The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (41 page)

Jake glanced at Archie, who backed away, putting
his hands up. “Don’t even think about hugging me.”

Jake laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. “C’mon
, coz. We’ve got a Keeper to rescue.”

Archie nodded, his jaw clenched in resolve.

Then the boys climbed on the Gryphon’s back. Jake leaned down to murmur in his mount’s ear: “All right, Red. The Lightriders dealt with this devil once before, but it’s our turn now. So let’s go and finish it.”

“Caw!”

Red took a few running steps then leaped into the air, his scarlet wings pumping powerfully as he rose into the air with his passengers.

The October sky
was cold and windy as he bore them aloft, but nothing would deter them now.

Both
boys held on tight as the Gryphon carried them over the mountains to the mine.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Light in a Dark Place

Jake had always suspected that Archie’s love of blowing things up would come in handy someday.

Deep
in the coalmine a short while later, having left Red out in the woods where he wouldn’t be seen, the boys crouched at a safe distance down the tunnel from the rock pile blocking the collapsed tomb.

Jake
held his ears while the boy genius lit the long fuse with a gleeful look of intensity. The spark burned its way along the ground to where he had packed the dynamite in among the rocks.

“Wait for
it…” Archie murmured.

B
OOOOOM!

The deafening sound of the explosion reverberated down the tunnel, followed a moment later by a
rolling cloud of dust.

The boys coughed a bit, waving the dust away, t
hen peeked around the bend in the tunnel, lifting their lanterns to see if the entrance to Garnock’s tomb had been cleared.

Jake clapped Archie on the back as soon as he saw that the stick
s of dynamite had done the job.

The huge m
ound of rocks from the collapse that had trapped him in the tomb had now been pulverized.

They raced
down the tunnel, but when they arrived at the newly formed opening, Jake held Archie back. “Stay out here. I don’t want to risk another collapse. The chamber will still be unstable without a few support beams. Learned that the hard way.”

“I’m coming with you!
She’s
my
sister!”

Jake knew his cous
in was terrified for Isabelle—they all were—but he shook his head in adamant refusal. “It’s too dangerous. You already got shrunk! What if he does something worse to you next time? Please, just stay back. I’m the only one he seems the least bit afraid of, because of my Lightrider bloodlines. Please. I’ll take care of Isabelle. Just stay back and send Derek in, if he reaches us in time. I’ll holler if I need you, I promise.”

Archie grumbled, peered
longingly through the hole into Garnock’s lair, but finally nodded in reluctance. “Be careful, Jake. Save her.”

“I’ll have her back to you in no time.”

“I know. I believe in you, coz,” he said.

Touched by his cousin’s words of encouragement, Jake gave Archie a grateful nod, then turned to face the tomb.

Blimey, he did not like caves any more now than he did when he had first arrived in Wales. Nevertheless, he climbed over the rubble left by Archie’s explosion and entered the tomb once again.

He shuddered upon arriv
ing, lifting his lantern high. He did not say it aloud, but privately, he could not believe he had to come back in here.

At
least this time there weren’t any gargoyles trying to bite his face off. No, he thought dryly as he crossed the chamber warily, now he only had to contend with their master. An enemy far older and far more powerful than he. An enemy that, frankly, he had no idea how to defeat.

But there had to be a way. There just had to. Isabelle’s life was at stake.
No, actually, more than her life, he thought. Her soul. Her afterlife. Eternity. Because the underworld was where bad people were sent to endure eternal punishment. She, of all people, did not deserve what would happen to her if he failed.

Then Jake’s blood ran cold, for
as he went down the dark stone steps into the second room with the skull-shaped doorway, he suddenly heard her screaming.

He drew in his breath, momentarily paralyzed with fear
.
Good Lord.
He had never heard anyone scream like that before. It was a sound of pure agony and raised the very hackles on his nape.

He’s
torturing her!

At that realization,
Jake instantly forgot all about his own terror, racing across the room and through the skull doorway to save her.

He would never forget the sound of those screams for as long as he lived—and if he failed, he knew he would never again be able to face Archie or Dani or Aunt Ramona.

As he burst through the door into Hades, which Garnock had left propped open, the smoke briefly choked and blinded him. He brought up his hand to shield his face. It was all as unpleasant as he remembered. The fiery heat, the sulfur smell, the wailing and gnashing of teeth from millions of dead souls who had earned their torment. Thieves and murderers, cheats and swindlers, liars and maniacs of all kinds.

And the innocent Keeper of the Unicorns.

Jake stopped at the top of the stairs, taken aback when he spotted her below. The moment his vision cleared, he saw, thank Heaven, that Garnock wasn’t torturing her.

He wasn’t even touching her.

On the flat rocky plateau at the bottom of the stairs, she was tied up with her arms over her head to a wooden frame resembling a gallows.

The sorcerer himself was standing, arms raised, at the cliff’s edge, shouting into the void to summon his fo
rmer demon ally, Jake supposed—the one he had betrayed with his trickery.

No doubt he had some making up to do after cheating the devil of his promised soul.

Neither Garnock nor Isabelle had noticed Jake’s arrival yet, but for his part, a chill ran down his spine despite the river of fire nearby as he suddenly realized
why
such bloodcurdling screams were coming out of his poor cousin.

Isa
belle was an empath.

Her particular gift was feeling what other people felt. Only now did it dawn on Jake how this terrible place of suffering would affect someone with her abilities.

Of all the people to be dragged down here!
he thought. She couldn’t even stand to be in a crowd in all the hustle and bustle of London. Even that was too overwhelming for her exquisite sensitivity, so finely attuned was she to the emotions and attitudes of everyone around her.

It was what made her so compassionate toward others, but in this place,
no wonder she was screaming like that.

Isabelle was in agony, dro
wning in a sea of other people’s pain and horror and regret. Sharing the despair of the damned. He swallowed hard.

She’ll go mad if she stays down here much longer.

Jake knew he had to get her out of here.

He also knew that Garnock was going to do everything in his
considerable power to stop him.

Given
that the sorcerer was still flickering between spirit and solid form, Jake wasn’t sure what—if anything—he could actually do to him. Nevertheless, he started rushing down the stairs, despite his lack of any particular plan.

Well, he thought, using his telekinesis to push Garnock off the cliff sounded like a decent start.

He filtered out Isabelle’s tormented screaming as best he could because it so unnerved him. Then he cleared his mind, focusing on the wizard’s back.

Determined to shove her captor off the ledge into the canyon below, he summoned up every ounce of magical ability at his disposal.

Now!

From the very core of him, power rocketed out of his palms, amplified by the presence of the great quartz crystals just outside the skull door.

Garnock didn’t have a chance. He went shooting over the cliff as though he had been blasted by the water from the strongest fireman’s hose that ever was.

Jake sustained the beam and did not stop until the sorcerer had disappeared over the stone ledge with a shout, plummeting into the dark, fiery pit beyond.

Where he belonged.

Jake’s
chest was heaving when he finally dropped his hands to his sides. He was a little dazed by the outpouring of power and could already feel his temples starting to throb. But as draining as that had been, he was still in much better shape than Isabelle. He pulled out his runic dagger and ran to cut the ropes binding her wrists.

Having seen him, she had stop
ped screaming.

“Jake,” she said weakly. Her blue eyes were glazed with pain. Her face was smudged with ashes.

“Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here.”

He lifted his knife to free her, but she glanced past his shoulder and gasped. “Jake, look out!”

Knife still in hand, he whirled around and was astonished to find the sorcerer floating back up over the side of the cliff again, his black robes billowing in the breeze.

“Surprise,” Garnock said sweetly, gliding up higher into the air. “Now it’s my turn,” he snarled. Suddenly brandishing a twisted black wand, he aimed it at Jake, and a snakelike wave of dreadful magic came crackling out of it, so powerful it emitted a deep, droning hum.

Shielding Isabelle with his body, Jake instinctively raised his hands to ward off the current of dark magic barreling toward them.

He was not entirely sure what he had expected to happen, but even he was shocked when, somehow, his telekinesis bent the beam
of magic coming at him and deflected it toward the red underworld sky.

Garnock was visibly outraged by this trick, though Jake was as bewildered by it as the sorcerer was.

The wizard redoubled his efforts, and Jake continued to channel the furious current of power elsewhere. He and Izzy remained unscathed—for the moment.

Garnock finally gave up on that, slightly winded.

Heart pounding, Jake tried to hide the fact that he, too, was rather exhausted from the effort.

Garnock
studied him through narrowed eyes. “Well, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you, little Lord Griffon? I didn’t hear you come in. But honestly! Shooting a fellow in the back? Hardly worthy of a young Lightrider.”

“That’s the least you deserve.” Bristling, Jake stood his ground in front of Isabelle, with sweat from the fires of Hades dripping down his face. “You kidnapped my cousin. You killed Brother
Colwyn. You shrank Red and Archie and froze Derek Stone. You nearly drained the life out of all those students, and terrorized their teachers.”

Garnock smiled.
“To be sure, I am such a naughty man.”

“Man? You’re not even human anymor
e, after you changed yourself into a black fog. You might have got your body back, but you’re still not a real person. I’m beginning to doubt you ever were.”

“Insulting me isn’t goi
ng to save you, you insolent snail.” Garnock floated down from the air and landed on solid ground, studying him intently. “Tell me how you did that. Bent the stream of magic away? I heard no chant. You don’t even carry a wand. What’s the trick?”

“How should I know?
But you better not come near me or my cousin, or I’ll give you something worse,” Jake warned.

Garnock laug
hed. “Such threats! Boy, you may have a prodigious amount of natural talent, but it’s obvious you have no idea what you’re doing. All that power, wasted on a cheeky little numskull. But…you’ve got courage, coming in here. I’ll give you that. I daresay with the proper training, you could actually be something someday, couldn’t you?” the sorcerer mused aloud.

Indifferent to the volcanoes in the distance and the screams echoing from the
city of the condemned, Garnock pocketed his wand and held up his hands to show he was unarmed. Then he started walking closer, step by cautious step. “Perhaps I was hasty in trying to destroy you. I could use a new apprentice.”

“
Forget it.”

“Ah, ah, remember,
I’ve looked into your mind, Jake. At the séance.”