“Right.” I forced a thin smile to my face. “I don’t suppose you want to elucidate some of these puzzles with your wisdom?”
“If I could do that, I’d have passed through and gone about my day.” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, choosing her words. “It’s like I told you. I’ve seen some of them done. I’ve seen more than a few people fail at them, especially the more fatal ones. Which is how I knew to knock you down when you tugged on that rope.”
Tess beamed. “This is incredible. It’s an escape room.” She turned to us. “I’ve always wanted to do one of these.”
“Well, you got your wish now.” I stuffed my hands into my pockets so I wouldn’t set off any more lethal traps.
19
The strange woman nodded vigorously in agreement. I found myself drawn to the shape of her face. It was unique. I loved her high cheekbones and her sharp chin. “Yes, an escape room. Exactly. Thank you. I had forgotten the English word. It is an escape room, but not the kind to which you would send tourists and bored executives looking for a cooperative team-building exercise.”
Tess rubbed her lethal little hands together. “High stakes. My kind of odds.” She glanced over at one of the few pieces of furniture in the room, a large old wardrobe I thought might fall over if we sneezed on it. I could see the gears turning in her mind, and I put my hand on her shoulder. We’d almost been killed twice today. If we were going to go poking at anything else in this death trap, we were going to get as much information as possible first.
The stranger gave her an odd look. “It is not a game. We’re all in incredible danger right now. Vampires come through this place regularly, all the time, and it doesn’t matter that it’s early afternoon. The blackout curtains should be enough to prove that.” She gestured toward the windows that illustrated her point.
She wasn’t kidding. The blackout curtains and complete lack of natural light in the place made it perfect for vampires. And if she was the one bringing them up, then it was probably okay to be a little freer with our language.
Zarya blinked. “I thought the favelas didn’t have electrical service. If that’s true, how is this room lit?” She looked up at the light fixture in the ceiling.
I hadn’t even thought about it. Vampires didn’t need light. “We’ve seen them operating a drug operation in here. I don’t know why they need to run a drug ring, but those baggies mean something. And we saw people running in and out of here like it was a drug house, right?”
“True.” The girl wrinkled her nose. “It’s not enough for the vampires to kill people. They have to find a thousand other ways to destroy people’s lives.”
The fact that she was bringing the vampires up in the first place made me hesitate, though. “I suppose it gives them a stable, non-resistant, dependent population to feed from.” Something inside of me squirmed at the thought, but it wasn’t exactly new. Pimps controlled their work force the same way.
“Exactly.” Her dark eyes sparkled in triumph. “And they can use the secret passages or hiding places or whatever to keep the drugs a secret, so the locals don’t steal from them.”
It gave me the perfect opportunity to re-engage about the escape room. “Speaking of those. You’re positive you’ve never made it all the way through?”
“No, never.” She looked down for a moment. “I’ve tried several times before. I made it far sometimes, but I’ve never gotten all the way. The last time I tried, I was almost caught. It was the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life. I lost three friends that day.” No one could possibly mistake the sorrow in her voice.
I knew she didn’t mean they’d stopped speaking to her.
“So what are you doing here?” Kamila gave her a penetrating look. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m deeply sorry for your loss, but I have to know. Why would you come back after an experience like that?”
It would have taken a lot to get me to come back. I’d have had to lose more than just a few school friends. I’d have had to lose someone very close, like a lover or a sibling. Even then, I might have hesitated. I’d have definitely hesitated if I were human, trying to go up against a coterie of high-powered vampires. There was a lot to be said for bravery, but some fights just couldn’t be won.
She twisted her lips into something like a smile. “I wasn’t going to. I stayed away for a good while. I knew I couldn’t win the fight by myself. Even if I could make it through the puzzles without getting caught, how would I fight the vampires? All I had were silver bullets and a couple of silver knives.” She threw her hands up, a sign of her frustration. “Things change around here so quickly, I almost didn’t recognize where I was going, but this place, this building? It never changes.”
She looked right at me then, long enough that I knew it wasn’t an accident. Then she looked around at the others. “Then I saw you. I knew I had to come back. I would give it one more try, even if it meant it was the last time.” She cracked her bloody knuckles. “I’m looking forward to getting to the bottom of all this. For good or ill, I will find what I came for.”
She’s a fighter. I can use a fighter. I pushed the thought out of my head and opened my mouth to speak, but first Tess stepped forward, just a little. Her pretty face was drawn down into a frown. “Forgive me. I’m sorry, but how do you know who we are?” It was the same question that had been on the tip of my tongue. Tess just got to it first.
“Oh, come now. You’re all famous, aren’t you? In the right circles, anyway. You’re Kamila, and Zarya, and Tess, and Jason. You’ve been making quite the name for yourselves.” She winked, like there was some kind of big joke to all this we just hadn’t figured out.
I raised my eyebrows. “So, you know who all of us are, but we don’t know you.” I didn’t think it was unreasonable for me to find that off-putting.
“Where are my manners?” She pressed her hands to her chest. “I am Lila.”
“Okay. Well, Lila, since you’re here and you’ve seen at least a few of these things before, are you willing to help us out?”
She gave me a beatific smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”
I wasn’t sure how far I could trust her. This whole scenario, where some strange woman dressed like a wanna-be ninja shows up and saves the day, seemed bizarre to me. It felt like a setup. Then again, we wouldn’t get anywhere without Lila. She’d saved me from the cheese-slicer of doom, or whatever that trap was. She’d stepped in to save the tourist out there in the favela too, even if she’d been getting her ass kicked at the time.
In essence, she’d gone out of her way to save lives twice today. The balance of probability was that I could trust her, at least to some extent. How far I could trust her was another story; one only time could answer.
20
Lila was a lot of things. She had this air of cultivated whimsy that sometimes struck me as completely artificial, but one thing she didn’t do was waste time. As soon as she agreed to help us, she walked right over to one of the windows. “This is the first one I figured out.” She slipped her hand under the curtain. “I had to ask myself, ‘what would a vampire do?’ He couldn’t put his hand beyond the reach of the wall because he might burn his hand. But he wouldn’t want to make it too easy, either. They don’t want to show everything too easily.”
I heard something move, my eyes peeled for any changes in the room.
When she pulled her hand out, a drawer slid out of the one wall without windows. I couldn’t fathom how that had been wired or rigged. Maybe it had been built before wiring, who knew? I thought it best not to speculate. All five of us crossed the room to look at the drawer.
It was the strangest combination of modern and ancient I’d ever seen. The drawer front fit so perfectly with the wall, it looked seamless. That was almost normal compared to what was inside. The drawer was more like a tray, like those bedside trays that came out of the wall in fancy hotels. The tray part had an inverted pentagram on it, with writing in yet another language I couldn’t read. The design lo
oked positively antique, inlaid with massive rough gemstones that glittered with malignant purpose.
The whole thing was covered in what looked to be plexiglass. I assumed it was special bulletproof glass, the kind they used on the Popemobile.
Zarya sniffed at it. “The gemstones are almost certainly glass.” She looked over at me. “Can’t you feel it?”
I frowned. Wasn’t glass just sand? I concentrated for a moment, trying to make sense of the jumble of information in my head. “If I’m understanding what I just saw correctly, the gemstones aren’t fake. They’ve been altered, I think. I’m not sure how. I’d need more time, more practice—”
Tess touched my shoulder, pulling me out of my daze. “Hey. You did good, babe.”
Lila’s eyes were shining just a little bit, but she recovered her aplomb quickly enough. “You are correct. The gemstones have been altered. You have to follow the pattern exactly, and the pattern is never the same any time you play it.”
I looked up, but none of the others seemed to recognize the game. Maybe I was wrong?
Lila brushed her fingertips across the glass, and the stones lit up in a pattern of dots and dashes.
“Oh my god, it’s like that game.” When the others looked at me, I blushed. “It was a game we had when we were kids. Only that one came with sound, too.”
Lila frowned as the patterns came faster and faster. Her hands flew across the glass, and sweat broke out on her forehead as she struggled to keep up. Finally, though, the drawer snapped shut, and a panel opened in the floor. It wasn’t a deep panel, just maybe an inch deep, and it looked like a giant set of eight piano keys.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I moved to step on them, but Lila stopped me.
“It’s a trick. The last time someone did this, they lost their head.” She pointed up to where a blade had dropped from the ceiling. It hadn’t dropped far. It lurked, waiting for someone to screw up.
“So, what do we do now?” Tess gave her a look.
Lila bit her lip. “Someone else always did this part. I remember what it was, but . . .” She gestured toward the ceiling again.
The blade started to move, swinging on its slow, inexorable way down toward us. By the time it got to us, it would swing across the whole room. We would probably be able to get away, but we’d have to give up our plan from that point, and I wasn’t in the mood to fuck around.
The lower it got, the harder it would be to stop it. I jumped up, reaching the beam easily. It held my weight without flexing at all, so I continued with my plan, which was quite simple. I disconnected the blade.
I held it in my hands as I dropped down to the floor, landing lightly on my feet. Lila was confused. “You know, stopping the mechanism is usually enough.”
I put the blade on the floor. “Maybe. But now I’ve broken their toy. They can fix it, but at the very least, it’ll be a pain in the ass for them to put it back together again.”
“Victory through spite. I like it.” Kamila nudged me with her shoulder and gave me a little chuckle.
As she said that, a large section of wall opened, making me twitch with anticipation. So did Tess, Kamila, and Zarya. Lila just squared her shoulders and moved on. Apparently, we had moved on to the next stage, but we hadn’t crossed the threshold.
Kamila sighed as Lila walked up to a tower. I recognized this game from any number of bars, but the vampires had gone the extra mile with this one. A third of the tiles were made with glass. I knew, without anyone having to tell me, that if a single one of those tiles broke, we would all be killed.
Well, maybe not all of us. The door closed behind us. I suspected this one was a security measure intended to weed out the humans. I could feel the change in pressure as the door sealed itself. “Charming,” I muttered.
Lila swallowed hard. “I’ve survived this one before.” She exhaled, shook out her hands, and got to work.
It took her over an hour to finish, but she managed to keep the tower standing while doubling its height. Only when that height was achieved were we permitted to leave the chamber, which led back into the main room again.
“Something about this isn’t adding up,” I said. “We saw Mustache Guy come in here, and he definitely wasn’t dithering around with all of these party games and puzzles.”
“No, he was not.” Lila made a face.
Kamila looked at her and blinked. “No, he was not. So what gives? Is it me, or is this a hugely time-consuming process that’s getting us exactly nowhere?”
Another panel slid open, revealing a screen with a complex math problem. That was all. Lila paled. “This part is new. And I am not a mathematician.”
I grimaced. “I didn’t use to be half bad at it.” I approached the screen and applied myself to the problem, which, I noticed, had been written in English.
Kamila took up her side of the conversation again. “So, these vampires—and Mustache Guy who runs around in daylight so he probably isn’t an actual vampire—get in here and they’re gone in seconds. The rest of us have to go through a complex, time-consuming, arcane, and just plain silly process that keeps us running around in circles trying to get into this place. What are we missing here?”
Lila shrugged. “The key?”
Tess rounded on her. “You couldn’t have mentioned a key in the first place?”
Lila tried to look angelic. It didn’t work. “Listen, the primary vampires who use this facility have keys. The keys bypass the challenges. I don’t necessarily know how or why, but they do. The puzzles are intended to test anyone who isn’t a key holder. Anyone who shows up outside of that community. Anyone who comes for a visit, any drug customers who come to the house, any rivals, any uninvited guests, and anyone who’s been summoned. You have to remember, the vampires only started working together a few months ago, outside of their usual kin groups I mean. They’ve always been this paranoid. It’s only just now that you have to see and experience it.”
Everything was down to the war, wasn’t it? “So they put their friends and customers through this stuff too?” I asked. Most of my mind was still on this ridiculous math problem, but I could still follow the conversation.
I could see why they might include a problem like this. Vampires were elitist pricks on their best days. Most of their customers, at least the ones I’d seen, came from the favela. They wouldn’t want to risk any normal people getting access to their world, and people who had grown up without access to an education would have a hell of a time working on a problem like this.
“They actually summon people to the favela?” Zarya drew back a little. “Why would they do that?”
“They’re basically feudal lords.” Lila crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t all that well-endowed. She had a slim, athletic build, not unlike Tess. “They summon their vassals to their manor. If they want their people to come to them in the favela, then they’ll come here. Why do you think that tourist was here? He came to pay his tribute.”
I gaped. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I turned back to the work I was doing.
“The locals don’t like it, especially the ones who aren’t already part of the vampires’ organization. And the vampires don’t care about the locals because even the ones who are intractable are powerless. What will they do, run to the police?” She gave a bitter laugh. “No, the vampires know better.”
Tess shuddered. “That’s a terrible way to live.”
“It is.” Lila stood up straighter. “And I mean to help stop it. That’s why I came back.”
I hit submit. I knew I’d gotten the question right. I didn’t even look for another trap. But I did look for an opening into the vampires’ lair.
When another drawer opened up, this time with yet another test, I joined in the collective groan.
Kamila summed up our feelings. “A puzzle. I really am learning to hate puzzles.”
21
The drawer that opened was full of chains. I reached out and tugged on one, my weight on my back foot. I
wasn’t wrong to be wary. Evidently, the chains were rigged, this time with a blade that shot out from the wall and embedded itself on the opposite side. It vibrated there for a minute. Only the fact that I’d been expecting it let me survive. Otherwise, I’d have come close to losing my head.
Lila turned, frustrated. “We have to start over now.”
I grinned, relaxing a little. “No.”
“Really? ” She put her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed.
“No. Look at the drawer. It’s still open.” I gestured to the gaping drawer, still full of chains.
Tess examined the blade sticking out of the wall. “It’s not big enough to behead someone, unless it’s by sheer luck.” She looked back at us and moistened her lips. It might have been my imagination, but I thought her eyes might be shining a little brightly. “This wasn’t meant to kill Ferin. And it’s not silver, so it wasn’t ever meant to kill vampires. It was only ever meant to kill humans.”
“And if it wasn’t meant to kill vampires . . .” Kamila grinned and came to look in the drawer. “It must be a trap vampires can get through.”
Lila gasped, mouth rounding into a large “O”.
“You might have a point there,” she said.
The chains had all been tangled together like overcooked spaghetti. The puzzle had to be for us to untangle them, but the possibility always existed that we might not make it. We might very well be wasting our time with this, carefully sorting out each individual strand of metal while the sun got lower and lower in the sky. I refused to consider the possibility, but I couldn’t overlook it either.
“What happens if it gets dark while we’re still here?” Lila kept her voice even and calm, but she couldn’t completely hide the catch in her breath or the way she jumped at every little sound. She had plenty of good reason to be scared.
“I won’t let that happen.” I was getting closer to the end by this point. “If we leave, everything resets. If everything resets, we have to do it all again tomorrow, and we still stay too late.”
Forever Young - Book 3 Page 11