by Jim Butcher
Hopefully this tunnel went somewhere and he hadn’t just entombed himself beneath hundreds of feet of solid rock. Escaping one horrible death to suffer another wasn’t his idea of a good time.
First things first; he needed light again. He felt around ahead of him until he located the torch he’d been carrying, then reached deep inside and tried to call forth a bit more power to light it up.
Nothing happened.
Uh-oh . . .
He tried again, but the well had run dry. The bolt of power had depleted his energy reserves. He wouldn’t be able to conjure up a light for some hours now, not until his body had a chance to rest and regenerate its energy stores.
Crawling around down there in the dark was not his idea of fun, but at the same time he didn’t want to just sit still and wait for his mojo to return. If any of the Mayans had survived the rock fall—and why not, they were already dead, right?—they could have been digging through to him at that very moment. He didn’t want to be there when they managed to dig themselves out from under.
Best to keep going and look for a way out while he still had the strength to do so.
Inch by inch, foot by foot, Logan slithered forward as best he was able. The darkness was absolute, and he began to feel like it was a living thing, surrounding him, hemming him in, pressing against every inch of his body until he wasn’t certain where it ended and he began. He wanted to scream and shout in fear and frustration but was afraid the second he opened his mouth the darkness would swoop down inside him, diving deep into the depths of his very soul, and that would be the end of him.
So he gritted his teeth and clamped his mouth shut and kept crawling, ever forward.
After what seemed like forever, the tunnel slowly grew wider, enough that he could get up on his hands and knees and move forward a bit more expeditiously, but the lack of fresh air combined with his physical exertions soon pushed him into a haze of dizziness despite the extra space. All he wanted to do was lie down in the middle of the tunnel and go to sleep, but something inside told him that if he gave in to that urge, he might never rise again, so he pushed on, moving forward little by little. He lost track of time and then lost track of the fact that he’d lost track of it, until it felt like all he’d ever done was crawl forward on his hands and knees, feeling for a way out.
When the tunnel floor disappeared from beneath him, it was almost a relief.
He reached forward with his left hand, just as he had a thousand, maybe ten thousand times before, except this time there wasn’t anything there to hold him up. His hand went down, down, down farther still, and by that time the weight of his body had tipped forward and he fell right out of the end of the tunnel he’d been crawling along and dropped into nothingness.
He let out one short, sharp cry and then slammed into the stone floor many feet below, knocking himself unconscious in the process.
Logan woke to excruciating pain, his right leg broken in two places. He screamed when his hand accidentally brushed against the shaft of bone sticking out of his shin and promptly passed out again.
Time passed.
When he came to a second—third?—time, he found that though his leg was still broken, his pain had settled into a low-grade hum in the back of his mind. He wondered, briefly, if he was dying. Had he perhaps lost so much blood that his body no longer had the capacity to feel the pain? If that was the case, then why was he thinking so clearly?
It didn’t make sense, and so, with no facility to puzzle it out, he just let it go.
He focused instead on the cavern around him, which, he realized with no small shock, he could actually see. A thin shaft of moonlight was shining into the chamber from a hole in the ceiling high above. He glanced upward to its source and then followed it down as it slashed through the darkness to land on the face of a figure seated on the other side of the room. Logan jerked in surprise at the sight and was struck with such an overwhelming sense of danger that he raised his hand in front of his face to shield himself.
When several seconds passed and the figure failed to move or speak, he sheepishly lowered his hand and gave the other a longer look.
Whoever he’d been, it was clear he’d been dead a long time. Like the warriors in the hall of the necklace, this man’s corpse had shriveled and blackened with age. His lips had pulled back from his teeth in a death’s-head rictus, and his eyes had sunk so deep in his skull that they were all but invisible. He was dressed in the remains of some kind of primitive robe, and a necklace of small round stones hung across his chest.
Logan stared at the necklace, a suspicion growing in the back of his mind.
Those aren’t stones . . .
The notion that he’d found the missing eyeballs of the dead Mayan warriors in the hall above wouldn’t go away.
His gaze drifted from the necklace to the throne on which the man sat. What he’d first taken as whitish stone revealed itself in the moonlight to be a massive collection of human skulls. Iron bands, looking strangely fresh after what was certainly ages beneath the surface, bound the man’s extremities to the throne itself.
He might once have been a king, but he ended his life as a prisoner, Logan thought, trapped down here where the darkness dwells, just like I am now.
He must have drifted off for a bit, for when Logan came to again he found that he was a bit closer to the throne than he’d been before. Had he crawled forward in his sleep?
The idea was a bit unnerving, he had to admit, but not as unnerving as the sense that the man—thing?—on the throne seemed to have moved since he’d last looked at it. Where before it had appeared to be sitting up and staring straight ahead, now it appeared to be leaning forward, its head cocked a bit to the side so that it could look directly at him.
It’s a trick of the light, he told himself, but deep in his heart he didn’t quite believe that.
Not really.
But as with his injuries, his mind didn’t really want to dwell on who, or what, he thought the thing on the throne really was.
Logan was looking about in the dim light, searching for another way out besides the hole in the ceiling three stories above, when he heard the voice.
Simon . . .
It was faint, almost at the edge of his hearing.
At first he thought he’d imagined it, but after a moment he heard it again.
Simon . . .
“Who’s there?” he called out, and was shocked at how weak his voice sounded even to his own ears. It was little more than a whisper itself.
I’m here, Simon.
“Hale? Is that you?”
No. That murdering bastard deserted you, Simon, left you to suffer for his own mistake.
The thought sent a spike of red-hot anger pouring through Logan’s frame, jolting him a bit into greater awareness.
“That fucking bastard,” he mumbled to himself, no longer wondering just who he was talking to, but focusing instead on the subject of the conversation.
Yesssss. He must be punished for what he’s done to you, stranding you here.
Logan laughed, a high, cackling sort of laugh with more than a touch of madness in it.
“Punished?” he said. “I’m not going to punish him. I’m going to rip his lungs out and kill him.”
The voice was silent as Logan went on mumbling for a bit, ranting really, talking about how he was going to fuck one Jonathan Hale nine different ways from Sunday if he ever made it out of this godforsaken place . . .
I can help you with that, you know.
“Help me with what?”
Getting out of this forsaken place. Isn’t that what you just said you wanted? To get out of this place so you can make that bastard pay . . .
Another laugh. “In case you haven’t noticed, my leg’s pretty messed up. I’m probably bleeding to death right now and I don’t even know it. Probably making you and everything else in this place up in my mind, just figments of my imagination as my brain gets starved for oxygen and my veins pour out on the ground
.”
I assure you, I am quite real.
For whatever reason, Logan believed him. And he played the only hand he saw before him.
“Okay, then; pop my bones back into place, knit my flesh back together, and we’ll get out of here. The two of us, together. You help me, I’ll help you. Deal?”
There was the sound of a gasp in the darkness, as if the other couldn’t quite believe what he’d just heard, and then a quick succession of rapid pops.
Almost like iron clasps being broken under immense force . . .
Logan had a second to wonder just what he’d done, and then the figure from the throne was bending over him, its bony teeth shining in the darkness, the eyes on the necklace around its throat all turning as one to stare at him in horror.
This won’t hurt a bit, the other said, and then a hand clamped itself over one side of his face as a searing heat burned itself deep into his flesh and his head was filled with the triumphant laughter of a being who should have remained locked in its prison deep beneath the earth until time itself passed all meaning, but was now free to wreak havoc wherever and whenever it wanted . . .
The Adversary was a prisoner no more.
Six Months Later
The door to the mansion in the swamps outside New Orleans crashed inward from a savage blow, and then Simon Logan strode into the room, staring with satisfaction at the surprised occupants and disrupting the ritual that they’d just begun.
One of them stepped forward.
“What’s the meaning of this?” he cried. “How dare you intrude on—”
The speaker, one of the senior mages of the Council of Nine that Simon Logan had once longed to emulate so badly, never got any further. Logan waved a hand, and the man began choking to death, his throat collapsing inward upon itself as if it had been struck by a great weight.
As the man struggled to escape the fate he’d called down upon himself, the other men in the room fell silent, stunned into inaction by the power of the man they thought long dead, the man who had once been nothing more than an eager acolyte but had now returned to them as a powerful sorcerer in his own right.
Just the reaction Logan was hoping for.
He searched their faces one by one, looking for his target. Not seeing him, he addressed the closest man. “Where’s Hale?”
This man was perhaps a bit smarter than his colleague, for rather than protesting he simply turned and pointed into the ranks of those behind him.
Sensing where this was going, the men standing in that part of the room quickly separated, leaving Logan staring at the man he had come here to kill.
Hale’s mistake was in not attacking the moment Logan entered the room. The extra time gave his opponent the opportunity to prepare his defenses, so when the attack came, it crashed against a wave of arcane force far more powerful than Hale had anticipated.
Logan gazed calmly at Hale as the other stood there, bewildered by his onetime apprentice’s newly found power.
“My turn,” Logan said with a smile.
When he was finished, there wasn’t much left of the former necromancer but a few bloody bits of flesh clinging to the walls.
Logan addressed those still standing in the room.
“I hereby claim leadership of the Council of Nine, its power and authority granted to me by the rite of trial by combat. Any objections?”
There were none.
As he turned, intending to seek out his former master’s study and see just what artifacts and books of power he had hidden away, the voice of the Adversary spoke into his mind from hundreds of miles distant.
Oh, we are going to have so much fun, you and I.
So much fun.
Simon Logan, now the most powerful necromancer in the United States, merely chuckled in agreement.
BELLUM ROMANUM
CARRIE VAUGHN
In the Kitty Norville series, werewolf Kitty hosts a talk-radio advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. At first the show is all about consoling lovelorn women whose vampire boyfriends have become pains in the neck. But the farther Kitty delves into the supernatural world, meeting powerful vampires and sinister magicians, the more she realizes the world isn’t what it seems and a deep, dangerous conspiracy is afoot. At the center of this conspiracy is a mysterious vampire named Roman. Before he became Kitty’s nemesis, Roman was Gaius Albinus, a centurion of Rome, and two thousand years ago he was dragged into the supernatural world against his will. He’s been seeking revenge ever since.
Gaius Albinus stood before the locked gates of Diocletian’s Palace. Fifteen hundred years of planning, and he could not get to where he needed to go because of a chain and padlock, an electronic security system, and a modern sense of reasonable working hours, helpfully marked out on a placard bolted to the stone. What had once been a palace was now a museum, and it was closed.
So many obstacles in this modern era did not involve armies, weapons, or violence. No, they were barriers of bureaucracy and officious politeness. Another venerable institution of old Rome he ought to have known well, passed down to successive civilizations.
He couldn’t help but smile, amused. To come so far, and to be confronted now by a sign telling him the site had closed several hours before and that he could not enter until daylight. Impossible for him.
Well. He would simply have to find another way. There was always another way.
What most impressed Gaius Albinus wasn’t how much the city of Split had changed, but how much remained the same and recognizable. Even now, the city felt Roman.
The central palace complex still stood, amidst the sprawl that had grown up around it. The temple walls were identifiable. Many pitted stone blocks had fallen long ago and were now arranged in artistic piles in the interest of archaeological curiosity. At some point, cast-off stones had become valuable, worthy of admiration. Entire towns had turned into relics, museum pieces. And the roads—the roads still marked out routes across the Empire. The great engineers of Rome remained triumphant.
These days the onetime retirement retreat of Emperor Diocletian was a university and tourist town, raucous with nightlife, young people crowding into cafés, spilling onto the beach, drinking hard under strings of electric lights. Not so different from youths cavorting under suspended oil lamps back in the day, letting clothing slip off shoulders while pretending not to notice, making eyes at each other, offering invitations. That hadn’t changed either, not in all his years.
Now, as then, tourists were easy to spot by how they wandered through it all with startled, awestruck expressions, most likely not understanding the local language. Gaius remembered going to Palestine as a young soldier, expecting to hear a cacophony of languages yet not being prepared for the sense of displacement, a kind of intellectual vertigo, that came from standing in the middle of a market and hearing people shout at one another using strange words, laughing at jokes he couldn’t understand. The way people became subdued when he spoke his native Latin. More often than not they understood him, even when they pretended not to. They marked him as a foreigner, a conqueror.
Since then, he had learned not to particularly care what people thought of him.
Outside the old Roman center, the city was comprised of the blend of modernity and semimodernity along narrow medieval streets that marked so many European cities. After traveling out by car, he stopped at a squat town house of middling modern construction: aluminum and plywood. Clearly a product of the time when this country was part of Yugoslavia, communist, and short on resources. That era had lasted less than a century. The blink of an eye. Hardly worth remembering.
The hour was late. Gaius knocked on the door anyway, and a mousy-looking man answered. In his thirties, he had tousled black hair and wore dark-rimmed glasses and a plain T-shirt with sweats. An average man dressed for a night in. He blinked, uncertain and ready to close the door on the stranger.
“I need your help,” Gaius said in the local Croatian.
“What is it?” The g
uy looked over Gaius’s shoulder as if searching for a broken-down car. There wasn’t one.
“If you could just step out for a moment.” The man did, coming out to the concrete stoop in front of the door. People were so trusting.
Gaius needed him outside his house, across the protection of his threshold. In the open, under a wide sky, the Roman could step into the man’s line of sight and catch his gaze, then draw that attention close, wrap his own will around the small mortal’s mind, and pull. In the space of three of the man’s own heartbeats, Gaius possessed him.
Gaius’s heart hadn’t beat once in two thousand years.
“Professor Dimic, I need to get inside the palace. You have access. You’ll help me.”
He didn’t even question how Gaius knew his name. “Yes, of course.”
Gaius drove the archaeologist back to the city center and navigated the crowds to the quiet alley where the gate to the lower level of the palace was located. Gaius could have broken in himself—picked the lock, disabled the security system. But this was simpler and would leave no evidence. No one must track him. No one must know what he did.
Dimic unlocked the gate and keyed in the security code, and they were inside.
“Anything else?” he asked, almost eagerly. His gaze was intent but vacant, focused on Gaius without really seeing anything.
“Show me how to reset all this when I leave.”
“Certainly.”
The archaeologist gave him the code, showed him the lock, and even left a key. He helpfully pointed out restrooms at the far end of the hallway.
“Go home now,” Gaius instructed the man. “Go inside. Sit in the first chair you come to and close your eyes. When you open them again you won’t remember any of this. Do you understand?”
“I do.” He nodded firmly, as if he’d just been given a dangerous mission and was determined to see it through.
“Go.”