by Eden Briar
“Uh, guys?”
I glance over my shoulder to see that Ben has fallen behind. He’s standing by the outer wall, peering through another gap.
“What is it?” Jazz jogs to his side before snorting with laughter and turning to Zac. “Great job, master navigator. You’ve led us in a circle.”
Sure enough, we can see the car through the gap in the wall. We’re back where we started.
Zac swears colorfully. “I touched every inch of that inner wall. If there was an entryway, I’d have found it.”
Jazz knocks Zac’s shoulder as he turns back inside. “Unless it was concealed by magic.”
“I’d have noticed if there were runes.”
“You didn’t notice we’d walked in a circle,” Ben mutters.
Great. They’re back to bickering like old women. And this is only three of them. If Archer’s right, we need seven. How am I going to manage that?
They move away, arguing amongst themselves. I trail after them, tired of it all and growing wearier by the second.
“Guys?” I slow to a stop. How long will it take them to notice I’m not keeping up? I lean against the inner wall with a sigh. “Guys—”
The wall gives way under my hand, and I fall through with a yelp.
Thanks to Jazz and Zac, I’ve got quicker reflexes than normal. I manage to stay on my feet, but only just.
Turning in a slow circle, I take in the place I’ve literally just stumbled into. It’s an enclosed space, different from the passageway outside. The walls are a bright, gleaming metallic. The ground beneath my feet is paved with stones engraved with symbols. And in the center of the room, upon a pedestal, is a glowing, glittering orb. Once I set eyes on it, I can’t look away. It calls to me. I walk toward it, my hand outstretched.
The guys’ voices grow louder as they draw near, their tones urgent.
“Indy?” Ben calls from behind me.
I climb onto the small platform that the orb is sitting on. It’s right there in front of me, beautiful and enchanting, and begging me to just…
“No, don’t touch that!”
Ben’s shout comes a moment too late.
My fingers graze the orb’s surface. It pulses once, sending a shower of tiny, sparkling lights up into the air. They rain down slowly around me, but they don’t fall to the ground. Instead, they hang in the air around and above me, almost like a curtain. Or a cage.
32
“Blue, get out of there.”
The urgency in Zac’s voice has me trying to step forward, but a wave of exhaustion washes over me.
“Guys, I’m really tired.” I sink down to sit at the edge of the platform. “I’m just gonna rest for a bit.”
“No, Indy.” Jazz rushes forward. “We need to keep moving. Come on, on your feet…”
He reaches through the sparkling lights to take my arm. There’s a crack like thunder, the lights spark, and he stumbles back with a curse.
“Fuck, that hurt.”
The idea of Jazz in pain shakes me awake.
“Are you okay? What was that?”
Zac circles the lights surrounding me, a frown on his face.
“I think it’s a trap.”
Ben groans, pressing a hand to his forehead. “And you walked right into it.”
“But the orb was so shiny; I had to touch it.”
I’m vaguely aware, in the back of my mind, that’s not a valid argument.
“Yeah.” Ben crouches down so he’s at eye level with me, his voice soft. “It had a lure enchantment on it. It’s meant to draw people in. Once you’re inside, it springs the trap, and you’re stuck.”
The tiredness hits me again. “Maybe I could just nap until it turns itself off?”
“No.” His voice turns sharp. “No sleeping. You need to stay awake. Stand up, move around, do whatever you can to keep your eyes open.”
Groaning, I push myself to my feet, noticing something as I do.
“Uh, guys? Where’s the door? And what happened to the walls?”
Their three heads whip around. It would have been comical if not for our situation.
“Well, fuck,” Jazz says with feeling.
That’s not the response I’m hoping for.
“Is the maze meant to do this? You said it lets people through or it kicks them out. No one said anything about it entrapping people with pretty lights.”
“Maybe it’s a test,” Zac ventures. He’s no longer looking at the cage, but at the walls of the space we’re trapped in.
Ben does the same.
“Wait, are those runes?”
“Where?” Jazz asks.
“There.” Ben points past me. “The wall behind Indy.”
They step around my cage to get a closer look. I turn to do likewise, but other than agreeing that yes, they look like runes, there’s not much I can contribute. To keep myself awake, I try to investigate the rest of the space, or as much as I can see from my prison. It’s a long minute of staring before I figure out what’s wrong with what I’m seeing.
“Hey, do you guys see that?”
“See what?”
“The light.”
“Yeah, Indy,” Jazz calls distractedly, his attention still on the runes. “Lots of lights.”
“No, not those lights. The light. I mean, it’s nighttime now, right?”
“Right.” Jazz’s voice is nearer now. “What do you see, Indy?”
I can’t be sure, seeing as I’m looking at everything through the sparkling walls of my very pretty cage, but…
“There’s four different levels of light falling in this room. That wall you’re all looking at behind me… is that sunlight?”
Jazz glances back over his shoulder, but it’s Zac who jerks at my words, looking up at the sky. Above us is inky black night, just as it should be, and yet… there’s no mistaking the light falling on Zac, Ben and the wall they’re exploring.
Zac pushes up his sleeve and lets the light play across his skin.
“It feels like sunlight.”
“Okay, but that’s just that wall. See the one over there?” The tiredness falls away as my brain kicks into gear. “That’s moonlight shining on it. But there’s no moon out. And that wall next to it, the one we came in through, is pitch black. The last time I checked, the moon doesn’t act like a spotlight. At least some of that wall should be illuminated.” I wave toward the last wall, the one to my right. “And I don’t know what’s going on over there. It looks different every time I set my eyes on it.”
Right now, there are pretty red flowers growing out between the bricks. I glance away and back at it, only to see that it’s now moss-covered.
“What if they’re puzzles and we have to solve them?” Ben says.
“Like I said, it’s a test,” Zac replies.
I see Jazz’s hackles rise at the flippant response and jump in before he snaps.
“But what kind of test? What do these puzzles mean?”
“Sunlight and runes… they’re both druid magic. This one’s for me,” Zac jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the wall behind him.
“You’re not the only one who knows their way around a rune,” Ben points out, but he’s busy investigating the other walls. “Moonlight might mean shifter, I guess. Darkness could be vampire or sorcerer... but none of us are sorcerers, so it wouldn’t be a very fair test. The constantly changing wall, though… I don’t know what that’s about.”
“Yeah, you do,” Jazz says quietly. “It’s the same wall at different points in time. That’s clary magic.”
“Caster magic seems woefully underrepresented.” My joke falls flat.
“Don’t be so sure,” Jazz tells me. “You’re surrounded by it right now.”
Ben moves back to the edge of my cage.
“Where do we start?”
“Let’s each take a wall and see if we can’t solve this before dawn. I’m getting hungry,” Jazz grumbles.
They move apart, Zac back to the runes, Jazz to the moonli
t wall, and Ben to the changing one. I force myself to take a closer look at my gilded cage. If this is caster magic… well, I am half-caster. Surely I can do something to free myself, if only I don’t come over all sleeping beauty.
It feels like hours pass when it’s probably only been fifteen or twenty minutes.
Zac speaks suddenly, sounding sheepish.
“Uh, guys?”
“Yeah?” Ben’s focus is still on his own wall.
“I think I’ve got the solution, but… I’ll need some help.”
Jazz mutters something under his breath as he goes to stand by Zac’s side. Ben follows.
“How does it work?” Jazz asks.
“It’s like a runic knot. I can unknot it, but I need to activate or deactivate three runes at the same time. There, there, and there.” He points, and I can see the problem. One rune is high up on the left, the second is low down near the center of the wall, and the third is about shoulder height on the right.
“Why not do each of them in turn?”
“Won’t work, the knot will just end up tighter. It has to be all three at once. I need both of you if we’re going to get this done.”
I laugh when I work it out. “Way to make a point, crazy magic maze.”
The guys glance back at me with expressions ranging from amused to perplexed.
“You three have been arguing non-stop since we got here. The maze is teaching you the art of cooperation, or some bullshit like that.”
Jazz rolls his eyes. “Let’s just get this done. There’s still three more walls and that cage to deal with.”
I sit back down as the guys stare at the wall some more.
“Runic magic has never been my specialty,” Ben points out. “I’ve never even seen most of these before, let alone activated them.”
“These are not your standard locking runes,” Jazz adds. “I’m not sure I can work them.”
Zac takes their admissions in his stride. “I can help you. They’re tricky, but they’re not high-level runes.”
Jazz looks skeptical.
“Where the hell did you learn about runes? You’ve been under Matthias’s thumb for years.”
“All vampires have pasts. Plenty of them have magic pasts. Matthias wanted a son who knew how to use every advantage he had.”
“Tutored by the best of the undead, huh?”
“He was going to turn a high-level druid especially for the task, but Katya managed to talk him out of it. She found someone suitable who’d been changed a few centuries back.”
“Charming guy, your dad.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Come on, let’s start with this one.”
I prop my head up on my hand, my eyes drooping closed.
“Indy…? Indy? Indy!” My chin slips off my palm as I jerk awake.
“Huh? I’m up. I’m—” Really, epically sleepy. A nap sounds good right about no—
“Indy, no!”
I blink my eyes open again. Jazz is crouched just outside my cage, watching me with concern.
“You need to stay awake. Get up, walk around, keep talking to us.”
I want to but I’m so tired. My expression says it all.
His tone softens. “Indy, I know you want to sleep, but that’s the magic talking. You have to fight it. Come on. Up and at ’em.”
Behind me, Zac and Ben are deep in discussion over the wall.
“We’re almost ready,” Jazz promises me. “It won’t be long now until we have you out.”
I push to my feet with a yawn. “Alright, I’m up.”
“Walk around a bit. Get the blood flowing. Sing.”
“Sing?”
“Hard to fall asleep when you’re singing. And it doesn’t get drowned out by our arguing.”
I make a face. I’ve never been much of a singer. But at Jazz’s encouraging smile, I roll my eyes and start humming.
He cants his head to the side, puzzled. “What is that?”
I shrug and stop. “Some old folk song.”
“Hum away, maestro.”
“We’re ready to give this a go,” Zac calls over.
“Coming.” Jazz heads their way. “I can’t hear you, Indy,” he says over his shoulder.
I grumble but start humming once more as the three of them position themselves by the runes that Zac insists will solve the puzzle. As I hum, I pace back and forth, watching them.
“On three,” Zac says. “One, two, three…”
As one, they reach out and touch their respective runes. I can only see their backs, but it’s obvious that it’s a struggle for all of them, even Zac.
The runes on the wall turn from yellow to orange to a deep fiery red. Jazz swears loudly, Ben’s hand slips, and for a moment it looks like they’ve failed. The light dims from the runes and the sunlight fades. Then the runes begin to flash in sequence—some darken again, others stay lit, creating a pattern across the wall.
I stop humming and stare as the guys back away.
“What is that?”
“A Celtic knot,” Zac explains. “This one is a Trinity knot—see the three leaves intertwined—with an interlocking circle.”
“A three-part knot linked by a circle? This maze is a little… on the nose, isn’t it?” Ben muses.
A loud growl echoes around us, pushing all thoughts of knots from my mind.
I spin around. The moonlit wall is gone, revealing another of the maze’s chambers. Inside it is the largest wolf I’ve ever seen.
33
“Oh, fuck.” Jazz is the first to reach the moonlit door. “That’s a werewolf.”
He presses his hand against the opening, which flashes green, revealing a transparent barrier separating us from it. “And this is a sorcerer’s shield, paper-thin. It won’t hold for long.”
The wolf snarls and bares its teeth. I do not want to be trapped in here while it tears the three of them apart.
“What do we do?” Zac is clearly looking at Jazz when he asks.
“Uh…” Jazz hasn’t taken his eyes off the wolf.
“Come on. You’re the shifter. What’s the plan?”
Jazz clenches his hands into fists. “I guess I have to fight it.”
Ben speaks up. “You can’t take on a wolf. You’ve never shifted before. You’re no match for him.”
“What other choice do we have?”
He steels himself, takes the barrier at a run, and passes right through.
“Jazz!” Ben goes to run after him.
Zac grabs him by the arm and shoves him back. “No.”
“I’m not letting him fight that wolf alone.”
“He won’t. Wolves hate vampires for a reason. Protect Indy.”
And with that, he dives through the barrier after Jazz.
I move as close to the edge of my cage as I can, and Ben backs away to stand near me. The wolf sizes up his two opponents, lifts his head, and howls. That doesn’t sound like peaceful surrender to me. I hope he’s not calling for reinforcements. The maze wouldn’t stack the odds against us, would it?
A wave of fatigue counters the adrenaline, and I sway on my feet. “Ben? They’re going to be okay, aren’t they?”
He glances over his shoulder at me, doing a double-take. “Shit, stay awake, Indy. You can’t fall asleep.”
“I’m trying.” What I wouldn’t do for a cup of coffee right now.
Another growl from the wolf draws our attention back to the moonlit room. In that instant, the wolf attacks, going for Jazz. But at the last second, Zac leaps in front of him, and the wolf rears back.
“I don’t understand.”
“He can scent that Zac’s a vampire. A vampire’s bite is fatal to a shifter.”
“They can’t turn shifters?”
“No. That’s not to say they haven’t tried.”
I can see why vampires like Matthias would want shifters in their arsenal. But I guess two monsters in one body is one monster too many.
“How are they going to stop him? They don’t
even have a weapon.”
Ben doesn’t look worried. “Just watch.”
The wolf lunges at Jazz again. Jazz moves fast, diving out of the way but sending the wolf straight into the sorcerer’s shield that separates them from us. The shield shimmers ominously but holds. The wolf seems stunned, collapsing onto the floor with a snarl.
And then Jazz and Zac pull their trump cards. Zac drops to the ground and presses his hand to the floor. Roots burst up from the soil, twisting and entwining themselves around the struggling wolf’s body. Jazz rubs his hands together, producing a maroon spark that he throws at the wolf. It yelps and goes still.
“Shit, is it dead?”
“Just stunned. We don’t kill unless we have no choice,” Ben assures me.
The moonlit room shifts and changes. The ground churns, the wolf disappearing beneath it. The sorcerer’s shield crumbles away as the wall behind Jazz and Zac pushes forward, forcing them back into the main room with us.
Zac wipes the dirt from his hands. “That’s two down.”
“Wow.” My tiredness forgotten, all I can do is stare.
“Magic is a weapon, Indy,” Ben says softly. “Never forget that.”
I see his gaze stray to the ever-changing wall before he averts his eyes. He’s not ready yet, but he’ll have to be soon.
Meanwhile, Zac is staring at the dark wall, a determined set to his shoulders.
“How bad can it be?”
He walks toward it, reaching out to touch the dark stone. His body goes rigid, frozen in place.
“Zac?” Ben starts toward him.
“No.” Zac whispers the word, his hand falling to his side as he takes a stumbling step back from the wall.
“No!” He goes to his knees, his hand pressed to his head.
Jazz reaches him first, shaking his shoulder. “Zac, what’s wrong? What is it?”
“Stop it,” Zac says, but it’s clear he’s not talking to Jazz. “You can’t… not again. Stop!”
Whatever this test is, it’s playing out inside Zac’s head and nowhere else. But if I’m right and this whole setup is about us working together, then that makes no sense. Unless…
“Ben, you have to help him.”
He turns to me, incredulous. “Me?”