But she hadn’t moved a muscle. She was still grasping her extinguished lantern, her back now against the wall as she stared blindly around her.
“Hawk!” she cried, ascertaining with panic that they were not alone, that he was being lured forward by more than just the tapping noise. Someone was with them. Someone who had misled Hawk into thinking that she was the shadow moving forward.
“Hawk! Stop—” she began.
Too late. She suddenly heard the sound of breaking, splintering wood beams, and she heard him cursing as he fell. Screaming, and moving blindly then herself, she started inching forward in the darkness.
“Hawk—”
“Shawna, stay still!” he thundered back to her. “Stay still, or you’ll wind up down here.”
“Where are you?”
“A few levels below. I can’t see a thing down here. And naturally,” he said, then paused in embarrassment, “I’ve dropped my matches.”
“I’ll get help.”
“I can hear the water.”
“Is there a way out?”
“Not that I can see. Well, if there was, I’m not so sure that even I could see it.” He suddenly swore with a vengeance. “The water is rising in here. There didn’t seem to be water when I first fell. Now it’s over my ankles.”
“Oh god!” Shawna breathed. “It’s the tide.”
“The tide?” Hawk repeated. “From the loch? Oh god yes, from the loch!”
Shawna knew that he’d forgotten the peculiar phenomena of Craig Loch. It was connected with the Irish Sea through several underground rivers, and they were close enough to the open water for the tides to cause great changes in water levels in the caves that rose at the edge of the loch.
“Oh my god! I’ll get help.”
“You can’t get help. You’ll kill yourself trying to maneuver in the mine in the darkness.”
“No, I won’t! I can see better now…” she began, but her voice trailed away as she frowned and turned desperately to try to see around herself.
Then she screamed in wild panic as she suddenly felt hands roughly upon her, settling upon her shoulders, spinning her around.
She dropped the lantern, wildly trying to free herself, gasping and screaming again in protest, fighting to no avail. She suddenly felt herself being shaken hard, and the voice grating out to her finally penetrated through her panic.
“M’lady, cease and desist, now!”
It was David. David—whose voice was less than reassuring at that moment.
“Get the lantern!” he ordered.
She was shaking and found it nearly impossible to locate the lantern she had dropped. She heard him striking a match against the stone of the tunnel wall, saw it blaze. She had managed to get the lantern. He managed to light it. She was vaguely aware of green fire in his eyes as they briefly met hers, then he was moving past her.
“Hawk!”
“Here!”
Following him, Shawna saw where the cave flooring had given way to a break, and where that break had been covered over by a thin plank of wood—one that had cracked easily beneath Hawk’s weight.
David didn’t follow his brother into the breech. He flattened himself to the ground before it, waving the lantern over the gaping hole until he saw his brother.
The water was now up to Hawk’s knees.
“What the hell are you doing down there?” David demanded.