“There’s an old tunnel ahead!” Klaus yelled back, his eyes glued to the treacherous, winding road. “Carved straight through the mountain. It’s narrow. If we make it through, I can drop a charge at the entrance and block them!”
“Do it!” Leo commanded.
Eleanor glanced back. The two black SUVs were relentless, moving with aggressive precision like wolves hunting an old elk. She could almost imagine Vanessa Whitmore sitting comfortably in the back of one, sipping espresso and watching the chaos unfold on a monitor.
The road narrowed drastically, flanked by sheer walls of jagged rock on the left and a dizzying drop on the right. Up ahead, gaping like a dark mouth in the white mountainside, was the tunnel Klaus had mentioned.
“Hold tight!” Klaus warned.
He didn't slow down as they approached the narrow opening. The SUV shot into the tunnel, the sudden darkness blinding them for a split second before the headlights illuminated the rough-hewn stone walls passing by at terrifying speed. The roar of the engine echoed violently in the confined space.
Klaus reached down to a control panel near the gearshift and flicked a red toggle switch. “Dropping the package!”
A small hatch underneath the rear bumper of their SUV opened, and a compact, metallic cylinder rolled out onto the tunnel floor, bouncing heavily on the asphalt.
“Go, go, go!” Leo urged.
They burst out of the far end of the tunnel, back into the swirling snowstorm. Three seconds later, a massive, concussive BOOM shook the very foundations of the mountain.
Eleanor looked back. A cloud of fire, smoke, and pulverized rock billowed out of the tunnel entrance. Tons of snow and stone cascaded from the mountainside above, entirely burying the tunnel entrance under a massive avalanche of debris.
The pursuit was cut off.
Klaus eased off the accelerator, letting the SUV slow down to a safer speed as they navigated a bend. He exhaled a long, shaky breath, wiping a line of sweat from his forehead despite the freezing temperature in the cabin.
“That bought us some time,” Leo said, holstering his weapon. He looked back at Eleanor, expecting to see a terrified old woman.
Instead, Eleanor was calmly adjusting her hair.
“Excellent work, gentlemen,” she said mildly. “Now, how far are we from the logging road?”
Leo shook his head in disbelief, a small smile playing on his lips. “You have ice in your veins, ma'am. Klaus, how far?”
“Five miles,” Klaus replied, checking the GPS. “But they’ll dig through that or find another way around. They have resources. We have maybe an hour’s lead.”
“An hour is all I need,” Eleanor said, her hand resting over the pocket that held the Midnight Star.
Chapter 7: The Path of the Devil
The turn-off for the logging road was nearly invisible, hidden behind a thick stand of snow-laden pine trees and obscured by years of unchecked overgrowth. Klaus steered the battered, snow-dusted SUV off the main paved route, the vehicle protesting as its tires hit the deeply rutted, unpaved earth.
Immediately, the terrain became brutal. The SUV crawled up the steep incline, its engine whining as it fought against deep snowdrifts and hidden boulders. The world outside the windows was a relentless, blinding white, the snowstorm intensifying into a full-blown blizzard.
Eleanor watched the altimeter on the dashboard steadily climb. They were passing eight thousand feet. The air inside the cabin was growing thin, and the cold was seeping through the vehicle's heavy insulation.
“Are you certain this is the way, Ms. Sterling?” Leo asked, his eyes scanning the impenetrable whiteout ahead. He had strapped a heavy tactical vest over his winter gear. “There’s no road left. We’re just driving over raw mountain.”
“Trust the map,” Eleanor replied softly. “My father never left anything to chance.”
Ten minutes later, the SUV came to a grinding, definitive halt. The tires spun uselessly, kicking up fountains of snow, but the vehicle refused to move forward.
Klaus slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “We’re high-centered. The snowdrift here is too deep. The chassis is resting on solid ice. She’s not going any further.”
Leo unbuckled his seatbelt. “Then we go on foot. How far to the coordinates?”
Eleanor checked the wooden box one last time, projecting the faint blue light against her hand. “Less than a mile. Straight up this ridge.”
“A mile in this weather is like ten miles on flat ground,” Leo warned. He turned to the back, pulling out heavily insulated parkas, snowshoes, and climbing gear. He handed a thick, down-filled coat to Eleanor. “Put this on over your own coat, ma'am. If you stop moving out there, you’ll freeze in minutes.”
Eleanor accepted the gear, shedding her frailty with surprising speed. She strapped the snowshoes onto her worn boots, pulling the heavy hood over her head.
They stepped out of the SUV, and the wind immediately hit them like a physical blow. It howled like a wounded animal, biting through layers of clothing and stealing the breath from their lungs. The visibility was reduced to perhaps twenty feet.
“Stay close behind me!” Leo shouted over the roar of the blizzard, taking point. He held a GPS tracker in one hand and a trekking pole in the other.
Klaus brought up the rear, carrying a heavy duffel bag slung over his shoulder, his assault rifle hanging across his chest.
Eleanor walked in the middle. Every step was agony. The snowshoes felt like lead weights attached to her feet, and the thin air made her chest burn. Her old joints ached, protesting the extreme exertion. But she didn't stop. She focused on Leo’s broad back, putting one foot in front of the other. She thought of her father’s burned face. She thought of the thirty years stolen from her.
Anger fueled her where her body failed.
They climbed for what felt like hours, a grueling, torturous ascent through the white hell. The slope grew steeper, forcing them to abandon the snowshoes and rely on crampons to grip the icy rock face.
Finally, the wind seemed to break. They had reached a plateau, sheltered by a massive, overarching cliff of black granite that jutted out from the mountainside like an accusing finger.
The Teufelshorn. The Devil's Horn.
Leo stopped, leaning heavily on his trekking pole, panting. “We’re here. These are the coordinates. But there’s nothing here, Ms. Sterling. Just rock and ice.”
Eleanor stepped forward, her breathing ragged, her face pale and frost-kissed. She looked at the sheer wall of black granite rising before them. It was perfectly smooth, devoid of any natural cracks or caves.
“It’s here,” she whispered.
She walked slowly toward the rock face, running her gloved hand over the freezing stone. She stepped back, looking up. About ten feet above the ground, almost completely obscured by shadows and frost, was a small, circular indentation in the rock.
It was exactly the size of a man’s ring.
Chapter 8: The Door in the Mountain
“Boost me up,” Eleanor commanded, her voice barely carrying over the howling wind.
Leo looked at the sheer rock face, then at Eleanor. Despite her age and the exhausting climb, her eyes burned with an intense, unyielding resolve. Without a word, Leo stepped to the base of the wall, bent his knees, and cupped his heavy, gloved hands together to form a step.
Eleanor placed her boot into his hands. With a grunt of exertion, Leo hoisted her upward. She braced her hands against the freezing, smooth granite to steady herself, her breath pluming in the icy air.
Now at eye level with the indentation, she reached into the deep pocket of her coat. Her fingers, stiff with cold, bypassed the Midnight Star and retrieved the worn velvet pouch.
She pulled out the Sovereign Seal—the heavy gold ring with the rampant lions and the blood-red sapphire.
With a trembling hand, she pressed the ring into the circular indentation in the rock.
It fit perfectly, with a satisfying, metallic click that seemed to resonate through the very bone of the mountain.
“Now what?” Leo called up from below, his muscles straining to hold her steady.
“Now,” Eleanor said, “we wait for the blood.”
Leo frowned in confusion, but a moment later, a sharp, grinding noise emanated from deep within the rock face. The red sapphire on the ring suddenly caught what little ambient light there was, glowing with an eerie, internal luminescence.
Deep inside the mountain, ancient, perfectly counterweighted gears—designed by master Swiss clockmakers three-quarters of a century ago—began to turn.
A loud crack echoed across the plateau, louder than a rifle shot.
A hairline fracture appeared in the solid granite, running vertically from the top of the cliff all the way to the base. Snow and ice shattered, falling away in heavy sheets. Slowly, agonizingly, a massive section of the rock face began to pivot inward.
It wasn't just a door; it was a ten-ton slab of solid stone, perfectly balanced on hidden titanium hinges.
As the gap widened, a rush of stale, incredibly dry air poured out of the dark opening, smelling of dust and aged paper.
Leo gently lowered Eleanor to the ground. Klaus stepped forward, clicking on a high-powered tactical flashlight, sweeping the beam into the yawning black maw of the mountain.
“Unbelievable,” Klaus muttered.
They stepped over the threshold, leaving the howling blizzard behind. The immediate silence inside the vault was deafening. The air was frigid, but entirely still.
The flashlight beam cut through the darkness, revealing a long, smooth corridor carved directly into the bedrock, its walls reinforced with thick steel plates. At the far end of the corridor, about fifty yards away, stood a second door.
This one was not made of stone. It was a massive, circular vault door made of gleaming, stainless steel, resembling the entrance to a nuclear bunker. In the dead center of the steel door was a complex, circular mechanism resembling a kaleidoscope of metal tumblers.