"There you are," Bella said, breaking off her conversation with the driver and turning to me. "Are you ready?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," I said, trying to keep the joy bubbling up inside from making me sound like this was going to be the best field trip to Disney World ever. I buckled up for safety's sake, and because I remembered how rough the roads were in these parts.

"Justin, this is Master Curtis," Alejandro said, indicating the man sitting to his right. "And Master Pokito is driving."

Curtis looked like the ginger version of Gandalf, complete with a wizard robe and a pointy hat. I couldn't remember meeting or seeing a single Arcane wearing such a ridiculous getup, but even with the giddiness doing backflips of happiness in my heart, I somehow managed to keep from laughing.

"You've been kissed by fire," I said, unable to control my smartass mouth.

He looked confused but took my hand when I held it out to shake. He smiled, revealing deep wrinkles around his eyes. "You can just call me Curtis." His voice was deep with a touch of Irish lilt.

Pokito made eye contact with me in the rear-view mirror and nodded before starting up the van and moving out.

I'd wanted to watch the rest of Elyssa's video along the way, but paranoia made me turn off my phone. Even if I watched it with headphones, I couldn't be sure that Elyssa's supersonic hearing wouldn't pick up on it. And I wasn't quite ready to reveal this bombshell to her. While it was highly unlikely I could fake anything like this, I didn't put it past her to react negatively at first, especially considering what her opinion of spawn must be thanks to her dear old dad.

We reached El Dorado and found a bored-looking sorcerer standing outside the invisible barrier. He said a few words to open it and hopped inside the van with us after we passed inside. Pokito dropped him off at a large grass clearing overlooked by one of the imposing pyramids. The picnic was already well underway. A few kids kicked a soccer ball back and forth while a plump sorcerer grilled chicken with the help of his wand. A large group of people were making their way up one of the smaller pyramids. I couldn't help but feel queasy thinking of all the lives in danger and hoped the Arcanes knew how to protect themselves. Then again, they always had the safe word for light.

The van bumped along a the same stone-lined road I'd used to get out of the place a couple days ago, except it went into the last place I wanted to be—the huge square with the giant mosaics. We piled out of the van near the square pedestal I'd slept next to on that terrifying night. Elyssa stretched. Turned. Saw the mural with the blonde woman on it and took in a sharp breath.

"What is it?" Beck said, looking in the same direction.

"I think I've seen that woman before," she said. "Except…something was different."

"Did she have dark hair and olive skin?" I asked.

Elyssa's head whipped toward me, violet eyes boring into mine. "How do you know that?" She turned the rest of the way toward me, arms tensing.

"Because you saw her for the first time a few days ago. Her name is Nightliss." The blonde woman was obviously a relative—a sister maybe? I wasn't sure. After my dream with the two of them, I didn't know what to think. All I knew was if this mural really depicted the blonde version of Nightliss, El Dorado hid ancient secrets perhaps best left forgotten. Instead, we were about to plow right through them.

Fausta swept the area with her gaze then turned to me. "We are being watched."

Beck knelt down to fiddle with his shoelaces before muttering, "Yep, over next to the painting of that dude."

"As it so happens, that's near the entrance to the vaults," Curtis said, sliding a slender black wand into a leather holder on the belt around his gray wizard robe. He reached into the back of the van and produced a staff a couple inches taller than him. Alejandro, Bella, and Pokito had similarly outfitted themselves, sans the silly-looking robes.

"Vadaemos?" I asked Fausta.

She shrugged. "I saw movement and a flash of pale skin. It's unlikely anyone from the picnic wandered this far."

A chill worked its way up my legs. I looked down, halfway expecting to see shadow tendrils writhing from the ground and grasping at me. Before Curtis closed the back doors on the van, I peeked inside. "Where are the flashlights?"

"We didn't bring any," Curtis said.

"None at all?"

He shrugged. "You have us. We can light the place up like the sun if we have to."

Bella touched my arm. "Light will not be a problem, Justin. We are particularly good at illumination."

I hoped they were right, I thought, slipping my heavy backpack onto my shoulders.

"What the heck do you have in that thing?" Beck said, studying my full-to-bursting pack.

I shrugged. "Supplies."

Fausta unzipped her jeans and started to pull them down. I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my skull. In fact, I was just about to ask why she'd suddenly decided to disrobe when I noticed the skintight Templar uniform beneath her civilian clothes. She saw me looking and winked. "Hoping for a show?"

"I know I was," Beck said, waggling an eyebrow.

She didn't so much as look at him. "The hood on my Nightingale armor provides night vision, should I need it."

Elyssa's expression soured, probably because she hadn't thought about it. Unless they'd brought her a spare uniform, though, her old bullet-riddled outfit probably wouldn't have worked too well. Or maybe it was because Fausta's curves looked pretty fantastic outlined by the sleek black material. When she tied her glossy black hair up in a ponytail, it amazed me how similar she and Elyssa looked. Their faces, thankfully, were distinctly different thanks in part to the Italian nose on Fausta's face.

"We ready?" Beck asked, his eyes making one more pass over Fausta before trotting toward the place our watcher had been.

The others looked to me. "Uh, head out," I said. Oh yeah. My leadership skills were amazing.

The rest of us sauntered toward the entrance Curtis indicated earlier, while Elyssa and Fausta fanned out around the structure in case our watcher bolted from cover. Maybe Vadaemos would save us the trouble of entering a shadow-infested warren of tunnels fraught with danger and give himself up outside. We had no such luck. Beck, however, found muddy footprints leading from behind the massive mosaic to the base of the towering pyramid.

Half a footprint protruded from beneath a slab of rock. My Indiana Jones training kicked in almost immediately. "A secret passage." I looked for torch sconces, usually the most obvious concealment for levers in every adventure movie I'd seen, but saw only rock roughened from the passage of time and elements. I pushed against the slab, looking for an indentation or hidden latch to pop it open, but the aforementioned pits and scars from the elements made that all but impossible.

"This is not the entrance I would use," Bella said. "Or am I remembering incorrectly?"

Curtis nodded. "The researchers made note of this particular passage as very dangerous thanks to a steep slope and a pit at the bottom filled with spikes."

My lips peeled back in a grimace. "Wait a minute, you already knew about this hidden passage?"

"We know about several of them, primarily in this pyramid." Curtis motioned to the other structures around the huge plaza. "Each one has what we think are sacrifice pits and entrances into the underground city, but many of them are caved in. This particular one is the most intact." He waved his staff at the area where the muddy footprint disappeared and said, "Open sesame."

The stone vanished into thin air.

I stared at the gap. "It's gone? I was expecting it to slide open."

Curtis chuckled. "No, the entrance is a combination of a barrier spell and the illusion of stone. We don't know how it's stayed powered all these centuries."

"It taps into the ley lines somehow," Bella said.

Curtis raised an eyebrow. "That's one theory. Actually, my paper on—"

"Hello down there!" Beck shouted down the open passage. His voice echoed several times, as if whatever chamber lay below was huge. He tapped a foot inside what looked like a ramp descending into the darkness but his shoe went right through it. "Illusion," he said. "That's a nasty trap."

Fausta's eyes narrowed. "Our watcher wanted us to fall into that trap."

I shook my head. "If we're talking about Vadaemos Slade, the same jackass who outsmarted the Templars and spawn all at once, this little trick is child's play."

"I agree," Elyssa said, tossing a fist-sized rock down the tunnel. It skittered down the unseen slope, scraping as it went. When the scraping stopped, everyone listened intently for the thud.

A soft, meaty smack sounded seconds later.

"Doesn't sound too far," Beck said.

A loud RAWR-HEEHAW echoed from the pit, sounding like a mix between a lion and a pissed-off donkey. Everyone jumped about a foot. Fausta's eyes went huge. Elyssa pressed a hand to her heart. Bella gripped my arm in a vice and squeaked.

"What in the hell was that?" I asked, backing away from the opening.

Elyssa touched the hilt of her swords where they protruded diagonally over her shoulders, as if their presence soothed her fears. I felt particularly naked with only the simple silver knife I wore on my side. Then again, what good would knives or swords do against whatever thing lurked down that passage?

I thought the shadow people were the worst this place had to offer. Obviously, I was wrong. And if I wanted a chance at getting Elyssa back, I had no choice but to face it.

Chapter 27

"Close sesame," Curtis said, a slight tremble in his baritone. The barrier and illusion sprang back into place, cutting off the angry roars and braying reverberating from below. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. "Well, I certainly hope the normal passage doesn't intersect with that one."

"Heaven help us if it does," Fausta said, her usual mask of bravado cracking at the edges.