by R D Martin
“He is one hell of a man, ain’t he?” said Cynthia on her left.
“Hum? I’m sorry, say again?”
“Chryso. He’s one hell of a man, ain’t he? Jack tells me he’s Greek but lives pretty much everywhere and got his fingers in every pie. If we could bring him in as a partner, well…” She left the rest of whatever she’d been about to say unfinished as Chryso approached them. Cynthia reached out to shake his hand immediately, but Bella was a little more hesitant.
This close to the man she could feel something magnetic about him, as if being in his vicinity held promise of adventure and riches. This was a man used to power, not the simple power of someone with just too much money, rather the power of someone used to holding the reins of destiny, guiding the rise and fall of empires. His gray eyes stared into hers as if he’d known her for years. They even widened a bit as, when his hand touched hers, a very real spark leaped between them, sending chills running up her arm and lodging in her spine. Staring into his eyes was like staring into the bottomless abyss of time and she felt herself getting lost. It was a shock then when he let go and continued on his path. For a moment, she felt the brief desire to follow him.
“What did I tell ya?” said Cynthia in a breathy voice beside her. “One hell of a man.”
As the party continued into the night, Bella and William met a few times to trade information before parting again in separate directions. The search had not gone well. While guests were allowed in the main ballroom and on most of the grounds outside, the rest of the mansion appeared to be off-limits with multiple guards stationed at almost every door. They’d prepared for this, though, and it was a simple matter of hitting them with an Isivini charm to pause time for them and let her slip through. Unfortunately, the mansion was so huge that searching every room would take weeks and it was already getting close to midnight. Some guests were already leaving.
Returning to the ballroom, she caught William’s attention and pointed to the doors hidden in the base of the grand staircase where servers were entering and exiting like ants in a hill. He nodded and slowly began making his way through the crowd to her.
Waiting for him and eavesdropping on the surrounding conversations, she heard a voice she knew didn’t belong and an electric current surged through her, making her scalp tighten and her stomach twist as she turned to find its source. Scanning the surrounding crowd while doing her best to shrink into the smallest space possible, she saw not six feet away her supervisor, Mr. Browser.
How had he not noticed her? she wondered as she ducked behind a nearby potted plant with as much grace as possible. Though they were speaking in hushed tones, she could still clearly hear what they were saying as Browser, from too many years of indulging himself with every confection known to man, seemed to gasp in the effort of speaking more than five words while standing at the same time. Apparently Chryso was not happy seeing his employee here.
“But, sir,” said Browser, holding his considerable bulk as straight as possible in his ill-fitting tux. “You said to let you know as soon as we caught him, and we did. He’s down in the cells now.”
She wondered who they were trying to capture and why. And what was that bit about cells below?
“You fool,” hissed Chryso before letting off a string of curses in a language she didn’t understand but would make a point of looking up later. His rigid shaking, along with Browser shrinking away from his employer, made it obvious he was holding himself back from striking the fat man. “Why did you come here now? I told you to stay away tonight.”
“I, I thought you would want to know. I know how important…”
“You thought wrong. Did my instructions get lost in the layers of fat surrounding your brain? Do. Not. Come. Here. Tonight. Five words. How hard could those instructions be?”
There was a mumble somewhere between an apology and an excuse from her supervisor. She’d never liked Browser and often wished she could tell him off, but listening to him being raked over the coals by Chryso, she almost felt sorry for the piggy little man. Almost.
Tossing his hands up with an exasperated sigh, Chryso turned and pressed a spot on a golden picture frame behind him. There was a click and the giant oil painting of a man with his stomach torn open by a huge bird opened.
“Go below. Do not leave. Do not be seen. I will come when this”—he indicated the surrounding party— “is over. Disobey me again and I will have you roasted over a fire with an apple in your mouth and fed to my dogs. Now go.” Before the last word could be swallowed by the surrounding noise, Browser leaped through the opening and disappeared into the darkness behind.
As the painting swung closed, Chryso turned and, a smile plastered on his face once more, continued mingling with his guests.
She let out the breath she’d been holding. As confused as if she’d just walked into an Escher painting, she stared at his back as he passed. What was going on? Why had he threatened Browser like that? What were they hiding below? Why did he need cells beneath the mansion?
When William arrived a moment later, she filled him in on what she’d overheard, and it was a moment’s work to have the painting open and the two of them stepped through.
Giving their eyes time to adjust to the low light she’d originally thought of as darkness, they found themselves at the top of a set of spiral stone stairs leading deep into the earth. With no way to go but forward, they slowly began descending. Unlike the marble floors making up every room they’d searched so far, these stairs were constructed from plain stone and concrete. The sounds of her heels clicking on them echoed around so loudly they had to stop long enough for her to take them off. Beneath her feet, the stone was cool and dry.
There weren’t any landings on the dimly lit spiral staircase to mark floors, so by the time they reached the bottom, she guessed they’d traveled at least a hundred feet down. Exiting the stairs through a stone archway, they stood in a long hallway lit in intervals by a string of lights hanging overhead. Replace the bulbs with torches, she imagined, and this place could be mistaken for a medieval dungeon. She shivered though it wasn’t cold.
Scurrying from shadow to shadow, hugging the walls and trying to make as little noise as possible, they snuck down the corridor. After a little more than a dozen feet they came to their first break in the wall. A heavy wooden door sat recessed into the stonework. The handle turned easily with a little pressure and the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. The light from the corridor failed to penetrate more than a few feet into the room.
A soft white light sprang into life as William whispering a few words beneath his breath, and hovered inches over his palm. The new light was brighter than what she was used to, and Bella threw her hand up to cover her eyes. Blinking away the blindness from the new light, she reached over and slapped her companion on the arm.
“Warn me next time,” she said. Losing her dark vision could have been dangerous.
What they saw in the room would only have counted as dangerous to a person’s wallet. Rows of bottles filled the room from floor to ceiling. Hundreds upon hundreds of different sizes and shapes glinted in the light, some with labels so old they’d yellowed with time and were now completely illegible. Near the back of the room such a thick sheet of dust covered them, she was afraid of leaving traces behind.
Finding nothing of interest, they left the room, pulling the door closed quietly behind them.
Farther down the corridor, they came to a fork where the stone walls split right and left. Shifting her attention between both tunnels, she poked her companion, pointed to the right, and turned to head left. They needed to cover as much ground as quickly as possible and splitting up here was the only way to do it. She just hoped they wouldn’t get stuck in some underground maze.
A few paces down the tunnel and the floor sloped gently before opening into a larger antechamber. The antechamber was much better lit than the corridor and, from where she stood, she could see three doors. Light shone from beneath the door to her r
ight. Fingers crossed, hoping no one was in the room, she pressed her ear to the thick wooden door and closed her eyes to concentrate. No sound or other signs of movement filtered through, so, taking a breath to steady nerves already on edge, she tried the handle. Pushing the door open slowly, she slipped through the moment it was open enough and gently pushed it closed behind her.
The room was maybe ten feet by twelve and filled with an assortment of items she immediately recognized as torture devices because of all the spikes and pointed objects. Her stomach turned as she surveyed the items and she brought her hand up to cover her mouth. Sitting in the middle of the room, barely small enough to have fit through the door in the first place, was a large brass bull. She recognized it immediately as it played an important role in her childhood nightmares. It was a Brazen Bull, a device invented by the Greeks to burn people to death on the inside. Their dying screams filtered through a system of pipes, making them sound as if the bull was snorting and mad.
Over the shoulder of the bull she could see a wall covered with whips and crops. Without having to step even a foot closer, she could tell Chryso meant these for use, not for play. Every lash was entwined with bits of metal intended to rend and tear. She recognized some of the items to her left as thumb screws, though the rest, especially one shaped like a pear, she had no clue.
Pulling the door open, she rushed out and slammed it behind her. Hands on knees, she panted as she tried to calm herself. Nothing in the room, not even the bull, had even a speck of dust as far as she could see. That meant either they were cleaned often or—and the thought sent shivers racing up her spine and her stomach to flip again—they were used regularly.
Regaining her composure and doing her best not to think about people and torture, she crossed the room and tried the other door. The room was about the same size as the one she’d just left, but instead of torture devices there was a bed and, oddly, a pile of what looked like a mixture of wood chips, straw, leaves, and scraps of newspaper. The pile shifted as something, burrowed deep inside, moved. As the pile shifted more, the snout of a pig poked through the mass.
Deciding tangling with a pig wasn’t on her list of things to do today, she left the room, closing the door behind her. Why a pig? What would Chryso possibly use a pig for in a dungeon? Choking her imagination back before it could run wild with the thought, she tried the last door.
No light crept from below it and she couldn’t hear anything on the other side, so, hoping it was as empty as the rest, she pushed it open, stepped through quickly, and pushed it shut behind her.
Casting the spell to summon a ball of light, she looked up from the pulsing white light and stifled a scream.
“Hello, little witch. Did you come to play too?” Ronnie coughed, spewing blood as he hung from manacles attached to the wall.
16
Blood ran in rivulets down the Lank’s body as it flowed from hundreds of cuts, dripping on the stone floor beneath him. His hair was gone. Burned away, she guessed, by whatever caused the acrid choking smell of the room. And it looked as though someone had tried to peel the flesh from half his face.
“Well, little witch? Did you come to play too or just to look? I know how pretty I am.” The Lank laughed, but the sound turned into a cough, spewing blood and saliva in alternate waves.
“Oh gods. Oh,” Bella started, frozen in place and unsure what to do. Of all the things she’d thought to find here, he was not one of them. “What… what happened? To you, I mean. What happened to you?”
“Oh, little witch, such concern? I’m touched.” The creature might have tried to smile, but missing half its lips ruined the effect.
“What did they do to you?” she asked again, approaching him. Getting a better look, she could see not only bleeding cuts, but jagged ends of bone poking through the skin of his chest. His right leg was at such a wrong angle she wasn’t sure even magic could fix it. His left foot was missing, though it looked as if they’d taken the time to cauterize it since blood didn’t drip from the ankle. “Oh God, what did they do to you?”
“We played,” the gurgling voice replied. Red bubbles formed at the remains of its lips as it spoke. “I played well, but he, he played better.”
“He? You mean Chryso? Is that who you’re talking about?”
The Lank chuckled and nodded. Another spasm of coughing wracked its body, shaking it and the chains it hung from.
“I, I’ve got to get you out of here,” she said, stepping forward and raising her hands to cast a spell. It would be hasty, but there was no telling how long Ronnie would last.
“Oh, so you want to play.” There was a gleam in its eyes that screamed the mania infesting its mind. The thing that was Ronnie screamed in frustration and yanked at the chains holding it, whipping them against the wall with a loud metallic clang. “Well? Go ahead, witch, have your fun,” it snarled.
“I,” she started. As afraid of this thing as she was, it was too hurt to do anything to her. Shaking her head, she looked at it straight in its single open eye. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to… to help. I’m here to help. So tell me how I can help you.”
“Help me?” The creature’s face, already contorted with rage, shifted as if it was trying to understand a foreign concept. “Help me?” it repeated, as though trying to get a taste for the idea. At last, its features drooped as the last of its hope died. “You can’t help me, little witch. No, you can’t help.”
“I can try.” Reaching up, she shouted the strongest healing spell she knew, unleashing a torrent of magic at the creature. The scream tearing from it was ferocious, filled with so much pain she cut the flow as fast as she could.
Aware she was doing more harm than good, she stopped to examine the chained monster. Hanging in its restraints, it didn’t even have the strength to lift its head. She barely heard it mumble as it tried to speak again.
“He has them, you know.”
“Them? Who?”
“Them, all of them. The children he sent me to gather. He has all of them.”
“Children? Samantha? You mean he has Samantha?” Her voice rose with each word. If she could find the girl, if she was here, this could be over tonight. “Where is she? Where’s Samantha!” she yelled at the creature as she pushed back its head, smearing the blood on its face with her palm.
“He’s going to sacrifice them.” It coughed. “Just kill them and not even play. Such a,” it paused to suck in a gurgling breath, “such a waste.”
“Where is she? Where’s Samantha?” Bella was desperate now. The Lank was dying and there was nothing she knew to do to stop it. “Where’s Samantha?” she screamed. The light remaining in its eyes dimmed.
“Two… two nights. Vo… Vomo Aimatos.” The words oozed from its lips and it breathed its last, succumbing to its wounds.
“No. No!” she screamed at the dead husk.
The door behind her swung open and William rushed through, hands glowing with offensive spells ready to be used. Skidding to a stop, he looked around the room for any threats, pausing over the corpse hanging from the wall.
“He,” she started, gulping back tears threatening to overwhelm her. “He knew where she was. I, I killed him. I didn’t mean to.”
Extinguishing the magic in his hands, William rushed over to her and took her in his arms, holding her tightly.
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s okay.” Looking at the manacled corpse, his face twisted as though trying to hold back revulsion at the sight of it. “Look,” he said after a moment, but before she had the chance to break down. “There’s nothing we could do and we’ve got to get out of here.”
She nodded at his words, refusing to pull her head away from his chest. He was right, they needed to leave, but she wasn’t sure she could. It was like losing everything all over again.
As if on cue, a voice echoed through the hall.
“Browser! Browser!” The voice bouncing off the walls belonged to Chryso, and it sounded like it was getting nearer.
Letting go, William dashed to the door, pushing it almost closed, leaving only a small crack for them to see through. Tossing out a hand, he sent a thin thread of magic out, snuffing the ball of light hanging overhead.
“Browser, you lazy pig. Where are you?” The words preceded the man by less than a heartbeat as he stepped into the antechamber.
Chryso was no longer dressed in his pressed tuxedo, opting instead to change into more casual wear. Just as he took a breath to scream for his subordinate again, the door on his left opened and Browser waddled out. The fat man must have been well asleep because, stumbling out of the room, he was even more disheveled than before, almost as if he was just figuring out how to wear clothes for the first time.
“There you are, pig. Well? Is he ready?”
“Ye… Yes, sir. He’s ready,” Browser said in a high-pitched squeal.
“Well then? Where did he hide it?”
“Ah, well, sir. I, um.”
“Oh, for the gods’ sake, pig. Spit it out. Where did he hide it?”
“Well, you see, I don’t…”
Browser had barely squeaked out the last word when Chryso’s hand lashed out, striking him in the face. As though the rotund man were filled feathers rather than fat, the blow lifted him into the air and spun him around before slamming him into the stone wall, where he bounced and dropped to the floor with a sickening thud.
“Never mind, idiot,” said Chryso, rubbing the back of his hand. “I’ll ask him myself.” Turning away from his crumpled servant, he strode across the antechamber toward the room they were hiding in.
With no time left and nowhere to go, William slammed the door shut, uncaring of the noise it made. Sketching a rune that looked like a circle with a diagonal lightning bolt running through it, he fed as much magic as he could into it. The rune burst to life with a blue glow that raced around the door frame, causing the surrounding stones to shift position as they pressed tighter against the door. With it sealed, he re-summoned the light and turned to Bella.