I was in such a funk that I barely noticed when Kiera came by, her color high, her breathing hard, and I saw that we were fresh out of demons; together we’d wasted them all, and right then that didn’t make me happy. I wanted more. More kills. More dark. And damned if I couldn’t have it.
I’d managed to shake off a bit of the darkness by the time we arrived at the basement, but not the terrible sense of betrayal. Clarence had already prepared the bridge, and he returned the necklace to me. Because we’d already determined that the relics of the Oris Clef were interconnected, it made sense that the game of hot-or-cold I played with my arm worked better if I had all the pieces to work with.
This time, he also loaded us down with a few more tools, though not many. Apparently the best way to travel through a portal is naked. The more stuff you carry, the more likely you are to get tossed off course.
Kiera was down with the naked plan. Me, not so much.
We ended up wearing our regular clothes—jeans, our Bloody Tongue tank tops—our weapons, and flashlights. Still nothing spectacular as far as blasting our way out of a rough spot, but when I suggested C-4, Clarence told me about a theoretical risk of detonation while we were on the bridge. That pretty much ended that conversation as far as I was concerned.
Finally equipped, we stepped into the portal, did the whole blood-on-the-symbol thing, and then the world was spinning, and we were on our way to the British underground. But not, as I would have preferred, the London Underground.
“You know what sucks?” Kiera whispered, as we crouched in a dimly lit passageway, breathing deep the scent of fresh earth. “I’ve always wanted to go to Britain. Always wanted to see Stonehenge. I mean, druids, right? How cool is that? And now here we are, as close to Stonehenge as I’m likely to ever get, and this is the view I have?”
We were, at the moment, somewhere underneath the famous stones. At least, I assumed we were. Since Clarence’s bridge had dumped us out in this underground tunnel, I really couldn’t be sure of anything.
By then, I was wondering if having a bit of plastic explosive wouldn’t have been worth the risk. “Look,” I said, shining my light in front of us. “The tunnel’s caved in.”
The beam from my flashlight played over a pile of rocks that reached from the floor all the way up to the top of the corridor. Through a few cracks and crevices, a hint of light shone. “Can you get up there?”
She climbed up, me lighting the way. “Can’t see anything,” she said. “And I can’t move these damn boulders.”
I sighed. “Come back down. Maybe there’s another way.”
With our narrow beams of light leading us, we headed in the opposite direction. We hadn’t gone that way in the first place because my arm burned as we approached the pile of rocks, and the pain eased up when we backed away. Now, though, I was hoping we could circle back around and find the pain again.
And didn’t that sound like a country-and-western song?
For that matter, I was feeling a bit like my entire life was a country-and-western song. The kind that’s sad, and bemoans losing love and trust and all that mushy stuff. I was also on edge, expecting to see Deacon any second. Because from what I’d seen in that demon’s head, Deacon Camphire was more interested in finding these relics than he was letting on.
More than that, the demon seemed to believe that Deacon knew where the third piece was. And if that was the case, then it explained why Clarence didn’t want him dead. If something happened to me, Deacon might be the only source of information.
What I didn’t get, though, was why Deacon would let me keep the first relic. If he really was intent on collecting them, then wouldn’t he have done everything in his power to get the necklace from me while we were in China?
I reached up to touch the necklace, realizing that Deacon had actually played it smart. If he didn’t know where the second piece was, then he needed me to find it. And that meant that as soon as I located piece number two, it was a good bet that Deacon was going to jump out and try to take the relics from me.
Damn his rotten soul. And damn me for falling for him.
Not that I had much time to curse either myself or Deacon, because Kiera had come to a dead stop in front of me.
“Here,” she said, her voice low. She’d found a fissure in the stone, about the shape of a keyhole but the height of a rather short person.
“Does it cut through?” I asked, shining my own light into the dark.
“I think so. Look.” She wiggled her light, and the beam seemed to reflect off something, giving the impression of an open space and not merely more caves closing in.