Aces Wilde: Immortal Vegas, Book 5 (2 page)

“Simon!” Giving up all pretext of subtlety, I flattened myself to the ground and peered beneath the overhang. “What did you…?”

But Simon was gone. The overhang now sheltered a slender crevice into the earth, as if the entire wall had lifted up at the touch of the Fool’s hands. Scrambling forward, I peered into the darkness, but there was no Simon, only dust-filled black.

“Simon?” I called again. No response.

I shoved myself over the edge.

The fall wasn’t far, and I had the advantage of hitting a relatively soft body at the end of it.

“Oof!” Simon groaned, shoving me off him and onto the rough stone floor. “You’re heavy.”

“And you’re an idiot.” I rolled to my feet, crouching in the darkness and letting my eyes and ears adjust. I could hear water churning beyond the far wall, but this chamber was still and shrouded in gloom, barely illuminated by the skylight we’d opened. “Don’t ever rush in like that. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, well, it’s what I do. And look.” He lifted a penlight to illuminate the near wall. Two more disks. “Easy peasy,” he said, standing.

“Don’t—”

Simon didn’t listen. Instead, he placed his hands on the wall. More debris clattered to the ground as the gaping hole leading up to the forum floor sealed shut. The Fool flipped his penlight to his face. “How cool was that, right?”

I stared at him. “Cool as in we have no way out, Simon. Pretty much exactly that cool.”

“You worry too much.” He sent his beam bouncing around the room. “Look at this place. How did it survive the quake thousands of years ago? There were two tremblers that leveled the city, right? Yet it all looks totally chill in here. Has to be some powerful magic, wouldn’t you say?”

“It…” I looked around. The room we were standing in was pristine—but beyond the chamber’s arches were layers of fallen rock that’d clearly been there a long time. I pulled out my own penlight to avoid Simon’s overcaffeinated wobble.

“That must have been the main temple chamber, through there, next to some kind of aquifer,” I said, flicking the beam toward the biggest archway. The light picked out the carved edge of an ornate table or stone chest, almost indistinguishable in the rubble except for its deep port-wine stains. “That looks like the edge of an altar, maybe used as a makeshift bar.” I moved the penlight beam slowly, scanning the small, four-cornered space. “This room seems more like storage.”

“Storage of awesome, maybe,” Simon said. He darted forward, then pried open a box and peered inside. “Cups and flagons. A lot of them. Homies liked to party.”

“Well, you know. Pan.”

“Right.” He sighed. “I kind of thought there’d be a statue or something of him down here, though. Maybe a note. I’m not feeling any of that.” He moved to another crate. “How long d’you think we have?”

“Until they notice we’re missing or until we die of starvation?”

“I have Twix bars.”

“I’m so relieved. But this place isn’t big. I don’t think we’ll be here long.”

I was wrong, of course. Two more storage crates yielded nothing but intricately worked ruby and gold jewelry. Pretty but ultimately useless, though Simon pawed through them with unfettered delight.

“Eshe’s shield is how big?” I asked.

“She couldn’t remember. The size of her face, she said. That’s not so big.”

“Better than her ego, which wouldn’t fit in this room.” Was it me or was the air getting a little stuffy down here?

Gritting my teeth, I looked again at the room. Really looked this time. I didn’t have magic, but I did have a strong sense of intuition, and right now it was picking up on the energy radiating from the chamber’s walls and surfaces. This was different from the rushing water that Simon’s initial jolt of magic had sent raging to the surface. There was something here, something that—the Fool was correct—
wanted
to be found.

Following the pull of that energy, I moved to another storage box carved out of the rock. I put the penlight in my teeth, then heaved the container’s lid free. “Mmph.”

The tenor of my grunt caught Simon’s attention. “What?” he asked, before realizing I couldn’t speak around the light. He abandoned his own crate and joined me, adding his wiry strength to mine. We didn’t get the lid pushed far, but we got it far enough.

Score one for instinct.

Simon whistled low. “This looks promising,” he said as rich silk fabric pooled beneath the dust motes. “Eshe is going to flip.”

He reached in and pulled out a thin, cloth-wrapped package, straining with the effort as he shimmied it out of the narrow space. The moment he cleared the lid, I dropped it, the resulting boom bouncing off the walls. Simon laid the package on the closed box. “This is the coolest.”

“Yo, wait. Keep it—” I broke off.

Ignoring me, Simon reached up and tugged the fabric free. It fell apart in his hands, revealing what lay beneath—a perfectly round shield. The Fool’s penlight beam illuminated the shield’s dull gray surface, but instead of reflecting back, it seemed to pull the light in, concentrate it.

“Holy shit,” Simon breathed.

I understood the sentiment. The image on the shield’s surface started as little more than Simon’s blinding light, but then it cleared. A weird sort of mist bubbled over the edges, and in the center of that mist, an image flickered and rolled—a fight, a battle. No, not a battle.

An attack.

Men swarmed over a house like beetles, pouring through windows and doors. Different figures streamed out the back, as if fleeing in terror. The beetles ravaged the house completely, leaving nothing but a gleaming skull, then they too rushed on. A moment later, the skull house disintegrated into tiny swords of bone, scattered by the wind.

The image cleared.

“What the hell was that?” Simon squeaked.

I didn’t want to think about it. “Cover that up,” I said. “We need to get out of here.”

“Affirmative.” Leaning down to pick up the ragged cloth, Simon quirked his head to the side. “Ya know, that geyser is still rushing along at a pretty good clip,” he said. “We get to the aquifer, we could get out.”

I squinted toward the unforgiving rock ceiling where we’d fallen to the temple floor. “Well, we’re not getting out the way we came in, that’s for sure.”

Fishing into my hoodie pocket, I pulled out a card. Only one this time. I didn’t have time to screw around.

My heart sank as I ran my penlight over the image.

“What is it?” Simon stepped toward me, also angling his light down. He paused. “Three of Swords? That means you’re going to do surgery or break my heart or something, right?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “Or it’s grief, dismay, disappointment.”

“None of those sound good. What else?”

“Recognition of your limitations, necessary cutting—” I pursed my lips, thinking about that, then glanced his way. “Simon, how did you get the two disks to work? The ones in the rock.”

“I grabbed them.” He shrugged. “Flattened my palms against them, actually.” He paused, screwing up his face toward me as he swept the light my way. “Why?”

“No reason.” I looked at my hands, the shiny gold band on the third finger of my left hand, mocking me in the thin beam. The thing looked exactly like a wedding ring, a fact I was sure hadn’t been missed by Armaeus Bertrand, the Magician of the Arcana Council, when he’d clamped it on me days earlier. Only, the band wasn’t a wedding ring; it was a tracking device. And apparently, the only way I could remove it was to chop my finger off—or invoke stronger magic than Armaeus’s.

Irritation riffled through me anew.
Stronger magic.
I was an artifact hunter, hard stop. Sure, I used Tarot cards to find what I needed. Sure, if the money was right, I was a willing assistant to those who possessed their own power. I was even getting pretty good at astral travel, at least when a Council member boosted me along.

But I
didn’t generate magic
. Armaeus knew that. The entire Council knew that. So this smug attempt to test me was seriously cheddaring my cheese.

I grimaced. If what I suspected about the Three of Swords was right, it looked like I was about to possibly kill two birds with one stone. Still, I’d kind of grown attached to my fingers. I wanted to keep it that way.

“Hey, what’re you doing?” Simon’s penlight followed me as I strode across the room to where the altar peeked out of the rubble. The stains that smeared over it seemed much more malevolent now, and I sighed, staring down for a long moment.

“You got the shield wrapped tight?” I asked over my shoulder. “I don’t know if this will work, but if it does, we probably won’t have a lot of time.”

“Sure…whoa, really?” Simon stopped short while I reached down to free the knife from my boot. “I know you hate that ring Armaeus gave you, but you really think this is the—”

“Shut up, Simon.”

I slashed the blade deep into my palm and slapped my hand to the stone altar.

A fiery river of agony blasted through me, the regular pain of the knife cut mingling with something far greater. A temblor rumbled through the ground and sent a sizzling jolt up my legs. I wondered for a moment exactly what
had
triggered the devastating earthquakes in ancient times that had buried this city not once, but twice. Behind me, Simon staggered to the right, his scope swinging crazily.

“Nothing’s happening,” he said, the tiniest bit of panic creeping into his voice. “Shouldn’t have something happened? Because I’m looking around, and nothing’s happened. Whatever you did, it isn’t enough.”

“Son of a—” Stowing my penlight, I put the hilt of the knife between my teeth and bit down. Then I lifted my other palm and slid it along the blade, slicing open a deep flap of skin. I bit out a curse as I smacked that palm also down on the stone altar, my blood mingling with the blood and wine of the ancients. Of all the times to leave the hand sanitizer back in the hotel—

A second tremor rocked the room, then a deluge of debris showered from the ceiling, rocks clattering around us.

“There—there!” Simon shouted as a portion of the nearest column swung inward. “Come on.”

Not waiting for me to react, he dashed forward. Queasiness swamped me despite the adrenaline surge, but I yanked my hands back from the altar, then ripped the blade out of my mouth. I pounded across the open room as chunks of dirt and stone rained down.

“C’mon, Sara, pick it up—” Simon’s call sounded strained, but I didn’t need the extra motivation to lean into my run. I dove through the opening even as the door started rolling shut. The force of my progress pushed Simon forward, and we splashed into shallow puddles lining a narrow, tall tunnel. The floor of the tunnel angled sharply up.

“Shouldn’t there be more water?” I gasped. I shoved the knife back into its boot sheath. My hands stung with pain as I clenched them into fists.

“You’d think.” Simon had tucked the shield under one arm and was now pointing his LIDAR scanner down the corridor. “That’s no good,” he said, squinting at the screens. “Something’s coming—fast. Water and rock, and a whole lot of it.” He shoved his gadget in his pocket and pulled something else out.

Another rumble through the ground sent us both reeling. With no further need for conversation, we started climbing up the steep incline of the aquifer, scrambling over chunks of fallen rock that served as unintended stairs. Water swelled behind us, and Simon pivoted, emptying his pockets even as I stumbled past him. I squinted at him, but he was dropping what looked like rocks into the corridor—fistfuls of them.

“What’re you doing? I demanded. “The passage splits off here, and I need your scope.”

“Gimme a second—”

“Dude, now.” I turned and stumbled forward, wincing as my hands shredded further against the rough rock.

“Go, go, go!” Simon barreled into me right as the upswell reached us. We dove into a side passage, drenched but not drowning, while the water continued its race to the surface along the main aquifer.

“There!” Simon urged—forcing me toward a hole that looked no larger than his penlight. “Readings say its thin, maybe only a foot, and mostly shale.”

Another temblor ground through the stone. Earth fell away from the hole, opening up a patch of daylight the size of my head. Muttering an apology to my bleeding hands, I scrabbled at the disintegrating dirt. Simon worked beside me, pummeling the gap until the walls gave way. We tumbled through the cavity, Simon’s lanky body somersaulting beside me until we both landed in a heap.

Above us on the ridge, another mini geyser burst through the blowhole. We’d somehow landed below and to the south of the dig site by a good fifty feet, nowhere near the forum.

“Careful,” I muttered, scraping the mud out of my eyes as Simon popped upright. “We need them to think we’ve gotten showered by the same mud they have, so Fonti doesn’t blame us for whatever’s going on up there. Let’s get close enough to be seen by one of the lower-level interns, then clear out.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Still, Simon seemed in unusually good spirits as we made our way along the ridge. A final burst of water shot high in the air. He stared upward, grinning ear to ear. “I don’t think anyone will be paying too much attention to us, though.”

The screams of the diggers drowned out Simon’s quiet words, their cries escalating into whoops and yelps of delight. I flashed back to the image of the Fool emptying his pockets in the middle of the rushing water of the underground aquifer…

As priceless treasures of rubies and gold rained down over the Hippos dig.

Chapter Two

“Armaeus will want you on this flight, Sara.” Simon peered at me worriedly as we walked through the Tel Aviv airport five hours later. “He thinks you’re coming right back to Vegas.”

“Uh-huh.” I eyed him. “What did you tell him?”

“Mission accomplished, and we were heading for the airport, that’s it” he said. “But he’ll figure it out soon enough. Why piss him off?”

I grimaced. So many reasons, so little time. “I’m flying commercial, and my manifest isn’t a secret. You’re going back with the shield. It’s already on the plane, right?” Simon nodded and I pushed on. “So I’m going to spend a few days in Paris, visit some old friends I haven’t seen in far too long. No big deal. I’ll be back to Vegas after that.”