Cale shrugged. “Whatever you say.” By then we’d reached the tree line, a jagged, coniferous break in the winter-crisp grass. Compared to the huge woodland we’d navigated near Dayton, the quarter-mile-long patch of trees on Sequin Island was nice and small. It was also dense, dark, and completely unfamiliar. Cale and his compass took the lead, and Orthus stuck me in the middle by refusing to walk ahead of me, probably so he could investigate the local wildlife along the way, without me cramping his style.
Except for the occasional pause as Cale shone light on the compass, we managed a fairly consistent pace, too busy not running into trunks and stepping in holes to waste energy on speech. Behind me, Orthus growled almost constantly, and no amount of scolding from me could shut him up. He paused in front of tree after tree, staring up into the needle-laden branches and barking, like he’d treed a squirrel and wanted me to come shoot it for him.
And I’ll be damned if I didn’t try, just to silence him. I shined my flashlight into several different trees, but found only swinging leaves and branches, as if something had just darted out of sight.
The third time I failed to catch sight of whatever he was chasing, I lost what little patience I had in the first place. “Orthus, shut up and come on!” I snapped over my shoulder. “It’s just a squirrel.”
“Not likely,” Cale opined. “Most squirrels are diurnal. We won’t see them until the sun rises.” He shined his flashlight on the compass one more time to check the heading and Orthus wandered off to snarl at another tree.
I winced as the hellhound’s complaint reached an absurd volume and my brain started to rattle. “Orthus, shut up and get over here,” I snapped, rubbing my forehead with one hand. He ignored me, staring up into a near-skeletal deciduous tree with his back paws planted at the roots, his front paws pressed into the bark five feet off the ground.
My curiosity resurrected by his persistence, I shined my flashlight up into the mostly bare branches. Scratching, scurrying noises accompanied a soft crunch of several brown leaves as they fell to the ground all around the hellhound. “You’re right. It isn’t squirrels,” I said, trying to track the noise with my light. I saw nothing but fall foliage and coniferous branches heavily laden with pine needles. “And it’s way too heavy to be an owl. Unless Maine’s had a recent surge in the bobcat population, I’d say Orthus has found something he can eat. Or at least play with.”
“What does a hellhound eat, anyway?” Cale turned slightly as he stared into the trees holding the compass, minutely adjusting our course.
“I’m kind of hoping never to find out,” I admitted as I turned away from the dog. “Come on. We’re getting close.”
My flashlight beam caught Cale’s worried expression. “How do you know that? Can you feel it?”
Yes. My step faltered as the realization sank in. Icouldfeel the box. Which was very unnerving. “Feels like strong anticipation. Like when I really need a jolt of caffeine and cansmellcoffee brewing. It’s a vicious craving.”
He exhaled slowly. “Is this going to be a problem, Lex?”
“No.” I hadn’t survived the past two centuries by giving in to every fleeting itch, and I could damn well resist the urge to rub some djinni’s lamp. Er…box.
Cale accepted my answer, and my opinion of him went up another notch. He took the lead again, and I followed, Orthus several feet behind me, still growling softly at whatever forest creature he was stalking. A couple of minutes later, Cale’s beam of light rose from the forest floor to the fall awning above us.
“There it is,” he said, tension thick in his voice. His light had hit an opening in the tightly woven canopy overhead and about fifty feet away, which had flooded the forest floor with mottled moonlight. “That has to be what we saw from the lighthouse.”
“It is.” Anticipation tingled beneath my skin, and my heart pumped harder. The sarcophagus spoke in my head like my conscience guiding me onto the straight and narrow.
Or an obsessive thought urging me over the ledge of reason into the chasm of insanity.
In that instant, I came to truly understand what I’d known academically all along: the sarcophagus wasn’t talking to me.Xaphanwas. He knew I was coming, and he was calling to me just like he’d called to Devich’s crew members on Oak Island,compellingthem to open the sarcophagus. He wanted to be set free just as badly as I wanted to release him.
Wait, no, I didn’t want to release him.
Only…suddenly I did.
I shook my head, trying to jar that thought loose. I wouldnotbe ruled by my urges. Except maybe hunger; that one I tended to oblige. And alcohol. After more than two hundred fifty years on the planet, sometimes the urge to think aboutanythingother than letting go and moving on was impossible to resist. Which was why I also rarely resisted more carnal urges.
But the compulsion to crack open a four-hundred-year-old coffin and let its evil occupant free to slaughter large swaths of humanity? Not gonna happen.
The clearing was small, because the pine crate only broke a few trees on its way to the ground. Still, it was impossible to miss. The crate was completely destroyed—smashed into shards, just like I’d known it would be. Pieces of wood littered the ground all around us, some as long as my arm, others mere splinters. Yet I was more convinced than ever that Cale was right about Xaphan. He was still contained.
I could feel him, silently demanding to be let out.
Several steps through the debris, as I scanned the ground with my flashlight, I put my foot down on something hard and angular enough to be uncomfortable through my boot sole. I knelt to inspect a chunk of rock half buried in the ground, and the first touch of cool, flat stone convinced me that the rock wasn’t a rock after all. It was a chunk of marble, impossibly smooth and precisely cut on two sides, jagged and broken on the others.
“Fuck,” I swore softly, and Cale merged his beam of light with mine. “Ohfuck me!”
He dropped into a squat to pluck the stone from the ground. “Looks like the sarcophagus didn’t survive the impact.”
“No shit.” I swept my flashlight across the ground, where it shone on more chunks of marble, most of them much larger than the splinters of pine from the crate. The sarcophagus had beendestroyed, just like I’d said it would be.
“Why do I still feel him?” I said, standing when Cale did. “How is that possible?”
“The sarcophagus isn’t what’s actually confining him.” He held up the chunk of marble for me to see. “The rest of it must still be intact. Come on.” He took off in a blur of motion, before I’d even managed to stand. I ran after him, my flashlight beam bobbing on the ground between us.
