Elemental Assassin 02 - Web of Lies

Sometimes, I had to turn sideways. I stood before it and peered into the darkness, wondering other times, I had to suck in my stomach and force what lay at the end of the midnight rainbow. only one myself through passageways that were little more than a way to find out. I couldn’t go back, and I had to get out. foot wide. But I kept moving. Despite my many injuries, So I stepped forward into the waiting darkness. despite my broken jaw and throbbing skull, despite the strange influx of magic coldly burning in my veins, I kept I’d only gone a few feet into the corridor when the world going. To stop would be to rest, to sleep. Who knew if I turned from dark gray to as black as the coal Tobias Dawwould ever wake up?
    Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 352-353
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    354 JENNIFER ESTEP
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    There could be some noxious gas down here already and right. Two more dark holes just like all the others killing me slowly. Some form of carbon monoxide or I’d walked and crawled and shimmied through. But this something equally lethal. No, I didn’t dare stop. Not to time, I had to make a choice. But which one? And would rest, not to cry, not for anything. If Fletcher Lane had sudit even do any good? They both could lead farther into the denly stepped out of the shadows and offered to tell me mountain, turn back on each other, or lead me straight to all the secrets he’d kept from me, where Bria was and what a dead end. As long as it seemed like I’d been walking, I she was like, I would have walked right on by the old man. could be halfway to China by now.
    So I trudged along in the blackness, with only the But still, I had to try. Right first. I walked down into magical silver glow of my palms to light the way. Time the right passageway about a hundred feet and placed my ceased to have any sort of meaning. There were only rocks bruised, bloody hand on the stone wall. The usual, low to navigate around, through, over. Sharp rocks pricking murmurs of water, rock, and time sounded back to me. my feet. The smell of my own blood. And the murmur of Same sound I’d heard for hours now.
    the stones around me.
    I sighed, turned around, and trudged down the left As I left the destruction of the cavern behind, the passageway. once again, I placed my hand on the stone stones’ murmurs became soft and sweet once more. They and listened to its vibrations. Water, rock, time. Nothing talked of water and air and the slow passage of time that to tell me which way to go.
    had little effect on them. After the screams of the stones
    “Fuck,” I snarled in a loud voice.
    and the wail of the shattered diamonds in the cavern, the My curse echoed up to the top of the cavern and murmur of the rocks was as soothing as a lullaby. But I bounced back down to me before reverberating through pushed the sound to the back of my mind, tuning it out. the whole area. I sighed and swiped my hand over my Because if I listened to it, I would want to stop, just for a face, smearing blood, dirt, and grime deeper into my skin. few minutes. And then I’d be gone.
    Flutter-flutter . Flutter-flutter . I don’t know how long I trudged along, just plodding I froze, wondering if I was imagining the noise. If I was through the dark earth. Minutes, hours, days, the end somehow concussed and just didn’t know it. If maybe I of the time. But I stumbled free of the narrow passagewas already dead, and this was all just a final dream or way I was in and entered a larger room, almost as big as some sort of purgatory before I got shipped down below. the cavern where the diamonds had been. I was halfway Flutter-flutter . Flutter-flutter . across before I realized I was walking directly into a sheer Nope, I wasn’t imagining it. The noise seemed to be stone wall.
    coming from somewhere up above. on an impulse, I I stopped, blinked, and held out my glowing palms. raised my hands over my head, palms up. I reached for The passageway branched off into two directions. Left my magic again, and the cold, silver flames burning in the Estep_Web of Lies_1P EP.indd 354-355
    12/17/09 9:32 PM
    356 JENNIFER ESTEP
    Web of Lies 357
    spider rune scars in my palms intensified. I’d just upped filtered in through a tangle of kudzu vines that dropped the wattage on my human flashlight.
    down the walls like snakes. I peered at the opening. It I frowned and peered into the darkness above my head. looked to be just big enough for me to shove myself There seemed to be some sort