Sandstorm

10:47 A.M.

SAFIA FOUNDherself grabbed around the waist and tackled to the side. Omaha dragged her into the shadows below the tilted slabs. “What are you-”

Before she could finish, a beam of bright light slammed through the hole overhead, casting a pillar of brilliance through the center of the trilith chamber.

“Helicopter,” Omaha yelled in her ear.

Safia now heard the vague beat of rotors against the dull roar of the storm.

Omaha held her tightly. “It’s Cassandra.”

The light blinked off as the floodlight swept away. But the thump of the copter’s rotors persisted. It was still out there, searching in the storm.

Safia knelt with Omaha. With the floodlight gone, the chamber seemed darker. “I have to alert Painter,” Safia said.

She crawled to the Motorola radio. As her fingers reached to its surface, another electric spark arced from radio to fingertips, stinging like a wasp. She jerked her hand back. Only now did she notice the escalation of static electricity. She felt it on her skin, crawling like ants. Her hair crackled with sparks as she glanced at Omaha.

“Safia, come back here.”

Omaha’s eyes were wide. He circled toward her, keeping to shadows. His attention was not on the helicopter, but fixed to the center of the chamber.

Safia joined him. He took her hand, shocking them both, hairs tingling.

In the center of the chamber, a bluish glow billowed where the helicopter’s beam had once shone. It shimmered, roiling in midair, edges ghostly. With each breath, it coalesced, swirling inward.

“Static electricity,” Omaha said. “Look at the keys.”

The three iron artifacts-heart, bust, and horns-shone a dull ruddy hue.

“They’re drawing the electricity out of the air. Acting like some lightning rods for the static charge of the storm above, feeding power to the keys.”

The blue glow grew into a scintillating cloud in the room’s center. It stirred to its own winds, churning in place. The keys shone even brighter. The air crackled. Traceries of charge coruscated from every fold of cloak or scarf.

Safia gaped at the sight. Sandstone was a great nonconductive insulator. Freeing the horns from the stone must have completed some circuit among the three. And the chamber was acting like a magnetic bottle, trapping the energies.

“We have to get the hell out of here,” Omaha urged.

Safia continued to stare, entranced. They were witnessing a sight set in motion millennia ago. How could they leave?

Omaha grabbed her elbow, fingers digging. “Saff, the keys! They’re like the iron camel at the museum. And now a ball of lightning is forming in here.”

Safia flashed back to the video feed from the British Museum. The ruddy glow of the meteorite, the cerulean roil of the lightning ball…Omaha was right.

“I think we just activated a bomb down here,” Omaha said, pulling Safia to her feet and shoving her to the collapsible ladder. “And it’s about to explode.”

As she set her foot on the first rung, the world flashed blindingly bright. She flinched, tightening in place, a deer in headlights.

The helicopter had returned, hovering directly overhead.

Death waited above…as surely as it did below.