The Diamond Dragon (Kip Keene Book 4) (17 page)

No guard rails.

Just a descent into the heart of oblivion.

Keene’s shoulder collided with a small platform about twenty feet from the edge of the cliff. He bounced off and almost continued falling, but had the wherewithal to reach out with his hand and grab hold of a tree branch. He hung there, his feet dangling over moonlit nothingness.

The tree gave way slightly, and his feet fell a half an inch.

Keene scrambled upward, so half his belly was on the extremely narrow overhang. It was too small for him to sit on. He hugged the tree and took a few minutes to recover, allowing the pain in his upper body to subside.

What sounded like a chopper whipped past, its blades blowing a stiff wind through his hair. He shut his eyes. Then it was past him, on to wherever it needed to be.

Where
did
it need to be? A chopper didn’t seem like something Cladius would use.

Huh.

Keene’s attention was drawn back to his own predicament by a large
crack
. His torso slipped off, and he was hanging again, his forearms pulsing.

The respite appeared to be ending, the thick, deadened wood finally giving up the ghost. Keene tried not to look down, but no matter where his gaze fell, the incredible smallness of his own existence was apparent. The gorgeous valley far below took on a menacing quality. From this height, it was like looking into the jaws of a hungry tiger.

He looked up at the smoking remains of the bridge and wondered how Strike was faring. He had heard her and the kid—and some new woman—head into the temple after the quaking had stopped. He’d tried to call back to them, but the wind rushing through the crevice overpowered any sound he could make.

Maybe they could stop this prophecy on their own.

He had his doubts. Not because they were incapable, but because the truth was uncertain, which side to pick no more than a crapshoot. The information was incomplete, and Keene had little hopes of anyone acquiring the full story before the clock struck twelve.

Waiting to plummet to his death gave Keene a lot of time to think. But he still couldn’t decide who frightened him more. Prashant or Cladius. That scared him more than his own impending death.

Well, not quite. Keene wasn’t so enlightened as to completely ignore imminent threats to his mortality. 

More of the tree’s roots came out. A terrible ripping filled the air, sickening in its steady consistency. The crack of the chilly bark, the frozen soil being upturned. This was the awful score that would accompany his death.

Come on Keene, focus
.

He still had a braid of rope from Alessia’s cabin. Keene cautiously reached towards his belt, feeling the tree give a little. He held his breath and detached the loop, letting it dangle down between his blistered fingers.

Hopefully it was long enough. But he had nothing to act as a hook.

The final roots still clinging to the ground began to give way, sending Keene flailing over the chasm. His mind raced to find a solution. He settled on the hunting knife. As the small tree continued to sag, Keene tore the knife from its sheath and tied the rope around the hilt.

He shook it, and the knife held steady.

Keene threw the makeshift grappling hook over his shoulder, hoping that the blade wouldn’t tumble down on his head. He heard it glance off the rock and come bouncing down the cliff. It zoomed past, narrowly missing his right arm. When the rope fully extended, Keene felt a slight jerk. He looked down. The knife glinted softly in the moonlight.

He had one final shot.

He yanked the rope up and spun it around like a lasso, trying to visualize a target he couldn’t see. If he got the arc and angle right, he could get the hook to whip back high enough over the edge of the cliff, up on solid ground.

Keene let the knife hook fly as the tree finally gave way.

He free fell, but only for a couple feet. The knife stuck in the snow above and held, even with all of Keene’s weight pulling down. He swung against the cliff face, putting his feet out to avoid a face first collision.

The tree clattered hundreds of feet below into the abyss.

Keene made his way slowly up the cliff, convinced with each movement that the knife would dislodge from the frozen tundra, and he would be swallowed up by the darkness. When he finally reached the top, he flopped on to the solid ground, breathing heavily. His gaze fell on the blade, which was entirely embedded in the thick ice covering the ground.

Not a bad throw.

He rolled over and looked at the Diamond Dragon, still trying to catch his breath and stop his racing heart. No sign of Strike, Linus or the woman. The voice, now that he could focus, was familiar. Carmen? Yes, it had to be Carmen.

But how had she and Linus gotten here? It didn’t matter.

The bridge was a nonstarter. They were on their own. Keene didn’t trust the makeshift grappling hook twice. The first miracle had been a gift.

Besides, the chasm was wider than his rope. Even if he did have a death wish, he couldn’t make the attempt if he wanted to.

That meant that the only way forward was to return to the valley.

Keene rose to his feet and pulled the saving blade from the snow. He returned the tools to his belt and began retracing his former path. Before he got far, an ominous rumble sent him flying to the ground. The entire mountain range shook and trembled, like the gods themselves had awoken beneath.

Keene crawled on the ground, unable to stand. Orange tendrils leapt towards the sky from the direction of the Diamond Dragon. His eyes darted across the landscape, scanning for tumbling rocks or jagged shards of ice. Not that he could do much to avoid them. He would just have enough time to realize that his death was imminent.

He glanced over his shoulder just as another massive fireball erupted in the air from the direction of the ice temple. Keene shielded his eyes as the rumbling intensified. He felt the ground beneath him shift and began to carry him away.

He tried to hunker down in the moving snow, but it was no use.

The series of explosions had destabilized all of the nearby mountains.

And Keene was now hurtling down the steep slopes at over eighty miles an hour, caught in a giant avalanche.

Keene struggled to keep his head above the roaring torrent of snow, but that was like trying to fight his way out of the eye of a hurricane. Attempting to control Mother Nature was impossible. He was just along for the ride, buffeted and thrown on a massive crest of endless white.

Through the snowy haze, Keene saw that he was high in the air, at the top. This was better than being beneath the crushing deluge, but there was one problem.

This wave was a hundred feet above the ground, and the bottom was dropping out.

Keene felt the ground disappear beneath him, and then his legs were churning above an open blue expanse, the wave receding beneath his feet. Boulder sized chunks of ice continued to rush down the slopes.

In the distance, Keene could see another avalanche picking up steam, outpacing him, rushing down the valley. He craned his neck, seeing that the other mountains were also disintegrating, dumping their entire contents into the green valley.

Shambhala was about to experience a deep frost.

Keene plummeted through the air, only to be caught be a second crest which knocked the wind out of his lungs. The snowstorm enveloped him in a sea of infinite white, blocking his view of anything outside his personal space. Maybe it was better that way.

Flying blind, he wouldn’t see the rock he would be impaled on.

But that didn’t happen. The new crest pushed Keene towards the outskirts of the avalanche, where things were comparably placid and serene. This meant he was only being thrown at about twenty miles an hour, which felt like he was standing still after the wild air ride only moments prior.

Keene drifted until the wave petered out. His legs were once again weightless, and the drop was quick and absolute.

Luckily, it was only about ten feet.

Unluckily, the frozen ground still hurt a lot. Snow piled up around Keene, and he struggled to sit up as his lungs burned and feet begged for a rest. But if he laid down, the tail-end of the snow pile would bury him alive, and he would drown in a frozen hell.

Keene staggered forward and made an awkward effort to keep moving. The remnants of the avalanche threw him down each time, but the meager effort allowed Keene to stay breathing and unburied. When the rumbling finally ceased, and the slope stopped shifting, he collapsed and coughed up an almost solid chunk of ice.

He lay on his back, staring at the almost perfect moon. His body wanted to shut down and rest, but the temperature was dropping. From the corners of his eyes, he could see the valley was no more than a half hour walk. In fact, he was already
in
the valley—the concurrent avalanches had buried portions of the edges in powder.

No—he couldn’t rest here. He would freeze to death and die, which seemed like a horrible waste after cheating death twice in under ten minutes. Keene crawled for a few paces, then managed to unsteadily rise to his feet.

He searched his belt for supplies. Everything that Alessia had given him was gone, swallowed up by a thousand tons of snow. A bitter wind rippled through his clothes. At least he still had those.

An orange glow in the distance below, from one of the partially covered mountains nearby, caught Keene’s attention. He froze for a moment by instinct, overtaken by fear. An arrow soared through the air, the wind pushing it wide of its mark. It hissed in the snow before burning out.

Keene began running.

After all this, the Centurions were still after him? Or was it the resistance? Who had won the battle for the estate, the right to use the precious girl?

No more arrows came, but Keene didn’t stop sprinting until he was in the tall grass of the fields. His mind was focused on only one thing.

Get to Cladius’ villa
.
Find the portal
.

The only way to save the girl right now was to save himself.

He reached the still burning wreckage of the estate within fifteen minutes. The whir of rotors caught his attention—that same sound he’d heard while he was dangling over the abyss, waiting to plunge into oblivion.

Keene dove behind a twisted hunk of wood—the top part of an exquisitely crafted Ionic column— and peered out as the black chopper set down. Its spinning blades flattened the nearby grass. Keene saw a number of archers with lit arrows rise from the shadows.

Their ragged clothing gave them away as resistance. So Prashant had won the battle for Shambhala. How wonderful for him—but Keene had doubts about how wonderful that was for the world. Or Alessia.

Or even this world. The entire place smoldered, thick smoke hanging over the once verdant pastures.

The pilot cut the engine, and the blades stopped. The archers formed a cautious ring around the copter. He came out with his hands raised, and the men snuffed out their burning arrows, nodding that it was okay. Then they disappeared into the tall grass, once again hidden and ready to attack any stray invaders.

The pilot walked towards the estate, whistling.

Keene had a crazy idea. Once upon a time, way back on Apollus, he had been the best captain in the entire galaxy. Without parallel. Those skills had translated to the technologically inferior vehicles gracing the time he now called home.

He
could
run away, into the mansion, escape back to Earth. Maybe the prophecy was all junk. Maybe everything would be okay if he fixed nothing here. Maybe he could save his own hide without a lick of extra trouble.

But that didn’t really appeal to him much.

The man passed by, his cracked bomber jacket shining in the fiery light. Keene vaulted over the splintered wood, the sharp edges tearing at his palms. He barely noticed as he broke into a flat run, headed straight for the majestic stairs carved into the hillside leading up to the estate. The pilot paused and turned, frozen in surprise.

No one could be this mad—a single man against a dedicated army.

Except for Keene, who hit the pilot dead in the chest, knocking the wind straight from the man’s gut. They tumbled down the hill, coming to a rest at the bottom, Keene riding the pilot’s torso like a boogie board. Keene rifled through the man’s pockets, finding the keys to the chopper. He jerked a small blade loose from the pilot’s belt.

Lit arrows began to spring up all over the valley. From above, from below, the flames casting shadows over the scorched grass. Keene jingled the keys and stared at the chopper. Arrows hissed and sizzled at his feet as his legs churned.

A sharp point scratched his calf, almost breaking his gait, but he kept moving, giving every last bit of energy he had. The black chassis was in reach, the opening in its belly beckoning to him, calling his name. Keene could picture the bird taking flight, whisking him up the mountain.

A lone archer stepped into view, on the other side of the copter’s opening, a flaming projectile notched and ready to fly straight at Keene’s heart. There was nowhere to go, no cover to take. Keene watched the man’s finger twitch on the drawstring.