Maddock swam to the surface and clambered out onto a narrow ledge. Grizzly surfaced a few seconds later, spat out his regulator, and clutched the ledge. Maddock pretended to busy himself with his gear while Grizzly sucked in ragged breaths and struggled to climb out of the water. After about twenty seconds, Maddock could no longer deal with his own pettiness and reluctantly hauled his unwelcome partner up onto dry land.
“Thanks,” Grizzly gasped. “I wore myself out breaking the current for you.”
“Breaking the current?”
“I went first so I could block the current. That way it was easier for you — like one race car drafting behind another.”
“Sure,” Maddock said.
They removed their air tanks and moved along the ledge, searching the darkness with their headlamps, until they came to a dead end.
“This doesn’t look like what your friend described,” Grizzly said. “Think we took the wrong passageway?”
Maddock shook his head. “The odds of there being more than one channel like this are microscopic.”
“I don’t know. You ever hear of Oak Island? That place is riddled with underwater passages.”
Maddock bit back a retort. Would this guy never shut up?
“It looks like the ceiling caved in. Let’s see if we can move some of this rubble.”
They set to work, Grizzly laboring without complaint until they’d cleared a large enough opening to squeeze through. On the other side, Maddock found what they were looking for.
Jimmy had discovered an archived post from a defunct internet forum, written by a man who claimed that, while diving, he’d found the underwater passageway, which took him beneath Dunstaffnage Castle. There, he’d found a wall covered in odd, ancient-looking carvings. Sure enough, here was that same wall.
“This is really something,” Grizzly said. He played his light back and forth across the solid wall. “It looks legit to me.”
Maddock nodded. This was nothing like the fake pictographs vandals sometimes carved among genuine, historical images. These were very old, weathered by perhaps centuries of water dripping down from above. He saw no apparent pattern to the carvings, which were a mixture of stars, letters, numbers, and symbols. He took out his waterproof camera and snapped a series of pictures.
“Do you think this is a clue to the location of the stone?” Grizzly asked.
“No telling,” Maddock said. “Maybe there’s a code here that needs to be deciphered, although I have to admit it seems unlikely. The images are too irregular.”
“There has got to be something here,” Grizzly said. “This place is almost impossible to get to, so it’s not like rock carvings in the American southwest, where people would camp for the night beneath an outcropping and leave a little graffiti behind. Somebody carved this here for a reason.”
Maddock couldn’t disagree. He took a few steps back and examined the symbols one by one. He was about halfway done when Grizzly let out a triumphant cry.
“That one! I recognize it.” He pointed to a shape like an old grave marker in the lower portion of the carving. “This is one of the symbols that represent the Tuatha de Dannan treasure.”
They both moved closer to inspect it.
“Are you sure it’s Tuatha?” Maddock asked.
“Definitely. I’ve been studying up on the treasure forever. Isla and I also spent a lot of time going over them. There’s the spear, the sword, the cauldron, and this one is the stone.”
“Well, the stone is what we’re looking for,” Maddock said.
Frowning, Grizzly rose up on his tiptoes and shone his light down into the recessed area where the stone symbol was carved. “This is weird. The edges around the image are cut deep. It’s almost like a handle.” Without warning, he hooked two fingers into the carving and pulled.
“Grizzly, no!” Maddock grabbed the man’s wrist and yanked his hand away, but it was too late. The oblong shape that represented the Tuatha stone tilted forward, then snapped back into place when Grizzly’s hand came free.
The floor trembled beneath their feet, and a low rumbling filled the cavern. Instinctively Maddock looked up, fearing the ceiling might collapse. But the sound stopped.
“See?” Grizzly said. “Nothing to worry…”
His words were lost among a series of sharp cracks as the floor fell away beneath their feet and they tumbled into darkness.
Chapter 17
Bones lay back on the soft grass, fingers laced together behind his head, and gazed up at the starry night. After hours, the ruins of Dunstaffnage were about as quiet as a place could get. A perfect locale for some alone time with a lovely lady. The problem was, Isla didn’t seem to feel the same way. The auburn-haired beauty had shown no interest in him. She now sat a few feet away, knees pulled against her chest, staring balefully out at the water.
“How long do you think it’s going to take them?” she asked.
“There’s no way of telling. Depends on how long it takes to find the underwater passageway, and then what’s waiting for them at the other end. Maddock won’t waste time, though. He’s efficient.”
“I just hope they’re all right.”
“Don’t worry about them. Maddock’s the most capable man I know, except for me, of course.” He smiled and winked, but she was still gazing off into the distance, paying him no mind.
“It’s not Maddock who concerns me. I’m worried that Grizzly will do something stupid and get them both into trouble.” A breeze gusted in from across the water, and she shivered.
“If you’re cold, you can come sit next to me,” Bones said, trying to sound both innocent and inviting at the same time. The flinty stare Isla shot in his direction caused him to immediately abandon any thoughts of making a connection with her, at least not tonight. He changed tactics on the fly. “Grizzly seems okay to me.”
Isla rolled her eyes. “The man is a buffoon. He has just enough knowledge to get himself into trouble.”
“But he’s a well-known cryptid hunter. He’s spent plenty of time in the field, built a reputation for himself, stayed alive in some precarious situations.”
“The fact that he hasn’t gotten himself killed tells me he’s got more dumb luck than Forrest Gump. That or he’s done a deal with the devil.”
Bones couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Sounds like you’ve got a personal grudge against him. Maybe he’s not paying you what you’re worth?”
Isla let out a harsh laugh. “I don’t work for that idiot. Circumstances brought us together, and I thought he would do less damage if I kept an eye on him.”
“Circumstances? Like a romance gone bad?”
“Oh my God.” Isla sprang to her feet and began pacing.
Bones watched her stalk back and forth, reading the lines of her face, the set of her jaw until he sensed it was safe to speak again. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get under your skin.”
“It’s fine. You’ll understand after you’ve worked with him for a few days. It might not even take that long for you to figure him out.”
Bones was dying to ask more questions, to understand what, exactly, had caused the rift between Isla and Grizzly. He and the cryptid hunter had talked lake monsters and sea monsters for a good half-hour and the guy knew his stuff. There had to be something else going on here.
“Look, if there’s a problem with Grizzly, Maddock and I should know about it if we’re going to work together.”
“I told you what the problem is; he’s a tosser. I don’t…” She jerked her head around, looking in the direction of the parking lot. “Do you hear that?”
Bones was already on his feet. He’d caught the sound of tires crunching gravel and asphalt. In the dim light, his sharp eyes spotted the outline of an SUV, headlights turned off, rolling into the parking lot. They, whoever they were, had even cut the engine and were coasting in.