Blood Codex

Chapter 54

Rose’s tunnel had gone on for so long that she began to wonder if it would ever end. Admittedly, she was going cautiously and watching all around herself, so it probably wouldn’t seem nearly as far on the way back. But surely it had to go somewhere.

She did her best to ignore the rapid flashes of memory that repeatedly flickered past her vision. They were not only disorienting, but hard to decipher, confused and opaque. And while their frequency seemed to be enduring, their clarity faded with every passing minute. Perhaps the effects of Landvik’s ritual were finally wearing off completely.

She paused, listening. A sound, distant and roaring, worried at the rock somewhere ahead. She kept her light high, hoping her phone battery wouldn’t fail her. She was terrified of being lost in the complete darkness of underground. As she moved further forward, the sound resolved itself slightly and she realized she was hearing the sea. There were no great waves around Lindisfarne unless the weather was stormy, but she definitely heard water, and the soft rush of the ocean further out.

She came around a shallow bend and her light reflected back off a solid surface and she stopped, disappointed. The end of the tunnel had clearly been sealed up, rocks piled and jammed together. There was a vague outline of the original tunnel mouth that seemed to be the beginnings of an opening into a cave. Clever bastards, she thought to herself, imagining the builders of this place finding a sea cave far from the foot of Beblowe Crag. She could picture them digging the tunnel from the cave system in the crag itself, working their way along until they met the sea cave, thereby having an exit like Crowley had suggested. An escape if they were under siege, or a way to smuggle people and supplies into the castle from the water, with only a small cave to defend, or the tunnel itself if the cave were taken.

She smiled, shook her head. Interesting history, but useless to her now. There was nowhere here to hide a mystical hammer. She turned off her light for a moment, plunging herself into stygian blackness. She breathed deep against the nerves that immediately rippled through her. She would need to preserve her battery, in case they needed to explore further. Who knew how far the other tunnels might go? She knew for a fact that it was one single passageway back to the cave where they had split up, so she could walk carefully trailing one hand on the wall for stability and get back with some of her battery preserved.

She took another deep breath, telling herself to be calm, then froze. She had heard something. No, not something. She knew exactly what it was. The scuff of a shoe on the rock floor. She knew instinctively that it wasn’t Crowley or Cameron. They knew she had come this way, they would call out her name or something, not creep along like that. A light danced around the shallow bend back the way she had come.

There had been a fissure in the rock beside the blocked-up cave entrance, a kind of fold as if the rock had been creased by some giant hand. Rose quickly, as quietly as she could, backed up, feeling behind her as she went. As the approaching light brightened, her hand fell into the gap and she pressed herself in.

The gap was narrow, but she forced her way. The leg of her jeans snagged on a sharp protuberance, but she drove herself against it, pushing deeper in, ignoring the cold rock against her flesh, the knife Cameron had given her gripped tightly in one hand. Her heart beat so hard it filled her ears, slammed against the inside of her chest. She drew breath as quietly as she could, but the rock closed her in, stopped her lungs from expanding. She fought against panic, trying not to hyperventilate.

The scuffing shoes came nearer, the light ridiculously bright now. Was she far enough in to be hidden from view?

Landvik appeared around the shallow bend, his face a mask of fury in the stark light from a small penlight torch. He grunted a sound of annoyance as his light splashed on the blocked dead end. He shined it around, looked up and down, and scanned the ceiling above. He muttered something in Norwegian that sounded almost certainly like a curse and turned, took a few steps back the way he had come.

Trembling from nerves and the cold, Rose was about to release a quiet sigh of relief when Landvik stopped, then turned back.