Jess’s sweating, shaking fingers slid along the creature’s jawline. The lion’s eyes sparked as red as blood, and a rumble built inside. The jaws parted, an instant away from clamping onto his arm and ripping it from his body in a spray of blood and torn bone.

His fingers brushed a slightly depressed area in the metal. It could have been a dent, since the beast was battle-scarred, cast-off, consigned here to lonely tunnel guard. But he pushed hard, knowing it was his last chance, and felt something click sharply inside.

The lion didn’t stop all at once. First, the rumbling died off, and then the glow faltered and flickered in its eyes. There was a ticking inside, like something very hot cooling off slowly, and then it was just . . . still.

A statue.

Jess pulled his hand back, still careful. Still wary. As the red glow died in its eyes the dark closed in and landed on him with the weight of real panic. What if he’d gotten it wrong? What if it was still moving in the dark and those jaws were opening? He fumbled for the glow he’d put aside and shook it back to life with so much enthusiasm, he almost dropped it.

The lion stared straight ahead, eyes dull gray now. One paw was slightly lifted and the body was tense, as if ready to lunge forward, but it stood utterly motionless.

There were still sounds from inside the body—ticks, pops, scratches. A spring slowly hissing as it uncoiled. Jess’s mouth was dry, and he felt giddy with relief. He tried to slow his breathing and had to stop himself from laughing aloud. After a few seconds, the exhilaration faded.

Mainly because he asked himself, Why did they put it here? Why in this spot? Surely it would have been a simple matter to position one right below the grate under Jupiter’s feet, the better to catch intruders before they even had a chance to discover any secrets.

If the lion had been put here, set to guard this spot, it meant it was important.

Jess squeezed past the bulk of the lion, moving carefully in case it should suddenly come back to life, and just beyond it lay the end of the tunnel. It emptied into a huge, rounded room lined with ancient mosaics dulled by time. But it was empty. This had once been some kind of ritual chamber, and on one wall Jess found a display of masks cast out of greenish bronze in frightening shapes.

He heard something directly overhead and looked up. Footsteps. They rang on metal, and as he raised the glow, he realized that there was a rounded, metal plate in the ceiling above. It looked solid and very old, and it was exactly where he would imagine a drainage grate would have gone. And who would remove a drainage grate and cover it with solid metal instead?

Someone who didn’t want anyone coming or going through it.