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SHADOW HUNTED
SHADOWS OF SALEM, BOOK 3
 REBECCA HAMILTON
HEATHER MARIE ADKINS
Shadow Hunted: Shadows of Salem Book 3 (Second Edition) © 2020 Heather Marie Adkins
& Rebecca Hamilton

All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons,
living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.

Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is
investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
 CONTENTS

Shadow Hunted

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30

Meet the Authors

 SHADOW HUNTED

The third book in the instant New York Times bestselling

series by Heather Marie Adkins and Rebecca Hamilton!
Once a whip-smart detective and a powerful Shadow, Brooke
Chandler has been stripped of both memories and identity. She now
spends her days scrubbing floors, reduced to nothing more than a
servant girl.
But even with no memory of her previous life or how she ended
up a slave, Brooke won’t remain trapped for long—not with friends
and enemies alike vying to find her.
Her escape attempt lands her in the deadly, beautiful land of
Faerie, where nothing is as it seems—possibly including her father,
The Winter King. Here, she rediscovers her past life, full of allies and
foes all waiting for her return.
Faced with the opportunity to flee, Brooke must decide which
fate terrifies her more: staying where her enemies wants her dead,
or returning to confront the ones who want her jailed for murder.
See why Laurell K. Hamilton and Karen Marie Moning
fans can’t get enough of this dark urban fantasy romance!
 1

T he housekeeper jerked a foot from beneath her skirts, kicking

my bucket of water sideways. Dirty, icy suds splashed all over
the hem of my rough, homespun dress—one of only two
outfits I owned—and spilled across the stone floor I’d just finished
cleaning.
“I’ve warned you about leaving your things in the middle of the
hall where others can run into them,” the housekeeper said coldly,
looking down at me over her long nose. Her pale skin had a bluish
tint to it, and her grey hair was pulled back into a severe bun. Black
eyes glittered with contempt and just a hint of smug authority. “Now
hurry up and clean this mess, girl, or you’ll get no dinner.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, forcing down the anger that rose in my
chest, even as my knuckles whitened around the scrub brush in my
hand. I wanted to smash it into her face, but even the slightest bit
of insolence would result in me being locked in my room with no
food for two days. And I couldn’t afford to have that happen, not
when they barely fed me enough as it was.
The housekeeper swept down the narrow staircase, the hem of
her much thicker, much warmer dress swishing as she went. I
watched her through my curtain of silver-white hair, wondering if it
would be worth it to push her down the long, winding steps.
But even if the tumble killed her, I would have the mistress to
contend with when she finally came back to this godforsaken place.
I trembled a little at the thought of the old crone, with her cloak of
feathers and her fathomless black gaze that held all sorts of cruelty
in its depths.
No, it wasn’t worth it. Better to just keep my head down, do the
work, and stay alive. My life was all I had, and I wouldn’t let these
people take it from me.
Sighing, I squeezed as much liquid from the skirt of my dress as
I could, then went to work mopping up the dirty water from the floor
I'd already spent hours scrubbing. I didn’t have time to run back to
my room for a change of clothes—dinner was in less than an hour,
and if I didn’t finish my duties on time, I wouldn’t get any.
I finished cleaning the floor, then put the bucket away and
rushed outside so I could bring the hall rug back in. I’d put the bulky
floor covering up on the clothesline to beat out the dust, behind the
ugly stone castle I called home. The rug swayed in the breeze as I
approached it, and that same draft caused my damp clothes to slap
against my flesh, chilling the fabric even more. Thankfully, cold
didn’t really affect me, but I didn’t like the way the wet fabric chafed
my skin.
The crash of the waves against the rocks below matched the
turmoil in my stomach, and though I knew I shouldn’t, I stepped
past the clothesline and approached the edge of the cliff on which
the castle sat.
I stood there for a moment, watching the dark blue waves beat
relentlessly against the bottom of the rocky cliffs. The weather here
was always some shade of miserable—cold, cloudy, and windy. The
choppy waters didn't instill confidence, let alone make me want to
take a swim, and I was convinced the sun didn’t show her face here
because she was afraid she might catch some of the misery that
seemed to coat this place like a sickness.
Not for the first time, I squinted at the horizon, trying to imagine
what might lie on the other side of the water. I’d never seen a ship
pass, nor had I seen another person on this rocky island aside from
the housekeeper and myself. And, of course, the mistress who
sometimes visited with her pet raven.
 I hefted the long, black rug into my arms, doing my best not to
let it trail in the dirt as I took it back inside and up to the second-
floor hallway where it belonged.
Unlike the island, the castle was far from barren. Oil paintings of
bloody war landscapes and grim warriors lined the walls, and
tapestries of the same nature covered full rooms in a vain attempt to
keep drafts to a minimum. Various statues dotted the halls,
crouching in the shadows with faces that told me in no uncertain
terms that they could kick my ass.
I tried to avoid touching those granite monoliths as much as
possible, since the visions they gave me haunted me interminably.
The violent visions far outweighed the innocuous, and I still woke up
in cold sweats from a particular scene I’d picked up in the dungeon
—humanoid creatures being tortured, their screams echoing off
blood-spattered stone walls.
After I replaced the rug, I hurried to the last hallway so I could
finish my tasks before dinner. I didn’t have much time, so I called on
the strange, foreign power that sometimes sizzled along my skin,
using it to coax the dirt from the floors as I scrubbed them.
This power existed all over the island, as much a part of my
surroundings as the air I breathed. When I concentrated, I found I
could absorb the energy and twist it to my will.
At first, I tried not to do it often, because the power would tingle
beneath my skin until I used it. Not only was that highly
uncomfortable, but I figured if the housekeeper or the mistress
caught me covered in magic, I would be in a world of trouble. I’d
seen them use the strange magic before, but some inherent instinct
told me this kind of power wasn’t meant for the likes of me.
Yet, it seemed as if I couldn’t help but absorb it—it just
happened, as natural as taking a breath.
I yearned to know more about this power, sure it could be used
for many things if one just knew how. Maybe it could even be used
to escape this miserable excuse for an island. But I didn’t even know
my own name or where I’d come from, so where would I go if I
could escape? I’d simply woken up on this island one day and had
been put to work immediately. I wasn’t even sure how long I’d been
here at this point. The days blended into a never-ending, dreary
existence.
My stomach ached with hunger when I finally hurried down the
stairs and into the kitchen. The smells of roasted meat, cheese, and
bread made my mouth water, and I entered to see the housekeeper
already taking her trencher of food up to her room, where she
always ate alone.
“Don’t forget to clean up the dishes when you’re done,” she said,
waving her hand to the pot and pan on the stove.
“Yes, ma’am.”
When I approached the bowl of boiled oats and onions that
waited on the counter for me, I tried not to be disappointed. After
all, I’d known the other food wasn’t for me. It never was.
The dull spoon felt heavy in my hands as I shoveled the tasteless
fare into my mouth, hoping it would fill my stomach enough to quiet
its grumbles. But even after I’d scraped the bowl clean, there was
still a hollowness in my gut that couldn't be quelled.
I took my empty dish to the sink to wash it, the barest hint of
cooked meat teasing my nostrils as I passed the stove. My stomach
roared in response. Against my better judgment, I swiped my finger
through the thin layer of grease in the pan and licked it off.
Moaning a little at the explosion of flavor on my tongue, I barely
restrained myself from grabbing the pan and licking it clean. If the
housekeeper walked in and caught me doing so, she’d beat me until
my back was raw. Occasionally, I got bits of milk and cheese at
mealtimes, but I was never allowed to help myself to anything, not
even when I milked the cows.
Instead, I scrubbed the grease and grit from the dishes and
longed silently for better things.
Even death would have been preferable to this.

O n my way back to my room, I paused outside the library. Unlike the

mistress’s rooms at the top of the castle, I’d never been barred from
here, even though the books inside looked old and valuable. But
they were all written in a language I couldn’t read, something I’d
found when I’d been told to dust the shelves. Because of that, I’d
never bothered coming back here during the little free time I had.
What if you can read them now? a little voice whispered in the
back of my mind just as I was about to continue down the hall.
After all, when I’d first arrived here, I hadn’t been able to
understand the strange language the housekeeper spoke. But over a
period of weeks, my mind had somehow adjusted, and I now
understood her perfectly.
If the books were written in the same language, perhaps I would
be able to read it. And if not, maybe if I tried a little bit every night,
my mind would eventually adjust. Although I still wasn’t sure how I’d
been able to decipher the housekeeper’s language, it stood to
reason that this strange ability would apply to written language, too.
Suddenly, I wanted more than anything to be able to read those
books. Reading could be an escape from reality. One I desperately
needed.
Stepping into the library, I inhaled the musty scent of old pages
and leather. The only light came from the dim glow of the moon that
filtered through the windows, so I had to step carefully as I made
my way past the study tables and toward the shelves.
I didn’t dare light any of the candles in the wall sconces, lest I
draw the housekeeper’s attention, or worse, the mistress herself.
She tended to drop in unexpectedly for visits, as if she were
checking in on me, though I couldn’t fathom why. After all, I was
just a lowly servant.
Lowly servants can’t light a candle with a thought.
I stiffened when that statement flitted through my mind. No, I
wasn’t just a lowly servant. The housekeeper and the mistress might
call me that, but I was something more. And if I could just
remember my past, I could figure out who I was and why the
mistress had trapped me on this island.
My desire to read stemmed from more than just the need to
escape this miserable existence. I wanted to escape this entire
place. Surely there was more to the world than this. The dull island
we lived on couldn’t be all there was to life. But what else was out
there?
One of these books has the answer, I told myself. I could feel it
in my bones.
I scanned the shelves briefly, then picked a book at random.
When my fingers brushed against the gold leaf laid into the leather
spine, a vision hit me so hard I stumbled back into one of the tables.
“How dare you borrow from my personal collection,” the mistress
growled.
Her face was youthful, her long, black hair free of silver streaks,
but I knew it was her by those cold black eyes and the black
feathered cloak that wrapped around her willowy form. She towered
over a male servant dressed in a drab grey tunic as he trembled
behind one of the desks. Next to a single lit candle, a book lay open
on the table.
“M-my apologies, Mistress,” the man stammered. “I was simply
trying—”
The mistress struck fast, her talon-tipped fingers shooting out
from beneath her cloak. The man barely had time to cry out before
she ripped his heart straight from his chest. His body went crashing
to the ground, an arc of blood spraying across the table and the
book, guttering out the candle as the mistress bit into the bloody,
still-pulsing organ.
I strangled on the scream trying claw its way up my throat and
barely managed to choke it back down. My heart pounded so hard
that my chest hurt as I tore from the library and flew to the meager
sanctuary that was my bedroom.
I would never go back to that library again.
 2

T he next morning, I sat beneath a tree and watched magic

rise from the grass. It curled around the legs of the mistress’s
four cows like a strange, sparkling mist. Closing my eyes, I
breathed it in, allowing it to fill me up much like the cows were filling
up on grass.
Every morning after milking the cows, I brought them out to the
pasture and sat with them for a bit before heading back to the castle
to do the rest of my chores. There were no predators on the island,
so there was no real need to sit with them. Which was too bad,
because I would have much rather done so than be stuck inside the
castle walls, sweeping, mopping, and scrubbing until my hands were
raw.
But this brief slice of morning was the only time I felt
unencumbered by hardship, so I took what little freedom I could get.
Plus, absorbing the power helped take the edge off my hunger.
I soaked in energy until my veins sizzled and a faint glow began
to emanate from beneath my skin. That was my cue to let up,
because I didn’t want the housekeeper to catch on to what I was
doing.
Stretching out a hand, I reached for the waves slapping against
the shore, which was only a quarter mile from the meadow. I used
my magic to play with the swells of water, making towering crests,
then reducing them before they could damage the shoreline.
Other documents randomly have
different content
moment Rowan glimpsed the mighty disk-platform sweeping up out
of the depths of that shaft, hovering motionless at its mouth, beside
him.
He staggered to his feet, still in the other's grasp, striking frantically
out with clenched fists. Now the other two had raced up on the
mound, he saw, and were leaping toward the combat. Then Rowan
gave a frantic wrench and twist, felt himself and the creature holding
him tottering at the rim of the abyss, and then they had fallen, still
striking and twisting, had fallen upon the great disk as it hovered
momentarily at the pit's edge beside them, and locked still in deadly
combat upon that disk were sinking ever more swiftly downward, into
the darkness of the giant shaft, into the raging of the deafening
winds, down, down, down....

4
For how many minutes he struggled thus with his lizard-thing
opponent on the great disk, Rowan could not guess. Twisting,
squirming, striking, the two rolled about, and then as the powerful
muscles of the creature began to wear down his own resistance,
Rowan put forth all his strength in one last effort. Grasping the
scaled body of the creature with his left arm he encircled its conical
head with his right and twisted that head back with all his force.
There was a moment of intense effort, a frantic threshing of the
creature in his grasp, and then a muffled snap as of breaking bones,
and the thing lay limp and still. Rowan scrambled up to his knees,
panting.
Around him now roared the deafening torrents of ascending and
descending winds, and a few feet away from him the smooth metal
wall of the great shaft was flashing upward with immense speed as
the disk shot downward. From high above a pale white light fell down
upon him, a little circle of white radiance that was swiftly contracting,
dwindling, as the disk flashed down. In a moment it had dwindled to
a spark of light, and then had vanished entirely. And then about
Rowan was only darkness—darkness and the thundering bellow of
the raging winds.
He crept to the edge of the great disk, now, peered down over the
low protecting rail that rimmed it, straining his eyes down through the
darkness. The flicker of light he had glimpsed from above was clear
now to his eyes, a tiny patch of quivering red light that was growing
rapidly stronger, larger, as the disk flashed down toward it. Crouched
at the great descending platform's edge Rowan gazed down toward
it, hair blown back by the great winds that raged past him, clinging to
his hold against their tremendous force. The patch of illumination
was swiftly broadening, until it lay across all the shaft far below, a
crimson, quivering glare.
And now it seemed to Rowan that the downward-shooting disk-
platform was slowing a little its tremendous speed. The gleaming
walls around him were not flashing upward so swiftly, he thought,
and then even as that thought came to him the great disk shot down
out of the darkness of the shaft and into a glare of lurid crimson light,
into a titanic, cavernous space which seemed to his eyes in that
moment limitless.
He was conscious first of a mighty curving roof of rock close above
him, from which the disk was dropping smoothly downward, and in
which there yawned a black circle which was the opening of the shaft
down which he had come. A full mile below lay the floor of the mighty
cavern, stretching away for miles on every side, a colossal
underworld lit by the crimson, wavering glare. Then Rowan's
stunned eyes made out, far away, the titanic, precipitous walls of
gray rock which formed the great cavern's sides, miles in the
distance, stretching from floor to rocky roof. And as his eyes swept
along them they came to rest upon the blinding, dazzling source of
the crimson light that illuminated all this cavern world.
In the gray wall to his right, miles away, was a great, slitlike opening
near the roof, an opening through which there poured down a mighty
torrent of blazing, liquid fire, a colossal Niagara of molten flame
whose crimson, blazing radiance shot out a quivering glare which lit
luridly the whole mighty cavern. For thousands of feet the great
torrent of raging fires tumbled downward, caught at the base of the
cliff in a canal of gray stone which conveyed it, a river of living flame,
into a central basin of stone of the same diameter as the great shaft
above, and which lay just beneath the opening of that shaft in the
roof and beneath the descending disk, a lake of leaping flame.
Around it were grouped a circle of strange, blunt-nosed machines of
some sort, and down toward it the disk-platform was smoothly
sinking.
And beyond and around it, on the stupendous cavern's floor, there
stretched mass upon mass of huge buildings, gray and mighty and
ancient in appearance, buildings which resembled masses of
gigantic gray cubes piled upon each other in neatly geometrical
designs. Broad streets cut through their square-cut masses, and in
those streets moved great throngs of large and smaller shapes,
mighty dinosaurs and masses of the lizard-men. Far away to the
distant, encircling walls stretched the massed buildings, and over
them hovered here and there great pterodactyls bearing lizard-riders,
flitting across the cavern from place to place on their immense,
flapping wings.
Rowan stared, stupefied, stunned, crouching at the edge of his
descending disk, and then became suddenly aware of fierce and
increasing heat beating up toward him. He looked down, saw that
the disk was dropping straight toward the lake of fire below, sprang
to its edge in sudden fear as it dropped on.
Down, down—ever more slowly the great disk was sinking, now,
down until at last it hovered motionless a scant fifty feet above the
surface of the molten lake, hanging level with the edges of the
circular stone basin which held that lake, and level with the floor of
the mighty cavern. A moment only it hovered there, and in that
moment Rowan saw that awaiting it at the great basin's edge stood a
half-score of the lizard-men. Even in the moment he saw them they
glimpsed him crouching at the disk's edge, and instantly two of them
leapt upon the disk, with the white globes that held the heat-beam
outstretched toward him. He cowered back, but instead of loosing
the ray upon him one grasped him by the shoulder and jerked him
from the platform onto the basin's edge, just as the great disk began
to move upward from that edge. Standing there for the moment
Rowan saw the great disk floating smoothly up once more into the
lurid light toward the black round opening of the shaft in the roof of
rock above, rising swiftly into that shaft and disappearing from view
inside it as it flashed upward once more on its endless, automatic
motion.
As one of his captors tugged suddenly at his arm, though, he turned,
and the creature pointed toward the gigantic gray buildings ahead, at
the same time jerking him forward. Slowly Rowan started toward
them, while on each side of him walked one of the lizard-men, their
deadly white globes ready for action.
A moment and they had left the broad clear plaza of stone where lay
the fiery lake, and were entering one of the wide streets which cut
across the masses of the city's buildings. As he marched down that
street between his two guards Rowan all but forgot his own
predicament, so intensely interesting was the panorama before his
eyes, a shifting pageant of creatures of the world's youth, enthralling
to the eyes of the paleontologist.
For through the streets were pouring masses of the lizard-men,
bearing tools or weapons, hurrying along on taloned feet or riding
huge brontosaurs, who tramped majestically along the street's center
while the walking crowds clung to its sides. Here and there, too,
moved other dinosaurs, almost as huge, bearing burdens or ridden
by lizard-men, the reptilian beast-servants of a lizard race.
Tyrannosaurs there were, moving along in their swift, hopping gait,
the fiercest and most terrible of all the dinosaurs, yet servants, like
the rest, of the green-scaled lizard-folk; allosaurs, like smaller
replicas of the great tyrannosaurs; mighty-armored stegosaurs and
great-horned triceratops, and over all the whirring wings of the great
pterodactyls.
As they marched on down the street, attracting but little attention
from the hurrying lizard-creatures, Rowan saw that in the great gray
buildings on each side the doors opening into the street were of
immense size, forty to fifty feet in height, and saw here and there a
giant dinosaur entering or emerging from one of those great open
doorways in obedience to the command of its lizard master. Then
abruptly his two guards turned with him into one of them, and he
found himself in a long, colossal corridor, its gray roof fifty feet above
him and its width almost as great. Here and there along this great
corridor were open doorways, and into one of these he was jerked
by his guards, finding himself in the presence of three other of the
lizard-creatures who sat behind a metal block much like a legless
table.
To these his guards spoke in their harsh voices. There was a
moment of silence, and then a rasping command from one of the
three, at which he was instantly reconducted from the room and
down the corridor's length to a smaller, bolted door. A moment his
captors fumbled with its bolt, then opened the door by sliding it down
into an aperture in the floor, motioning Rowan inside and keeping the
white globes full upon him.
Hopelessly he stepped in, and the door slid up and shut behind him,
while in a moment the bolts clanged shut outside. Rowan turned
slowly around, then stood rigid. Across the room from him a single
figure was staring at him, and as his eyes took in that figure a cry
broke from him:
"Morton!"

5
A single moment the other stared at him, unspeaking, a haggard,
unshaven figure utterly different from the trim little scientist Rowan
remembered, and then he came across the room, hands
outstretched.
"Rowan!" he cried, hoarsely. "Good God, you here, Rowan!" Then
his thoughts shifted, lightning-like. "They've gone out, Rowan?" he
asked. "These things—these creatures—they've started their
attack?"
"Yes," said the assistant. "Over Brinton, hours ago. I came—when
you disappeared there in the swamp." Swiftly he spoke of the attack
on Brinton, of his own crazed flight into the swamp, his own trip
down the shaft and capture, and when he had finished Morton was
silent, his face a mask. When at last he spoke it was in a whisper.
"They've started," he whispered. "Over Brinton—and over all earth,
now. And I who might have warned, captured——"
"You were captured by them there in the swamp?" asked Rowan,
quickly, and the other inclined his head.
"Taken there by them, without a chance to escape. And taken down
here....
"You know, Rowan, why I came to Brinton, to the swamp, to
investigate the rumors we had heard of great bones and skeletons
existing in the slime of that swamp. And in the week I spent
investigating the morass I found that the rumors had spoken truly, for
here and there inside the edges of the morass I found great bone-
fragments which could only come from dinosaur skeletons. Then, a
week after I had begun my search, the thing happened.
"I was working with my probing-rod, perhaps a mile inside the
swamp, when there was a sudden distant crashing of trees and I
saw a gigantic, slate-colored bulk rolling across the forest toward
me. Before I could recover from my amazement the thing was on
me, a great brontosaur ridden by one of the lizard-men—a gigantic
dinosaur out of the Mesozoic age, crashing through an Illinois
swamp! Before I could gather my stunned wits another had crashed
toward me from beyond it, and in an instant I was the prisoner of the
lizard-creatures, who fettered my hands and feet, crashed back on
the great brontosaurs with me toward that mound at the swamp's
center, where there yawned the opening of the great shaft. Up and
down that shaft moves the great disk-platform, endlessly, and on it
they brought me down to this cavern world, down to this gray city of
theirs and into this building. And here, first, I was examined by three
of their number who seemed to hold positions of authority among
them.
"For hours the three examined me, striving to converse with me in
their rasping tones, endeavoring to make plain to me the elementary
word-sounds of their strange language. That language, I found, is a
phonetic one, but aided by gestures and written diagrams we were
able to attain to a rough exchange of ideas. And partly through their
own questions, partly through what I had seen in the great cavern
outside, I came to understand who and what these enigmatic
creatures were, and where they had originated.
"They were beings of an age dead for hundreds of millions of years, I
learnt, creatures of the Mesozoic age, that period of the earth's
history which we call the age of reptiles. For in that age the races of
mammals had hardly begun to arise, and the great and smaller
reptiles and lizard-races were the rulers of all earth. And just as man,
the creature of dominant intelligence, was to develop later from the
races of mammals, so had these lizard-men, the dominant
intelligence of their own age, developed from the races of reptiles.
They had spread out in great numbers over what is now North
America, the most habitable portion of earth during the Mesozoic
age. They had built strange cities, had developed their knowledge
and science in myriad ways, and had learned how to conquer and
subjugate the great reptilian creatures who swarmed then on earth,
to make servants of them. The great brontosaurs, more tractable
than the rest, they used as mounts and beasts of burden; the fiercer
tyrannosaurs and allosaurs were their beasts of war; and on the
mighty pterodactyls they soared into the upper air and flitted across
earth's surface. Great indeed was their power, and through that
power and through their terrible, giant servants they ruled all the
habitable parts of earth unquestioningly.
"At last, though, there came that great convulsion of earth which was
to mark the end of the Mesozoic age, that vast world-cataclysm in
which continents sank beneath the seas and new lands rose from
the oceans' depths. In such convulsions and mighty quakes the
cities of the lizard-men were shaken down and annihilated, and
across all their world was wild confusion. They knew, then, that they
must find some other place of refuge or perish, and so they hit upon
the plan of descending to one of the great cavernous spaces which
lie scores of miles down in earth's interior. They had discovered long
before that such great caverns exist inside earth's crust, and so they
pierced a shaft down to one of them and descended into it to
investigate.
"They found it a place large enough to hold all their numbers, and
one quite habitable. It was lit perpetually with crimson light, too,
since the molten fires of earth's heart had pressed up close to the
walls of the cavern, and through an opening in those walls there
poured down eternally a raging Niagara of molten rock and flame,
that titanic fall of living fire whose blazing radiance illuminates all this
cavern-world. So beneath this fall of fire the lizard-men constructed a
canal which conducted it into a great stone basin which lay directly
beneath the opening of their shaft in the cavern's roof, and from this
basin the molten fires were able to seep gradually into crevices
beneath the cavern.
"Naturally, however, an intensely powerful gale of heated air roared
up from this molten lake, and by setting a ring of current-projectors
around the lake they were able to concentrate the cyclonic power of
those winds into a single concentrated air-current roaring straight up
and through the shaft, and capable of lifting titanic weights up that
shaft, just as a cyclone, which is concentrated wind, will lift and whirl
about great buildings. And this terrific, upward-thrusting current they
used to lift their great disk-platform up the shaft, arranging the
projectors beneath so that the force of the current automatically
lessened when the disk reached the top, and allowed it to sink again
to the cavern's floor, to the fiery lake, whence it traveled up again,
and so on ceaselessly, an automatic, never-stopping lift or platform
on which the throngs of the lizard-people and their dinosaur-beasts
were able to move down into this cavern world.
"Only a portion of their dinosaur servants did they bring with them,
leaving the rest to perish above, whose bones, indeed, I had found in
the swamp. When this had been done they closed tightly the opening
of the great shaft, above, and dismantled the great ascending and
descending disk for which they no longer had need. Then their
hordes set to work to build up their cities anew in their new cavern
home. Far above them the surface of earth writhed and twisted
gigantically, annihilating all the hordes of dinosaurs above, but the
cavern world of the lizard-men remained unchanged, as they had
foreseen, and in it they lived serenely on.

"When at last the surface of earth quieted once more they could
have quitted their underworld and gone back up, but they did not do
so, since by then their city was established in the safe, warm world
of the mighty cavern and they had no desire to leave it. So in that
cavern they lived on, while on the world above the races of
mammals rose to replace the great reptiles; until with the passing of
ages man rose to dominance over all those races and set his cities
where those of the lizard-men had once stood. The mouth of the
shaft was hidden and covered by the great swamp, and on all earth
none suspected the races who dwelt beneath them.
"So ages passed, and might have continued so to pass until the end
of time, had not necessity pressed once more upon the lizard-people
in their cavern world. As I have said, the interior fires of earth's heart
had pressed up close against the walls of their cavern, bursting forth
in one place in that fall of flame which lighted their world; and now
the molten fires began to press with more and more force against the
walls, forced up by convulsions far beneath, and it was only a
question of time until they would burst through those walls and
sweep over all the cavern world in a great cataclysm of annihilating
fire, instantly wiping out all life in the cavern. They must leave it, they
knew, before that happened, so they decided to venture back once
more to earth's surface. So they again placed the great disk-platform
in position, and as it again swept ceaselessly up and down a party of
them rose on it and opened the mouth of the shaft, in the swamp far
above. It was that party, exploring the swamp on their great
brontosaurs, who had captured me, and brought me down here to
examine me. They had observed that intelligent creatures, men, now
were established on earth's surface, that one of their cities stood
near the swamp itself, and so they planned to send up first a striking
force which would annihilate that city, annihilate Brinton, to prevent
any possible interference from it. Then that first attacking force would
return down the shaft, leaving guards at its mouth, and all the lizard-
people and their dinosaur hordes would gather and assemble to pour
up the shaft on the great disk and sweep out upon earth to conquer
and annihilate the world we know. Besides their dinosaurs they had
their own heat-beam projectors, those white globes in which they
could condense and concentrate heat-vibrations, holding those
vibrations static and releasing them at will in a concentrated ray.
"So they poured up the shaft to attack Brinton, and now that that
attack has been made, their first striking force will return down here,
gathering together all their hordes for the last attack on earth itself.
Within hours, I think, that attack will take place, their hordes will
swarm up the shaft and out over earth. Up at the shaft's mouth they
have placed a great switch which will be turned on when all of them
have left this cavern and are safely above, and which will release
concentrated rays down here that will blast the cavern's walls and
allow the floods of fire that press against them to burst into the
cavern. For they fear that if they do not do so the imprisoned fires
will burst forth in some mighty cataclysm that will wreck all earth. To
loose the fires upon the cavern while they are in it would be to
annihilate themselves, of course, but if it is done through the switch
above after all of them have gained earth's surface there will be no
harm to themselves.
"So all their plan has been carried out, so far, and within hours now
their hordes will be sweeping up the shaft and out over earth. And
what then? What will the forces of man avail him? What troops could
stand against the thundering, gigantic dinosaurs? What guns against
the deadly heat-beams? What airplanes could ever battle with the
hordes of circling, swooping pterodactyls and the rays of their lizard-
riders? For man, and for the world of man, there looms swift
annihilation only, when the hordes of the lizard-men and their giant
beasts sweep terribly upon him."
Morton's voice ceased, and he sat motionless, staring across the
dusky little room with strange eyes. From the great corridor outside
came the rasping voices of passing lizard-men, and the thundering
tramp now and then of one of the great dinosaurs, but in the room
itself was silence, as the two men regarded each other. Finally, with
an effort, Rowan spoke.
"And so they plan to sweep out over all earth," he repeated, "plan to
annihilate the world we know. And no chance of escape, for us, no
chance to get back up to earth's surface——"
Morton raised his head, a sudden eagerness on his face. "There is
still a chance," he said. "If we could get out of here—could get to that
disk and back up the shaft! And we must, soon; for soon, I know,
their hordes will be sweeping up that shaft, and when all are gone
they will loose from above the fires upon this cavern, annihilating us
unless we are slain by them before. Soon, I think, they will come to
take you for questioning, also; since had they not intended to do so
they would have slain you outright. And when they come—here is
my plan——"
Swiftly he unfolded his scheme to Rowan, and wild as it seemed the
other agreed to try it, as their only chance. Then they sat silent, for a
time, in the darkness. It was a silence and a darkness torturing to
Rowan. On earth above, he knew, the news of the terrible attack on
Brinton would be flashing out, would be spreading terror and panic
over all the world. And soon, now, would come the outward,
resistless sweep of the lizard-men and their dinosaur hordes from
this cavern world. Unless they escaped——

Hours fled by as they sat there, while from outside came the
unceasing hurrying of lizard-men and dinosaurs through the giant
corridor. Then from the distance came a loud bellowing and chorus
of rasping cries, and a thunder of many gigantic feet passing the
building where they lay imprisoned.
"The first attackers!" whispered Morton. "They've come back, from
Brinton—they'll be assembling now beyond the city there, making
ready for all to go——"
Outside in the corridor the sounds had lessened, almost ceased. It
would be sunset, by then, in the world above, Rowan thought, and
he wondered, momentarily, whether the desperate scheme which he
and Morton had agreed on was to be of no avail. Then, as though in
answer to his thoughts, there came a sound of footsteps down the
great hall outside, and a fumbling with the bolts.
Instantly the two were on their feet, and at once they put into action
their plan. Leaping toward each other they locked instantly in battle,
gripping and striking at each other furiously, swaying about the room,
smiting and kicking. Rowan glimpsed the door slide down and open,
saw two of the lizard-men entering with white globes held toward
them, but he paid no attention to them, nor did Morton, the two men
staggering about the room as though locked in a death-combat,
twisting and swaying in assumed fury.
There was a rasping command from the lizard-men, but they heeded
it not, still intent upon getting at each other's throat. Another
command was given which they ignored also, and then that which
they had hoped for happened, since the foremost of the lizard-men
came toward them, gripping Rowan's arm with a taloned claw and
pulling him back from Morton. And as he did so Rowan turned
instantly and before he could raise the deadly white globe had leapt
upon him.
As he leapt he saw Morton springing upon the other of the two
creatures; then all else vanished as he whirled blindly about the little
room with the reptilian creature in his grasp. He held in his left hand
the claw which gripped the white globe, preventing the creature from
raising it, but as they spun dizzily about he felt his own strength
beaten down by the lizard-man, since the power of the muscles
under its scaled hide was tremendous. With a last effort he clung to
the creature, to the claw that held the globe, and then heard a cry
from Morton, saw the other of the two scaled shapes hurl his friend
to the room's floor and leap toward the door. The next moment his
own hold was torn loose as his opponent wrenched free and leapt in
turn toward the door with his fellow.
A single moment Rowan glimpsed them as he staggered back, and
then he became aware of something round in his hand, the white
globe which his frantic grip had torn from his opponent's grasp. With
a last instinctive action he raised it and threw it at the two at the door.
It struck the wall beside them, the white globe seeming to smash
under the impact; then there was a great flash of pallid light there, a
gust of intensely heated air scorched over Rowan, and then the two
lizard-things lay upon the floor as two charred, shapeless heaps. The
smashing of the globe and the release of its condensed heat-
vibrations had annihilated them.
Instantly Morton was on his feet and the two were staggering out of
the room, into the immense, dusky corridor outside. Down it they ran,
for a moment, then suddenly stopped. For from ahead had come the
sound of immense steps, while some vast black bulk had suddenly
blotted out the great square of crimson light at the corridor's open
end, ahead. Then, as it came on, they saw the great thing clearly—a
gigantic brontosaur that had halted momentarily a hundred feet down
the corridor from them. A moment it surveyed them with small,
glaring reptilian eyes, then raised its mighty neck and head with a
vast, hoarse bellow and thundered straight down upon them.

6
As the colossal beast charged down upon them Rowan stood
motionless, stunned, seeing as though in some nightmare dream the
great snaky neck and head, the gigantic, trampling feet, and hearing
in his ears the deep bellow of the oncoming monster. Then suddenly
Morton had leapt forward, beside him, uttering a high, harsh-voiced
cry, a cry at which the thundering brontosaur suddenly slowed,
stopped. A scant twenty feet from them it stood, regarding them
suspiciously, and Morton turned swiftly to the other.
"Come on, Rowan!" he cried. "I heard the lizard-men direct these
beasts with that cry—I think it'll hold this one till we get past!"
Together they ran forward, down the corridor toward the gigantic
brontosaur, which was regarding them with its small eyes in seeming
perplexity, its head swaying to and fro on its sinuous neck as they
neared it. Now they were to the great beast, pressing past it and
between its great body and the corridor wall, its mighty bulk looming
above them awe-inspiringly in the great corridor. As they ran past it
the huge beast half turned, half stepped toward them, but as Morton
repeated his strange high cry it halted again. The next moment
Rowan breathed for the first time in seconds, for they were past the
brontosaur and racing on down the corridor toward its open end.
As they neared that end they slowed their pace, crept forward more
cautiously, until they were peering out into the great, crimson-lit
street. The broad avenue seemed quite deserted and empty, and
they sprang out into it, toward the central plaza where lay the lake of
fire and its ascending and descending disk. But suddenly Morton
turned, pointed back. Far down the street behind them a great mass
of huge figures was moving toward them—a mob of mighty
dinosaurs and lizard-riders which was coming rapidly up the avenue.
"They're coming now!" cried Morton. "They've gathered—they're
ready—they're going to go up the shaft, now!"
From the advancing horde they heard, now, deep, gigantic
bellowings, answered far across the great gray city by others like it,
by other masses of dinosaurs and lizard-men moving toward the
central plaza and the great lake of flame. Then abruptly the two men
had turned and were racing madly up the avenue toward that lake,
up the broad and empty street toward the great disk that was their
sole hope of escape.
On and on they staggered until at last they were stumbling between
the last gray buildings of the street and into the broad, clear plaza,
toward the rim of its central basin of fire. Rowan looked up, as they
ran, saw high above them a dark, expanding circle which was
dropping down from a round black opening in the rock roof far
above, dropping swiftly down toward the lake of fire ahead. And then
he cried out, for emerging into the empty plaza directly across from
them were a half-dozen of the lizard-men, who saw the two running
men, and, uttering rasping cries, sprang around the rim of the
flaming lake toward them.
The mighty disk was sweeping smoothly downward, now, down until
it hung level with the plaza, above the basin's fires, and now Morton
had flung forward across the two-foot gap and upon the disk. But as
Rowan too leapt forward the racing lizard-men reached him, and as
he threw himself upon the disk, which was rising now, one of them
had leapt forward with him and pulled him back. He clung frantically
to the great disk's edge, and then the mighty platform was rising
smoothly upward while he and his lizard-man opponent clung dizzily
to its edge, swinging above the flaming lake and striking at each
other with their free hands.
Rowan felt himself carried upward with ever-increasing speed, heard
the roar of winds in his ears and glimpsed the raging lake of fire
below, and then felt his strength slipping from him beneath the blows
of the lizard-man, who clung to the disk with one taloned claw and
struck out with the other. Then, as Rowan felt his grip on the disk's
edge slipping, loosening, there was a flashing blow from above
which sent the scaled green body of his opponent whirling down into
the flames beneath, torn loose from his hold. And as Rowan's
nerveless fingers released his own hold a hand above caught his
wrist, there was a tense moment of straining effort, and then he had
been pulled up onto the disk's surface by Morton, and lay there,
panting.
A moment he lay thus, then crept with Morton to the disk's edge and
stared down with him at the gray city which now lay far below. They
saw, pouring into the plaza, a great mass of huge dinosaurs and a
vast throng of the lizard-shapes, an eddying throng that was moving
now toward the plaza and the fiery lake from all the city's wide and
branching streets. The next moment all this was blotted from sight as
the disk shot smoothly upward into the darkness of the great shaft,
flashing up that shaft amid a thundering of confined winds. Over the
raging of those winds Rowan shouted in the other's ear.
"They've gathered down there!" he cried. "When the disk goes down
again they'll come up with it, after us! We have only minutes——"
Morton shouted back. "The switch! If we could open that wheel-
switch up there, let loose those fires below——"
Rowan gasped. The switch! That switch which the lizard-men had
themselves prepared, to use after they had all come up from their
cavern-world. If they could open it, could release upon that cavern-
world the raging fires which pressed against its walls, it would mean
annihilation for the lizard-people and all their giant reptile hordes. If
they could——
Abruptly he grasped the other's arm, pointed mutely upward. Far
above them a spark of pale white light was glimmering, a spark that
changed to a spot and then to a little circle of pallid light as their disk-
platform flashed up toward it with tremendous speed. And now, as
that circle of white light widened, the disk was beginning to slow its
speed a little, the downward-flashing metal walls beside them were
moving past them more slowly. Up, up the great disk lifted, while the
two men crouched tensely at its edge, and then it had floated up until
it hung level with the mouth of the great shaft, beneath the radiance
of the suspended bulb.
It was night once more on earth, Rowan knew, but the brilliance of
the white bulb overhead was dazzlingly revealing as the disk swept
up to hang at the shaft's mouth. In the moment that it hung there
both he and Morton threw themselves from it onto the surface of the
mound, and then as the great disk sank downward once more into
the shaft they saw that their movement had not been observed,
since the only figures on the mound were a half-dozen of the lizard-
men armed with the white heat-beam globes, who lounged near the
great three-pillar switchboard, at the opposite edge of the mound
from the two men. They had not turned as the great disk reached the
shaft's mouth and sank again, and after a moment of crouching
Morton whispered to Rowan, who crept slowly off the mound in
obedience to that whisper and into the shelter of the dark bordering
forest around it. There he began to slip through the trees, stealthily,
while on the mound itself he saw Morton crawling snakelike around
the great shaft's edge toward the switchboard. Minutes passed while
the two crept on, from different sides, minutes that seemed eternities
to Rowan, and then he had reached the edge of the mound near the
switchboard and was gathering himself for a dash toward it. And in
that moment he was discovered. There was a harsh cry from one of
the lizard-men guards at the mechanism and instantly two of them
had leapt toward him, across the mound.

Rowan sprang to his feet, but before he could gain the surface of the
mound he was borne down by the charging of the two sealed
shapes, thrust back into the swamp from the mound's edge and
struggling in their grip. He heard another cry, glimpsed the other
guards on the mound springing toward Morton, who had half risen;
then all other sounds in his ears, the rasping cries of his opponents,
the deafening winds from the great pit, the panting of his own
breathing as he whirled about—all these sounds were suddenly
dwarfed by a sound that came to his ears like the thunder of doom, a
deep, throaty bellowing coming faintly as though from far beneath
but growing swiftly louder, nearer, coming up the shaft from the
ascending disk there!
"Morton!" he cried. "Morton!"
Then he saw Morton whirl sidewise from the guards who ran toward
him, saw him leap toward the great switchboard and toward the
wheel-switch at its center, felt himself thrust backward as his two
opponents rushed back onto the mound with frantic cries. At the
same moment the giant disk swept up again to the shaft's mouth,
hanging there, crowded with massed lizard-men and a half-dozen of
the huge tyrannosaurs. Out toward Morton leapt these gleaming-
fanged monsters, and from a score of the lizard-men on the disk and
on the mound there stabbed toward him rays of pallid light. But in the
second before those deadly rays could be released Morton had
grasped the great wheel, had spun it around in one frantic motion.
The next moment the machine and Morton beside it had vanished in
a flare of blinding flame, but even as they did so there came from far
beneath a gigantic rumbling and crashing, a rending crash as of
riven worlds, while the ground beneath Rowan swayed and rocked
violently. The next moment there had burst up the shaft a vast gush
of crimson fire, a molten flood bursting up from the suddenly
released seas of molten fires below, annihilating the great disk that
hovered in the shaft, raining in fiery death upon all on the mound,
falling hissingly into the water and slime about Rowan. Then was
another rumbling crash and the mound itself seemed to buckle,
collapse, as the walls of the great shaft below it collapsed, and then
before Rowan there lay only a vast, smoking gouge in the earth, with
no sign of life in it.
For minutes Rowan stared, unable to credit the miracle which had
taken place before his eyes, which had thrust back the lizard-men
and all their dinosaur hordes at the last moment, annihilating them in
their cavern world far below by the switch they had themselves
prepared, by the molten fiery seas of earth's heart which Morton's
hand had loosed upon them. But for all the incredulous emotion
within him he could find no words, could but stretch out his hands
speechlessly toward the steaming pit before him.
And then suddenly he became aware that he was weeping....

7
It was hours later that Rowan stumbled at last out of the great
swamp and westward across the rolling fields toward Brinton. Behind
him the first pale light of dawn was welling up from beneath the
horizon, and as he went on the fields about him lay misty and
ghostlike beneath that increasing light. Then, as he came wearily to
the crest of a little rise of ground, he paused, gazing ahead.
Before him there lay in the distance the ruins of Brinton, a great
mass of blackened wreckage in which was no sign of movement,
and from which arose no sound of life. So silent was it, so wrapped
round with the unutterable stillness and soundlessness of death, that
it seemed to Rowan, standing there, that he must needs be the last
living creature in the world, the last living man.
Yet it was not so, he knew. Out beyond the shattered city, out in
those other cities beyond the horizon, out over all earth's surface,
there would be running men, and the fleeing of panic-driven crowds,
and all the fear and horror which the invaders from the abyss had
loosed upon the world. But soon would come an end to that. Soon
those fear-driven throngs would be drifting back, returning, would be
learning how those dark invaders had been thrust back, annihilated,
the destiny of their race shattered by a single man. Soon....
Rowan looked on at the silent, ruined town, his lips moving. "You
alone, Morton!" he was whispering. "You—alone!"
Then, as he stood there, the pallid light about him changed,
deepened, while from behind him there shot forth long rays of yellow
light. Beneath the magic of their alchemy the whole world seemed
transfigured suddenly from gray to glowing gold. But Rowan never
turned, never moved, standing still motionless there on the crest,
gazing westward, a black, lone little figure against the splendor of the
rising sun.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ABYSMAL
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