Into the Dim (Into the Dim, #1)(19)

“Wait.” I braced myself against the wall and tried to suck in the dense air. “Wait. I don’t . . . It’s too . . . Can’t . . . breathe.”

Collum turned from the step just below me. The light from his flashlight splashed across my face, and his irritated expression changed. He took my hand in his own callused one. For the first time, he sounded almost decent.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Close your eyes and hold on to my shoulder. The passage opens up just below. Not much farther now. You can do it.”

“Yeah. Close my eyes. That’ll help.” I’d meant to sound sarcastic, but without any breath behind them, the words emerged raspy and pathetic.

Cold sweat trickled down my back. Behind me, Doug said, “He’s right, Hope. Nothing to fear. This passage has been here a good long time.”

Collum secured my clammy hand on his shoulder and turned, tugging me down another step. “That’s right. Come on. You’re safe. Just like that. Keep going.”

Collum had been nothing but a jerk to me since we met. But the warmth of his sturdy shoulder beneath my hand felt good, and after a few seconds I was able to force my feet down one step after another.

By the time we came to a final bend, my thighs trembled with effort, but I could breathe almost normally. Lucinda disappeared and I heard a click. Diffuse light glowed in the tunnel below us. The air here smelled different, like the wind after a lightning storm.

“All right,” Lucinda called. “Bring her in.”

Collum turned to face me in the arched entrance, blocking my view of whatever lay beyond. His freckled features hardened. I guessed he’d met his niceness quota for the day.

“Listen, Lu’s having a rough go of it right now,” he said. “I don’t want you causing her any more grief. So you just listen to what she has to say. Got it?”

At my sullen nod, he stepped back. “Now don’t move off that step.”

With that, he moved aside, leaving me to gape at what lay hidden deep within the Highland mountain.

The oval-shaped room had started life as a cave, no doubt. But at some point in the mythic past, the place had been transformed. Overhead the stone ceiling soared up and disappeared into shadow, while carved symbols and ancient runes danced across the walls.

Celtic? My brain quickly shuffled and sorted through pages and images of all the ancient languages I’d ever studied. In an instant, my vision was overlaid with glowing translucent lists. No, I decided. This writing is older than Celtic. Much older. I don’t know what that is.

More of the electric lights had been strung up along the walls, though I could see carved stone holders where torches had once hung. Embedded in the floor were tiny bits of colored stone. A mosaic, woven in a distinct pattern. At its middle, I recognized the elongated figure eight, the symbol for infinity, but not the meaning of the three wavy lines that bisected it.

The room’s incredible beauty seemed alien there, in what had to be the heart of the mountain. But that’s not why my jaw dropped with awe. Equidistant from the center of the figure eight stood two pyramidal machines. Each taller than me, they were topped with silver, mushroom-shaped caps.

I knew them at once. Or, at least, who must’ve created them.

“Tesla,” I whispered.

Doug nodded in approval. “You’re right, Lu. She’s smart.”

The bundle of colored wires were secured to the floor, their ends attached to the back of the buzzing, clicking machines. Tiny filaments threaded out of holes in the sides of each mechanism, snaking up the walls and terminating in hundreds of round silver discs a couple of feet above our heads.

Wanting a closer look, I stepped down, then yelped as a prickling electric sensation flowed up from the soles of my feet. I shot a look at Aunt Lucinda, who was watching, as if waiting for my reaction. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Collum smirk as I scrambled back onto the steps. The feeling vanished.

“What,” I gritted, chafing at goose bumps that had erupted all over my arms, “the mother-loving hell was that?”

“You can come down, Hope,” my aunt called. “I assure you it’s perfectly safe.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Excuse me if I don’t take your word for it.”

With a glance to Moira, Lucinda approached the closer of the two machines. “You were correct in your assumption. This is an original Tesla design. I understand you were once quite intrigued by the man?”

I huffed at that.

While most girls probably obsessed over singers or movie stars, I’d been infatuated with famous historical figures. And Tesla . . . well . . . he was amazing. A genius. More than a genius, really. When I was ten, I’d papered my room with pictures and articles of the troubled inventor. I’d always felt an odd kinship with him. Like me, Tesla had a photographic memory. Except unlike the vast array of historical facts and figures that lay dormant and useless in my own brain, Tesla had spun magic out of his incredible mind, creating some of the most impressive inventions ever known. Alternating current. The tesla coil. The man had invented lasers and robots in a day where people still traveled by horse and buggy, for God’s sake.

Yeah. Intrigued. You could say that.

And if what they claimed was true, I was standing in a room with one of his original inventions.

Wow.

“They look like mini versions of Wardenclyffe Tower, don’t they, Hope?” Doug chimed in.