Chapter 2 Know Yourself #2
“Just one store?” Marban scoffed. “A chain of stores. I would accept no less than an empire.”
“A franchise-ship,” Wally agreed with a snort. But that answer was all Marban and it was Marban’s weakness. He couldn’t be happy with what he had. He needed more all the time. Always. “But I liked keeping it small, hands on. Let me focus on what was important.”
“And that was?” Marban asked.
Wally recognized his tone. He was about to knock over Wally’s toys and tell him they were junk. But Wally was prepared for this and he knew that Marban was wrong.
“Helping people,” Wally said.
“You had the power to help more people with your gang than you ever could do with your store,” Marban scoffed.
He’d just swept his arm across the table, sweeping Wally’s toys onto the ground where they smashed into a million pieces.
“No,” Wally answered flatly.
“No?” Marban’s voice rose, but Wally could hear him suppressing the emotions he was feeling.
“You have--or had--two workers in your store. Caden and Landry. In your gang you had hundreds, if not thousands of people you could have influenced. Unless you’re counting the fact that since Caden is the ninth Dragon Shifter it counts more. ”
“No, I am not counting that,” Wally stated. “I’m at a T-intersection. Which way?”
Another pause as Marban collected himself or asked Rose which direction. It could have been either or both.
“Right,” Marban said briefly.
Wally turned right. This section of the passageway was dark.
Very dark. There was only one, faint amber construction light about fifty feet down the passage.
Wally stood there and listened. His whiskers would have twitched as would his ears if he had been in rat form.
He opened his mouth and his tongue flickered out as if he were a Snake Shifter tasting the air for enemies.
“What’s wrong?” Marban’s voice sounded absurdly loud and Wally jumped.
“Shush for a moment,” Wally told him even as he tried to stuff his heart back into his chest from his throat.
Marban was silent as if he were listening too for anything off.
Finally, Wally was satisfied that the passage was, indeed, empty.
Again he was struck by the emptiness of this place.
“It’s been years since I’ve come down here.
But I recalled seeing more people in the walls. You do a sweep or something?”
“No, it is often better for everyone involved if they stay in there and not out with the general population,” Marban said coolly. “We leave food and clothing near certain openings, so they have what they need and don’t steal.”
“Keep them in the dark and out of sight?” Wally asked.
“Judging me, are you? I have the lives of thousands of people dependent upon me,” Marban growled. “There are not any easy choices with that.”
“No, there aren’t,” Wally agreed. “That’s why I had to get out.”
“The pressure of it got to you?” Marban sounded interested and not judgmental.
“The choices I made were. The choices that seemed easiest. The fact that it didn’t bother me anymore,” Wally admitted.
“You cannot bear the weight of the world on your shoulders or it will crush you,” Marban said softly.
“Maybe I was a coward. Didn’t like who I was becoming and so I left. Left everyone to fend for themselves. Find other dark Spirits to follow,” Wally admitted. “But, then again, I knew myself. I knew I couldn’t fight what I was becoming by staying in power like that.”
“But you’re now in a great position of influence, like you said in the beginning of this interesting conversation,” Marban pointed out.
Wally could picture the drooping mustache and overgrown eyebrows on Marban’s face as he curled forward, looking like a frail monk.
“Yes, that is a danger,” Wally admitted. It worried him. It worried him greatly. “It is something I must be aware of. But I know myself quite a bit better now. I hope that will be enough. And Caden’s good sense. Not to mention Rose’s.”
He paused for a moment as he entered the darkest part of the passage.
He went still once more. His own breathing sounded incredibly loud in his ears.
He sniffed the air. There was something different.
Something cold and bitter like metal and water, stone and ice.
The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end.
The urge to turn around and flee was so strong--his sixth sense working overtime--that Wally felt his breath pushed out of his body. Adrenaline pounded in his veins.
“How close am I?” Wally whispered.
“Not far. Just about fifty more feet and then the broken open wall should be on your right,” Marban told him. “Is anything wrong?”
“This is a bad place,” Wally said simply.
Marban did not answer that.
Wally forced himself to go on. One step after the other. He kept his ears and eyes open. He felt the weight of the small cameras in his pockets that his rat forms would put up at various locations along the wall’s length.
“There is no way that the Behemoth could be getting in and out of here other than in human form,” Wally stated. “I think this plan is a good one.”
“So long as this wall is still being used,” Marban pointed out. “It was blocked up long ago. With the one in the Gray Mountains, perhaps it did not need this one.”
“Come on, Marban,” Wally snorted, “you just want to pretend that your territory hasn’t been infiltrated all this time.”
“It was bricked up,” Marban articulated each word.
“It passes through one wall, but you think it can’t pass through another? Interesting,” Wally replied dryly.
Again, Marban was silent.
Wally crept forward again, knowing he should keep silent, but somehow unable to do so as the oppressive sense grew upon him.
He swore he felt the weight of the mountain itself upon him.
He wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a creaking or rumbling and the ceiling to come crashing down after a moment’s notice.
He would be smashed flat. This whole place would be destroyed and maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
“So now that you’re breathing in the rarified air you’ve dreamed of, Marban, will it be enough?” Wally asked.
Marban said archly, “Why should I be satisfied until I have all I desire? You make it seem like a failing that I want more.”
“No, just that you never feel you have enough. It’s always more and more and more,” Wally stated. “Trying to fill that hole the lack of respect you’ve had for so long has dug.”
“I am content… for now,” Marban sounded amused.
Wally sighed. “You talk about having thousands of people’s lives in your hands in the Below, now you have the world’s population. You’re a Councillor to Valerius.”
“You sound so very virtuous, Wally--”
“Yes,” Wally hissed. He swallowed as a wave of icy chill flowed over him and his breath frosted the air. “We have to be better than we’ve ever been, Marban. We can’t be doing this for us.”
“Rise above our natures? I don’t know if that is possible,” Marban almost sounded sad again.
“You will regret forever if you let your ego or self-interest get in the way of your service to Valerius,” Wally told him.
“I’m touched by how concerned you are for me.”
“I’m concerned for everyone. You’re finally where you’ve always wanted to be. Don’t mess it up,” Wally warned. “I’m here. I can see the broken wall.”
It was good timing. He heard Marban let out a hiss of breath between his teeth.
He had, undoubtedly, wanted to tell Wally off, but he couldn’t now.
Wally hoped that Marban would sit with what he had said.
For his part, Wally emptied his mind of everything.
He had to be completely one with the moment so that he could sense anything that changed in the atmosphere.
Wally stopped about fifteen feet from where the smooth stone of the mountain’s interior was marked by a slice of brick.
Now those bricks were broken and scattered on the ground.
Wally noted that the mortar used seemed strange.
It was white and powdery. He could smell it and it reminded him of…
bone. Ground bone. For a moment, he imagined one of the forgotten in these tunnels grinding bone into powder and mixing it with liquid so that it could be slathered between the bricks to cover up the passage beyond.
He could easily imagine the unhinged worshipping of this place.
Strange that no one is here. Silence. So much silence.
The cold was coming from there. Wally couldn’t quite see the wall.
His plan was to walk past and look down casually like he wasn’t there for the wall at all.
But had other unsavory business. He crept forward, weighing each step to put the least amount of weight on the ground.
Despite the chill, sweat coursed down his forehead and stung his eyes. Wally swiped it away.
Finally, he was close enough that if he shifted his body just the right way, he could see into the formerly bricked up passage at the wall.
He was supposed to saunter past. There was no way.
If he really was here on his own business, he would have been affected by this.
Since he thought he knew what was there, he had to look.
Wally shifted and looked.
His breath froze in his throat.
“Marban,” Wally said.
“What is it, Wallace?” Marban’s voice reflected the dread in Wally’s
“This wall… it’s being used,” Wally answered.
There was a pause and then Marban asked, “How do you know?”
Wally stared at the hundreds of arms, perfectly shaped as if by an expert sculptor, that were reaching out of the wall.
Wally swallowed and didn’t answer Marban exactly. Instead, he said, “You won’t have to leave food or clothes for the people here anymore. The Behemoth took care of that problem for you.”