And they all stopped.
Every single one of the guys froze in place—lips on mine, teeth latch onto my nipple, hands shoved down my pants—as if the four of us were some kind of extremely dirty statue.
Then the noise came again, sharp and loud. It bounced around the large cave, making it hard to pinpoint the exact source of the sound.
As one, we surged to our feet, my mind whipping from dazed lust to alert wariness so fast it almost made me dizzy. Merrick yanked his hand out of my pants, holding onto my hips to steady me as he gazed around, his breath sharp.
“What the hell was tha—?”
A loud, deep rumble echoed throughout the entire cave, cutting him off.
The ground shook wildly beneath us, throwing me off balance as if I were on a pitching ship in a stormy sea.
I reached out and grabbed for the three men, my heart dropping into my stomach as the rumbling grew even louder.
Oh, shit. This can’t be good.
Chapter Twenty
“Run! Run!”
&n
bsp; The scream tore out of my throat, but the sound was swallowed up by the noise around us, barely audible over the ear-splitting rumble of rock shifting and collapsing.
The guys didn’t need to hear the words though. They could probably read my lips, and besides, they were no dummies. Their survival instincts were on par with mine.
Abandoning our pack, the water bottle, everything but the clothes on our backs, we sprinted as fast as we could over the churning ground.
Trace and Lachlan ran in front of me, Merrick behind me, the three men surrounding me as if they could somehow save me from masses of falling rock. They couldn’t though—our magic might be able to deflect some of it, but none of us were strong enough to prevent the collapse of an entire cave. Even combined, our powers couldn’t do that.
Small chunks of rock formations began to break off from the ceiling, hurtling down like deadly hail.
We needed to get out of here. But how?
“The boat!” I called, following Lachlan blindly as he led us across the shaking cave floor.
“Too slow!” He called back. “We’d have to use our magic to propel it. We’d never make it out in time. There’s a passageway in the far wall. A smaller tunnel!”
Fuck. I didn’t like the sound of that. But before I could even try to argue through panting breaths, a loud crack made me duck. When I looked back over my shoulder, I saw the cave entrance begin to collapse, sending huge boulder-sized chunks of rock falling into the river of fire below.
Okay, passageway it is then.
Bigger chunks of rock began to fall all around us, and we picked up speed, scrambling and falling and pulling each other onward as we traversed the uneven ground. We were within three feet of the passageway when we skidded to a stop.
Just like at the cave entrance, the ceiling began to collapse. Chunks of rock broke off and plummeted toward us as if trying to keep us from getting through the passageway.
We all put our hands up, not even looking at each other but moving in sync.
Bursts of magic shot from each of us in different forms. I used mine to grab the boulders and redirect them over into the lake of fire. Merrick sent sharp shards of energy, bursting the rocks into tiny pebbles that rained down like stinging bees. Lachlan wielded something like a giant magical hammer, bashing chunks of the ceiling into oblivion before they could hit us. And Trace used those balls of energy I’d seen him create before, hurling them out to wrap around the rock pieces and send them spiraling in the opposite direction.
The ground stopped shaking for a moment, and we didn’t hesitate.
“Go, go, go!”
I grabbed Trace and Merrick’s hands, urging Lachlan on with a jerk of my head.
We dashed into the narrow passageway, which was darker and more shadowy than the rest of the cave had been, not lit by the glowing light of the fire lake. It felt ominous and too tight, and my heart thrummed hard in my chest as we raced forward.