Madison's Song

by Christine Amsden

  Stay calm. Focus. She reached within herself, angling back to her source of power, to the meadow where Scott’s inner wolf rolled and played. She didn’t make it there, though. She stopped inside her church, looking above the altar to the giant cross statue hanging there. A ceramic Jesus hung from it, legs together, feet bound by a single nail. He had his arms thrown wide, a nail in each wrist, and though she knew he had died that way, she had always seen his wide arms as a symbol of welcome. His head hung just to one side, his eyes cast downward, a crown of thorns atop his long brown hair.

  Here he was, the cornerstone of her faith, poised for all eternity in a symbol of love and sacrifice. Three days later, he would come back to life, then take himself straight into heaven by the power of God the Father.

  That was what made sense to her. Maybe on some level she was not aware of, the power of God was the same as the power of the earth beneath her feet and the moon above her head, but one was an image she knew and embraced, whereas the other was something she had only tried to force herself to learn because well-meaning sorcerers told her she must.

  Henry Wolf believed electricity interfered with magic. Not all sorcerers thought magic worked in exactly the same way.

  Here was her connection. This was how she could get it.

  Lord God, help me. I have all this magic, more than I ever imagined, most of which isn’t even mine. I need to become invisible, but I don’t know how. If I give it to you, will you make it work?

  The door opened. Two stone faces burst in, looking from left to right. And as they did, their faces started showing emotion. Grave emotion.

  “Where are they?” one of them asked.

  “He’s an illusionist. Get out your phone.”

  The first stone face did so. Madison held her breath, but a few seconds later, a sweep of the room with the camera yielded no results.

  “What do we do?” asked the first stone face.

  Madison slipped past them. It was easy, she realized, when she was really invisible, no more than air. She could slide around them unseen and unfelt. She couldn’t even see or feel herself, but she was aware, both of her own mind and of the wolf’s, still fueling the magic for this operation.

  “It’s not over yet,” Madison whispered. Their escape had only just begun.

  Chapter 30

  THE HALLWAY YAWNED ENDLESSLY BEFORE HER. Theirs had been the last cell down the corridor and ahead of them stood locked door after locked door.

  They hadn’t discussed this part. Madison had thought about it, but she and Scott had talked about little past the two of them getting out of here, preferably alive. Now as she looked at the nearest locked cell, wondering who or what lay within, she knew she couldn’t leave them there. Maybe they deserved imprisonment. Maybe she would inadvertently release some horrible monster, but she didn’t trust her jailers to know the difference.

  Was it worth the risk? She thought of her brother Clinton, and whatever experiment they had performed upon him. He could be in one of these rooms. He was somewhere in this building; Scott had said so. If she had any chance of freeing her brother, she had to take the risk.

  She also had to work quickly. The two stone faces who had entered her cell were whirling around, shouting at a trio of stone faces sitting behind a security desk at the end of the hallway. The two men and one woman seated there were standing up, reaching for their weapons.

  She needed a key. Glancing to either side of her, she saw that the doors were unlocked using a simple RFID scanner. The two stone faces now backing out of her cell, glancing left and right as if they thought they might spot Scott and Madison hiding in the walls, had tags on the badges clipped to their belts. All she needed to do was reach out and grab one.

  The first stone face started to run back down the hall. She reached out, made a grab for his belt, and her hand passed right through it.

  Stupid. Stupid. Her hand was insubstantial. She’d have to drop her spell of invisibility to grab the badge. Or did she? Was it possible that she could make only her hand substantial, making it look to those who happened to see it as though a disembodied hand were floating through the air?

  It was risky, but it was better than letting her entire body be seen. She concentrated, then suddenly felt the heavy weight of her injured hand like an anvil strapped to her wrist, and nearly collapsed under the shock.

  The second stone face didn’t retreat down the hall. He continued to stand guard by her cell door after receiving shouted orders to stay put. He held his gun firmly in both hands, glancing around anxiously as if expecting to be attacked at any moment.

  He spotted her hand a split second before she yanked his badge off his belt. He shouted and started firing, but the bullets passed right through her body and managed to miss her hand as she quickly passed it in front of the first scanner.

  Down by the guard station, one of the stone faces screamed. Apparently a stray bullet had hit him.

  Inside the newly opened room, a young girl sat on the edge of a bottom bunk, her feral yellow eyes focused on the disembodied hand that had opened the door. Madison froze, wondering if this was another werewolf, but then she realized a werewolf would be in wolf form right now.

  Vampires also had those yellow eyes, according to Cassie and Evan. She had never seen a vampire in the flesh, but when the girl opened her mouth to reveal fangs, Madison knew she had just encountered one.

  And from the looks of it, she was starving. Madison had only seen such emaciated forms in pictures of unfortunate children from third world countries. Her bones stuck out grotesquely, and it was impossible to determine her age with any accuracy, but she couldn’t be older than ten.

  Who had turned a child into a vampire? While Madison sat there in stunned disbelief, the child vampire stood on shaky legs and started to run, but not with supernatural speed. Perhaps starving vampires couldn’t super-speed? It might explain how they had captured one.

  For a second, Madison thought the child might kill her, but it hardly seemed interested in the disembodied hand. Instead, she ran across the hall to the guard still stationed outside Madison’s old cell. He had stopped firing his weapon at random after hitting his comrade, but when he saw the vampire he let loose another volley of bullets that had no affect at all on the vampire child.

  “Your cross!” someone shouted from the other end of the corridor.

  The stone face dropped his weapon and fumbled at his neck for a cross, but either he was too slow or the vampire child was too hungry to care about being burned by the holy relic. She latched onto him, clamped her jaw around his throat, and tore.

  Madison looked away, wondering what she’d done and what she should do next. She hadn’t meant to kill anyone, but what else had she expected to happen by opening up the doors?

  That’s when all hell broke loose. From the ceiling above them a sprinkler went off, spraying the hallway with water. The vampire child screamed and retreated to her room. A few seconds later, alarms blasted.

  She still felt Scott’s presence, silent and illusory. It seemed to want her to move on, to leave this place, to find fresh air so it could run, but she unlocked the next cell with another quick pass of the ID tag. She didn’t open the door or look inside this time, just moved on to the next cell. Then the next.

  Suddenly a blinding pain shot through her visible left hand. She screamed and dropped the badge, staring at the blood welling up from her palm. She’d been shot.

  An old man came up behind her, and she nearly screamed again. He had scaly skin and black, leathery wings protruding from his back. But he didn’t seem intent on hurting her. In fact, he reached down, scooped up her dropped badge, and continued unlocking cell doors.

  Bullets ricocheted off his back as he worked, and the holy water sprinklers had no effect on him. She thought she heard one of the stone faces at the guard station call for a flame thrower, but the situation was quickly spiraling out of control. Half the cells were empty now, and she had no idea what many of the creatures
emerging from the rooms were. One shot some kind of heat ray out of his eyes, melting the sprinklers. The instant he did three vampires, including the little girl who had retreated a minute ago, spilled into the hallway.

  Madison decided not to stick around to see what happened. She headed for the stairs, praying for her hand to retreat into the cloak of invisibility.

  It didn’t.

  Oh darn. She spotted a set of double wide stairs just behind the guard station. Men and women in the army fatigues were coming down, some armed with rifles, others with crossbows or flame throwers. She detected the crackling aura of magical shields around each and every one, and many of them were linked in sets of three. She flattened her bloody hand to the wall, hoping nobody noticed, then edged her way up the stairs.

  “What’s that?” a woman asked, pointing towards the hand.

  Madison scarcely had time to think of an alternate plan. Behind her, she heard a loud howl, and a great black wolf bounded up the stairs, rushing the guards.

  At first Madison thought it was Scott, but she could still feel Scott’s ethereal presence by her side.

  A distracted soldier brought his weapon up and put several bullets into the wolf’s thick fur, but not before the beast sank his fangs into a woman’s neck, cutting off her scream almost before it had begun. Then one of the bullets finally lodged itself in the beast’s heart and it collapsed to the floor with a grunt.

  Behind her, the old man with the leathery wings was depriving guards of crosses, giving three starving vampires access to a feast. He had a spring in his step and his wings kept fluttering like he wanted to fly in this enclosed space. He laughed, a high-pitched sound that made almost everyone except the vampires clutch at their ears.

  Suddenly, a soldier wielding a flame thrower came at the man. His wings caught fire and his laughter turned to screams as he ran up the stairs, passing through Madison and ramming himself into several soldiers who lost their balance and fell.

  Half of the guards who had rushed down the stairs turned and ran back up them. Madison followed, trying not to think about what she had unleashed this night. The sounds and smells of death were quickly filling the air.

  Upstairs, everything was chaos. There were fewer guards up here, most of them seemingly concentrated on the stairs, which in Madison’s mind had been a bad decision. Up here were mostly researchers, technicians, office workers, and janitors. All but the last group looked like they had recently roused from sleep, meaning they must bunk in the building somewhere. Two vampires and a werewolf broke through the soldiers’ blockade, coming up the stairs to send everyone bolting for cover.

  Somewhere in the chaos, Madison heard the howls and barks of what had to be dozens more werewolves trapped in this building somewhere. She followed the sound down a long corridor to a door marked, “Experimental Subjects.”

  Three linked soldiers with crosses and magical shields in place blocked the entrance, looking as though they would willingly die to keep this door from being opened. But the howls were definitely coming from within, and Madison couldn’t help but wonder if Clinton was inside with them.

  They didn’t see her hand. They were too busy watching the wolves, demons, vampires, and other creatures escape from the dungeon below. Quickly and efficiently, Madison removed the crosses from their necks, then threw them towards the vampires feasting at the other end of the hall. One of the crosses hit an emaciated vampire, which hissed and stood, then caught sight of the now unprotected guards.

  The vampire charged, but these three together weren’t as unprotected as Madison had supposed. Linked together, they created a translucent shield around themselves, which the vampire slammed into a foot shy of his goal.

  Frustrated, Madison searched for another way through this more powerful blockade. If she could convince her hand to go back to being invisible, she could get inside that room by sliding through the door, but that wouldn’t help her get her brother and the other wolves out.

  Scott was growing angry with her, she sensed through their link. He wanted to leave now. This place was dangerous. More dangerous now that all the creatures were free.

  Madison abruptly let go of the invisibility spell and of Scott’s magic. She felt solidity fall upon her like a load of bricks, making her stagger for a moment before she regained her footing. But it was a relief, too, not to have to hold that power. Or maintain the link.

  Next to her, Scott became solid again. One of the guards at the door yelled a warning when he spotted the great black wolf that had just materialized in front of them.

  Scott growled, a low and threatening sound. Her heart seized when she saw him, his yellow eyes staring at her without the slightest trace of humanity left within them. And if she was no longer insubstantial, then neither was he. He was large and real and angry and ready to attack. She fell back a step, unable to help herself even knowing that the beast would scent her fear.

  She had half-wanted him to bite her, to mark her, to make her something like him so she could truly belong. How could she have forgotten? He looked angry. Hungry. How easily those teeth could rip and tear, how mercilessly the beast gorged. Scott lost his humanity once a month. He wasn’t there with her now. No one was. If she wanted to survive this, it was time to act. Quickly. Before he did.

  She opened her mouth, ready to sing a lullaby she had prepared for this moment. Her voice caught on a couple of notes, but the message came through loud and clear.

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.

  And if that mockingbird won’t sing, Mama’s gonna buy you a diamond ring.

  And if that diamond ring turns brass, Mama’s gonna buy you a looking glass.

  And if that looking glass gets broke, Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat,

  And if that billy goat don’t pull, Mama’s gonna buy you a cart and bull.

  And if that cart and bull turn over, Mama’s gonna buy you a dog named Rover.

  And if that dog named Rover won’t bark, Mama’s gonna buy you a horse and cart.

  And if that horse and cart fall down, you’ll still be the sweetest little baby in town.

  All around her, people and creatures were falling asleep. Only the vampires seemed immune to her power, but they didn’t attack her. In fact, one of them held another back when it tried. When Madison finished on a weary note, the guards were slumped over and even the howls from within the room behind them had diminished. A few wolves had resisted her command for them to sleep, but most had not.

  Madison got the access badge from one of the guards and held it against the reader with her shaking, burned, bleeding hand. The vampires rushed in then, but not to attack. Instead, they helped her by pulling the guards out of the way so she could open the door.

  The howling sounds increased. Madison threw herself out of the way, stumbling over Scott, who had fallen asleep nearby. She wondered if she should sneak away from him, but the next second he woke, taking the choice from her.

  She ran. Scott ran at her heels, but he did not overtake her as he could have done. Instead, he only nipped at her when she slowed, more like he was herding her than chasing her.

  She tucked her injured hand against her chest as she ran, trying to ignore the pain and the blood. The pain didn’t bother her as much as she expected – muted, perhaps by the adrenaline – but she felt as if she were leading a trail of blood for the predators to follow straight to her.

  The hallways were littered with the dead and dying. There were screams. Gunshots. Sirens. The destruction was almost unbelievable. The spells that had been worked into the structure of the building didn’t seem to be holding up to the mass onslaught, especially when the vampires and demons worked together.

  There were other things too. Not just werewolves and vampires. Madison had no idea what they were, or if they were natural. It was all unreal.

  It was deadly. And she had caused it. She had opened those cell doors, letting loose these monsters on their jailers. She had, in e
ffect, become their judge and jury.

  She suddenly, and alarmingly, had a real glimpse into what Scott must feel like. But she had not killed directly. Did that absolve her?

  When she stepped over the bloodied corpse of a man in a janitor’s uniform, she knew the answer. What had he known or understood about what went on here? He had only cleaned the floors and taken out the trash. Now he was dead, while two large wolves tore into his guts.

  Bullets flew around her, one grazing her shoulder. One of the feasting werewolves howled and started chasing the soldier with the gun, but Madison didn’t wait to see who would come out the victor. She ran.

  The corridors seemed to go on forever, one twisting into another, but after a few minutes of frantic running she found a place where a group of human refugees were funneling out into the night. There was a huge bottleneck there, making it almost impossible for anyone to get out quickly. If anyone attacked...

  Scott howled. Several figures turned towards him, then bolted, jostling others in their haste to get away. Within thirty seconds, Madison had her clear path to the door and out into the moonlit night.

  The forest outside was dense, the full moon above barely visible through the thick foliage. And they weren’t safe. Chaos still reigned supreme out here, as former captors and former prisoners vied for supremacy.

  Madison ran. She had no idea where she was, or what she was running to, but she had only one thought in her mind: Get away. Weeks of inactivity took their toll, leaving her winded far sooner than she would have liked. Her lungs burned, her heart pounded far too quickly, and she began gasping for breath. She hadn’t been in great shape before, her daily interval jogs not preparing her for this far more strenuous form of exercise. If she got out of this alive, she would start training to run instead of walk, but at the moment the if felt big.

  Making matters worse were her bare feet, which had no calluses to protect her from the harsh reality of the forest floor. Within minutes they were torn and bloodied, and she could feel that she had innumerable cuts and scrapes on her feet and legs. But she couldn’t stop.