She didn’t answer. The rat shifter pushed me on once again, and I had to clench my fists against the urge to push her into the sea. The path got progressively more dangerous, and I ended up edging down sideways over the last few meters, my back pressed against the rockface in an effort to keep away from the crumbling edge.

The relief of reaching the cavern’s mouth in one piece was so damn strong, it left me shaking.

Maran and Vincentia stopped beside me and swept their lights across the darkness. Other than the odd flash of gold—the bats, not precious metal—there was little to be seen.

But it was what we couldn’t see that was the problem.

The sense of evil riding the air was so damn strong, even Vincentia felt it. She sucked in a breath and said, “I’m not liking the feel of that.”

“Oh, for goddess’s sake,” Maran muttered. “I’m surrounded by idiots.”

She quickly cast a light spell. As the sphere rolled into the cave, the rivers of gold became hundreds of bats that rose in a cloud and flew straight at us. I raised my hands to protect my face and stop them getting tangled in my hair, then carefully edged deeper into the cave.

The sense of danger increased tenfold.

Despite Maran’s sphere, shadows haunted the cave’s walls, and it was hard to see anything deeper in. But I knew from my vision the steps lay to the left and wound up to the deeper darkness that still hugged the ceiling.

My stream of wind finally returned and quickly shared her findings. Images rose—men waking, fighting. A car destroyed, another stolen.

The cavalry was coming. I just had to hope they got here in time.

I flexed my fingers, marginally increasing the strength of the wind rolling around them. The storm was ten minutes away, Lugh and the others at least fifteen.

But it was pointless delaying things. The longer we dallied in this place, the more dangerous it became. The dark gate was definitely here. Its presence stained the air, making it difficult to breathe.

I moved left and found the steps. They were made of the same Baltic stone as the island, and each one had definitely been designed for the stride of giants rather than humans.

We hurried up them, the sphere bobbing along beside us, though neither it nor the flashlights did all that much to penetrate the veil of darkness that hugged the walls and ceiling.

As we neared the cavern’s roof and the stalactites became a forest of stone through which we had to move, I caught a glimpse of the old wooden door that divided this cave from the one in which the church stood. Dark tendrils of fog swirled slowly around the latch, and foreboding pulsed through me.

Touching those tendrils would not be a good idea.

I stopped several feet away and glanced at Maran. “Can you magically punch that door open?”

She immediately did so, using so much force that the poor old door simply disintegrated. I stepped over the splintered remnants, being careful to avoid those still-swirling shadows. The three women followed me, but Frances’s arm brushed the shadow’s edge, and their movement immediately stopped.