AS SOON AS I passed the warding symbols that had muted my link to the staff, my fear vanished. So did my aches from the multiple items I'd bashed into in the water, let alone the beating I'd taken from the minion who'd tried to drown me. All I could focus on was the staff, and it pulled me forward as if I'd been caught in a tractor beam.
I swam past Jasmine and Costa, not listening to what they said as I went farther into the mine. Something slashed into my leg, an old piece of equipment, perhaps, but not even the pain registered. All I could feel was the staff, and its power sizzled along my nerves from being in its proximity. Closer, it seemed to whisper, urging me forward. Almost there.
A hundred yards ahead, I stopped, facing the wall on my left. It was the same granite-gray color of the rest of the mine, its uneven surface no different than the rest of the rocks around it. Yet when I touched the stone, the power behind it seared my hand, and I would've snatched it away at once if I could feel the pain. For the strangest reason, I couldn't. I was too consumed with freeing the staff from its rocky confines.
I dug around the surface of the rock, knowing that the slab acted as a natural door and my prize was right behind it. My hands and fingers tore and bled from the jagged edges of stone, but that didn't stop me, either. Neither did the water rising up to my chest as I continued to feel for a good handhold in order to pull the rock away. When I finally reached a spot where my fingers could curl around the stone at both ends, I pulled. The stone gave, but not enough. I increased my efforts, feeling my muscles strain as I heaved and pulled with all of my strength.
The rock slid toward me, and water rushed into the alcove it revealed. I barely noticed the carved stone figure of the old bearded man behind it. My eyes were fixed on the wooden staff in his raised hands. The statue held it in front of itself as if in supplication, and the staff was so long, it extended from the floor to well past the reach of those stone hands.
And the power that vibrated from it made the very air around me crackle with energy.
The slingshot in my arm throbbed, as if recognizing the power that ran through the staff. Without a single concern as to the repercussions, I grabbed it, removing it from the stone hands that were half-curled around it. Using the staff would save everyone. I knew that to my core, unlike the time I found the slingshot and had to keep trying until I mustered up enough faith to wield it.
But as soon as my hands closed around the staff, my mind felt like it emptied of everything that made me Ivy Jenkins. I wasn't concerned about the water that now swirled to my chin, the screams and howls that echoed down the tunnel from the supernatural death match, my sister, Costa or even Adrian. I didn't have purpose here. Something else did, and it was so overwhelming, so focused, that nothing else could sway it.
It made me hold the staff vertically, then raise my arms over my head. As soon as I did, power smashed into me with the force of a meteor landing. I would have crumbled beneath it, but that force held my legs as straight as the arms I kept extended over my head. That power grew, building, until it took over everything, even my breath. I was held completely immobile, with no more free will than a power line has over the electricity coursing through it, and as that power reached a crescendo that felt as if it would rip me asunder, I had a moment of complete, out-of-body clarity.
I could see the ruined elevator, the broken exhibit and all the smashed rocks now being pulled back into their original positions. Could feel the water reversing course and returning to the underground lake it had poured out from, then feel the walls of rock beneath it realign into the impenetrable barrier they had been before dynamite had blasted them away.