by Jamie Davis
Taylor walked up and pulled out a flashlight. She aimed it at the jumble of equipment stashed in the closet and smiled. “This is perfect. Miranda, pull the cart over by the entrance. I should be able to get everything I want to grab to fit onto the cart.”
Five minutes later, they rolled the overloaded cart back through the lobby to the entrance. As they did, Quinn looked back over her shoulder at the double doors. They led to the long hallway she’d taken to get to the basement level and the caverns below when rescuing Taylor a month ago. Her thoughts went back to everything that happened that night.
While Quinn was lost in thought, Clark, Taylor, and Miranda unloaded the cart, stashing everything in the sedan’s trunk.
Clark nodded and shut the trunk lid. “Let’s get going before someone shows up to check on the place.”
“We can’t leave yet,” Quinn said.
“Why not?” Clark asked.
“The Ruby Heart was down there the last time we were here. There’s a chance it might still be down there now, hidden where I left it. If they didn’t find it, that thing’s a powerful artifact, and we might be able to use it to help us in our search for VirSync and their new operation.”
Miranda shook her head. “It’s an object of evil, Quinn. We can’t use it the same way they can. The magic doesn’t work that way.”
“We have to check.” Quinn looked at Clark, pleading her case. “If it is still there, isn’t it better that we grab it and stash it somewhere we can keep it safe and out of their hands?”
Clark stared back at her for several seconds before he gave the barest nod. “It would be nice to deny them access to that particular source of power.”
Quinn resisted the urge to clap. She had regretted not finding a way to get the magical gem out of the caverns the last time she was here. Myles Hickman and the others had managed so much evil using it.
Clark locked the car’s doors again with a click of the key fob. The car chirped in response. “Let’s go see if there’s even power for the elevator down there. It might be a moot point if we can’t get down to the caverns. Let’s hurry up, though. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.”
Clark once again led the way, followed by Miranda and the two eighteen-year-olds. Soon they were making their way down the long basement hallway. Most of the doors lining the corridor stood open. A lot of them had been locked when they’d been here before.
Quinn stole a look inside the room that used to hold all the weapons the last time she was here. That room was cleaned out. Most of the others still held odds and ends, but nothing they found useful enough to take with them. They reached the morgue-like room at the end of the hall. This was where the comatose bodies of the candidates being prepared for possession had been held. The doors on either side of the room were open, giving them easy access to the hallway on the far side.
Quinn couldn’t wait any longer. She pushed past Clark and raced ahead to see if the elevator to the caverns below still worked. She beamed a smile back at the flashlights of her companions as the elevator hummed to life when she punched the button.
“Quinn, you need to be careful,” Clark admonished her. “You still don’t know what you’ll find down here. Even though the upper floors were deserted, we don’t know what was left down below.”
“It’s obvious the place is completely deserted at this point, Clark. Can’t you feel the emptiness? Plus, there’s something else about it. There’s nothing, uh, I don’t know, nothing wrong with it anymore. It’s like it’s clean now.”
Clark shook his head to disagree but didn’t say anything as the elevator doors opened and everyone stepped inside.
When they reached the rocky caverns below, everything was dark. Quinn found an electrical switch on the wall beside the elevator and tried it. To her delight, the string of overhead lights clipped to the ceiling down the long passage turned on, filling the cave with a warm yellow glow. They all put their flashlights away and started down the tunnel.
While there was no wrongness in the building above, that wasn’t the case down here. Quinn’s back itched between her shoulder blades as if someone stood behind her watching what she was doing from a hidden place. Her hand moved to her Bowie knife, which was still hanging in its inverted sheath beneath her right arm.
“We should probably check out the cavern,” Quinn said, despite the sense of foreboding she felt. When no one answered her, she started down the tunnel.
Chapter Six
The sickly-sweet fetid odor of decay met them about halfway to the cavern.
“What is that?” Taylor asked.
“It’s not good,” Clark replied.
Miranda nodded. “That’s the smell of death.”
They neared the opening to the large cavern that had held the pedestal and magical brazier. The acrid odor had grown into something so tangible it could almost be tasted. Quinn’s stomach lurched in response. She fought down the burning taste of bile in her throat as she regained control.
Then they reached the entrance and stared into the cavern.
The brazier atop the stone pedestal had been removed. Something else had been left behind, or rather, many somethings, piled all around it.
Taylor gasped and choked back tears. “Oh, my God, no.”
Quinn didn’t blame for her reaction. The jumble of bloated bodies lying around the pedestal were in various states of decay. Even through the rictus of death, though, she could recognize most of them. They had been her fellow candidates. She’d trained next to most of them at one time or another. They’d all been sent into the VR world created by VirSync to assassinate the company’s opponents.
“They killed them, Quinn,” Taylor whispered. “They killed all of them as if they were nothing but trash.”
A voice sounded from the air around them, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. “They were trash. We had no need for them anymore.”
Quinn recognized the voice. She scanned the room, trying to find the source. It was the demon-possessed candidate Jared. She thought she’d killed him during their escape a month ago.
Apparently not.
“Where are you, Jared? Show yourself.”
Laughter filled the room and echoed off the walls. “You can’t see me. No one can see me. I warned you that you wouldn’t be able to be rid of me so easily. I still remain. I still have power over this place.”
Miranda sketched a glowing rune in the air with a fingertip, then hissed in response to the spell she’d cast. “It’s the spirit of the demon, released when you killed the body it used as an earthly vessel. Either they couldn’t assign it to another body or chose not to.”
Clark smirked. “My guess is they chose not to. It’s just the kind of punishment for failure demonkind likes to use to make an example of one of their own.” The hunter looked around the room and raised his voice. “You’re a cautionary tale for the next of your ilk who passes by, aren’t you? You’re a warning. You have no body to inhabit, and you can’t return to the netherworld. You’re stuck somewhere between.”
“So what if I am? That doesn’t mean I’m powerless.”
Clark laughed. “I’m betting it does. Quinn, you came down here to look for something. Go and search. We’ll wait here for you to come back. Hurry up; we need to leave.”
Jared had fallen silent. Still, the memory of the disembodied voice creeped Quinn out. She hurried across the cavern and went out through a gap in the far side to a series of caves where she’d hidden the Ruby Heart the last time she was here. After scrambling through the caves and passages, Quinn reached the shallow pool of water where she’d submerged the magical gemstone to hide if from the cultists.
Bending down, Quinn groped around the bottom of the smooth stone basin for the fist-sized ruby. She searched for several minutes until she was drenched from flailing around in the water. It wasn’t there. Myles and the others must have found it and taken it with them when they left.
She trudged back to the main cavern, w
here the others waited amidst the bodies strewn about the stone floor. She shook her head when her companions looked her way. “It’s gone. They found it.”
Jared’s voice cackled with delight. “Of course, they found it. Each of the candidates was tasked with searching. They were all told that only the one who found the gem was worthy of leaving the cavern alive. The others were killed one at a time by my brethren.”
Clark shook his head. “Come on, Quinn. There’s nothing more you can do here. Let’s leave this creature to his solitary existence.”
“Oh, Hunter, there’s no leaving this place for you or your companions.” Jared’s cackling laughter echoed around the cavern.
A groan near Quinn’s feet caught her attention. She stifled a scream as the body at her feet jerked to life and rolled over to stare up at her with bulging black eyes.
Miranda shouted, “The demon is using necromantic magic. It’s animating the bodies to attack us. Everyone, get out before they all come to life!”
It was too late for that, though. Ten of the corpses started moving, lurching and stumbling as they climbed to their feet. The zombies didn’t move very fast, but there were so many of them that there was no way for Quinn and the others to avoid them. That slowed them down long enough for the remainder of the slowly reanimating bodies to reach them.
Clark had pulled out his gleaming silver short sword and started laying about, chopping at the undead around him.
Quinn drew her Bowie knife and turned in time to thrust it into the bloated belly of the reanimated body reaching for her.
A flood of putrid fluid and gas rushed from around her blade, drenching her arm and causing her to retch as she pulled her knife back to stab it in again and again.
The smell was bad enough, but the worst part was, the thing wasn’t going down.
“How the hell do I kill these things?”
Across the cavern, much closer to the entrance, Clark called, “Stab ’em in the head or decapitate them.”
His enchanted blade sliced downward to hack the top half of a skull away from its body. The undead creature slumped to the ground.
Quinn switched her grip. She drove her knife upward through the bottom of the corpse’s chin and into its brain from below.
Just as with Clark’s opponent, this one went limp and fell back to the stone floor. Two more had risen just behind it, though. They shuffled forward, reaching for Quinn.
By the entrance, several of the zombie creatures moved toward Miranda. She wove her hands in the air in front of her, and twin bursts of energy lanced outward from her right palm toward the undead. The power of the energy charge knocked the two shambling figures over backward, where they flailed on the ground, trying to get back to their feet.
“There’s got to be a way to remove the animation spell,” Miranda shouted. “Keep them off me while I try to find out how the spirit is controlling them.”
“Easier said than done,” Taylor yelled, dodging between two of the roaming corpses. “These things aren’t speedy, but there are a lot of them. Plus, they’re gross and really smelly.”
The tech witch punched one of the creatures as it reached for her. The blow had no visible effect, and the zombie clutched her arm before she could pull it back, tight enough that she couldn’t get away.
“Agh, it’s got me!”
Quinn kicked another of the animated corpses and knocked it off balance. It tumbled into two of its brethren, and they fell over. “Hang on, Taylor. I’ll be right there.”
She charged in the direction of her friend, spinning and twisting to avoid the grasping hands of the zombies reaching for her. The whole time, Jared’s cackling filled the room.
One zombie rose directly in front of her and Quinn charged straight at it, bringing her Bowie knife around from the left to plunge into the thing’s ear. The blow skewered the skull, with the point coming out the other side.
It fell, but the bone trapped her blade, putting her off-balance as she tried to pull the knife free.
Taylor screamed again.
Quinn snarled and placed her black-booted foot on the reanimated corpse’s face while she retrieved her knife with a yank.
It was just enough of a distraction to let another pair of zombies come up behind her and grab Quinn’s shoulders as she stood. They pulled her back two steps, each one holding onto an arm and tugging as if trying to tear her in half.
They were stronger than she expected dead people to be. They might be slow, but they didn’t lack in the muscle department.
“Hang on, Taylor,” Quinn called. “I’m trying to get there.”
Clark yelled, “I’ll get her. You get to Miranda so she can try to dispel whatever magic is reanimating them.”
“Got it.” Quinn grunted. It took all her strength to keep her shoulders from being pulled out of their sockets.
Concentrating, Quinn dialed up her stamina bar and drew on it to enhance her strength. The green bar drained by half, but she sensed the fight’s balance shifting.
Using her surging power, Quinn pulled from both sides, slamming the zombies together in front of her. Their heads smacked into each other with an audible crunch, and the bodies fell in a heap to the floor.
Scratch two more zombies.
Quinn searched for the others as she moved toward Miranda.
Clark was true to his word. He had reached Taylor and was cutting down the zombie holding her. He then shoved the girl into the tunnel, where Miranda pressed outward with both palms, holding back four zombies with a sort of forcefield. Their legs moved and pushed, but they made no progress against the witch’s invisible barrier.
Taylor darted forward, bending over to scoop up a large stone the size of a frozen chicken. With both hands raising the rock over her head, the girl ran up behind the first of the four zombies facing Miranda’s hasty force field. She bashed its skull until it dropped and moved on to the next one in line.
The second zombie turned in place to face her but moved too slowly to stop her from crashing her improvised weapon down on its head. It collapsed in a heap.
By this time, the final two zombies with Miranda turned and noticed the easier target in Taylor. They shambled her way, arms outstretched.
Taylor backpedaled, trying to put some distance between her and the two zombies advancing on her. “Uh, Clark? I think I need you again.”
“Can’t right now,” Clark called. He’d become entangled with three zombies, who’d closed in on him so he couldn’t swing his sword effectively. “Quinn, can you get to her?”
“I’ve got her.” Quinn charged, dodging around two more zombies while reaching for her. She still had her enhanced strength and speed, so getting past them was simple.
Quinn ran up behind the two zombies advancing on Taylor and lowered her shoulder. She slammed into the closest creature from behind, sending it sprawling to the floor. Then she turned to the other one and swung at it, jabbing her Bowie at its head.
Somehow the creature dodged the incoming blow. Her knife missed its head, sliding into the beast’s neck instead.
That didn’t kill the thing; it only seemed to make it angrier.
Quinn remembered what Clark told her at the beginning of this fight, and she began sawing her blade back and forth while she reached out to grab a handful of greasy black hair.
The zombie leaned toward her, its teeth gnashing, trying to get at her flesh.
Quinn redoubled her efforts and was rewarded when her blade parted the skull from the rest of the body. It collapsed in a pile of twitching limbs.
She turned to Miranda. “What do you need us to do?”
“Just keep them busy enough so they can’t get to me while I concentrate on what I sense in the background. I think I can interrupt whatever magic the demon is using to control the bodies.”
Quinn nodded and stood beside Taylor, who still had her rock raised and ready to defend the witch.
“Nice choice of a weapon, T.”
“Yeah, all I know i
s Clark is getting me a sword or a pistol or something so I don’t have to wait for someone else to come and rescue me. This damsel-in-distress crap is not for me.”
More of the zombies began to reanimate. “Hey, Miranda, is it possible that Jared can only control a few of these things at a time?”
“That makes sense, especially since he’s in spirit form. We need to do something to distract him so he can’t jump from body to body and get them to move.”
Quinn noticed a chill against her chest as she stared at the latest of the animated corpses rising to its feet. A sort of hazy film hung around it that drifted away as soon as the zombie was on its feet. The nearly transparent blob floated over to another body, and that one started to move.
“I can see him,” Quinn hissed to Miranda and Taylor. “My amulet is enabling me to see him move around and create the zombies.”
“We have to stop him from reanimating any more of them,” Miranda declared. “I can stop him if we can pin him in one place.”
Quinn reached up and pressed the silver oval of her hunter amulet to her chest. The icy-cold of the magical charm burned her skin, but she ignored it. She scanned the room, focusing on following the thing she was now sure had to be the demonic spirit that had formerly inhabited Jared.
As it floated around the room bringing more corpses to life, Quinn noticed it never flew too close to the stone pedestal in the center. In fact, the short stone column had a sort of hazy power of its own when she stared at it while concentrating with her amulet. When Jared floated closer, tendrils laced out from the pedestal in his direction.
“I have an idea, Miranda. Get ready with your trapping spell or whatever. I think we can somehow tie the demon’s spirit to the residual magic in the pedestal.”
“Good plan,” Miranda said. “Can you get him close enough? I can seal him to the magic there if you can.”
Quinn nodded and focused on her amulet while she moved toward the pedestal. She had to dodge zombies on the way, and as she neared the rock formation, finishing off the final one standing in her way, magical tendrils laced out in her direction. Instead of shying from them, Quinn welcomed them, using her amulet to grab them.