“Show-off.” I turned my back on him and went down the line of gear for one last look. At the end of the stash was a chest on the floor. I flipped it open with the toe of my boot.
Inside was nothing but gold coins shimmering in the dim light. I reached in and pulled one up, holding it to get a better look at it. “What is this?” I didn’t recognize the stamps on it; the language was unfamiliar to me, which was saying something.
“Druid coins,” Killian said. “My forbears were druids and this was the blood money they took from the Romans.”
“Gaelic?” I flipped the coin to him and he caught it in the air as he nodded.
“Yes.”
I tipped my head to the side and stared into the chest. “Why keep it?”
“The legend is that the one who takes it and uses it for their own gain will have their life end in nothing but misery.”
“Lovely,” I said. “Can I have one?”
He laughed. “You want a gold coin?”
I shrugged and caught the coin as he flipped it back to me. “I don’t want to use it. I want to hang onto it.”
“Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Gut instinct.”
He pointed a finger at me. “Survivor. Okay, you take it with my permission. Just don’t spend it.”
I nodded and stuffed the coin in my front right pocket, doing my best not to blush because I was relying on an instinct that I wasn’t even sure was my own. Just my abnormal ability cropping up again telling me the coin would be important at some point.
I closed the lid of the chest and turned toward the Humvee. Figures shifted through the shadows from the direction of the stairs.
Not good, this was not good in a small tight space. “Abe, hier.”
I yanked the .45 and Dinah from their holsters. “Killian, your family are quick to wake up.”
He spun and lightning arced from his fingers in a flash of bright blue and white. The air around us snapped and crackled and the hair on the back of my neck and arms rose to the static, the smell of ozone covering any other scent I might have been picking up on.
I ran forward, firing toward Killian’s family, Abe tucked in close to me, panting hard. This time I didn’t hold back. “Kill them, Dinah.”
“On it,” she snarled as she bucked in my hand, bullet after bullet slamming into the Irish around us. The .45 gave a harder kick, but I steadied it and kept emptying the clip, counting the rounds.
The last bullet discharged and I flicked the button to drop the clip and slammed the grip onto my hip where another full clip waited. An arc of lightning shot past my head and I spun on one foot, twisting around and down. I ended up on a knee.
“Above you!” Killian yelled and I didn’t look, just pushed forward, pushing with all I had as the cavern ceiling above me collapsed. I jammed Dinah into her holster—I couldn’t lose her too—and kept the .45 in my right hand, firing into the abnormals tightening around us. By my count, Dinah and I had taken out six, and two with the .45, which meant they called in reinforcements. Just how many, though, was the question. With our backs to the wall—literally—we were pinned down. I didn’t know how long we would last facing this many powerful abnormals.
I rolled and ended up against a wall as the stalactite crumbled and crashed into the place where I’d been. From what I could see, Killian was still on his feet and giving as good as he got. Abe had crawled under the Humvee.
We could kill them all, but they weren’t who we were here for and the odds were not in our favor to finish this without injury.
“Dinah, you still got a smoke bomb?”
“Yes. But I want to kill the nasty shit fuckers.”
I nodded. “Right, but we need to move if we are going to catch up to Tommy and Eleanor.”
That shut her up. I yanked her from her holster, her inner workings clicking as they shifted from ammo to smoke. I fired once into the middle of the cavern and the smoke spread up and outward with a whoosh.
I scrambled up and ran for the Humvee. “Time is ticking, Irish,” I yelled.
He met me at the armored vehicle, out of breath, a nick above his eye. “You’re giving me a nickname?”
“Fits.” I slid into the driver’s side and Abe leapt in and over me, scrambling into the backseat without being told. I held my hand out to Killian for the keys. He handed them over and ran to the passenger side.
“Where are we going?” I jammed the key in the ignition and revved the engine. A spark of lightning danced over the Humvee and I braced myself, but to his credit, Killian was right. The lightning never reached us.
“Back it up.”
I slammed it into reverse and a camera came on in the dash. Good deal. I hit the gas pedal and we sped backwards until I cranked the wheel hard, spinning us around. I threw the Humvee into drive and hit the pedal again, leaving his family behind in the smoke as we raced through the cavern.
“Just keep the speed up, don’t slow down no matter what you see. It’s all illusions,” Killian said as he reached across me and buckled me up. I wanted to frown at him, but I couldn’t look away. The cavern twisted and turned rapidly and I didn’t dare look anywhere but where we were going for fear of smashing right into a wall of rock.
“Killian, how bad is this going to be?”
“Not bad. Terrifying, but not bad. Trust me,” he said as he turned around and did some fancy work for Abe, lashing him into the backseat between two seatbelts. Strapping the dog in did not bode well for the end of this drive. Then he buckled himself in. “It’ll be fine.”
I stared out the windshield. “Trust is not easily given in my world. Last guy I trusted killed Zee.”
“Have I ever lied to you?” Done with the seatbelts, he reached across and put a hand on my upper thigh. “I won’t ever lie to you, Nix. You might not like what I have to say, but I will always tell you the truth.”
“As you see it,” I said.
“Sure. How else would I see it?”
I couldn’t help laughing at him, but the laughter dried up as we turned what ended up being the final corner. A waterfall rushed down in front of us, but I could see through it. And through it was nothing but empty space.
“Pedal down, Lass.” He pushed on my thigh, keeping my foot tightly to the gas.
“Fuck me,” I whispered.
“Soon enough.” He laughed and then we were in open space and I had to bite down on the scream that bubbled up my throat. Abe grunted as his straps tightened.
For just a moment, we floated and I wondered if the Humvee was going to sprout wings like some sort of transformer. But no, gravity caught up with us and we fell from the sky, the Humvee tipping so I was looking down into a pool of water that had to be forty feet below. Abe yelped and began to pant so heavily, I could feel his breath on the back of my neck, his straps yanking as tight as my own seatbelt.
I’d fallen further, with more metal around me, but never into a pool of water while my seatbelt was still on, never strapped in and unable to escape. I tried to relax into the straps holding me fast, knowing more damage would be done the more I tensed.
The seconds ticked, silence in the cab of the armored vehicle a weird thing that I couldn’t help thinking was not unlike the silence of a tomb. Right when I thought I couldn’t stand it any longer, we hit the water with a thunderous crash, the front end of the vehicle dipping down as I was jerked forward in my straps, my head hitting the steering wheel.