“Yes, I thought you kept that,” Rasmussen said with a grin.
“Yes, I did. I’m going to head down there, and if there’s more than zombies and I can’t do it, I’ll come up, and we’ll make a new plan.”
“Oh, shizzna,” Rose said and then disappeared.
I looked around and heard Vassago before I saw him. He was being led at sword point in our direction. His eyes caught mine. They were pleading, almost begging me to hurry.
“Make yourself scarce for a few minutes and then do what you can to make contact with me, and we can test it out as we go.”
“Indeed,” Rasmussen said again, inscrutable as ever.
“Bye, boss. I uh…”
“You too short stuff, you stay behind, no matter what,” I told her, feeling like this was a final goodbye somehow.
“Promise.”
I debated triggering the veil charm, but I was already feeling the effects of what I’d done before. It wasn’t huge, but if you have to run hard for ten minutes, you’re going to feel that half an hour later. I was still feeling it, and I didn’t think it’d been a half hour yet, so I decided that the athame was the best I could do for the moment. I had no clue if it worked on more than zombies, but the rune work seemed to suggest there was more to it than merely making the wielder invisible. I had the book, I’d studied it, but the translation hadn’t been completed.
There had been more than Gaelic on the following page, but most of the gist that I could make out was that it was to protect the wielder from the undead and send their souls back from whence they came, roughly. Then there was what looked like a journal entry on the following page, with a brief history and notes from other people who’d found the knife over the centuries. How Vassago had known to go after the book was beyond me. Mere chance, or was I being set up?
My old paranoia was kicking in as I started down the stairs, staying against the outside wall, sight walking every few seconds to see if anything was going to jump out and startle me. Seventy-seven steps going down opened to a landing, full of rotting, shambling undead. The smell was even worse than in the futures I’d explored beforehand. I was almost gagging and pulled part of my hoodie over my nose, before deciding to tie the fabric across my mouth.
“Oh god,” I muttered.
There must have been thirty of them loosely spaced around the room. Speaking of the room, it was nearly forty feet square with an archway on the far side. Four torches with more of the eldritch fire lined the side walls, with two torches on either side of the arches and a ball of mage light near the center of the ceiling.
At one point, it could have worked as a medieval ballroom, underground without the need for heat or worry that people above would hear their debauchery unless they came down the long flight of spiral stairs. The stonework that made up the walls and floor was done at a level of expertise I’d never seen before. It was like somebody had laid them in place like tile, without the need for mastic and grout. The ceiling had supports in two spots, large oaken beams ran from floor to ceiling, nearly as thick as JJ’s shoulders. The ceiling itself looked to be made out of stone, whitewashed to reflect the light back down.
There had been a runner on the floor once, but it was now dark colored as things had dropped off or had been stomped into the fabric. It squelched with liquids unmentionable by polite society. The zombies themselves… I had enough ammunition, but I didn’t want to make that kind of noise. How was I going to get to the other side, get down another floor, find Kat, get back out, and not get eaten? I hadn’t checked, but I was willing to bet these floors had gate walls set up to prevent people from escaping quickly.
I watched the zombies from the last stair, looking for a pattern, but none of them seemed to have one, just the constant motion of tortured undead beings that, if stopped, might never regain motion again. I saw an opening and stepped through, pulling the Deathless blade from the sheath and transferred it to my left hand so I could keep my dominant hand free.
As soon as the knife left the sheath, the undead seemed to move further away, almost like I had an invisible bubble around me that repelled them or encouraged them to find a different direction. I started moving slowly. In the futures I checked, any loud noise would draw their attention, regardless of the blade, so apparently, they could still hear me, but not see me or smell me if I had things figured out right. I took slow steps, making my way to the far right wall so I wouldn’t have to walk across the squelching fabric laid down the center of the floor.
”Testing, 1, 2, 3. Can you hear me?”
Rasmussen!
“Yes, thirty-four undead. I’m making my way through them. There appears to be another landing and stairwell going down across from the room I’m in. I don’t know what I’m going to find next, but I’m going to sight walk my next path once I get to the other side. It’s slow going.”
“Good. Hermosa… Rose said you’re a dumbass and to be careful.”
“That’s the plan.”
“This is straining my limits, if I cannot reach you once you make the lower level, do not be surprised. Vassago has been taken upstairs, the guards think he shall be punished and sent down where you are for attacking one of them. Time is of the essence.”
“Got it.”
Just like that, I felt his mind disconnect. I hadn’t stopped moving, but I had slowed so I could concentrate on not bumping into anything that’d make noise, or any zombies that stumbled and weren’t repelled by my small bubble. A woman zombie, long dead, shambled past, half her ribcage gone from some accident or attack. She stumbled and went sprawling behind me. The others turned, a groan coming from the mouths of many, and as one, the room seemed to turn and start walking in my direction. I took three quick leaping steps before I realized they were homing in on the sound of the flailing zombie. It gave me an opportunity.
In the futures I checked, I rushed through the large gap in the doorway and…
Teeth, breaking bones, being fed upon. Red eyes and an insatiable hunger before everything went dark.
Okay, don’t go rushing all headlong. I did take the opportunity to get past the crush of bodies, then I studied the ceiling and the walls. That was when I decided to stand near the archway, off to the right just out of sight of it. I heard something coming up the stairwell. I looked into the futures to see what would walk through the door…
Two figures, dressed in old chain mail. Flesh still clung to their bones, but they didn’t move with the shambling and shuffling of the lesser undead. They smelled like bile, buzzard puke and rat shit all at once and spoke using mouths without tongues in a dead language. Sumerian? Both carried long broadswords, and as soon as they saw what was causing the commotion behind me, they were going to take a look to their left and… Teeth, gnawing, chewing, blood, darkness.
I put my fingers on the veil necklace charm and whispered the command word and hunkered down. Two seconds later, the figures walked out, hesitating in the doorway, looked left, right where I was crouched, then to the right, before striding in the direction of the downed zombie.
One of the Wright’s spoke harsh words to one who started using his bony appendages to fling the undead back away from the woman zombie who’d fallen. He roughly dragged her to her feet as the second one brought his sword back like a baseball bat. I didn’t want to watch, but I saw the first whack that took the zombie’s arm off. There was a scramble for the piece. I checked the futures to see what would happen if I shot the wights with my runed bullets and saw that it didn’t do much more than make them lose a limb. So they were a little stronger than the average undead, but not quite vampire status.
That scared me, but then I had an idea and checked to see what would happen if I stabbed or cut one with the deathless blade. Agony, pain, death. But not for me. Good to know. I then checked the futures to see if I could make it down the stairwell behind me unmolested. I could. I slipped past them, definitely not giving up the blade. My runed bullets wouldn’t turn those two into puddles of goo like they would
the other zombies, but it would hurt them and I had no doubt I could kill them if there weren’t so many hungry things that would home in on the sound.
23
The next landing ended with a bench on the other side of a large wooden door with a small slot cut into it waist high. I knelt down and looked through it, but the room beyond was darkened. It wasn’t large like the one upstairs, but by the smell, I could tell right away what this one was. A cell. I shuddered. Vassago’s daughter had been kept down here for longer than I was alive, guarded by the greater undead? The smell alone was still getting to me, but living down here… it had to have permeated everything, and it didn’t smell like there was running water in there.
The smell of unwashed bodies and an open latrine hit me hard then I saw movement, moving from in front of the doorway, blocking the sputtering torch at the far wall. A face came into focus, startling me.
“Kat?” I asked in a soft voice.
“Who are you?” a rusty voice whispered back.
“Friend of your father’s, here to get you out,” I said, trying to pull the bar that held the door open.
“I… It’s locked.”
“I can see that,” I said, looking at the big stupid keyhole that looked like every major pain in the butt keyhole in every Tom and Jerry Cartoon I’d seen since they were in black and white.
“Who’s got the key?” I asked her.
“Sebastian. Is he coming soon? I haven’t eaten in days.”
My heart stuttered to a stop and then restarted. I hadn’t found a key on him, not for anything like this. Just the van keys. I felt my pockets futility, hoping against hope we’d kept them. We hadn’t.
“Sebastian’s dead,” I told her.
“What about his little brother? He was always nice to me,” she said.
Her voice sounded young, but it was too dark to make out more features than her mouth and pale skin in the dark.
“Dead,” I whispered.
“The Empress is not going to be happy,” Kat whispered back.
“Sent her pet demons after me. Mass and Effect.” I jiggled the handle again.
She mumbled something, but I was pulling a lock pick kit out of my back pocket. I did not have any innate skill in picking locks, nor was I practiced, but with my new power, I was hoping if I ever needed to, it would help me do more difficult tasks like this, the way the brief flashes of insight would allow me to aim better or pull off unbelievable stunts. Twenty seconds in and every future I tried while concurrently doing something else was fruitless.
I studied the door. It had old hinges, probably made by a blacksmith. The part bolted to the door had the shaft pointing down while the part of the stone had the pocket to accept it. There was a gap on the bottom and the top of the door. I got an idea, and I would love to say it was original, but it wasn’t.
“This is going to make some noise, so I need you to get away from the door and be ready to run. Once the Wights come after me, I’ll take them out.”
“The zombies?” she shivered.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told her.
The reason I wasn’t doing more planning and more seat of the pants stuff, was I’d left my sight open a crack and saw that in about two minutes the Wights were going to be returning. I’d rather have another mage at my back, helping me, than face those down on my own. I got the bench out and turned it over, spilling the foul cushions on the floor and looked at the bottom. The legs were carved in an X with a solid piece of milled timber. Perfect. I flipped it and picked it up.
“Ready,” Kat said from the other side of the door, her voice quieter.
I put the leg of the bench under the door, the stools sitting edge on the floor as a fulcrum and pulled down on the end I’d left up. The door lifted, wobbled and scraped along the top. It took everything I had just to get it to lift that much, and my arms were already straining. My feet left the ground as I pushed all my weight on it and I hit my ass as the large door popped free, the bottom hinge finally letting loose. The heavy wooden door hit the floor and then fell backward. When it landed, the nearly five-inch thick wooden door seemed to make the floor shake, and the sound was huge.
I got to my feet, rubbing my leg where I’d hit it on the bench while being smooth as hell.
“Come on,” I hissed.
“Coming,” Kat said quietly, still in shadows, but my eyes were on the stairwell.
I knew about having the higher ground and being trapped, but in this case, I needed to stay out of range of the broadsword and the Wights wouldn’t know I was there because I was still invisible, under my veil… Kat, she’d seen me… how?
I searched the futures as I felt a light touch to the side of my neck.
“I’m sorry, Thomas,” Kat whispered, then everything was pain and darkness.
“You’ve killed the stupid bastard,” Khrystiana snarled, or at least that’s the voice I heard.
I opened my eyes. My lungs were burning and pain radiated from everywhere.
“He’s not dead, he’s just mostly dead,” a young woman’s voice said.
“Oh God, not the Princess Bride stuff again,” Khrystiana said before she noticed me eyeing her.
“Give me some sugar baby,” I said through thick lips.
Something was wrong with one eye, and it felt like my lips had been smashed into pulp. Those injuries had nothing on my hands though. If I hadn’t woken up like this, I would have probably gone insane… A rough hemp rope was tied just under my arms, leaving my feet dangling and each hand was tied and nailed to a cross member. Blood dripped from my hands, and something was dripping from the side of my mouth. Saliva? Spit? It was hard to breathe, and I fought for every breath.
“Oh, now that’s how I like it,” the young voice said.
I picked her out as the figure facing Khrystiana. Through the pain, I squinted, focusing. She was small in stature, spiky hair and when she turned…
“Zania?” I asked her.
“God, you must feel like the world’s biggest dumbass right about now,” she said and giggled.
She had the deathless blade in her hand and was twirling it around expertly. I watched her nervously.
“I don’t understand?” I said, my thought process slow.
“How many life mages do you know with the same level of power as my father?” she asked.
“Your father?” I wasn’t getting it.
Zania walked towards me and turned to my right side at the last moment. I turned my head to see another figure had been tied to another upright, though not crucified. Blood had dried on the exposed skin that otherwise looked unblemished where his shirt and jacket had been ripped or cut away from his body, a black hood over its face. She sunk the knife into the waist and pulled upwards, ignoring the muffled screams.
I closed my eyes against the horror, and when the screams and sobs subsided, I took as deep of a breath as I could and opened them again. Zania was standing right before me, the Deathless blade dripping blood. She looked to my right, and I turned, not wanting to see but helpless to stop. The long knife wound was healing up before my eyes. Vassago.
“You’re Katarina?” I asked Zania.
“Yup,” she said and spun the blade, blood flecks hitting me in the face.
“You see,” Khrystiana said, “it is true, I’m everywhere, and it was easy to pick out Vassago’s betrayal.”
“Even with help?” Rasmussen’s deep voice said, stepping out from my left side.
I wheezed, turning to face him. He had his hood up, but I could make out his facial features. That was when I took in the room, knowing in a second he was going to be in my mind. It seemed to be a living chamber of all things; windows along one wall letting in a light breeze that made the pale blue curtains fly into the room every time the wind blew. There was a bed, a dresser, and a lounging area off at one end. This was a bedroom, a medieval style bedroom. On the far wall, there was a small door set into the stonework, and a chandelier seemed to be burning real candles inst
ead of eldritch fire.
“Your help was most appreciated,” Khrystiana said with a smug smile.
I felt lost. I felt… I was beyond betrayed. If I could have drawn a full breath, I might have felt enraged. The pain radiating out of my hands was one of the worst things, but being held up the way I was… it was putting pressure on my diaphragm, and I knew by research that most people crucified died by suffocation long before they died of their wounds. A day or three at the most. If they were strong or could pull their weight up with their feet? I was too weak for that, and I’d suffered a beating. Hopefully no bites. How had I got out of the basement? The cell? How had I got past the undead?
“So many questions, so little time,” Rasmussen said softly, touching my cheek. “I am sorry about your mother.”
“That was you too?” I asked him.
“Ta-dah!” he said with a flourish. “I was merely the pretense to get her to open the door. She had to trust somebody.”
My world wobbled. I didn’t know if I was losing my grip or I was simply overwhelmed. Khrystiana walked over to the dresser and looked down.
“Why?” I asked them.
“Everybody has their price,” Rasmussen said, “and long have mages suffered quietly, even died to keep the silence.”
“Everybody has sacrifices to be made,” Zania said with a grin, looking back to see what Khrystiana was picking up.
I could see, the lighting wasn’t bad. It was two blades. My blood ran cold.
“Sacrifices? What do you two know of it?” I asked them.
“My son,” Rasmussen said.
“Your son?” I asked him.
“Yes. Haven’t you figured it out already?” he asked with a grin.
“No,” I said softly, coughing.
“Mind magic and life magic are such small clubs,” he said after a moment.
My eyes went wide. “You were dating Cindy’s grandmother?” I asked him.
Second Sight: The Rune Sight Chronicles Page 22