It was unnerving enough that we were descending farther and farther into the earth, that each step layered more rock and dirt above us; I shouldn’t have considered the consequences of Vincent making even a single wrong turn, of our becoming lost and hopeless together in an eternal darkness. But we couldn’t go back, so we had to hope he’d find the proper way forward.

I brushed dangling spiderwebs away from my face, became fairly certain I could feel all the tunnel’s spiders running across my shoulders, had to consciously force myself not to obsess about the possibility.

Think of it this way, Sentinel. You’re getting a very unique tour of Colorado.

I’m going to need a vacation from my vacation. Don’t you have a place in Scotland? I’m going there. For a week. Alone.

He touched my back in solidarity. Forward progress, Sentinel. That’s all you have to do.

Sometimes, even that felt overwhelming.

***

We walked for nearly an hour, following Vincent down one passage, then another. We stopped descending, had begun to move slightly uphill, which gave me hope we’d eventually find the surface of the earth again.

The darkness, the similarity, of each yard of tunnel was discombobulating. I’d lost my sense of direction five minutes into the trip and, but for the slope in the floor, would have had no idea of our bearing. Our nervous magic accumulated in the damp darkness, so it felt as if we traveled in a cloud of anxiety.

There was a low rumble above us, around us, behind us. Dirt fell from the ceiling like confetti, and Damien held up a hand to halt our progress. We froze, just as we had the first two times bits of the tunnel’s roof had sprinkled down like rain.

But this time, the rumbling didn’t stop. It seemed to grow louder, gathering momentum like a ghost train bearing down upon us.

I caught sight of Damien, looking up, then back. “Move!” he boomed, and we all surged forward.

“Go!” I said, gently pushing the vampires ahead. “Run! Keep moving!”

Behind me, Nessa screamed, and I turned back just in time to see her go down, clutching her ankle.

“Nessa!” Ethan called, and dodged back to help her, dropping to one knee to get her onto her feet again.

And then the ceiling simply opened.

A monsoon of dirt and stone poured through as though the planet itself was collapsing inward. The force of it knocked me back and away, and filled the air with dust and rock. I covered my face with the hem of my shirt to filter out some of the debris, but still coughed in long, racking spasms.

It took an eternity for the air to clear again. And when the beams of our flashlights finally penetrated the darkness, they illuminated a passage blocked by an enormous spill of rocks and dirt.

Ethan and Nessa were gone.

Panic twisted in my gut, and I scrambled over pillow-sized rocks and hillocks of dirt toward the barrier, toward them. “Ethan! Ethan! Answer me!”

I called his name aloud, screamed it over and over again, repeated it in my mind.

But for all that, he didn’t answer.

He’s a vampire, I reminded myself, trying to keep terror from shutting down my body, my mind. He’s immortal.

Until he isn’t, said the competing voice with the mocking tone of a mean-tempered child.

Maybe the rocks were just too thick for psychic communication to travel through, said the nicer voice. Maybe they’re heavy in iron or something and it interferes with the transmission.

“It doesn’t matter,” I murmured to myself, probably sounding as hysterical as I felt. “It doesn’t matter.”

The only thing that mattered was getting him out. I moved to the pile, began kicking away rocks on the ground to make a clear place to stand. And a clear place to dig.

“We should come back for him,” Cyril said, gesturing to the open end of the shaft. “The entire tunnel could collapse, and then where would we be? Nessa’s a killer anyway.”

I froze, slowly lifted my gaze to him. That, I decided, was the last straw. The final insult in a trip that had become an unmitigated disaster. How many times had we been threatened because we’d offered to help these people, and they didn’t have the courage to do the same?

“Oh, fuck that,” I spat out.

All heads turned to me, and I had a slender moment of enjoyment when Damien’s eyes widened like dinner plates with pleasure. “You have quite a mouth on you,” he murmured.

“Just wait,” I muttered, and leveled my gaze at Cyril.

“You wanna know where I’d like to be right now? Enjoying a glass of wine with my boyfriend on a terrace. But I’m not, am I? No. I’m down here in a goddamned den of spiders big enough to have college degrees and pensions because your community can’t grow the fuck up.”

When Cyril opened his mouth to object, I leaned in, stuck a pointed finger in his face. “No. You don’t get to talk. You’re an immortal who’d leave a man behind. Nothing you have to say is valid. Now, shut up and get to work, or get the fuck out of the way.”

For a moment, magic and tension joined the dust and dirt in the air. And then, wordlessly, Vincent moved beside me, looked over the rock fall, pointed.

“Smaller rocks on this side, boulders there. I say we work on the smaller, leave the larger; they’ll add stability, reduce the chance of another fall.”

I nodded, my relief so sharp I nearly burst into tears. “That sounds reasonable to me.”

We formed a bucket line. Vincent and I pulled rocks from the pile, passed them off to vampires from his crew. Cyril stood some feet away, an arm around ribs that may very well have been hurting, and looked at me with anger layered over insult.