Montross opened his eyes. His fingers unclenched from each other. Disoriented, he teetered on the edge of the crypt, almost falling backward into water before Nina caught him.
He blinked, took a moment to catch his breath, then glanced around before nodding to Nina. “I’ve taken care of securing our items for later retrieval. Now, what’s up with this crew?”
Nina shrugged, aimed the light at the feet of the four psychics, with their eyes closed, lost in their own trances. “They’ve been like this for three minutes. We don’t have much time left.”
Montross pulled himself up. He bent down at the head of Genghis Khan’s coffin. “Grab his feet,” he told Nina. “Let’s make us some room.” They lifted him, gracefully, carefully. Then, following Montross’s lead, Nina gently set the body down, lowering it onto the surface of the rising water. Then Montross gave the leather shoulder pad a reverential push, sending the body floating away.
“Farewell, Lord Temujin.” He stood on the center of the crypt dais next to the lever that had brought down the tower and studied it. “Give them another minute, then we’ll try something. It has to involve this lever somehow.”
“Or not,” said Phoebe, blinking and standing up fully. “It might be something much worse.”
Orlando woke himself up, then Alexander looked their way. “I couldn’t see anything.”
“Me neither,” said Orlando.
“And my dear brother Caleb?” Montross shined his light on Caleb’s face, which remained placid, motionless except for his eyes, which seemed to be fluttering in the full stages of a dream-vision.
“Don’t need him,” Phoebe said with a slight smile.
“So, what did you see?” Nina asked.
“I saw that somebody’s going to need to brave the eels.” She took a deep breath. “Those three step-stones down there that you used to activate the tower’s descent? They’ve got to be unstuck, pressed down again. Dragon, gryphon, centaur.”
Orlando took off his boots and got ready to jump in.
“What?” he said when everyone turned to look at him. “I’ve just done the math. I’m the expendable one here, the only one with a shot at this. And since gnarly girl here has still got the gun, I’m not going to wait to be asked.”
Phoebe smiled at him. “You’re my hero.”
He dropped over the side where Alexander was pointing. “That should be the dragon.”
“I hope,” said Orlando as he jumped in. With a splash, his feet struck the bottom and the water rose to his neck. The stone beneath his feet shifted, then rose up. “Okay, one down. And then up, I guess.” He watched the lights stabbing into the dark water around him. “Uh, Nina? I hope you’re as good a shot with these eels as you were with those soldiers.”
From above, a light darted around his body, scanning for movement. “Only because we need you,” she said. “Otherwise, you’re not worth the price of ammo.”
He was about to move clockwise toward the gryphon at the twelve o’clock position, when Nina fired. He flinched with the splash right in front of him. A gout of purplish blood erupted, and an eel thrashed and spun, contorting itself into knots. Orlando saw a flash of yellow eyes and needle-sharp teeth, then it was gone.
“Great,” he said. “Now you’ve made it bleed. It’s going to lure its friends. Hope they’re cannibals.”
“Maybe not,” said Montross, pointing to the soldiers’ bodies, “but you may luck out. There are a lot of other lunch options floating around.”
Orlando moved, treading water and swimming to where the lights led him. In his peripheral vision he saw a floating body, waterlogged. A head turned his way and a single eye, half-eaten, blinked at him from a partially devoured face. As he watched, a grayish-blue eel slithered around the corpse’s neck, then attached its jaws to the man’s neck.
“Eyes ahead, Orlando,” Phoebe called.
“Easy for you to say.”
“Almost there.”
Another gunshot, another eel popped and splashed spastically behind him. He cringed, floated to the narrow portion at the head of the crypt, then waited.
“There,” said Alexander. “Hit it.”
Using his arms, Orlando pushed up like the start of doing a jumping jack but with his palms open, and sent himself down. He stomped with both feet and felt the stone give way, release and push up. “Got it.”
“Okay, one more. Hurry. Three o’clock position.”
Treading water again, he swam a half-hearted breast stroke, reaching out and helping himself by pulling along the crypt wall.
Another shot, and an eel’s head exploded right in front of him.
“ Judas Priest! Do you think you could- Ow! ” he screamed, as he jerked his hand out of the water and shook it, trying to dislodge the eel sawing its teeth into his flesh.
“Stop moving!” Nina yelled. “I can’t get a shot!”
Still screaming, Orlando spun around, then slammed his arm sideways, pounding the eel’s body against the crypt’s side. There was a satisfying crunch, and the jaws loosened. In the dazzling white light, those glowing eyes were locked on his, even as the jaws loosened.
“Get off me!” he yelled as his blood rushed down his wrist. Another swing, hard, vertically up and then down and then it snapped free. “Those things are evil.” He rubbed his hand, then washed it under the water, not caring at this point about attracting more critters.
“You’re almost there,” Alexander shouted. “Another few feet.” His flashlight beam pointed the way, and under the water, Orlando could just make out the outline of a centaur. He moved to it and was about to step ahead when something nipped his leg, just above the calf. Then, a pain as great as anything he could imagine as something chomped into his back, just above the tailbone. It felt like it was trying to burrow inside, gnawing and thrashing into tendons.
He barely heard the gunshots over his own screams, and he certainly didn’t notice that he had staggered forward, depressing the centaur stone and then he slipped under water, struggling against a sudden onslaught of eels. A veritable horde, jumping and wriggling like spawning salmon, converging on live prey.
“Orlando!” Phoebe’s shout was the last thing he heard before they dragged him under.
“No way I’m losing him!” Phoebe jumped to the edge, leaned over and yelled back. “Someone grab my hand.”
“Ah shit,” Nina said, putting away her now-empty Beretta, and gripped Phoebe’s wrist with one hand, then hung on to Montross with the other. She lowered Phoebe down, just above the thrashing pile of slithering eels, and then a hand, thrust up in wild desperation.
Phoebe lunged and caught it, gripped it tight. His head emerged, bloody, an eel snapping at his ear. And then Montross yanked backwards, reeling in Nina, who slipped, but caught herself and got her footing just as Phoebe fell halfway in. Nina found some leverage and heaved her catch out of the water.
Four eels were still attached to Orlando. Phoebe hauled him up and together they slid him onto the flat mortuary slab, and as he writhed, screaming, bleeding from a dozen wounds, Nina pulled out a military knife, ten-inch standard-issue, serrated.
“Just like Fridays at the fish market,” she said with enthusiasm, and hacked down on the first eel, lopping its body free from its head. Again with the next one. “Hold his leg still!” she yelled, as she slashed down again. She turned to the last one on his neck. It must have seen the fate of its friends as it let go, hissed at her, and flopped sideways to escape.
But Orlando’s left hand rose up and caught it by the neck. He sat up, still screaming, and turned to the side, whipping its head down hard against the stone. Once, twice, three times until it was a bloody, lifeless mess. He pushed it aside, then looked down at himself. The torn clothes, the blood seeping everywhere.
And he smiled. “Did I do it?”
“Yes, but we’ve got other problems,” Alexander said, and he seemed to be shaking, swaying back and forth. “We’d better hold onto something.”
Phoebe pulled herself up, then reached over to grab Caleb, who was still somehow unconscious through all the screaming, still lost in the depths of an unbreakable vision.
“Hang on tight!” she yelled.
The tower shuddered, rocked, then roared upwards. The gears released. Hidden counterweights offset levers and pulleys and shot the tower back up, pulling free of the debris from the explosion with just a bump in its ascent, grinding upwards. Water spilled from its length, eels and bodies tumbled away with the recoiling waves.
Their lights reached out, illuminating the golden walls of the octagonal chamber until they gave way to the aquamarine siding of the dome, the murals now visible in multiple sections. Quiet images of Burkhan Khaldun, of women and children, of proud soldiers on horseback. And then the ascent slowed. The ceiling was only ten yards away as the minaret, scraping and shaking, finally grinding to a halt.
Phoebe’s flashlight beam sought everyone out. “All here,” she said with relief, still clinging to her unconscious brother. And then she looked below, shining the light all the way down the length of the tower.
“But why are we here?” Alexander asked. “Now we’re even farther from the door, and-oh.” He pointed over Nina’s shoulder. “There’s a window.”
“And there,” said Phoebe proudly, “is the other thing I saw in my vision.” She played her light over something that at first wasn’t even visible: a walkway, disconnected from their position, but level with the crypt, held up by angled supports cut into the walls. Perfectly blue, just as the dome, the walkway blended in, invisible from any other angle.
Montross clapped his hands. “Nice work, Phoebe.” He took off his backpack, so much lighter now without the tablet, and tossed it to her. “First aid in there, maybe even enough bandages for your friend. Make it quick and let’s go.”
She caught it, then gave him a wary eye. “Thanks. I think. But I still don’t trust you.”
“Don’t trust him later,” Orlando snapped, reaching for the bag. “Right now I’m bleeding to death.”
“We can trust him,” came another voice, and for a moment, Phoebe didn’t recognize it, so weak and shaken, like it came from a long distance away.
Caleb was awake.
His face was ashen. His eyes haunted. “I almost wish it wasn’t true, but my visions, my powers… they’re back.”
He stared at Montross. Stared until the other man lowered his eyes, nodding. “So you know.”
“I know,” Caleb said. “And I forgive you.”