by C. B. Miller
Regaining consciousness, Chad groaned and then yipped in pain as he tried to move his dislocated arm. His eyes slowly focused on me as I dropped the athame next to his head and pulled him up by his bad arm.
“Hard way it is then,” I stated. “Off to see Eden, and when she’s done with you, she’ll give you over to Segane.”
Chad’s pale face turned alabaster as the blood drained away. Maybe he didn’t believe in Eden’s legendary powers or hadn’t really heard of her. He definitely heard of the necromancer vampire that ran Chicago, Segane. I should have led with that angle. Death is not an escape from him, and the more I watched Chad, the more I noticed that there was something unhinged about the guy.
“Care to talk now?”
His eyes were wide, pupils dilated, as he nodded.
“Good, now I see that we are starting to talk the same language here. Care to tell me what I want to know? We might be able to forget about this unfortunate encounter.”
“Whefurgepmbuhsmahsah”
“What?”
I loosened my hold on his throat slightly, now a bit worried that he was close to losing consciousness.
“Whefurgepmbuhsmahsah” It was a little louder with a phlegmy quality, but it sounded more distinct.
“Seriously, Chad, you need-”
He threw back his head and cried out, “Whefurgepmbuhsmahsah!”
Fire filled the room in a silent explosion.
ChapTer Twelve
I should have realized when he was able to perfectly repeat that mishmash of syllables that something was up.
The air rippled as reality ripped open in front of me. A black void lay behind the tear, and out of the meter-long gash poured a being of fire that flowed like lava engulfing Chad. I leaped away towards the wooden door as the flaming being merged with Chad. A halo of fire surrounded Chad, and heat washed over me in waves as droplets of fire dripped from Chad’s hands. The lower half of his face fell away like lava, exposing the bone beneath the raging flames consuming him. A year ago, this might have scared me, but this was like a normal Tuesday now.
Right now, I wish I tried to convince The Grey to reload my ring with some lightning. I’m tough, I’m fast, but when it came to magical fire, I was extremely flammable. The books and papers nearest to Chad ignited, sending streams of dark smoke into the air.
He smiled and raised his arm towards me. A chunk of flaming flesh fell to the floor just before a lance of fire streamed out towards me in a blur.
I yanked the closest shelving unit in front of me, blocking the stream of fire, and dropped it just as quickly as it instantly burst into flames. I dove to the right, down the narrow walkway between the storeroom shelves.
I stopped, twisted on my back foot, and lashed out with a back kick to Chad’s face as he turned the corner. My foot connected, and there was a bright flash of light and heat; I hit something, but it wasn’t his face.
Chad let out a horrid gurgling chuckle that crackled like a campfire, and as I withdrew my foot, I caught the fading remnants of some sort of barrier between us fading away. I pivoted, kicking low with the same leg this time. My foot collided with a barrier of solid flame as a burst of light nearly blinded me, and the heat threatened to melt through my shoe.
Chad threw his arms wide, and his chuckle turned into a full belly laugh. Flaming flesh dripped from his bones in small chunks. “Despair and weep. Your doom is at hand!” He bellowed.
I pulled the closest shelving unit down on him, and he bent under the weight of crystals, books, and boxes as they slammed into him. I turned and ran down the short passage, stopping at the wall. The storeroom wasn’t much bigger than the front, and I didn’t realize the shelves ran all the way to the wall. I hoped there was another path along the back wall, and now I was trapped. I turned to see Chad slide the burning wreckage off as he stood up. The aura of fire surrounding Chad made it hard to make out his details, yet I could see that most of his flesh had burned away from his body, leaving him a skeletal mockery. A flaming skeleton, but more bones than anything else now. Acrid smoke accumulated above us, and the heat threatened to choke me as more things caught on fire.
The flaming aura burned brighter, the flames nearly reaching me as they licked everything within five feet of him. Purple-black spheres burned where his eyes should have been as he screamed, “Burn! BURN!” His voice modulated like there were two or three people speaking at once through him.
No one has infinite power.
I grabbed the closest object next to me, a bookcase, and heaved it at him. It broke through the wall of fire, and I was rewarded by an umphf as the magical flames receded, and the shelf propelled Chad backward to the other side of the storeroom. I ran through the gap and pushed the next set of shelves over, climbing over them into the last aisle.
I could hear the wood cracking and splintering as Chad regained his feet, the tips of his flame aura poking up above the storage racks between us. Twin bolts of flame burned through the shelves between us, nearly striking me as I flattened to the floor.
“YOU. Will. BURN!” He howled as I jumped back to my feet and ran to the wooden door.
“Not today,” I yelled back and twisted the handle.
Locked.
I felt the heat on my back as Chad walked back into the main aisle. I kicked the door, throwing every bit of my strength into it, and bounced back. Its perfect wooden surface mocked me, untouched by my strike, and I turned to face Chad.
Every bit of his flesh had burned away, leaving him nothing more than a fiery skeleton. Chad’s arms were outstretched above his head, the flames licking the ceiling above and setting it alight, while he stared at me with those purplish-black orbs. “Submit to the cleansing! Submit to the end!” He took a step closer to me and clenched his right hand into a fist in front of him. “Accept your fate. Embrace their perfection.” He commanded.
I laughed at him.
I couldn’t help it.
He gasped and recoiled at my laughter, his strange eyes doubling in size as I clutched my belly and continued to laugh.
He rose back up to his full height, opening his skeletal maw to speak, and I propelled myself at him. Closing my eyes, I lowered my shoulder and hit him in the chest. The scent of my hair and flesh burning filled my nose as I drove him into the counter in the front room. His spine cracked against the hardwood edge of the counter, bending him over in the wrong direction, and I jumped back.
Chad’s flame aura flickered and dimmed to a candle’s strength as I patted out the small fires in my hair and clothes.
“No. No. But they said….” Chad whimpered.
I wasn’t sure who ‘they’ were, but this guy tried to kill me, and I’m pretty sure whoever it was he’s talking about wouldn’t have my best interests at heart. I picked up the cash register and walked around the counter. Malevolence flowed from Chad as I approached, and he waved his arms futilely to keep me at bay. I slammed the antique into his skull, shattering both in the process, and the flames surrounding the wizard abruptly ceased.
Beyond him, the backroom was engulfed in flames.
The amulet around my neck buzzed, and I could feel it pulling me through the fire and to the door. The door hadn’t even budged after I put everything into kicking it down. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be on the other side of the fire trying to break into what I assume is a magically protected door. The ceiling was on fire, and the smoke was thick enough that I had to duck to keep from inhaling it now.
The buzzing grew into a loud hum.
There was something big going on here, and I’m this close already.
I slid over the counter and barged through the fire, almost stopping in surprise at the wide-open door on the far side of the storeroom. Fire caressed me as I raced past through the doorway and down the staircase into the cavernous darkness below.
Chapter Thirteen
The stone steps turned into a sloped ramp after twenty feet and twisted to the left as I followed it for over a minute down. Pale green
torches lit as I approached, casting a sickly pall over the crudely dug passage that was too long and too deep for a building of this size. The tunnel was wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side and tall enough I didn’t have to duck as I crept along its path. The floor leveled out, and the tunnel widened into a small earthen room. A chill danced across my skin as I halted in front of a set of twin black stone doors. Glyphs in white paint covered the doors with no discernable reason, and neither door had a handle. Instead, on each door, a white hand was painted at eye level.
“Well, well, now what have you been up to, Bertha?” I whispered.
Grateful for the reprieve, I checked my wounds. Completely ignoring pain was a blessing and a curse. Pain exists for a reason; it tells you when something is wrong with your body. One of the first lessons I received about being a wight was that we needed to check our wounds after a battle and assess the damage with our own eyes. Many wights have fought on, only to be taken down by a minor injury that, left unchecked, turned into a mortal wound.
My clothes were singed, and a few places had holes burned through them. I had minor burns all over my flesh, but nothing that would stop me in the near future or was a concern to my long term health. I breathed out a sigh of relief that my keys and wallet hadn’t fallen out during my scuffle with Chad. The last thing I needed was to be without a car when I got out of here.
If I can find a way out, that is.
I stepped closer, my hands hovering over each of the painted handprints for a second before I took a step back. I grabbed the amulet around my neck, “Ok, you lead me here. Now what?”
The silence was deafening as the torches burned silently in their sconces, their flames moving and dancing to a wind I couldn’t feel. It would have been nice if Stanley or Eden had given me even the slightest hint as to what this thing did. Upstairs, the pull to go down further into Bertha’s haven had been so powerful, and now that I’m here, it’s nothing.
It’s not like I’m going to sneak past whatever wards that are on this door.
“Alrighty then.”
I slapped my hands onto the doors and pushed. My skin tingled, and the air pressure suddenly dropped as the doors swung wide. The crude earthen tunnel continued on another fifty feet and turned to the left, opening up into a small kitchenette bathed in that sickening omnipresent pale green torch light.
The lime-colored walls were sponge-painted with a pattern that reminded me of my uncle’s place that was forever stuck in the 1990s. The uneven floor was bare in places where the laminate floor had peeled away, revealing patches of stone underneath. The small countertop was overflowing with dirty pots and pans, stacked precariously high. There were far too many to have been used at once on the small two-burner stove tucked in the corner. The sink was filled with the carcass of an animal that was definitely not of this world. Like a dog with octopus arms attached to its back, it had been skinned, gutted, and then left to float in its own ‘juices.’
Soft sobs came from underneath the small table in the center of the room. I crouched down to see a woman curled up in the fetal position, softly weeping into her hands. Her clothes were torn and dirty, and were unable to hide multiple bruises all over her pale skin.
There was one thing for certain. This wasn’t Bertha. Bertha was an imposing woman, unlike the wraith-thin woman underneath the table. Uncertainty sucked away my earlier bravado. Do I help this woman? Can I help this woman?
I scanned the room, and the only other exit was a thin wooden door on the far side. There was nowhere else for anyone to hide, but I really didn’t want to leave someone behind. I crept closer, stopping a few feet from her.
“Miss?” I whispered.
She continued to sob uncontrollably in her hands, and her body trembled with each wail.
“Hey. Hey miss, did Bertha do this to you?” I snapped my fingers to get her attention, and I saw one yellowed eye peer through her fingers at me.
“Mother? Do you know where Mother is?”
I resisted jerking away in surprise at her eyes and the light, pleasant tones of her voice. I shook my head slowly, “I’m looking for Mother too. Do you think we can find her together?”
The woman spun on her belly and crawled out toward me. The fetid stench of her body hit me like a brick as she came face to face with me. The whites of her eyes were gone, leaving her eyes solid yellow except for the barest black pinpoint in their center. Something moved beneath her skin like an insect scuttling just under the surface across her back for a moment before disappearing. Her face lit up as she smiled with a mass of blackened and broken teeth.
“You are looking for Mother?”
I nodded.
Mother had to be Bertha, or at least the person pulling Bertha’s strings. The stench rolling off her was a unique odor, one that I couldn’t quite place. This woman might have been human, maybe even a wizard at one time. Whatever was done to her by Mother must have twisted her into this thing. Maybe I could use that to my advantage somehow. I really didn’t want to fight a bunch of wizards in their home either.
She sat back onto her knees and rubbed her hands together. Eying me for a moment, she turned to look back at the door and pointed. “I think she’s back there, but the others won’t let me see her. Not without… a friend.” Her head whipped back toward me. “Are you my friend?”
“I can be your friend. But, to be your friend, I’ll need to know your name.”
She bit the meat of her hand and eyed me nervously for a few seconds. “I don’t know if I should.” She mumbled around her hand.
Suppressing my own concerns, I smiled at her. “Friends know each other by name, right? My name is Kaedin.”
“Kaedin…”
She pulled her hand out of her mouth, and a blackened tooth came with it. The flesh around the tooth was scabbed over. After a few heartbeats, she smiled wide, revealing a mouth full of broken and rotting teeth. “I’m Rebecca.”
“Hi, Rebecca. Nice to meet you. Now that we’re friends, do you think the others will let us see Mother then?”
She jumped up to her feet and squealed in joy. “Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes!” Twirling around in a circle, she bounded off to the door and rested her hand on it. “Come on, Kaedin. I’m sure Mother is going to be so excited to meet you!”
She opened the door, and it led into a living room of sorts.
More of the strange green flame torches, along with seven wooden chairs and two couches, lined the walls. One was beige broken-down couch with numerous stains on it. On the other was a faded green couch covered in a thick mass of spider webs. Next to the man-sized cauldron in the center of the room was an overstuffed black leather chair covered in the same webbing. Bulges the size of large cats or small dogs dotted the webbing.
Sigils and other strange markings covered every surface, from floor to ceiling, and I gauged by their dark crimson color that they were drawn in blood. The markings were a dark emerald that looked slick and pulsed in the torchlight.
Rebecca danced over to the boiling cauldron and peered inside before wrinkling her nose and crossing the room to the opening on the other side. The massive cast iron monstrosity was five feet tall and nearly as wide, decorated with a spider motif, and filled nearly to the brim with viscera and blood. The cauldron was steaming, although there was no obvious source of heat. I broke out in a sweat as the heat emanating from the cauldron filled the room, but I still felt chilled. Something inside it moved, and I had a sense that whatever was inside wasn’t quite dead but wasn’t quite alive either. It was something in between.
As I passed by, a hand floated to the surface before spreading its fingers and sinking back into the abyssal sludge. I hurried away from the cauldron, nearly tripping on a chair and into the stained couch in the process. The stench of bodily fluids coming from the couch was overwhelming, and I fought down the rising bile as my stomach twisted in a knot as I followed Rebecca into the hallway.
I stopped and turned back towards the room at the opening, trying
to memorize as much of the room as possible. Magic meant nothing to me, but maybe The Grey or one of Eden’s contacts would understand what was going on here. Whatever Bertha and circle were up, it was nothing good.
“Hurry, we’re going to be late!” Rebecca called out to me urgently.
I thought about pulling out my cellphone and snapping some pictures, but there was something in Rebecca’s voice that made me discard the notion. I turned back, and she was at the end of the hallway, waving at me to hurry. The passage was maybe fifty feet long, with two wooden doors on each side before ending at a wrought iron door. Rebecca stood to the side of the door and pointed at its handle. In the center of the door, a twisted iron spider with its legs outstretched.
Cautiously, I padded down the hallway, passing each door in the hallway, prepared for something to leap out at me until I reached Rebecca.
She smiled at me and stood like a rod, and pointed at the spider legs. “It must have begun already, so they aren’t here to let us in. I’m sure Mother won’t mind if we join in late, though.” She whispered. Rebecca’s face drooped for a moment and then brightened. “I can’t open the door, but you can. That’s why I needed a friend – at least that’s what they told me.” Her lips pursed together, and brows furrowed for a moment before her smile returned.
I looked at the handle and back to her expectant face. The ornate grip was a spider the size of my hand, its belly facing me, and head bent to look at whoever grabs it. I wasn’t quite sure how to grab it, and after several hesitant attempts trying to figure out how to place my hand on the handle, Rebecca gently grabbed my wrist. Her hand was feverishly warm against mine as she pulled it back. “Like this,” she said and held her hand out with the back facing me. “So she can wrap around your hand.”
And this is how I lose a hand.