I nod, swallowing my alarm, and head along the path to the right. I scan my eyes over the gray walls and the cracked concrete. I wish I knew what I was looking for. As I walk onward, I don’t think I have ever experienced such an overwhelming lack of sound. It’s dark, too, and I keep glancing over my shoulder to make sure Cupid is still there. When he starts to look small in the distance I stop.
There’s nothing here.
I decide to head back. As I do, something catches my eye—a shape carved into the ground. I crouch down, brushing aside some rubble.
“Cupid?”
The silence of the maze swallows my voice and he doesn’t look up from the stretch of wall he’s studying.
“Cupid!” I shout. “Does this mean anything to you?”
This time he hears me. As he jogs toward me I turn my attention back to the carving. It’s so small I almost missed it—a cube carved into the stone.
“Looks like . . .” I begin.
“A box.”
There’s a triumphant note in his voice. He steps over the carving and heads down the shadowed path behind it. I push myself to my feet and fall into step beside him.
“I found a clue?”
“Yup, you found a clue. This path will lead to the Sim of one of the Myths, and if I’m right, I’m guessing it’s Pandora.”
“Pandora as in Pandora’s box? The Myth who opened a box that let out all the evil in the world?”
Cupid laughs. “According to you humans. Come on—we must be close now.”
A few minutes later we reach a large black door covered with carvings that curl around the frame. Some are cubes like the one that marked the entrance to our path, others depict monsters and beasts.
“The Sim of each Myth has been created to torture them,” he says. “They’re designed to turn their own power against them.” He caresses one of the arrows in the quiver over his shoulder, and I wonder if he knows he’s doing it. “Pandora is very powerful. She found a way to control the sins her box was said to contain.” A dark look passes across his face. “She’s been in here a long time,” he says, “and whatever her power has conjured up for her, I don’t think it will be pleasant.”
He looks at me and all of the lightness and amusement I’m used to seeing in his expression is gone.
“Stay close and don’t lose sight of me. And do as I tell you, whatever that may be. I’m a trained cupid, and though you showed promise in the training Sim, you are not. Do you understand?”
There’s a new ferocity in his eyes, so I nod. Then he pushes open the door. It screeches against the stone floor—if there is anything there, I’m now sure it’s heard us.
We enter a long tunnel, dark except for a small square of light far at the other end. Where there was sky above us before, there is now a ceiling low enough that the top of Cupid’s hair brushes against it as we walk. The walls are closer together here, and if I stretch my arms I can touch both at once. The walls are damp and cold.
As we get close to the middle of the tunnel, Cupid suddenly stops and shushes me.
“Listen,” he whispers, carefully pulling one of the black arrows from its case.
For a moment I hear nothing. Then my body tenses as a faint scream sounds from faraway. I’m about to ask Cupid about it when I hear something worse; something that sends a chill down my spine.
Coming from the end of the tunnel is a low rasping noise, followed by a grotesque squelching. It sounds inhuman. Whatever lays at the end of this path, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to encounter it.
“What is that?”
Before Cupid can reply I notice another noise, this time coming from all around us. It’s a loud screeching—like the tunnel door scraping against the stone, but worse. Cupid’s gaze flicks up over my shoulder, his face confused. Then his eyes widen.
“The walls,” he whispers in horror.
Tentatively, I reach out to touch them again, finding I don’t have to stretch my arms so far. Then I feel the vibrations emanating from inside and the full force of our situation hits me.
The walls are moving.
Slowly, the walls on either side of the tunnel are closing in on us. I zero in on the small space of light where the horrible, rasping noise came from—it must be about two hundred feet away. A cold panic fills my body.
Get crushed to death or face whatever lays at the end of this passageway?
“What are you waiting for?” Cupid bellows, grabbing my arm. “Run!”
53
I sprint down the tunnel after Cupid, my heart pounding against my chest. The screech of the walls fills my ears, so close to me now that my sides ram against them as I stumble forward. My leg muscles are screaming with the effort and my breathing is hard and fast.
We’re getting closer to the opening at the end, but it’s still a good fifty feet away. Panic fills me. I’m not sure I can make it.
Twenty feet to go.
Cupid glances over his shoulder as he reaches the end of the tunnel. The walls are now almost touching me.
“Lila!”
I’m almost there.
With a spurt of strength I thrust myself forward. I can hardly breathe—the air is close and I have a stitch in my side.
Five feet to go.
The tunnel walls have almost closed in on Cupid’s broad frame. With a screaming effort he twists his body to the side and grabs my arm so hard that I feel my shoulder wrench in its socket. He pulls me forward and together we burst into the light, our sides scraping against the narrow edges of the walls as the passage clamps shut behind us.
For a moment we find ourselves falling through the air. Then pain explodes through my body as we hit the floor hard, in a crumpled heap of arms and legs.
Cupid groans as I disentangle myself from him, then rolls onto his back and pushes himself up so he’s leaning on his elbows. I kneel on the floor beside him, trying to catch my breath.
“Pandora’s box,” he says. “I should have guessed there would be some claustrophobic element to her Sim. Are you okay?”
I nod, glancing down at my body; my once-white suit is covered with a thick layer of dust and rubble. I brush off my arms and look around us.
We’re in a small, square room filled with flickering torchlight—it makes the eerie carvings in the stone walls seem like they’re moving. I try to make them out; there’s a strange horned goatlike creature on one side and what looks like a human heart carved on the other.
Across the room is a metal door, a letter L imprinted on it in ancient-looking calligraphy. Around the frame the numbers one to seven are repeated in flourished carvings. I remember Cupid saying something earlier about Pandora keeping sins in her box.
Seven sins?
I turn back to Cupid, who is still reclining, propped up on his elbows. I wonder why he hasn’t got up yet. His gaze catches mine and he holds it. The black top beneath his leather jacket is damp with sweat, and it clings to his body. Even though I know we should move through the marked door, I feel strangely reluctant to go. I kneel beside Cupid. I can feel heat radiating from him.
“What is this place?” My voice comes out croaky and breathless. I’m hot, and I feel different.
Cupid doesn’t answer me. His eyes burn into mine, almost feverish, and his breathing intensifies. Though I am close enough to touch his skin, he is not close enough.
Suddenly he grabs the back of my head with a large hand and pulls. I fall into him and he kisses me; the movements of his mouth are hot and heavy as his arms encase me, pulling me closer as he parts my lips with his tongue. I run my fingers along the back of his neck then grab at his hair. A small groan escapes him. With a sudden movement he seizes me and flips me over onto my back, pressing his body against mine, thigh to thigh.
Then, just as suddenly, he propels himself away from me. Looking astonished, he leaps to his feet and pl
asters himself against the far wall. His breathing is heavy and his eyes wide.
I scramble to a sitting position, trying to control my racing pulse. His skin is flushed and I don’t feel right. What’s wrong with us?
“We need to get out of here,” says Cupid.
His voice sounds different; lower and rougher.
“What’s going on?”
“I told you that Pandora could control the sins,” he says between hard and heavy breaths. “There are seven in total. Lust is one of them.” He gestures to the door. “L for lust—it’s controlling us. We need to get out of here.”
I lurch to my feet and try to walk toward the door, but somehow find myself approaching Cupid instead.
“Lila,” he says, his breathing still heavy, “you need to stay away from me. It’ll work on us like the Ardor. Drive us mad. We’ll never get out.”
When I try to move away, I somehow end up touching his arm. There is an ache inside of me that only he can ease.
“Lila,” he warns, alarm in his eyes. His jaw is clenched, like he’s waging some kind of internal battle. Then suddenly the resolve dissolves. He grins, but it’s wider than usual, and there’s a flash of white teeth.
“Could have been a worse sin to be stuck with, I suppose,” he says mischievously as he steps toward me. He loops an arm around my waist and I stagger forward, bracing my palms on his chest, my fingers curling around the fabric of his top.
He tilts his head to me, leaning in for another kiss.
His words repeat in my head.
The lust will drive us mad. We’ll never get out.
I wrench myself away and bolt toward the door, ramming my shoulder against the metal. It gives way, screeching against the floor, and the spell is broken. I lean my back against the carved metal and, panting, catch Cupid’s gaze.
“Well, that was interesting,” he says, striding toward the exit. “Though as I said, it could have been worse. Sloth, wrath, greed . . .”
“Gluttony might not have been so bad,” I say, my voice still a little croaky. “Maybe we’d have just got to eat a load of pies.”
“You’re thinking about pie at a time like this?” He chuckles. “Come on,” he says, and we walk through the door together.
Almost instantly I feel the wind get knocked out of my lungs as something hits me, throwing me to the hard ground. I hear a woman’s voice raised in a war cry, and the sudden clash of metal against metal.
Cupid is fighting an athletic-looking female.
Her hair is long and black, and whips ferociously around her face. She wears a light dress, which moves and flows with her quick, fluid movements. She’s wielding what looks like a samurai sword, which Cupid deflects with an arrow he’s brandishing with both hands, like a shield.
I glance around hurriedly. We’re in a vast arena. There are seven doors around the circle, including the one Cupid and I just came through. In the center of the arena is a hatch in the floor.
My body tenses. Behind the sound of fighting, I hear something worse; something that makes the hairs on my arms stand on end. It’s the weird squelching sound I heard earlier in the tunnel.
What is that?
The girl has pushed Cupid up against the wall, his arrow at their feet.
“Pandora,” he says, raising his hands in defeat. “Hey, Pandora, it’s me.”
She stares at him for a moment with ferocious, catlike eyes. Then she furrows her eyebrows.
“Cupid?” she says as the noise sounds again—closer this time.
“Yes, we’ve come to get you out of here.”
She looks at him suspiciously. “There’s no way out of here.”
The noise is loud now, coming from the hatch at the center of the arena. I stare as the doors begin to move; something is pushing against them. There’s something in there.
Pandora finally notices me on the ground, and then turns her gaze coldly back to Cupid.
“Every hour,” she says, “every hour for as long as I can remember, a sin comes out of that box, and I have to kill it or be killed myself. Next one is Gluttony.”
She strides toward the hatch which is now rattling, and brandishes her sword.
“If you really are here to help me, then get ready to fight,” she says. “I’ve been here a long time, and I’m tired.”
My heart races as the hatch suddenly bursts open.
“Oh,” she adds, “and don’t get eaten.”
54
Gluttony looks like a huge worm. Its bulbous, swollen flesh drips with a sticky fatlike substance that shudders as it lurches forward. With each movement, the squelching sound I heard earlier reverberates about the room. The worm gives off a pungent odor: the smell of old sweat, rotting garbage, and death.
Pandora stands before it, swishing her sword through the air. Her words repeat themselves over and over in my mind.
Don’t get eaten.
Suddenly, Gluttony lifts its entire top half into the air, exposing an underside completely covered in sharp, needlelike teeth. It stays there a moment, reared back, its body pulsing, before suddenly turning and lurching in my direction.
“Lila!” shouts Cupid. “Get out of the way!”
I scramble to my feet and instinctively pull out an arrow. I thrust it upward as the monstrous creature strikes, the black weapon sinking into the rolls of fat on the side of its body. I try to pull away, but find half of my arm sucked into its flesh; it’s moist and hot and feels like jelly. The stench is unbearable and the intense pressure against my arm makes me feel light-headed with pain.
With a heave, Cupid hauls me away from the beast, creating a suctioning noise as my arm is released from its flabby prison. We both fall to the floor and Pandora leaps before us—slashing at the monster with her sword and scattering lumps of flesh about the arena.
“Eeeww,” says Cupid.
The monster, however, does not slow down. It advances again and again, forcing Pandora to move backward until she is fighting with her back to the far wall. Every time a part of it is cut off, its body pulses a new roll of slippery fat into place. It moves with an extraordinary speed, its teeth gnashing and gnawing.
“A little help,” she calls between heavy breaths, “would be nice.”
Cupid gets back onto his feet and grabs his black bow. He looks at the creature distastefully. “It’s just so . . . gross.”
The beast hits Pandora with the side of its body, throwing her across the floor.
“Okay, I’m coming,” Cupid says. “As long as I don’t have to touch it.”
He fires a rain of arrows into its swollen body. It rears up again, away from Pandora, and for a moment it looks like it’s sniffing the air. Then it turns toward Cupid and me.
“Fire into its mouth,” Pandora shouts, springing back to her feet, “between its teeth. That’s the only place where it’s vulnerable.”
Cupid does so—firing arrow after arrow as it bears down on him. As the arrows find their mark, one after the other, the monster begins to thrash about in the air. Then, suddenly, it falls to the floor, its flesh exploding on impact and spurting a sticky, gelatinous substance across the entire arena. Cupid gets the full brunt of it, the dripping fat coating his body. He turns around and looks at me, a pained expression on his face.
“So. Disgusting,” he says as translucent goo drips down his face.
He strips off his leather jacket, wipes his face and hair with it, then casts it to the ground. My eyes linger on his muscular arms. He somehow manages to look hot even while covered in goo.
He catches me staring. “See something you like?”
Pandora walks forward and stands beside him, surveying him with dark eyes. “Of course she doesn’t. You look disgusting and you smell like a trash can.”
She smirks, the smile lighting up her otherwise serious face. I laugh, instantly likin
g her refreshing bluntness.
Cupid’s eyes glint with amusement. “Pandora, this is Lila,” he says. “She’s my Match.”
Pandora purses her lips. “I assume Venus is back then?”
“You assume correctly. We’ve come to ask for your help. You and all the others trapped in Sims.”
A dark look passes across her face. “Sure, you want to break us out now that you need something.” She wipes her sword against her sleeve. “Where have you been for the past . . . however many centuries?”
Cupid shrugs. “Hey, I’ve been banished. You can take that up with my brother when we get you out.”
Her eyes flash. “Cal.”
“You know Cal?” I ask.
“He was the one who put me here.”
I’m not sure how to react. In the silence, Cupid looks between the two of us.
“Well, granted, this could cause some awkward reunions when we get out of here,” he says, “but be that as it may, Cal has connected all the Sims, we have the Finis, and we’re breaking out all Her prisoners. We’re going after Venus.” He pauses, then adds, “Will you help us?”
Her steely gaze passes over Cupid then me.
“Fine. But only because I’d be happy to watch her die.”
“Excellent,” he says. “Now . . . how exactly do we get out of here?”
She gives Cupid a look. “Well I obviously don’t know. I’ve tried all the doors—they’re all dead ends leading to the sin rooms. The hatch that spat out our friend Gluttony is home to all the monsters.” She shakes her head. “You seriously came in here not knowing how to get out?”
Cupid shrugs. “Not really thinking that far ahead. However, when the Sims were merged they created links between themselves. We just need to find the link—something out of place.”
Pandora raises an eyebrow. “Well, we better be quick—the next sin will arrive soon.”
The three of us search the vast arena for what feels like an age. I keep firing glances at the hatch in the floor. Pandora says the next monster will appear in the next five minutes.
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