Twisted Legends: Twisted Magic Book 4

by Kaye, Rainy

  Sasmita’s light forged a path ahead as a roach skittered out of our way. I shuddered, even though, realistically, that would be far easier to take on than the sludge monster. Still, my skin prickled as we continued down the hallway, passing numbered doors on either side. We turned into another hallway, with a bank of elevators on one side and more doors all the way down. The hallway ended at a boarded-up window.

  With my teeth on edge, I dared to try the doorknobs, one at a time. None of them budged. At the end of the hallway, we found a stairwell and made our way up them to the second floor, footsteps echoing around us in the near darkness. The walls had been tagged with overlapping graffiti to the point most of it was not decipherable. The rest, I wished wasn’t.

  We exited onto the second floor and found ourselves in another hallway of doors. Lackluster, I began trying them again. The first two didn’t budge; the next turned and the door creaked open.

  My group came up behind me as I tried the light switch on the wall, but nothing happened. Eventually, I would just have to accept the power had been turned off to this building.

  Something brushed over my hand. I yelped, flinging it off, and then rubbed the back of my hand against the thigh of my jeans until I felt I had sufficiently scraped off the first layer of skin.

  Sasmita shined the light around me, the beam picking out segments of the room like a puzzle coming together. A long thin kitchen stood to the right, the counters cluttered with small appliances and a few jars of long-expired food. The tile hadn’t seen a mop this decade. Ahead was a living room-bedroom with a mattress on the floor, pushed up to the corner, and a TV propped up on a flat-pack coffee table. A bag of chips sat open next to it.

  The door on the left probably led to a bathroom, and I had no desire to see what state that was in.

  “And who says meth labs can’t be charming?” I said, and then sighed and strolled into the apartment.

  Even the air felt dirty. I sort of wished I had the respirator from Haven Rock.

  My face itched as a reminder that no, I actually did not.

  I crossed the room and, veering around the bed, came to a halt at the window. It overlooked the front of the apartment complex. A water fountain, long dried up, stood as a testament of when this place had seen better times. Or it had fooled people into thinking there were better times. Now, the base of the fountain harbored trash. The parking lot beyond was cracked and empty, barring a few vehicles with bashed-in windows and no license plates.

  Not a soul had made an appearance so far.

  Something wasn’t right. Of course, there was a sludge monster on the loose, so that was probably a moot point.

  Had everyone abandoned ship when the monster showed up? Or was it eating people? Or was this just a normal day in Orangewood Grove?

  We really didn’t know enough yet about what was happening here. As much as it would have been nice to stay holed up—even in a dump like this—we weren’t going to catch our next target by sitting around.

  Fiona shuffled to the mattress and collapsed on it, seeming not to care about any number of pests that likely called it home. Like the rest of us, her bar had lowered drastically. She rolled away from me, and a moment later, her side moved in slow, deep breaths.

  “I think she’s asleep,” I whispered, not looking away from her crumpled form. “We need to keep moving, though. Someone should stay here with her, and the others go looking around town, see what turns up.”

  Randall and Sasmita nodded from where they stood apart in the living room.

  I looked between them, and then shrugged. “Randall and I can go out. Sasmita, can you stay here and guard Fiona?”

  She raised an eyebrow at me, and I added, “You can blast any intruders to kingdom come. Take no prisoners.”

  She gave a mock salute, and then wordlessly crossed the room to where Fiona slept. She sat on the very edge of the mattress and brought her limbs in tight, as if trying to take up as little space as possible in our grungy surroundings.

  I understood entirely.

  With a look at Randall, I headed toward the door.

  3

  The late afternoon sun glared at us as we made our way down the street. I kept watch for any sign of the sludge monster returning, but nothing moved. Not a breeze, not a piece of trash, not a person. I expected to see flashes of activity in the windows of the houses, but their blinds remained closed and curtains drawn.

  At this point, some deranged inhabitants trying to kidnap or kill us would have been less unsettling.

  “I’m not sure what’s going on in this town,” Randall said, breaking the stillness.

  His words fell on me hard. The Salem witch had been straight-up demonic. The carnival mage a festival of mayhem and terror. The necromancer had been downright terrifying.

  This, though, I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. We were missing details, and more than just a few.

  I slipped my hand into my pocket and touched the heart-shaped necklace I had stolen from the house in New Orleans. Truth was, we were still in the dark with a lot more than whatever was happening in Orangewood Grove. I didn’t know why I could sense magic on the necklace, but the vendor at the Dark Bazaar had thought otherwise. I didn’t know what had happened to Fiona during her captivity on the steamboat. I didn’t know what Sasmita was really up to, gathering blood from the dark witches and mages. And I still didn’t know how the damn pictures had been released from the vault to begin with.

  To add insult to injury, I couldn’t even begin to explain why my magic was a zero or a twelve. The shield, the fire, the air bubble in the lake; they had all come out stronger than I knew I was even capable of. Not to mention, the tentacles of magic I had spontaneously manifested in Haven Rock. Yet, I couldn’t control any of it, apparently. The only thing I knew for sure was Jada had been right—we should have just left our magic alone

  The deeper we were dragged down into the figurative muck, the less I understood.

  One problem at a time. At least, that was what I kept telling myself. They seemed to attack me all at once these days.

  “We could try the sewers,” Randall said. “See if the sludge monster is down there.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but a shadow draped over us like a storm rolling in. I jerked my head back, staring up at the sky. An empty blackness slid across the clear blue, like a sheet being tugged into place. It blocked out the sky inch by inch and seemed to have no end.

  Goosebumps followed the trail of cold that raced along my skin as I watched the strange darkness until it slid over the sun, draping night over us.

  “What the fuck is that?” Randall asked, his gaze fixed to the darkness covering the sky.

  It defied explanation. Yet, as I stared up at it, rooted in my spot too afraid to move, I gleaned emotions that were not my own: dismay, anger…intrigue.

  It was watching us, though I couldn’t be sure how that would be possible.

  “We need to go,” I whispered to Randall, my throat tight.

  He took off, grabbing my arm to tug me along. I tripped over myself as I struggled to tear my attention and thoughts away from the darkness in the sky. As I watched, the sheet of black continued onward, in the opposite direction we headed, and eventually, we passed under where it ended in a hard line, splitting the sky between day and night.

  Randall and I did not speak, our ragged gasps filling the space between us as we continued to run.

  Whatever was happening in this town, it was different than the others.

  My side ached, but we didn’t slow until we had left the darkness far behind. Even then I continued at a brisk walk before finally easing to a stop, hunched over with a split side, breathing hard.

  “I think we should leave,” Randall said between pants. “This isn’t right, Saf.”

  He had felt it too, the strangeness that enveloped this town. It tingled on my skin, despite how I tried to ignore it. Whatever lurked here was not the same as what we had encountered before.

 
Still, how could we turn away? So much relied on us getting this right. While I contemplated on what to say, I took in my surroundings as if an answer would manifest. We were on a sidewalk near an empty street, and next to us stood a tall chain-link fence.

  “I think we can cut through here and get back to the apartment,” I said, trying to get my bearings. I pulled myself up on the fence to get a better look, and spotted bleachers in the distance. “Good news. You won’t have to drive the kids to school in another town. There’s one here in this little slice of paradise after all.”

  With that, I scrambled up and over, then dropped to the ground on the other side. Randall followed after me, and we headed across the field, soles making sucking noises as we trudged through mud.

  Neither of us spoke, but without a doubt, both of our minds were riveted to what had sailed across the sky. I still couldn’t think of one explanation, reasonable or otherwise.

  As we passed the bleachers, movement caught my eye. I jerked around as something thick and ropey slithered underneath, into the shadows.

  “Oh, boy,” I said with no enthusiasm whatsoever. “I simply can’t wait to see what fresh hell this is.”

  Despite my better judgment, I stooped down to peer under the bleachers, but found nothing. I was long past believing strange occurrences were my imagination, though. Something was here. It was just playing Hide-and-Seek and we were ‘it.’

  I twisted and crouched down farther, trying to get a better look.

  A panting-hissing sound came from directly in front of me.

  “Uh, Saf…” Randall said, and his tone conveyed more than words ever could.

  Something unpleasant was afoot.

  I slowly straightened up as a shadow dropped over me.

  Raised up from the bleachers was an enormous woman with wild knots of hair and black eyes. Her arms undulated at her side, and her bare breasts swayed with the motion. Flat gemstones adorned her face and abdomen, shimmering in the moonlight. Her waist faded into scales that rushed down her long serpentine lower half that wound around the bleachers and disappeared into the shadows.

  “Okay,” I said, as my brain jammed. That was the only word I could find. “Okay.”

  She hiss-breathed again, facing us. I couldn’t track the movement of her eyes, but many snakes didn’t rely on vision anyway. She had sensed us, and that was more than enough.

  “Just hold still,” Randall said, barely audible. “Unless, you know, she does something.”

  “Okay.”

  There was that word again.

  “We need to think this through,” he said. “We need to keep her from picking up our heat signature again.”

  “By doing what?” I asked.

  “Keeping her from looking our way,” he said.

  I didn’t reply; the less we talked, the less likely she would notice us. After a moment of chest-seizing terror in which I couldn’t imagine how we would do anything but stand here forever, Randall backed away slowly.

  It took all my willpower to follow suit. When she didn’t react, I took another step, mindful of how slowly I lowered my heel.

  Her bottom half tightened a little, cinching up just enough for me to notice.

  I paused. Randall seemed to have the same idea.

  We waited, and I held my breath.

  After a moment, he said in a low voice, “Let’s keep going.”

  Keeping my eyes fixed on her, I took another painfully measured step backwards. Then another. My foot hit the mud puddle and slid out. My arms shot out to the side, trying to catch my balance. I went down on my ass.

  She lunged forward, over the bleachers. I screamed, scrambling for my knife. It was coated in mud. My fingers slipped over the hilt, unable to grip it.

  Her arms coiled around me. She yanked me up off the ground as she raised up like a cobra until I was dangling in the air. I kicked at her, but she barely registered as my boots contacted her abdomen. Her fingers tightened around me, and my lungs hitched as I tried to suck in air. My head began to rush, both in panic and lack of oxygen.

  I scrubbed my hand against my pants, my arm pinned to my side, and then grabbed for my knife again. My fingers wrapped around the hilt, and I pulled the blade free. Gritting my teeth, I slammed myself forward and back, trying to loosen her hold on my arm. She didn’t budge. I braced my soles against her chest bone and shoved back, grunting, not caring if she dropped me to the ground.

  She hissed, but didn’t release me.

  With a growl, I flipped the knife around in my hand, level with my thigh, and stabbed it forward a few inches. The tip pierced her abdomen. Her eyes widened and then narrowed. Despite the awkward angle, I pushed in deeper. A sharp pain bolted through my wrist and my hand slipped off the hilt. With effort, I brought up my knee and rammed it into the top of the knife, plunging the blade all the way into her.

  She flung me toward the ground. I sucked in a breath right before slamming into the earth. The air whooshed out of my lungs. Everything dimmed and came back and then dimmed again.

  Randall grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet. I fled with him, slipping and scrambling as I tried to find my senses. He continued to pull me along. My ribs ached, and I hunched forward.

  “No, no, no,” Randall said, panting hard. “Keep going, keep going.”

  I forced myself onward. He pulled me to the right, and something creaked right before my feet hit sidewalk.

  As I continued to suck in deep breaths, my vision began to clear. I dared a glance back. A gate to the schoolyard hung open. Beyond it, her dark form slithered away until she disappeared from sight.

  “I thought nagas were nice,” Randall said.

  “I didn’t know nagas were real,” I replied. “I’m getting really tired of learning about this shit.”

  Randall didn’t say anything, and I stole a look at him. His expression was twisted in something like amusement.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “I just…” He took a few heavy breaths. “How do you not know about these things?”

  I slowed, reeling around to face him.

  “Did you see them out and about?” I asked, jabbing my finger at him.

  He shifted weight. “No…”

  Hot anger roiled through me. “Then why would I have seen them, either?”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, putting up his hands in a show of resignation. “I just…I don’t get it, that’s all. I don’t get any of this.”

  I had nothing to say to him. I spun around and stormed off.

  Perhaps it wasn’t fair to be mad at him, but how could he insinuate that I should somehow have in-depth arcane knowledge about whatever was happening? Until connecting with Arlo, I had never met anything more than fairies and ghosts and everything else that never ticked past nuisance on the danger scale. Beyond those, I didn’t know anything more than he did.

  Maybe he should take it up with Sasmita, instead.

  In time, Randall caught up with me, and I knew it wasn’t because I had been too fast for him. He had just been giving me space.

  “So, no sewer?” he asked lightheartedly.

  Fuck the sewers. I’d had enough of Orangewood Grove already.

  I shook my head. If I spoke, I would probably sound harsher than I wanted to right now. For tonight, we just needed to get back to the apartment and try to get some rest among whatever creepy crawlies had taken up residency before we got there.

  We took long strides down the empty sidewalk. This town could be hiding anything, and I was down a knife. My only knife, as it were.

  Randall grabbed the back of my shirt, tugging me to a halt. I turned, opening my mouth to speak, but he put his finger to his lips. I slammed my jaw shut. He tilted his head, listening. I tried to hear around my thudding heart.

  Distant chattering interspersed with music came from nearby.

  I scowled, trying to pick out words or even lyrics more clearly, but it was all background noise.

  Randall leaned towards me and whispered, “I
t seems we found people.”

  4

  Tracking down the talking and music was a little more difficult than I would have expected, given the night was otherwise silent. Randall and I wandered up and down the sidewalk, stopping every few feet and listening to judge if we were closer or farther from the source. Eventually, the noise became louder.

  Together, Randall and I crossed through front yards to check doors and peer into backyards in hopes of finding whatever event we were missing.

  I pulled myself up on a gate, the wood biting into my palms, and squinted. The backyard beyond was dark and empty.

  “Over here,” Randall hissed as he headed across the carport, into the next yard.

  I dropped down on my feet and winced as my ribs pulsed with pain, and then hurried after him.

  When I caught up with him, I asked, “Is this the house with the pool party?”

  “And to think, they didn’t even bother to invite us.” He grinned, nudging my shoulder with his.

  “We won’t be inviting them to our housewarming, then,” I said as we crunched along the gravel driveway leading up the side of the house.

  “Our housewarming?”

  I paused, realizing what I had said, and then waved him off. We continued up the driveway, and the talking grew louder. I veered to the side of the house, tugging Randall into the shadows with me, and together we crept up toward the backyard.

  I peeked around the corner.

  Nearly two dozen people ambled around folding tables that had been setup and filled with platters full of treats. Everyone wore costumes—black cat ears and painted whiskers, a ninja in a mask, and a stereotypical witch with a black pointed hat. There was even someone in a full T-rex costume meandering around.

  Purple, black, and orange streamers swung off the edges of the tables and from low tree branches. Music thudded from somewhere inside the house, growing louder each time the back door opened.

  A woman in a naughty nurse outfit sauntered outside with a bowl of red punch with fake eyeballs floating in it.