“Why are you so afraid of your own people, Alexa?” Hope’s eyes are hard. “What did you do?”
I forget that Hope doesn’t know what I know, that Alexa set off the explosions that flushed us out; I haven’t told her because I didn’t want to jeopardize what little trust we’ve built. If anyone back at barracks put the pieces together, and if the people inside this temple are indeed Wolves, and if they maintain regular communication with people back on the shore—I can understand why Alexa doesn’t want to push her luck.
But Alexa would rather push her luck than spill her secrets to Hope, apparently. “I’m not afraid,” she says. And the look on her face, all coldness and sharp corners, as stony as the walls that surround us, betrays nothing of the fear I most definitely saw before. “In fact, I’ll lead the way.”
Despite every warning siren going off in my head, I suggest we attempt to enter somewhere else: the crumbled-to-pieces section we saw when we first arrived.
Hope shifts her weight off her injured leg. The bleeding has already dried into a dark, crusty line. “So breaking in through the unsecured part is going to win their favor?” She shakes her head. “I don’t know, you guys.”
But in the end, that is exactly what we do.
We test every step with leaves, waving them in front of us as we climb to make sure there’s nothing waiting to slice us in half. So far—halfway up the rubble—so good. No bleeding legs or spliced leaves, no thick covering of poisoned moss.
I hear Alexa groan. “I’m going to sleep for a full day when we get back to the beach.”
“Same,” Hope says. “I’m going to sleep forever.”
For once, we are on the same page. My muscles ache from all the walking we’ve done, and from the rope bridge. A day spent with sun, sand, and the constant crash of ocean waves sounds incredibly therapeutic right now. Perhaps we should have just accepted the Sanctuary we’d already found and been happy with that.
Once we’re at the top of the heap, I feel a surge of pride. “I think I see an opening!” From this angle, it’s obvious the rubble used to be a wall, and that we’re standing in the middle of an open courtyard. Most of the courtyard’s inner walls are still intact, but there’s a thin vertical strip of black toward the back corner. Carefully, we make our way over to it. It is indeed a way in.
“We’ve come this far,” I say. “Let’s go.”
We encounter no lasers, no security measures of any kind. We’re cautious, quiet. We listen for sounds of life, sounds of struggle. Other than the soft brush of our footsteps against stone, the temple is completely silent.
It’s also dark most of the way, except for occasional small patches of light that come in through cracks in the walls. Finally, the tunnel dumps us out into an open space like a rotunda, with carved-window ceilings that let light in whenever the leaves shift in the breeze. The air is cool but stale, with a strong ripeness to it. I don’t want to know what might be hiding in the shadows. If only some of the breeze would find its way inside.
“You guys.”
There’s something unsettling about the way Hope says this—she sounds like someone who’s noticed the first crack in the snow as it becomes an avalanche, like if she keeps her voice calm enough it will stop the town below from being buried. She stands facing the far wall, muscles stiff and rigid. In this meager light, I can’t quite see what she’s found.
“The shadows,” she says, in that same careful tone. “I think they’re alive.”
I hear them before I see them: the scuttle of thousands of tiny limbs, the click-clack of shells as they scurry haphazardly down the wall. It’s like a waterfall, this mass of beetles, this thick and heavy and determined swarm that pours toward the floor over every inch of the stone walls. More and more spill out through the cracks, thick bodies materializing through the thinnest gaps. The floor is a black, shimmery carpet now. It’s hard to move without the crunch of life underfoot.
“I think maybe it’s time to get out of here.” My attempt at replicating Hope’s careful voice comes down like my heels on the beetles’ heads—sudden, blunt, final.
“They’re on me!” Hope shrieks, shaking her leg. Several fall off, but more climb up in their place. “I think they’re trying to eat me!”
Beetles don’t eat people, is all I can think. I’ve scoured Dad’s field guide more times than I can count, and beetles are not listed in the dangerous insects section.
Yet, for the most part, they swarm past Alexa’s ankles, and they swarm past mine. They climb up Hope, on her right leg only, and not even all the way up to her knee.
They stop at the thin line of dried blood on her shin.
Hope brushes more beetles away, and a fresh trickle of red drips down her leg. She wipes that away, too, staining the heel of her hand. More beetles scurry up, frenzied.
They live for blood, I realize.
And not only that: they look well fed.
TWENTY-FIVE
“CLIMB ON MY back,” I say. “It’ll be harder for them to get to you.”
Hope’s thin frame isn’t as light as it looks. Then again, she looks like dandelion wisps that could be blown away by a child, so I shouldn’t be surprised that her bones and flesh and spirit pack more weight than is visible.
The beetles are already onto our attempt to outsmart them: they scurry up my legs, each tiny step like a freshly sterilized needle on my skin.
“Alexa”—I’m breathless from kicking them off, stomping on more, trying not to lose my balance—“grab the last two strips of fabric from my pocket. Use one to wipe the blood from Hope’s leg, and tie the other around it to keep them off!” Kick, kick, stomp, stomp. “Toss the bloody one on the ground—maybe it’ll throw them off enough to give us a head start.”
Alexa throws the rag several feet from where we’re standing, and it works, at least for a few glorious seconds.
“Run!” I say, trampling over the horde of beetles as they swarm in the opposite direction, toward the rag.
A few stragglers—the smart ones—keep trying to climb up my legs, but I kick them off. Alexa and I run, back into the dark and winding tunnel, as fast as I can manage with Hope on my back. I try not to think about the blackness, about the click-clack scuttle that follows us, about the silent things that could be even more dangerous, or even deadly. I try not to think about how very, very far off the temple is from everything I so desperately wanted it to be.