Part 27 (2/2)

Listened.

She was just about to call out for her companions a second time when, as if on cue, a deep, groaning cry burst up from the ground nearby.

She jumped in surprise, her skin rising in goose b.u.mps, the sound just the right timbre to cause the hair across her body to stand on end.

The noise came again almost immediately but this time it was gentler, quieter, and somehow she knew it would continue getting softer until she wouldn't be able to hear it at all.

She had to find its source before that happened.

Annja scrambled back to the point where the water surged up from beneath the cliff face, her gaze flas.h.i.+ng frantically about, her ears straining.

Come on, come on, she thought, just one more time.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye but she dared not turn away, dared not miss the opportunity, for who knew when it would come again.

”Annja!” she heard Davenport call, but still she didn't turn.

One more time. Please.

The voice obliged her.

It came again, much more softly, but this time she was ready for it, standing as she was directly in front of the wall when the sound issued from it a third and final time. She saw that it came from a small hole about the size of her fist, a hole that was at shoulder height and, lucky for her, on her side of the stream.

”Did you hear that?” Davenport asked, as he and Mason rushed over to her side. Williams and Kent weren't too far behind.

Annja barely heard the question. Guided by some inner sense she couldn't define, she watched as if from afar as she put her hand inside the hole and pushed.

A deep grinding sound came from somewhere within the wall in front of them and a section of the stone a few feet away rolled slowly to one side, revealing an opening large enough for several of them to fit through at once.

Annja started toward it, but Mason stopped her with a hand on her arm. ”Hang on a second. We do this the smart way.”

He pulled a pair of high-intensity flashlights out of his pack, keeping one for himself and handing the other to her.

Together, they stepped as one through the opening.

29.

The door opened up into some kind of antechamber, complete with benches around the perimeter and niches in the wall for storing items.

There was a door directly across from the one they'd entered and even in the dim light of their flashlights they could see that it led down a short tunnel and opened into a large s.p.a.ce just beyond. A sconce holding a torch hung on either side of the door and they paused a moment to light them, noting from the dust and cobwebs that neither torch had been lit in many years, ages even.

The torchlight flickered off the stone and sent their shadows chasing after them as they continued. Their footfalls sounded louder than normal in the narrow confines and deep silence of the place. Annja felt the thrill of discovery coursing through her. It was what she loved about archaeology-the suspense, the antic.i.p.ation, the wonder, of what they might find and what they might learn.

Satisfied that there wasn't anything immediately threatening inside the chamber, Mason called out to Davenport and had him join them. After all, this was his expedition. Jeffries and Nambai came in, as well, leaving Williams and Vale to guard the entrance and to watch for any sign that Ransom might be on to them again.

Once the others were inside, Annja and Mason continued on. They quickly found that the short hallway opened into another room, though this one was much larger than the first; they could see darkness pooling out beyond the edge of their torchlight, indicating there was more to uncover. But they barely paid any attention to that fact as soon they got a glimpse of what had been drawn across the floor in the center of the room.

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