Ash Princess (The Deviant Future #6) - Eve Langlais Page 0,68
get the kids past.”
“Which handles the dragon, but what about those soldiers?”
“You leave them to me. Come on, let’s see what’s on this floor.” He’d skipped the third level with its distinct hum of machines to go straight to the fourth. “We should know what we’re up against before we bring the kids down here.”
All this use of “we” was making her feel more confident. She might not have a plan, but he did. It was nice to not be the one trying to have all the answers, even if some of his seemed a bit overconfident.
The fourth level was a dusty place of abandoned rooms with desks and chairs and not much else. The handle of the door for exiting didn’t budge when Kayda gripped it.
“It’s locked.”
“Not for long. Give me a second.” Cam fiddled with it, jamming yet another pin he’d taken from his other boot into the mechanism until they heard a click. He stood to the side and waited.
Sure enough, the door opened, and a guard, wearing a scowl, looked out. “You’re early for the shift change.”
Cam clubbed him over the head. The guy dropped.
She’d not seen that guard before, which prompted her to ask, “How many more do you think?”
“Not too many. Don’t forget it takes a certain kind of person to be able to breathe up here, and as we’ve noticed, no one that lives here wears a mask.”
“Because they are Diamond citizens who turned traitor.” The reminder still made her sad and angry all at once.
Behind the locked door that the soldier had guarded they found a room full of humming machinery.
“What is this stuff?”
“Looks like it’s the power source for the printers on the floor above.” He pointed. “They’re using gemminars.”
She stepped inside and gazed with curiosity on the complex machine. “My father used to say ten of these was the price of a castle.”
“He wasn’t wrong. Axel almost sold his promised mate for one.”
“Wait, what? I thought you admired this guy.”
“I said almost. We all knew he wouldn’t actually do it.”
At the end of the hall, Cam handled yet another locked door.
“Shouldn’t we be more careful? What if one of those sealed portals is actually keeping ghouls or other nasties out?”
“Then best we know now before the kids get here.”
The reminder had her musing aloud, “I wonder what the Necropolis is doing. They must be worried.”
“By this point they’re assuming we’re dead,” was his blunt reply, but he drew her close. “Once we’re through here, we’ll show them how wrong that assumption is.”
“If they don’t escape overland before then.”
“They won’t dare go before nightfall, which means we have time to intercept them.”
A set of stairs led to yet another level, not as brilliantly lit, and the air was most definitely warmer and acrid. A familiar smell.
“You heard what the countess said about Ruby being blocked. Given the crevice between us and the Marshlands, the same thing probably happened down here,” she said.
“Maybe. But we are pretty far underground. Could be the tunnels go under.”
“And if they don’t?”
He rolled his shoulders. “Then maybe we have the kids hole up in the base. It should give them enough supplies and space to run around in until we clear up the mess Ruby started.”
“Do you really think we can?”
“Now that we know the cause of the continued eruptions, we just need to find a way to stop it.”
Perhaps they’d have better luck with the volcano, because the tunnels proved to be a bust. The way was blocked.
Cam stood at the junction and looked at the collapsed rubble. “This blows dust.”
To her surprise, she was the one with comforting words. “It’s okay. Like you said, we can live upstairs.”
“Yeah.” He still seemed bummed.
“Tell me more about your plan to stop a volcano,” she teased, linking her arm in his on the way back.
“The most obvious thing is we need to shut off the dumping of the radioactive shit.”
“What makes you think we can?”
“Because whatever pumps it in turns off at night, meaning they control the flow. All we have to do is find the machine carrying it to the volcano and destroy it.”
“You make it sound easy.”
He grinned. “I doubt it will be easy. But it’s something to do.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“We’re going to set a trap for the next transport.”
“They’re full of soldiers.”
“Who will have to be handled. They’ll never expect an ambush from inside.”
“You’re going to kill them all.” Her brow furrowed.