The stone ceiling fell toward us hard and fast. Lucius shoved me to the floor and caught the ceiling with both hands. His knees almost immediately buckled, but luckily they did not give out. He stood strong, holding the ceiling above him with amazing strength, even though it had to weigh a ton. His face broke out in a strong sweat, however, which told me that the ceiling was heavy even for someone as strong as him.
“Lucius!” I said. “Are you okay?”
“Barely,” said Lucius through gritted teeth. “But you need to run. I can’t hold this ceiling forever. It will fall at some point and crush both of us. Try to go back the way we came and find another way forward.”
Lucius was probably right, but there was no way I was going to abandon him, even if he wanted me. If I was going to save Jane, I needed Lucius’ help, which meant that I couldn’t allow him to die.
I looked over at the Questioning Rock. “Please, stop dropping the ceiling on him! You’re killing him.”
“That’s the point,” said the Questioning Rock. “You two failed to answer the question. That means that you must die.”
I scrambled to my feet and tried to hold up the ceiling as well, adding my own strength to Lucius’, but then Lucius snapped, “Tara, what are you doing? Don’t help me. Get out of here. Better for one of us to escape alive than for both of us to die. You’re just putting your own life in danger for no reason.”
“It’s not for no reason,” I said. “It’s to save—”
“I don’t care!” Lucius said. “Go! Now!”
Lucius lashed out with a kick, forcing me to let go of the ceiling. The ceiling almost immediately fell, but Lucius held it up again, although I could tell that he wasn’t very far from collapsing from the strain of holding it up. His muscles flexed under the immense weight, while sweat beaded his handsome face and made his hair damp. It pained me to see him that way, but there was no way I could help him. Perhaps I should run away and try to find another way forward, though I wasn’t so sure that there was another way forward or that I would not end up just walking into another trap set by the Maze or the Mistress.
Once again, I looked at the Questioning Rock. “If I answer your question, will stop trying to crush us with the ceiling? Will you space us?”
The Questioning Rock was silent for too long before it finally said, “Yes. I rarely grant second chances like this, but because the vampire has managed to hold back the ceiling so far—a feat that no one else in my memory has accomplished—I will grant you one, and only one, chance to answer again. But remember, your answer must be satisfactory. If you fail to give me a satisfactory answer, then both of you will die for sure.”
I bit my lower lip again. I had probably made a dumb mistake by begging for another chance to answer his question, rather than taking this opportunity to run, but I had already lost Lucius once and I didn’t intend to lose him again. I had already lost Jane. I was not going to lose another friend, especially if I could do something about it.
I thought about the question again. What is a half-vampire … on the surface, that was an easy question, would have been easy even if I hadn’t been a half-vampire myself. Half-vampires were sorcerers transformed by a vampire bite.
But again, that wasn’t the answer the Questioning Rock wanted. It wanted a satisfying answer, one that satisfied it in an emotional way. Therefore, I had to think of a way to answer the question differently, but again, my mind kept drawing a blank.
“Tara …” said Lucius above me, his voice strained to the breaking. “Forget about the question. Just run.”
“If you do that, neither of you will escape alive,” said the Questioning Rock. “You do not run out on deals made with me. I always demand an answer and I always get one.”
I didn’t think the Questioning Rock was lying. If I tried to run now, he would probably just increase the pressure on the ceiling to the point that even Lucius couldn’t hold it back and we’d both die instantly. I could already feel the heavy stone ceiling crushing our bones into dust and making our blood explode from our bodies like water balloons.
But I pushed that thought out of my mind in order to focus on the answer.
As I always did whenever I found myself in danger, I prayed to God. I asked him to reveal an insight to me that would allow me to come up with an answer that met the Questioning Rock’s question. I didn’t care what God gave me. At this point, I was desperate enough to try anything, even praying to a God who might not even hear my prayers. It was the only thing I could do, because nothing else I could do would help.
And then, seemingly without warning, an answer popped into my mind. The answer was emotionally satisfying, even though it was not one I would ever have thought up on my own. There was still a chance that the Questioning Rock would reject the answer anyway, but I had no choice but to tell it to him and hope for the best.
Raising my eyes to look at the Questioning Rock’s, I said, “You want my answer, Questioning Rock? Well, here it is: A half-vampire is a creature torn between two worlds, one who has to keep her inner darkness from defining her. She must cling to her humanity, no matter how seductive the Darkness is, otherwise she’s no better than your average bloodthirsty Bloodseeker.”
Even I was surprised by the answer, because I had honestly not expected it to come out like that. It even felt emotionally satisfying to me, which I considered a good sign that it might also convince the Questioning Rock.
The Questioning Rock stared at me for what seemed like an eternity, which made me fear—just for a moment—that my answer had failed to satisfy him and that Lucius and I were going to be crushed underneath the falling ceiling. Oh, well. At least we’d die together, if nothing else.
Then the Questioning Rock nodded once. “A satisfying answer. A very satisfying answer. You may pass.”
Suddenly, the ceiling—which had been pushing down hard on Lucius as hard as it could—stopped and then began rising. As it did, Lucius let go of it and fell onto his hands and knees, panting from the effort he had put into holding it up. I knelt next to him and put a hand on his back, saying, “Lucius, are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine,” said Lucius, though he sounded incredibly exhausted. “I’ve lifted heavier in the past for longer periods of time. I could have held out for a little while longer, though not by much.”
Relieved that Lucius was okay, I looked at the Questioning Rock, which still stood in our path. All of a sudden, the Questioning Rock began to sink into the floor inch by inch, until finally, the massive form of the Questioning Rock disappeared underneath the floor, which closed up over its head. A second later, the ceiling locked into place above and the pathway deeper into the Maze was clear for us to take.
“Amazing,” said Lucius. He looked at me. “How did you come up with such a satisfying answer to his question? And under pressure?”
“It wasn’t me,” I admitted. “It was God. He gave me the answer. Or at least pushed my mind in the right direction.”
Lucius looked at me with a curious expression, almost as if he was surprised, but then he nodded and said, “Then your God is cleverer than I thought.”
I didn’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not, but I decided that Lucius probably meant it that way, so I just shrugged and said, “The Scriptures say we need to be as gentle as doves but wise as serpents.”
“Serpents,” Lucius mused. “Yes, they are wise creatures, aren’t they?”
I was about to ask Lucius what he meant by that, but then Lucius rose to his feet and dusted his shirt off. “Anyway, the Questioning Rock is gone. That means we can advance further into the Maze and get closer to the Vampire Flame.”
“I wonder how close we are to the Flame,” I said as I rose to my feet as well. “Do you think it’s that much farther?”
“I can’t say,” said Lucius. “The Maze is huge, not helped by the fact that its layout changes seemingly at random. But it isn’t like we have any choice at this point but to go forward and hope we reach it
before the Mistress and Blake do.”
I nodded. “Very well, then. Let’s go.”
Lucius nodded in return, but then the floor shuddered and, without warning, the floor rose up between us faster than our eyes could follow. Before I could react, Lucius disappeared on the other side of the wall that shot out of the floor and slammed into the ceiling, causing me to jump backwards and nearly trip over my feet in surprise.
“Lucius?” I called, looking at the new wall in surprise. “Lucius, can you hear me? Lucius!”
But I didn’t hear any answer. I was separated from him by this wall … and there was nothing I could do about it.
I ran up to the newly-created wall and started beating my fists against it, calling Lucius’ name over and over again. But even with my enhanced strength as a half-vampire, my blows left no damage on the wall at all. It was like the wall was made out of steel rather than stone, but I kept beating my fists against it anyway, hoping against hope that I could somehow break through and reach Lucius.
But no matter how hard I beat my fists against the wall, it wouldn’t budge or even crack. After several minutes of fruitlessly banging my fists against the wall, I dropped my fists to my side and stepped back, breathing in and out rapidly as I looked at the wall that now stood between me and Lucius. It fit in so smoothly with the ceiling that, if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought it had always stood there, rather than rising from the floor without warning the way it did.
“Lucius …” I said in a low voice. “Lucius …”
This was the Maze’s doing. That was obvious. But whether the Maze had intentionally separated us or we’d just gotten really unlucky during one of its usual shape shifting, I couldn’t say. All I knew was that this was really inconvenient for us. I felt vulnerable without Lucius. Yes, I’d come a long way in terms of my combat and magical skills since the day I became a half-vampire what seemed like an eternity ago now, but I was still far from an expert. I still mostly relied on Lucius, Dad, and other men in my life to protect me.
Without Lucius, I now just had myself. Well, myself and God, I guess, but I still had my doubts about whether God was with me or not. Even after our encounter with the Questioning Rock, I still suffered from doubt, however unjustified it might be.
Shaking my head, I turned around and looked at my new surroundings. The wall was not the only change in the hallway. The hallway itself now sloped steeply downward like a slide. The walls were covered with strange carvings, including one of a man and a woman walking together like they were on a date. I had no idea what the carvings meant, but maybe it was just another way the Maze could change itself.
I now faced a hard dilemma: Either go down this hallway to whatever awaited me at the end or try to find a way through or around the wall separating me from Lucius. The wall was tall and thick and perhaps reinforced with magic, because there was no way that normal stone could have withstood the beating I inflicted on it. I could either keep trying to break through and rejoin Lucius—which didn’t seem very likely to happen to me—or go down the hallway and see what lay at the end.
It was pretty obvious which choice I had to make. My only real choice was to go down the hallway and hope to rejoin with Lucius at some point. Perhaps we’d take separate paths that would nonetheless end up at the same destination, or maybe the Maze would shift again and allow us to reunite. Of course, there was always the possibility that the Maze was herding us both to our deaths. It wasn’t like the Maze had to send us anywhere nice, did it?
I started walking down the hallway, slowly and carefully, keeping my eyes and ears open for any sign of danger. The hallway seemed empty, as far as I could tell. I was all by myself, but knowing the constantly shifting nature of the Maze, I drew Domination from its sheath and held it before me carefully. That way, if someone tried to jump me, they would have to deal with Domination first.
The hallway seemed to go on forever, with the only change occasionally being a bend in the path. Otherwise, it was a straight path down, down to only God knows where. It was also eerily silent, except for the sounds of my footsteps against the stone floor and my own breathing.
Indeed, it was so quiet that my attention started to wander … and that was when I noticed the walls moving.
No, it wasn’t the walls that were moving. It was the carvings on the walls, the ones I had noticed earlier when I had first been separated from Lucius. They were moving like a movie, depicting scenes that seemed both familiar and strange at the same time. It took me a moment, but then I realized that the scenes that it showed me were carvings of Lucius and me.
For example, I recognized the man and woman on the carving as they entered what looked like a cave. In the next moving carving, they ran into an old man who was obviously Shawn, who then turned into the Mysteria, which Lucius goes on to kill. The carvings were simple and basic, and if I hadn’t been involved in the events they depicted, I probably wouldn’t have recognized them at all, but it was obvious what these carvings depicted. The carving which depicted me even had Domination sheathed at my side, a nice little detail.
In fact, now that I looked closely, I realized that the length of this hall was no coincidence. It showed everything that Lucius and I had done, starting from Jane being kidnapped behind Ricardo’s Place and going from there. It was like walking through a museum which placed displays in a chronological order, though it was more like a movie than a museum display.
I didn’t quite know what to make of it. Had the Maze somehow been watching me the entire time? Was it showing me this to let me know that it knew everything I did? If so, why? What was the point? Or was this a trick by the Mistress?
It creeped me out. I didn’t know the answers but suspected that they weren’t very good. On the other hand, I was curious to see exactly how far this recollection went. If I went far enough, would I eventually find a carving of myself looking at the carvings of me and Lucius? Or would it just end at the point where Lucius and I got separated? The only way to know was to find out.
I resumed walking down the hallway, my eyes on the walls, looking at the carvings as we walked. Yes, there was our fight with Crog the Amphibia, along with my conversation with Blake, and there was me and Lucius walking down the hallway after that, with Lucius explaining his story about the witch Abigail to me. This part was particularly good, because it even showed a few scenes from Lucius’ past, with Lucius killing the witch who had kidnapped him in the first place. It was really interesting how detailed it was. If the Maze was a person, I would have said it was a good artist.
Finally, I reached the point where Lucius and I were separated. Somehow, it looked even worse in stone than it did in real life. Carving Me banged on the wall, clearly desperately trying to reunite with Carving Lucius, but then Carving Me eventually gave up, turned around, and started walking down the hallway, with Carving Domination held in her hands.
This was it. I was about to find out what would happen next, now that it had caught up with my current situation. I eagerly walked forward, hoping to see what would happen next.
To my surprise, I saw that the story didn’t end with me just wandering the hall. Carving Me reached a door at the end of the hallway, which, after a moment of hesitation, she opens and enters. She emerges in a room, where she looks around for a second, like she isn’t sure where she is. I stop to watch, because I’m fairly certain that this is showing me a vision of the near future. I knew that the Bible spoke against divination and all that, but I wasn’t technically committing divination at the moment. I was just watching what someone—or something—else in this case was showing me.
All of a sudden, Carving Lucius appears out of nowhere and Carving Me hugs him exactly the way I would hug him if I saw him again. It was really cute and even romantic in a way.
Then, without warning, Carving Me lets go of Carving Lucius, raises Domination, and slashes Carving Lucius’ neck.
I stared in shock as Carving Lucius fell onto the floor. There was no blood pourin
g from his neck—I guess that would have been hard to ‘animate’ on stone—but it was obvious, based on the way he lay on the ground, that he was deader than dead. I didn’t quite get how Carving Me had killed him by slitting his throat, rather than beheading him the way you’re supposed to when you want to kill vampires, but maybe that was just artistic license or something.
Carving Me stood over the corpse of Carving Lucius, but she didn’t look even remotely sorry or horrified by what she had done. No, she looked very satisfied, if a simple cartoon carving could be described that way, as if she had been carefully planning to do this thing this entire time. Well, sorry, sister, but I have no plans to kill Lucius myself. That would make it hard to date him.
But I couldn’t keep looking at this. I turned away, because I didn’t know if this was real or a trick of the Maze or what. I hoped to God that the Maze wasn’t predicting the future, that this was just an invention of its own, created to mess with my mind and make me doubt myself, but given all of the other weird stuff I’d seen in here so far, I had the sinking feeling that the Maze wasn’t making that up.
“No,” I said aloud, even though there was no one else in here to hear me but myself. “I won’t kill Lucius. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Does it?” said a feminine, yet cruel, voice that seemed familiar. “Because I think it does make sense.”
I looked behind me. Standing not far up the hallway was a woman who I had never seen before, but who seemed eerily familiar to me just the same. She looked to be about the same age as me, even wielding a sword that looked like Domination, though its blade was black instead of silver. Her eyes were a deep red, while her hair was long and silvery. She even wore clothes similar to mine, except hers were more … well, if Dad saw me wearing that skirt and that shirt to church when I was a teenager, he would never have let me leave the house.
“Who are you?” I said, turning to face her. I held Domination before me. “Another servant of the Mistress? Or another one of the Maze’s tricks?”
The Vampire Flame (Vampire Sorceress Book 3) Page 10