Insidious: (The Marked Mage Chronicles, Book 1)

by Victoria Evers

  “Haven’t thought that far,” he said, continuing on his way.

  “Maybe you should, because you’re gonna wind up looking like a victim from Saw,” I sneered.

  “Well, if your boyfriend wants to help out, then he’s more than welcome. But as far as I can see, Reynolds’s conveniently absent at the moment,” growled Reese, motioning down the abandoned hallway. “Hate to break it to you, but right now, I’m the only person here who can deal with this. Just stay here. If anything happens, you run. Understand?”

  He didn’t wait for my response.

  The cheering that sounded from the gym grew louder, drowning out the sound of his footsteps as he disappeared down the hall. A tug in my chest stole the air right out of me. It was that inexplicable pull I’d felt when Brenda got hurt in P.E., and it urged me forward. Considering how things had ended the last time, I didn’t hesitate. Just as he was about to turn down the adjacent hallway, black mist ignited all around his frame.

  I bolted after him. “Reese, don’t-”

  A loud thud echoed from the end of the hall, and I caught sight of Reese’s body slamming against a set of lockers as I came around the corner.

  “Okay, definitely not my best plan,” the magician huffed, staggering up to his feet.

  Despite its warped stature, the creepy figure moved far more stealthily than I’d imagine. It sprang forward, gripping Reese by the throat and yanking him clear off his feet. Whirling around, it tossed him across the hallway right into the brick wall like he weighed nothing. Reese lurched toward where his sword lay nearby, but the creature swiped a taloned hand down at his arm, forcing him to recoil before it tore into his flesh.

  The metallic nails slammed down on the linoleum floor, slicing four long lines into the tiles. Adrenaline overcame me as I raced towards the action. A sickening mixture of rotten eggs and burnt meat batted me in the face upon arrival, making me gag. The creature remained with its back turned toward me as it scuttled after Reese. I grabbed the silver-infused blade off the ground, prepared to swing it. Only, the sword was a whole lot heavier than I’d imagined, and my arms were still killing me from art class. I clumsily drove the weapon through dead air.

  Nice.

  The momentum spun me around in a full circle, and I nearly dropped the blade as I steadied myself. With every movement, a small cloud of ash billowed into the air off the monster’s burnt robe. I leapt to the side, trying to stay in the creature’s blind spot as it lurched about the hall in pursuit of the Magician. I lifted the blade again, positive of my stance, and swung all-out at the figure’s back. The cloth tore open, and the creature snarled as it staggered forward. I looked at the end of the sword, expecting to see blood on the tip. Instead, gooey red gunk hugged the blade, forcing my eyes to the spot of impact. I shrieked, stumbling back a step to see a section of fleshless ribcage bones with exposed muscle clinging to the skeletal frame.

  The creature hissed, stealing a look over its shoulder. I staggered back another step, seeing the full extent of its face. It looked human; only the skull was a great deal longer. Its jaw appeared to be dislocated, as it hung crooked with a gaping expression. Patches of skin still clung to its face, but it was thin and flaky, revealing dehydrated muscle underneath that looked like spoiled turkey jerky.

  The creature roared, and the tendons in its cheeks visibly stretched. It sniffed through the decayed remains of its nostrils. Empty eye sockets bore down at me from its seven-and-a-half foot stature, making me recoil all the more. Bones creaked as it twisted around and faced me.

  “Et alterum ad dominum,” the creature hissed like a snake. It even had a forked tongue.

  I swung the blade defensively, hoping it would make the beast recoil. Instead, it lurched forward, forcing me to swing again. Lacking the momentum and obvious accuracy, the blade merely skimmed its arm.

  “Hey!” Reese barked, regaining the creature’s attention. He had a new sword in hand, poised in a battle-ready stance.

  A jeering sound escaped the skeletal figure, and it slashed a hand at the significantly smaller blade. The steel sliced off in four separate sections, where each of its fingernails connected with the blade, leaving Reese with nothing but a stump.

  The boy went pale. “That’s not good.” He suddenly whipped the nub at the creature’s face, and of all things, the fiend wrinkled its nose in surprise. Reese slinked to the side just as the creature feverishly thrashed its hands out where he’d just been standing, repeatedly clawing into nothing but air. And that’s when I realized…it was blind.

  Reese, now pinned in the corner of the hall, remained still and hunkered down, having realized the same as me. The creature relied wholly on its other senses. So long as he didn’t make a sound, it couldn’t pinpoint him. I dug into my pocket and pulled out a pack of gum, hurling it at the lockers on the opposite side of the hallway from where Reese stood. The thud caused the creature to whirl around, and it slashed its deadly set of nails into the metal sheeted lockers. Taking advantage of my distraction, Reese sprang up and darted over to me, but the creature reacted instantly to the sound of his footsteps.

  Freddy Kruger’s cousin sliced a hand out once more, and I drove my own blade up for another attempt. The fingernails grazed Reese’s right side, tearing through the fabric of his coat sleeve, but my swing actually managed to deflect the nails from connecting all the way. The blade wedged into the creature’s arm, and I gave a solid heave to free it. Only, the thing wouldn’t budge. The sword sat lodged in decrepit bone, and the handle ripped out of my grasp as the creature wildly hurled its injured arm about. I ducked, narrowly managing to not get a head full of hilt in the process as the butt of the blade swung back in my direction.

  My shoulder was practically ripped from its socket as Reese grabbed my arm and yanked me away. We ran down the hall, but once we reached the end of the corridor, Reese stopped me from turning back toward the gymnasium.

  “We can’t put that thing towards other people,” he panted. “Regular humans may not be able to see it, but they’ll sure as hell feel it if that creature takes a swipe at them.”

  Bones rasped as the ghoul lurched towards us. With no other choice, we went down the converse hall. Though a lot of the students were at the rally, there were still plenty of others loitering the hallways and classrooms. We passed emergency exits, but leading that thing outside wasn’t an option. Alarms were rigged to go off if someone opened any of the doors, which would cause a flood of students to pour out into the hallways and put them right in the path of that thing.

  Racing through the maze of corridors, I did my best to get that thing to the other side of the school. There was some halted construction going on in the west wing. With no workers and classes in that section, it was the least populated part of the building and our safest bet. Despite our quickened pace, the creature remained no more than a hall’s length behind us. We came to the dead end of the corridor to the art room. An exit rested on the other side, free of alarms. Our ticket out of here. In all my time going here, never had the door been locked. Today of all days… I twisted the knob to no avail.

  The gruesome smell of rotten eggs only grew stronger the closer the creature came. Reese wrenched the knob as hard as he could, but the damned thing wouldn’t give. We both hurled our bodies at the door in a last ditch effort. Still, nothing.

  “Come on!” I raced back down the hall, right toward the decaying monster.

  “What the hell are you doing?” bellowed Reese, following on my foot heels.

  I motioned to the small passageway up ahead, midway down the hall. By just a hair’s breadth, we managed to turn into the dark, ten-foot long corridor before the creature met with us. Our momentum sent us crashing into the heavy steel door. We ignored the WARNING: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY sign and pried the rusted entrance door open. We snaked inside and slammed the door shut, throwing the metal lever lock into place. The pungent odor of burning oil and mildew greeted us as we trampled down a barely visible flight of steps. Dim flu
orescent lights did little to illuminate the vast cellar space. Water pumps and electrical generators eventually came into focus. We were in the boiler room.

  I knew the school had one, but I honestly didn’t ever know where it was. There were several maintenance rooms with the same signs around the building, so by logic, it could’ve been behind any one of those doors. Yet, here we were. Trapped in the basement with nothing but a couple of barred windows near the ceiling.

  Reese used the flashlight on his phone to help him investigate deeper into the room. “By law, there should be an emergency exit in here somewhere.”

  The building was fairly old, and I could see the bars guarding the windows had some rust on them. It was worth a shot. I leapt up, clinging onto them. The glass could be opened, I guessed for air circulation, but the bars were firmly welded in place. I relentlessly clutched my fingers around the metal, wrenching my body down with as much force as I could muster. It wasn’t any use.

  “This might not be the best time to mention this, but what does it mean if you see a freakish cloud looming around someone?” I gritted, still yanking at the bars.

  “It’s a prophetic aura. Tells you that the person in question is either going to get hurt…or die. Why?”

  “There’s one around you right now,” I admitted, finally dropping back to the floor.

  “What color?”

  “Black.”

  Reese reemerged from the shadows. “Come again?”

  Even with the darkness resting behind him, I could still see the swirling black mist clinging around his form. I didn’t need to be told what that meant.

  Reese’s cursing didn’t inspire any confidence as he darted back into the darkness. His flashlight finally stopped moving, now transfixed on an unlit EXIT sign…behind an old, busted rooftop HVAC unit blocking the entranceway. I raced over and we both yanked and pulled and wrenched our weight into it. The damn thing didn’t budge an inch.

  The door at the top of the stairs continuously pounded, and shrill screeching followed. Seeing as how that thing tore through locker doors like they were made of paper, I doubted we would have more than thirty seconds before that ghoul clawed its way in here.

  I needed to think. Fast.

  An array of equipment lay before us, and I started hitting every button and pulling every lever available. Engines roared and gears clanked and sensor alarms started beeping.

  “What are you doing?”

  “That thing can’t see,” I said, now dumping disinfectant and floor cleaner across the open space of concrete. “So we confuse it. It can’t kill us if it can’t find us.”

  The whole room was now filled with a barrage of mechanical roars and the pungent odor of chemical.

  “All it has to go on now is touch, so we hide. The moment it moves towards the back of the room, we make a run for it.”

  Sure enough, a loud rupture ignited from the top of the stairs. The metal lever once locking the door clanged down the steps, its handle shredded right off. The door burst open, and as if it was floating, the creature swept down the stairs in one fluent motion.

  Reese pulled me back, and I ducked behind an empty hot water tank as he crouched in back of some kind of large chiller. The creature whirled around, rasping at the air. The ends of his tattered cloak sat inches from the pooling disinfectant as it suddenly stopped. The creature lowered itself, snuffling in the potent tang through whatever remained of its nose.

  Scrunching its face in what looked like disgust, the monster recoiled, batting a talon-clawed hand through the air as if to fan away the smell. It straightened back upright and slowly moved about the floor, still consciously avoiding the spilled chemicals. Cocking its head from side to side, it seemed confused by the whaling machinery. Only, it didn’t come deeper into the room.

  Its sharp shoulders slackened. “Sponsae of Sitri.”

  I stole a look over at Reese who just shook his head in puzzlement. His eyes grew as they traveled down the length of me.

  Sure enough, a blue light was illuminating from beneath the left sleeve of my sweatshirt. I rolled up the fabric to see one of the runes glowing brighter and brighter. It was circular with an ornate U shape holding up three iron crosses. I still didn’t have a clue what any of them meant, but I had a feeling the towering creep in front of me did, because he was staring straight at me.

  Panicking, I slithered out from behind the tank, moving further back into the room. A bat of noxious air hit me in the face not a second before the creature suddenly manifested right in front of me.

  I clumsily stumbled back, falling into a machine. My palms pressed against the plate cover behind me, and I yelped as the hot metal scorched the skin. The creature cocked its head, raising its clawed hand out to me. It even turned its palm upright so that its clawed fingers angled away toward the floor. Was it…reaching out to me?

  The creature suddenly lurched back, hissing as it batted its talon around. Something was clamped under its throat. The skeletal figure whirled around in a frenzy.

  Reese.

  He was clinging to the creature’s back, gripping a lead pipe from both ends as he dug it against the monster’s windpipe. The beast threw its weight back, hurtling both Reese and itself into the far brick wall. Reese gasped, clearly having the wind knocked out of him. The pipe fell away as his body sank to the floor. The creature turned to him, its claws primed and raised.

  I raced for the stairs. “HEY!”

  Before it even had a chance to look at me, I hurtled the broken lever at the foot of the landing square right into the back of its head. The creature hissed something under its breath, striking a hand against the wall right above Reese’s head. Blackburn sank down lower until he was practically lying on the floor, still struggling to refill his lungs.

  “You want to kill me?” I barked, wielding a long rod of rebar. “Then have at it!”

  “Kat…go,” Reese choked.

  Like hell.

  Bearing in mind of the stealth it possessed, I swung at the creature the instant it stepped forward. And just like that, its skeletal hands caught hold of the steel well before it even came close to landing a hit. I twisted the grooved rod and yanked it back, watching the abrasive metal tear apart the remaining skin on the creature’s palm and fingers.

  That same disgusting red gunk clung to the end of the rebar as I ripped the metal away. I tried to lift it up to take another swing, but the creature gripped it again. Only this time, steam was coming out from the hand wrapped around the steel. Instantly, I let go of the rebar. An all new level of fear hit me as I watched the steel melt away in thick globs like wax from a sickly candle.

  If Mr. Abrams was right in his teachings last year, then it took about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit to liquefy steel. And this creature was doing it with the mere touch of its hand.

  Speaking of hands, the beast reached its free one out to me again. A bright light suddenly blasted from my left arm as a fresh wave of adrenaline overcame me. The skin burned, and I instinctively thrust my hand up.

  My fingers burned as light suddenly erupted from my palm, hitting the creature right in the chest. The monstrous being shot across the room, but instead of hitting the wall beside Reese, it went right through it, evaporating into an inky mist. Burn marks powdered the wall, low embers still burning amid the charcoaled residue.

  The instant I lowered my hand, the light vanished, the glow from the runes returning to their shiny metallic branding.

  “Reese.” I raced over to him, falling down onto my knees.

  “I’m okay,” he muttered hoarsely.

  And he was right. That weird aura around him had vanished as well.

  “What did you do?” Reese muttered, coughing out the words grievously.

  “I thought maybe you’d know.” I helped him back up to his feet, turning him around to face the wall.

  “Holy shit,” he blurted.

  I extended my arm out, showing him the collection of runes. He immediately recognized the one in question
…

  Because the very same symbol was burned into the wall, on a much bigger scale.

  It took up nearly the entire space from floor to ceiling and stretched at least ten feet wide. That circle with the three iron crosses.

  Chapter 21

  Make Me Wanna Die

  All I wanted to do was go home and curl up in bed, but Carly had insisted that Reese and I meet up with her at the library after school let out. I just started to doze off when a heavy thud hit the table. My head shot up to see a big office file box set in front of me.

  “Break out your magnifying glasses, Sherlock,” declared my blonde bestie in pure giddiness, removing piles of manila folders from the container.

  “Whatcha got there?” I asked, nervous.

  “Well, I stopped by the office supply store during Study Hall and got myself a corkboard. And like any good sleuth, I started mapping out the details from each of the cases to see if I could find any connection between the victims.” She lobbed over a stack of files to both Reese and me. “Guess what I found.”

  “That you have way too much time on your hands?” Reese guessed, fingering through the good hundred pages of work in front of him alone.

  She rolled her eyes. “Hey, I’m not hearing you contributing anything here yet, Edward Scissorhands. So shut your pie hole.” Car dug deeper into the box and unfolded a gigantic diagram full of labeled squares. “As it turns out, they were related. Distantly, but related nonetheless.”

  “Seriously?” Now Reese seemed impressed.

  “Fourth cousins, once removed to be exact.”

  “So what’s all this for?” I asked, leafing through the first few pages. “Car, what the hell is this?”

  “You. Or more specifically you and your family.”

  “I can see that.” There were pictures and news ads and….medical records? “Where did you even get all this stuff?”

  “With ‘too much time,’” she cracked, casting Reese a glare. “And a…confidential source.”