“What you waiting for, Christmas?” Coanda hissed. “Into the hole!”

Crouching on all fours, I forced my way into the hole and the others raced in behind me. Halfway down the tunnel, I could see a pinprick of light in the distance. Behind me, I could hear Coanda, Luke, and Potter dragging the boulder back over the entrance, and as they did, the sound of the approaching Vampyrus fell silent.

With only one way to go, I crawled forward towards that speck of light.

Chapter Eight

The white light ahead wasn’t the end of the tunnel as I had first thought. It was a light of sorts, but not like any other I had seen before. It glowed - no it pulsed - a sickly yellow colour and it seemed to be coming from the walls of the tunnel ahead. As I grew closer still, I could see it was a plant that scaled the walls, lighting my way. It was thick and ropey, like illumines seaweed. It smelt too - sweet like toffee apples. I crawled further down the tunnel, the others behind me, and my hands hurt against the surface which felt as if it was covered in loose stone chippings.

Fixated on the glowing plant ahead, I failed to notice what was beneath me, and as if having all the air sucked from my lungs, I suddenly began to plummet downwards. The ground beneath me had suddenly fallen away. I dropped into utter darkness and couldn’t help but scream. As I fell, I heard Kayla and Isidor cry out above me as they, too, started to fall.

Had we just been led into another trap by Coanda? Was he going to be someone else who had deceived me? With my mind scrambling, I couldn’t really think about that now, and I clutched at the air for something to grab onto. But there was nothing. Then, just like a parachute opening, my wings rolled open and I began to slow. They beat frantically on either side of me and matched the rhythm of my pounding heart. Then my eyes, as they always did, began to adjust to the darkness that smothered me like a rug. I looked left and right, then up. Above me I could see Kayla and Isidor as their own wings opened and slowed their descent.

“Where are we?” Kayla called out into the darkness, her voice sounding panicked.

“I don’t know!” Isidor called back, both of their voices echoed as if they were shouting into some giant well.

“Kiera, is that you? I can’t see you but I can hear your heart and wings beating!” Kayla shouted.

“I can see you,” I tried to reassure her. “It looks like we fell into some giant hole.”

“But we’re still falling!” Isidor yelled. “I can’t fly back up to the surface - it’s like we’re being pulled down.”

I knew exactly what Isidor meant. It was like the darkness was some kind of quicksand, which was sucking us further and further below ground.

“You’re in a drop shaft,” a voice said very close to me. I spun around in the air, Coanda was falling beside me. Then, half-smiling, he added, “There’s only one way you can go and that’s down.”

Before I had a chance to say anything back, he was gone, flying away beneath me.

Kayla and Isidor drew level with me.

“Did he say we were in a drop shaft?” Isidor asked me.

“I think so,” I told him, all the time being sucked into the darkness below.

“Wow,” Isidor breathed. “I’d heard about these things as a kid, but I thought they had all been sealed up.”

“Why?” Kayla asked.

“They had a tendency of collapsing…” he started.

“Just like this one!” Potter suddenly shouted as he nosedived past us and down into the blackness.

“What!” I called out, after him.

“Kiera, the drop shaft is gonna collapse!” another voice said, and by the time I realised it had been Luke who had spoken, he was gone, rocketing away beneath me.

The shaft began to vibrate, shake, then rumble. Within seconds, the sound of falling rock became deafening - it was louder than any thunder I had ever heard and I had a quick snapshot of my mum leaving the house that day in the thunder storm. Then the memory was gone and I was looking up into the shaft as it began to cave in above us. But it looked odd. It was like a solid mass of darkness racing towards us like a tidal wave.

Shoving Kayla and Isidor out of the path of a falling piece of giant rock, I screamed at them, “Go!”

Without needing any further persuasion, the three of us dived down into the awaiting darkness. Rocks whisked past us and the tunnel soon began to fill with thick, gritty dust. It stung my eyes and burnt my throat and lungs, but still I raced on. The shaft made a hideous cracking noise as if the very core of the Earth was being ripped open. The dust and falling rock had now become so dense that I had lost sight of Kayla and Isidor and I couldn’t even call out for fear of sucking in a lungful of the burning dust that was now suffocating me.

So, with my arms held out before me, I lent further forward, mimicking the shape of an arrow and raced forward at a blistering speed. The wind rushed past me, my hair bellowed back from my brow, and my wings fluttered so furiously that I couldn’t even see them. Peeking through my long eyelashes, I snatched a look at those little black claws that had repulsed me so much and could see that they were batting away rocks that were heading towards me. They moved with a nimbleness and speed that was mesmerizing to watch as they plucked rocks out of the air and tossed them out of harm’s way. They were protecting me and I wondered if they were something that should be feared after all.

Closing my eyes against the grit and dark, I could feel the pressure of the falling debris behind me, and to my horror, I got the feeling that the shaft was actually becoming narrower. Why could nothing ever be easy for me? Just when I thought things couldn’t ever get any worse, they usually did.

I feared that if I didn’t reach the end of the shaft soon, the tunnel would collapse in all around me. Willing myself forward, I darted between lumps of rock, skirted past jagged outcrops that jutted from the shaft walls, and all the while the shaft became thinner.

As I panicked, I breathed deeper, and the deeper I breathed, the more of the burning dust I took in and I began to feel as if I were drowning - suffocating.

But I wouldn’t be beaten - I couldn’t be. So with the last of the breath I had within me, I tucked my arms tight against my body, lowered my head, arched my wings and just dropped like one of the rocks that soared past me. The fall was endless and just when I thought it was never going to stop, my heart suddenly leapt. There was a spot of orange light below me. I angled my body towards it. I don’t know how long or how far I dropped, but I must have fallen hundreds of miles below the Earth’s surface. As I fell, the orange light didn’t seem to grow larger though, and at first I couldn’t work out why. Surely, if I were heading towards it, the hole would start to become bigger. But this hole wasn’t growing in size; in fact, it looked as if it were getting smaller! The hole – my escape from the shaft – was filling in with the rock and earth which had overtaken me.

Then in that little chink of light, I saw the silhouette of a figure and it appeared as if it were looking up and waving frantically at me.

Potter? I wondered as I felt myself begin to lose consciousness. Potter, help me! I wanted to call out, but I couldn’t, I had no breath left in my lungs. I squinted through the falling dust and rock one last time at the orange light with the waving figure.

Then, all of a sudden, that figure was grabbing at me, pulling me out of the collapsing shaft and taking me into their arms.

“Potter?” I whispered.

“Shhh,” the voice said, “It’s me, Luke, I’ve got you. Welcome to The Hollows.”

Chapter Nine

“General outer appearance of the deceased…” the voice said. It was female and seemed to echo off stone. The voice said something else but the darkness took me again and there was nothing.

“The deceased appears to be mildly decomposed…” the female voice said again. “It has obviously been left out in the open for approximately forty-eight hours. Maybe less, but no longer.”

The voice was soft, but serious – professional. I swooned back from the darkness, my head feeling light although I could feel it resting against something hard and cold.

“Body is that of a female – approximate age early twenties…” the voice said and trailed off again as I slipped once more back into nothingness.

Surfacing again, I could feel fingers prodding me as if being examined by someone. The voice came again and I guessed that it was the owner of that soft, clinical voice who was performing some kind of inspection of me.

“The deceased has the first two index fingers intact on the left hand and the right has a thumb, forefinger and third index…” the female said.

“That’s impossible!” said another voice – a male voice.

“Shhh!” the female said.

Ignoring her, the male continued: “When we pulled her off that mountainside, she didn’t have any fingers! What you’re trying to tell me is, they’re growing back?”

“Photograph this,” the female said to another who was in the room.

Above the darkness, a sudden burst of white light popped. It startled me. I wanted to flinch but I couldn’t. I was paralysed. The female spoke again, and her voice came from above me, no longer sounding as if it were coming down a tunnel.

“The deceased is wearing black overalls, like combat clothing of some kind. On her feet she is wearing black boots. Around her neck she is wearing a chain and silver crucifix…”

“Here, let me have those,” the male voice said.

I felt my head being tugged at and my shoulders being lifted up off of whatever it was I was…

I’m lying down! I suddenly thought. They’ve laid me down! I tried to reach out and grab the hand that was removing the crucifix, but I couldn’t. Although my brain commanded my arms to move, they refused.

Have they tied me down? I didn’t think so, but my arms felt heavy and unmoveable.

The female spoke again. “The head is fully covered with flesh and it is bald except for a few partial hair fragments. There is no visible left eye socket – this is also covered with flesh. The right eye appears to be partially formed and has omitted what appears to be blood and a milky-type fluid. Please photograph this and take a few samples for DNA analysis.”