The Queen's Secret (The Queen's Secret #2) - Melissa de la Cruz Page 0,44

considered plotting a speedy escape.

The three of them step into the entrance and clamber down steep wooden steps, Rhema leading the way and brandishing a torch. The passageway here is narrow, and Cal knows that belowground here is a vast network of similar passages and tunnels. The flame flickers and buckles, threatening to blow out, but they still have light when they reach the first landing area. This is where the miner’s body was found, and the flame picks out a wild spray of blood on the stone walls.

Jander, small and sharp-eyed, scours the area, running his hand along the crevice where wall meets dirt floor. Rhema sniffs the blood.

“Human and something else,” she says. “But not an animal. Strange. Didn’t they say the miner was killed with claws?”

“What looked like claws,” says Cal. He’s listening for the deep whisper that the miners reported, but hears nothing. It smells of damp soil and blood, and maybe rotten flesh. They’re going to have to venture deeper into the labyrinth below the old monastery.

“Look,” Jander says, walking into the light. He’s holding something small in his hand. It looks like a tiny piece of coal, or maybe a lump of the obsidian that’s mined in this region.

Cal steps close to Rhema to examine it. “Looks like a tooth?” he asks. “Maybe it flew from the mouth of a miner when the creature—whatever it was—attacked him.”

“No, it’s some sort of animal tooth,” Jander tells them, and Cal realizes he’s right. It’s a blackened tooth that’s much larger than any human tooth.

“Monster tooth,” Rhema agrees, her face bright in the torchlight. “Definitely not human. Hey!”

She spins around and Cal is in shadow; he can’t see past her.

“Black robe!” Rhema cries. She takes off at high speed, the torch flames dancing.

“Rhema!” Cal shouts at her disappearing back. This isn’t the place to run off. It has all the twists and turns of a maze. But she’s almost out of sight, so there’s no choice but for him and Jander to follow in the twilight of her wake.

He can’t see anything but Rhema’s sprinting form ahead, but Cal can hear the fabled whispers now, louder than his pounding heart. It’s like something between an incantation and the sound of a field of corn bending in a breeze. He turns a corner at high speed, bashing his elbow against a wall, and the whispers are now loud as a windstorm.

Black robe, he’s thinking—is that what Rhema saw? An Aphrasian monk here in the mine?

They turn again and again, and again, the whispers echoing louder and louder. Cal can no longer make out the pounding of Jander’s footsteps behind him. Rhema is a sliver, an arrow of light. That girl can run, he thinks. But what will she do when she finds what she’s chasing?

The answer is around the next corner, where the passage hits a dead end. Rhema’s not running anymore: She’s cornered, flattened against one wall, sword in hand. A giant black jaguar, twice as large as an ordinary one, growls and paces, its eyes glowing amber orbs.

Rhema’s torch flickers and dies, but Jander is there, right on Cal’s heels. He holds up the white stone and the glow illuminates the cavern. The whisper Cal’s been hearing, deep and urgent, is now a roar echoing off the walls.

This beast reminds him of the jaguar Lilac had to fight in the forest near the abbey, but even bigger. Its haunches are enormous, its head the size of a wagon wheel. Its gleaming teeth are longer than Jander’s head, and sharper than their swords. It’s more mythical creature than animal.

“Steady,” Cal says in a low voice. “Stay still, Rhema.”

“I thought I was following a monk,” she says, eyes fixed on the beast. “I swear I saw his black robe. Then he transformed into this.”

The creature growls again, then lunges at Rhema. Her sword is ready, but Cal can’t see if she’s managed to drive it into the beast. All he can hear is the cacophonous whisper and Rhema’s scream. He plunges his own sword into the beast’s neck and is conscious of Jander, to his right, clutching a fistful of fur and hauling his skinny frame up its back. Then he loses hold of the stone, which plunges everyone into darkness. Cal stabs again and again, the only thing in his line of vision the blackness of the animal and the viscous spray of its blood.

“Rhema!” he shouts, because she’s not screaming anymore. The creature thrashes, and he