Tempted by Darkness

by Lillian Sable

  “They have shock therapy for that,” I assured her, trying not to laugh. “Believe me, I know.”

  “I mean, if anybody would . . .” she murmured, obviously loud enough for me to hear.

  Ryn returned to hear the tail end of our conversation. He and Cerberus watched us with a strange sort of curiosity as if our interchange was deeply fascinating. They probably didn’t have a lot of experience with girls who both sort of loved and hated each other.

  “We only have about seven hours left,” I told her as we made our way out of the junkyard that spread further than it had originally seemed. Piles of trash dozens of feet high blocked our view of whatever lay beyond. I didn’t have to guess that it would be something bad. Hades had no reason to make this easy for us.

  With a confident nod, Cleo set off in the wrong direction, and I had to turn her around.

  “Let’s get going,” she said cheerfully. “And on the way, we can talk about these hot guys that are following you all of a sudden. I don’t remember either of them from your play.”

  Ryn and Cerberus had fallen back to give us some privacy, but I knew they could hear every word we said. A blush darkened my cheeks, and I looked away from Cleo’s knowing smile. “Not everything is the way I imagined it. There is definitely more random dick roaming around that I would have anticipated.”

  “You run into Hades yet? From the parts of your play I read, he seemed like a real asshole.”

  “That’s definitely one way of putting it, although that might be an insult to assholes.” I was still convinced that Hades was capable of hearing what we said about him, especially when his title was spoken. But it surprised me that he hadn’t shown up again to taunt me, almost as if he had no plans to actively get in my way. That didn’t exactly make perfect sense, but I wasn’t going to kick a gift horse in the teeth.

  I had completed three challenges, there could only be so many more standing in the way of escaping this place with my friends.

  “Adonis is here, too.” I refused to look at Cleo even as her gaze swung toward mine because I didn’t want her to see whatever emotion was on my face. “Hades has him, and we won’t get him back unless we get to his castle before time runs out.”

  Cleo opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again. Finally, she offered me a reassuring smile. “Let’s not waste any more time, then.” But I heard her mutter under her breath as we navigated through the trash. “Maybe after this, one of you will finally make a move.”

  I pretended that I didn’t hear her, hoping that Cerberus and Ryn hadn’t either.

  The situation with Adonis was complicated, only more so now that we were trapped in a game with a maniacal god. Of course, I liked Adonis. Anybody with eyes could see that was the case. He was the only person, aside from Cleo, that I made any effort to spend time with outside of class. But liking wasn’t the same thing as assuming that you’d end up in a relationship. Adonis had plenty of chances to tell me he wanted to be more than friends, and he never did. I could only assume that meant he wasn’t interested.

  I was still desperate to save him, but I’d do the same thing for anyone I called a friend.

  Okay, that didn’t sound convincing even to me.

  The fog had cleared, and we found ourselves wandering through an abandoned village. It looked like a picture out of a brochure for some quaint town in a touristy part of Europe, save for the fact that it was completely abandoned. All the vegetation was overgrown, covering the walls and doors of the houses as if nothing had been disturbed for years.

  Cerberus gestured for us to stay behind him as he strode ahead of us, hand on the pommel of his sword. Ryn rolled his eyes but followed the other man so that they were both in a position to protect us from whatever might be coming next.

  “He seems very strong and capable and from the look of it, a pretty good kisser” Cleo murmured as she walked next to me. “I didn’t think you were into the tall, dark, and handsome type.”

  “Feel free to fuck right off, thanks,” I said sweetly. “I’m just trying to get out of here before Hades kills us all.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Is he as gorgeous as this one?”

  That was a question that I had no intention of answering where someone else might hear it. “They’re all myth and magic. Looking good is kind of their thing.”

  Seeming to sense that I wasn’t going to give her the juicy gossip that she obviously longed for, Cleo focused on our surroundings. “How did we get from the trash heap to this? This looks like a movie set for a folk horror movie.”

  “The Underworld becomes what its master wills it to be. There is no anticipating what Hades has planned for us.” Cerberus’s tense voice drifted over us; clearly he and Ryn had been listening in. “You should stay alert.”

  Ryn bounced back to us, his smile wide enough to fill his entire face. “Hopefully, the next challenge will involve more kissing. I haven’t gotten my fair share.”

  I picked up a nearby stick and threw it at him, but Ryn easily dodged away, laughing as he spun to catch back up with Cerberus. “Missed me.”

  “Next time, I’m aiming for your balls.”

  He looked back and winked. “Don’t tease me.”

  When I turned back to Cleo, she stared at me with a strange expression on her face. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  “Like what?”

  She hesitated before answering, then shrugged. “Usually you walk around acting like nothing about the world makes any sense to you. But now, you seem way more relaxed, like you’re more comfortable here than you’ve ever been anywhere else. Even with the fact that we’re about to go toe to toe with some mythical bad guy. I almost get the impression that you’re looking forward to it.”

  And maybe I was. The fear and urgency were there, but those feelings were distant and easy to manage. I’d felt more fear giving oral presentations in class than I was experiencing now. My most predominant emotion was a sense of determination that I’d never felt before as if everything in my life had led me to this moment. This was the culmination of a lifetime spent feeling like nothing in the world made sense when I was moments from finally putting all the pieces together.

  I wanted to face down Hades, stand in the center of his castle, and declare that I had met his challenge. I wanted to see the look on his face when he was forced to accept defeat.

  My entire life had been leading up to this moment, even though I never knew it.

  Instead of explaining that to Cleo, who couldn’t possibly understand it, I focused on the task at hand. “We need to be careful, something doesn’t feel right.”

  “I know, this empty town is freaking me out.” She looked around us with a curious gaze, as if considering something. “You know what this reminds me of?”

  “If you’re going to say something creepy, please keep that shit to yourself.”

  “Too late.” She snapped her fingers and made a triumphant sound. “This looks just like that horror movie we watched a few weeks ago. You know, the one where the whole town gets turned into werewolves, and then these random teenagers end up there when their car breaks down. They think the town is abandoned, but then the full moon comes out, and all the werewolves appear. It was scary as hell.”

  Everything reminded Cleo of something she saw on television or a movie. But I couldn’t stop myself from looking reflexively at the darkened sky overhead. A bright white moon hung there as if suspended from a string by the hand of a god, hugely round and full, where it loomed just above us.

  I couldn’t remember the film she was talking about at all. Sometimes, I would hang out on the couch with her and watch a movie, but I usually fell asleep before we ever got through the opening credits. “This doesn’t look exactly the same though, right?”

  “Pretty damn close.” Cleo wandered closer to a small house with overgrown vines covering the windows. “Actually yeah, I think this was the first house they tried to hide in after the werewolves attacked.”

&
nbsp; A shiver of fearful awareness rolled up my spine. “And what happened to the teenagers?”

  “They all died. You think the main girl is going to survive in the end, but then you see an old lady that you thought was dead get up and shift into a werewolf behind her. It was so creepy.”

  “We need to get out of here.” I grabbed her arm and forced her to walk faster until we caught up with Cerberus. “I think something bad is about to happen.”

  He turned back to look at me, a question in his gaze. But before he could say anything, we all heard a distinct and unwelcome sound that froze us in our tracks.

  The baying of wolves.

  Ryn, his reaction time the fastest, saw them first. “They’re coming from behind.”

  The look on his face would have been all the warning I needed. I was already moving and pulling Cleo with me when he yelled for us to run.

  Wolves several times larger than any of I’d ever seen at the zoo, burst from behind the dilapidated houses and buildings. Frothing lips snapped over teeth glistening with spittle and sharp enough to slice through flesh with very little effort.

  Cerberus unsheathed his sword, bracing as if he planned to fight them all off. But this wasn’t a fight that one man could win on his own, no matter how strong he was. He might have been made of stone until hours ago, but I knew he would bleed red now like any other living thing.

  “Come on,” I screamed. “We can’t fight them!”

  Cerberus reluctantly ran after us, just behind Ryn, who urged us forward between gasping breaths. But there wasn’t anywhere for us to run, the little town stretched up the rise of the hill, and it was impossible to know what lay beyond it.

  A stitch in my side that turned into a dull ache made me wonder if I’d even make it that far. “Can we outrun them?”

  “We can try,” Cleo insisted.

  “No, we have to fight.” Cerberus gestured for us to keep going as he came to a stop and turned back. “You two go, Ryn and I will hold them off.”

  “You and Ryn will do what?” Ryn caught up with us, gasping for breath. “I’m a lover, not a fighter, remember?”

  Cerberus scoffed. “You’ll be whatever you have to be today.”

  The wolves were gaining on us. We were moments from being torn apart with absolutely no time for this argument. But I couldn’t just leave them here. “I’m not letting you sacrifice yourselves.”

  “They don’t want us.” Cerberus raised the sword and pointed at the leader of the wolf pack who was less than a dozen feet away and bearing down fast. “And the most important thing is that you make it to the castle and save yourselves. You still have a chance at escaping this place, the same isn’t true for us.”

  Ryn pulled a pair of daggers out of his pants that must have been in a hidden sheathe and spun them in his hands. “He’s right, just get out of here. Now.”

  Even though I hesitated, Cleo made the decision for me. Grabbing my arm, she half-pulled and half-yanked on it until we were both moving again. I heard the impact of battle, but I forced myself not to turn back around. Whatever the outcome, I didn’t need to see it. Grunts of pain met the whistle of honed steel through the air. I heard the whimper of a wolf and a heavy thump as it fell to the ground. In response, I pressed my hands over my ears to dull the sound so I wouldn’t hear anymore.

  The village abruptly came to an end at the crest of the hill, and we stumbled through the darkness. Moonlight still shone bright overhead, but whatever was in the valley below remained shrouded in the shadows of nearby trees.

  Cleo’s hand stayed gripped hard around mine even as the sounds of the battle faded into eerie silence. I didn’t want to think about what that might mean, holding out hope that Ryn and Cerberus survived their encounter and would catch up with us.

  We reached the bottom of the hill, and I could finally see what hadn’t been visible from further away. A chain-link fence greeted us, with just enough in the broken metal loops for us to fit through. We passed a hand-written sign, and I stopped so suddenly that Cleo ran right into me.

  Pomona Valley Carnival.

  She had stopped too and regarded the sign with a sound of alarm. “That can’t be what I think it is.”

  “The fairgrounds,” I whispered, feeling suddenly faint. Growing up, I’d always been terrified of carnivals. Everything about them seemed creepy, from the grizzled ride operators to the grown men dressed as clowns who always made you wonder what they were hiding under all that face paint. “Diana used to bring me here every summer when I was a kid.”

  “Is this the place where you got lost in the—”

  I cut her off before she could finish that sentence, because it wasn’t a memory that I wanted to think about ever again. “Let’s just get through here as quickly as possible.”

  “But it’s weird, right?” she asked, falling into step beside me. “Why would this place have a village that looks like something I just saw in a movie or the fairgrounds you used to visit as a kid?”

  Thinking about it made my head hurt. “Hades created all of this to challenge us. Maybe he can see our memories.”

  “Or maybe we’re doing it ourselves. When we were walking through the garbage dump, I was thinking about how I need to stop watching so much TV. And then that made me think about the last thing that I saw, which was that horror movie with the werewolves.” She took a deep breath and exhaled, sounding both excited and scared. “Do you think I made the wolves happen?”

  Any answer to that question was terrifying. Either this place was random and unpredictable, or somehow our deepest fears were being manifested in physical form.

  But while we were running from the wolves, I’d been thinking about the last time I was this terrified. It had been my last visit to the fairgrounds when I’d been chased into the mirror maze by a clown who either wanted to eat me or hand me a balloon. My twelve-year-old brain had been convinced either of those things was equally likely. I’d run without waiting to figure it out.

  How easily could a realm of dreams become the stuff of nightmares?

  “I have no idea, but it’s definitely possible.”

  It was obvious that she felt bad about it. “I hope the guys are okay.”

  “God, me too.”

  But the path led us through the fairgrounds, past displays and rides that had all gone dark. Wind whistled through twisted metal and rattled dilapidated wood in a way that raised the tiny hairs on the back of my arms.

  We passed all the mainstays of the county fair, from the creaking Tilt-a-Whirl to a Ferris wheel that rose so high above our heads that it blocked out the moon overhead. Nothing moved in the darkness, and we had no reason to interact with any of the rides or abandoned games. Everything was silent and abandoned.

  But I had a sinking suspicion that I already knew where this path would lead.

  We navigated around the Ferris wheel, and that was when I saw it. Brightly-colored lights spelled out its name across the front, and I heard the faint sounds of 80s music that I knew would be blasting once we stepped inside. The path led straight to it with no other way around.

  We had to enter the Mirror Maze.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Cleo murmured from beside me. “The one you’re afraid of.”

  “No, this was always my favorite attraction. I wonder how this place figured that out.”

  She sighed and pulled me forward. “There’s something terrible waiting for us inside there, right?”

  “Hades wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  When she gripped my hand, I held onto it so tightly that she winced but didn’t try to pull away. I didn’t have to know what awaited inside that brightly colored building to understand that it wouldn’t be good. The innocent appearance was intended to lull me into a false sense of security so that I would make a mistake. I had already lost Ryn and Cerberus, although I hoped they survived even if I never got to see them again. The next challenge might be the one that finally ends this journey entirely.

  I squeezed
Cleo’s hand before letting go, fear wasn’t going to get me anywhere. “Let’s just get it over with. The damned Hades won’t know what hit him.”

  The Mirror Maze mocked me, so cheerful and bright that I knew a horrible darkness had to be waiting inside. My memory of it was one of the worst in my young life, not necessarily because of what happened but because of how it had made me feel. I never wanted to experience that feeling of loneliness and isolation again.

  Finally, I mounted the steps of the Mirror Maze, where the path ended as Cleo trailed after me. I didn’t have to go through this alone, not this time.

  And if we found any clowns inside, I was ready to go Old Testament on their asses.

  Chapter Eleven

  “This is your worst nightmare, huh?”

  I waved Cleo’s gentle mockery away with the hand not holding a large rock, ready to bash in the heads of any errant clowns. The hall of mirrors was precisely as I remembered it, relentlessly hokey and old-fashioned. As a child, I’d been convinced that one wrong turn would leave me trapped inside of the maze forever, regardless of how ridiculous that might sound to an adult. It took me years to figure out that it was only a trick, and eventually, I would find my way like everyone did. In the real world, children don’t get trapped inside of mirrored mazes and end up lost forever.

  But we weren’t in the real world anymore. I couldn’t assume the same rules applied.

  Creepy lights flashed across our faces from a strobe light mounted on the ceiling, reflected dozens of times in the mirrors surrounding us. I had never understood how people could enjoy the thought of getting lost with a bunch of reflections of themselves, but there had to be fans of this nonsense somewhere.

  I held my free hand out in front of me so I wouldn’t collide with the mirrored surfaces that only seemed to reflect the strobe light after I’d run into them. Most of the mirrors were angled so that you wouldn’t see yourself reflected until it was too late.

  “I’ve always heard that you can solve these things by only going right when the path forks,” Cleo murmurs from behind me. “But I have no idea if that’s right.”