Uhh . . . wait.
Too late. I couldn’t stop the momentum. The door shut. The locks engaged with an ominous snick. And I was trapped in a cold cocoon of utter darkness.
Oh God. No air. No air. No air.
My diaphragm seized, smooshing my heart into a tiny space. It slammed in my throat like a captive bird trying to escape its cage. My lungs refused to work. Green dots throbbed at the edge of my vision.
Nearly retching in panic, I no longer cared if I was caught. I beat on the door, screaming for someone—anyone—to let me out, but my voice only echoed off the metal, swallowed by the black space and empty stone. For seconds—hours, maybe—I smashed my fists into steel, until my split knuckles ran sticky with blood.
My knees smacked the stone floor. A chill bled through the thin fabric of my robe as I tried to hold on to reason. I snatched at it, but it trickled through my fingers like sand. I lost my tenuous hold. White-hot pain seared through my brain as fear took me. In that instant, I was back inside the nightmare tree.
I lay curled inside the trunk of the hollowed-out tree. Outside, the snow-shrouded ground of a forest clearing sparkled silver with moonlight. Claw-like shadows skittered across the ground as a howling wind whipped the bare branches. I was little, and all alone except for the doll in my lap.
“Don’t be scared, Elizabeth,” I whispered to her painted face. “He’ll come back for us. He promised.”
A crack from overhead. I flinched, knowing what came next. It happened every time, but knowing didn’t help. I couldn’t stop it. An enormous, laden branch from high above gave under the clinging weight of ice and snow. It cascaded to the ground, bringing other thick branches with it. Everything went dark. I froze as something scurried across my hand. I cast my doll aside, shoving at the obstruction, but it wouldn’t budge. I clawed at the thick wood until my hands bled. When something heavy and leggy dropped down into my hair, I began to thrash and shriek, ripping out handfuls of curls.
Only one thing had ever reached me once I was trapped in the nightmare tree. My mother’s voice, leading me out of the darkness. Only she had ever been able to banish the fear and the frost.
Mom.
As I thought of my mother, a warm tendril began to thread through me. My mom was infuriating and stubborn, yes. But also tough and certain in everything she did. She made me feel safe. She made me feel loved. And she would never cower here, like a mindless pile of quivering goo, just waiting for rescue.
No.
She would find a way out. Nothing—nothing—ever scared Sarah Walton.
I stood on Jell-O legs and reached out. Blindly, I traced my way around the smooth edges of the vault door. When I touched rough stone, I kept going until my fingertips revealed the smooth plastic and reassuring bumps of a light switch.
I threw an arm over my eyes when a series of hanging fluorescent bulbs buzzed to life. My eyes adjusting to the glare, I stared around at the wooden crates and draped objects that filled the small chamber, which had been carved into bedrock. Booths of smoky glass stood on either side of the vault door. The right one was empty, but the left held a large object suspended on a rod with wires set into stone.
I blotted my stinging knuckles on my robe, then reached out to touch a card affixed to the glass.
ARTIFACT 5419. TAPESTRY 182 X 283 CM.
CREATED: FLANDERS/LONDON, 1153. ACQUIRED:
AT AUCTION, BATH, 1789. LC, MM1, CM.
Tapestry. Okay. So the second set of numbers are obviously dimensions. Roughly six feet by nine. The rest . . . some kind of code, maybe? Or was it the year? But why would anyone hide a priceless, nine-hundred-year-old artifact all the way down here?
The hermetically sealed door on the front of the booth hissed when I pulled it open. Muted light blinked on inside and cast a sheen over the silky drape covering the object. When I stepped inside and tugged on the slippery cloth, it whispered to the floor, making the horizontal rod sway back and forth. I blinked, my brain unable to parse what it was seeing. My vision tipped sideways. My shoulders hit the cool glass wall as I stumbled back, stunned.
It was a tapestry all right, the colors faded from smoke and wear. And it looked old. Very, very old.