Secret of the Labyrinth (The Temple of the Blind #5)

by Brian Harmon

  Andrea, however, was an entirely different story.

  “This is so cool!” she exclaimed, gazing wonderingly around at every new tunnel they entered, her blue eyes wide and bright, as if she were a child on Christmas morning. “How far do these tunnels go?”

  “Can’t say,” Wayne replied. “But it’s still a long way to the temple.”

  “So awesome! It’s like a movie set down here!”

  Each time they walked past an adjoining tunnel, she paused and poked her flashlight into it for a moment, exploring as much as she could get away with. Then she would hurry to catch up again.

  “Be careful,” he reminded her. “Remember, some of the machinery down here is dangerous. You can burn yourself on some of this stuff. Or cut yourself. This place isn’t exactly approved for tours.”

  “I’ll be careful. Do these tunnels go under the whole city?”

  “Not sure. Maybe,” he replied, although he wasn’t entirely sure she was even listening to his answers.

  “I used to hear stories about tunnels under the city, but I never knew if any of them were real.”

  The girl’s eagerness was amusing, and her energetic personality was refreshing in such a gloomy place. Her chattiness was definitely a welcome distraction from the task ahead. He wondered if she always talked this much or if it was just how she dealt with scary situations.

  “You’re sure we’re not going to get in trouble for being down here?” Andrea asked as she looked back the way they came. She half expected to see flashlights chasing after them.

  “Nobody saw us,” Wayne assured her.

  “My dad would probably kill me if I got in trouble for something like this.”

  “Even if someone saw us, they’d never find us. It’s a maze down here.”

  Wayne found it amusing that she was more afraid of getting caught trespassing than she was of spiders and rats.

  Andrea returned her attention to where she was going and saw that she had lagged behind again. Hurriedly, she caught back up and then resumed scanning every surface with her flashlight. “My friends would never believe all this,” she announced. “Never.”

  Wayne had to smile a little. She wasn’t even out of the steam tunnels yet. Just wait until she saw the temple.

  He glanced back at Olivia again, and again she met his eyes with that steely determination.

  “There’ll be some tunnels down here that are too small to walk in,” he explained. “Some are pretty damp. We’ll probably get a little wet and muddy.”

  “That’s okay,” assured Andrea cheerfully.

  Olivia merely nodded.

  Wayne focused his attention back on the tunnels ahead, careful not to miss any of the florescent green marks that would guide him back to the Temple of the Blind. He could not afford to get lost. Albert was already several hours ahead of him and still moving. That distance was only going to increase every moment he wasn’t working to close it.

  Andrea pulled her cell phone from her jeans pocket and examined the screen. “No signal down here,” she reported. “Guess that’s not really a surprise, huh?”

  “Yeah, you can forget about your phone,” Wayne warned. “Those things are pretty well useless where we’re going.”

  Andrea returned it to her pocket. She didn’t like not having her phone. She felt vulnerable. But it was hardly unexpected. She probably lost the signal almost as soon as she entered the tunnels.

  They were utterly on their own down here.

  Chapter 9

  After wandering blindly through the empty passages for so long, it was almost comforting to come across another water chamber. Any end to the monotony of the blank, gray walls that didn’t involve a vicious, drooling beast was a welcome one. This passage was almost identical to the one that led away from the reservoir and to the small distribution chamber, except that there was a walkway on both sides and many passageways leading away from it.

  They were walking on the left side, passing by the openings that led back into the closed-in labyrinth in favor of the open space for a while.

  “I think my batteries are going dead,” said Nicole, giving her flashlight a shake. She realized a while ago that it had faded. It was already putting out noticeably less light than the other two. Now it seemed to be struggling against the darkness, rapidly dying away. And there was something remarkably ominous about watching it dim to a dull glow like that. Even knowing that Albert had enough extra batteries in his backpack to replace them in all three flashlights at least four times, it was unnerving. What if they were stuck down here long enough to use them all up? What if they found themselves trapped down here in the dark? She found the very thought indescribably dreadful.

  Albert stopped and took off the backpack.

  Nicole handed him her flashlight and then sat down with her back against the wall and rested her weary feet. After a moment, Brandy joined her and the two of them sat and watched as Albert fumbled open the new package of batteries and replaced the spent ones.

  After he had finished and handed back the newly invigorated light, Nicole and Brandy made no effort to rise from the floor and Albert made no effort to coax them up. Instead, he sat down with them and joined them in a long-overdue break.

  Their feet and legs were beyond sore. But Nicole was still far from wishing she hadn’t come. She’d always wanted to do something like this, something bold and adventurous. It was about being a part of something big, something that went far beyond the mundane world she was living in.

  She would have given anything to have been the one to go on the adventure with Albert last year. She was so envious of Brandy’s incredible love story.

  But she was not nearly as lucky as Brandy. She was just Nicole. There was nothing special about her. Sure, she was pretty. Her friends were always telling her so. They told her she was beautiful. But she didn’t feel beautiful. She allowed herself to feel pretty because she worked hard to be that way. She jogged and she ate right and she went to the campus gym. And even she had to admit that genetics had dealt her a lucky card when she hit puberty. She could not have asked for more perfect breasts. But she would not use the word “beautiful.” She did not think herself beautiful. She knew too many people who she honestly believed were far more beautiful than she. Brandy Rudman was one of those people. It was not beauty for which she worked so hard, anyway. It was for herself, because she simply did not believe that she was as good a person as she could be.

  Earl Tannis was proof of that. A better woman would never have gotten involved with him. He was a pompous jerk. He was mean, rude, vulgar and about as romantic as a sledgehammer. She knew that neither Brandy nor Albert liked him. She’d always known that, though they’d done their best not to let her see it. They were so wonderful to her. She did not blame them for how they felt. In fact, she agreed with them. Earl Tannis was as much a man as any pile of garbage on the side of the street. But he was company. In a world where her best friend found the kind of man she’d always hoped to find, while stumbling into the kind of adventure she’d always dreamed of going on, she needed a little company.

  Yes, she was a little jealous of Brandy. Her eyes washed over Albert as he sat resting, his whole body exposed to her. She was so lonely, so starved for the kind of romance that Brandy sometimes described to her when they were alone together. The relationship they shared was a perfect combination of romantic adoration and scorching passion, the latter of which she sometimes whispered about after a few drinks, incredible stories about steamy nights they’d spent together, intensely hot, erotic moments that she could not resist greedily soaking up, though they often left her aching long into the night with depressingly unattainable desires.

  Albert Cross was everything Nicole had ever wished for. He was kind, loving, romantic and generous. He loved deeply and truly and passionately and he was both a boy and a man in all the right ways.

  Of course he had no brothers, no friends to which he could introduce her. There was no one else on earth like Albert. Perio
d. And she couldn’t just clone him. There were laws about that sort of thing now. And she supposed that would just be kind of awkward anyway.

  Nicole watched as Brandy reached over and took Albert’s hand. Perhaps thinking about these things was healthy. Perhaps it wasn’t. Either way, it took her mind off the labyrinth and her anxiousness for a few minutes. She supposed that she might have a small crush on Albert. Hell, she had a big crush on him, if she was going to be honest, but it changed nothing. Brandy was her best friend. Albert was Brandy’s boyfriend. She would have to be the most hateful, malicious bitch on the planet to want it any other way. Besides, there was bound to be another Albert out there somewhere, right? One custom fit just for her. Maybe even one who liked romantic comedies.

  She turned away and looked at the softly rocking surface of the water. She felt as though she were creeping onto thin ice on this subject. She did not want to think this way. Her love for Albert was not romantic. Not really. It was the love a sister felt for a very dear brother. It was the love of close friends. Those other things she felt were nothing more than projections of her unfulfilled desires, desires that her gorilla of an ex-boyfriend would never be capable of satisfying.

  But she also did not want to think about the labyrinth. Specifically, she did not want to think about the Caggo. She did not want to be afraid. So her thoughts rolled around in her head, bouncing from one thing to the next until it was time to get up and carry on.

  Chapter 10

  “That is just so wrong!” Andrea giggled as she stood in front of one of the sentinels, her flashlight fixed on its enormous erection.

  “It gets a lot more wrong,” Wayne warned her with no amusement whatsoever in his voice. He and Olivia stood before the face of the moaning woman. It was still startling to look upon.

  “It’s so…perfect,” Olivia marveled. “How did they make it so real?”

  Andrea stepped up beside her and examined the face. “Can the statues in there really make you…do those things?” she asked, blushing a little.

  “They made Albert and Brandy do those things the first time they came down here.”

  Olivia shuddered at the thought. How humiliating. She couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  “They really did that?” Andrea pressed. “Right in there?”

  “Like a couple of animals,” Wayne replied. Although Albert and Brandy had never explicitly described in steamy detail what happened to them inside the sex room, he made it a point to exaggerate his knowledge of the incident. He wanted to discourage any curiosity that might arise before reaching the other side.

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Wayne agreed. “Wow. Just remember, we can’t peek in here.”

  Andrea didn’t know how mere statues could do something like that. She thought the statues out here looked ridiculous. But she had to admit there was something extremely creepy about the woman’s face that framed the doorway. It was like Olivia said: it was just so perfect, so disturbingly real. She couldn’t find anything funny about it. And she liked finding reasons to laugh at scary things. It made them easier to deal with.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Wayne sighed. He lifted his glasses and rested them atop his head so that he wouldn’t lose them. Then he carefully ducked into the moaning woman’s mouth and peered into the sex room.

  Immediately, he realized that his eyesight was considerably better than Brandy’s. The shape on the floor in front of him was clearly a woman lying on her back with her feet spread in the air as a man mounted her.

  He closed his eyes and waited for a moment as he tried to judge whether he was being affected or not. He didn’t feel overly aroused. His body was not reacting to the sight of the dirty act he had just witnessed. But he felt something uncomfortable deep in the pit of his belly. Was that the first stirring of the sex room’s mysterious power taking hold of his senses? Or was that simply his nerves? The task before him was dangerous and his confidence questionable. What if he wasn’t strong enough to lead these girls through this room?

  From behind him, Olivia reached out and grasped his hand. She didn’t have a flashlight. She chose to let Wayne and Andrea carry the two that they brought, therefore she would be the link between them as they walked.

  Wayne opened his eyes again, this time holding his flashlight so that it pointed back at his belly, illuminating the room ahead of him indirectly. This darkened the room considerably, and the extra dimness, combined with the shadows, helped to reduce his visibility. But it wasn’t quite enough.

  “Turn off your flashlight,” he instructed. “I need it a little darker in here.”

  Andrea hesitated, but obeyed. She didn’t need it anyway if she was going to have her eyes closed. But the very idea of turning off her light was a little unnerving.

  “That’s better.” Now he could scarcely make out any details at all. “Brandy’s eyes are better for this than mine.”

  “Funny way to say she’s more blind,” Olivia observed.

  “True,” Wayne agreed. “It’s a funny thing. Not many instances where it’s actually an advantage to have poor eyesight.”

  Olivia found it intriguing to think that being extremely nearsighted, of all things, was the key to safely navigating these bizarre chambers.

  “Okay,” Wayne announced. “I’m going to start moving now. Stay right behind me. There’s a lot of places to bump your head in here. And remember to keep your eyes closed. No matter how bad you want to peek.”

  Olivia didn’t need any encouragement. As Wayne started forward into the sex room, she found that she had no interest at all in seeing what was inside this room. He had already told them—multiple times—what would happen, what the statues in here could do, and that was enough for her. After all that she had seen at Gilbert House, she had no reason to doubt a single word that he said. Though she could hardly fathom the idea of losing control and turning into a sex-crazed slut just by looking at a few statues, she had been through quite enough these past few days to keep her from being the slightest bit tempted to test it. She could certainly do without humiliating herself down here.

  Andrea, on the other hand, was terribly curious about this chamber. Could it really do the things Wayne said it could? She couldn’t help but doubt. She couldn’t imagine anything making her do the things he said it would. She simply wasn’t like that.

  “I can see the doorway already,” Wayne announced. On one hand, it was a relief to be able to rely on his own nearsightedness. Without Brandy’s glasses, he could indulge in glancing to the sides when something seemed to be reaching toward him in his peripheral vision. But he still could see a little too well for his liking. The details of the statues were shrouded in a shadowy haze, but he could see what most of them were doing, and he found that this alone turned him on a little. He could not imagine what he would feel if he put his glasses back on and actually looked at them. The idea of losing all control was so incredibly foreign to him that he almost wished he could do it, just for the experience. Just to know the feeling. But of course the consequences of doing that could be unimaginable.

  “How are you doing back there?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” Olivia replied.

  “Me too,” reported Andrea. But the truth was that she was dying of curiosity. All around her supposedly stood fantastic statues. X-rated statues. Statues that would make her throw herself shamelessly at any man with merely a glance.

  They couldn’t be real. Not the way he described them. She could buy a lot of what he had told her, but this was too much. Maybe if she were some kind of exhibitionist slut already. Maybe then she could believe it. She even knew a couple of girls who she suspected might be susceptible to such a place. But not her.

  And now that Wayne had told them that they were already approaching the exit, she found herself even more tempted to peek. Just a little. Just a tiny glimpse. That was all. That couldn’t hurt.

  Could it?

  “Almost there,” Wayne assured them.

  “
Good,” replied Olivia. She didn’t like stumbling around with her eyes closed. It was too much like being in the dark. And she didn’t care for the dark anymore. The dark reminded her of Gilbert House, of that horrible restroom, and the endless hours she spent waiting for someone to find her.

  Andrea said nothing. They were almost out. It would soon all be behind them. Then she might never know what was in this room.

  And what if there was nothing here? What if this was all an extravagant lie? What if this was her one chance to realize that she was the victim of an elaborate deception? If she opened her eyes now and found nothing more than an empty room…

  But what if it was exactly what Wayne said it was?

  She bit her lip as she struggled with the urge to take just that one little look. It couldn’t do those things to her. It just couldn’t. She was sure of it.

  She opened her eyes.

  Immediately, her attention was drawn to the left, to a tall, gray shape, and she found herself staring at the brazen image of a man and a woman in the midst of ferocious copulation. It was a startling sight. She was barely able to stifle her gasp. The details were so real it was difficult to believe they were nothing more than stone. They could have been real people, their bodies merely painted to match the surfaces around them, acting out their filthiest fantasies. In the brief instant before she turned away, she saw the frozen face of the man with perfect clarity, even in the gloom. His lips were peeled back in a terrible grimace as he cried out with an unmistakable mix of ecstasy and agony, caught at the very apex of a powerful orgasm. The woman had her arms around his neck, her legs locked around his waist, her head thrown all the way back, her eyes bulging, her long hair dangling toward the floor. Somehow she looked both furious and rapturous.