Immortals After Dark 09 - Pleasure of a Dark Prince

he hacked at the cloaking vines with his claws, tearing them away until they found what appeared to be an entranceway—a slab of unbroken stone, probably eight feet square.
    A smoothed knob of rock jutted out beside it. “Check that out,” she said. “It looks like a dial.” Carved all around it were more hieroglyphs, expanding out in a circular pattern.
    “So which way do we turn it?” MacRieve asked. “Seems to me this could go really bad. Go the wrong way…”
    “I saw a movie once where someone’s hand got trapped around a knob, then sliced off. How attached are you to your paws?”
    He gave her ass a quick squeeze. “No’ as much as you were last night.”
    “Werewolf! Wait, I’ve got an idea.” She took out her phone, scrolling through her address book.
    “Who are you calling?”
    “Language specialist.”
    He stepped back, gazing at the scene. “Doona think this is Mayan or Incan.”
    “I know someone who’s omnilingual.”
    “Omni?”
    “She knows every language in the world and adjoining planes.”
    He raised his brows as if he were impressed, until she added, “A female called Tera the Fey.” When he glowered, she said, “What is it?”
    “Nothing. How do you know her?”
    “We were competitors in the immortal tournaments of old.”
    Lucia’s half sister Atalanta would compete in the foot races, Kaderin the Coldhearted at swords, and Lucia at the bow. They’d dominated.
    And Lucia had smack-talked Tera unmercifully.
    Still, with nothing to lose, she rang the number.
    “Valkyrie,” Tera said in a cool greeting.
    “Tera, I need a favor. I need you to translate something.”
    “Indeed. And why should I help you?”
    Lucia said, “To stop an apocalypse.” Then she explained where she and MacRieve were and the highlights of the threat.
    Once she’d finished, Tera sighed. “Can you take a picture of the symbols and e-mail them?”
    “What’s your e-mail addy?” Lucia asked.
    “Hmm. Thegreatestarcherever at gmail dot com.”
    “Surely the greatest archer ever had already taken that one?”
    Tera said tightly, “Terafey at thenoblefey dot com.”
    “Pics are on their way.” After she’d hung up, Lucia used her phone to snap photographs of the hieroglyphs, then e-mailed them.
    Tera wrote back directly.
I’ll call shortly. P.S.: Tell werewolf I want my quiver back.
    Lucia faced MacRieve with raised brows. “Tera says she wants her quiver back.”
    He cast her an innocent expression. “Huh? What? Bluidy daft fey…”
    The phone rang within five minutes. Lucia turned on the speaker feature.
    “Congratulations. You’ve discovered a previously unidentified language,” Tera said. “It’s logosyllabic, combining about three hundred syllabograms, which represent syllables, and eight hundred logograms— whole words.”
    “Right, whatever. What does it
say
?”
    “There are three warnings. First, you’re not to get any kind of moisture upon the watchers’… husks. Second, do not disturb the Gilded One’s rest. And third, no gold leaves the confines of the tomb. Basically, be dry, don’t take any gold, and hands-off the important dead person inside.”
    The Gilded One
was
within!
    “Or what?” MacReive asked. “How are these enforced?”
    “Or tragedy awaits,” Tera said. “We’re likely talking ancient loss-prevention technology—booby traps. So essentially, the fate of the world rests in the hands of a sticky-fingered Lykae and an avaricious Valkyrie about to enter a tomb of off-limits gold. I believe I’ll be going out tonight—”
    “Just tell us how to get in,” he interrupted.
    “Turn the dial to the right, then immediately left, then back to the right.”
    “How sure are you?” he asked.
    “As certain as I am that Lucia’s wearing my quiver strapped to her leg right now.”
    With raised brows, MacRieve followed her instructions. At once, the stone slab rumbled, inching to the side, revealing a downward-sloping tunnel. Air released, as though the ruins had gasped.
    He narrowed his eyes. “This place was airtight.”
    “They meant what they said about moisture,” Lucia observed. Then she told Tera, “Hey, we’re in. Thanks for your help—”
    “What about my quiver?”
    Lucia gazed at MacRieve who’d raised his stubborn chin, as if to say
stolen fair and square
. To Tera, she said, “I guarantee
nothing
.”
    After she hung up, Lucia and MacRieve prepared to head inside. She shrugged from her pack and took her bow in hand, while his