was breathing hard. The drop must have been fifty, sixty feet, and if she had fallen… well, she didn’t want to think about that.
But she was safe, finally. She sat down against the wall. And before she knew it, Logan was at her side.
“You killed him,” he exclaimed in wonder. “Nobody has killed a vampire, certainly no human, since… since the start of our recorded history! There’s never been a human responsible for a vampire death!”
“And now I’m just like you,” Laura said. “We’ve both got vampire blood on our hands.”
“So we do,” Logan laughed. He bent down to offer a hand, and she took it, rising up.
“Now what do we go?” Laura asked.
“After the elders discover this death, they’re going to double their efforts to catch us. Quadruple them. I fear we’ll have all the clans in North America coming after us.”
“We can escape.” Laura’s voice took a newfound confidence. For the first time since discovering the true identity of her pursuers, she did not feel helpless. In fact, she felt better than that. She felt strong. “I know we can.”
“Glad to have you confidence,” Logan told her. “But it looks like what you did left us with little option of what to do next.”
“What do you mean?”
“The entrance,” Logan explained. “Everything collapsed right in front of it. Even with my strength, I don’t think I’ll be able to move the rocks.”
“Do you mean…”
“Yes. We have to enter the tunnels.”
Chapter Twenty
~An Ancient Riddle~
After a bit of searching, Logan found the entrance leading deeper into the cavern. Before setting off, he painstakingly studied the glyphs on that smooth wall again, trying to glean some hint of the right direction. There was none. He read to Laura what he could, and it amounted to a very fleeting mention of “the Proper path.”
The entrance deeper was tight, creating a claustrophobic feel with the two of them walking side-by-side. But Laura wouldn’t be separated from Logan if her life depended on it. He was her only chance of survival.
A mixture of satisfaction tinged with doubt flooded her at that thought. Here she was, in the depths of the earth, accompanied by a creature of near god-like power. Not only that, but he was sacrificing all that he was, all that he could become, just for her. For some inexplicable, unfathomable, and incomprehensible reason, he seemed to care for her. He had forsaken his race, his own kind… for her.
She couldn’t understand what led Logan to show her the dream world in the first place, especially if he knew the risks it would entail beforehand. And he claimed he did. Knowing that he had taken on that risk for her – despite how it all had turned out – gave Laura a warm feeling in the pit of her stomach. She stumbled a bit, but caught herself. She wasn’t getting woozy, was she?
No, she wouldn’t let herself be a slave to her emotions again. She had to focus on her current situation. On surviving her current situation.
She carried a lit torch, which broke the darkness for a few yards in front of her. Logan was carrying more, as a backup supply in case hers died before they got out. If and when they got out, she thought somewhat gloomily.
She had no idea how long this tunnel was, and neither did Logan. So far, it had been cut straight into the rock, with no division or splits. But she would bet anything that that wouldn’t last long. For all she knew, it could take ages for them to find their way out.
Abruptly, a thought occurred to her. “Hey,” she asked Logan, “what about the dream world?”
“What about it?” Logan replied.
“I was just thinking… if you take us into the dream world, like you did before, we’ll be right in this tunnel, won’t we?”
“That’s right.”
“So, you said time flows differently there. We can explore the tunnels and find the right way out before coming back to our bodies.” She was critically aware what the danger of getting lost down here, with no source of food or water, meant for her. “If we catch the dream at the right wave, we can be back in minutes. We’ll know the right path, and there’ll be no danger of us taking a wrong turn and getting lost down here forever.” She was also critically aware of the hunger pains that were starting to attack her stomach.
“No,” Logan said intently, “we cannot do that. The elders are monitoring our dreams