Ikelos (The Ephemeral: Book 2)

Chapter 11

We climbed down the brittle ladder in haste.

With all three of us descending at once, I could hear the steel moaning against our combined weight like a foreboding symphony. My fingertips became bloodless ice cubes as they clung tightly to frozen metal, and I swore up a storm when my numb foot nearly slipped from its rung.

Below us, the dam and its icy waters grew closer. A red fire bloomed within the first watchtower like a torchbearer from hell—Charon waiting for us at the river Styx.

Harmon slowed as we approached the outpost, and he glanced up at us with his finger to his lips. Wait here.

He shimmied down the ladder and jumped onto the watchtower roof. Swinging down over the steel balustrade, he struck the platform without a sound and swiftly vanished into the cabin.

I watched a pair of silhouettes move back and forth across the scarlet windowpane as Harmon conducted his silent assault. In the glow of hellfire, it looked like a dramatic production of shadow puppetry, and a few seconds later, Harmon stuck his head out of the watchtower and waved us down—impatient, as usual. Relieved, Mason and I descended the ladder to the tower's terrace and joined the royal guard inside the warm enclosure.

The sconces in the corners of the cabin illuminated three piles of ashes and armor on the stone floor. I crossed my arms. "You said you were going to knock them out and gag them."

"I changed my mind," Harmon dismissed. At my glower, he arched his brow. "You have no right to pass judgement, Ikelos."

I gaped at him, but I had no rebuttal.

He pulled at the metal handle in the center of the floor, and the hatch opened to reveal a pit ladder and a black, endless hole. A hole that bore a striking resemblance to the well of my childhood nightmares.

"Wait. We're going down there?" I whispered.

Into the dam itself? Like...under the water?

I thought we'd simply sneak across the top of the dam and take the four other outposts by force. At least, that was how I'd interpreted Harmon's ambiguous plan.

"Best way to avoid alerting our friends upstairs is to travel through the dam, not above it," Harmon explained, snatching one of the torches off the wall. He toed the ladder. "Get in."

Mason adjusted his pack over his shoulders and crawled into the dark space, smirking at me as he did so. Left with no choice, I followed after him, stifling a despondent whine.

Inside the rusty pothole, cool, dank air clung to my skin, and I watched Harmon close the metal hatch above us, turning our world into a narrow chamber of shadows, fire, and concrete.

"You sure no one monitors this area anymore?" I grumbled, trying to distract myself from the acute fear nesting in my chest.

"No need to inspect the organs of an expired dam. They've got their outposts for shelter. I wager they've never even set foot in here before," Harmon replied.

I pressed my lips together and focused on climbing down the ladder, but I couldn't ignore the nausea in my gut. My instincts were begging me to turn back, and their clamor only grew louder with the sounds of rushing water and groaning pipes.

Mason reached the metal platform first, although I suspected it was the first of many resting stops on a treacherous descent into nothingness. "There's a door down here. Looks like it leads into an inspection tunnel or something. Should we check it out or keep going?"

I dropped down next to him, and my shoes crunched what I hoped were the shards of a broken light bulb and not a human skull.

A small window spanned the top of the watertight door, providing us with a glimpse of the concrete tunnel beyond: a path bordered by pipe railing and dim bulkhead lights. 

"This is good," Harmon decided, joining us on the platform and painting the tight space in fiery, cautionary reds. "Any further down, and we risk weak piping and structural support. The lower levels may even be flooded."

I closed my eyes. That was the last thing I wanted to hear.

Mason tried the door handle, but it didn't budge.

Harmon grabbed the boy by the hood and yanked him out of his way. "It would have been automated back in the day, you welt."

He lifted his torch to the wall, revealing a panel of rusted buttons and warning labels. He took a moment to run his hands over the control board and inspect the door, and then he pushed a yellow button. A few seconds later, the steel barrier swung inward.

Harmon grinned at my astonishment, his whiskered face glowing a satanic red. "It seems the hydropower is still running internal operations. Interesting."

We entered the dark chamber together, and I scowled at the flooded floor beneath us—about two inches of freezing, murky water. Around us, water trickled down from cracks in the concrete, and a few of the pipes sprayed spittle in the air.

"I hate this," I said immediately.

"It's just a few leaks," Harmon teased, although I could see the concern in the deep lines of his face. He slapped his hand to my back, the force rocking my thin frame forward. "Everyone always talks about overcoming your fears. But sometimes, you try to face it, you make it through, and you're more afraid than before. Sometimes, the only way not to be afraid is to find something more frightening."

I glared at him. Now I knew where Will got all his crappy advice from.

"If you're afraid of spiders, sticking your hand in a jar of spiders won't do you any good," the guard explained. "But if you stumble across a giant man-eating spider, the small ones don't seem so scary in comparison."

"So you don't always conquer the fear itself, you just...upgrade it."

"Exactly. You're haunted by drowning and the underground. Now we've put those two variables together. You survive this, Kingsley, and those fears will become nothing but minor inconveniences."

I wasn't sure I believed him, but wishing for this nightmare to have positive outcomes couldn't hurt.

We sloshed through the long, damp tunnel, and I kept a wary eye on the flickering lights above. The lamps were too old to be working, too haunting to provide comfort in the dark. And maybe Harmon was right, maybe I was letting paranoia infect intuition. But for all its faults, my lizard brain did serve an important primitive function:

Survival.

We'd just skirted around a protruding section of the tunnel—likely the inner wall of the turbines beneath us—when I heard an ungraceful splash behind us.

My heart stuttered at the sound, and my pulse pounded heavily and anxiously in the disturbing silence that followed. With my hand at my scabbard, I slowly turned to face the dark, straining to see what kind of creature had pursued us. But then the chain of lights flashed again, and they revealed nothing but an empty corridor.

The vacuity only put me more on edge.

"Kingsley," Harmon hissed, and his voice bounced off the curved walls around us. "What are you doing?"

"Something followed us down here," I said, refusing to take my eyes off the dark space behind us.

Mason swore and unsheathed his weapon, and Harmon marched forward to peer into the shadows, but his torch only exposed our nearest surroundings, and our enemy lurked beyond its radiance.

"You're sure?" Harmon whispered.

A familiar chill crawled up my spine and slithered across the nape of my neck. "Positive."

The lights sputtered on again, buzzing and humming to life, and there, at the far end of the tunnel, something rose from the pool of water.

Something big.

I barely had a chance to utter the warning on my lips when the lights shut off again—and a wave of black water enveloped me in its frigid embrace.