Free Hunt at World's End by Gabriel Hunt Page A

shook her head. “It’s here, I know it is. It has to be.”
    Gabriel walked over to her. “Look, I know you were excited about your first find, but—”
    Joyce grabbed the handle of the machete and pulled it out of his belt so fast he didn’t have time to stop her. She started marching toward the slope at the far end of the clearing. “I’m going to keep looking,” she called back to him. “Come or don’t come, it’s up to you.”
    He sprinted up behind her. “Joyce…don’t let yourself be blinded by what you want to find. For every legend that points to something real, there are dozens that are just stories. You have to prepare yourself for the fact that sometimes what you’re looking for just isn’t there. Believe me, it’s happened to me plenty of times.”
    She ignored him and continued storming up the slope. Nearly at the top she lost her footing amid the twigs and roots littering the hillside. She slipped suddenly, cried out and slid back down toward the clearing.
    “Joyce!” Gabriel ran to her. She had tumbled to the base of the hill. When he got to her, her cheek was smeared with dirt, but thankfully she looked okay otherwise. He held his hands out. She glared at him, then cursed under her breath, took his hands and let him help her back to her feet.
    “I’m fine ,” she snapped, yanking her hands away. She bent to pick up the machete she’d dropped. Then she froze and stared at the grass on the side of the hill. “Gabriel,” she whispered. “Come here. Look at this.”
    He bent down next to her. “What is it?”
    “There,” she said. She pointed at a patch of grassthat had been torn up by her fall. She’d struck a stone with the machete, dislodging it, and where it had been there was now a narrow hole. The sun reflected off of something inside the depression. She pushed the tip of the machete into the hole. It hit something flat, smooth and hard. Gabriel recognized the sound it made right away: the tink of metal on metal.
    “Something’s buried under there,” Gabriel said.
    “The first Eye was given to the earth,” Joyce murmured.
    They looked at each other, then back at the hill. Joyce started scraping the dirt away with the edge of the machete while Gabriel dug with his fingers, pulling out divots of soil and tossing them over his shoulder. It was slow work, but after twenty minutes they’d cleared away enough earth to reveal a stretch of dark metal with a long seam in it. A few minutes later, they uncovered the rusty bulk of a hinge.
    “It’s a door,” Gabriel said. “There must be a whole structure under here.”
    They attacked the hill again, digging faster now in their excitement. Joyce plunged and scraped with the machete like a coal miner working a pickaxe, and Gabriel dug until his fingers cramped. Another half hour passed without his even noticing it, and though his back and shoulders ached and he was tired and drenched in sweat, thoughts of what lay beyond the mysterious metal door kept him going. Joyce didn’t waver either, didn’t even take a break. Finally, they’d cleared away a rough rectangle of earth, exposing the metal door that lay beneath. The seam around it was caked with dirt, as were the ornate carvings that decorated the door. There was no knob or handle visible, but there was a lock.
    Gabriel knelt to inspect it. He picked the dirt awayand saw that the keyway was shaped almost like an upward-pointing arrow, with not one but three slots. Above the lock was a rough etching of a skull with a diamond between its eye sockets. Gabriel recognized it right away. The muscles in his back tightened.
    It was the same design that had been on the Death’s Head Key.
    Vincenzo de Montoya had found the key somewhere in Asia—but no one knew exactly where. Even de Montoya’s own journals were vague on the specifics. Now Gabriel had the answer: Borneo. De Montoya had taken the key with him upon leaving the island and died in the Amazon with it still on a strap