"I am glad to hear that," he said with a grin. "However, I am wholeheartedly willing to forgo gentlemanly manners and let the door hit you in the ass at your immediate request."
"You are too kind," she laughed.
The group continued to move through the tunnels, following Siena's sure lead. The cavern floor was often slippery, the limestone filled with water that dripped off the points of stalactites and mist from underground falls and hot springs.
"It isn't far now," Siena told them as they worked their way up a slick slope. "I wish we had a way of sensing those wards from here."
"We have Bella. She's better than any sensors."
"How?" The Queen turned to look back at Elijah curiously.
"Bella can dampen power."
"Elijah, we want to avoid that if possible," Jacob reminded him. "The side effects of it are proving to be damaging."
"But imagine how much simpler it would be to just walk through those wards once I dampen the power. We wouldn't have to go through all of this." She jerked her hand away from the touch of a particularly slimy wall. "Yuck," she said, making a face as she wiped her hand on her jeans. "And above all, Ruth and Mary can escape in a teleporting flash if I don't give them the whammy. I don't see how we can avoid it."
"You are not to have contact with Ruth no matter what," Jacob warned, this time brooking none of her stubborn refusals. "She is so tainted, and in ways no one has seen before, that we cannot even guess at the damage it might cause to any of us. Ruth would never have been able to touch Gideon six months ago. Not even Ruth and Mary and a dozen necromancers could have done so."
"She is very powerful," Gideon agreed grimly. "We must all remember not to treat this like any ordinary battle. There is great risk involved here."
The conversation stopped when Siena suddenly halted in her steps. They watched her c*ck her head, and immediately nine heads turned in unison to listen.
"I have never been here before," Siena murmured. "There is something peculiar about this place. I cannot put my finger on it. Can any of you?"
It was Noah who raised his brows in surprise.
"Must. I smell must and…" He searched, shaking his dark head.
"Books!" Bella erupted suddenly. "I smell books. I've spent too many years in a library not to know that smell."
"But no one has been through these passages in years," Siena mused. "The stone growth, the water flow and passages are wholly unspoiled. Besides, it's too damp to make sense of storing books in here. They would ruin easily. Jinaeri has to keep hers covered even though she is in a dry area."
"I'm telling you, it's books," Bella insisted.
"I think she's right," Noah agreed.
"Look, over here." Jacob leapt onto a natural ledge, crouching down to inspect the wall nearby. "It may be unspoiled now, but someone definitely altered this rock face at one point. See these grooves? These are manmade, though trying to keep an appearance of natural occurrence. See? The water does not flow over this section here, so why is it worn into a groove so deep?"
Jacob reached to touch the fist-size indentation.
"Jacob, don't!" Bella cried out suddenly, making him freeze immediately.
She hurried over to him, grabbing his arm and trying to pull him down to her side.
"Something isn't right. I can feel it. Please come away."
"Bella, step back. I promise I will be careful." He extracted his hand from the death grip she had on it and shook off her fingers when she tried to maintain her hold.
Siena watched with narrowed eyes as the Enforcer skimmed searching fingers over and around those slight grooves, trying to search her memory for something, even though she had no clue what it was.
"Jacob, stop!"
The chorus erupted simultaneously from Elijah and Siena. In unison they had experienced a moment of clarity, Siena recollecting a snippet of a story she had heard during her childhood over one hundred years ago, and Elijah's closeness to the sudden fear that leapt up in its wake in her mind prompting him to echo her warning.
Jacob pulled away this time, listening to yet another warning from a source he could not dismiss as being overprotective. He jumped off the ledge even as Siena pushed forward toward it. She sprang up easily, feeling Elijah's hand guiding her up with absent habit.
It made her smile even as she dusted her hands across the skirt of the dress Legna had loaned her. Magdelegna had a more conservative style, so the skirt was longer and more cumbersome than the Queen would have liked, but she simply pulled it out of her way as she knelt to inspect the suspicious grooves.
"There is a legend among my people about the times before we ventured out of the caves and into the world. Like my castle, whole cities were supposedly built underground. In those times, it is said we never went into the light of day." She peered closer at the wall. "We have only found small abodes that hinted at this truth. Otherwise, our only other proof was the stories we handed down verbally and the odd scrap of written lore."
"So what does that-?"
"The legend said all the entrances to this city were disguised and trapped to keep out accidental as well as purposeful intruders. If the curious person did not know how to harmlessly bypass the trap, it was tripped and the intruder would be killed."
"You don't believe this is a city," Bella said with clear disbelief.
"No. I do not," Siena agreed. "But I do believe this could be an entrance fashioned with those same traps."
"Tell me you know how to disarm it," Jacob encouraged her.
She didn't have to. She touched both grooves simultaneously, a loud click echoing around them, making them start with surprise. Then, after a brief, studying search, she placed both hands on the wall and shifted her weight and the pressure of her touch slightly to the right. The wall dropped away so suddenly that it startled the Queen, who stepped back into Elijah's steady frame as he vaulted onto the ledge in a heartbeat to prevent her from falling off it.
"Nice reflexes," she murmured to her husband.
"Thank you," he chuckled, drawing her to his back as he peered into the pitch black of the entrance. "Noah?"
"Consider it done," the King responded. Reaching out with his refined senses, he felt the presence of tarred torches and lit them in a brilliant surge of light. Everyone winced as the rows of the torches blinded them momentarily.
"Whoa. I think I know what Ruth is looking for," Bella said with eager awe, having recovered before the others because her eyes were not as sensitive to dark and light theirs were.
Eyes cleared and a chorus of gasps came out of the group as they hurried to crowd around the entrance of the hidden room.
"Told you it was books," Bella murmured.
It was an understatement. It was actually an underground library. It was a bit worse for wear because of the years it had spent being ignored-the damage of water that had changed course over the years of erosion ran down walls that had been meant to be dry-but it had at one time definitely been a well-appointed library. It had red runners between every set of shelves in the corridor, the embroidered ruby velvet of it clearly once very rich and very fine. The torches lit up study tables as well as podiums that held singled-out tomes of enormous size.
And, of course, along both sides of the corridor were shelves and shelves of books reaching well beyond what even their keen sight could see.
"Wow," Legna said, at a loss for any other reaction.
"Okay, how would Ruth, of all people, know this was here?"
"Clearly she doesn't know it's here. She thinks it's up there," Siena said, pointing above herself to the stone that would block Ruth's progress even had she suspected something beneath it.
"True. Mary does not have the power to burrow through earth and stone. That is a male Earth Demon trait," Jacob said, his eyes as wide as everyone else's as he scanned the library slowly. "Do you think it is safe to go in there?"
"I think so," Siena murmured, "but I wouldn't put money on it being completely harmless, so keep alert."
The battle they had been headed for was completely dismissed, all of them understanding that this was a more critical task. They moved into the isolated cavern, males linking hands with females, everyone wary as they prepared to take whatever forms they needed to in order to escape damage and carry those with them to safety as well.
Siena preceded them all, wide golden eyes skimming over the titles of the nearest volumes. Elijah was close behind her, so close that when she stopped, he bumped into her back and then remained there until she continued on.
"Siena, this is the Treasured Tongue," Syreena whispered, her sense of reverence coming through loud and clear as she reached to take a book in her hands, holding it as if it were a precious gem. "The historic language only the members of The Pride now know. It would be lost to them as well if not for the fact that they spend so much time maintaining their knowledge of it."
"That means this is a Lycanthrope library?" Elijah asked.
"No."
Everyone turned to see Bella pull another book down.
"Jacob, this it the ancient language of Demonkind."
Heads turned from one woman to the other. They crossed to meet each other and inspect the books.
"They aren't the same," Bella informed them. "Let's see if there are others."
There were. Books in languages both known and unknown to those in the room.
"The language of the Vampires," Gideon said, shaking his head. "This looks like Shadowdweller print. These are those bold, picturesque characters they use."
"It's a Nightwalker library," Siena said, her whispering voice echoing off the ceilings high above them.
"A lot of them are ruined," Elijah remarked, dropping a saturated book onto a table, where it immediately disintegrated.
"Noah, have you ever heard of anything like this in your history?" Siena asked the King.