The Lost Chalice (The Relic Seekers Book 3) (4 page)

CHAPTER FOUR

T
HE THIN METAL
container lay on its side as if someone had dropped it. Was it the same vial, or did Raphael keep others here? Jake picked it up and turned it over. A single drop of water ran out, and he knew in his gut that it was the one Kendall had brought to refill.

Jake checked the rest of the temple, putting the room with the tombs off until last. There was something about the room that made him sick. There were three tombs of black marble, which most likely held the remains of King Arthur and Guinevere, whose bones had disappeared along with the treasure that the monks of the abbey protected. Legend said their tombs were made of black marble. The third tomb was a mystery. Merlin’s? A knight’s?

Jake felt the same twisting in his stomach and head as he had the first time he’d seen the room. Bones, that must be it. He hated them, and tombs this old must contain bones. Kendall and Nathan weren’t in this room either. There must be another room, or rooms. The Protettori loved secret rooms. And booby traps. Kendall and Nathan could be trapped somewhere.

He searched every square inch of the place, but didn’t find them or any secret rooms. Either they’d gone exploring somewhere else, been kidnapped, or vanished into thin air.

Vanishing into thin air didn’t seem likely, so that left exploring or kidnapping. Jake couldn’t see them exploring when Raphael was lying injured, waiting for the water. That narrowed it down to kidnapping. Nathan had enemies, as any man in his position of wealth and power would, but there were only two who knew this location. The Reaper and Brandi. The Reaper was the most likely candidate since Brandi didn’t have a cross to get her past the statues. Of course, she wouldn’t need a cross if she touched Kendall or Nathan as they passed. Jake didn’t see Brandi taking on Nathan and Kendall so soon after they had all escaped the Reaper. Brandi was scared of Nathan. Had the Reaper come back through the portal?

The thought had just crossed Jake’s mind when he heard a whisper coming from the main room of the temple. Pulling his gun, he slipped out to see who was there. The temple was empty, other than the whispers, soft at first, growing louder and faster until they created a hum like the statues made. It gave him an eerie feeling, as if the statues were talking to each other. He took the vial and walked down the steps to the fountain again. Raphael needed water, and right now he was Jake’s only source of help, since Marco was out of his head half the time.

Jake filled the vial and closed the opening to the fountain. Carefully holding the precious water, he started to leave the temple. As he passed the statues, he heard a sizzle. Pain shot through him like a bolt of lightning, flinging him across the floor. He lay there, unable to move as blackness descended and the smell of ozone filled his nostrils.

When he regained consciousness, it took him a minute to figure out he was still inside the temple. His head and body felt like they were on fire. Near the doorway, the closest statue watched him with stone eyes. The statues. They must have zapped him when he tried to pass. Why hadn’t the cross protected him? He lifted his hand, the only part he could move, to his chest. The cross wasn’t there.

He should be dead. He tried sitting up, but he couldn’t, so he lay still, gasping for breath. Something warm ran from the corner of his mouth. He touched it with his tongue. Blood. That’s why his insides felt like they’d been fried. They had. He coughed and felt another trickle of blood. He was hemorrhaging internally. He was going to die.

He’d survived war and countless enemies, only to be killed by statues? Kendall’s face filled his mind. Her lovely green eyes, her smile, the catch of her breath as they’d made love. He’d finally tasted love and lost it. Dammit. He couldn’t leave her alone. His throat worked, and he started to choke on the blood.

Kendall wasn’t alone. She had Nathan. He would protect her. But Nathan needed him too. They were both in trouble. Jake put his hands against the floor and tried again to push himself up. He felt something hard in his left hand. The vial of water. Moving stiffly, he raised his hand to his mouth and did the only thing he could think of. He opened the vial and drank.

He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but he wasn’t dead. Jake sat up and moved his legs. They worked. What the hell? He even managed to stand. Something rolled across the floor. Raphael’s vial. Drinking the water must have kept him alive. But without a cross, he was trapped.

He gathered his backpack, which had been knocked off when he fell, and retraced his steps, but didn’t find the cross. Impossible. It couldn’t have vanished. He looked at the statues watching in silence. “Don’t suppose one of you has an extra cross?” he asked. Then he was struck by a thought. Assuming the tombs contained the corpses of knights, they must have had crosses. Perhaps they were buried with them.

He dreaded going into the room again, but he had to get out of this temple so he could search for Kendall and Nathan. He looked at the first two tombs. King Arthur and Guinevere? Jake was hesitant to open those. He’d idolized King Arthur when he was a kid. It didn’t seem right to desecrate his tomb. Nor Guinevere’s. Mentally Jake was drawing a comparison to her and Kendall after the visions he’d had of the couple from Camelot while he and Kendall were making love. Since Kendall had called him Lancelot afterward, Jake was pretty sure the woman in the vision had been Guinevere. He had no concrete explanation, but he assumed he must have tapped into Kendall’s vision when he touched her.

Swallowing his dread, he walked back into the room and looked at the first tomb. Now wasn’t the time to be courteous. If anyone would have a cross, it should be King Arthur.

The black marble was still shiny, which was surprising. He couldn’t imagine Raphael polishing the tombs. The covering was heavy. Pushing and tugging didn’t work, so he decided he must be going about the process wrong. Using his knife, he slid the blade around the edges, searching for a catch. The Protettori loved secret catches. He was surprised when he heard a click.

This time when he pushed the covering, it slid back without a sound. Jake looked down at the corpse inside. It wasn’t King Arthur.

It was Nathan.

CHAPTER FIVE

J
AKE STARED AT
the body in shock. Nathan was wearing
some kind of strange clothes. The Reaper must have caught them here. Where was Kendall? Pulse drumming in his ears, Jake hurried to the second tomb and, with trembling hands, used his knife again to find the catch. When the lid slid back, his heart stopped.

Kendall’s eyes were closed, but she didn’t look dead. He pressed his fingers to the cold skin of her neck in search of a pulse. Nothing. A harsh cry rose in his throat. “No, dammit. You can’t be dead.” He started to lift her out of the tomb when he noticed her fingernails. They were long. Kendall’s nails weren’t long. And these clothes weren’t right. He scoured her face and body and noticed other things that were different. The corpse’s lips weren’t as full as Kendall’s. Her eyebrows were thicker. It wasn’t her.

He felt light-headed with relief. But who was she? He looked at the first tomb again, and felt the same shock at seeing Nathan, or his likeness. This time Jake recognized the corpse’s clothes. He’d seen them on King Arthur in a vision.

How could that be? Unless it was one of the Protettori’s traps, a mental one to make trespassers hallucinate and go insane. Kendall had mentioned myths about men getting trapped inside the Tor and losing their minds. Or maybe he was dead and this was hell. If it was, he wasn’t planning on staying here. He needed a cross. A quick search revealed that there wasn’t one on Nathan’s or Kendall’s—he didn’t want to think of them as corpses—likenesses.

He stepped over to the third tomb, and his stomach rolled with waves of nausea. Swallowing, he opened the tomb and looked inside. His jaw dropped. “Why the hell not?”

It was him.

He was so well preserved he didn’t even look dead. Like the corpses in the first two tombs, the clothing was old, but the face was enough like Jake’s to be him, or at least a brother. There were slight differences. Haircut, scars that Jake didn’t have. Was this a joke? The closer his fingers got to the body, the higher the contents of his stomach climbed up his throat, but he didn’t stop. By the time he finished searching
his
corpse, his stomach felt like he’d dived off a cliff. He stepped back and pulled in a hard breath. The search hadn’t helped. There wasn’t a cross in any of the tombs. He’d have to find another way out. Stomach churning, he closed the tombs. Later, after he escaped, he would figure out who the hell the corpses were.

He searched the temple one last time, but he didn’t find the cross. Logically, he knew it couldn’t have vanished, but he also couldn’t have just searched his own corpse. Logic didn’t seem to matter here.

He couldn’t pass the statues, so he had to go up or down. He looked at the ceiling. The Reaper had used it as a portal, but Jake had no idea how it worked, or if anyone could open it besides the Reaper. That left the floor. If he could dig down far enough, it should be safe to pass the statues, considering that people walked all over the hillside above the statues and didn’t get electrocuted. But how the hell could he dig his way out from under the Tor?

He found a loose stone and started working with a small tool from his backpack. It took a while to remove it, and he was disappointed to find rock underneath. He chipped away at the granite, and after several minutes, the rock underneath cracked. A few more strikes and he was able to lift the broken rock. Dirt. That was good. But after an hour, he knew this was never going to work. He’d starve to death before he moved enough dirt to get out. The Tor wasn’t a huge mountain, but it was a mountain, and there was a good possibility that the temple was right in the center.

Jake stopped digging. He was so thirsty he decided to risk taking another drink of water. He did, and he felt refreshed. Then a plan occurred to him. It was insane, and might kill him, but he couldn’t just sit there waiting. He’d passed the statues before and nearly died, but the water had healed him. If he drank the water as he was crossing . . .

He refilled the vial from the fountain, but didn’t drink any more until he would need it. The water was powerful, and he didn’t know enough about it. Overdosing on the Fountain of Youth would be a hell of a way to die.

He walked back to the door leading from the temple—the only exit, as far as he knew. The statues stood a few feet inside the temple wall, so if he could just get past them, he’d have some time and space to recover—which he was sure he’d need—before getting out into the tunnel. He opened the vial of water and moved as close to the line of statues as he dared. His skin tingled as the fingers of electricity reached out for him. He pictured Kendall in his mind, lying underneath him, her face glowing, so that in case he didn’t make it, she would be the last thing he saw. Then he took a long drink and leaped.

The ringing in Kendall’s ears settled into a low rumble, but her body was tingling all over. She was wrapped in Nathan’s arms, and the rumbling sound was coming from his chest. She scrambled out of his arms and saw his eyes glowing the most beautiful shade of amber. He looked frightening and terribly beautiful.

“Nathan. Calm down.” But his fiery gaze didn’t fade, and his chest was moving in and out too fast. He hadn’t tried to stand, which worried her. He stayed on the floor, arms tensed, body curled like a wounded animal. Kendall swallowed and eased toward him. Kneeling, she touched his arm. His skin was burning hot. He had taken the brunt of their fall . . . but where were they?

Glancing around, she saw a room with large stones covering the walls and floor. The former was decorated with pictographs illuminated by candelabras lining the walls. In the center of the room was a rectangular object like an altar. It would be a fascinating place to explore at any other time, but now she was more interested in finding a door.

Nathan’s body was thrumming with energy, and his gaze hadn’t left hers, like a tiger watching its prey. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and his body slumped. She checked his pulse. Fast. “Nathan? Can you hear me?”

He didn’t open his eyes. His heartbeat was erratic and his skin felt dangerously hot. She tried her cell phone, but there was no signal. Not surprising. There wasn’t a signal in the temple either. She touched his cheek and brushed her hand over his light-brown hair. “I’m going to look for a way out. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” She had no idea where she was—under the Tor perhaps—but she had to get help.

She left him there and quickly searched the room for a door. The pictures on the walls reminded her of some Egyptian tombs. The altar in the center of the room had writing along the edges, but she couldn’t read it. Latin perhaps? There was a large, round shield-looking stone on one wall. But there wasn’t a door. Panic started setting in. She had to get help. Nathan could die, and Raphael needed water.

There wasn’t an obvious door, so she started searching for a hidden one. She examined the stones in general, and spent a good amount of time studying the round stone on the wall, but found nothing. Someone had built a lovely room here that required materials and labor. They weren’t here now, so there must be a way out. She glanced at the altar. Maybe it wasn’t an altar but a tomb holding the body of the last person who’d built this room. It was large enough. That was a morbid thought, and highly unlikely. Nonsense. Maybe the only way back was the way they came.

The best she could tell, they had fallen from the ceiling. Had she activated a trapdoor? She couldn’t see any sign of an opening from here. Giving up for the moment, she went back to check on Nathan. He was still hot, heartbeat still too fast. Alternating between checking on him and searching every stone for a way out, she finally grew exhausted. Her head felt strange, from the portal, she guessed.

Nathan was calmer and not quite as warm now, but still unconscious. Kendall sat down beside him, and when her eyes grew too heavy, she lay down, listening to him breathe. She thought about Jake. He would wonder where they were and come looking for them. But would he find them? She concentrated on his face, his steel-gray eyes and those dark lashes, as if trying to conjure him.
Help us, Jake.

Her scent filled his head, the sweetness of Kendall’s warm, female flesh. Since his
curse
had come into effect, Nathan’s sense of smell had intensified, making nearness to her sometimes like torture. It was all he could do to keep his hands off her. Through the pleasant drowsiness, he realized her scent was very close and there was a firm bum pressed against his groin.

Nathan opened his eyes. Kendall was lying in his arms, her blond hair tickling his nose. He couldn’t recall how they’d gotten in this position. The last thing he remembered was seeing Kendall fall and him reaching for her. Then that awful light-headed heaviness, as if his head were being separated from his body. They must have fallen through another portal. Damn the Protettori.

“Kendall?” He touched her shoulder.

She sat up with a start and turned, her startled eyes soft with sleep. “Nathan. Are you OK?” she asked.

He sat up beside her. “You?”

“I think so. You scared me. You got stuck in your adrenaline mode.”

He felt a shiver of fear. “Did I . . .”

“No. You weren’t dangerous. I was just worried for you. You felt so hot.” A blush started creeping across her cheeks. “Warm, your skin felt too warm.”

“The monster was trying to come out.” What if it had? What if he’d hurt her?

“You’re not a monster. Raphael is like you. He’s not a monster.”

“We don’t know much about what Raphael is or isn’t, and whatever he is, he’s had a long time to learn to control it. Where are we?”

“I don’t know. Under the temple, maybe. I touched the wheel.” Kendall said. “Maybe I accidentally opened a trapdoor. Remember the rumors about a labyrinth underneath the Tor? It would make sense for the Protettori to have something to stop a person if they got too close to the fountain.”

“My head feels like it did when Jake and I fell through the portal in the maze.”

Kendall looked dismayed but nodded. “Mine too. I would rather it be a booby trap.”

Nathan stood and helped Kendall to her feet. “How long was I out?”

She glanced at her watch. “It’s not working. A couple of hours, I think.”

Nathan glanced at his beat-up watch. He could afford a thousand Rolexes, but he couldn’t part with this watch. It was the only link to his father. It wasn’t working either. “Blimey.”

“Are you sure you’re feeling OK? I’ve never seen you like that before. I was afraid I would lose you . . . again.”

A thrill went through him to know she cared, that Jake didn’t consume her thoughts. “I feel OK, other than my head. But we do need to find a way out. Raphael needs water.”

Kendall touched her pocket. “The vial’s gone. I must have lost it when I fell.”

“Or else it’s floating around in some kind of time warp.” Nathan pulled his cell phone out and cursed. “No signal.”

“I already checked.”

He put it back in his pocket. “There has to be a door out of here.”

“I checked that too. I couldn’t find one.”

“There’s always a door.” Nathan looked back at the ceiling. “Unless we just fell through the only one.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Do you sense anything? Any clue to where we are?”

“No.”

“We’d better start exploring.”
They were good at that.
The quick memory didn’t startle him as much as the earlier ones had. But he didn’t tell her. She was already sure he was Adam. He still wasn’t certain he hadn’t gotten the memories from Kendall and Raphael. They both had the ability to share things they sensed with others, and most of Nathan’s memories of Adam had come when he was touching one of them. He needed more proof.

He conducted his own search, briefly admiring the amazing paintings and sketches on the walls, but Kendall was right, there wasn’t a door. “Did you light the torches?”

“No. They were on when I woke up,” she said. “Someone must have been here recently.”

They checked the room, carefully prodding each stone. They fell into a rhythm, methodically tapping and listening, studying surfaces. Occasionally he would turn and catch her looking at him. “Is something the matter?” he finally asked.

“No,” she said, smiling. “Nothing at all. Other than falling through a portal and getting trapped.”

Nathan smiled in return. “Business as usual.”

Kendall looked as if he’d said something impressive. “You’re different now,” she said. “You smile, and you’re more . . . open. I can sense more about you. You were blocking me when we first met, weren’t you?”

He took a moment to answer. “I didn’t want to frighten you off with my thoughts.”

“You were worried that I’d sense your curse?”

He was worried that she would see herself in his thoughts.
Bloody fool
, he chided himself. How could he not be Adam if he’d had memories of her as a child before he even knew anything about Adam? She hadn’t been touching him then. Why the devil was he fighting it so hard? He didn’t want to explain, so he nodded.

As they searched the room, Nathan grew more concerned about Raphael. Kendall’s wrinkled brows indicated that she was having the same thought.