I looked at the manmade lake. "You're saying there's an underwater place here similar to the Grotto?"
"More like an unfinished construction site which, if completed, would have been like the Grotto. I've spent countless hours exploring the underwater areas. Why it was abandoned, I do not know. This place is situated over the crossing of several powerful ley line conduits. It appears that these particular ley lines may differ in quality from those beneath the Grotto."
"How so?" I asked.
"I don't know. If I had a sorcerer I could trust, I would bring one here to determine what makes these different from others." She regarded the tiny arch in the center of her palm. "Unfortunately, this arch can only bring us to Thunder Rock or I would have used it to take us elsewhere."
I raised an eyebrow. "That's all it's good for? Just to bring us to this lousy place?"
"I have never been able to attune it to another arch or location. I can only assume it was tethered to this place somehow, but never fully affixed."
Elyssa looked at the cliff walls in alarm. "How are we supposed to get out of here? Isn't there a magically protected perimeter surrounding this place?"
"The underground cavern has an exit which is not too difficult a swim."
I groaned. "We have to go in the water?"
Kassallandra nodded. "With the golems and police closing in, I felt this place was our only chance for escape." She glanced at the pink-tinged sky. "It will be dark soon. There are things which lurk here in the night and I do not wish to be present when they come out."
"What sort of things?"
She shuddered. "Who knows what they are? Remnants of the massacre? Dark spawn trapped in this realm? I do not wish to find out."
I clapped my hands and rubbed them together. "Well, might as well get this over with." I bent down and touched a hand to the water. It was so cold my nipples hardened at the thought of jumping in. We might be having a mild winter, but the water didn't care.
"How deep is the lake?" Elyssa asked.
"Forty feet to the hole, and another twenty feet to the first air pocket," Kassallandra said. "An easy swim for those with our strength, though I suggest you grab a hefty rock and use it to assist in your descent."
My hands trembled at the thought of those dark murky depths. "Just great." I paced back and forth. "Any chance there are leftover creepy crawlers or anything nasty down there?"
Kassallandra shook her head. "No. I've been in this lake many times during daylight hours and have seen only fish and vegetation."
It was hard picturing this beautiful fair-skinned woman, clad in an expensive red dress and fancy shoes swimming and exploring this place. She looked like a real diva.
Elyssa, who was definitely no diva, pulled off her shoes and socks, looked at the water for a moment and then stripped down to her pink T-shirt and matching Hello Kitty boy-shorts. Kassallandra did the same, fastening her long red hair into a tight ponytail as she walked away toward one of the small caves pockmarking the cliffs. I suddenly wished for a bucket of cold lake water over my head—not to mention other parts of me. I'd seen Elyssa half-naked before, but at the time, she had been unconscious and covered in gore from our fight with vamplings. Having two hot, mostly naked women near me was triggering a volcanic chain reaction in my hormones.
I caught Elyssa grinning at me, her eyes angled ever so slightly down. "You'd better strip too," she said and winked. "Even with our strength, wet clothing is gonna feel like lead weights."
Kassallandra entered a nearby cleft in the rock wall and returned moments later with waterproof backpacks and diving masks for each of us. "After coming here several times for my research, I decided it best to be prepared, though I never refilled the oxygen tanks I used in the past."
"Can the hounds swim?"
"Quite literally, like fish." She whistled at the largest hound. "Malkesh, come here, my sweet." The hound padded over, tongue lolling and eyes vivid yellow. She took both sides of his huge head in her hands and massaged it vigorously while kissing him on his nose. "Prepare the way."
He ruffed a few syllables and the other hounds appeared like ghosts from hiding places in the surrounding boulders, one of them giving me a start as he nuzzled past. They jumped toward the water, their hindquarters morphing into large flippers as they dove and were gone.
"They can turn into fish?"
"In a manner of speaking," Kassallandra said, stuffing her clothing into one of the backpacks. "Well-trained hounds have limited morphing abilities and mine are the best."
Wondering if they had a hellhound category in dog shows, I tore my eyes from her snow-skinned cleavage and stared at Elyssa's shapely bottom as she bent over her backpack. The incubus inside me drooled with desire. Standing strategically behind a waist-high boulder, I pulled off my own clothes until I was down to my boxer-briefs and stuffed everything into the backpack, strapped it tight onto my back, and hoped against hope the second man brain in my shorts wouldn't make itself obvious.
Elyssa graced me with a sexy, naughty smile and a wink. I made a dash for the water as man-brain number two tried to wink back.
"Oh, oh, cold!" I shouted, thinking I'd wade in until I was waist deep, finding instead a steep drop-off and plunging in up to my neck. At least it stopped the rebellion in my underwear.
Kassallandra hopped in and squealed, followed shortly by a screeching Elyssa.
"Follow me and stay close," Kassallandra said her teeth chattering. "There are a couple of tricky spots to watch for."
It was so cold in the water I found it difficult to breathe as my muscles clenched and refused my commands. I looked at Elyssa, expecting to see her Templar training keeping her calm and reserved. Instead, her teeth clacked away at full speed. "C-c-cold," she said, her entire body shivering.
"Once we start moving, our bodies will heat up," Kassallandra said, pulling her mask down.
Elyssa nodded and did the same, forcing herself to take deep breaths.
I pulled the diving mask over my face, making sure it was tight and peered under the water. My night-vision kicked in after a moment, but failed to reveal much of anything except a few startled fish. Kassallandra and Elyssa each grabbed a large rock from the side of the lake, took deep breaths, and plunged under the water. I gripped the largest rock I could find—a small boulder, really—and sucked in a few breaths to fill my lungs.
With trembling hands, I pulled the large chunk of granite to me, gulped down one last big breath, and pushed off. The boulder dragged me quickly into the dark depths, the water pressure increasing until it felt like tiny needles in my eardrums. The chill in the water deepened, covering my body like an icy glove. Even with my night vision, the murky water obscured everything past twenty feet, so any random fish scurrying into view nearly gave me a coronary.
I looked for Kassallandra and Elyssa but saw no sign of them. Worry gnawed at my stomach because I didn't know where the hole in the lakebed was supposed to be. For all I knew it could be in the middle somewhere. Why hadn't I asked Kassallandra for a precise location? Just great. I was going to be groping around the bottom while my breath ran out and the others waited in the air pocket. My worry sprouted into low-level panic as I realized I didn't know where the air pocket was either.
What kind of an idiot was I not to ask where these very vital things were, or at the very least follow Kassallandra down the instant she dove? Thankfully, my lungs still felt fine, and I didn't seem to be in any danger of running out of oxygen just yet.
My boulder finally clunked against the rocky surface of the bottom. I released it and I looked about for a hole. Instead, I spotted a silvery length of chain bolted to the granite lakebed. I gripped the chilly metal and pulled myself hand-over-hand along it for about twenty feet until I reached the end. At its terminus, a ragged gap in the granite yawned into pitch black. I pulled myself down past a relatively thin lip of rock and found another chain bolted into the ceiling of the cavern beneath.
When I reached the end, I came upon a space considerably larger than an air pocket. In fact, Kassallandra and Elyssa stood inside a perfectly square room, shivering, arms crossed over their chests. A warm yellow glow suffused the walls.
"Finally!" Elyssa said, springing toward me, pressing her cold wet skin to mine. "I was worried you missed the chains or something."
I kissed her, pressing a hand to the small of her back and finding a patch of bare skin beneath the backpack and shirt. Kassallandra's eyes glinted with what I interpreted as amusement. Or, she could have felt like hurling her lunch for all I knew. That woman was way too serious.
"Where's the light coming from?" I asked, looking at the ceiling for a bulb or other source.
Kassallandra shrugged. "I assume whatever lights this place also prevents the water pressure in the lake from flooding it."
Whatever lit the room also gave it some warmth, for which I was grateful. My nipples were hard as icicles and both females had their metaphorical brights on—not that I minded all that much.
Elyssa pressed herself to me and shivered. "I hate to think we have more to go."
Her soft curves were enough to override the cold water and part of me began to respond. Her eyes flared and a devilish grin lit her face.
"Unfortunately, I don't have chains leading all the way to the exit," Kassallandra said, thankfully unaware of the developing situation. "We'll follow one more down toward the circle. Near the edge of the wall is a tunnel leading into an underground river. The current isn't very strong, but there are some very sharp rocks. Once you hit the river, you can swim up a few feet and you'll find the surface. There is plenty of room, for the most part, until you arrive near the end and then you'll have to duck under a shelf of rock, follow the river through a tunnel about fifty feet, and eventually exit a hole in the side of a granite cliff a short distance outside of the quarry."
My second brain abruptly withdrew at the thought of all the water and sharp rocks between me, a warm bed, and my hot girlfriend. "I thought this was an easy swim," I said, grumbling. "My nerves don't enjoy hearing words like 'for the most part' and 'eventually' when it involves the possibility of drowning and-or being shredded against sharp rocks."