“It’s a hologram,” I said softly, voice filled with awe.
It was perfect. So perfect, that I never would have believed the stone wasn’t really there if my own hand hadn’t just passed right through the thing. The ancient Romans never could have created this. I wasn’t sure even modern people could create such a realistic, believable hologram. Which meant it wasn’t human-made, but alien-made. Atlantean-made.
I turned partway, meeting Raiden’s eyes one last time. “I’ll come back,” I told him. “Just stay alive.” And then I turned back to the archway and walked through the slab of stone.
Energy tingled over my skin as I passed through the hologram, making the tiny hairs all over my body stand on end. When I came out through the other side, I found myself in near complete darkness. Only patches of faintly glowing green iridescence stretching out in a long, uneven line overhead broke up my dark surroundings, and glimmering specks of that same eerie neon green floated all around me.
I reached up to switch on the headlamp.
“Crap,” I hissed when my fingertips touched my bare forehead. The headlamp had fallen off when I’d been overwhelmed by all of the psychic input.
I pulled the cell phone from my back pocket, intending to use its built-in light. But it wouldn’t turn on. No matter how hard or long I pressed down the power button, nothing happened. It didn’t matter that the battery had been nearly full just a few minutes earlier; now, the phone was dead.
Growling under my breath, I turned on my heel, intending to pop back out to the vault to grab the headlamp.
And walked straight into a wall of stone—not the holographic kind.
“Damn it,” I muttered, slapping the stone wall with both hands. No wonder nobody had ever returned—the archway only allowed passage one-way.
At the unmistakable whoosh of fire igniting, I spun around. Two torches had flared to life about twenty paces ahead, illuminating either side of a high-ceilinged stone passageway. A few seconds later, two more torches auto-ignited some fifty paces down, followed by two more after that. I stopped counting after the eighth set of torches flared to life.
The passageway was nearly twice my height and just wide enough that I couldn’t touch both sides at once with my arms fully extended, and it seemed to go on forever. The pairs of torches were placed opposite one another in archways that broke up the seemingly never-ending corridor into shorter sections.
I looked up at the ceiling. The glowing iridescence had faded to a pale green in the torchlight. It appeared to be a thick blanket of some sort of mold covering the stone overhead, the slightly florescent color making it look almost like it had been irradiated.
There was a strangely sweet, musty scent in the air. It must have been coming from the mold, I realized, and wrinkled my nose.
I started up the corridor, slowing when I neared the first set of torches. After the archway, the corridor was bisected by another, perpendicular to this one.
At the sound of a metallic clatter behind me, I spun around, hands clutching my chest.
The doru lay on the floor a few yards in from the hologram.
I frowned, eyes narrowing. If Henry had been willing to lose the ancient weapon to the labyrinth, he really must have been rooting for me to make it all the way through. I wondered what had been hidden in the labyrinth that he was so desperate to get his hands on. Not that it really mattered to me. Nothing was more valuable than the lives of my mom and Raiden.
I jogged back to the hologram, scooped up the doru, then turned and headed up the corridor once more. I stopped in the intersection between passageways and planted the butt of the doru on the floor before first looking down the corridor on the left, then down the one on the right. The torch-archway pattern continued on in both directions until the torchlight blended into one solid glow. It was like I’d stepped into Daedalus’ fabled labyrinth, only this one wasn’t a prison for a savage minotaur. It was a prison for me.
My heart plummeted as I returned to looking up the seemingly endless corridor stretching out ahead of me. I hadn’t thought this would be easy—nobody had ever made it out alive, after all. But this was impossible.
I rubbed the back of my neck. A dull throbbing was settling in at the base of my skull. Clearly, the stress of the situation was getting to me.
A growl rumbled up the opposite corridor, making me jump. I spun to the left, fully expecting to see some kind of monster watching me from farther in.
But there was nothing there.
The growl faded, replaced by a forceful exhale that brought to mind a bull preparing to charge and the unmistakable sound of hooves on stone. The clopping lasted several seconds before fading along with the growl. Those were exactly the kinds of sounds I might expect a minotaur to make.
Except minotaurs weren’t real. They were mythical beasts. Remnants from stories of the ancients.
My heart gave a heavy thud-thump. I was afraid to move. Afraid to breathe. I stood in the intersection between corridors, frozen in place. I stood there for so long, and the silence grew so heavy, that I started to think I had imagined the whole thing.
Until the growl rumbled up the passageway again, louder this time.
Without thinking, I turned in the opposite direction and sprinted up the corridor. I skidded around the corner two archways down, slowing to a jog as I headed deeper into the labyrinth. Each step sent dizzying reverberations through my skull, making me increasingly unsteady.
I had just rounded another corner when my steps faltered, and I stopped, planting one hand on the wall. I blinked, shaking my head to clear it, but that only made the dizzying headache worse.
This wasn’t just stress; this was something more. Something in the labyrinth was messing with my head, and fast.
That growl came again, rolling up the passageway behind me. My whole body tensed up, and fear gripped my heart. Fear for Raiden and my mom. Fear for me, too.
I pushed off the wall and continued on in a stumbling jog, reaching out to steady myself with a hand on the wall every few steps. I had a pretty good rhythm going by the time I reached the next intersection of passageways. I rounded the corner, expecting to find yet another empty corridor.
A corpse sat curled up against the wall on the left, just before the next archway. It wore priest’s robes, the heavy black fabric hanging loosely on the desecrated frame. I was no expert, but even I could tell that this guy had been dead for years.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and my mouth was suddenly a desert. I licked my lips with my tacky tongue, swallowing roughly.
I approached the body slowly. Cautiously. If this were one of my video games, the dead priest very well could’ve been lying in wait to jump up and attack me.
My hazy brain started filling in the gaps of what was happening down here. Had the growling, roaring creature that seemed to be stalking me killed the priest? Would this be my fate, too? Would I end up a shriveled corpse curled up against a wall, forever trapped in this labyrinth?
I paused about ten paces from the corpse. So close, I could see that the priest’s skin had dried out and darkened as it thinned, giving him a mummified look. His eyes had long since rotted away, and his lips had retracted as they’d dried, leaving him with a ghastly grin. His left arm draped down to the floor, his hand resting on a thick book bound in black leather.
At first, I thought it was a bible. But then, I spotted the pen clipped to the cover, partially concealed by the priest’s decrepit hand. Maybe it wasn’t a bible, but a journal. And if it was a journal and the priest had been writing in it, maybe he had recorded some of what he found down here. Maybe he knew what the growling creature was. Or even better yet, maybe he knew the way out. Or, based on the fact that he’d died down here, which ways didn’t lead out.
I moved closer and held the doru up defensively, keeping a close eye on the corpse’s grisly face. At the first hint of movement, I was fully committed to smashing his skull to smithereens. This labyrinth was too creepy, and
I had seen too many zombie movies and played too many video games to expect the dead to stay that way.
But the priest didn’t move, thankfully. I reached him and nudged his hand off the cover of the book, cringing at the brittle, crunching sound his arm made. I bent down and scooped up the book, backing away even before I had fully straightened my legs.
Keeping one eye on the priest, I moved farther down the corridor. I pressed my backpack to the wall to ensure that nobody—and nothing—could sneak up on me while I was distracted, and looked down at the book.
The symbol of the Custodes Veritatis had been stamped into the front cover. I ran my fingertips over the depression in the black leather, then opened the book. It wasn’t a bible, that much was clear. But it also wasn’t a journal. The first page was blank, but the second had two words printed onto the page in bold, black type: LIBER VERITATIS. This was the missing book mentioned in my mom’s journal.
I fanned through the pages, searching for anything that might help me. The pages in the first two-thirds of the book were filled with neat, black type, but the remaining third was handwritten, the last several dozen pages completely blank.
I paused when I reached the inside of the back cover. The thick white paper was covered in a dense-packed grid.
I felt a surge of adrenaline when I realized what I was looking at, and my mind cleared up a bit.
It was a map—of the labyrinth. And based on the solid, unbroken line bordering the map, there was no exit. No way out. No end to this madness.
“You’re not trying to get out.” That voice—I would have recognized it anywhere.
Startled, I dropped the book, and it hit the stone floor with a thunk.
Persephone—she was right there, her back to me as she stood in the intersection between corridors just fifty paces ahead, dead center of all four arches. Her dark hair was pulled up into a neat bun atop her head. She wore a tight-fitting black suit with channels of electric blue glowing in a distinctive pattern from neck to fingertip to toe. It was the same thing Demeter and the other Amazons had been wearing in my dreams—in her memories. The same garment I had tucked into my backpack in the vault.
My leaden heart was suddenly galloping in my chest. How was she here? I thought she was dead—how could she be down here, when just minutes ago, she was in my head?
Was it possible that she worked for the Order? Or had she, by some strange coincidence, broken into the vault immediately before me and snuck into the labyrinth?
“Hey!” I called out, wincing as the sound of my voice reverberated inside my skull, magnifying the headache. Dead priest forgotten, I snatched the Liber Veritatis off the floor and started toward Persephone. “What are you doing in here?” I demanded. “And what do you mean I’m not trying to get out?”
Persephone turned, just a little, enough to acknowledge that she heard me, but not enough to show me more than a hint of her profile. “You’re trying to get in,” she said, and it was as though I could hear her voice both with my ears and in my mind.
I shook my head, ignoring the dizzying effect. “No, I—”
“This way,” Persephone said and stepped to the left, disappearing around another corner.
“Wait!” I shouted. The sound was like a gong inside my head, throwing me off balance. I missed a step and stumbled to the side, my shoulder just grazing the wall. I rested my forehead against the cool stone and took deep, measured breaths.
With one last breath, I pushed away from the wall and continued after Persephone, moving as quickly as I could manage. I stopped in the archway, turning to follow her, and found myself staring down a long, empty corridor.
She couldn’t have slipped around another corner that fast. There hadn’t been enough time.
But that didn’t change the fact that she was gone. Vanished. Like she’d never even been here to begin with.
Maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she was a ghost. Or maybe she was a figment of my imagination, and I was losing my mind. Maybe it didn’t matter.
What had she said before disappearing around the corner?
You’re not trying to get out.
I squeezed my eyes shut, rubbing my temples with my thumb and middle finger as I tried to remember the rest. My head was pounding, and coherent thought was growing slipperier by the second.
And then Persephone’s second statement coalesced in my mind.
You’re trying to get in.
My eyes popped open, and I looked down at the book, flipping to the map in the back. There was a small, triangular open area in the center of the map. At first glance, I’d assumed the blank spot meant the priest hadn’t quite finished mapping the labyrinth before he’d died. But now that I was looking for it, I could see that the open area was almost entirely enclosed, surrounded by a warren of dead-end tunnels. All dead-ends, save for one.
A single corridor led into the open space at the heart of the maze.
I couldn’t imagine how long it must have taken the priest to map the whole labyrinth. Days, maybe weeks, from the looks of all of the twists, turns, and dead-ends. How he had managed to do such a thorough, meticulous job while also evading the beast that was down here was beyond me.
Something else tickled my brain, and an image of the dead priest flitted before my mind’s eye. He didn’t look mauled or ravaged or anything like how I would’ve expected the victim of a captive, savage beast to look. Rather, he looked like was resting. Like he had run out of energy and had gotten comfortable while he waited to die.
I narrowed my eyes. What if there was no beast down here at all? What if it was a trick of the mind?
I glanced up at the ceiling. The thick blanket of irradiated-looking mold continued here. No doubt the floating spores filled the air, invisible in the torchlight, but still there.
A few years back, I read about mold having psychoactive effects. I was going through a phase where I spent days on end binge-watching nearly every ghost-hunting show out there, only to be disappointed when my own independent research suggested that mold containing neurotoxins was likely responsible for alleged ghost sightings, especially those that happened in older, “haunted” buildings. Older, meaning more time for mold to spread. More time for spores to saturate the walls and floors . . . to linger in the air.
Was that what was happening here? Was mold responsible for my hazy, aching head? Was it poisoning my brain, making me hallucinate?
I frowned. Was the mold the reason I was suddenly not just hearing Persephone’s voice in my head, but seeing full-fledged apparitions of her, too?
The ghost of a whisper floated up the passageway toward me, giving rise to a sudden bout of goose bumps. I shivered, swallowing roughly.
It’s not real, I told myself. Not that thinking that made the next whisper any less creepy.
Taking a deep breath, then wrinkling my nose as I considered what I’d just inhaled, I refocused on the map. I tried to recall the turns I had made when first fleeing deeper into the labyrinth, then later, when chasing Persephone. I tracked different routes on the map, but none of the combinations I tried worked—either ending in dead-ends or impossible turns.
I was lost. I felt the color drain from my face as I realized the truth. The map wouldn’t do me any good. Unlike in my games, there was no little beacon marking my position.
“This way.”
My head snapped up, and I barely caught a glimpse of Persephone before she disappeared around a corner up ahead.
I stared after her, frozen by indecision. I had no idea where I was on the map, and any way I tried to go would likely just get me more lost. But, then, so would following an imaginary woman.
Unless she wasn’t imaginary.
Persephone had been in my head for days, helping me work my way out of difficult situations. Helping me cope with the sudden insanity that had invaded my life. Helping me do things I shouldn’t have been able to do. I had to accept that there was a very real possibility that this apparition of her wasn’t a figment of my imagination. A
very real, very small possibility. Which made following her a better alternative to the crapshoot of me trying to find my own way through the labyrinth.
I laughed under my breath. It was a hopeless, mania-tinged laugh. A desperate laugh. A resigned laugh. I was still laughing as I stashed the priest’s book in my backpack and took my first step to follow Persephone.
At this point, what did I have to lose?
34
I passed more corpses as I delved deeper into the labyrinth, chasing after Persephone. They grew more concentrated the deeper we went.
Some were huddled in groups of two or three, while others were alone. Some were on the fresher—and riper—side, while others were little more than skeletons. Some wore priests’ robes, others black or camo tactical clothing, while others still were bedecked in full suits of armor. Some wore little more than brittle scraps, the ancient fabric of their clothing having dissolved over the centuries.
I didn’t stop to examine their remains or look for any more goodies like the priest’s book. My time was limited. Add on the fact that, with each rounded corner, my mind felt hazier and I was more light-headed. I feared I might drop within the hour.
The growls had been replaced by haunting whispers and moans almost the moment I realized the mold was likely the hallucinogenic variety. Despite being pretty damn certain it was all in my head, the sounds were still eerie as hell and distracting enough that I had to consciously try to ignore them.
I lost track of the twists and turns almost immediately, going on faith that around each corner, I would find Persephone waiting at the next bend. She would linger just long enough for me to catch sight of her before slipping around the next corner, once again disappearing from sight.
My run soon slowed to a jog, my jog to a walk, until even calling my forward movement walking was being generous. At best, I was hobbling, head hanging as I leaned heavily on the doru. I had no clue how the priest had managed to map this place; it was all I could do to drag one foot in front of the other, and I had probably only been down here for twenty or thirty minutes.
Legacy of the Lost Page 24