“No. Eos doesn’t belong in my world.”
Nik just shot him an unreadable look.
“Let’s just get her back. Safe and alive.”
They kept in cover behind the rubble until the ruined temple came into view. An arched roof and its spire stood at one end. The remainder of the building was a collapsed ruin.
Dathan took a step toward the entrance when a booming disruptor blast reverberated through the area.
For a horrible second, he thought they were the target.
But he was still in one piece, his brothers beside him.
His gut dropped. “Eos!” Abandoning stealth, he ran.
It was so dark.
Eos stumbled along behind Darc. The hunter had a small, high-powered flashlight. Its thin beam speared into the tunnel, but it didn’t do much to help Eos see where she was putting her feet.
Her ears were still ringing from the disruptor Darc had fired into a wall. The woman knew how to make a point. Eos tugged at her earlobe.
The tunnel wasn’t much of an engineering feat. Rough-hewn walls and an undulating floor that had tripped her more thanonce. At first, she thought this tunnel under the altar couldn’t lead to the treasure, but then she realized that was what Hawkins had wanted people to think.
Her heartbeat was a loud, frenetic thump in her ears. The treasure was close. Now she knew what Dathan meant when he said he could sense it. It was like a pulse of solar radiation beating at her.
“Stop.” Darc came to an abrupt halt.
The tunnel widened out into a square chamber. All pretense of poor workmanship disappeared. The walls were smooth and precise, and carved with intricate images. The carvings were exquisite and all lit with lights. There must be some sort of inexhaustible energy source.
“By Suva’s grace.” Eos took a step forward, lured by the images of a past civilization long gone. One was the skyline of a magnificent city. Another showed three pyramids rising out of sand. Another showed a man with a beard in some sort of workshop, working on a painting, inventions littered around him
Darc’s arm shot out, hitting Eos in the chest. “Don’t move.” She motioned to the floor.
All Eos saw was a pattern of mosaic tiles. “What?”
“That—” the hunter pointed to a dark square a few feet in front of them “—looks like a pressure sensor.”
To Eos, it looked like the other tiles, but it had a metallic sheen. Scanning the floor, she noted several other tiles of the darker color. “That does what?”
“I’m sure we don’t want to find out.”
Eos dragged her gaze from the floor and gave the beautiful carvings one more look of longing before focusing on what was set in the back wall. A huge, circular, metallic vault door.
She swallowed, unable to believe the treasure of the New Louvre could be just meters away from her. “I don’t know how to the get the vault door open.”
Darc arched a brow. “That happens to be my area of expertise.”
“Eos will be fine,Dath. She’s smart.”
Dathan stalked through the ruined church, wanting to believe Nik’s words. They’d searched for twenty agonizing minutes. In every shadow, he’d had expected to find Eos’ body, broken and bleeding.
Nik grabbed his shoulder. “Darc doesn’t use guns to kill. She likes her knives too much.”
Dathan jerked to a stop. “It was supposed to panic us?”
“Maybe. Or scare Eos.”
“Here!”
