Free Guardians of Stone (The Relic Seekers) by Anita Clenney

She’d come this way. Her tracks continued for several yards, stopping at a cliff covered in ivy. It had to be at least twelve feet high. Too high to jump. There were no tree limbs strong enough to climb. Where had she gone? He pulled the thick ivy aside and saw it was actually a stone wall.
    Then Jake noticed a second set of footprints a few feet away. A man’s. The goat herder maybe. But there was no indentation from his walking stick. Jake pulled out his gun and cautiously bent to study the tracks. Big feet, average height. These prints weren’t as fresh as Kendall’s. She wasn’t followed, but where was she? Both sets of tracks stopped near the same spot.
    Jake heard the rumbling sound again. He jumped to his feet and raised the gun. The curtain of vines moved and Kendall’s face appeared. “I found a door,” she said. Her grin changed to surprise when she saw the gun pointed at her chest.
    He lowered the gun. “You damned idiotic...” he sputtered, looking for words. “Are you insane? I had no idea where you were.” He shoved the gun into his jeans and glared at her.
    “Calm down. I saw the footsteps leading to the wall and thought they were yours.”
    “They’re not mine.”
    “Oh.”
    She looked slightly alarmed, which was good. A little fear might help him keep her safe. He studied the opening in the wall, more intrigued than he wanted to admit. “How did you find the door?” One of her
senses
?
    “I saw this.” She pushed back the vines on a section of the wall. There was a mark etched in the stone. A circle. “I knew it must be there for a reason. The stone seemed loose. When I pushed it the door opened.”
    “You should have waited for me. What if it didn’t open again? You’re forgetting this place is supposed to be cursed.”
    “You believe in curses?”
    “I believe in traps.”
    “The bridge was safe. If the door didn’t open from this side, I would have climbed the vines.”
    And she probably could have, but that didn’t change the fact that she wasn’t following orders.
    “Maybe the footsteps belong to the goat herder,” she said. “He could be the one who’s been taking care of this place. You should see this side of the wall.”
    “Keep your voice down. Anyone who’s gone to these lengths to keep people away won’t be happy to find us here.”
    She moved aside so he could climb through the opening. Even though the trail behind them had a rugged beauty, this side of the wall was like entering heaven after escaping hell. The area was well tended. Plants and shrubbery grew along a small path. The trees formed a lacy canopy, allowing the setting sun throughin soft streams. One large tree sat in the center, its leaves already golden with the chill of fall.
    “It doesn’t look cursed,” Kendall said. “It looks magical.”
    A little too magical. It was probably a trap. “It wasn’t magical getting here. I want to look around too, but we need to head back or we’ll be stuck on the trail after dark.”
    “My God.”
    He turned and saw Kendall staring at something in the distance. He moved closer and saw a tall statue a few hundred yards away.
    “I’ve seen this before,” Kendall said, her voice hushed with awe.
    The damned thing about it was he’d seen the statue too. Sketched on a piece of paper he’d found in a palace in Iraq. Then he noticed there were more statues, lined up as far as he could see. He looked at the first one again, puzzled. Kendall gasped, pulling him from his shock. The sound was so loud he was afraid she’d been shot.
    “There it is,” she said.
    He saw what looked like a mountain of rock covered by vines. Then he noticed windows and doors peeking through the vegetation. It was a castle built against a hillside, like something out of a fairy tale. It was three stories tall, with towers rising at each end. Beyond it, he could see a garden with fountains and a maze.
    Kendall moved toward the castle in a daze. “It’s like the one in my