Torrent (13 page)

“I concur,” Temi said before Simon could sputter out a protest.

I eyed her with new speculation. “Oh, I like this. With an odd number of people, we suddenly have the ability to settle disputes with a vote, a vote that can’t end up in a stalemate.”

“Wait a minute,” Simon said. “We need to discuss this. As a new member, her vote shouldn’t count for as much as mine.”

“It only needs to count for a hundredth of yours, so long as it can be added to my full vote.” I smiled and opened the van door.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all…”

Still smiling, I shoved him out the door. “You should have thought of that before arguing to have her join the team.”

I stepped outside after Simon. The quiet of the forest reminded me that we weren’t alone out here, and it wouldn’t do to be overheard. We didn’t have a fire extinguisher this time, and I wasn’t about to start shooting at
people
with my bow. I didn’t like the idea of facing the two riders in another brawl anyway. Eleriss had been pleasant enough, if odd, when I’d talked to him the night before, but I didn’t think that politeness would last if he found us stalking him.

We dropped our chitchat for the hike to the motorcycles, each of us scanning the path ahead and the surrounding trees, watching for movement. Fresh tire prints dented the earth between the rounded rocks that dotted the riverbed. Tracking
them
was easy; following the men after they dismounted would be more challenging, especially since we wouldn’t want to get close enough to be seen.

After ten minutes of walking, a glint in the brush caught my eye. I pointed, and we found the black bikes hidden there. I wondered if the riders had known someone was following them, or if they’d simply taken a precaution.

“This is as far as I can track them.” Simon waved his phone—we’d caught up with the little dot that represented the device he’d glued in one of the tailpipes.

Given that
my
reception had disappeared a while back, I wondered if he’d been guessing a little as to their location in the end. Or maybe his app simply required less juice than a web browser. We hunted around for a moment, our faces toward the dusty earth.

“Found their prints.” I pointed to the ground and led the way. With brush clogging the riverbanks, there wasn’t much chance of the riders leaving the bed, but I kept my eyes open for the possibility anyway. Other than the footprints, the pair traveled lightly over the earth. I didn’t notice any broken branches or snapped twigs such as one expected in the wake of large animals and careless humans.

As we continued down the dry riverbed, I grew more conscious of the passing of time. I checked the clock on my phone often. My willingness to be out here was predicated on the monster’s history of nocturnal attacks. For all that I wanted to solve some of the mysteries around Eleriss and Jakatra, I wasn’t willing to die to do so.

“What’s that?” Temi whispered, pointing ahead.

Something dark lay between some rocks. I crept forward, pausing to note the fresh cup of a boot in the dust, then stopped. A bunch of weeds had been cut back, revealing a hole in a stretch of granite, its edges worn smooth. The sound of rushing water drifted up from within.

“Our underground river,” I said.

Simon peered into the hole. About two feet in diameter, it would be an unpleasant space to crawl into. I doubted the cold water waiting at the bottom would be pleasant either. The sun was still out, but it had moved behind the trees, and I didn’t fancy the idea of air-drying my clothing. Arizona or not, it was October, and we were five thousand feet above sea level.

I tried to pick up the tracks on the other side of the hole, but the earth there didn’t hold any footprints. I circled the area in case the riders had climbed out of the wash. Nothing.

“Why do I have a feeling they went down there?” Temi asked.

Simon looked to me.

“Because… I think they have.” Shaking my head, I returned to the hole. “How could they know if there’s air to breathe down there? You can’t tell from here. The water might fill the entire space.”

“A river should be low at this time of year,” Simon said.

“Maybe so, but I don’t relish the idea of plopping down there and seeing where the flow takes me.”

“It could be a trap too,” Temi said. “If they knew we were following them and wanted to… get rid of us, they could lead us to believe they’d gone down there when all they’d truly done was hidden their tracks and continued on.”

“That’s true. I’ve only tracked animals.” And not that many of them, I admitted to myself. “They don’t do things like sweeping branches across the sand to rub out their prints.”

Simon dug into his pack and pulled out a flashlight. He flopped onto his belly and peered into the hole.

“Still,” I added, “I didn’t get the impression that they wanted to do us any harm. The chatty one warned me to leave town.”

“This hole looks like it opens up before it hits the water,” Simon said. “Though I don’t know if there’s anywhere to walk on the sides.”

“Perhaps if we had some rope, we could lower him down,” Temi said.

“Me?” Simon drew back and knelt by the edge. “I didn’t volunteer for that.”

“Oh, you were volunteered,” I said. “We even voted on it while you were hanging over the side there. Due to our superior numbers, we easily obtained the majority.”

He pointed the flashlight at me. “We
are
going to have a discussion about voting procedures soon.”

“Of course,” I said. “In the meantime, why don’t you get out our rope alternative and see what kind of harness you can fashion for yourself?”

“Fine, but if there are any tarantulas down there, we’re switching places.”

“That’s fair,” I said.

As Simon dug into his pack again, Temi pointed at my bullwhip and said, “Can’t we use that like a rope? It might be long enough to lower someone down.”

“And risk having it drop into the water and float away? I took a special class so I could make it myself. It’s priceless.”

“Note, she’s perfectly willing to let
me
drop in the water and float away,” Simon said.

“Well, I didn’t make you by hand in a special class.”

Simon pulled out his trusty roll of duct tape. “Rope alternative, coming up.”

In an impressively short time, he’d braided strips of tape into a twenty-foot length and had fashioned the equivalent of a rappelling seat for himself. He found a sturdy stump to tie the end around, then handed the loose coils to us. He stuck the flashlight into his belt and crouched beside the hole, placing his hands on either side.

“Lower me down, ladies.”

Temi and I gripped the “rope,” and I took a wide-legged stance, ready to lean back to help with the weight while she found a bolder to brace herself against. Sometime I’d have to ask her if she wore a knee brace, which would account for the limp, or if she favored the leg because it hurt to put weight on. It’d be a drag either way.

“Ready when you are,” I told Simon.

He lowered himself, using his legs to slow his descent. At first, there was no pull on the rope, but his head dropped below the hole, and he must have run out of rock to brace himself against, for we soon had his full body weight.

“Should we start lowering you?” I asked, not sure if he’d hear me in my normal tone of voice, but not willing to shout in case the riders lurked nearby. Temi’s observation that this might be a trap hadn’t left my mind.

A couple of quick tugs came in response.

“Guess that’s a yes,” I said.

We let our rope slide a foot, then a foot more. When we didn’t receive any more feedback, we kept going. I wished I’d taken a closer look inside so I’d have an idea as to the depth, but it couldn’t be more than ten feet to the water. All right, maybe fifteen, I decided as more and more rope played through our hands.

Something jerked at the end of the line, and my gut lurched.

“Simon?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay low, though I wanted to shout.

Words floated up. I couldn’t decipher anything except a few curses followed by, “Cold!”

“He must have let himself drop into the river,” I said, not certain Temi had heard. She was farther away from the hole than I was.

“There’s probably not a bank or anything to stand on,” she said.

A couple more tugs came, and I let out a little more line, but it grew slack. He must be standing on the bottom. I knelt beside the edge of the hole. I couldn’t see Simon but a flashlight beam was waving back and forth down there.

“Anything promising?” I asked.

Simon stepped—no,
waded
—into view beneath the hole. Water lapped about his waist. “As far as I can tell, there are no tarantulas.”

So that was what all the flashlight waving had been about.

“That’s the most promising feature?” I asked.

“Actually, no. I can see… I don’t know. It might just be some natural caves, but I bet you’ll be interested.”

“Interested enough to warrant standing in freezing cold water?”

“I think so. There’s enough headroom for walking.”

I leaned back, facing Temi. I considered how fragile our duct tape rope was—it would be easy for someone to come along and cut it. I wasn’t sure about climbing back out again without it either. If Simon jumped, he might be able to reach the bottom of the hole, but those smooth stone walls didn’t offer any handholds.

“You want me to stay up here?” Temi asked.

“Would you? I’ll leave my bow in case… in case.”

“Because the handful of times I shot one as a kid will serve me so well if a monster blazes out of the trees,” she said dryly.

“You can use the staff as a club if you have to.” At her skeptical expression, I added, “You can serve a tennis ball at a hundred miles an hour, right? You ought to be able to crack a monster on the head hard enough for it to see stars.”

“A hundred and thirty-two,” she said.

“What?”

“My fastest serve. It was a record, actually.”

“There you go. Add some adrenaline to that, and you should be quite lethal with a club.”

Temi eyed the bow, perhaps trying to decide if it had as many nice merits as a club, at least insofar as blunt instruments went. “I’d rather have a fire extinguisher.”

“We’ll add that to our arsenal in the future. Given the suspicious smells that come out of Zelda’s air conditioning vents, the ability to put out fires might come in handy one day.”

“I heard that,” Simon called up from below.

I left Temi my pack as well as the bow, in case she got hungry and wanted my munchies. “We’ll be back shortly,” I said with a parting wave.

Now that we knew there weren’t rushing rapids or anything else dangerous below the hole, I climbed down the sticky duct tape rope without help. It was darker than expected at the bottom—Simon had moved farther down the river with his light. I hissed when my feet hit the cold water, the damp chill penetrating my shoes immediately, and I almost yanked them out again. I knew the river flowed out of that lake and wasn’t glacier water, but it
was
a degree of cold I could only appreciate when the outside temperatures read in the 100s.

Simon was moving farther away, clearly drawn by something, so I gritted my teeth and dropped the rest of the way into the water. I managed to keep from cursing, but only because I remembered those two riders were around there somewhere. And also because Simon was doing this in his socks and sandals.

I pulled out my flashlight and let go of the rope. Smooth continuous stone lay beneath my feet rather than small, shifting rocks and pebbles. I slipped within the first two steps. Copious amounts of flailing kept my head from going under—barely—but I had to bite back curses again. I groped my way to the nearest wall to brace myself. Damp cool rock met my fingers. The lack of vegetation growing out of the cracks made me wonder if the passage flooded regularly. Hopefully not while intrepid explorers were visiting.

With one hand on the wall and one gripping a flashlight, I waded after Simon. He’d disappeared around a bend, though his light reflected off the slick walls, guiding me forward. The darkness soon grew oppressive, with the water particularly black as it flowed around me. I couldn’t see a thing under it and had to hold back a squeal as something brushed past my leg. When I jerked away, I slipped again. Only my hand on the wall kept me from pitching over backward.

“Just a fish,” I whispered.

I glanced back at the hole in the ceiling, at the beam of daylight flowing down from it, and was reassured by the presence of the rope dangling there. We could slosh back and climb out of the river anytime we needed to.

As I continued on, the ceiling rose, and I ran my flashlight along it. A few bats hung from roots that had found their way through the rock, the tips dangling a few inches down from above.

Simon hadn’t gone around a bend, I saw as I walked farther, but into a cave. Not a cave, I realized with a start. A
cavate
, a manmade cave dwelling. A row of them lined the wall, the openings about three feet wide, four feet tall, and a meter above the water level. The walls around the entrances appeared to be sandstone, with layers of granite above and below.

The discovery floored me, and I forgot about the icy water and other dangers. Arizona possessed cavates aplenty, with a whole mess of them over in the Verde Valley, but they were high up on cliffs, not underground.

I scrambled for the largest entrance, pausing only to touch a few old blocks, part of a masonry wall that would have once made the entrance more of a frame than a doorway. Once inside, I found myself in an oblong space about fifteen feet long with openings to other chambers on each side. The entry room was tall enough to stand in, though Temi would have had to duck. There weren’t any furnishings remaining or, at first glance, evidence of habitation. My first thought was that looters had been through, but it might be simpler than that: any time the river flooded, it would clean out the interior. What would have prompted people to scrape out dwellings down here? Hostile neighbors, I supposed.

“Amazing,” I whispered, turning a full circle. “I wonder if any archaeologists are aware of this spot.”