"Damn. I don't know if I can do this." I stopped and waited for the bile in my stomach to settle.
"What if Luma is down there?" Gabriella asked. "We don't have a choice."
I nodded, closing my eyes. She was right, of course. I set my jaw and strode forward. The tunnel continued to narrow and we were forced to crawl on our knees a couple of times when the ceiling became too low to allow us to continue walking. Perhaps more disconcerting was the appearance of two and three-foot diameter holes that led to other branches of the tunnel. I wasn't particularly susceptible to claustrophobia, but between the low ceiling, the off-shoot tunnels and the horrible smell, my brain had pretty much decided we were in the worst possible place. Finally, we reached the end of the low ceiling and were able to stand up in a larger chamber.
"Felix …" Gabriella's voice rose as she said my name. I recognized panic in her voice as she shined a bright beam of light from a pencil sized LED flashlight at her feet. A blackened hand had ensnared her ankle and was compressing her pant leg. I swung the ghost lantern closer, fully illuminating the remains of a woman who'd been dead for months, if not years.
Gabriella's eyes grew wild and I quickly placed my hand over her mouth, dropping the lantern, just as she started to scream in abject horror. Wildly, she kicked her foot and the undead woman lurched forward. With the lantern no longer in my control, the light extinguished. In her panic, Gabriella dropped the small but powerful LED. The sound of flesh tearing loose and a loud crack preceded the flight of the woman's forearm as it arced through the beam of the lost flashlight.
"It's not moving," I said with my face close to hers. There was enough light for me to see the terror in her eyes. "I'm taking my hand off your mouth. Okay?"
She nodded and I slowly removed my hand. "Is it off?" she whispered, not willing to look.
"Silici Scintillam Excudit." I reignited the lantern. "See if you can hold this." I handed the lantern to her and slowly let go. She smiled the smile of a person grasping for sanity in a world gone crazy. Even so, the lantern remained lit for her. I reached for her fallen flashlight and as the beam played along the floor of the cavern, it fell across a line of corpses.
"Do you hear that?" I asked, quietly, turning off the flashlight.
"What?" Gabriella whispered.
"Listen," I said walking forward. The light of the ghost lantern didn't reach far and as long as we didn't get too close to the cavern's wall, the dead weren't overly illuminated. "Something's tapping."
We continued forward, not moving overly fast. As we turned another bend, the tapping sound grew louder and we turned our attention to water dripping from the end of a tall stalagmite and running down, disappearing into the ground. I turned on the flashlight and ran the beam into a parallel cavern, separated from our side by a jagged wall of both rising stalagmites and drooping stalactites. Further back in the room, a green-hued pool was ringed by calcium deposits as if someone had sprinkled the edge with salt. The undisturbed water perfectly reflected the spectacular scene above.
"There's something else," Gabriella whispered, pointing at her ears and then down the main corridor where we'd been walking. I strained my ears and heard a faint clanking of steel on steel.
"They'll see us approach," I whispered back. "There's no way to hide the light."
"Use that spell you cast in the forest to enhance our senses," she said.
"It won't work. It enhances existing light. We're too deep; there's not enough residual light," I explained. "Let me try something. And this is going to suck." I doused the ghost lantern and cast the enhancement spell she'd asked for, first on me then on her.
She gasped, grabbing my arm as the spell enhanced our ability to smell the stench of decaying flesh within the cavern. I clenched my teeth and fought a new wave of revulsion. The idea seemed more horrible upon implementation than I could have imagined. I suspected the magic, having little light, texture or sound to work with, had boosted the only thing we were actively using – our sense of smell. That or the stink of dead people kept in enclosed spaces follows an exponential curve.
I placed my hand over the end of the LED and turned it back on, then carefully uncovered a tiny portion of the lens, allowing a small amount of light to leak out. The cave glowed and the shadows lightened. I could just make out the smooth path that led down.
"Can you see well enough?" I asked. Gabriella nodded and we pushed forward.
At some point, I lost count of the dead we passed. Anderson's estimate of thirty wasn't close by half, although most of them were so decayed, I had to wonder if they'd been pulled from graveyards.
The periodic clanking grew louder as we continued on, soon rounding a final bend and ending at the edge of a steep ramp that led downward. The glow of an electric lantern forty yards ahead was the first thing I recognized and I shut off the LED, allowing our eyes to adjust. We'd entered a large room, within which rows of old church pews had been set out more or less in an even pattern. At the front, where the lamp burned, a solitary figure hung, chained, in what could best be described as a very narrow, iron banded bird cage. Next to the cage was a stone altar, dark liquid dripping from its large flat top. The smell of blood hung thick in the air.
"This must be the cathedral," I whispered.
"I hear weeping," Gabriella said. I closed my eyes and concentrated. For some reason Gabriella's hearing had responded extremely well to the enhancement, much better than my own. I finally picked up on the sound of muted sobbing.
"Someone's alive in that cage," Gabriella said, surging forward.
I caught her arm. "Careful. Let me go first." I made my way down the ramp and through the center of the ordered rows of pews, my eyes scanning back and forth for signs of danger. Just as in the hallway, more corpses lined the walls, only these appeared to be newer kills. A glimpse of a familiar face caused me to do a double-take. I scanned back until I located it. In the middle of the group sat a very dead Agent Mulper.
"Shit," I said, pointing him out to Gabriella.
"Is someone there?" A woman's voice asked from the cage.
"Lace?" Gabriella replied. "It's Gabriella and Felix. Are you hurt?"
"Get out of here," Lace said. "The whole place is spelled. They'll be coming; you need to run."
"We're not leaving you," Gabriella said.
"You have to. They'll be here any minute."
"Lucem." I pulled the brightly lit crystal from beneath my shirt. My eyes stung at the bright wash of light. I pulled off my day pack and unlocked Judy's phone. I wasn't surprised to discover I had no reception, but that wasn't my current end game.
"Here." I handed the phone to Gabriella. "Take pictures. They'll never believe us. I'll see to Lace."
Gabriella accepted the phone and I ran over to Lace's cell. A chain held the cage off the ground. I found the pulley mechanism by the cave wall and released the latch, quickly lowering her.
"No key," she said, looking at the heavy lock. "You can’t break it off. It's too thick."
"Don't know a lot of wizards, do you?" I asked, twisting my fingers. The lock didn't budge, so I cast my wizard's sight – and laughed. The locks at Tenebrius Manerium had been a challenge, these were uninteresting at best. I twisted, lifted the locking mechanism and pulled the body sharply downward. The lock fell off easily and the door swung open. Lace collapsed through the door with a groan. The cage, short and narrow, had been designed to torture by not allowing a person enough room to sit or stand straight.
"I don't know any wizards," she answered.
"Any other wizards," I corrected. "And neither do I - unless you count my sister and even I'm not sure what she is."
As I talked, I scanned the room. It was coated in the green slimy aura I'd come to associate with Willum and the ghrelin.
"I'm good," Gabriella said, pushing the phone back into the pack. "Anderson isn't going to like that we found Mulper dead."
I helped Lace to her feet. "I think she already knows. We'll need to get word to her righ
t away, though."
"All you need to do is get this phone within sight of a cell tower. I sent her a text with pictures and the location."
"Lace, did you see a little girl?" I asked.
"You mean the one with the book at Judy's barbeque?"
Lace stumbled forward as I tried to help her up the path.
"That's her," I said. "She's been abducted too."
"I'm not sure you've got that right," Lace said. "She and a blonde witch were the ones who snagged me. The girl didn't help, but she wasn't tied up either."
"Damn it," I said. "She's a good kid."
"Take it from someone who knows. Sometimes when you're in with the wrong crowd, you do the wrong things," she said. "The girl was definitely involved."
"Damn it," I repeated.
A wave of power surged through the cavern and for a moment, nothing changed.
"Luuucy," I heard Thea's faint voice calling from above. "Luuucy. You have some 'splaining to do." She'd adopted a very poor Cuban accent.
The corpses near us started to move, very slowly at first, as they gathered their arms to their sides and started to rock forward, synchronized.
"If they brought necros, we can't get past all of them. We're trapped," Lace said, resigned.
"We're not staying here," I said.
Gabriella had already pulled her wand from her pocket and lashed out with it. A wave of power struck the closest corpse. The effect was immediate and the body was flung into the cavern wall. Unfortunately, it didn’t break apart and gathered itself slowly for another push forward. Spurred by adrenaline, Gabriella swung her wand to the side and struck a second. This time the shambling cadaver fell to the side. It hadn't been permanently stopped either.
"I have an idea," I said, reaching up and dousing the crystal hanging around my neck.
"Are you crazy?" Gabriella whispered harshly.
"If we can't see them, they can't see us," I said. I quickly cast my planar view. All around us, the animated dead appeared as pale wisps. Small contrails of energy streaked up the ramp, coalescing into a single cord that wrapped around the bend above and out of sight.
I turned my attention to Lace, who was unable to walk, stumbling as she attempted to move. "Help me with Lace," I said. "I need to keep a hand free."
"I can't see anything," Gabriella's bright form stood out like a beacon in the darkness. I stepped closer to her and she jumped as Lace's foot made contact.
"It's us," I said. "Grab on." The nearest wispy figures were closing in on our position, but since I'd doused the lights, they'd dropped their arms to their sides. "They can't see us."
Thea's voice came down from above, baiting us. "That won't help when we get down there."
With Gabriella behind, I threaded us through the animated corpses. I was grateful not all of them had been lit up although the sheer number seeking us was still considerable.
"Why isn't Thea here yet?" Gabriella whispered.
I stumbled on a rock and was driven to my knee. The sound of my breath being pushed out was enough to redirect a pair in our direction.
"I'd guess they're waiting for reinforcements," I whispered back, once again gaining my feet. "If we could just get outside, they won't be able to follow."
We finally reached the top of the steep ramp and our pursuers appeared to have given up on finding us and were instead shambling along a parallel path to our own. It made sense, there was a choke point ahead where we'd have to crawl out. If the undead could beat us there, we'd be trapped.
For a few minutes, the entire journey took on a surreal sensation as we walked forward in lockstep, with our unseeing enemy both in front of us and behind. As we reached the point I was looking for, I angled to the edge of the cave and toward the stalactite room, shuffling unanimated skeletons from my path. Fortunately, Lace was able to crawl, where she hadn't been able to walk. The going was slower, but we'd separated ourselves from the herd.
When I finally felt the edge of the pool, I understood right where we were. It seemed like we'd taken forever to get this far. In that there was little magical energy in this portion of the cave, my wizard's sight was useless. I pulled out Gabriella's flashlight, once again blocking a majority of the light. We'd gotten turned around trying to navigate through the sediment formations, so I maneuvered us over to where the stalagmites were the densest and our light was less likely to be visible from the main passageway.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Thea cackled, sounding very close.
I stopped our forward movement and popped my head up, looking over a natural swale and came face to face with a glowing skeleton. Whoever was controlling this one had to have seen or heard me. Boney arms flopped against the top of the wall and swung at me. My heart hammered in my chest as I fell back, dropping the damn flashlight again. Gabriella scrambled to cover the light, but the damage had been done.
"Darling, you don't need to hide," Thea said, overly sweet. "Come out of the shadows and join us."
Three strong-beamed flashlights illuminated the cavern where we huddled.
I dismissed my wizard’s sight. "Pull back your minions and we will."
"Did you not think we'd be monitoring our home?" Thea taunted as we inelegantly crawled through a break in the mineral deposits.
"Where's Petaluma?" I asked just before my eyes fell on the thirteen-year-old standing beside Thea. They were dressed identically, both wearing black leather pants and matching blouses. Luma's face showed conflict and Thea must have sensed it, because she turned and picked up Luma's hand.
"Right here, darling. She's been hoping you'd join us," she said.
"Please, Uncle Felix. It's who I am," Petaluma said quietly, her face looking at the floor.
"You don't have to do this, Luma," I said. "Necromancy is misunderstood, but you don't have to do bad things with it."
Thea chuckled. "Bad things? A moral argument from Felix Slade? I thought I'd never see the day. How can it be bad if it feels so good?" I recognized the words as my own, from when Thea and I had been dating. As a younger man, I'd rationalized breaking my own rule of not being involved with Judy's coven sisters with that same reasoning.
"That's not the same," I said, helping Lace stand. She seemed a little more stable on her feet, but I knew we'd never be able to make a run for it. Plus, we had at least ten feet of crawling between us and the next section of cave.
A man and woman I didn't recognize stood just behind Thea and Luma. Their manipulation of the minions was obvious as they moved their own bodies, if only slightly, bringing the small army in to surround us.
"Would you believe she's the most powerful necro in the group?" Thea asked, stroking Luma's hair. "She controls dozens, where most of these idiots can only handle two or three."
"Luma, you need to let us go. They'll kill us," I said, looking at the girl I'd babysat so many times.
"We'll do no such thing," Thea argued, looking directly into Petaluma’s eyes. "Willum just needs them not to be messing it up for us. Don't listen to him."
Two more people arrived, sliding beneath the low wall that led to the entrance and immediately added to the army around us.
Petaluma closed her eyes and raised her arms out to her sides, palms up. "Mother would never allow me to reach my potential," she said. "I tried talking to her, but she won't even say the word necromancer. There's no place for me."
The power gathering around her was enormous and we all watched in horror as every remaining corpse rose to its feet. "Why?" Luma continued. "Why is this so wrong?" The clatter of feet on the ground was almost deafening in the enclosed space as perhaps a hundred corpses in varying degrees of decay stepped forward, moving at varying speeds depending on how far back they were.
My mind raced. We couldn't be captured again. Willum, under the ghrelin's control wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving us alive a second time.
"Stop, Luma. Can't you see that when people discover what you're doing they'll have to stop you?" Gabriella pled. "The
re is a channel for your energy, but this isn't it."
"Thea says you're a bad witch. That you stole Uncle Felix from her," she said. A cadre of corpses moved toward Gabriella. I moved around to place myself between her and them.
"That's not right, Luma," I said. "Thea is with Willum. She never loved me."
"Don't listen to him, dear," Thea soothed. "The witch is certainly bad; we should remove her."
"NO!" I said. In a moment of perfect clarity the idea that I'd been missing struck me as if a bolt of lightning.
"Lucem!" I pulled the chain from around my neck and held the crystal in front of me, pushing it into the face of the nearest rotted face. Involuntarily, it turned from the glow, holding a skeletal hand up as an ineffective shield.
"Uncle Felix!" Petaluma shrieked. "You're hurting me."
I put as much command into my voice as I had. "Luma, pull them back."
"I can't," she whimpered. "He'll be angry."
The corpses surged forward and as they did, I pushed more of my energy into the crystal.
Luma screamed frantically as bodies dropped to the ground. "Stop! You're murdering them!"
I pressed forward, Lace and Gabriella close on my heels. "You must pull them back, Luma. I won't allow you to hurt my friends."
"No," Thea commanded. "Willum will punish us if they escape. Stop him." She gestured over her shoulder to the other necromancers.
As I swung the crystal in a wide arc, six of the approaching enemy fell, as did two necromancers. I reached down and pulled at the energy of the earth below. As with Judy's home, there was little to be found, but still it sustained my efforts and the crystal brightened. The radius of the crystal's light turned into a lethal wrecking ball of destruction.
Thea stepped in front of us and tried to physically block our path. Between helping Lace and channeling energy to the crystal, I was running at a hundred percent and almost missed her approach.
Gabriella stepped forward to block the woman. "Back off."
"Shut up," Thea countered, bringing her hands up to push Gabriella, who was considerably smaller, out of her way.
What happened next caught me completely by surprise, as Gabriella simply punched Thea straight in the nose. I didn't see it coming because I had no idea my girlfriend had such skills. Thea's hands popped up defensively to her face just in time for Gabriella to swing a second time, this time coming around on her eye. Thea fell to the floor, stumbling as she backpedaled.
Wicked Folk (Witchy World Book 2) Page 15