I held on, then pulled myself to a more secure position. I had grabbed onto an iron bar, rusted and ancient, part of what looked like an immense gate buried beneath the rubble.

What was it doing here?

The cavern darkened. Looking over my shoulder, I caught sight of the last pockets of fire, simmering into smoke along the water.

Only the blue flame above my head illuminated the chamber.

Come on, Wallace, finish the job before you end up like Johnny C.

Reaching the dam's halfway point, I quickly set the remaining eleven explosives with three-minute fuses, then dropped each of the ticking cylinders into crevices of rubble and rock.

In my haste, I realized that I should have kept at least a few.

Too late… keep moving!

Continuing on, I half-slid, half-climbed over the remaining boulders with Johnny C.'s remains until I found myself looking down upon the opposite shoreline.

"Oh, hell …"

By the ceiling's flickering flame I could see two immense shadows. Conger eels, the saltwater relative of the Anguilla. The insane beasts, each well over two hundred pounds, hissed at me like cobras.

Another thirty seconds, maybe less. Get off the dam!

"Yah! Get outta here!" I grabbed a few stones and threw them at the predatory fish, chasing them back several feet.

Go!

Tossing Cialino's remains as far onto the shoreline as I could, I jumped down from the rubble, desperate to distance myself from the dam.

Too late.

My brain seemed to spin in my skull as multiple explosions detonated behind me like dominoes, igniting the darkness in brilliant orange flames. Shrapnel struck my back and head, and a concussion wave blasted me off my feet and into the black river.

The booms deadened underwater. For a moment I remained in this near-freezing environment, allowing the pain to subside, then remembering the Guivre, I kicked to the surface, gasping for air in the smoke-filled, flaming cavern, desperate to climb ashore.

As I tried to drag myself out of the water, all hell broke loose.

Rolling thunder roared through the chamber as seventy years and two hundred tons of debris collapsed upon itself in an avalanche of rock and water and flame. The aquifer's long-stagnant waters became a slowly moving river, and then the remains of the dam flushed free, and an ungodly current grabbed me, dragging me backwards into the raging abyss.

Helpless, I was swept away, tumbling underwater in the darkness, my arms thrashing, groping blindly for anything to grab hold of… when something grabbed me, impaling the left side of my body, and I dangled from its teeth like a kitten taken by the nape of its neck.

The Guivre!

I spun around against the blackness and lashed out at the beast, my right hand slipping between the iron bars of the ancient gate.