CHAPTER 79 ROHAN
ROHAN
Vantage had been named for its view—or rather, its viewpoint. The manor was built into a high, steep cliff that was separated from the mainland by a long, narrow isthmus barren but for rock and wild grass. Approach Vantage by land in the daytime, and you would be seen.
Even now, with the shield of night, the superior option was approaching by sea.
Clad in black and armed to the teeth, Rohan and his Hawthorne companions pulled their boat silently ashore into a blind spot beneath the cliff.
They’d silenced their outboard motor more than a mile out.
Their ship—a very fast, very stealthy ship Rohan had been able to conjure very nearly out of thin air as Proprietor—was waiting farther out, manned by a crew who knew nothing and would do nothing unless enough time passed for certain fail-safes to come into play.
Rohan could not say the same for the other reinforcements that were doubtlessly incoming.
At a minimum, John Oren would have boarded a plane directly after realizing where they were headed, and Rohan was well aware that all three Hawthorne brothers had turned their phones back on long enough to send what were surely emotional texts, just before they’d headed for shore.
Suffice to say, in one form or another, the cavalry was coming.
Rohan’s priority was to find and secure Savannah before said cavalry arrived to muck things up.
He swiftly cut across the beach from blind spot to blind spot, Hawthornes on his heels.
Even in the dark, Rohan left nothing to chance, retrieving his penlight only once they were safely ensconced in the first cave.
Light in one hand and a knife in the other, Rohan pressed forward into the darkness. In other circumstances, he might have been holding a gun instead of a knife, but they’d eschewed firearms because of the explosive material that lined their vests.
Go big, as the Americans liked to say, or go home.
“If we encounter the Watcher…” Toby Hawthorne’s whisper echoed off the stone. “Leave her to me.”
The first cave turned up nothing, and they backtracked. Deep into the second, Rohan heard the sound of running water. He turned off his penlight, and as one, his companions did the same. The five of them moved in silent tandem, farther and farther into the cave.
Jameson fell in directly behind Rohan, close enough to speak directly into his ear. “The statue on the beach. The one you integrated into the Game. Do you remember it?”
“A woman wearing three necklaces,” Rohan murmured back, “and dozens of bracelets. And then there was the hidden inscription.”
“Inscription?” Jameson’s whisper grew just a bit louder as they drew closer to the sound of the water. Falling water.
Rohan came to a sudden and instinctual stop. “The echo in here just changed.” He inched forward, and sure enough, there was a drop-off—and by the sound of it, a small, underground waterfall somewhere beyond.
“What did the inscription say?” Jameson asked.
“Omnes memorantur, non omnes superesse,” a woman’s voice answered from the darkness. “All are remembered, not all survive.”
“Hello, duchess,” Rohan said.
“Did you ever wonder what it meant, Rohan? The statue and that inscription?”
Three necklaces, dozens of bracelets. Three Ascendants… and the web. The Kyrie, apparently, hadn’t rated a special mention.
“A bit sentimental, if you ask me,” Rohan called. “Over the long term, it is a fact that very few are remembered and none survive.” The echo really was extraordinary in here. “Come to hasten us to our respective ends, Zella?”
“As it happens, I owe one of your companions a favor.” The duchess was close to them now. Very close. “Ask me for that favor now, Jameson, and I can get two of you out—and three of you in.”
“Why would any of us need to get out?” Grayson had a handy knack for making questions sound more like threats.
“They know we’re here, don’t they?” Jameson said. “Alice. The other Ascendants.”
“Your grandmother is the reason you’re still alive,” Zella replied. “But Judge or not, she won’t be able to stop what’s coming now. I can save two of you, and the rest, I can give the barest of head starts. Ask me for that favor, Jameson—and choose.”
As if, Rohan thought, there could be any doubt of his choice.
“I’d like that favor now, Zella.”
“There is no way in heaven or hell that I am leaving you here, Jamie,” Grayson bit out.
“Cosigned,” Xander said emphatically. “And not in the fun mathematical way!”
Rohan saved Jameson the agony of replying. “The fewer of us caught here, the more contained the problem will seem.”
Rohan did not intend to be contained, but that was neither here nor there.
“No good-byes,” Jameson told his brothers. “And no regrets.”
And then there were three, Rohan thought as Zella made good on her promise. She got Grayson and Xander out—and triggered the parting of a stone wall behind the waterfall.
Two of us out. Three of us in—with the barest of head starts. And somewhere, beyond that stone entrance, was Savannah.
“Well, gentlemen,” Rohan told Jameson and Toby, making his way to the opening and, seeing torchlight beyond it, trading his penlight for a second knife. “It’s been a pleasure.”
Armed and ready—for plan A, for plan B, for any of it or all of it—Rohan took off at a run. Twenty feet in, the torchlit tunnel branched and, soon thereafter, branched again.
A maze. And what will I find at the center? It wasn’t until he hit his third dead end that Rohan heard the footsteps—light, feminine footsteps—and smelled smoke.