“Maybe we took the wrong passage out of the Vatican?” she suggested.
“No,” Julian said, the word harsher now. He still hadn’t moved. “This is New York.”
Etta was about to shake him when a breeze stirred the fog, swirled it. The muddied shapes, which had clearly been hills and rough terrain, were now sloping piles of brick and stone, the warped frames of buildings and burned-out bodies of cars. The frost near her feet wasn’t frost at all, but shattered glass. Flecks of white flurried around her, and for one stupid, insane second, Etta thought, Snow. It’s snowing.
But the only thing falling around them was ash.
THE DARKNESS NEVER LIFTED.
For a single terrifying moment, Nicholas was certain he, too, had somehow lost vision in one or both of his eyes. The blackness was absolute; the air breathed around him, thick enough to slice into ribbons. Already unsteady from exhaustion and—Christ—blood loss, he landed hard enough on his knees to nearly bite off his own tongue. Sophia almost slipped out of his arms. He gripped the back of her tunic for purchase, avoiding her cold, slick skin.
“Sophia?” he said, his voice echoing back to him threefold. “Sophia? Can you hear me?”
Silence.
Stillness.
The touch of death, he thought.
The hairs on his body prickled to attention as panic surged through him, and he shook her gently, trying to provoke any sort of cutting word. “Sophia!”
“Give her to me,” Li Min said, forcing the matter. He should have fought her, he should have argued with her for propriety’s sake, but there wasn’t the time, and he hadn’t the strength. Sophia was inches taller than her, but the other young woman easily arranged her on her back and carried her forward quickly, her steps light. Nicholas was horrified that, even with the additional weight gone, his limbs dragged as if he were deep in his cups.
Pounding steps…or perhaps his own heart. No—there was another sound underscoring it, one that pierced his awareness. Someone was dragging a blade against stone, and he felt it, he felt it as if the sword or knife were scraping at his own bones.
“There’s nowhere you can hide that we won’t find you!” Miles Ironwood. “Come out now, Carter, and I’ll let you choose how you’d like to die.”
The other men laughed in response to Miles’s threat. Nicholas barely managed to catch his tongue before he shouted something back.
“Blade or barrel, blade or barrel,” Miles sang out. “I don’t think you want the old man to choose for you. Blade or barrel, what’ll it be, Carter? My knife or gun at your throat?”
Li Min muttered something he was sure was an oath.
“This way!” Her voice floated to him through the darkness, bounced between whatever walls were around them, cutting through even the passage’s groaning.
“Where—?” He coughed, trying to clear the tightness in his throat. “Where are you?”
It was so dark—so very, very dark and still. There wasn’t a hint of starlight or moonlight to warm the air with their glow, and there was no wind stirring against his skin. The utter stillness of this place was devastating. Terrifying. There did not seem to be a beginning or end to it.
“Get up!” Li Min sounded nearly breathless.
Where are we? A cellar of some sort? Holy Christ, why hadn’t he even thought to ask before he’d gone charging through the passage?
Get ahold of yourself. Nicholas was nearly frenzied with the need to seize some sort of control, some understanding, over what was happening.
Over the scraping and footfalls, there was a snick of sound, and a small spark of light floated like a firefly a few yards in front of him. His mind reached through its tangled mass of chaos for the word. Match.
Li Min had lit a match. She drew it close to her face, illuminating the stark lines of concern etched there.
“She’s not…” he tried to tell her. “I can’t…”
“We haven’t much time—stand up, Nicholas Carter. If you cannot, then I will carry you both.”
His legs bobbed like a newborn calf’s, but Nicholas, seemingly by the grace of God alone, got his feet under him. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness well enough to see the stark lines of the narrow walkway, the walls that opened here and there in doorless entryways.
In this state, he couldn’t think and walk at the same time, so he shut off the valve to his thoughts and followed each prick of light that the girl lit, until finally they veered off the main walkway, and into what looked like…
A mausoleum.
It was one in a string of three that shared walls. Li Min had stepped through the nearest, her hand brushing a small engraving of a leaf, nearly hidden by the fading fresco of men. Nicholas stepped down into the structure, carefully balancing as loose stones bit into the thin soles of his sandals.
“Is she alive?” he whispered, but Li Min ignored the question. Sophia hadn’t said a word since they’d made their way through the passage, and he could no longer feel to ensure her chest was rising and falling. He could barely see her in this impenetrable darkness.
You cannot die, he thought, the words searing and unyielding. You owe me a debt.
Etta’s terrified face, the moment before she disappeared, cut through his mind. What would happen if Sophia died? The passage they’d come through would likely collapse—but would she disappear, the way Etta and Julian had when they’d been caught in a wrinkle and tossed through time?