My eyes didn’t snap open with the clear awareness of a man waking from a nap. They rolled back into my head, the whites showing. My body jerked beneath the furs. I was caught in the heavy, drugged paralysis of midday.
“Kaspar!” Sloane shrieked, shaking my shoulders.
A smell hit me. It was the odor of something ancient and rotted and overwhelmingly sweet, like a grave opened in the middle of a garden. I heard a wet, dragging sound accompanied by heavy footfalls near the mouth of the south passage.
My hand shot out, wrapping around Sloane’s wrist as I gasped for air. I finally broke through the surface of my forced slumber. My eyes were wide, pupils blown so large there was almost no iris left.
“Get…behind…the altar,” I choked out.
I tried to stand, but my legs buckled. I was still
