Paper and Fire (The Great Library #2)(71)

He heard the roar that had been building inside the thing skew to a strange whining noise and die. The lion took another step forward and froze.

Jess pushed himself out from behind it and cut his arm on the tail when he grabbed hold to stand up; the barbed end of it, he realized, was razor sharp. Even standing still, the thing was capable of harm.

The door lay just beyond—locked, as Wolfe had said. Jess never left without his handy set of picklocks—the lesson of a devious childhood—and pulled them out of the pack and set to work as quickly as he could. He heard the sounds of fighting behind him. Wolfe and Glain must have met with resistance.

He’d just pushed the last tumbler in the lock when Khalila dropped down beside him and said, “How can I help?”

“You can get out of the light,” he said. “Are they coming?”

“Yes. Dario went to help them.” She stood up and looked back over the lion’s shoulder. “How did you know to do this?”

“What, lock picking? Comes naturally. I’m a criminal, remember?”

“I meant the lion, Jess.” She was waving now, giving urgent hurry signals. “Get the door open—they’re coming!”

They were. He heard the footsteps. Glain, ever the athlete, chose to throw herself under the lion, as Jess had, and slid neatly through, then rolled back to her feet and leaned on the still metallic body to aim her weapon back down the hallway. She fired, and Jess recognized the sound: stunning rounds, not lethal. She didn’t intend to kill her fellow High Garda soldiers, no matter what their orders might be.

Dario came next, and behind him . . . behind him came Santi, and . . . Scholar Wolfe. Wolfe, like Dario, wore Scholar’s robes, and his shoulder-length hair had been tied back in a tight knot. “Wolfe?” Jess spared a precious, astonished second to stare at him. Khalila jabbed him in the shoulder to remind him to keep working. “How did he get here?”

“Translation,” she said. “Santi wouldn’t leave him alone in Alexandria. That would have been a death sentence. Jess, are you sure you can—”

“Got it,” Jess said, as the last tumbler clicked and fell away. “Is he all right to be here, do you think? Wolfe?” He couldn’t shake the memory of Wolfe’s swallowed screams as the Mesmer tried to calm him. Whatever was buried under that calm, Elsinore Quest had been right: it was poisonous and powerful. Must have been hard to keep it locked away.

“I don’t know,” Khalila admitted, as Jess rose and pulled on the door’s handle. “I can’t imagine how it would feel to . . . go down there. But it’s Wolfe. We can’t leave him behind for the Archivist, can we?”

She was right. They were all in it together and would rise or fall together. And Santi was staying close to Wolfe, only a step or two away, as if well aware of the risks.

Jess slammed the metal door back against the wall and took the lead, heading down a ramp into the dark. As his eyes adjusted, he realized there were lights, just low ones that blazed brighter as he approached—sensing his presence somehow. There’ll be three more automata, he remembered. The Alexandrian sphinxes would be smaller than the lions, though no less dangerous. The Spartan . . .

He didn’t know what to do about the Spartan.

The tunnel twisted to the left, and he looked back before he took the turn. Khalila and Glain were behind him, then Dario and Wolfe with Santi. As Jess turned the curving corner, he saw steps going down. The smooth plaster of the walls gave way to old Roman stone. The lights continued to brighten around them, and Jess moved as fast as he could.

A High Garda soldier stepped out into his path, and Jess prepared to shoot, but Santi put a hand on his shoulder. “No,” he said. “Sergeant Reynolds?”

The soldier lowered his weapon—not completely, just enough to ease Jess’s mind a little. “Captain Santi? Sir, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Let me pass.”

“I can’t do that, sir.”

Glain shot him. It was a quick, economical movement, and the stun round dropped the man to his knees. A second put him completely down. Santi checked the man’s pulse and nodded. He wasn’t happy, but Glain had done the right thing. Talking would get them killed.

The second soldier who came rushing in fired. Glain shot back, but he was wearing armor, and the stunning shot had no effect.

Jess had his weapon set to full strength and fired. He put two rounds into the armor, which was enough to knock the man down and unconscious, but—he hoped—not enough to kill.

A chorus of high-pitched shrieks split the air. There was another blind corner ahead, and beyond it would be the cells . . . and the sphinxes were between them and Thomas. Two of them. How do I stop two of them at once? It seemed impossible now that he was here, listening to the screams coming closer.

“Khalila,” he said. “When the sphinx comes, there’s a depression underneath the jaw, behind the pharaoh’s beard. You need to press it. They should hesitate, seeing you in a Scholar’s robe and a gold band. I’ll get the other one.”

She stared at him with wide, incredulous eyes for an instant, then nodded. No discussion, no questions. She stood beside him, ready, as the two sphinxes rounded the corner together, loping out of rhythm with each other but with the same deadly grace. The one making for Jess screamed again and bared needle teeth, but the one on Khalila’s side of the hallway seemed confused. She held her hand up to show her gold band. It slowed, cocking its inhuman head.