Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
The moment they’d hit the cave entrance, everything went to shit.
The tunnel was a fucking furnace. The ground kicked up like it was trying to throw them off the island.
The air was laced with volcanic ash, and this guy he’d just run into should be nowhere near a high-risk zone.
Viper hadn’t even the time to process who the hell the guy was before instinct kicked in and he’d grabbed him, barked the order to run, and dragged him deeper into the mountain.
Ash and heat chased them like a living thing.
Every step felt like an apocalypse was hunting them.
The cave twisted, narrowed, and then opened again.
He didn’t stop running. His team was behind him—he could hear their boots over the roar.
“Move, move, MOVE,” he shouted again, though his voice was mostly for himself.
A pyroclastic flow had a speed clocked in triple digits.
No human could outrun one, and Viper knew it.
But stopping meant dying, so they ran. The guy he’d grabbed wasn’t built for this.
He stumbled more than once as they rounded another sharp bend in the cave.
But he dragged him after him anyway; the protector in his soul would allow nothing less.
“This is new,” the guy gasped, panic rising in his voice. “This wasn’t—this was a wall before. I—I don’t recognize this passage. Something must have shifted the route?—”
Fantastic. We’re being chased by a fucking wall of fire, and now the nerd is telling me the floor plan’s changed.
Viper ignored him, shoved him ahead of him, and veered toward a narrow crevice on the right where the air was cooler, the draft stronger.
If there’s airflow, it might lead to a way out or a deeper chamber.
It might also lead to a lava tube and kill us all faster.
He ruthlessly shoved his fear aside and refused to slow down. Behind him, the roar of the mountain grew louder. It sounded like the earth was screaming. Dust rained from the ceiling. A glance over his shoulder showed him all his guys were right on his heels.
At least we’ll die together.
Viper stepped around the man he was pushing, ducked under a jut of black rock, and dragged him after him. “You got a name?”
The guy huffed, stumbled, then half-yelled over his shoulder, “Ward. Dr. Ward Sutherland.”
Figures. The type to have doctor in front of his name and still be dumb enough to get caught in a volcano cave with zero backup.
They rounded another bend, this one tighter, the walls closing in. Viper tossed a glow stick forward, the pale green light bouncing off a sheer descent. “It’s a vertical drop.”
“Looks like ten, twelve feet.” Reaper crowded up on his heels to look over his shoulder. “Could be more.”
Viper stepped forward and peered over. He spotted a steeply slanted slope. All he could do at this point was hope like hell it was by some miracle survivable. He could barely make out the glint of rocks below and a faint flicker of red through a natural chimney.
It’ll have to do.
He turned to Ward. “Slide down, feet first, and keep your center of mass low.”
Ward gave him a look like he wanted to argue. “What if it’s?—”
“We’re gonna be dead if you don’t go now. Pick one.”
Ward went. It was clumsy and loud, but he didn’t break anything, so Viper counted it as a win.
He followed next, then Trace and Juice. Reaper and Zero followed up on their six.
The moment they hit the lower chamber, the temperature shifted again, cooler, and thankfully with less ash.
The space opened up into a cathedral-like cavern, maybe twenty meters wide, fifteen tall at the center, and made entirely of volcanic basalt, smooth as glass in some places, jagged in others.
His men fanned out automatically, weapons up.
The place was wrong. The air was dry, hot, oppressive, but there wasn’t a single sign of active lava in sight.
No vents. No open flows. Just pressure. Endless pressure like the mountain was breathing down their necks, pissed and holding its breath.
Viper wiped the sweat from his brow and moved to cover. “Volcano, check in.”
Oh, the fucking irony of having a team called Volcano, and we are all going to die because of a fucking volcanic blast.
“Clear,” Juice immediately responded.
“Clear.” Reaper’s voice followed.
“Five is vertical.”
“Three good.”
Trace didn’t answer.
Viper spun. “Six?”
“Grá Croí?” Juice said at the same time.
Viper followed Trace’s gaze over their heads. His eyes widened at the sight of the pyroclastic flow rolling above the slope that had led them into this tavern. It rolled and pushed like an angry beast against an invisible barrier. “What the hell?”
It’s like a damn oven in here and getting hotter by the second.
Sweat dripped down his face. “How is it staying up there?”
“Magic,” Trace growled. “Witch magic.” He spun around and glared at the archaeologist. “You…”
Viper jumped in front of Trace as he took a step toward Ward. “What the hell, man?”
“He did this.”
Viper could hear the growl of the wolf in Trace’s words.
He flicked his gaze toward his second in command, and thankfully, Juice understood what he wanted.
He wrapped his arms around Trace from behind and hauled him against his chest. Viper didn’t miss the blackness of his eyes or the blood dripping from Trace’s hands.
“I didn’t…”
“Don’t,” Trace snapped, pointing at Ward, who froze in the face of his fury. While Trace looked like a man, it was clear Ward’s instincts told him he faced an apex predator.
“Shh.” Juice tried to soothe and calm the shifter. “I don’t understand what’s going on. Explain it to me, mate.”
Viper’s body tensed when he recognized how Trace stilled as the wolf inside him locked onto his prey.
He angled himself between Ward and Trace.
“Sutherland,” he said, keeping his tone even.
“Stay very still. If you scream, run, or pull any stupid-ass moves, I will duct tape you to a wall. Understood?”
“Yeah.” Then he muttered, “I don’t understand what’s going on. You are all either insane or I am. There is no way to escape a pyroclastic flow.”
Reaper’s laugh was a short bark. “Yet we are under one, and other than it being as hot as fuck and we are being cooked like a damn Sunday roast, it’s staying up there.” He pointed up with the muzzle of his weapon.
“Anyone want to take a shot at explaining what the hell that’s happening?” Viper was all out of ideas. “Or even how the fuck it’s happening?”
Juice cleared his throat. “Bran says it’s old binding magic, the likes that hasn’t been seen in many millennia.”
“Fuck. Does that sound as bad to everyone else as it does to me?” Kaze muttered.
Yes. Yes, it does.
Viper shifted his weapon on its sling, and now that Juice seemed to have a handle on Trace, he leaned back against a chunk of volcanic glass.
His pulse still hadn’t settled. He could feel the tremors through the soles of his boots.
Above them, the volcano was losing its goddamn mind.
He turned to Ward. “You from the dig site?”
“Yes.”
“Why were you inside the mountain?”
The archaeologist wiped sweat and ash from his forehead with a shaking hand. “I was following a sequence of carved glyphs. They’re not part of the local record. I think they’re Irish in origin—ancient Irish. Pre-Ogham. Proto-Goidelic, maybe even older.”
“You saying there are Irish symbols in the belly of a volcanic island in the middle of the Indian Ocean?”
“Yes.”
That doesn’t make sense. The Indian Ocean is a hell of a long way from Ireland.
“Bullshit.”
“I didn’t say it made sense. I said it’s what I found.”
Viper stared at him, assessing him, trying to figure out if he believed him or not. Ward looked ready to pass out, but his words had a sharpness to them that didn’t reek of fantasy.
Trace leaned close. “He’s not lying. He’s rattled, but not lying. I feel the magic in here.” He met Viper’s gaze, and his voice once again rumbled with the undertones of Bran’s growl. “We feel it.”
“Great,” Viper muttered. “One more mystery to throw on the pile.” The ground shook again, and over their heads a massive bang sounded and a rain of pebbles skittered down from walls near the ceiling. “Everyone down.”
They crouched low in the corner of the cavern as the earth growled again.
Heat pulsed from above in waves like a warning heartbeat as the pyroclastic flow retreated, then slammed against whatever invisible barrier was keeping it at bay, again and again, as if it was determined to feed from their souls.
Viper wiped the beads of sweat from his brow with the Shemagh around his neck. “How deep are we?” he asked.
Ward pointed toward the tunnel. “Deeper than I was before the volcano started. I think there was a cave-in or something. It opened a path I’ve never seen before.”
“So we’re in virgin tunnel space?”
“Yes.”
“Does that matter?”
Did anything really matter? They were buried deep into a mountain tunnel while the island rained fire and brimstone down on their heads. Even if whatever it was holding back the river of ash overhead held, when that shit hardened, they’d be buried deeper than Pompei or Herculaneum.
Ward hesitated. “I don’t know. I think the symbols I followed were part of a sequence, like a ritual pathway. The collapse, I think, was at the end of that sequence.”
“Ritual?” Zero asked. “Like magic bullshit?”
Ward gave a helpless shrug. “I study language. I don’t do magic.”
Viper made eye contact first with Juice, and then with Trace, but spoke to Ward. “Are you saying you think those symbols do something or had something to do with the situation we’re in?”
“Yes.”
Fucking hell.