Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series
Chapter 17

The Brotherhood council had spoken. More information was needed before it could decide what, if anything, the Brotherhood should do about the missing guardian from Upyr. Nothing more sinister than the earthquake could explain its migration. Even if this had always been the case in the past, Angel and Alvaro did not believe it. Talking it over amongst themselves, the specialists decided that they did not have the time to wait for human assets to check out the other vampyre conclaves, and yet, sending their own kind was too dangerous. They had run out of options.

“It’s the only way,” Angel sighed in resignation. “I just don’t like dealing with its kind.”

“What could you have against it,” Crystal teased. “It’s only a puddle of water.”

“Its kind has been around since the time of Creation,” Angel explained. “They were His building blocks. They do not understand the needs of flesh and blood creatures.”

“It does not need to understand us,” Aiko pointed out. “It only has to answer our question.”

“Sometimes, the answer you receive is not to the question you ask,” Angel sighed, really unhappy. “Just because it is aware of anything that occurs near a source of water doesn’t make it all-knowing. We may go all that way only to replace out where Crystal lost her favourite red sock.”

“I don’t wear red socks,” Crystal retorted. “But, I wouldn’t mind replaceing out what made April cry.”

“She will tell us when she is ready,” Cantara scolded. “Who do you want to take with you, Angel?”

Angel paused, considering. “Aiko and Alvaro. They don’t require oxygen to live. Fewer tanks that way. And Crystal. We need at least one air breather to whet its curiosity. I’d take Alex, but she’s too raw.”

“I am not,” Alex retorted. “If you ever see me in the raw, you’d never say that! I’m so hot I’m simmering, not that you’d ever notice.”

“We’ll talk about that when I get back,” Angel warned. “In the meantime, keep an eye on Ember and see you both get to school.”

“I’ll make sure they do,” Gwen offered. “Besides, we have to finish looking for a sixteenth-century map of Nepal – or would it have been the Mongol Empire?”

“I think he wants us to behave, you nut,” Alex laughed. “Me, I think I’m going to start my own demon collection. It seems to be the only way to hold that man’s attention.”

“Oh,” Gwen squealed. “Two red devils would go so awesome with the streak in your hair.”

“With horns and pointy tails,” Alex added, stepping up behind Angel and making the devil’s sign behind his head.

Studiously ignoring them, Angel concluded, “I will go to the diner and let April know we are leaving. Alvaro, see if you can book us a flight and if it can’t be done safely, replace us a van for the drive out to New Mexico.”

What April really thought of her girls on a road trip with these two reprobates only Angel would ever know. Moments after they had announced their intentions, April had closeted him in a room with her for more than two hours. Judging by the startled look on Angel’s face when he returned, she had read him the riot act – a first for him, and probably any other angel in the history of creation. Aiko raised an amused eyebrow at him, and Crystal outright snickered. They had both been the recipient of the rough side of April’s tongue, and her calm straightforward delivery made it all the scarier. How could it be anything but funny when someone else caught it?

Packing began, only a change of clothes – heavy and durable – and camping and spelunking gear. Caves and bats – old home week Crystal teased Alvaro and Aiko, who threatened to bite her at least twice. Vampyres did not change into bats, and she was not fond of those flying rodents. She smiled when Alvaro promised to help her with the biting, and Aiko stuck a tongue out at Crystal. She was too lady-like to tell Crystal what she really thought about them, but still girl enough to put a bat in her bed that night. These human girls really were corrupting her.

Crystal came down to join them in the van that morning, looking a fright. Whatever was put in her brush was not coming out of her hair, nor matter how many times she washed it. Her look promised dire consequences for Aiko. But hey! Payback was a bitch. How many times had she been the butt of one of the succubus’ practical jokes? It’s what happens when you play with your food.

As Alvaro settled into the driver’s seat, he turned to the girls. “My sword can also be used for spanking. This mission is dangerous enough without you two engaging in a personal feud. And Crystal, brush your hair. It looks like a bat slept in it.”

Crystal kicked the back of his seat.

It was still dark when they left the brownstone, which didn’t help Crystal’s mood. They had a long day’s drive ahead of them and were leaving without breakfast. Only one of the four ate daily, and Angel decided to stop at a drive-thru before they left the city. He had promised April to take care of Crystal and Aiko, but the first part of the morning, she would sleep, and he did not think he needed to feed her yet. How much food did a mortal need to eat anyway? And could he let Alvaro spank them and still keep his promise? His life was so much more complicated since he had come to live with mortal and immortal teenagers. He was beginning to miss fighting demons and monsters that hid under the bed or in the closet. Oh, for the simple days.

Crystal really did not want breakfast and accepted the fruit juice and bagel from Angel with bad grace. He really did look anxious. At least it wasn’t fishes and loaves, but did he have to wake her up? Really, she would not perish if she missed one meal. And seriously, she was almost as old as he was. She was capable of feeding herself without having someone wipe her face anytime she missed a crumb. When she got home, she was going to have a long talk with April and then leave Angel to her tender mercies. The thought made her smile in a way that startled the angel.

Driving across the country was both thrilling and incredibly boring. Scenery could get monotonous when so little changed mile after mile after endless mile… People could change up the architecture a little, Crystal thought – an igloo, the Taj Mahal, a tenement – and trees could mix it up instead of growing in the same dull shape. Nature’s own topiary. A dragon here, a flamingo there. Even cows were ordinary after the first dozen herds – the same four feet, the same variation of colour, the same cud-chewing placidity. A little dancing wouldn’t hurt.

Crystal was tired of sleeping, and her bum hurt. “Are we going to stop for lunch soon?”

“There’s a rest stop a couple of miles further down the road,” Alvaro suggested. He needed to stretch his legs anyway.

Angel shrugged. Hadn’t he just fed her? Well, at least they could use the time to look over their maps. It looked like the best place to camp overnight was the pueblo village built over the entrance of the cavern, although that might have attracted tourists since the last time they were out this way. It was still his first choice, though, because even if they set out at first light, they would be forced to spend at least one night in the caverns. And he would rather limit their time below ground. Not all the cave’s network had been mapped or even explored, only enough for them to plot their path through the cavern, choose a base camp, and reach their goal if none of the caverns had collapsed in the last hundred years.

Would it really be too much to ask?

Alvaro pulled into the parking lot of a large rest centre. Angel gathered up the map case, and like a scout leader leading his troop, marched them into the restaurant. Crystal took a tray and chose a salad, a cheese sandwich and a coke. Angel already had the maps spread out when she joined them at the table. He eyed her food choices questioningly, and Crystal sighed.

“It’s healthy with very few calories,” she retorted.

“And are calories bad?” He asked innocently.

“Not if you like junk in your trunk,” Crystal replied, “but if you like big butts and you do not lie, fill your boots.”

Aiko giggled, and Alvaro rolled his eyes.

“The branch we need is here?” Angel brought them back to the task at hand, tapping the map with his finger. What was junk in your trunk, and why would it matter to him whether her butt was big or small?

“It’s hard to replace, and it’s a tight fit,” Alvaro replied. “So keep that junk out of your trunk.”

Crystal stuck her tongue out at him.

“It’s going to be almost sixteen hours underwater,” Alvaro commented, studiously ignoring her. “What’s the capacity of these tanks?”

“We will all have to carry two double tanks and a rebreather,” Angel replied. Although only Crystal needed oxygen to live, they needed enough to reach their goal and return, plus a safety margin.

“This area shaded in grey,” Aiko pointed to a section of the map. “This cavern would make a good base camp.”

“Methane pockets,” Angel explained.

“And that’s bad for me,” Crystal supplied.

Aiko’s frown showed her fangs against the bottom of her lip, and Alvaro laughed. “This one will do fine.”

Back in the van, Angel took the time to fold up the maps and tuck them back into their water-proof case. The map of the cavern was irreplaceable. The Brotherhood only had the one copy and had lost five divers in its creation. That it had never been copied was one of those things. Too much to do, too little time and too few hands. And then other priorities came up, another crisis, and it would get forgotten. Mortals with their short life spans could be like that, too often living for the moment and not thinking about a future that could be hundreds of years away.

The sun was setting when they rolled out into the New Mexico desert. The cliff they were heading for, a collection of five rocks, was so far off the beaten track that few mortals had seen it in the last hundred years. Alvaro was putting the van’s suspension through a workout. Shaken, rattled and battered, his passengers tried to complain, but no-one could understand them through the rattle of their teeth. By the time he pulled into the deeper shadows at the skirt of the cliff, their kidneys were well tenderized, and their bones had a permanent shimmy. Mostly, they were all more than willing to blame his driving rather than the rough terrain of the desert.

Arriving, unfortunately, was not the end of their trip. They still had to haul all their gear up the side of the cliff and into the pueblo village. Angel flew up with their supply of ropes and dropped three down to his companions waiting below. Each loaded with a heavy pack, they began the difficult climb up in darkness. As they struggled up the cliff, fairy man flew back and forth with several loads. He made it look too easy. Sweating on the side of the cliff, they could not help but hate him. When they finally joined him at the top, Angel had the fire started and was sorting out the gear he had flown up, oblivious to the envy he had left behind.

“What, no coffee?” Crystal snapped.

Tired, they flopped down by the fire. When Angel found a seat, Crystal flopped her head onto his chest. “Alex will just have to suck it up, I am cold and need a back warmer.”

“I’ve been demoted to furniture,” Angel complained. “To think I was once a guardian angel.”

“Eventually the best of us are,” Alvaro teased, talking over Aiko’s head, where she sat in his lap.

“Men are seldom this useful,” Aiko remarked innocently.

Angel raised an eyebrow but held his peace. Looking down, Crystal was already asleep. It was a disturbing trend with the young women in his company. Wasn’t he supposed to feed her again?

The chill of the night was still in the air when they began to stir. Alvaro was frying up some bacon and eggs for Crystal’s breakfast and was patiently teaching Aiko how to toast bread over the fire. Two pieces already lay in the coals, slowly being consumed by the fire, and Aiko looked ready to bite back. She sat at his side, wearing a frown of concentration as she balanced a third slice on a stick. While she did not see the point of tanning weed paste, it had become a challenge, and she hated failing at anything.

“That looks good,” Crystal sighed. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to replace someplace to pee.”

Aiko pointed to a doorway behind and to the left. “I had Alvaro check. No spiders, lizards, scorpions or snakes.” Aiko didn’t like anything she couldn’t bite, or that had a habit of biting back.

Angel looked up and shook his head. Mortals. He was currently dividing their gear into four piles, and carefully packing each pile away into a knapsack. He wondered what it would be like to be a slave to the needs of one’s body, and if such a life was really worth living? Once Crystal had eaten breakfast, Alvaro carefully stored their food and Angel kept the other two busy hiding their extra gear. If, as impossible as it seemed, some hikers stumbled upon this location, they did not want them to know anyone else was here. Nor did they want any of their gear stolen. Cave diving equipment was expensive, and the Brotherhood was short enough on money without having to pay for losses due to carelessness.

Finally, they were ready to set out. Angel took the lead as they entered the pueblo. He had been here before, ironically, with Jean-Claude. The last visit by the Brotherhood before that was over a hundred years ago. Maybe more. It was not solely the danger to reach the cavern, but the usefulness of the answers you could receive from this type of oracle that had kept them away. Only a mortal air-breather could catch the water elemental’s attention long enough to ask a question, and water elementals were quixotic. They would tell you what you most needed to know according to some hierarchy of needs that went beyond the esoteric. Maybe far enough beyond to be considered insane, and often worthless. And that’s what had put the permanent frown on Angel’s face.

Inside the pueblo, he led the way down, often leaping through holes in the floor, waiting below to catch his companions. No point breaking out their ropes to climb down to the next floor, taking the time after each drop to recoil and repack it. At one time, wooden ladders would have connected the upper and lower levels, but these had long ago rotten away. Humans had abandoned this pueblo so long ago that even the dust had turned to dust, so why would they expect any of the ladders to have survived? One could always dream, Angel thought as they reached a chamber about three levels down that seemed to go on forever.

“Okay,” Angel announced. “Lamps on. And let’s get linked up. Once beyond the first bend, the cavern becomes a twisting maze.”

“No replaceing a dark corner for a little smooching, Aiko,” Crystal teased.

“Don’t worry,” Aiko retorted. “You’re not my type.”

“Girls,” Angel warned, drawing and retracting his sword. Maybe he would try a little spanking of his own.

The cavern walls were limestone and sandstone worn smooth by years of wind and water. At the first branching, Angel led them down a passage that slowly dwindled to what looked like a dead-end. The entrance to the next section of the cavern was a mouse hole. Obviously, he meant that for someone without hips or shoulders or a head for that matter. Something like a double-jointed snake or a gymnastic flatworm.

“Who’s going through there?” Crystal demanded pouting.

“Us,” Angel assured her. “It’s wider than it looks and widens out after a hundred feet. Just wiggle a lot.”

“Not helpful!” Crystal muttered. Men!

Pushing their packs ahead of them, they entered the funnel. Alvaro led the way with Crystal right behind him, filling the tunnel with a cloud of blue language. Way to make her feel fat, boys. It wasn’t like a teenage girl didn’t already have enough self-esteem issues. Getting her fat bottom through the first five feet of tunnel was like giving birth to a whale, and only yesterday, she thought it was an awesome bum. No wonder no-one was in a hurry to explore this arm of the cavern.

Someone shoved her from the other end, and she was through. At least that section of the narrow tunnel. For a moment there, she thought they would have to break out the plunger. No fair when the others could mould themselves to fit the passage, or that Aiko could turn herself into a mist. And the bitch had begun to teach Alvaro her trick. How about hooking a sister up, girlfriend?

And at last, they were through, and Crystal could stand upright, only her elbows and knees did not bend that way anymore. When Angel came through, she took his hands and held them on either side of her hips, and then shoved them in front of his face.

“This wide, and no narrower.”

Angel held out his hands in front of him as if puzzled. Alvaro chuckled.

“Needed for child-bearing,” he explained. “And yes, Alex is about the same size.”

Alvaro would have sworn he saw Angel blush. In all the years he had known him, almost two hundred now, he had never seen the angel notice the difference between male and female anything. In the spirit world, such things did not matter or even exist. A difference in sex belonged to the physical realm, and even his own choice of sex was an affectation to blend in. Judging by the amount of flirting the young girls did with Angel, they found him cute. His boy was in for a world of hurt and Alvaro would make sure he was there to witness every last moment. Someone had to enjoy the angel’s discomfort, and he was the man to do it….

A quarter of a mile down, they reached the cavern they had chosen as a base camp. From this point on, they would be swimming or crawling through flooded caverns with few or no air pockets. It was time to kit Crystal up in her wet suit and diving tanks. For the next twelve to fourteen hours, she would rely on her rebreather and the tanks they all carried on their backs. By the end of this trip, she would be sick of canned air. As long as she was still alive, and he could face April without worrying about replaceing himself an afterlife.

Angel volunteered to help her with her gear. He checked the fit of her suit and helped her with the tanks. He gave her a quick refresher course on her breather and how to swap out tanks and then patted her on the shoulder to let her know she was ready. She gave him the thumbs up.

And with that, they entered a world of shadows and light, rocks and bubbles. Only the sound of her rebreather broke the stillness. Crystal was hyperaware of her own breathing, the constant hiss and gasp of the intake valve. In tight quarters its bubbles surrounded her, creating a curtain across her face mask. At other times they drifted up into an unknown depth, unseen and unnoticed. From darkness so black her light barely made a dint, to sunlit chambers of blues and aquas she swam and crawled and wriggled through an underwater wonder world, often forgetting where and why she was there, and even which way was up and which down.

After six hours of swimming, crawling and climbing, they were all tired. They surfaced in a pool of water, bobbing in a strange world lit by some form of phosphorescent lichen. In the centre of the pool was a flat round island of rock. They swam towards it. Helping each other up out of the water, they flopped over onto their backs, staring up at the rocky sky, too exhausted to even feel wonder.

Crystal took the rebreather out of her mouth and shrugged out of her tank. She would start the return trip with a fresh tank.

“I don’t think I can swim another stroke,” Crystal complained. “You’re going to have to carry me home, Angel.”

“Rescuing damsels in distress is Alvaro’s department,” Angel retorted. “I’m only here to read the map.”

“Let’s say we rest here for a few minutes, let Crystal ask her question, and then all have a nap for ten or twelve years,” Alvaro offered.

“Man up already,” Aiko teased. “As soon as I replace my arms, I’m ready to crawl through another league or two of the cavern.”

“In whose nightmares,” Alvaro scoffed.

While they waited, Angel swapped out Crystal’s tanks and readjusted their gear. When he first came to Earth, he had never understood a mortal’s need for rest. The longer he stayed here, the more he envied them their ability to switch off and recharge like this. But the air here was stale, and they would deplete the oxygen all too soon. It was time for Crystal to ask her question.

“Stand here in the centre,” Angel urged. “Clear your mind and face the water when you ask your question.”

“Stand?” Crystal demanded.

“Here,” Angel offered her his hand. “I will help you up.”

Crystal stood in the centre of the island, looking ridiculous in her wetsuit and flippers. She should be dressed like a priestess in some diaphanous robe, a mystic wind blowing back her hair, not like some rejected swamp monster from a 50’s B-movie. Her thoughts were sleepy and growing ridiculous. She shrugged. Here goes nothing.

“Oh, Elder Water,” she cried. “What can you tell us of the vampyres and their guardians?”

“You could have asked without the production,” Angel complained.

“I am summoning a water elemental here, people,” Crystal retorted.

“I think you insulted it,” Alvaro shot back when her question went unanswered.

Suddenly, the surface of the lake began to roil. Bubbles burst from its depth in ever-increasing violence. Waves lapping at the stone island, raising wild streams of spray. A figure began to rise from the water, rippling and translucent and vaguely man-shaped. It continued to rise until it reached the vaulted ceiling of the chamber.

“What you seek is on the slopes of Mount Arafat. Go to the place called the Armenian Plateau.”

And it was gone.

“Don’t tell me we came all this way to hear something we already knew,” Crystal complained sarcastically.

“I told you before we left,” Angel replied. “Asking a water elemental anything is a long shot at best.”

“Well, that just sucks.”